Tag: Politics

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Observations Politics

Each Political Party Has A Story — by James R Martin

“Stories do not materialize from a void but grow out of materials already in history and human experience.” Reading this sentence written by Robert McKee, who is writing about constructing screenplays, reminded me that in the real world there are stories that we live each moment of our lives. These stories have structures, events, beginnings, middles and endings. The outcomes of our personal stories don’t usually break the rules of probability. We always look for positive, happy outcomes for our stories, but in reality happy endings are not always likely outcomes in the actuality in which we find ourselves living. We make decisions and choices but they are often following a pattern, of which we may not be aware. One may dream of being a concert pianist, but without ten thousand hours of practice, study and some natural talent, the probability of that performance at Carnegie Hall in NYC is remote.

What of the political party stories in which we live and vote in the United States? While there are other stories, the main two scenarios, are a Republican story and a Democratic story. The outcomes or actions in these two stories are always predictable and do not change. Each party may attack candidates running for office in the other party. Candidates in each party may attack each other. But it really doesn’t matter who the person running is, if you vote for a Republican you are voting for the Republican story. If you vote for the Democrat, you are voting for a Democratic Story.

I saw a woman on a Facebook video talking about loosing her job in a manufacturing plant owned by Carrier. A factory where the Republican candidate for President told her that she and the other workers would not lose their jobs. Vote for him! He would be sure to stop the company from “outsourcing” work to foreign countries. He would “build a wall.” She said she voted for him because of this fact. But now she was loosing her job because the company was moving production to another country. She was practically begging the President, she helped elect, to keep his promise. However, keeping jobs in America is not part of the Republican story. The candidate ran as a Republican. She is a working class person who voted for the Republican Story.

This phenomenon of working and middle class people voting for Republican candidates, who make promises that don’t fit the plot line of the Republican Party’s story, repeats itself constantly. So, of course these promises are not kept. They are improbable outcomes under a Republican administration. The Republican story never benefits working and middle class people beyond a few superficial perks. The main benefits are always directed at the top one percent and corporate interests. Campaigns supposedly directed at curbing “alleged welfare abuses,” are not just about welfare recipients, they are about cutting larger social programs.  When services are cut, the money saved goes to the rich in the form of tax cuts.

All social reform, middle and working class advances financially and socially come under Democratic Administrations. Republican Administrations always try to take away these benefits. Republican conservatives have never stopped trying to undo Social Security, Medicare and recently the Affordable Care Act. They strip services, and give tax breaks to the wealthy. The story never changes. Yet people are manipulated, persuaded, perhaps on emotional grounds or other issues, to vote against their own best interests. In the back of their minds, they must know how the story ends, but they still buy into an improbable fantasy.

The same people would not suspend disbelief while watching a movie, where the main protagonist chose a course of action that doomed her, even though it was obvious to her that the choice was not good for her survival. For example trusting her life to a pathological liar. Falling off the high cliff into the rocky surf, thousands of feet below, always ends up the same way in reality. The story has only one possible ending. This is not an animated fantasy film.

I hope that voters in elections, now and in the fall, think about what story they are actually voting for. You can help write the story if you vote. Ignore all the rhetoric, spin, negative ads and appeals to tribalism. Vote for a story that will benefit your life and keep the story of the United States, one of the ongoing “noble experiment in democracy” and freedom for all.

Books by James R Martin

Available print and digital on Amazon

Listen Learn Share: How & Why Listening, Learning and Sharing can Transform Your Life Experience In Practical Ways

Documentary Directing and Storytelling: How to Direct Documentaries and More!

Actuality Interviewing and Listening: How to conduct successful interviews for nonfiction storytelling, actuality documentaries and other disciplines … (Documentary and Nonfiction Storytelling)

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Politics

Republicans Create DysfunctionalGovernment and Pathological Donald – by James R (Jim) Martin

Republicans must take responsibility for their party creating a dysfunctional congress, senate and Supreme Court, in other words, stopping government from functioning properly. They have done it for money, politics and avarice. They have lulled half the country into believing government is not functioning when in fact it is Republicans in government who are not functioning. Republicans are campaigning to fix all the things they are responsible for breaking. They pathologically lie and misrepresent reality to the public. They have reduced any dialog to name calling and a smoke screen of bullshit. Trump, the man Republicans are nominating to run for President,  is the complete embodiment of all the Republican party now represents.

