been a long time coming, but Tea Baggin' Conferderates Secessionist Slavery Deniers are coming openly out of the closet more and more as time goes on.
There have been numerous examples from South Carolina's (Now) Lt. Governor Glenn McConnell posing with mock-slaves in a Civil War Uniform during the "Southern Experience" event for the National Federation of Republican Women. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's Celebration of "Confederate Day", Texas Governor Rick Perry's not-so-veiled threats of secession to the Rand Paul Staffer who called himself the "Confederate Avenger".
[Just as an aside, I have my doubts that McConnell is actually wearing a Southern Uniform, it's Blue and that was the color of the Union Army. Edit: Nope, It's Confederate]
And yet, there's more.
.
Let's not let revisionism discolor what this was really all about. In it's letter of Secession, which was sent immediately after the Election of President Abraham Lincoln, even before he took Office, Texas stated the following:
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states
It was merely the election of a President from a Party that endorsed Abolition, even if that President at the time DID NOT make accomplishing that party of his platform or an agenda item of his administration - that drove the South in a complete overreaction to losing an Election to begin to dismantle the nation State by State.
And now today we see more and more Tea Partiers - while also overreacting to an election they lost - slowly endorsing the legitimacy of a new secession and further - of ABSOLUTE rights of the BUSINESS OWNER over their EMPLOYEES (as well as CLIENTS) in everything from denying them a living wage and working conditions to Dictating Whether they can have access to Preventive Services in their HealthCare, impose llfetime caps, and openly discriminate against those who had the temerity to previously GET SICK.
Apparently Modern Confederate Tea Partiers think the cruelty of that system is just "Fine".
Wither is Freedom then, eh?
In the last few years there have been a rising of Pro-Confederacy Groups who've written such amazing revisionist history such as this.
Southerners have less reason to be loyal to the collective enterprise that is the United States than does any group of citizens. The South was Invaded, laid waste, and conquered when it tried to uphold the original and correct meaning of the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution.
Yeah, right, the South was "Invaded" - so much for those pesky letters of Secesion and that little Ft Sumter thing. Sure.
And this happened merely because they felt they had the economic Right to continue practices such as this.
Slavery was Evil. It was pure Economic Evil. Human Cruelty for Wealth and Profit. The Confederates were trying to Protect and Continue that system of Cruelty, of The THEFT of Freedom, Free Will and Choice for their own enrichment.
But this is what they are, what they've always been. They know it in their hearts, and this is why they truly FEAR - deeply in their bones - an African American President such as Barack Obama. It is beyond their comprehension that he isn't racked with a deep desire for Vengence against Whites.
How could it not be?
It was this type of deep atavistic fear that even affected Barack Obama's own grandmother, Toot. In his book, Dreams from my Father he recounts how his grandmother while working in Texas following WWII had befriended a black janitor, Mr. Reed, who worked in the same building. They had a cordial friendship, yet another - white - secretary working in the building proceeded to angrily scold them both for their familiarity telling Toot she should never, ever "call no Nigger 'Mister'".
Years later in Hawaii, when Barack was a boy living with his grandparents to attend High School in the U.S. while his mother worked overseas, his grandmother encountered a particularly aggressive beggar who frightened her. A black beggar. Despite knowing the character of Barack's father, and of Barack himself - she was still terrified of him because she knew and had seen in Texas the kind of cruel mis-treatment people like him had received. She had a understanding of the righteous anger that that person could potentially feel, and she feared it.
That beggar was not Mr. Reed. But another 20 years later, it very well could have been - and he would have be duly justified in his outrage. Gramps - Toot's husband - angrily scolded her for her reaction to the beggar, his feeling had always been the individuals are individuals not some collective mass of angst, not some open racial sore that refuses to be healed. For all of this, Barack had a ring-side seat. He witnessed both Yin and Yang.
Unlike Toot who was sympathetic to those who suffered from bigotry, identified with their outrage - and recognized it's legitimacy - what the Modern Tea Party-Confederate feels is something worse.
Guilt!
No, not their own personal guilt, but the collective guilt of centuries of cruelty. They constantly try to wipe it away, ignore it, deflect it, disguise it, but it continues to come right back because they in their own heart of hearts simply don't believe that any Nigger should ever, EVER be called "Mr. President".
It's fear driven by that guilt that also drove the Confederates, as it drives the Tea Party, and now- the Republican Party.
So of course, they have to Do Anything Necessary to prevent this cruel retribution from being inflicted on the Good White people... um, I mean the American People. They have to SHUTDOWN THE GOVERNMENT, because that is the limited leverage they have with a majority in the House.
They have to rail that Obamacare is a Complete and Total Failure even as Hundreds of Thousands successfully send in their applications despite initial website glitches, and are finding they can get better care for far less than they were previously spending.
They have to DENY Reality, again and again and again.
Obama was never a Slave. None of his Ancestors, on his father's side, were Slaves. Most of what he knows about what it means to be historically "Black In America" came from his White Grandparents and their experiences during the 40's and the 50's as recounted to him. He has studied Langston Hughes and Baldwin and W.E.B. Debois to better understand the "Black Experience". He lived it within his own skin, in LA whlie attending Occidental College, in New York while working for a Non-Profit, in Chicago working with communities to help incrimentally improve their lives. He's seen it from just about every possible angle, and he's not racked with Anger
He's not driven to seek Devine Retribution against the Ills of the White Race.
ObamaCare is not Punishment for the Wickedness of Long Dead White People. Some of those White people, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War, are his own Ancestors.
Obama is not a Kenyan. Not a Socialist. Not a Muslim. Not a Mau Mau Anti-Colonialist. Not a Fist Pumping Black Power Enthusiast. He's not Mr. Reed, nor is he the Beggar.
He's our American President. He's doing the best he can, under his power, to improve the lives of All American Citizens. As did President Lincoln before him.
Some day the Tea Party-Confederates will learn that lesson. But apparently, not today.
10/20/13
Someone Finally Informs Sarah Palin That She’s An Idiot, And It’s A Veteran
Sarah Palin can’t take a hint. It’s been six years since she lost her bid to become Vice-President of the United States, and yet she won’t go away. Even though her stupidity has turned off voters to the point where she’ll never again be a candidate for the highest offices in the land, she keeps coming back like a bad rash. You have to wonder if she even understands what most people think about her. Well, during her speech at a Tea Party rally, she was duly informed.
Sarah Palin gets called an idiot during her Tea Party rally speech.
On Sunday, as Palin used military veterans as political pawns during a Tea Party rally speech to protest the closing of war memorials, a member of the audience loudly told her that she’s an idiot. Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Mike Lee, other Tea Party Republicans turned in the direction of the heckler who bravely confronted her. Even Palin paused to look around.
PALIN: “This is a matter of shutdown priorities…”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: “You’re an idiot!”
