On a right-wing talk show on Thursday, David Keene, the president of the National Rifle Association, blamed President Obama and the left for what he says have been hundreds of death threats made against him and his family. SOURCE
Don’t underestimate the wrath of the Left when irked
This may be all a big to do about nothing though. It’s an oxymoron to believe that ideologues on the left have deadly assault weapons, unlike the ideologues on the right who routinely send death threats to the president, so we can only presume that they will use less lethal means to carry out any ill-will on Mr. Keene.
What can we expect from the limp-wristed, milquetoast liberals? Will they utilize the tea spoons they stir their organic green tea with to cull his eyeballs out? Or catch him off guard outside a Starbuck’s and scald him with a hot semi-sweet mocha latte? He ought to be careful too as he pulls out of his driveway. They may be lying in wait in their beamer or a preserved 1968 Volkswagen bus from their trips to the Monterrey and Woodstock festivals to T-bone him once he backs into the street.
An anonymous source for the NRA president said one angry advocate for gun support claimed she would suffocate him with her silk embroidered collector pillow she purchased at a gift shop while vacationing in Maui last summer. Another came from a Beverly Hills zip code who said they would attempt to slip an overdose of pure Columbian cocaine in his coffee if only their gardener/dealer hadn’t been busted and deported back to Guatemala.
But there is a legitimate fear that there are some leftist extremists out there who may have developed some mental disorders recently and purchased one of them AR-15s in the mad rush with the gun nuts to get them before Obama bans them.
Keene isn’t too worried about this prospect the anonymous source tells me. The existing laws to prevent such a purchase are likely to prevent this from happening. However, if that turns out to be the case, he had better hope the gun supplier for that person was out of extended magazines with a 30-round capacity. There is little guarantee he’ll be able to outmaneuver such a rapid fire attack. Unless of course he has updated his certified self-defense NRA training that has been affectionately referred to as the “Dirty Harry response”
Some of the fanatics who were dreading the possibility of an Obama re-election have reacted in ways that resemble the image they portrayed for those on the left who, it was suggested, would become mad and begin rioting if Obama did not win. Indeed there were hundreds of Tweets, largely by blacks, that intimated a riot would ensue if Romney won. Such sentiments however have always been a part of our political environment but seldom made as public as the new social media allows today.
I can recall in 2000 that my supervisor in the new-home building industry indicated that if Al Gore wound up getting the Florida vote that “there will be blood in the streets.” My supervisor then was something of a racist based on his frequent use of the “N” word that he used when he felt sure he was amongst those who shared his prejudices. He knew damn well that I didn’t but I was an “underling” so he felt no compulsion to respect my views. The point being, there’s no reason to think his sentiments toward an Obama victory are any different from what he felt about Gore and yet I haven’t read anything in the newspaper where he has participated in any violence.
Strong feelings run deep within us all about political issues today and rage and anger is frequently expressed. Fortunately most of this has not materialized into real action though there are those who have carried their dark, bitter feelings to a final solution.
The man in Florida who killed himself after Obama was elected was convinced that the end was nigh. It was a conviction that many are overcome with when they get so steeped in extremist political ideologies where it literally suppresses all rational thought. Again, this is not a new phenomena. John Wilkes Booth is a character in history that was led by his virulent antipathy toward Unionists to kill the man he felt represented all that was evil about things he had conjured up in his small little brain.
But the influence of these hyper-angry people back then was marginalized considerably compared to today by their lack of an effective means of communication. So when the same personalities today have access to the broadcast medium in our modern age, they are bound to influence millions. Some of those millions will have mental deficiencies whose fear and hysteria can push them over the edge. Glenn Beck is one of those demagogues who can have an extreme influence on some of those with mental deficiencies.
Mr. Beck requires no introduction or background to those who have resided on this planet for at least the last ten years are so. His flights of fantasy are well-documented on videos that were produced by his former bosses at FOX. However it seems that Glenn Beck’s madness exceeded even the typical mindlessness that FOX accommodates with their slanted portrayal of social and political issues and so was summarily dismissed in April, 2011. Even the ultraconservative WorldNetDaily website posted a story on Beck’s firing entitled “TOO CRAZY FOR FOX – AND THAT’S CRAZY”
So what has Glenn Beck done that elicits his name amongst those who have reacted alarmingly to President Obama’s re-election?
On his radio show, former Fox host Glenn Beck lamented the downgrade of the country, but promised “I won’t make a deal with the devil… I will tell you last week we purchased more farmland as a family. May I recommend if you have a chance to buy farmland, you buy farmland. If you live in the east may I recommend get the hell out of the east. Find a place where you are surrounded by like-minded people and the best way to find those people is, you should probably look at the maps on how counties voted… May I highly suggest you get grandfathered in to the second amendment today. Oh and don’t forget the ammunition.” SOURCE
Now lest one might think that the self-described “rodeo clown” was advocating a pastoral return to a life where self-sufficiencies were met by the nuclear family, please read what is clearly stated by the man who is literally asking people to band together in a circle-the-wagons mentality. And though some of us may laugh at his overreaction to current conditions, it is his illogical solution in response to an Obama victory that requires our attention.
What Beck want’s his followers to alter their life’s for is a change that by itself would ruin most of those families who took his advice; far more than any perceived evil he or they may have attributed to a renewed Obama administration. By moving to those areas he implies, away from the East coast and purchase farmland, is to put these desperate people in regions that are suffering some of the worst drought conditions since the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression era. These droughts today can be linked to that bugaboo the former FOX host was and remains in denial of – man-made climate change – where natural disasters are enhanced by increased warming attributed to accelerated levels of CO2 from fossil fuels in our atmosphere.
In the main stream media’s failure to report substantively, if at all, on the growing threat of climate changes, Jim Naureckas with the FAIR website has pointed out how bad things are as a result of global warming.
