| Source: Continuous Improvement Associates http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/hannityinsanity.shtml Politics Links to sections below:
(I found I'm not the first to use the obvious rhyme, Hannity Insanity.)
#1 Hannity Insanity: He said, "Obama isn't a good fit for the U.S. because it's center-right and Obama is far left." Hannity is insane, but this is true and extremely important: And Obama is well to the right of true center, as I document below, continuing "free trade", with far right advisors, and bank bailouts with virtually no strings attached. What's called "liberal" is the true political center while much of what's called "socialism" is simply pragmatic to prevent system failure and make the nation stronger ... not "collectivism" for it's own sake. Hannity, on his July 1, 2009 radio program, was talking about how Obama is so "leftist" in a nation that isn't. It went something like this ... greatly paraphrased.
Hannity is correct on one point: the politics of this country is center-right. But it's idiotic to assert that Obama is a "far-left socialist" ... as I'll show below he's a right-winger and Republicans should absolutely love him. Added 12/4/15 The Real Roots of the Rising Right BY DAVID DAYEN, 12/2/15 Why the rise of the "right"? Because, as explained by ... a new study by three German researchers on the political aftermath of global financial crises. ... found that elections following a financial crisis almost always benefit the far right, resulting in increasing political polarization. In other words, the rise of the Tea Party right could be merely a normal response to a banking meltdown. The common assumption has been that major crises lift all fringe parties, whether on the left or the right, as people become disillusioned with failed institutions. But in the five-year period after a financial crisis, far-right votes increase by one-third, according to the study, while far-left votes rise only slightly. The most severe financial crises, like the Great Depression or the 2008 crash, produce even greater boosts for the far right. This data was consistent throughout the 140 years of study, even after controlling for different voting systems. And why is that? ... the upheaval of the post-crisis years fed back into our political system. Because banks were protected from the worst losses, they were able to maintain their political power, and even expand it when Republicans took over Congress. The combination of that regained strength and the wholesale destruction of our campaign finance system after the Citizens United ruling helped turn the financial crisis into conservative electoral success. And that feedback loop has not stopped running. And why did Democrats make this worse? They've also moved to the right and failed to restructure the financial system: Democrats had a moment after 2008 to restructure the financial system, not just rebuild it. Failure to do so wasn’t just bad policy; it hurt at the voting booth. Very clever. Deregulate to create a financial crisis and economic collapse ... and benefit from it. Also see Big Recessions Are Good For Right-Wing Politics By Kevin Drum, 12/02/15 Politically, the result of this is pretty obvious. Liberal parties think that bad times are precisely when the poor need the most help, so they propose more social spending. Right-wing parties, by contrast, oppose increased spending. In public, this usually isn't framed as support or opposition to doling out money to the poor. Liberals talk about stimulus and countercyclical spending. Conservatives talk about massive budget deficits and skyrocketing government outlays. But it doesn't really matter. What people hear is that liberals want to spend more on the poor and conservatives don't. When people are feeling vulnerable and mean, the conservative message resonates with them. From a practical policy standpoint, this makes little sense. Liberals are right that recessions are the best time to spend more on safety-net programs, both because the poor need the help and because it acts as useful stimulus. But human nature doesn't work that way, and conservatives have the better read on that. Added 9/28/15 The Polarization of the Congressional Parties [Updated 21 March 2015] Polarization declined in both chambers from roughly the beginning of the 20th Century until World War II. It was then fairly stable until the late 1970s and has been increasing steadily over the past 25 years. Our (Poole and Rosenthal, 1997) original D-NOMINATE estimation ended with the 99th Congress. Interestingly, Congresses 100- 113, if anything, mark an acceleration of the trend (especially in the House). Note, however, that the acceleration is smooth and does not show a particular jump in polarization induced by the large Republican freshman class elected in 1994. Polarization in the House and Senate is now at the highest level since the end of Reconstruction. In addition, the percentage of moderate Representatives and Senators continues to plummet. In the House the percentage of moderates (-.25 to +.25 on the first DW-NOMINATE dimension) has declined to about 10 Percent in both Chambers. This astonishing chart shows how moderate Republicans are an endangered species By Christopher Ingraham 6/2/14 Political scientists have known for years that political polarization is largely a one-sided phenomenon: in recent decades the Republican Party has moved to the right much faster than Democrats have moved to the left. As Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution has described it, "Republicans have become a radical insurgency—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of their political opposition." Admit It, Political Scientists: Politics Really Is More Broken Than Ever by THOMAS E. MANN, 5/26/14 Scholars restrain themselves out of fear of being seen as partisans, but what's happening now is different, and false equivalence is no virtue. ... With Barack Obama in the White House and Democrats and Republicans each controlling one chamber, Congress has ceased to operate as an effective legislative body. Deliberation and compromise are scarce commodities, not the coin of the realm. The contemporary Congress bears little resemblance to the “textbook Congress” of the 1950s and 1960s or “the reform Congress” that followed. Individual members are no longer the most useful unit of analysis for understanding congressional behavior and policymaking. Parties are the key actors, and they respond more to their activist bases than to the median voter. Public approval of Congress and trust in government have plunged to record depths. Growing concerns about economic and political inequality are rooted in real increases in the concentration of income, wealth, and opportunities for influence. ... Perhaps a more reliable way of bringing the Republican Party back into the mainstream is a few more decisive presidential defeats. That might create the conditions for the emergence of new Republican ideas less detached from reality and new efforts among some coalition partners to challenge extremist forces in primary elections. Sadly, those extreme candidates are no longer limited to Tea Party members; there are found throughout the so-called Republican Party establishment. ... ___________________________________
Senatorial positions from The Political Compass. At the upper right corner there are "authoritarian, "free market" privatize everything" policies ... that's fascism. Republicans are more extreme and practically there, but Democrats are also well to the right and hardly "socialist." Republicans get their way when they control Congress because they can pick off enough right-wing Democrats from the rest to collude with them. So both Republicans and Democrats are well to the social authoritarian top and economic "free market" right, with Republicans being much more so. Though both are right wing, there is a real difference between the two parties with the worst being toward the upper right. While being further to the authoritarian right is more evil, both parties are somewhat evil. Some say they'll not vote for the "lesser of two evils." But in our two-party system without something like Instant Runoff Voting, it makes no sense to vote for a third party that has no chance of winning because that's actually supporting one of the two major parties that you like least. That's supporting the greater of two evils, which makes no sense at all. ______________________________ Added 12/28/14: Bruce Bartlett on how Democrats moved to the right.
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The chart to the right is from The Political Compass before the 2008 election (it's also at the section on Capitalism, Socialism, & Dictatorship). I added the Communist & Fascist Dictatorship labels. A later Political Compass chart (to the right) shows, Romney and Obama to be close to the same and explains why: U.S Presidential Election 2012. [In a later revision of this chart, Gravel was moved (correctly) to just below the x-axis near Ron Paul.]
Note where the candidates are: Democrats well to the economic "right" and Republicans on the far "right" ... essentially under the thrall of anti-government, libertarian ideology. What's called "liberal" in America is the true "center". There is no "left" left in America, much less a "far-left". The Republicans and other "conservatives" have moved so far to the "far-right" that the liberal center now looks like the "left". What has "conservative" (mostly Republican) rule since Reagan does to wages? People complain about high taxes, but it's not that people are taxed too much, they're paid too little thanks to policies that have depressed wages. Using the graph below on productivity & compensation, you can determine that in 2004 you'd have been making 68% more had compensation kept up with productivity. We wouldn't need those cheap products from China, if this were the case. And millions wouldn't have lost their jobs: see Jobs & 'Trade' Data Update Jun10. Take the test at the Political Compass to see where you stand compared to those you support.