PsychopathtestbookThe notion that Donald Trump some how represents the interests of working and middle class people is ludicrous since he is a billionaire, son of a millionaire. Donald Trump is not a pull your self up from the bootstraps, entrepreneur, businessman billionaire. He’s a member of the so-called “One Percent” of super rich billionaires. But he represents himself as an outsider, entrepreneur because he knows Americans like self-made people.

It appears that Donald  scores high on “the psychopath test” as  it is profiled  in a book by Jon Ronson entitled “The Psychopath Test-A Journey through the Madness Industry.” © 2011.  While it may be that many top executives and CEO’s would also score high on this test, the question remains, do we want someone who seems to mirror most of these attributes to be President of the United States?

Here is the famous twenty-point Hare PCL-R Psychopath Checklist as reported in the book (pg. 97) How many of the twenty signs appear to fit “The Donald?” Seems like he would get an A+ in a huge way.

  1. “Glibness/superficial charm
  2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
  3. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
  4. Pathological lying
  5. Conning/manipulative
  6. Lack of remorse or guilt
  7. Shallow affect
  8. Callous/lack of empathy
  9. Parasitic lifestyle
  10. Poor behavioral controls
  11. Promiscuous sexual behavior
  12. Early behavior problems
  13. Lack of realistic long-term goals
  14. Impulsivity
  15. Irresponsibility
  16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
  17. Many short-term marital relationships
  18. Juvenile delinquency
  19. Revocation of conditional release
  20. Criminal versatility”

The current Republican nominee for President is running on all the problems created by the Republican’s for at least sixteen years beginning, after 9/11 with the lead up to and ultimately the Iraq war. One graphic example is ISIS, a result of invading Iraq and the Republican Cheney/Bush administration criminal misrepresentation of the reasons for the Iraq war as demonstrated in this PBS Frontline documentary

“The Secret History of ISIS 54:47Video duration: 54:47 Aired: 05/17/16 Rating: NRVideo has closed captioning.”

mezzanine_456.jpg.crop.767x432“From veteran FRONTLINE filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team comes the inside story of the creation of ISIS, and how the United States missed the many warning signs. The film uncovers the terror group’s earliest plans, the Islamic radicals who became its leaders, and the American failures to stop ISIS’s brutal rise.”

There is one possible error in the above copy for this documentary. The US did not miss “the many warning signs.” Republican’s Dick Cheney and George Bush ignored and suppressed the warning signs reported by US intelligence and others, so they could push the US into invading Iraq. This is apparent in the documentary and other sources.

The media and everyone else are reluctant to place the blame for problems, directly at the feet of the Republicans who caused the problems. News reporters on cable and in print constantly talk about the “dysfunction in congress.” What they should report is the Republican dysfunction in congress. By not reporting accurately and precisely they convey the impression that everyone in congress is part of the problem. When in fact it’s all coming from the Republican radicals and obstructionists who vowed from the start of President Obama’s first term to destroy and obstruct his administration.  Interestingly news sources do not seem to have much of a problem reporting possibly negative issues relating directly to Democrats.

Now we have, an apparent Republican Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who is an obvious narcissistic, pathological liar manipulating and playing the media to his benefit. He has gotten more coverage than any candidate. He claims he’s going to fix everything the general public believes is wrong about the country. But he knows that it’s all a sham, that the public has been brainwashed with propaganda and conspiracy theories from Republicans, far right conservatives and lobbyists for many years. Trump used conspiracy theories like the racially motivated idea that President Obama wasn’t born in the US (Birthers) to keep his own name out there and to try to discredit the President. The public is distracted from the real problems by “dog whistle” issues that stir religious, racial, ethnic, cultural and social concerns. Working and middle class people succumb to tribal drum beats, as they dance in primitive circles, persuaded to vote against their own interests.

Voters believed that President Obama would bring change and end the wars the country was involved in when he was elected. But the Republicans made sure he couldn’t do it in an absolute way. For example, they watered down a very workable Affordable Health Care Act and then spent the next six years trying to destroy it in any way possible. Republicans made it impossible for the President to close Guantanamo by passing restrictive laws. Republicans tried to shut down the government and did, causing problems. Republicans stopped economic progress by not allowing the administrations plans for national infrastructure building and repair. Republicans voted against saving the American auto industry, brought to its knees by the Republican sponsored real estate crash beginning in 2007, but put up little resistance to the, too big to fail, bank bailout. The complete list is a story by itself.

