Month: March 2010

The Menacing, Anarchistic Tea Party Mob And Capitol Hill Demonstrations Against Health Care Reform

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Today, Saturday, a day before the big House of Representatives vote on Capitol Hill on Health Care reform, the US Capitol and the surrounding House Office Buildings are being besieged by a mob of chanting, belligerent demonstrators shouting epithets at Democrats, including Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California.

These anarchists are causing some to wonder why the Capitol Police do not arrest some of the demonstrators as using inappropriate language, conducting themselves in a menacing mob like mentality, and making many observers wonder if we are going to allow a mob psychology to dictate what the US House does tomorrow!

The fact that GOP members of Congress, led by loony Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, have been encouraging lawlessness and open defiance by these Tea Party activists, is to be condemned, and if any violence occurs, those members of Congress encouraging this lawlessness and anarchy should be arrested along with the bums that are acting worse than animals, and measures should be taken to expel such members from the House of Representatives as having conducted themselves inappropriately and unacceptably as lawmakers!

The fear is there that we could see anarchy in Washington, DC if we do not establish that law and order will be imposed if the misbehaving, law breaking domestic “terrorists” that call themselves Tea Party Patriots do not start acting civil and decent in government buildings!

The right of freedom of speech and assembly survives, but not lawless, anarchistic behavior, which must be cracked down upon and punished promptly! 🙁

Barack Obama’s Popularity Remains High Despite Health Care Controversy

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Amidst all of the criticism of President Obama on conservative talk radio and Fox News Channel, the fact is that he remains extremely popular personally. That is certainly infuriating to his naysayers!

While polls this week show Obama down to an all time low of 46 percent, realize that if after all of the venom used against him by Tea Party activists and other conservatives he is still that close to 50 percent, then indeed he is in good shape!

Polls show that 61 percent still find Obama inspiring; 57 percent see him as decisive; 54 percent state that he gives them hope for the future; and 49 percent say he makes them feel proud.

Only about a third feel Obama is arrogant or detached, or makes them feel angry. Only 12 percent of conservative Republicans like the job Obama is doing, but twice that number still find him inspiring.

Early indications are that Obama is in good shape for 2012, considering these polls numbers from the Pew Research Center. While there may be discontent, Obama has not fallen to the low figures that George W. Bush had, and it is, at this point, hard to see any Republican opponent being strong enough to counteract him.

Barack Obama, Taxes, And The Ignorance Of Tea Party Activists

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The Tea Party movement has displayed its narrow minded nature and ignorance so often in the past year, but a new poll just further demonstrates that reality.

Wanting to believe that taxes have gone up under President Obama’s administration, the tea party activists by two thirds in a poll believe just that, although the facts are just the opposite!

They conveniently forget that 40 percent of the stimulus legislation was a tax cut ranging between $400 and $800 per taxpayer, and that 90 percent of all taxpayers received a tax cut!

And even more significantly, NO ONE had his taxes raised because of Obama Administration policies! But try to tell the Tea Party people that, or the conservative talk radio show hosts, or Fox News Channel! They would rather promote propaganda and lies and deception, with the view that if you tell a lie enough times, a lot of people will believe it! 🙁

This is what was called the Big Lie Technique as employed by Adolf Hitler, someone who these Tea Party people, Glenn Beck and others like to claim that Barack Obama is the image of, including ridiculous photos of Obama with a Hitler mustache!

Can anyone really with any brains in their head believe anything the Tea Party activists say? 🙁

Right Wingers, Health Care, And God: Hypocrisy Personified!

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The right wing in this country will stop at nothing to defeat health care!

Now some of them are stating that promoting health care is affronting God!

How outrageous and despicable these people are! 🙁 Health care promotes and protects life, and supposedly the right wing is big on preserving life and preventing abortion and mercy killings.

And yet, the fact that 45,000 Americans die every year for lack of health care does not phase them, and they have the nerve to co-opt God and claim to be “good Christians”!

Anyone who claims to be “good” and “religious” is lying if he or she promotes the idea that we should not save lives, that people who have serious health crises should not get adequate health care!

It is another example of the problem of so called “religious” people being phonies, and utilizing God to their political advantage! But these people are to be understood for what they are: charlatans! 🙁

7 Years, $700 Billion For Iraq War, But No Money For Health Care?

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Today marks seven years of the Iraq War, at the cost of $700 Billion, plus over four thousand dead soldiers, and 30,000 plus wounded, many seriously.

