THE GOP: A ONE HUNDRED YEAR LEGACY OF SWINDLING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (REVISITED)
In 1921 -- eight years before the great depression -- Republicans took over the helm of this nation for 12 years. During that time there were three Republican administrations, the first of which was the administration of Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding's administration for one thing more than anything other -- scandal. It was during Harding's presidency that the Teapot Dome Scandal erupted. His administration was considered the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States -- until Nixon's, then Reagan's, and finally Bush's.
.
Next, in 1923, came Calvin Coolidge, the president that Ronald Reagan is said to have most admired. Coolidge's policies of large tax cuts, allowing business a free-rein, and his encouragement of stock speculation contributed greatly to the impending stock market crash and the great depression that was to come.
.
Then in 1929 Herbert Hoover came to power. During his administration the stock market crashed, starting the Great Depression. In spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. During Hoover's administration 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
.
Finally in 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a liberal democrat, was elected overwhelmingly. He immediately surrounded himself with a group of the finest minds in the country, including Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, Jr., Rexford G. Tugwell, and Raymond Moley, known at the time as the "Brain Trust." After assembling these men and others he went about the business of developing a" New Deal" for the working class people of this country.
.
The New Deal had two components -- one to help the economy to recover from the effects of the great depression, and a second component to give relief to the American people and to insure that they would never be placed in a position of total destitution again. To help heal the economy Roosevelt created programs that regulated business, controlled inflation, and brought about price stabilization; to bring relief to the people he signed The National Labor Relations Act which guaranteed workers the right to collective bargaining, and he created the Social Security Administration to guarantee workers some sort of income once they became too old to work. He also signed the Fair Labor Standards Act which protected workers rights and set a minimum wage for workers.
.
With his New Deal in place Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this "bleeding heart liberal", not only led this country out of the worst, Republican generated, crisis that this country has ever faced, but went on to lead the free world in victory over Hitler in WWII. He then ushered in the most sustained era of prosperity that the world has ever known.
.
One would think that conservatives would have seen the light, but their passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to supersede all logic. Therefore, from the moment that the New Deal went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. The closest they've come to succeeding started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" -- and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.
.
Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was first floated, even George Bush, Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
.
Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planed.
.
Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
.
And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut -- for the rich.
.
Due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
.
Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement.
.
Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that is currently playing out on Wall Street. He was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name.
.
In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars.
.
After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five--Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain--attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
.
Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed the American people blind, whose fumbling ignited the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, and whose greed came very close to sending the nation into yet another depression.
.
Now, after all of their repeated efforts to deplete the national treasury, they're unanimously voting against every piece of legislation that the Democrats propose to repair the damage they created, and to bring relief to the American people. Then they have the audacity to claim that they're doing it because they're concerned about deficit spending.
.
They're against affordable health care for American families; they're against any kind of spending to put Americans back to work, and they're against extending unemployment insurance to relieve the burden of America's unemployed. What's particularly telling, however, is they're also against any kind of strong legislation to prevent the financial community (them) from being able to rob the American people in the future.
.
The fact is, what they really wanted was to maintain the status quo and make damn sure that the American people remained miserable, hungry, and divided until the next election so they'd have a better chance to regain power and raid the treasury again. Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was frustrated and reckless enough to say it out loud - "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president" - not to save America, or to bring relief to the American people, but to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Flag pens in lapels and patriotic rhetoric notwithstanding, that says it all about the GOP's lack of concern for America, or the American people.
.
After losing the 2012 election, their agenda shifted to making sure that President Obama was not successful, because if he was, and then combine that with the rapidly changing demographic, that could spell doom for the future of the GOP - and it should, because they're grossly out of touch with reality and America's best interest. They're out to create a corporate feudalist society. Their government shutdown alone, clearly demonstrated that they had, nor have, absolutely no respect for democracy.
. And this is not just political rhetoric. Here is the activity of the Republican congress who ran in the 2010 election on their claim that their number one priority was to bring economic relief, and create jobs for the American people:
.
History is clear. The conservative Republicans don't mind spending money, they just don't want to spend it on those who need it - us. Remember, they're the party of Alexander Hamilton, one of this country's founding fathers who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote. He also said: . "All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government." Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).
.
So, let's set the record straight. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that "bleeding heart liberal," not only brought the nation back from the Great Depression and saved the world from Hitler during his life, but his "New Deal" for the American people gave us the greatest prosperity we've ever known, and allowed him to reach back from the grave to save the nation from Ronald Reagan 50 years after his death, and Barack Obama saved the nation from a second Great Depression during his administration.
.
So for the past one hundred years the Democratic Party has always been there to draw a line in the sand against Republican excess, mean-spiritedness, and greed, and to ensure that we maintained a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, instead of a government where the citizens are nothing more than disposable resources for big business. But due to the impact of Citizens/United, the party has been taken over by "Republicrats" and we all paid the price in the 2016 election.
.
2016: A NO-LOSE ELECTION FOR THE
CORPORATE ELITE
"New Democrats, also called Centrist Democrats, Clinton Democrats or Moderate Democrats, are a relatively centrist ideological faction within the Democratic Party that emerged after the victory of RepublicanGeorge H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. Describing themselves as "centrist", they are an economically conservative and "Third Way" faction which dominated the party for around 20 years, starting in the late 1980s after the US electorate turned to the political right. They are represented by organizations such as the New Democrat Network and the New Democrat Coalition." New Democrats - Wikipedia
.
