A Huge Forced Dose of Reality for Conservatives

Editor's Note: A quick post about the election. I haven't posted here much with Facebook to rant on and the immediacy that seems to provide but I got on board with Train Obama last year after he came around on Gay Marriage and basically after realizing a Romney Presidency would be a Third Term of Bush. So with that declaration out of the way, here's my commentary on the election aftermath and what it means about the beliefs the Conservative Movement carries.

They live and die on this phony set of beliefs but then they had to eat shit about a number of things the past few weeks...

Climate Change? Well Sandy sort of proved their anti-science attitude to be bullshit and over 70% of Americans now are on board with Climate Change as truth. Even mainstream media is finally reporting it as fact. Remember two weeks before Sandy, Fox was reporting that Climate Change was false and that Global Warming had ENDED. Oops!

Tax Cuts for Rich are Good Economic Policy? The Congressional Research Service did a non-partisan report that crushed that notion and Republicans had to scramble to try to kill the report before the election. They ended up with major egg on their face over that.

Polls are biased towards Democrats? Well they even tried to create a site to "unskew" the polls. Except if anyone was oversampled it was older, landline users. Most young people use cell phones and they weren't asked their opinion for the most part. Still the poll samples were steady enough for people like Nate Silver who used basic Math, another elitist institution of the Education snobs, to call all 50 states correct for the Presidential race and all but one Senate race.

The Majority of Americans Oppose Abortion Rights? You remember them saying this as they increasingly upped their attacks on George Tiller and other Abortion Doctors, the Kansas AG tried to make abortion records public to shame women, they went after Planned Parenthood funding and tried to make Abortion of any sort illegal everywhere they could? Well it turns out they were DEAD WRONG. They overreached with the rape comments but 60-70% of people that voted and were asked in exit polling, supported abortion rights. Turns out they have been wrong this entire time.

Most Americans oppose Gay Marriage? Well tell that to the three states that voted for Gay Marriage, the one state that voted to block a ban of it, the state that voted for the judge that declared it legal with his ruling and the country who via electoral and popular vote majorities voted for a President who came out in favor of gay marriage. Homophobia is a dying cause it seems.

Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et al are truthtellers? It turns out everything they were telling their viewers was completely fabricated and they were wrong about pretty much everything. It's why so many Conservatives were and are STILL shell shocked by the results this past Tuesday.

And here's the big one: "America is a Conservative/Center-Right Nation". Well they now know: It's not. Even with Independents that broke for Romney, Democrats didn't even NEED them. They hold a Majority coalition where it counts most (ie not White Males) in the future and they are able to attract a broader base of voters. Even Fox is saying they are no longer the majority (they lament it, grumble about it and then say that these people are leeches, essentially).

This sort of set of revelations would usually get someone to think about their views and beliefs and do a little introspection about whether or not they have been listening to the correct sources. However I get the feeling that instead of self-correcting, they're going to insulate themselves further to protect their viewpoints.

I've already heard them blame the poor/minorities/women as people who want "stuff" so they haven't stopped their attacks. The Susan B. Anthony List fools said the Right was anti-abortion enough. Fox and the like are saying there was voter suppression (100% pure projection) and they aren't really soul searching anything over there. In fact they just plan to take more steps to obstruct and steal the next vote. McConnell and Boehner have made clear that they refuse to do any deals with Obama which isn't 100% based on what they want to do. They won't work with him on anything.

So that leads me to this question. If Conservatives keep following these people down this same path, knowing what they know now and after a barrage of facts just whooped their asses this past few weeks.... can we stop pretending these are serious people? Can we stop pretending that there are any smart, intellectual people on that side? Because for years people like Paul Ryan have been hailed as brilliant policy wonks when reality is we learned he has never done the math on his plans and really doesn't give a shit about how they would collapse the American economy. Ultimately he and his rich benefactors would get theirs.

It's time to call these people what they are: Thieves. They get elected to office to embezzle public funds via contracts and subsidies and then use their personal portfolios, future job prospects and campaigns and PAC funding as a money laundering operation to get money back on their investments. They don't care about anybody in the Middle Class. Fuck them. They don't line their pockets later.

