The State of the Republicans: 2013

The end of the Romney campaign ushered in a new era for the Republicans…. apparently. They insisted they must change. Their appeal must broaden. Their hate-filled, politics of over-the-top Glenn Beck style fear had to go. They had to be presentable. Change or die! The old days of a Party of old, white, male, Christian, heterosexual, angry-at-everyone-who-isn’t-EXACTLY-like-them, funded by big corporations had to go. And so we were informed that a new breed of Republicans would appear. Ready to present a reformed GOP to the electorate. They were radically different from their predecessors.

So how’s that going?

Well, in November 2012, the residents of Texas’ first district re-elected Louie Gohmert for a fifth term in the House of Reps. If the Republicans are intending to break from the past, surely we’d expect Gohmert to perhaps be a little more moderate than his more radical Tea-Party-esque contemporaries. That’s what we’d expect. However, when asked about his opposition to any gun control legislation, Gohmert gave this rather odd answer:

“In fact, I had this discussion with some wonderful, caring Democrats earlier this week on the issue of, well, they said “surely you could agree to limit the number of rounds in a magazine, couldn’t you? How would that be problematic?”

And I pointed out, well, once you make it ten, then why would you draw the line at ten? What’s wrong with nine? Or eleven? And the problem is once you draw that limit ; it’s kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?

There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used, then it’s just really easy to have laws that make them all illegal.

- You read right. In a discussion about gun control, Gohmert managed to take a shot at same-sex marriage, by employing the insufferably weak slippery slope fallacy. I cannot work out which is more impressive; his ability to link gun control and same-sex marriage… two completely separate issues that in no way overlap, or his intense lack of sensibility in recognising that there is no reason to believe a slippery slope with either of the issues he’s commenting on. I could equally say “If we let women vote, what next, letting camels vote?” or “If we ban cocaine, why not ban cough medicine? Where does it end!!” It’s absurd and it is baseless. He isn’t the only Republican to use this fallacy recently. John Cornyn, the new Senate Minority Whip said:

“It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right…. Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.”

- Yes. the Republican Senate Minority Whip has just compared a loving couple wishing to express that love via marriage, and wishing only to be considered equal under law….. to a man marrying a turtle. That’s the standard of top Republicans in 2013.

Back to Gohmert. The man who tried to link gay marriage to gun control, also claimed that the liberals are going to make Churches:

….hire whatever Satan-worshiper, whatever cross-dresser you think might be immoral, that’s against your religious belief. You are going to be forced to abandon your religious beliefs, and we’ve been seeing that with some of the requirements under Obamacare.

- Yes! Someone had to say it! Obamacare is simply a mask to make Churches hire cross-dressing Satan-Worshippers! It’s SO obvious. Wake up America!
The fact that this man gets the privilege to vote on gun legislation; a vote on the safety of your children in school, would be laughable if it weren’t so utterly terrifying.

Bobby Jindal won a 2nd term as Louisiana Governor in 2011. Since then, he’s been rather excitable at promoting misleading figures to promote an agenda of fear. Whilst one fifth of all residents of Louisiana lack health insurance, Jindal refuses to expand Medicaid expansion, claiming it would cost Louisiana $1bn over the next ten years. Quite where he gets this figure from, I’m not sure. Especially given that a Department of Health Report noted that Louisiana would actually save around $400mn over the next ten years, by expanding Medicaid. He appears to have invented his own figure, to scare people. Despite this, and despite a petition signed by…

Advocates for Louisiana Public Healthcare.

Advocacy Center.

Capitol City Family Health Center.

Capital City Alliance.

Citizens United for In-Home Support.

Coalition of HIV/AIDS Nonprofits and Governmental Entities.

Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Harvard Law School.

Children’s Defense Fund-Louisiana.

Children’s Bureau of New Orleans.

DEAF Louisiana.

Doctors for America.

Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance, Northeast Louisiana.

Health Law Advocates of Louisiana.

HOPE For Homeless.
Along with 30 other groups, and countless more individual signatures….. Jindal refuses to expand Medicaid.

And then there is the apparent darling of the Republicans new bid for power in 2016; Marco Rubio.

“We’re bound together by common values. That family is the most important institution in society. That almighty God is the source of all we have.”

- Here, Rubio is subtly promoting the myth that America was founded a Christian nation, and that religion must be considered part of the fabric. A subtle hint that non-belief, cannot be considered an American value. Thus, in a single, tiny quote, we see the saviour of the Republicans alienate anyone who isn’t slightly obsessed with ‘God’ being a key component to Patriotism. So that’s 15% of Americans who claim no religion. That’s a lot of people to alienate, for a man promoted as the key to solving the Republican Party’s problem of appealing to minorities. Rubio is following the conservative trend of telling people who should and shouldn’t qualify as ‘American’. This in itself, is divisive.

Rubio also still appeals to tradition when dealing with same-sex marriage, insisting that marriage cannot be redefined. Seemingly ignoring all evidence that the current definition of marriage, is just one that has evolved over time, based on modern Christian understanding of the term, and differs from other cultures entirely. So, that’s gay people alienated, as well as non-believers.

Brand new Senator for Senator for Arizona, assuming office in 2013, Jeff Flake also doesn’t like the idea of two people in love getting married. Whilst despising ‘big government’ and the intrusion of the State into people’s lives, Flake voted in favour of a Federal Marriage Amendment, Constitutionally banning same-sex marriage. For someone so obsessed for getting government out of people’s private lives, Flake seems more than happy to use government power to ban love.

Back to Rubio. As well as not particularly liking gay people, Rubio voted against the Violence Against Women Act, stating:

“I have concerns regarding the conferring of criminal jurisdiction to some Indian tribal governments over all persons in Indian country, including non-Indians.”

- Essentially, a non-Native American male being tried under the law for sexually assaulting a Native American woman, concerns Rubio, because he doesn’t trust Indian Tribal Governments. And yet, he puts his full faith in the States to fund programs properly:

“These funding decisions should be left up to the state-based coalitions that understand local needs best.”

- So trustworthy are local areas in dealing with domestic abuse cases, that due to budget cuts, the Topeka, Kansas City Council and Mayor actually repealed the Domestic Abuse law, in a bid to start a bit of a war with the County Prosecutor. This came about after Shawnee County D.A Chad Taylor, moved to stop investigating domestic violence entirely due to budget cuts. This meant that the City of Topeka would have to take up the cases, which they couldn’t afford to do either. So their Council voted to repeal the domestic abuse act. Which, forced it back into the hands of Shawnee County. Taylor said:

“My office now retains sole authority to prosecute domestic battery misdemeanors and will take on this responsibility so as to better protect and serve our community. We will do so with less staff, less resources, and severe constraints on our ability to effectively seek justice.”

Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence said:

“I really do not understand this. It’s really outrageous that they’re playing with family safety to see who blinks first. People could die while they’re waiting to straighten this out.”

- All of this comes down to budget cuts. Shawnee County DA Chad Taylor refused to prosecute domestic violence cases, after facing a 10% budget cut, despite half of all cases being domestic abuse cases, which increased substantially in the past three years, without any extra funding from the County. How very trustworthy! Interestingly, Rubio voted against the Budget Control Act in 2011, and the Fiscal Cliff 2012. Rubio evidently trusts the localities to make funding decisions, which is much easier, if those localities don’t have any funds in the first place.

Rubio isn’t the only Republican with odd reasons for voting against the Violence Against Women Act. Steve Stockman, Representative of Texas’ 36th District announced his shameful reasons for voting against:

“This is a truly bad bill. This is helping the liberals, this is horrible. Unbelievable. What really bothers—it’s called a women’s act, but then they have men dressed up as women, they count that. Change-gender, or whatever. How is that—how is that a woman?”

Stockman also voted to repeal Federal laws that ban guns in schools. Why so? Well, given that among his campaign contributors are the ‘National Association for Gun Rights’ and ‘Gun Owners of America’, it perhaps isn’t that surprising that Stockman feels the need to put their interests above the safety of children. Just to make sure we all understand where his allegiances lie, here is incredibly ridiculous, almost comical campaign bumper sticker, tweeted for the World to see, by the man himself.

- I’m not sure if Stockman is calling for semi-automatic rifles to be inserted into the vaginas of every pregnant woman. I wouldn’t be surprised.

The scientifically illiterate are still abundant in the Republican Party. Marco Rubio once announced that he didn’t know if the Earth was made in 6 days or not, and that we’re never likely to know. But Georgia’s 10th District Rep. Paul Broun (planning to run for Senate in 2014) and, quite horrifyingly, serving on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology once took Rubio’s toying with Creationism one step further:

Earth is about 9,000 years old, it was created in six days as we know them”

- Broun also said of embryology, genetics, evolution, and the Big Bang theory:

“they’re lies straight from the Pit of Hell … lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

- Broun also said of climate change:

“Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.”[

- Echoing his scientific illiteracy, Broun gives us enlightening views on politics, when brief mention of a National Security Force by President Obama, before the 2008 election:

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force, I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may _ may not, I hope not _ but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

- Yes. A US Representative, thinks the Earth was made in 6 days, evolution is a lie from the pit of hell, climate change isn’t man made, and convinced President Obama was going to create his own Hitler Youth, to take over America and create a Marxist haven.

Now to move on from bat-shit crazy, to slightly less crazy, Paul Ryan. The spritely Paul Ryan. You may think he’s irrelevant as a symbol of this great new era for Republicans, given that his ticket lost the Presidential election. But let’s not forget that Ryan is the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, in 2013. A pretty important position. He’s also Wisconsin’s 1st District House Representative. He looks young, he seemed fresh, he wasn’t the grey haired typical old Republican. Nor was he the gun tottin’ Sarah Palin slightly vacant Republican. He was paraded on the networks as a hero of fiscal conservativism, brave to speak out against Obama overspending! His brand new House Republican Budget released in March this year, which the brave, fiscally conservative hero claims will:

“end cronyism, eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and returns the federal government to its proper sphere of activity”

- So it is worthwhile to note that the anti-big government, pro-deficit reduction Paul Ryan voted for the two Bush tax cuts (both considered a great failure, and added significantly to the deficit), the $700 bailout of the banks, and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, whilst voting against Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Most of Paul Ryan’s economic voting record, has added significantly to the National deficit.
His House Republicans Budget, unveiled by Republicans on March 12, noted that $931 billion of the creatively accounted $4.6tn apparently savable over the next ten years, will come from counting the savings from ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars…. wars that Paul Ryan voted for in the first place. Economically, Paul Ryan doesn’t know where he stands.
Socially, despite absolutely no evidence to back up its claims, in 2009 Paul Ryan cosponsored the ‘Sanctity of Life Act’. A very odd little Act that sought to protect fertilised eggs, stating that the eggs:

“shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood”

Ryan also believes that abortion, in all cases, including rape and incest, should be made illegal, and States given the right to criminally prosecute women who have abortions, including for rape and incest.

Before being elected as Senator for South Carolina in 2013, Tim Scott was House Representative for South Carolina’s first district. During his time in the House, Scott cosponsored a truly horrifying Bill that would deny food stamps to poorest families, if a family member was taking part in strike action. The right to strike – a key component of a democratic society – used by the weak against the powerful, used to secure freedoms and security for generations, Tim Scott voted to essentially end. Threatening the poorest people in society; you either strike, or you eat. Scott is also convinced that the private health care system in the US is the greatest in the World, and that the Health Reforms of 2010 should be repealed. This is no surprise given that one of his main campaign contributors, has been Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the health insurance company. Among other campaign contributions, he has received donations from Goldman Sachs. Tim Scott is a politician, for the wealthy, by the wealthy. The Insurance Industry Candidate.
Speaking of complete contempt for the less wealthy, Mark Meadows, a member of the January 2013 intake for The House, and Tea Party favourite, representing North Carolina’s 11th District voted against the Sandy Relief Fund.

Dean Heller, the Senator for Nevada, who will hold that position until 2019, voted against the Health Care Reform, and against Fair Minimum Wage Act. Heller has also voted against subsidising renewable energy, whilst voting to support development of oil, gas and coal…. two of his top campaign contributors, are Alliance Resource, and Murray Energy…. two coal companies.

So, gay marriage leading to marrying an animal, Church’s having to hire crossdressing Satan-worshippers, manipulating figures to suit an agenda, a refusal to expand Medicaid to help the most vulnerable, evolution a myth from the pits of hell, refusal to protect victims of domestic abuse, including transgendered people, a desire to see women who have been raped imprisoned for having an abortion, guns in schools funded by the gun lobby, Obama trying to raise an army to enforce a Marxist Utopia, anti-renewable energy, candidates wishing to disenfranchise poor people and their right to strike, and wishing to repeal health reform whilst taking campaign contributions from the wealthiest insurance companies in the country.

This new Republican breed sound, and act, and speak, eerily familiar to the old breed.

Bad day for bigots II

The President today gave a far more forceful and progressive Inaugural Speech than that of four years ago. He mentioned the word ‘gay’ for the first time in inaugural history, whilst discussing equality. He mentioned climate change. He mentioned equality in diversity, and being a friend of the poor along with support for the undocumented immigrant community. Words are of course, cheap. It would now be great if he backed up his words with actions, took on the insane American Right Wing, and left an enduring legacy.

After election night, I became aware of a vast array of tweets from those seemingly unhappy that Obama had been re-elected. You can see the flurry of right winged bigotry from election night, right here. As for today, it seems there has been another outpouring of insane, bigoted, putrid right winged sentiment coming out of the Twittersphere that i’ve come across. Here are a few of my favourites:

- Where would these far right lunatics be, without referring to someone they don’t like as either Hitler or Stalin? This genius goes one step further and suggests President Obama is both Hitler and Stalin. Communist and Fascist. Quite the achievement!

- Oh and Marx too. Obviously. What with bailing out the auto industry and the banking system. EXACTLY as Marx demands.

- Oh and Saddam too.

- YES! FACT! Except, it isn’t. The Nazis inherited gun restrictions from the former Weimar Republic. Actually, one of the first things Hitler did on coming to power, was to destroy all Union Power. Mitt Romney signalled his support for Ohio’s anti-Union laws in 2012. If you’re going to draw weak links to Hitler, at least get your research straight.

- This is sensible from Ken Stephens. Politics, and whom we elect should not be based on the candidates personal life.

- Oh Ken. The sensibility has suddenly been reduced to a big pile of bigoted ashes.

- It’s true. One mention in Leviticus that homosexuality is ‘abominable’. And it’s not like the Bible also endorses slaver….. oh wait: “When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21)“. I guess I can count on anti-gay Christian Americans to campaign for the re-introduction of slavery.

- Spirit of the Civil War still alive and well in 1860s/2013 Texas, I see.

So. That’s Hitler, Saddam, Stalin, Muslim, Communist, Fascist, Marx, Socialist, Kenyan, and Gay. The Right Winged Nut Jobs really did come out in force today to express their delusions. They provide great material, and i’m always thankful for them.

As to the Obama speech; I am inclined to be far more sceptical than four years ago. He still has to contend with a viciously regressive Republican Congress, and I’m a little concerned that his mention of climate change, and gay rights was simply a way to make the progressives sing his praises. In four years time, I hold out very little hope that there will have been any advancement in dealing with climate change, and no Federal recognition of the right to marry for homosexual couples. The President’s rhetoric really needs to be backed up by strong action, in spite of the opposition from the abusive far right.

Why the Republican Party lost

Ohio. An important State for any Presidential candidate to win. No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. And so you’d expect Republicans to be a bit less malicious in their campaigning tactics when trying to win over potential key voters. And yet, in 2010 Medina County Republicans put out this leaflet. You should probably cast your eyes down to the most telling part, and the epitome of the problem with the Republican Party today:

- Not only is the problem in the horrendous sexism, but it’s also in that…… it isn’t surprising.

Republicans are reeling, trying to figure out what went wrong. From calls that the Romney campaign was not right winged enough; to calls that the Romney campaign was not moderate enough; to calls that Obama rigged the election. To Karl Rove not convinced that Obama actually won the election; To calls that Republicans need to appeal to minorities more. All of which do not address the actual problem; the Republican Party has an ideology problem, both economically and socially. Appealing to ‘minorities’ means nothing unless the underlying bigotry and ignorance is addressed. Cloaking inherent racism, sexism and homophobia behind more creative language hides nothing. The country is more liberal than they think. It is not a suspicious, homophobic, sexist country of multimillionaires.

In the UK the Conservative Party is quite generally known as the Nasty Party. They alienate, they belittle, and they discriminate. They open their mouths to say pretty vicious stuff, and nothing else. The Republicans are no different.

The fact that Republicans manage to attract any female voters strikes me as incredible. Republican news anchor Ann Coulter, reflecting a general Republican anti-women stance once said:

“If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. ”

- Even female Republicans, are anti-women. This is a paradox of right winged America. They seem to insist as much as possible that they are true Patriots. Real Americans. Defenders of the Constitution. And yet, they apparently call for secession whenever a democratic decision does not go their way, they call for the right to vote for women to be revoked, and then they completely ignore the distinct separation between Church and State as laid out by the Founders and their enlightenment thinking, with things like this…..

“We’re bound together by common values. That family is the most important institution in society. That almighty God is the source of all we have.”

This is Marco Rubio. Apparently, he is the Republican answer to appealing to alienated minorities. Here, he is promoting the myth that America was founded a Christian nation, and subtly hinting that non-belief, cannot be considered an American value. Thus, in two quotes, we have seen both women and atheists alienated. So that’s 155.6 million women, and 15% of Americans who claim no religion. That’s a lot of people to alienate. Rubio is following the conservative trend of telling people who does and doesn’t qualify as ‘American’. This in itself, is divisive. It works against the Republicans, because not only are their policies seen as having racist, sexist undertones; the rhetoric confirms it. They are shooting themselves. Rubio is also reflecting the Biblical free will myth. In the Bible this myth is simple; you are free to believe in the Christian God, but if you choose not to, you will be punished for eternity. Suddenly there is force, which means there is no freedom in choice. Republicans are similar. You are FREE in America to believe whatever you wish. But if you don’t believe what Republicans tell you, then you’re not American.
We’re not finished with Coulter yet. She of course, can alienate more people pretty quickly. On the subject of 9/11, Coulter needlessly and baseless-ly said:

If Chicago had been hit, I assure you New Yorkers would not have cared. What was stunning when New York was hit was how the rest of America rushed to New York’s defense. New Yorkers would have been like, “It’s tough for them; now let’s go back to our Calvin Klein fashion shows.”

