freshwest
freshwest's JournalYowsa! Here's a little more to get you stirred up there, ProSense. At least I am:
Here's the version without commentary:
You can overthrow government and auction everything off to the Koch brothers by several ways.
First, by denying others a voice in voting by oppressive regulations and misinformation.
Second, by impoverishing people through defunding government's ability to stand between predatory capitalists and their prey.
Third. by non-stop propaganda against that government to make people give in to the fascism they promote by default, allowing the church and business interests to run wild in the public and private lives of people.
Fourth, is just shooting people or intimidation, doing that banana republic routine so obvious in the videos, to shut people up and let their 'betters' run things.
Please note the familiarity of the speakers with the entire Infowars universe, a JBS production. They have learned their lessons well that the Koch brothers paid for.
Rand Paul is the elected version of Adam Kokesh and the rest of the gang who want to bring the Old South back. And at this point, we must ask supporters, just like those of Ron Paul:
...See, believe it or not, judgment matters. If a man believes there is a straight line of unbroken tyranny betwixt the torture and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists on the one hand, and anti-discrimination laws that seek to extend to all persons equal opportunity, on the other, that man is a lunatic. Worse than a lunatic, that man is a person of such extraordinarily obtuse philosophical and moral discernment as to call into real question whether he should even be allowed to go through life absent the protective and custodial assistance of a straightjacket, let alone hold office. That one might believe in unicorns would still allow one to profess a level of sagacity and synaptic activity in one’s brain several measures beyond that of the man who thinks liberty is equally imperiled by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as by the CIA.
That any liberal, progressive or leftist could waste so much as a kind word about someone as this is mind-boggling. There are not many litmus tests for being a progressive in good standing in this country, but one would think, if there were, that surely to God, civil rights would be one of them. It is one thing to disagree about the proper level of taxation, either on the wealthy or corporations: honest people can disagree about that, and for reasons that would still permit one to claim the mantle of liberalism or progressivism; so too with defense spending, drug policy, trade, education reform, energy policy, and any number of other things. But the notion that one can be a progressive, even merely liberal, while praising someone who believes that companies should be allowed to post “No Blacks Need Apply” signs if they wish, and that only the market should determine whether that kind of bigotry will stand, is so stupefying that it should render even the most cynical of us utterly bereft of words. It is, or should be, a deal-breaker among decent people.
And please, Glenn Greenwald, spare me the tired shtick about how Paul “raises important issues” that no one on the left is raising, and so even though you’re not endorsing him, it is still helpful to a progressive narrative that his voice be heard. Bullshit. The stronger Paul gets the stronger Paul gets, period. And the stronger Paul gets, the stronger libertarianism gets, and thus, the Libertarian Party as a potential third party: not the Greens, mind you, but the Libertarians. And the stronger Paul gets, the stronger become those voices who worship the free market as though it were an invisible fairy godparent, capable of dispensing all good things to all comers — people like Paul Ryan, for instance, or Scott Walker. In a nation where the dominant narrative has long been anti-tax, anti-regulation, poor-people-bashing and God-bless-capitalism, it would be precisely those aspects of Paul’s ideological grab bag that would become more prominent. And if you don’t know that, you are a fool of such Herculean proportions as to suggest that Salon might wish to consider administering some kind of political-movement-related-cognitive skills test for its columnists, and the setting of a minimum cutoff score, below which you would, for this one stroke of asininity alone, most assuredly fall.
I mean, seriously, if “raising important issues” is all it takes to get some kind words from liberal authors, bloggers and activists, and maybe even votes from some progressives, just so as to “shake things up,” then why not support David Duke? With the exception of his views on the drug war, David shares every single view of Paul’s that can be considered progressive or left in orientation. Every single one. So where do you draw the line? Must one have actually donned a Klan hood and lit a cross before his handful of liberal stands prove to be insufficient? Must one actually, as Duke has been known to do, light candles on a birthday cake for Hitler on April 20, before it no longer proves adequate to want to limit the overzealous reach of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms? Exactly when does one become too much of an evil fuck even for you? Inquiring minds seriously want to know...
http://www.timwise.org/2012/01/of-broken-clocks-presidential-candidates-and-the-confusion-of-certain-white-liberals/
Rand is no different than Ron. Libertarians and want this government gone so their sponsors can steal America. EOM.
