Sadly, Conservatives Are Not Patriots, They are Ethnocentric Nationalists Who Love Their Plutocratic Masters

Sadly, Conservatives Are Not Patriots, They are Ethnocentric Nationalists Who Love Their Plutocratic Masters

Calls to rally the virtuous "producing classes" against evil "parasites" at both the top and bottom of society is a tendency called producerism. It is a conspiracist narrative used by repressive right wing populism. Today we see examples of it in some sectors of the Christian Right, in the Patriot movements and armed militias, and in the Far right. (see chart of US right). Producerism is involved in the relationship between Buchanan, Fulani, Perot, and the Reform Party.

Producerism begins in the US with the Jacksonians, who wove together intra-elite factionalism and lower-class Whites’ double-edged resentments. Producerism became a staple of repressive populist ideology.  Producerism sought to rally the middle strata together with certain sections of the elite. Specifically, it championed the so-called producing classes (including White farmers, laborers, artisans, slaveowning planters, and “productive” capitalists) against “unproductive” bankers, speculators, and monopolists above—and people of color below. After the Jacksonian era, producerism was a central tenet of the anti-Chinese crusade in the late nineteenth century. In the 1920s industrial philosophy of Henry Ford, and Father Coughlin’s fascist doctrine in the 1930s, producerism fused with antisemitic attacks against “parasitic” Jews.

Conservatives like to talk in big expansive terms about freedom, family and values. Dive into the details and you find their family values are all about their families, freedom is only for what they want - much like a five year old, and theyir values rest on the foundation of a cruel dog-eat-dog society perpetually at war.

Conservative Republican ALEC-Linked Group Revealed As Attacking Average American's Most Fundamental Rights

Conservative Republican ALEC-Linked Group Revealed As Attacking Average American's Most Fundamental Rights

Last month, Maine voters delivered a major rebuke to Gov. Paul LePage (R) and the Republican-held legislature when they approved a referendum restoring election day voting registration rights in the state. Earlier this year, state legislators passed a bill repealing the state’s 38 year-old law allowing citizens to register at the polls on election day.

Tens of thousands of Mainers responded by petitioning for the matter come to a referendum. Issue 1 was one of the most-anticipated votes on election day this year, with pundits watching closely to see how citizens would react to the Republican-led war on voting, which ramped up in states across the country this year.

Recognizing the referendum’s importance, voting rights opponents poured money into the campaign to repeal election day registration. In fact, just two days after the state’s campaign finance reporting deadline, a secret conservative donor funneled $250,000 into the race, allowing the No On 1 campaign to make significant TV ad buys in an inexpensive media market.

Per state law, however, the identity of donors must be revealed within 45 days after the election. In fact, the entire $250,000 worth of late money came from a single source: the American Justice Partnership.

The AJP is a conservative legal organization based not in Maine, but in Michigan. On their website, the group states they are fighting against “the scheming George Soros money machine” which is “trying to sabotage your right to vote,” a claim apparently made without a hint of irony. Though the AJP doesn’t disclose where its funding comes from, the Bangor Daily News notes that it has partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past, a group that has been instrumental in the proliferation of voter ID laws across the country.

The AJP’s secret $250,000 contribution ultimately accounted for over 78 percent of all the money raised by the No On 1 campaign. In other words, over three-quarters of the funding for opponents of election day registration in Maine came from Michigan. (This money was then used to run ads decrying “outsiders from other states” who were influencing the Maine election.) With Mainers of all stripes explaining to ThinkProgress why they cherish having the option to register at the polls on election day, it’s not altogether surprising that the predominance of financial support for No On 1 came from out of state.

Though AJP’s website correctly warns that “Your right to vote is at stake”, it’s groups like AJB and ALEC that are threatening that right in the first place. Maine voters stood up to the influence of voting rights opponents in November, however, passing Issue 1 by an overwhelming 61-39 margin and restoring election day registration in the Pine Tree State.

Republican Anti-American Agenda Exposed

Republican Anti-American Agenda Exposed

In the iconic Christmas film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” an angel offers the beleaguered main character, George Bailey, the stark choice between a hometown named for a cruel banker or one created by and for the middle class.

The banker’s town, Pottersville, is filled with bars, gambling dens and despair. The people’s town of Bedford Falls is made of hope, hard working middle class families, and their homes financed by the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan.

The film’s happy ending is the people of Bedford Falls banding together to rescue George Bailey and the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan that had given so many of them a leg up over the years. Republicans seek a different conclusion. They find middle class cooperation and community intolerable. They want the banker, Henry Potter, with his “every man for himself” philosophy to triumph. In the spirit of their self-centered mentor Ayn Rand, Republicans are trying to disfigure America so she resembles Pottersville.

A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers’, uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. At one point in the film, George Bailey explains this concept to frightened depositors who are trying to withdraw their savings during the panic that led to bank runs in 1929.

Bailey urges the townspeople who had crowded into the building and loan office to withdraw only what they need, not empty their accounts. “We have got to stick together,” he tells them, “We have to do this together.” A building and loan doesn’t function without trust and cooperation.

It works well for Bedford Falls. The mortgages it provides help working people move out of the Potters Field slums and into Bailey Park, where homes well kept by their owners increase in value. Despite the success, Potter condemned this practice, saying it was based on “high ideals without common sense.” He criticized the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan for granting a taxi driver a mortgage after Potter’s bank had rejected his application. Potter scoffed at such practices, asking if the building and loan was a “business or a charity ward.”

This is exactly what Republicans do. They describe beloved American programs like Medicare and Social Security as charities – using the euphemism “entitlements.” Like mortgages from the Bailey Building & Loan, Medicare and Social Security are not charities. They’re the American people depositing and pooling their money for the benefit of the American community.

The GOP tries to destroy programs like these that aid the middle class, the vast majority of Americans – the 99 percent – while Republicans protect tax breaks and special perks for the rich – the one percent, the Henry Potters.

This time last year, Republicans demanded extension of tax breaks for the 1 percent, contending tax breaks stimulate the economy.

For the past three months, however, Republicans have fought extension of payroll tax cuts, contending a break benefiting 160 million middle class Americans did not stimulate the economy.

