The problem for the right-wing is their complete and total ignorance of not only the meaning of the word "fascism", but also of the history surrounding this political and economic movement.
While I am very interested in the question of "Who paid Bart Stupak's rent? " I would also like to know who was paying the rent of his roommates. Some of those roommates were . . .
Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC)
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Senator John Ensign (R-NV)
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Rep Zach Wamp (R-TN)
Rep Mike Doyle (D-PA)
Who wants to bet Fox asks Doyle about this but not DeMint, who is the front man for their Tea Party astroturfed Corporatist movement.
But that is not the BIG QUESTION I want to ask Stupak and his Christian Mafia cult members. No, my question to them is . . .
"Should we kill our gays now, or wait until later?"
Jon Walker makes a very effective argument about why learning the wrong lesson from the defeat of Martha Coakley in yesterday's Massachusetts Senate race will lead to disaster.
Not only will Democrats lose badly if they adopt this strategy, but they will be laughed at. Republicans never had 59 Senate seats, and that did not stop them from passing the legislation they wanted. Trying to explain to the American people how, despite controlling everything, Democrats cannot do anything, because a mean minority of 41 Republican senators won't let them, is a message that will go over like a lead balloon. If you try to use that excuse, people will think elected Democrats are liars, wimps, idiots, or an ineffectual combination of all three.
This is the left's equivalent of John Yoo.
http://www.informationliberati... On second thought left/right means nothing as the fascist New World Order takes shape. Want to tell me how I should think now? Fuck You. One can only tread water in the cesspool for so long. I came before the great American dumbed down generation so Fuck You and two middle fingers straight up.
Are you talking to me Mr. Sunstein? You should be. I note the omission of the now global 911 truth movement from the list of conspiracy theories.
BECK: Last week, I head you say that - you were on with Dennis Miller. ... You two were talking about an insurrection coming.
O'REILLY: Tax revolt.
BECK: He used the word insurrection. And not in a comedic way.
O'REILLY: Yeah, tax revolt. I think people, when they figure out how badly they're going to get hurt in the next few years, there's going to be a tea party on taxes and its gonna get nasty. Nancy Pelosi's going to be bobbing up and down in the Boston Harbor.
This statement appeared to be too much for Beck even, who replied, "Uh, I don't think that's necessary."
As the total vacuum of any principled leadership from President Obama has now produced the inevitable directionless, anti-consumer, Insurance Monopoly boondoggle fraud, now masquerading in Congress as "reform", it is time to reflect upon just who Obama's friends really are and have been all along, and what his uninspiring charade of a Presidency is really all about.
I'm sorry, but if this doesn't leave you feeling completely sick to your stomach, you just haven't been paying attention.
This is one of those times where the transparency is cranked up to 11, the veil falls away, and no pretense is made as to a political figure's true position. This is right up there with GWB's "I call you my base" speech, one of those sickening moments that you will probably only see in a Michael Moore film, a moment that will leave you wondering "how come nobody noticed this when it happened?"
I'll just get right to it, even though I'm tempted to go on about how disgusting it truly is:
In a glowing tribute to a Republican predecessor, President Obama on Friday praised President George H.W. Bush as an example of someone who eschewed "a life of comfort and privilege" and instead devoted himself to public service - inside government and out.
During an evening speech to honor the public service institute that Bush founded two decades ago, Obama called for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. The former president, he said, proved that "the R or D next to your name is irrelevant" in challenging times.
"You might not always know it from watching the cable news shows or listening to folks on the radio," Obama said, but "I think we're standing in one of those moments."
They were joined onstage Friday in the Texas A&M University auditorium by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who also served in the previous administration and was CIA director under the elder Bush.
Okay, I don't even know where to begin here ....
For one thing, here's the statement that is so ridiculously true, it's like they are mocking us on purpose:
"the R or D next to your name is irrelevant"
That really does say it all. There is no difference between the R's and the D's, especially when the D's are honoring one of the great criminals of the 20th century, George Herbert Walker Bush. The Bush family is nothing more than a criminal enterprise, literally a crime family, who are responsible for literally countless deaths, destruction, coups, wars, trickery, assassinations, corporate/government malfeasance, conspiracies, and worse.