Sounds like it's functioning well for millions of Americans right now, despite all complaints.
Eliminating government is the base of the Libertarian Party platform, that all can survive on charity, government must go away. Not only that, but Social Security must go away, which is what is keeping millions of people right now from being hungry and homeless...
We are talking about well over a hundred million people getting the essentials of life right now. Not everyone needs these long-term:
In 2012, over 56 million Americans will receive $778 billion in Social Security benefits.
http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/basicfact.htm
Medicaid is the nation’s largest health program in terms of number of recipients, serving 56 million to Medicare’s 48 million.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html
More than a third of Americans lived in households receiving government assistance in 2010.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/07/news/economy/government_assistance/index.htm
More than 46.6 Million Americans Participated in SNAP in June 2012
http://frac.org/reports-and-resources/snapfood-stamp-monthly-participation-data/
The Libertarian Party Platform on Welfare:
http://www.lp.org/issues/poverty-and-welfare
The Libertarian Party Platform on Health care:
http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Libertarian_Party_Health_Care.htm
More Libertarian, Ron Paul, Tea Bagger ideas that Democrats do not believe in:
Libertarians believe that taxes should be abolished along with all the programs and departments that taxes fund. Libertarians don’t believe in Medicare. Libertarians don’t believe in Social Security. Libertarians don’t believe that there should be fire departments, police departments, public transportation, grants for education, unemployment, disability, food stamps, and every other type of government system and assistance that you can think of.
Libertarians wish to eliminate taxes in order to eliminate all of the above programs and more. Libertarians believe that without these taxes, individuals will have more money in their pockets and will be able to afford all of these things. If someone is unable to provide themselves or their family with school, health care, or food, people need to rely on family members, church, or a private charity.
Libertarians believe that government’s role in the market should be to protect property owner’s rights. There should be no FDA, equal employment opportunities, unions, minimum wage, payroll taxes, safe food handling requirements, consumer protections, regulations that protect against financial conflicts of interest and fraud, and business licenses.
Libertarians believe that business owners should have the right to deny entry to minorities and/or women and/or people with disabilities, if that is how business owners wish to run their businesses.
http://deni-edwards.hubpages.com/hub/Defining-a-Libertarian-Ron-Pauls-Political-Platform
Social Security and Medicaid keeps millions of people they will never meet, and have no idea exist, off the streets. They disapprove of those who are doing the work to keep them alive and well, because it's a 'statist' thing, not ideologically pure, easy for them.
Democrats are and will continue to help many more people than private groups ever will. The GOP who are primarily Libertarians, plan to end all government so there will no votes needed, just be connected to the biggest boss you can find.
Here's another link:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/federal-benefits-able-bodied-workers
Anyone who cares about such things, won't be cavalier like Mr. Lee and the media about this subject. Those unaffected, can make such claims, when those would be, knows things could be much worse.
And that the GOP, Libertarians and Tea Baggers are in full favor of the government being shut down. Not Democrats nor the American people.
I will also add this about the Obama Administration and how it ties much of my life together:
Rosa Parks in 1955, with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background
Rosa Parks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks
Rosa Parks - The Story Behind the Bus
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman who worked as a seamstress, boarded this Montgomery City bus to go home from work. On this bus on that day, Rosa Parks initiated a new era in the American quest for freedom and equality.
She sat near the middle of the bus, just behind the 10 seats reserved for whites. Soon all of the seats in the bus were filled. When a white man entered the bus, the driver (following the standard practice of segregation) insisted that all four blacks sitting just behind the white section give up their seats so that the man could sit there. Mrs. Parks, who was an active member of the local NAACP, quietly refused to give up her seat.
Her action was spontaneous and not pre-meditated, although her previous civil rights involvement and strong sense of justice were obvious influences. "When I made that decision," she said later, “I knew that I had the strength of my ancestors with me.”