- So now, that’s women, Atheists and the entire State of New York.
It may be unfair to pick on Coulter. She is not representative of the Republican Party. She describes herself as conservative, which of course the Republicans are also. But she isn’t a Republican congress person or Presidential candidate. She says ridiculous shit, because she has books to sell. She perpetuates stupidity, for financial gain. It isn’t Patriotism it is right winged anti-democratic solypsism, with its very very narrow understanding of what is decent and correct. The abusive levels these people will stoop for commercial purposes is possibly more telling that their disturbingly outdated views themselves.
Another commercial bigot, is Rush Limbaugh. On the subject of women, Limbaugh said:

“So Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch

- Wealthy white conservative attitudes to women are simply a reactive response from a modern liberal inclusive culture that they very much dislike, because it threatens their unjustifiably privileged position in life.

We can however find just as much disturbing sentiment from Republicans in congress and Presidential candidates pretty easily, along with groups that support and fight for them. They are very dogmatic. Like a religion that never updates with the times. The Republicans, are a religious ideology unto themselves.

The Republican controlled State Senate of North Carolina voted to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Their main support group, “North Carolina Values Coalition”, whose benevolent overlord Tami Fitzgerald said this:

“the people of North Carolina would rise up and vote to keep the opposition from redefining traditional marriage.”

As i’ve noted before, using the term ‘traditional marriage’ comes with an intense amount of problems. Hopefully (and I will email and ask them this) they are going to be consistent and support Biblical marriage in its entirety. As I noted in a previous entry:#

Republicans must be against marriage, if the woman isn’t a virgin. As advocated in Deuteronomy 22:13-21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to have multiple concubines as justified in 2 Sam 5:13 and
2 Chron 11:21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his kidnapped captive (though, only after shaving her head, obviously) as permitted in Deut. 21:11-13.
Republicans must support the right for a man to trade his wife, as property. As advocated in RUTH 4:5-10.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his rape victim, if he pays for her: Deut. 22:28.
Let’s be consistent Republicans!

- I look forward to seeing the bigoted bullshit of Tami Fitzgerald support the right for a man to trade his wife as property. Though, judging by Republican attitudes to women, it wouldn’t actually surprise me.
Her organisation went on to just invent ‘facts’:

“….the overwhelming body of social science evidence establishes that children do best when raised by their married mother and father.”

- This simply isn’t true. Along with the idea that sexuality is a choice, or can be cured this is an assertion completely discredited by the American Psychological Association. Here:

Do children of lesbian and gay parents have more problems with sexual identity than do children of heterosexual parents?For instance, do these children develop problems in gender identity and/or in gender role behavior? The answer from research is clear: sexual and gender identities (including gender identity, gender-role behavior, and sexual orientation) develop in much the same way among children of lesbian mothers as they do among children of heterosexual parents. Few studies are available regarding children of gay fathers.

Do children raised by lesbian or gay parents have problems in personal development in areas other than sexual identity?For example, are the children of lesbian or gay parents more vulnerable to mental breakdown, do they have more behavior problems, or are they less psychologically healthy than other children? Again, studies of personality, self-concept, and behavior problems show few differences between children of lesbian mothers and children of heterosexual parents. Few studies are available regarding children of gay fathers.

Are children of lesbian and gay parents likely to have problems with social relationships?For example, will they be teased or otherwise mistreated by their peers? Once more, evidence indicates that children of lesbian and gay parents have normal social relationships with their peers and adults. The picture that emerges from this research shows that children of gay and lesbian parents enjoy a social life that is typical of their age group in terms of involvement with peers, parents, family members, and friends.

Are these children more likely to be sexually abused by a parent or by a parent’s friends or acquaintances?There is no scientific support for fears about children of lesbian or gay parents being sexually abused by their parents or their parents’ gay, lesbian, or bisexual friends or acquaintances.

- So, what we are saying is that Tami Fitzgerald is simply homophobic. Her baseless bullshit is nothing but prejudice dressed up as reason. To ban two loving people from marriage, on the grounds of nothing but a book of fairy tales and private prejudice, is disgusting.
Similarly, Paul Ryan said that Mitt Romney would be a great “defender of marriage”. Against what? We all know he means against gay marriage. Which suggests he means that a gay couple willing to get marriage, let’s say, these two sweet old ladies, Cathy Glass and Carmeh Lawler….

….. are trying to ‘attack’ …. ‘traditional’ marriage. The language is important here. ‘Attack’. It suggests there is a purpose behind the desire of Cathy and Carmeh to get marriage… who have been together for 30 years….. other than just for love. Again, the prejudice is disgusting. The Republicans are on the wrong side of history, again. The opposition to gay equality will be viewed in much the same way as the opposition to civil rights 50 years ago is now viewed. Regressive, bigoted, hate filled and wrong.

So far….

Women.

The entire State of New York.

Atheists.

Gay people.

Children of gay parents.
Republicans are really racking up the list.

Of course we know Republicans main claim this election was to be on the side of the middle class. The mask slowly begins to slide when you note the way that Republicans have dealt with labor unions in the GOPs quest to turn Capitalism back to the industrial revolution. Firstly, we should take a look at the advancements made by labor unions and we should also note that these advancements were certainly not made with the support of people like Mitt Romney…
End of child labour; healthcare insurance; collective bargaining for wages; minimum wage; paid over time; 8 hour work day; outlawing of job discrimination based on race, colour, sex, or national origin; workers comp benefits for people injured at work. All of these gains would be entirely erased tomorrow, if Romney’s entitlement society for the wealthy were to prevail. They certainly had to be fought for.

So how to Republicans treat unions? The Republicans in 2011 voted through a number of bills with the express intention of weakening unions. Given that their main donors are massive corporate entities famed for shipping jobs abroad and keeping wages as low as physically possible, it isn’t a surprise. But these were not all bills designed to attack union leaders, or excessive union power (of which, there isn’t any). These were bills strictly designed to make it more difficult for workers to join unions in the first place. And it is all hidden behind the idea that only big business has a workers best interests at heart. Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan said that unions:

“….taken actions that directly oppose American job providers.”

- The problem is, those ‘job providers’ main concern is profit, not person. Unions provide the person, not profit counterbalance. They are essential. To undermine unions, to underfund unions, to make it difficult for people to join unions – the very backbone of the middle class – is, well, a Corporate/Romney wet dream.
If we were to travel back to the 1950s labor unions were a positive part of everyday life. Corporations and unions acted together in a balanced way, as to be beneficial to everyone. Around the 1970s, that changed, and corporate America took on unions viciously. Mainly Republicans. And mainly for two reasons; large Corporate backing demanded it, and it weakened the Democrat Party. Interestingly, the media helped to distort or ignore the viewpoint of organised labor…. On the subject of the Delphi buyout, Progressive Review published how many paragraphs in the Washington Post, Detroit News and NY Times you had to read before reading the viewpoint of a union;
NY Times: 26 paragraphs.
Detroit Times: 22 paragraphs.
Washington Post: 11 paragraphs.
There has been a concerted effort to undermine unions for the past thirty years, and a Republican Party will not stop until unions have virtually no power. For some reason, even after the biggest economic crises bought on by deregulated greed of the ‘job creators’… the Republican Party is insistent that these people are our saviours.

Interestingly, nations with the highest Union membership; Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Belgium….. all came out of the economic crises, pretty strong. And Denmark, Finland and Norway all came top of the UNs ‘World Happiness Report’, which takes into account job security, quality of work and life, and opportunities. Also, they are the most Atheist countries in the World, and have universal healthcare. I’m afraid the US comes in at 11th place. Perhaps looking to that EVIL SOCIALIST EUROPE! for inspiration isn’t all that bad an idea afterall.

Federal Judge James Leon Holmes, nominated by the Bush administration, once said of rape:

“Concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.”

- That’s right. He made a joke. He of course is only one of many Republicans who don’t particularly like rape victims. And it isn’t a new phenomena of stupidity either. In 1995 Republican Rep. Henry Aldridge told the House Appropriations committee:

“The facts show that people who are raped — who are truly raped — the juices don’t flow, the body functions don’t work and they don’t get pregnant. Medical authorities agree that this is a rarity, if ever.”

- There’s that appeal to ‘facts’ again. Republican facts. Not regular ACTUAL facts. And what was the context? That’s right, cutting funds to help poorer women get access to abortion. A disgusting manipulation of facts, to achieve a disgusting end. In fact, all medical institutions entirely refute the extraordinary claim Aldridge made here.
We all know that this line of reasoning is still alive, after over fifteen years since Aldridge made his ridiculous statement. Todd Akin said:

If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something.

- I’m not sure what qualifies as ‘legitimate rape’, other than exposing Akin’s own prejudicial lack of trust in women. And also, AGAIN with the inventing ‘facts’. Really, stop that!
The Republican position on ‘life’ seems to be pretty clear.

Onto race.
Usually I am not surprised by Republican racist quotes. But I must confess, this one shocked me. Arkansas State Rep. Jon Hubbard wrote a book in which he refers to slavery as:

A blessing in disguise.

He goes on to say that it is a blessing, because African Americans were:

“Rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”

Rewarded! He actually said that. Rewarded. By their superiors.
And so it goes on….
Kansas State Senate Speaker Mike O’Neal sent an email to House Republicans which referred to Michelle Obama as “Mrs YoMamma”. This is the same Mike O’Neal who sent an email to friends regarding the President, quoting a Biblical passage which states:

7 When he is judged, let him come forth guilty,
And let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few;
Let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless
And his wife a widow.
10 Let his children wander about and beg;
And let them seek sustenance [a]far from their ruined homes.

He isn’t the only slightly insane racist Republican. Marily Davenport, an elected member of the Orange County Republican Party and central committee sent an email with the title “No birth certificate… now you know why!” with this picture attached:

- As well as this blatant racism, there is an underlying and subtle institutional sentimental racism behind certain Republican shows of disrespect from the moment Obama was elected. From heckling him in Congress, to refusing to meet at the White House for budget negotiations, to storming out of negotiations, to John Boehner being the first Speaker in history to deny the President’s request on a specific date to address a joint session of Congress. There is a mass of disrespect, as if the President simply isn’t worthy of their respect.

During the 1970s, the Nixon Administration employed the Southern Strategy in order to win over white voters who traditonally voted Democrat in the past, by appealing to Southern racism. The Nixon strategist who came up with the Souther Strategy, Kevin Phillips, in 1970 said this:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that…but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

- This has been the position ever since.
The Senator for South Carolina Lindsey Graham in 2012 echoed the Southern Strategy of the Nixon years with this little gem of racist wisdom:

“The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

Though it is now masked more creatively; economic opposition to affirmative action. Or Bill O’Reilly’s underhanded racist and sexist remark that:

“The white establishment is now the minority, and the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

…. the stoking of the racist flames for electoral purposes is still a strong tactic of the Republican Party. O’Reilly went on to say that 20 years ago a candidate like Romney would have beaten Obama. And it’s true. We were still getting used to the idea of Neo-liberalism. Everyone loved it. It was going to trickle wealth down. Everyone was going to benefit. Communities would be lifted out of poverty…blah blah.. utter bullshit. We now know what that economic plan actually achieved; the wealthy like Romney got wealthier, exported jobs oversees, put most of their money into off-shore accounts to avoid actually having to help sustain a social safety net and ladder for others to climb, and then investing in destructive stock market deals that eventually collapsed and plummeted America into a deep recession. The only people who actually believe they are entitled to government handouts, are the very wealthy who for some odd reason have it into their minds that they made their wealth themselves, did not require a stable infrastructure of roads, policing, fire protection, schooling, health protection etc as a framework for wealth to be amassed, and so now having taken everything the well funded system offered them, insist they should not have to pay back into it to sustain it for the next generation. This is the entitlement society.

And do we really believe that Goldman Sachs, Adelson Drug Clinic, Bain Capital, Crow Holdings, Las Vegas Sands and other top corporate Republican Party donors didn’t want ‘stuff’ had Romney been elected? Did they simply donate out of the goodness of their heart? Las Vegas Sands spent $20,512,550. Pretty sure they could have ‘created’ thousands of jobs with those wasted funds.

We know that the by-product of tax cuts for the wealthy, especially in the south, is that African Americans get hit the hardest. From the 1960s to today, blatant racism through political process is deplored. So there are more abstract ways to achieve essentially the same racist policies based on white privilege. There is the subtle hint by people like O’Reilly that minorities like African Americans are the problem, due to Welfare. And so cutting entitlements and safety nets certainly has a racial element. We forget that the very reason welfare payments have risen, is because poorer African American communities were targeted for sub-prime mortgages that eventually pushed millions of people out of work, and unable to find work. This has nothing to do with a ‘culture of dependency’ it is simply a safety net for when the very Social-Darwinist system that people like Romney advocate so vehemently, fails miserably, but does not affect those who amassed fortunes when times were good.

As I noted in a previous article on race in America today:

Public Policy Polling of Raleigh North Carolina, found that 46% of Republican voters in Mississippi think interracial marriage should be illegal. 14% said they weren’t sure. I cannot comprehend that number. It does indeed show that race is an issue, and specifically with Republican voters.

- Whilst it is more subtle racism, the Republicans still give of the atmosphere of racism.

And of course, it is impossible not to mention Mitt Romney’s description of half the American electorate being those who want to live of the Government.

So, that’s

Women.

The entire State of New York.

Atheists.

Gay people.

Children of gay parents.

Anyone in a Union.

Anyone who has had an abortion.

Anyone who isn’t white.

Anyone who isn’t rich.

And then there is of course… appealing to irrational fear. Evolution will end my religious freedom ARGH!!! Gay people will end my religious freedom also ARGH!!!! Universal healthcare will kill my nan ARGH!!!! Putting top rate of tax back to what it was before Bush IS COMMUNISM ARGH!!! They are taking away my freedom!! ARGH!!! And you ask “How are they taking away your freedom” to vacant expressions from empty heads who simply repeat what Fox News has told them. Thinking people do not like being associated with a party of irrational fear.

The most disturbing thing about the Republican Party is their outward claim to be the party for freedom, liberty and individual rights, yet their complete abhorrence of anyone who isn’t like them. They are therefore willing to restrict the most fundamental rights; love, marriage, control of ones own body, as well as opportunity. To achieve this, there are three points of attack:
1. Subtly claim that the privilege currently given out to white, rich, heterosexual, christian males may be under threat. Offer no evidence for this. For example, there is no reason for anyone to believe that allowing Cathy and Carmeh to marry would somehow destroy Bill O’Reilly’s marriage.
2. Link it to “Being American”. Again, pose the anti-thesis of this line of reasoning, as ‘anti-American’. As if your life, or your freedoms are under threat.
3. Read selected Biblical passages. Ignore all context of passage, ignore surrounding passages, ignore all passages that you do not like.
4. Know that your audience is probably too busy to look up the evidence for what you’re saying, so just say every so often “the research is clear!” and apply it to your argument. Whether it’s clear or not.
They are willing to invent ‘facts’ and distort scientific research for their own horrid little bigoted agenda. It isn’t that they don’t know how to talk to minorities; it is simply that those minorities have long been defined as the enemies of America, by a very hostile Republican Party.

To appeal to a wider audience, they can’t just change Republican Party rhetoric to be a bit less vicious. They must change their fundamental principles. The idea of what an “American” is, they must no longer be so arrogant as to claim a monopoly on. They cannot keep up attacks on unionised labor. They must not speak of women as if they are 2nd to men. They must not allow Christian fundamentalism to take over the party. And most of all, they must not act and speak like they are the landlords of America, simply allowing African Americans and Latinos to live in their US. They must, in short, completely change. I am going to say this will take far longer than four years.

Bad day for bigots

The Twittersphere is alive today, as it was last night, with the incoherent, fact-less ramblings of the bigots trying to grasp what happened to their crusade to turn America back sixty years. And we know why.
Obama wins the Presidency.
Tammy Baldwin is elected first openly gay Senator, for Wisconsin.
Gay marriage is legalised in Maine and Maryland by popular vote.
And recreational use of maurijuana is part legalised in Colorado and Washington State.
For liberal America, this has been a great day for progress.
It is, however, the worst nightmare for crackpot conservatives, whose bullshit amplifier; Fox News has spent the past four years referring to anyone slightly left of Hitler, as Communist, Marxist, Nazi, Muslim, anti-white, anti-American, Socialist, terrorist sympathisers in a seemingly ineffective attempt to scare people on a constant basis. Nevertheless, some people are hanging on to the bigotry that was dealt such a swift blow last night. Here are a few of my personal favourites:

- Hitler? Really? We are seriously suggesting President Obama….is similar…. to Adolf Hitler? REALLY?
As pointed out in an earlier article, it is incredibly easy to draw tenuous comparisons between any politician and Adolf Hitler. For example, the first thing Hitler did on coming to power, was to completely destroy all union power. Similarly, Mitt Romney pledged his total support for Ohio’s anti-union laws, he has also claimed that teachers unions ‘deaden’ student achievement. Clearly this means that Romney is a nazi who wants to kill 6,000,000 Jews and enslave the World. And by clearly, I mean…. not at all, because it’s massively fucking irrational.

Normally i’d ignore this, but I thought – perhaps naively – that I might engage one of these insane right wingers in order to try and figure out why Obama is basically Hitler. So I did. I asked why Obama is a ‘socialist’ or a ‘nazi’. The response? ….

- Oh, well that clears it up! Obama is like Hitler because Europe is too used to America being the backbone of our defence. How could I not have seen this before? Obamanazi!