July 2011 to June 2012 was the hottest 12-month period ever recorded for the mainland United States, the National Climatic Data Center announced in July (CNN, 7/9/12)―which itself turned out to be the hottest month ever in the lower 48 (CNN, 8/10/12). Drought produced the largest agricultural disaster area in U.S. history (Atlantic Wire, 7/12/12), and the accompanying wildfires burned unprecedented acreage―nearly 7 million (Mother Jones, 8/21/12)―while the Arctic icecap shrank to its smallest historical coverage (BBC, 9/19/12). SOURCE
Here’s a map of the area that Beck is suggesting his disgruntled supporters move to and purchase farms. Notice that those areas “away from the East coast” are under severe drought conditions.
These areas are also short on water resources with many lakes and reservoirs below acceptable levels. Underground aquifers are also dwindling from agricultural use as well as extraction for use on the thousands of natural gas wells sprouting up in these areas. Fracking just one natural gas well can use on average 4.5 million gallons of precious clean water that’s needed for crops to be cultivated and families to have drinking water. History has shown that individual property owners – like those who Glenn is encouraging to “buy farmland” – have less sway over the authorities that control water access.
Farmers in the Great Plains are expecting to harvest just a fraction of their corn and other crops this year as the worst drought in 50 years plagues nearly two-thirds of the nation. SOURCE
It’s not outside the realm of probability to believe that Beck’s desire for his listeners to buy farmland is perhaps an appeal to find sponsorships from the rural real estate market. You can only appeal to so many people about buying gold, the industry sponsorship that stayed with Beck even when he was dumped by Roger Ailes at FOX.
So in his hysteria, the excommunicated moron from FOX news is enticing emotionally distraught people to invest their life savings in ventures that are likely to fail for reasons that they have been poorly informed of. Poorly informed because they have listened to people like Glenn Beck far too long.
The depressing state of the current political campaign has been so egregious that even I can’t weigh in much longer. However that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with this silly season. In the vein of the bible decoding scams I started playing around with the letters of the presidential and VP candidates’ last names to see if there was anything striking that could be divined from them. I know. Get a job right? If only.
Anyway, I was a little surprised that with the limited choices I had at how well the words I could create seem to reveal prophetic traits of the candidates.
The only rule I made for myself was that I had to use ALL of the letters of their last name to form real words.
So starting with the VP candidates here’s what I came up with
BIDEN – In Bed Politically speaking, when you are in bed with someone you are supportive and aligned with their ideas and policies. OMG! Does this speak directly to Biden or what? As Obama’s Vice-president Biden has been nothing but a loyal advocate for the POTUS.
RYAN – Now this one is really prophetic. Who is Paul Ryan’s role model? AYN Rand
Romney = R Money (Republican money). Need I say anything more other than what this 1984 photo of Romney’s Bain Capital group conveys? (Take my word for it. Those really are conservative greenbacks coming out of their orifices)
Obama – A Moab. We all laughed at the Tea Party-types when they chided Obama supporters for treating him like the anointed one but check out this revelation.
Moab was the illegitimate offspring of Lot’s daughter who became pregnant by having sex with her father after she and her sister got him drunk. Ironically, Moab was the patriarch of the line that eventually gave us King David and ultimately Jesus himself. One can only conclude, with the logic of Orly Taitz, that the messiah has returned.
I awoke a little later this Sunday than I usually do, having a restless night and not falling asleep until close to 2am. By 7am though I was up and preparing my usual Sunday breakfast of two eggs, hash browns, one strip of bacon, two breakfast patties, an English muffin, a cup of coffee and a glass of juice. The patties however were a veggie product, though I did let the bacon grease drift over to them in the pan they shared.
After the morning’s feast was laid out on the table for consumption I opened my local Sunday newspaper and previewed the headlines before heading to the editorial page. The editorial column caught my eye but before I could get engrossed with what it had to say I began to hear dreadful noises that sounded much like watermelons splattering against brick walls. The sounds were faint but they seemed multitudinous and spread out all around me.
I went to the windows to see what I could but there was no visible signs that would clue me in to what was transpiring, so I went back to my breakfast and newspaper to finish what I had started. Then it dawned on me as the impact of what the editorial comments were conveying about the local Denton economy as to what that god-awful noise was. It surely was the heads of right-wing extremists exploding when they discovered that their fantasy world was coming unraveled. How? I’ll let the editorial comments draw that picture for you.
“Recent reports reflect a promising picture for Denton County’s economy.”
The comments go on to point out how there has been “significant gains from the first quarter of 2012 to the second quarter in sales [of real estate] as well as median and average prices.
In addition, the number of pre-owned homes on the market in Denton County has dropped 38 percent in the past 12 months.
Automotive sales are also up year over year, according to Freeman Auto Report.
[The City of] Denton’s unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent for September, down seven-tenths of a percentage point from August. In September 2011, the city’s unemployment rate was 6.3 percent.
In Denton County, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent, also down seven-tenths of a percentage point from the prior month. In September 2011, the county’s unemployment rate stood at 6.9 percent. SOURCE
Though not the economic news that would elicit such euphoria, the recent revelations of recovery are indeed something to celebrate rather than scorn
This indeed is good news for my local community but it appears that Denton is something of a microcosm of what’s going on around the nation.
For the first time in six years, the residential market is expected to add to U.S. economic growth in 2012. New home sales are up 28% from a year ago and new construction is running 35% higher.
The long-awaited recovery in the devastated real-estate market was a long time coming, but it finally looks like it’s here to stay. Barring another recession, most economists expect sales and construction to continue to rise steadily over the next few years SOURCE
Retail Sales beating forecasts support U.S. Growth. The 1.1 percent advance followed a revised 1.2 percent increase in August, the best back-to-back showing since late 2010, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 77 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 0.8 percent rise.
“This keeps the economic expansion moving forward,” said Dean Maki, New York-based chief U.S. economist at Barclays Plc. “Consumer spending is continuing to grow solidly.” SOURCE
The Franchise Business Index increased by 2.2 percent from September 2011 to September 2012, marking the industry’s best year-over-year gain since the Great Recession began in December 2007.