Obama is Well to the Right on Economic & Other Issues What's really amazing is that "conservatives" call Obama a socialist and/or a communist even though he's done these things that they absolutely would do. They should absolutely love him:
Thomas Frank on Obama: Cornel West: "He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency" by THOMAS FRANK, Salon, 8/24/14. Cornel West: ... the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he's just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that's a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are-we're an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody-a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility. ... Even with [Attorney General] Eric Holder. Eric Holder won't touch the Wall Street executives; they're his friends. He might charge them some money. They want to celebrate. This money is just a tax write-off for these people. There's no accountability. No answerability. No responsibility that these people have to take at all. The same is true with the Robert Rubin crowd. Obama comes in, he's got all this populist rhetoric which is wonderful, progressive populist rhetoric which we needed badly. What does he do, goes straight to the Robert Rubin crowd and here comes Larry Summers, here comes Tim Geithner, we can go on and on and on, and he allows them to run things. You see it in the Suskind book, The Confidence Men. These guys are running things, and these are neoliberal, deregulating free marketeers-and poverty is not even an afterthought for them. ... More on Obama's support for oil & gas drilling and pipelines: Added 7/29/15 Global Warming denier is effusive in praise for Obama, plus Obama's approval of pipeline. Yet, "conservatives" liars & fools say Obama is a "socialist" ... ha! Capitalism vs. the Climate: Naomi Klein on Need for New Economic Model to Address Ecological Crisis Amy Goodman spoke with Marc Morano, publisher of the Climate Depot, a website run by the climate denier group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. She asked him about President Obama’s record on climate change. MARC MORANO: His nickname is "George W. Obama." Obama’s negotiator, Todd Stern, will be here today. They have kept the exact same principles and negotiating stance as President George Bush did for eight years. Obama has carried on Bush’s legacy. So, as skeptics, we tip our hat to President Obama in helping crush and continue to defeat the United Nations process. Obama has been a great friend of global warming skeptics at these conferences. Obama has problems, you know, for us, because he’s going through the EPA regulatory process, which is a grave threat. But in terms of this, President Obama could not have turned out better when it came to his lack of interest in the congressional climate bill and his lack of interest in the United Nations Kyoto Protocol. So, a job well done for President Obama. On Obama's approval of drilling for oil & gas and praise of pipeline expansion. Amy Goodman: Let’s go to President Obama. This is him in 2012 when he appeared in Cushing, Oklahoma, to announce his support for TransCanada to build the southern leg of its Keystone oil pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some. So, we are drilling all over the place, right now. That’s not the challenge. That’s not the problem. In fact, the problem in a place like Cushing is that we’re actually producing so much oil and gas in places like North Dakota and Colorado, that we don’t have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it to where it needs to go.
Clinton Well to the Right on Economic & Other Issues Clinton, characterized by the "right" as a liberal, governed well to the right. Far-right economic conservative (read libertarian) Alan Greenspan, replied to the question, "About how much would you say you agreed with him [Clinton]? ALAN GREENSPAN: "On economic issues, I would say probably 80%." Case closed, Clinton was a right winger on economics. Examples: NAFTA (passed only with massive Republican support, most Democrats opposed it ... see The NAFTA Nemesis on the results), the creation and expansion of the World Trade Organization, banking deregulation (1999 abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act) by way of the the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowing financial institutions to get too big to fail and take on risks that contributed to the current economic crisis, and telecommunications deregulation (1996 Telecom Act) that continued the historic industry consolidation begun by Reagan that reduced the number of major media companies from around 50 in 1983 to 10 in 1996 and 6 in 2005. Way to go right-wingers!
Take the test at the Political Compass to see where you stand compared to those you support.
Added 6/20/16 Thomas Frank: Bill Clinton's Five Major Achievements Were Longstanding GOP Objectives By Mark Karlin, Truthout, 5/15/16 Thomas Frank: "The Democrats are a class party in the fullest sense of the phrase, and the class whose perspective they reflect and whose interests they serve is the highly educated, white-collar professional class. Theirs is a liberalism of the rich." Question: This is a little off message regarding the book, but can you speculate why the Republicans were so obsessed with removing Clinton from office when he was fulfilling so much of the GOP agenda, including negotiating with Newt Gingrich about cutting Medicare and Social Security? Thomas Frank: "Fulfilling so much of the GOP agenda": That is a point worth reiterating. Clinton had five major achievements as president: NAFTA, the Crime Bill of 1994, welfare reform, the deregulation of banks and telecoms, and the balanced budget. All of them -- every single one -- were longstanding Republican objectives. His smaller achievements were more traditionally Democratic (he raised the earned-income tax credit and the minimum wage), but his big accomplishments all enacted conservative wishes, and then all of them ended in disaster.Frank: "The Democrats are a class