Yet here he is being "honored" by the member of the supposed "opposition" party who was swept into power by one of the greatest con jobs of all time, that of convincing the desperate American public that he was an agent of "hope" and "change".
Wow.
Next is the "you must think we're really stupid" bullshit of this whole "public service" thing. Public Service? Are you fucking kidding me? PUBLIC SERVICE from the BUSH FAMILY? Is THAT what you're CALLING IT these days?
Gangsterism, pure and simple, is now being called "Public Service"?
Sure, it's a public service to start wars, destroy governments, conspire to assassinate folks who don't play ball with you, to give your sons entire states to play with, to manipulate presidential elections, to con, to steal, to bankrupt ...... You call that Public Service?
Okay. In a world turned completely upside down and gone completely fucking MAD, we'll call that Public Service from now on.
And it is utterly appropriate that they these two assholes, these two criminal fucks, were joined onstage by another monster criminal fuck, one Robert Gates, who Obama had the sheer audacity to keep on as head of the Pentagon, knowing that we wouldn't give him one iota of shit for this. The Obama-Con was so complete that Obama could literally wipe his ass with the Constitution on live television and everybody would swoon and cheer, and this is basically what he is doing at this point -- he has done nothing but go out of his way to continue the policies of George Bush, one of the three criminal sons of the master criminal he is honoring here, knowing that nobody would say a peep and what's more important, nobody could stop him even if they wanted to.
I don't even know where to begin with Gates. He's a criminal from the GHWBush school, a crony, a former CIA guy along with "Poppy" Bush, and his rap sheet is a mile long. Here's just a tiny sample:
"You guys," David said, "are here to learn how to rule the world."
~snip~
"It's called a covenant. Two, or three, agree? They can do anything. A covenant is . . . powerful. Can you think of anyone who made a covenant with his friends?"
We all knew the answer to this, having heard his name invoked numerous times in this context. Andrew from Australia, sitting beside Doug, cleared his throat: "Hitler."
"Yes," Doug said. "Yes, Hitler made a covenant. The Mafia makes a covenant. It is such a very powerful thing. Two, or three, agree."
What Douglas Coe is talking about is fascism, Christofascism, where a few powerful dominate the masses despie their collective will and against their interests.
One of my daily hits on the internet is Cryptogon. The site is run by a fellow who was lucky enough to be able to leave the country and set up a self-sustaining farm out in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand. Now did he pull this off? Well, he married a woman from New Zealand. That's step one that not everyone can do of course. :)
He has a knack for finding the out-of-the-way story, and has a unique perspective on the world.
Usually he posts articles and information with just a few comments, sometimes none, but today he has a post which is pure commentary. And I just have to share it because it's brilliant.
A few people seem surprised that the U.S. is a police state.
Oh the cops. Oh the poor students. Oh boo hoo, we just want to wave our signs.
The don't taze me bro generation is obviously going to have to figure this one out the hard way.
My position has always been that people who wave signs at fascists are clinically nuts; holy roller, speaking in tongues, batshit crazy nuts.
Sign waving is not resistance. Sign waving is part of the problem in the same way that voting is part of the problem. How's that Change working out for the Obama supporters? (Some of those bozos are already talking about how they're going to get it right in 2012...)
In the few video clips of the G20 protests that I watched, I saw a bunch of zombies with iPhones, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, as the Legion of Doom tested out its new sonic weapons and tear gas lobbing skills.
WTF is the matter with these people? Where does someone get the idea that the way to deal with Darth Vader is to wave a sign at him? Maybe a few, "Fuck the police" tweets will do the trick? Send out invites to join revolutionary sign waving groups on Facebook?!
