Freenet or die

The middle class, and not wealthy innovators like himself, are America’s true “job creators”.

Mitt Romney’s Bullying Gay Children

Romney led a group of his prep school cronies in cutting off the hair of an effeminate classmate named John Lauber. Lauber was held down, crying and begging for the attack to stop, while Romney allegedly cut off clumps of his bleach-blond hair with a scissors. The piece also suggests that Romney mocked another effeminate student, saying “Attagirl” whenever he made a comment in class. The stories are upsetting; and for anyone who has been bullied, it brings back terrible memories of helplessness and adolescent vulnerability.

When initially contacted by the Post, Romney denied any memory of the incident.

That the only person who appears to have no memory of the event is the one running for president of the United States seems more than mere coincidence. That he remembers Lauber well enough to know that he didn’t think he was gay – yet has no memory of attacking him – also fails to pass the smell test. There is, of course, an even worse possibility: that Romney did participate but has simply forgotten that he committed such a heinous act of cruelty.

Faced with the fact that five eyewitnesses, including indirectly the victim, confirmed the Post’s account, Romney was forced to walk back his initial blanket denial – offering instead, the most tepid of apologies:

“I played a lot of pranks in high school and they describe some that, well, you just say to yourself, back in high school, well, I did some dumb things. And if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize. But overall, high school years were a long time ago.”

Mitt Romney lead the group. He lead and now he can not look himself in the face. “Obviously, obviously, obviously, I apologize”, Mitt apologizes and Mitt doesn’t admit to exactly what he did and that after lying about no memory of the entire incident. Mitt apologies obviously, with arrogance and insincerity, continuing to cast doubt on exactly just what he did. He lead a group of bullies, to assault one person who was weak. Romney looks down his nose at everyone, including himself. Do you really want this cowardly and dysfunctional piece of “it” for President?

Contrary to what a pathologically lying fuck said, Corporations are not people.

The Movement Made Him Do It

Franklin Roosevelt had the famous phrase: “Make me do it.” He was speaking to activists for the labor movement or some other faction fighting for a slice of the pie, and he was saying to them, don’t expect me to back you out of the kindness of my heart, even if in my heart I agree with you. This is politics, and you have to create the conditions that make it possible for me to support your cause. And that’s what the LGBT movement did for Obama.

In the immediate sense, it was apparently the comments by Joe Biden (and to a secondary extent Education Secretary Arne Duncan) that forced the president’s hand, leading to his historic announcement in support of same-sex marriage. But in the deeper and more long-lasting sense, the movement made him do it. That’s exactly how politics on the left is supposed to work.

Make Obama: Protect the Freenet, Protect the Environment, Regulate the 1%, Go Green, Stop Fracking, Protect Women’s rights…………………

Noam Chomsky on America’s Economic Suicide

In the major state capitalists economies, Europe and the US, it’s low growth and stagnation and a very sharp income differentiation a shift — a striking shift — from production to financialization.

The US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways. In Europe it’s austerity in the midst of recession and that’s guaranteed to be a disaster. There’s some resistance to that now. In the US, it’s essentially off-shoring production and financialization and getting rid of superfluous population through incarceration.

The Republican Party has pretty much abandoned any pretense of being a traditional political party. It’s in lockstep obedience to the very rich, the super rich and the corporate sector. They can’t get votes that way so they have to mobilize a different constituency. It’s always been there, but it’s rarely been mobilized politically. They call it the religious right, but basically it’s the extreme religious population. The US is off the spectrum in religious commitment. It’s been increasing since 1980 but now it’s a major part of the voting base of the Republican Party so that means committing to anti-abortion positions, opposing women’s rights…  The US is a country [in which] eighty percent of the population thinks the Bible was written by god. About half think every word is literally true. So it’s had to appeal to that – and to the nativist population, the people that are frightened, have always been… It’s a very frightened country and that’s increasing now with the recognition that the white population is going to be a minority pretty soon, “they’ve taken our country from us.” That’s the Republicans. There are no more moderate Republicans. They are now the centrist Democrats. Of course the Democrats are drifting to the Right right after them. The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues and that’s not their concern.

You describe Occupy as the first organized response to a thirty-year class war….

NC: It’s a class war, and a war on young people too… that’s why tuition is rising so rapidly. There’s no real economic reason for that. It’s a technique of control and indoctrination.  And this is really the first organized, significant reaction to it, which is important.

Noam Chomsky

A Good Read

Republicans To Female Activist: “Get A Job”

When Republican politicians run for office in the Pacific Northwest, they often try to play up their moderate stances, avoid mentioning party affiliations, sometimes even replicate Democratic commercials in an attempt to lure voters into believing they aren’t that much different from the progressive candidates that often get elected.

