John Fugelsang On The GOP Ronald Reagan Myths (Via The Stephanie Miller Show's Fridays with Fugelsang)

Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings ~ Howard Dean (dob 11/17/1948) The 79th Governor of Vermont (1991-2003) and Chairman of DNC (2005-2009).

The following (selected) quotes from the Friday 1/8/2016 airing of The Stephanie Miller Show by John Fugelsang concerning Ronald Reagan (plus one concerning the NRA and one last one concerning Donald Trump).

->[Republicans] are for the things Reagan said he was for. Reagan said he was for smaller government, but grew by 60 odd thousand jobs. Reagan said he was not for negotiating with terrorists, but armed the same Iranians who helped kill our marines in Beirut. They like Reagan the myth, they don't like Reagan the fact.

->Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to every undocumented immigrant in the country, which makes him to the Left [on this issue] of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Sylvester Stallone.

->They [The NRA] don't care. They want more gun violence. More violence means more profit. How many guns have Obama confiscated? That's right, none. Every time there's a massacre the NRA sends out this mailing list. I encourage all your listeners to subscribe to the NRA mailing lists online and they'll see [what a] racket [this is]. They'll tell you Obama is coming for your guns, and then people go out and buy more guns because the Skeeters believe this. The gun manufacturers make more money the more massacres.

->Between Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and Jaden Smith, [it's] not a good year for nepotism so far.

->[Sarcastically] Can you believe that Barack Obama has done nothing about this [North Korea testing an H-Bomb]? You know what a man would do? A man would pour billions and billions of dollars into a missile defense system that doesn't work. Obama has even spent 2 billion on a non functional missile defense system [whereas Reagan spend more than 209 billion].

->Whatever they [Republicans] want to throw at you, you just have to throw back Reagan. I'm sure you've seen it - they're trying to smear Hillary Clinton with Bill Cosby. And with Bill Clinton. [The] Juanita Broaddrick [allegation] has been exhumed, and now, of course, Hillary Clinton is a rape apologist. They can't beat her on the issues, so they're going to try to smear a woman... [Sarcastically] By the way, if you're a political party looking to get more female voters, blame women for their husband's cheating [not that rape is cheating... Bill Clinton has been accused of both].

->They're going to come out and say Juanita Broaddrick was raped by Bill Clinton. There's no way to prove it one way or the other. It's he said, she said. But, by this logic, Selene Walters, the woman who claimed that Ronald Reagan raped her when he was president of the Screen Actor's Guild. Kitty Kelly documented it thoroughly in her book, and, at the time, she told several people that Reagan... forced himself on her. So, anyone who says you have to believe Juanita Broaddrick has to believe Selene Walters.

->There is one group that Trump hasn't attacked - that's ignorant White guys with small penises. If he began doing that... [then he'd drop in the polls, given the fact that angry White guys constitute his base].

[End John Fugelsang Quotes Via Stephanie Miller 1/8/2016]

Speaking of Donald Trump, he has also been accused of rape... by his ex-wife ex-wife Ivana Trump, who "once used [the word] rape to describe an incident between them in 1989. She later said she felt violated by the experience" (Ex-Wife: Donald Trump Made Me Feel Violated During Sex.

So, as a Democrat, do I believe that Juanita Broaddrick is a liar, while Selene Walters and Ivana Trump told the truth? I don't know. The point (that John Fugelsang was making) is that Trump (and the other Reagan idolizing GOP potus hopefuls) attacking HRC over what her husband may or may not have done smacks of hypocrisy. (May or may not = rape. WJC definitely cheated with a number of consensual affairs).

And the Reagan idolizers and mythologizers are hypocrites when they attack Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton for doing/being guilty of of things Ronald Reagan did/is guilty of (10 Things Conservatives Don't Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan).

Also, let us not forget that when Repubs attack Bill Clinton, they're attack a very popular ex-president (Bill Clinton is incredibly popular. How much will that help Hillary's 2016 campaign?) and (more importantly) Bill Clinton isn't running for anything - it's his wife who is seeking the presidency. Which isn't to say that I believe Bill Clinton's sex life (or, rather his sex life back in the 80s and 90s) should be "off limits". Just keep the hypocrisy in mind. And the fact that Bill isn't running.

And there is also the fact (as evidenced by WJC's popularity) that people don't care too much about rehashing a decades old debate. So I doubt these attacks will have much of an effect on HRC's campaign or the enthusiaism of her voters. (And, for th record here, I don't include myself in this group, as I will be voting for Bernie Sanders in the primary. Provided his name is on the ballot and he hasn't "suspended" his campaign prior to the primary in my state. If he has? Then I will be voting for HRC. And my "enthusiasm" - such as it is - won't be impacted. Not by any attacks on HRC by way of attacking her husband).

Image: Hal Sparks, Stephanie Miller and John Fugelsang arrive at the 10/21/2011 Sexy Liberal Tour.

SWTD #318

George Pataki's Bizarre Reference to TR & St. Ronnie In His "I Wanna B POTUS" Announcement

It's all part of a determined rewriting of history that casts any Republican president not named Coolidge or Reagan as a progressive and therefore a socialist determined to undermine the Constitution ~ Edmund Morris, author of the book The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, the first volume of what would eventually become a trilogy on the life of the 26th president. It won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for biography.

George Pataki, the 53rd Republican Governor of New York (from 1995 to 2006) who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal, recently announced he's launching a futile bid for the presidency.

The following is from his announcement speech.

George Pataki: We are here in Exeter, NH, birthplace of the Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln's party, who saved the Union and brought the promise of freedom to all Americans. Teddy Roosevelt's party, who fought for the Square Deal, to make sure the rich and powerful couldn't limit the freedom of working Americans. And Ronald Reagan's party, who restored Americans' belief in ourselves and in the transcendent value of freedom; the freedom that has given us the greatest country the world has ever known; the freedom a man named Amos Tuck, declared as the foundation of that party right here in Exeter, NH. The same freedom that I fear is at risk today from an ever more powerful, ever more intrusive government in Washington. It is to preserve and protect that freedom for us that I stand here today. It is to preserve and protect that freedom for future generations that I rise. It is to preserve and protect that freedom that I am announcing I am a candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. (Read the speech George Pataki gave in Exeter, N.H., the Buffalo News 5/28/2015).

Pataki's bid for the presidency is futile because it's mostly the Base that turns out to vote in primary elections, and the Republican Base is socially conservative. But that isn't what is most bizarre. What is even more bizarre is that Pataki mentions two past presidents who could not be farther apart ideologically in his announcement that he's going to run for prez.

Teddy Roosevelt (president from 1901 to 1909) fought for the Square Deal to make sure the rich and powerful couldn't limit the freedom of working Americans... because he was a Progressive Republican. Wikipedia notes that "by 1907, his agenda had worn thin his mandate with Congressional Republicans". Because the GOP had become more Conservative (moving away from it's Progressive roots) TR split with the Republicans to form his own party, the Progressive or "Bull Moose" party in 1912.

Teddy ran for POTUS again that same year but was defeated by the Progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson. After this election TR's Progressive Party faded and died, and the Progressive banner thereafter has been largely born by Democrats.

Failing to make itself a believable third party, the Bull Moose Party ended up losing strength. Its candidates did poorly in 1914. It vanished in 1916 with most members following Roosevelt back into the Republican party. However, the Taft conservatives controlled the party and its platform from 1912 to 1928, and thus some Progressives like Harold L. Ickes joined the steadily more liberal Democratic party. (Wikipedia/United States presidential election, 1912/Consequences).

(Note: Harold L. Ickes was responsible for implementing much of President FDR's New Deal (as Secretary of the Interior) along with Labor Secretary Frances Perkins).

The Republican Party of today is the party of Reagan, a Conservative Republican - both fiscally and Socially [1+2] - which is why George Pataki mentioning two Progressive Republicans (Lincoln then TR) and thirdly Reagan is bizarre.

He of course mentions Lincoln because he freed the slaves, and Republicans like to bring that up to "refute" the fact that LBJ signed Civil Rights Legislation and the vast majority of African Americans vote Democratic. What they're saying is "hey, it was our guy who freed the slaves, Blacks, so why aren't you voting Republican?". Except that Lincoln was a Progressive Republican and Republicans aren't progressive anymore. But a lot of White voters are ignorant of history and do not know this (although African American voters obviously do).