Despite all the Republican dysfunction and obstruction, the President and the Democratic administration brought the country back from a terrible crisis in 2008.  They saved the auto industry, which is doing well now, and paid back loans to the government, with interest. The economy has steadily improved, unemployment gone down, the deficit reduced, troops brought home. This doesn’t seem to get much press.

Republicans have wasted billions of dollars on committees to investigate things like Bengazi and Hillary Clinton’s emails all for political gain. There is a technique practiced by Fox News, the Republican propaganda cable news outlet. Make up absurd claims about anything, throw them out there, twenty-four/seven, and see if anything sticks. Create enough smoke so that the public will believe there is a fire and blame it on the firemen, in this case the President, the Democrats and Liberals. There is so much smoke the general public doesn’t know what to believe because they can’t see things clearly.

Another hoax perpetrated on the public is the myth of the “liberal media.” When ever a fact contrary to Republican interests is reported, even though it’s accurate, it is deemed as liberal. I suppose it is a “liberal” trait to tell the truth but in this case the term is used to discredit the reporting as biased in some way, perhaps because the information was reported on in the first place. It is also a way to intimidate the press into using language that is less precise and ambiguous. Instead of saying Republicans in congress are causing government to not function properly, the report defers to just saying “congress is causing…” This gives the impression that it is all of congress that is obstructing and not doing their jobs when in fact it is just the Republicans. The public believes it is all of congress and therefore government that is the problem.

At the same time as the right-wing is running around claiming liberal media bias they are using all sorts of “frames” and “spin” to make it appear that the problem is something other than their obstruction.

Who ever wins the Democratic Party Nomination will face an onslaught of “dirty politics” from the Donald Trump campaign. It has already started with Trump calling Hillary Clinton names like “crooked Hillary,” and other things each time he mentions her in some false accusation, rambling tirade.  He is just continuing the bashing of Hillary Clinton that the Republican party has been doing for the last eight years and longer going back to when her husband was President. This continual attack has biased people to think ill of her unfairly.  Fair or not the perception is out there.  If the Republicans thought Bernie Sanders was going to be the nominee they would be attacking him.

Hopefully moderate and normally conservative Republicans will either, hold their noses and vote Democrat or vote for a Libertarian candidate.  Democrats need to unite after the primaries, rally around the Democratic nominee and turn out the vote as they did for Barack Obama in 2008. Because of new restrictive voter laws, early registration of voters is important. In addition to voting for President there is an opportunity to shift the balance of power in the Senate and Congress sending a message that the smoke screen is no longer working.

 

 

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

 

Categories
Observations Politics

Republican Reality Check – It’s still a lie even if you believe it.

Right, Radical Republicanism Rejected By The Majority of Americans.

Each time they loose an election Republicans just can’t understand it.  They go around acting as if they won or try to ruin the government of who ever did win.  Some form of aberrant denial. President Obama has beaten both McCain and now Romney. McCain has never gotten over it and in his senile, spiteful way continues to do take swipes at the President and his administration.  Romney is starting out the same way with mean spirited derisive behavior. Romney has recently repeated basically the same things he said in the famous “47 percent video!

At a time when the Senate and the Congress should be focusing on the economy, creating jobs, budget and reducing the deficit all certain Republicans can do is try to create scandals, embarrass the President and the administration and obstruct.

As the presidential election approached Republicans were working on conjuring up an “October Surprise” to “bring down the President.”  Romney was so anxious to find something that he came out criticizing the administration before the facts about the Benghazi attack in Libya were even known. He basically shot himself in the foot.  Shortly after that Republican Congressman Inofe started a congressional investigation, but it seems that mother nature had her own October surprise, it was called “Sandy.”  Had it not been for this hurricane combining with other weather conditions hitting the east coast Republicans would have been pushing harder to turn the attack in Libya in to a foreign policy scandal.  The fact is Republicans voted down money the State Department requested to beef up security at our  embassies and consulates around the world. If Republicans has passed these appropriations there might have been security at the consulate in Benghazi. Is this really another example of what Republican obstruction and partisan politics has done?

Meanwhile an FBi agent, Fredrick Humphrey, known to be a Republican conservative, who was not assigned to the case, tryed to escalate a matter he reported about a woman friend of his getting threatening emails. When things don’t seem to be moving fast enough to create a scandal before the presidential election, he went to a Republican Congressmen claiming the FBI was dragging their feet for political reasons.  This doesn’t pan out before the election but results in General Petraeus resigning as head of the CIA, after the election.  It’s clear that Republicans were desperate for a scandal to embarrass the President before the election.  Now that the election is over, they are trying to use the same “red herrings” to hurt the President and distract the public from the real problems facing the nation. This is unpatriotic and shows disdain for the democratic process.