The ramblings continued:

- His first comment is of course ludicrous. The point being, that taxing the wealthy is somehow punishment. The ignorance comes from the fact that this mentality basis itself on the idea that success, is entirely individual. It chooses to ignore the public schools that pay teachers next to nothing to produce an educated workforce, or the public funded roads that the successful use to transport, the police protecting their property. Tax is the price you pay for belonging to a civilised society. The most fundamental principle of which, is protection of the most vulnerable. It is not punishing success, it is helping to maintain the ladder for future generations to climb, rather than kicking it away so that people like Mitt Romney can afford a new yacht. Capitalism is by far the best method to allocate resources efficiently. But at its core, it is amoral. You regulate, and you tax, to prevent it from becoming immoral.
Onto the second point………Just like Hitler! Lying means he is just like Hitler. I cannot remember a time when a politician didn’t lie a little. Even before Hitler. There is quite obviously a different motive for someone to relate a politician they dislike, using a rather weak link, to Hitler. It is to perpetuate irrational fear. Nothing more. So I pointed out the massive inconsistencies in the Romney campaign rhetoric; which as pointed out in a previous article on here, is full of horrid little manipulations…… to which I was given the incredible reply:

- Yup. It is perfectly acceptable for a Presidential challenger to lie and manipulate, purely because he isn’t President yet. It is perfectly acceptable, apparently, for someone to manipulate you, to practically steal your democratic right to vote, on the basis of bullshit. That’s absolutely fine apparently, as long as he’s a contender.

He then finished his term as King of Bullshit Mountain, at about 1am British time, with this little gem:

- Naturally, a few hours after he posted this, I am smug.

A few other glorious tweets from the crazed American Right Wing:

- Right Winged American Patriotism. Swear allegiance to the Constitution and the democracy it so beautifully created….. unless things don’t go your way. And then, invoke the memory of slavery. Brilliant life choice.

- So, that’s half the American electorate who, according to Romney, are government dependent, and one girl who wants an abortion. Seems legit.

- Anti-homosexuality tweet from Christian fundamentalist group with very little support. Thankfully, there are very few anti-homosexuality tweets out there, when Tammy Baldwin had been pronounced the winner for the Wisconsin Senate seat. 99% of tweets were congratulatory, and supportive, hailing progress.

- God wanted you to vote Romney. Jesus is a massive fan of private health insurance.

- Okay…. Mein Fuhrer, suggests Hitler. Hitler was of course in control of a Party whose main goal was a State based on Nationalist principles built on the idea of a superior race. The economy was used to promote the image of the power of the State through the military. It was vehemently opposed to communism; a system based on the idea of total egalitarianism in which an economy reflects the necessity to disintegrate class structures, and has absolutely nothing to do with race, the military, the myth of the ‘Nation’ or anything else that a Nazi government desires. And yet, this crazed Right Winger merges the two polar opposite concepts, into one. And what’s the reason? Again, scare tactics. In reality, President Obama is can in no reasonable way be described as either a nazi, or a communist (even if Glenn Beck tells you differently).

- All true. Except…

Prime Minister, not President.

HE, is a SHE.

She is an Atheist.

- So in fact, none of it is true. But a career at Fox News seems imminent for this young lady, whose ‘make-shit-up’ strategy fits their profile perfectly.
Also, Australia has universal healthcare, no death penalty, evolution is taught in pretty much all schools, creationism is rejected, and compulsory voting. Sounds like an ideal country for right winged anti-universal healthcare, anti-atheism, creationist, death penalty supporting bat-shit crazy Republicans.

So, Romney concedes defeat. Fox News concedes that Obama won fairly. Even Donald Trump isn’t questioning the outcome. Lawyers aren’t questioning the outcome. No one is seriously questioning the outcome. Because that would be ridiculous. Unless of course, you’re an overly dramatic Republican, in denial, in which case….

- I don’t understand what God has to do with this? Are rational thinking people a threat? Let’s not forget that Jefferson was a Deist who did not believe in a personal God who intervenes in human affairs. Benjamin Franklin was an Atheist. And the Constitution and Declaration are specifically pro-enlightenment, and anti-religion in their content. The World is a much better place because of secularism and the ideals of the Englightenment.

- What I have learnt from this entire election from social media, is that the more vehement right winged Americans; whilst acting Patriotic, are actually very very undemocratic, very despotic, and only like it when they have power or their poisonous and largely discredited ideas control everything. They cannot accept defeat. They threaten. They scare. Their rhetoric is baseless but full of fear. They have no concept of ‘socialism’. If they truly understood it, they would accept that no President can be regarded as ‘Socialist’ since the beginning of the Union. Probably closest, was Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, every 20th Century Republican pre-Reagan, would be considered ‘socialist’ by todays’ Right winged American standards. To associate universal healthcare with the sort of feared Socialist totalitarian dictatorships of old, is disingenuous and a manipulation of facts (the fact being, that every industrialised country with a nationalised health service, out performs the US private system by a huge margin on every important measure; child mortality, life expectancy, per capita cost). Obama is simply a conservative in the old Disraeli tradition. One Nation Conservatism. He is in no way a socialist. He is just not a free market fundamentalist that appears to have infected the Republican Party as of late.
America, according to these people should always be ruled by overly religious, bigoted, free-market-fundamentalists….. nothing else is acceptable, and if America doesn’t vote in line with that, then they get angry, and threatening, and violent.

I am happy and relieved that the majority of the American public, have voted to defeat such a venomous ideology. They have quite overwhelmingly voted for progress, for tolerance, for dignity and for the majority rather than the wealthy few. Something we in Britain seem to have chosen to ignore, in 2010.

Four more years.

Election Day 2012

It is telling, just how desperate Republicans have become at this time, when ex Republican presidential candidate, endorser of Santorum, and ex-Reagan secretary for Planning and Budget in the Department of Education posts an article on his facebook wall accusing Obama of being a Marxist simply for using the term ‘Forward’:

The intense lack of focus on issues, on offering any sort of solutions is telling. Bauer offers nothing. No new ideas, no ingenuity. Simple, and ridiculous weak attacks on wording.
Bauer is a Christian. Deeply Christian. He believes secularism is destroying Christian values. In an article for ‘Campaign for Working Families’ Bauer states:

“The removal of the only reference to God from the Democratic Party platform is telling. Under Barack Obama the Democratic Party has become more secular and more hostile to faith-based voters. On issues ranging from the sanctity of life to traditional marriage, Obama’s Democratic Party has embraced positions contrary to the values of heartland America, values rooted in our Judeo-Christian traditions and expressed in our founding documents. Values voters will respond in November.”

Now, leaving aside the fact that America’s founding documents are a symbol of secularism and the Enlightenment… not Christian values; if we’re judging people by their wording, as Bauer did by posting that article, he must be consistent, here’s a speech from Hitler, in 1933:

“Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity.”

- Sounds a lot like every speech Bauer ever makes. If he has the nerve to suggest Obama is a Marxist because he used the term ‘forward’ in his campaign, then we must be consistent and say that Gary L Bauer is a Nazi. Probably Hitler himself. See how easy it is? This has been the Republican strategy for about four years.

Onto the main topic of this article.
Today is election day in the US. And whilst most of the World cannot fathom why any reasonable human being would vote for a bigoted and economically illiterate Romney Presidency; the polls are pretty even. I even heard a suggestion that New Hampshire might be the State to play kingmaker.

I laid out in a previous article Why the Romney economic plan based on ‘job creators’ is a manipulation of fact and devoid of all reason. Today i’d quite like to lay out the accomplishments of President Obama. We know he hasn’t always been the President that expectation demanded of him back in 2008, but that’s not to say he hasn’t achieved a heck of a lot of good, and progress in the past four years despite two years of Republican (and right winged Christian) attempts to derail his agenda at every possible opportunity; usually without regard for the national interest.

Obama’s biggest achievement must be the Healthcare Act. Now that the fear has died down… fear created and perpetuated by a Republican Party that consider anything slightly left of Mussolini to be “Socialism”, people seem to be starting to like the idea of ‘Obamacare’. Of course, it isn’t ideal. The ideal is universal healthcare. We can bicker about “Omg it’s socialism!!!” all we want. We can even bicker about if government is capable of providing healthcare, on a very fundamental basis if we want. But we must look at the facts. Here is what the World Health Organisation says about two systems. The American private insurer system (before Obamacare), and the British National Healthcare system.

Life Expectancy M/F
USA: 76/81
UK: 78/82

Distribution of causes of death among children aged <5 years (%)
USA – Injuries: 22
UK – Injuries: 4

Case detection rate for all forms of tuberculosis (%):
UK: 94
USA: 89

Under-five mortality rate (probability of dying by age 5 per 1000 live births):
UK: 5
USA 8

Adult mortality rate (probability of dying between 15 and 60 years per 1000):
UK: 77
USA: 106

Per capita total expenditure on health at average exchange rate (US$):
UK: 3285
USA: 7410

General government expenditure on health as a percentage of total government expenditure:
UK: 15.1%
USA: 18.7%

A quick analysis suggests that the UK pays less per capita, our government spends less on our health system than the US, and yet we have “Socialised” healthcare, we’re living longer, and our children are less likely to die at a young age. And yet, all of this is grossly overlooked in favour of ideological dogma regardless of how backward, and ultimately deadly it is. And it isn’t just the UK, look to Sweden, Norway, and any other industrialised, civil society with a universal healthcare model, and you will see similar results. A private healthcare system is not only horrendously barbaric, it doesn’t work.
Obama has made progress in correcting that problem.
For all their concern about the deficit, Republicans choose to ignore the FACT that the Congressional Budget Office stated that ‘Obamacare’ will reduce the deficit. Here, see for yourself: CBO Report. To repeal it, would cost around $230bn. Another CBO report states that in the next ten years, ‘Obamacare’ will cover a further 33,000,000 Americans who otherwise would have no coverage (the very idea of not being covered for healthcare, baffles and disgusts me). Here, see for yourself CBO Report. NOT ONLY THAT but ‘Obamacare’ incentivises small businesses by offering a 50% tax credit, if they insure their workers.
Republicans adding to the deficit, whilst making life harder for average people, whilst enriching wealthy insurers, whilst ignoring small businesses? SURELY NOT!

Republican interest and ‘disgust’ at the size of the Obama stimulus slowly verge on hypocritical when we see who was actually anti-stimulus. Take this man, for example:

This is former House of Reps Republican in Delaware, Mike Castle. He voted to kill the stimulus bill, the health reform bill, financial regulation reform etc etc etc. On the stimulus package, Mike Castle said this:

“We cannot spend our way back to economic prosperity,”

He hates the idea of a stimulating the economy! Doesn’t think government should stimulate the economy. So, obviously he’s going to be consistent in his condemnation, right? Well, no.
… Castle then accepted $5,230,610 of stimulus money, stating:

These grants, totaling more than $5 million, will help the invaluable organizations and programs which are working to help the homeless, hungry, and those facing economic hardship throughout the State.

- Suddenly, government CAN help to eleviate poverty, and hunger, and provide help to the most vulnerable. Republicans oppose programs in order to entice their over privileged support base, and then cowardly support the program when it might win them some votes among the less wealthy in their constituencies.

Every Romney/Republican Speech is a vomit inducing display of feigned patrotism. …. “What would I do?.. Well i’d make America great again!” It seems, if you lack any detailed plan for running the highest office on the planet, then the next best thing is to win over idiots, with sentimental nonsense.

Economically, whilst it’s slow, the US economy is growing. If we contrast that with the austerity lead (Romney-esque) governments across the World, we see a different story. Austerity has failed everywhere. The UK has had to endure three years of it, and so far we’ve had another huge recession (the biggest since the 1950s) no growth over the entire year, and horribly stagnating wages. It fails. The opposite is true of the Obama economy. It is moving in the right direction. If you think slow Keynesian inspired growth is bad, then you’re REALLY going to hate Romney inspired recession.

Taxes too high? Well, if you’re a Republican prone to ‘make shit up’ then yes. But, if you rely on evidence, as the Washington Post did, you will see that:

“A USA Today analysis found last year that if we include everything — federal, state, and local taxes, including income, property, sales, and other taxes — the percentage of personal income that’s paid in taxes is still at its lowest level since 1950.”

And since when has it become acceptable, and in fact, preferable, for a ‘business minded’ person to be a President? Businesses are run for profit. People are very much a secondary concern. Democratic accountability does not exist in a business setting. I cannot vote for who runs the gas and electricity companies. I can move to another. Yet, there are very few, and all of them offer poor service. The object is money. It is profit. People become statistics. The interest of business leaders, is to enrich themselves. They are economically illiterate, and dangerous. Their word, it seems, is taken as gospal. This couldn’t be proven any more than in the UK. In 2010, before the general election, 35 of the Nation’s top business leaders signed a petition in support of the Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity plan. They said, quite amusingly:

There is no reason to think that the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget will undermine the recovery. Business is amoral. It is regulated it prevent it becoming immoral. Business minds are self interest. This, of course, is not always a terrible thing. A majority of the time, it works. But at its most fundamental, it is dangerous.

The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.

- Two and a half years later, the ‘pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget’ has absolutely choked off recovery. The private sector has not generated any additional jobs. We hit another recession. And wages stagnated. This is the legacy of listening to those with a ‘business’ mind when it comes to national governance.

The repealing of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell must rank up there with great liberal policies, alongside civil rights legislation of the 1960s (which of course, conservatives opposed). Obama also admitted, tacitly, that he is no longer opposed to gay marriage. This was a risky move, but showed courage and conviction, when faced with such hostile bigotry. Whilst in Michigan, I saw a Republican billboard with “Obama supports gay marriage, and abortion…. do you?” And I thought…. Yes. I do. Because i’m not a crazed Christian bigoted fundamentalist from the 4th Century. To prevent full rights to loving couples, based soley on a very fundamental and selective view of a Biblical passage is so thoroughly beyond the realm of reason, it should be ridiculed, and argued against, and kept as far away from public policy as possible. If we are to continue to believe that the concept of marriage is based entirely on Biblical principles, then, like with Bauer, we must be consistent:
Republicans must be against marriage, if the woman isn’t a virgin. As advocated in Deuteronomy 22:13-21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to have multiple concubines as justified in 2 Sam 5:13 and
2 Chron 11:21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his kidnapped captive (though, only after shaving her head, obviously) as permitted in Deut. 21:11-13.
Republicans must support the right for a man to trade his wife, as property. As advocated in RUTH 4:5-10.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his rape victim, if he pays for her: Deut. 22:28.
Let’s be consistent Republicans!

Gaddafi. Bin Laden. Weakened Mubarak’s position by telling him to reform, or step down. Has not jumped into conflict with Iran, relying instead on diplomacy, but also strong with providing sanctions on Iran by signing into law a bill to punish companies aiding Iran’s petroleum sector.

Between 2010 and 2011, Obama increased Department of Veterans Affairs budget by 26%. Conversely, Paul Ryan suggested cutting aid to Veterans who do not suffer from combat caused medical problems. Essentially, Republicans (strong national defence) are happy to use you to defend the country, and then forget about you when you get home, and paint you as a drain on the economy. Let’s not forget that those cuts to Veterans benefits would be paid for, by a massive tax cut for the wealthiest.

Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act, EPA restrictions on toxic pollution. Omnibus Public Lands Management Act expanding wilderness protection. Cancelled anti-ballistic missile systems set to be placed in Czech and Poland, saving $1.4bn. Kickstarted renewable energy research through stimulus funding on unprecedented scale. Used diplomacy to convince BP to put aside a $20 billion fund for victims of Gulf oil spill, without any power to force them to do so. Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act provides coverage for 4 million more children by raising taxes on tobacco. And for me, one of the most overlooked and yet most vital advancements the US has to thank President Obama for, is the ending of Bush-era restrictions on stem cell research. This is perhaps the most important scientific area of research at the moment. For Republicans to deny it, is a disgrace.

President Obama has achieved a lot in four years, despite Republicans opposing absolutely everything, and ensuring the word ‘Socialism’ is forever attached to anything Obama says or does. It is of course a basic misunderstanding of what Socialism is. The definition becomes irrelevant because the word is enough to strike irrational fear. The use of terms like ‘Socialism’ or the obsession with dethroning the President by suggesting his isn’t American, or any other empty attack point goes to prove nothing more than the fact that the Republican Party has absolutely no solution for any problem. It just wants power.

I cannot believe a country that has come so far forward in four years, would elect to fall twenty years into the past.
This is why I am certain President Obama should be given four more years.

EDIT: And has now been given four more years. Excellent choice America.

“The role of oxygen atoms in supply side economics”

The title of this blog is meaningless. It was composed by cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett to highlight scientific reductionism; the abandonment of theory, laws, interactions, and deeper understanding of the connections between chemistry, physics, and biology and even social sciences in an attempt to unify them all into a category, which almost always leads to the idea of social Darwinism. What Dennett is saying, is that to break down theories to their bare minimum, and then to attach them to other broken down bare minimum theories in an attempt to unify them, is meaningless at best, and very dangerous at worst.

Recently, the musician Frank Turner revealed that whilst his fans quite enjoy his apparently left leaning political ideals – he is actually a Libertarian. He accuses people of not understanding politics, if they believe that from this, he is a Republican/Tory. He also claims that Fascism, is a Left wing phenomena. Here:

“To start with, most people don’t seem to understand what the difference between left and right is. For example, the BNP are a hard left party.”

- For those of you who don’t know, the BNP (British National Party) is a fascist political party based on race. It has ties to neo-nazi groups, and its leader Nick Griffin once said:

Without the White race, nothing matters. Other right-wing parties believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create ‘Black Britons’, while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land.”

- He also denies the holocaust happened, believes that there is a Jewish conspiracy to destroy White Europeans, and is good friends with David Duke. For all intents and purposes, the BNP is a neo-nazi. Fascist, at the very least. Which suggests that Frank Turner believes that Fascism is a product of the Left.

This idea – that ‘National Socialism’ or Fascism are products of the Left – is not new. It represents a deeply reductionist understanding of the political spectrum, dismissing all theory and motive, and ending up with ‘well the Nazi’s controlled the State centrally. And enacted some social protections. As did Communist regimes. Therefore, the Nazi’s are a left wing party‘. It is a very very weak understanding of the difference between Right and Left. For the record, I do not place Fascism on the far right. I think the ‘right’ has changed incalculably over the years. And that both Right and Left are almost entirely different to their early 20th century counterparts. As noted in my previous article, the conservatism of Disraeli is similar to the social democratic principles of a politician like Barack Obama today; of which most of those on the right would consider ‘socialist’, whilst 100 years ago, would certainly not have been. The right has (for the sake of argument, though this assertion is debatable also) become a beacon of free market ideals, mixed with a dose of patriotism/nationalism. In that sense, it is not libertarian, as it seeks to strengthen national borders, rather than diminish them. Libertarianism is specifically the free, unhindered movement of labour, capital and goods. It recognises no national borders.

It is fair to say that Fascism and Socialism may have traits in common; central economic planning for example. But, then, so does Libertarianism and Communism; no government, free association, no borders. But the motives and the differences in organisation are enough to render them entirely at odds. The same is true of Fascism and the Far Left.

