Grayson writes: "Evolution is not something that you 'believe' or 'disbelieve.' Evolution is like gravity; it's not like Santa Claus or the Abominable Snowman. Be that as it may, neither Jon Huntsman nor any other Republican presidential candidate has been willing to take on the hard myths. The myths that are killing us. Here are a dirty dozen, right off the top of my head."
Progressive political gadfly and former Representative Alan Grayson. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
12 Republican Myths That Are Killing Us
03 March 12
s the Republican demolition derby rolls on, I continue to be amused by how each remaining contender tries to assume the "small government" mantle.
Mitt Romney wants a government so small that it provides universal health care.
Newt Gingrich wants a government so small that it will establish a permanent base on the moon.
Rick Santorum wants a government so small that it will fit inside a woman's uterus.
The only real remaining advocate of small government is Ron Paul. Dr. Paul appears to be disqualified from the Republican presidential primary, however, because he is unwilling to drench himself with the blood of our imagined enemies, like Gerard Butler in the movie "300."
But what about that Jon Huntsman guy? This week three different people told me, quite independently of each other, how sorry they were that Governor Huntsman never gained any traction in the Republican presidential primary.
I told them that they should get over it. Huntsman wasn't any better.
It somehow counts as an act of courage for Huntsman to have tweeted: "I believe in evolution." Of course, it would have been more courageous if Huntsman had said that to a Tea Party audience, and then they tore him limb from limb, thereby disproving the theory of evolution right before our eyes.
And evolution is not something that you "believe" or "disbelieve." Evolution is like gravity; it's not like Santa Claus or the Abominable Snowman. (Question: Why do they both live at the North Pole?)
Be that as it may, neither Huntsman nor any other Republican presidential candidate has been willing to take on the hard myths. The myths that are killing us. Here are a dirty dozen, right off the top of my head:
- The government can't create jobs. (Tell that to FDR, who created four million jobs in three months.)
- Tax cuts reduce the deficit. (Doesn't it bother them that a man named "Laffer" came up with this one?)
- A fetus is a baby.
- The poor have too much money.
- Cutting the federal deficit will end the recession.
- The rich are incentivized by tax cuts, while the poor are incentivized by lower wages, no benefits, an end to the minimum wage, and unemployment.
- An unwanted child is God's will.
- Everyone who wants health insurance has it.
- The problem with education is the teachers.
- The "free market" satisfies every human need.
- There is no discrimination in America anymore.
- The distribution of wealth and income are irrelevant.
I don't remember Jon Huntsman disputing any of these myths. And these are the ones that do the real damage. Show me a candidate who is willing to take on these myths, and I'll pay more attention.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
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Comments
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Or maybe they are destined for extinction due to their lack of adaptation to the modern world about them.
All the 12 points Grayson lists are trule false, but the become the standard issue that the mass media debates and that democrats think they have to respond to.
Republicans are excellent at propaganda. They've been studying and practicing it for 100 years. Their paymasters have spent billions of dollars on propaganda. It is now America's only reality.
Obama hardly need to make any adds to tackle the one left standing and bleeding,
He can just run all the idiotic remarks made in the primary, comments barely needed.
All class ideologies, class parties have degenerated through class myths, since the time PLATO tried to graft social reforms, democracy and Republics into existing class Patriarchy and got crippled class republics degenerating into class Empires , class tyrants.
Another class/Empire myth Grayson does not discuss is the BI PARTISAN FASCIST SUPPORT FOR FASCIST ZIONISM, which Grayson, himself tries to hide. Class deformed languange hides these inverted, totalitarian , corrupted class results, and selectively cherry picks, failures of others when they are a failed political class, whether democrats or republicans.
Is Obama better educated than John McCain? Who knows? John McCain's academic record is public. Obama's, sealed!
Unquote
What the record regarding John McCain's education does not show is that "in those days" we (at the U S Naval Academy) were not educated in the classical sense of the word. We were trained to undertake & complete difficult jobs under arduous conditions" under a cardinal Law of the Navy: "Thou shall not criticize but obey. " This remains a skill and attitude for which demand will forever out-strip the supply, and we from "those days' need not apologize to anyone.
