http://www.wral.com/news/local…
Let’s see…
Tag: Democrats
Aug 14 2009
Oh, Johnny Boy (Edwards that is)….
Aug 10 2009
About my screen name and sig
I have had many questions asked about my screen name and sig. Some people have accused me of being a Right Wing troll. Others have doubted my sincerity because of the meaning of my screen name. I thought I might explain my choice and point out a few facts, for those who may be interested.
We have replaced the two minutes hate with the 24/7 hate/lie cycle.
My hope is to challenge that, and to bring truth to light as best as I can.
One of the first books I read as a young man was George Orwell’s 1984. Politically it opened my eyes and unplugged me from the matrix. I re-read the book once a year and every year since then. It serves as a reminder for what is at stake.
But many would like to tell us that Government is always evil. They fail to recognize that the same can be said of Big Business.
Big Business can be Big Brother too.
In fact, Big Business may be worse than Big Government sometimes. Good Government can check Bad Business. Good Business has not once stopped Bad Government, and both Good/Good and Bad/Bad can exists as well.
The question is how we keep both accountable. If we kill good government to save Big Business, Big Business will become Big Brother. That is the heart of true Mussolini Fascism, a combination of Big Business and Bad Government.
And the wall between the reality of that and the reality they would sell us can be called the Ministry Of Truth.
The Ministry of Truth – Minitrue, in Newspeak – was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. The were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided: the Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts; the Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.
The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within a half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.
Each day we see a precept from 1984 personified before our eyes. Part of my purpose in writing is to educate people to the real truth, as I perceive it from my progressive liberal perspective. Many may not agree with my views. I do not place a premium on agreement. Rather, the importance I place is on the FACT. That is where the truth shall be found.
No one in their right mind who is not a fool can look at our Corporate controlled media and not see a similarity to Orwell’s Ministry Of Truth. The Right Wing Noise Machine is fully aware that their policies are not in the interest of the Average citizen of Earth. In order to convince the poor that they want free market fiscal conservative economic policies they have created a place that can be best described as the debate between fact and false. To deny fact, science and reality and equate it with falsity and lies. This is an important part of their agenda.
Thus
Ignorance = Strength
The issue is whether you will make your own decisions, do you own research and form your own opinions, or if you will allow programmers to pre-program you.
If we remain ignorant, we give strength to those who would exercise total power over us, whether they are Business or Politically oriented
Aug 04 2009
Done With the Lesser of Two Evils
I won’t get fooled again.
I voted for Kerry, and I voted for Barrack Obama.
But I won’t ever do it again.
And I of all people should’ve known better.
See, back in 76, I was a 12 year old kid during the Gerald Ford / Jimmy Carter election. I’d seen the Watergate movie, and I had a pretty good grasp of what was going on.
Probably most here have forgotten or never even knew that in ’76 there was also an independent run by Eugene McCarthy–the actually semi-leftist guy the Dems screwed way back in 1968.
Despite strong showings in several primaries – indeed, he won more votes than any other Democratic candidate – McCarthy garnered only 23 percent of the delegates at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, largely due to the control of state party organizations over the delegate selection process.
Emphasis: mine. From http://www.answers.com/topic/e…
Anyway, in 76, since I was 12, I couldn’t drive yet, but I had a cool bike with a blue banana seat, and I cruised all over town handing out literature for Gene.
When election day came I too young too vote, but old enough to canvass, and I witnessed an amazing phenomena:
The Democrats were bringing in carload after carload of scared old people from old folks homes. In return for a nice dinner, they would vote a straight Democratic ticket. That was the deal–the other poll watchers informed me– I was incredulous at first, but they brought them in by Lincoln, they brought them in by vans, they came and they came and they came.
And they didn’t look left. They didn’t look right. Not one took any literature from me or anyone else. And there was fear in their eyes when they saw me–real fear. I assume from hunger, but I don’t know.
They voted, they ate. Or, they ate they voted, I’m not sure which–but I’ve always wondered–since if they were fed first what were they worried about?
I bet they hadn’t eaten yet. And now 33 years later they’re all dead anyway.
Well, 33 years from now I’ll likely be dead too, or at least I’ll be getting pretty damn fragile.
And, I’ll still look left, when asked, even if I have to forgo supper.
Jul 31 2009
Tell Us All Why
For far too long, I’ve heard progressives say we have to be polite when we contact the politicians who keep betraying us. For years, I’ve heard them say we can’t be “rude”, we have to be civil, we have to be respectful. Although they’ve acknowledged that war criminals and their enablers in Congress don’t deserve any respect, they insist that we have to be respectful anyway. That’s what we’ve been told, that’s what we’re still being told.
I’ve had my fill of that. This isn’t complicated. We can either be progressives, or we can be hypocrites. From what I’ve seen, being respectful hypocrites hasn’t accomplished a whole lot. Except for Kos, he has a Newsweek column now, and respectful hypocrite traffic at that Democratic Fan Club of his is at an all time high. This has been presented as an encouraging development, and who can possibly disagree, for as the graph below clearly demonstrates, there’s a direct correlation between higher Daily Kos traffic and spectacular Democratic triumphs in Washington . . .
Yet somehow, many Democrats still feel an extremely compelling urge to betray us. Bush and Cheney went on a crime rampage for 8 years, but Democrats won’t hold them accountable. They won’t prosecute Wall Street criminals for gutting our economy, they’re rewarding them for it. Our health care system is a travesty, the corporate media is a propaganda shithole, the Fed is a Machiavellian nightmare, rightwing madness is escalating, the fuse of economic collapse is still burning, and Congress is still a snakepit of corruption.