With the emergence of these Republicrats, the Democratic tradition of fidelity to the American people has been corrupted to the point that the Democratic Party has become a mere vapor of it's former greatness. So it remains to be seen if the true progressives within the Democratic Party will be successful in coming together to "drain the swamp" and once again come to the rescue of the American people, but they have their work cut out for them. Because this time they must defeat Donald Trump and his army of bigots, the wealthy corporate establishment, the ignorance of a thoroughly brainwashed and uninformed electorate, and also, their very own self-serving Republicrats within the Democratic establishment, and collectively, that won't be an easy task. Their only hope is to get the message out and educate the American people - and fast.
*
Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com Ewattree@Gmail.com
.
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
Sphere: Related Content
GOD DIDN'T CREATE NO TALKIN' SNAKES, REGARDLESS TO WHAT PAT REBERTSON SAYS .
I'm a firm believer in God - for intellectual reasons that I can defend. God is whatever force is responsible for creating nature, what we call reality, and the universe. But organized religion, with all of its walkin' dead men and talkin' snakes is THE most evil force on this planet. It's more responsible for all the hatred, murder, mayhem, wars, bigotry, ignorance and greed than any other force on Earth - and when I say religion, I mean ALL of them!!! Religion is what terrorism is all about. Would a loving god bestow that upon humanity? I don’t think so.
.
NOBODY can speak for God, and anyone who believes that ANY man - including Jesus - can, is a damn fool. Jesus didn't "die for your sins"; he died just like any other man, because he was stabbed. If he’d been God - or even the son of God - when they stabbed him he would have just laughed at ‘em. But since Christians were claiming he was "the son of God," they had to find a reason to justify how he could be killed, so they came up with this nonsense. It’s also a loophole that allows Christians to think they can cut people’s throats all week and then pray for forgiveness on Sunday and think they can erase what they’ve done. Well, you can forget it. You may be fooling yourself, but you’re not fooling God. If you commit a sin, it’s with you forever, regardless to what you do - and that includes being dipped in water and trying to pray it away.
.
So if you're waiting around for Jesus to come back and "save" you, you can forget that as well. Dead men don’t come back. That’s why God blessed you with a mind, so you could handle your own problems. Believing in the Bible and believing in God are two different things. To believe in the Bible is to believe in the word of man - and ignorant, self-serving, and superstitious men at that - to believe in God, is to believe in the common sense that God bestowed upon you. So to go around worshiping man’s nonsense is the source of your misery, not your salvation. If God blesses those he loves, he must love White folks much more than he does Black people. So wake up! God helps those who help themselves. That’s why your preacher has a much bigger house than you do - and he worked a whole lot less to get it.
.
There are only three commandments, and you don't have to read a user's manual to find them any more than birds need a calendar and a map to know when to fly south - God instilled them in you when he created you:
1). Live the best life you can.
2). Help others whenever you can.
3). Mind your own business.
That came directly from God. It’s called common sense.
.
IGNORANCE IS A SIN (REPRISE)
.
When I saw all of the "Amens" on a Black site lauding Christian dogma I was absolutely disgusted. No wonder Black people are in such bad shape. We've been completely brainwashed, and it makes me sick to my stomach to see so many Black people so passionately embracing the White establishment’s version of God and what they claim he wants. How do they know what God wants!!!? The fact is, they don’t. All they know is what they want, and that’s to maintain the status quo, with White folks on the top and unchallenged as God’s “favorite” people - and I want to make it clear that when I say "White people," I'm not referring to all White people, I'm referring to the White establishment. But Black people, and America as a whole, have been convinced to believe in walkin' dead men and talkin’ snakes in order to maintain that agenda. They taught us that nonsense from birth so we casually accept it and never question it, but what we were taught is no different, and just as ridiculous, as Voodoo. So if you dismiss Voodoo as laughably ridiculous, take a moment to think about the Christian belief in talkin' snakes. How are they any different?
.
FIND EARTH And we're just looking in one direction of one galaxy in a universe that's filled with hundreds of billions of them just like it.
No, I'm not a fanatical fool. I was raised a Christian, and I remain a firm believer in God, but I'm not an idiot. I believe in God for rational reasons, so I have absolutely no need for the dogma, or mindless sermonizing of self-serving and backward-thinking men to justify that belief. God is whatever entity, being, or force that is responsible for setting the universe, nature, or what we refer to as reality into motion - period. So it's the height of human arrogance to think that with our feeble and limited mentality that we're capable of even comprehending the mere concept of God, and much less know what's on his, her, or its mind. Yet we have these arrogant men struttin' around in fancy robes every Sunday as though they're experts. What they actually are, are either con men, or delusional.
.
Our galaxy alone is over 100,000 light years across, and has over 200 billion stars that are light years apart - and there's over 10 TRILLION galaxies in the universe just like it. If you go and look out at the night sky (as I do every night as part of my personal spirituality) some of the light you see, just from stars near by, left its respective stars traveling through time and space at 186,000 MILES PER SECOND (7 1/2 times around the Earth in one second), over 100,000 years before Jesus was born just to hit your eyeball tonight, and our galaxy is just a dust particle in the universe. Again, there are thousands of billions of galaxies just like it, and billions of times more distant, and the universe is still expanding in every direction at the speed of light. There are a billion times more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach, desert, and beneath the sea - and yet, man claims to know what's on God's mind!!!? That's utterly ridiculous.