All year, Republicans have demanded an end to programs the middle class created to aid the majority, the 99 percent. The GOP wants to reverse the new banking regulations that were passed in an attempt to prevent another economic collapse caused by risky Wall Street practices. The GOP tried to to rescind the healthcare reform law that prevents insurance companies from terminating coverage when beneficiaries get sick and prohibits the practice of refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

Influential Republicans this year have called for repealing laws forbidding child labor, laws guaranteeing minimum wage and laws protecting the environment. They’ve demanded elimination of federal funding for organizations like the Public Broadcasting System that educates preschoolers, Head Start, which provides opportunity to poor children, and Planned Parenthood, which uses 97 percent of its funds to provide general, obstetrical and gynecological medical care to women, many of whom are rural and poor.

Republicans have decided to be the party of Henry Potter, the “meanest man in the county,” a man about whom George Bailey’s father said: “he's a sick man, frustrated. Sick in his mind, sick in his soul, if he has one.”

Like Potter, Republicans deride compassion and community as character defects.

In the Republican world, where greed is good, it was appropriate for Henry Potter to keep the $8,000 in Bailey Building & Loan money that George Bailey’s uncle, Billy Bailey, accidentally handed him.

Republicans are attempting to impose that selfish belief system on the selfless American people, people like the citizens of Bedford Falls who rush to the rescue of neighbors.

It won’t work, just like it didn’t in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Republicans will fail in their attempt to make America Pottersville because the 99 percent believe avarice is a sin, not a value. The GOP will fail because greed is not the American way.

Radically UnAmerican, Republicans Intent on Bringing Back Elements of Jim Crow Laws

Radically UnAmerican, Republicans Intent on Bringing Back Elements of Jim Crow Laws

A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations.

Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn’t produce a birth certificate:

    Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers’ license clerk, he suggested she might be an illegal immigrant.

    Thelma Mitchell told WSMV-TV that she went to a state drivers’ license center last week after being told that her old state ID from her cleaning job would not meet new regulations for voter identification.

A spokesman for the House Republican Caucus insisted that Mitchell was given bad information and should’ve been allowed to vote, even with an expired state ID. But even if that’s the case, her ordeal illustrates the inevitable disenfranchisements that result when confusing voting laws enable state officials to apply the law inconsistently.

The incident is the just latest in a series of reports of senior citizens being denied their constitutional right to vote under restrictive new voter ID laws pushed by Republican governors and legislatures. These laws are a transparent attempt to target Democrat constituencies who are less likely to have photo ID’s, and disproportionately affect seniors, college students, the poor and minorities.

As ThinkProgress reported, one 96-year-old Tennessee woman was denied a voter ID because she didn’t have her marriage license. Another senior citizen in Tennessee, 91-year-old Virginia Lasater, couldn’t get the ID she needed to vote because she wasn’t able to stand in a long line at the DMV. A Tennessee agency even told a 86-year-old World War II veteran that he had to pay an unconstitutional poll tax if he wanted to obtain an ID.

Conservatives can shroud their radical UnAmerican agenda in five layers of Flags and Bibles to hide the stench. At the end of the day there is nothing patriotic about the conservative agenda. Wake up America, the anti-democracy movement known as conservatism is destroying our democratic republic one step at a time.

Vote For Romney The Choice of Conservative 17th Century French Aristocracy

Vote For Romney The Choice of Conservative 17th Century French Aristocracy

If campaign donations are any sign, Mitt Romney is the runaway favorite candidate of billionaires and Wall Street bankers. Indeed, Wall Street has flooded his campaign with donations and a massive 10 percent of all American billionaires donated to his campaign. So it should probably come as no surprise that, in an interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, Romney called for the super wealthy to be able to give unlimited sums of money directly to candidates:

    TODD: Do you think Citizens United was a bad decision? [...]

    ROMNEY:Well,I think the Supreme Court decision was following their interpretation of the campaign finance laws that were written by Congress. My own view is now we tried a lot of efforts to try and restrict what can be given to campaigns, we’d be a lot wiser to say you can give what you’d like to a campaign. They must report it immediately and the creation of these independent expenditure committees that have to be separate from the candidate, that’s just a bad idea.


It’s not entirely clear from this interview that Romney understands what happened in Citizens United. That decision emphatically did not follow any “interpretation of campaign finance laws that were written by Congress.” Rather, Citizens United threw out a 63 year-old federal ban on corporate money in politics. Citizens United was a case of five conservative justices deciding they knew better than America’s democratically elected representatives, and it was not a case of judges following the law.

More importantly, however, Romney’s proposal to allow wealthy donors to give candidates whatever they’d “like to a campaign” is simply an invitation to corruption. Under Romney’s proposed rule, there is nothing preventing a single billionaire from bankrolling a candidate’s entire campaign — and then expecting that candidate to do whatever the wealthy donor wants once the candidate is elected to office. Romney’s unlimited donations proposal would be a bonanza for Romney himself and the army of Wall Street bankers and billionaire donors who support him, but it is very difficult to distinguish it from legalized bribery.

As Romney himself said in 1994, when you allow special interest groups to buy and sell candidates, “that kind of relationship has an influence on the way that [those candidates are] going to vote.” Now that Romney’s running for president on the Wall Street ticket, however, he’s suddenly unconcerned with whether or not his big money donors exert a corrupting influence.

 Romney thus believes that corporations are people. If corporations are people that means Prince Romney believes money and free speech are one in the same. Those with the most money get the most free speech. Romney would have been a great French monarch.

OMG, Supercommittee Republican Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Admits Bush Tax Cuts Didn’t Create Jobs, Can’t Explain Why

OMG, Supercommittee Republican Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Admits Bush Tax Cuts Didn’t Create Jobs, Can’t Explain Why

Republicans this week filibustered a Democratic plan to extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, objecting to the fact that the extension was paid for by implementing a small surtax on income in excess of $1 million. To justify their objection to taxing the wealthy, Republicans have revived their false claim that taxing the rich amounts to taxing small business owners and job creators.

Bloomberg’s Al Hunt asked Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) — who represented the GOP on the fiscal supercommittee that failed to craft a deficit reduction package — to explain this viewpoint, considering that more jobs were created under the Clinton administration and its higher taxes on the rich than were created following the Bush tax cuts. Upton admitted that “I don’t know specifically the answer to that question,” nonsensically pointing to Friday’s jobs report instead of trying to argue the premise of Hunt’s question:

    HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ‘90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

    UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know -

    HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

    UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

    HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

    UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question. I can – I can maybe merit a guess. But, I mean, in large part is because our job – we lost jobs. I mean, look at the jobs report that came out this last week, three-hundred- some-thousand people actually stopped looking for jobs.



As Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now.” In fact, “if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher.” The GOP, as Upton displays, simply has no explanation for these facts.

In a Bloomberg op-ed, wealthy investor Nick Hanauer also blew a hole in the GOP’s line of thinking, writing, “I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate. That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs.” The GOP would do well to take note.

This is not particularly breaking news in the sense we know that conservatives practice economics the way cults practice their beliefs. Conservatives pay no attention to evidence, they just irrationally believe in what they believe, no matter how many millions of decent hard working Americans they hurt.

Georgia Confederate Republican Loon Bill Looman is an Embarrassment to America

Georgia Confederate Republican Loon Bill Looman is an Embarrassment to America

A business owner in western Georgia instituted a new company policy recently: “We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”

Bill Looman, who owns U.S. Cranes, LLC in Waco, Georgia, explained that while “I’ve got people that I want to hire now,” he didn’t think he would be able to foot the expense “unless some things change in D.C.”

Not content to simply implement the new policy internally, Looman decided to plaster it on all his company’s trucks. He did so, as 11Alive noted, “for all to see as the trucks roll up and down roads, highways and interstates.” Watch it:

The notion that President Obama’s economic policies preclude small businesses from hiring new workers isn’t the only ludicrous claim Looman pushes. A cursory glance at Looman’s public Facebook page shows he is prone to anti-Obama conspiracy theories. Earlier this month, he posted a false report that Larry Sinclair – the man who claimed he did drugs and had sex with President Obama – had died and implied foul play, writing “MAKES YOU WONDER HUH?” Looman’s page is also riddled with pro-confederate and anti-Muslim postings.

More importantly, Looman’s assertion that he would be able to hire more workers but for Obama’s economic policies defies reason. In the last few months alone, Obama has proposed giving major tax credits to businesses that hire new workers, including a $4,000 credit for hiring the long-term unemployed. Just this week, Obama signed a law to give additional tax credits to businesses that hire veterans.

Ironically, despite the fact that he claims to want to hire new workers, Looman’s anti-Obama anti-hiring stance will prevent his business from enjoying any of these new incentives.

Since taking office President Obama has given small businesses 17 tax cuts. Small businesses in the U.S. now have the lowest tax rate since 1960. That's right, Obama's tax rats are lower than Saint Ronnie Reagan. Looman, a fan of the treasonous Confederacy is doing a lot of people a favor. Who would want to work for this treasonous nut bag who pushes tin-foil wrapped conspiracy theories. 

Anti-American Conservative Newt Gingrich Was Pro Health Care Mandate Before He Was Against It

Gingrich Backs Away From Individual Mandate: ‘I Never Focused On It Much’

In 1993, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed the concept of a national individual mandate, saying on Meet the Press, “I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.” He reiterated the principle in 2007 — writing in a Des Moines Register op-ed, “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance” — and again in 2008: “Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond).” His for-profit think tank, the Center for Health Transformation (CHT), still promotes the concept on its website, writing, “Anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond.”

But since the requirement is also included in the Affordable Care Act, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is against it and believes it to be unconstitutional. During an interview with the Union Leader on Monday, he announced that despite the long public record, he actually “never focused on it much on the federal level”:

    GINGRICH: I never focused on it much on the federal level. I talked about it at the center, at the state level and what we were trying to solve, we just concluded you couldn’t do it, it was too hard…As you work through it, at the time it was designed to block Hillarycare and the more you thought about it, the more you realized, a Congress that can compel you to do something like that, could compel you to do anything. What’s the limit to Congress’ power to dictate your life? And that, I think, will be heart of the argument at the Supreme Court?

The limit is actually fairly clear. The Supreme Court grants the Congress broad deference in regulating the country’s economic activities, so long as the activity is itself economic in nature. And since we all have bodies and they all get old and sick, health care costs are shifted to other payers throughout the country. In 2008, the government spent $43 billion providing uncompensated care to uninsured individuals. In that sense, even the failure to buy a product constitutes an “economic activity.”

For over sixty years conservative leaders such as Gingrich have been lying the Constitution. They say they believe in it literally word for word. While that kind of interpretation is not one the Founders intended - they did not have broadcast airwaves or air travel to regulate back in 1775 for one thing. Conservatives consistently cannot pass their own litmus tests. They decide to believe in whatever screwy point of view and than they find some way to shoe horn in their beliefs into the Constitution. This approach to living in a modern democratic republic is inherently Anti-American.

Conservatism Down The Rabbit Hole - America deserves better from its business leaders: Making a profit shouldn't be the only bottom line

Conservatism Down The Rabbit Hole - America deserves better from its business leaders: Making a profit shouldn't be the only bottom line

Do corporations have a social responsibility to be decent, upstanding citizens? Is there a moral imperative that the likes of Bank of America, General Electric and Apple should boost employment, refrain from contributing to inequality, or restrain themselves from despoiling the environment, simply because those are the right things to do?

If you spend even a cursory amount of time investigating this question, you will speedily find yourself reckoning with the answer delivered four decades ago by the economist Milton Friedman: A most emphatic no.

In “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” originally published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in 1970, Friedman, the arch-deacon of free market economics, declared that any businessman who thinks a corporation should take “seriously its responsibilities for providing em­ployment, eliminating discrimination, avoid­ing pollution and whatever else” was “preach­ing pure and unadulterated socialism.”

    Busi­nessmen who talk this way are unwitting pup­pets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades … In a free-enterprise, private-property sys­tem, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct re­sponsibility to his employers. That responsi­bility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while con­forming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.

The great irony of Friedman’s hard line is that in 1970, his words probably sounded much more extreme than they do today. Despite decades of lip service to the idea of “corporate social responsibility,” the notions that corporations do best when most untrammeled by regulatory constraint or that they should only be guided by a desire to generate the maximum return on investment for their shareholders are now bedrock ideological fixations of the contemporary Republican Party.