party in the fullest sense of the phrase, and the class whose perspective they reflect and whose interests they serve is the highly educated, white-collar professional class. Theirs is a liberalism of the rich." So why did the right try so hard to get rid of him? For one thing, because they always do that. They never suspend the war or stop pushing rightward. There is no point at which they say, "OK, we've won enough." For another, because Gingrich couldn't control the rank and file, a problem that persists to this day. ... Added 5/22/16. Clinton deregulated telecom, undermined strong banking laws, and rammed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through Congress ... all by colluding with Repubicans against majority Democratic opposition. Bill Clinton’s odious presidency: Thomas Frank on the real history of the ’90s by THOMAS FRANK, 3/13/16 ... Evaluating Clinton’s presidency as heroic is no longer a given, however. After the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000, the corporate scandals of the Enron period, and the collapse of the real estate racket, our view of the prosperous Nineties has changed quite a bit. Now we remember that it was Bill Clinton’s administration that deregulated derivatives, that deregulated telecom, and that put our country’s only strong banking laws in the grave. He’s the one who rammed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through Congress and who taught the world that the way you respond to a recession is by paying off the federal deficit. Mass incarceration and the repeal of welfare, two of Clinton’s other major achievements, are the pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society. He would have put a huge dent in Social Security, too, had the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal not stopped him. If we take inequality as our measure, the Clinton administration looks not heroic but odious. ... The first time I myself tuned in and noticed some version of this inevitability-speak was in 1993, during that fight over NAFTA. The deal had been negotiated by the departed president, George H. W. Bush, but the Democratic majority in Congress had balked at the original version of the treaty, forcing the parties back to the table. As with so many of the achievements of the Clinton era, it eventually took a Democratic president, working with Republican members of Congress, to pass this landmark of neoliberalism. According to the president himself, what the agreement was about was simple: “NAFTA will tear down trade barriers,” he said when signing it. “It will create the world’s largest trade zone and create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone.” The stationery of an outfit that lobbied for the treaty was emblazoned with the argument: “North American Free Trade Agreement—Exports. Better Jobs. Better Wages.” But it wasn’t reason that sold NAFTA; it was a simulacrum of reason, by which I mean the great god inevitability, invoked in the language of professional-class self-assurance. “We cannot stop global change,” Clinton said in his signing speech. The predictions about NAFTA were lies. It was a disaster that tremendously increased imports compared to exports as I document in The NAFTA Nemesis. That led to the export of a million higher-paying U.S. jobs: NAFTA at 20: One Million U.S. Jobs Lost, Higher Income Inequality by Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, 01/06/2014 As I explain at Federal Reserve Policy: Drive Down Wages by Limiting Demand for Labor, the number of jobs is not determined by "free trade" offshoing, but the pay of jobs is undermined by "free trade". Added 5/22/16. NAFTA and TPP: "Free Trade" undermines wages and the U.S. economy Fast Track to Lost Jobs and Lower Wages by Robert E. Scott, Economic Policy Institute, 4/13/15 ... More than 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost between 1997 and 2014, and most of those job losses were due to growing trade deficits with countries that have negotiated trade and investment deals with the United States. Between 1993 (before NAFTA took effect) and 2013, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada increased from $17.0 billion to $177.2 billion, displacing more than 850,000 U.S. jobs. Growing trade deficits and job displacement, especially between the United States and Mexico, were the result of a surge in outsourcing of production by U.S. and other foreign investors. The rise in outsourcing was fueled, in turn, by a surge in foreign direct investment (FDI) into Mexico, which increased by more than 150 percent in the post-NAFTA period. KORUS took effect in March 2012. Between 2011 and 2014, U.S. exports to Korea increased by about $1 billion, but imports have increased by $13 billion, so the trade deficit has increased by nearly $12 billion. This growing trade deficit with Korea has cost more than 75,000 U.S. jobs. Then there is China, until now a part of the biggest trade and investment deal of all. In 2000, President Bill Clinton claimed that the agreement then being negotiated to allow China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) would create “a win-win result for both countries.” Exports to China “now support hundreds of thousands of American jobs,” and these figures “can grow substantially with the new access to the Chinese market the WTO agreement creates,” he said. Between 2001, when China came into the WTO, and 2013 the U.S. trade deficit with China increased $240 billion. These growing trade deficits eliminated 3.2 million U.S. jobs. China became the third largest recipient of FDI in the world, which fueled the growth of thousands of new manufacturing plants that generated exports to the United States and other markets. Manufacturers were willing to invest in Mexico and China because of special protections offered in these deals for investors, including greatly expanded intellectual property rights and special, extra-judicial dispute settlement mechanisms to protect corporate investments (so-called investor-state dispute