.
In spite of man's narcissistic assumption, it's all but mathematically impossible for mankind to be the only sentient beings in the universe. Stephen Hawking (the Albert Einstein of our time) suggested that one day beings from another solar system or galaxy may show up with a gigantic can of Black Flagg, and then we'll see how important we are. So the bottom line is, man is completely delusional to think that he's so special that he, in particular, has God's undivided attention.
.
Yet, the very same people who compiled the Bible threaten Galileo for saying that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe. But as the church finally acknowledged, Galileo was absolutely right. Because, you see, Galileo didn't just depend on "faith," he utilized the intellect that God bestowed upon him to improve on Hans Lippershey's invention of the telescope and then used it to look out at the night sky. If Galileo had continued to depended on "faith" instead of God's gift of intellect, preachers would still be running around here preaching that the entire universe revolved around man, just like they refuse to believe in global warming because it's financially inconvenient. These people are ignorant, and their gross ignorance is a threat to the existence of all of humanity. Yet we have "faith," and we continue to follow.
.
So while this may be hard on man's gargantuan ego, the fact is, in cosmic terms, man is no more significant in just this one galaxy than a colony of germs under a toilet seat in Uzbekistan. Thus, man is on the mother of all ego trips to believe that God is kickin' it with either the Pope, Pat Robertson, or T.D. Jakes. It's also pure lunacy to believe that man is so significant that "God sent his only begotten son" to suffer and die just to save man for his sins. Just the thought of it is so childishly ridiculous it's laughable. Even if we were that important, why would a loving God send his ONLY begotten son through all that agony and unnecessary hassle when he could just forgive us - after all, he is God, isn't he? But if he did it to teach us some kind of lesson, it didn't work.
.
We can only know God's will by observing what he's done, so the one thing we do know about God is that he intended for man to be an intellectual being. He made that clear by blessing us with a logical mind, so we’re slapping him in the face by choosing to follow "the word of man" instead of following what he's clearly demonstrated was his will - for mankind to be logical thinkers, not to go around believing in talkin’ snakes, walkin’ dead men, and that God only speaks to White men - not all of humanity, but the White man in particular. But by looking at the books in the Bible, that seems to be the case. Didn't he ever speak to the Chinese, or Africans? If he did, it's not reflected by books in the Bible. Where's the Book of Chong, or Mumbulu in the Bible? EvenWhite women are relegated to second-class status. There's not one book in the Bible that was written by a woman, but that's not surprising, because the bigoted men in the Catholic church don't even believe women are worthy of being priests, and Pope Damasus I of the Catholic church compiled the Bible.
.
So according to what we see in the Bible, the Whiteman reigns supreme in the eyes of God. In fact, he occupies a status just beneath that of God himself. The Bible says, "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.” - Ephesians 6:5 In other words, you should know your place, and stay in it. But God didn't have anything to do with that stupidity. That has man written all over it. Yet, still we worship, and still we follow. So our "faith" is not in God, it's in man - and no, I'm not "the Devil trying to lead you astray."
.
CHRISTIANS ARE BEING TAUGHT TO HATE THESE TWO BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, JUST BECAUSE THEY DON'T LOOK, THINK, AND ACT LIKE THEMSELVES. THEY'RE BEING TOLD THEY'RE "UN-GODLY."
All you have to do to live a Godly life is to live the best life you can, help others whenever you can, and mind your own business. But the Bible was designed and compiled by Pope Damasus I (nearly 400 years after the death of Jesus) to get you to believe in fairy tales, jump through a lot of hoops, and prepare you for brainwashing - and in that respect, it's served it's purpose well. But in terms of enlightening mankind it's been an abject failure. It's cause more hatred, bigotry, and dissension among man than any book ever written - and there's a good reason for that, because the only time man follows it is when he's looking for a scripture to justify killing other men who don't believe what he believes. Clear evidence of that is there's going to be a lot of Christians who are going to hate my guts just for saying what I'm saying now. But while that attitude is clearly ungodly, their attitude is, "It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does." We're seeing that attitude reflected in Donald Trump right now - "Everyone who's a Mexican, or of the Muslim faith, is the enemy."
.
Black people were taught these Mother Goose tales by White folks while they had us tied up next to the mules, yet, now we’re more devoted to their nonsense than they ever were. Wouldn’t you think that if God had created religion to guide man that he would have created only one instead of multiple religions that caused man hate one another’s guts? That defeats its purpose. And if the religion that we were taught was true, wouldn’t the people who taught it to us follow it themselves? But if a slave had walked out of the field to go “worship the Lord” and went into a White church and sat next to a White woman, the preacher would’ve stopped his sermon on “loving thy neighbor” mid sentence just long enough to lynch him. Yet, we’re gorging ourselves on every word they taught us as though we heard it come directly from the mouth of God.
.