These crazy Republican distractions are flooding the airwaves. The media loves a scandal.   It’s a scandal that Republican politicians and operatives are wasting their time and our tax dollars pushing.  It’s obvious partisan politics. The press should call them out on this and not just go along with their agenda. In addition to the politicians ugly behavior we have nut case tea party members and others getting up petitions to secede from the union because they lost the election.  This insanity is being fanned by irresponsible, right wing radio and television hacks.

Senator McCain, someone who once had the respect of many people, has turned into a senile blowhard who should just resign from the Senate before he further ruins his reputation and makes a fool of himself. Other Republicans should be called to task for failing to work on constructive projects to improve the economy and create jobs for Americans.

There is no “smoking gun” in Benghazi.  The consulate was hit by terrorists on September 11th because they saw an opportunity. It probably was planned. Apparently our security had no knowledge of the impending attack. One has to wonder why the Ambassador was there without a security detail.  Was the mission in Libya underfunded because of the Republican Congress? The CIA and the State Department need money to gather intelligence.

The whole can of worms around General Petreaus, General Allen and the women involved so far has not been something that jeopardized national security. This agent who tried to politicize this matter should be reprimanded and/or fired from the FBI. He should have let the FBI do it’s work before going public with classified information.

It is no coincidence that the Republican Congress is trying to create problems for the administration now, before the President’s second term even begins.  They want to discredit him through members of his administration to, among other things, hinder him and reduce the mandate he has received from the American people who elected him.  The majority of Americans rejected the far right wing Republican party. But these traitors to the country are still trying to get power no matter what it costs the average American. What they fail to realize is that the Republican presidential candidate was a pathetic liar and panderer.  Americans sooner or later can recognize BS.

Americans need to show support for the President in anyway possible. This will blunt the attack on him and the administration. It will silence all the crazies who are running around getting petitions signed to secede from the union or impeach the president, because they lost the election. But more than anything it will allow everyone to focus on the real issues facing the country.

 

 

 

Categories
Observations Politics

BLAME GAME

BLAST FURNACE US STEEL 1984 – WRAPPED IN STEEL DOCUMENTARY FILM

I read a post this morning that blamed the decline of a working class neighborhood on the Southeast side of Chicago on “the progressive socialists.”  I have no idea who these “progressive socialists” are, but let’s continue.  These progressives, many of whom appear to be minorities, are somehow responsible, as far back the 1980’s, for the closing of the steel mills by their corporate owners like US Steel, who closed their mill in South Chicago, and started buying steel from China, while investing in Marathon Oil.  All of this, the post claimed, is the fault of immigrants and minorities who feel “entitled” to things not named. “Things” that the writer of the post believes that minorities and immigrants are not entitled to get. Seems like the same kind of rhetoric used in the 2012 elections.

During the recent Presidential election the twisted mantra of entitlement, in some form, was promoted by all the right wing Republican politicians, which means the entire Republican Party.  A party now pretending to try  to figure out why  they lost the election  so badly. Pretending to want to reinvent itself to appeal more to Latino and Asian immigrants (they don’t seem to mention African American citizens very much). They talk  about how they can get their message over to people, sugar coat it, so minorities and others will vote against their own best interests. Republican surrogates talk about having Senator Rubio, the Cuban American Senator from Florida, go out to pitch Hispanics, as if they were some monolithic group who would automatically vote Republican because there was one Latino politician pitching them.

Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, have used the technique of turning working class white people against minorities of all persuasions. First they take away jobs that white working class people have and then blame minorities and immigrants for taking those jobs. Republicans promote racial and ethnic animosity to Americans who are predisposed culturally to this tendency. Republicans have taken over a block of southern states building on the civil rights movement that did away with segregation.  The voting rights act was used to  further anger white southerners who had been suppressing minority voting up to that point. Midwestern and Northern working and middle class whites have been taught to fear minorities.

