Tell us why you March
The March on Washington has concluded, and we are all exhausted, but it’s imperative that we keep telling the stories, and sharing the images, and connecting the people who came from all 50 states to petition their government. After all, we all worked so hard to send the message to our elected officials: “Silent No More.”
To help document this monumental event, over the next few weeks, FreedomWorks will be putting together an online archive of the 9/12 March on Washington. However, if this project is going to be successful, we need your help!
Click here to learn how you can help.
Good night Chillin
The video on Jodi Miller led me to a good one on Gun control. And the SNL was hlarious.
Chillin: Go to Politics Daily- is Chris Matthews turning on “Obama”?
Chillin, how do you find these? That was too d— funny. I need to catch up with your sites. It has been a busy couple of days with the holiday tomorrow. But, I’ll be back on track Fri. Happy Thanksgiving! I wondered if you heard about Best Buys Sun. circular? They put in it (circular) Happy Holiday to the muslims in their lingo. To the rest of us, Shop Thanksgiving. Everybody is up in arms about it. Ya. people are getting real fed up with this s—. Boycott, maybe we can send them the way of Circuit City.
I marched for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and American values. This is beyond politics.As a young American, I am concerned with the direction our country is headed and felt , for the first time,that I must march for our values !
The it/man is a narcissist . Isn’t anyone but a few of us seeing that? Noone could behave this way or make these outrageous decisions. My fear is that enough voters won’t recognize this serious mental issue we find, my God, in our White House! I know we are building steam on our side, but is it enough? How friffin frightening is that? Chavez behind us in the socialism dept.? My fear is that too many people don’t follow what is happening and just vote party. Most of my family are die hard dems. and there is no talking to them. Class envy! What do I do?
I marched because, for once in my life, I am very terrified about the direction this administration has been taking us. Everyday they are working hard to ram different things down our throats and turning us ever closer into slaves. They are very clever how they are doing all this stuff behind our backs while lying to our faces. I want to be one person who is fighting back and others are doing the same. Washington opened my eyes to see I was nowhere close to being alone. Wow, was that ever an experience. I am so excited to know that people are awake and aware.
So True Ric!
I have never in my life been surrounded by so many God-fearing white Christians. It was wonderful.
I feel nothing but pity and sorrow for all of you “terrified” and ignorant so-called Americans. Just take a long look at your pathetic selves…can you do nothing but complain and condemn our President. Can you do nothing but blame and point, hold your hate rally’s in the guise of being a “true American?”
The ultra-conservative right is doing it’s best to play a divide and conquer game. Only thing is real unity is no game. We didn’t become a progressive (oh, I’m sorry your’re afraid of that word too) nation by game playing.
So go ahead, toast yourselves until you drown in your tea, continue to stick your heads so far down in the ground hoping and praying YOUR country returns-whatever that means. While the real Americans group together with our President and our Administration, dig in and do the real work. And guess what…YES WE CAN, with or without you. You’ll find that out when you finally pull those heads out of the sand.
Gal…..hello?
Beater?…are you there?
Jethro?
Shiner?
Post American?
We TROUNCED YOU and your Post American bleeding heart progressive entitlementistic gimme gimme ideas up here in Mass. with a resounding Brown Victory.
Prying the seat from your machine.
Where’d you all go? Hiding under the apron strings of momma? BO has forsaken you.
We told you we are here to stay and now we are coming for you and your leaders…………….
Aporn, whatta joke!
post Gitmo facility anyone?
Sure…this country has a lot of people who love the terrorists…maybe we could set it up as a resort (Rush has already named it Club Gitmo) and imprison people for the weekend so they could get a real feel…maybe build some small scale twin towers these lunatics could blow up…ROTFLMFAO@THEM….They would pey well I’m sure to be able to act out their fantasies without fear…LOL
Is Michigan still in the running? Of course the local politicians want it for jobs. Too bad the locals won’t qualify for these Fed positions. So how will that help the economy in Standish Michigan????
Well Rocky I keep tellin’ yuh – I ain’t got nuthin’ up my sleeve!
You sure can tell who here has been on the internet less than six months – or conversely, who here is a geritric old fart in waiting. Buddy, all that ‘ROFL’ stuff has been out of style since about 2006. Keep up.
Well I have some paying work to do…gotta’ feed the trolls..LOL…The jobless parasitic trolls on this forum…Thought I better make that more clear for you Dumbasses…LOl
I thought I told you to shut the fuck up and go jerk off into your white hood.
Really? Since all the way back to 2006…You must be like 12 if you think 06 was a long time ago…now shouldn’t you be in school getting your brain washed…LOL
BTW it still seems to bother you as you try to act superior…it’s your envy that is talking…envy like hate is a wasted emotion…work on that a little….you easy
Thank you Canuck for vast experience with life. LMFAO
CONSERVATIVE ALERT
CONSERVATIVE ALERT
THIS IS A CONSERVATIVE ALERT. CONSERVATIVES HAVE BEEN SEEN IN THIS AREA. WE ADVISE THE PUBLIC TO REMAIN CALM, AS CONSERVATIVES CAN BE ANNOYING AS HELL. AND THEY DON’T GET THAT.
THIS HAS BEEN A CONSERVATIVE ALERT
THIS HAS BEEN A CONSERVATIVE ALERT
I’m amazed that someone – anyone, really – trusts you sufficiently to provide you gainful employment. I’d just assumed the most that could be expected of your sort would be finger-painting or macaroni sculptures.
LOL
nice
Tell someone who cares…LOL
I trust me therefore others trust me…I’m not full of self doubt so I don’t have to overcompensate….LOL
Buddy, I am superior – in every way that counts. Figures that someone with as poor a sense of the world around them would project their own deep-seated inadequacies on those who aren’t… how to put this politely…? those who aren’t effectively handicapped.
If you think three years ago is yesterday, you’re older than you like to pretend buddy. It’s the perview of the aged to see time fly by.
You are a superior idiot. That’s all.
There you go bragging again. Feeling a wee bit insecure little man?
I think we all know how little you care. I wonder whether you care enough about anyone other than yourself that you take the time to wipe your ass after using the bog in the morning… or do you prefer to sniff your fingers between breakie and lunch?
They really get in a hizzy when you find their button…LOL
CC, I’m very happy for you. Since you are such a stuped…I’m sorry, I mean stupendous human being you should have no fears..no matter what happens I’m sure you’ll rise to the top…So why do you try to bother us insignificant people…we don’t cost you anything….hey, wait a minute….are you a union thug?..LOL
That’s why you are so afraid, you need our money…hmmm….sorry to dissapoint, I do look for the union label so I don’t purchase union items and I’m spreadin’ the word baby….buncha’ socialist pussies…LOL… Beating up that little black dude…3 of you big boys…shame on you…pussy…LMFAO@U
Spoken like the inferior idiot you refuse to admit to being. Well done, brainiac.
*applauds*
I have my own business so I don’t have breakie and take lunch when I have time ….I was right on the lower post…you are a union pussy..LMFAO@U
Stop with that language young man or you’ll be written up….union pussy…LOL
Yer relli smarrt…yuo msut reed a lotsa’ boook wen yuo r on breakie…union pussy..LOL
Anybody know what the hell a bog is….as far as I know it’s swampland….is that a nickname for a shared bathroom in Canada?…Ya’ll still aren’t up to speed on that plumbing thing?…Dumbass union pussy
Unions, yeah that’s your fallback position. Tell me, have they installed indoor plumbing in your village yet, or do you still have to take dumps out your windows?
thank you…”bows graciously”…asshole…union pussy…lol
Posts are getting a little out of order here so I’ll post once more…
Folks, this one is borderline suicidal, should we send it over the edge or let it go? Talk to ya’ll this evening…great things happening
You wouldn’t know what “grace” was if it didn’t precede a bag full of grease burgers around your house.
Borderline homicidal is probably more apt, but let’s work with your dumb assumption. It’s people like you that incite others to wearing suicide vests in crowded shopping centers.
God you’re retarded. “Breakie” is breakfast, you addle-pated American yobbo.
Go eat some smarties and don’t get so wee weed up, you may need that wonderful health care you get. chill man.
Like we give a rats A$$.
Sorry Dude, I don’t speak Cannuck and since this site is all USA you must speak US english when visiting, Thank you..
I have nothing to feel insecure about – unlike you, Connie B., who copy/pasted an outright myth about Stanford University right on this very page. You’re entirely justified in your own myriad insecurities.
Not half as insecure as I’d feel if I was in the habit of trying to pass off a willful lie as stated truth. Connie, you’re the lowest of the low – d’you truly understand that?
And it’s too bad you Yanks can’t buy any Smarties yourselves, though I can’t help but think it’d be all for naught, seeing as you’re thick as bricks down your way.
Hey, that sounds like a threat…you better go take your meds….LOL@UR Dumbass….
I believe you do…does the Canadian plan cover mental issues?…
GOOGLE Dumbass
Wow is that all you can complain about? You still think that fish are more important than humans? That we should protect fish and fowl to protect the earth and let humans starve?
S’funny, I just tried Googling “Dumbass” and I got this page right off the top:
http://912dc.org/2009/09/tell-us-why-you-march/
Like you can spell. Jingoistic moron.
hey all sorry i haven’t been around lately.
Still debating the fools? good!
I’m shocked to learn that all republicans want people to “Die Quickly”
i thought slowly would be more evil….
Cap you need to chill, seriously man, we can’t control what is happening…A major crash will probably occur and you should spend some time getting prepared…If you think your union brothers are going to help you you’re sadly mistaken…just settle down a little man…It’ll be okay
Think Michigan is out of luck as O’Bama has no one there he needs to pay off…Detroit would be perfect though since they’re going to bulldoze half the city anyway..
If by ‘fools’, you mean ‘your betters’, then yes. Oh and by the way, R.W. wants to confess his undying horniness to you. Or was that his mother? I get all you inbred lunatic Americans mixed up, you see.
Again with this ‘union’ bulldada. Oh how you duck and you weave but you can’t ever remain on target. Oh well, I guess that’s what the onset of dementia is like, eh? Too bad you’re an American. Better die quickly – !
M & M’s are much better than smarties.
Who is Captain Cannuck? do I know you? why are you saying all those mean thi…Oh yeah it’s coming back to me now…I have these moments….
I have a theory about Canada and how it came to be….The sailors drank too much on the way to the new continent and missed their mark by about 500 miles. They were so tired and hungover from the voyage that they just stopped. Too lazy to push on to the south….
I was in Toronto in January of 1980…it was the coldest damn place I’ve ever been in my life…Why in the hell anyone would live there is beyond me…And Toronto is not that far up there…oh well to each his own
If you prefer processed sugars and red dye #2 to milk chocolate, maybe.
Hey, Hey, Hey…speak US english if you want to play or we’re going to take our website and go home….Damn I’m glad I was born in the USA….Thanks God…
Except it’s not “to each their own”, is it R.W.?
It’s to YOUR own, as often as Goddamn possible. Lemme tell you, there’s a lot of reasons why America’s name is mud across the planet – and not just in your generic third world mud-holes, either. Nobody likes you people – and it’s assholes like the teabags and the birthers that make the world hate you and want to see you tear each other limb from limb.
US english is inferior.
me too glad I was born in the USA
We’de all have to go to Windsor. Oh no, Canada, they don’t want us unless it’s to gamble.
Suckee me dickee, oh most honorable sir.
Suits me fine Connie. All anyone wants from an American is their cash, then to have them fuck off immediately thereafter so we can all laugh at them behind their backs.
Yeah, ‘bog’. It’s something I don’t think you’d understand, it’s kinda magical, and it allows you to perform an ablution whilst remaining indoors. What with it being so damnably hot down your way, I’m sure you just piss and shit out your windows, so never mind.
What the fuck are you confused about now, you slack-jawed bitch?
I beg to differ…I have some good friends in Costa Rica and they really like most US gringos…however they say Canadians are cheap, don’t tip, treat them like servants…you know generally act superior…I just laugh and tell them it’s their insecurities making them that way…They say most Europeans are the same….We all have the same DNA so tell me why we have created so much more than any other country…it’s called freedom you Dumbasses and that’s why socialism will not work here…we will fight it physically if need be….if that fuc&s up your little neck of the woods, tough shit…find some independence you freakin’ pussies…damn lazy people bother me more than the insane ones…LMFAO@ them……
Al Franken is going to lose his seat because of voter fraud…maybe..let’s hope Stuart Smalley has to leave Washington
I piss off the back deck sometimes, but I always use the toilet to take a Captain Canuck…LOL
Key phrase there shitbag is “behind their backs” you sneaky backstabbing union pussy boy lazy asshole…G’night now Skippy…See you in the AM if you’re still around… You Shithead…LOL
Message to all.
Look up to the top of this page.
He’ll have a new name by then. Obviously he has no clue to what we’ve been upset about when he doesn’t realize that the water in central valley CA was shut off to protect a fish. That’s how the True far left radicals operate. They don’t care about the poor farmers or migrant workers or people who need the land to survive by growing food for the rest of the country and Canada. These far leftist are so concerned with a stupid little fish. In the meantime people have a 40% unemployment rate and the guvmint is shipping in carrots from China. Is that not one of the most STOOOOPIDist things we have seen them do?
Maybe if he comes back he would like to work on a project about Canada’s immigration problem. Who knows maybe that is how he got into Canada. The motels in outlying Toronto are so full of immigrants that the Government pays to house out there. He should ask some of the motel owners about how their property is treated.
The part of immigration that I absolutely hate is when people claw and struggle to get here for the freedoms ony to want and change our culture. Women in burkas who want a drivers license but refuse to remove it for a picture. Hello, they all loook the same with those things covering 80% of their heads.
Learn the language, stop forcing your ways on us. Little Iraq (Dearborn) in suburban Detroit has to listen to the call to prayer throughout the city but we can’t have crosses in our cemetaries. Amazing thing about Dearborn is that 50years ago the mayor did everything he could to keep Blacks out and now it is all arab. Things are just so screwed up and now we have Canadians trying to tell us what is wrong with us. Look in you own back yards ya loons.
You are right, my post above is one of the reason my husband and I marched. We also marched for the
following:
We The People want our Government to protect our Constitution and in addition:
To be accountable
To be responsible
To put the citizens before their own selfish needs
To stop the corruption
To stop the excessive spending
To leave our health insurance alone and legislate true insurance reform so people can BUY their own.
Tighten our borders on immigration and protect our laws on immigration
Become less energy dependent on our enemies.
Drill offshore and in Alaska. Alaska is big enough to handle it.
We want out media to be accountable for accurate reporting
Equal justice for all especially elected officials in ALL parties.
Stop government social programs that drain our budget and add to the enormous deficit.
Stop funding corrupt organizations and if there is evidence of corruption INVESTIGATE it.
Get rid of the radical leftist “Special Advisors” who have billion dollar budgets of our money to spend.
Start using common sense on matters of global warming and the environment.
Stop putting value of animals, vegetiation, fish and fowl above HUMAN life.
That’s just a start
I think it’s getting quite rediculous around here lately.
It’s funny ’cause you’re all Americans.
I agree with those things, but above all else, we need to drastically cut back the size of our government. I want a freeze on ALL spending (excluding defence). That’s a start…
That is very good Connie…Can I use that to circulate on the internet?
http://www.operationcanyouhearusnow.com/
No Crosses in your cemetaries? If I were there I believe I’d find some like minded people to build small crosses(to keep the cost down) and place them all over the city including public property ( did you notice I did not say “city” property…It’s time to fight back and protest the Islamofascists into Canada…they seem to like them….How do you feel about ignoring the trolls Connie? I think it is a good idea…let’s give it a try…IGNORE NOW…that’s what we’ll do when we clean this mess up…might as well start now..LOL
Here is a link to Congressman Paul Ryans site which contains the Republican alternative to goverment takeover of the health care system….I have not made it through it yet, but will this evening…I just wanted to get it out there…The Left stream media will not publish it and Pelosi and crew keep saying the repubs have no plan…Well, they do and I guess we’ll have to use the web to get it out there…Check it out and send it on folks…Pawlenty said he is going to push to make it public, but you know what the LSM will do to it…let’s do it ourselves..Send it on!!!
http://www.house.gov/ryan/
FAIL
You mean the “die quickly” plan.
The monumental failure of the Obama in Copenhagen may be a harbinger of his future efforts.
The White House and the Chicago cronies are reeling in the tears. Valerie Jarrett won’t see her slum house windfall.
Testing?
October 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Wizard of Beck
By DAVID BROOKS
Let us take a trip back into history. Not ancient history. Recent history. It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They’re weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
Yet somehow, despite the fervor of the great microphone giants, the Thompson campaign flops like a fish. Despite the schoolgirl delight from the radio studios, the Romney campaign underperforms.
Meanwhile, Huckabee surges. Limbaugh attacks him, but social conservatives flock.
Along comes New Hampshire and McCain wins! Republican voters have not heeded their masters in the media. Before long, South Carolina looms as the crucial point of the race. The contest is effectively between Romney and McCain. The talk jocks are now in spittle-flecked furor. Day after day, whole programs are dedicated to hurling abuse at McCain and everybody ever associated with him. The jocks are threatening to unleash their angry millions.
Yet the imaginary armies do not materialize. McCain wins the South Carolina primary and goes on to win the nomination. The talk jocks can’t even deliver the conservative voters who show up at Republican primaries. They can’t even deliver South Carolina!
So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.
But, of course, we shouldn’t be surprised by this story. Over the past few years the talk jocks have demonstrated their real-world weakness time and again. Back in 2006, they threatened to build a new majority on anti-immigration fervor. Republicans like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, both of Arizona, built their House election campaigns under that banner. But these two didn’t march to glory. Both lost their campaigns.
In 2008, after McCain had won his nomination, Limbaugh turned his attention to the Democratic race. He commanded his followers to vote in the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton because “we need Barack Obama bloodied up politically.” Todd Donovan of Western Washington University has looked at data from 38 states and could find no strong evidence that significant numbers of people actually did what Limbaugh commanded. Rush blared the trumpets, but few of his Dittoheads advanced.
Over the years, I have asked many politicians what happens when Limbaugh and his colleagues attack. The story is always the same. Hundreds of calls come in. The receptionists are miserable. But the numbers back home do not move. There is no effect on the favorability rating or the re-election prospects. In the media world, he is a giant. In the real world, he’s not.
But this is not merely a story of weakness. It is a story of resilience. For no matter how often their hollowness is exposed, the jocks still reweave the myth of their own power. They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. They are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the G.O.P. They are enabled by lazy pundits who find it easier to argue with showmen than with people whose opinions are based on knowledge. They are enabled by the slightly educated snobs who believe that Glenn Beck really is the voice of Middle America.
So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.
They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.
The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.
No sure if this reply will connect to Marksman re: Olympics but I’ll try anyway.
For a week now I’ve been trying to get that little song by the kids out of my head. mm mmm mmmm You know the one. Well today I reworded it.
Barak Hussein Obama
mmm mmm mmm
Took his plane to Denmark and laid a golden egg
mmm mmmmmm mmmm
Now I don’t mind it as it isn’t as offensive as “equal in his eyes” mm mm mmm
Marksman, repying to your Olympics post…
I think something is rotten in Denmark…LOL
This admin has nothing but failure to this point….Did you hear the end of his speech and see the look on his face as he walked away from the podium after losing the bid…..I don’t think he likes his job anymore…LOL …He is going to have to deal immediately with Afghanistan….he just can’t put the blame anywhere else on this one or pick someone to do it for him…He will have to make the first decision of his presidency that he be held completely accountable for and I think that scares him…..Sad
Yaaaaaaaaawwwwn. Can you say 2010? Real change is coming.
freespeecher, you make good points. The GOP still lost with all their help.