Mitt Romney's 47% comment wasn't a slip. It was what they all believe. And so they use all of those lies I mentioned above to confuse the low information voters into thinking their cause is just and that most Americans agree with their premises. They've successfully conned these people into the voting booths for them a number of times. Last Tuesday should be a wake up call to the con that they have been played for, however I doubt these people are smart enough to come back to reality. Or some, will openly choose not to even with all of the facts in their plain view.

After all, for some people they really would rather take the Blue Pill. Ignorance is Bliss, it would seem.

A quick note about the shooting of Rep. Giffords

I am 33 years old. I don't know what this is like. A politically charged assassination attempt on a current elected official in my home country. None of my generation of American Youth has ever gone through this. Yes, Reagan was shot but that still is before many young people can remember and John Hinckley was just crazy, not politically motivated.

What happened yesterday, I've only read about it in books. The 1960s in particular seems like such a crazy time period. I close my eyes and remember what I have seen in old video clips and from old newscasts. I remember what I read about. Something seems eerily similar.

A group of people fighting for their civil rights and another group of people steadfastly holding out against them for fear that the America they grew up and in always known was changing rapidly. It was a time period where a young charismatic President was in office. He was a Catholic which at the time was a pretty scary thing for so many Americans. Not unlike that of a purported Muslim being in office (even if he's not).

Talks of peace when there was clearly still lingering war going on with the Communists scared the Right Wing at a time when the beginning of social change at home was already driving them into a frenzied fear. After two World Wars and Korea, war was all these people knew. Now we were talking about pulling our boys out of Vietnam, not invading Cuba and god forbid brokering a deal with the Russians?

I imagine the culmination of all of this combined with the fear that blacks were going to run rampant and take over was scaring the right wing white male into a frenzy. The difference is there weren't as many television outlets then and they still bought into the concept of legitimate news. Not completely unbiased mind you because Edward R. Murrow sort of broke that barrier. Rather it was fact driven using serious sources and strong journalistic practices and because of this it wasn't working off of talking points or purposely catering to a specific ideology.

Back then, instead of having Fox News peddle their causes to a much larger, easier to lead audience they used back room techniques. They joined the John Birch Society (somewhat representative of the tea party today) and used such groups to help spread their propaganda.

I look at America today and I see similar shades of a totally unbalanced, scary time period.

People can look back now and see the 60s with hindsight. We made progress and broke through on Civil Rights. Woodstock occurred. The Vietnam War resistance began and eventually helped end the war, even if it was many years later. All of that required struggle and even the sacrifice of blood and lives of leaders.

I can't imagine watching the television on November 22nd, 1963 and seeing Walter Cronkite read off a bulletin that my President had been shot and murdered. Or to hear the same about his brother Robert or Martin Luther King, Jr. in such a short timeframe.

I imagine that the person that I am now would have felt hopeless that America could and would never change or be allowed to change. Of course the case can be made that certain elements of the Government were behind each killing and of course one can clearly look at the elements of Government that would have been involved in pulling such a trigger and would see such right leaning elements as those John Birchers I mentioned before. To them and to the unelected and fearful, any progress at all was a threat to a group of people who had irrationally built up fear inside of them to believe that if they did not arm themselves and fight back.

So they did.

Imagine the feeling of those people that lived through that. Every day wandering around a world of political hopelessness and helplessness where you know you don't count in America. Your voices will be silenced.

Yet knowing this, they fought on and protested more. They stopped a damn war.



The dates may have changed but is anything really that different? We have our insidious fascist groups thinking they are arguing for political power but using fear to whip up the troops. They are preying on a group of people afraid of Blacks, Muslims, Mexicans and now Gays from taking over their world. They fear the President who looks different than them. They fear the changes to the Government in the form of Health Care regardless of what it might offer them in terms of positives.

The bullhorn is louder now. Fox News, Conservative Radio, the corporately owned Mainstream Media... they shout from the rooftops and are much more effective than the old backdoor whisper campaigns. The genius of this is they don't need insiders in the Government to do their dirty work. They can call for the armed uprisings against politicians all they want and wait for their sheep to do their dirty work and they can scream first amendment all day long. They know they can call the person a fringe nut and absolve themselves of their responsibility. They know nobody has the guts to call them out for what they've done. They'll never face charges, never be publicly shamed. And when tomorrow comes and they hit the airwaves, they'll move their target and start anew. They succeeded in taking out their enemy without having to lift a finger. It's all so perfect now.