The Twitbook aspect of this is, frankly, bizarre. Maybe I've been out here in the bush too long, but it looks like powerlessness is manifesting itself into a sort of flaccid, me-too technophelia, crossbred with a hamster wheel. This is more embarrassing than anything else.
The U.S. is no longer a country. It's a company town. If waving signs at the company's goon squad just makes people look stupid, what does twitbooking about it amount to?
Here are some other ideas:
Eliminate your debt. Take your money off the table. Stop buying stuff that you don't need. Live well on very little. Grow your own food. Participate in alternative and/or outlawed food economies for what you don't produce yourself. Barter, or use cash. Support people who do good work. Finally, draw a line in the sand. Don't tell anyone where that line is, or what the consequences will be if it's crossed. Don't wave a sign about it. Don't twitbook about it. Let the fascists figure it out the hard way.
The U.S. is no longer a country. It's a company town. That's just stating the obvious so perfectly that I wish I'd thought of it.
So I want to share three stories with the people here, but I honestly can't decide which one to post tonight. So I'm doing all three. Why not?
First, the bad news.
Apparently, a "Thursday Night Massacre" in Afghanistan, where we blew up a tanker truck and killed at least 90 people and wounded more, almost all of whom were civilians, happened at 2:30 a.m. on the biggest party night of the week.
In short, it happened while everybody was blind stinking drunk.
There are seven bars on half-square mile Isaf compound. One insider told the Times: 'Thursday nights are the big party nights, because Friday's a 'low-ops' day. They even open a bar in the garden at headquarters.
'There's a 'two can' rule but people ignore it and hit it pretty hard.'
The airstrike occurred at 2.30am on Friday morning.
Although McChrystal is publicly saying that alcohol was not a factor in the strike itself (yeah right), check out the evidence to the contrary:
General Stanley McChrystal has banned alcohol at the International Forces in Afghanistan headquarters
Alcohol has been banned from Nato's headquarters in Afghanistan in the wake of an airstrike that killed up to 70 civilians.
US General Stanley McChrystal, head of the International Forces in Afghanistan (Isaf), decided to bar boozing after launching an investigation into the bombing in northern Afghanistan.
Staff at the Kabul headquarters were 'either drunk or too hungover' to answer his questions.
Yeah it sounds like alcohol played no part whatsoever in the strike. Sure, Stanley, we believe you.
It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control of Congress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainly be talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and the importance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can't you just picture it?
There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Still creating and destroying laws with executive orders. And still violating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy of extraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries with grim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can even picture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucing it up with some "due process" even as he permanently removes habeas corpus from our culture.
I picture this demonic president still swearing he doesn't torture, still insisting that he wants to close Guantanamo, but assuring his subordinates that the commander-in-chief has the power to torture "if needed", and maintaining a prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan that makes Guantanamo look like summer camp. I can imagine him continuing to keep secret his warrantless spying programs while protecting the corporations and government officials involved.
If Bush were in his third term, we would already have seen him propose, yet again, the largest military budget in the history of the world. We might well have seen him pretend he was including war funding in the standard budget, and then claim that one final supplemental war budget was still needed, immediately after which he would surely announce that yet another war supplemental bill would be needed down the road. And of course, he would have held onto his Secretary of Defense from his second term, Robert Gates, to run the Pentagon, keep our ongoing wars rolling along, and oversee the better part of our public budget.
Bush would undoubtedly be following through on the agreement he signed with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for all US troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 (except where he chose not to follow through). His generals would, in the meantime, be leaking word that the United States never intended to actually leave. He'd surely be maintaining current levels of troops in Iraq, while sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan and talking about a new "surge" there. He'd probably also be escalating the campaign he launched late in his second term to use drone aircraft to illegally and repeatedly strike into Pakistan's tribal borderlands with Afghanistan.