We’ve been so brainwashed that many of us are like a man sitting on a rail road track and seeing an oncoming train. Instead of using the common sense that God gave him and simply getting off the track, he decides to “test his faith” and get on his knees and pray that God stops the train. That kind of stupidity is gonna to cause the man to perish, and it does - the train didn't even slow down - because God did his part when he gave the man a brain and he failed to use it. So the man wasn’t testing his faith in God, he was testing his faith in what another man told him about God. The same is true of us. If we don't learn to use the common sense that God bestowed upon us and stop having more “faith” in the White man’s fairy tales than in what God has done, we’re also gonna perish, because after God clearly demonstrated his will by giving us a brain, to allow ourselves to remain ignorant is a sin - and believing that a walking dead man is gonna appear to solve all our problems is just that - sinfully ignorant. It hasn’t happened in 400 years, and it’s not about to happen any time in the future.
.
While we’re on our knees praying, the White establishment is cutting our throats, because religion keeps us docile and thinking that “salvation” is right around the corner. Think about it. Did all of our prayers keep Trump out of office, or keep our children from being shot down in the street? No they didn’t. God’s not gonna stop that train either. It’s up to us to save ourselves. So we need to get up off our knees and get off the tracks - and in a hurry, if we haven’t already squandered away any time we might have had left - because the American Express is about to obliterate us, and God is just gonna sit there and watch, because we chose to believe in the White man’s religious dogma instead of the common sense that he bestowed upon us.
.
NOTICE THAT THE DEVIL IS ALWAYS PORTRAYED
AS HAVING DARK SKIN, NEVER WHITE.
I've known intuitively that Christianity didn't make sense every since I was a child sitting up in Sunday school. Actually, it makes no more sense than Voodoo. I'd sit there (at 9 years old) and say to myself, "This stuff doesn't make sense. If Adam and Eve were the first two people on Earth and they only had two sons, where did the rest of us come from, and where did the people come from who Cain went to live with after he killed his brother?" But I was afraid to either say, or admit that I didn't believe it because I'd been threatened with demons, Hell, and brimstones if I refused to "believe" - and that's a very real fear for a child when even your protectors are scared to death. That's why Christianity is so thoroughly ingrained in us, because it was threatened into us by authority figures when we were children, and that was a horrible thing to do to a child - in fact, it's ungodly.
.
AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT'S HAPPENED.
THAT'S WHY WE'RE STUCK WITH DONALD TRUMP -
BIGOTED AND CLOSED-MINDED CHRISTIANS.
So personally, I don't think that most Christians really believe that Christian nonsense for a minute, unless they're complete idiots, but they'll never admit it, because they too were threatened as children. That's why you hear so many "Amens," "hallelujahs" and so much testifying in church, because they know deep down inside that they don't believe that snakes can talk, but they're trying to convince God that they do, which is ironic, since it's God's gift of common sense and logic that's telling them NOT to believe it. Yet they continue to try to lie to God, because they've been taught that any atrocity can be forgiven, EXCEPT, not believing in what they've been told. And Christians take full advantage of that loophole, because many are absolute horrors Monday through Saturday. Pat Robertson is the most evil-spirited person I've ever seen - he even LOOKS like a demon - and if you'll notice, Christians tend to be some of the most closed-minded and bigoted people in the country. Yet, we follow.
.
A PREACHER'S HOME
And many of these Black preachers better hope like hell that Hell is just a myth, because they should be educating the Black community on how to survive its adversities instead of getting rich off our misery by giving paid spoken-word concerts every Sunday morning. So if Hell is real and not just a myth, God is gonna slam them in there so hard and fast that they’re gonna be bouncing off the walls. They shouldn’t be preaching us a sermon, they should be living us one.
.
Frederick Douglass had this to say about the jackleg preachers of his time - ". . . the church of this country is not only indifferent to the . . . [bad treatment of] the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the . . . [defender] of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent . . . [preachers], who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world . . . [as] Christianity."
.
So I’m sorry for having to be so brutally blunt regarding an issue that is obviously so close to your heart, but our current circumstance calls for exactly what I'm saying, and since God made me arrogant enough to say it, I feel like I'm simply following his will - and I didn't make up one syllable, or ask you to believe in one magic trick in order to hold my words together. So just remember this - your religious beliefs are merely an accident of birth. If you’d been born in Israel, chances are, you’d be a Jew, if you’d been born in Iran you’d be a Muslim, or China, a Buddhist, so you’ve been SOCIALIZED into believing what you so passionately believe is the word of God. And again, regardless to what man says, you can only know God’s will by what God has done, and what he’s done is blessed us with logical minds. So when that mind tells you that snakes don’t talk, and dead men don’t walk, that’s God speaking to you, just like he's speaking to me right now. And his word is self-evident, so you don’t have to have “faith” in it. You only have to have “faith” in the word of man, but for some reason, he always wants to be paid for it.
.
So put your "faith" aside for just one moment and use the common sense that you KNOW that God bestowed upon you and ask yourself one question - How can you claim to hate White supremacy and then get all dressed up on Sunday morning and go PAY a man to tell you that God is White?
.
JUST LISTEN TO THIS IDIOT!
.
. KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE
Thank you, Patricia.
.
The good professor seems to have disappeared, but since then I’ve had to dispatch one of his friends as well, a gentleman by the name of Walter Chang. He got so frustrated that he couldn’t compete intellectually that he called me a “nigga clown,” but he lacked the courage of his convictions and he was also so lacking in character that he tried to go back and delete the word “nigga.” But by then he had completely fractured his facade. Yet, he still didn’t have the good sense to move on. In an attempt to save face after being dragged through the mud by this inferior 'nigga clown,' this PROVEN bigot left a comment advising ME not to feed Black youth poison, and then called me an 'angry Black man.'