In fact, one could well argue that we are currently closer to Friedman’s utopia than during any other period in living memory. The Supreme Court has vastly loosened restrictions on corporate spending on the political process, trade policy has supported a decades-long trend toward foreign investment, offshoring and outsourcing, corporate taxes are at a historic low, and even the worst financial crisis in decades has hardly resulted in more than a slap on the regulatory wrist for the guilty parties.

America had at least five decades of that shrill, pompous and self-righteous messaging from conservatives about "values". Where are they? America keeps waiting and getting screwed over by the "values" party. Maybe they meant they had the values of despots, plutocrats or Medieval monarchs. When is middle-class America going to wake up and stop getting the shaft from people who think think values are the same thing as economic tyranny.

America Hater Newt Gingrich Has Ethics. They Just Happen to Be Abominable

America Hater Newt Gingrich Has Ethics. They Just Happen to Be Abominable

The GOP presidential primary is a lot like a kindergarten t-ball game: When it comes to being in first place, just about everybody gets a turn. And now, congratulations, Newt Gingrich: It’s your turn!

Steve Kornacki wrote about the Public Policy Polling survey that found Gingrich is following in the footsteps of Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain as the Republican flavor of the week. Gingrich benefits from three things: A lot of Republicans can’t stand Mitt Romney, Cain and Perry have shamed themselves in public, and by contrast, he’s had no bad debates. So far he’s come off as smart and affable, trying to rally his rivals against the big, bad media that’s trying to get them to fight.

Since Gingrich has mostly been in single digits, far back in the polls, his rivals have humored him and ignored his liabilities. That’s about to change, and Gingrich, like Perry, Cain and Michele Bachmann before him, will likewise wither under the hot sun of political scrutiny. The seemingly affable professor and author is a hothead with many political liabilities and almost as many enemies. He’s committed so many political and ethical transgressions that his baggage has baggage.

Gingrich is probably best known for serving his wife with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery, so he could marry his mistress, whom he later divorced to marry a staffer. But he’s also probably the only politician, who when you’re asked “What’s the worst thing he’s done?” has done a lot of things that rival leaving his cancer-stricken wife for his mistress. For most people in the world, in fact, that would be the hands-down worst act ever; for Gingrich, it’s just not that clear-cut (h/t Jamie Kilstein).

For instance, he’s the only House speaker in American history to be disciplined by Congress for ethics violations.  In 1998, he paid a $300,000 fine after he was found to have been misusing his tax-exempt foundations for political gain.

OK, those have to be the two worst things, dumping his wife who had cancer for his mistress, and congressional ethics sanctions, right?

But wait, but there’s more:

    Shutting down the government in 1995 at least partly because President Clinton allegedly snubbed him by seating him in the rear of Air Force One on a flight home from Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral. No, really, he told reporters the “snub” was “part of why you ended up with us sending down a tougher continuing resolution.”
    Advocating that the children of welfare recipients be taken away from their parents and raised in orphanages.
    Leading the drive to impeach Clinton over lying about adultery when he was himself lying about adultery, cheating on his wife with a staffer, Callista Bisek, who became his third wife.
    Insisting President Obama suffers from “a Kenyan anti-colonial mindset” like his Kenyan father, even though he barely knew his Kenyan father.
    Denouncing Paul Ryan’s radical budget (that was actually smart) as “right-wing social engineering,” then flip-flopping and warning that “any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood.”
    Railing against Obama’s alleged “class warfare” when he’s run up a $500,000 tab at Tiffany’s.
But my all-time favorite Newt Gingrich “worst” was the time he blamed the horrendous case of Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother( a Republican who was having an affair with her Republican father-in-law) who murdered her young sons in 1994, on Democrats. Smith, you’ll recall, first blamed her son’s drowning deaths on a black man who supposedly car-jacked her, but it turned out, she did it herself. Just before the 1994 election, in which his party swept back into power, Gingrich said:

     I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That’s the message for the last three days.

Two days later, Gingrich defended his comments by insisting he’d been saying the same thing for years: that Democratic rule had frayed the moral fabric of the country: “We need very deep change if we’re going to turn this country around.” Asked directly if he was saying electing Republicans could stop killings like Smith’s, he said flatly: “Yes. In my judgment, there’s no question.”

He later blamed the Columbine and Virginia Tech killings on liberals, too.

America has never been perfect, but its "moral" fabric has always been in most danger by conservatism. Conservatism - forget the names of the political parties Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives were in both parties until the 1980s - has always been the biggest threat to America. Conservatism by its very nature is anti-American. Conservatism as a movement has more in common with the ultra-nationalism of the Japanese leading up to WW II. Gingrich fits in perfectly. he believes in a dog-eat-dog culture and economy. He believes America should be ruled by the elite and voting rights given only to those who believe in the far Right agenda.


Scott Walker recall, Day 1, by the numbers and you can download a Walker recall form here. Beware of false recalls conservative nuts who will throw your recall petition in the trash.

How Conservatism and Personhood Laws Could Make Women Servants to Government

How Conservatism and Personhood Laws Could Make Women Servants to Government

Tuesday’s ballot initiative in Mississippi regarding a constitutional amendment that would grant fertilized eggs legal personhood is polling right down to the wire, with 45% of Mississippians favoring it and 44% opposed. Gender influences opinion on this initiative somewhat, with men favoring it by six percentage points and women opposing it by four percentage points. Race and party affiliation has even more influence, with Democrats and African-Americans registering around 60% opposition to the amendment. This suggests that the racial and class-based aspects to this amendment that have passed national attention aren’t passing the attention of Mississippi voters, and hopefully fear of this law will be enough to keep personhood for fertilized eggs from becoming law. 

Most of the national attention to this ballot initiative has focused on the potential effects it could have on access to abortion and birth control, as supporters of the personhood amendment erroneously claim that hormonal birth control works by killing fertilized eggs. (All forms, including emergency contraception, work by preventing ovulation.) These are very real concerns, of course, but not out of the ordinary for an anti-choice movement that spends most of its time trying to restrict access to contraception and abortion. The personhood represents an even more disturbing shift rightwards, because if it’s passed into law it will turn women of reproductive age into a criminally suspicious class whose privacy will be invaded and basic rights ignored, all with the pretense of protecting this new class of “persons”. If this law passes in Mississippi, women who have miscarriages could be facing the handcuffs, and pregnant women could very well lose basic freedoms to a state that uses the fetus in their bodies as an excuse to control them. 

