Kentucky Governor To Mitch McConnell: Get Your Facts Straight On Obamacare
Wait just a cotton pickin minute!! You mean to tell me that Mitch by god McConnell might be … a lyin sack o’ shit?! No! Say it isn’t so!!
Tag Archives: Republican
Government Shutdown Was Planned For Months
Government Shutdown Was Planned For Months By Ed Meese, Koch Bros.
From the article, “So, when you are told by Republicans that the shutdown is he fault of President Obama and Democrats, you can now say with certainty that this is untrue.”
Note the article’s source: FOX news
My comment:
The Union and Confederate soldiers would often get together in the evenings, and then resume hostilities the next morning. Axis and Allied soldiers would cross the fields between the trenches to share a bottle overnight and then resume hostilities the next day.
One can be friends with a conservative, but one never forgets that they are also, always the enemy. It is their stated intention to destroy the USA and all that she has come to stand for. All that it was said she stood for from the moment she was founded, though it has taken a long time to even begin to approach those ideals. And, even though there is a long way to go to achieve those ideals. This latest manufactured “crisis” and the looming one in 9 days are just the latest examples of their attempts to do so.
This is what they have said they want, and this is what they have worked hard to accomplish.
More Failed Political Theatre
July 24, 2013 – The “Amash Amendment” was voted down. What was this amendment, you might wonder? It got very little coverage really, so you wouldn’t be so out of line to ask. The Amash amendment, surprisingly, was offered by a Republican representative despite the opposition of the Speaker of the House, Boehner. It would have limited the NSA’s ability to collect the so-called meta data on phone and internet data usage, and otherwise reduced the funding and scope of the NSA. It drew, as politics sometimes is wont to do, a strange series of bedfellows. Right wing “libertarians” and “left wing liberals” joined together to support this bill and still it failed by a vote of 205 to 217. Here is the roll call so you can see how your own representatives voted.
On the one hand, it really didn’t matter how this vote turned out. We should all understand that. Should this have passed, and then succeeded in the Senate, which was far from likely to begin with, the POTUS had promised to veto it. Of course, he has promised to veto numerous things in the past and then signed them any way. However, this one, I find his threat much more credible as it is more in line with his right wing totalitarian regime approach to things. “Trust me. We’ve got your best interest at heart. We’ll give you some pretense of good faith, such as lip service about believing in same-sex marriage, but in reality, we’re going to call out the militarized police to control you and beat you into submission, while half way around the world, we kill children in your name.” {Some Afghan kids aren’t bystanders, indeed!! You right wing, murderous bastard!}
– Deep breaths – Deep breaths – Deep breaths –
It is also very likely that he would not have vetoed it because he has come out so strongly in support of the program. For example, on June 18, 2013:
Charlie Rose: So I hear you saying, I have no problem with what NSA has been doing.
Barack Obama: Well, let me — let me finish, because I don’t.
Except, we are not allowed to look at the details, so you are asking us to take your word, and since you have shown yourself to be a liar, we can’t trust that, Mr. President.
So, if you think that there was really any chance that this amendment would have succeeded, then I would like to discuss a lake I have for sale. You might be interested. It has a beautiful view, and several ships are included. Details here.
Okay, so it didn’t really matter because president Napoleon the Pig, er, I mean Obama would have vetoed it. However, it also didn’t matter, because if the POTUS is to be believed, and he has been backed on this by many in the congress, then:
Understand what that means is that each of those 205 members of congress that voted for the Amash amendment is one of two things. Either they are so spineless that they couldn’t act without sufficient support around them. They couldn’t stand on their own two feet to say, “This is wrong, and I must stand against it.” Or, they are still conducting political theatre. They saw that there were enough people in their constituencies that were at least a little upset that they would benefit from making it appear that they were trying to do something to end these programs, without actually trying to do something. Then, they can return to what is much more important to the Republicans in the House of Representatives – a 40th attempt to repeal the ACA, other wise known as Obamacare.
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Same as The Old Boss
You thought you were getting something different?
“Hollywood” hasn’t been giving you anything different for years, and you bought it. While the critics have analyzed it all and told you how great and new it all is. Yet, it has all been done before, to the point where many of the movies have literally been recycled (Here’s a bonus 20 more). Fashion hasn’t been giving you anything new for decades, and you bought it, while the fashionistas raved about how the beautiful people were decked out in daring new styles never seen before. Music on the radio (terrestrial and satellite) have become more and more homogeneous with every passing year as they have become more and more consolidated, while you bought it.