.
But what he didn’t have sense enough to realize was I wasn’t angry at all. On the contrary, I was thrilled to death. Bigots like Walter imbue me with a sense of intellectual superiority, so I love engaging them, and I never get angry while doing so, because, first, I anticipate them, and second, I want to completely enjoy the experience of thoroughly humiliating them. I’ve spent my entire adult life preparing myself to make bigots like Walter feel exactly what he was feeling, a humiliating sense of helpless frustration; and since I’ve also dedicated my life to educating Black youth, he gives me something to take back to the community and share with young Black people. His words and arrogance combined with his gross level of intellectual incompetence allows me to graphically demonstrate the level of ignorance that these young people can expect to face, and then, exactly how to deal with it. Thus, if people like Walter, and the good Professor Ghidella didn’t exist, I’d hire a couple just like ‘em.
.
Such people help me to make a point that I’ve said many times before. Bigots tend to be the mediocrity of White (and White wannabe) society, so they try to use their condescension toward Black people to define themselves, and in order to compensate for their lack of personal value. Their entire sense of self-esteem is based more upon group association than individual value and accomplishment, so they’re totally dependent upon having someone to look down upon to maintain their sense of value as human beings. For that reason they leave no lie unturned, and no delusion unexploited, to maintain their contention that Black people are inferior to them. Their entire sense of personal value is based upon it.
.
That's what's drove radical conservatives so crazy about Barack Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they cannot claim superiority by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact alone caused them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the eyes of the entire world. That 's also why they're so determined not to allow President Obama’s programs (like Obamacare) to be successful, even if it means destroying the country - and international corporatists are using the social division inherent in those sentiments to lower the standard of living of the American middle class.
.
Thus, this entire nation and the future of our children is being threatened by the desperate attempt of a handful of insecure bigots to maintain their delusions of superiority, and as far as they’re concerned, if the country has to be sacrificed for that cause, so be it.
.
So Black people must always remember that we should never meet a bigot’s delusion of superiority with anger and frustration. Bigots love that, because they don’t see our anger as anger over the shear stupidity of their behavior, they see it as anger over the frustration of being inferior, and that only serves to validate and bring comfort to their delusions.
.
So Black people must prepare themselves to meet the ignorance of bigots with our natural creativity and intellectual acuity, because knowledge and intellect will defeat ignorance and delusion every time. We must let their underestimation of the Black intellect work in our favor, because being underestimated is a Black man’s most valuable asset. So we must stop shaking our fists, and start nurturing our minds, and we must make the pursuit of knowledge the new “soul.” We must arm ourselves with knowledge, not a knife or a gun; and we shouldn't shoot or stab a bigot, we must humiliate him, because when you clearly demonstrate to a bigot that you’re his intellectual superior he dies a thousand deaths, and he dies yet again every time he re-lives the experience.
.
Walter Chang:
.
Current thought: it is perfect to make fun of people[’s] intelligen[ce], why? Simple, people always want to feel they are more superior. Just like Blacks always look down on white people or Asian people on basketball court. They want to feel superior. Same goes with other races. Who give a crap, about skin color really. [The] world is bigger than you think. Indian, Chinese, many more races. We understand this is basic human behavior. The hate, love, wanting to feel better than another, empathy. Hate is not racism, It is basic human behavior.
.
Can you imagine if white people ha[d] an association call national advancement of white? My reaction would be fine by me, but then blacks [would] go crazy. Why is that? It is the hate.
.
I know your ancestors came here unwillingly and most were sold by the same race. But, it is over 200 years now. Let that go, how long can you be angry?
.
Lastly, the urban league people I've met. Also, Noel Massie, UPS CEO and Urban league chairman. When we discuss inner city issues and skills they need to advance in life, it was Never just about blacks.
.
It is the work ethic and skills [that] will have people look at you and respect you.
. Eric L. Wattree:
.
Walter Chang, it's too late to try to be logical now. When you called me a nigga that said all that needed to be said. It negated any and everything you have to say. And the irony is, the word didn't bother me at all, because the desperation and intellectual incompetence that led to your using it goes much farther in describing your frustration, limitations, and character than it does mine. And finally, with respect to the Black "work ethic and skills," we've just seen a graphic example of the difference between ours. So, am I angry? I don't think so. I'm simply stating facts. Your problem is, you're making the mistaken assumption that everyone thinks as inefficiently as you do. Think about it. You've just given me a tool that I can use all over the internet for years to come. So why would I be angry about that?
. Aaron Matteson:
.
It's easy to say, "Let (slavery) go," and it's the right approach. But, the effects of slavery didn't end 200 years ago. Blacks only received the right to vote in The South in the 1960's. The right of whites and blacks to marry in the 1970's.
.
BTW: There have been many groups that have effectively supported whites over the years. They just weren't labeled as such.
. Eric Wattree:
.
Aaron, including America itself. The entire nation represents an Affirmative Action Program for White folks.
A MESSAGE TO PROFESSOR RICHARD GHIDELLA
Richard, regarding your comment that I hate to admit being wrong because I see it as an assault on my intellect. You couldn't be farther from the truth. The fact is, I would much rather walk away from a debate more informed than simply a "winner" any day. Walking away a "winner" only gives me bragging rights, which is worthless. On the other hand, if I walk away having been proven wrong, it makes me more knowledgeable than I was the day before.