Military veterans were outraged and scolded Palin and the Tea Party for hijacking the Million Vet March.
Of course, most military veterans saw right through Palin and her rhetoric. After all, the Tea Party had hijacked the ‘Million Veterans March’ that had been organized by veterans. The Tea Party shamelessly used the non-partisan event to attack Democrats. During the rally, veterans scolded Palin as she attempted to accuse President Obama and Democrats of playing political games with them. Many pointed out that Republicans were the ones who caused the shutdown in the first place. However, Tea Party Republicans didn’t give a damn about what veterans actually think. They were too busy using veterans as pawns to shift blame for the government shutdown to Democrats.
The organizers of the march have since expressed their anger about the Tea Party takeover of the event.
“The political agenda put forth by a local organizer in Washington DC was not in alignment with our message,” the ‘Million Vet March’ website stated. “We feel disheartened that some would seek to hijack the narrative for political gain. The core principle is about all Americans honoring Veterans in a peaceful and apolitical manner.”
Sarah Palin is an idiot for using veterans as pawns for political and monetary gain.
‘Apolitical’ means not supporting any political group, even the Tea Party. But Palin and her right-wing cohorts only saw an opportunity to get photo-ops and pretend that all soldiers stand against President Obama and Democrats. Palin also may have seen it as a chance to step into the spotlight to generate interest in her new book. So not only did she use veterans for political gain, she used them for monetary gain as well, which truly makes her the queen idiot of the Tea Party.
PALIN: “…Our vets have proven that they have not been timid, we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.”
Sarah Palin gets called an idiot during her Tea Party rally speech.
On Sunday, as Palin used military veterans as political pawns during a Tea Party rally speech to protest the closing of war memorials, a member of the audience loudly told her that she’s an idiot. Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Mike Lee, other Tea Party Republicans turned in the direction of the heckler who bravely confronted her. Even Palin paused to look around.
PALIN: “This is a matter of shutdown priorities…”
AUDIENCE MEMBER: “You’re an idiot!”
Military veterans were outraged and scolded Palin and the Tea Party for hijacking the Million Vet March.
Of course, most military veterans saw right through Palin and her rhetoric. After all, the Tea Party had hijacked the ‘Million Veterans March’ that had been organized by veterans. The Tea Party shamelessly used the non-partisan event to attack Democrats. During the rally, veterans scolded Palin as she attempted to accuse President Obama and Democrats of playing political games with them. Many pointed out that Republicans were the ones who caused the shutdown in the first place. However, Tea Party Republicans didn’t give a damn about what veterans actually think. They were too busy using veterans as pawns to shift blame for the government shutdown to Democrats.
The organizers of the march have since expressed their anger about the Tea Party takeover of the event.
“The political agenda put forth by a local organizer in Washington DC was not in alignment with our message,” the ‘Million Vet March’ website stated. “We feel disheartened that some would seek to hijack the narrative for political gain. The core principle is about all Americans honoring Veterans in a peaceful and apolitical manner.”
Sarah Palin is an idiot for using veterans as pawns for political and monetary gain.
‘Apolitical’ means not supporting any political group, even the Tea Party. But Palin and her right-wing cohorts only saw an opportunity to get photo-ops and pretend that all soldiers stand against President Obama and Democrats. Palin also may have seen it as a chance to step into the spotlight to generate interest in her new book. So not only did she use veterans for political gain, she used them for monetary gain as well, which truly makes her the queen idiot of the Tea Party.
PALIN: “…Our vets have proven that they have not been timid, we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.”
10/17/13
Ted Cruz owes America 24 Billion Dollars- Pay up!
This is one of those weeks that puts a smile on my face, a song in my heart and a spring in my step. The GOP are crushed and humiliated; Cory Booker wins his Senate race; hostilities break out between Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter; and The Houston Chronicle suffers buyers remorse over Calgary Ted. Could it possibly get even better?
Why, yes...yes, it could.
In an interview with capitalnewyork.com entitled Pete King calls for a Republican war on Ted Cruz, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) vented his feelings about Sen. Ted 'Cruise To Nowhere' Cruz and his thoughtless, irresponsible, preening narcissism.
King complains that the GOP could have bargained for much more than they're getting, if only the House had kept the government open in September.
"Instead we look like the crazies...Shutting down the government, throwing barricades against the White House, and having Ted Cruz reading Dr. Seuss, this is like the theater of the absurd."
More GOP Deathmatch deliciousness below the Boehner Orange Cloud of Tears .
King lays the blame for the GOP's humiliation and nose-dive in the polls at the feet of the freshman senator from Texas, who King believes Republicans need to start targetting.
"I don't mean this in an egotistical way, I'm the only one who's been going after Cruz by name," King told me. "And there's a purpose for that, because this is going to come back again in two or three months, whether it's January 15 or February 7 or whatever, there's going to be a threat of another shutdown.
"And he's going to be coming back, rewriting history, saying, 'We were on the verge of victory back in October, and we could have won if we'd just stayed in there another week.' And he's going to have phone calls being made, and he's going to have town hall meetings. And he's going to have all those support groups out there, threatening to downgrade people on their scorecards and all that stuff."
King is eager to dump the GOP's inept, spiteful and ultimately pointless buffoonery entirely into the lap of Sen. Cruz:
"It was one person who was able to steamroll Congress and unless we target him for what he is, he's going to do it again. So I'm hoping other Republicans will join me and start going after this guy, and say we're not going to let it happen again."
King was unhappy that while GOP leaders like Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush had criticized the GOP's dysfunction, none of them had singled out Cruz for special criticism.
King said the "business community, other people, guys running for president, governors around the country, retired members of Congress, elder statesmen, whoever considers himself to be a leader in the Republican Party should be out there" making the case against Cruz.
The War on Ted Cruz! Yes! Finally: a war I can wholeheartedly support! Please proceed, GOPers...
I have a feeling that 2014 is going to be a good year for us. Stock up on popcorn and watch the GOP destroy itself from within and, with any luck, lose the House.
Send Senator Cruz a bill!
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/contact.cfm
WWW Homepage: http://www.cruz.senate.gov/
Twitter: @SenTedCruz
.
Why, yes...yes, it could.
In an interview with capitalnewyork.com entitled Pete King calls for a Republican war on Ted Cruz, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) vented his feelings about Sen. Ted 'Cruise To Nowhere' Cruz and his thoughtless, irresponsible, preening narcissism.
King complains that the GOP could have bargained for much more than they're getting, if only the House had kept the government open in September.
"Instead we look like the crazies...Shutting down the government, throwing barricades against the White House, and having Ted Cruz reading Dr. Seuss, this is like the theater of the absurd."
More GOP Deathmatch deliciousness below the Boehner Orange Cloud of Tears .