By mentioning TR and his Square Deal, I'm guessing Pataki is attempting a run as a populist Republican, but it won't work. Not for him, anyway [3]. I mean, he knows the current Republican Party worships Reagan, which is why he mentions him, but Reagan stood in opposition to the Progressivism of TR.

Prior to the Reagan presidency, the concept of supply side economics—with its lower personal income tax rates for the wealthy, reduction in the capital gains rates and increased tax responsibilities for the middle and lower classes—was viewed with considerable suspicion by mainstream Republicans. For many, it was, as defined by the first President Bush, "voodoo economics". (The Numbers Don't Lie-Why Lowering Taxes For The Rich No Longer Works To Grow The Economy by Rick Ungar. Forbes, 9/16/2012).

And the modern Republican Party stand opposes the Progressivism of TR to an even greater degree than Reagan.

The GOP's War on Teddy Roosevelt: Here's how crazy our politics have become... Legendary Republican President Theodore Roosevelt is being called a socialist by conservatives like Glenn Beck. The man on Mount Rushmore, the Rough Rider president, is getting caught up in a party-purity dragnet 91 years after his death, an exaggerated symptom of the rabid hunting of RINOs... If conservatives want to kick TR out, Obama seems ready to welcome him in. As if on cue, the president's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, announced yesterday that the president is now reading the classic The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris... In [the] book, Glenn Beck's Common Sense, the author devoted a chapter to "the cancer of Progressivism" and lays the blame at TR's feet, in addition to Roosevelt's rival Woodrow Wilson. (Article from The Daily Beast by John Avlon, 3/8/2010).

So TR has been kicked out of the Party for his Socialist leanings and for being opposed to everything the modern Republican Party stands for.

...TR was an early apostle of health care reform - not to mention draconian regulation of banks and interstate corporations, inheritance taxes, and protection of the environment by executive order. These things are a matter of record, although TR's progressivism was actually much more radical after he left the presidency in 1909. He didn't call for national health insurance until he ran for a third White House term in the famous Bull Moose campaign of 1912. His platform was so radical that many of its proposals were not enacted until the New Deal administration of his fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Article from The Daily Beast by Edmund Morris, 3/9/2010).

Today's GOP loathes FDR and the New Deal because it "succeeded in doing something that Republicans detest from the bottom of their hearts, which is using government as a tool to better the lives of middle-class and poor Americans". With his Square Deal, TR called out the "the representatives of predatory wealth" as guilty of "all forms of iniquity from the oppression of wage workers to defrauding the public".

Huh. Sounds like TR's Square Deal bashed the "job creators". But the only deal Republicans are interested in extending to wage workers is a raw one [4], given their favoring of things like eliminating the minimum wage and union busting via Right-to-Work-for-less laws [5].

And Pataki, while he may be socially liberal, is not Progressive, but a believer in Reagan's Supply side Voodoo Economics.

Pataki has been a long-time advocate of tax cuts during his administration and his time in the state legislature. He signed and sponsored several tax cuts during his first term in office and in addition made spending cuts to the budgets he proposed. (Wikipedia/George Pataki/Fiscal Policy).

In regards to the ACA, Pataki said "ObamaCare is worst law of my lifetime" and that "he would repeal and then replace ObamaCare with a more market-based alternative". WTF? ObamaCare *is* market-based, in that it relies on for-profit insurers [6]. This is the ACA's huge flaw, BTW. We should have gone the TR route of national health insurance provided by the government on a not-for-profit basis [7].

Additionally, Pataki, as governor, strongly opposed spending the necessary monies to ensure the students of his state received a first rate education. According to Pataki "the state constitution only guaranteed a sound education until 8th grade". This despite the fact that High school encompases grades 9-12 [8].

This does not sound Progressive to me. So, was his mention of the Progressive TR is his "I'm running" announcement, suggesting he is a populist Republican, total BS? Was his mention of Reagan, given the fact that Reagan was a Social Conservative (and Pataki is not) transparent pandering? Yes and yes, I say [9].

Also bizarre, given the current GOP's rejection of TR and Progressivism and worship of St. Ronnie for his Voodoo Economic theories involving cutting taxes on the wealthy (the antithesis of Democratic Progressivism)...

Footnotes
[1] Real Clear Politics: Ronald Reagan... Social Conservative? (article excerpt) Abortion was not then an issue, but Ronald Reagan's strong stand for life came from this coherent core to his thought. Almost 25 years ago, a mother named Ruth Smith wrote to Reagan to thank him for standing strong for life and family... The fact that abortion was illegal saved her daughter's life, she said... "I just liked Ronald really well. He was put down for his stance for life, and since I had that experience - I had gotten pregnant and had the child and she such a blessing! ...life and marriage... are core conservative issues... (by Maggie Gallagher, 2/9/2011).
[2] Wikipedia/Conservatism in the United States: President Ronald Reagan set the conservative standard in the 1980s; in the 2010s the Republican leaders typically claim fealty to it. For example most of the Republican candidates in 2012, "claimed to be standardbearers of Reagan's ideological legacy". Reagan solidified conservative Republican strength with tax cuts, a greatly increased military budget, continued deregulation, a policy of rollback of Communism... and appeals to family values and conservative morality.
[3] Even more bizarre than Pataki thinking he can appeal to both populist Republicans AND socially conservative ones, it appears that Rick Santorum - he whose prior campaign was financed by the billionaire Foster Friess - is running as a Republican populist. He'll
have better luck with this deception than Pataki, IMO.
[4] In the book by Joe Conason "The Raw Deal: How the Bush Republicans Plan to Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal", the author examines how the New Deal is under attack by Republicans.
[5] Right-to-Work Laws, Explained (Mother Jones article excerpt): Jimmy Hoffa, the president of the Teamsters, has said that right-to-work proponents are waging a "war on workers," and Martin Luther King Jr. called right-to-work a "false slogan" and said the laws "rob us of our civil rights and job rights". Where does Pataki stand on busting public sector unions or on unionization in general? I admit I am not sure. I Googled for awhile but could not find any definitive answers. Although the NY Firefighters union apparently likes him, but then so do the unions that Scott Walker exempted from his changes in collective bargaining rights (police, firefighters and state troopers but not educators).
[6] A number of RW sites also advocate for "market-based" reforms. Heritages says "[The ACA] moves health care in the wrong direction. It puts government, not patients, in charge of individual health care decisions"... To which I say (again) WTF? How are people NOT in charge of their individual HC decisions under the ACA? Heritage also claims that people are "forced" "into government-run health insurance exchanges" but this is a LIE, as people are only required to purchase HC insurance. Buying from the exchange is an OPTION. HC insurance can be purchased outside the exchange if a person so desires. In any case, most Americans get HC insurance through their employers. So, most people aren't using the exchanges (or being "forced" into them, as Heritage claims).
[7] Wikipedia notes that "Under the Pataki Administration a number of new health care programs were created focusing on expanding care to the state's poorest citizens. ...Governor Pataki... provided health insurance coverage, under Family Health Plus, to lower income adults [and] children [and later offered] free insurance to families and single adults who had too much income to be covered by Medicaid but could not afford insurance... NY's EPIC program lowers fees and expands eligibility [in regards to medications for seniors]. [There is also] ban on smoking in public places... The NY Times ran an editorial praising his work on health care". So... in regards to HC it appears Pataki is a lot more progressive than your average GOPer. So why not do the same (be more progressive) in regards to education (see below)?
[8] From Wikipedia/George Pataki/Fiscal Policy: Pataki's tenure had been marked with the long-standing Campaign for Fiscal Equity suit regarding the state's funding of public education. The CFE sued in order to get more state money for the New York City public schools and to guarantee a sound education for all students. Pataki fought the lawsuit, saying that the state should not pay for the increased funding and that the state constitution only guaranteed a sound education until 8th grade.
[9] Pataki may not be a Progressive, but he (Wikipedia excerpt) "has long been regarded as an environmentalist and he has made the environment and open space preservation a top priority of his administration. He has long cited that Theodore Roosevelt is his political hero for his work as a conservationist". So his mention of TR may not have been as BS as I originally thought... although Pataki did specifically mention TR's Square Deal, and not his environmental work. Is there any evidence that Pataki is a Square Deal guy? My opinion is NO, and I stand by my conclusion. It seems a lot of presidents admired TR, including Reagan... and Edmund Morris (whom I quote at the top of this commentary) was commissioned by Reagan to write the Reagan bio "Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan". Does this mean Reagan was a Progressive? The evidence decisively says NO.