And the women who will be most affected will be those who are already targeted routinely by law enforcement: poorer women, young women, and women of color. 

The campaign for the personhood amendment fallaciously claims that they’re just trying to return Mississippi to a pre-Roe state, but this is simply and demonstrably untrue. Fertilized eggs didn’t have personhood status prior to 1973; bans on abortion and contraception were generally justified by the state arguing it had a right to control sexual morality, which is why the court decided Roe on the basis of sexual privacy rights. Under pre-Roe laws, doctors were mainly the ones prosecuted for providing abortion, but under personhood laws, a woman who procures an abortion has taken a hit out on a legal “person”, and can also be charged with a crime. At it’s foremost, this is about expanding the power of the state to throw women in jail for private medical choices. 

But there’s so much more at stake with this wild expansion of state control over women’s bodies. That’s why it’s ridiculous for personhood amendment supporters to wave off concerns that this law will lead to imprisoning women for miscarriages. If embryos count as “persons”, then it’s entirely possible and in fact likely that the state will start investigating women who miscarry. Like Will Saletan writing for Slate notes:

    A woman who suffers a miscarriage would be prosecuted not because she had a miscarriage, but because police and prosecutors suspect she might have had an abortion. You would certainly be investigated if your born child disappeared and you said it had died in an accident.

Much like everything conservatism stands for small government is just another myth, a fairy tale of epic proportions. Conservatives, given the chance and power to govern at the state or federal level have always increased the size and power of government and taken away more rights from individual Americans.

Did liberals cause the housing crisis? No.

What Liberal Media - ABC News Fisker "Exclusive" Is Actually A Recycled Fox News Story From 2009

What Liberal Media - ABC News  Fisker "Exclusive" Is Actually A Recycled Fox News Story From 2009

A story touted as "an ABC News exclusive" actually rehashes a flawed narrative pushed by Fox News more than two years ago.

In collaboration with iWatch News, Brian Ross and ABC's "investigative unit" reported late last week that Fisker Automotive, a hybrid car maker that received a federal loan, "is assembling its first line of cars in Finland." The loan itself, however, can only be used to support operations based in the U.S.

ABC published the story, titled "Car Company Gets U.S. Loan, Builds Cars In Finland," on Thursday night and Ross reported the "ABC News exclusive" on Friday's edition of Good Morning America. Ross said that World News and Nightline would also feature the story on Friday, but ABC did not run those segments.

Instead, Ross appeared on the Fox Business Network Friday night, where he told host David Asman that those in the administration criticizing his reporting "just don't like the takeaway, which is that they got the loan and they're building the car in Finland."

But this news isn't new. In fact, it was explained by the Department of Energy (DOE) in a September 2009 press release announcing the conditional loan. According to the release, "final assembly" of the high-end Fisker Karma "will be done overseas." Indeed, Fisker had a contract to assemble the Karma in Finland before the company ever received funds from DOE. ABC failed to note this fact and the misunderstanding was compounded by other news outlets covering ABC's report.

The loan supports design work carried out in Michigan and California for the Karma, as well as the assembly of Fisker's lower-cost hybrid, Project Nina, which will take place at a former GM factory in Wilmington, Deleware. Fisker began hiring for the Delaware plant in June.

Following the DOE announcement in September 2009, Fox ran a series of segments and an online article exclaiming that the government "gave a half a billion dollars" to "a car company that is creating jobs in Finland," in the words of America's Newsroom anchor Martha MacCallum. Fox characteristically botched some important details, spurring a response from Henrik Fisker, who criticized news reports that "ignored or marginalized the truth, or sensationalized irrelevant aspects of the loan and our company." "It is unfortunate how false information can be disseminated and it is our intention to correct as much of it as possible," Fisker said in a press release at the time.

Fox is now using the ABC report to launch another round of outrage. Fox News and Fox Business have already devoted at least 18 segments to the story since Friday.

It's worth noting that Ford Motors, which received by far the largest of DOE's loans, has numerous overseas manufacturing plants. Oil and gas companies that benefit from taxpayer subsidies also conduct business all over the world. So the notion that federal incentives should not be available to companies with multinational operations has implications far beyond Fisker.

The recent media storm surrounding ABC's report has some at Fox scratching their heads. "I've been talking about it for literally two years," Eric Bolling said Friday night on his Fox Business show. "What happened yesterday that all of a sudden this story is on every single show that I watch?"

ABC's framing might provide a clue. The network's October 20 article referred to "intense scrutiny" of DOE's clean energy investments "in the wake of the administration's failed $535 million investment in solar panel maker Solyndra" and asked if "another Solyndra is in the offing."

On Thursday night, the Drudge Report hyped the ABC report as a "SOLYDRA-like story" before it was even published, citing unnamed "sources":

Drudge Headline

And on Good Morning America, Ross mentioned "questions about whether [Fisker] could end up as another taxpayer boondoggle." ABC followed up Monday with an article titled, "Obama Admin. Defends Fisker Cars From Solyndra Comparison."

CNN also adopted the Solyndra association, despite the lack of any indication at this point that Fisker -- which included in the Wall Street Journal's 2010 list of "Top 10 Cleantech Companies" -- will default on the federal loan. Introducing the story, CNN's Wolf Blitzer said on Friday: "It might, repeat, might just be another Solyndra in the making. That's what some of the critics are charging."

ABC News was among the media outlets that most persistently pursued the Solyndra story. As we showed last month, ABC dedicated more airtime to Solyndra than did CBS and NBC during the month after the solar panel maker announced its bankruptcy filing. In the same month, ABC virtually ignored a report by the Commission on Wartime Contracting which concluded that $31-60 billion has been lost to waste and fraud through contracts related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, costing taxpayers 56 times more than Solyndra's failure.

ABC's Solyndra reporting was at times misleading and littered with unsupported insinuations that political favoritism played a role in the company's loan guarantee. ABC also reported excerpts from emails leaked by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee which were later shown to be taken out of context.

After the Obama administration pointed out that the Bush administration intended to give Solyndra the loan guarantee, a claim backed up by internal documents, ABC posted the headline: "Blame It On Bush, Say Obama Officials." 