King lays the blame for the GOP's humiliation and nose-dive in the polls at the feet of the freshman senator from Texas, who King believes Republicans need to start targetting.
"I don't mean this in an egotistical way, I'm the only one who's been going after Cruz by name," King told me. "And there's a purpose for that, because this is going to come back again in two or three months, whether it's January 15 or February 7 or whatever, there's going to be a threat of another shutdown.
"And he's going to be coming back, rewriting history, saying, 'We were on the verge of victory back in October, and we could have won if we'd just stayed in there another week.' And he's going to have phone calls being made, and he's going to have town hall meetings. And he's going to have all those support groups out there, threatening to downgrade people on their scorecards and all that stuff."
King is eager to dump the GOP's inept, spiteful and ultimately pointless buffoonery entirely into the lap of Sen. Cruz:
"It was one person who was able to steamroll Congress and unless we target him for what he is, he's going to do it again. So I'm hoping other Republicans will join me and start going after this guy, and say we're not going to let it happen again."
King was unhappy that while GOP leaders like Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush had criticized the GOP's dysfunction, none of them had singled out Cruz for special criticism.
King said the "business community, other people, guys running for president, governors around the country, retired members of Congress, elder statesmen, whoever considers himself to be a leader in the Republican Party should be out there" making the case against Cruz.
The War on Ted Cruz! Yes! Finally: a war I can wholeheartedly support! Please proceed, GOPers...
I have a feeling that 2014 is going to be a good year for us. Stock up on popcorn and watch the GOP destroy itself from within and, with any luck, lose the House.
Send Senator Cruz a bill!
http://www.cruz.senate.gov/contact.cfm
WWW Homepage: http://www.cruz.senate.gov/
Twitter: @SenTedCruz
.
10/16/13
We can't afford the Republican Right
Journalists are understandably captivated by the government shutdown and the looming confrontation over the debt ceiling. Those are certainly dramatic stories. But another, quieter drama has been playing out for years in homes and communities across the country, as millions of jobs and trillions in wealth have been lost to Republican economic folly.
Now the Republicans are doing their best to make things even worse. Their budget stance offends many Americans' sense of morality, since they're asking poor and middle-class Americans to subsidize the luxuries of the wealthy and the profits of powerful corporations.
But in the end the country may reject their ideology for an even simpler reason: We can't afford it anymore.
Millions Left Behind
The story begins with the financial crisis and recession of 2008. Reports say that the incoming Obama Administration reduced its proposed stimulus because it thought Republicans would reject the actual level of spending needed to rescue the economy. The resulting stimulus package saved or created millions of jobs, but the country remained in the grip of an ongoing recession that limited both job creation and wage growth. Further stimulus spending became politically unfeasible after they won the House in 2010.
The result? Wealth inequality has became worse since the crisis. The top 1 percent of American earners saw their income increase by a staggering 32 percent in 2012, even as millions of others remained mired in an ongoing de facto depression. For the first time since they began tracking the numbers a century ago, the wealthiest 10 percent of the country captured more than half its total income.
It didn't have to be this way. A number of jobs proposals were put forward that would have helped the "99 percent" obtain more jobs and strengthen its wage base, including the Economic Policy Institute's "American Jobs Plan" and our own "Citizens' Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America's Economic Future" (from the Institute for America's Future).
These programs would have created jobs and strengthened the economy for everyone, while also enhancing education and funding urgently-needed repairs to the nation's infrastructure. We still need those investments, and they would still create jobs.
Wrong Way Out
Unfortunately spending cuts, not job creation, became the main topic of Washington debate. This misguided fixation became much worse after Republicans recaptured the House in 2010, leading to the 2011 budget showdown and the disastrous cuts which followed.
How damaging were those cuts? Economist Adam Hersh estimated what the jobs figures might have been without the destructive austerity cuts agreed upon after the last showdown with the GOP. U.S. employers would have added more than 260,000 jobs last month, according to Hersh, and the unemployment rate would have fallen below 6 percent. The economy would have added 8.2 million jobs since the end of 2010, 2.4 million jobs than it actually did.
And that's without stimulus spending, solely by avoiding the austerity cuts demanded by Republicans in the last budget confrontation. Add in needed spending on jobs and growth and we would be experiencing a full recovery.
The Ghosts of Republicans Past
Republicans have passed one extremist budget after another since winning the House in 2010. Those budgets, with cuts in the $1.2 trillion range, would have led to catastrophic double-dip recession and major additional job loss had they passed the Senate and been signed into law.
The GOP's budgets would have also had an enormous disruptive effect on society, with cuts to a bewilderingly wide range of programs: Emergency storm warnings. The Small Business Administration. State and local law enforcement.
But even without their extreme budgets, the nation is haunted by the ghosts of past Republican choices. Their 2011 confrontation with the other branches of government cost Americans an estimated $2.4 trillion in household wealth. And while some of that has since been restored, their current actions could cost even more.
Geographically, large chunks of the nation are still mired in unemployment. As economist Heidi Shierholz notes, "There has been very little improvement in the hires rate since its low of the recession in June 2009, four years ago." That's when the hires rate fell dramatically. It has yet to recover. And as Shierholz also explains, "there has been no sustained improvement whatsoever in the hires rate for two years."
Shierholz also observed that, even after four years of recovery, "we're just a fifth of the way out of the hole left by the Great Recession." And yet, instead of debating ways to repair the damage, Republicans are determined to do more harm than ever.
The List of Demands
Democrats have already agreed to the Republicans' original economic demand: an extension of sequestration's spending cuts. Those cuts have cost the nation an estimated 900,000 jobs. But that's not enough for the GOP. Their most famous demand this time around is a delay in implementing Obamacare, although that's by no means their only demand.
Republicans have also demanded a jobs-crushing "balanced budget amendment" and trillions in additional spending cuts. Some of their other ideas are both socially harsh and potentially very damaging to the economy: Environmental deregulation could lead to another costly spill like BP's. Financial deregulation could rob Americans of their savings and lead to another recession, or worse. (Past deregulation on Wall Street cost the US economy an estimated $12.8 trillion, according to a study by Better Markets.)
Even the GOP's call for food stamp cuts will cost people their jobs and reduce the national wealth, by leaving impoverished families even less to spend on the basics of life. (A compendium of their demands can be found here.)
Confrontation's Costs
According to conservative estimates the Republican shutdown is costing the economy $1.6 billion per week, a figure which doesn't include the ripple effect in lost investment and growth. Those ripples could be seen Gallup's consumer confidence figures, which last week took their biggest plunge since Lehman Brothers collapsed and triggered the 2008 global crisis.
Consumer confidence is what drives consumer spending in goods and services -- the kind of spending that creates jobs. Last week's plunge means the Republican shutdown is almost certainly losing American jobs already.In addition, the stock market continues to take a hit as investors worry about economic uncertainty.