That said, Senator McCain graduated from the United States Naval Academy in June 1958 with a standing of 894 out of a class of 899. His post-graduate education was obtained., courtesy of North Viet Nam, as a POW in Hanoi.
There is no way to campare John McCain with Barrak Obama. Don't even try!
YES, I think McCain and all presidents (D, R, I,...) will grab all the power they can, any way they can. The Constitution was written to account for the "moral vacuity" of humans. We need a strong congress to check and balance the executive.
I also think I understand the point you are trying to make but this portion of your post belies the point that although it was a simple Democratic congressional majority it was not a substantial (60/40) majority to get laws and bills passed. And remember how long it took for Franken to be declared the winner?
Obama definitely has not always acted or moved in the direction I would have wished. He also felt "shellacked" by the mid-term elections and moved heavily to the right to accomodate the voters. He has done the best he could with the congress he had and the way the poeple voted. I can only say thank you to Pelosi who pulled that healthcare 'rabbit' (not the Universal Health Care as I would have wanted) out of her hat with a great maneuver. She's a great student of her daddy's politics. I hope she becomes House majority leader once again.
It's downhill for the USA. The clowns are driving the bus. They are heading for a cliff -- and laughing all the way.
Let's not forget Nixon's price controls, if anyone remembers those. One example I recall is that house prices were regulated so builders used inferior materials to build new homes. Using cheap aluminum as opposed to more expensive copper wiring created firetraps in homes that mixed copper terminal switches with aluminum wire. Walls were thin as paper, 2x2's instead of 2x4's..... Go to any city or home built during the Nixon era. I would call this type of governing more akin to USSR's centralized government than liberal or socialist.
ps. I hope you are wrong about the cliff thing, but I see your point there, too.
Proof:
1. Alan Grayson, after having signed a pledge that he would vote against what is now called "Obamacare" unless there were a strong public option, voted for it with no public option. The reason Grayson gave for his vote was he thought it was better than no legislation at all and he did not want to see the Obama presidency fail.
2. Dennis Kucinich did and said the same thing in a democracynow interview shared by Ralph Nader, who sharply criticized Obamacare.
3. Russ Feingold recently described Barack Obama "a good guy" and supports him though Feingold disagrees with Obama.
QED
Huh?
Do you even know what QED means? Do you actually think listing 2 examples of non-progressive behavior in Democrats constitutes "proof" that it's impossible for someone to be both a progressive and a Democrat? (Btw, your 3rd example is just nonsense: it's not at all contradictory to disagree with someone you believe to be a good guy.)
Let me give you a few examples of the awesome power of your logic:
1) It's impossible to be a "black President," because George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt were all white. QED.
2) It's impossible to be a "bipedal mammal," since horses, cows, and llamas are all quadrupeds. QED.
3) It's impossible to be an "honest conservative," because, obviously. QED.
Please leave conversations like this to adults.
Then the outcry against this Fascism resulted in Congress CONSIDERING restoring the HABEUS CORPUS, but in the meantime they voted to CRIMINALIZE DISSENT with not one Democrat opposing this Fascist legislation.
On WARISACRIME, one comment was:
How did we get here?
Submitted by Darwin26 on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 9:51am.
"How is it we didn't see this coming ? aren't there watch dog groups that would have sounded some alarm or was this just sailed under
the radar . This is indeed mind boggling that all these Dems would be so stoopid to vote for this ? well i'm not a Dem but these baffoons /hacks and charlantans should be tried as traitors !Will"
But the history of class degeneration and "Weimarization" , fascist appeasement then totalitarians themselves, Liberals degenerated into Fascists, totalitarians.
This devolving class,empire process is explained there with this link:
A SOCIAL MANIFESTO AND HISTORICAL THEORY
http://asocialmanifestoagainstclasshistory.com
HOWEVER, these bills were attached to military spending bills and to vote against military funding will get you drummed out of office quickly. The reality is, if you aren't elected to office you can't govern. It is wrong and I hate it, but it is the way it is. It is better than violence in the streets. Want to be like Syria?
I hope these "watch dog" groups you talk of find a way to bring platiffs, with standing, through the courts, to the Supreme court and get these absurd laws struck down.
"Watch Dog Group" gets started.
From a National Lampoon skit(reduced):
"My major premise is that poop's brown."
"My minor premise is that you's brown."