settlement or ISDS). The TPP threatens to roll back U.S. regulations in areas such as food safety, banking, and finance regulations. These changes will be enforced through private actions under the ISDS, as well as changes in government rules. ... Added 1/1/16: 15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World By AlterNet Staff / AlterNet, 6/22/15 1. Prison-loving president. Added 1/19/16 This article by a right-wing extremist explains about Clinton in a National Review piece on Trump. Trump Doesn’t Represent the Conservative Base by JONAH GOLDBERG, 12/11/15 ... Consider Bill Clinton. His staggering dishonesty, tackiness, and scorn for the rule of law aroused a lot of anger from the Right. But he wasn’t really that left-wing. Oh, he was certainly more liberal in his heart than he let on, but he also worked from the assumption that this was a center-right country, and that limited what he could get away with. Clinton ran for president the first time by “triangulating” against the base of his own party. He took time off from the campaign to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a man so mentally disabled, when he left for the electric chair, he told the guards that he was saving the pecan pie from his last meal “for later.” Clinton signed welfare reform (reluctantly), the Defense of Marriage Act (less reluctantly), helped to balance the budget, and proclaimed that “the era of big government is over.” And yet, many conservatives insisted he was a no-good hippy left-winger. ... Added 6/1/16 On the effects of Clinton's policies on minorities and the disadvantaged BILL CLINTON HAS ALWAYS BEEN THIS PERSON by NATHAN J. ROBINSON, Current Affairs, 4/05/16 Confronted by Black Lives Matter activists at a Pennsylvania campaign event on Thursday, Bill Clinton snapped. Responding to protesters’ condemnations of Clinton’s record on criminal justice as president, as well as Hillary Clinton’s notorious warning about dangerous juvenile “superpredators,” Bill issued a furious rebuke: [see article] Clinton's acidic hectoring quickly made the news. ... But what happened on Thursday was neither unpredictable or inscrutable, nor was it the product of some senile bewilderment. Rather, it was simply the most blatant expression of a trait that has been present in Bill Clinton’s character since his early political career: his cruel and cynical treatment of black people, and his use of progressive racial rhetoric to mask a willingness to devastatingly harm black communities in the service of self-interested political ends.
With a total lack of cognitive dissonance, Hannity complains that liberals have destroyed America, even as he recognizes that the nation's politicians are and have been "center-right." The fact is that the nation is in the midst of economic collapse exactly because it's been governed from the "right." That's the root of every major economic problem: see Invisible Hand Drops Ball & Economics 101. The result of ignoring natural law is economic failure. Unfortunately, because Obama's governing too far to the right, his stimulus will fail, so right-wing Obama-haters and America-haters can join hands and rejoice together. What's called "centrist" in the U.S. is about halfway between the true center and the right ... and authoritarian, as well. Here's The Political Compass on what's the center:
The Political Compass explains the dimensions of their charts: Firstly, a few words about popular political terms. Once you accept that left and right are merely measures of economic position, the "extreme right" refers to extremely liberal economics that may be practised by social authoritarians or social libertarians. Similarly, the "extreme left" identifies a strong degree of state economic control, which may also be accompanied by liberal or authoritarian social policies. ... Voter turnout is highest when ideological differences are most significant. This helps explain why the voter turnout is lower in the US than in all other western democracies , most of which have a multiplicity of parties and proportional representation. Added 1/18/16: One-half of Trump supporters are strongly authoritarian
The Republican Race to the Far Right
Barry Goldwater, who in 1964 ran for the presidency, observed that the Republican Party had become radically more socially conservative.
This trend toward increased social conservatism also drove the Republican Party to the far right economically. From "Assessing the Vote and the Roots of American Political Divide" by R.G. Price - 11/6/04
Added 7/29/10: It really is totally obvious that the nation has moved to the far right.
Added 9/12/10: The America John Boehner grew up in? Check out the GOP platforms at the time Policies on economics have moved way to the "right" since then. Added 10/2/15 Boehner Ally Calls Ted Cruz Republicans “Right Wing Marxists” By: Rmusemore from Rmuse 9/24/15 Noam Chomsky on Trump: "We Should Recognize the Other Candidates are Not That Different", Democracy Now!, 9/22/15 ... I think what’s actually happened is that during the whole so-called neoliberal period, last generation, both political parties have drifted to the right. Today’s Democrats are what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just drifted off the spectrum. They’re so committed to extreme wealth and power that they cannot get votes, can’t get votes by presenting those positions. So what has happened is that they’ve mobilized sectors of the population that have been around for a long time. It is a pretty exceptional country in many ways. One is it’s extremely religious. It’s one of the most extreme fundamentalist countries in the world. And by now, I suspect the majority of the base of the Republican Party is evangelical Christians, extremists, not—they’re a mixture, but these are the extremist ones, nativists who are afraid that, you know, "they are taking our white Anglo-Saxon country away from us," people who have to have guns when they go into Starbucks because, who knows, they might get killed by an Islamic terrorist and so on.