A drop in the unemployment rate, coupled with a slow but steady improvement in small-business credit conditions, contributed to the gains. SOURCE
Now this good news still doesn’t ignore the reality that unemployment is still at a traditional high and that wages and benefits for most American workers hasn’t realized significant growth over the last few decades but it is indicative that things are turning around from the nightmarish times of late 2008 and early 2009. As we all know the economy was tanking and government bailouts with the financial sector and the auto industry had to be implemented to prevent a death spiral that would have taken us to the depths of the Great Depression that we saw in the early 1930’s.
But based on the ominous uttering from many right-wing contributors whose letters on this editorial page asserted that we were headed for even worse conditions and that another four years of an Obama administration would take us over the edge completely makes these positive economic revelations a true cause to celebrate rather than to fret our lives away.
To be clear, those doom and gloom types assured us that unless we removed Obama from office and inserted the glossed over promises of trickle down economics that is being touted by the Romney/Ryan camp, we would, in the words of one letter writer, miss our “last chance to remain free, to save our country and ourselves.” Today’s economic positive news flies in the face of another assertion by a writer who shares the views of many who oppose Obama, saying that “A vote for Obama is a vote to continue down the road to ruin.” If this “road to ruin” continues, by the end of a second Obama presidency we may well be out of the Great Recession that we found ourselves in at the end of George Bush’s terms as president.
One can only hope that maybe these prophets of woe and misery will now see that their fears were unfounded after all. I mean, how can you refute this logic in light of this economic good news for Denton, a model that likely serves as a microcosm for most other cities in the U.S., even Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin that has seen a drop in unemployment from 13.9% in Aug 2009 to only 8.6% in Aug this year.
Oh wait. I forget these people live in another world detached from reality. These positive numbers will likely be turned on their heads and will be declared, as were the recent job numbers and polls showing Obama ahead in the presidential race, as something being twisted by the “liberal media” and the gubermint of that Islamic socialist, Barack Hussein Obama
The title of my essay suggests that the President himself has informed Mitt Romney that he is on to his little deception but I am in fact writing vicariously for the President in the hopes that he takes this baton and effectively carries it to not only his next debate with his GOP opponent but for the remainder of the campaign as he travels through swing states talking to voters.
Voters need to make sure that Romney isn’t employing some legerdemain when he debates the president
Following the first presidential debates in Denver, GOP candidate Mitt Romney put a spotlight on himself that continues to reveal how he is misleading the American voter, not only in his claims about his own abilities but in how he is misrepresenting President Obama’s job creating policies.
Mitt Romney has made the economy the centerpiece of his campaign and has tried to make a case that not only has the President’s policies not worked but that they will make things worse if he remains in office. Romney has also assured us that if he is elected he will use his business skills to bring jobs back and reduce the deficit without raising taxes. In order for voters to buy into this they will have allow themselves to be mesmerized by the trickery Romney and his VP choice, Paul Ryan, will be performing for the remainder of this election year.
Ignore that man behind the curtain
If the President’s policies were not working and were in fact making things worse, then we wouldn’t be seeing the opposite of what we were experiencing during George Bush’s last year.
[O]ur economy and financial markets went into a tailspin in the second half of 2008 due to the consequences of conservative economic policies aggressively implemented by the Bush administration.
Compare this to the economic situation today:
The U.S. economy has added jobs for 31 consecutive months
The economy has been growing since June 2009
Manufacturing has been on the upswing
Corporate profits have risen sharply
The stock market has added healthy gains
Foreclosures are finally falling
Household wealth is continuing to expand
Instead of a second Great Depression, the actions of President Barack Obama’s administration resulted in our economy exiting what became known as the Great Recession of 2007–2009 within the first six months of his term. - SOURCE
Watch, as I create jobs out of thin air!
“See, nothing up my sleeves”
Mitt Romney claims, “If I’m president, I will help create 12 million new jobs in this country with rising incomes.” Really? Romney says he can achieve what only Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have and will do it in 4 years rather than the course of two terms Clinton and Reagan needed to achieve this.
That’s pretty bold stuff. Romney has always viewed himself as something of a hero riding in to save the day. His successes at Bain Capital, passing Universal Health Care in Massachusetts (Romney-care) and the 2002 Winter Olympics may make this a justifiable view of himself. But his achievements with these were perhaps more a factor of his fiduciary skills. The claim that he will help create 12 million jobs is more a sleight of hand move that involves something he hasn’t had a hand in and which has essentially already been set in motion without any Romney heroics.
12 million new jobs will occur with or without Romney, according to several reports by Moody Analytics, the economic firm IHS Global Insight as well as the CBO’s own analysis. Strange that this is forecasted and Mr. Romney has yet to step foot in the Oval office. Romney’s imaginary part in this only comes about if he wins in November and finds himself in place when this all materializes. Voila! His promise of creating 12 million jobs comes true. But it comes true not for actions he took but for merely showing up.
These analyses likely do not take into account an Obama loss that allows the GOP to repeal Obamacare along with their failure to address the debt ceiling issue that could well push the economy over the “fiscal cliff”. Then that 12 million figure would likely drop dramatically according to the CBO’s analysis. Hundreds of thousands of jobs could be lost in the first two years alone if Romney implements most of his draconian budget cuts.
What this job creation projection does is to debunk the claims made by Romney and the GOP that Obama’s actions have not improved the economic quagmire he inherited. Though factors are in play here that no single person can take credit for, it becomes clear that if unemployment is reduced to the projected 6-7% figure by the fourth quarter of 2016, it will have done so by actions Obama has taken that have been anything but hurtful.
“ … GDP grew by 1.7 percent in 2011, producing nearly 1.6 million jobs. This is net of nearly 300,000 jobs lost in the public sector, thereby reflecting a private sector that is experiencing sustained, if not vigorous, growth.
A stronger above-trend economic recovery is not expected until 2014, after which several years of healthy growth are forecast. Thus, in the mid- to long-term, real estate markets should experience full recovery. This recovery should also lead to new supply ..