"My conlusion is that you's POOP, QED."
Go to 6:58 minutes into the recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Lll_tndUc&feature=related
The whole album is a hoot, back from the Nixon era.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Kaiser Family Foundations have been studying health American health care policy for more than 60 Years and have said that we will revisit this again and again until we achieve an inkling of the success of the Bizmark system tht Germany has. That system is privately funded and privately delivered and has worked since 1888.
It's a myth that Americans CAN'T achieve something similar. Like my mother said, "Can't never did anything."
Yes, we can get rid of Blue Dogs and Republicans and Teas. But it will take more than whining and more than just one man. The people have to work the magic.
Logic and moral principles are not about
"complaining" or "whining", they are about exposing the rot and corrupt elements that make up a class compromising ideology such as Liberalism which has degenerated like all class ideologies into embracing FASCISM, TOTALITARIANISM.
When democrats, liberals vote for FASCIST LAWS and a POLICE STATE they become FASCISTS. Some of the most illogical arguments are by Liberals who used to say that a principled social vote against Democrats was "Wasting your vote". In fact every time ANYONE who votes for class parties, they are voting for class hierarchies, the Patriarchal class mechanism, which deforms the politicial class, through inversion, substitution, and false conflation, thereby THROWING the social intention of the vote into a class/empire agenda...AS A BETRAYAL/CLASS MECHANISM.
That is the whole history of social ideologies within class deformed civil societies, where CLUELESS voters fail to see that they are enslaving themselves, every time they THROW THEIR SOCIAL VOTES INTO THE PATRIARCHAL/CLA SS/BETRAYING MACHINE. This corruption, degeneration expalins how LIBERALS BECOME FASCISTS:
US Congress passes authoritarian anti-protest law
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/mar2012/prot-m03.shtml
"Not a single Democratic politician voted against the bill..."
I'm sorry! What Grayson, Kucinich and others did in not keeping their word was absolutely inexcusable. The excuse they offered - to save the presidency of a war criminal - is a bad joke!
As for Feingold, do you recall that he voted to confirm John Roberts?
Some progressives!
Some choice!
1. There are no simple answers to complicated problems.
2. All change is pain.
There is little or no evidence that either is a consideration in our current universe except, perhaps, for the 'general assembly democracy of OCCUPY.
However there exists outside the two corporate parties real social ideologies, outlooks that are independent of these corrupt class parties. A social critique against class Liberals exists within the OCCUPY MOVEMENT, that does not want to be sucked into the false choices, clueless votes by so many liberals here.
Liberalism started out as a social, revolutionary ideology in the Enlightenment, but once the class hierarchies and class laws were extended into the industrial revolution, Liberalism became associated with moral cowardice, class and empire appeasement, fascist appeasement, and finally into totalitarians.
Napoleon created the class liberal doctrine linked to the Patriarchal class mechanism which reproduced all the failures of class history, and the failures of Liberals, HERE, to understand that all class ideologies are BETRAYAL MECHANISMS, that are NOT BASED on principled social forces, instead appeasing class forces.
Our wars are for freedom and democracy.
This is to point out that a forum is moderated for two general reasons: 1) legal - The forum's manager does not wish to publish defamatory comments; 2) content - The manager wishes the expressions to be appropriate to the subject.
Thumbs-up/down are not arguments for or against a point of view. They are simply a cheer or a boo. As such, they do not contribute anything to the discussion. They just add a bit of smugness to the majority opinion. Thus, they are a discouragement to thought, to consideration of others' views. If RSN continues to play to the gallery by this technique, I shall take my computer elsewhere.
Be my guest: are you SEEKIN' A ROUND OF APPLAUSE or trying to make a point?
I ask you, like a couple of the other reactionaries who post here betimes; WHER CAN A LEFTY GO to post or have an opinion published or HEARD?
I've had one or two thumbs - down for sayin' what I think but might not be the majority's opinion and that's fine.
Quit WHININ' or take yr computer elsewhere. 'Scuse me for the capitalization a.k.a., YELLING.
Seems like inside-the-does that to many power-seekers.
Alan Grayson is at least courageous enough to call them out on their shit and I hope he is re-elected.
I meant "inside-the-bel tway" o' course. 'Scuse crappy typing.
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