Whether the President wants to admit it or not,
You can see it in the paper, read it on the wall,
Hear it on the wind, if you’re listening at all.
Jul 22 2009
It is NOT a Center-Right Country!
It is NOT a Center-Right Country!
We may have a Center-Right Media.
We may have a Center-Right Punditry-ville.
But our Country, and the majority of the American People in our “Two America’s” are NOW decidedly a deeper shade of Blue!
Tide of the Country has shifted … Dramatically!
Jul 20 2009
PUNKED!
It’s been clear for a long time to many of us, and as time passes more and more catch on to the fact that, the Democrats, especially Barack Obama are frauds and, once again, America has been Punked. Bush was the Compassionate Conservative and Obama was the Crusader for Change – fundamental and necessary change to a system which only works for the few.
Jul 12 2009
Whatever Happened to the Left?
This is an essay about observations, so it’s not going to be sourced to the Mainstream Press that has served as propagandists and gatekeepers to the political status quo for too damned long. These are observations of political trends I’ve noted over more than 40 years of certifiable adulthood, strong interest in all things political, several oaths to protect and defend the Constitution (thus Laws of the Land), and a 40-year marriage to a political sci-guy who is even more obsessed with politics than I am.
The last time the left side of the political spectrum wielded significant political power was back during the dark days of VietNam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It gained effective – though not much status quo – political power through the efforts of activists who motivated the young in high schools and on college campuses across the country, where the cannon fodder for the right’s dirty little opium war could be Shanghai’d by the draft. This meant that your average Mom and Pop America had a personal stake in the war, and they were darned sick of flag-draped coffins and burying pieces of their children shipped home from rice patties in a far-away country they couldn’t even find on a map. For no better reason than somebody’s terror of dominoes that might interfere with the drug supply and the M-I complex’s desire to make a fortune battle-testing cool shit like Napalm and 2,000# bombs and fancy new fighter jets. Hey, they’d been shafted by the end of the space race, and had to do something to justify their incestuous existence.
Oddly enough, it turned out to be Tricky Dick’s very own generals (plus spooks) who ended up taking him down, even though he made a valiant effort to save himself by abruptly ending a war nobody on this side of the Pacific ever could have ‘won’. That was back in an era when most of the military old-timers – the career officers who served at the Pentagon and commanded the conscripted troops – still took their oaths of service seriously, and they didn’t like what was going on any more than the students who had no choice or their parents did. You don’t really believe it was just a “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate that did Nixon in, do you?
Jun 28 2009
Idiot’s guide to the Power of a Majority in the US Senate
Crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
Chapter #1
Dear members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, below you will find helpful definitions and other useful tools as you assemble your ability to effective use the tools of a majority party in the US Senate.
Step 1. What is a Majority Party?
No need to fret little Harry. It’s just this simple.
Majority and minority parties
The “Majority party” is the political party which either has a majority of seats or can form a coalition or caucus with a majority of seats; if two or more parties are tied, the Vice President’s affiliation determines which party is the majority party. The next-largest party is known as the minority party.
Until Texas or Alaska secedes, there are 50 States and 100 Senators in The US Senate. That’s two for every state!
Jun 27 2009
Will You Wait With Us?
(please rec at dkos too)
If you will indulge me for a few minutes, I have a thought experiment in which I would like you to participate. Sit and close your eyes for a minute. Now imagine, you wake up and it’s tomorrow. The government tells you that you aren’t married to your love. Everyone in the media calls your marriage a “marriage” with scare quotes, or a partnership or even worse. Some in the media decide to tell you that you’re completely sick and wrong. That your existence and the love you have for your partner is not love but a sick, hedonistic perversion.
Nobody understands you.
People cast you out and ignore you.
They call you names.
Jun 21 2009
Bill Maher: ‘Democrats are the new Republicans’
Bill Maher’s ‘New Rules’ June 19, Via RawStory:
In his weekly monologue, New Rules, Bill Maher weighs in on everything from Iran to Twitter, but his primary target Friday night was the Democratic party, which he says has become the new GOP.
Each time President Obama tries to take on a progressive cause, Maher charged that there was “a major political party standing in his way: the Democrats.
But the solution is not a third political party, according to the self-described libertarian pundit: “We don’t need a third party. We have a center right party, and a crazy party. Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital.”
Maher scoffs at the notion that Obama is a socialist: “He’s not even a liberal.”
Hammering in his point, Maher asks, “Shouldn’t there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting military spending? Straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the rich, universal healthcare, legalizing pot, and steep, direct taxing of polluters?”
“These aren’t radical ideas,” Maher stresses, “The majority of Americans are either already for them, or would be if they were properly argued and defended; and what we need is an actual progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren’t being served by the Democrats.”
“Because bottom line,” he concludes “Democrats are the new Republicans.”
Jun 15 2009
A Lesson from Labour? Perhaps.
Original article, titled Statement:”A long time in politics” – Labour after the elections, via Socialist Appeal (UK):
“A week is a long time in politics.” Harold Wilson
The European election results were published last Monday, following on from the local election results of a few days earlier. They showed Labour behind not just the Tories, but even behind UKIP, a lunatic fringe party, on just 15% of the vote. For the first time since 1918, Labour had been beaten by the Tories in Wales. Labour was smashed in its other heartlands, where working class voters just sat at home in disgust, and was completely marginalised elsewhere in the country. Labour came 5th in the South East with just 8.2% of the vote. In Cornwall they came 6th behind the Cornish Nationalist Party, whom presumably even the local folk see as a lost cause.