While a modest improvement from 2011, the coming year is forecast to experience continued gradual recovery, with anticipated job creation of about 140,000 per month. Longer-term, growth should accelerate. The previous employment peak should be achieved in 2014, and the unemployment rate should fall below 7 percent in 2016.” SOURCE (emphasis mine)
Obama and the Democrats have less than four weeks to convince voters who were impressed with Governor Romney’s performance following the first debate that there exuberance is based largely on distortions and lies. Unless they can convince enough people that the change they think they will get by returning the power back to the GOP is simply more of the same policies that created the great recession in the first place, this country will devolve into an economic morass that will take at least a decade to recover from. The writing is already on the wall as we watch conservative austerity programs dragging Europe down as it prevents a faster resurgence of our own economy.
And now for a side show
Watch the Daily Beast’s video of Hankeygate showing Romney employing a little prestidigitation that could violate the debate rules forbidding the use of any props, notes, charts, diagrams or other writings
I routinely take on the right-wing crowd here in my part of red-state Texas by countering their skewered views about Obama, health care reform, the economy and climate change. During my hiatus I still take time to respond to this crowd in the local newspaper’s Opinion page. Their arguments are so open to factual criticism that it doesn’t take much effort to knock down their straw man positions. The following is an example of these rejoinders.
You’ll first need to do a quick read in the Denton Record-Chronicle’s “Letters to the Editor” column today of Danna Zoltner and D.J. Anderson’s letters. Here are my comments found at the bottom of the page responding to these two.
To Mr. Anderson and Ms. Zoltner
The so-called “job creators”, who are sitting on plenty of revenue that could create jobs are doing so not because they’re waiting for Obamacare to be repealed or they’re uncertain of what the tax structure will be. These kind of things can be overcome when there is plenty of demand.
The economy will grow from the middle out by making sure you don’t reduce the middle class or their spending power. The unemployment problem isn’t the result of any imagined high tax rates but because there is insufficient spending to create demand.
Any economists worth his degree will tell you that demand is what creates jobs and when you kill public sector jobs as the only means of reducing the deficit you kill income from families who spend it in the private sector. As their spending reduces then their demand is taken out of the economy and eventually it impacts many private sector businesses that relied on dollars earned by teachers, cops, firemen, along with engineers and assembly line workers at companies who developed and built things that relied on government contracts to keep them profitable.
Rather than take money away from the middle class that are barely able to stay above water with wages that have increased only fractionally to that of income earners in the top 5% tier, why not tax that 5% during these difficult times who can better adapt, at least until the economy is back on its feet. The austerity measures that the GOP wants to impose have already proved to be a failure where they’ve been employed in Europe.
Trying to pay down the debt with spending cuts only in areas that benefit millions of Americans and that puts money back into the economy will fail as long as there is no effort to also trim the massive Defense budget or increase taxes prudently. Author David Korten says “our social deficits (rising poverty and inequality) and environmental deficits (starting with the climate crisis) do more to erode our society than the fiscal deficit does.
All this could be done without negatively impacting the income and thus the spending power of the middle class, the economists at the IPS assure us. By reinstating this spending, Mr. Anderson, is how you “build the economy from the middle class out.”
While corporate profits are at all time highs most of this money remains in the pockets of the very wealthy rather than creating jobs with. In fact, due to the European debt crisis it has been reported that now only 23 percent of the firms polled in June plan to add to staff in the next six months. This is down 13% from earlier this year in March and early April.
Back in 2010, while middle income families were losing their jobs and watching their paychecks and health benefits shrink, “American businesses sucked in profits at an annualized pace of $1.66 trillion between July and September. These profits allowed about a 6% increase in CEO pay last year while the average workers income increased only about 1%, “not enough to keep pace with inflation”.
And Ms. Zoltner, though you may be concerned that “the American taxpayer has gotten precious little for the administration’s investment in battery-powered vehicles, in terms of permanent jobs or lower carbon dioxide emissions”, efforts to change this are in play. Despite your mimicking of the naysayers, Ford, according to Bloomberg news, is “debuting five battery-powered models this year, spending $135 million to design electric-drive parts and double battery testing capacity”.
“Ford has said hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and all-electric cars will account for as much as 25 percent of its new vehicle sales by 2020, from less than 3 percent last year. The second- largest U.S. automaker is competing in the nascent market for electrified vehicles with Toyota, General Motors, Nissan and startups such as Tesla and closely held Fisker Automotive.
Ford said it plans to hire “dozens” of additional engineers for electric-vehicle development. It’s also renaming its 285,000-square-foot (26,477-square-meter) advanced engineering center in Dearborn, Mich., the “Ford Advanced Electrification Center.” SOURCE
You know, it took years for the fossil fuel industries to finely provide abundant cheap energy. Efforts that required plenty of government subsidies along with private investments. I am curious why you and others who think like you, are not willing to allow the same to occur with clean, abundant alternate forms of energy.
They are part of the crowd that Bill Clinton eloquently pointed in his speech at the Democratic Convention earlier this month who are essentially saying, “We left [Obama] a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.”
“In Tampa, the Republican argument against the president’s re-election was actually pretty simple — pretty snappy. It went something like this: We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.” – Bill Clinton’s speech at 2012 Democratic National Convention
No doubt Bill Clinton’s comments speaking to the delegates at the Democratic National Convention was on par with Michelle Obama’s as being the most inspiring and revealing speech about President Obama and the challenges he faces from the Republicans. But unlike the First Lady, Clinton I think more accurately framed the narrative that Americans needs to hear. Fact checkers can pick at his details but the basic message is sound and in my opinion, represents the reality of who and what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are all about.
That opening quote of his at the top of this page is perhaps the clearest synopsis I’ve seen yet of the GOP’s strategy if they regain the oval office. Line after line of Clinton’s convention speech was spot on and laconic. It was not laden with the legalese that lawyers and politicians hiding something often use and it was in this folksy vernacular that gives it its strongest appeal
In the Romney/Ryan 5-point plan to fix the economy there is nothing outlined that suggest how they will achieve what he proposes. In fact, the proposals are so generic that you can just as easily extrapolate them over to the Democratic platform.