I don't want to live in the 1960s. That time period is one of lost innocence. One where all the history books about how good America was started to show how inaccurate they were. Any real historian would laugh at the irony that we taught our kids how great our country was, by lying to them.

What we knew about America had been tied together with pretty wrapping paper and a shiny red bow. The bow was perfectly proportioned and you almost wondered how it got that way without a machine. Human hands can mold things into wondrous shapes if they are diligent at changing the form to fit their needs after all.

When we started unwrapping America: The Gift we start to see things we don't want to see. A murderous enterprise engaging in exactly what President Eisenhower warned us about. War for Profit. Killing to enrich military and corporate contractors.

Was there ever a legitimate target? Not so much. A vague threat of potential communism in Vietnam. A weak and moronic enemy in Iraq. A pretty pathetic government in Afghanistan and a leader of a terrorist group we never fully intended to capture (See: Nov. 2001 - Troops stand down in Tora Bora and Bin Laden escapes).

Lies. All of it.

Their job. To keep you scared.

We need war or they'll get us. Now let us loot your tax dollars and social security funds so we can redistribute money to our connected wealthy friends.

We need tax cuts or else more of you will lose their jobs or they won't create new ones. And these rich people need zero estate taxes or their heirs can't employ you either. Don't worry though, we'll make sure when our rich friends get that money that there is no regulation forcing reinvestment. Oh and you better believe we're not going to stand for closing any foreign loopholes that prevent our friends from paying the little bit of tax money they still might owe.

They kept people scared in the 1960s about everything and ultimately it was about money. They needed endless war. They're better at the game now and a tad bit hungrier. War is not the only way they figured out that loots the American Treasury. It's still the best way but not the only way.

So to keep you distracted they make you look at the changes in your life.

High Unemployment? It's not the corporate greed downsizing or outsourcing your jobs away, it's Mexicans taking your job.

Gay Rights? A new group of people that want to ruin YOUR marriage.

Welfare and Unemployment Benefits? Robbing from the hard working middle class and giving to the lazy poor people that want to leech off of the sweat and effort you put in every day. Oh and hey, they're almost always lazy drug addicted minorities that would rather collect welfare than work.

An attack 10 years ago? That could happen to anyone at any time, regardless of what we're doing to them overseas. So give up your constitutional rights about unreasonable search and seizure and we'll tap and record your every phone call and internet movement without a warrant. Oh and hey, those evil Muslims hate you and your religion and will force you to wear a burqa.

Christmas? Atheists and other non-religious people HATE your holiday and want to destroy it and while they're at it they want to eliminate the Baby Jesus from every being a part of anyone's life.

Sound familiar?

Whip up this internal terror in people and they'll do whatever you want. Including murder Democrats on your behalf.

So when you tell people that you constantly at rallies whip into a frenzy with eliminationist rhetoric that they need to reload and put target crosshairs on a Representative's district basically sicking the dogs on them, you're calling for a hit on that person. (Below: the images Palin tried to scrub from her website immediately after the attack)



Everyone called out this nonsense when she did it originally. The View denounced it back in March of 2010. Yet here we are.

My heart and thoughts go out to Rep. Giffords and to the families of each and every family member that either lost a loved one in that attack yesterday or had a friend or family member be senselessly wounded in it.

Regardless of what the media chooses to do with this info now, it's clear that the blood is on Sarah Palin's hands for this. Just as it should have been on Bill O'Reilly's hands when Dr. Tiller was murdered after he labeled the man, "Tiller the Killer" and aired the man's address.

But let's not kid ourselves here. These people know what they're doing and what results their actions are creating. They need to be held publicly responsible for what they have done and be shamed from the spotlight for good.

I don't want to experience the 1960s. Yet, yesterday sure felt like a small bitter taste of it.

"Us versus Them" - Why the Qur'an Burning is So Wrong.

When a right wing whackjob led by sensationalistic sources like Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or the like get drawn into the whole "Muslims are evil! Obama is a muslim!" propaganda it barely draws my attention.

It seems like every single day the media is giving that Michelle Bachmann/Sarah Palin batshit crazy 30% that supported Bush and Cheney no matter what they did more and more airtime. They absolutely love following these people because they're unstable and angry and fear makes for some compelling television. Which is fine if you're programming a horror movie or suspense thriller show for your TV audience but when you pretend to be journalists, well you owe the audience some facts and serious balance.

