Tag: Republicans

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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

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

IT’S NOT “THE ECONOMY STUPID”

Article and Photograph by J R Martin

The “economy” is where it is today because of factors that began in the Bush/Cheney administration over an eight year period causing a budget surplus to turn into a huge deficit, unemployment to rise, and involved the country in two wars. The United States  sank into a major financial depression triggered by banking industry malfeasance. In 2012 the economy is slowly healing despite the unyielding efforts of the Republican Party far right radicals, Neo-Cons and others to obstruct any policy that would help the country heal faster.

President Obama has succeeded despite this adversarial, partisan climate to not only avoid a long term depression in the US, but to also create over four million jobs, save the US auto industry, reduce unemployment and end one of the wars. His landmark achievement, a progressive bill to reform healthcare, has been totally misrepresented by the far right and then used against him.

Opponents of the Affordable Health Care Act and other accomplishments of President Obama have adhered to the propaganda axiom that recommends taking someone’s strengths and turning them against them. In recent months the radical right, the Romney campaign, Fox Fake News and Republican politicians have even tried to take the elimination of Osama Bin Laden under Presidents watch and turn it against him using alleged leaks about the mission afterward.

The attack on the President is amplified by “framing” positive accomplishments in a negative light. Of course this makes it difficult for the person being attacked to showcase his administrations accomplishments. Every trick in the book has been used to destroy not only the economy but the President himself with countless personal attacks, overt and “dog whistle” racism, not to mention demeaning rhetoric never used against a President of the United States.  The President is essentially a moderate Democrat but his adversaries try to “frame” him as “socialist” who is somehow foreign. Everyone knows the President was born in the US but the Republicans support “birther” nonsense to spin the Presidents credibility in a negative way.

Is the economy as bad as it’s made out to be?  Is the “economy” the only standard by which we judge the success of our democracy? Should we take to heart all the predictions of gloom and doom put out by economists who all have different theories of what is needed and what should be done “to turn the economy around?  The “economy” is turned around and making slow by steady progress against the head winds of partisan obstructionism. We don’t have a “do nothing congress,” we have “do nothing Republicans” stopping congress from doing anything. Now we have a presidential candidate who’s only plan is to go “back to the future” and repeat what didn’t work before? A candidate who is getting advice from Dick Cheney!

As far as the barrage of negative predictions and reporting by media pundits and bombastic radio personalities there is a self-serving tendency to stay negative in order to prove themselves right. Even when there is positive news it is spun or framed to favor their point-of-view. For example, when a “Jobs Report” comes out stating the fact that say, 250,000 new jobs were created, it is reported as ONLY 250,000 jobs were created. It could also have been reported as ” 250,000 new jobs were created, continuing the trend of new job creation each month for the past 24 months.” There is very little original thinking in the media industry. A new development reported in the New York Times, ends up being reported or misreported by Broadcast, Radio and Cable shows. The negative spin on all economic and political news is like a virus that has reached epidemic proportions.

We live in an era of instant gratification. We want everything to happen now. We are told that what took eight years to destroy should take a year or two to recreate. Progress is being intentionally held back by forces who don’t give a damn about the economy. billionaires are set for life, why would they care if the economy is bad while they achieve goals that have to do with ideology, power and control? Goals that in the long term will make them even richer.

Using all sorts of fear tactics the billionaires backing Romney have convinced a large number of people that the government is their enemy except when the billionaires candidates are in power. But the actual reality is that in every State where the Republicans gained control in 2010 they have enacted laws in which their state governments restrict the rights of citizens in many areas including the right to vote, women’s health issues and the rights of working people, especially in the public sector. They campaigned on creating jobs. In fact they have eliminated jobs, refused federal stimulus money and hampered commerce in their own states.

This upcoming Presidential election is not about the economy it is about whether the United States will remain a democracy of and by the people, with majority rule deciding issues. It’s about the middle-class surviving and flourishing or being reduced to working for minimum wages.

We voted for President Obama because the Bush/Cheney polices that favored the very rich were hurting the country. Bush/Cheney wars and tax cuts ruined the economy. Cheney’s “crony capitalism” (connections with Haliburton and the oil industry) gave billions of dollars away in government contracts which often didn’t deliver the goods as ordered.

Now we have Romney the  “vulture capitalist” who is too arrogant to release his tax returns running on a Bush/Cheney platform. In the words of Romney’s wife, “…you got all you need to know,” this after one year worth of taxes were partially released.  But it’s more than arrogance, Romney is quite possibly hiding the fact that he’s a billionaire. It’s likely that he has stretched he limits of ethical financial behavior and the tax laws. That the tax returns for certain years may well prove he has been lying about his involvement in Bain Capital from 1999 to 2002.

Moderate and Independent Americans of all persuasions have only one choice.  Give the current administration four more years and a clear majority in the house and senate. The economy will continue to improve. Employment will increase. The deficit will be reduced. College graduates will find jobs again. Teachers, firefighters, policemen and public sector workers will be able to do their work again. The war in Afghanistan will end. Our troops will come home. There will  not be another war like Iraq started in Iran. Veterans will get the kind of aid they need in all areas.  Social Security will not be destroyed. Medicare will not be turned into a voucher program. Students will not be dropped from their parents healthcare policies.

This country and working middle-class  does better when Democrats have control of the government. FDR brought the country out of a major depression, created jobs, and enacted Social Security. Under the Clinton Administration a surplus was created — there was no deficit until Bush/Cheney. President Obama has been systemically obstructed in his efforts to create jobs and move the economy by Republicans. Since 2010 the Republicans have had control of the House of Representative and have done nothing but obstruct progress. Republicans in lockstep have voted to repeal the Affordable Health Care act thirty-one times but have not created one stimulus bill for the economy.

The choice is clear move the country forward, save the American way of life or let the ultra conservative billionaires create a country with only two classes, the super rich and the poor.