Look at this and imagine the impact on civilization….
I came across this YouTube video on David Mixner’s site and he has some thoughts on it as well:
Category Archives: History
Right-Wing Rage and Democratic Presidents – Salon.com
A little historical perspective from Salon.com….
As I’ve noted before, the behavior that has come to define conservative activism in the age of Obama — reflexive opposition justified by overheated, irrational and hysterical claims about Obama’s legitimacy and motives — shouldn’t have caught anyone off-guard. We saw this show before, when Bill Clinton was president and the right became obsessed with wild conspiracy theories (remember Vince Foster’s suicide?) and convinced itself that the president and his wife were part of some countercultural, socialistic plot. And we saw it when Jimmy Carter was president (although the dynamics were a little different, since Carter spent most of his term at war with liberals in his own party) and we saw it when Lyndon Johnson was president. This is just what the right does when Democrats run Washington.
In this sense, the exchange at Broun’s town hall meeting is reminiscent of Jesse Helms’ reaction in November 1994 to the news that Clinton would be visiting a military base in North Carolina. “Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here,” Helms said. “He’d better have a bodyguard.” Not surprisingly, Democrats reacted with outrage and Helms’ GOP Senate colleagues prodded him to recant; he ultimately admitted that it had been a mistake to make the statement, but then added, “Of course, I didn’t expect to be taken literally.”
Helms wasn’t speaking for every Republican or every conservative when he opened his mouth, but his utter personal contempt for Clinton was indicative of the right’s mid-’90s mind-set. His “bodyguard” quip came just weeks after Republicans posted massive midterm election gains, their strength particularly pronounced in North Carolina and other Southern states, where white voters turned hard against Clinton and the Democrats. It’s hard not to read about Broun’s town hall exchange and see the same dynamic at work today.
Of course, the right’s attitude toward Clinton has changed dramatically these past few years. Not coincidentally, this reevaluation took hold at the same time that Obama emerged as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in 2008. Suddenly, expressing fondness for Bill and Hillary (and forgetting all about all of the nastiness of 1993 and 1994) served a practical political purpose for the right, helping them to portray Obama as a dangerous, extreme-even-by-Democratic-standards outsider — the same thing that they once claimed Clinton was.
In other words, maybe a decade or two from now, when some other Democrat is sitting in the Oval Office, don’t be surprised if Paul Broun is out there longing for the good old days when a reasonable, pragmatic, impossible-to-dislike Democrat named Barack Obama was running the country.
via Right-wing rage and Democratic presidents – Barack Obama News – Salon.com.
Empire at the End of Decadence – NYTimes.com
I encourage you to click the link at the bottom and see the chart accompanying this article by Charles Blow.
This is really no surprise to those of us who travel outside the USA. It’s just not safe to talk about it in the press or publicly in the USA.
People basically lose it when you try to explain that the USA is not the world leader, in every area, it once was and is slipping further behind in so many ways.
Denial is among out biggest problems today…
And the fact that the Republicans only want to make it worse…
The fact is, we are in danger of moving more and more in the direction of becoming a Third World Country if we don’t start to invest in the future…
Preventing that and securing the future is more important than some arbitrary budget target or letting the Rich keep their tax cuts…
It’s time for us to stop lying to ourselves about this country.
America is great in many ways, but on a whole host of measures — some of which are shown in the accompanying chart — we have become the laggards of the industrialized world. Not only are we not No. 1 — “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” — we are among the worst of the worst.
Yet this reality and the urgency that it ushers in is too hard for many Americans to digest. They would prefer to continue to bathe in platitudes about America’s greatness, to view our eroding empire through the gauzy vapors of past grandeur.
Republicans have even submitted a draconian budget that would make deep cuts into the tiny vein that is nonsecurity discretionary spending, cuts that would prove devastating to the poor and working class.
At the very time that many Americans — and the very country itself — are struggling to emerge from a very deep hole, the Republican proposal would simply throw the dirt in on top of us.
This cannot be. Financing for education and social services isn’t simply about handouts to the hardscrabble, it is about building an infrastructure that can produce healthy, engaged and well-educated citizens who can compete in an increasingly cutthroat global economy.
One of President Obama’s new catchphrases is “win the future,” but we can’t win the future by ceding the present and romanticizing the past.
Filed under History, Politics, The Economy
The G.O.P.’s Post-Tucson Traumatic Stress Disorder – NYTimes.com
Interesting article from Frank Rich today…
If the GOP is tiring of the rabid right and people realize they have nothing to offer, will the Dems finally capitalize on the GOP lack of ideas?
Or will they show the usually lack of nerve and cede the communications war in the name of bi-partisanship?
If they had had an effective communications strategy and some balls, we would have a better Health Care plan-with the Public Option- and they would still control the House of Representatives. Oh, and we might have had a chance at true infrastructure development and Financial Reform. Then President Obama might be viewed more as FDR than the Herbert Hoover imagery that is being used more and more often in the press…
Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.
Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.
Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.