Instead we get bombarded with daily severe imbalance. Imbalance in coverage and chemical imbalance from their lunatic guests. Since Obama's election they have made sure to claim illegitimacy at every turn with that foolish birth certificate nonsense and portraying him as a Muslim who attended a Madrassa. It's rather insane but realize they tried to illegitimize Bill Clinton at every turn as well. This is the typical GOP playbook. Smear, demean, inspire fear into your base and be stubborn 2 year old children with temper tantrums and say NO to anything the Democrats offer up.

The worst part is that the crazy 30% is winning in some polls (likely push polls but whatever) and poised for a Washington re-take. Why? Don't people remember that these are the people that messed it all up to begin with? It was their tax cuts and deregulation that ran us into the ground and we want more of this?

Well Obama and a complicit Democratic Congress seemed to suffer from a sort of Stockholm Syndrome from being rolled over by Bush for 8 years... maybe it even dates back to Reagan's rule. They have no spine, don't fight for the poor or middle class even remotely as hard as they fight for their corporate buddies and well they've alienated their base to the point that they are likely responding to these polls in ways that doesn't count them as potential Democratic voters. Likely to stay home, the very base that got Obama elected and that Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs have taken glee in demeaning are now being told to shut up and get out and vote or else! Or else more of the Bush years!

Yeah that should get them out and working. Thanks for all the back stabbing but if we want all the policies Republicans want (yeah they're voting No because it wins them political points as the opposition party but behind the scenes they absolutely love all the money going to their rich friends), we'll vote for them directly.

Anyway the point I am making is this... Liberal/Progressive voter apathy will have more of a direct correlation to November's Mid-term results than any pretend surge in Republican support or pretend impact of a fringe right wing nutjob group like the Tea Party.

So with that in mind we must remember that Republicans (and their phony separatist group) know one trick to turn out voters: FEAR!!!!

In 2004 they used gays as their target. As it turns out Gays just aren't the bogeymen they used to be. Muslims however, well it was Muslims involved in 9/11, the Republicans' favorite holiday, so why not bring them up and scare people some more about them? After all, there's one in the White House right?

They target a "Mosque" being constructed "2 Blocks" from Ground Zero. Except it's not a Mosque, it's basically the Muslim version of a YMCA. It's not 2 blocks away either. It's actually a bit further than that. There's already a Mosque closer than that which has existed since 1970 since before the World Trade Center ever existed. But hey, who needs facts. Besides Keith Olbermann covered this in a much better way than I ever could.



So in all of this fake outrage, the right wing lie pushers... Fox News, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc, kept the narrative about this Mosque out there until it drove people to a fever pitch. Winning an election has always meant more than the effect on human lives to the right wingers.

Things start to happen. Muslim cab drivers get stabbed. Mosques get desecrated with urine. And of course other mosques face opposition outside of the magical hallowed ground of Ground Zero and are met with Arson. Oh and let's not forget how those protests on Ground Zero against that "Mosque" went.

When you start the ball rolling down that steep of a hill, it's often difficult to stop it. Of course, they don't care about the repercussions of their actions as long as they find a way to win in November.

So now that the whackos are out in full force, the reverends of tiny fringe churches come out and have a National Burn the Qur'an Day to try to create more xenophobia against Muslims and worse to enrage an entire population of over 1 Billion people who follow the Qur'an with the same devotion as Christians do with their Bibles. How do you think a Bible burning that had national media coverage on it would go on our shores?

Christians tend to believe they're the most persecuted people in the world anyway, I assume that would just reinforce their rather ludicrous world view.

Now the Qur'an burning appears to be off, temporarily at least because Terry Jones the really crazy and inconsiderate Pastor of this Church tried to come up with some fake story about if he stopped the burning the NYC "Mosque" would be moved.

And hey, even if he doesn't, the world's craziest reverend, Fred Phelps of the "God HATES Fags" Westboro Baptist Church has said he will step in to make sure it goes down anyway. Aww, don't you love when crazies get together and make friends?

Of course the real story here is that, oh yeah, the same people that stoked this paranoia and fear, also chose to send our troops over there to work with Muslims... in THEIR countries... in a war. They are skeptical enough over our mission but they truly have a right to be.

American politicians are making reckless statements about Islam to make this worse and they see this all over our media as a mainstream story. It appears as if America is taking a side against them. The side of Christianity versus Islam.