And today Republican brinksmanship has pushed the yield for Treasury bonds to their highest point since the height of the crisis in 2008 -- which, in plain English, means that investors are losing confidence is the government's ability to repay its debts. That increases borrowing costs for the government (so much for Republicans' professed concern for lowered spending), and for everyone else as well.
They're right to be concerned. Republicans now seem poised to fire the biggest cannon of all: a debt default. As Bloomberg News reports, that move is seen as "a catastrophe dwarfing Lehman's fall." The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that a U.S. default would "seriously damage" the global economy. It "would have major consequences," said the IMF's chief economist, adding: "... it could well be that what is now a recovery would turn into a recession, or even worse." (emphasis ours)
The only people dismissing the harmful effects of a default are the ones who have been wrong all along.
Unaffordable
Democrats haven't been blameless. The president spent far too much time echoing the Republicans' deficit-fixated austerity rhetoric. Senate Democrats could have been tougher. The party could have done more to explain why we need investment in jobs and growth, and how the GOP's financial agenda hurts most Americans.
But those sins seem trivial when compared to the harm Republicans have done, and continue to do, to the national economy. That's the real economic story, and it should be told every day until the GOP is reined in and the nation is restored to economic health.
The Republicans' extremism is morally out of step with Americans. Democrats need to stand firm against it and explain the real story to the American people. But what may hurt Republicans most in the end is cold economic reality. The Republican Right is just too expensive for America.
Now the Republicans are doing their best to make things even worse. Their budget stance offends many Americans' sense of morality, since they're asking poor and middle-class Americans to subsidize the luxuries of the wealthy and the profits of powerful corporations.
But in the end the country may reject their ideology for an even simpler reason: We can't afford it anymore.
Millions Left Behind
The story begins with the financial crisis and recession of 2008. Reports say that the incoming Obama Administration reduced its proposed stimulus because it thought Republicans would reject the actual level of spending needed to rescue the economy. The resulting stimulus package saved or created millions of jobs, but the country remained in the grip of an ongoing recession that limited both job creation and wage growth. Further stimulus spending became politically unfeasible after they won the House in 2010.
The result? Wealth inequality has became worse since the crisis. The top 1 percent of American earners saw their income increase by a staggering 32 percent in 2012, even as millions of others remained mired in an ongoing de facto depression. For the first time since they began tracking the numbers a century ago, the wealthiest 10 percent of the country captured more than half its total income.
It didn't have to be this way. A number of jobs proposals were put forward that would have helped the "99 percent" obtain more jobs and strengthen its wage base, including the Economic Policy Institute's "American Jobs Plan" and our own "Citizens' Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America's Economic Future" (from the Institute for America's Future).
These programs would have created jobs and strengthened the economy for everyone, while also enhancing education and funding urgently-needed repairs to the nation's infrastructure. We still need those investments, and they would still create jobs.
Wrong Way Out
Unfortunately spending cuts, not job creation, became the main topic of Washington debate. This misguided fixation became much worse after Republicans recaptured the House in 2010, leading to the 2011 budget showdown and the disastrous cuts which followed.
How damaging were those cuts? Economist Adam Hersh estimated what the jobs figures might have been without the destructive austerity cuts agreed upon after the last showdown with the GOP. U.S. employers would have added more than 260,000 jobs last month, according to Hersh, and the unemployment rate would have fallen below 6 percent. The economy would have added 8.2 million jobs since the end of 2010, 2.4 million jobs than it actually did.
And that's without stimulus spending, solely by avoiding the austerity cuts demanded by Republicans in the last budget confrontation. Add in needed spending on jobs and growth and we would be experiencing a full recovery.
The Ghosts of Republicans Past
Republicans have passed one extremist budget after another since winning the House in 2010. Those budgets, with cuts in the $1.2 trillion range, would have led to catastrophic double-dip recession and major additional job loss had they passed the Senate and been signed into law.
The GOP's budgets would have also had an enormous disruptive effect on society, with cuts to a bewilderingly wide range of programs: Emergency storm warnings. The Small Business Administration. State and local law enforcement.
But even without their extreme budgets, the nation is haunted by the ghosts of past Republican choices. Their 2011 confrontation with the other branches of government cost Americans an estimated $2.4 trillion in household wealth. And while some of that has since been restored, their current actions could cost even more.
Geographically, large chunks of the nation are still mired in unemployment. As economist Heidi Shierholz notes, "There has been very little improvement in the hires rate since its low of the recession in June 2009, four years ago." That's when the hires rate fell dramatically. It has yet to recover. And as Shierholz also explains, "there has been no sustained improvement whatsoever in the hires rate for two years."
Shierholz also observed that, even after four years of recovery, "we're just a fifth of the way out of the hole left by the Great Recession." And yet, instead of debating ways to repair the damage, Republicans are determined to do more harm than ever.
The List of Demands
Democrats have already agreed to the Republicans' original economic demand: an extension of sequestration's spending cuts. Those cuts have cost the nation an estimated 900,000 jobs. But that's not enough for the GOP. Their most famous demand this time around is a delay in implementing Obamacare, although that's by no means their only demand.
Republicans have also demanded a jobs-crushing "balanced budget amendment" and trillions in additional spending cuts. Some of their other ideas are both socially harsh and potentially very damaging to the economy: Environmental deregulation could lead to another costly spill like BP's. Financial deregulation could rob Americans of their savings and lead to another recession, or worse. (Past deregulation on Wall Street cost the US economy an estimated $12.8 trillion, according to a study by Better Markets.)
Even the GOP's call for food stamp cuts will cost people their jobs and reduce the national wealth, by leaving impoverished families even less to spend on the basics of life. (A compendium of their demands can be found here.)
Confrontation's Costs
According to conservative estimates the Republican shutdown is costing the economy $1.6 billion per week, a figure which doesn't include the ripple effect in lost investment and growth. Those ripples could be seen Gallup's consumer confidence figures, which last week took their biggest plunge since Lehman Brothers collapsed and triggered the 2008 global crisis.
Consumer confidence is what drives consumer spending in goods and services -- the kind of spending that creates jobs. Last week's plunge means the Republican shutdown is almost certainly losing American jobs already.In addition, the stock market continues to take a hit as investors worry about economic uncertainty.
And today Republican brinksmanship has pushed the yield for Treasury bonds to their highest point since the height of the crisis in 2008 -- which, in plain English, means that investors are losing confidence is the government's ability to repay its debts. That increases borrowing costs for the government (so much for Republicans' professed concern for lowered spending), and for everyone else as well.