Turner seems to be suggesting that central economic planning, means far left. Theory, motive, and overriding political aims are ignored entirely. It is supremely reductionist and ignorant. The blurred lines between left and right when it comes to totalitarian dictatorships are often exploited by both sides. Ignore theory, and motive for just a second, and you can come up with all sorts of comparisons.
We can say that Hitler centralised power, providing a dictatorship of the German people. Marxist-Leninism calls for a similar ruler and control over the economy.
We could say that the Nazi’s use of the term ‘work shy’, followed by punishment for refusing jobs, is eerily similar to right winged austerity rhetoric coming out of the Republican/Tory camp.
We could also point out that Thatcher took on, and crushed the power of the trade unions in the 1980s, as did Reagan. Similarly, after coming to power Hitler banned trade unionism entirely.
Both comparisons miss the point; the reason Fascism differs entirely from the far left, is because it bases its entire being, its essence on a community based on race/nationality. The driving force of history, to Fascists, is shared heritage that must be preserved and perpetuated. The central economy of Fascist States thus works to this end and nothing else. When Hitler replaced the trade union movement and imprisoned German socialist leaders in the mid-30s, he created a new movement in order to control the working classes. He called this the ‘German Labour Force’. The name is significant. Before this, the trade union movement and the German communist/socialist groups associated with it, were international in their scope. They supported their comrades around the World. There were not understood in terms of national borders. Suddenly, they became the ‘German’ labour force. Their whole point, was advancement of the nation state. Alongside this new movement cloaked in patriotism, was a list of ‘un-german activities’. This included striking. Anyone who turned down a job in both the public or private sector was named ‘work shy’ and imprisoned. 8.3% of the unemployed were conscripted. It is important to note that a Fascist State depends on the strength of its armed forces, this is Nationalism, not socialism. Here is a song sung by the new ‘German Labour Force’….

“We demand from ourselves service to the end, even when no eyes are upon us.
We know that we should love our Fatherland more than our own life.
We vow that no one shall outdo us in loyalty,
That our life shall be one great labour service for Germany.
So in this solemn hour we pray for blessing on the oath we take,
We thank thee, Fuhrer, that we have now seen thee,
Do thou behold us as thine own creation?
May our hearts ever beat with thy heart’s pulses, Our lives find inspiration in thy love,
Behold us here! Thy Germany are we.”

- This highlights, again, the difference between Fascism and the far left. The far left bases its existence on class. It stands to obliterate class, ending in a completely classless society. Class is the driving force. Race, nationality, religion, sexuality and most other social constructs are not important. This is in stark contrast to what we see in this song. The German Labour Force had a purpose. That purpose was the advancement of the nation. The line: “We know that we should love our Fatherland more than our own life” is the key to the difference between Fascism and the far-left. The far-left is more often than not, completely obliterated by Fascist forces. The Fascism of Hitler attempted to destroy the far-left…. the Fascism of Saddam attempted to destroy the far-left. Fascism cannot abide the far-left. The two are vehemently opposed.

The Nazi Charter of Labour does not grant total control over the means of production to the workers, as you would expect if the Nazi’s truly were a party of the far-left. Instead, it states that the ‘leader of the enterprise’ (also known as the employer:

“……..makes the decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise.”

- This, along with the banning of trade unions, cut wages (from 20.4 to 19.5 cents an hour for skilled labour, and from 16.1 to 13 cents an hour for unskilled labour), the banning of strikes, the outlawing of collective bargaining, and the move to make the labour force a cog in the Nationalist machinery suggests unequivically that referring to the Nazi’s as a far-left party, could not be more ignorant of historical fact and the environment in which the left had to exist under a Nazi leadership.

Let us also not forget who supported, and who opposed Fascism. Communists and Socialists across the World opposed the Nazi’s. Between 1933 and 1939 150,000 Communists were imprisoned by the Nazis purely for being Far-left. A further 30,000 were executed. The oldest Communist party in Germany, the KDP started in 1919 (the biggest outside of Russia) was declared illegal by Hitler in 1933. All Communist publications were closed down. Other Socialist groups – The Baum Group, Red Orchestra, Home Front, the Uhrig Group – were routinely terrorised by the Nazis, imprisoned and executed. In 1944, there was a workers uprising in an attempt to inspire a socialist revolution, in which 200,000 workers were arrested. This isn’t far-left.
And yet, the support seemed to come not only from the Catholic Church, but also from big business. The Fascists in Spain were being aided by Ford and DuPont. Standard Oil also worked with Franco. US Steel and Alcoa supplied the Fascists with steel.
An exert from the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1974 stated:

In Germany, for example, General Motors and Ford became an integral part of the Nazi war efforts. GM’s plants in Germany built thousands of bomber and jet fighter propulsion systems for the Luftwaffe at the same time that its American plants produced aircraft engines for the U.S. Army Air Corps….
Ford was also active in Nazi Germany’s prewar preparations. In 1938, for instance, it opened a truck assembly plant in Berlin whose “real purpose,” according to U.S. Army Intelligence, was producing “troop transport-type” vehicles for the Wehrmacht. That year Ford’s chief executive received the Nazi German Eagle (first class).
On the ground, GM and Ford subsidiaries built nearly 90 percent of the armored “mule” 3-ton half-trucks and more than 70 percent of the Reich’s medium and heavy-duty trucks. These vehicles, according to American intelligence reports, served as “the backbone of the German Army transportation system.”….
After the cessation of hostilities, GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing… Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne.

- Are we saying that GM, and Ford are also far-left? Seriously?

Glenn Beck once claimed that ‘social justice’ was a term used by both the left and the Nazis, in an attempt to draw links between the two. And yet, one of the main strands of Nazism; harsh restrictions on trade unionism was adopted by the American Right Wing of which Beck belongs. It is illegal in the US for unions to ask other unions to picket alongside them. In 2001 a contractor named Ruzicka Electric hired to build a student centre at Lindenwood University were picketed by the union representing their staff for paying too low wages. In support of the union, other unions working at Lindenwood picketed alongside them. The Eighth Court and Supreme Court ruled that:

The picketing will be unlawful if there is an expectation or a hope or a desire that employees of the secondary employer will be induced or encouraged to take concerted action to quit working behind the picket line…Ruzicka Electric presented evidence that Local 1 agents, acting as observers at the neutral gate, engaged in picketing activity, asking neutral employees to refuse to work. If believed, this evidence establishes Local 1 engaged in unlawful secondary activity.

- It is thus illegal to ‘expect’ or ‘hope’ that another union might picket alongside your union. If Beck was truly anti-Nazi, he would recognise that limits to unionism is not only undemocratic, it is totalitarian in principle.

Motive is the key.

Economic centralising is meaningless without a purpose. The purpose of the Fascist centralised state is perpetuation of the Nation based on perceived heritage – be it race, religion, or any other man-made social phenomena that they claim is a natural way to order society. All economic planning in a Fascist centralised economy is geared toward the advancement of the Nation. It is a war economy. By contrast Left wing economic centralisation does not hold the Nation, or race to be a great natural truth that must be protected and advanced. It works to create a more equal society based on wealth distribution. It is international in its approach to social relations, and has absolutely no regard for perceived social heritage.

The Nazi’s certainly pushed social policies, and abhorred Capitalism when it suited them (we can call this left wing, if we wish), but they also promoted Nationalistic principles (we can call this right wing, if we wish). We can find Left leaning policies and rhetoric coming out of Fascist States, we can just as easily find Right leaning policy and rhetoric coming out of Fascist States.

Turner, whilst insisting that it is the rest of the World that doesn’t particularly understand political spectrum, makes a hugely ironic mistake. In an interview with ‘Moon and Back music’, he says:

“I consider myself a libertarian”

And yet, in 2011, in an interview with ‘Huck Magazine’ he says:

“I’ve got no problem with using taxes to pay for essential things like defence or the basics of a healthcare system.”

- It is my understanding of Libertarianism, that they believe taxation to be evil. A Libertarian system would include no taxation whatsoever. No healthcare system. No publicly funded anything. Libertarianism calls for free association without state coercion. It is the belief that taxation is theft (seriously ridiculous) and all government should be voluntarily funded, rather than collectively (because collective = evil). It is based on the premise that all wealth is individually obtained, and that the owner of wealth has no duty toward the rest of society. It is the ultimate in Hobbesian hell. A Libertarian’s fundamental beliefs are that individuals should be free to acquire property, without any State coercion, and form voluntary associations paid for by the individuals within the group, if they wish. The moment you believe in a tax payer funded program of any sort, you are not a Libertarian. Frank Turner is not a Libertarian, if he believes in any sort of state funded ‘basics of a healthcare system’. He’s just a little more Right Winged than Thatcher.

Turner makes the very fundamental mistake that a lot of commentators make when they attempt to attribute labels to political ideas; they reduce the complexity of methods and motives and aims and the roles of institutions, down to their simplest explanations. They do this, because they fail to note that ideology is dogmatic; free from the context in which they are placed. Whether a country be rich, poor, racist, liberal, democratic or totalitarian…. to ideologues, it doesn’t matter. We see this in the way that Communism was forced upon a largely unprepared agricultural Russia in 1917. The Nazi’s were neither a party of the left, nor the right. They incorporated methods for both, their motives were strictly Nationalistic, their aims were oppressive if they came into conflict with anti-Nationalist forces. This is neither a doctrine permitted by Marxism, or promoted by Friedman-ite New Right. Whilst the far-left strives for human equality, Nazism strived for human inequality in which the group (white German’s in this case) are superior.

Frank Turner, does not understand the very basics of political thought.

During the Bush years, Keith Olberman of MSNBC called Bush a Fascist. During Obama’s Presidency, Fox News have attempted to draw links between Obama and Fascism. It is simply propaganda in a simplistic attempt to discredit the Right or the Left, using very loose comparisons lacking any sort of context, without much thought and absolutely no analysis, drawn from flawed reductionism.

The myth of the job creators

This is my second time in the US. I’m currently in a house in Michigan, reading a leaflet posted through the door from the Romney campaign. The right winged rhetoric is as poignant on every line of text as it has ever been. I’m not sure why we call it right winged. Prior to the Thatcherite revolution, the right were markedly more Keynesian than anything else. One nation conservatism was far closer to what Barack Obama is today, than the conservatism of Mitt Romney. Most one nation conservatives believed the rich had a moral duty to protect the poor. Disraeli passed a plethora of social reform; the Employers and Workmen Act made it possible for employees to sue their employers if the employer broke a contract. The Factory Act expanded regulation beyond anything seen before; it prevented children under 10 being employed, it set maximum working hours for women, and it set compulsory education for children up to 10 years old. The Public Health Act set minimum requirements for house building including running water and internal drainage. Disraeli was a Conservative Prime Minister. Can you imagine Mitt Romney proposing any sort of tough regulation on the extremities of Capitalism? In the eyes of the 21st century right wing; Disraeli was a terrible socialist. In the eyes of the 21st century right wing; every President pre-Reagan, was a terrible socialist.
The point being, Conservative governments have not always been addicted to horrendous free market anti-government dogma.

The leaflet posted through the door makes clear several times that Romney is committed to free market fundamentalism. His is simply an extension of new right thinking. He isn’t new, he isn’t presenting a credible plan for growth. He is rehashing the same tired old Friedman-ite economic philosophy that has dominated Western thought for the past thirty years, and has failed miserably every time. It fails, because it is ideology set apart from, and applied to a nation regardless of the contemporary economic or social context. We see the failure again in the UK. Since coming to power the epitome of new right economic thinking have forced through economic austerity leading necessarily to high unemployment, stagnating wages, rising poverty rates, increased gap between rich and poor, and most tellingly of all; the biggest double dip recession since the 1950s. That is the legacy of the myth of the job creators.

We have called it supply-side, we have called it trickle-down, now the rhetoric has moved on to labeling anyone with money as a ‘job creator’. This is a fallacious argument for several reasons…

I recently started up my own small business. As you’d expect, business isn’t exactly booming in the current climate. The reason for this lack of business isn’t the fact that I need a tax break. I really don’t. The reason for that is the fact that by cutting social programmes that helped those on low and middle incomes, the people and families affected no longer have enough, if any disposable income to spend on little luxuries. Instead, they work to survive and nothing else. Three years ago, a family with a teenager who went to college, could rely on the Educational Maintenance Allowance given to students who stay on into higher education for their food, and their travel. I know this, because I received EMA. It paid my petrol to and from college every day, as well as my food. I also worked part time in the evenings and at weekends, for extra money to spend on luxuries…. like the kind offered by my Photography business. Luxuries keep a consumer economy running. By taking away EMA, that little bit extra is lost from the pockets of the young. Which means they spend less. Which has a knock on effect in which businesses take less money, because there is less money. And so they lay off employees. Who are now on unemployment benefits. But unemployment benefits that have been cut. So they have less money again. And so the cycle continues.The point being, my business, whilst it is staying afloat, is struggling not because I need a tax cut, but because demand has been completely wiped out.

By giving me a tax cut, the new right is expecting me to help fill the employment gap created when it cuts ‘government’. The problem with this idea is again, related to demand. Why on earth would I employ somebody new? There is not enough demand currently for me to fill. The extra money i’d save in tax reductions would simply soon be lost, plus a little more, to the cost of employing someone, to help cope with demand that isn’t there. I am not going to ‘create jobs’ with saved tax money. Nor am I going to expand. It may give an advantage to large business, who by their very nature, don’t need a dose of corporate socialism. Employing new people, especially for small businesses, is a measure of last resort. A tax break for the lower and middle classes – the masses – will help to stimulate demand, as do effective governmental programmes aimed at elevating the burden of necessities – soaring gas and electric costs; education costs, petrol, healthcare costs (of which a universal system, is by far the most advantageous for a growing, civilised society). Taxing the wealthy, to pay for programmes that benefit the middle and lower classes, benefits everyone economically whilst building a compassionate society. It is the only possible way forward. We must not fall for the rhetoric of “all the best people will leave”. No they wont. It takes a lot to up and move country. Uprooting your children from schools, leaving your family and friends. It is a big life changing decision.

The myth of the job creators is as evident in the US as it is in the UK. Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan once stated:

The other thing, in the tax side is permanent tax increases on job creators doesn’t work to grow the economy. It’s actually fueling the uncertainty that is hurting job growth right now. And don’t forget the fact that most small businesses file taxes as individuals. So, when you are raising these top tax rates, you’re raising taxes on these job creators where more than half of Americans get their jobs from in this country.

- The key to this quote is “when you’re raising these top tax rates”….. Top tax rates.
Similarly, over at Romney/Ryan headquarters, Fox News said of the proposed Obama top rate of tax hike to 39.6%:

….a clear majority of all small business profits face taxation at this top marginal income tax rate.

- It simply isn’t true.
According to the non-partisan ‘Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ and backed up by ‘Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center’, only 1.9% of small businesses make enough profit to fall into either of the top two income tax brackets. Visually, it looks like this:

So, let’s move my small business to the US. If suddenly, I am making $300,000 a year, by raising my rate by 4%, I will be paying about $6000 a year more. I’m not sure that would prevent me from hiring someone new, given that demand is high enough for me to be earning so much in the first place. Raising the top rate of tax, does not affect job creation. If it were the case that lower taxes on the wealthy lead necessarily to job creation, and higher taxes killed jobs, as suggested by Ryan and Fox, then we would today be absolutely fine for jobs. The opposite is true. Here is the evidence:

- Note how low the top rate of tax will STILL be, after the President’s proposed tax rise in 2013. Note also, that between 1993, and 2000, the top rate of tax was …. 39.6%… exactly as the President has proposed for 2013. The period between 1993 and 2000 was the largest period of US growth in history. Note also just how high the top rate was under Reagan. Prior to Reagan, in order to be eligible for a tax cut, a company would be required to use a portion of its profits to reinvest. Reagan put a stop to that, and gave a tax break up front. The companies thus invested elsewhere (offshore) and got the tax cut in the US. Isn’t ‘freedom’ wonderful?

The irrational phobia of ‘big government’ is a jobs killer. The Romney leaflet makes clear that government does not create wealth. This is disingenuous at best, and horribly dismissive of the millions of Americans that help drive the economy forward from the public sector. Schools create inquisitive minds and help to create an equipped workforce that both intellectually and materially drives the economy. Road building, property protection (being a policeman, is a job), fire protection and so on, all help to create an environment for which capitalism can flourish. It is true that the Government should not be the main force for economic growth. But they help, they protect, and they foster private growth. Without the government, we would belong to a Hobbesian hell hole. Libertarianism is as dangerous as Communism.

Evidence suggests that when the top rate of tax is higher, so is growth. When it is lower, economic inequality grows, not the economy.

Romney has pledged to reduce tax rates by 20%. It is no surprised that whilst market fundamentalists hail this as the beginning of an economic miracle, those who rely on evidence and analysis paint a different picture. According to a report by The Brookings Institution, the Romney tax plan would see taxpayers who earn over $1,000,000 given an extra 8.3% after tax; an average tax cut of $175,000, whilst taxpayers earning less than $30,000 would see a tax rise of about 0.9%; an average rise of $130. They go further:

“Offsetting the $360 billion in revenue losses necessitates a reduction of roughly 65 percent of available tax expenditures. Such a reduction by itself would be unprecedented, and would require deep reductions in many popular tax benefits ranging from the mortgage interest deduction, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, the deduction for charitable contributions, and benefits for low- and middle-income families and children like the EITC
and child tax credit.”

- The Romney/Ryan tax plan, is based on fundamentalist dogma devoid of all context, and based on an even more extreme form of failed economics. We see market fundamentalism, and austerity programmes failing all across Europe. Romney seems to be ignorant to the plight of those living under deep austerity, choosing instead to emulate it in America. It doesn’t work.

It is more evident to me being here, that the Right-leaning US electorate ignore evidence of what actually works, and instead choose to cling to outdated dogma – government bad/private business great – borne out of the fear of the big bad tyrannical government. Government is portrayed as the enemy, out to destroy your freedom, maliciously rubbing their hands whilst the country burns. It is the reason the US has resisted universal healthcare, despite the FACT that nations with universal healthcare continuously – as I noted here – out-perform the US in all healthcare league tables. To the US, Disraeli inspired conservatism is apparently Marxism. Any form of government help, is Marxism. They have chosen to ignore what actually works, in order to fight a misplaced war on what they perceive as Marxism. It is terrifyingly inaccurate and ignorant, as well as fundamentalist.