And, like you, I totally agree that with all of the conservative jock’s help, they still can’t compete with ACORN’s voter fraud. Booyaaa!
The Repubs really screwed up the primary….anyone other than McCain could have won….I think we need to see some changes in the primary process…at the very minimum we should have no cross party voting….and idealy I think all 50 states should have their primary on the same day…..I really don’t like the choices the left stream media gives us…..
Here’s a little insight into conservatives, conservatism and talk radio — we don’t care what David Brooks has to say. He is irrelevant. He is incoherent. And you guys should rely less on The New York Times. Its circulation is plummeting for a reason.
No, the “Die Slowly” plan, currently practiced by the Canadians.
No, the “Die Slowly” plan, currently practiced by the Canadians.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, SEPTEMBER 2009
Manipulating the Public Agenda:
Why Acorn was in the News and What the News Got Wrong
http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/acornstudy/acornstudy.pdf
CONSERVATIVE ALERT
CONSERVATIVE ALERT
THIS IS A CONSERVATIVE ALERT. THERE ARE CONSERVATIVES CURRENTLY IN THIS VICINITY. DO NOT BE ALARMED. DO NOT BE ALARMED. THEY ARE SLOW TO GRASP REALITY, AND ARE EASILY DUPED BY OLD MEN IN SUITS. AGAIN, DO NOT BE ALARMED. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO LURE THEM AWAY WITH PROMISES OF FREE BUFFET DINNER COUPONS.
THIS HAS BEEN A CONSERVATIVE ALERT
THIS HAS BEEN A CONSERVATIVE ALERT
Manipulating the Public Agenda:
Why Acorn was in the News and What the News Got Wrong
http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/acornstudy/acornstudy.pdf
My pleasure, just don’t copy and paste my name. LOL
That reply was for you R W Extreme.
Could you repost that after it’s been edited….it’s incoherent in it’s present form…Thanks
I got ya’ Connie, no names I promise…Thanks, Tim
Repost request was for Shine….wish the site was working right….
Some you can reply to and others drop Did you watch Beck tonight? This grandma signed up.
The election process is way too long as it is now…wastes a lot of money and by the time the primaries are over the populace is sick of politicians and talking heads….
No I didn’t, I just got in about 15 minutes before my first post….a long day today and the only breakie I had was lunch…had to check in then too..lol …I’m addicted to politics and what is happening right now with the people finally standing up to the BS spewed out of DC…..It’s something I’ve been waiting for all my adult life…..Exciting time to be alive, even though it sucks financially right now, real change is going to come…It’s nice to see some repubs showing some cajones…remember to call and thank the ones that show courage and conservatism, word will get around among the others…maybe even some Dems….LOL
Another reason we Marched
Support our Troops with adequate care, less red tape and better insurance benefits.
Fair taxes
Term Limits
Tort Reform on liability
No Public option on health care
Fund Social Security and leave medicare alone.
Maintain our personal privacy and freedom of choice on health care
Protect parental rights
Yeah we’re watching our for our Representative. The dems really want his seat and he’s voted down Stimulus, cap and tax. He did vote for clunkers but I believe it was because auto manuf are so big in this area. Beck continued his show about the moms who marched and had three mom on who have started websites and talk about a million mom walk. He’s really gotten the mothers motivated and fired up about this. I haven’t listed it here as I figure the you know what’s will start making trouble about it right away.
I think my wife is signing up…Think I’ll join her…union thugs and other nutz might show up to try to intimidate the fine ladies in the march….
Good, men can sign up as Mr. Mom’s. Equal opportunity and all. LOL
They can’t fund social security….that’s another failed program thanks to the theives in DC…the Fair tax is the only way to fix social security….I know I mention it a lot, but if you read the Harvard study about the Fair Tax you’ll see how much sense it makes…We wouldn’t have to keep such a close eye on these clowns after it passes..which is a good thing because a couple of generations is all it took to forget about Jimmy Cahtah….Of course we didn’t have Fox News back then so there were not many of the bad things covered in the press…LOL, I guess he probably did me a favor as the unemployment rate was 18% and I was just entering the job market ….I didn’t work for someone else for long, I got my own gig goin’….Thanks Mr. Cahtah…LOL
CONSERVATIVE ALERT
CONSERVATIVE ALERT
THIS IS A CONSERVATIVE ALERT. THERE ARE CONSERVATIVES CURRENTLY IN THIS VICINITY. DO NOT BE ALARMED. DO NOT BE ALARMED. THEY ARE MOSTLY STUPID, AND POSE LESS OF A THREAT WHEN
PUBLICLY LAUGHED AT. AGAIN, DO NOT BE ALARMED. MANY OF THEM ARE FAT, OLD AND BALDING. WE EXPECT THEM TO DISPERSE AT OR AROUND THE TIME OF THE NEXT GLENN BECK PROGRAM.
THIS HAS BEEN A CONSERVATIVE ALERT
THIS HAS BEEN A CONSERVATIVE ALERT
Cool…Connie..I like that…LOL
I can see the T-Shirts now……Mr. Mom Security….We shouldn’t need more than a couple dozen……
Why do conservatives target Acorn and ignore others?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#33064799
Why don’t you or your handlers ever go after any of these organizations?
http://www.contractormisconduct.org/
Why is the president’s star fading?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6859031.ece
I think you are right. He finally realizes that he can fail and it will be historical.
For the record, his first decision was closing Gitmo, which is already a failure, although quiet.
The IOC decision was global smack down!
A gold medal for Obamalympic-hating media conservatives
It isn’t every day that the conservative media — America’s self-appointed protectors of patriotism — illustrate their true priorities so clearly. But on Friday, they did just that. Here it is, in a nutshell: America lost, and the right-wing noise machine cheered.
The announcement that President Obama planned to fly to Copenhagen to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics was immediately denounced by the conservative media. After months of falsely accusing Obama of apologizing for America on the world stage — even blatantly cropping the president’s words to make the point — you would think that right-wing media figures would have applauded a voyage with the explicit goal of praising the United States. Think again — not when there are political points to score.
“Chicago is good at … organized Mafi– oops, did I say that out loud?” Fox News’ Glenn Beck quipped on Thursday. Malkin was even more vitriolic, stating Obama’s trip was nothing more than a taxpayer-funded junket designed to secure paybacks for Obama’s hometown “cronies.”
And that was just the beginning. Hannity claimed that Obama was “more concerned about bringing the Olympics to Chicago than winning the war in Afghanistan.” The Washington Examiner’s Byron York and The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes attacked Obama’s priorities, with Hayes adding, “the optics of it at the very least are terrible.” Fox News’ Bret Baier brought up the “carbon footprint” of the Air Force One trip, and the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell claimed that Obama’s venture was “evidence that [Obama] just cannot stay away from the klieg lights.” Fox News’ Gretchen Carlson suggested the trip was inappropriate, and both she and her colleague Steve Doocy said that it was against U.S. tradition to “send our president out as a salesman like this.” “Have you been to Rio?” asked columnist S.E. Cupp on Fox News, swelling with national pride. “I have. It’s awesome.”
Even more abysmal was the right’s exploitation of a recently released video depicting the brutal murder of a teenage Chicagoan at the hands of gang members. “Is this a city where we want the Olympics taking place?” Hannity asked. “OLYMPIC SPIRIT: VIDEO SHOWS BRUTAL GANG MURDER IN CHICAGO” the Drudge Report blared. “Community organizing has not stopped Chicago’s teen violence epidemic,” Malkin added.
Then on Friday, the International Olympic Committee eliminated Chicago from the running — and the rejoicing began.
“Oh, it’s so sweet,” said Beck live on the radio. “Enjoy this — savor this moment.” “[T]he IOC just says ‘no’ to Chicago!” cheered Lou Dobbs’ webpage, reprinting the latest headline topping Drudge: “The Ego Has Landed.” “I don’t deny it,” said Limbaugh, “I’m happy.” Erick Erickson, managing editor of the conservative blog RedState.com, was perhaps the most mature of the conservative revelers, summing up his feelings by writing, “Hahahahaha.”
No, it’s not every week that we get such a clear indication of just what “patriotism” really means to those in the conservative media — and it doesn’t have anything to do with putting country first.
The complete and utter defeat in Copenhagen is a wake up call to all Obots. The messiah is false. His handlers are inept. The apology tour has bit him in the ass.
FOX-TV CHICAGO ORDERED NOT TO RUN ANTI-OLYMPICS STORY
Sun Sep 27 2009 21:56:11 ET
A local TV station that reported on Chicagoans NOT wanting the Olympics has been told NOT to run the report again, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT!
The Chicago Olympic Committee told FOX Chicago that its broadcast “would harm Chicago’s chances” to be awarded the games.
The station’s news director ordered staff to hold fire after the report aired once last Thursday morning, claims a source.
Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and Rio are mounting strong bids for the honor to host in 2016.
The International Olympic Committee makes its decision on Friday. President Obama will lead the in-person push.
Developing…
FOX VIDEO: ‘Chicagoans for Rio’: Not Everyone in Illinois Wants the 2016 Olympics
http://www.breitbart.tv/chicagoans-for-rio-not-everyone-in-illinois-wants-the-2016-olympics/
Apparently, conservatives are not the only ones cheering the Obama Olympic fiasco.
As reported earlier this week:
No Games Chicago’s Tom Tresser is begging Chicago residents to turn out Tuesday at City Hall for what he is hoping will be a mass demonstration against hosting the 2016 Games.
Tresser is hoping to get the attention of the International Olympic Committee in advance of Friday’s vote.
“Tax payers are already on the hook for $250 million dollars and the Games haven’t even started yet,” says Tresser.
Recent polls show as many as 84% of Chicagoans are against having to finance any part of The Olympics.
Some of Chicago’s under-developed communities are left out of the plans, leaving residents of these areas feeling less than positive about the Games. Even residents of lower-income neighborhoods included in the 2016 plans are opposed, stating events won’t help the communities. Some even call the plans racists.
Tresser is asking for help so that he can travel to Copenhagen and air the grievances of the group.
The other day, someone at a store in our town read that a methamphetamine lab had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county and he asked me a rhetorical question, “Why didn’t we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?”
I replied: I had a drug problem when I was young: I was drug to church on Sunday morning, I was drug to church for weddings and funerals. I was drug to family reunions and community socials no matter the weather.
I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the preacher, or if I didn’t put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me.
I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if I uttered a profanity. I was drug out to pull weeds in mom’s garden and flowerbeds and cockleburs out of dad’s fields. I was drug to the homes of family, friends, and neighbors to help out some poor soul who had no one to mow the yard, repair the clothesline, or chop some firewood, and. if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for this kindness, she would have drug me back to the woodshed.
Those drugs are still in my veins and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say or think. They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin and, if today’s children had this kind of drug problem, the world would be a better place.
God bless the parents who drugged us.
So true, those were much better days and the younguns think so little of growing up with true values.
Since this board is intended to allow people to relate why they marched, do ya’ll think we should join another forum where ideas can be discussed…That way the 9/12 folks won’t have so many posts to go through to find the stories they are looking for…..Any suggestions as to a site?…or just your thoughts on this..
It’s getting frustrating the way the posts are being randomly dropped in….
Media Matters: Right-wing media lynch mob gay-baits White House, facts be damned
For the better part of a week, conservatives in the media have been on a witch hunt for Kevin Jennings, the director of the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Led by Fox News, the right-wing media have claimed that 21 years ago, when Jennings was a 24-year-old teacher at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, he “cover[ed] up statutory rape” by not reporting to authorities a conversation he had with a student who told him about being involved with an “older man.”
The attacks on Jennings, the latest Obama administration official in the right’s crosshairs, have been disgusting, misleading, baseless, and at times pointedly anti-gay.
WorldNetDaily’s Erik Rush called Jennings a “radical homosexual druggie.” The conservative Washington Times contended in an editorial that “Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools.” Right-wing radio’s big kahuna, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News’ Sean Hannity both claimed that Jennings supported promoting homosexuality in the schools, while conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote that Jennings was a “controversial homosexual rights’ advocate” who founded a “controversial” organization that “aggressively pushes sexually explicit” books.
The controversial organization of which Malkin speaks? GLSEN — the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network — which, according to the organization’s website, is “the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students. … GLSEN envisions a world in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.”
In addition to the right’s attacks aimed at Jennings’ sexual orientation, conservative media outlets sought to paint Jennings as complicit in covering up a crime — specifically “statutory rape.” A Washington Times editorial accused Jennings of “encourag[ing]” a relationship that amounted to “statutory rape.” Led by Hannity, Fox News also baselessly claimed that Jennings “cover[ed] up statutory rape” and violated Massachusetts law by not reporting to authorities his 1988 conversation with the student. Limbaugh took things a step further, claiming that Jennings had “encouraged” and “facilitated” a sexual relationship between the student and an adult. Fox News’ Bill Hemmer continued the conservative network’s attacks on Jennings by claiming that Jennings knew of a “statutory rape” case involving a student but “never reported it.” MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan went even further, asking if Jennings had “a sense of solidarity with the man, rather than with the kid.” Seriously.
The conservative media made it abundantly clear that facts wouldn’t get in the way of their latest line of attack on the Obama administration. In a 2004 letter, Jennings’ attorney wrote that the student was 16 years old at the time of the incident, which is, and was at the time, the legal age of consent in Massachusetts.
Additionally, Media Matters exclusively confirmed the former student’s age was 16 at the time of his conversation with Jennings, posting a redacted copy of his current driver’s license, his Facebook message exchange with a FoxNews.com writer in which he said as much, and his statement on the matter.
If you’ve ever wondered what kind of folks regularly participate in polls sponsored by FoxNews.com, the answer is here. It’s two kinds of people: those who are comfortable forming a strong opinion on a subject before the facts are in, and people who get all of their news from Fox News. Ninety-eight percent of respondents to a FoxNews.com poll this week said that Jennings should resign due to his “actions” and “questionable past and experience.” I wonder where they could have gotten that idea. (After all, self-righteous indignation is what Sean Hannity does best.)
But don’t hold your breath hoping for any consistency from Hannity. After The Washington Times established a completely false equivalency between Jennings and former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) (who, if you’ll recall, personally pursued young congressional pages), Media Matters went back and checked the record. It turns out that in 2006, while Dennis Hastert was on his way to being criticized by the House Ethics Committee for his failure to stop Foley’s actions, Hannity and his Fox News cohorts were among the then-speaker’s staunchest defenders. “The only thing that Hastert knew about was that there was an e-mail,” Hannity said at the time. “[I]’s always easy to say what [Hastert] should’ve done,” Brit Hume said, “but when you start thinking about the things he could’ve done, there’s not much there.” “I think there’s no evidence that Hastert did anything wrong, in my view,” said Bill Kristol. “Hastert’s position is completely defensible,” said Mort Kondracke. “Hastert’s you know, being witch hunted down,” stated Bill O’Reilly.
When it comes to media conservatives, integrity may be dead, but irony certainly is not.
Lost in these right-wing caricatures of Jennings is the simple fact that education officials and others have spoken highly of the Obama administration official, who has received numerous awards and was an appointee of former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican.
With this, the latest conservative media witch hunt debunked and put to bed, the timer starts anew. When will the next witch hunt begin? Who’s next on the list?
I’m game but don’t have a clue where 9/12 project? Any suggestions
Just Chillin
October 3, 2009 • 11:19 am
Since this board is intended to allow people to relate why they marched, do ya’ll think we should join another forum where ideas can be discussed…That way the 9/12 folks won’t have so many posts to go through to find the stories they are looking for…..Any suggestions as to a site?…or just your thoughts on this..
I think I’ve found a spot if you don’t mind being with a bunch of women. There is a group for Dad’s within the group that was on Glenn Beck last night. Do you know it or should I put it here? It’s awesome how it is growing and men I’m sure would be welcome in the Dad group. The enthusiasm and ideas bouncing around is amazing. Plan is for a march but they are having a problem setting up a date (Parks service isn’t cooperating) so in person visit is necessary. According to one post Freedom Works is planning another one next Sept just in time for elections. I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it.
Thanks for the suggestion Connie, but I’m not really into joining a group for Dads. Maybe if you put it here I could see for myself, but I’m more of a bachelor at heart you see. Now I wouldn’t mind being with a bunch of women (if you catch my drift), but I think I’ll take a pass on joining the Dad group for now.
Hopefully, someone can find a conservative blog with a moderator to filter out the Jekyl and Hyde VM BS.
Has anyone visited a lib/prog blog for a little fair game?
Hey Connie, I’m sure you know that wasn’t me…lol…I’ll check Glen’s site for a link in the a.m. ….Watching some football at my son’s house right now……Don’t mind being around a bunch of women at all unless they’re lefty man/wimen…LOL What names will everyone be using…mine will be this one
Not yet Marksman, but I’m going to…Most of them make you sign in so remember you can use any name with a yahoo email, every city has a Main Street…just make sure the zip you use matches the town or city…..pick a town small enough to have one zip code….I’m going to enjoy screwing with them….you know we’ll be much better at it they are…LOL…
You know all those European countries with their national health care systems? Did you ever wonder how they pay for it? Check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_of_Europe
Sermon from a church in Virginia recently.
Good morning, brothers and sisters; it’s always a delight to see the pews crowded on Sunday morning, and so eager to get into God’s Word. Turn with me in your Bibles, if you will, to the 47th chapter of Genesis; we’ll begin our reading at verse 13, and go through verse 27.
Genesis 47:13-27 (English Standard Version)
Joseph and the Famine
13 Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe, so that the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished by reason of the famine. 14 And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, in exchange for the grain that they bought. And Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house. 15 And when the money was all spent in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? For our money is gone.” 16 And Joseph answered, “Give your livestock, and I will give you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money is gone.” 17 So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds, and the donkeys. He supplied them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year. 18 And when that year was ended, they came to him the following year and said to him, “We will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent. The herds of livestock are my lord’s. There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land. 19 Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh. And give us seed that we may live and not die, and that the land may not be desolate.”
20 So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe on them. The land became Pharaoh’s. 21 As for the people, he made servants of them[a] from one end of Egypt to the other. 22 Only the land of the priests he did not buy, for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land.
23 Then Joseph said to the people, “Behold, I have this day bought you and your land for Pharaoh. Now here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land. 24 And at the harvests you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field and as food for yourselves and your households, and as food for your little ones.” 25 And they said, “You have saved our lives;(F) may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh.” 26 So Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt, and it stands to this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth; the land of the priests alone did not become Pharaoh’s.
27 Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen.(I) And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly.
So we see that economic hard times fell upon Egypt , and the people turned to the government of Pharaoh to deal with this for them. And Pharaoh nationalized the grain harvest, and placed the grain in great storehouses that he had built. So the people brought their money to Pharaoh, like a great tax increase, and gave it all to him willingly in return for grain. And this went on until their money ran out, and they were hungry again.
So when they went to Pharaoh after that, they brought their livestock – their cattle, their horses, their sheep, and their donkey – to barter for grain, and verse 17 says that only took them through the end of that year.
But the famine wasn’t over, was it?
So the next year, the people came before Pharaoh and admitted they had nothing left, except their land and their own lives. “There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh.” So they surrendered their homes, their land, and their real estate to Pharaoh’s government, and then sold themselves into slavery to him, in return for grain.