SWTD #284

Libertarian BS About The Great Society Subsidizing Poverty

from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century ~ Joseph A. Califano Jr. (dob 5/15/1931) Special Assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson (7/26/1965 to 1/20/1969).

If there is one thing that Libertarians absolutely can not stand it is the idea that government can be a force to affect positive economic or societal change. Fact is, Libertarians strongly believe that government can't do anything right. One of their favorite pastimes is running down government and heaping praise on the so-called "free market". It's the answer to all our problems, doncha know?

If they aren't demonizing government, an institution that represents The People and works on their behalf (in so far as they haven't been bribed by the wealthy elites), then Libertarians are demonizing poor people; and the demonization of both is exemplified in this recent post by a Libertarian blog I check in from time to time.

Libertarian blogger: The poverty rate was coming down precipitously in this country and for the most part people weren't having children out of wedlock, and then came the Great Society. Thank you so much, the political class. ...this is one hell of a strong correlation and you know, YOU KNOW, that if the trend-lines had been plotted out in the opposite direction the left would have been singing and dancing that it was some sort of proof-positive that the Great Society was effective. And the fact that it makes such total fucking sense. Of course when you subsidize something you're going to get more of it. Hello! (11/12/2013 AT 7:43pm).

The poverty rate was coming down because our economy was growing due to industrialization and continuing innovation, for which, yes, we can thank the so-called "free market". But the reason EVERYONE benefited is because of the existence of unions; organizations that allowed workers to bargain for their share of the wealth. According to Mr. Libertarian Blogger (Mr. LB) Democrats can't blame Reagan, but it was Reagan who kicked off his presidency by declaring a war on working people, as Liberal Talker Thom Hartmann points out in his 2006 book Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class...

Thom Hartmann: We can easily trace decline [of unionization] to Reagan's first public declaration of war on the middle class when he went after the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981. He broke the back of the air-traffic controllers' union and began the practice of using the Department of Labor - traditionally the ally of workers - against organized labor and working people. (Excerpt from Thom's book reprinted by Alternet, 9/5/2006).

If you look at the graph Mr. LB includes with his post to "prove" that LBJ's war on poverty actually subsidized poverty and therefore increased it, you will get the impression that the Great Society didn't have much of an impact, but that is because the graph covers such a large period of time (1940-2010) and all the programs that comprised the Great Society were not actually fully in effect for very long, as noted by Wikipedia...

Wikipedia/The Great Society/The War On Poverty: The War on Poverty [began with] the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created the OEO to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs. ... The OEO was dismantled by the Nixon and Ford administrations, largely by transferring poverty programs to other government departments. Funding for many of these programs were further cut in President Ronald Reagan's first budget in 1981.

Mr. Libertarian Blogger is criticizing a program that began in 1964 and for which the dismantling commenced only 5 years later (under Nixon who assumed office in 1969)? And, then there is the fact that Johnson got us involved in the Vietnam war the previous year (1963) and "Anti-war Democrats complained that spending on the Vietnam War choked off the Great Society". So, the programs were under-funded due to money spend on the Vietnam conflict, which brings us to what the actual criticism should be... a criticism the Lefty publication The Nation notes was levied by Martin Luther King...

Mark Engler, writing for The Nation: King criticized Johnson's War on Poverty for being too piecemeal. While housing programs, job training and family counseling were not themselves unsound, he wrote that "all have a fatal disadvantage. The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis... At no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived". (Dr. Martin Luther King's Economics: Through Jobs, Freedom 1/15/2010).

The obvious conclusion is that the Great Society didn't do enough and it didn't do it long enough. Mr. LB did not present "one hell of a strong correlation" that the Great Society caused poverty to increase, as the short while that it was in place it did have an effect (as Joseph A. Califano Jr. points out in the quote at the top of my post).

As for the graph and conclusion drawn from it by Mr. LB that out-of-wedlock births have increased (again) due to the Great Society... this is a simple-minded conclusion (the kind of conclusions Conservatives and Libertarians excel at). The Brookings Institute analyzed the data, and their conclusion was that out-of-wedlock births in the United States increased due to "technology shock".

The researchers lay out their hypothesis as follows...

Brookings: In the late 1960s and very early 1970s (well before Roe v. Wade in January 1973) many major states, including NY and CA, liberalized their abortion laws. At about the same time it became easier for unmarried people to obtain contraceptives. ... We have found that this rather sudden increase in the availability of both abortion and contraception [caused] reproductive technology shock... In our view, it was the technology shock itself that, by eroding the age-old custom of shotgun marriage, paradoxically raised out-of-wedlock birth rates instead of lowering them. (An Analysis of Out-Of-Wedlock Births in the United States by George A. Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen of Brookings, 8/1996).

Why? Brookings concludes that...

Brookings: Women who were willing to get an abortion or who reliably used contraception no longer found it necessary to condition sexual relations on a promise of marriage in the event of pregnancy. But women who wanted children, who did not want an abortion for moral or religious reasons, or who were unreliable in their use of contraception found themselves pressured to participate in premarital sexual relations without being able to exact a promise of marriage in case of pregnancy. (same credit as previous quote).

Thus out of wedlock births increased. Granted, this explanation is a little more complicated and nuanced than the one put forward by Libertarians and Conservatives who think like Mr. LB. It makes sense to me, in any case. More so than the notion that poor people prefer to live in poverty, so long as they're getting welfare from the government... and a poor woman will have kids out of wedlock on purpose just to get more bennies. Regarding that argument Brookings said...

Brookings: One argument that appeals to conservatives is that of Charles Murray, who attributes the increase to overly generous federal welfare benefits. But... welfare benefits could not have played a major role in the rise of out-of-wedlock births because benefits rose sharply in the 1960s and then fell in the 1970s and 1980s, when out-of-wedlock births rose most. (same credit as previous Brookings excerpt).

However, as I pointed out earlier, demonizing the poor is something Libertarians and Conservatives excel at. If you say the government can't help the poor (and in fact it makes poverty worse) then no money need be spent on these types of programs. There is therefore no need to tax the wealthy to help the less fortunate (as it only harms them). And, let us not forget that it's their own fault for being lazy and preferring to lie back in the social safety net hammock instead of working hard to get ahead.

But most people do not prefer to only get by. Most people do work hard but simply can't get ahead... as the plutocrats are taking more and more, which is easier for them to do since Reagan and his war on unions. It certainly is no coincidence that Libertarians and Conservatives also hate unions, as unions allow workers to bargain for higher wages. Also, it is no coincidence that Libertarians and Conservatives love free trade, as that also drives down wages for working folks. Hello!

SWTD #218, wDel #41.

Brookings' Intellectually Honest Analysis Of Romney's Tax Proposals Got Me Banned

Romney says he is going to balance the budget, cut taxes, raise defense, protect Medicare, and preserve all the institutions of the federal government that we need from the FBI to the FAA. You can't possibly do all of those things. That was my problem. How does the math add up? To me, he's still at war with math ~ Tom Friedman (b. 7/20/1953) NYT columnist and self-identified Republican, on the 9/2/2012 broadcast of BC's Meet the Press.

Preface 1: This is a old post. I originally intended to publish it in September of 2012, but never got around to finishing it. I wrote most of it, but never actually completed it for some reason. I was recently looking for things to delete from my computer and found this... and decided to dust it off, finish it, and publish it. Why? Because it explains MY SIDE of a debate that lead to me being banned from the blog Contra O'Reilly.

I've authored a number of highly critical posts over the last few months that take aim at the proprietor of that blog, a Mr. Willis L. Hart (who I refer to as "PA" below). This post explains why. He banned me over a stoopid disagreement over former presidential contender Mitt Romney's tax plan (a plan that was never explained in detail, therefore making assumptions necessary if anyone wished to critique it).

Preface 2: What follows is my original post which my records say I intended to publish on 9/1/2012...

According to Wikipedia Harvard ethicist Louis M. Guenin describes the "kernel" of intellectual honesty to be "a virtuous disposition to eschew deception when given an incentive for deception".

Definition-wise, Wikipedia states that Intellectual Honesty is: [1] One's personal beliefs do not interfere with the pursuit of truth. [2] Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such things may contradict one's hypothesis. [3] Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give misleading impressions or to support one view over another. [4] References are acknowledged where possible, and plagiarism is avoided.

Regarding "Intellectual Honesty", I certainly do not try, nor have I ever tried to deceive with any of my posts, although I'm not going to claim that my personal beliefs never interfere with the pursuit of truth. They do. Facts here will sometimes be presented in a "biased" manner... from my Democrat-Liberal-Progressive point of view, that is. That is my bias. I don't deny it, but I do deny that I am the most intellectually dishonest person Willis Hart this particular as*hole has ever had to deal with.

The particular as*hole (PA) who levied this insult (and then banned me from his blog) did so because I defended a report from the Brookings Institute and the Tax Policy Center that said the Romney tax plan would raise taxes on the poor and middle class (see my previous post on the subject). Regarding Brookings' determination "...that a revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed... maintaining all tax breaks for saving and investment... would... increase the tax burdens on middle and/or lower-income taxpayers", PA asserted that, "this study was done for one purpose, and one purpose only, to make frigging Romney look ridiculous".

Because Romney has put forward very few specifics, Brookings was required to make a number of assumptions in order to do the analysis at all. One of the things they assumed was that because Romney has said he favors "maintaining all tax breaks for saving and investment" that items that fall into this category are "off the table".

So just what deductions is Mitt Romney talking about? In their analysis Brookings/TPC says, "offsetting the $360 billion in revenue losses necessitates a reduction of roughly 65 percent of available tax expenditures. Such a reduction... would require deep reductions in many popular tax benefits ranging from the mortgage interest deduction, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, the deduction for charitable contributions, and benefits for low and middle-income families and children like the EITC and child tax credit".

No way says PA. PA thinks it is much more likely that Romney would lower taxes as he has described, while keeping these deductions and allow the deficit to rise. Do I think Romney would actually put forward a budget that did this? I doubt it, but, AGAIN, he has proposed a huge tax cut that also "maintains all tax breaks for saving and investment", and that simply is not possible unless many or most tax expenditures are reduced or eliminated. This is another reasonable assumption... in my opinion.

But because of these assumptions PA determined that the Brookings analysis was BS. Why? Apparently because the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, and the Manhattan Institute (all Conservative) made that exact criticism. Even though Brookings concluded that "maintaining all tax breaks for saving and investment" meant taxing these items would be "off the table".

But PA says the report's assumptions are not reasonable, and when I continued to insist they are, PA flew off the handle declaring, "what an absolute piece of shit you are". Why? Because I was claiming (according to PA) that "[Brookings] included it by not including it". No. They looked at these items and determined that they were "off the table" because they fell into the category of "tax breaks for saving and investment".

So, why MUST these items be "on the table" according to PA? Because Mitt Romney has never said they were off. In other words, because Romney has not put forward a detailed tax plan, ANY analysis of a possible Romney tax plan (taking what Romney has said and making some assumptions) is completely invalid. Or any analysis that doesn't include reducing or eliminating tax deductions for "municipal bonds and life insurance savings" is invalid. Why? Damned if I know.

I do know, however, that I'm "intellectually dishonest" for agreeing with the Brookings determination that these things would be "off the table", and was banned for that reason. PA authored a post that said, "You're done. I don't want you to comment here anymore". OK by me. This guy is clearly a lunatic. Why we can't simply disagree on what is a "reasonable assumption" is beyond me.

Finally, regarding the comment from PA that the Brookings/TPC report was done, "to make frigging Romney look ridiculous"... PA says Brookings (one of the preeminent Think Tanks in the country) is LYING because they are a "Liberal" organization. He bases this on an article from US News & World Report that points out that from 2003 to 2010 most of Brookings political contributions went to Democrats (97.6% to Democrats and 1.2% to Republicans).

The US News & World Report article identifies Brookings as a "Liberal" Think Tank. However, in an article titled "Brookings: The Establishment's Think Tank", Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) points out that "much of Brookings' top brass has come from Republican administrations". FAIR says labeling Brookings Liberal is "a victory of Right-wing think tanks" and that "to this day, Brookings is commonly, and inaccurately, dubbed liberal... It's called centrist almost as often, but never conservative, though that label would be more accurate than liberal".

SourceWatch says Brookings was "initially centrist... [but] since the 1990s it has taken steps further towards the Right in parallel with the increasing influence of Right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation.

Wikipedia states that the Tax Policy Center was formed "in 2002, [by] tax experts who had served in the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton administrations [with the objective of] providing unbiased analysis of tax issues".

Now, FAIR and SourceWatch are both progressive/Liberal organizations, but who better to determine what organizations are "Liberal" than other Liberal organizations? So why all the donations to Democrats? I say it is because that is where all the Moderates are. PA describes himself as a "Moderate", and has (previously) identified as a "Blue Dog" Democrat. So who are these Moderate Republicans he thinks Brookings should be donating to if they were really (in PA's estimation) a centrist organization?

With the ascendance of the Tea Party and Mitt having to adopt positions contrary to those he used to hold in order to secure the nomination, how can any sane person deny the Republican Party has moved to the Far Right? Beats me, yet the Hartster does just that, in agreement with his Conservative buddy dmarks who contends that Brookings is a "well known leftist group".

But articles can easily be found via Googling that correctly state that Republicans of yesteryear would not be welcome in the Republican Party of today, including Richard Nixon and the Repub saint Ronald Reagan.

In a recent Fox News interview conducted by Chris Wallace former Senate majority leader Bob Dole said he "doesn't think he could make it in today's Republican Party". Wallace referred to Dole's "generation as Eisenhower Republicans, moderate Republicans". These are the Republicans that by and large no longer exist, so how the hell can Brookings donate to the re-election campaigns of moderate Republicans when there aren't any (or hardly any)? The answer to that question should be self-evident, I say.

But I disagreed, and that was another of several reasons the "Moderate" proprietor of Contra O'Reilly asked me to leave his blog and never return (and that he'd delete my comments if I did). This is a frigging stoopid reason for a banning, IMO. What it really shows is this Willis Hart fellow is really not all that Moderate.

Afterword: On 2/10/2013 PA (AKA Willis Hart) authored a post titled "The Silence of the Lefts" in which he criticized the political Left for it's "silence" regarding specific actions taken by the Obama Administration that are very similar to actions taken by the prior administration. Specifically drone strikes, reauthorization of the PATRIOT act, indefinite detention and rendition of terror suspects, and the president's kill list.

For the record I actually AGREE with PA. Both with his objection to these policies, and with his criticism of the Left in it's acceptance of Obama continuing these policies (when they were severely critical of bush when he did the exact same things). Willis does, however, slip in one lie. According to him Democrats in Congress were "seemingly" briefed on waterboarding. He is one of those who thinks Nancy Pelosi lied when she said the CIA never briefed her on the fact that they were waterboarding. Pelosi told the truth about not being briefed about EITs (enhanced Interrogation Techniques) AKA waterboarding, as her House colleague Bob Graham confirmed.

Also, while the Left (voters and politicians) are much too accepting of these policies just because a Democratic president is in office, there are voices of Progressive disagreement. I would have told Willis that if I had been allowed to comment (and I did tell him I disagreed with these policies prior to my banning). I am actually in agreement with the 26 members of the Progressive caucus (the real Left) who sent a letter to President Obama "demanding greater openness on all aspects of its counterterrorism-related targeted killing program".

I am also in agreement with Progressive host of The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur, who says the problem isn't with drones, because drones are just a tool. The actual problem is how we are using this tool. The three problems identified by Mr. Uygur are that... [1] We have used drones to execute U.S. civilians without a trial, [2] Most of the drone strikes are signature strikes where we have no idea who we're killing, and [3] We often do double taps where we kill first-responders and the people trying to help the wounded.

