Why Are Republicans WRONG about EVERYTHING?

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Craig Fry

Trad climber

So Cal.

Feb 11, 2015 - 07:50pm PT

Karl Rove is STILL in contempt of congress rong

and now he's running a multi-million dollar criminal operation helping Republicans get elected

Perspective??

The Lois Lerner comtempt is a Darrel Issa Joke, just like the all of the RNC

If you were able to find out every fact that Lois Lerner knew, what difference will it make, Obama was not involved, and liberal organizations were scrutinized just as much as the degressive Tea baggars and other conservatives

Which ones were non profits?
Is Karl Rove's PAC a non-profit?
He claims it is, so he doesn't have to disclose his donors
Maybe his donors are all Saudi Princes and the Bin Laddens?, or Chinese hoping to buy America?
Do you know who they are?

We do know one thing, they are the big money capitalists wanting to influence our Government using their money.

TGT

Social climber

So Cal

Feb 11, 2015 - 07:52pm PT

crankster

Trad climber

Feb 11, 2015 - 07:59pm PT

Oh no...presidential candidates raise tons of cash. Never knew!!!

Skeptimistic

Mountain climber

La Mancha

Feb 11, 2015 - 08:04pm PT

Good to see she has the backing of some solid corporations. Better follow the smart money...

rottingjohnny

Sport climber

mammoth lakes ca

Feb 11, 2015 - 08:08pm PT

Did Frank Smith get banned..? Somebody must have complained to the attack duck...?

Gary

Social climber

Desolation Basin, Calif.

Feb 11, 2015 - 09:36pm PT

When you say capitalists, you really mean the Republican party, since they are owned by the Capitalists and doing the work of rigging the system for them, correct?

Dr. F, the capitalists are buying the Democrats, too, if you haven't noticed already. Obama has hardly been a champion of the people. He talked like FDR in his first campaign, but morphed into Bush lite.

crankster

Trad climber

Feb 12, 2015 - 05:36am PT

Perfect, DMT.

Gary

Social climber

Desolation Basin, Calif.

Feb 12, 2015 - 05:43am PT

Got a pension fund, comrade?

I do, or did, tovarisch. The private equity people who managed Wonder Bread/Hostess into the ground, while at the same time lining their pockets with raises and bonuses, have reduced it by a third so far. By the time I start drawing it I imagine there won't be much left. Every year lately it is reduced by "market forces."

Yeah, I'm pissed. I worked hard for that pension in the bakery, spent my 20s and 30s there. It was good steady, honest work. Imagine that. Hindsight,being 20/20, tells me that actual work isn't the smart thing to do in this country. Better to be some sort of financial con man, stock broker, banker, preacher, etc.

Craig Fry

Trad climber

So Cal.

Feb 12, 2015 - 08:29am PT

Henry A. Wallace

Henry A. Wallace-Townsend, (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965)

He was the thirty-third Vice President of the United States (1941–45), the eleventh Secretary of Agriculture (1933–40), and the tenth Secretary of Commerce (1945–46). In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.

"The Danger of American Fascism," in New York Times, April 9, 1944

The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
...
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort.

TGT

Social climber

So Cal

Feb 12, 2015 - 12:22pm PT

Wallace was a communist nut case that Roosevelt finally had to fire in favor of Harry Truman for VP.

(when in congress he once rode a horse up the capital steps as a publicity stunt)

Then the next election cycle he ran as a socialist against Truman.

dirtbag

climber

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 12, 2015 - 01:59pm PT

I'm sure he could also tell you exactly where he was, and what he was doing, the exact moment he found out Hussein Obama failed to put down his latte to salute a Marine.

EdwardT

Trad climber

Retired

Feb 12, 2015 - 02:05pm PT

"The Danger of American Fascism," in New York Times, April 9, 1944

Four months later, the incumbent Vice President was off the ticket.

Larry Nelson

Social climber

Feb 12, 2015 - 02:36pm PT

According to Wallace's definition of "Fascism" in the quote, it sounds like either political party could be called fascist.

In the Wikipedia section, the historians are even at odds on how to define it and where to put it on the political spectrum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

As a bemused libertarian observing the quasi religious fervor of hard core partisans, I would say the "fascist" card is as overdrawn as the "race" card.

Norton

Social climber

quitcherbellyachin

Feb 12, 2015 - 02:41pm PT

JEleazarian

Trad climber

Fresno CA

Feb 12, 2015 - 02:46pm PT

It's nice to have some of the old posters back. Particularly nice to read Craig's return, and I'd missed seeing Norton for a while, too.

John

crankster

Trad climber

Feb 12, 2015 - 03:00pm PT

^^
Well, the tedious, little Mr. Sunshine has upped the O2 level in his bunker and learned a new word.

wilbeer

Mountain climber

Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,

Feb 12, 2015 - 03:48pm PT

History repeats itself.

Good to see you back ,Craig,posting on YOUR thread.

Craig Fry

Trad climber

So Cal.