What can we learn from this, brothers and sisters?
That turning to the government instead of to God to be our provider in hard times only leads to slavery? Yes. That the only reason government wants to be our provider is to also become our master? Yes.
But look how that passage ends, brothers and sisters! Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt , in the land of Goshen . And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly.” God provided for His people, just as He always has! They didn’t end up giving all their possessions to the government, no, it says they gained possessions!
But I also tell you a great truth today, and an ominous one. We see the same thing happening today – the government today wants to “share the wealth” once again, to take it from us and redistribute it back to us. It wants to take control of healthcare, just as it has taken control of education, and ration it back to us, and when government rations it, then government decides who gets it, and how much, and what kind.
And if we go along with it, and do it willingly, then we will wind up no differently than the people of Egypt did four thousand years ago – as slaves to the government, and as slaves to our leaders.
What Mr. Obama’s government is doing now is no different from what Pharaoh’s government did then, and it will end the same.. And a lot of people like to call Mr. Obama a “Messiah,” don’t they? Is he a Messiah? A savior? Didn’t the Egyptians say, after Pharaoh made them his slaves, “You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh”?
Well, I tell you this – I know the Messiah; the Messiah is a friend of mine; and Mr. Obama is no Messiah! No, brothers and sisters, if Mr. Obama is a character from the Bible, then he is Pharaoh.
Bow with me in prayer, if you will.
Lord, You alone are worthy to be served, and we rely on You, and You alone. We confess that the government is not our deliverer, and never rightly will be. We read in the eighth chapter of 1 Samuel, when Samuel warned the people of what a ruler would do, where it says “And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.” And Lord, we acknowledge that day has come. We cry out to you because of the ruler that we have chosen for ourselves as a nation..Lord, we pray for this nation. We pray for revival, and we pray for deliverance from those who would be our masters.
Give us hearts to seek You and hands to serve You, and protect Your people from the atrocities of Pharaoh’s government.
In God we Trust.
united kingdom: 20% (basic), 40% (above (£34,800 + personal allowance))
^ and for that, you get to give birth on the sidewalk outside the hospital.
Very nice…..
Stu blog on Glen Beck’s site is where I’m going…see ya’ll there…See you loonies there too I’m sure…LOL
Jc…why don’t you join me at http://asamom.ning.com/
Which blog? I don’t see current activity.
They want your full name there…I don’t like to give my name on these sites….Too many crazies on these sites….LOL
The Politics of Spite
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 4, 2009
There was what President Obama likes to call a teachable moment last week, when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago’s bid to be host of the 2016 Summer Games.
“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.
So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.
But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.
To be sure, while celebrating America’s rebuff by the Olympic Committee was puerile, it didn’t do any real harm. But the same principle of spite has determined Republican positions on more serious matters, with potentially serious consequences — in particular, in the debate over health care reform.
Now, it’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage — just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.
But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk.
The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.
Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan — and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending — growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs.
But the Obama administration’s plan to expand coverage relies in part on savings from Medicare. And since the G.O.P. opposes anything that might be good for Mr. Obama, it has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.
How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?
The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.
Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.
The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.
The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.
It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.
What’s wrong with using your name?
That kind of hesitation reminds me of the libs that cover thir faces with masks as they protest.
No, the point is that we conservatives are glad that he lost in his bid to SPEND MORE MONEY!
Winning the Olympics would have cost us taxpayers billions of dollars to prepare for… F-THAT!
We have more important things to worry about.
Why have they not saved on waste and fraud already if it’s so easy? You people don’t think independently at all do you?…LOL..amazing
Argh, i hate when the reply finction doesn’t work
Not only all the money to prepare for the Olympics….what about the “carbon footprint” (hoax) created every four years to stage the Olympics….LOL…Hypocrites
Too many wackos on the left evette…All the left wing sites want you to give name, address, phone….Why?…I never trust or do business with scared people…they’ll stab you in the back in a heartbeat….big brother is everywhere…I’m not paranoid, but I do realize the nutz are out to get us…LOL
Conservative VS Liberal
If a conservative doesn’t like guns, they don’t buy one.
Since a liberal doesn’t like guns, then no one should have one.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, they don’t eat meat.
Since a liberal is, they want to ban all meat products for everyone.
If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.
If a conservative is homosexual, they quietly enjoy their life.
When a liberal is homosexual, they loudly demand legislated respect.
If a black man or Hispanic is conservative, they see themselves as independently successful.
Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him..
If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don’t like be taken off the air.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
When a liberal is a non-believer, he wants all churches to be silenced.
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it..
When a liberal decides he needs health care, he demands that his neighbors pay for his.
You’re more paranoid than the complete works of Philip K. Dick.
If a liberal attends a protest, he’ll bring a placard.
If a conservative attends a protest, he’ll bring a gun.
That’s good and so true RWE
Chris,
Are you Canadian?
Who would know more about the politics of spite than liberal?
Yes he’ll bring a placard which was supplied to him/her as he/she steps off the free bus in which they were given a free T-shirt and a twenty dollar bill….I have not seen any working guns at any of the conservative protests I’ve been to including the march on DC……I believe it will happen if we see the need…hope not, it would be a bloody mess of libs…what do you do with them when their dead? Oh yeah ignore them…it’s good for the vulture population….Irony…..parasites being eaten by vultures…LOL…Pussies
evette…you forgot the VAT tax…..one of those invisible taxes the thieves in DC can manipulate
Chris…you stutter don’t you?
Has anyone read chris’s C & P of an article by Krugman? I don’t read that trash anymore since I figured out how to find the truth…LOL…chris is just another scared, paranoid, lefty, pussy boy…LOL
Methinks they better not try another bailout when the commercial real estate fails…as it will…I don’t think the middle class (the target of all this spending) is going to go along peacefully this time…Tax and credit revolts are on the horizon folks…stay organized
TARP Cop: Feds Fibbed on Bailout Banks
Monday, October 5, 2009 8:15 AM
Article Font Size
The credibility of the government’s $700 billion financial rescue program was damaged by claims a year ago that all of the initial banks receiving support were healthy, a new report contends.
Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky generally found that the government had acted properly in October 2008 as it scrambled to implement the Troubled Asset Relief Program to avert the collapse of the U.S. financial system.
But the report said that then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other officials were wrong to contend at an Oct. 14 press conference that all nine institutions receiving the first round of support – $125 billion – were sound.
“These are healthy institutions, and they have taken this step for the good of the economy,” Paulson had declared at the time.
Barofsky said that the fact that Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. soon required billions in additional assistance highlighted the inaccuracy of that claim and raised questions about the whole effort. In addition, Merrill Lynch, which was also in the original nine, was in the process of being acquired by Bank of America because of its weakening financial position.
“Statements that are less than careful or forthright – like those made in this case – may ultimately undermine the public’s understanding and support,” the report said. “This loss of public support could damage the government’s credibility and have long-term unintended consequences that actually hamper the government’s ability to respond to crises.”
In announcing the $125 billion in support to the nine institutions, Paulson had said that by building up the capital reserves of these healthy institutions, it would allow them to resume normal lending to businesses and consumers and help stabilize the financial system.
The nine institutions, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., held about 75 percent of the assets of the U.S. banking system at the time.
A joint statement from Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. also referred to the nine institutions as healthy.
In commenting on Barofsky’s report, the Federal Reserve generally supported the findings, saying “transparency and effective communications are important to restoring and maintaining public confidence, especially during a financial crisis.”
But Assistant Treasury Secretary Herbert Allison Jr., who now heads the bailout program for the government, said that any critique of the announcements made a year ago should take into consideration the unprecedented circumstances facing financial regulators at the time.
“We believe the most important lesson from this history is that quick, forceful action prevented a catastrophic meltdown of the system,” Allison wrote in his response to Barofsky’s findings.
Barofsky serves as the auditor for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a position that was created by Congress when it passed the $700 billion bailout fund on Oct. 3, 2008.
In his new report, Barofsky reviewed Paulson’s decision to switch the focus of the program from buying up toxic assets from banks to spur new lending to direct injections of capital. The report cited developments that supported Paulson’s contention that financial conditions were deteriorating so quickly that the government did not have the time needed to get the toxic asset program up and running.
The government just announced last week that two large investment funds have raised the minimum amounts needed to begin purchasing toxic assets from banks, a full year after Congress authorized the program.
The new report also provided information on interviews conducted with embattled Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis and Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke over their conversations regarding Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
A congressional committee has investigated whether the government pressured Lewis, who announced this past week that he would leave Bank of America at year’s end, to continue with the merger despite sharply rising losses at Merrill Lynch and to delay revealing those losses.
The report said that it had “found nothing to indicate Treasury and Federal Reserve officials instructed Bank of America executives to withhold the public disclosure of losses,” the report said.
The one thing that cracks me up about liberals is they still try to make this a demoprick/republiprick argument when it is a conservative/socialist issue….they just don’t get it…LOL
RWE,
You’re right. They don’t get it. Chris definitely doesn’t get it. He is the victim mentality.
From Alan Greenspan who, with a small handful of idiots triggered the subprime crisis with raising the prime from 1 % to 8.25% in six months…freakin’ idiots…unless it was by design to put us in a crises to help o get elected…if that’s the case they’re not stupid they are traitors and will be treated as such soon….paybacks a bitch…LOL…Just hope I don’t get hit by a bus before getting to see it happen…LOL
By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer Douglass K. Daniel, Associated Press Writer – Sun Oct 4, 12:47 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan predicted on Sunday that the jobless rate will pass 10 percent and stay there for a while, and a second stimulus plan is not needed now.
He spoke favorably of extending unemployment benefits and tax credits for health insurance, options the Obama administration is considering for helping people laid off during the recession. With more than 15 million people out of work, unemployment reached 9.8 percent in September, the highest rate in 26 years.
“This is an extraordinary period and temporary actions must be taken, especially to assuage the angst of a very substantial part of our population,” Greenspan said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“I don’t actually consider those types of actions stimulus programs. I think that they are essentially programs which support people — essentially their living standards in part. I grant you it has a stimulus effect, but that would be my primary focus,” he said.
Calling the jobs report released Friday “pretty awful,” Greenspan said he is particularly concerned with statistics showing the number of people out of work for six months or more has reached 5 million after going up sharply last month.
“People who are out of work for very protracted periods of time lose their skills eventually,” he said. “What makes an economy great is a combination of the capital assets of the economy and the people who run it. And if you erode the human skills that are involved there, there is a real and, in one sense, an irretrievable loss.”
Looking ahead on the unemployment picture, he said his “own suspicion is that we’re going to penetrate the 10 percent barrier and stay there for a while before we start down.”
The former Fed chief said he would recommend that President Barack Obama focus on trying to get the economy going but without doing so much that the government’s action are counterproductive. With growth for the third quarter appearing to reach or surpass 3 percent, Greenspan said he would not propose a second stimulus package.
“In my judgment it’s far better to wait and see how this momentum that has already begun to develop in the economy carries forward,” he said.
Greenspan against expressed his concern over the growing size of the federal deficit and the federal debt.
Sen. Evan Bayh, who’s on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said he, too, is waiting for the remainder of the job-related stimulus initiatives to take effect.
“If I’d been drafting the package, I would have tried to have it go into effect sooner and have more of it directly related to jobs,” Bayh, D-Ind., said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But it is what it is at this point. It continues to go into the economic bloodstream and to keep things, which, as unsatisfying as they are, from being a whole lot worse.”
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said an energy bill promoted by Democrats could serve as a jobs stimulus because it focuses on using venture capital to fund “clean energy” jobs.
But Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said Democrats would best help the economy by supporting targeted tax relief and dropping “job killers” such as the proposed cap-and-trade approach to climate change and a health care bill that he said would raise taxes on small businesses.
Boxer and Kyl appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
My fellow Americans, My fellow Republicans, I too am disappointed and hurt by the loss of the Presidential election to a wonderfully gifted and talented candidate and President. We have only ourselves to blame. It is time for introspection and reflection to ask why this happened.
Projecting on the President will not solve the problems that exist in our country. Our party shares equal blame and responsibilty for the mess the country is in.
Let us work the problems, and this country has many, and not cause more of the same, and that problem is being divided.
Now we may differ on how problems get solved with the Democrats, but the fact is we as a country are not going to solve anything unless we solve these problems together. Let us talk more with each other, including Democrats, and gain a better understanding and incite to become a better Nation, a Nation less divided, for the betterment of all the citizens of the United States of America, and not just for a single group or party.
After all, we are all in this together like it or not. Just do it and let us all get along to continue to make our country the best. All THE BEST
Let’s not forget who and what put us in this mess. Tax cuts for the wealthy, corperate giants greediness, George W. Bush and his cronies. They have no ideas. President Obama has the unsavory task of cleaning up after Repulicans and the so-called conservatives. He has been in office 9 months. How can you expect that to be a reasonable time to fix something so messed up for 8 long years. You all must get behind the president like good Americans. I mean it. You are the ones fucking this up. Not Obama.
Any faith I had in America is slowly dying away. The crazies and their favored demagogues have begun to rule through stupidity, fear , ignorance and subversion.
Politcal discourse that is honest and open is dead, Limbaugh and his like have killed it for their own profit.
Erich Ludendorff, once said after learning of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, he expressed his disappointment to German President Paul von Hindenburg: “By appointing Hitler Chancellor of the Reich, you have handed over our sacred German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I prophesy to you this evil man will plunge our Reich into the abyss and will inflict immeasurable woe on our nation. Future generations will curse you in your grave for this action.”
Limbaugh, Beck, O’really are just the type of self promoting huslter that the little Corp. Hitler was and I predict will cause much damage to this once great nation.
In defense of all the knuckle-dragging, compulsive liars who call themselves Republicans I suspect their root problem may be medical rather than psychological. Each and every one of them should contact their family proctologist as soon as possible to arrange for a brain scan.
Pat Buchannon thinks that the US and England attacked Hitler. He thinks that Hitler should have been allowed to take Poland AND Yugoslavia. And he claims that when Paris fell to the Nazis that Hitler was benevolent to the French. Crazy. He is trying to blame FDR for WW2 and that Hitler really wasn’t such a bad guy. He would never have killed 6m jews in ovens if NATO had just not attacked him. You all are like Nazis.
Be brave and just read this. This is real and not some psycho drama like the one you teabaggers create in your heads. This is a real conservative saying what most of you will love. The article is titled “Did Hitler Really Want War.” This is a perfect example of speculation, conjecture and inuendo being construed as fact. He doesn’t know shit from shine-ola and neither do you. You’re just mean.
http://buchanan.org/blog/did-hitler-want-war-2068
REPUBLICANS/NAZIS (are they polar opposites?)
Well, let’s consider many of their cherished philosophical precepts.
1) The (Jews/ Mexicans) are ruining our country.
2) (Poland/Iraq) is getting ready to attack us, so we must act first.
3)Sometimes it’s OK to torture, as long as we get useable intelligence as a result.
4) You should always mistrust (Intellectuals/Liberals), as they will lead you into ruin.
5) You should be brainwashed by your (Church/Government) into blindly serving your country in a monolithic fashion.
6) You should hate communists with a passion.
7) You should mistrust other nations.
9) You should mock homosexuals, and try to take away their legal rights.
10) You should enjoy listening to and participating in screaming, vicious, ad hominum attacks on people who you disagree with. Your hero’s should be Radio & TV screamers.
Time’s up; Pencils down! So, what group would this be, Nazis or Republicans?
The answer, or course, is both. As all thinking people already now, the current incarnation of the Republican party and the Nazi party share ALL of the most significant ideology.
They are one in the same, sixty+ years removed…
If the Republicans ever manage to retake Congress, they will absolutely try to impeach President Obama. And it’ll be based upon a supremely ridiculous charge such as, say, the president refusing to nourish our crops with a sports drink instead of water.
Okay, so maybe the Idiocracy example is over-the-top, but if we follow the current trajectory of far-right attacks to their logical yet insane conclusion, it makes sense in a very eerie way. Have you seen the television commercials solemnly defending our right to poison our kids with “juice drinks and soda?” There you go.
I’ve been following the Republican descent into the realms of the bizarre for some time now, and it wasn’t until the “czars” thing broke that I became convinced that if they retook Congress the Republicans might try to impeach the president. The grounds for both the impeachment and the language used to sell it will likely be fabricated by either Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh.
I mean, 100 Republican members of Congress have signed onto Rep. Jack Kingston’s cartoonish czar bill. 100 House Republicans out of 177 have attached their names to a bill that was essentially invented as a television bit by Glenn Beck without any regard for the fact that “czar” is a nickname invented by the press, and that every president — all of them! — has employed policy and political advisers within their administrations. But it functions as an effective Beck attack because he knows his audience isn’t bright enough to distinguish “czars” from “communists.” By the way, not to be out-crazied by his House colleagues, Senator Ensign introduced an amendment to the Finance Committee health care reform bill called “Transparency in Czars.” This might as well be “Transparency in Hobbits” because it’s just that ludicrous.
Nevertheless, there’s a growing conventional wisdom in the press alleging that both sides of the political spectrum are equally guilty of wackaloon attacks and conspiracy theories.
Granted there might be one or two very fringe exceptions but this is otherwise a false equivalency written by the establishment media as part of their self-conscious effort to seem balanced. The distinction is that any “fringe” attacks from the left during the Bush years weren’t mainstreamed and legitimized the way the wingnut attacks are today, even though the fringe attacks from the left turned out to be mostly accurate.
On the right, we’re hearing about communist takeovers, birth certificates, Oval Office dress codes, teleprompters, death panels, czars and a return to segregated buses. During the previous administration, on the other hand, the left insisted that Iraq didn’t have WMD. This turned out to be true. The left insisted that there wasn’t a connection between Saddam and 9/11. Also true. The left alleged that George W. Bush was incompetent. The rest of the nation caught up with the left when Katrina slammed into New Orleans, shattering the levees while Bush was eating cake with John McCain.
Some, but not all, of the left thought Bush had prior knowledge of the September 11th attacks. It’s a matter of record that he knew an attack might be imminent based upon the famous PDB titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” So that one was partially true.
The left also accused the administration of using illegal wiretaps, torture and other human rights violations. All true. Did Bush have business connections with the Bin Laden family? Yes. Did 100 Democratic members of Congress co-sponsor a bill calling him out for it? Of course not.
And throughout the Bush years — no matter how accurate the left’s “fringe” attacks might’ve been — liberals were marginalized and laughed off by the establishment press, ignored by certain leaders in our own party and attacked as unpatriotic by the Republicans. Sean Hannity, Tom DeLay and Bill O’Reilly, who are all busily ripping the current president an array of new holes, actively accused the left of undermining the troops because we were criticizing the commander-in-chief during wartime. Ah yes. They abandoned that one faster than Newt Gingrich abandons sick wives, didn’t they?
As for the name-calling, it’s to be expected given its long and distinguished history in American politics. (Teddy Roosevelt once called Howard Taft a “puzzle-wit.” Fightin’ words!) But again, it’s a matter of who’s doing it and in what context. Yes, some people on the left were guilty of violating Godwin’s Law and compared Bush and Cheney to Nazis. But in terms of the ideological spectrum, it’s far more likely that a conservative, reactionary, corporate-friendly administration engaged in secret detentions, eavesdropping, torture and endless war might have fascist tendencies. On the other side of the coin, I don’t know when Nazis suddenly began to embrace biracial, liberal children of African immigrants, but if I missed this development then bravo Nazis! You’re doing better than South Carolina! Of course I’m kidding, South Carolina. Maybe.