It’s no wonder they can get vicious when someone tries to ask them about their real positions.

State Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican candidate for Governor, reminded the people of Washington of that fact as he recently berates a young woman asking him about how he would vote on the Reproductive Parity Act, a bill that would expand insurance coverage for abortions in the state insurance plan as long as the plan covers maternity care as well.  If it had passed, it would allow low income and uninsured women the ability to control their own reproductive choices rather than be forced into paying abortion costs out of pocket or continuing an unwanted pregnancy due to lack of funds.

The bill died in the state legislature, but many reproductive rights advocates hope it can be returned at some point, allowing all women, not just those who are higher income, to have the ability to make the same reproductive choices.

McKenna, if elected, would be able to veto a bill, so its only fair to ask him where he stands on the issue.  But apparently asking about policy is “bushwacking” a politician, and makes them lash out.

Woman: “Mr. Mckenna.”
McKenna: “Yes.”
Woman: “What’s your stance on the Reproductive Parity Act?”
McKenna: “My stance is I’m a lawyer for the State. You can turn that recorder off if you’d like, instead of trying to bushwhack me. It’s not really very polite is it? Do you think you’re honest?”
Woman: “I’m just wondering…”
McKenna: “Do you think you’re being honest?”
Woman: “Huh?”
McKenna: “Are you being honest? Or are you just not going to answer my question?”
Woman: “I’m a youth worker who’s wondering…”
McKenna: “You’re not being honest. Forget it.”
Woman: “Okay…”
McKenna: “You’re just trying to gain a political advantage, sorry. Why don’t you go get a job?”

Actually, the woman in question does have a job — she runs “youth empowerment” programs at the YMCA.  And as a woman, she’s likely to be concerned how candidates who want to run the state feel about her right to bodily autonomy.

But even if she weren’t employed, dismissing a potential constituent in such a way, especially when you belong to a party that enacts policies that have lead to a 25 percent unemployment rate for young adults, is not the wisest of political moves.  Especially not when, as you’ve already noted, that constituent has a camera.

Candidates instictively react as though those who ask them questions on camera are trying to make them look bad.  But how is asking a policy question making a candidate “look bad” unless he knows his answer isn’t a good one?  If McKenna thought that snapping “get a job” would make him look better than his actual answer would, what does that say about his positions on the issues?

Republicans: No Greater Concentration of Bible Humping Cowardly Misogynist Knuckledragging Stone Age Dog Shit for a Whiter Corporate America in the Farthest Reaches of the Infinite.

Vote Republican: Send America Back to the Stone Age.

Get Ready to Rumble………..

robertreich:

Tweet Bill O’Reilly (@oreillyfactor) and tell him to man up and debate me.

#BEYONDOUTRAGE

Give To the Rich?

In the old days, if a “doctor” thought that your skin looked too red, the standard prescription was … leeches. Fever? Leeches. Rash? Leeches. Bruise? Leeches. In fact, if you seemed to have an unfortunate tendency to get angry, the treatment for that was – you guessed it – leeches.

This was not some passing fad. This went on for 2,700 years, throughout Asia and Europe, and then the New World.

The leeches actually were grown on leech farms. Doctors bought the leeches in lots, and kept them in an earthenware jar with little breathing holes in it. Whenever a patient “needed” one, the doctor would apply it to the patient. And then the leech would suck the patient’s blood out.

Yuk.

So, basically, whatever was wrong with you, the doctor would attach a blood-sucking parasite to you, and that was supposed to make it better.

And that actually sounds very much like the right-wing’s economic policies. Whatever might be wrong with the economy, let’s just drain all the blood out of it, and see if that helps.

Unemployment? Let’s cut teacher jobs. Deficit? Let’s cut police and firefighter jobs. Trade imbalance? Let’s cut sanitation and public transport jobs. Banking crisis? Let’s cut nursing jobs.

Just bleed that sucker.

Yesterday, in the New York Times, Paul Krugman described right-wing economics in a similar way: “suicide by economic crisis.” The greedheads who run Europe are exploiting the economic crisis in weaker countries like Greece and Spain to wipe out pensions, benefits, unions and public healthcare everywhere. They don’t just want to tear the social safety net. They want to nuke it.

The saddest thing about that is all of the pain that it inflicts on the vulnerable and the needy. But the next saddest thing is this:

It just doesn’t work. Bleeding a patient with leeches doesn’t make him healthy. Even if you bleed him dry.

And now the greed-heads are coming for us, with their Ryan Budget and their Medicare vouchers and their Social Security cuts and their Medicaid block grants and their student vouchers and their privatization. Now, they’re coming for us.