This war is now longer than any war in American History, except the Afghan War and the Vietnam War! We have lost so much in young lives and treasure. But we went ahead and continue to pay for it without question!

But the fact that 45,000 Americans die every year for lack of health care seems not to phase Republicans and conservatives, who claim we cannot afford the health care plan costs.

So because we blundered and got involved in a war that has sucked us dry, now the American people have to be denied what should be a basic human right to health care!

If we can, somehow, afford to wage wars that have no end and are bleeding us dry, then we must also find a way to have those who are more fortunate, and have evaded taxes in the past ten years, to start paying now for the good fortune they have had, and to start paying the higher level of taxes they should have been paying, if it was not for the GOP working to favor the upper class and harm the middle class, which they have done, now leading to the Great Recession!

Bret Baier, Fox News Channel, And Rudeness Toward President Obama

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President Obama decided yesterday to go into the “lion’s den”, Fox News Channel, to promote his Health Care reform proposal.

Already a critic of the channel, as promoting propaganda rather than news, Obama could not have been surprised at the way he was treated, but still it was an outrage!

Bret Baier, the interviewer, constantly and rudely interrupted him, not letting him finish a sentence.

How would that channel have reacted if a liberal talk show host rudely interrupted President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney? We all know the answer!

There is a need for civil discourse and respect, and the President of the United States, while certainly able to be challenged, should not be interrupted in a rude manner by anyone, if for no other reason than respect for his office.

Fox News Channel has just continued to show it is a third rate organization, a disgrace to journalism! 🙁

Two Big Switches Favoring Health Care Legislation: Major Step Forward!

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A major step toward approval of Health Care reform occurred today, when an anti abortion Congressman, along with one of the most liberal members of the House, agreed to support the bill, although not one hundred percent happy with the legislation.

Dale Kildee of Michigan, part of the anti abortion Democratic group in the House, and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who has run for President twice as a far left critic, both made the endorsement at a crucial time.

The point to be made is that while no one thinks the legislation is perfect, it is a first step toward insuring health care for 30 million or more Americans, and improves health care conditions for many millions of others. Every major piece of legislation has been improved over time, with the main goal now being to gain passage of the basic purpose of the legislation.

And those who fear that passage of the legislation will clinch bigger losses for the Democrats is wrong, as many Americans will see the virtues of the legislation as it goes into effect. The odds of repeal are extremely slim, as even Rush Limbaugh admits today on his radio program. Once in law, repealing it will turn off many voters and citizens, and will make the Republican party look bad, although right now they are plotting a repeal strategy.

All it will do is make the GOP look hardhearted and reactionary, so no matter what is said as scare tactics right now, once health care reform passes, even if by one vote, it will sustain itself, and one must recall that many important pieces of legislation over the years have barely passed, but become part of the American historical tradition.

It is likely a few years down the road no one will believe that the battle over health care reform was as contentious as it has been. The Republican party will not look good in opposition, and eventually, it will hurt their image and cause!

The Texas State Board Of Education Vs. Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, And Lyndon B. Johnson

Ronald 3 Comments

The Texas State Board of Education is on a rampage to promote a right wing, conservative, Christian agenda on the nearly 5 million public school students in the Lone Star State!

In the process, they are about to destroy all objectivity and the pursuit of truth, as they work to wipe out anything secular and liberal, and in the process, eliminate the great advances in the study of American history in the past half century, from an all white perspective to one that includes minorities and the dispossessed as part of the American story. They also are out to deemphasize or eliminate the importance of such Presidents as Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson, because their historical contributions do not agree with the set agenda of the majority of the state board of education!

What is wrong with Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and contributed so much in so many ways to our history? Well, he had the “gall” to promote separation of church and state, and to give up organized Christianity and become a Deist! But, what the state board seems not to know, due to their historical ignorance, is that Jefferson became the basis of conservatism, which these people profess, as he battled Alexander Hamilton over the issue of strict versus broad interpretation of the Constitution, and also fought with Hamilton over more state and local government versus a stronger national government! In other words, Jefferson is a conservative icon, as even Ronald Reagan recognized!

What is wrong with FDR? Well, he actually used the national government to fight the Great Depression with his New Deal programs, which, while far from perfect, did actually help lessen the effects of the depression on poor people and minorities, but of course, the board of education wishes to deemphasize the fact that there are minorities and poor people in this nation, who need consideration by government, which is not just for the rich and powerful! Also, he promoted “socialist” programs such as Social Security and Aid to Dependent Children (welfare), so therefore he is evil!