.
But dealing with you is a little different because you're an arrogant and presumptuous White boy who needs to be put in his place. I've lived in a Lily-White community for 30 years, so I know as many White people as I do Blacks. Some of them are among the most brilliant people I've ever met, but others are the dumbest. People like you Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, and Donald Trump fall into the latter category - as clueless as the day is long, yet you consider yourselves superior - so I take great pride in bustin' your bubble. It's become a game with me. Now here are the facts regarding your conservative nonsense.
.
FELLOW AMERICANS, DON’T LET OUR IGNORANCE DESTROY US
.
The racist animosities that are running rampant among ALL segments of the American people are playing right into the hands of the those who are our most insidious enemy – the global corporatists. These people are intent upon enslaving us all. The only difference between literal slavery and what they have in mind for us is we'll have to provide our own housing.
.
These people are no longer Americans; they are now globalists, and America is just a virtual cotton field to them. And as long as they keep the poor and middle class fighting and hating one another, we’ll be powerless against their social and political manipulation. So "illegal aliens" and others are far from the biggest threat to the American way of life – the global corporatists are.
.
If Al Qaeda represents a rattlesnake in America's garden, the corporate/GOP alliance represents a python under our bed. Al Qaeda can only destroy buildings, but the corporate/GOP alliance wants to destroy our entire way of life and replace American democracy with a system of corporate feudalism, where corporations, literally, control the nation. So it is essential that every man, woman, and child who is a part of the poor and middle class begin to recognize that fact, put our petty hatreds aside, and come together to fight our most insidious enemy - the global corporatist.
. History is clear. Conservative Republicans don't mind spending money, they just don't want to spend it on those who need it - us. Remember, they're the party of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of fiscal conservatism who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote - and based on the voter obstruction laws currently being passed in Republican controlled states, they're heading in that direction again. Hamilton said the following:
.
"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government." Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).
.
Hamilton's views were rejected by the founding fathers, mainly because many of them left Europe to escape the class system. But those who hold Hamilton's view are still among us. They simply have to remain discreet, and they must contrive various pretexts to camouflage their agenda in order to remain politically viable. But the agenda is clearly visible for anyone who takes the time to look. It's simply being disguised and hidden within the fabric of purposely instigated racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred and bigotry. The GOP specializes in using emotion to circumvent clear thinking. .
While they have the poor and middle class distracted by hating and fighting one another, the GOP/Corporate alliance is steeped in the process of undermining us all. Clear evidence of that is any and all legislation that benefits poor and middle class Americans is labeled "socialist," and the GOP fights it tooth-and-nail as "un-American." But they had absolutely no problem in bailing out Wall Street, even though the source of Wall Street's repeated problems result from their repeated attempts to swindle the American people. But Americans have been conditioned to believe that protecting ourselves is "un-American"; the American way of doing things is handing our wealth over to the rich. The scam is clear for anyone to see, but again, the American people have been conditioned to blame one another.
.
The Republican Record of Economic Irresponsibility
.
During the George W. Bush administration wasn't the first time that the American people had to bailout Wall Street as a result of Reckless Republican policies. As I pointed in my article, "The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling The American People," due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
.
The GOP's passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to know no bounds and transcend all logic. From the moment the New Deal safety net to protect the American people went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. There are two reasons for that. The first is, it sets money aside for the American people that they'd like to get their hands on. The second is, it insulates the American people from being so vulnerable to corporate manipulation. We'll discuss how that works below.
.
The closest the GOP has come to dismantling the New Deal started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" - and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.
.
Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would then not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. It's exactly the same plan the Republicans in congress are pushing today. But when the plan was first floated, even George Bush Sr., Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
.
Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planned.
.
Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
. And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut - for the rich.
.
Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. Bush. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement.
.
Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that played out on Wall Street in 2008. McCain was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name.
.
In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars.
.
After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five - Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain - attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
.
Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed the American people blind, whose fumbling ignited the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, and whose greed came very close to sending the nation into yet another depression.
.
Now, after all of their repeated efforts to deplete the national treasury, they're unanimously voting against every piece of legislation that the Democrats propose to repair the damage they created and bring relief to the American people. Then they have the audacity to claim that they're doing it because they're concerned about deficit spending.
.
They're against affordable health care for American families; they're against any kind of spending to put Americans back to work, and they're against extending unemployment insurance to relieve the burden of America's unemployed. What's particularly telling, however, is they're also against any kind of strong legislation to prevent the financial community (them) from being able to rob the American people in the future.
.
Also interesting, considering their deep "concern" over the national debt, is the estimated $4 trillion Bush tax cut for the rich. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Considering both the direct costs of the tax cuts and the associated increase in interest payments, the tax cuts would increase deficits by nearly $4 trillion between 2005 and 2014."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1811
.
So the fact is, what they really wanted prior to the 2012 election was to maintain the status quo, and make sure that the American people remained miserable, hungry, and divided until the elections so they'd have a better chance to regain power and raid the treasury again. Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was frustrated and reckless enough to say it out loud - "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president" - not to save America, or to bring relief to the American people, but to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Flag pens in lapels and patriotic rhetoric notwithstanding, that says it all about the GOP's lack of concern for America, or the American people.