Yet on the right, we have legitimate politicians, talkers and writers accusing President Obama of being everything from a fascist to a communist to a foreign usurper — as if all of those accusations are somehow interchangeable. In other words, on the left there were fringe protesters ballyhooing the “Bush is a Nazi” thing, but on the right, everyone from cable news people to members of Congress are questioning whether the president was even born in the United States.
Fortunately, no Republican members of Congress would stoop so low as to compare President Obama to Hitler — oh wait. Correction. Congressman Gohmert did exactly that back in July on the Alex Jones radio show no less — Alex Jones, who makes Glenn Beck and Michael Savage appear centered.
All of this is all set against the backdrop of the infamous Republican Southern Strategy: a well-known tactic from the GOP playbook employing racially-suggestive code language and imagery for the sole purpose of consolidating white support by stoking racial resentment.
This is nothing new, and so it’s a little strange and nearsighted of the very serious Sunday morning television people to laugh off racial connotations in right-wing attacks against the president, given the Strategy’s prevalence in Republican politics. Pat Buchanan, the official cable news grampy, practically invented it. Later, Lee Atwater laid out the semantics like so: Republicans “can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff.” In the present day context, Atwater might’ve been happy with dog-whistles like “ACORN” or “community organizers” or “third world” or “exotic.”
So some of these Republicans need to drop the “who me?” act. Credit where credit is due: at least Rush Limbaugh, the de facto head of the Republican Party, is honest about his racial dog-whistles and epithets. Calling for segregated buses in order to protect white kids from violent black kids in “Obama’s America” is pretty obvious, no? In light of what happens on his show for three hours a day, it’s remarkable that there’s such denial coming from the press. (The Obama administration has no choice but to deny it, or else they’ll only succeed in feeding it.)
Ultimately, this is how the Republicans will likely proceed with an attempted impeachment of the president should they manage to take back Congress next year. If precedent is any indicator, they’ll likely concoct some sort of ridiculous charge torn from a Beck or Limbaugh transcript, while generating public support for it using a Brundlefly hybrid of the Southern Strategy and neo-McCarthyism. And why not? It’s exactly what they’re doing now.
Vice President Biden said this week that the administration’s agenda would be crushed if the Republicans manage to take back Congress. He’s right, but I think it’d be worse than that. Much worse. The 1990s will seem quaint by comparison, and it’s clear that no matter how ridiculous the charges, the media will devour the spectacular drama while simultaneously excusing their behavior using false equivalencies and overcompensating with right-leaning conventional wisdom.
Of course, I hope I’m very, very wrong on this one.
So…George Bush was an intellectual? He lead us to ruin.
This is so stupid, childish and a real bonefide idiotic. Sorry to be harsh but this is real idiosy, juvenile and…well just stupid. What is your point? I came out with Republicans are Nazis, which I believe they are. They yell louder at the left so people are too scared to take a serious look at them. Can’t you see that??????
On Tuesday I took my children out of school so that they could watch the president’s address live. I wanted them to see just how bad things have gotten in this country. I had to bring them home to see it since my local school system had acceded to the demands of right-thinking Americans to prevent presidents not named Bush from speaking to schoolchildren.
The president encouraged them to do well in school. What nonsense! Socialist Obama is trying to turn this great country of ours into a socialist state. Do you know what you get if all students perform “equally” well? Socialism! Competition is what made this country great. What would happen to the rest of us if there were no under-performers?
Later, he encouraged them to take responsibility for their education. How sad that we have not learned the lessons of our own history. Remember, the Nazis encouraged their children to take responsibility for their education, too, and look where that got us. Brave Americans shed their blood on the beaches of Normandy to prevent Nazi schoolchildren from taking responsibility for their education. Now our poor country is headed down that same Nazi road, led by a dictator who is not even an American, but was instead born in the country of Hawaii.
My children and I knew we were only moments away from hearing Obama preach his entire socialist political agenda. We were told so by a Republican Party official in Florida who hadn’t read the speech, and he would never make stuff up. Making stuff up is not one of our values. As Sarah Palin, one of the brilliant orators of our time, said just last summer, “Quit makin’ stuff up!”
But we couldn’t take any more. We turned off the TV before the president could indoctrinate the children with any more of his evil lies. The kids were so upset by his attempts at socialist mind control that I knew there was only one thing to do: We went out and bought some tea bags and threw them in a puddle near our house. The kids weren’t sure what it meant or why they were doing it, but it made them feel better anyway.
You are wrong and it’ll be over soon…LOL pussy lefty nutjob
It’s good to know gay Republicans are every bit as crazy as their straight counterparts. Case in point, a Palm Springs Log Cabin Republicans chapter said Monday its endorsement of Drew Sweatte, an openly gay candidate for Palm Springs City Council, remains intact, despite the fact that Sweatte once described himself as a “proudly anti-homosexual Republican” to a Washington state newspaper.
Homo-hating queers aren’t new but Drew Sweatte seems to have internalized the very worst homophobic elements of the dominate, heterosexual society.
The controversy came to light in 2005 in a letter of support to the editor of the Spokesman-Review, and then-Spokane Mayor Jim West, who was recalled from office that year amid a sex scandal. In the letter, Sweatte described himself as a “proudly anti-homosexual Republican” and said, “I acknowledge that he has admitted to leading a personal life that is very much against my values, but his personal life is just that, personal.”
But, here’s the real kicker. In response to the revelation of Sweatte’s letter, the local Palm Springs chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans responded with this statement:
“The endorsement of Drew Sweatte was extended based on several different issues, such as a commitment to low taxes, thoughtful growth, a pro-business climate and an efficient, effective local government. Log Cabin Palm Springs makes many endorsements to candidates, both gay and straight, based on their commitment to conservative issues of the preservation of personal freedoms, individual liberty and limited government.”
Got that? The Log Cabin Republicans enthusiastically endorse a homo-hating queer just as long as their candidate embraces such cherished conservative issues as low-taxes and limited government.
It looks like the A$$trolls are taking over again. Nice try Chris deadbeat racism whatever you call yourself today. My kids are adults which you should know since I’m such an old lady. It’s nice that you want to pretend you are me tho. Do you put lipstick on when you use my name?
Hilarious Connie B!
A$$TROLL PATROL ALERT——–IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE
We Americans need to stop this nonsense dipicted by shows like the Glenn Beck circus, the Hannity fake Macho right-wing outcry, and the Bill O’Reilly’s BullSh*T factor. All of these guys sound like they are preaching, but they are a tool for Corporate America. They make millions of dollars and brain-wash a bunch of Americans who are maily uneducated, live in a fear factor, and mainly white Americans. The Right-wing America is starting to look more like the Modern-day version of KKK. This stupid blaming game has to stop. We need to go beyond our political ideologies and political affiliations. This country is at cross-roads. If we don’t fix our problems with logic and practicality, we are doomed and we will go bankrupt as a nation.
Gay conservatives must be a lot like black and hispanic conservatives…gray matter between their ears…Independent thinkers are hated and feared by the lefts group mentality….groups of pussy boys…LMFAO@them…so sfwaid they are…LOL
Glenn Beck, Fox News’ deranged media personality, has been telling a national television audience that the Obama administration might be setting up secret “concentration camps” to lock up conservatives. The president, Beck believes, may be using FEMA in this conspiratorial drive towards “a totalitarian state.”
Beck, who has already voiced his affinity for the John Birch Society, is also distributing Birchers’ literature to his audiences.
If he were just some random right-wing blogger, it would be easier to laugh this off. If he were just some strange man screaming on a street corner, social service agencies might be called in to help the guy out. But instead, people are listening to this nut.
In fact, Beck has been dominating cable news recently. According to TVNewser’s charts of Nielsen ratings, out of all the cable news networks, his Fox show has consistently placed second in the key demographic of viewers aged 25 to 54 over the past couple weeks, beating even Sean Hannity’s and trailing only “The O’Reilly Factor.” When it comes to total viewers, too, Beck’s been cleaning up, generally placing third, just behind Hannity.
But Beck got his biggest audience numbers yet for a special he hosted on Friday, a special so ludicrous and over-hyped that Fox’s own Shep Smith couldn’t help but have a little fun at his colleague’s expense.
But it paid off: That one episode of Beck’s program got the highest ratings in the key demographic for the entire month of March so far. In total, TVNewser reports, “There were more viewers watching Beck’s 5pm show than watched the entire prime time (8-11pm) lineups on CNN and MSNBC.”
Kevin Drum argued the other day, “It’s more and more obvious that Glenn Beck has decided that becoming a male Ann Coulter is good for his ratings. So his show is now dedicated to saying increasingly outrageous things solely in an attempt to get liberals to denounce him and drive his ratings yet higher. Conclusion: it’s time to start ignoring him, right?”
Maybe, but I’m not sure. Beck, far more than Coulter, seems to believe what he’s saying. Coulter craves controversy — she’s a clown pretending to be a provocateur — but Beck literally seems mad. He sees bizarre and elaborate conspiracies, and worse, seems to perceive himself as the leader of an unstable movement.
Coulter is harmless. Is Beck?
Amen, GBH, Amen
If you lefties were not such pussies you could just ignore Beck or Hannity, Rush or Levin….you can’t so we have to assume they are pushing your buttons to get your panties all wadded up…from where I sit that’s a good thing…LOL don’t try to take them off the air unless you really want to be afwaid…pussies….
So not only is Glenn Beck a bigot, but he’s also a raving lunatic. On his Fox News show, Beck freaked out because President Obama didn’t place his hand on a Bible while retaking the oath of office. The best part was Beck pretended he “checked” and found that no President has been sworn in without a Bible. That, of course, is FALSE. As Think Progress points out, Teddy Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and John Quincy Adams didn’t use Bibles when they were sworn into office.
But hey, why should Beck let a little thing like the facts get in the way of marginalizing Obama at all costs? Isn’t that what all the redo complaints really boil down to — the true Fox mission? I mean, Fox simply gave the Bush administration a pass for eight painfully long years of blatant lies and illicitness. Now, however, they’re suddenly so concerned about strictly adhering to the law, criticizing Obama over something that was actually the fault of Chief Justice Roberts.
Why are you pussies so afraid of Beck if he doesn’t matter??…must be confusing as hell to be a lefty pussy…LOLOL…thank God I’ll never know or care..LOL
Last August, hate radio host Glenn Beck played a song by “one of his favorite new bands,” the English rock group Muse, claiming that the band endorses his radical anti-government views. The UK Telegraph reports that Muse asked Beck to retract his endorsement of them, prompting Beck to childishly claim the album he once praised is “awful and you should never go out and buy it”:
Beck, an outspoken conservative known for his caustic attacks on Barack Obama, praised a song on [Muse's] new album The Resistance for warning against the dangers of “one world government”. Describing their music as “absolutely fantastic”, Beck implied that the band members shared his concern about the centralisation of power by liberal politicians. [...]
But Beck withdrew his recommendation after being emailed during the show by a representative of the band.
“They would like me to retract my endorsement,” Beck told listeners. “My apologies to Muse for saying that I like them. I didn’t mean to destroy all their credibility and all their coolness.
“It’s an awful album and you should never go out and buy it.”
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Fox News anchor and conservative commentator Glenn Beck was taking incoming fire Sunday from both ends of the political spectrum, but especially from Democratic strategist James Carville.
“I think he’s nuts, OK?,” the outspoken Democrat said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,”
“Just out-and-out nuts. And I also think that he’s a blatant hypocrite,” Carville said. “Here’s somebody that sits on his show … weeping about how much he loves America and … and then he’s absolutely giddy when his country doesn’t get the Olympics. And this is — I’ll tell you another thing about Glenn Beck. He wouldn’t know the difference between a football, a bat and a hockey court. This guy is not — he’s just all — he’s just all weeping.”
Carville was reacting to earlier comments Sunday on Fox News, where Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina made it clear that he was not a fan of Beck.
“[H]e doesn’t represent the Republican Party,” Graham said of Beck, “When a person says he represents conservatism and that the country is better off with Barack Obama than John McCain, that sort of ends the debate for me as to how much more I’m going to listen.”
“So he has a right to say what he wants to say. In my view, it’s not — it’s not the kind of political analysis that I buy into,” Graham said.
Republican strategist Mary Matalin disagreed with Graham and with Carville, who is her husband.
“[Beck] has two best-sellers,” Matalin told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “This has never happened before. Two No. 1 best-sellers in hard-cover and paperback, non-fiction. All right. Somebody out there is listening [to] what Glenn Beck says. I know he [Carville] doesn’t listen and Lindsey doesn’t listen.”
“[Beck] doesn’t affiliate with either party, or any party,” Matalin also observed Sunday, “but he has tapped into this mainstream of America who feels otherwise not listened to.”
Before joining Fox News, Beck anchored a show on CNN Headline News, a sister network to CNN.
Carville and Matalin are both CNN political contributors.
I can see Glenn laughing as he said “you should not go out and buy their album…or was it CD”…
You pussies are very afraid of Beck..I love it…LOL
Ever notice that Beck dsefenders can never seem to defend him with facts? They defend him by attacking people who have facts? He is totally scamming his viewers and exploiting their lack of education and possible organic deficiencies. This exploitation is comparible to terroisted using the mentally handicapped as suicide bombers. He is using his viewers in a similar fashion. They are his army and they spread his lies. Just watch. One of these wack jobs will attack me. At one point I was accused of “sucking Russian bear d**k” and that I was a commie. Imagine how nasty things would have been id McCarthy was allowed to swear. These teabaggers would love it. They are McCarthyist types.
McCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term specifically describes activities associated with the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, “McCarthyism” soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.
What are you so afraid of…nobody is going to hurt you as long as you don’t get in the way…pussies..LOL
A couple of days ago, Beck was busy attacking Obama’s decision to make a personal appearance in Copenhagen in an effort to win the Olympics for the president’s hometown of Chicago. To make his point, Beck informed his audience that the Vancouver games had lost a billion dollars when it hosted the Olympics.
Of course, Vancouver’s games will not take place until next year – an error on Beck’s part to be sure, but nothing compared to his usual, far more dangerous, spewing of nonsense.
In response, the official White House blog took Beck to task, issuing a line-by-line rebuttal of Beck’s erroneous statements.
Here’s a sample-
RHETORIC: BECK SAID VANCOUVER LOST $1 BILLION WHEN IT “HAD THE OLYMPICS.” Glenn Beck said, “Vancouver lost, how much was it? they lost a billion dollars when they had the Olympics.” [Transcript, Glenn Beck Show, 9/29/09]
REALITY: VANCOUVER’S OLYMPICS WILL NOT TAKE PLACE UNTIL 2010. Vancouver will host the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games from February 12 – 28, 2010 and March 12-21, 2010, respectively. [Vancouver2010.com, accessed 9/29/09]
Via The Hill
Let’s see….Carville is obviously envious of Becks ratings…most people don’t know who Carville is….Judging from cargills response he is becoming seriously unhinged..LOL..pussy snakehead
I don’t think Lindsey Graham is representative of the conservative wing of the Republican party…he’s about as much of a rino as Olympia Snowe…he just likes the attention these statements get him…he knows the LSM will jump on it.
I like the idea of the conservatives having to deal with their own resident lunatic. Glenn Beck is a classic 12 stepper, painfully and publicly recovering from whatever consumes him at the moment.
He is a little short in the intelligence department. Several months ago he called President Barack Obama a racist. A few weeks back he spent the better part of his show connecting Obama to the word “oligarchy”. Unfortunately for Beck and his production staff, they misspelled it and never once noticed it during the course of the show.
Then there’s his million mad men march of teabaggers in Washington for which he didn’t even bother to appear (apparently Beck didn’t know the sexual reference of teabagging), his laughably high crowd estimate from the University of “I don’t know” to his co-opting Yom Kippur for Fox viewers not familiar with the Jewish Day of Atonement.
Today Keith Olberman ridiculed Beck’s laughably inept understanding of the US Constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1 which reads: “The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year One thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars each person.”
Glenn Beck got this wrong and in a big way. For Beck this was somehow a confirmation that the founding fathers “actually put a price tag on coming to this country: $10 per person. Apparently they felt like there was a value to being able to live here. Not anymore. These days we can’t ask anything of immigrants–including that they abide boy our laws.”
Seriously. Glenn Beck confuses a tax on slaves for a price tag that he thinks the founding fathers somehow put on immigrants for the benefit of living here.
Yes people he really is that stupid.
Beck is an affirmative action hire, employed first by CNN and now Fox, to give even more conservative spin from the windbag pundit class.
The problem is not only that Beck is a dolt. It is that he offers untruths and lies to support his over-the-top analysis.
President Barack Obama is a racist? Really?
As the comedian Ron White says, you can’t fix stupid.
He most likely meant to say the Vancouver Olympics are already 1 billion in the hole on the Olympics….very possible as taxpayers in Illinois are 250 million in the hole just putting the bid together….LOL…you pussy
We don’t deal with Glenn we blindly follow Glenn….You pussies can follow kieth…LOL…and stop using Connie’s name you pussy boy…LOL
Wonderfully talented, yes.
especially without a teleprompter!
“Uh, um, er, ah, um, er, ah, uh”
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
1) The Hate America First Crowd extreme partisanship
During the eight long, dreadful years of the Bush administration, liberals were repeatedly accused of hating America. Oppose George W. Bush’s unfunded $1.3 trillion tax cut for the richest Americans? You hate America! Oppose the invasion of Iraq which has cost taxpayers $3 trillion so far? You hate America! Think that John Kerry would have made a better president than George W. Bush? You hate America! Disgusted by Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina? You must really hate America!
Last week President Obama took 18 hours out of his day to fly to Copenhagen and back in order to give a boost to America’s chances of hosting the 2016 Olympics. As it turned out, Obama’s pitch could not derail the clear favorite Brazil, who eventually took home the prize. But you can’t knock the President for giving it a shot.
Or can you? The way the right-wing reacted, you’d think Saddam Hussein had just been hanged all over again. Never mind the fact that hosting the Olympics would have created thousands of American jobs, provided a real economic stimulus to the Midwest, and improved America’s international image…
“For those of you … who are upset that I sound gleeful, I am. I don’t deny it. I’m happy.” — Rush Limbaugh
“ChicagP\/\/n3D!” — Newsmax
“Please, please let me break this news to you. It’s so sweet.” — Glenn Beck
Yes folks, that’s the right-wing reacting to news that an American city will not be hosting the Olympics in 2016. Want more? The Huffington Post reported that:
Upon being informed of the news, a gathering of conservatives at the Americans For Prosperity — one of the main organizing groups behind the tea party protests — erupted in applause. They cheered once more after they were told that Chicago had been eliminated during the first round of voting. The moment was captured on video and reported by Hotline On Call.
Or how about the reaction at the Weekly Standard? According to Think Progress:
Soon after news broke that the International Olympic Committee had rejected Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics, which President Obama had personally lobbied for, Weekly Standard blogger John McCormack published a celebratory post on the magazine’s blog, titled “Chicago Loses! Chicago Loses!.” McCormack wrote that “Cheers erupt at WEEKLY STANDARD world headquarters.”
It’s okay though – shortly after it was published, the Weekly Standard edited McCormack’s post to remove the reference to cheers and tone the headline down a bit. Phew! That was close. For a moment there they almost came across as being a bit, you know… un-American.