And, your political parties have become more and more impossible to distinguish from one another, while the pundits have screamed louder and louder about how different they are, while you bought it. When the reality is that if you removed the party labels, and the names; if you simply listed their “accomplishments”, you would be hard pressed to distinguish any of the last 5 presidents from each other. In fact, with two exceptions, you would be very hard pressed to distinguish any of the last 9 from each other simply by their accomplishments or policies. Those two exceptions are Carter and Nixon. One being simply too nice to have accomplished anything in such a tarnished and cut throat office, and the other being so criminal that he made the others look almost decent.
For an excellent, though brief, analysis of those policies and achievements pop over here. I’ll wait.
I disagree with the conclusions that the author has reached, because I see that history has taught us one very important truth. The power is always with the people. The people always have the ability to change the government at their will. The only questions are whether it will be done peacefully and what form will come after. Other than that, it is matters of details – how, when, and at what cost.
It is not too late for “we the people” to change the course of America. It is not too late to reclaim it from the “corporations are people” group. It doesn’t have to even be done in a violent manner. We can do it through grassroots efforts and through the ballot box, but to do so, we have to actually wake up and pay attention. We have to get our noses out of the boob tube, and care more about this:
than we do about this:
I talk to people and they tell me we need to change the way we vote. Some one suggested the other day that we should change to the Instant Runoff Voting system. There are several problems with this, but the largest is that it doesn’t actually address the problem. People are still funding and voting for Democrats and Republicans because they believe they have no real alternatives. This plurality voting system isn’t really going to change that. People are still going to place the R or D at the top because they’re still going to believe that those are the only two viable alternatives. It is that belief that has to be broken through. Until that is done, people will continue to hold their noses and vote for one or the other, and then continue to bitch and moan about it for the next two or four years, whining the whole time about how “we have no control” and “they only give us these choices.”
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Apathetic After Shock
There has been a lot of talk recently, of course, about Edward Snowden and traitors. There has been a great deal of public gnashing of teeth and wailing by our elected leaders over his release of the snazzy Micro$oft PowerPoint slideshow that was not meant for public consumption. There was a really well done piece explaining how, under the definitions given in the US Constitution, Snowden has not committed treason. Not going to talk about that today. Not directly.
Instead, what I find bothersome is just how much acceptance there is about this from the vast majority of people. I really shouldn’t be surprised, and I suppose I’m not really. Still, I am disappointed. When it broke, I had hoped that perhaps this would be sufficient to bring about a ground swell of anger and activity. There was certainly an initial outburst of shock. And, yet, very quickly since then …
There has been some small amount of noise at the fringes. Reddit has been one place where a little activity has taken place. The Daily Kos, EFF, and a lot of other organizations have quietly come out in opposition. Note the key word being quietly. These organizations sent out emails to their members. I know. I got some of them. I certainly didn’t get all of them. I’m not on all of their mailing lists. There was some activity on the right. Again, I know. I saw some of it. I heard about other, and I went looking to see if there was any in other places. At the fringes, yes. In the heart, in the mainstream? No. Not really.
stopwatching.us was set up to collect signatures. I want to share with you a screen shot taken from that site on the morning of June 16, 2013. It is a compilation that shows their “Selected Signatories.” I’ve compiled the 4 categories that they have on four separate tabs – Organizations, Individuals, Businesses, and Members of US Congress – together for you to take in all at once.
As of this morning, they have collected 178,350 signatures. Please read that again. That’s a sad number.
No one cares. The majority of the country is so used to the intrusions of the PATRIOT Act, warrantless searches, surrendering our civil liberties in the name of security, and the concept that “If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear,” that this kind of “revelation” is blasé. No worries, mate.
According to one poll (as reliable as that may be), 54% of Americans think that Snowden did the right thing in exposing PRISM, but 53% still think he should be prosecuted. A vast majority of people say they’re following the story closely. My theory as to why? Because to most people this is just the next episode in the Bourne Chronicles. Most people are likely watching to see which scenario happens next. Will he be subjected to “extraordinary rendition”? Will he be found dead “by his own hand”? Will he be mundanely arrested and extradited back to the US? Will he become an “asset” of the Chinese or some other foreign government that would like access to the information he may still have not released yet?
They are not paying attention because they are interested in or concerned about the actual issues. I see in both left of center and right of center blogs, as well as the main stream media the over-whelming theme of “Who cares?” about the program itself. I actually read the words, “I am not sure I care if the government is reading my email or listening in on my phone calls as long as it keeps me safe.” The majority of the coverage of this case is about who is Edward Snowden? (My Google search for the term, “Who is edward snowden” returned 1,180,000,000 results) What is Booz Allen Hamilton? (A firm most of us had never heard of before.) Should we be privatizing “national security”? (A question that probably should have been asked 40 years ago, but which was answered as an inevitable part of the supply-side, conservative domination of the government over that time period. What did y’all really expect?) And, so on. Very little about the intrusiveness of this program which in all likelihood has accomplished nothing in terms of actual security, despite claims to the contrary.