What may at long last be dawning on some Republican grandees is that a provocateur who puts her political adversaries in the cross hairs and then instructs her acolytes to “RELOAD” frightens most voters.
via The G.O.P.’s Post-Tucson Traumatic Stress Disorder – NYTimes.com.
Filed under Health Care, History, Politics, The Economy
8-Track Tapes Belong In A Museum : The Record : NPR
And to think I just threw a bunch of these in the trash when I was cleaning out my Mother’s house….
Today — when you can literally take your music anywhere — it’s hard to imagine a time when that wasn’t possible. So, if you’re old enough, cast your mind back 40 years or so. Remember 8-track tapes? In the 1960s and early ’70s, they were the way that millions of Americans took their music with them. Now, a museum devoted to the obsolete format is open in Dallas, Texas.
Bucks Burnett is its proprietor. He caught the 8-track bug when he was rummaging through bins at a garage sale in 1988 and something caught his eye: the Beatles’ White Album on 8-track tape.
“And so I’m thinkin’ ‘I’ll get this for 50 cents.’ And I said, ‘How much for the 8-track?’ And the guys says, ‘$7.’ And I said, ‘No, the 8-track? How much for the 8-track?’ And he said, ‘$7.’ I said, ‘Will you take five?’ He said, ‘Put it back in the box.’ I said, ‘OK, wait a minute. Why is this 8-track $7?’ And he said, ‘It’s the Beatles. It’s the White Album. Where you gonna find another one?’ And I gave him $7.”
More than 3,000 8-tracks later, Burnett’s collection is so large he opened the 700 square foot Eight Track Museum (take a video tour). He displays between 500 and 1,000 tapes, as well as an example of every type of physical recorded music from the wax cylinders of the 1800s to the iPod.
Filed under Entertainment, History, Music
Reagan and Reality – NYTimes.com
Another reality check on St Ronnie from Bob Herbert in the New York Times….
They really love him because he was the first one to get away with this act- claim to be for the average American while actually destroying their economic lives to benefit the rich and corporations.
It’s been the playbook of the GOP ever since…
And people still fall for it…
This also references a new documentary that debunks the myth….
Sounds like a must-see– if I can stand 90 more minutes of Reagan…
No less than other public figures, Reagan was complicated. He was neither the empty suit that his greatest detractors would have you believe nor the conservative god of his most slavish admirers. He was a tax-cutter who raised taxes in seven of the eight years of his presidency. He was a budget-cutter who nearly tripled the federal budget deficit.
The biggest problem with Reagan, as we look back at his presidency in search of clues that might help us meet the challenges of today, is that he presented himself — and has since been presented by his admirers — as someone committed to the best interests of ordinary, hard-working Americans. Yet his economic policies, Reaganomics, dealt a body blow to that very constituency.
Mark Hertsgaard, the author of “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,” says in the film, “You cannot be fair in your historical evaluation of Ronald Reagan if you don’t look at the terrible damage his economic policies did to this country.”
Paul Volcker, who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve during most of the Reagan years, commented in the film about the economist Arthur Laffer’s famous curve, which, incredibly, became a cornerstone of national economic policy. “The Laffer Curve,” said Mr. Volcker, “was presented as an intellectual support for the idea that reducing taxes would produce more revenues, and that was, I think, considered by most people a pretty extreme interpretation of what would happen.”
Toward the end of his comment, the former Fed chairman chuckled as if still amused by the idea that this was ever taken seriously.
What we get with Reagan are a series of disconnects and contradictions that have led us to a situation in which a president widely hailed as a hero of the working class set in motion policies that have been mind-bogglingly beneficial to the wealthy and devastating to working people and the poor.
Filed under History, Politics, The Economy
10 Historical ‘Facts’ Only a Right-Winger Could Believe | | AlterNet
This is definitely worth reading…
As you may have noticed by following their writings, conservatives are not sticklers for historical accuracy, especially when they have a point to defend and not a lot of evidence to support it. Get a load, for example, of John Podhoretz explaining how the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani reduced abortions in New York City (though, um, not really) because he cut crime, which is one of “the spiritual causes of abortion.”
Yeah, deadline pressure’s a bitch. But there are some bizarre notions of American history in which conservatives have become so invested they’ve adopted them into their worldview. The best-known example is probably Jonah Goldberg’s notion of “Liberal Fascism”; nowadays anytime a conservative talks about, say, Woodrow Wilson or Hillary Clinton, you may expect him to mention their resemblance to Benito Mussolini. They don’t even have to think about it, even when normal people are gaping at them open-mouthed like audience members at “Springtime for Hitler” — it’s part of the folklore that helps them understand the American experience.
There are plenty of others. I’ve picked out 10 such ideas that are widespread enough to qualify. (In the nomenclature I have treated “Republican” and “conservative” as synonyms because, come on.)
MORE: 10 Historical ‘Facts’ Only a Right-Winger Could Believe | | AlterNet.
Glenn Beck: Should Fox Toss Him Out of the Coop?
If only….
I keep hoping people will get wise to him or he would self-destruct, but I never thought it would be over something like the Egyptian protests..