I am absolutely in agreement with Mr. Uygur on all three points. With these three concerns addressed I'd have much less a problem with the Obama administration's use of drones. But because they are not addressing them, and are in fact killing innocent civilians - I say they are creating more "terrorists" than they are killing... by angering the relatives of the innocents we are killing, who then join up to fight against the United States [1].

As it currently is utilized I strongly oppose the administration's use of drones. I am not silent in this regard. Also, in regards to the uninformed (Lefty) voters, Mr. Uygur says, "the great majority of Americans have no idea what we're doing with these drones. They think we're only targeting high level terrorists". He is correct. There are uninformed voters on both the Left and the Right. Here the Left is "silent" (in support of the drone program) because they don't understand how the drone program works.

In concluding his post PA says, "I'm beginning to think here that the Left wasn't so much anti-war as anti-Bush", but I say he is a fibbing (as well as displaying his fervent anti-Left bias). He has a point (so I don't say "lie"), but to not mention (at all) that there are those on the Left who are against these policies - the same as when bush was president - is a little dishonest. Only "a little" because I'm sure there are some on the Left who only complained about drones when bush was president because bush was president. Now they support the use of drones because it is a Democratic president doing it.

But for PA to suggest the Left is entirely silent? The progressives (that Willis dislikes with much intensity) ARE speaking out. That he ignores this fact is as dishonest as PA's characterization of me as "the most intellectually dishonest person [he] has ever had to deal with". That is way over the top and a huge distortion of reality - a reality in which I AGREE with him on some topics but disagree with him on others. The problem PA actually had with me was that, when I disagreed I wouldn't end up caving when he kept insisting he was right.

Footnote
[1] AKA blowback, which is a concept the idiot Willis, while he criticizes Obama for his drone policy, does not agree with. According to dope, the idea that all the murdering via drone that we're doing (of mostly innocents) causes anyone to seek revenge "ultimately fails". The US, in his mind, is blameless, in other words. Sounds like something a jingoist fear mongering warmongering MIC-stooging Republican would say. (Note: This footnote was added on 7/19/2015).

Video Description: Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks speaks out against Obama's use of drones.

SWTD #160, wDel #27.

Romney's Tax Plan Would Complete Reagan's Dream of an American Oligarchy

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses ~ Aristotle (384 BC to 322 BC) a Greek philosopher who was a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

The Walton family owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America. The top 1 percent owns 40 percent of the nation's wealth while the bottom 60 percent own less than 2 percent. Between 2009 and 2010 93 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent, the other 99 percent shared the remaining 7 percent. The United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any industrialized nation on earth and it is worse now than since the 1920s. The United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. [source: Bernie Sanders on the 8/3/2012 Stephanie Miller Show].

In response John Fugelsang asked: "if 60 percent of the population controls only 2 percent of the wealth, does that mean that the top 40 percent needs to pay 98 percent of the taxes?" [John Fugelsang is a friday regular on the Stephanie Miller Show].

The rigged tax system of the United States has been moving up toward oligarchy for the past 30 years - ever since Ronald Reagan set us on that path. According to a non-partisan analysis conducted by the Brookings Institute and the Tax Policy Center, "...a revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed – including reducing marginal tax rates substantially, eliminating the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) and maintaining all tax breaks for saving and investment – would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle and/or lower-income taxpayers. This is true even when we bias our assumptions about which and whose tax expenditures are reduced to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible".

Mitt Romney says he will reduce taxes across the board, but in reality his elimination of deductions would RAISE taxes on middle and lower income taxpayers. The Brookings/Tax Policy analysis says, "[Romney's] tax cuts predominantly favor upper-income taxpayers. Taxpayers with incomes over $1 million would see their after-tax income increased by 8.3 percent (an average tax cut of about $175,000)... while the after-tax income of taxpayers earning less than $30,000 would actually decrease by about 0.9 percent (an average tax increase of about $130)".

In other words: Romney wants YOU to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy! Unless you're rich and greedy, why would you cast your ballot for Mitt Romney? Barack Obama should win re-election in a landslide, but we all know he won't. It's going to be close. Why? I've been declared "arrogant" for saying so, but I'm convinced that a lot of voters are allowing themselves to be tricked into voting for oligarchy.

SWTD #118

Throwing A Liberal Pundit Under the Bus to Bash The Gipper

Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference ~ Mort Sahl (b. 5/11/1927) a Canadian-born American comedian and actor who occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy.

I'm a diehard Liberal who loves to worship partisan Liberal pundits who reaffirm what I already believe. Which is why I like Rachel Maddow, despite the fact that she's a partisan stooge, liar, and dumbass to boot. But I'm willing to overlook all that because she hates Ronald Reagan as much as I do. On the 5/12/2011 TRMS, Rachel impugned the Gipper's reputation with disgusting innuendo suggesting that (in the late 40's and early 50's) Ronald Reagan was a red baiter sympathetic to McCarthyism.

How do we know this? Because Rachel Maddow said Reagan testified as a "friendly witness" before The House Un-American Activities Committee (HCUA) on 10/23/1947. In her set up to her uncalled for Gipper bash, Rachel Maddow said...

RM: ...you may remember the House on American Activities Committee. Part of that was Senator Joe McCarthy red baiting the living heck out of the entertainment industry, dragging in writers and actors and anyone he thought might have a whiff of communism on them. Remember those hearings? All the people who turned in their friends who then got blacklisted as communists and some of them got sent to prison. A bunch of them never worked again.

The problem with this statement is that Joseph McCarthy had nothing to do with HUAC, which was a House committee. McCarthy had his own Commie witch hunt committee in the Senate: The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI). That committee was looking into imaginary Commie infiltration in Washington, not Hollywood. It also didn't begin this task until 1950, two years after the House began ruining the careers of Hollywood types for no good reason - other than to scare the public into voting Republican.

Needless to say, the Maddow haters pounced. David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun described Maddow's words as "ignorant snark". According to Zuarwik, MSNBC is the "most biased and propagandist television news outlet in America", so it's no surprise that he gleefully tore into Maddow, declaring that she was "guilty and then some" of re-writing history, and that she's a dummy because this was something she should have learned in sixth grade civics. Willis Hart of the blog "Contra O'Reilly" suggested that Rachel Maddow and Michele Bachmann both need to stay after school (and then he added an "LOL").

Willis Hart is probably going to be muy surprised (if he reads this), but I'm going to concede that Rachel Maddow was historically inaccurate in her description of the relationship between HUAC and Joe McCarthy. I am, however, inclined to believe that she misspoke, and that what she said isn't what she meant. I certainly do not believe that she is an ignoramus on par with Michelle Bachmann (who believes the "Founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery"), which is why I defended her on Willis' blog.

Later, in preparation for my own post on the topic, I re-read the quote and realized my previous interpretation of it was wrong. Which is a little embarrassing, considering how I posted numerous times explaining that when Rachel said McCarthy was a "part of that" she meant that he and HUAC were both a part of the Congressional communist witch hunts that were in vogue at the time. But then she goes on to suggest that it was McCarthy who was dragging in the Hollywood types.

This is why I've decided I'm going to throw Rachel Maddow under the bush and blame her for this. If she hadn't misspoke then I wouldn't have been placed in the position where I felt I needed to defend her. I usually watch the program every night, although I don't recall if I missed any programs since her "gaffe" (and therefore missed her issue a clarification or correction). A Google search and careful examination of The Maddow Blog did not result in my finding any clarifications or corrections. But, according to The Maddow Blog, "We read our mail", so I shot them at email at the address provided (see below).

I'll also blame the haters on the Right and in the Middle (like Willis Hart and David Zurawik) who were so quick to take out the knives and have at Ms. Maddow. Although, of the two, I think Willis was the worst offender. Because in addition to pointing out that Rachel misspoke (which isn't at all how he worded it) he also claimed that when Rachel said Reagan testified as a "friendly witness" before HUAC, she was implying that Reagan was down with McCarthyism - and he turned in his colleagues and gave up names to save his own skin. Willis insists there is ZERO evidence that Reagan did anything of the sort.