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Surprised? No. Outraged? Yes!
Let me begin with a question. It is a simple question. We’ll come back to the context in a moment. In all seriousness.
Why are you surprised? Or, perhaps, better, why would anyone be surprised?
The Guardian newspaper this week, using leaked documents, “revealed” the existence of “PRISM” – a broad program to collect “so-called meta data on your telephone calls.” The article goes further to claim that the NSA also has direct backdoor access to the servers of major tech companies (Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple) which between them own the vast majority of all online communications between e-mail, video, and chat.
Again, why would anyone be surprised? This is really not news. The specifics of it might be new, but we have known about the existence of this program for years. I don’t think the public knew the name of the program, or had seen that nifty logo. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court was set up in the mid-1970s. The PATRIOT Act was approved by near unanimous consent (357 to 66 in the House and 98 to 1 in the Senate) and signed into law by George W Bush on 10/25/2001. It was introduced on 10/23. So, in less than 48 hours it went from concept to law. It was then renewed in 2006, and again in 2011 by the current POTUS. It is these two laws which provide the broad foundations for the program, however, there are many, many other laws which have been passed that have aided and abetted the development of these programs.
Again, why are you surprised? In 1979, the Supreme Court upheld this kind of invasion of privacy. They found in the Smith v Maryland case, that collecting, what was called at the time the “pen register” (that is the time equivalent of the meta data), was legal. This is the modern, technologically equivalent program. When it goes further into the courts, they will uphold it.
The NSA has been involved in this kind of snooping and has been caught at it before. We know this. It isn’t new. In 2005, the EFF filed a lawsuit against AT&T for illegally cooperating with the NSA to facilitate these actions. If you read this article, or remember from the time period, you will note that the defense from the administration is almost precisely the same.
In 2006, one of the sitting FISA judges quit the appointment and others urged congress to give the FISA court a direct role in overseeing the wiretapping program.
“The administration defends the eavesdropping program, saying it is only targeting communications to and from suspected terrorists, that government lawyers review the program every 45 days and that Congress authorized the president to track down 9/11 co-conspirators, thereby giving the president the ability to bypass wiretapping laws.”
In 2009, the director of the National Cybersecurity Center resigned, and blamed the NSA’s “pwer grab” as a threat to “our democratic process.”
In 2001, William Binney resigned from the NSA after more than 30 years, including time as director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, and started blowing the whistle, warning about the size and scope of the NSA’s surveillance program.
This is not tin foil hat conspiracy theory territory. This is you can only be surprised if you weren’t paying attention. This is, “If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention” territory.
For most of the last 60 years there has been talk of Project ECHELON. Not just in tin foil hat, conspiracist circles where we can laugh at it, but also in the halls of government, with official investigations. There have been actual investigations and acknowledgements of its existence with accompanying refusals to discuss its full expanse. Sound familiar?
Many in our governments, around the world, took Orwell’s 1984 not as a warning, but as a guidebook, just as many right wingers took Ayn Rand’s work not as a poorly written morality play, but as the writings of a prophetess.
Now, as I said, there is no reason that anyone should be surprised. However, that does not mean that we should not be outraged, nor does it suggest that we should accept it. I hope that this will be the moment that people will awake and arise. I do not expect it, but I do hope for it. Perhaps we will remember and live up to the words of at least one of the “Founding Fatherstm”
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Liberal Media? Riiiighttt
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
– Ronald Reagan1
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”
– George Orwell, 1984
How many times have you heard about the “liberal media”? Probably so many times that most of you even believe it. It would be amusing, if it wasn’t so sad. These types of falsehoods that become “facts” are precisely part of the war of definitions that the right has used to drag the political center, and the country, further and further to the right over the years.
This myth, in its current form, originated from a single survey that was done many years ago. 1972, S. Robert Lichter et al in “The Media Elite: America’s New Powerbrokers” did a small survey of 238 journalists, and found that the majority of them did vote Democrat. While this shouldn’t be surprising, particularly given that that study after study shows that there is an inverse relationship between education and conservatism, and as a rule, journalists tend to be fairly well educated. (This is the truth behind why Republicans and conservatives are so opposed to education. It is why people like Rick Santorum say, “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side”)
Did this survey find that the media was liberal? No, not really. Not even its authors claim so. What it found was that the media was, in fact, not liberally biased, though many of the mid-level and below reporters did tend to vote Democrat. (At that point, voting Democrat actually put one a bit left of center.) The right wing though, and in particular (oh, the irony here), the right wing columnists in the media, took this survey, twisted it, as they are wont to do, and on the other end of their propaganda machine came out the turd that “The media is liberal”. They have been decrying the media as such ever since.