It is simply not true that those who enjoy profits that place them in the top rate of tax bracket, are job creators. They ride the tide of demand. The term ‘job creator’ is a deliberate attempt to create an almost moral argument for extending and perpetuating economic privileges for the very wealthy, without providing any evidence that it is beneficial for the rest of us. Manipulative language apparently negates the necessity for a reasoned argument. For free market fundamentalists; manipulative language is all they have ever had.

Demand creates jobs. Not tax cuts for the wealthy.

The Right of the Week

It has been a funny old week for the right wing. Here are a few example:

Across the pond in the US, it seems that tonight, the Republican Party has decided it isn’t all that bad an idea for the supremely rich to pay a bit extra tax instead of the entire World falling into bankruptcy. The term “job creators” has been used to defend the mega wealthy and ensure the public see these people as some sort of benevolent overlords who should be spared any financial pain whilst they insist on public sector cuts for the least wealthy. The falsity stands in the fact that the rich do not create jobs. Demand creates jobs. The businessman doesn’t give you a job out of the goodness of his heart; he does so, to ride the wave of demand in a certain sector, thus making himself a small fortune off the back of the labour of those who will now have to endure cuts. So whilst you now have to sell your labour at the lowest possible price just to survive, because the Republicans are actively trying to destroy any sort of safety net, those at the top will make even more money from squeezing you for as little pay as possible, whilst enjoying lovely big tax breaks. Thanks Republicans!

Hopefully the Democrats on the newly created “Super Congress” will push for tax hikes on the wealthiest, despite the Bush tax cuts being off the table.
Overall, the substance of the bill is tipped firmly in favour of Tea Party Republicans. Obama showing again, intense weakness.

Interestingly, the debt ceiling was raising 18 times under the Reagan administration. Over the Obama four years, it has increased by 45%. Under Reagan – 199%.

Back in the UK, the City of Westminster Police showed how much they hate the new Blackburn Rovers Red and black away kit, by announcing:

“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.”

- Correct me if i’m wrong, but most of the Tory front bench consider the State to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful. Can we report them? The last line, that any information on Anarchists should be reported to the police is worrying. Remember when the entire Right Wing threw a collective tantrum whenever New Labour introduced legislation that the Right considered to be an attack on civil liberties? Where are those protesters now? Surely i’m allowed to hold Anarchist sympathies without the police having to know? Do I need to ring my local police station to inform them that I have a number of Chomsky books and am quite a fan of Bakunin? Am I a danger?

The Tory blogger Guido Fawkes has immersed himself in a plethora of hypocrisy today, having created a campaign to reintroduce the death penalty. So, essentially he doesn’t trust the State to run hospitals, disability services, schools, libraries, museums, and nurseries, but he absolutely trusts them to murder. He, being Tory, is absolutely against Shariah Law and its primitive retributive justice system, but absolutely in favour of a Western primitive retribution justice system. Taxation on the Right, is considered State theft. Murder by the State is perfectly acceptable apparently. There is absolutely no value; moral or otherwise, in State murder. I can envisage people from low socio-economic backgrounds ending up on the “to hang” list, way above anyone else. What a silly campaign they are running over at Guido. They back up their desire to see the restoration of State backed murder, by saying:

When the public are asked about the death penalty the results have consistently shown a majority in favour, when they are asked specifically about child killers, the numbers change dramatically with a range of polls showing two-thirds to three-quarters in in favour. On this issue there is definitely a clear regressive majority in Britain.

- The problem is, as far as I can tell from my research so far, there has only been one poll (a Yougov poll) in the past 15 years, of 2011 people. 50% were for the death penalty. I am not entirely sure we can back a death penalty restoration off the back of 1000 people, from a population of 70,000,000 backing it. Such is the logic of the Right. When the say the “results have consistently shown a majority in favour“, what they mean is, if you read the exact same result from a variety of media outlets, it is surprisingly consistent! Though, there was one other poll, by The Sun, of 100000 people, in which 99% of them said they support the Death Penalty. Not surprisingly, it was the same time as the Sun itself backed a campaign for the restoration of the death penalty.

Yougov quite unequivocally states:

Support for the death penalty has fallen over the decades – it used to be over 70%, these days roughly half of the population support the death penalty for “standard” murder – indeed there was a YouGov poll in 2006 that showed marginally less than half of people in support of it, the first time it had occured. More recently, a YouGov poll in September 2010 found 51% supported the death penalty for murder, 37% opposed. A MORI poll in July 2010 found 51% supported the death penalty for adult murder. An Angus Reid poll in 2008 found people supported the death penalty for murder by 50% to 40%.

One of the MPs supporting the campaign, is Tory Phillip Davis. I have an entire blog entry dedicated to Philip Davis. Not only is he for State sponsored murder, but he also thinks disabled people should agree to work for less than minimum wage. He voted against the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, which state that it is unlawful to discriminate when selling goods or services, education or facilities based on sexuality. He also said of a group of vandals who turned out to be white, British, and not at all muslims:

“if there’s anybody who should fuck off it’s the Muslims who do this sort of thing.”

Guido is genuinely happy to have the support of this idiot?
The State is not above the law. What if the State murders someone who it later turns out is innocent? Can we therefore murder Guido Fawkes and all his supporters? It’d be retributive justice after all right? For the sake of sanity, we must ensure our Country is run on the basis of the rule of law, not the rule of the lynch mob. A Nation killing a person to show that killing is wrong, is beyond my comprehension of what is morally acceptable.

Quite amusingly, The English Defence League has gone on a massive defensive campaign since the Oslo murders. Whenever a Far Right organisation gets questioned, or challenged in any way, they insist that those doing the challenging are part of a Left Wing Liberal Media Elite conspiracy to silence them. To paint them as Nazis when all they want to do is protect “our way of life“. They seem unable to accept that perhaps we just don’t like them, nor do we consider our way of life, to be synonymous with the Far Right. Now it has been proven that Right Winged Christians are just as dangerous as any other political or religious grouping, the EDL have sought to go on a huge defensive.
Breivik had posted on EDL forums weeks before he carried out his act of terrorism. Under the pseudonym Sigurd Jorsalfare (the 12th Century King of Norway, whom led the Crusades, Breivik said:

“The biggest problem in norway is that there is no real free press, there is a left-wing angle on all the political topics so most people are going around like idiots. And offcourse with our norwegian labour party beeing in power for most of the last 50 years dont help. but i i think there is an awakening now atleast i hope so. Do some of you know the truth about what happened to the ndl, there was some clames that neo-nazis had hijacked the organisation, but on the ndl site i cant really say i noticed anything like that. So may guess is that there were some kind of police pressure to stop the movement. Anyone here heard anything?”

- A typical response, as I said earlier, is to blame lack of enthusiasm for a wholly Fascist doctrine, on a left wing media.

Breivik claimed he’d been to a meeting of the anti-immigration “Knights Templar” in London, in which he met his British Mentor named “Richard”. Coincidentally, a man called Paul Ray, runs an anti-muslim website on which he calls himself “Richard the Lionheart“, with the logo being Knights Templar. He describes himself as one of the founders of the EDL. The links are pretty clear. On his blog, after denying he is Breivik’s mentor, and after blaming the media AGAIN, he shows his potential insanity by relating his far right views to a Christian goal, a 12th Century Christian goal:

A Knight is chosen by God, and anyone professing to be a Knight not chosen by God is not a Knight. A little group and a secret ceremony does not make a Knight that is just a group of men with ideals and agendas dressed up in the clothes playing a pantomime without the power and authority.

- How does one prove that he is ‘chosen by God’? Mr Ray sounds oddly like the Fascist Islamic militants he claims to be fighting against. They are one in the same.

Breivik on the EDL forum goes on to state, when asked if he was part of the Norweigen Defence League:

“I was but, the site has been put down now. There was to be a demo in Oslo on the 26 of February but after the police security service put us on the “danger-list” the the internet site was sadly shut down.”

- The NDL Facebook Group is administered by a man called Jeff Marsh. Marsh is a convicted football hooligan, and was once in prison for stabbing two Manchester United Fans.
At an NDL rally in Oslo, one of the speakers was Darren Lee Marsh, an EDL activist who is also good friends with the leader of the Youth EDL. The links between the EDL, the NDL, an Breivik are pretty clear, without the need for some sort of Commie media perceived by an entirely irrational and paranoid group of Fascists. It isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the EDL isn’t exactly the peaceful organisation it claims to be. On July 21st this year, a man called Christopher Payne of the EDL pleaded guilty in Nottingham to sticking the decapitated head of a pig onto a pole, and rammed into the site of a new Mosque being built, with the words “No Mosque here. EDL Notts” sprayed on the pavement. On July 22nd, vandals broke into a Mosque in Luton (a Mosque not connected with extremism) and spray painted “EDL” and a swastika on the walls. Now, for a group that claims to simply be against Militant Islam, one has to wonder why they seem to pick on random Mosques with no connection to Militancy? By their logic, they should not be targeting sites of potential Church’s, because Breivik was a Christian Terrorist. That is the irony in EDL bullshit. They will stigmatise all Muslims as extremists, by breaking into Mosques and vandalising and intimidating Muslim residents who have done nothing wrong, but when people start to equate far right EDL thought with far right terrorism, they go on the defensive and insist there is no link. Irony at its finest.

In his cherished manifesto, Breivik wrote:

“I used to have more than 600 EDL members as Facebook friends and have spoken with tens of EDL members and leaders. In fact; I was one of the individuals who supplied them with processed ideological material (including rhetorical strategies) in the very beginning.”

- Pretty conclusive. His manifesto is worrying for all of us who are not members of groups like EDL. Because it shows the mentality of those that groups like the EDL consider to be enemies. In it, he attacks Muslims, liberals, those he calls “Cultural Marxists” and journalists. He even lists ways in which he could kill journalists, and other targets he considers “traitors“. It is not a leap to describe these groups as Fascists and dangerous. The British flag and the cross of St George have been hijacked by the far right for too long. I no longer want to feel like a fascist if I see an English flag. It needs to be taken back, and the true nature of Britain – diversity, tolerance, respect, cultural understanding and awareness – restored.

In his manifesto, Breivik quoted Daily Mail journalist Melanie Phillips often. She was criticised but then decided to have a little bit of a typical right winged tantrum in her column claiming that liberals are trying to bully her into silence. Moreover, she provides a sort of defence, a reasoning behind the Oslo attacks, with a nice little disclaimer first:

This shouldn’t need saying, but it does: there can be no excuse, justification or rationale whatsoever for the atrocity perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik. The reason it unfortunately needs saying is that I have been reading too many weaselly equivocations about this, along the lines of ‘Yes, it was indeed a most terrible atrocity and one’s heart bleeds for those poor victims; but Norway’s politics towards Israel do stink/Norway’s Labour Party stinks/Quisling’s country, say no more/the Islamisation of Europe stinks/it was only a matter of time before someone was provoked by the railroading of public opinion into doing something like this’.

- So, in essence, she is blaming centrist, centre right, and centre left politics for this. As if she is saying “if we all agreed that Islam is evil, Palestinians do not deserve their own state, and Labour party politics should be criminalised, we’d all be fine now!” I am a leftie Atheist. If a Leftie Atheist suddenly start killing hundreds of people, I wouldn’t say “I know it’s bad blah blah blah, but religion is a right bastard!” She should have stopped talking with “there can be no excuse“. She incessantly needs to remind us that not everyone with a slightly far right view on the World is an evil racist. Unfortunately, she fails to employ this same logic with this:

Muslims not only despise western secular values as decadent, materialistic, corrupt and immoral. They do not accept the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal, the division which in Christian societies confines religion to the margins of everyday life. Instead, for Muslims the whole of human life must represent a submission to God.
This means that they feel a duty to Islamicise the values of the surrounding culture.

- All of them? Really?
Everything she says reads more like a Glenn Beck rant, though she is quick becoming his UK counterpart. Attempting to shut her up? The chance would be a fine thing; her excessive and extreme ramblings keep on plaguing journalism as an institution on a regular basis. In an article in the Spectator, Phillips genuinely refers to Obama as a “revolutionary Marxist“. One wonders, after almost a full term, what Obama has achieved that is so revolutionary and Marxist? I’m pretty sure a major bank bail out package cannot be considered Marxist. Perhaps the persistence of the Bush Tax Cuts? I’m sure Guevara would have approved of those! In fact, the enlarging of the State through the stimulus package, could not be considered Marxist either, given that it simply tried to kick start Capitalism after its horrific failure in 2008. I don’t see any workers groups taking control of the means of production? I don’t see Obama referring to private property as a great sin? So short of us liberals wanting to bully her into shutting up, I’d suggest we simply want rational and coherent journalism rather than a mess of poor logic and misrepresentation. Oh, and this extends to her claim that Obama is a secret Muslim having “adopt[ed] the agenda of the Islamists“. Here:

“We are entitled to ask precisely when he stopped being a Muslim, and why. Did Obama embrace Christianity as a tactical manoeuvre to get himself elected?”

- She wants to be taken seriously? Stop the hysterical over reactions and outright bullshit. Problem solved. So as well as the Muslim Obama, the bullying Liberal media, and Marxists, who else does Melanie Phillips believe is part of a grand conspiracy to silence people like her?

“For years we have watched helplessly the undermining of the traditional family, which has been relentlessly attacked by an alliance of feminists, gay rights activists, divorce lawyers and ‘cultural Marxists’ who grasped that this was the surest way to destroy Western society.”

- Lawyers and gay people. I consider myself pro-gay rights. I am not sure I have ever sat and conspired with gay people, Marxists, Feminists, and lawyers about the easiest way to destroy the West. In short, Melanie Phillips is certifiably insane. A typical paranoid right winger who insists that anyone who doesn’t support her very narrow minded view of what it means to live in a Western Country, is surely conspiring to destory it. Whilst she is correct in her assertation that she is not responsible for the awful terrorist attack committed by Breivik; she is however implicated in promoting a far right discourse because she has the media presence to do so, by basing her articles on absolute nonsense and extreme over reactions to events. She is partly responsible for the hysteria that has infected the West, when it comes to Islam. So yes, for that, she is entirely to blame.

There is an internet forum principle that says whenever someone invokes Hitler during a debate, the debate should end there and then, because it has reached a level of absurdity not worth continuing with. So I will end on a Melanie Phillips quote regarding Climate Change:

“It was no accident that Hitler was a green.”

The UK: According to the American Right.

It is always flattering when a manic, incessantly paranoid, overly hysterical right winged American takes a pop at me. When you read what they say, and you’re literally taken aback by the shear nerve to print so much ignorance and bullshit apparently without any form of irony, you have to stand a little bit in awe. You really have to put aside your thoughts that perhaps they are a parody, and you have to make yourself believe that people really do think like them. Once you come to the realisation that they are absolutely serious in what they say, it feels like you have just been bukakked with stupid.

The blogger “Pumabydesign” wrote a blog recently, suggesting that President Obama’s visit to the UK has been marred by unexpected amounts of hate aimed towards him. Like we’re all somehow on the same page as the Republicans in America in our displeasure (and subtle hints of racism) toward the President.
She starts her tirade of bullshit thusly:

Apparently, the Muslims in Europe have not received the memo that Barack Obama is one of them.

Marvel at the stupidity. I think it was an attempt at humour. Though, Right Winged Americans do seem to accuse Obama of being anything they have heard Glenn Beck say recently. The black man with the funny name MUST be a Muslim. Why else would he……………. pump more troops into Afghanistan, kill the leader of Al Qaeda and …… oh wait. She may aswell have started her blog with “We all know Obama is a marxist fascist socialist gay muslim terrorist spanish secretly over weight female foreigner….” It would have made just as much sense. It is fascinating the level to which Right Winged America will drop, to insult a President. It suggests that politically, he’s doing something right. I knew, that trying to reason with such idiocy would be difficult, but I read on….

Speaking of which, if Obama thought that his visit to the UK was going to be a total love fest, WRONG! What a disappointing revelation it must have been for the one to see that the anti-Obama crowd was much larger than the pro-Obama crowd.

- The protesters actually numbered about three muslims and the same anti-war protesters that sit outside Parliament every day declaring anyone who walks past them to be a war criminal. The streets were clearly lined with Obama supporters. A stark contrast to George W Bush’s visit to London, in which the Mall was closed off…….. in fact, Central London itself was closed off, because the entire country despised the man. The atmosphere in London is entirely different with Obama. I pointed this out to the slightly vacant Pumabydesign, only to be told I am using propaganda. Which essentially means that anything that doesn’t come from Fox News is quite clearly Progressive Marxist propaganda. So, she wouldn’t risk being hypocritical herself with the propaganda would she? No of course not.. that’s why her source for that particular blog is……….. The Daily Mail.

In case you’re not aware of the Daily Mail, it is a right winged tabloid, that tacitly supported the Nazis in World War II, claims pretty much everything in the World causes cancer (including being a black person, candle-lit dinners, hugging, and blow jobs) and has since made it the mission of the paper to print as many misleading articles as possible. Here’s a great, current example of that. The Mail On Sunday printed a story claiming the BBC will be paying Tim Henman £14,000 a day to commentate on the Wimbledon Championships this year. The problem is, it isn’t actually true. Then, buried deep in the US section (for absolutely no reason), a few days later, the Mail said this:

On May 15 we said Tim Henman was being paid £200,000 by the BBC for commentating at Wimbledon this year.
In fact we have been informed that his fee will be substantially less than that. We apologise for the mistake and are happy to set the record straight.

- Happy to set the record straight, after outting him as a £14,000 a day commentator on your front page, and then correcting your lack of quality journalism and your right winged lies, on a page absolutely out the way of anything relating to the story whatsoever……. whilst the original story is STILL on the site? What a reputable source.

Speaking of reputable sources, the Mail article that the quickly-losing-all-credibility Pumabydesign published, quotes Anjem Choudary, whom she presumably takes the idea from that everyone actually hates Obama. Choudary said:

“The anti-Obama camp is far bigger than the pro-Obama….”