That’s right Connie B. And you can’t let the village idioot run the village.
A$$TROLL PATROL ALERT
IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
2) Newsmax extreme partisanship covering your ass
Just in case you’re still unclear on where the right-wing stands vis-a-vis America, conservative author John L. Perry can help you out. Last week Perry penned a column for Newsmax which – believe it or not – fantasized about a military coup that might take place inside the United States.
There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.
(snip)
Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.
Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.
Yeah, that’s the ticket! Toss out all those useless democratically-elected civilians and replace then with “skilled, military-trained, nation-builders.” What better way to “restore and defend the Constitution.”
But don’t worry – Newsmax subsequently removed the column and tried to claim that Perry has “no official relationship with Newsmax other than as an unpaid blogger.” (Despite the fact that the bio at the end of his many Newsmax articles calls him “a regular columnist for Newsmax.com.”) So it’s almost like it never even happened!
I think that if President Obama was running across the street to save a nun and didn’t there in time and the nun died the Becker-heads and Ditto-heads would laugh at another “failure” by our President. Forget about the nun, what’s important is that Obama failed.
3) Jim DeMint massive ego hypocrisy
Speaking of coups, Sen. Jim DeMint’s showed his love for America last week by travelling overseas and deliberately undermining U.S. foreign policy.
DeMint, a Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee, went to Honduras to offer support to its unelected dictator, who recently ousted President Manuel Zelaya by force. Current U.S. policy states that the takeover was illegal, and that Zelaya is still the legitimate president.
Okay I must have missed something here. I was under the impression that it’s a big no-no for a U.S. Senator to travel overseas and publicly offer support to a foreign power that the U.S. government considers illegitimate. Is that allowed now? Is this one of those “The election of Obama changed everything” moments?
Maybe DeMint is taking a cue from Newsmax and going over there to get tips on how to stage a successful coup.
ON PATROL FOR MORE A$$TROLLS
IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
4) Chuck Norris dumb
Here’s a good man to have on your side during a coup: Chuck Norris. Sure, he may be getting on a bit, but I bet he could still take down a Secret Service agent or two before his knees gave out.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Chuckles wrote a column for townhall.com in which he said the following:
As 9/12 concluded, we all heard many ways to keep this revolutionary movement going. But I was sitting back thinking there’s one way we can take a daily stand and declare that as for me and my house, we will serve God and the republic as the Founders did.
If that describes you, then I suggest you fly some revolutionary flag in lieu of your 50-star flag over the next year. Post the 13-star Betsy Ross flag, Navy Jack or Gadsden flag (”Don’t Tread on Me”) or any representation that tells the story of Old Glory and makes a stand for our Founders’ vision of America.
You heard right – Chuck Norris wants you to go outside and take down your star-spangled banner. A bit odd this – I vaguely seem to recall that Barack Obama was once nearly burned at the stake for not wearing a flag pin. Times have certainly changed.
So Chuckles, what do you tell people who think you’re being unpatriotic?
Of course, patriots know that the 50-star flag truly represents one nation under God and our Founders’ republic, but modernists simply don’t get it. So what do you say we make a statement by flying a different flag and educate our neighbors when they ask us, “Why are you flying that flag instead of the contemporary Stars and Stripes?”
Ah, I see! Reverse psychology. Very clever.
If you insist on posting a modern USA flag, too, then get one that is tea-stained to show your solidarity with our Founders.
So let’s see… you want people to either take down their American flags, or stain them with tea. Hey Chuck, here’s an idea – why don’t you and your buddies just cut to the chase and soak them in piss?
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
5) Michelle Bachmann batshit crazy
Picture the scene at GOP headquarters as the health care reform battle slowly draws to a conclusion…
Republican Consultant #1: So let’s see. We’ve done “Death Panels.”
Republican Consultant #2: Yup.
Republican Consultant #1: That didn’t work.
Republican Consultant #2: No.
Republican Consultant #1: And we’ve done “Government Takeover.”
Republican Consultant #2: Uh huh.
Republican Consultant #1: And that didn’t work.
Republican Consultant #2: Not really.
Republican Consultant #1: And we’ve done the whole “Socialism” thing.
Republican Consultant #2: Yes.
Republican Consultant #1: And that didn’t work.
Republican Consultant #2: Um… no.
Republican Consultant #1: Hmm. What’s left on the list?
Republican Consultant #2: That’s it I’m afraid. Well…
Republican Consultant #1: What?
Republican Consultant #2: It’s nothing.
Republican Consultant #1: No, you said “well…” – Well what? It’s not “Communist Vampires Will Feast On Your Kidneys” again is it? I told you already we’re not doing that.
Republican Consultant #2: No… Bob had an idea. But I’m warning you, he came up with this in the middle of a six-hour hookers-and-blow marathon down at C Street.
Republican Consultant #1: Go on.
Republican Consultant #2: We get Michelle Bachmann to announce from the House floor that if health care reform passes, Planned Parenthood will put sex clinics in schools and give secret free abortions to 13-year-olds.
Republican Consultant #1: Ha ha! Oh… you were being serious. Okay.
Salon, October 1, 2009:
Speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, the Minnesota Republican warned parents everywhere that if Democrats’ healthcare reform legislation passes, school clinics will become controlled by Planned Parenthood and turned into sex clinics that promote abortions free of parental consent for 13-year-old girls.
Bachmann said: “And written in this bill is a provision whereby Planned Parenthood could become a proprietor for school-based clinics in every school across United States. These have been more accurately called school sex clinics … And as a matter of fact, the bill goes on to say what’s going to go on — comprehensive primary health services, physicals, treatment of minor acute medical conditions, referrals to follow-up for specialty care — is that abortion? Does that mean that someone’s 13 year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser.”
VICTIM A$$TROLL ALERT—-IGNORE
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
6) House Republicans hypocrisy
Keep Michelle Bachmann’s words in mind as you contemplate this mind-bending chunk of chutzpa: last week House Republicans demanded a formal apology from Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) because during a speech on the House floor Grayson noted that 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance and said that the Republican health care plan is “Don’t get sick,” and failing that, “Die quickly.”
The horror! This of course follows a summer during which, according to Think Progress:
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) said on the House floor: “Last week Democrats released a health care bill which essentially said to America’s seniors: Drop dead.”
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said on the House floor: “They’re going to save money by rationing care, getting you in a long line. Places like Canada, United Kingdom, and Europe. People die when they’re in line.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said on the House floor: “(The Republican plan will) make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government.”
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) said on the House floor: “That’s exactly what’s going on in Canada and Great Britain today … and a lot of people are going to die.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said on the House floor: “One in five people have to die because they went to socialized medicine! … I would hate to think that among five women, one of ‘em is gonna die because we go to socialized care.”
And of course let’s not forget bug-eyed Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) who screamed “YOU LIE!” at the President during a joint session of Congress and then refused to apologize for violating House rules.
Yes, despite all that, Alan Grayson’s remarks were suddenly the hot news story of the day (thanks, liberal media!) and Republicans quickly piled aboard the demandwagon. “We want an apology!” they shrieked, apparently completely blind to the irony of such a request. As Nancy Pelosi said later, “If anybody’s going to apologize everybody should apologize.”
But of course that wasn’t good enough for the GOP. Up stepped Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) with a laughable resolution of disapproval calling Grayson’s remarks “a breach of decorum and degraded the integrity and proceedings of the House.”
So Grayson did the only thing he could do. He took to the House floor and apologized:
REP. GRAYSON: Last night, I gave a speech and I’m not going to recount everything I said but after that speech, several republicans asked me to apologize. I would like to apologize.
I would like to apologize and here’s why. According to this study, health insurance and mortality in adults which was published two weeks, 44,000 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance. 44,789 Americans die every year according to the Harvard study. And you can see it by going to our website at grayson.house.gov. That is 10 times more than the number of Americans who have died in Iraq and who died in 9/11. But that was just once. This is every single year. That’s right. Every single year.
Take a look at this. Read it and weep. And I mean that, read it and weep, because of all these Americans who are dying because they don’t have health insurance. Now, I think we should do something about that and the Democratic health care plan does do something about that. It makes health care affordable for those who can’t afford insurance and it safes these peoples’ lives.
Let’s remember we should care about people even after they’re born. I call upon the Democratic members of the House, I call upon the republican members of the house, I call upon all of us to do our jobs for the sake of America, for the sake of those dying people and their families. I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America. I yield the rest of my time.
Grayson later went on TV to call the Republican party a “lie factory” and “knuckle-dragging neanderthals,” and like most bullies who suddenly get punched in the face, the GOP folded like a handkerchief. “House Republicans will not offer a resolution Thursday asking that Rep. Alan Grayson be condemned for charging that the GOP health care plan calls for those who get sick to die quickly,” reported CNN last week.
Oh, but look out! They “did not rule out taking future action against the controversial Florida Democrat.”
I expect Rep. Grayson is quivering in his shoes.
Here is an example of what kind of made up drivel is coming from republicans, conservatives and teabaggers these days. It is not based on any kind of fact. It is conjecture and they are saying things just to hear themselves talk and sound like an authority on something they know nothing about. Lets take a trip to the “Values Voters Summit”. Sounds important dudn’t it? One subject was the this idiotic subject. All pornography is gay pornography and will make prepubescent boys GAY! T&A will make boys want to bang thier BFF in the locker room. HA! Here is an exerpt from and Ed Braydon post-op:
David Weigel has been having a ball at the Values Voters Summit, dutifully chronicling all the crazy things said there. Here’s one of my favorites so far, from Michael Schwartz, chief of staff for “republican” Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma:
Schwartz: “Pornography is a blight,” Schwartz told an audience in a crowded room of the Omni Shoreham hotel. “It is a disaster. It is one of those silent diseases in our society that we haven’t been able to overcome very well. Now, I may be getting politically incorrect here. And it’s been a few years, but not that many, since I was closely associated with pre-adolescent boys, boys around 10 years of age. But it is my observation that boys of that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people. They speak badly about homosexuality. And that’s because they don’t want to be that way. They don’t want to fall into it.”
Weigel: And yet if you ask most teenagers today, they’re fine with equality for gays — one of the big reasons why the bigots have already lost. But here comes the real crazy:
Schwartz told the crowd about Jim Johnson, a friend of his who turned an old hotel into a hospice for gay men dying of AIDS. “One of the things he said to me,” said Schwartz, “that I think is an astonishingly insightful remark… he said ‘All pornography is homosexual pornography, because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards.”
There were murmurs and gasps from the crowd. “Now, think about that,” said Schwartz. “And if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants! You know, that’s a good comment, it’s a good point, and it’s a good thing to teach young people.”
That’s hilarious. Tell teenage boys that looking at Playboy is “gay” and they’ll stop looking at it. Mr. Schwartz, you can tell teenage boys that looking at naked women will make them go blind, make their palms hairy or that God will kill a kitten every time they masturbate, and you know what? They’re still going to do it.
I guess the senator’s aide is either gay or he completely forgot his child hood. Come on guys. How many of you looked at porno as a kid, and maybe still do, and you ain’t gay. Guys who talk like Schwartz are probably gay and are “posing” and pointing a different direction so you don’t look too close at him. It’s an old tactic. “Insightful”. Yeah the concept of a flat earth was “insightful” to.
I don’t blindly follow Glenn Beck at all.
I listen to him, and judge for myself.
Just as he asks for his listeners to do.
Also, if you think you have all the answers, by all means, please call him and tell him how he’s wrong.
I’ve learned alot from him as well as Rush, Sean, and Savage.
Things about history, that were hideously distorted by my teachers in school.
I’m glad for them. They’ve inspired me to search for the truth myself.
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
7) John Ensign sex quid pro quo lying crook
Hey, remember when Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) got caught bonking one of his campaign staffers? (See Idiots 367.) And then his parents paid the woman $100,000 which was, er, totally not so she would keep her mouth shut? (See Idiots 368.) At this point you may be wondering how on earth Sen. Ensign has managed to avoid resigning, but that’s the party of personal responsibility for you.
Unfortunately Ensign’s luck could be running out. It was revealed last week that not only was he bonking the campaign staffer and apparently paying her hush money, he was also keeping her cuckolded husband cheerful with jobs and favors.
According to the New York Times:
Early last year, Senator John Ensign contacted a small circle of political and corporate supporters back home in Nevada – a casino designer, an airline executive, the head of a utility and several political consultants – seeking work for a close friend and top Washington aide, Douglas Hampton.
“He’s a competent guy, and he’s looking to come back to Nevada. Do you know of anything?” one patron recalled Mr. Ensign asking.
The job pitch left out one salient fact: the senator was having an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia, a campaign aide. The tumult that the liaison was causing both families prompted Mr. Ensign, a two-term Republican, to try to contain the damage and find a landing spot for Mr. Hampton.
In the coming months, the senator arranged for Mr. Hampton to join a political consulting firm and lined up several donors as his lobbying clients, according to interviews, e-mail messages and other records. Mr. Ensign and his staff then repeatedly intervened on the companies’ behalf with federal agencies, often after urging from Mr. Hampton.
The bad news for Ensign is that not only is his reputation in the gutter, he may well have violated a variety of campaign laws. Not only that but the unpleasant aroma surrounding Ensign’s extra-curricular activities seems to be clinging to some of his colleagues. For example…
…a longtime fund-raiser who came through with help says Mr. Ensign misled him about why Mr. Hampton needed a new job. The senator also put his chief of staff at the time, who had raised concerns that Mr. Hampton’s activities could be problematic, in charge of dealing with him.
And Mr. Ensign allowed Senator Tom Coburn, a friend and fellow conservative Christian, to serve as an intermediary with the Hamptons in May in discussing a large financial settlement, to help them rebuild their lives.
It’s okay though because according to Coburn, “John got trapped doing something really stupid and then made a lot of other mistakes afterward.” So give the guy a break. He’s human after all. No need to punish a United States Senator just because he committed adultery, tried to pay off his mistress, and then used the power of his office to bribe her husband into keeping his mouth shut. Nothing to see here!
VICTIM A$$TROLL ALERT——They feel so impotent with their lies again they use my name
IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
8)The Republican Circular Firing Squad circular firing squad
When they’re taking a break from hating America, Republicans like to hate each other instead. For example, last week, according to The Plum Line, “Rush Limbaugh unleashed a blistering shot at McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt over his criticism of Palin … blasting the McCain team as ‘losers’ who should ‘move aside’ so others can ‘clean up the mess they helped create.’”
Ouch, what brought that on? Turns out that earlier in the week Schmidt had said that Sarah Palin “would not be a winning candidate for the Republican Party in 2012,” and in fact if she were the nominee, it could be a “catastrophic election.”
Which is pretty harsh coming from the guy who picked Palin to be McCain’s running mate in the first place.
Oh well, I guess Schmidt’s one consolation is that he probably can’t do anything worse to piss off his fellow Republicans this week.
Wait, what’s this?
In comments almost certain to rankle Republicans on Capital Hill, Sen. John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager Steve Schmidt accused the GOP on Friday of having no comprehensive alternative to Democratic health care reform.
In an appearance at The Atlantic’s First Draft of History conference, the longtime GOP strategist did argue that individual Republicans, notably Rep, Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), were “advancing ideas” on health care legislation.
“But the party holistically is bereft of ideas,” Schmidt added.
The remarks come at a time when Republicans are already beating back accusations that the party has not been a viable or honest bargaining partner during reform negotiations.
I stand corrected.
look out, it’s a cut copy paste fiasco
Poor girl. A library would be more productive. I don’t think Obama has gotten to all of them with all the new books with all the revisionist history. Especially in that little town you live in.
Here is the man you admire so much. Put aside the fact that he is wrong on every count if you take the time to check it all out. When he is asked what his solution is he just scream “GET OFF MY PHONE”. He’s a sick man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA7-BvVDV10&feature=fvw
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
9) Jim Bunning booze
Hey, Senator Bunning! Can you do something that would be really symbolic of the Republican Party’s attitude towards providing Americans with decent health care?
The Senate Finance Committee was barely an hour into its consideration of health-care reform on Tuesday morning, but Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) already knew where he stood.
“I do not support a government takeover of the health-care system,” he railed. The proposal “confiscates more money from the taxpayers,” he went on. “It tramples on American freedom and liberties.”
After this vigorous display of open-mindedness, Bunning was spent. About an hour later, spectators noticed that the senator, who had been resting his chin in his hand, had fallen fast asleep. As giggles rippled through the chamber, an aide shook Bunning, who woke with a start.
CAUTION A$$TROLL ZONE
TOP TEN CONSERVATIVE IDIOTS:
10) Newt Gingrich dumb
And finally, you may recall that former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich used to have quite a reputation with the ladies. The man has been married three times, and according to Wikipedia “was conducting an extra-marital affair during the Congressional investigation into allegations that Bill Clinton lied under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.” Whoops.
Anyway, it seems that Newt hasn’t lost his touch. Last month, according to Talking Points Memo, his 527 group American Solutions for Winning the Future “sent a letter to porn exec Allison Vivas … telling her she’d won their ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award and inviting her to an ‘intimate event’ with Gingrich.”
“I’m honored, and more than a little surprised, to receive this prestigious award,” Vivas said today in a cheeky press release. “Rest assured, I’ll take the opportunity to inform Mr. Gingrich of some of the major challenges facing the adult entertainment industry in the current market … from obscenity prosecutions to content piracy, I’ll make sure he walks away from that dinner educated about the realities of the online porn market.”
The statement made the rounds, and now Media Matters reports that the group’s spokesman sent a short statement clearing things up: “We have notified Allison Vivas that the notice she received was sent by mistake. We regret the error.”
Well that’s pretty embarassing. But not as embarassing as this a few weeks later…
Dawn Rizos didn’t need any formal recognition that The Lodge, one of the best-known topless clubs in Dallas, was a successful small business.
But when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s conservative group named her an “Entrepreneur of the Year,” she was thrilled by the opportunity to accept the award in Washington, D.C., and speak about ways to help small businesses.
That all changed, however, when Gingrich realized that The Lodge was a topless bar, not some other business in Virginia. He rescinded Rizos’ invitation to a private dinner and returned the $5,000 she gave to his group, American Solutions for Winning the Future.
Come on Newt, we all know you’re horny but don’t you think this is a bit over the top?
cut/copy/paste
Why can’t the trolls ever be genuine?
Why can’t they be themselves?
Why do they have to wear masks at their protests?
Why do they hate the truth?
WHY?
Hey Syble…crawl back under the rock or I’m going to make you feel bad…LOL
Because you’re fucking paranoid.
Why?…evette..it’s because they’re stoopid pussies…LOL
Awesome Jim!
You’re an American HERO!
Leave it up to a liberal troll (cuz i know it’s not Connie) to completely miss the point.
Instead, you call the guy stupid cuz he fell asleep?
listen to what he said you idiot. HE’S RIGHT!
Not only that, but if you don’t have acceptable insurance you’ll be fined by the government, then if you don’t pay the fine (cuz lord knows we’ve got plenty of money to pay fines) YOU’LL GO TO JAIL FOR UP TO A YEAR!!! (cuz lord knows our jails aren’t full enough)
Question: What will happen to the Amish? Since it is against their religion to own any type of insurance, does that mean they’ll all have to be fined and imprisoned?
Evette. Why can’t teabaggers make sense?
Why can’t they just leave us in peace to patriotically plot the downfall of our nation in it’s hour of need?