From David Corn at AOL Politics Daily:
For years, Beck has pitched various conspiracy theories with a rather predictable thrust: The left is out to take over and/or destroy the United States. (The relationship between assuming control of the country and scheming its decimation has always been a bit fuzzy.) And his targets have been sinister lefty outfits that are not household names: the Tides Foundation, ACORN, and others. As long as Beck stuck to this classic tale — secret commies undermining this great land of ours — he wasn’t much of a problem to most conservatives and his patrons at Fox. Sure, some conservative commentators (such as David Frum) derided Beck. But Beck was more like the crazy uncle in the attic who could be ignored. And Fox News could bank the revenue Beck generated without worry. Good ratings forgive much.
But only so much.
The Egypt uprising has raised the stakes for Beck — and Fox. In the past two weeks, Beck has viewed events in Egypt through his own rather warped filter. He claims that the rebellion is not about the people, not about democracy. Instead, he says, it’s a move by radical Islamists to take over Egypt, as part of a larger plan to install a caliphate that stretches from the Middle East through Europe and toward the United States. And he contends that “uber-leftists” and Islamic extremists are “plotting together” toward this end. Last week on his radio show, he declared, “Groups from the hard-core socialist and communist left and extreme Islam will work together because they are both a common enemy of Israel and the Jew. . . . Islam wants a caliphate. Communists want a communist new world order. They’ll work together, and they’ll destabilize. Because they both want chaos.”
Austin Powers, anyone? But it gets better. This grand cabal also includes . . . the Establishment. Beck points out that Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush refrained from bombing “ancient Babylon” during their respective wars against Iraq. “Why?” he asks. “Because the Bible tells us that that is the seat right there of power of a global evil empire,” meaning that Islamic caliphate. Bush father and son each wanted to preserve the heart of a radical Islam caliphate? That seems to be what Beck is saying.
Filed under History, Media, Politics, Television
10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan
A little more on the truth about the Reagan Presidency….
How soon people forget and how easily their memories are manipulated by the Corporate Media….
From ThinkProgress.org
ThinkProgress has compiled a list of the top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan:
1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.
2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.
3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.
4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously.
MORE: ThinkProgress » Blog Archive » 10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan.
Filed under History, Media, Politics, The Economy
Ronald Reagan’s Real Legacy: Death, Heartache and Silence Over AIDS : LGBT | POV
Excellent article about the real legacy of Ronald Reagan…
This is exactly how I remember it…
Hat tip to PamsHouseBlend.com for originally posting this….
America is gushing Sunday over former President Ronald Reagan in recognition of what would have been his 100th birthday. Produced by Reagan groupies, the long-weekend celebrations at the newly primped Reagan Library and Museum in Simi Valley are glitzy and reverent evocations of an imagined man.
In this white-washed version of history, Reagan, not Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev (remember “glasnost,” “perestroika,” and the impact of Levis, Coke and “Dynasty”?) is credited with “tearing down” the Berlin Wall; the trillion dollars in debt Reagan wracked up during his “conservative” presidency is ignored; “supply-side” or “trickle-down” economics” still works, even though theory-originator David Stockman says it doesn’t; the Reagan-approved secret Iran-Contra scandal was patriotic, not subversive; and he is still the “Great Communicator” – who conned working-class “Reagan Democrats” while catering to the rich, creating a huge surge in homelessness, reveling in unchecked deregulation and extolling union-busting with the mass firing of the over-worked, striking PATCO flight controllers – even before there were trained replacements.
AND:
For LGBT people, Ronald Reagan’s presidency was the far different “mourning in America.” And unlike Nixon who was forced to resign for covering up the political Watergate scandal, Reagan didn’t even bother covering up his cold disdain, his deliberate neglect, his abject refusal to help gay men stricken in 1981 by a strange new communicable disease that turned out to be AIDS. But there was no “AIDSgate” for Reagan; the White House agreed with the Religious Right that gays deserved what they got – they deserved to die.
Rev. Jerry Falwell, head of the Moral Majority, said, “AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals.” Patrick Buchanan, Reagan’s Press Secretary, said AIDS was “nature’s revenge on gay men.” Antigay Gary Bauer, Reagan’s domestic policy advisor, kept Surgeon General C. Everett Koop (selected because he was an anti-abortion Christian fundamentalist) away from Reagan:
”[In 1986] President Reagan asked the surgeon general to prepare a report on AIDS as the United States confirmed its ten-thousandth case. Leaders of the evangelical movement did not want Koop to write the report, nor did senior White House staffers who shared Koop’s evangelical convictions. As Dr. Koop related to me, “Gary Bauer [Reagan’s chief advisor on domestic policy] … was my nemesis in Washington because he kept me from the president. He kept me from the cabinet and he set up a wall of enmity between me and most of the people that surrounded Reagan because he believed that anybody who had AIDS ought to die with it. That was God’s punishment for them.”
via Ronald Reagan’s Real Legacy: Death, Heartache and Silence Over AIDS : LGBT | POV.
Filed under Gay, Health Care, History, Politics, Religion, The Economy
Lost in the 21st Century 