This may be about the Reagan administration but here we are nearly 40 years later with a repeat performance by the Trump crime family. The only difference is Ronald Reagan was not in the back pocket of the Russian government.
Tag: Ronald Reagan
Sep 22 2012
Burns Like a Red Coal Carpet
Ronald Reagan . . .
I’ve spoken of the Shining City On a Hill all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it’s a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity,
Well . . . he got wind-swept right.
Everything got blown away except the illusions. They’re still here.
This used to be the Department of Justice . . .
It’s the Department of Complicity now.
Everyone there knows damn well that the rule of law is long gone, it got buried ten-feet-deep under the amber waves of grain by the politicians, profit-chasers, and hypocrites of the corporate media machine, who are all either directly involved in systemic fraud and abuses of power or are complicit in the ongoing cover ups that have been concocted in order to keep covering up the cover ups of all the earlier cover ups.
In a rare moment of candor, George H. W. Bush explained why the political, economic, and media elites are so fond of this perpetual, bipartisan, across-the-board, you cover my ass and I’ll cover yours partnership they’ve forged with one another . . .
“If the American people ever find out what we have done, they will chase us down the streets and lynch us.”
We have a BINGO. Thank you for playing, Poppy.
Jun 24 2012
Asperity, Austerity and 1984: Fulfillment of 1984 & the Replication Today By The Geogre
In the first part, I talked about the false comparison of Orwell to Huxley and how features of the writing made it easy to mistake each author’s purpose and scope. However, there is something else. Neil Postman was not alone in thinking, in 1984, that we dodged a bullet and instead took a pill. I understand the feeling and shared it. It seemed like, as Lord Boyd Orr had said in 1966, “Give the people a choice between freedom and sandwiches, and they’ll take the sandwiches,” but we had already been shot but did not know the blood stain.
We were aware, then, that the public of democratic nations was placidly accepting outrages that would lead to atrocities, but I would propose that it took 2003 and George W. Bush to demonstrate to us how well television and the fragmented Internet have made every year 1984. Indeed, the television, which Postman saw as an abstracted medium that forbade long-form discourse and non-pictorial conceptualizing, would eventually resemble the view screen of 1984 as much as the Soma of Brave New World, especially cable news, where anything not at full volume and alarm was mere caesura for a day of emotional extremes and informational abbreviation. The Memory Hole was far easier to achieve by accident than plan.
I criticized Postman for a misplaced emphasis on the fiction of 1984 whereby he missed the systemic critique of the novel. The novel’s appearance in the midst of a nation enacting a policy called Austerity, where everyone was to “pitch in” to get “England” back on its feet after the war, is conspicuous and screams out for a comparison. Specifically, within the fiction and outside of it, a System of power is above the people, and the people are the enemy of power itself. Big Brother is an image or visage for a system, but the true power is no person or party — just the continuing flow of resources and labor from the people to an indifferent end. This is what is frightening. The group in charge was never fascists or Stalinists or Churchill or anyone else: it was capital.
Austerity today (the “new Austerity” in Europe and deficit mania in the U.S.) is different in cause, but the same in effect. Both ask nations to turn their GDP over to repayment of debt rather than intervention in markets to stimulate employment. The language used in both instances is similar, too: “Get back on our feet” and “recovery.” However, nation states and capital have had quite a bit of time and learned a few lessons.
We can see, in the gap of attitudes and responses of the public, the effect of social and cultural mutation. If we can see a greater or lesser increase in the effects of social control, then we can understand, I believe, just how thoroughgoing Orwell’s book was a description of an ongoing project that has now succeeded.
Feb 06 2011
Moe Lane shoots Reagan in the face for his 100th birthday
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
or just after.
Moe Lane (Turdus turdus) tests the reality of the fields with his sweet questionings:
People ask where Ronald Reagan’s monument is.
To which I say: look around you.
Blammo!
Feb 05 2011
Why IS Ronald Reagan a Hero to Conservatives?
Well, he’s a tax raiser, an amnesty giver, a cut-and-runner, and he negotiated with terrorists. Why is he a hero to conservatives? I don’t think you understand it.
The transcript can be read here at Mike Stark’s web site, The StarkReport
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Feb 20 2010
Food Stamp Profiling Contributes to the Stigma
The Food Stamp program has always been a contentious, heavily partisan issue. A recent New York Times article highlights the back-and-forth that has characterized the highs and lows of the program, and where it seems to be headed. Today I’ve chosen to write about this controversial subject to, in part, document of my own direct personal experience. Though food stamp usage might have been more stigmatized in an earlier year, there is unfortunately still much bias and prejudice directed towards those who take advantage of its existence. Until this is eliminated, others will refuse to apply and find their poverty and need considerably worsened. If this be Welfare, it is one of the most essential safety nets ever devised and my fear is that a resurgent GOP presence will eliminate it altogether, or prune it back considerably.
Feb 14 2010
1950-1980 — Was This Our Golden Era?
Is good news one of those quaint relics, exclusively relegated to our past, fovever doomed to never again be a part of our present or future?
Jan 27 2010
Presidential “Hit List”
Is President Obama sanctioning the assassinations of American citizens without due process just as George W, Bush did? It would appear that is exactly what he is doing.
President Obama has now extended Bush’s “War on Terror” to Yemen. In today’s Washington Post there is an article by Dana Priest where she writes:
U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people, among them six of 15 top leaders of a regional al-Qaeda affiliate, according to senior administration officials.
snip
As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations.
(emphasis mine)
Dec 18 2009
F@#$ THIS CEO-Monopoly Care! I will NOT pay tribute to the insurance gods
Crossposted at Daily Kos
Pre- existing conditions? They are still in there, only now, instead of getting denied they get to jack the price up 3X and you’ll be FORCED to buy something, and without competition who are you gonna choose? THEY WILL ALL CHARGE THE SAME CLIMBING PRICE!