Noam Chomsky: Dems are now Moderate Repugs: Republicans are now Off the Spectrum of Reality , Ring of Fire, 9/23/15 [added 5/13/16] Today’s Democrats are what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just drifted off the spectrum. They’re so committed to extreme wealth and power that they cannot get votes … So what has happened is that they’ve mobilized sectors of the population that have been around for a long time. … Trump may be comic relief, but it’s not that different from the mainstream, which I think is more important. Added 10/11/15 This explains how it's accomplished with the help of "Fox News": This Is How Fox News Brainwashes Its Viewers: Our In-Depth Investigation of the Propaganda Cycle by Heather Hogan 9/2/15. ... Fox News is not only uninterested in being fair and balanced; it is also uninterested in being a reliable source of news. That’s because Fox News is playing a zero-sum political game in which every major news story is an opportunity to use their viewers as pawns to advance the power and agenda of the most extremist ideology of the Republican Party. ... Added 10/18/15 As before the Civil War, a "conservative" political faction is determined to have their way ... democracy be damned. Ted Cruz wants to be king: Make no mistake, the GOP extremists’ real goal is absolute control 10/18/15 The Movement Conservatives now calling the shots in the Republican Party are forcing the nation toward a Constitutional crisis. A very small number of extremists are trying to bend the federal government to their will. They want to force the president to abandon his own policies and adopt theirs. If he refuses to cave in to their demands to kill Planned Parenthood, they will refuse to fund the government. They will force it to shut down. The thirty or forty people in the secretive “House Freedom Caucus,” elected by voters only from their own deeply Republican districts, want to erase the constitutional role of the president. They want to impose their will on the American people. They have deliberately set out to destroy the American constitutional system. This is not the first time the America government has seen such an assault. The nation faced a similar crisis after the Civil War. ... The crisis of 1879 holds lessons for today, as an extremist cabal of Movement Conservatives searches for a House Speaker who will promise to make raising the debt ceiling contingent on defunding Planned Parenthood. Now, as in 1879, these extremists ran roughshod over a weak House Speaker, claiming a mandate to overturn the policies endorsed by the majority of Americans. Now, as in 1879, those extremists seek to bend a president of the opposite party to their will by holding government finances hostage until they get their way. Now, as in 1879, they threaten the structure of American democracy.
Redistribution of Money from Liberal to 'Conservative' States
That the "redistribution of wealth", about which "conservatives" complain, is from liberal to "conservative" states is extremely ironic.
10 Republican Red States That Mooch off Coastal Liberal States By Alex Henderson / AlterNet, 9/17/14 ... the more prosperous and Democrat-leaning areas of the United States are likely to be subsidizing dysfunctional “red states,” many of which are suffering from insufficient tax revenue and an abundance of low-wage workers who don’t have much to tax. ...
#2. Surprise! Hannity is a liar An example of how Hannity lies on "Fox News". Propaganda at its finest. Jon Stewart points out How intentionally misleading "news' from Fox News doesn't really get more obvious than this ... More Hannity lies:
The truth: Unfortunately for Hannity, Bundy's 'Ancestral Rights' Story A Load Of Crap. Bundy is a liar and a thief. Cliven Bundy And The Myth Of Rural 'Powerlessness' An Abbreviated Look At Rancher Cliven Bundy's Family History Apocalyse Cow: Jon Stewart Takes On The Bundy Brawl
#3. More Hannity Insanity Coming as soon as I have the stomach to listen to more. Here is the Republican Party Platform of 1956, August 20, 1956. The meme abbreviates and simplifies; this is what Politifact says about it: "generally correct". Viral meme says 1956 Republican platform was pretty liberal By Nai Issa, Louis Jacobson on Tuesday, October 28th, 2014 The meme says the 1956 Republican Party platform supported equal pay, the minimum wage, asylum for refugees, protections for unions and more. That’s generally correct. However, it’s worth noting that other elements of the 1956 platform were considered conservative for that era. Also, some of the issues have changed considerably between 1956 and 2012, such as the shift from focusing on post-war refugees to focusing on illegal immigration. The claim is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Mostly True. © 2003 Continuous Improvement AssociatesTop of Page |