She was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, known as “Jim Crow laws.” Mrs. Parks appealed her conviction and thus formally challenged the legality of segregation.
http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/rosaparks/story.asp
That was how the bus I rode to school looked. See the back seat. I'll mention that later. Rosa Parks' story upset me, as I was taught that a man or a young person should give up their seat on a bus to an older person or a woman. An expression of the stronger protecting the weaker. I'm sure that sounds ancient now.
I was angry that she was ordered to give up her seat for a man, she being an older woman. As being 42 years old was elderly from my perspective, then, but not now. I fumed to myself about why she was not shown the courtesy and respect that I showed people.
Later as black riders began to sit at the front of the bus, I enjoyed the luxury of going to sit at the long seat at the back of the bus. I smiled there, feeling liberated. The perspective was different, I could see everything.
It felt freer because I was not being confined to my role of being at the front of the bus. You see, whenever a person tries to confine another person, they confine themselves as well.
Like the words of the song:
Right Where It Belongs
by Nine Inch Nails
See the animal in his cage that you built,
Are you sure what side you're on?
Better not look him too closely in the eye,
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?
See the safety of the life you have built
Everything where it belongs
Feel the hollowness inside of your heart
And it's all, right where it belongs
What if everything around you,
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know,
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection,
Is that all you want to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks,
Would you find yourself, find yourself afraid to see?
What if all the worlds inside of your head,
Just creations of your own?
Your devils and your Gods, all the living and the dead
And you're really all alone?
You could live in this illusion
You can choose to believe
You keep looking but you can't find the woods
While you're hiding in the trees
What if everything around you,
Isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you used to know,
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection,
Is that all you want to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks,
Would you find yourself, find yourself afraid to see?
That may seem to be a strange thing to be happy about to some, but most people like to choose their own path.
I remember seeing the fire hoses and dogs set on protestors, the governor of Alabama with his stand in the door fuss, and then the murder of Medgar Evers. That shocked me more than anything else that had happened yet.
My father and I were working in our front yard, then I looked out at the street, bringing the image of a man who had just arrived home in joy to report the words of JFK to his family. The killers shot him in his front yard, in front of his family. It was obscene. I asked if someone would come to kill us in our yard, too.
I grew up in what was largely a segregrated world, with more safety nets. I never saw blacks as a threat, neither did my family and they told me a lot of history as the events of those days were being presented to the world through thne media, school, community meetings, and people we knew. We were being taught at school 'how the world works' in elementary school, even voting for some things, including the 1960 election in class. It was part of being a grown up, politics were.
The death of Evers and all that followed are seared into my heart and mind. All for the insanity of not allowing black people a seat at a lunch counter. or a seat on the bus or the right to vote.
I don't want to go back to that world again.
This was part of what I was going to post on Holder, so here's an add:
Attorney General Eric Holder at the NAACP
Published on Jul 16, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder addresses the 104th Annual NAACP Convention in Orlando, Florida on 07/16/13 and discusses the Trayvon Martin verdict.
His critics don't realize that there is anything going on in the nation outside their own narrow views. There is are reasons Libertarians hate Holder, but Democrats and the disenfranchised love him.
This man has been standing up for those in need for most of his life, this is a tiny part of the fabric of his life. Just like the critics of Perez, they don't acknowledge the powerful changes wrought by these men.
Biden and Holder have worked since Day One to change the unfairness in charging and penalties by police and lack of representation for the poor in this country in courts. A little history, that shows a life of commitment:
The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door
When Alabama Gov. George Wallace positioned himself defiantly at the entrance to a University of Alabama gymnasium, he created a moment and phrase that still echoes half a century later.
His "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" was an attempt to keep African-Americans out of the state's flagship university in Tuscaloosa. The politician, who had vowed "Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever," provided one of the most dramatic moments of the 1960s when he tried to block two students from enrolling at the University of Alabama...
The two students who confronted Wallace, Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, arrived at the university's Foster Auditorium on the morning of June 11, 1963, to register for classes. They were escorted by U.S. deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach with the support of the Alabama National Guard, which had been federalized that day by President Kennedy...