As in Fisker's case, Fox News embraced ABC's Solyndra reporting and Bill O'Reilly hosted Brian Ross on September 14. During his appearance, Ross said "there are serious questions about whether influence was involved" in the loan guarantee. Asked by O'Reilly if Solyndra "is Enron 2," Ross replied: "It has that aspect. And you know, there are lots of big names that could be drawn in. I think we will be hearing about this all the way through next November."

Like the loan guarantee program that provided financing to Solyndra and other solar companies, the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program was designed to fund innovative projects that inherently carry some risk.

The program was signed into law by President Bush in 2007 and Congress allocated $7.5 billion to cover the costs of any defaults. The $529 million Fisker loan is 7 percent of that amount. The Department of Energy told ABC that Fisker has not missed a loan payment or asked to restructure the agreement.

UPDATE (10/26/11):

ABC posted another report last night titled, "Republicans Call for Probe of Obama's Green Car Program." Brian Ross also appeared on Nightline and World News with Diane Sawyer to discuss the loans to Fisker and Tesla Motors. ABC is promoting the World News segment with the title, "Another Green Company Going Bankrupt?"

On Nightline, Ross said Fisker promised to create jobs in Delaware, "but so far the only cars being made have come off the line at this plant in Finland." Of course Ross didn't explain that when Fisker got the loan in 2009, the company said it would produce the cars in Delaware starting in late 2012.

The major take-away from the story. Bush signed off on the Fisker loan. it was understood even than that Fisker would be assembling the car in Europe. None of the loan money was used for the overseas part of the Fisker company operations. The loan did create American jobs. Ross and ABC have slanted the story along Obama hating right-wing talking points. ABC and Brian Ross have been caught previously acting as a fax machine for right-wing conservative talking points about the "war on terrorism". Finally, Fisker is making the repayments on its loan on schedule. All the negative publicity coming from anti-America conservatives may do more to hurt the company's chances of success than anything else. Why are conservatives always cheering for the failure of American technology and science.

America Hater Karl Rove and His Astroturf Group American Crossroads takes aim at union workers to stop Obama jobs bill

America Hater Karl Rove and His Astroturf Group American Crossroads takes aim at union workers to stop Obama jobs bill

Jonathan Chait looks at the polling memo produced for Karl Rove's American Crossroads on how to kill President Obama's jobs bill. Jed Lewison previously highlighted the memo's origin in fear; Chait points to two key strategies it promotes:

    The key fact to understand about the bill, delicately left unmentioned by the American Crossroads memo, is that Americans want to do all the things Obama proposes. By a twenty-point margin, they favor funding new road construction and a payroll tax cut. By a 30-point margin, they agree with higher taxes on the rich to cut the long-term deficit. They support helping stave off layoffs of police officers, firefighters, and teachers by a 50-point margin. How do you fight that?

    You redefine the issue as a generalization. People don’t like firing police officers and teachers? Fine, just call them “union workers[.]”

The memo (warning: Karl Rove PDF) found that if you describe Obama's proposal to "give billions to states to stop layoffs of teachers and firefighters," 70 percent of them favored it. But let's say you describe it as "giv[ing] billions to states to keep government union workers on the payroll." Support drops dramatically.

That's exactly why it's so important to always remind people that we're talking about police officers and teachers and nurses and firefighters and librarians and custodians and construction workers, no matter how much the repetition can make you feel like you're talking about the Village People.

Chait also highlights how the memo supports the Republican strategy of opposition to every damn thing that Obama wants or that could improve the economy:

    When one party is unanimously opposed to something, and the other party is disagreeing about it, many people figure it’s a bad idea. This was an insight Mitch McConnell grasped from the outset of Obama’s presidency, announcing that unified Republican opposition would help make the president’s policies unpopular. Accordingly, American Crossroads finds that the mere fact of Republican unanimity, and Democratic lack thereof, ranks among its most persuasive arguments against the bill[.]

They're pushing an agenda the American people do not want to see imposed. But they've got a lot of money to push it with, they're good at pushing it, and demonizing workers and obstructing progress are among their most powerful weapons.

It is no surprise that the America hating right-wing conservative movement would destroy millions of American's lives all for the sake of advancing the extremist agenda of the fake patriots who call themselves conservatives. They've been selling America their twisted brand of patriotism for years and just like those products that swear you can get rock hard abs while eating cookies and watching TV, there have always been Americans stupid enough to but into it.

Republicans Criticize Obama's Withdrawing From Iraq On The Time-Table Bush and Republicans Agreed To

Republicans Criticize Obama's Withdrawing From Iraq On The Time-Table Bush and Republicans Agreed To

Why it’s safe to ignore Republican criticism of Obama’s policy in Iraq.

This is getting all too predictable. President Obama announced that all American troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year, in compliance not only with his election pledge but also with the terms of a U.S.-Iraq treaty. In response, the Republicans moaned and hollered that Obama is playing politics with national security, or that he could have negotiated a better outcome, or that he’s surrendering to Iranian domination.

It’s a safe bet that, had Obama announced he was keeping 10,000 troops in Iraq for the indefinite future, most of the same Republicans would have moaned and hollered that he was breaking a promise to the American people, draining the Treasury, and boosting the chance of a terrorist attack by Muslims angered at our continued occupation.
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More than this, their complaints are unfounded, based on either ignorance or deliberate distortion.

First, it is crucial to note that this withdrawal and its timetable were set in a treaty called the Status of Forces Agreement, signed Nov. 17, 2008, not by Obama (who wasn’t president yet) but rather by George W. Bush. SOFAs, as they’re often abbreviated, are treaties—bearing the force of national and international law—that presidents sign with each country that hosts U.S. armed forces. They set the terms and conditions under which those forces can stay.

The SOFA with Iraq states, in Article 24: “All U.S. forces are to withdraw from all Iraqi territory, waters, and airspace no later than the 31st of December of 2011.” That’s as definitive as these things get.
Article 30 does allow for amendments to the treaty, but only in the event of the “formal written approval of both parties and in accordance with the constitutional procedures in both countries.” For the past few months, U.S. officials (including some former Bush officials called back to join the delegation) have tested the waters to see if Iraqi lawmakers would allow—or, more to the point, wanted—an amendment that would permit some of the current 40,000 American troops to stay on. Their conclusion: The Iraqis had no such desire, and not much need.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and some others have suggested that the sticking point was over a clause giving U.S. troops immunity from Iraqi prosecution for alleged crimes. This is a standard feature of such treaties, including of the earlier arrangement with Iraq. It’s true that the Iraqis refused to grant the immunity. But there was no leeway to negotiate an exemption, because the main sticking point was, and is, that the Iraqis simply do not want American troops in their country anymore. One U.S. official in Iraq said in a phone interview, “Even our erstwhile friends [among Iraqi politicians] want us out by the end of the year. None of them lifted a finger to keep us.”

