Sunday, September 13, 2009

It's the Hypocrisy, the Financial Collapse, the War Crimes

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Nixon was selling us out to China to whom we are now but a vassal state?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan's incompetent policies would plunge the nation into the greatest depression since Hoover's 'Great Depression' of '29.

Where were the 'tea baggers' when it has since become clear that the US has not really ever recovered from the Reagan 'recession' in which were lost several major US industries to Japan and, most recently, China!

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan sold us out to both Iran and the Contras?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Sr lied about raising taxes?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan called 'crazy' those made jobless by his idiotic, right wing policies?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Jr was bankrupting the nation with wars of naked aggression, lying about 911, covering it up, and money-laundering booty to his 'base' via 'tax cuts' and whopping defense contracts?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Jr waged war on what he called a 'goddamned piece of paper' known to the rest of us as 'The Constitution'.

Where were the 'tea baggers'? The Carvellian quick response: 'they were bent over with their heads squarely up their asses!

The Tea Party Express has hit Washington and while there are many sincere people involved in the Tea Party protests and they have valid points to make about government spending, the entire movement is stained by the fact that its organized by conservatives who are the ones responsible for the mess in the first place and who haven't to this day, taken responsibility for their own mistakes and the economic mess they created by letting George W Bush get away with his disastrous policies.

--The hypocrisy of tea party conservatives
I grew up listening to windbag conservatives denounce 'big spending librul's' and DC bureaucrats. So --what do these windbags do? They support Ronald Reagan who DOUBLED the Federal Bureaucracy and TRIPLED the national deficit. But this idiot ilk will still talk about 'big spending libruls'. Give it a frickin' rest or get a new comedy writer!

Enough already!

My suggestion to the GOP: unless you can come up with more creative lies, more entertaining bullshit, just do us all a favor and just shut the fuck up!

The same policies, under a Democrat, might have been redeemed by the 'Keynesian' increase in jobs which even Nixon would have embraced. But during the Reagan regime, NONE of the moneys spent so profligately 'trickled down'. Following Reagan's tax cut, called a 'red herring' by his own Budget Director David Stockman, the nation plunged into a depression of two years, the deepest and longest since the Great Depression during the Hoover years.

Now --after another INCOMPETENT GOP President bankrupts the nation, plunges it into yet another financial crisis, a war of naked aggression, commits war crimes for which he is culpable and prosecutable, so-called 'tea baggers' are protesting GOVERNMENT WASTE.

Where were these scumbaggers four years ago?
It was the conservatives who, after 8 years of the greatest economic expansion in history during the Clinton years, came to power and intentionally undid everything Clinton did, reversing all of Clinton's policies. And anyone with half a brain knows that if you do the opposite of anything you will get the opposite results. And that's what the Republicans did. And that's what the country got. Now the conservatives are shaking their baby rattles and complaining.

It was a conservative Republican administration and a conservative Republican congress who blew a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus. They destroyed the balanced budget they inherited, and after Clinton had eliminated the deficit, they exploded the deficit to record levels with their war and tax policies.

It was a conservative Republican government that took the country from the greatest economic expansion in history, lowest unemployment in 40 years, a balanced budget and record surpluses to deficits, unemployment and the greatest economic crisis since the 1930's.

So during these Tea Party protests conservatives are showing why the word "hypocrite" should be part of the dictionary definition of conservative.

The hypocrisy of tea party conservatives
I know where these lying hypocrites were eight years ago. They were in Florida busily violating Federal Laws, attacking vote re-counters, stealing an election! They were trying mightily to effect Antonin Scalia's prescription for a GOP win: stop the recount while Bush was still ahead! Or as Robert Novak put it: 'the Democrats are trying to steal the election by counting votes!'

Eight years ago, this ilk was trying mightily to sandbag a continuation of Clinton's policies which --in fact --had reversed previous declines in jobs and GDP, another legacy of two failed GOP regimes: Reagan and Bush Sr.