In another surprising twist, her younger sister married an attorney, named Eric Holder, who went on to become the first African-American Attorney General of the United States. Holder, who attended the dedication ceremony honoring his late sister-in-law, said nothing to reporters that day, knowing, it seems, that her achievement helped lead to his decades later. But happy endings were hardly assured after the confrontation at Foster Auditorium. The next day, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered in Jackson, Miss., and many (including President Kennedy and his brother, then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy), feared violence might spread across the South...
More and a video at the link:
http://civilrightstravel.com/tuscaloosa.html
Vivian Malone Jones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Malone_Jones
Eric Holder has worked on many issues important to progressives. He supports the view of the 2nd Amendment that has existed among liberals since FDR. That earned him many enemies and the bogus Fast and Furious charges by Darryl Issa.
A clear look at the total man reveals more about him than the media disinformation about him. As shown above, Holder does not crave the spotlight, but keeps working. He has been working hard for Americans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder
I hope you're right, but Aqua Buddha and heads stomping didn't prevent him being elected...
At this point, I think anything is possible. And the money is there. So is the media.
He supports the 2nd and armed Revolution. The Libertarian and Bagger will come out to vote in droves. See here:
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/33792/rand-paul-tea-party-shoulder-blame-for-head-stomp-attack/
Oh, no, that's not Rand 'Personhood Bill' Paul's office. That's her Stand With TX Women pic! Right?
4th Amendment? You don't need no stinking 4th Amendment!http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014523420#post22
APPLY
LIBERALLY AS NEEDED...
For full fascism to be accepted, government MUST fail. All functions become private property.
They are waiting for a fire sale to buy up all assets of the USA for the best price. The more hopelessness, the more prey the people are to demagogues.
Purposeful destabilization leading to chaos leading to dictatorship. Long history of this in the world.
Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself.
That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.
The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home.
Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Simple Truths message to Congress (April 29, 1938).
Roosevelt's VP described the process:
"The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence.
His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power...
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.
Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."
~ U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace, quoted in the New York Times, April 9, 1944
More of what we're up against:
Thom Hartmann: Conservative Millennials, Boomers & Libertarians all being Conned
This is worth the read. A video and full transcript are posted here at DU:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101744227
Both are tops in my book too. For you, Ucrdem:
Attorney General Eric Holder at the NAACP
Published on Jul 16, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder addresses the 104th Annual NAACP Convention in Orlando, Florida on 07/16/13 and discusses the Trayvon Martin verdict.
The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door
When Alabama Gov. George Wallace positioned himself defiantly at the entrance to a University of Alabama gymnasium, he created a moment and phrase that still echoes half a century later.
His "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" was an attempt to keep African-Americans out of the state's flagship university in Tuscaloosa. The politician, who had vowed "Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever," provided one of the most dramatic moments of the 1960s when he tried to block two students from enrolling at the University of Alabama...
The two students who confronted Wallace, Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood, arrived at the university's Foster Auditorium on the morning of June 11, 1963, to register for classes. They were escorted by U.S. deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach with the support of the Alabama National Guard, which had been federalized that day by President Kennedy...
In another surprising twist, her younger sister married an attorney, named Eric Holder, who went on to become the first African-American Attorney General of the United States. Holder, who attended the dedication ceremony honoring his late sister-in-law, said nothing to reporters that day, knowing, it seems, that her achievement helped lead to his decades later. But happy endings were hardly assured after the confrontation at Foster Auditorium. The next day, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered in Jackson, Miss., and many (including President Kennedy and his brother, then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy), feared violence might spread across the South...
More and a video at the link:
http://civilrightstravel.com/tuscaloosa.html
Vivian Malone Jones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Malone_Jones
Eric Holder has worked on many issues important to progressives. He supports the view of the 2nd Amendment that has existed among liberals since FDR. That earned him many enemies and the bogus Fast and Furious charges by Darryl Issa.
A clear look at the total man reveals more about him than the media disinformation about him. As shown above, Holder does not crave the spotlight, but keeps working. He has been working hard for Americans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder
Start with Rand Paul. Please, pretty please!
Wait, he's with those guys...
We are sooo screwn, BB!
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