Make America energy independent
Skills training for workers to meet future needs
Forge new trade agreements
Cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget.
Champion small businesses by reducing taxes and simplifying and modernizing regulations.
It can honestly be said that though Obama’s speech was only slightly more specific on how he would achieve his goals, he was, in the words of Slate’s John Dickerson, “far more [straight-talking] than his Republican rival”.
Romney and Ryan talked about hard choices, but only in the abstract, never really pointing out that it was the people who would have to endure the hard results of those choices. Obama was more up front. Restoring the middle-class dream would require sacrifice and struggle from everyone, the president said. ”The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place.” This speech was more like the one he gave on election night in Chicago: hard, clear-eyed, and earthbound.
Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney wanted points at their convention for the promise that they would tackle hard truths once they got into office. Obama wanted points for already having embraced hard truths. “I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth.” SOURCE
You can read the full 68 pages of the GOP platform to get the details on this but Clinton puts it more succinctly and without all of the lipstick and lace.
“they want to do the same old policies that got us in trouble in the first place. They want to cut taxes for high- income Americans, even more than President Bush did. They want to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts. They want to actually increase defense spending over a decade $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they’ll spend it on. And they want to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor children.”
Regarding that part about the $2 trillion extra they claim the Pentagon requested without knowing what it was going to be spent on, a CNN Money reportback in May confirmed this and stated that this “lack of detail means that Romney’s claim of moving toward a balanced budget requires a great deal of trust.”
The Romney/Ryan ticket does indeed rely on voters to “just trust us” while they try to redirect the argument back to their talking point about how Obama has failed to keep his promises made to the American people back in 2008. One of those promises Romney claims was when the “newly elected President Obama told America that if Congress approved his plan to borrow nearly a trillion dollars, he would hold unemployment below 8 percent.” Politifact.com debunked this notion on more than one occasion as it was made by various other Republican leaders. What’s truly interesting though is that of the some 500 promises that Obama is supposed to have made, 83 of them (or 16%) that have yet been kept, according to Politifact.com’s count, are promises that not only are absent in Romney’s criticism of the President but are mostly those that Romney and the GOP support, like not closing GITMO or ending the Bush tax cuts
At the heart of this attack however is that Obama has failed to resolve our great economic recession in less than 4 years in office. Though his efforts to reshape the economy have misfired some of the times and many American’s public finances are suffering, writers for The Economist say holding the president solely responsible for our current state isn’t an accurate assessment.
To say Obama blew it “is not a fair judgment on Mr Obama’s record, which must consider not just the results but the decisions he took, the alternatives on offer and the obstacles in his way. Seen in that light, the report card is better. His handling of the crisis and recession were impressive.” SOURCE
Those “obstacles in his way” mentioned by The Economist are the recalcitrant GOP who have opposed nearly every policy and piece of legislation put forth by the Obama administration since the Republicans won a majority in the House back in 2010. Long before that however he’s been attacked by the corporate-backed TEA Party who lost sight of those responsible for the bailout of America’s financial institutions and what caused their unraveling that led to the worst recession since the early 1930’s. Any actions perceived to address our economic woes by the GOP have been guided too strongly by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s Party fiat that placed a “top political priority” on making President Obama a one-term president. He reiterated this on FOX News seven months later stating that it was still his major objective “along with every active Republican in the country.”
In their abuse of the filibuster and delaying tactics to block Presidential appointments through the advise and consent procedure, Republicans have aimed “to embarrass the president and hobble his ability to run the executive branch”, according to the authors of the book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics of Extremism by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein (p. 100) In so doing they can make the president appear incompetent to the public and malign him on news shows to create a poor image to voters.
… since 2006, but especially since Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the filibuster is more often a stealth weapon, which minority Republicans use not to highlight an important national issue but to delay and obstruct quietly on nearly all matters, including routine and widely supported one. It is fair to say that this pervasive use of the filibuster has never before happened in the history of the Senate. Mann and Ornstein – p.89 (emphasis mine)
The Party has been further aided in undermining Obama’s presidency with the Citizens United decision that lets huge sums of money into political campaigns. Karl Rove’s super Pac, American Crossroads GPS, for example told potential donors that they would conduct “in-depth research on congressional expense account abuses”, to blame Democrats for “failed border controls” and to frame the BP oil spill as “Obama’s Katrina.” Then of course there has been the complicity of many news outlets that promote Republican talking points or fail to do journalistic due diligence and research many of the claims made by Republican talking heads.
What voters need to take away from this campaign is the understanding of what Obama really did and didn’t promise, which seems to unnerve the GOP candidates. The promises Obama made in 2008, like the one’s he made last Thursday night, require active participation and the willingness by every capable soul to help in that endeavor. No one man can do everything alone nor should he be expected to or have blame laid solely at his feet. It was the understanding that with everyone’s help that such promises could reasonably be achieved. It is in part those of us who had expectations beyond the realm of reality that are at fault for our disappointment that the economy has not rebounded better than we hoped.
For anyone to assume their job is done once their vote is cast is a level of apathy only slightly higher than one who doesn’t vote at all or chooses not to get involved with the political process in any way. But even worse are those people who not only sit on their hands but who actively engage in preventing any forward motion, even if they don’t like the guy. Saying it’s a wrong-headed policy before it’s been given a chance and based only on ideological views is part of the political back-and-forth between political adversaries. But for those who actively engage in obstructionist practices that stymie those legitimate efforts simply to enhance their own political agenda, borders, in my opinion, close to treason.
That leaves me closing with Bill Clinton who has made the best expression of these unhealthy, hurtful actions by the GOP leadership.
Now, there’s something I’ve noticed lately. You probably have too. And it’s this. Maybe just because I grew up in a different time, but though I often disagree with Republicans, I actually never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate our president and a lot of other Democrats.
When times are tough and people are frustrated and angry and hurting and uncertain, the politics of constant conflict may be good. But what is good politics does not necessarily work in the real world. What works in the real world is cooperation. What works in the real world is cooperation, business and government, foundations and universities.