Here are some facts I wish the GOP would choke on:
Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents8
Johnson   3.8%
Carter 3.1
Clinton 2.4
Kennedy 2.3
Nixon 2.3
Reagan 2.1
Bush 0.6

--
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey
The GOP prezzes are at the bottom because that's where their policies have taken the US vis a vis the rest of the world. Those official figures shatter the carefully cultivated GOP myth, in fact, an Orwellian re-write of history, a bald-face lie! Fortunately, enough patriotic liberals have survived the wave of murders and assassination to set the record straight after so many GOP-types have worked so mightily, so assiduously to set it crooked.
Reagan inherited many of those economic problems, but once he cut taxes, America's entrepreneurial spirit was unshackled. We experienced the greatest peacetime expansion in postwar history - the so-called 'Seven Fat Years' from 1983 to 1989. Then George Bush broke his 'Read my lips: no new taxes' pledge, and sent the economy back into recession."

There are several problems with this story. First, Carter actually began many of the policies that Reagan would later become known for; Carter gave the rich a capital gains tax cut, massively deregulated key industries like trucking and airlines, and even increased defense spending. This was also the period that corporate PACs began compelling Congress to pass pro-business legislation.

According to supply-side theory, these actions should have nudged the economy in the right direction, not plunged it into the worst recession in 40 years. Other problems involve timing: Reagan's first tax cuts went into effect in 1982, but this was also the summer that the Federal Reserve Board slashed interest rates and expanded the money supply. Most economists believe the Fed, not Reagan, was responsible for the following recovery. Finally, the recession of 1990 began four months before Bush broke his "no new taxes" pledge. The recession began in July 1990; Bush signed his tax increases into law in November 1990.

And supply-siders are careful to note that Reagan's was the longest peacetime expansion since World War II. In truth, the Kennedy-Johnson expansion was longer: 106 months compared to Reagan's 92.1 Of course, there was a war in Vietnam, which gives supply-siders an excuse to dismiss it because wars are beneficial to the economy. But they are beneficial because governments engage in Keynesian borrowing and spending during them (which could be directed to social services as well as war). Unfortunately for supply-siders, it was really Keynesianism that produced the longest economic boom since World War II.

--Steve Kangas, Economic Performance, The Reagan Years
Such GOP success as was enjoyed by the 'White Rioters' in Florida is a failure, a tragedy in fact, for the nation as a whole. I no longer expect the GOP to see past the end of its crooked nose, to perceive the fact that what is good for the GOP's increasingly tiny elite gang of oligopolists is not good for those of us who have refused to sell out to the special interests.

I am frankly not interested in defending Obama. If Obama did little more than just show up and punch a clock, he beats any GOP regime since WWII.

Anything but Joe, the idiot beats another disastrous GOP regime of lies, incompetence, cronyism, and rampant felony crimes at the highest levels of government. An unemployed paper hanger could have done a better job than Bush Jr ...a dumb ass if there ever was one!

DOWN WITH THE GOP!

There is a growing body of scientific research to the effect that 'Republicanism' is a mental illness! Earlier, Stanford Univ psychologists published the results of their studies concluding that Republicans have more nightmares and night terrors than do normal folk!

Earlier, Dr. Gustav Gilbert ascribed to Nazi 'war criminals' at Nuremberg a 'lack of empathy' and implied that it was the source of evil itself. Hanah Arendt, a founder of the distinguished New School for Sociological Studies in New York wrote of the 'banality of evil'. Anyone who has acquired and read the 'minutes' of the Nazi meeting at Wannsee conducted by Reinhard Heydrich will discover such 'banality', i.e, Nazi bureaucrats discussing disspasionately the the mass murder of an entire race over a gourmet lunch amid witty conversation and 'banal' quips.

Certainly --anyone who can look at Reagan's abysmal record after some four years in office and blame CARTER for it is either 1) nuts, or 2) stupid, or 3) both!

Hey, GOP! Live with this: Carter beats any GOP President since WWII.

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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great article Len...just keep pumping out the facts and associated reality, some of this has got to rise to the surface at some point, or one would hope.


"Where were the 'tea baggers'..." LH

I will bet many (I venture a decent percentage) were / are cashing in on one or another of the schemes you mention above. I certainly have no problem with people working hard to advance their wealth or well being, but this 'tea-bagger' movement is not only hypocritical, it is self defeating, and destructive to us all. The anti-immigration 'tea-baggers' are exceptionally egregious in their claims and behavior, after all it was their messiah Reagan that opened the door to increased immigration,
(by deconstructing and demoralizing many segments of American labor). I am guessing a little trick he picked up in California, when he was governor ( they work so cheaply!). Until people realize how the conservative agenda over the past few decades has been nothing but a corrupt power and money grab for the elite and their greedy minions, our problems will continue to grow.


benmerc

AdamS said...