If Bush were still "the decider" he'd be employing mercenaries like Blackwater and propagandists like the Rendon Group and he might even be expanding the number of private security contractors in Afghanistan. In fact, the whole executive branch would be packed with disreputable corporate executive types. You'd have somebody like John ("May I torture this one some more, please?") Rizzo still serving, at least for a while, as general counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The White House and Justice Department would be crawling with corporate cronies, people like John Brennan, Greg Craig, James Jones and Eric Holder. Most of the top prosecutors hired at the Department of Justice for political purposes would still be on the job. And political prisoners, like former Alabama governor Don Siegelman and former top Democratic donor Paul Minor would still be abandoned to their fate.
In addition, the bank bailouts Bush and his economic team initiated in his second term would still be rolling along - with a similar crowd of people running the show. Ben Bernanke, for instance, would certainly have been re-appointed to run the Fed. And Bush's third term would have guaranteed that there would be none of the monkeying around with the North American Free Trade Agreement that the Democrats proposed or promised in their losing presidential campaign. At this point in Bush's third term, no significant new effort would have begun to restore Katrina-decimated New Orleans either.
If the Democrats in Congress attempted to pass any set of needed reforms like, to take an example, new healthcare legislation, Bush, the third termer, would have held secret meetings in the White House with insurance and drug company executives to devise a means to turn such proposals to their advantage. And he would have refused to release the visitor logs so that the American public would have no way of knowing just whom he'd been talking to.
President Obama is now deploying American Troops to Colombia to start new unprovoked Military hostilities against (neighboring) Venezuela, using the same advanced Predator Drone Airstrike technology that has been murdering thousands of innocent civilians throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan.
American troops will soon find themselves stationed at military bases scattered across the South American nation of Colombia with a mission to use advanced Predator drone technology to "aid in fighting the drug trade" and to "combat terrorism".
President Hugo Chavez warned, "the winds of war are beginning to blow." Chavez has already accused Colombian troops of making an incursion over the border and regional tensions are running high.
Honduran de-facto President Rafael Correa also took exception, saying the United States would target Colombia's neighbors. "It has also sparked concern from moderate Colombian allies, such as Chile and Brazil, who want assurances that U.S. forces won't be operating outside Colombia's territory," The Wall Street Journal adds.
From the moment of its birth Christianity had envisioned the end of the world. Saints and theologians differed on many details about the end, but few disagreements were as intense as those concerned with the nature and timing of the events involved. There were those who believed that as the end drew near conditions on earth would grow progressively dire, evil would increase, love would diminish, the final tribulations would be unleashed-and then suddenly the Son of Man would appear: he would overcome Satan, judge mankind, and bring an end to history. Others had what is generally thought to be a more optimistic view: before reaching the final grand conclusion, they claimed, there would be a long reign of peace, justice, abundance, and bliss; the Jews would be converted, while the heathens would be either converted or annihilated; and, in certain versions of the prophecy, this Messianic Age of Gold would be ushered in by a Last World Emperor-a human saviour-who would prepare the way for the final cataclysmic but glorious struggle between Good and Evil, whereupon history would end with the triumphant Second Coming.
Right-Wing Turncoat Gives the Inside Scoop on Why Conservatives Are Rampaging Town Halls
snip
They are using my old shock troops -- given many of these folks were first energized by the Evangelical pro-life movement that my late father and I started in the 1970s. What we did to clinics they are now doing to congressmen and others speaking out for health care reform.
snip
"How do I know this is the norm? ... I know this script. I helped write it."
He tells it exactly how it is.
There is no daylight between the Republican Party, the health-care insurance industry, far right leaders like Dick Armey, the legion of insurance lobbyists, and now, a small army of thugs. All we're missing is actual uniforms, otherwise we now have a full blown American version of the Nazi Brown Shirts.
No, I don't believe that these people are about to take over the country. No, the sky is not falling. But the Republican Party is. It is now profoundly anti-American.
snip
Here's the emerging American version of the fascist's formula: combine millions of dollars of lobbyists' money with embittered troublemakers who have a small army of not terribly bright white angry people (collected over decades through pro-life mass mailing networks) at their beck and call, ever ready to believe any myth or lie circulated by the semi literate and completely and routinely misinformed right wing -- Evangelical religious underground. Then put his little mob together with the insurance companies' big bucks. That's how it works -- American Brown Shirts at the ready.