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Folks, whether the American people believe what I just said or not may be the whole election. I just want you to know that I believe it. With all my heart, I believe it.
I think voters need to step back and take a serious, measured look at what our real choices are for President this fall. Hard working Americans who have become victims of this recession are not dead beats looking for a free lunch. They see their plight as temporary but would feel better about it if there was some genuine empathy from one of the candidates who could be President but appears to have no idea what it’s like to be struggling economically when times are hard.
While corporate profits reach record highs, wages remain stagnant
The high unemployment rate that just refuses to recede back to that 4-5% rate that most economists view as the norm continues to drain savings accounts, puts families out of their homes and clearly brings into perspective that the idea of an American dream is no longer a reality for most people as it once was. More people have slipped from middle incomes levels into the ranks of poverty as a result of the financial collapse on Wall Street back in 2008.
As a consequence, the need for state and federal aid has grown in the form of unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicaid benefits. Older workers are discovering how difficult it is to find comparable work that they once held before being laid off and are often forced to collect Social Security benefits at the earlier retirement age of 62, putting an added burden on that trust fund when receipts are shrinking from fewer income earners in the job market.
This isn’t a condition any of these people sought or feel comfortable with. It is taxing and humiliating on individuals to go through the paperwork and expend the time applying for benefits while simultaneously trying to compete with 4-5 other people looking for that one job that will put them back in the work force. Many have put off taking such action until there is nothing else left for them to do after they’ve emptied their savings, sold their home and moved in with relatives, all while cutting back on food and health needs to sustain them. It is a depressing state that has a deteriorating affect on their physical health, leading to greater economic woes for them and their family.
Nobody wants what Paul Ryan recently suggested about having “a safety net that turns into a hammock that lulls people into dependency in this country”. That’s a fear smear used by the political right to mischaracterize necessary welfare programs in this country that fill the void when free markets fail. All anyone really wants now as they did during the Great Depression was “the right to live, Mister,Give me back my job again.” Jim Garland’s 1941 lyrics to All I Want was part of the social protest movement expressed in the music of the Almanac Singers that consisted of Garland, Wood Guthrie and Pete Seeger
We worked to build this country, Mister,
While you enjoyed a life of ease.
You’ve stolen all that we built, Mister,
Now our children starve and freeze.
So, I don’t want your millions, Mister,
I don’t want your diamond ring.
All I want is the right to live, Mister,
Give me back my job again.
Charities of every kind are over-burdened with the needs to meet this new population who just a few short years ago were themselves contributing to food banks, work programs and life support organizations that routinely meet the needs of society’s poor and disenfranchised groups. As a society we are just not wired to become dependent on others, looking for a “free lunch”, and will go out of our way to avoid relying on the kindness of strangers.
It would be nice then if the presumed Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney, would stop disparaging these people, portraying them as a “culture of dependency” and showed some empathy by ending his demeaning narrative towards those policies and programs that offer some solace in these economic hard times until the promises of the free markets correct what they essentially caused. Without some government assistance at this time, this doesn’t seem likely anytime soon. Paul Ryan’s entry into the race as Romney’s VP will have no affect on this dynamic. It will in fact bring it more into focus since Ryan is the poster boy for wanting to privatize Medicaid/Medicare.
“There is no such thing as a free-market. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them.” – economist Ha-Joon Chang
In order for the “invisible hand” of the free markets to work its magic, more people will likely lose their homes, their savings and their hopes of an ideal American dream first . Unfettered markets will rely solely on the forces of supply and demand from the private sector to revive the economy. Without government stimulus to generate demand and speed up the recovery, those currently unemployed will have to hope that a high level of entrepreneurship springs into action quicker rather than later. The prospects for that happening soon are not promising.
And while waiting for this to occur the victims of the great recession are finding it more difficult to rely on state and federal assistance to tide them over. The free markets do not accommodate families struggling who are waiting for the “job creators” to provide employment opportunities. This puts them deeper in debt and prevents them from rejoining the ranks of consumers if they are mostly reliant on private charities.
If people are not buying then demand is weak and employment either remains the same or shrinks, creating even less demand needed to turn the unemployment crisis around. Thus the new unemployed population that developed when the banks too big to fail went under have to hope that the failed premise of trickle down economics Romney and Ryan offer will deliver this time where it hasn’t in the past.
The deck remains stacked in favor of Wall Street. A Romney Presidency will gain them a card dealer who deals to them from the bottom of the deck.
President Obama has been criticized by apostles of supply side economics for his use of the Keynesian approach requiring government intervention during economic hard times. These efforts were effective in stopping the rapid rate of job losses and even began to turn the tide shortly after being applied. But the stimulus package passed by Congress shortly after Obama’s inauguration, without any Republican backing, was too little for an economy that had deeper issues than nearly anyone on either side predicted.
As a result, the Republicans exploited this short-sightedness and portrayed it as a failure of policy, even though they battled to insure its failure. Angry voters who watched Washington bailout Wall Street while Main Street went under easily bought in to the straw man offered by forces eager to regain their prominence under the neo-conservative policies of the Bush/Cheney days
Acting behind the scenes to promote the anti-government, anti-tax fervor of the small libertarian contingent in this country which came to be known as the T.E.A. Party, they repackaged trickle down economics in a thinly veiled manner that allows even greater revenue loss to prop up the social safety net that is saving millions from falling deeper into debt and poverty. While middle-income families who still have a job are led to believe that it is the expense of maintaining this social safety net that’s causing their economic concerns, the wealthiest amongst us are getting richer from lower taxes and less regulation to keep their greed in check.
This is the select group of people who Mitt Romney comes from and Ryan supports to the detriment of the middle-income victims of failed free-market policies. The gaffes Romney makes and continues to make about the working class in America and his feigned concern for them is becoming legendary. Yet he retains a modicum of persuasion over those who will ultimately be adversely affected by his hoped-for victory come November because of a level of hate for Obama that can’t be rationally explained. In the end however this may not save him because Romney still lives in a fog about his own culture of wealth as writer Jonathan Chait has noted.