They're right to be concerned. Republicans now seem poised to fire the biggest cannon of all: a debt default. As Bloomberg News reports, that move is seen as "a catastrophe dwarfing Lehman's fall." The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that a U.S. default would "seriously damage" the global economy. It "would have major consequences," said the IMF's chief economist, adding: "... it could well be that what is now a recovery would turn into a recession, or even worse." (emphasis ours)
The only people dismissing the harmful effects of a default are the ones who have been wrong all along.
Unaffordable
Democrats haven't been blameless. The president spent far too much time echoing the Republicans' deficit-fixated austerity rhetoric. Senate Democrats could have been tougher. The party could have done more to explain why we need investment in jobs and growth, and how the GOP's financial agenda hurts most Americans.
But those sins seem trivial when compared to the harm Republicans have done, and continue to do, to the national economy. That's the real economic story, and it should be told every day until the GOP is reined in and the nation is restored to economic health.
The Republicans' extremism is morally out of step with Americans. Democrats need to stand firm against it and explain the real story to the American people. But what may hurt Republicans most in the end is cold economic reality. The Republican Right is just too expensive for America.
10/15/13
The Religious Right Is a Fraud
There's Nothing Christian About Michele Bachmann’s Values
The American right obsesses over abortion and birth control, not helping people. It's different around the globe.
Last week, the nation’s capital was host to Value Voters 2013 Summit, a three-day political conference for predominantly religious conservatives. Among the smattering of social and economic issues at hand, the overall tenor of the Summit focused on eliminating Obamacare, expanding the tangible presence of Christianity through the public arena and military and preventing the proliferation of easily available birth control and abortion. In speeches, lunches and breakout sessions, American’s Christian Right worked out strategies to bring the values of the federal government in line with their preferred Christian ethical dictates, using democracy as their chief tool.
It isn’t unusual for Christians living in democracies to use the vote to express their ethics, and to shape government to do the same. That the moral and ethical preferences of a given society should inform government is a foundational principle of democracy, after all. And American values voters are far from the first Christians to undertake the project of bringing their government’s policies in line with Christian ethics: European Christian parties have aimed to do the same for decades. But between American Christian voters and their European counterparts, a curious departure opens up: while European Christians generally see the anti-poverty mission of Christianity as worthy of political action, the American Christian Right inexplicably cordons off economics from the realm of Christian influence.
By all means, the American Christian Right is willing to leverage government authority to carry out a variety of Christian ethical projects, especially within the arena of family life. Michele Bachmann would make abortion illegal, and Rick Santorum has stated on multiple occasions that he supports laws against homosexual intercourse. But Christian politicians in the United States curtail their interest in making the gospel actionable when it comes to welfare. While the government should see to the moral uprightness of marriage, sex and family, the Value Voters 2013 Summit was notably bereft of talks on living wages, labor rights or basic incomes.
The notable exclusion of poverty from the Christian agenda would doubtlessly puzzle European Christians, whose support of Christian ethical approaches to family life have always been paired with a deep and vigorous concern for the poor. And, unlike their American counterparts, European Christians haven’t been willing to leave poverty up to individual charity or the market to handle. Quite the contrary: Just as public morality is an arena fit for intervention by a Christian-informed government, so too is welfare. Consider the British Christian People’s Alliance 2010 election manifesto, a document intended to explain the imminently Christian party’s policy goals:
“The Christian Peoples Alliance believes that Britain will return to economic prosperity when government chooses instead to put human relationships in right order. This requires power, income and wealth to be redistributed and for greater equality to be achieved. These are deeply spiritual convictions and reflect a Biblical pattern of priorities…By the end of the next Parliament, the CPA will establish the reduction of inequality as a national target, so that the ratios of the incomes of the top 20 per cent are reduced to no more than five and a half times the incomes of the bottom 20 per cent.”
The CPA election manifesto goes on to explain that their aversion to inequality arises from a uniquely Christian concern for the health of human relationships, which suffer under the weight of massive social inequality. Their position on inequality is hardly an anomaly among European Christian parties. In fact, the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), a confederation of Christian parties from different European nations operating within the European Union, states very similar goals in its own programme:
10/14/13
How House Republicans guaranteed a shutdown: by changing the rules
Here's proof positive that Republicans own this shutdown. How badly did House Republican leadership wanted to shut down the government? Here's how much. They used an unprecedented parliamentary procedure to block any chance that the clean continuing resolution sent to them by the Senate would reach the floor. They did so by changing standing House rules.
Under normal procedure, here's how it would have worked the day it all fell down, September 30. The Senate sent over their clean CR. The House amended it with their anti-Obamacare stuff. The Senate rejected that change, and sent their resolution back. At that point, under normal procedure, any member would have been able to make a motion to bring the Senate bill to the floor. The rule that says they can do it is this:
When the stage of disagreement has been reached on a bill or resolution with House or Senate amendments, a motion to dispose of any amendment shall be privileged.
That means the chambers are deadlocked and any member trying to break the deadlock would be able to do so—would have privilege to do so. Except that in this case, for this continuing resolution only, Republicans changed the rule. They did it on the night of September 30, the eve of the shutdown, in a Rules Committee meeting. The rule change said that any motion to take up the Senate bill "may be offered only by the majority Leader or his designee." Meaning only Eric Cantor or with his approval. Which wasn't going to happen.
"I've never seen this rule used. I'm not even sure they were certain we would have found it," a House Democratic aide told TPM. "This was an overabundance of caution on their part. 'We've got to find every single crack in the dam that water can get through and plug it.'"
Congressional historians agreed that it was highly unusual for the House to reserve such power solely for the leadership.
"I've never heard of anything like that before," Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told TPM.
There was no way John Boehner and Eric Cantor were going to allow a clean funding bill to reach the floor the night before the shutdown. Because they knew that there were plenty of Republicans who would vote for it and it would pass.
House Democrats knew this was happening from the beginning, but unlike the Senate, the minority party in the House has very little power to do anything about abuses like this. They've been doing what they can do, trying to pass a motion to recommit every mini-funding bill the leadership brings up, to replace them with the Senate's clean resolution. But the procedure is arcane and complex and it's easy for the so-called moderate Republicans to pretend like those efforts don't exist, and to not do what they say they want—reopen government with a clean spending bill.
That makes those "moderate" Republicans as complicit in this as their leadership. The entire Republican Party owns this shutdown, completely.
.
Under normal procedure, here's how it would have worked the day it all fell down, September 30. The Senate sent over their clean CR. The House amended it with their anti-Obamacare stuff. The Senate rejected that change, and sent their resolution back. At that point, under normal procedure, any member would have been able to make a motion to bring the Senate bill to the floor. The rule that says they can do it is this:
When the stage of disagreement has been reached on a bill or resolution with House or Senate amendments, a motion to dispose of any amendment shall be privileged.