Choudary is the leader of Islam4UK, which is proscribed under anti-terrorist laws in the UK. Choudary’s group claims homosexuality is the same as rape and paedophilia (he could join most US Christian organisations so far), that children aren’t safe in the hands of Secular teachers, and that anyone who insults Mohammad should be killed. In short, the guy is insane.
Selman Ansari of the group “Progressive British Muslims” says of Islam4UK:

“We’re concerned that terrorist organisations are dodging their bans by simply reforming under a new name. We can’t let the extremists intimidate people and spread their lies within the British Muslim community. I call upon the police to investigate whether Islam4UK is just Al-Muhajiroun by another name.”

Choudary claims that all non-believers are committing a crime against God and should be punished. The Islamic political editor of the New Statesman, Medhi Hasan writing in The Guardian sums up just how reputable Choudary really is:

“Is Choudary an Islamic scholar whose views merit attention or consideration? No. Has he studied under leading Islamic scholars? Nope. Does he have any Islamic qualifications or credentials? None whatsoever.

Now, apparently Pumabydesign wasn’t going to stop there. Oh no. She wanted to spout some more terribly moronic bullshit. But this is even better than the one above. Her new blog entry takes a pop at me. I feel flattered.
She goes on:

The futile one would, therefore, be more than pleased to learn that radical Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary is launching an endeavor to accelerate the Islamization of the UK.

Did you see my mention? She didn’t fucking link to my blog, like I did to her. Though using links to other blogs may be a bit too complicated for this most simple of apes. Her premise is simple enough, she is informing me that the aforementioned lunatic Choudary wants to create a radical Islamic Britain. No shit. We know that’s what he wants. In the same way that we know the Communist Party want Communism in the UK, or that the British National Party want an all white UK. It doesn’t mean it’s about to happen, or is happening. And the phrase “accelerate the Islamization of the UK” is massively misleading. I didn’t realise this was happening? But, given that Pumabydesign lives thousands of miles away and seemingly knows nothing about our Country, I figured she MUST be right and I MUST be wrong. So I walked through my city (which has one of the largest muslim populations in the UK) And imagine my surprise when I found my city to have fallen into Islamic hands since reading her blog. I took a photo to illustrate this point:
Here was Leicester a day ago:

Here is Leicester today:

How did this happen? Pumabydesign quite rightly asks:

How long will it be before the stoning begins in the UK?

- Manic hysteria and the worst type of propaganda akin to 1930s Germany and the fear of the Jews taking over, you might say? Absolutely. According to the 2001 census (the census results for 2011 are not out yet) show that the muslim population makes up 2.7% of the overall population. There is 13% more Atheists (of which I am proudly one of them) than Muslims, which is about 7,000,000 more .Of that 2.7% of muslims, most do not support Choudary. In fact, Choudary’s most publicised attack on the UK was the poppy burning. He advertised it all over the place expecting hundreds of thousands of Muslims to turn up and burn a poppy on Rememberance Day. The Daily Mail obviously jumped on it and published pictures of the Muslims burning the poppies. What they didn’t point out, was that under 36 muslims turned up. That’s 36 out of 2,000,000. Which is 0.0018% of Muslims. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!!!!!!! All 0.0018% of them! ARGH! The Daily Mail had a choice. They could either print a story about very very few insignificant Muslims burning poppies, or they could say “1,999,964 Muslims didn’t burn a poppy today“, or they could just not have mentioned it at all because to mention such an insignificant event would hold no purpose but to incite hate, and spread bullshit through the intolerable garbage like the type spewed by pumabydesign. They went for the first option, and predictably, the Right Wing decide it is evidence that the UK may as well change its name to Englandistan. Not only that, but those 36, were all members of Muslims Against Crusades, a group formed after Islam4UK was proscribed. So, Choudary’s own group. What news source does Pumabydesign cite this time? …….. The Daily Star. Seriously, i’m not making this shit up. She really is that ridiculous. If you’re wondering what the Daily Star is, here is todays front page story (try to picture all the news in the World today, even in the UK today, the World news, what is happening on the planet we inhabit, when you read this FRONT PAGE story):

RYAN GIGGS was fighting to save his marriage last night after wife Stacey ditched her wedding ring as she left their £5million mansion.

- A Manchester United Footballer’s wife has left their house.
Full of quality journalism, reputable source number three!

Perhaps she means that radical Islam is infecting our political system?
There are eight muslims in the House of Commons. Eight, out of 650 MPs. That’s hardly taking over. Not only that, but none of the eight are radical. One of whom, Labour MP Sadiq Khan, argued in an article for the Fabian Society, that Muslims should ditch the victim mentality and integrate more with the rest of the Country. Hardly about to start suggesting the immediately implementation of Sharia Law. Maybe she means the House of Lords. The Lords currently has 26 Lords Spiritual (Anglican Church Bishops and Archbishops), and one Muslim Lord. One Muslim Lord out of 789 Lords. Wow, they really are infiltrating every aspect of our life.
So i’m going to hedge my bets and suggest stoning isn’t going to begin any time soon.

But, it was nice to get a mention in a blog that is so lacking in any kind of substance, intellect, or accuracy.
Thanks!

Racism in America: Lincoln

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 brought with it the utopic notion that racism in the United States of America was over. I certainly do not the doubt the momentous appointment of an African American man to the office of President of a country that was built on racial genocide and slavery. A country that less than a century ago, during the life time of my grandparents, did not allow a white child to attend the same school as a black child simply on the basis of race. The elevation of a black man to the highest office in American politics is symbolically another step on the road to tackling the evils of racism.

This blog isn’t meant as an analysis of Obama. He is essentially part of an establishment that favours financial institutions, oil companies and private health insurers above the lives of the less wealthy, and panders to the apparently widespread American belief that the very wealthy deserve massive tax cuts at the behest of the most vulnerable. He is no different in that respect regardless of his skin colour.

I wanted instead to focus on the beliefs of America’s 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, and his complex and often contradictory approach to slavery. Like Jefferson before him, it is almost impossible to figure out where Lincoln stood on the issue, and conflicting books are widespread. Lincoln’s party politics and his true beliefs seem to be confused much of the time, and yet history tends to stick entirely to his party politics regardless of the motives. I wanted to explore those motives more in depth.

Yesterday I went along to see an hour long lecture by Professor Richard Carwardin, the President of Corpus Christi College Oxford and winner of the Lincoln Prize for his book “Lincoln: A life of purpose and power“, a favourite of George W.Bush. Obviously there is a very limited and narrow version of Lincoln’s life one can present in just an hour, but Carwardin alluded to Lincoln as a great emancipator, as if he had been way a head of his time and the progressive champion for the freedom of black slaves, willing to fight a war for its eradication.
I would argue differently.

Lincoln wasn’t happy with the fact that slavery had become an issue by the time he took office. Lincoln told the esteemed journalist Henry Villard;

“I will be damned if I don’t feel almost sorry for being elected when the niggers is the first thing I have to attend to.”

Lincoln was not prepared to go to war for the abolition of slavery in itself. He had agreed to back an amendment to the Constitution, penned by the Representative from Ohio, Thomas Corwin, that would have made it Unconstitutional for Congress to amend rules or abolish slavery. Lincoln backed it.
The Corwin amendment read:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State

In his inaugural address, Lincoln referenced the proposed amendment, stating:

“Holding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

Interestingly, the amendment passed Congress by the two-thirds majority needed, but was never fully ratified in the State legislatures, and is still up for ratification, as it was never thrown out. If it had been fully ratified, one must wonder just how different the U.S would look today. The fact remains though that up until the outbreak of Civil War, Abraham Lincoln supported a Constitutional Amendment rendering it impossible to abolish the institution of slavery.

The worry from the Republican Party of the Lincoln years, was not so much the moral implications of ethical dilemma of the owning of slave labour, but the economic problems it creates. They worried that slave labour merely worked to undermine wages of the poor white working classes, and just created a new dominant class known as “Slave Power”. They worried that the Slave owning classes in the South were just violent and expansionist people with a goal of Empire. This paranoia wasn’t without merit, but it was borne out of the relatively new Nation’s deep suspicion of Empire and too much power. Lincoln charged that the Southern Democrats and slave owning classes were out to take over Cuba and the war on Mexico seemed to confirm those suspicions. The Civil War Confederate cry of “States rights!!” was simply the right for the very wealthy land owners in the South to keep and abuse people with darker skin, and the right to centralise power within very few hands. Only the free States were fighting for States rights.

Lincoln’s famous signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. It is doubtful whether the proclamation actually freed any slaves whatsoever. Depending on your source, it was either the greatest achievement of the short Presidency of Lincoln, or it was useless. No one really knows. One thing is for sure, Lincoln signed the proclamation as a further attack on the South (rightfully so). In September 1862, he demanded they return to the Union or he would free their slaves. Not “and i’ll free your slave“. It’s an ultimatum. If you rejoin the USA, you get to keep your slaves… if you don’t, we’re freeing them. He is more concerned here with preserving the Union – an abstract concept – than ending slavery. The Proclamation not only didn’t free slaves in the Confederacy, it didn’t free slaves in the slave holding States in the Union – Kentucky and Maryland.

The Proclamation looked good for Lincoln, as it put real pressure on the Confederacy. France and Britain were very anti-slavery, and he needed support and recognition of the legitimacy of the USA in a war that at the time, no one knew which way it might go. With the support of France and Britain, and so legitimacy, it helped Lincolns case. It was similar in a way, to how old European powers gained legitimacy. When Henry Tudor took the Kingship away from Richard III, he was a nobody on the European stage and England was at civil war, much like America. Tudor needed an air of legitimacy, so he married Elizabeth of York; she happened to be the niece of Richard, and daughter of King Edward IV. This was the legitimacy Henry required, and won. He rather secured himself, by marrying his son – Arthur – off to the daughter – Catherine of Aragon – of the most powerful family in Europe; the King and Queen of Spain. The marriages and alliances were all about protecting himself, and securing his throne, not about love nor about the wellbeing of his Kingdom. Lincoln signed the Emancipation declaration, to protect his Throne by winning the support of the English and the French. Up until the Proclamation was signed, it seemed Britain was on the side of the Confederacy, having been involved in the provision of the British made warships the CSS Alabama and the CSS Florida.

Lincoln knew the Proclamation, which freed black slaves in Confederate States that fell to the Union forces, would compel black slaves and freed slaves to help the Union armies. He stressed in a letter to his friend James C. Conkling:

“I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union.”

The freedom of the slaves with the passing of the 13th Amendment was a tiny ripple in the water. Saying to a group of people who have had no access to education, to family ties, to survival, to anything other than a system that treated them as less than human for so long, that they are now “free”, is worthless. It is not freedom. It would take another 100 years before the real reforms were introduced. Lincoln was not a head of his time. The abolitionists were calling for equality, not just the ending of slavery. Economically, black Americans would be held down for more than a century in place of White privilege. Lincoln may have given them freedom, but he certainly did not give them anything anywhere near equality, and he knew it.

Even the banning of slavery expanding into new territories was a rather obscure policy that was not designed for the sake of the wellbeing of black Americans, rather it was an attempt to keep black people from being shipped to America full stop. It was a white supremacist policy that today would be deplored as vicious and racist. Lincoln, when talking about the banning of slavery expanding to new territories stated that he did not want the United States:

…….to become an asylum for slavery and niggers

The expansion into the West was an opportunity to spread the white race for Lincoln, who had no desire to see black people live there, stating in 1858 in Illinois, that:

in favor of our new territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home … as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over.

Lincoln was therefore using race as an unnecessary social divide. Race had only really became an issue, during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Up until then, nobody really cared what race you were. White slaves existed in the Colonies way before black slaves. The worry was that they would join hands and rise up, so race was used to divide them. Tell a poor white slave that he is more important in God’s eyes than a poor black slave, and suddenly there is no chance they will rise up together and overthrow the economic powers that hold them both down.

In 1853, Lincoln backed the Illinois State law that banned freed black people from moving to Illinois. They weren’t so free afterall. Lincoln it seems, was obsessed with the division of black and white, and even Mexicans, whom he referred to, out of the blue, for no reason, as:

“most decidedly a race of mongrels. I understand that there is not more than one person there out of eight who is pure white.”

He was a power obsessed, white supremacist.

The great emancipators in the Congress and the abolitionist leaders who pressured and pressured for Lincoln to keep to his line on abolition. Thaddeus Stevens, in the House of Representatives, and Chairman of the Ways and Means committee was a committed Abolitionist. This man was ahead of his time. He helped runaway slaves escape to Canada. He protected the rights of Jewish and Chinese Americans and he defended the rights of Native Americans. Stevens was a hero of the Civil War era and should be remembered as such, far above Lincoln. But one man stood out as great, even beyond that of Thaddeus Stevens, and that man was Charles Sumner, the Senator from Massachusetts.

Charles Sumner absolutely hated the institution of slavery. As did his father before him. He argued that freeing the slaves would achieve nothing, unless it was accompanied by a raft of legislation promoting equal rights both politically and economically. This was 100 years before equal rights began to take shape. He is responsible for one of my favourite quotes from history, that I tend to live by when shaping my political thoughts:

“The Utopias of one age have been the realities of the next.”

Sumner argued in a court case, that segregation was an abomination. The year was 1848. The case was Roberts VS Boston. It lead to the ban on segregation on the basis of race in all public schools in Massachusetts. It was over 100 years before the rest of the country would catch up.

Sumner’s extraordinary career taught me that it is okay to think radically, even if the rest of your contemporaries think that you are an idealist living in a dream land. The contemporary Senators did not like Sumner for his radical ideas on racial integration and equality, one Senator suggested that Sumner was unimportant and should be ignored:

“The ravings of a maniac may sometimes be dangerous, but the barking of a puppy never did any harm.”

It is a myth that Lincoln was a great emancipator and forward thinker and it is a great injustice that men like Charles Sumner go unrecognised and ignored by history.
Sumner’s face should be on Mount Rushmore. Not Lincoln’s.

Anyway, as Sumner argued, The Proclamation was meaningless, the 13th Amendment was the result of much pressure put on the administration. Lincoln himself once remarked quite tellingly:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.”

He stresses exactly why he felt compelled to free the slaves. It was not on grounds of compassion or freedom or respect for the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, far from it, he did it for the sake of his own power:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

Abraham Lincoln was not a great emancipator. Nor was he one of the great forward thinking abolitionists of the time. He was a racist and a white supremacist who put his own position and power above that of the rights of a group of people who had different coloured skin. It is quite extraordinary that history teaches us that President Lincoln was one of the great Presidents who ended the horrific institution of slavery. The reality is far more ambiguous. It is much like the celebrating of Columbus day as a great day in American history, when in fact it simply marked the beginnings of a mass genocide. History should be taught with equal weight to both interpretations, if the subject is as ambiguous as that of President Lincoln and the question of slavery.

Blinded by Patriotism

In 2003 the Americans tried to convince the World that Al Jazeera had been infiltrated by spies, in an effort to produce propaganda for the war in Iraq. It is an interesting and mightily hypocritical claim by the U.S who have a media largely in bed with the American Government, and largely responsible for the biggest manipulation in war time history. Propaganda is an absolute specialty of the United States of America.

Ex CBS reporter Dan Rather stated recently, on the subject of his unquestioning adherence to absolutely everything the Bush Administration was insisting, that:

“Had journalists questioned the deceptions…the invasion would not have happened.”

The truth is, Al Jazeera is the only news network in the World who were investigating the horrors of the U.S invasion of Iraq. Where were the U.S press, the freest press in the World, when the population of Fallujah were being massacred? Phrases like “terrorist” and “insurgent” were being used everywhere, to describe anyone in Iraq who wanted to fight back against the U.S invasion.

Fox went along to an anti-war rally in 2004, and suggested several times, that the protesters were “unpatriotic“. Fox went along to the Tea Party rallies in 2009 and 2010 and referred to them as “true patriots“. Fox was the most watched news broadcaster for news on the war. Throughout coverage of the war in Iraq, Fox displayed a little waiving American flag in the corner of the screen.

Similarly, MSNBC played a segment every week, called “America’s bravest”, which showed photos of American soldiers deployed in Iraq.

Peter Arnett, a reporter with NBC was fired for questioning the legitimacy of the war. He had interviewed Iraqi officials and said the American “first war plan had failed”.

A Maryland University study into the media affects on public perception of Iraq, found that 57% of mainstream media viewers believed Iraq was involved in 9/11. 69% believe that Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. 22% believed WMDs had been found in Iraq. 80% of Fox News viewers had one or more of the above misconceptions.

Media watchdog group “FAIR” found that 79% of all 319 news stories on Iraq in 2003, were sourced from Government officials or Military officials.

The media became the mouthpiece for a barrage of lies and propaganda. This is evident even today. When Wikileaks leaked the war files, the news outlets, from Fox in the US to the BBC in the UK focused almost entirely on Wikileaks itself. American Republicans are referring to Assange as a traitor for exposing their criminal activity. The UK media was focusing on Assange personally. No one focused on what the war logs were saying.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster, along with a team of researchers, surveyed 4,800 people in Fallujah and concluded that dramatic increases in cancer rates and infant mortality since the relative genocide by American troops, is “worse than Hiroshima”. After Fallujah, US Marines admitted, after first strongly denying, that they had used white phosphorus. The report is open for any to read, called “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009“. It shows a 38 fold increase in leukaemia (compared to a 17 fold increase, after Hiroshima), a ten fold increase in breast cancer, and an increase in brain tumours. This sharp rise if health defects, was not helped by the fact that the city continued to be blocked off to essential supplies, by the US, long after 2004.

Whilst the U.S networks were struggling to understand a map of the Middle East:

And using handy little catchphrases that seemed to give credit to the horrors:

Al Jazeera was getting right into the heart of the situation, and showing images, like the one below, which is beyond awful. (I have spent the past few minutes looking at this photo, and it is something I cannot comprehend without being overcome with quite profound sadness):

It is then, no wonder that the one media outlet that was actually bothering to do some investigative journalism, rather than imbedded journalism (in which the Western Military dictates what a Journalist is allowed to see and where he can go), showing pictures and videos of innocent people’s lives ruined, in the same way that Fox and CNN were after 9/11 were bombed. The Al Jazeera Kabul and Baghdad offices were bombed by the Americans, who also drew up plans to bomb the Al Jazeera office in Doha – Qatar!. Why? They weren’t harbouring terrorists. They were just a threat to US mass propaganda. We were not supposed to see the destruction and terrorism left by the Americans. We were supposed to see a happy population, joyfully welcoming the Americans as great liberators fighting for freedom. If people fought back, we were supposed to believe they were “insurgents” who “hated our freedoms”, rather than the fathers of dead children or orphaned children.