Romney has taken no steps at all to put a middle-class sheen on his background, and he’s allowed Democrats to define him by his wealth and heartlessness. He seems to have fallen into the trap of believing that the sentiments about wealth that prevail among movement conservatives reflect the beliefs of Americans as a whole. SOURCE
Polls are clearly showing that this may well work against the presumed GOP nominee for president. Not only do more people like Barack Obama than they do Romney, they also don’t identify with his wealth culture. It remains to be seen if Ryan’s inclusion into the Romney campaign will alter these poll results more in favor of the man who continues to demonstrate his failure to connect with the average American.
So why are those Independents who will eventually decide the outcome of this election still waiting to make their choice? Obama has understandably been disappointing for not being more aggressive going after the culture of greed that caused our current state of affairs and has been too willing to compromise with people who have made it clear that compromise is itself a dirty word. The GOP has focused on this weak aspect of his leadership to undermine the president in all things. But the choice between Obama and a man who has no clue what it’s like to be unemployed and struggling to meet the daily needs to survive seems like a no-brainer.
It’s not that wealthy people are automatically out of touch with poorer working class families. Not all of them are. In his inaugural address John Kennedy warned that “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” But Romney clearly showed his ignorance of poverty in America when he implied at Otterbein University in Ohio earlier this year that financial success was simply a matter of “borrowing money if you have to from your parents”.
Reinstating Obama means we will still at least have a sympathetic ear and a foot in the door to accomplish greater things we were led to believe would come to fruition shortly after his inauguration. He will remain in place to block any draconian measures by a GOP-controlled House or Senate that attempt to severe necessary benefits for the most vulnerable in our society – the elderly, children and the handicapped.
For all his misgivings in his first term they still remain outdone by what he did achieve. Obama is likely to be more receptive to the change we still need in Washington in his second and final term as President. This may not inspire the hope for many that voted for Obama in 2008 but it remains a lifeline for working families and the indigent poor.
That door slams shut however if Romney is elected. The alternative of a Romney/Ryan ticket promises to return the status quo view of economics that sent markets dropping like lead balloons four short years ago. The only form of hope likely to be left then for most Americans will be that their lottery numbers hit and trickle down economics will at least contribute more to the foods banks and free health clinics.
“It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as it is seeing the rich asking for more money.”- G.K Chesterton
The recent Supreme Court decision that found the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to be constitutional caught both liberals and conservatives off guard. Most thought the conservative majority would follow it’s “activist” judicial ways and rule against what the Right derisively calls “Obamacare”. Though now that the law has been validated by the highest court in the land, supporters are also now using the term. Perhaps as a dig to those people who have used it as a pejorative since the ACA passed both houses of Congress in March, 2010.
The Court’’s majority was surprisingly led by conservative Chief Justice Roberts, sending the right into an apoplectic fit. They were prepared to make this President Obama’s death nail, being as it has been considered his signature policy piece. But that plan of action has been taken from them so their outrage has been rekindled and we can expect vitriol and distortions at a new level and with a fervency of a Southern Baptist preacher exorcising the demons from the heathen masses.
What the public can expect to see from this outrage are some of the old lies and distortions about the health care law and perhaps even a few new ones. But leading their attack will be the hue and cry of “another tax on the American people”. Though conservatives are more correct in hitting the Obama administration with increased spending (necessitated by the Great Recession he inherited from the Bush administration) their attacks about being “Taxed Enough Already”, from which the T.E.A. Party evolved from shortly after Obama’s inauguration, is a bogus claim since American tax rates are at a fifty-year low, especially for the wealthiest 1%.
But this hasn’t stopped the right-wing spin machine from fabricating the delusion that we are over-taxed. In actuality the U.S. tax rate is near the bottom of a list of developed countries, coming in with a higher rate only over Korea, Chile, Turkey and Mexico. But if you’re a Grover Norquist libertarian this ranking is not only too high but should be perhaps lower than most third world countries whose populations live in utter poverty by most standards.
The GOP has taken this theme and intends to elevate it to pitched levels that will distort the reality. Chief Justice Roberts declared in his ruling that the fee that will be assessed against those Americans who refuse to get health insurance by 2014 is in fact a tax. Technically he’s right and I suspect his reason for stressing this was to generate the type of virulent response we will soon see from the anti-tax devotees. Many will falsely claim it to be, as my Republican Congressman Michael Burgess has, “a very large tax on middle-income Americans.”
To include all of “middle income America” into this equation is the lie in Congressman Burgess’s statement. The CBO has estimated that only a little over 2% of the population, about 6 million people, will be affected by this law. In 2006 nearly half of the 116,011,000 households in the United States had annual middle-income wages that fell somewhere between $36,000 and $91,000. This tallies out to about 50 million households. This is hardly a number close to the 6 million who the CBO projects will be impacted by the ACA’s mandate and is clearly not a tax that all middle-income Americans will be hurt by.
Once this theme has run been through the cycle on radio talk shows and right-wing blogs we will most likely see a renewed effort to discredit the ACA with claims that have already been fact checked and proven false. Politifact.com has posted a few of their biggest falsehoods about the law:
A couple of new ones are Senator Tom Coburn’s rant about how Obamacare will “Sovietize the American health care system” and Carly Fiorina’s screed about how the health care law would make it “very deleterious” for breast cancer patients. Accompanying these are the hyperbolic claims being distributed by GOP functionaries like the one from the RNC on how the health care law will tax heart attacks, sick puppies and new babies. This is the one I did a recent satire on titled “Mr. Priebus’s Neighborhood”.
It will be a certainty that those who buy into such nonsense easily will never be persuaded to see things rationally. There simply are about thirty percent of the electorate that hate Barack Obama for various reasons and are willing to accept anybody that the GOP finds who’ll replace him in 2012. It looks like this person will be the former Governor of Massachusetts who himself passed a health care law exactly like what the Obama administration modeled the ACA on. Go figure.