Other GOP insiders are worried the reaction may reinforce Democrats’ attacks, however unfair, that the party’s anti-Obama fervor is pushing them away from their self-professed patriotism.
Moments after the Chicago news broke, former Bush deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel Tweeted, “Note to GOP officials/consultants – resist temptation to pile on about Chicago losing just becuz Obama made the pitch.”
Kevin Madden, who served as Mitt Romney’s spokesman in 2008, sent around Stanzel’s sentiments to friends and cautioned against a backlash.
“Republicans disagree with Obama on many policies, ranging from taxes and spending to national security,” Madden told POLITICO.
“He has a lot of really wrong ideas. But does that mean his effort to bring the Olympic games to Chicago and a chance to put America on the world’s stage should also automatically be subjected to scorn? I don’t believe it should. That’s just criticism for criticism’s sake. Reactionary criticism could even dilute any valid and legitimate criticism of his bad policies.”
Democrats are still smarting from years of GOP attacks on their own commitment to America’s safety and security, criticism that sometimes crossed the line into attacks on the party’s patriotism.
In late 2002, Rep. Joe Wilson shouted down Rep. Bob Filner, a California Democrat, who challenged Bush administration pre-war Iraq intelligence, bellowing, “This hatred of America by some people is just outrageous, and you need to get over it.”
Summing up his view of Democrats in 2005, President Bush’s top political advisor, Karl Rove, remarked that liberals are “concerned about what our enemies think of us, whether every government approves of our actions.”
Rove echoed that sentiment in a March 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed, writing, “Democrats appear to have an ideological investment in things going badly in Iraq. They seem upset and prickly when asked to comment on the progress America is making.”
Boehner, talking to reporters in 2006, quipped, “I listen to my Democrat friends, and I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting terrorists than in protecting the American people.”
And Limbaugh, defending his “fail” comment at a conservative conference in February, asked the audience, “Did the Democrats want the war on Iraq to fail?” The crowd shouted “Yes!” and Limbaugh agreed.
The meme has carried into the Obama era, with Steve Doocy, the co-host of “Fox and Friends,” touting a video showing Obama without hand over heart during the playing of the national anthem.
“First he kicked his American flag pin to the curb,” Doocy said. “Now Barack Obama has a new round of patriotism problems.”
Democrats also point at the way the GOP has been pouncing on any scrap of economic data that shows the economy is still struggling.
Within the first 45 minutes after the Labor Department announced a worse-than-expected 263,000 jobs lost in September, POLITICO received no fewer than eight GOP press releases blasting away at Obama for failing to stem the tide of unemployment.
The office of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) literally hit the send button at 8:30 a.m. — the moment of the announcement.
Former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who helped Democrats win 14 seats in the last two cycles, said the GOP risks the perception rooting against recovery.
“They are playing to their base again, which I think is a big mistake.” he said.
“Criticizing the White House for spending nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayers’ money to produce a jobless recovery is the responsibility of public officials who believe there is a better way,” responded Steel.
Scarcity Worship:
quote:
From Conservapedia
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Scarcity Worship is exaggerated attention and desire for something perceived to be scarce. Often the scarcity is created artificially for the purpose of worshiping it, or exercising preferences in how it is allocated, or hoarding it up for the purpose of feeling superior to those who do not have it, or profiting from an artificial scarcity. The object of the attention is often meaningless.
The liberal media exploit and encourage scarcity worship, focusing on artificial scarcity such as a man-made position, or an earthly death. Over time people who habitually watch or read the media tend to believe in scarcity worship as though it were somehow a basic or important part of life. Newspapers in particular depend almost entirely on scarcity worship to increase or sustain sales.
Sports fans exhibit a form of scarcity worship by placing significance in the sole winner of a contest, as though that artificial scarcity has any real meaning. Special sports prizes are created, such as the World Series or Super Bowl, to tap into scarcity worship and increase interest in the outcome.
For example, there may be plenty of oil in the ground, but politicians may seek advantage in declaring it to be scarce and then preventing full use of the resource. On a personal level, there is no shortage of food in the world yet often people will take delight in pretending there is a shortage, and in deciding who should receive what.
Marches to end hunger display a form of collective scarcity worship, as obesity is a bigger problem in the world today than starvation is.
I’m literally choking on Poe’s Law here.
Speaking of topless bars…that reminded me of the Mustang Ranch or whatever the name of the brothel in Reno, Nevada that the IRS took over and attempted to run..LMFAO@this one…the guy that owned it made millions and owed a million in back taxes (like Charlie Rangel) so the IRS decides to run the place and went bankrupt in one year after losing a million….guvmint employees cannot run private businesses…I don’t care how foolproof the business model is…they’re just not built for it…LOL
A$$TROLL ZONE USE EXTREME CAUTION
I feel so violated right now. Even more now than the last few times my name has been used by these liberal trolls. I feel so violated I’ve made my mind up to leave this place for good. Again.
So, same time tomorrow then?
Awesome Jim!
You’re an American HERO!
Leave it up to a liberal troll (cuz i know it’s not Connie) to completely miss the point.
Instead, you call the guy stupid cuz he fell asleep?
listen to what he said you idiot. HE’S RIGHT!
Not only that, but if you don’t have acceptable insurance you’ll be fined by the government, then if you don’t pay the fine (cuz lord knows we’ve got plenty of money to pay fines) YOU’LL GO TO JAIL FOR UP TO A YEAR!!! (cuz lord knows our jails aren’t full enough)
Question: What will happen to the Amish? Since it is against their religion to own any type of insurance, does that mean they’ll all have to be fined and imprisoned?
All the cut and pasting going on…WOW…just to pick out some wascalwy wepubwicans…I’m glad we don’t have to look for dumbass dimocrats…it’s all of them..no searching…they are all selfish, lefty, pussy boys…LOL
OMG! Stop mocking me by using my name! You troll!
Why can’t you use your own name?
What are you afraid of?
See that’s the difference between a real American, and a dirty Marxist.
We fear no one.
You fear everyone, especially us.
LOL… ROFLMAO… WTF… I’m a redneck unclefuckin’ alphabet-maulin’ pobucker who can’t get enough of using endless… ellipses… ROFL LOL LMAO, etc. etc.
You fear my black trouser snake, cracker.
LOL, I don’t care if you use my name.
Everyone knows me here, as well as my posting patterns.
You don’t hurt me. I win every time.
unklefuckin’? you just got back from your family reunion didn’t you? Find a girlfriend while you were there? Pussy…LMFAO@U…
It is generally accepted — though sometimes broken — rule of politics that competing parties criticize each other at home, not abroad. But that rule now appears to be ignored more often than it is observed, as Republican politicians take to the world’s stages to criticize President Barack Obama’s policies on everything from climate change to the coup in Honduras to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
A recent post by Eric Kleefeld at TalkingPointsMemo outlines numerous Obama administration policies that Republicans have taken to criticizing abroad. The most recent case was that of Republican Sen. Jim DeMint’s visit to Honduras on Friday.
DeMint (R-SC) was a supporter of the military-backed coup in that country since it took place in July. But after word spread that the interim Honduran government had suspended civil liberties, DeMint found himself backtracking, telling TPM that wasn’t taking sides and extracting promises from the Honduran government that civil liberties would be restored.
Hey Dumbass…it’s R.W. Xtreme…if you’re going to use it asshole…use it right…Dumbass, welfare collecting, pussy…LOL
You win? Every time?
You mean, “whinge”. And yes – you do, indeed evette. Every single time.
I can’t help it if you’re even less literate than I gave you credit for. You unclefuckin’ pigfarmin’ cross-burnin’ racist old FUCK.
What’s worse Bill, American dissent, or a president’s world wide apology tour?
We conservatives oppose to Obama’s policies, and so does the rest of the world if you haven’t noticed. It seems that the only person on the world stage who likes Obama is Hugo chavez. Real good guy BTW….
O’Bama (cause’ he’s mo’ Irish than black) criticized the whole country asshole…he’ll go down as the worst leader in the history of the world…LOL…just wait until we get to write the history books…we gonna’ change em’ back…LOL..pussy boys…
Sounds like I found this ones button…he collects welfare and he is a gay black man….LOL
Palin’s 15 minutes running out fast
The New York Post reports that Sarah Palin’s effort to cash in on her moment of fame are running into rough waters.
Palin’s bookers are said to be asking for $100,000 per speech, but an industry expert tells Page Six: “The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot.”
Many big lecture venues are subscription series, “and they don’t want to tick people off,” said our source. “Palin is polarizing, and some subscribers might cancel if she’s on the lineup.” Other lecture buyers are universities, which have a leftist slant, and corporations, which dislike controversy.
“Palin is so uninteresting to so many groups — unless they are interested in moose hunting,” said our insider. “What does she have to say? She can’t even describe what she reads.”
Palin’s first paid performance was in Hong Kong, safely outside the U.S., and publication of her memoirs has been moved up to November because they didn’t take long to write. Get your watches out folks, this 15 minutes could go fast.
Her book is a best seller and it’s not even been released yet…She’s another one these pussies are afraid of…If the left stream media are bashing someone they are showing their fear of them…pussies
Yay, the trolls are attacking me
How sweet!
I won’t give you any kibble though, you’re all stuffed on hand-outs as it is.
LOL
She’s polarizing alright…she’ll deliver the 80% center right sleeping giant while the 20% socialist population will get smaller and smaller every election cycle…it’s already happening in Europe….I love it!!! …pussy boys and man/wimen..LOL
LOLOLOLOL!
The New York Compost should watch what they say.
Palin is booked SOLID till the end of the year, and her book is #1 NYT best seller and isn’t even released yet!
Jealousy is tuff to witness.
She’s so beautiful and smart, she’s my true American Idol. <3
*vomits*
I can see idiots from my back porch.
Jealousy is tuff to witness.
You know, like pro-abortion, anti-american groups
An article on Salon asks “Why Can’t We Have Smarter Right Wingers?”
It’s been my own stark plaint for a decade — and not from any lefty reflex. Rather, as one who openly avows some libertarian and classic “conservative” views, sprinkled in a mostly-progressive goulash.
Shouldn’t there be clear-headed voices, articulating the attractiveness of balanced budgets, national readiness, genuinely competitive free enterprise, and caution in international entanglements? Isn’t it good to have someone in the room demanding: “Prove that something really is broken, before using the the blunt instrument of the state to fix it”?
I’ve long felt that the best minds of the right had useful things to contribute to a national conversation — even if their overall habit of resistance to change proved wrongheaded, more often than right. At least, some of them had the beneficial knack of targeting and criticizing the worst liberal mistakes, and often forcing needful re-drafting.
That is, some did, way back in when decent republicans and democrats shared one aim — to negotiate better solutions for the republic.
Does The New Right Even Have an Agenda Anymore?
Alas, today’s Republican Establishment seems not only incapable but uninterested in negotiation or deliberation. It isn’t just the dogmatism, or lockstep partisanship, or Koolaid fantasies spun -up by the Murdoch-Limbaugh hate machine. Heck, even though “culture war” is verifiably the worst direct treason against the United States of America since Fort Sumter, that isn’t what boggles most.
It’s the stupidity. The vast and nearly uniform dumbitudinousness of ignoring what has happened to conservatism, a transformation of nearly all of the salient traits of Barry Goldwater from:
* prudence to recklessness
* accountability to secrecy
* fiscal discretion to spendthrift profligacy
* consistency to hypocrisy
* civility to nastiness
* international restraint to recklessness
* efficiency to no-tomorrow wastrelness
* personal rectitude to flagrant licentiousness
* cleanliness to filthy habits
* logic to unreason
…and more, reversing:
* from respect for science to incantatory voodoo
* from an almost pedantic love of history to near total ignorance of the past
* from individual-based deliberation to lockstep party-line voting
* from belief in federalism and states’ rights to excusing monolithic presidential power
* from negotiated problem-solving to strawman-based politics
* from a bookish love of statistics to justification by anecdote
* from country-first patriotism to the flagwaving kind that can instantly turn into rants about secession, the killing of civil servants and praying for the president to fail, even if that means the country going down with him.
This is not about classic left-vs-right anymore. (As if that metaphor ever held cogent meaning.) Not when every measure of national health that conservatives ought to care about — from budget balancing to small business startups, to military readiness, to States’ Rights, to the economy, to individual liberty, to control over immigration at our borders — does vastly and demonstrably better under democrats. With nearly 100% perfection.
(Fact avoidance is even worse when you encompass ALL of history. Ask today’s conservatives which force destroyed more freedom and nearly every competitive market, across 5,000 years. Which foe of liberty and enterprise did Adam Smith despise? Hint: it wasn’t “socialism” or “government bureaucrats.”)
No. Given their lack of any other tangible accomplishments across the last fifteen years, one must to conclude that the core agenda of Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch and their petroprince backers really is quite simple.
To find out just how far they can push “culture war” toward a repeat of 1861.
Is the Agenda Civil War?
Does that sound florid and paranoid? Well, I do try to be entertaining!
Anyway, bear with me a bit, because the parallels are eerie. Not only on the geographical electoral map, but in the way that vast swathes of the South would only see or hear just one point of view (in uniformly pro-slavery newspapers, back in 1861, or via talk radio today), or propounded from every white pulpit — an incessant drumbeat of regional, ethnic and partisan hatred. With predictable results: the demolition of national discourse, along with the murder of census workers and the bubbling froth of a new wave of Timothy McVeighs.
Obviously, this is blatantly the agenda of Murdoch and Limbaugh and their foreign backers, since they do not even offer their own measures or agenda for deliberative negotiation with the party and president chosen by the American majority. They never even try to assert that any tangible improvements in national health occurred during their long tenure in power. Indeed, can you name any effective accomplishment — consistently pursued and unambiguously achieved — other than to push America toward Civil War?
Why they have been doing this is open to speculation. I have my theories. You may have yours.
But even without knowing their true motives, one can look ahead to outcomes. And so, I have to ask these fellows one question –
Let’s say that you succeed. Suppose, driven by your potent and effective propaganda, America’s “red” population rises up and Culture War finally goes all out… do you actually think that subsequent events will be to your liking?
The Mistake Made by All Our Enemies
Step back for a minute and note an important piece of psychohistory — that every generation of Americans faced adversaries who called us “decadent cowards and pleasure-seeking sybarites (wimps), devoid of any of the virtues of manhood.”
Elsewhere, I mark out this pattern, showing how every hostile nation, leader or meme had to invest in this story, for a simple reason. Because Americans were clearly happier, richer, smarter, more successful and far more free than anyone else. Hence, either those darned Yanks must know a better way of living (unthinkable!)… or else they must have traded something for all those surface satisfactions.
Something precious. Like their cojones. Or their souls. A devil’s bargain. And hence — (our adversaries told themselves) — those pathetic American will fold up, like pansies, as soon as you give them a good push.
It is the one uniform trait shown by every* vicious, obstinate and troglodytic enemy of the American Experiment. A wish fantasy that convinced Hitler and Stalin and the others that urbanized, comfortable New Yorkers and Californians and all the rest cannot possibly have any guts, not like real men. A delusion shared by the King George, the plantation-owners, the Nazis, Soviets and so on, down to Saddam and Osama bin Laden. A delusion that our ancestors disproved time and again, decisively — though not without a lot of pain
But let’s get back to my question for Murdoch and Limbaugh and their puppetmasters. All right, so you are pushing us toward another 1861, betting that we’ll tear ourselves to shreds, and that the “red” portion will dominate whatever’s left standing.
But do you even remember what happened in 1862? In 1863 and 1864 and 1865?
(A side bet? Ask any of the flagwaving jingo-patriots you know, “Have you ever fantasized about riding with Nathan Bedford Forest?” (Name’s unfamiliar? Wiki him and read it all.) My experience, asking that question? A shockingly high percentage of the loudest “patriots” have daydreamed about riding with that brilliant traitor, cutting down their fellow citizens — both blue and black — with a whoop and a holler, while screaming damnation at the United States of America. Some patriots.)
Have They Really Thought It Out?
But all right, Rush and Rupert and Sean and Glenn and Tafik. Go ahead. Push hard enough to finally wake up the real United States — the “Blue America” that seems all mushy because it always tries reason first. The citified sophisticates who have, for generations, sent vast net-flows of their taxes toward the red counties that then bit that generous hand with rants about the “decadent cities…” even though those cities have proved to be more moral, by far. (Compare rates of divorce, domestic violence, teen sex, STDs and yes, even abortion!)
Even though those cities are the front lines in the modern war on terror. Even though it was city folk who proved their courage and resilience, standing up for their country on 9/11.
Remember what finally happened almost a century and a half ago, Rush. Pushed too far, and as a last resort, those “decadent” Americans rose up. They donned that color blue and wore it proudly to defend the Union — and the dream — with their very lives.
(And this isn’t just regionalist bigotry, speaking. In every state of the Confederacy — except South Carolina — regiments of volunteers marched off to wear blue and fight for the country they had given sacred oaths to defend, showing even more courage than boys from Indiana or Maine. Ultimately, it wasn’t North vs South, but )
So, Sean and Glenn. Do you have any solid reason to believe things will go differently, this time? That we, the heirs of Fremont and Hancock, are made of lesser stuff? Really? You think so?
Well, you seem determined to find out. So keep pushing. The Union will awaken. It always has. We always will.
Is it Useless To Say Any Of This?
Folks, the truth is, these guys really haven’t thought it out.
It’s never occurred to them, for example, to ponder the reason why liberals aren’t even tepidly trying to pass Gun Control laws, anymore. Because, after eight years of power-grabbing, centralization and abuse by the Bushite Cabal, they came to realize that they might need protection and militia recourse, someday, after all. Especially at a time when their red neighbors are packing away bullets so fast that the factories have to work overtime, while screeching about using violence against their own freely-elected government.
No, Hannity & co haven’t thought that out, so wedded are they to the Decadence Assumption. The smugly satisfying but ultimately fatuous notion that wimpy cowardice is all you can expect from anyone with a post-graduate degree. (Tell it to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Tell it to George Marshall.)
Why Do All Fools Think They Are Wise?
And so we have circled back to where we started — the sad decline of American conservatism into cartoonish idiocy. The puppeteers may be rich. They may be talented provocateurs and con artists… but talent does not equate to brains. Not when the GOP has driven off almost everybody in America who actually knows stuff, including nearly all the scientists, the skilled innovators, and most of the U.S. Officer Corps.
Alas. This is no longer even about “conservatism” anymore. Barry Goldwater lived long enough to denounce what he saw happening to his beloved movement, and things have plummeted even father, since that great man died
Nowadays, bottom-to-top — and especially at the very top — it is all about stupidity.
——
———-
* Oh. There was one exception to the rule that all our foes have committed the Decadence Assumption. Ho Chi Minh never underestimated America. His avowed hero was George Washington and he remained in awe of the U.S., all his life. He remains the only enemy leader who ever defeated us at war, and then only because our hubris (not decadence) got the better of us.
Last winter I wrote a story about the number of people who were dying in house fires after having their utilities turned off. I began to do some research on the growing numbers of tent cities springing up across America. How, I wondered, will these people deal with the coming months of winter cold?
But, as I find is so often the case, I start off on one story and end up doing another. Officially there are over fourteen million unemployed in America. That is the official number that the politicians will own up to; in actuality the number could be as high as twenty million.
I have been unemployed myself for well over a year. I have twenty years of management experience, and I have a great track record with a proven record for results. However, I am over fifty years old and to prospective employers that is the kiss of death. They perceive you as about to keel over from a heart attack at any moment.