That means the chambers are deadlocked and any member trying to break the deadlock would be able to do so—would have privilege to do so. Except that in this case, for this continuing resolution only, Republicans changed the rule. They did it on the night of September 30, the eve of the shutdown, in a Rules Committee meeting. The rule change said that any motion to take up the Senate bill "may be offered only by the majority Leader or his designee." Meaning only Eric Cantor or with his approval. Which wasn't going to happen.
"I've never seen this rule used. I'm not even sure they were certain we would have found it," a House Democratic aide told TPM. "This was an overabundance of caution on their part. 'We've got to find every single crack in the dam that water can get through and plug it.'"
Congressional historians agreed that it was highly unusual for the House to reserve such power solely for the leadership.
"I've never heard of anything like that before," Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told TPM.
There was no way John Boehner and Eric Cantor were going to allow a clean funding bill to reach the floor the night before the shutdown. Because they knew that there were plenty of Republicans who would vote for it and it would pass.
House Democrats knew this was happening from the beginning, but unlike the Senate, the minority party in the House has very little power to do anything about abuses like this. They've been doing what they can do, trying to pass a motion to recommit every mini-funding bill the leadership brings up, to replace them with the Senate's clean resolution. But the procedure is arcane and complex and it's easy for the so-called moderate Republicans to pretend like those efforts don't exist, and to not do what they say they want—reopen government with a clean spending bill.
That makes those "moderate" Republicans as complicit in this as their leadership. The entire Republican Party owns this shutdown, completely.
.
10/8/13
You can't fix stupid (Part Deux )
Only the truly child-like can have expected anything else.
In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.
We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.
We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.
We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn't seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up to the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.
We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.
This is what they came to Washington to do -- to break the government of the United States. It doesn't matter any more whether they're doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party's mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in which government "was" the problem, through Bill Clinton's ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being "over," through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find "common ground" and a "Third Way." Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.
What is there to be done? The first and most important thing is to recognize how we came to this pass. Both sides did not do this. Both sides are not to blame. There is no compromise to be had here that will leave the current structure of the government intact. There can be no reward for this behavior. I am less sanguine than are many people that this whole thing will redound to the credit of the Democratic party. For that to happen, the country would have to make a nuanced judgment over who is to blame that, I believe, will be discouraged by the courtier press of the Beltway and that, in any case, the country has not shown itself capable of making. For that to happen, the Democratic party would have to be demonstrably ruthless enough to risk its own political standing to make the point, which the Democratic party never has shown itself capable of doing. With the vandals tucked away in safe, gerrymandered districts, and their control over state governments probably unshaken by events in Washington, there will be no great wave election that sweeps them out of power. I do not see profound political consequences for enough of them to change the character of a Congress gone delusional. The only real consequences will be felt by the millions of people affected by what this Congress has forced upon the nation, which was the whole point all along.
Among other things, the Library Of Congress is closed as a result of what the vandals have done. Padlock study and intellect. Wander aimlessly down the mall among the shuttered monuments to self-government. Find yourself a food truck that serves monkey brains. Eat your fking fill.
In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.
We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.
We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.
We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn't seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up to the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.
We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.
This is what they came to Washington to do -- to break the government of the United States. It doesn't matter any more whether they're doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party's mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in which government "was" the problem, through Bill Clinton's ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being "over," through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find "common ground" and a "Third Way." Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.
What is there to be done? The first and most important thing is to recognize how we came to this pass. Both sides did not do this. Both sides are not to blame. There is no compromise to be had here that will leave the current structure of the government intact. There can be no reward for this behavior. I am less sanguine than are many people that this whole thing will redound to the credit of the Democratic party. For that to happen, the country would have to make a nuanced judgment over who is to blame that, I believe, will be discouraged by the courtier press of the Beltway and that, in any case, the country has not shown itself capable of making. For that to happen, the Democratic party would have to be demonstrably ruthless enough to risk its own political standing to make the point, which the Democratic party never has shown itself capable of doing. With the vandals tucked away in safe, gerrymandered districts, and their control over state governments probably unshaken by events in Washington, there will be no great wave election that sweeps them out of power. I do not see profound political consequences for enough of them to change the character of a Congress gone delusional. The only real consequences will be felt by the millions of people affected by what this Congress has forced upon the nation, which was the whole point all along.
Among other things, the Library Of Congress is closed as a result of what the vandals have done. Padlock study and intellect. Wander aimlessly down the mall among the shuttered monuments to self-government. Find yourself a food truck that serves monkey brains. Eat your fking fill.
10/4/13
In Ireland we used to say "Let's talk a little treason"
Sedition: To write, print, utter or publish, or cause it to be done, or assist in it, any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring either into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against either the hatred of the people of the United States, or to stir up sedition, or to excite unlawful combinations against the government, or to resist it, or to aid or encourage hostile designs of foreign nations. Sedition Act of 1798
I am always amazed when certain political preachers make their pronouncements about how they think that God is speaking to them about political issues. However yesterday, when my troubles seemed so far away the radical Christian Dominionist and self proclaimed “Prophet and Apostle” Rick Joyner stunned me. Joyner is one of the leaders of what he and others like C. Peter Wagner call the New Apostolic Reformation which inculcates people to believe that they and they alone are hearing from the Lord and that the task of the church is to rule the earth and if need be judge and destroy those that do not agree with this particular form of Christianity.
Now as most people who really know me know it takes a lot to stun me, even from the right wing political preachers that crowd the airways and cyber space of the United States and the world. I am not a fan of these very non-pastoral and often quite un-Christian political animals who claim to be speaking for God.
Now I am all in favor of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, even for men like the prophet Rick. In fact when I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States it included defending the rights of irresponsible, hateful and idiotic men like Joyner and others like him no matter what their political or religious persuasion.
But there is a line where what someone says is irresponsible, hateful and idiotic, which mind you are perfectly legal and Constitutional; after all there is nothing prohibiting people from being hate driven fear mongering idiots. That being said there is a time when speech borders or crosses the line into what Federal law, common law and the laws of most western civilized countries which have a Judeo-Christian heritage call “treason” or “sedition.”
I think that yesterday the prophet Rick looked to me like he crossed that line. He said yesterday on his broadcast that in terms of the President Obama that our “only hope is a military takeover, martial law.” Not only that but he continued: “And that the most crucial element of that is who to the martial [sic] is going to be,” he said. “I believe there are noble leaders in our military that love the republic and love everything we stand for. And they could seize the government.”
Now obviously Joyner neither understands the Constitution of the United States, nor knows history our military. The fact is that most of us who have been around any time at all in the military know the history of just how bad military coups are for Republics or Democracies. The fact is that they seldom end well and usually bring about worse conditions than if sensible people took charge and let the political system work as it was designed. The fact that our often badly divided founders understood that there would be times that one faction, party or another would not be happy with the way an election turned out.
I would have linked the video of this absolutely insane, treasonous and seditious video Joyner’s Morningstar ministries have now pulled it. I guess that some clearer headed people, likely his corporate lawyers realized that this was over the line.