Democrats may have won the majority of the battles in the current election cycle. But as far as the Republican party is concerned this is just one battle in a war that has been going on for a very long time. For Republicans and their plutocratic puppeteers this is a war of attrition. Plato must have had Republicans in mind when he wrote about a cave where prisoners are chained to a wall so they can only look in one direction,  unknowingly seeing only shadows, cast in front of a fire by puppeteers they cannot see. The prisoners perceive the shadows cast on the wall as reality.

Democrats must organize and prepare for the next election cycle. Credible candidates need to be found to run against tea party and far right leaning  obstructionist politicians in the senate and congress. Democrats should help the President explain the Affordable Heath Care Act and other achievements of Democrats and the administration.  The  Republican propaganda machine is at work every day trying to win over anxious and frustrated Americans in any way possible.  Democrats need to counter this with a campaign that promotes facts and reality to counter the propaganda and lies.

The Republican Party of today is not the party of moderate conservatives it once was.  It seems many of those moderates have become “Blue Dog Democrats” or centrist, conservative Democrats.  Even though the cable news pundits don’t talk about it, the coalition that elected the President for both terms, included a sizable number of middle and working class white voters.  This includes men, women and younger voters. The President and others down ticket could not have been elected without white voters. The press and others by failing to describe the Democratic coalition of voters properly are playing into the hands of the far right who will make it seem that the Democratic party is the fabricated reality of “minority and immigrant progressive socialists.”

by J R Martin

 

Categories
Observations Politics

ROMNEY’S DISDAIN AND CONTEMPT FOR AMERICANS

Romney’s Disdain and Contempt for Ninety-nine Percent of all Americans.

By J R Martin

It has been clear for anyone scratching off a bit of the facade worn by Willard Mitt Romney, Republican Presidential Candidate, who he really represents beside himself. Funded by billionaires and begrudgingly supported by the radical Christian fundamentalists, both of whom he has tried to hide, Romney has left no doubt now about who he represents and that he has only disdain for the majority of Americans. He mentions 47% that he dismisses as freeloaders. The other fifty-two percent he doesn’t like very much either but he needs them to use for his political ambitions. He only cares about himself and the rest of the one percent he considers himself to be included.

All of this proven in a recently released video, http://www.motherjones.com/ by Mother Jones. This video was secretly recorded at a Romney fundraiser held by Marc Leder in Boca Raton on May 17, 2012. Leder is a controversial private equity manager who has been a long term friend and supporter of Romney.

At the fundraiser, Romney replied to a question about how he would deal with certain types of voters.  His answer recorded both with video and audio was:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it, that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax…  My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Who are the forty-seven percent?  Could they be the 22 percent of people who didn’t owe income taxes who are elderly people on Social Security? Seventeen percent who are students, disabled people or the unemployed? Perhaps sixty percent of the group are low-income workers, many of whom qualified for the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit. (These workers did pay payroll taxes for Social Security and other programs.)  And maybe the 4000 people earning over a million dollars who also paid no income taxes in 2011, perhaps the very people who Romney was addressing in that room?  The people who paid $50,000 each to attend the fundraiser.

I believe about fifty-three percent of Americans voted for President Obama in 2008. I doubt that forty-seven percent of them paid no income taxes. So it is Romney who is promoting “class warfare.”  Romney continued on speaking at the fundraiser about his strategy to get the other six percent of voters to vote for him:

“Those people I told you—the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring onto our side—they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago. So, and by the way, when you say to them, “Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?” they overwhelmingly say no. They like him.” — Romney 

Romney talks about how they will claim that Obama is a nice guy but not up to the task to appease the emotional side of the five to seven percent of voters they want to win over to vote for him.

It has always been a Republican strategy to try and convince working people, blue collar and white collar, that somehow other people are using them, living off the taxes they pay, on welfare or getting food stamps. They try to make it seem as if all these people are minorities, which is not true.  In hard times more non-minority people are on welfare and food stamps than minority people. This strategy is one aspect of getting working, middle class people to vote against there own best interests. “Divide and Conquer.”

It is misleading to talk about middle class people making under two hundred fifty thousand dollars per year when the mean salary for working people is more like $35,000. Here you have Romney donors dropping $50,000 to attend a fundraiser when many middle class people would love to make that much in a year.

Romney is a liar and a total fraud when he appears in public. In private he is an arrogant, unapologetic, probable billionaire (if we could only see his tax returns for more than a partial year) who represents the minority of super wealthy; the oligarchy that wants to control the United States. He pays lip service to the tea party and Christian fundamentalist because they control the Republican Party.

Visit MOTHER JONES WEBSITE –  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser