Hauntingly familiar

A group of sociologists and political scientists published as "Lawrence Britt" examined regimes in Germany, Italy, Spain, Indonesia and several Latin American regimes. they found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - Traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - The tendancy to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - A  tendency to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be denigrated or vilified. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forgo civil liberties in the name of patriotism.

 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Government by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in some cases for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even the use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Even using the judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.










Does this sound familiar to you?

How Wall Street owns Congress, and why the financial sector gets away with everything.

There are certain committees, congressmembers just love getting on-- and sometimes even pay to get on-- especially the committees that play a role in regulating big-money industries, like Agriculture, the Military Industrial Complex, Health Care and, most of all, Finance.
Finance has paid out bigger bribes to Congress than any other sector-- exponnentially.

Since 1989, the Finance/Insurance/Real Estate sector has ponied up $1,710,713,286 in congressional races. This election cycle, they've given $135,085,054 to candidates, in hopes of further deregulation and hopes of further complicity. Banks donate to both Dems and Rethugs, with the higher percentage paid to Rethugs.
These are HUGE amounts of money. But to the banks, this kind of cash is an investment, one that pays enormous dividends; for instance, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which helped make lots of millionaires multimillionaires and some multimillionaires into billionaires.

Below is a simple list. These are members of the House Financial Services Committee and how much they have taken this cycle from the Finance Secto it is their job to oversee.
Only Boehner ($2,269,358) and Cantor ($1,051,900) have taken more bribe money than Spencer Bachus this year. Kind of explains their continued opposition to supporting the American people, in favor of a few donors interests.

The names in bold are the committee members who are flagrant corporate whores, who have shown they will happily trade their votes for enough cash. Each of them belongs in prison... for a long time.

Spencer Bachus, R-AL, Chairman ($1,041,825)
Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, Vice Chairman ($708,347)
Peter King, R-NY ($166,300)
Edward Royce, R-CA ($681,685)
Frank Lucas, R-OK ($154,500)
Ron Paul, R-TX ($872,406)
Donald Manzullo, R-IL ($162,729)
Walter Jones, R-NC ($43,000)
Judy Biggert, R-IL ($374,094)
Gary Miller, R-CA ($146,970)
Shelley Moore Capito, R-WV ($240,700)
Scott Garrett, R-NJ ($630,370)
Randy Neugebauer, R-TX ($383,683)
Patrick McHenry, R-NC ($295,350)
John Campbell, R-CA ($292,750)
Michele Bachmann, R-MN ($262,213)
Thaddeus G. McCotter, R-MI ($103,250)
Kevin McCarthy, R-CA ($649,247)
Stevan Pearce, R-NM ($91,550)
Bill Posey, R-FL ($167,050)
Michael Fitzpatrick, R-PA ($208,750)
Lynn Westmoreland, R-GA ($191,635)
Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-MO ($234,385)
Bill Huizenga, R-MI ($183,790)
Sean Duffy, R-WI ($272,684)
Nan Hayworth, R-NY ($503,371)
James Renacci, R-OH ($299,484)
Robert Hurt, R-VA ($262,982)
Robert Dold, R-IL ($635,350)
David Schweikert, R-AZ ($359,000)
Michael Grimm, R-NY ($421,281)
Francisco "Quico" Canseco, R-TX ($304,226)
Steve Stivers, R-OH ($508,210)
Stephen Fincher, R-TN ($303,813)
Barney Frank, D-MA, Ranking Member ($285,250)
Maxine Waters, D-CA ($19,200)
Carolyn Maloney, D-NY ($409,323)
Luis Gutierrez, D-IL ($58,750)
Nydia Velázquez, D-NY ($116,000)
Melvin Watt, D-NC ($103,750)
Gary Ackerman, D-NY ($107,100)
Brad Sherman, D-CA ($217,400)
Gregory Meeks, D-NY ($197,000)
Michael Capuano, D-MA ($60,350)
Rubén Hinojosa, D-TX ($26,700)
William Lacy Clay, D-MO ($58,850)
Carolyn McCarthy, D-NY ($214,460)
Joe Baca, D-CA ($77,301)
Stephen Lynch, D-MA ($50,500)
Brad Miller, D-NC ($45,000)
David Scott, D-GA ($139,120)
Al Green, D-TX ($33,900)
Emanuel Cleaver, D-MO ($112,739)
Gwen Moore, D-WI ($138,805)
Keith Ellison, D-MN ($84,812)
Ed Perlmutter, D-CO ($358,556)
Joe Donnelly, D-IN ($121,561)
André Carson, D-IN ($94,927)
James Himes, D-CT ($623,449)
Gary Peters, D-MI ($280,750)
John Carney, Jr., D-DE ($224,250)

I don't think anyone would disagree that members of the Financial Services Committee who take large bribes from the banks, in exchange for favorable deregulation, and turning a blind eye to malfeasance or criminality,  are entitled to a fair trial before they're thrown in prison.

Thanks you OpenSecrets and DWT for such concise information!

Ever wonder how ignorant Congress critters are?

The Sunlight Foundation just conducted an interesting experiment that is somewhat helpful in measuring politicians' intelligence-- at least as much as intelligence can be correlated to the ability to communicate in formal speech

Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven years ago, with the most conservative members of Congress speaking on average at the lowest grade level, according to a new Sunlight Foundation analysis of the Congressional Record using Capitol Words.

https://data.sunlightlabs.com/dataset/Members-And-Grade-Level/iwhe-qaqu

Is YOUR Congress critter as smart as your children?

Republicans continue to lie about Obama's spending record

Reality just does not interest conservatives.
Conservatives are still hammering the lie, that Obama has increased governmental spending by eleventy billion percent or some such nonsense...

The facts are quite different:

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

 

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion. 

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion. 

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August. 

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook. 

There has been no huge increase in spending under this president, despite what the GOP desperately wants you to believe.

Why do people think Obama has spent like a drunken sailor? It’s in part because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal budget, and on part total fabrications.

This is why the birthers, and the cries of "Socialism" and "Tyranny" are being bandied about.....Because it has been true since Atwater, if you cannot win on issues, slander your opponent.

Tired of the South.

Progress in America is being slowed, and normal, productive states are being threatened by the most backward, racist, superstitious hellholes, primarily the Old Confederacy, with being pulled down to their Third World levels.

If Greece can amicably leave the European Union, why doesn't the South make the same decision with the United States? Who would support keeping them now if the Confederate states wanted to go?
They're nothing but a drain in every way and without the South, there would be no establishment GOP left in the U.S. and by that reasoning, no Blue Dogs, like Ben Nelson and Joe Donnely to fuck up the Democrats


No one likes the Health Care mandates, which was always just a bad conservative Republican plan about how to use market principles to finance health care reform.
However once pusillanimous, compromise-for-the-sake-of-compromise and conservative Democrats embraced the idea,  which, of course, is a prime feature of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, the GOP abandoned it.

Unfortunately the mandate is the financial edifice upon which Obama's health care bill is built. It shouldn't have been. Progressives warned from the beginning that single-payer whether Medicare For All or a public option is what the Democrats should have fought for.

But corrupt corporate Democrats catered the the GOP, particularly Chuck "Death panels" Grassley and mandates were baked into the equation. Now, congressional Republicans are campaigning on tossing out the entire bill.


Studies consistently show that the Affordable Care Act is driving down the price of healthcare-- good for consumers, not good for the folks who finance conservative politicians' career paths-- and that the decade-long erosion in access to medical services will be accelerated if the GOP gets its way and repeals healthcare reform.

On Thursday Boehner spoke for the whole party when he said they want to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. No, they don't want to start fresh; they just want to wipe the slate clean and leave it at that. “We voted to fully repeal the president’s healthcare law as one of our first acts as a new House majority, and our plan remains to repeal the law in its entirety. Anything short of that is unacceptable.”

"Unacceptable".....The operative term for the GOP agenda, keep the majority of Americans teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, while the poor, the elderly and the sick can simply muck about in abject poverty.

Fun for the whole family!

Conservatism.....

Conservatism is the antithesis of democracy.
This has been true for thousands of years.
People who believe that the aristocracy rightfully dominates society because of some intrinsic superiority, are generally conservatives; conversely Liberals believe that we are all of equal social worth.
Aristocracy is a fundamental pillar of conservatism.
All the bullshit about individual freedoms and liberty, what matters most to conservatives is property.

The main goal in life of all aristocrats, besides the accumulation of wealth and power however, is to pass on their positions of privilege to their children...

Mitt Romney is an aristocrat.

And he's making sure that his children are aristocrats too. And, like all aristocrats, they believe their aristocratic privilege is a result of natural superiority. As Steve Forbes says, they believe it's exactly the same as being born with talent or intelligence. It's God-given.

The Romneys who have managed, through an obscure loophole used solely for the extraordinarily wealthy, to leave $100 million tax-free to their clutch of sons.

As we all know, there are different sets of rules in place for the aristocracy, and the rest of Americans.

What these pompous wind bags fail to remember is history. Every time the aristocracy feel that only they deserve the fruits of all labor, it ends very badly for them. As our nation was being born, France was cleaning house. Ending more than two generations of extreme oppression of the working poor, by the aristocracy.

The aristocrats lost their heads over it.

Why alternative energy gets little Congressional support.

So far this year, The US oil industrychas pumped $14,603,634 into federal elections, $12,792,986 to Republicans and the leftovers to conservative Democrats who vote with the Republicans on energy matters; John Barrow being the top recipient of the oil industry's legalized bribes among Democrats for 2011-'12.

Since 1989 bribes masked as donations, lobbyist perks and "Gifts" from the oil industry to Members of Congress (and candidates) has come to $175,262,390-- $131,577,484 of that to Republicans.

If you were to look at a chart of all the Members of the House who have gotten six-figure bribes from the oil industry so far this year, you would see a strategic pattern. Obviously a great deal of money is going into bolster the GOP leadership that supports the industry's taxpayer subsidies and anti-environmental agenda:
Speaker John Boehner ($218,850)
Whip Kevin McCarthy ($172,200)
Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp ($140,000)
Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton ($127,000)
Majority Leader Eric Cantor ($121,800).

And Big Oil is heavily pushing two of their most slavish supporters, Rick Berg (ND- $245,450) and Denny Rehberg (MT- $190,070), for Senate seats.

And in case you did not think the Oil industry is involved in American politics, here is a report outlining their wishlist to Congress:
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/227409-oil-lobby-gives-wish-list-to-dems-gop

 In a nutshell, what they want is everyone to just shut up about their taxpayer subsidies and ridiculously low taxes and just get rid of more and more regulations.

Verbatim conversation with an "I'm not a bigot", bigot.

dallasnew:
President Obama is clearly on the losing side of this medical marijuana issue. What happened to progressive Obama? He's not progressive enough where he should be and way-too-progressive about extending (now unaffordable) federal entitlement programs.

Me:
The president and his administration must follow the laws on the books.
Advocate for changing them. Vote out the Republicans, and Democrats that voted in favor of these laws.

dallasnew:
How come President Obama is empowered to remove all federal justice support for DOMA, (which he admitted he intentionally removed), but he can't stop enforcement of the federal drug laws against marijuana growers and suppliers who conform to state medical marijuana laws?

Me:
DOMA is openly discriminatory, therefore in violation of the 14th amendment, by creating a lesser citizen.
SCOTUS has previously upheld Nixon's anti drug legislation.
The difference is obvious.
 
dallasnew:
I wasn't aware that the SCOTUS has designated those who are not heterosexual in terms of their sexual preferences to be part of a protected 'class' under the Fourteenth Amendment.
 
Me:
They are not singled out as not protected...Yet they are..
The 14 applys to ALL US Citizens, makes no mention of exceptions.
Bigotry is pervasive, but it's not protected, why do you believe bigotry is protected?

dallasnew:
The 14th Amendment against discrimination has, under  SCOTUS case law, been held to protect only a person who belongs to a 'suspect' class. Suspect classes are defined as person(s) belonging to group(s)  that have been historically discriminated against due to race, religion, ethnic origin, sex and disability. To my knowledge homosexuality has never been defined by SCOTUS as qualifying as a 'suspect' class. Although homosexuals have been and are discriminated against, the SCOTUS may not view the (arguable) choice to live as a person who is sexually attracted to members of their own sex as  meeting the 'suspect' class requirements. Ergo, Obama's choice to withdraw support of DOMA cannot be based on the 14th Amendment because homosexuals aren't protected w/out a SCOTUS precedent.

Me:
SCOTUS case law? You mean ignoring the actual words in the amendment in order to allow your religious bigotry?
And you are simply incorrect.
Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction.
This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which began the dismantling of racial segregation in United States education.
In Reed v. Reed in 1971, the Supreme Court ruled that laws arbitrarily requiring sex discrimination violated the Equal Protection Clause.
And Loving v. VA in 1967 decided that Marriage is a fundamental human right...
Seems you prefer cherry picking who is a citizen, and who the Constitution protects.


I am weary, dealing with the regressive, and the willfully ignorant.

Randians are assholes that hate 99% of Americans.

The neo fascist, self centered utopia envisioned by Ayn Rand, idealized by Ronald Reagan, and now codified by Paul Ryan, his handlers, and far too many wealthy white men to count; has been obliquely embraced by the GOP.

Last month, Gary Weiss' essay, looked with fresh eyes on how Ayn Rand's-- and Paul Ryan's-- vision (certainly destined to be part of Barack Obama's hideous "Grand Bargain") will lead to an Objectivist America that describes a new age of unhindered free enterprise, far more primitive and Darwinian than anything seen before. And Weiss thinks the stages are already manifesting.

I think he might be right.

The shape of an Objectivist world, has been well documented for the past 50 years, since Ayn Rand, the Brandens, Alan Greenspan, and other selfish fucks began to set down their views in Randian newsletters.

When he casually defended repeal of child labor laws in the debate with Miles Rappaport, Aaron Brook [President of the Ayn Rand Institute] was merely repeating long- established Randian doctrine, summarized by Peikoff as “Government is inherently negative.”

It is a worldview that has been static through the decades, its tenets reiterated endlessly by Rand and her self centered apostles:

No government except the police, courts of law, and the armed services.

No regulation of anything by any government.

No Medicare or Medicaid.

No Social Security.

No public schools.

No public hospitals.

No public anything, in fact. Just individuals, each looking out for himself, not asking for help or giving help to anyone.

The poor and elderly, freed at last from dependence on government-subsidized medical care, would die as bravely and in as generous quantities as in a Dikensian novel.

Minimum wage laws would come to an end, providing factory owners with a pool of cheap labor competitive with any Banana Republic.

All laws protecting consumers would simply be erased from the books.

Mass transit would grind to a halt in the big cities as municipal subsidies were stopped.

Securities laws and stock market regulations would be eliminated.

Roads would go unplowed in winter, and bridges would fall as the government withdrew from the business of maintaining them - unless some private citizen would find it in his rational self-interest to voluntarily take up the slack by scraping off the rust and replacing frayed cables.

Public parks and land, from the tiniest vest-pocket patch of green to vast expanses of the West, would be sold off to the newly liberated megacorporations.

Airplane traffic would be grounded unless a profit-making capitalist found it in his own selfish interests to fund the air traffic control system. If it could be made profitable, fine. If not, tough luck. The market had spoken.

The Coast Guard would stay in port while storm-tossed mariners drown lustily as they did in days of yore. Fires would rage in the remnants of silent forests, vegetation and wildlife no longer protected by rangers and coercive environmental laws, swept clean of timber, their streams polluted in a rational, self-interested manner by bold, imaginative entrepreneurs.

...Such is the Ayn Rand vision of paradise: an America that would resemble the lands from which our ancestors emigrated, altruism confined to ignored, fringe texts, grinding poverty and starvation coexisting alongside the opulence of the wealthy. Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York would become like Cairo and Calcutta, with walled enclaves protecting the wealthy from the malnourished, uneducated masses outside.

We need to understand the basis of her "morality", not just its origins but where it doesn't originate - the three great monotheistic religions, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the other writings and actions of the Founding Fathers. The words “capitalism,” “markets,” and “free enterprise” appear in none of the founding documents of America. The natural enemies of Ayn Rand are not only Lenin and Roosevelt but Jefferson, Rousseau, and Paine. The Founders were not defenders of oligarchy and selfishness. They sacrificed. They were altruists, and proud of it.


We need to choose-- our heritage or Ayn Rand

Talking points vs. reality.

Barney Frank, on ABC's This Week, had a pretty heated exchange with Marsh Blackburn, a Republican Rep from Tennessee.

She deflected a question from Stephanopolous about Obama's support of gay marriage, by going into a factless screed about women's jobs lost under Obama, as opposed to the greater context of the issue.

It starts around  7:45 into the video.

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/rep-barney-frank-rep-marsha-blackburn-16337609

Facthammer! Thy name is Frank!

The Republican House in a stunning display of homophobia, passed a blatantly anti-gay amendment, proposed by Kansas Republican hate-monger Tim Huelskamp, who is so hung up on gay issues that psychologists just assume he's either gay himself or spending a great deal of time repressing his homosexual desires.

His amendment would prohibit the Justice Department from actively opposing DOMA in the courts. Nancy Pelosi led almost all Democrats in opposition to the amendment.

House Republicans have voted to prevent Obama administration's efforts to end discrimination against American families.

House Republicans gleefully plant their flag firmly on the wrong side of history.” But, depending on how you define "Democrat," not every "Democrat" agreed with her. The Republi...I mean Blue Dog caucus-- and a few of their fellow travelers-- hid behind Cantor's skirts and voted with the Republicans. The amendment passed 245-171, all but 7 Republicans vote with the hatemongers. Sixteen anti-LGBT "Democrats" voted with the Republicans:

John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)
Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)
Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY)
Jerry Costello (IL)
Mark Critz (PA)
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA)
Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC)
Dan Lipinski (IL)
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC)
Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
Nick Rahall (WV)
Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)
Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)

If you're missing Joe Donnelly's name from the list, fear not. He didn't vote. He was busy in Indiana running around calling Dick Mourdock an extremist and campaigning for the Senate. Donnelly has always voted against LGBT equality.

Boehner and The GOP may have their own disingenuous way of spinning this issue, but as Lee Fang pointed out this morning, it was all about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Banking Association and other corrupt enterprises that exist to "Legally" bribe Congress so that, like in this case, they do the wrong thing, tossing their own constituents under the bus for the sake of the corporations that finance their slimy careers.

Republicans blocked the student loan interest rate bill simply because big businesses and campaign contributors lobbied aggressively against closing the loophole. The National Journal published a letter from a number of Beltway lobbying groups-- among them, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents many multinational corporations, and the American Banking Association-- protesting the measure. These lobbying groups have wide sway over both parties, but particularly the GOP.

Boner even lied in a tweet:

Republicans DO NOT represent YOU!

The dynamics of the Indiana Primary race are such that the populist right is trying to knock off Lugar for being "too mainstream." (Which is patently ridiculous if you compare his crucial vote ProgressivePunch lifetime score, which is 7.11-- neatly between Alabama reactionary Richard Shelby's 7.29 and Kentucky teabagger Rand Paul's 7.06.

In the current session, Lugar has moved so far to the right, to appease the lunatic fringe Republicans have pinned their hopes on, and his score is 3.49, more extreme right than Mike Lee, David Vitter, Richard Burr, Saxby Chambliss or even fascist theocrat Pat Roberts.

They're running an uber right wing tea bagger against him, Richard Mourdock, Indiana's deranged, tax evading, junk bond buying Treasurer.

Polling has Mourdock beating Lugar by 10-- 48-38%. The radical right's gripe with Lugar, aside from having been in office forever, is that voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court and that he favors the START Treaty, the DREAM Act and a rational approach to immigration and gun control. You know, tyranny, and Socialism.

AFP supports Murdoch, which is reason enough to not vote for him.

GOD I HATE INDIANA REGRESSIVE MENTALITIES!

On one side is a man who has made it his life’s work to build a cross-aisle consensus, working to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. On the other side is a man who mocks his opponent for such efforts and who talks more about fighting Democrats than fighting America’s enemies.

Enter Dick Mourdock, a tea party idiot, who's cornerstone in his effort to oust Lugar, is Lugar's bad habit of bipartisanship-- never mind that Lugar’s bipartisanship was in the service of protecting millions of Americans from nuclear, chemical and biological terrorism.

The tea baggers have harmed this country as much or more than the Bush administration did!