I wonder what Joyner and his supporters would say if a religious leader of another faith other than their own uttered such foolishness. I suspect that if there was a Conservative Republican in the White House that they would be calling for the prosecution, conviction, imprisonment or maybe even the execution of such a person who suggested the overthrow of the civil government. But then for such people the irony of this is too rich for them to comprehend.
The sad thing is that this is now par for the course for people like Joyner whose hubris, narcissism and Gnostic understanding of the Christian faith justifies their radicalism and arrogance. I took some time to read Joyner’s comments about this controversy in his “Morningstar Prophetic Bulletin” and it looks to me like he is willing to go even farther in the coming days. Speaking to his disciples he wrote:
“I am very glad for this controversy, even the outrage I have created in some by the Prophetic Perspectives program. To quote King David, “I will yet be more vile” (see II Samuel 6:22 KJV). I don’t enjoy controversy, but I do appreciate it for what it can accomplish. It is not likely that anyone will be able to speak the truth in these times without it. I intend to use the controversy started by that program to delve into more depth on these issues. Therefore, future Prophetic Perspectives programs will likely be even more controversial....”
Sad to say it looks to me like Joyner is looking to collect some cash for his ministry by getting them fired up. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s I heard Joyner speak and had some of his books. He is very good at deceiving people and ensuring his material well being by doing this kind of thing. He has been doing it for years. In fact he has been castigated by conservative and Fundamentalist Bible Christians for his incredibly shoddy and self serving “revelations.” Hank Handergraaf’s Christian Research Institute even noted that “Joyner leaves us no middle way. Either we treat him as God’s chosen super-prophet for the end-times, or we treat him as a man in the grip of evil deceit and seek to expose him as such.”
While I am not in agreement with Handergraaf on many things I can agree with him on this. Joyner and others like him in the Christian Dominionist movement are not only narcissistic, arrogant and full of hubris but are dangerous not only to those that follow them but to others. Especially those that they decide based on their personal “word from the Lord” are against Jesus.
Honestly this is little different from the way that people like Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban interpret Islam.
Yes if you ask me what Joyner is saying is seditious and borders on treason. However because people are afraid of the religious right in this country no charges will ever be filed. Joyner will get away with this and rake in more cash from those that he leads into disaster, people who swallow his heresy and radicalism hook line and sinker because it fits their world view.
The late associate Justice of the Supreme Court and Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials wrote: “[I]n our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds — that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.”
Joyner and those like him fit Justice Jackson's description
10/3/13
Christian Dominionism and the Shutdown
“[I]n our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds — that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.” — Justice Robert H Jackson, American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 US 382, 438; 70 SCt. 674, 704 (1950)
Well we are in day two of the government shutdown of 2013 with no end in sight. Sadly I have to say that the groups most responsible for this on the Tea Party and Republican Party side of the house are Evangelical Christians and ultra-conservative Catholics. The Evangelical are held in the thrall of Christian Dominionism, or Recontructionism while the conservative Catholics long for the days when their church owned the governments of Europe.
If the shutdown was about pragmatic budgetary considerations I might give the authors of the shutdown some consideration. However, it is not and their leaders have either said it openly or all but said this to be the case.
I am a Christian and a Historian in a small Old Catholic denomination. I am a graduate of a premier Evangelical Protestant Seminary as well several prestigious Universities,where I came to appreciate and revere religious liberty. What I am going to write today may offend some but it has to be said. I believe that the cause of religious liberty, and for that matter the liberty of the Christian Church to be faithful to its call and unencumbered by unseemly political alliances is in danger due to the actions of people that in many cases honestly believe that they are defending religious liberty. Justice Robert Jackson prosecuted the major Nazi War criminals at Nuremberg and was able to view the results of what happened when churches that entered into such alliances.
I back in my days as a more “conservative” Evangelical Christian I attended and unlike conservative Christian TV icon and former governor of Arkansas actually graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas. This was in the days just prior to the Fundamentalist takeover of the seminary and the denomination. It was at Southwestern that I gained a distinct appreciation of and love for the concept of the separation of church and state and the importance of the rights, both civil and religious of non-believers, members of minority religions and others not in the religious majority, or those without power, be it religious, social or economic.
I look at what is going on today, just two days after the shutdown and it appears to me that the most vitriolic bunch pushing the Republican Party and their hapless, soulless and clueless Speaker of the House John Boehner into this are the Tea-vangelicals led by the like of Senator Ted Cruz, whose father Rafael Cruz is a prominent Dominionist pastor who has long been part of the movement to establish what amounts to a Christian Theocracy in the United States.
However, whether people realize it or not we were warned by no less than conservative icon Barry Goldwater about such people.
Yes, I said it. Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was not a fan of the influence of preachers and religious zealots. In fact he warned us about them in very clear words.
My liberal and conservative friends both might be dismayed by this but Barry Goldwater, the man who inspired Ronald Reagan to run for President and who was the conservative bulwark for many years in Washington DC warned us of what would happen when the Religious Right took over the Republican Party. Goldwater said of the types of people that currently dominate the conservative movement, if it can be still called that:
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” November, 1994, in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience.
Billy Graham, a saint if there ever was one and a man who used his faith to build bridges even while being unabashedly evangelical warned back in 1981 about the current crop of religious conservatives and stand in sharp contrast to the words and actions of Franklin:
“I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” Parade Magazine February 1, 1981, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom
What we are seeing today is the expressed manifestation of religious bigotry operating under the guise of defending religious freedom. Likewise it is little different (except in the religion involved) to the Wahhabi Taliban or the the Saudi Arabian state, the Shi’te Hezbollah government in Lebanon or the Mullah’s of Iran.
This ultra-religious intransigence of the Tea-vangelicals is being shown in its ugliness by the brazen acts of Evangelical political and religious leaders during this shutdown. And they wonder why more and more people want nothing to do with the faith that they espouse. If there is any way to lose religious freedom it is to follow this attempt to marry the Christian faith with the American government is not only short sighted but does great damage to the faith and our American liberties.
A host of influential of Evangelical leaders, politicians and even Roman Catholic Bishops have said what they believe religious liberty means to them and it has little in common with the understanding of our founders. It has nothing to do with limited government nor religious liberty. It is the imperial religion of Constantine, dressed up a bit to keep up with the times. It is simply an attempt by these leaders to use the apparatus of the government to support themselves and to establish their specific religion as a state religion with the full legal means to subjugate non-believers or others who do not agree with them.
The whole debate over the Affordable Healthcare Act in the shutdown is a red herring. The actual goal is to achieve a merger of church and state with the Dominionists leading it and dominating what they call the “Seven Mountains” of culture and society. Attempting to delegitimize President Obama through the shutdown and the debt limit is only a tactic in a larger strategy to achieve “dominion” over the United States and the world.