The facts in front of us would convince any sane reasonable person to the contrary, but that is not what we are dealing with. We are dealing with people who have largely been victims of a Milligramesque Experiment echo chamber. “You will accept authority.” You will accept that the media is liberal.” “You will believe that everything that comes from the government is evil.” “You will ignore the contradictions.” “You will ignore the man behind the curtain.” You will give me your dollars.”
Oh, and buy my book! It’s called, “How to get rich by selling people a book called, How to get rich by selling a book called, How to get rich by …” It’s only $19.99. Order here.
One of the other interesting things to consider in this is that these low- and mid-level reporters really have very little control or influence over what they actually put in the papers or on the screens. The people who are in control are the editors and the managers. These people are the ones who are shown, in the same material referenced above, and multiple repeated surveys, to be most typically conservative. Oh, wait. Let’s pause here. What we have here is pretty typical, isn’t it? Those at the top are going to escape taking responsibility, while the right blames those at the bottom for their perceived issues? It is the typical way that the right wing operates.
Let us look briefly at the consolidation of media. I’m sure we’ve all seen the numbers, yes? And, they are constantly changing. Growing ever more consolidated. When Ben Bagdikian introduced The Media Monopoly in 1983, he concluded that “50 men and women, chiefs of their corporations, control more than half the information and ideas that reach 220 million Americans, it is time for Americans to examine the institutions from which they receive their daily picture of the world.” Today, 30 years later, the consolidation has grown to such a degree that we now have “more than 1500 newspapers, 1100 magazines, 9000 radio stations, 1500 TV stations, 2400 publishers, owned by only 3 corporations,” as the meme goes. Using Bagdikian’s methodology, in 2009, this number had fallen from 50 to 15 controlling over 50% of the information and ideas dominating the American market, and:
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The Boys Who Cried Wolf
Does anyone else remember fairy tales? As I recall, they used to serve a very different purpose many, many moons ago. You see, fairy tales used to be used to scare children into behaving. The stories as originally preserved by the Grimm Brothers, for example, were “capricious and often cruel”. National Geographic says it well, except they leave out a crucial detail, which I’ll come back to in a moment.
Once they saw how the tales bewitched young readers, the Grimms, and editors aplenty after them, started “fixing” things. Tales gradually got softer, sweeter, and primly moral. Yet all the polishing never rubbed away the solid heart of the stories, now read and loved in more than 160 languages.
So, what was left out? The modern, as in the last 30 years or so, impact on the fairy tale. What I will call, “the Disney effect”, when fairy tales became even more sanitized and Pollyanna-ish1. When fairy tales lost their truly moral lessons, and simply became entertainment.
They’re baaaacck!! At least one of them. The boy who cried wolf. Remember that one? In a nutshell, a shepherd boy who didn’t want to be alone in the fields watching the sheep cries out, “Wolf!” and the town’s men come running to protect him, even though there is no wolf. Eventually, though, he does this so many times, that they stop. Then, when there really is a wolf, he cries and cries, and no one comes to his aid. I am sure in the older version, the wolf not only drives off many of the town’s flock, but also kills him and many of the sheep. In the modern version, the wolf just scares the little miscreant and scatters the flock, because everyone knows that wolves don’t actually kill sheep, right? uh huh.
This presidency has been one never ending stream of accusations and trumped up scandals. It has been a series of boys crying wolf, and now that there might, actually be one that is legitimate, most of us who are not so easily worked up and manipulated by the right-wing press are so worn out from it, that we are having a hard time caring. How sad is that? You have managed to wear us out with your constant stream of made up malarkey that now that there is a hint of possible real scandal in the air, guess what? Most of us that you need in order to actually pursue it, don’t care. Way to go. Guess it’s time for the wolf to dine.
Before we get to that, let’s recap a little, shall we? (Not even a complete list. Just a survey.)
We have had, and still have, questions regarding the POTUS’ place of birth. This despite it having been established and verified and certified and re-certified.
We have seen attempts to tie him to terrorist organizations, domestic and foreign, from the time he began campaigning and still going today.
We heard about his “Apology Tour”, which when fact checked by more reliable sources, is shown to be either completely fallacious, misunderstood, or overly hyped, depending on which aspect of the “tour” to which you are referring.
For the last 8 months, we have been subjected to the far right-wing, led primarily by Fox news, of course, pushing an investigation into a supposed Benghazi cover-up and scandal. The Republican party and conservative public has dutifully followed along, wasting much time and money on a non-story. The rest of the main stream media has had almost no choice but to cover it as well, since this is what all the players are playing. If they didn’t, it would be like a reporter sent to cover a concert and ignoring the entire first set. With the latest disclosure being that someone, somewhere, very likely in a Republican congressional office actually changed the e-mails released by the White House in order to make them look more damning than they actually are. Could it be any more obvious how desperate they are to focus on anything other than real issues?
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S C I A M A G E 