.
Now that they've lost the 2012 election, their agenda has shifted to making sure that President Obama is not successful, because if he is, and you combine that with the rapidly changing demographic and Hillary Clinton's popularity, that could spell doom for the future of the GOP - and it should, because they're grossly out of touch with reality, and, America's best interest. They're out to create a corporate feudalist society. The government shutdown alone, clearly demonstrates that they have absolutely no respect for democracy.
.
The Middle Class Slide Since the Reagan Administration
.
"In 1982, Forbes magazine began its now much-read annual list of America’s richest men and women. At the time of the first list, there were 12 billionaires in the country and fewer than 200,000 millionaires. By the year 2000, there were nearly 300 billionaires and about 5 million millionaires. Smith’s account of the rise of the rich and super-rich tells the story of five types of individuals: entrepreneurs, dealmakers, investors, tycoons (corporate executives, who are distinguished from
entrepreneurs), and entertainers."
http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/the_rise_of_todays_rich_and_super_rich.html
.
"No matter how you slice it, when it comes to income and wealth in America the rich get most of the pie and the rest get the leftovers. The numbers are shocking. Today the top 1 percent of Americans control 43 percent of the financial wealth (see the pie chart below) while the bottom 80 percent control only 7 percent of the wealth. Incredibly, the wealthiest 400 Americans have the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans — over 150 million people.". A recent Princeton study Shows that America is no longer a democracy. We are now an Oligarchy, controlled by the rich. So it is essential that we wake up. Racism is no longer the war; racism is now merely a TOOL of war. We are now knee-deep in a CLASS WAR, and the American people are losing badly - ALL of the American people.
.
Here’s the game that we're allowing the corporatists to run on us. They’ve convinced America that if we give the rich enough money, they’ll use that money to create jobs for the poor and middle class. Now, I don’t claim to be an intellectual giant, but it doesn’t take a great mind to understand that demand fuels supply, not the reverse.
.
If I made my living selling Gucci Bags, for example, I don’t care how much money you give me, I’m not going to hire anyone to produce any more Gucci Bags than I have in stock if I'm being forced to sell those bags in a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t make sense, because in a homeless shelter no one would have the money to purchase my product. The only way that you’re going to get me to hire people to produce Gucci Bags is if you gave that money to the people in the shelter so they’d have the money to buy my merchandise.
.
That's exactly what's happening in America today. Corporate profits are at record highs, and the information and charts above clearly show that corporations and corporate executives are currently making more money than they've ever dreamed of in the past. So there's no reason for high unemployment. The rich are not putting that money into creating jobs; that money is going into offshore accounts, and we never see it again. That's why the rich are getting so much richer, and the middle class so much poorer. Even now Donald Trump is proposing further subsidizing the military/industrial complex and giving huge tax cuts to the rich, and curtailing spending on poor and middle class Americans.
.
On the other hand, if the Republican congress would have allowed President Obama to create jobs to repair American's infrastructure - repair bridges, dams, and interstate highways and the like - that money would create jobs, just like it did when it brought us out of the Great Depression. Then, Americans would have money to spend on goods and services. They would go on vacations, so hotels and restaurants would have to hire people to accommodate them, and the food industry would have to hire people to process and serve their food. They would also buy bicycles and toys for their children, and that would create jobs, and they would buy more clothing, gas, and make needed repairs to their homes, and that would create jobs. And as a result of all those jobs being created, more revenue would come into the government in taxes, which would allow us to pay down the national debt.
.
Again, think about it - the business community is making more profits than they've ever made in their history, so there's no logical reason for unemployment in America to be so high. The reason that unemployment is so high is because it's being kept high on purpose.
.
Consider this. In the sixties, Howard Hughes was famous for being one of the richest men in the world. He was considered so incredibly rich that they made movies about him. But compared to today's billionaires, he'd qualify for food stamps. Howard Hughes only had $4 billion, but today, Bill Gates has $79.1 billion, David Koch, of the infamous Koch brothers has $41.3 Billion, and even the young man, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, has $29.9 billion. So there is absolutely no reason for the American people to be suffering so severely, and for unemployment to be so high - yet, they have us hating and pointing the finger at one another as the cause of our misery, when as pointed out above, the wealthiest 400 Americans have as much combined wealth as the 150 million poorest half of Americans.
.
So it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see where the wealth of middle-class America has gone. It hasn't gone to "illegal aliens," or people requiring food stamps. Corporate welfare is nearly double the cost of all social programs. About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent nearly 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006. http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-welfare-statistics-vs-social-welfare-statistics/
.
The GOP's supposed concern for the national debt is only a pretext to block spending and keep unemployment high. They are purposely trying to turn America into a homeless shelter, because the GOP and its corporate cronies have a vested interest in keeping us angry, miserable, and divided.
.
The GOP's motive is political - by keeping unemployment high and the American people miserable, it makes Obama and the Democrats look bad, and they're hoping that the resulting anger and division in the country will help them to get elected in a demographic that's shrinking to the GOP's disadvantage. And the corporatist are trying to squeeze the middle class. They’re trying to lower the American middle class standard of living to a level that conforms to the other countries in the global economy, where in many countries people make less per week than some middle-class Americans spend on lunch per day. So they're trying to squeeze the middle class to the point that it lowers our expectations, and we'll feel grateful for less.