Do Obama’s Republican critics, who have made such a big deal of Iraq’s bourgeoning democracy, really think Obama should (or could) have disregarded the democratically elected parliament of a sovereign nation—a sovereign ally, at that—in order to keep U.S. troops on that nation’s soil, allegedly for its own interest (as defined by us, not by them)? We would then become nothing but an occupying power, sure to trigger an escalation of armed resistance and appear hypocritical in the extreme.

Meanwhile, we have been withdrawing troops steadily for some time. And so far, violence has not been on the rise. In fact, it’s been sharply declining.

The authors also note two other things Republicans cannot seem to get through their partisan addled brains. Iraq has shown no signs of wanting to sign up with any of Iran's agenda. There are about 40,000 troops still in the region on the Kuwait border plus a naval task force in the area should Iraq need protection from invaders. Too bad conservatives seem more obsessed with trying to make Obama look bad than they are with creating jobs. Isn't that what they campaigned on in 2010. How many jobs bills have Republicans passed? Zero. Yet they have opposed Obama's Job Bill because it would make billionaires pay a few more dollars in taxes. How is it again that conservatives are not the self absorbed elitists. 

Anti-American Zealot Rep. Allen West(R) Exploits Martin Luther King Jr to Justify His Elitist Agenda

Anti-American Zealot Rep. Allen West(R) Exploits Martin Luther King Jr to Justify His Elitist Agenda

At the dedication of the national Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial last Sunday, the Rev. Bernice King said her father Dr. King would support the 99 Percent Movement: “I hear my father saying what we are seeing now all across the streets of America and the world is a freedom explosion.” She reminded the nation that civil rights leader worked not just for racial justice, but for economic justice as well. “We should never adjust to the one percent controlling more than 40 percent of the wealth,” she said.

Florida Rep. Allen West (R), however, was “born and raised” in the same town that Dr. King grew up in. Therefore, he asserted as a fact today in a Newsmax interview that “Martin Luther King, Jr. would not back these types of protesters”:

    WEST: I was born and raised in the same town that Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have backed these type of protesters. First of all, Martin Luther King, Jr. had a focus, he had a message. He was divinely inspired. I don’t know what the inspiration is for these individuals.



Unfortunately for West, geographical proximity clearly did not provide West any insight into the man himself. Like the 99 percent movement, King consistently called for economic justice. He critiqued unregulated free marketism as a system that permits “necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few.” He envisioned a “Poor People’s Campaign” in which a multiracial coalition would march through the capital to “demand that President Lyndon Johnson and Congress help the poor get jobs, health care, and decent homes.”

King was assassinated just weeks before the march on May 12, 1968. Rev. Ralph Abernathy carried his legacy to DC, stating, “We come with an appeal to open the doors of America to the almost 50 million Americans who have not been given a fair share of American’s wealth and opportunity, and we will stay until we get it.” This, incidentally, is what the 99 Percent Movement is about.

This, however, is also what West sees as “contradictory to the foundational principles and values that we have in the United States.” If West grew up anywhere near Dr. King and his legacy, he has now turned his back on him.

Many Americans may know West as the man who terrorized a bound unarmed man in Iraq. He was kicked out of the military for his cowardly behavior. Unlike what West would have done, the military took pity on him and gave him his tax payer funded military pension. Now West is in Congress ( once again making a living off the government he says he hates) West is doing his best to stop President Obama from creating jobs, while also fighting for even more tax cuts for millionaires. West doesn't seem to have a genuine patriotic bone in his body, no wonder right-wing conservatives love him.

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

Erick Erickson Is Proud to Be a Serial Lying Unamerican Pundit

Erick Erickson Is Proud to Be a Serial Lying Unamerican Pundit

Suzy Khimm points us to redstate.org leader and right-wing establishment figure @ewerickson declares he is "one of the 53%": part of this generation's "silent majority" who are upset at #occupywallstreet and its attacks on the top 1%:

What Erick says:

    I work three jobs.

    I have a house I can't sell.

    My family insurance costs are outrageous.

    But I don't blame Wall Street.

    Suck it up you whiners.

    I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.

Erick should blame not Wall Street but the health-insurance industry for the fact that his family insurance costs are outrageous--but at least come 2014 the Obama-Romney Affordable Care Act will give him the bargaining power that those of us who work for large organizations have in the health insurance marketplace and lower his insurance costs to more reasonable levels.

Erick should blame Wall Street for the fact that he can't sell his house: had Wall Street not broken mortgage finance, and had the breaking of mortgage finance not led to the general credit crunch that launched our Lesser Depression, then Erick would be able to sell his house.

And it is not clear to me what Erick's three jobs are: his internet biographies mention (i) right-wing internet community organizer, (ii) CNN commentator, and (iii) radio host. Are these his "three jobs"? Most of us would say that those are three aspects of one occupation--not three jobs. People who work three jobs are people who teach elementary school in the morning and early afternoon, take a shift at the car wash around dinnertime, and work a pre-dawn shift at a 24-hour 7-11. That does not sound like Erick, Son of Erick to me.

Wall Street stole $17 trillion of the nations wealth. The protesters just want a job that pays a living wage ( currently there are about 6 applicants for every job opening). So welfare queen Erik looks at these facts and declares the protesters are bad and the Wall Street vampires are good. Erik, like the vast majority of right-wing conservatives has some deeply corrupt values. He and his friends would fit right in with the crony economic system of Russia. If they hate America so much and think our traditional American values are so awful Erik and his 53% are welcome to pack up and leave.