Well, here is my answer:

No.

Now get lost, you leeches.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

Tell Congress: No Cyber Spying, No CISPA

The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on legislation that would give the government, including military spy agencies like the National Security Agency, unprecedented powers to snoop through people’s personal information — medical records, private emails, financial information — all without a warrant, proper oversight or limits.

Snot, Disparity in Wealth and Corporations Are People.

If Obama Is the Flu, Romney Is End Stage Cancer.

President Obama paid 20.5 percent on earnings of $789,674. The President’s total income is the amount Romney raked in every two weeks last year, for a total of $21 million. Romney, the likely GOP presidential nominee, has estimated he’ll pay a tax rate of only 15.4 percent. Romney is among the millionaires and billionaires - the 1 percenters - enjoying the lowest levels in 50 years. Some pay nothing!

Obama Administration: McCarthyism

1) The Obama Administration Suddenly Fixated on Stomping out Medical Pot.

The DEA acknowledged that it was investigating a Montana state lawmaker for potentially conspiring to violate federal anti-marijuana laws. The lawmaker, Rep. Diane Sands – a Democrat from Missoula, Montana – served as the chairwoman of a 2011 interim legislative committee that sought to enact statewide regulations governing the production and distribution of medical pot, which has been legal in the state since 2004. “Can you say McCarthy?” she told The Missoulian newspaper. “This sounds like stuff from the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy. So once you talk about medical marijuana in reasonable terms, you’re on some sort of list of possible conspirators. … It’s ridiculous, of course, but it’s also threatening to think that the federal government is willing to use its influence and try to chill discussion about this subject.”

Worse, it looks as if Obama is setting up big pharma to take control of marijuana, resulting in pot not only staying illegal, but staying illegal with its “heroin classification” intact just so an obamacorporation can profit from Americans use of this truly recreational drug.

2) President Obama Doesn’t Support SOPA, But Signs ACTA

ACTA, SOPA, PIPA and CISPA are all Internet destroying bills or treaties that will violate privacy rights of Americans, destroy the openness of the Internet, destroy the free exchange of the internet, reduce the virtual real time discussion of information on the Internet and destroy the interactivity, the give and take of the Internet (as opposed to, “sit and listen to a corporate employee tell you what to think…one way monologue”).

Most importantly, what will be protected by destroying the Internet is a lack of government transparency. And a lack of government transparency is what Obama is all about: remember Obama’s hunt for whistleblowers? A destruction of government transparency by Obama and his associate legislatewhores is veiled thinly by their slight of hand argument for protection against online theft. Theft, greed and alakazam, corporations design the Internet, the same corporations that created peer to peer software, the same corporations that made billions from peer to peer software, the same corporations that wiped their asses on the Internet creating peer to peer software facilitating all the illegal downloading.

Obama would have the Internet be a lackey to corporate greed and the Internet be thereby castrated in its ability to effect government transparency. Obama, like most of our elected officials operates within a culture of incompetence: remember Wikileaks? No one died because of Wikileaks but a great number of public officials were embarrassed due to the Wikispotlight on their incompetence. Wikileaks is the essence of the Internet. Wikileaks is the greatest creation of the Internet and this our pitifully incompetent public servants fear rather than embrace as it could herald a rebirth of citizen participation and a rebirth of America’s health and vigor. Obama and our legislatewhores are cowards.

Yes, Obama and legislatewhores like him are definitely shallow, cowardly, small minded, greedy, corporate sycophants but mostly our politicians simply suck at what they do. If ACTA, SOPA, PIPA and CISPA are enacted, you the people, my fellow Americans are back to watching corporate state TV and maybe one of the laughing hyenas you put in office will throw you a biscuit.

The Freenet is the only way to bring more people back into participating in their country. That these useless talking heads, like Obama, would destroy the constitutional powers at the core of the Internet is clearly an indication of what these abject traitors, like Obama think of Americans, the essence of The US Constitution and all those Americans that sacrificed greatly, down through the years. It is not what politicians say; it is what politicians do and a politician supporting anything like ACTA, SOPA, PIPA or CISPA believes that Americans are little more than cattle.

In Many Ways, Obama, Like George Bush, Is Just One More Sick Bastard in Public Office.

Ronald Reagan was a B-Actor and the Republican Party was his stooge stage. Above Ron is pictured with his mistress, Karl Rove.

Eleanor Clift said that “greed in this country is associated with Ronald Reagan”. Sarah McClendon said that “it will take a hundred years to get the government back into place after Ronald Reagan. He hurt people: the disabled, women, nursing mothers, the homeless.”

GOP is SHIT.