The truth of the matter is that Reagan did names names and he did use the HUAC hearings to slime SAG (and other Hollywood) union members who wanted better pay and benefits. It is also a FACT that Reagan testified at those hearings as a "friendly witness". As I pointed out on the Mr. Hart's blog, I believe Reagan was a crap president who deserves to be pissed on (metaphorically speaking). But I'm going to hold off revealing the details until my next post because I want that information to take center stage - instead of being revealed secondary to this unflattering account of the "Rachel Maddow gaffe".

"Reagan... is the devil in the minds of most progressives and the ends ALWAYS justify the means", says the Hartster. No Willis, Reagan isn't "the Devil", but he is the absolute worst POTUS ever. Of that there is no doubt in my mind. Aside from getting the relationship between McCarthy and HUAC wrong, the rest of Rachel Maddow's story was absolutely correct. Ronald Reagan didn't fight Communism in Hollywood, he implied certain elements within SAG (and other unions) were pinko Commies because they advocated striking for higher pay and benefits, an act I find utterly despicable.

My Message to TRMS

Subject: 5/12/2011 TRMS Huckabee/Reagan Story
email sent to: Rachel@msnbc.com on 5/22/2011 at 3:36pm CT

Hello. The purpose of this email is to inquire about a story TRMS covered on 5/12/2011. First, I'd like to let you know that I am contacting you because, as a loyal fan and regular viewer of the Rachel Maddow program - the integrity of the show is something I feel is very important.

The story I'm inquiring about is the Mike Huckabee cartoons that re-write Ronald Reagan's history of "fighting Communism" in Hollywood. While Rachel was entirely correct that Reagan did appear as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee, I believe she mischaracterized Senator Joseph McCarthy's relationship with that committee.

On the program Rachel said (quoting from the transcript), "Part of that was Senator Joe McCarthy red baiting the living heck out of the entertainment industry, dragging in writers and actors and anyone he thought might have a whiff of communism on them". Senator McCarthy couldn't have dragged anyone into those hearings, because he was a Senator and not a member of that House committee.

Senator McCarthy, as chairman of the The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, red baited the living heck out of Washington (not Hollywood). He accused federal employees of being communist infiltrators or of being sympathetic to communism. As far as I know he didn't have anything to do with the Hollywood red baiting.

Can you tell me if Rachel will be issuing either a clarification or a correction to counter the criticisms of David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun (there are probably others, but his is the article that was brought to my attention)? Mr. Zurawik questioned Rachel's integrity (and her intelligence) in a 5/13/2011 article titled, "Rachel Maddow: American history as ignorant snark". It is my feeling that these allegations need to be answered.

If a clarification or correction has already been made I haven't been able to find it (I've looked).

Thank you, a loyal (and concerned) fan.

See also: Not Even a Hedgehog: The stupidity of Ronald Reagan by Christopher Hitchens, 6/7/2004.

SWTD #80

The Ideology That Screwed The World, Part 1

I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy. Let me put it briefly - I am for the separation of state and economics ~ Ayn Rand (2/2/1905 to 3/6/1982) a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.

Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life. It hadn't taken long for us to have a meeting of the minds - mostly my mind meeting hers ~ Alan Greenspan (DOB 3/6/1926) an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006, quoted from his autobiography, "The Age of Turbulence"

Everyone knows that the recent financial meltdown, which began in 2008, came about as the result of another housing bubble. But what caused this bubble? And whom can we blame? Did McCain lose the election simply due to the fact that the Republicans were in charge at the time? That, plus the fact that he looked incredibly foolish when he suspended his campaign to rush back to Washington to fix the mess, stopping first to be interviewed by Wolf Blitzer in his "Situation Room", and snubbing David Letterman in the process?

Fortunately the American public correctly assigned blame for the financial crisis to John McCain, the Republican Party and deregulation. In the days immediately following McCain suspending his campaign, visiting Wolf's situation room, and apologizing to David Letterman because he "screwed up", McCain was asked (in a "CBS Today" interview) if he regretted championing deregulation in 1999. McCain replied, "I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy" (a definite "no").

And this occurred only shortly after McCain was forced to fire his financial advisor, Phil Gramm, who called the recession "mental", and declared that "America is a nation of whiners". Unsurprisingly, McCain lost the election.

The deregulation McCain championed in 1999, along with his financial advisor Phil Gramm, was the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act). It repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which "prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and/or an insurance company". In other words, retail banks and investment banks were required to remain separate entities, so as to discourage speculation (which can also be described as gambling).

Freed from these prohibitions, investment banks purchased retail banks, bundled their customer's mortgages and resold them as "mortgage backed securities". But because the banksters made their money upfront they didn't really care if the mortgage holders defaulted. Certainly there was a strong incentive from them not to care, as their profit margin would be negatively impacted if they did. Naturally this led to a bubble (and bubbles eventually burst). But for the time being there was loads of cash to be made.

Gramm, Leach, and Bliley were Republicans. Conservative economic philosophy calls for deregulation. Ayn Rand believed in it, and so did her acolyte Alan Greenspan, who began his tenure with the Federal Reserve in 1987 when he was appointed its chairman by President Ronald Reagan. Reagan, the President who declared, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem" (sounds anti-regulation to me).

It is the Democratic Party that is supposed to champion protection of the consumer through strict regulation, yet they got snookered by the Ayn Rand laissez-faire fairy tale! Greenspan kept his Fed chair position for the next 18 years, whether the President was a Republican or a Democrat. According to the Frontline special, The Warning, "by the time Bill Clinton took the White House, the anti-government rhetoric had become so fashionable that even some Democrats embraced it".

In addition to not firing Greenspan as he should have, Clinton brought on board ex-Goldman Sachs employee Robert Rubin to head up the Treasury department. Greenspan and Rubin, along with advisors Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner formed a "pro-business anti-regulation support group". The 2/15/1999 edition of Time Magazine dubbed Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, "The Committee to Save the World". I think a more apt honorific would have been "The three horsemen of the coming financial apocalypse".

And so, President Clinton, following the Randian advice of his free market advisors, signed a bill sponsored by three Republicans and championed by a future Republican Presidential contender. That was after Gramm-Leach-Bliley passed the Senate with 53 Republican "yeas", one Democratic "yea", and 44 Democratic "nays" (there was also one "present" and one "absent", but those were Repubicans).

Update 9/26/2014: The vote I reference above was NOT the final vote. After conferencing with the House the bill came up for a vote again and this time it passed with 38 Democratic "yea" votes and only 7 Democratic "nay votes... unfortunately. Also, I've known about this post being wrong for quite some time and did nothing about it.

That is something that I ALWAYS try to avoid (wrong information being presented here). But this was back during my early days of blogging. I think that currently I am doing a much better job in making sure no erroneous information slips through. I apologize for taking so long to correct this post.

Correctly voting "nay" on this terrible piece of legislation in the Senate were Democrats Barbara Boxer (CA 1993-present), Richard Bryan (NV 1989-2001), Byron Dorgan (ND 1992-2011), Russell Feingold (WI 1993-2011), Tom Harkin (IA 1985-present), Barbara Mikulski (MD 1987-present), Paul Wellstone (MN), and Republican Richard Shelby (AL 1987-present).

Final Vote Tallies on S. 900, 106th Congress: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (On the Conference Report) 11/4/1999. (Yea/Nay/Not Voting or Present)... Senate Vote #354: Republicans (52/1/2), Democrats (38/7/0). House Vote #570: Republicans (207/5/11), Democrats (154/51/4).

SWTD #36

Who's Harboring bin Laden Now?

I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, 67th US Secretary of State (1/21/2009 to Present), referring to the Pakistan government and the conventional wisdom that bin Laden and al Qaeda are hiding out somewhere in Pakistan's Hindu Kush mountains (10/29/2009).

Personally I think that Osama bin Laden is probably dead (as Benazir Bhutto believed), although for the purposes of this post I'll go along with the belief that he's alive and hiding out in "northwestern Pakistan's impenetrable Hindu Kush mountains... in the Chitral region".

Obviously Hillary Clinton believes it to be the case - that OBL is hiding out in these mountains, or somewhere else in Pakistan - and that the Pakistani government (or elements within the government) know where bin Laden is and aren't doing everything they could be doing to see that he is brought to justice.