George Truett, the great Southern Baptist Pastor who served as President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote in his book Baptists and Religious Liberty in 1920 about the decidedly negative effect of when the Church became the State religion:
“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”
The late Senator Mark Hatfield a strongly committed Evangelical Christian before it became popular in Washington made this comment concerning those that are now driving this spurious debate:
“As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The New Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses, and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and of his gospel for millions of people.” quoted in the pamphlet “Christian Reconstruction: God’s Glorious Millennium?” by Paul Thibodeau
The core of the current campaign in the shutdown is the imposition of Christian Dominionism onto the rest of the country. It may reference the Gospel and even certain Christian moral understandings even as it mocks other just as “Biblical” Christian teachings.
Back in 1981 Barry Goldwater said on the Senate Floor “The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent.”
The leaders of this shutdown movement and their supporters are almost all self-proclaimed Evangelical Christians who represent gerrymandered congressional districts in which they only have to worry about being considered not extreme enough.
Like it or not Goldwater was right about this crowd. They will drive their churches and their political party into the abyss. The fractures in my former party, the Republican Party are becoming more and apparent and neither the Dominionist Preachers, or their allied politicians and pundits can see the end state of their party and for what they think they are fighting.
But then none are so blind as those who will not see. Please do not say that you were not warned.
Well we are in day two of the government shutdown of 2013 with no end in sight. Sadly I have to say that the groups most responsible for this on the Tea Party and Republican Party side of the house are Evangelical Christians and ultra-conservative Catholics. The Evangelical are held in the thrall of Christian Dominionism, or Recontructionism while the conservative Catholics long for the days when their church owned the governments of Europe.
If the shutdown was about pragmatic budgetary considerations I might give the authors of the shutdown some consideration. However, it is not and their leaders have either said it openly or all but said this to be the case.
I am a Christian and a Historian in a small Old Catholic denomination. I am a graduate of a premier Evangelical Protestant Seminary as well several prestigious Universities,where I came to appreciate and revere religious liberty. What I am going to write today may offend some but it has to be said. I believe that the cause of religious liberty, and for that matter the liberty of the Christian Church to be faithful to its call and unencumbered by unseemly political alliances is in danger due to the actions of people that in many cases honestly believe that they are defending religious liberty. Justice Robert Jackson prosecuted the major Nazi War criminals at Nuremberg and was able to view the results of what happened when churches that entered into such alliances.
I back in my days as a more “conservative” Evangelical Christian I attended and unlike conservative Christian TV icon and former governor of Arkansas actually graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas. This was in the days just prior to the Fundamentalist takeover of the seminary and the denomination. It was at Southwestern that I gained a distinct appreciation of and love for the concept of the separation of church and state and the importance of the rights, both civil and religious of non-believers, members of minority religions and others not in the religious majority, or those without power, be it religious, social or economic.
I look at what is going on today, just two days after the shutdown and it appears to me that the most vitriolic bunch pushing the Republican Party and their hapless, soulless and clueless Speaker of the House John Boehner into this are the Tea-vangelicals led by the like of Senator Ted Cruz, whose father Rafael Cruz is a prominent Dominionist pastor who has long been part of the movement to establish what amounts to a Christian Theocracy in the United States.
However, whether people realize it or not we were warned by no less than conservative icon Barry Goldwater about such people.
Yes, I said it. Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was not a fan of the influence of preachers and religious zealots. In fact he warned us about them in very clear words.
My liberal and conservative friends both might be dismayed by this but Barry Goldwater, the man who inspired Ronald Reagan to run for President and who was the conservative bulwark for many years in Washington DC warned us of what would happen when the Religious Right took over the Republican Party. Goldwater said of the types of people that currently dominate the conservative movement, if it can be still called that:
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” November, 1994, in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience.
Billy Graham, a saint if there ever was one and a man who used his faith to build bridges even while being unabashedly evangelical warned back in 1981 about the current crop of religious conservatives and stand in sharp contrast to the words and actions of Franklin:
“I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” Parade Magazine February 1, 1981, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom
What we are seeing today is the expressed manifestation of religious bigotry operating under the guise of defending religious freedom. Likewise it is little different (except in the religion involved) to the Wahhabi Taliban or the the Saudi Arabian state, the Shi’te Hezbollah government in Lebanon or the Mullah’s of Iran.
This ultra-religious intransigence of the Tea-vangelicals is being shown in its ugliness by the brazen acts of Evangelical political and religious leaders during this shutdown. And they wonder why more and more people want nothing to do with the faith that they espouse. If there is any way to lose religious freedom it is to follow this attempt to marry the Christian faith with the American government is not only short sighted but does great damage to the faith and our American liberties.
A host of influential of Evangelical leaders, politicians and even Roman Catholic Bishops have said what they believe religious liberty means to them and it has little in common with the understanding of our founders. It has nothing to do with limited government nor religious liberty. It is the imperial religion of Constantine, dressed up a bit to keep up with the times. It is simply an attempt by these leaders to use the apparatus of the government to support themselves and to establish their specific religion as a state religion with the full legal means to subjugate non-believers or others who do not agree with them.
The whole debate over the Affordable Healthcare Act in the shutdown is a red herring. The actual goal is to achieve a merger of church and state with the Dominionists leading it and dominating what they call the “Seven Mountains” of culture and society. Attempting to delegitimize President Obama through the shutdown and the debt limit is only a tactic in a larger strategy to achieve “dominion” over the United States and the world.
George Truett, the great Southern Baptist Pastor who served as President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote in his book Baptists and Religious Liberty in 1920 about the decidedly negative effect of when the Church became the State religion:
“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”
The late Senator Mark Hatfield a strongly committed Evangelical Christian before it became popular in Washington made this comment concerning those that are now driving this spurious debate:
“As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The New Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses, and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and of his gospel for millions of people.” quoted in the pamphlet “Christian Reconstruction: God’s Glorious Millennium?” by Paul Thibodeau
The core of the current campaign in the shutdown is the imposition of Christian Dominionism onto the rest of the country. It may reference the Gospel and even certain Christian moral understandings even as it mocks other just as “Biblical” Christian teachings.
Back in 1981 Barry Goldwater said on the Senate Floor “The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent.”
The leaders of this shutdown movement and their supporters are almost all self-proclaimed Evangelical Christians who represent gerrymandered congressional districts in which they only have to worry about being considered not extreme enough.
Like it or not Goldwater was right about this crowd. They will drive their churches and their political party into the abyss. The fractures in my former party, the Republican Party are becoming more and apparent and neither the Dominionist Preachers, or their allied politicians and pundits can see the end state of their party and for what they think they are fighting.
But then none are so blind as those who will not see. Please do not say that you were not warned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