There are very few jobs to be had; the department of labor reports six people looking for every one job available. Because of the economy I became homeless and now live in a garage. I am not an alcoholic, and I’m not hooked on drugs. I’m just unemployed.
So as I began to research the tent cities across the country, what surprised me, although it really shouldn’t have, was the attitudes of my countrymen towards their fellow homeless Americans.
Several years ago I read a book about a woman who was a holocaust survivor. She described how she would drag out the dead bodies from the barracks in the morning so that she could have the corpse’s clothing. She could then trade the clothing for extra food or necessities. She said something that has always stuck with me. “Many people gave up on life because this was a world where it was very easy to give up on life. When you gave up then you just died.”
When you are homeless it is very easy to give up on life. Every activity is an uphill struggle, cooking food, doing laundry, looking for work, etc. The industry in which I worked has virtually ceased to exist. Many unemployed workers were employed in industries that have now ceased to exist. Their jobs and careers are gone, and yet the public sneers, “Get a job.” They also offer up the following helpful solutions, direct quotes all.
“As others have said..does it really help the homeless by providing them with a free home? I bet not. There are other solutions. I notice that when I give things to my children it does not tend to make them more responsible.. Just the opposite.”
“I don’t know the actual number, but what, isn’t it like 70-80 percent of all homeless people have drug/addiction problems? Even if it’s less how is tent city doing anything but enabling this problem? I know this is more about tent cities in general but honestly giving someone a free place to live along with free meals is not really motivating them to change.”
“The poverty pimps will not allow the homeless to be housed without 24/7 babysitting. Without the babysitting the homeless could move on with their live and thrive; NO MONEY IN THAT FOR THE POVERTY PIMPS!”
Homeless people are not children. For the most part they want the same things that any other citizen of this country wants.
In my two decades in management I have had to deal with employees with both drug and mental problems. Mental problems are sometimes masked by drug problems; just stopping the drugs does nothing to solve the emotional issues. It is not uncommon for a widower or a divorcee to struggle with depression and to then medicate themselves with drugs or alcohol. Why should it be so difficult to understand that a person who has lost everything they’ve owned and worked for to use the same treatment?
Many of these people have lost husbands, wives, and children. Why is it so hard to understand their pain? These people are not made of wood or stone; they are breakable. “Many people gave up on life because this was a world where it was very easy to give up on life.”
“You don’t have to go beyond the first page of a Google search for “homelessness and criminal behavior” to find several links to studies, which find much higher rates of drug use, crime, and mental illness among the chronically homeless. It’s sad, but some people are truly beyond saving.”
“I understand unemployment is up and some people have lost homes and need a hand to get back on their feet. These tent city’s are not for these people. History shows that this is just a party camp for the homeless. Help the people who want to help themselves not the ones who just want a hand out to support their criminal activity.”
What is truly sad is how these people tend to view crime. They worry about the homeless man who might steal their purse but don’t give a thought to the corporate executives who might steal their pension. They want all drug abusers locked away in prison because they are beyond saving. Then they listen to and watch talk show hosts with long and chronic histories of drug abuse and bob their heads, agreeing in unison.
“If I lost my job and house, I would literally have 10 options as to where to stay til I got back on my feet. I understand I am lucky for having a good support system. But how does someone get to the point where there is not even a couch or friends garage they can crash in? the only answer I can come up with is Drugs. You guys can paint these people as business men down on their luck all you want, an it might be the case for a very tiny minority of them, but last I checked McDonald’s is still hiring.”
Almost ten million homes have been foreclosed on in the last three years. That means forty million Americans have been dispossessed. That number does not include renters who have also been evicted. So maybe these people are living with relatives but maybe the relatives also enforced conditions. “You can stay but that good for nothing husband or lazy, fat-ass wife can’t!” Take your choice, live with mom and dad by yourself? Or live in the street with your spouse? If children are involved what real choice is there?
As I peruse the want ads each day, I see many jobs that literally don’t pay enough money to keep the lights on. I had written about the job offered by the storage facility. Be available 24/7 to do sales, bookkeeping, maintenance and janitorial work at any facility in Atlanta. $300 per week, no mileage, no gas money, no benefits, no promise of steady work. I read an ad yesterday to rewrite 400-word articles for five dollars each. I thought to myself that at ten or twelve thousand words a day I could make a decent living. McDonalds and many large corporations take applications to keep a current stock of applicants on hand, but it doesn’t mean that they are hiring.
When Chrysler went through its recent bankruptcy I read about thousands in Chrysler management who had been permanently laid off. Most had worked their entire adult lives in the automobile industry, and I thought, “Where will these people find new jobs?” The problem is not drugs or alcoholism or even homelessness; the problem is jobs. Strange, isn’t it, that when America had a strong manufacturing base and a strong job market that we had few so-called defective people.
I live in the South and there are a great many literal Biblical believers who take the Bible at face value. I’ve always tended to view it in the same way as the Old Testament was written, in the form of parables. The stories are told in a way to make us see ourselves in them. Why else would they dwell on Christ’s long walk to Calvary? Dragging his cross, an innocent man convicted by society. As the onlookers heckle and throw things at him, mocking his burden, only one of the multitude stopped to offer him any kindness or assistance.
As Lenny Bruce said, “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.” This is a mean country that calls the victims criminals and the criminals innocents. So I’ve stopped worrying about the coldness of winter, as it will never blow colder than an American’s heart.
Boomstick, what’s your point, it’s already over, you pussies are done…your messiah has already done more damage to the left than Jimmy Cahtah did in four years…gridlock will be sweet..LOL
We are going to go back to the constitution and cut the size and power of the federal guvmint…it’s simple…you dumbasses always want to complicate things…it’s really funny to watch you “ponder”…this country is going to need producers not ponderers…..BTW, next time you get a brilliant idea while pondering, do us all a favor and ponder the long term consequences of your brilliance…dumbasses…LMFAO@U pussies….
The Repubikkkan Party is showing their true colors now. After seeing the reaction that many of them had to Chicago’s failure to land the Olympics, I can only advise them to seek medical help if it lasts more than four hours.
So Obama had the audacity to fly to Denmark to lobby for the games, as did the Spanish and Japanese heads of state. Except for the fuel, there is little cost and little lost efficiency. Obama can do virtually anything on Air Force One that he can do in the Oval Office. There is this invention called the telly-phone and he has one on the plane.
So why the unrestrained glee at Chicago’s loss? I thought it was treasonous to wish failure for the president or for the nation. Yet Republikkkans are acting as if this is great news? Why? The answer is that it is seen as a failure for Obama. In their minds, every failure of his will make him easier to defeat in 2012, or at the least make the Democratic majority in Congress either diminish or disappear. That’s it. Remember, boys and girls, when a Republikkkan is in the White House, you must support whatever he does. When it’s a Democrat, particularly a black one, to hell with the country.
You mean If you give a man a fish he’ll eat one meal, If you teach a man to fish he’ll never be hungry….But you will not be able to count on his vote unless you keep him dependent upon you….sound like our guvmint folks?……
Manifesto of the Communist Party
A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish
Chapter I. Bourgeois and Proletarians
The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.
Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.
The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.
The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.
At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.
But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.
Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.
This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.
Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.
Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.
The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.
Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.
Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.
They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.
They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.
The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.
Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.
Let us now take wage-labour.
The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.
It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.
All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.
But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.
Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.
And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.
The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.
But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.
The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.
National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.
Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.
“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”
“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”
What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.
But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature
1. Reactionary Socialism
A. Feudal Socialism
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation[A], these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political struggle was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period had become impossible.(1)
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England” exhibited this spectacle.
In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.
For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the bourgeois régime a class is being developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits.(2)
As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.
In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois régime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but also in England.
This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.
Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.
Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable hangover.
C. German or “True” Socialism
The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expressions of the struggle against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.
German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits (men of letters), eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate practical significance and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the Eighteenth Century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of “Practical Reason” in general, and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified, in their eyes, the laws of pure Will, of Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will generally.
The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view.
This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely, by translation.
It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity”, and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois state they wrote “Dethronement of the Category of the General”, and so forth.
The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical criticisms, they dubbed “Philosophy of Action”, “True Socialism”, “German Science of Socialism”, “Philosophical Foundation of Socialism”, and so on.
The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome “French one-sidedness” and of representing, not true requirements, but the requirements of Truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.
This German socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.
The fight of the Germans, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest.
By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to “True” Socialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things those attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.
To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires, and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.
It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and bullets, with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings.
While this “True” Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things.
To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction — on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True” Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic.
The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry “eternal truths”, all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public.
And on its part German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.
It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.(3)
2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism
A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.
To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.
We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.
The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.
A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.
Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.
Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.
It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.
3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism
We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others.
The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form.
The Socialist and Communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians).
The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement.
Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to create these conditions.
Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action; historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones; and the gradual, spontaneous class organisation of the proletariat to an organisation of society especially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans.
In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society?
Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.
Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.
But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them — such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of production — all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their earliest indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian character.
The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated “phalansteres”, of establishing “Home Colonies”, or setting up a “Little Icaria”(4) — duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem — and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.
They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.
The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the Réformistes.
Chapter IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties
Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.
The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats(1) against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.
In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.
In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.
In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.
But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.
The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.
In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!
The Internationale
Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we’ll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They’ll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.
No savior from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E’er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.
R. W. EH???? Is that a threat?
Could you post the first Harry Potter book for me?
Wy can’t libs speak for themselves?
Wy do they always have to use another’s words?
Are you threatening me??
To Sibel…. I don’t know what you’re responding to Dumbass, but I don’t make threats….LOL
Ho Chi Minh was born in Vietnam in 1890. His father, Nguyen Sinh Huy was a teacher employed by the French. He had a reputation for being extremely intelligent but his unwillingness to learn the French language resulted in the loss of his job. To survive, Nguyen Sinh Huy was forced to travel throughout Vietnam, offering his services to the peasants. This usually involved writing letters and providing medical care.
As a nationalist, Nguyen taught his children to resist the rule of the French. Not surprisingly, they all grew up to be committed nationalists willing to fight for Vietnamese independence.
Ho Chi Minh’s sister obtained employment working with the French Army. She used this position to steal weapons that she hoped one day would be used to drive the French out of Vietnam. She was eventually caught and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Although he had refused to learn French himself, Nguyen decided to send Ho to a French school. He was now of the opinion that it would help him prepare for the forthcoming struggle against the French.
After his studies. Ho was, for a short period, a schoolteacher. He then decided to become a sailor. This enabled him to travel to many different countries. This included several countries that were part of the French Empire. In doing so. Ho learnt that the Vietnamese were not the only people suffering from exploitation
Ho finally settled in Paris in 1917. Here he read books by Karl Marx and other left-wing writers and eventually he became convened to communism. When in December, 1920 the French Communist Party was formed. Ho became one of its founder members.
Ho, like the rest of the French Communist Party, had been inspired by the Russian Revolution. In 1924, he visited the Soviet Union. While in Moscow, Ho wrote to a friend that it was the duty of all communists to return to their own country to: “make contact with the masses to awaken, organise, unite and train them, and lead them to fight for freedom and independence.”
However, Ho was aware that if he returned to Vietnam he was in danger of being arrested by the French authorities. He therefore decided to go and live in China on the Vietnam border. Here he helped organise other exiled nationalists into the ‘Vietnam Revolutionary League’.
In September, 1940, the Japanese army invaded Indochina. With Paris already occupied by Germany, the French troops decided it was not worth putting up a fight and they surrendered to the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh and his fellow nationalists saw this as an opportunity to free their country from foreign domination and formed an organisation called the Vietminh. Under the military leadership of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietminh began a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese.
The Vietminh received weapons and ammunition from the Soviet Union, and after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, they also obtained supplies from the United States. During this period the Vietminh leant a considerable amount about military tactics which was to prove invaluable in the years that were to follow.
When the Japanese surrendered to the Allies after the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, the Vietminh was in a good position to take over the control of the country.
In September, 1945, Ho Chi Minh announced the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Unknown to the Vietminh Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had already decided what would happen to post-war Vietnam at a summit-meeting at Potsdam. It had been agreed that the country would be divided into two, the northern half under the control of the Chinese and the southern half under the British.
After the Second World War France attempted to re-establish control over Vietnam. In January 1946, Britain agreed to remove her troops and later that year, China left Vietnam in exchange for a promise from France that she would give up her rights to territory in China.
France refused to recognise the Democratic Republic of Vietnam that had been declared by Ho Chi Minh and fighting soon broke out between the Vietminh and the French troops. At first, the Vietminh under General Vo Nguyen Giap, had great difficulty in coping with the better trained and equipped French forces. The situation improved in 1949 after Mao Zedong and his communist army defeated Chaing Kai-Shek in China. The Vietminh now had a safe-base where they could take their wounded and train new soldiers.
By 1953 the Vietminh controlled large areas of North Vietnam. The French, however, had a firm hold on the south and had installed Bo Dai, the former Vietnamese Emperor, as the Chief of State.
When it became clear that France was becoming involved in a long-drawn out war, the French government tried to negotiate a deal with the Vietminh. They offered to help set-up a national government and promised they would eventually grant Vietnam its independence. Ho Chi Minh and the other leaders of the Vietminh did not trust the word of the French and continued the war.
French public opinion continued to move against the war. There were four main reasons for this: (1) Between 1946 and 1952 90,000 French troops had been killed, wounded or captured; (2) France was attempting to build up her economy after the devastation of the Second World War. The cost of the war had so far been twice what they had received from the United States under the Marshall Plan; (3) The war had lasted seven years and there was still no sign of an outright French victory; (4) A growing number of people in France had reached the conclusion that their country did not have any moral justification for being in Vietnam.
General Navarre, the French commander in Vietnam, realised that time was running out and that he needed to obtain a quick victory over the Vietminh. He was convinced that if he could manoeuvre General Vo Nguyen Giap into engaging in a large scale battle, France was bound to win. In December, 1953, General Navarre setup a defensive complex at Dien Bien Phu, which would block the route of the Vietminh forces trying to return to camps in neighbouring Laos. Navarre surmised that in an attempt to reestablish the route to Laos, General Giap would be forced to organise a mass-attack on the French forces at Dien Bien Phu.
Navarre’s plan worked and General Giap took up the French challenge. However, instead of making a massive frontal assault, Giap choose to surround Dien Bien Phu and ordered his men to dig a trench that encircled the French troops. From the outer trench, other trenches and tunnels were dug inwards towards the centre. The Vietminh were now able to move in close on the French troops defending Dien Bien Phu.
While these preparations were going on, Giap brought up members of the Vietminh from all over Vietnam. By the time the battle was ready to start, Giap had 70,000 soldiers surrounding Dien Bien Phu, five times the number of French troops enclosed within.
Employing recently obtained anti-aircraft guns and howitzers from China, Giap was able to restrict severely the ability of the French to supply their forces in Dien Bien Phu. When Navarre realised that he was trapped, he appealed for help. The United States was approached and some advisers suggested the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the Vietminh. Another suggestion was that conventional air-raids would be enough to scatter Giap’s troops.
The United States President, Dwight Eisenhower, however, refused to intervene unless he could persuade Britain and his other western allies to participate. Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, declined claiming that he wanted to wait for the outcome of the peace negotiations taking place in Geneva before becoming involved in escalating the war.
On March 13, 1954, Vo Nguyen Giap launched his offensive. For fifty-six days the Vietminh pushed the French forces back until they only occupied a small area of Dien Bien Phu. Colonel Piroth, the artillery commander, blamed himself for the tactics that had been employed and after telling his fellow officers that he had been “completely dishonoured” committed suicide by pulling the safety pin out of a grenade.
The French surrendered on May 7th. French casualties totalled over 7,000 and a further 11,000 soldiers were taken prisoner. The following day the French government announced that it intended to withdraw from Vietnam. The following month the foreign ministers of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France decided to meet in Geneva to see if they could bring about a peaceful solution to the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.
After much negotiation the following was agreed: (1) Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel; (2) North Vietnam would be ruled by Ho Chi Minh; (3) South Vietnam would be ruled by Ngo Dinh Diem, a strong opponent of communism; (4) French troops would withdraw from Vietnam; (5) the Vietminh would withdraw from South Vietnam; (6) the Vietnamese could freely choose to live in the North or the South; and (7) a General Election for the whole of Vietnam would be held before July, 1956, under the supervision of an international commission.
After their victory at Dien Bien Phu, some members of the Vietminh were reluctant to accept the cease-fire agreement. Their main concern was the division of Vietnam into two sections. However, Ho Chi Minh argued that this was only a temporary situation and was convinced that in the promised General Election, the Vietnamese were sure to elect a communist government to rule a re-united Vietnam.
This view was shared by President Dwight Eisenhower. As he wrote later: “I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held at the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the communist Ho Chi Minh.”
When the Geneva conference took place in 1954, the United States delegation proposed the name of Ngo Dinh Diem as the new ruler of South Vietnam. The French argued against this claiming that Diem was “not only incapable but mad”. However, eventually it was decided that Diem presented the best opportunity to keep South Vietnam from falling under the control of communism.
When it became clear that Ngo Dinh Diem had no intention of holding elections for a united Vietnam, his political opponents began to consider alternative ways of obtaining their objectives. Some came to the conclusion that violence was the only way to persuade Diem to agree to the terms of the 1954 Geneva Conference. The year following the cancelled elections saw a large increase in the number of people leaving their homes to form armed groups in the forests of Vietnam. At first they were not in a position to take on the South Vietnamese Army and instead concentrated on what became known as ’soft targets’. In 1959, an estimated 1,200 of Diem’s government officials were murdered.
Ho Chi Minh was initially against this strategy. He argued that the opposition forces in South Vietnam should concentrate on organising support rather than carrying out acts of terrorism against Diem’s government.
In 1959, Ho Chi Minh sent Le Duan, a trusted adviser, to visit South Vietnam. Le Duan returned to inform his leader that Diem’s policy of imprisoning the leaders of the opposition was so successful that unless North Vietnam encouraged armed resistance, a united country would never be achieved.
Ho Chi Minh agreed to supply the guerrilla units with aid. He also encouraged the different armed groups to join together and form a more powerful and effective resistance organisation. This they agreed to do and in December, 1960, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) was formed. The NLF, or the ‘Vietcong’, as the Americans were to call them, was made up of over a dozen different political and religious groups. Although the leader of the NLF, Hua Tho, was a non-Marxist, Saigon lawyer, large numbers of the movement were supporters of communism.
The strategy and tactics of the NLF were very much based on those used by Mao Zedong in China. This became known as Guerrilla Warfare. The NLF was organised into small groups of between three to ten soldiers. These groups were called cells. These cells worked together but the knowledge they had of each other was kept to the bare minimum. Therefore, when a guerrilla was captured and tortured, his confessions did not do too much damage to the NLF.
The initial objective of the NLF was to gain the support of the peasants living in the rural areas. According to Mao Zedong, the peasants were the sea in which the guerrillas needed to swim: “without the constant and active support of the peasants… failure is inevitable.”
When the NLF entered a village they obeyed a strict code of behaviour. All members were issued with a series of ‘directives’. These included:” (1) Not to do what is likely to damage the land and crops or spoil the houses and belongings of the people; (2) Not to insist on buying or borrowing what the people are not willing to sell or lend; (3) Never to break our word; (4) Not to do or speak what is likely to make people believe that we hold them in contempt; (5) To help them in their daily work (harvesting, fetching firewood, carrying water, sewing, etc.).”