Yearly caps? They are STILL IN THERE!
Death Panels? For Profit death panels, you betcha.
And loopholes, loopholes, loopholes!
I’m sorry, but Obama is NOT FDR. This is NOT the same political climate as when Social Security was passed or when Medicare was passed. Hell, this isn’t even the same century!
So get over the fact that you have been TOTALLY SCREWED at this point and do something about it. This bill, as it stands, is so poisoned it should be killed and began again from the start, no matter how long and painful it might be. This CAN be dealt with in a year or two when the Conservative Wing of the Democratic part loses in droves, because that is coming one way or another.
I am PISSED, and you should be pissed too, cause we’re getting SCREWED on this deal. The ONLY winners are the political class and the special interests. Consumers are getting sold down the river.
Nov 20 2009
Breaking: Barack Obama is a socialist, Ronald Reagan is the Devil
Crossposted at Daily Kos
Wall Street must LOVE Socialism, because it is doing great under our new President, who has been declared a socialist by people who think capitalism is what happens when the bank overcharges you for no reason on overdraft fees.
So, if the wingnuts can say anything about this President and need no facts to prove so, barring any admission that Barack Obama IS a socialist, admits that he does think he is the Messiah after all or somebody finds Sean Hannity’s crystal ball that gives him supernatural powers of clairvoyance, Ronald Reagan logically MUST be the devil.
Proof? You dare ask for Proof? Well who needs proof when you have a wild imagination and a blackboard to spell it out on, and thus I can prove that Barack Obama wants to kill all the smurfs, is, in fact a sekrit communist muslim, and Ronald Reagan is the devil.
All below the fold.
Jul 20 2009
According to Rumors, Mississippi’s Boss Hog Aspires to Become President
Can you imagine this crook in the White House? No way this is in the cards for America’s future! No way this white supremacist will be allowed in the White House!
Barbour Ignores Budget-balancing Stimulus in Fox News Criticisms
By Bill Minor, 7-19-09
Jackson, Miss – Call it chutzpah, biting the hand that feeds you, or whatever else you might call it when the beneficiary of largesse disdains the one who made the goodies possible.
Gov. Haley Barbour goes on Fox News Channel’s (where else?) Sean Hannity show four days after Mississippi’s Legislature has handed him a balanced state budget without draconian agency cuts or big tax increases, thanks largely to money from President Obama’s $785 billion stimulus package, officially known as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Does Haley tell Sean anything about how the Obama stimulus money plugged gaping holes in the Mississippi budget? He does not.
No, he tears into the stimulus package with all the pat phrases from the Republican Party playbook.
“Too much spending on social policy and not enough on infrastructure,” Barbour repeats, followed by the old GOP standby: “not enough tax cuts.”
Adding, of course, “It would make a lot more sense if they’d given states more discretion over how to spend the money.”
Translation: Give me say-so on where to put the money (we all remember how Barbour shifted $600 million in Katrina money intended to rebuild housing on the devastated Gulf Coast to the Port of Gulfport’s 10-year old expansion plan that includes creating casino-hotel sites.)
What were the “social policy” programs Barbour told Fox viewers were wrongly included in Obama’s recovery package?
Did that apply to the $160 million stimulus money that made it possible to fully fund Mississippi’s K-12 education program, saving 4,500 teachers’ jobs?
Or $133 million ARRA money for Title 1 to aid poverty students or another $122.3 million for school children with disabilities?
Or the $164 million ARRA money that saved the fiscally troubled Medicaid program and its 600,000 vulnerable clients?Or the $177 million to the Department of Transportation for shovel-ready projects that will put hundreds of Mississippians to work?
At home, a different tune
Strangely, back home in Mississippi, Barbour whistled a different tune about the Obama recovery package in his Web site. It was saying “spending on all three levels of education will be the highest ever” and acknowledged that federal stimulus money made it possible.
On the Hannity show, Barbour sounded more like a hopeful to be on the GOP’s 2012 ticket, veering off into water over his head on foreign policy and military preparedness.
He roundly criticized President Obama’s recent meetings with Russia’s two top leaders, and his agreement that both U.S. and Russia would reduce to 1,600 their nuclear warheads.
The Mississippi governor charged “it is no time to dismantle our nuclear arsenal to have a charm offensive with the Russians.”
Barbour said that his hero, Ronald Reagan, would never have done such a thing, insisting that Ronnie “showed the world the Russians couldn’t compete with us” in nuclear weaponry.
Barbour forgets Reagan
Obviously Barbour didn’t know or conveniently forgot that Reagan, meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986, stunned NATO allies and his aides by proposing both the U. S. and the Soviet Union scrap all of their nuclear weapons.
Reagan aides quickly went into damage control, attributing Reagan’s off-handed nuclear giveaway to a brief lapse of memory, and told the Russian team just to forget what he said.
Makes Obama’s nuclear agreement with the Russian leaders small potatoes by comparison.
Barbour’s Fox News sortie into the foreign policy minefield brings to mind his unmemorable 1982 Senate race against aging Sen. John Stennis when he tried to portray Stennis, then one of the hawkish of war hawks in Congress, as soft on standing up to the Soviets in the Cold War.
Mississippians then saw that Barbour was talking pure hogwash and soundly defeated him.
Bill Minor is a syndicated columnist who has covered Mississippi politics since 1947.
Jun 27 2009
What ever happened to the News?
Media Reform Information Center
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S.
…in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world’s largest media corporation.
In 2004, Bagdikian’s revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) — now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric’s NBC is a close sixth.