Apparently this is the same area he has been hiding out in since December of 2001, after he "escaped" following the battle of Tora Bora. Since then we've sent Pakistan 8.6 Billion (as of 2008) in bribes to fight al Qaeda and hunt down bin Laden. Yet, according to retired Pakistani general Mahmud Durrani, "The army itself got very little. ...The military was financing the war on terror out of its own budget".

Most of the money went toward propping up Pakistan's sagging economy, and toward "support capability against India". It isn't like this information is new either; the US has suspected it for quite some time, but done nothing. I pointed out in my previous post that Afghanistan was invaded because they were "harboring" bin Laden. So if what Secretary Clinton says is true, coupled with the fact that most of the billions we've sent them isn't being used to fight al Qaeda or capture bin Laden, do Pakistan's actions not amount to harboring?

Does anyone else find it odd that the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists" resolution of 2001 gave bush the authority to invade Afghanistan because they were "harboring" bin Laden, but Pakistan, who (it could be argued) has been harboring bin Laden for years, gets billions of dollars to use as they please?

Could it be the reason we're bribing them is because they've got nukes? That is partly the reason, I believe. Also, the bribes allow us to fly drones over their territory, fire missiles, and accidentally kill scores of innocent people without having to answer for the collateral damage negligent homicides? Attacks which Pakistan then officially denies they've approved.

The US Department of Defense defines "collateral damage" as, "unintentional or incidental injury or damage to persons or objects that would not be lawful military targets in the circumstances ruling at the time". And that, "such damage is not unlawful so long as it is not excessive in light of the overall military advantage anticipated from the attack".

I don't agree that killing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians in addition to the 14 wanted al Qaeda leaders you were actually targeting is not excessive (1/14/2006 to 4/8/2009). This is an indictment against the bush administration AND the Obama administration, under whom drone attacks have intensified.

This isn't the point I was trying to make with this post, however. I wanted to highlight the hypocrisy of toppling one government (the Taliban of Afghanistan) when they clearly tried to give us what we wanted, and giving billions in bribes to another while looking the other way when they use that money for purposes other than what we gave it to them for. And this isn't also an indictment of the Obama administration, because that is apparently starting to change. Now military aid will be "contingent on Pakistan's efforts to cut government ties to insurgents". "Government ties to insurgents" sounds like "harboring" to me. I don't know why this wasn't a condition of continued aid before!

Maybe this is why bush traded our nuclear technology for India's mangos? He knew that would force Pakistan to use our billions defending themselves against India and not on fighting al Qaeda and finding bin Laden. The nuke technology we gave India was supposedly for civilian use only, but they are not signatories to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.

Given Pakistan's "obsession with India [which] has made [their] military resistant, practically up to the present, to reorienting its defense posture to include counterinsurgency capabilities needed to deal with growing internal threats", it's not surprising they are now on the verge of becoming a failed state. If this wasn't intentional, then what the hell was bush thinking? Even if the nuke technology we handed off to India doesn't end up in the hands of their military, I'm sure there are those in the Pakistani government who believe otherwise.

More importantly, why are we again funding (or providing technology to) both sides in a long running conflict? This reminds me of how the Reagan and George HW Bush administrations armed both sides in the Iran-Iraq war. (Yet another example of war crimes committed by Republican Presidents!)

I do not know how much merit there is to what Hillary Clinton said. It is obvious, however, that Pakistan needs to direct more of their attention towards internal threats rather than blowing all our money defending themselves against India; a miscalculation which could end with Pakistan becoming the world's first nuclear armed failed state.

9/26/2014 Update: As we all now know, OBL was not dead and not hiding out in "northwestern Pakistan's impenetrable Hindu Kush mountains. He was ALIVE and living in a compound in Abbotabad... Pakistan. According to Wikipedia, "Bin Laden was reported to have evaded capture by living in a section of the house for at least five years".

A 3/19/2014 NYT article by Carlotta Gall says "members of the ISI, Pakistan's main intelligence service" were responsible for hiding bin Laden.

Shakil Afridi, "a Pakistani physician who helped the CIA run a fake vaccine program in Abbottabad... to confirm Osama bin Laden's presence in the city by obtaining DNA samples" said (in a Fox News interview) that "Pakistan's fight against militancy is bogus. It's just to extract money from America".

The Abbottabad Commission report (a judicial inquiry paper authored and submitted by the Abbottabad Commission, led by Justice Javaid Iqbal, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on 1/4/2013) blamed "incompetence at every level in the Pakistan's intelligence and security services [but] did not rule out the involvement of rogue elements within the Pakistani intelligence service.

SWTD #34

A Day to Honor President Jimmy Carter

This ninth of November is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone ~ Unknown Moderator speaking for the West German television channel, ARD (11/9/1989)

Short-circuiting the long-established principles of patient negotiation leads to war, not peace ~ Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States (1/20/1977 to 1/20/1981)

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday yesterday. I would have posted on this topic then, but I was too busy celebrating. I am talking of course about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and also the day we recognize how President Jimmy Carter, by ending the cold war, made it all possible.

It would have been, however, President Walter Mondale who uttered the historic phrase, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!", since that challenge was issued in 1987, which would have been several years after President Carter completed his second term. Everyone would have, however, rightly acknowledged that it was President Carter who set things in motion.

Alas, it was not to be. President Carter did not win a second term, and instead credit goes to a senile B-movie actor who was probably the worst president our great nation has ever known. Reagan's October Surprise was just the first of many acts of treason he would commit after stealing the presidency from Mr. Carter.

A day to celebrate, or a day to mourn what might have been? The words preceding the "tear down this wall" line crafted by Saint Reagan's speech writers was "...if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate". He was, of course, talking about the bad kind of "liberalization", which has nothing at all to do with the Liberal, or Progressive wing, of the Democratic Party. "Most often, the term is used to refer to economic liberalization, especially trade liberalization or capital market liberalization".

The Reagan Presidency started us down the path to ruination, and every president since Saint Reagan has bought into the lie that sending our middle class manufacturing jobs to China is a good idea. Luckily the united German people did not buy into Reagan's hogwash. They moved to the left along with the rest of Europe, and thus were not hit as hard by the worldwide effect of the bush recession.

If you read my previous day's post, you know I was obviously not celebrating, but mourning. For 28 years we've been following Reagan's advice to seek economic liberalization. As I pointed out with my 9/6/2009 post, all the Republican - and, unfortunately, a majority of Democrats PLUS our current President still have not realized we can't survive as a first world nation by relying primarily on the Service and Financial sectors while creating nothing of value (because we've outsourced virtually all our manufacturing).

See also: The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War by William Blum, Strategy Page 4/29/2004.

SWTD #28

It's Everyone Else's Fault

The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts ~ Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English Logician and Philosopher.

I'm becoming disheartened. In regards to political discourse in this country... and in regards to blogging. My last post received ONE lousy comment (7 actually, but the other six I posted myself by way of sock puppets). Man, how pathetic. Meanwhile, Conservative bloggers are getting 100 PLUS comments! Maybe I should hang it up.

I have less than a half-dozen readers, and (by my estimate) only three people (or less) who actually ever comment. Why am I wasting my time? Just like the radical Righties disrupted the town halls they're dominating the blogosphere. At least, as far as dinky one-person run blogs go. These morons are mad and they want everyone to know it (I'm talking about the people who have commented on the blog I just linked to, and others like them, not the blog proprietor specifically).

The sad thing is that the corporate-funded astroturf organizations have them deluded to the point where they think the majority of Americans are with them. Their idiotic worries regarding socialism, the President purposefully bankrupting the government, and health insurance reform being akin to Hitler's final solution ARE TAKING CENTER STAGE!

(for the record, Republicans are the ones who are purposefully attempting to bankrupt the government. "Starving the beast" is a fiscal-political strategy of some American conservatives to use budget deficits via tax cuts to force future reductions in the size of government. The term "beast" refers to government and the programs it funds, particularly social programs such as welfare, Social Security, and Medicare.)

Witnessing this, the "independent" voters may jump ship in 2010 and 2012, not realizing that to actually make progress they should pick an ideology and stick with it. Saint Reagan and bush-the-stupider (whom I have dubbed "President Doofus") proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that conservatism is NOT the way to go. We'll be f*cked royally if Barack Obama is not re-elected in 2012.