And what is wrong with Lyndon B. Johnson? Well, he promoted a War on Poverty which helped white and minority poor people; promoted civil rights, which many of these Texas board members wish did not exist; and of course promoted “socialist” programs such as federal aid to education, Medicare, Medicaid, and environment and consumer protection laws. This is all bad by definition of many Texas board members, because it means he did not promote states rights and limited national government!

This move in Texas to affect the future textbooks and educational curriculum in the field of Social Studies will be detrimental not only to millions of Texas students, but through the power of widespread acceptance in other states of what the Texas Board decides and textbook companies accepts as the norm, will undermine the historical exposure of millions of students nationwide, and present a challenge to college and university professors, who will discover that college students will be more ignorant and backward in their historical knowledge when they enter college!

It is therefore URGENT for all historical organizations and agencies nationwide to protest loudly and take whatever action is necessary to prevent such a travesty of the historical curriculum to be put into place, as it would be the triumph of the “know nothings”, and affect the long term future of the United States! Ignorance breeds ignorance, something we can ill afford as a nation in the 21st century, and in a country rapidly becoming one in which the majority of children will be minority, and yet be exposed to a white, Christian, sanitized version of historical reality!

Michele Bachmann Promotes Breaking Of Tax Laws!

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Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann continues to be a right wing firebrand.

Now she advocates in public gatherings that people refuse to pay their taxes if the Congress passes health care reform legislation! She also calls for immediate lawsuits to prevent the legislation from being put into effect!

This is very interesting, as she has already in the past year declared that people should not fill out the census forms that are coming in the mail this week, even though filling out such forms promotes government aid to all congressional districts over the next decade!

So Michele Bachmann is promoting people breaking the law, which requires that we file tax forms and pay our fair share of taxes, and that we fill out the census forms as another of the basic responsibilities of living in the United States!

So Michele Bachmann is advocating lawlessness, and defiance! Doesn’t that make her no better than a common criminal, provoking reactions by citizens who might think it is fine to disobey the law and act in an anarchistic way? And isn’t anarchism a form of terrorism, Michele? Do we maybe need to arrest you for breaking the law, and not upholding your oath as a Congresswoman to obey the Constitution and the laws? And you have the nerve and gall to talk about others being not “good Americans”? What does that make you, Michele, heh? 🙁

Glenn Beck Vs. Social Justice Christianity

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Glenn Beck has become controversial yet again, calling on Christians to leave churches that preach social and economic justice, claiming that it is not the purpose of churches to get involved in promoting what he calls “socialism”.

An evangelical Christian preacher, the Reverend Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a network of progressive Christianity, denounced Beck as perverting the message of Jesus Christ, who he says believed in economic and social justice. Beck condemned such beliefs as equivalent to Communism and Nazism, as well as Socialism. Wallis is calling for a boycott of Beck’s television show on Fox News Channel.

At the same time, Jerry Falwell, Jr, son of the late Jerry Falwell, a leading evangelical conservative, agreed with Beck, and said it is not the job of government to be involved in economic and social justice, but rather it is the mission of church goers to help the poor and support widows out of their own good will.

This debate over the role of religion is not just among evangelical Christians, but also among mainline Protestants and Catholics who have long believed in economic and social justice.

It is what motivated ministers who opposed slavery in the 19th century, such as William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Dwight Weld. It is what motivated Social Gospel ministers to be involved in labor reforms and work against child labor in the Progressive Era, such as Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden. It is what motivated Martin Luther King, Jr and other black and white ministers, priests and rabbis who sacrificed their safety in the civil rights movement of the mid 20th century. It is what motivated many men and women of the cloth who have opposed the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghan Wars. It is a belief of many Christians that see the concept of their religion being practiced in moral ways by group and government action.

This debate over the proper role of religion in dealing with social and economic issues will not be ended with the kind of bitter attacks of Glenn Beck, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and others who are conservative, as it is clear that if Jesus was here today, he would not agree with such narrow minded views of the importance of social and economic commitment by individuals and governments!

It also is clear that Glenn Beck needs education in the definitions and meanings of Socialism, Communism, and Nazism. Again he displays tremendous ignorance and willingness to divide for the sake of splitting people and groups, and it is therefore to be condemned as despicable!