Despite Months Of Public Job Loss, Republicans Continue To Block Obama’s Jobs Plan

Despite Months Of Public Job Loss, Republicans Continue To Block Obama’s Jobs Plan

Political Correction charted the plummeting public sector growth next to the steady rise in private sector jobs over the past two years. While the private sector marked a net gain of 1.4 million jobs, budget cuts have eliminated 572,000 government jobs. If governments maintained the same employment rate since 2009, “the economy would have grown by about 2 million jobs”:

This trend of public job depletion puts the Republican jobs agenda in stark contrast with the administration’s approach. President Obama’s American Jobs Act would not only add 1.9 million jobs next year, but makes targeted investments to arrest the trend in layoffs. The plan includes $35 billion in direct state aid infusion that will “prevent up to 280,000 layoffs of teachers, who are — along with cops and firefighters — particularly vulnerable to local government budget shortfalls.”

However, Republicans continue to block Obama’s much-needed plan because, in part, they see public job loss as a positive. As Yglesias points out, “this shrinkage is exactly what conservatives claim to believe will spark growth once they bring the era of Kenyan Anticolonialism to an end.” Buying into the conservative campaign against government workers, Republicans governors like Chris Christie (NJ) and Rick Scott (FL) openly tout laying off thousands of workers as a badge of honor. Scott actually bragged about getting rid of 15,000 jobs in his state. In talking up his draconian budget cuts, Scott admitted that his “biggest cut” is “always people.”

However loud Republicans sing about the shrinking public sector, plummeting public job numbers have failed to deliver on the promise of “private sector magic” — and the economy will continue to suffer for it.

Why Are Conservatives Such Freaks - Herman Cain’s weird opinion columns published by birther website

Herman Cain’s weird opinion columns published by birther website

Apparently for two years now Herman Cain’s been writing an opinion column that is published at hilarious birther conspiracy website WorldNetDaily, and no one noticed this, except for Yahoo’s Chris Moody.

WND has published 113 Cain columns. The site advertises the columns as “exclusive commentary” from Cain, which led Moody to report initially that Cain was writing the columns for WND. Of course, in a very WND twist, it is just making up the “exclusive commentary” thing, because it makes up everything: Cain’s columns are syndicated by North Star Writers Group.

But WorldNetDaily considers Cain one of is own. Cain seems to write the columns himself (or at least he did initially, before his campaign took off), unless his ghost is particularly fond of exclamation points. None of them involve birtherism, which for years now has been WND’s sole driving concern. (Cain did flirt with bitherism earlier this year, thanks mostly to Donald Trump, but he now believes the president is an American.)

    Farah, a friend of Cain’s for several years, told The Ticket that he has been surprised by Cain’s rise over the past few months. While Farah would not make an official endorsement, he said Cain is his “favorite” candidate.

Good work, Herman: You’ve got Farah’s support! That should be more than enough to overcome the fact that Cain is basically taking the month of October off from campaigning in order to sell his book, because this entire “presidential run” was basically done to create a little buzz around a burgeoning conservative media personality, and the fact that he’s now tied for second in the polls is due to the hilarious collapse of various other more “serious” campaigns.

The WND site's stable is crazy conspiracy theories that are filled with opinions and few facts. They know they cannot win a public debate so they create bizarre UnAmerican accusations that are like raw red meat to its loony followers. Cain fits right in. They believe that allowing more poisons in the air and water will be good for business and deny that those poisons cause breast cancer, childhood ailments and respiratory disease. They were the ones who pushed the crazy myth that former Hillary Clinton aid Vince Foster was murdered by Bill Clinton and his associates out of jealousy. They believe if American business do not pay their share of taxes to maintain our infrastructure that America will somehow still be able to function as a healthy free market economy.  They believe a lot of bull. They never seem to have the facts to back up what they believe. So crazy Cain should fit right in.

Joe Bidens' Noble Ownership Of An Economy Republicans Crashed

VP Joe Bidens' Noble Ownership Of An Economy Republicans Crashed

This week, Vice President Joe Biden inadvertently turned the heat up on his boss - and warmed conservative hearts - when he declared it's "totally legitimate" for the 2012 presidential election to be "a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature and state of the economy" because "we're in charge." His candor and willingness to take accountability is refreshing and even noble. After all, polling from CNN and CBS shows majorities of Americans still blame George W. Bush and the Republicans for the nation's struggling economy. And as it turns out, Biden could have simply taken a page from the Republican playbook. As it turns out, with its bogus claims that Bush "inherited a recession" and Barack Obama was responsible for the Bush economic meltdown even before taking office, Republican mythology wrongly insists America's economic woes are always the Democrats' fault.

While Vice President Biden explained the equivalent of "Bush broke it, we own it," the Republican objective since January 2009 has been to set that ownership in stone. During his admitted debt ceiling hostage-taking, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained, "I refuse to help Barack Obama get re-elected by marching Republicans into a position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy."

Of course, trying to evade responsibility for the nation's economic difficulties has been a central GOP strategy for years. As it turns out, George W. Bush and his amen corner continue to insist he inherited a recession from Bill Clinton, a claim then as now unsupported by the facts.

Nevertheless, even as he was ambling out of the Oval Office, President Bush in January 2009 tried to make that case that we blameless for the two recessions which occurred under his watch:

    "In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth. And I defended tax cuts when I campaigned, I helped implement tax cuts when I was President, and I will defend them after my presidency as the right course of action. And there's a fundamental philosophical debate about tax cuts. Who best can spend your money, the government or you? And I have always sided with the people on that issue."

But not the facts. After all, Bush nearly doubled the national debt, as Republican majorities in Congress voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling during his tenure. The first modern President to cut taxes during wartime, Bush's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were the single biggest driver of red ink during the last decade and, if made permanent, will be for the next. And the meager one million jobs created during his presidency represented what the Wall Street Journal deemed the "The Worst Track Record on Record."

Then there's Bush's claim that "I inherited a recession" from Bill Clinton. As the data show, it's not true. (He did inherit a 4.2% unemployment rate and budget surpluses.) But after ten years of perpetuation by the right-wing propaganda machine, the long-ago debunked myth has remained remarkably durable.

For two terms - eight years - Bush and his apologists - blamed everything on Bill Clinton. Now they blame everything Bush and a Congress controlled by Republicans for 6 of those eight years on Democrats. This is another alarming and pathetic fake patriotism of right-wing conservatives, never be responsible, never be accountable for what they do. No movement with that mindset is fit to govern in any capacity. Republicans hate government and work very hard at making sure government doesn't work for the people. Its time to send them all back to private life where they can be full time irresponsible wackos and leave the rest of us the next twenty years to undo the damage they've done.