The “reality” of war, is not a natural reality, it is a construct. When thousands are killed in American and British aggression it is called the “reality of war“, simply because a Western Government has used the word “war” to describe it. But when a far smaller number are killed by extremists, it is called “terrorism” and it is “evil”. It is the creation of a narrative that seeks to propel Western aggression as necessary, to defeat evil. Whether that evil be Communists, Muslims, Vietcong, or Arabs. That is the public narrative. The truth is that if your dictator opens up his markets to American Capitalist ventures, he will be propped up for years to come. The moment he closes those markets, we will take them by force.

How blurred the lines of “reality of war” really are, and absolutely always in favour of the Western World. Vietnam, the propping up of Latin American and Middle Eastern Dictators, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, the invasion of Iraq. None of it is labelled “terrorism”, and yet what else is it other than the spreading of terror and death across Nations that aren’t ours.

It isn’t new. The British Empire did it in Australia. Terrorised the Country but apparently it was for their own good. What if Aboriginal Australians had invaded England? Rome labelled anyone who disagreed with its policies as “Barbarians”. The concealing of crimes behind romaticised ideals is not new. Especially with America. America celebrates Columbus Day. A day when Europe began the mass genocide project across that continent.
The great American author Kurt Vonnegut sums this up in his book “Breakfast of Champions“:

rout and Hoover were citizens of the United States of America, a country which was called America for short. This was their national anthem, which was pure balderdash, like so much they were expected to take seriously:

O, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

There were one quadrillion nations in the Universe, but the nation Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout belonged to was the only one with a national anthem which was gibberish sprinkled with question marks.

The motto of Dwayne Hoover’s and Kilgore Trout’s nation was this, which meant in a language nobody spoke anymore, Out of Many, One: “E pluribus unum.” The undippable flag was a beauty, and the anthem and the vacant motto might not have mattered much, if it weren’t for this: a lot of citizens were so ignored and cheated and insulted that they thought they might be in the wrong country, or even on the wrong planet, that some terrible mistake had been made.

It might have comforted them some if their anthem and their motto had mentioned fairness or brotherhood or hope or happiness, had somehow welcomed them to the society and its real estate. If they studied their paper money for clues as to what their country was all about, they found, among a lot of other baroque trash, a picture of a truncated pyramid with a radiant eye on top of it. Not even the President of the United States knew what that was all about.

It was as though the country were saying to its citizens, “In nonsense is strength.” A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the founding fathers of the nation of Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout.

The founders were aristocrats, and they wished to show off their useless education, which consisted of the study of hocus-pocus from ancient times. They were bum poets as well. But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.

Here was another piece of evil nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom to human beings everywhere else. There were pictures and statues of this supposed imaginary beacon for children to see. It was sort of an ice-cream cone on fire. Like this [the Liberty torch].

Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, even after slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and their descendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines

Vonnegut is ingeniously pointing out the illogical mental illness of Patriotism and its refusal to accept the horrors that came before it, and are committed in the name of it. It is a delusional, non-existent entity that exists to hinder human progression rather than help that seed to grow. A heartfelt anthem and a flag are just ways to mask injustice. It is a clever social construction, to make you think what you are doing is for the greater good and that the greatest good is the Nation State, when in fact the truth is, it is all for the sake of profit.

The dominant superpower will always place itself as the moral standard, and we buy into the bullshit, because it takes too much effort to stop playing on Fifa, and actually read.
Instead of seeing a little girl marched out of her home, crying and scared and made to kneel down on the floor with her hands in the air, by our troops, isn’t presented in the media. Instead, the media will have experts in to talk about how awesome our aircraft is, or how the Democrats are trying to block Defence funding. As if any of that bullshit matters.

We don’t see a bunch of vicious soldiers shooting random people or committing mass murder in Fallujah. Instead, we see a Saddam statue being brought down and how wonderful and free Iraq now is. We don’t see the pictures of a family digging their dead child out of the rubble, instead we only hear words like “insurgents” and “terrorists”. If my child had just been killed by American forces, for no reason, I’d fucking do all I could to kill the bastards too.

We are all desensitised to war, by this obsession with an us VS them mentality. Consumerism is a useful tool against the questioning of the immoral actions of big business and government. It is a simple narrative to understand, we don’t have to read too much into it, we’re busy working our arses off for shit we don’t need, so we consume easily accessible news, without questioning its motives or its intentions. We are apparently the good guys, and they are apparently the enemies, that is how it is presented. A healthy dose of National Pride, by making pictures of American soldiers draping their flag over the head of the statue in Baghdad, ensures that we are kept docile and unquestioning. We don’t want to seem unpatriotic.

Whereas, the reality is that the good guys are the idiots who are compelled to fight to perpetuate the economic war system, on both sides, rather than joining hands and fighting the very people who profit from war and make it a rational product of Capitalism. Do we really believe that the American private defence contractors and oil companies would love to see a peaceful World? They exist, to profit from war. Therefore, the financial sector profits from war. It is gross manipulation. These are the real bastards, not a few farmers in Afghanistan.

David Cameron went to Kuwait and told them that 20 years ago a brutal and violent dictator invaded their home land, and they had a right to defend themselves. How offensive; we sold those arms to that brutal dictator, before we designated him a brutal dictator, because he was nice to our businessmen. I keep seeing arguments defending Cameron’s arms sales across the Arab World as “good for jobs in England”. Economic matters are being placed above human rights. It is believed that British arms were used in the massacre of protesters in Libya this week.

Blair’s government lifted sanctions on the sale of weapons to Libya in 2004. Since then British companies have sold £500,000,000 worth of arms to Libya n 2009 alone. This includes Sniper rifles, tear gas, and crowd control ammunition. Are we seriously suggesting that selling tear gas and crowd control ammunition to a dictatorship, is going to be used to protect itself from an evil outside force? They are always going to be used against protesters, to keep the dictatorship in power. For that, I don’t care how many jobs it creates in the UK, we should be ashamed.

And so whilst the Libyan government uses our weapons, like Saddam did before him, on its own people, the rest of the World will sit back and have lots of UN meetings and keeping saying “please stop“.

Sometimes, death is good for the economy, and so we are all expendable.
Was is an essential ingredient of Capitalism.

My law on marriage

If we are to take the Biblical view, that marriage is between a man and a woman, we must look at what Biblical marriage stood for. Christians who oppose gay marriage, if they are going to use to the Bible to try to justify their prejudices, must be consistent and follow through with the Biblical guide to marriage. So perhaps we should use the Bible to structure a new Federal law on the Defence of Marriage. Let’s call it, Futile Democracy’s Defence of Marriage Act 2010. I took it upon myself to write it up:

Section 1 define marriage:
A marriage is defined as a union between a man and a virgin woman.
Deuteronomy 22:13-21
A marriage is also valid, in the eyes of God and so the eyes of the United States Congress, if it is between a man and his sister.
Genesis 20:1-14
The union also permits the man to take concubines whenever he sees fit.
2 Sam 5:13
2 Chron 11:21

Section 2 relating to women as captives:
If a man within the United States of America finds a desirable woman in a room of captives, he is entitled to marry her on the spot, without her consent.
After marrying a captive, it is required, by the consent of the United States Congress, that the man must first take her home, and shave her head.
Deut. 21:11-13

Section 3 relating to women as property:
Trading in women, is a perfectly acceptable form of property dealing, within the United States of America.
RUTH 4:5-10
Wives must not speak, or offer opinions, especially in Church, except in the company of her superior (husband) at home.
I Corinthians 14:34-35
If a man rapes a virgin, he shall pay fifty pieces of silver, and then marry her.
Deut. 22:28
If a woman is kidnapped at a party, this shall not fall under the law of the United States forbidding kidnapping, as long as the man marries the kidnapped woman.
Judges 21:19-25
When at war, is it permitted that you destroy their cities, kill all men and women and male children, take the female children for yourselves, and marry them.
Judges 21:7-23
Purchasing children of foreigners is acceptable in God’s eyes. You may marry them, as they are now your property.
Leviticus 25:44-46

Section 4 relating to adultery:
The punishment for adultery is stoning to death.
Death shall not be enforced before a quasi-trial is given for the wife. If the parents of the wife can prove that the wife is a virgin by spreading the cloth worn by the wife on a table to the City Elders, the husband must pay compensation to the parents and the wife is not permitted to see her parents ever again.
If she is found guilty, she must be put to death.
Deut. 22:22-30

Section 5 relating to pregnancy:
If a wife gives birth to a boy, she must spend a week in isolation because she is, by decree of the Congress of the United States, and God Almighty, unclean.
If a wife gives birth to a girl, she must spend two weeks in isolation, because she is, by decree of the Congress of the United States, and God Almighty, very very unclean.
Leviticus 12:5

Section 6 relating to the death of a husband:
Definitely don’t marry your dead husband’s brother.
Leviticus 20:21
Definitely do marry your dead husband’s brother.
Deuteronomy 25:5-10

Section 7 on divorce:
If a citizen of the United States of America abandons his wife and children, for Jesus, he will be rewarded.
Matthew 19:29
A woman who is divorced for a second time or widowed by her second husband, must not remarry her first husband.
Deuteronomy 24:3-4
Divorce and remarrying, is committing adultery against your first husband or wife in the eyes of Jesus and the United States Congress. This isn’t a law as such, just to let you know, if you get divorced, we think you’re scum.
Mark 10:2-12

Section 8 conclusion:
Marriage within the United States of America, is hereby described objectively as a union between a man, brother, rapist and a virgin woman, another woman, another woman, a few more women, a hostage, a rape victim, and the female children of parents who have just been slaughtered.
But NEVER let a homo marry. This is unnatural and immoral.

I think that just about sums up exactly what the new US law on Defence of Marriage should consist of, you know, if it really is about pleasing God, and not about simply being horrific bigots.

I found this poet, Alvin Lau, in a powerfully beautiful poem exploring the bullshit of Christian homophobic attitudes that are prominent on the American Right wing. I cannot think of a better way to put into words exactly how I feel on the subject of gay marriage, than Lau does:

O’Reilly proves the existence of God.

I quite liked this video.
It is disturbing to my sense of rationality, that Bill O’Reilly is one of the most watched men in America. In this video, he proves the existence of God (in the illogical world of Christian America, if nowhere else) by saying the the tide goes in and out.
Just incase the American Right decide my EVIL SOCIALIST ATHEIST agenda is misleading, O’Reilly actually said:

“I’ll tell you why [religion is] not a scam, in my opinion. Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”

It is been quite some years now, since humanity first discovered why the tide goes in and out. We are pretty certain that it isn’t because of a God in a cloud somewhere using a big sea magnet. I am sure I learnt in very early school, that the tide is controlled by the Moon’s orbit.

Bill then goes on the defensive:

You’re calling me a moron.

Yup.
That’d be pretty accurate.
Sadly, I’m sure there are a number of American Christians who sat up during this, and said…
“YAR! That there is one heck of a good case for Jesus, yes sir! He was all like, what about the tides going out and shit, now i’m no racist but that nigra couldn’t god-damn answer him. Fucking Atheists tryna turn my Kids into an-tie Christian, an-tie- Amerkan pro-gay commies”

Perhaps O’Reilly was suggesting that the moon is ideally placed to create a tide. I doubt he was suggesting that, because, that’s not what he actually said. But for arguments sake, let’s say he was suggesting the ideally placed moon. It is only ideally placed, because we exist. There is no design or reason behind it. It is just there. It isn’t “perfectly placed” because we invented the concept of something being perfectly placed, purely because we’re here. It is rather vain of us to decide that the chaotic universe, and the size and scale of it, exists, purely for us. There is no reason, or logic, or cause, or meaning. It stands to reason that if a Moon is at a certain location, and the planet is at a certain location relative to its star, and conditions for life exist, then life will pop into existence. It is just how it is. It does not mean it was designed that way at all.

By measuring the total mass of stars and luminosity in our galaxy alone, there are estimated to be 100 billion stars, plus another estimated 200 million Galaxies. A star is like the Sun, so for every 100 billion stars, let’s say there are roughly 5-10 planets around each one. That would produce around 500 billion planets in our Galaxy alone. Is it not reasonable to suggest that one of those 500 billion might have a Moon placed in a position that has an affect on the liquid of its planet?

How arrogant one must be, to suggest that this was all created for us.

That being said, conditions on Earth are not perfect for human existence. They are adequate to say the very least. We have natural resources that are running out, not enough food to feed the World and billions of people live in abject poverty for their entire lives, on very inhospitable land. A cyclone is currently tearing its way through Queensland in Australia, only a few weeks after Queensland suffered severe flooding on a scale unknown to locals. If the Earth is the creation of God, for the intention of housing man, then God is a little bit incompetent.

We are an insignificant, tiny race of apes, in an unimportant dot on the map of the universe. There is no grand design for this tiny little dot.
Probability is irrelevant. We are surrounded by absolutely no evidence for the existence of God. Saying “yeah, but you can’t disprove the existence of God” is meaningless. If I see a dog, I shouldn’t be expected to accept the possibility that it might be a monkey. Similarly, I have all the evidence for Natural selection, I shouldn’t be expected, when faced with such a plethora of evidence, to say “yeah, but it might be a God.”

Now, O’Reilly then uses a classic logical fallacy. If person X cannot prove their position, then person Y must be right in theirs. O’Reilly suggests that because Silverman was too stunned by O’Reilly’s intense stupidity that he didn’t answer him in the millisecond that O’Reilly allows his guests to actually speak, that he must therefore not be able to answer, and so he presumes he is correct.

O’Reilly then goes on to complain that by saying Religion is a scam and a myth (which it is), American Atheists are insulting Americans. This comes about two minutes before he calls Silverman a “loon“.

O’Reilly would insist he insults no one (except every week, when he refers to someone new, whom he disagrees with, but doesn’t give them the opportunity to argue their case, as a pinhead). Fox News spent most of 2008 attacking President Obama because Obama included non-believers in his inaugural address. The title of the piece just after the President’s speech was “Obama reaches out: addresses Muslims and Atheists in speech“. As if we’re the “other“. As if we, along with the Muslim community are a problem that needs to be addressed. The Fox host (I don’t know his name, but he looks about 12), said:

“It surprised me when I heard it, it made me do a double take.”

Why? Because some people aren’t all absolutely mad Christian Right Wingers? Mike Huckabee on that same show, said that Obama had acknowledged that some people don’t believe in anything….. “but themselves”. So, if I don’t believe in the Christian God, I must be a bit of a narcissist and nothing more. Am I unable to believe in beauty? Do Christians have a monopoly on beauty? When I see something beautiful, must I thank Christians for giving me that sense? Am I unable to believe in love? Must I thank Fox News for how I feel about Ashlee? Without Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, would I just be raping and murdering my way through life? Fox went on to ask if it was offensive to include a reference to Atheists in the speech. As if we’re non-human. We shouldn’t be recognised. But if we dare question religion……. we’re the ones being offensive. The mad World of Fox News.

Here is O’Reilly again, being insulting toward Atheism. Mocking it. Not logically, with well thought out, reasoned Philosophy; just the ramblings of a mad old hillbilly Christian, who has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about, and is just appealing to his very low-IQ’d viewers. Here, he refers to a sign that was shown by Atheists at Christmas, and says “No God, No Problem; be good for goodness sake” (which is a fantastic and optimistic and not in any way offensive at all; sign) a “dopey sign“. He then says:

“What is it about Christmas they don’t like”.

What a ridiculous question. Atheists aren’t attacking Christmas. We still celebrate Christmas. We don’t celebrate it for the birth of Jesus. I’m convinced he didn’t actually exist. We celebrate it, because it is a time when all our friends and family have time off work at the same time, we share gifts, we have a family meal, and we create memories and stories for our children. It is a small break from a very rushed life. We absolutely love Christmas. O’Reilly is trying to spread fear and hate. O’Reilly then, quite brilliantly says:

“Why do they loathe the Baby Jesus”.

As if we’re all sitting around, throwing darts at a printed picture of the baby Jesus. We get angry when we see the baby Jesus. Some of us can’t control that anger, and we actually vomit.

He then ponders how Atheists sell Atheism by “running down a baby, it’s just a baby”. That’s not what any Atheist has ever done, in the history of the Catholic Church allowing Atheists to exist without being executed for it. Nor is it what the poster is actually saying, or even alludes to. I’m not sure how more manipulative one massive twat could actually be.

Some equally as vacant Fox presenter tells O’Reilly that the sign is a:

“direct and deliberate smear against Christianity”.

In other words, anything that remotely questions a socially prevailing belief system, must be an attack on it. Atheists should all keep quiet, we shouldn’t question, we shouldn’t be allowed to present an alternative. We should accept that homosexuality is a disgrace because the Bible says so, we should accept that abortion doctors deserve to be shot, we should accept that the Pope shouldn’t be brought to trial for covering up child sex abuse, we should just accept that schools in America teach Christianity as fact and evolution as theory, and just ignore it, because the Christians’ point of view is far more valid and reasonable, simply because it is based entirely on tradition; another logical fallacy.

She goes on to say:

“What comes with Christianity are traditional values”

Really? Is that so? And what are those traditional values? Burning witches? Beheading perceived “heretics”? Hanging gay people? Fucking children? For every positive value one can loosely ascribe to Christianity, it is equally as easy to ascribe a pretty direct link between Christianity and shameful violence and corruption.

O’Reilly ends the piece by suggesting that Atheists are just jealous because we have nothing, that Christians have Christmas, and we don’t. He asks “what do they have?” and concludes “nothing”. We have wonderment. We have the understanding that nature is so beautiful and creative itself, without the need for a cruel and angry dictator in the sky. We see the stars and stare in awe at how inspiring it all is. We see a slug and admire how this ugly looking thing is so beautiful because it is as evolved as we are. We have Darwin (Not even the baby Jesus is as great as Darwin). But most importantly, we have fact. To quote the brilliant Douglas Adams:

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

I do not accept what Silverman is saying in the first video. He says that he believes people in America only go to Church because their is a social pressure to announce your belief in Christianity, but most people don’t believe it. I’d say that may be true to an extent, but for the sake of O’Reilly thinking Silverman is being insulting, I can go one better and say that those people actually go to Church because they are brainwashed and deluded; uneducated and illogical; unthinking and weak minded.