Well after all, John McCain ran for President in the last cycle purposely excluding all other religions by spouting that 'America is a Christian nation' nonsense.

But we have troops over there in harms way. You'd think they'd be smarter about this. We don't want to appear to be fighting a new crusade with Muslims in their own nations do we? We remember how that last one went. There is no end to such a fight.

Or do we?

There's been a never ending trickle of stories, mostly buried in the papers over the past few years that makes it seem as if the Pentagon does indeed want to make sure we're sending a Christian Army out there to Muslim lands.

For instance, check these stories out:

-US Military Weapons inscribed with Christian Scriptures

-Soldiers punished for not attending Christian Concert

-Iraq: Marines try to convert Muslims

Not to mention the many things Mikey Weinstein has been fighting against in terms of Christianity's grip on the Military.

So what are they seeing over there? They see us pulling this stuff at every turn and of course they are more and more unwilling to work with our troops and unwilling to find peace with us. They don't see us as honest brokers.

They see things like Mass Baptisms in the Military as proof and validation of their fears.

Ultimately what all of this should be is a major eye opener. To anyone with any sort of honesty, we have to start to address this head on. Are we in fact a tolerant melting pot or is intolerance, much like that showed towards Gays and Mexican Immigrants in recent years or Blacks and Women before that or even intolerance towards different European immigrants... is that the real fabric of our nation?

Are we made up of so much fear and angst that our only reaction to anything is the most irrational response possible? Is it worth more soldiers dying so that we can scream incoherently against people that don't share your religious beliefs? Should we then go after Jews and Buddhists next?

If we are a country of a single religion what do we do about the large population of people who disagree with your beliefs?

And when it comes to that... are even other Christian sects safe from your paranoia?

What Would Jesus Do?

More Reasons Not to Vote for Hillary #3-4-5

Well now that I'm rolling on this I might as well add a few other easy ones.

How about her lack of will to restore the civil liberties Bushco stole from us? Amongst the many criminal acts perpetuated on America by the Bush Administration, stealing our civil liberties might be the worst. It stains all that America stands for and the entire reason we have been considered a beacon of light and hope for other countries.

Hillary had an opportunity to stop them cold in their tracks but true to Clinton form she basically gave the finger to liberals and libertarians alike (possibly hoping to have such power to herself if she and her supposed inevitable campaign were to steamroll into the Presidency?).

From Jeffrey Rosen at the NY Times:

In the Senate, Mr. Obama distinguished himself by making civil liberties one of his legislative priorities. He co-sponsored a bipartisan reform bill that would have cured the worst excesses of the Patriot Act by meaningfully tightening the standards for warrantless surveillance. Once again, he helped encourage a coalition of civil-libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives. The effort failed when Hillary Clinton joined 13 other Democrats in supporting a Republican motion to cut off debate on amendments to the Patriot Act.

That wasn’t the first time Mrs. Clinton tacked to the center in a civil-liberties debate. In 2005, she co-sponsored a bill that would have made it a federal crime to intimidate someone by burning a flag, even though the Supreme Court had struck down similar laws in the past. (Mr. Obama supported a narrower bill that would have satisfied the Constitution.) And Mrs. Clinton opposed a moderate proposal by the United States Sentencing Commission that would have retroactively reduced the draconian penalties for possession of crack cocaine — a proposal supported by Mr. Obama, and by liberal as well as conservative judges.

Or there's the shadiness of her past. Like when she goes out and touts her "35 years of experience" and proclaims herself a fighter. She neglects to mention that some of the fights she has taken up have been pretty disgusting in nature. Like attacking a 12 year old rape victim as if she asked for it.

According to Glenn Thrush at Newsday:

Hillary Rodham Clinton often invokes her "35 years of experience making change" on the campaign trail, recounting her work in the 1970s on behalf of battered and neglected children and impoverished legal-aid clients.

But there is a little-known episode Clinton doesn't mention in her standard campaign speech in which those two principles collided. In 1975, a 27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas - using her child development background to help the defendant.

-more at link above-

Or how about the fact that she is sponsored by FOX's Rupert Murdoch and supported by nutcases like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh?

Hell this doesn't even broach her positions on the war or healthcare but if you see slime on the top of the water usually you refrain from even jumping into the pool.

-Rp

Proof of FOX Propaganda

Is there any question anymore that Fox is nothing more than Right Wing Pravda?