Feb 12, 2015 - 03:50pm PT

The Danger of American Fascism
By Henry A. Wallace

The New York Times, Sunday 09 April 1944

On returning from my trip to the West in February, I received a request from The New York Times to write a piece answering the following questions:

What is a fascist?
How many fascists have we?
How dangerous are they?

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.

The perfect type of fascist throughout recent centuries has been the Prussian Junker, who developed such hatred for other races and such allegiance to a military clique as to make him willing at all times to engage in any degree of deceit and violence necessary to place his culture and race astride the world. In every big nation of the world are at least a few people who have the fascist temperament. Every Jew-baiter, every Catholic hater, is a fascist at heart. The hoodlums who have been desecrating churches, cathedrals and synagogues in some of our larger cities are ripe material for fascist leadership.

The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.

Silll another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after "the present unpleasantness" ceases:

The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups. Likewise, many people whose patriotism is their proudest boast play Hitler's game by retailing distrust of our Allies and by giving currency to snide suspicions without foundation in fact.

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust of both Britain and Russia. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

Several leaders of industry in this country who have gained a new vision of the meaning of opportunity through co-operation with government have warned the public openly that there are some selfish groups in industry who are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage. We all know the part that the cartels played in bringing Hitler to power, and the rule the giant German trusts have played in Nazi conquests. Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ed_encho_080306_henry_a__wallace_s_w.htm

Craig Fry

Trad climber

So Cal.

Feb 12, 2015 - 04:31pm PT

Hating Good Government
JAN. 18, 2015
Paul Krugman

It’s now official: 2014 was the warmest year on record. You might expect this to be a politically important milestone. After all, climate change deniers have long used the blip of 1998 — an unusually hot year, mainly due to an upwelling of warm water in the Pacific — to claim that the planet has stopped warming. This claim involves a complete misunderstanding of how one goes about identifying underlying trends. (Hint: Don’t cherry-pick your observations.) But now even that bogus argument has collapsed. So will the deniers now concede that climate change is real?

Of course not. Evidence doesn’t matter for the “debate” over climate policy, where I put scare quotes around “debate” because, given the obvious irrelevance of logic and evidence, it’s not really a debate in any normal sense. And this situation is by no means unique. Indeed, at this point it’s hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it’s unshakable dogma, across the board. And the real question is why.

Before I get into that, let me remind you of some other news that won’t matter.

First, consider the Kansas experiment. Back in 2012 Sam Brownback, the state’s right-wing governor, went all in on supply-side economics: He drastically cut taxes, assuring everyone that the resulting boom would make up for the initial loss in revenues. Unfortunately for his constituents, his experiment has been a resounding failure. The economy of Kansas, far from booming, has lagged the economies of neighboring states, and Kansas is now in fiscal crisis.

So will we see conservatives scaling back their claims about the magical efficacy of tax cuts as a form of economic stimulus? Of course not. If evidence mattered, supply-side economics would have faded into obscurity decades ago. Instead, it has only strengthened its grip on the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, the news on health reform keeps coming in, and it keeps being more favorable than even the supporters expected. We already knew that the number of Americans without insurance is dropping fast, even as the growth in health care costs moderates. Now we have evidence that the number of Americans experiencing financial distress due to medical expenses is also dropping fast.

All this is utterly at odds with dire predictions that reform would lead to declining coverage and soaring costs. So will we see any of the people claiming that Obamacare is doomed to utter failure revising their position? You know the answer.

And the list goes on. On issues that range from monetary policy to the control of infectious disease, a big chunk of America’s body politic holds views that are completely at odds with, and completely unmovable by, actual experience. And no matter the issue, it’s the same chunk. If you’ve gotten involved in any of these debates, you know that these people aren’t happy warriors; they’re red-faced angry, with special rage directed at know-it-alls who snootily point out that the facts don’t support their position.

The question, as I said at the beginning, is why. Why the dogmatism? Why the rage? And why do these issues go together, with the set of people insisting that climate change is a hoax pretty much the same as the set of people insisting that any attempt at providing universal health insurance must lead to disaster and tyranny?

Well, it strikes me that the immovable position in each of these cases is bound up with rejecting any role for government that serves the public interest. If you don’t want the government to impose controls or fees on polluters, you want to deny that there is any reason to limit emissions. If you don’t want the combination of regulation, mandates and subsidies that is needed to extend coverage to the uninsured, you want to deny that expanding coverage is even possible. And claims about the magical powers of tax cuts are often little more than a mask for the real agenda of crippling government by starving it of revenue.

And why this hatred of government in the public interest? Well, the political scientist Corey Robin argues that most self-proclaimed conservatives are actually reactionaries. That is, they’re defenders of traditional hierarchy — the kind of hierarchy that is threatened by any expansion of government, even (or perhaps especially) when that expansion makes the lives of ordinary citizens better and more secure. I’m partial to that story, partly because it helps explain why climate science and health economics inspire so much rage.

Whether this is the right explanation or not, the fact is that we’re living in a political era in which facts don’t matter. This doesn’t mean that those of us who care about evidence should stop seeking it out. But we should be realistic in our expectations, and not expect even the most decisive evidence to make much difference.