I saw a little of the rally 'cause Fox News streamed it. Which tells you all you need to know. But the effort is a multi-layered one: if the only reason two million people turned out was because TV told them to, then that is truly worrying. Though I don't think that's quite true.

If you ask me, the financial elite figured people were starting to get mad anyway (for legitimate reasons) and so the astroturf groups, in combination with the moronic '9/12 project' are trying to drown out things like war issues, monetary policy issues etc with neocon rhetoric about how everything just got bad since Obama and his 'Commies' 'took over'...

But here's my point. You would probably consider yourself of the left I presume. If/when some neocon gets the Presidency again, and the mil/ind machine rolls on, there will again be big anti-war protests. And you know what the supporters of the new Pres will say? "Where were you for the last 4/8 years when Obama invaded Pakistan". And they'd be just as right then as you are now about these protestors.

Divide and rule is still working just fine. Steer the crowd into a rightwing box and you alienate the real dissenters who really should be a coalition of left, right, whatever.

PS: This is a thread I was reading today at Free Republic, from 2001:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/570136/posts

Never mind the issue they're talking about, I just thought that if you swap 'Bush' for 'Obama', 'Republican' for 'Democrat' etc, then it's a mirror image of discussions among Obama supporters today, in that the tyranny continues irrespective of party, but the two-party system blinds a lot of people to that continuation of tyranny.

Unknown said...

benmerc sez...

The anti-immigration 'tea-baggers' are exceptionally egregious in their claims and behavior, after all it was their messiah Reagan that opened the door to increased immigration,

Excellent point! And, as I recall, so-called 'conservatives', in a California that was perhaps dominated by 'General' Harrison Gray Otis (L.A. Times), DENOUNCED immigration and 'immigrants' until they figured out how to EXPLOIT them as a source of cheap labor.

The 'tea bagger' movement is as worrisome to me as is the Ku Klux Klan and just as 'smart' which is to say they are not smart at all.

This country is in deep, deep trouble. Cultural war??? You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Unknown said...

AdamS sez...

You would probably consider yourself of the left I presume.

I think the right thinks me a part of the left!

I am, rather, a a pragmatist. SUPPLY SIDE is just a money laundering scheme, a way to ENRICH a base without dropping money filled suitcases in bus station lockers!

Secondly, I would enjoy hearing the truth from politicians but have abandoned all hope!

Third, the government is NOT owned by the people of the US anymore, whatever our persuasions may be. None of our input matters UNLESS you happen to be among the top one percent.

I suggest a careful read of Gibbon, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Rome fell for the same reasons the US will collapse. 1) the currency is debased; 2) an increasingly TINY elite OWNS just about all the wealth; 3) labor is NOT valued though it is the SOURCE of value itself.

When Alaric sacked Rome in 410, it was already finished.

Anonymous said...

"ENDGAME",

The U.S., and for that matter most of the Western-World, have entered an domestic and geo-political endgame in wich they're losing control and dominance over a abused Planet and its populations wich both Europe and the U.S., I'm sad to say, have ravaged both materially and morally.

And now the 'Western' system of usurption, legalized corruptions, murder, torture, rape and theft, with its perpetual-Warfare, perpetual-hypocrisy through perpetual smoke & mirrors and perpetual lies, with wich they so arrogant-superior thought they could create and sustain yet one more Great(est) Empire and a New World Order, is crumbling under the corrupt to the core Western-Corporatists-Political-Elites clay feet.

The U.S.-GOP, (there are GOP-Like forces in every Western Nation)like Hitlers Nazi-Party, but now with the truth defying degenerative-christian accents that promote ignorance and idiocy as core-values, is truly a miracle of American self-destruction, having bitten off the middle-class hand that fed the American Nation and its Economy with 'REAL PRODUCTS, REAL MONEY, REAL VALUE and...REAL PROSPERITY'.

And now that's gone, the U.S. public lost 14.5 trillion dollars in value, in equity in just one year time. According to 'shadowstats.com' the 'real U.S. un-employment rate' has passed the 20% mark (In Europe around 12% and growing) and whatever the Wall-Street Corporate Ponzi-Schemers, the FED and the Political Elites (Republican and Democrat), who enabled the ruin of the U.S. real-economy seem able to come up with is protecting the by the GOP instigated corruption-trickle-down-status-quo wich has spread like deadly cancer through all of U.S. society.