Three months after being elected president in 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson launched Operation Rolling Thunder. The plan was to destroy the North Vietnam economy and to force her to stop helping the guerrilla fighters in the south. Bombing was also directed against territory controlled by the NLF in South Vietnam. The plan was for Operation Rolling Thunder to last for eight weeks but it lasted for the next three years. In that time, the US dropped 1 million tons of bombs on Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh died in 1969
Fidel Castro, the illegitimate son of a successful Creole sugar plantation owner, was born in Cuba in 1926. He was a rebellious boy and at the age of thirteen helped to organize a strike of sugar workers on his father’s plantation.
Both his parents were illiterate but they were determined that their children should receive a good education and Fidel was sent to a Jesuit boarding school. Although he disliked the strict discipline of the school, Fidel soon showed that he was extremely intelligent. However, except for history, he preferred sports to academic subjects. Fidel was good at running, soccer and baseball, and in 1944 was awarded the prize as Cuba’s best all-round school athlete.
After he had finished his education Castro became a lawyer in Havana. As he tended to take the cases of poor people who could not afford to pay him, Castro was constantly short of money. Castro’s experience as a lawyer made him extremely critical of the great inequalities in wealth that existed in Cuba. Like many other Cubans, Castro resented the wealth and power of the American businessmen who appeared to control the country.
In 1947 Castro joined the Cuban People’s Party. He was attracted to this new party’s campaign against corruption, injustice, poverty, unemployment and low wages. The Cuban People’s Party accused government ministers of taking bribes and running the country for the benefit of the large United States corporations that had factories and offices in Cuba.
In 1952 Fidel Castro became a candidate for Congress for the Cuban People’s Party. He was a superb public speaker and soon built up a strong following amongst the young members of the party. The Cuban People’s Party was expected to win the election but during the campaign. General Fulgencio Batista, with the support of the armed forces, took control of the country.
Castro came to the conclusion that revolution was the only way that the Cuban People’s Party would gain power. In 1953, Castro, with an armed group of 123 men and women, attacked the Moncada Army Barracks. The plan to overthrow Batista ended in disaster and although only eight were killed in the fighting, another eighty were murdered by the army after they were captured. Castro was lucky that the lieutenant who arrested him ignored orders to have him executed and instead delivered him to the nearest civilian prison.
Castro also came close to death in prison. Captain Pelletier was instructed to put poison in Castro’s food. The man refused and instead revealed his orders to the Cuban people. Pelletier was court-martialed but, concerned about world opinion, Batista decided not to have Castro killed.
Castro was put on trial charged with organising an armed uprising. He used this opportunity to make a speech about the problems of Cuba and how they could be solved. His speech later became a book entitled History Will Absolve Me. Castro was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The trial and the publication of the book made Castro famous in Cuba. His attempted revolution had considerable support in the country. After all, the party he represented would probably have won the election in 1952 had it been allowed to take place. Following considerable pressure from the Cuban population, Fulgencio Batista decided to release Castro after he had served only two years of his sentence. Batista also promised elections but when it became clear that they would not take place, Castro left for Mexico where he began to plan another attempt to overthrow the Cuban government.
After building up a stock of guns and ammunition, Castro, Che Guevara, Juan Almeida, and eighty other rebels arrived in Cuba in 1956. This group became known as the July 26 Movement (the date that Castro had attacked the Moncada barracks). Their plan was to set up their base in the Sierra Maestra mountains. On the way to the mountains they were attacked by government troops. By the time they reached the Sierra Maestra there were only sixteen men left with twelve weapons between them. For the next few months Castro’s guerrilla army raided isolated army garrisons and were gradually able to build-up their stock of weapons.
When the guerrillas took control of territory they redistributed the land amongst the peasants. In return, the peasants helped the guerrillas against Batista’s soldiers. In some cases the peasants also joined Castro’s army, as did students from the cities and occasionally Catholic priests.
In an effort to find out information about Castro’s army people were pulled in for questioning. Many innocent people were tortured. Suspects, including children, were publicly executed and then left hanging in the streets for several days as a warning to others who were considering joining Castro. The behaviour of Batista’s forces increased support for the guerrillas. In 1958 forty-five organizations signed an open letter supporting the July 26 Movement. National bodies representing lawyers, architects, dentists, accountants and social workers were amongst those who signed. Castro, who had originally relied on the support of the poor, was now gaining the backing of the influential middle classes.
Fulgencio Batista responded to this by sending more troops to the Sierra Maestra. He now had 10,000 men hunting for Castro and his 300-strong army. Although outnumbered, Castro’s guerrillas were able to inflict defeat after defeat on the government’s troops. In the summer of 1958 over a thousand of Batista’s soldiers were killed or wounded and many more were captured. Unlike Batista’s soldiers, Castro’s troops had developed a reputation for behaving well towards prisoners. This encouraged Batista’s troops to surrender to Castro when things went badly in battle. Complete military units began to join the guerrillas.
The United States supplied Batista with planes, ships and tanks, but the advantage of using the latest technology such as napalm failed to win them victory against the guerrillas. In March 1958, the United States government, disillusioned with Batista’s performance, suggested he held elections. This he did, but the people showed their dissatisfaction with his government by refusing to vote. Over 75 per cent of the voters in the capital Havana boycotted the polls. In some areas, such as Santiago, it was as high as 98 per cent.
Castro was now confident he could beat Batista in a head-on battle. Leaving the Sierra Maestra mountains, Castro’s troops began to march on the main towns. After consultations with the United States government, Batista decided to flee Cuba. Senior Generals left behind attempted to set up another military government. Castro’s reaction was to call for a general strike. The workers came out on strike and the military were forced to accept the people’s desire for change. Castro marched into Havana on January 9,1959, and became Cuba’s new leader.
In its first hundred days in office Castro’s government passed several new laws. Rents were cut by up to 50 per cent for low wage earners; property owned by Batista and his ministers was confiscated; the telephone company was nationalized and the rates were reduced by 50 per cent; land was redistributed amongst the peasants (including the land owned by the Castro family); separate facilities for blacks and whites (swimming pools, beaches, hotels, cemeteries etc.) were abolished.
Castro had strong views on morality. He considered that alcohol, drugs, gambling, homosexuality and prostitution were major evils. He saw the casinos and night-clubs as sources of temptation and corruption and he passed laws closing them down. Members of the Mafia, who had been heavily involved in running these places, were forced to leave the country.
Castro believed strongly in education. Before the revolution 23.6 per cent of the Cuban population were illiterate. In rural areas over half the population could not read or write and 61 per cent of the children did not go to school. Castro asked young students in the cities to travel to the countryside and teach the people to read and write. Cuba adopted the slogan: “If you don’t know, learn. If you know, teach.” Eventually free education was made available to all citizens and illiteracy in Cuba became a thing of the past.
The new Cuban government also set about the problem of health care. Before the revolution Cuba had 6,000 doctors. Of these, 64 per cent worked in Havana where most of the rich people lived. When Castro ordered that doctors had to be redistributed throughout the country, over half decided to leave Cuba. To replace them Cuba built three new training schools for doctors.
The death of young children from disease was a major problem in Cuba. Infant mortality was 60 per 1,000 live births in 1959. To help deal with this Cuba introduced a free health-service and started a massive inoculation program. By 1980 infant mortality had fallen to 15 per 1,000. This figure is now the best in the developing world and is in fact better than many areas of the United States.
It has been estimated that in his seven-year reign, Batista’s regime had murdered over 20,000 Cubans. Those involved in the murders had not expected to lose power and had kept records, including photographs of the people they had tortured and murdered. Castro established public tribunals to try the people responsible and an estimated 600 people were executed. Although this pleased the relatives of the people murdered by Batista’s government, these executions shocked world opinion.
Some of Castro’s new laws also upset the United States. Much of the land given to the peasants was owned by United States corporations. So also was the telephone company that was nationalized. The United States government responded by telling Castro they would no longer be willing to supply the technology and technicians needed to run Cuba’s economy. When this failed to change Castro’s policies they reduced their orders for Cuban sugar.
Castro refused to be intimidated by the United States and adopted even more aggressive policies towards them. In the summer of 1960 Castro nationalized United States property worth $850 million. He also negotiated a deal where by the Soviet Union and other communist countries in Eastern Europe agreed to purchase the sugar that the United States had refused to take. The Soviet Union also agreed to supply the weapons, technicians and machinery denied to Cuba by the United States.
President Dwight Eisenhower was in a difficult situation. The more he attempted to punish Castro the closer he became to the Soviet Union. His main fear was that Cuba could eventually become a Soviet military base. To change course and attempt to win Castro’s friendship with favourable trade deals was likely to be interpreted as a humiliating defeat for the United States. Instead Eisenhower announced that he would not buy any more sugar from Cuba.
In March I960, Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to overthrow Castro. The plan involved a budget of $13 million to train “a paramilitary force outside Cuba for guerrilla action.” The strategy was organised by Richard Bissell and Richard Helms. An estimated 400 CIA officers were employed full-time to carry out what became known as Operation Mongoose. Edward Lansdale became project leader whereas William Harvey became head of what became known as Task Force W. The JM WAVE station served as operational headquarters for Operation Mongoose.
Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA Technical Services Division was asked to come up with proposals that would undermine Castro’s popularity with the Cuban people. Plans included a scheme to spray a television studio in which he was about to appear with an hallucinogenic drug and contaminating his shoes with thallium which they believed would cause the hair in his beard to fall out.
These schemes were rejected and instead Bissell decided to arrange the assassination of Castro. In September 1960, Richard Bissell and Allen W. Dulles, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), initiated talks with two leading figures of the Mafia, Johnny Roselli and Sam Giancana. Later, other crime bosses such as Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky became involved in this plot against Castro.
Robert Maheu, a veteran of CIA counter-espionage activities, was instructed to offer the Mafia $150,000 to kill Fidel Castro. The advantage of employing the Mafia for this work is that it provided CIA with a credible cover story. The Mafia were known to be angry with Castro for closing down their profitable brothels and casinos in Cuba. If the assassins were killed or captured the media would accept that the Mafia were working on their own.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation had to be brought into this plan as part of the deal involved protection against investigations against the Mafia in the United States. Castro was later to complain that there were twenty ClA-sponsered attempts on his life. Eventually Johnny Roselli and his friends became convinced that the Cuban revolution could not be reversed by simply removing its leader. However, they continued to play along with this CIA plot in order to prevent them being prosecuted for criminal offences committed in the United States.
In 1961 Eisenhower retired and the problem of dealing with Castro was passed on to the new president, John F. Kennedy. The new president continued with Eisenhower’s policy of trying to assassinate Castro. This became known as Operation Freedom and was placed under the control of Robert Kennedy.
In the three years that followed the revolution, 250,000 Cubans out of a population of six million left the country. Most of these were from the upper and middle-classes who were financially worse off as a result of Castro’s policies.
Of those who stayed, 90 per cent of the population, according to public opinion polls, supported Castro. However, Castro did not keep his promise of holding free elections. Castro claimed the national unity that had been created would be destroyed by the competing political parties in an election.
Castro was also becoming less tolerant towards people who disagreed with him. Ministers who questioned the wisdom of his policies were sacked and replaced by people who had proved their loyalty to him. These people were often young, inexperienced politicians who had fought with him in the Sierra Maestra.
Politicians who publicly disagreed with him faced the possibility of being arrested. Writers who expressed dissenting views and people he considered deviants such as homosexuals were also imprisoned.
When John F. Kennedy replaced Dwight Eisenhower as president of the United States he was told about the CIA plan to invade Cuba. Kennedy had doubts about the venture but he was afraid he would be seen as soft on communism if he refused permission for it to go ahead. Kennedy’s advisers convinced him that Castro was an unpopular leader and that once the invasion started the Cuban people would support the ClA-trained forces.
On April 14, 1961, B-26 planes began bombing Cuba’s airfields. After the raids Cuba was left with only eight planes and seven pilots. Two days later five merchant ships carrying 1,400 Cuban exiles arrived at the Bay of Pigs. The attack was a total failure. Two of the ships were sunk, including the ship that was carrying most of the supplies. Two of the planes that were attempting to give air-cover were also shot down. Within seventy-two hours all the invading troops had been killed, wounded or had surrendered.
At the beginning of September 1962, U-2 spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was building surface-to-air missile (SAM) launch sites. There was also an increase in the number of Soviet ships arriving in Cuba which the United States government feared were carrying new supplies of weapons. President John Kennedy complained to the Soviet Union about these developments and warned them that the United States would not accept offensive weapons (SAMs were considered to be defensive) in Cuba.
As the Cubans now had SAM installations they were in a position to shoot down U-2 spy-planes. Kennedy was in a difficult situation. Elections were to take place for the United States Congress in two month’s time. The public opinion polls showed that his own ratings had fallen to their lowest point since he became president.
In his first two years of office a combination of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats in Congress had blocked much of Kennedy’s proposed legislation. The polls suggested that after the elections he would have even less support in Congress. Kennedy feared that any trouble over Cuba would lose the Democratic Party even more votes, as it would remind voters of the Bay of Pigs disaster where the CIA had tried to oust Castro from power. One poll showed that over 62 per cent of the population were unhappy with his policies on Cuba. Understandably, the Republicans attempted to make Cuba the main issue in the campaign.
This was probably in Kennedy’s mind when he decided to restrict the flights of the U-2 planes over Cuba . Pilots were also told to avoid flying the whole length of the island. Kennedy hoped this would ensure that a U-2 plane would not be shot down, and would prevent Cuba becoming a major issue during the election campaign.
On September 27, a CIA agent in Cuba overheard Castro’s personal pilot tell another man in a bar that Cuba now had nuclear weapons. U-2 spy-plane photographs also showed that unusual activity was taking place at San Cristobal. However, it was not until October 15 that photographs were taken that revealed that the Soviet Union was placing long range missiles in Cuba.
President Kennedy’s first reaction to the information about the missiles in Cuba was to call a meeting to discuss what should be done. Fourteen men attended the meeting and included military leaders, experts on Latin America, representatives of the CIA, cabinet ministers and personal friends whose advice Kennedy valued. This group became known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Over the next few days they were to meet several times.
At the first meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, the CIA and other military advisers explained the situation. After hearing what they had to say, the general feeling of the meeting was for an air-attack on the missile sites. Remembering the poor advice the CIA had provided before the Bay of Pigs invasion, John F. Kennedy decided to wait and instead called for another meeting to take place that evening. By this time several of the men were having doubts about the wisdom of a bombing raid, fearing that it would lead to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The committee was now so divided that a firm decision could not be made.
The Executive Committee of the National Security Council argued amongst themselves for the next two days. The CIA and the military were still in favour of a bombing raid and/or an invasion. However, the majority of the committee gradually began to favour a naval blockade of Cuba.
Kennedy accepted their decision and instructed Theodore Sorensen, a member of the committee, to write a speech in which Kennedy would explain to the world why it was necessary to impose a naval blockade of Cuba.
As well as imposing a naval blockade, Kennedy also told the air-force to prepare for attacks on Cuba and the Soviet Union. The army positioned 125,000 men in Florida and was told to wait for orders to invade Cuba. If the Soviet ships carrying weapons for Cuba did not turn back or refused to be searched, a war was likely to begin. Kennedy also promised his military advisers that if one of the U-2 spy planes were fired upon he would give orders for an attack on the Cuban SAM missile sites.
The world waited anxiously. A public opinion poll in the United States revealed that three out of five people expected fighting to break out between the two sides. There were angry demonstrations outside the American Embassy in London as people protested about the possibility of nuclear war. Demonstrations also took place in other cities in Europe. However, in the United States, polls suggested that the vast majority supported Kennedy’s action.
On October 24, President John F. Kennedy was informed that Soviet ships had stopped just before they reached the United States ships blockading Cuba. That evening Nikita Khrushchev sent an angry note to Kennedy accusing him of creating a crisis to help the Democratic Party win the forthcoming election.
On October 26, Khrushchev sent Kennedy another letter. In this he proposed that the Soviet Union would be willing to remove the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a promise by the United States that they would not invade Cuba. The next day a second letter from Khrushchev arrived demanding that the United States remove their nuclear bases in Turkey.
While the president and his advisers were analyzing Khrushchev’s two letters, news came through that a U-2 plane had been shot down over Cuba. The leaders of the military, reminding Kennedy of the promise he had made, argued that he should now give orders for the bombing of Cuba. Kennedy refused and instead sent a letter to Khrushchev accepting the terms of his first letter.
Khrushchev agreed and gave orders for the missiles to be dismantled. Eight days later the elections for Congress took place. The Democrats increased their majority and it was estimated that Kennedy would now have an extra twelve supporters in Congress for his policies.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the first and only nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The event appeared to frighten both sides and it marked a change in the development of the Cold War.
Castro remained dependent on the support of the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev was ousted from power on 15th October, 1964, but his successors, including Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev provided aid to his government. However, after the fall of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989 this economic help came to an end
In 1991 Cuba suffered an economic crisis. Its outdated and unrepaired equipment meant that sugar and tobacco production fell. At the same time Cuba could no longer rely on former countries in Eastern Europe to buy its goods. Castro suffered great embarrassment when his own daughter sough asylum in the United States in 1994.
In 2005, the CIA reported that Fidel Castro was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Other rumours suggested that he had terminal cancer. The following year he underwent intestinal surgery and on 31st July, 2006, he transferred his political responsibilities to his younger brother Raúl Castro.
On 19th February, 2008, Fidel Castro announced he would neither seek nor accept a new term as either president or commander-in-chief of Cuba.
Sounds like your hero…good luck with that…you’re not going to make it happen here shithead…LOL Dumbass pussy boys…
The Commune was the result of an uprising in Paris after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. This uprising was chiefly caused by the disaster in the war and the growing discontent among French workers.[1] The worker discontent can be traced to the first worker uprisings, the Canut Revolts, in Lyon and Paris in the 1830s[2] (a Canut was a Lyonnais silk worker, often working on Jacquard looms).
Parisians, especially workers and the lower-middle classes, had long supported a democratic republic. A specific demand was that Paris should be self-governing with its own elected council, something enjoyed by smaller French towns but denied to Paris by a national government wary of the capital’s unruly populace. An associated, but less well-articulated, wish was for a more “just”, if not necessarily socialist, way of managing the economy, summed up in the popular appeal for “la république démocratique et sociale!”, “the democratic and social republic!”
The war with Prussia, initiated by Napoleon III in July 1870, turned out disastrously for France, and by September Paris itself was under siege. The gap between rich and poor in the capital had widened during the preceding years, and then, food shortages, military failures, and, finally, a Prussian bombardment of the city contributed to a widespread discontent. In January 1871, after four months of siege, the moderate, republican, Government of National Defence sought an armistice with the newly-proclaimed German Empire. The Germans included a triumphal entry into Paris in their peace terms. Despite the hardships of the siege, many Parisians were bitterly resentful of the Prussians (now at the head of the German Empire) being allowed even a brief ceremonial occupation of their city.
Hundreds of thousands of Parisians were armed members of a citizens’ militia known as the “National Guard”, which had been greatly expanded to help defend the city. Guard units elected their own officers, who, in working-class districts, included radical and socialist leaders.
Steps were taken to form a “Central Committee” of the Guard, including patriotic republicans and socialists, both to defend Paris against a possible German attack and also to defend the republic against a possible royalist restoration. The election of a monarchist majority to the new National Ass