What's the results of the fascist formula for the rest of us? Well, think how this "method" worked against Dr. Tiller's abortion clinic and how that story ended. In this case a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save our economy from going bankrupt because of spiraling health care costs may be lost, not because of a better argument, but because of lies backed up by anti-democratic embittered thuggery. The motive? Revenge on America by the Old White Guys of the far right, and greed by the insurance industry.
snip
It's time to give this garbage in name: insurance industry funded fascism.
Why? Because Obama won:
They can't compute that their white man-led conservative revolution is dead. They can't reconcile their idea of themselves with the fact that white men like them don't run the country any more -- and never will again. To them the black president is leading a column of the "other" into their promised land. Gays, immigrants, blacks, progressives, even a female Hispanic appointed to the Supreme Court... for them this is the Apocalypse.
Could someone do a diary on Daily Kos on this? I did one today. It needs ot be out there.
Chris Hedges is a war correspondent and a Pulitzer Prize winner. He is also one of the "truthiest" people out there, and is one of the few who actually has a handle on things. Sad thing is, the truth is damn scary.
A group called "Patients First," a project of the lobbyist-funded Americans for Prosperity, has been going around the country and hosting tea parties in opposition to "government-run health care."
Yesterday, AFP decided to hold a protest in front of the offices of Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil's (D-MD1) office. Despite the fact that Rep. Kratovil has yet to take a stance for or against health care reform, the AFP protesters felt it would be appropriate to voice their concerns by hanging him in effigy.
And I thought calling the Congressman or writing him was the best way to influence his opinion! I didn't know this was an option.
It's not an option, of course, unless you have lost your mind or you are a hate mongering sociopath.
Now, if I were Rep. Kratovil, I would vote for health care reform just to spite this proto-lynch mob.
Unfortunately, I am not he, and I don't know how Congressman Kratovil will respond to this.
This is not the first time a Democratic Politician has been threatened with hanging by voices empathetic to the GOP. Recently Sam Joe The Plumber the Propaganda machine suggested that someone should String up Senator Chris Dodd.
And then of course there are the tea baggers, the Obama is a socialists, the Obama is a fascists, the Obama is a Kenyan, and on, and on, and on.
This is not Democracy of We The People. This is not the rule of law decided by fair elections. This is how to intimidate citizens through threats of violence. This is the rule of mob.
I do not know if the goal is to threaten Kravotil into opposing Health Care reform or if these tea baggers are just so mindlessly hateful and violent that this is the only way they can express themselves. I honestly do not know what the fuck these clowns are thinking when they do this kind of shit.
But I do know what the goal is. The goal is to use threats of violence to achieve their political means.
And that is the definition of terrorism.
So when is the line in the sand drawn? When do We The People who voted for NotTheGOP put our foot down and say ENOUGH to these Corporatist psychotic brownshirts?
The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling.
I've referenced this this before, but this quote haunts me in my sleep.
Please, send an e-mail or call Attorney general Eric Holder. He is said to be strongly leaning towards naming a Special Prosecutor, let's give him a little push in the right direction!
And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror.It's going to come out."
There are people who will defend this. Terrible people.
In an act of unbelievable stupidity, Starbucks has decided to be a huge, major sponsor of the right-wing propaganda show "Morning Joe".
No more Starbucks for me.
And this isn't just a few commercials they've decided to air, or their logo flashing on the screen, or even a voiceover with someone saying "brought to you by Starbucks".
No. This is the CEO of Starbucks going on the show and talking about how great the show is, how much he thinks Starbucks should be tied in with it, with the hosts verbally fellating the product and the CEO.
It's the most disgusting show of corporate cock-sucking I think I've ever seen.
Here's The Daily Show link to their video where they cover this atrocious story:
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