Personally I think its for the better that the whole 'Western' stinking-heap collapses under its own weight, its total corruption is simply unsustainable for mankind, and for that matter for most living creatures, to survive.

One cannot be sure that other Nations (China/India) who are shifting into World-power shall do a better job, but the Western-Nations, especially the U.S. since the second World-War, have had and blew the chance to create a Nation based on the true meaning of the 'We The People's' Constitution and its profound promise of justice and freedom.

The result? A bankrupt, heavely indebted Nation, armed to the teeth waging criminal wars on sovereign countries, persuaded, bribed and blackmailed into by Israels AIPAC-NEO-CONNIVING-PNAC-GOPPERS who sold the U.S. for every thirty stinking peaces of silver they could get their blood-soaked hands on.

"Is it Time to Disband the Republican Party?" (by Mike Whitney)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23484.htm

Take Care for one another,

Jacob.

Unknown said...

Jacob sez...

New World Order, is crumbling under the corrupt to the core Western-Corporatists-Political-Elites clay feet.

At first blush, this sounds very Hegelian, perhaps Marxist. Marx's 'metaphysics', after all, was just his version of Hegal. I am inclined to agree that the whole stinkin' mess is in the process of collapsing of its own weight and inherent weaknesses. It took a while --but it appears that Marx has been vindicated.

...the U.S. public lost 14.5 trillion dollars in value, in equity in just one year time.

Staggering! At some point, the sheer magnitude of it all might be grasped by the 'man on the street'. Reagan's debacle was on the cusp. A critical mass had not been reached. Millions STILL believe he was a great President. Rather, the DEBACLE now witnessed in real time very nearly occurred on Reagan's watch.

I think its for the better that the whole 'Western' stinking-heap collapses under its own weight, its total corruption is simply unsustainable for mankind, and for that matter for most living creatures, to survive.

Billie Holiday summed it up very well: 'God Bless the Child' that's got his own!

And thanks for the link to Whitney.

Anonymous said...

Does this head up my as make me look fat?

ROFLMAO

Anonymous said...

" MORE ENDGAME ",


Thanks for your 'intuïtive on the mark' respons, but I think more like a pragmatic Marxist than a dialectic Hegelian, and when it comes to it, I also like the Critics of Hegel, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

Nietzsche; " 'The State' is not a carnation of the 'common' good and their interests, but a cold monster servicing the selfish special-interests of the privileged few." (letters and notations)

I promessed more endgame, here's the Russian 'Igor Panarins' academic approach/analysis/prediction, amongst others, on the U.S. social and economic future;

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/192705-Predicting-Worse-Ahead-from-America-s-Economic-Crisis (by Steven Lendman, Global Research) connected with Stiglitz's economic predictions, in the Wall-Street journal/paper, Robert Scheer's apt analysis of the Obama Administration today on; http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090916_obamas_precidency_isnt_too_big_to_fail/ and noticing how mindnumbing, affraid-scared-paranoid, polarized the U.S. has become since, YES INDEED! Ronald Reagan, the United States of America today is very much Ronald Reagans legacy, Reagan, slave and adept, the great follower and instigator on behalf of the special-interests of the priveledged elites, he build the foundation under the bankrupt HOUSE OF DEBTS that's the U.S. today. Every administration including Bill Clinton's, that came next, thereafter, added with every presidency more stories onto the to the brim filled stories with multitudes of diverse corruptions and plunder, Bill Clintons 'FINANCIAL MARKETS REGULATION DEMOLITION TEAM' and their great successes, was like bursting the dam or opening the floodgates to fraude and plunder.

GOP instigates and promotes fraude and plunder and the Dems on their turn enables that to continue, giving it a liberal/progressive/intellectual touch all the while 'acting' for their corporate providers who enables these Dems to be part of the domestic and international privileged classes.

And now they've added to many and to much stories filled with disgusting filthy stinking heavy-crap, to the high-rise building called 'The U.S.A' and all these added stories rest on Ronald-Reagans sociopath perception of societal morals, greed, greed, greed, wich he and his Administration cemented in the now crumbling, disintegrating U.S. Constitution, The American Constitution, wich is in dire need, wich needs restoration and repair A.S.A.P.

Jacob.

Unknown said...

Jacob sez ...