I guess it's "cool" to be independent though, and vote based simply on your feelings. GWb was president when the economy crashed? Conservative economic principals aren't to blame, just the man. Maybe McCain can fix the problem. No matter that his "solution" would be more of the same, HE'S A DIFFERENT GUY! Plus, Hillary voters, he has a woman VP! No matter that she's clearly not that bright. Who, when asked which news periodicals they read, would say they read them all, but then not be able to name ONE?

BUT... then McCain made the mistake of "suspending" his campaign and rushing back to Washington to "fix" the crisis. And he screwed that up. By canceling on David Letterman to chat with Wolf Blitzer.

That made him look stupid, so the Independents were pushed towards Barack Obama. Not because they agreed with Democratic economic principals. Because he offered "hope" and "change". I'm not knocking Hope and Change, because they were more than a slogan. But the slogan is all that a lot of Independents (and Democrats) heard.

So now they may be ready to swing the other way. No matter that reversing course 100 degrees back to a plan of action which has been proven disastrous is idiotic in the extreme. They may do it anyway! Why?? For no other reason than they're "independent", apparently.

And the Democrats may stay home. Because Barack Obama isn't changing things quickly enough for them. No matter that the primary agenda of the remaining Republicans in Congress is to obstruct. Also, even though Democrats gained a bunch of seats in the last election -- and I'm sure it has something to do with demographics and who they're representing -- why does it seem like the Republicans who are left are the craziest of the crazy?

Virginia Fox and Michelle Bachmann are loony toons. I apologize ladies; there are some crazy dudes as well. Joe Wilson rudely called out "you lie" as the President spoke before a joint session of Congress, then immediately afterward lied about having worked as an immigration lawyer. In a vain attempt to stop people from voicing their suspicions that what he really meant to say was "You lie, boy". And John Boner claimed that the public option was a popular as a garlic milkshake, even though a majority of Americans support it.

And of course we have Joe Lieberman, who was for Universal Coverage before he was against it. Apparently he saw all the attention that Olympia Snowe was getting and wanted the media to fawn all over HIM. So, even though he caucuses with the Democrats he'll stand with the Republicans and single-handedly be responsible for health care insurance reform getting shot down. He gets to feed his ego and collect some big donations from the health care insurance lobby. As Stephen Colbert pointed out recently, the party he formed after he lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut was called "Connecticut for Lieberman", NOT "Lieberman for Connecticut".

If the Republicans are given another shot at destroying this country it will be because the moron electorate allows them two. Yes, Republicans are the masters of election fraud, but when people turn out in high enough numbers they can overcome that fraud.

People were so disgusted with George W. bush at the end of his presidency that they turned out in record numbers and pushed Barack Obama over the top. Next time around they may say to themselves, "this guy was not as hopey and changey as I was lead to believe, I think I'll vote for the other guy... or stay home". What they fail to realize is that the President is not a king. There is only so much he can do. He's up against the power of big money and their ability to buy off our elected officials.

Low information voters fail to take this into consideration. Which is why we may be doomed. If so it's everybody else's fault, not mine. I've done a lot of things that were stupid, but I'm not a moron. A blogger I follow who calls himself "Truth 101" recently posited that the morons shall inherit the earth. I'm worried that he may very well be right.

SWTD #27

Faking Fiscal Conservatism

Republicans used to be, once upon a time, for fiscal conservatism, and there are a few of those left, and they're starting to murmur more, and, you know, people forget Ronald Reagan raised taxes, you know, he cut taxes, but then he raised taxes. George Bush, the father, raised taxes ~ Evan Thomas (DOB 4/25/1951) an American journalist and author who currently teaches journalism at Princeton University.

That the Republican Party is socially conservative can't be denied. Examples of Republican "social conservatism" include their homophobic defense of "traditional marriage", their phony claim that American is a Christian nation, that Christians are discriminated against and that there is a "War on Christmas". These socially conservative Republicans, represent the morally superior "Religious Right" (or "Culture Warriors", according to Bill O'Reilly). Liberals, on the other hand are godless "secular progressive" atheists whose moral decadence is responsible for all of society's ills.

As far as their political agenda goes, however, enacting their fiscal policies are paramount. The "social conservative" nonsense is simply a means to achieve that end. The socially conservative issues are how they motivate the poor, ignorant and gullible to vote against their own interests (these saps are often described as "misinformed" or "low information voters" by those wishing to be polite).

George W. Bush ended up the fall guy for some of them. Others blame the Democrats who controlled the Congress during Bush's final two years in office. They let Fannie and Freddie get out of control and the Republicans couldn't do a thing to stop them. I'm sure that if you asked any Republican that they'd blame social programs. Even though corporate welfare dwarfs the money we spend on social programs it seems to be completely off the radar of most self-identified Conservatives.

According to Conservatives the patron saint of all things fiscally conservative is Ronald Reagan, but they conveniently overlook the fact that it was Saint Reagan that increased the national debt more than all the administrations that came before him combined. Conservatives may attempt to assert that it was Congressional Democrats that ran up the debt, and poor Saint Reagan couldn't stop them. Or that Reagan needed to drive us deeply into debt to "win" the cold war.

Neither claim is true. Saint Reagan requested $29.4 billion more in spending than Congress passed. His tax cuts did not stimulate the economy and increase revenue. The nonsensical "supply side" theory was a "Trojan horse to bring down the top rate" - this according to Reagan administration Office of Management and Budget director David Stockman.

Ending Communism through an arms race that would cause the Soviets to go bankrupt when they futilely attempted to keep pace was a scam for funneling billions to the military industrial complex. Revised CIA estimates indicate that "the Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures". And Saint Reagan's military buildup actually prolonged the cold war.

To pay for the increased military expenditures - including the ridiculous boondoggle dubbed Star Wars and the inane "trickle down" economy stimulating tax cuts for the wealthy - Saint Reagan raised payroll taxes (the largest tax increase in US history) and raided the social security trust fund.

Is this fiscal conservatism?

Disciples of Saint Reagan currently bemoan the "fact" that George bush Junior strayed from the path, becoming a "Big Government Conservative". But Junior was following the Reagan playbook! First on his agenda was cutting taxes for the wealthy (and getting rid of President Clinton's surplus). Next he ignored the numerous warnings of a potential terrorist attack and was rewarded with the "new Pearl Harbor" that the "Project For The New American Century" had been praying for.

The "war on terrorism" replaced the "cold war", two illegal wars were launched, and the money flowed. A former attorney who filed dozens of civil "whistleblower" lawsuits against Iraq war contractors, Congressman Alan Grayson concluded, "The Bush administration doesn't give a damn about contractor fraud in Iraq". The reason they didn't care may have had something to do with the fact that a lot of the contracts went to bush administration cronies like Halliburton - whose stock tripled in the 2 years after the invasion.

"Fiscal conservatism" is clearly code for running the government in order to benefit the wealthy and spending as little as possible on social programs. The only problem is that people like social programs, and will vote for politicians who provide them (and vote against those who threaten to take them away). The "fiscally conservative" solution is to outsource these programs to their private sector cronies. Apparently there isn't any job the government can do for less (since anything the government does involves no profit for CEOs or stockholders) that they don't think should be outsourced at greater expense to the private sector.

One example of this during the bush administration would be the never fully funded "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB), which took a multi-million dollar testing industry and turned it into a multi-billion dollar industry. Beneficiaries of NCLB include Bush brother Neil's Ignite!, and former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett's K12 Inc. -- that would be the same Bill Bennett who wants public schools "to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education". Would you hire someone to help students in public schools succeed if they had a publicly stated desire to see public schools fail?

I could go on, but this article is already running long. Instead I'll again ask - is this fiscal conservatism?

The theory of crony capitalism states that, "since businesses make money and money leads to political power, business will inevitably use their power to influence governments". Republicans (and some Democrats) call it fiscal conservatism - I call it theft.

Further Reading
[1] Was Ronald Reagan an Even Worse President Than George W. Bush? by Robert Parry, Consortium News 6/5/2009.
[2] Bush Budget Would Inflate Corporate Welfare, Slash Social Programs, The New Standard 2/8/2005.
[3] The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War by William Blum, Counter Punch 6/7/2004.

SWTD #25