If O’Reilly thinks Silverman is insulting toward Christianity….. he obviously hasn’t read my blog.

The way of the Huckabee

Former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee has called for whomever leaked the cables to Wikileaks, to be executed. Interesting. When Islamic extremists issue fatwas against people like Salmond Rushdie, our politicians rush to condemn them. They are barbaric. They are left overs from the Middle Ages. But apparently, American Republicans can issue death threats against whomever they so wish; especially if it intrudes on their apparent inherent right to be the bringers of war and destruction across the World.

Huckabee said:

‘Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty’

A little extreme perhaps. But then i’ve always said, those who worship their abstract, fantasy World of the concept of “Nation” are just as moronic as those who worship their fantasy World of “Religion“. Huckabee wants to put someone to death for the sake of his abstract concept.

Huckabee, ironically, is part of a political party that sent thousands of troops to their deaths in a war that won support on the basis of a lie. In 2003 a letter was conveniently found in Saddam Hussein’s house, from one of the 9/11 bombers, Mohammad Atta, and the head of Saddam’s Iraqi Intelligence, General Tahir Jalil Habbush. The letter read:

“To the President of the Ba’ath Revolution Party and President of the Republic, may God protect you.”
reads:
“Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian national, came with Abu Ammer [the real name behind this Arabic alias remains a mystery] and we hosted him in Abu Nidal’s house at al-Dora under our direct supervision.
We arranged a work program for him for three days with a team dedicated to working with him…He displayed extraordinary effort and showed a firm commitment to lead the team which will be responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy.”

It was convenient, because it was simply false. The man named Nidal was an enemy of Hussein. I wrote about this in a previous blog in greater detail than I will go into here. Needless to say, the document is not authentic. This comes years after Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist and Author Ron Suskind, suggested that the Bush White House along with the CIA had forged the document to suggest a pre-war link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to back up their authority for war. Given that, according to Wikileak documents leaked a few months back, this little lie, along with the tidal wave of lies the Republicans threw at the World in order to gain support for their illegal war, caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, shouldn’t Huckabee be getting his priorities straight, and quit worrying about how many rich Americans in expensive suits these leaks embarrass, and worry about his weak interpretation of the word “treason”?

Every President for the past, at least, 100 years should be tried for treason. Reagan funded and armed right winged terrorists in Nicaragua, and so was indirectly responsible for thousands of innocent lives lost.
General Suharto of Indonesia is estimated to have killed around 1,000,000 people in 1965, after the US gave lists of known Communist sympathisers, making it easier to round them up and execute them. Arms deals then propped up the Suharto dictatorship through the reign of President Ford right up to President Clinton.
$112,000,000 worth of arms were passed to Suharto’s regime, from the Carter administration.
During the invasion of East Timor, but the Suharto regime in Indonesia, supported by the Americans; the UN had a vote calling for Indonesia to stop its invasion immediately. The vote was blocked by the US who also blocked a vote to impose economic sanctions on the Country.
Ford’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Suharto, on his absolutely abhorrent invasion of East Timor:

“It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly; the use of US-made arms could create problems.”

Kissinger knew that what he was supporting and helping, was nothing short of genocide. Strangely, Huckabee hasn’t called for Kissinger to be executed.

The problem isn’t that the leaker, or Wikileaks puts anyone in danger. They don’t. What they do, is embarrass World Governments. Especially America. It is long overdue quite frankly. Politicians like Huckabee would quite like to be able to get away with murder, without being hindered by those pesky journalists.

They set a precedent; they show that technology has reached a point where it is possible for those working within the system to say “Hang on, this is wrong, this needs to stop” and leak the relevant information and misdeeds to the press, without meeting in a car park and handing over brown envelopes. Politicians like Clinton, and Obama, and Huckabee, and Bush are not concerned with National Security, they are concerned that their quite obvious misdeeds and crimes are being made public. It is the equivalent of a murderer complaining that the press made his name public, and that it might make his neighbours dislike him now. Boo fucking hoo.

Wikileaks is doing what journalism should have been doing for years. This is the job of journalism.
It seems to have become the job of the press, to add fuel to the cancer of Nationalism/Patriotism. To mask all shocking details of what our Country undertakes in our name, behind a wall. On one side of the wall, the press place us…. portrayed as the great victims of the evil Arab and Socialist World. On the other side of the wall, they place everyone else. The problem is, the wall doesn’t exist. It is an illusion. To keep us supporting this shit, they wave an English or American flag every so often, and play our National Anthem. Suddenly, we don’t need to question what sort of crimes our Governments are committing, because they must be doing the right thing; they’re English after all!

The Press tend to toe the Government line, certainly on foreign policy issues. Even the BBC, that beacon of independent broadcasting, in 2004 referred to Blair as the “great liberator”, and not in an ironic sense.
We seem happy to read versions of stories sourced by government officials and business leaders (as if their word is truth), influenced by the needs and desires of advertisers, and playing to the political and business sympathies of editors; who all create a sort of fantasy World, but the moment any potentially embarrassing story is leaked, we bang on about National Security. As if it’s the fault of those who leaked the fact that our governments are shit and our ridiculously clouded National Pride is a little bit misplaced.

It isn’t irresponsible. We’re fucking irresponsible for constantly electing corrupt lying money hungry bastards. Governments are irresponsible for playing such a dangerous game with diplomacy, and invoking a sense of the abstract concept of National Pride whenever we’re heading toward a conflict, whether we’re morally right or not.
We’ve known for years anyway, that governments and big business are absolute bastards, it’s nice to have it confirmed.

Yet some people seem to have said….. “Oh my god, the UK has been supporting torture, and bad mouthing other Nations. They also are responsible for millions of civilian deaths in the Arab World……….including children!!!……………….. who fucking leaked this, the bastards!!“
Get your priorities straight.

There needs to be a place where the misdeeds of government and business can be aired without being twisted by vested interests in the press. There is no Andy Coulson or Alastair Campbell to spin the truth.

Also, there exists quite a contradiction within Capitalist countries, especially from the Right, who want wikileaks closed down. The hollow cries of “keep government out of the market” are suddenly ignored, whenever they demand it. It’s almost laughable how hypocritical the bastards actually are. Jefferson said that a free press was essential to democracy. Well, this is what a free press does. Accept it.

One of the leaks shows that whilst the US and UK have been telling us that no official log of civilian deaths in Iraq exists at all, it actually does exist. It shows that the US had continually ignored hundreds of cases of rape, child abuse, torture, beatings, and murder by the Iraqi police. It shows also that the US and UK know that at least 109,000 innocent Iraqis have died as a result of the Iraq war. A war that was sanctioned on the basis of a complete lie. The Republicans, of whom Huckabee is one, are responsible for the deaths of at least 109,000 innocent people. Huckabee should be tried for war crimes, and treason given how many Americans lost their lives as a result of it.

Wikileaks also released a video not long ago showing soldiers in an Apache helicopter gun sight, using the helicopter like an XBox war game. They take out a small village, and then can be heard saying “Ha, ha, I hit ‘em.” Another says “Look at those dead bastards“. Who are the real fucking criminals in this?

Another log shows that a British rifleman shot dead an young Iraqi girl who was innocently playing in the street. Our journalists would have never uncovered this. Her death, the anguish of her family would have remained a secret. The rifleman would be, and probably still is, hailed a hero. And so the game of the glory of the West no matter what, continues, unhindered; whilst the bodies of children lie shot and bloodied in the streets of Iraq. But Huckabee doesn’t have a problem with this. He has a problem with anyone who actually dares to make it public.

For a Nation that prides itself on its democratic system, I would have thought we’d all be supporting something that absolutely helps democracy flourish. You cannot have democracy, without all the relevant information on how your representatives and government are acting, in your name. Genuinely justifiable secrets, like troop positions in Afghanistan are one thing; but leaking the amount of awful deaths and torturing your Country has been involved in, or leaking the fact that your Country is trying to spy on UN officials, is not a genuinely justifiable secret (unless you’re President Nixon).

Without these sorts of leaks, the status quo remains, and the status quo is massively unbalanced, and quite honestly wrong. The status quo exists to keep the consumer-lead middle classes happy, half truthful news, quickly devised, by journalists who do not investigate as they should, next to stories about who Paris Hilton fucked at the weekend. A World that and is basically saying “ignore what’s happening over there…. ignore the blood……….. oooo look, a shiny thing! You want to buy the shiny thing! Go on, buy the shiny thing”. But then when someone shouts, loudly, “No, fuck the shiny thing, let’s focus on the blood, let’s focus on what’s happening over there….” politicians call out “NATIONAL SECURITY!” It has nothing to do with National Security and everything to do with National embarrassment.
What Huckabee is generally saying is “We have worked hard to create the myth that was care about the World. That we aren’t just attempting to create an economic empire built on docile, easily manipulated and exploited peoples. Our people ACTUALLY believe this bullshit we propagate too. Please don’t ruin it. If you do ruin it, we’ll put you to death“.
Wikileaks, and online citizen journalism, is where journalism is heading. A proper radical kind of press, that does not filter out damaging reports, is what people like Northcliff set out to do decades ago.

This isn’t dangerous. It isn’t going to cause another World War. It is massively needed. Because the way things work at the moment, is very one sided, and is run like an American Empire. They are the new Rome and they want it all their way, without question, placing themselves above the law. The President and the Secretary of State are on damage control mode. They are part of the established order, that wishes to conduct their business, however dodgy it is, however illegal it may be, in absolute secrecy. That is the order that exists. If you don’t particularly like this fairy land of an order, then you will support Wikileaks, like I support Wikileaks.

The only question you should ask yourself is; Should America be allowed to get away with anything it pleases?

Privatise profit, socialise risk

I am not an economist.
Never studied economics.
The graphs, the analyses, the spreadsheets, the intricate data fine tooth-combing is not something I do on a regular basis. Even if I had studied economics, I might have a better understanding of the language we use to describe capital flow and its merits and contradictions; but I can’t honestly say i’d understand economics as a science, any better. When the Queen asked top economists at the London School of Economics, why they didn’t see the credit crunch coming, they couldn’t answer. They knew nothing. All those years at a top economist school taught them nothing when it came down to it. So therefore, I, like everyone else, can only comment on the relationship between society and economics as I see it, from my perspective.

This is how I interpret the financial crash.

The first thing to note, is that this isn’t Capitalism. This is a system of perpetual yet flimsy consumerism. It is not a free market system. It is a Financial Sector system.
The obvious link between this crises, and society as a whole is also the catalyst for the problems. The subprime mortgage market began plunging around 2005. It was largely ignored because those who were losing their homes and livelihoods in cities like Detroit in the US, were predominantly Hispanic or African American. The media did not question it. The economists did not question it. The Bush administration did not question it. But it was a small basement fire that before long would engulf the World.

When white middle class towns and cities around California for example started to experience a wave of foreclosures, and people started owing more than their properties were actually worth, the World took note. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae all but died. Lehmann was allowed to collapse. AIG, who snook onto the gravy train, expecting the housing market to be on an upward turn forever and ever, were bailed out and then faced a liquidity crises. It’s a funny thing, because this started to happen in 2007. Two years after the poorer black communities felt the pinch hard. Suddenly millions were losing their homes in the US. This didn’t appear to upset those who actually caused the mess in the first place.

Wall Street gave out bonuses of well over $30bn in 2007, despite crushing the entire system. Often you will hear Right Wingers defend these obscene bonuses with “you have to pay the best to get the best”. These people aren’t the best. If Wayne Rooney single handedly drives Manchester United down into the First Division, from the Premiership and then the Championship, he isn’t likely to get a massive bonus at the end of it.

The point of neoliberalism today, as it was in the 1980s, is to protect financial institutions at all costs. An it has worked. It concentrates wealth within the Nations with big powerful financial institutions. A report by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University found that 1% owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults own 85% overall. In the US, it was found that 38% of the Nation’s wealth is owned by 1% of the population.

A similar study from the Federal Reserve shows that between 1989 and 2004:

“there are indications that wealth became more concentrated”

and

“from 1992 to 2004 the wealth share of the least wealthy half of the population fell significantly to 2.5 percent of total wealth”

During the 1980s, real wage growth stagnated both here in the UK and in the US. Money did not trickle down. This great neoliberal Thatcherite/Reaganomic experiment actually did nothing but make the wealthy, very very wealthy. The poverty rate under Thatcher was higher than it has been since. The wages and assets of the guys at the top increased massively at the same time as the average workers’ wage stagnated. You see for example, the fact that you have to earn far over the National average to be able to afford a home now. We cannot afford homes, and we are working in the UK the longest hours in Europe. We have nothing to show for it, except stagnating wages, and massively inflated wages for the guys at the very top. But, the propaganda of Neoliberalism, tells us that they deserve their wealth, and we deserve nothing. So we get nothing. This creates a problem, because the workers are in the majority and they are where the demand comes from for the economy to flourish. How do you fill the gap between keeping the wealthy very wealthy, and making sure the masses can afford to consume? Well, if you’re a financial institution you employ an idiot to come up with the idea of easy credit. Give everyone a credit card. Give everyone store cards. Give everyone subprime mortgages. You are essentially giving people money that doesn’t yet exist, in the optimistic view that everything will be okay, and the money will exist sometime in the future. I was offered a Student Credit Card with £1500 on it. I’m 24, but presumably my bank had also offered this non-existent money to 18 year olds. They are only just allowed to legally buy alcohol, and banks are already luring them into this hellhole of consumer capitalism.

David Cameron, when accused of socially cleansing London of poorer people, with his plans to cut housing benefit, said:

“The point everyone in this House has got to consider: are we happy to go on paying housing benefit of £30,000, £40,000, £50,000?

“Our constituents working hard to give benefits so people can live in homes they couldn’t even dream of? I don’t think that’s fair.”

This is interesting for a few of reasons. Firstly, housing benefit has only gone up recently, because many people have been kicked out of their jobs as a result of the failings of the Neoliberal system David Cameron holds so dear. The benefit is a safety net for those who were unfortunate enough to lose their jobs. It is fine, if you managed to escape the chop, and can still afford your house. But no one knows what the future brings. What if double dip recession hits as a result of these cuts the Coalition are introducing? A lot more people will lose their jobs, and wont be able to find one for quite some time, when 10 or 12 people are chasing the same job. So, do they get kicked out of London too? They aren’t scrounging. They are victims of a crises of Neoliberalism.

Secondly, the comment suggests that David Cameron sees no inherent problem with the way the housing market actually works. He hasn’t said he’ll make it easier for people to be able to actually afford a house. He simply offers ways to prop up a grossly overvalued housing market. The reason that “constituents working hard” can’t afford home they “even dream of” is because the Tories of the 1980s sold all social housing, and the Financial Institutions have been ripping people off ever since. Apparently, Cameron has no issue with this.

And thirdly, kicking the poor out of London isn’t going to free up housing for Cameron’s “hard working constituents“. These hard working people wont suddenly flock to the City of London for homes that are now magically cheaper; purely because these hard working people are having to deal with stagnated wages, inflated prices, and a mass of debt encouraged by the Tories, Labour and the Banks for thirty years. The homes will be bought up by property developers, and people who want nice little London bachelor pads, becoming a city of croissant-at-Canary-Wharf-eating businessmen.

British households, on average, tripled their debt over the past thirty years, mostly housing market debt. They had to, in order to keep up. Now, what happens what you can no longer pay that debt back? The subprime crash happens. And then suddenly banks stop lending, because they have no money themselves. They gave out this fake money, that not only didn’t exist before, but doesn’t exist when they suddenly need it. So now business can’t borrow. So unemployment shoots up. But then demand across the marketplace falls, because people have less and less disposable income. So businesses go bust. Good times!

Millions became unemployed, millions lost their homes, the suicide rate shot up, the homeless rate was at a forty year high, and yet bonuses on Wall Street in 2008 were close to $32bn. Quite a nice rewarded for ruining lives.

Consumerism obviously can only exist and perpetuate if there is some sort of emotional attachment to it. The need to “fit in”. I HAD to have Nike trainers at school because kids have their own social heirarchy going on, and we all have to try to fit in with it. We are what we own, that is how consumerism, supported by governments and the media have presented life. Volvo embodied this idea beautifully, with the slogan “Life is better lived together”. We need to buy an XBox 360 because all our friends play online together, we don’t want to be left out. How can we afford it? Ah yes, student credit card. Or, buy on finance, on which you pay about one and a half times as much as you would have done if you’d have brought it from a shop. Easy credit rears its ugly head once more, to ease our need to “fit in”.

The Financial institutions keep getting fatter that way. Wealth becomes very concentrated. Capital becomes just as powerful and destructive, as the Unions were in the 1970s. This isn’t helped by the fact that businesses everywhere, and in fact, our consumer haven itself, relies on the Financial sector. The sector truly is too big to fail. They weren’t lying. Which means those working within the Financial sector are very very powerful people. And so people start to pump money into the Financial sector.

A few economists have pointed out, that although capital accumulation appears limitless, when you start to make a lot of money, you start to look for other avenues to invest in, in order to get one over on your competition. You need to expand. But there are limits to expansion (scarcity of labour supply, consumption, production etc). But those limits are barriers that need to be broken, according to Capitalist thought. Marx stated that “Every limit appears, as a barrier to be overcome” as being a massively destructive force at the heart of the Capitalist ideal. The consequence of being unable to use this mass amount of surplus profit in expansion, was that more money was pumped into speculating on the stock market, in unproductive ventures with absolutely no social good. When the stock market tanked, the money tanked with it.

When an entire financial system is built essentially on fake money, it is no wonder it didn’t last. For Nobel prize winning economists and top level financial experts at the Bank of England or the Federal Reserve, not to notice this, is a massive failure and quite frankly, disastrously unnerving. This isn’t Capitalism. It is a financial sector consumer economy. And out of nowhere, its failings are socialised. Suddenly we blame the public sector. Suddenly government spending on help for single mums has to be cut. Why? What have they done? They didn’t gamble away the Nation’s money on dodgy packages and risky easy credit. In fact, they took on the easy credit, because without it, they can’t afford to eat, what with wages stagnating across the board, and unemployment at a decade long high. Irresponsibility in the Financial sector has been ignored, and blamed entirely on the public sector.

That is how I viewed the crises.