...the war against Japan was far, far, far from decided before the Nagasaki 8 Hiroshim bombs were dropped.

You've misstated my position. I said that the US wanted to 'make a point'. They did and did so against a Civilian population. No one has ever made a convincing case that either Nagasaki or Hiroshima were of ANY military significance whatsoever.

I defy you to find a single article written by a US GI in the Pacific who thought the war was over before the A-bombs delivered their deliverance.

Again -- you misstate my position. Secondly, no ordinary soldier i.e, those not calling the shots at the Joint Chiefs of Staff level EVER had a say in when wars were ended and when they were not. Soldiers were and remain 'cannon fodder', proxies for politicians.

At at last, US propaganda --to this day --demonizes Hitler for his 'development' of wonders weapons with which he hope to win quick victories by using AGAINST civilian populations.

I wonder why it was WRONG for Hitler to use the Vs 1 and 2 against London but OKEY DOKEY for the US to use NUKES which in fact whiped TWO CIVLIANS POPULATIONS OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

At last, there was considerable dissent --at the time. Much of it stating --at the time --that the US would set a dangerous precedent if it insisted upon '...making a point'.

To wit:

"I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380 "

Unknown said...

May 28, 1945 --Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly:

"I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

--Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.


MORE:

"... after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

--Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.


Additionally --

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been NO OCCASSION to drop the [atomic] bombs."

- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142


The all caps 'emphasis' above is mine.

Clearly --the US was hell-bent on 'making a point' and did. There is no moral difference between the US use of NUKES on Japan and Hitler's use of the V-1 and the V-2 on England.

The US could have achieved surrender terms but chose, rather, to sacrifice a civilian population --a war crime, in fact --in order to 'make a point'.

Unknown said...

Some excellent analysis re: Japans and the US use of Nukes is found at Sense of Events which cites two excellent and recent books:

There are two essential books to understand what happened and why. One is a little-known work of Japanese historians, written eight years after the bombing, Japan's Longest Day . Their focus is on the period between the Nagasaki bombing and the radio address of Emperor Hirohito in which he announced that the war had not turned in Japan's favor. The authors painstakingly document the fact that even the atomic bombings did not persuade all the Japanese high command to surrender. A coup was actually attempted by an army general, who sent troops to occupy the emperor's palace grounds, take the emperor into protective custody and seize the recordings of his statement to be broadcast. The coup failed, of course, but as Wellington had said about Waterloo, it was a close-run thing.

The second book is an award-winning book, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, by Richard B. Frank. A very comprehensive history, Frank documents the Japanese plan for defending against American invasion of the home islands, using Japanese documents and records. But his best contribution is the way he shows the context in which the Japanese bombings occurred.

Frank shows that the most destructive weapon used against Japan in 1945 was blockade, which robbed Japan of raw materials, petroleum and most vitally, food from the Asian mainland. The blockade was enforced by submarines and B-29 bombers, which laid mines throughout the Sea of Japan, concentrating on the approaches to Japan's harbors. Japan's industries were surprisingly resilient to aerial bombing but could not function when their raw materials were so successfully interdicted.

SadButTrue said...

I'm reminded of Benjamin Franklin's famous remark about what kind of government resulted from the Constitutional Convention, "A republic, if you can keep it."

It's probably too late for that now. I believe it's only a republic if you can somehow get it back from the criminals who've stolen it.

Anonymous said...

Eh, Len, am I missing something?

Jacob sez...the war against Japan ect.??

Something got mixed up, and it aint me!

Take care, Jacob.

Unknown said...

Jacob sez...

Eh, Len, am I missing something... the war against Japan ect.??"

Something was very screwy ...until I discovered it, two of my articles had wound up under the same perma-link.

Somewhere in among all the HTML was the post in question and your name showed up when I 'pasted' into the comment box.

VERY WEIRD!

In any case, I am glad we got it sorted out.

The point raised is a good one in any case and deserved a clarification. How it got attributed to you, I will never know for sure.

If its just a screw up on my part, please accept my apologies.

Anonymous said...

Boom! The hammer comes down - again. Great stuff, Len. Absolutely destroys these "shitbaggers". There are some YouTube videos of these white morons being interviewed. What a bunch of losers!

Steve

Unknown said...

Thanks Steve. If you are interested in the 'bigot' aspect of the 'tea baggers', you might check my latestd article:

Tea Bagger Bigotry Exposed