.
Their ultimate agenda is to turn America into a corporate feudalist state, where the American people are totally dependent on corporations for their survival. That will greatly enhance corporate profits, and essentially, allow them to control this nation. That's why the GOP is attacking unions, our educational system, and all social programs that prevent us from being totally reliant on the business community. They want to have complete control over our lives. Here's the philosophy behind it and how it works:
.
I pointed out the following in a previous article:
In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed - much like under the Bush Administration - starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.
.
During Hoover's administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
.
The conditions were horrific. During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income, so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So three generations of a family could be living in one household - and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and the wife lived with the family.
.
In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them - and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights, or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted.
. They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and no paid vacation. In addition, since there was no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family - sick grandparents and all - would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
.
As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery - the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.
.
Think back to the "Little Rascals" we use to watch as kids, and how ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and would tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. Those are the conditions that they’re fighting to restore today.
. Think about it - while the GOP comes up with various pretexts to explain their actions, they are oppose to the minimum wage, they would cut unemployment insurance, "modify" Social Security, they’re against Affordable healthcare, they’re leaving no stone unturned to abolish unions, they’re blocking every jobs bill that comes before them, and in spite of record corporate profits, their corporate cronies are sending jobs out of the country and keeping unemployment high until the American middle class caves in and accept a lower standard of living.
.
IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO MERELY SALUTE OUR HEROES
Keeping unemployment high also serves another purpose - it provides an endless supply of young American men and women to use as canon fodder for neocon military adventurism. But what else do you expect them to do? We certainly can’t expect them to send their children over there to die for the country. Dying for your country is no longer for the "rich and wellborn," that’s for the "little people." Then, IF your children come back home maimed and broken from their service to the country, the GOP has absolutely no compassion for them. Just like with Herbert Hoover, they call them deadbeats and a burden on the nation for having to beg for food stamps, and then throw them off the premises. And that’s in spite of the fact that most of the GOP ran - like Dick ‘five-deferment’ Cheney - when they were called upon to serve the nation. Donald Trump also obtained five deferments to avoid the draft. The GOP only love our troops as long as they can carry a weapon.
.
I WOULD START THE SEARCH IN DICK CHENEY'S OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS
The GOP/corporatist agenda also explains why they were so determined to send innocent American children to die in a senseless Iraqi war. The poor and middle class safety net put in place by the New Deal enjoys so much support among the American people that the GOP couldn't attack it head on. So they took us into Iraq to enrich their cronies and passed a tax cut for the rich that squandered trillions of dollars and ravaged our national treasury. That gave them a pretext to now claim, "We can no longer afford to fund the nation's safety net." But they could afford to build an embassy in Iraq that was so extravagant that it rivals the Vatican (U.S. Embassy Building will Rival the Vatican). And they could also afford to send so much unaccounted for CASH to Iraq that they could "MISPLACE" 6.6 BILLION dollars without a whimper from those who now want to count every penny that we spend on the poor and middle class.
.
So we're being played, America, and if we don't put our petty hatreds and prejudices aside and come together to fight this "Domestic Enemy" of the United States, the Tea party, the Klan, the Black Guerrilla Army, and the Mexican Mafia are going to find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder picking virtual cotton on the very same plantation, singing, "We Shall Overcome."
A Letter to Bush and Cheney From a Dying Vet
.
OLD MARINES NEVER GIVE UP THE FIGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY
.
So how do we fight against their control of our political system?
.
Vote against ANY politician whose money isn’t coming directly from the people. And ALWAYS vote against the issues and politicians whose campaigns are flooded with money.
.
LEARN THE ISSUES, ALWAYS VOTE FOR JUSTICE, AND NEVER, VOTE YOUR HATRED, OR IN RESPONSE TO MONEY.
FOR THE JUSTICE THAT YOU VOTE AGAINST, WILL INVARIABLY, BECOME YOUR OWN.
Strive To Become Your Own Hero... Then Let No One Remove Your Cape.
BIO
Eric L. Wattree is a writer, poet, and musician, born in Los Angeles. He’s been a columnist for The Los Angeles Sentinel, Black Star News, The Atlanta Post, and is a member of the Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/). He’s also the author of "A Message From the Hood."
Some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, while some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia in pursuit of credentials over knowledge.
Am I a hater, you ask? You're damn right I'm a hater. I hate injustice. I hate hypocrisy. I also hate demagoguery, apathy, and the stupidity that allows it to exist. Hater? Absolutely. I'm a big time hater. I hate what I see happening to this country, and I hate watching the development of a culture that embraces ignorance with a stupid sense of pride. So yes, I am indeed a hater, but not only that - I'm a hater with a very low threshold for bullshit, so step off.
In 1921 -- eight years before the great depression -- Republicans took over the helm of this nation for 12 years. During that time there were three Republican administrations, the first of which was the administration of Warren G. Harding. History remembers Harding's administration for one thing more than anything other -- scandal. It was during Harding's presidency that the Teapot Dome Scandal erupted. His administration was considered the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States -- until Nixon's, then Reagan's, and finally Bush's.
And this is not just political rhetoric. Here is the activity of the Republican congress who ran in the 2010 election on their claim that their number one priority was to bring economic relief, and create jobs for the American people:
Posts