The guy who uses an old cardboard box and a marks-a-lot to make his protest sign calls poor people “lazy bastards”
But it falls on the Obama administration and the Democratic Party to concentrate their energy and money on those rational, thoughtful human beings who remain undecided at this point on how they feel their vote will select the best candidate. These are the people who haven’t been completely won over with the idealistic view that free markets are our only hope. Many still recall it was the collapse of the free market under the Bush administration in a highly de-regulated economy that put us where we are at today. Some may see Obama as failing to have turn things around a lot quicker than they feel he could have, and in fact they would be right in the views of many economist. But they are still uneasy in assuming that the GOP pig with lipstick on it – trickle-down economics – is somehow going to work this time when it has failed ever since its inception under Ronald Reagan.
A recent Ross Douthat’s column entitled “The Party of Julia” provides yet another example of how conservatives will play out this election to win votes for their candidate, Mitt Romney. It is similar to a legal defense an attorney would take with a client that could possibly do more damage to his cause by taking the witness stand so is instead prevented from testifying on their own behalf. It’s often a gamble that hope’s the prosecution’s case can be demoralized enough to weaken the presumption of guilt for the defense’s client and thus look for a dismissal because the accused can’t be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Clearly the Republicans have nothing to offer that could convince enough people with short memories that trickle down economics this time around will somehow work, despite it poor track record. The data is so convincing that such economic policies are a failure that the GOP’s only hope of regaining both Houses of Congress along with the White House is to make Obama and the Democrats look worse than this retread alternative. Douthat would have his readers believe that the Obama campaign theme of FORWARD “is a none-too-subtle admission that a look backward at the Obama economic record might be bad news for the president’s re-election prospects.” In actually it’s contrasting the direction Obama will continue with as opposed to the opposite direction the Romney campaign will take the country
The thrust of Douthat’s efforts however, in line with conservative bloggers and pundits across the nation, is currently focused on the the Obama/Biden campaign slide show, The Life Of Julia. This animated narrative shows how federal funded programs can help people who either cannot engage in the free markets, like children and many of the elderly, or who can but the free markets have not provided adequate jobs or compensation for services to take advantage of the system that opens opportunities up to those who have the financial means.
“All propaganda invites snark and parody, and the story of Julia is ripe for it” Douthat tells us.
She’s an everywoman only by the standards of the liberal upper middle class: She works as a Web designer, has her first child in her early 30s (the average first-time American mother is in her mid-20s), and spends her golden years as a “volunteer at a community garden.” (It will not surprise you to learn that the cartoon Julia looks Caucasian.)
Based on that last comment in parenthesis it’s not clear here if Douthat is trying to suggest that Obama’s revealing something the GOP has overlooked – that white, professional, thirty something single moms are also in need of some assistance from the failed promises of free markets – or, if he is suggesting that only minorities with dark skin fit the profile portrayed in this slide show. The latter perspective would go against the radical conservative argument that the Democrats and liberals are all too willing to use the race card. It seems Douthat is doing the race-baiting here.
Poor divorced mothers need help to survive the end of a marriage
Douthat then seems surprised that the imaginary Julia has “no meaningful relationships apart from her bond with the Obama White House: no friends or siblings or extended family, no husband”, even though she has given birth to a child. Only a conservative would presume that such a demographic is either unlikely or not significant in numbers. A quick look at the stats show that more women are remaining single rather than getting married, that half of all marriages wound up in divorce these days with better than 85% of women still under the age of 30 and that the birth rate for unmarried women is 50.5 births per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15-44 years.
These numbers are staggering even when you realize that a lot of the women with children will either get married or remarry. But that period of time may be too long to subsist for a woman who either has no family to help her get by or whose family also falls below the poverty level and can offer her no real relief from her plight. Yes Ross, such a demographic does exist.
Douthat goes on like this a bit and then tries to defend a notion that omits modern day realities.
The liberalism of “the Life of Julia” doesn’t envision government spending the way an older liberalism did — as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government’s place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision — personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.
To my knowledge I don’t think there has been a change in how liberals view federally funded social programs from what they did 30-40 years ago. Douthat’s premise is a red-herring, but it does expose an element that appears to go completely over the head of the conservative columnist. If it appears to conservatives that there is an attempt by liberals to establish a government “in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life” they might want to reflect on the economic realties of today that could possibly explain why this may have some merit.
The policies of the GOP over the last thirty years have hurt the vibrant middle class in this country. They have supported the outsourcing of jobs, shifted the tax burden away from the wealthiest 1% and they have done nothing to stymie the increasing cost of health care. Under these extraordinary dire economic circumstances they have fought against extending unemployment benefits and worked to kill legislation aimed at creating the type of jobs that will address our future energy problems. They have removed the regulatory safeguards that are intended to prevent the great recession we fell victim to in 2008 and are still unwilling to implement these necessary safeguards in the face of this deficiency.
To pour salt into the wound the GOP House recently took action that would renege on their promise last year as part of a resolution to the debt-ceiling crisis.
Republicans had already agreed to $109 billion a year in automatic spending cuts — half from defense, half from the domestic side — if lawmakers failed to agree to lower the deficit in more reasonable ways such as mixing targeted cuts with tax increases on the rich. Even Democrats who supported big defense cuts wanted them chosen carefully, not with the sequester’s cleaver. But Republicans refused to take that path when the supercommittee deliberated and now are trying to make all of the cuts on the domestic side.
In just one particularly destructive example, the bill would eliminate the social services block grant, a $1.7 billion fund that is given to the states to help people struggling the hardest. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the fund provides services to 23 million people, including Meals on Wheels and other programs that help older Americans. It also helps pay for child care assistance, foster care and juvenile justice at a time when states are cutting back these programs. SOURCE
They have no plan other than “to make Obama a one-term president” and continue to hope that the voter will be distracted by their demonization of Obama’s policies enough to forget that it was their policies that created a world wide economic catastrophe. What does that say about the conservative message when all of their hopes for regaining power focuses on their negative images of Obama with little to nothing to say in a positive fashion for their own candidate?
