Time is running out
Is this the way our democracy is supposed to work?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-republicans-rig-the-game-20131111
National Republicans have waged an unrelenting campaign to exploit every weakness and anachronism in our electoral system. Through a combination of hyperpartisan redistricting of the House, unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate and racist voter suppression in the states, today’s GOP has locked in political power that it could never have secured on a level playing field.
These people are the ones waving the flag and accusing progressives of being unpatriotic. What is American about trying to lie and cheat your way into office? And why can’t these people see that their way of life is virtually over.
What is on its way out?
- Bigotry and racism
- Religious fanaticism and interference with our secular government
- Slavocracy, with a tiny privileged group of people exploiting everyone else
- Women as second-class citizens, working for 70 cents on the dollar and giving up control over reproductive rights to legislators
- People dying from lack of affordable health care and insurance companies deciding who gets treatment
- Voter suppression and poll taxes
- Unlivable hourly wages
- An underclass of undocumented workers living in the shadows and doing back-breaking work, virtually for free
- Man-made climate change denial
- Prejudicial trade agreements that benefit big corporations
- International billionaires buying our elections
- Exclusion of same-sex couples from the same legal rights and privileges that heterosexual couples enjoy
- Holding back food from the 49 million people living at the poverty level, even though they are working or willing to
- Obstruction of government through filibusters and super-majorities, and refusing to put a bill on the floor for a vote
- Unrestricted use and open carrying of automatic weapons on our streets, buttressed by unconscionable ‘stand your ground’ and ‘castle doctrine’ laws
The list could go on and on. The GOP is on the wrong side of history. They can try to hold back the tide of change, but it will be increasingly difficult.
Such trickery has come to define the GOP’s approach to federal elections where Republicans can no longer prevail in a fair fight.
And by the way, they will be lucky if the next POTUS is Hilary Clinton and not Elizabeth Warren. Warren means business. She is no moderate and she is not only wildly popular, she raises money like no-one else. She has the big five banks in her sights as the real culprits in our recent Depression, not one of which has been brought to justice. They are now 30% bigger than they were in 2009.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115509/elizabeth-warren-hillary-clintons-nightmare
According to Thom Hartmann, there is a major stock market crash on the horizon in 2016 (no props to Obama for the Dow flirting 
with 16,000 right now, from these petty extremists on the right, either). When that happens, the roiling populace that has had enough of disenfranchisement and the domination of America by the oligarchs, will simply rise up and squash the GOP once and for all.
The United States is in the midst of an economic implosion that could make the Great Depression look like child’s play. In THE CRASH OF 2016, Thom Hartmann argues that the facade of our once-great United States will soon disintegrate to reveal the rotting core where corporate and billionaire power and greed have replaced democratic infrastructure and governance. Our once-enlightened political and economic systems have been manipulated to ensure the success of only a fraction of the population at the expense of the rest of us.
The Republican war on the poor, minorities, gays, women, and Democrats just cannot succeed. Good people do not do these things. In the end, this is anti-American conduct and will not be supported by the majority of decent citizens for much longer.
Why can’t these people wake up and see it coming? I hate to say it but, it just seems like willful obtuseness from where I sit.
Images: thenewrepublic.com, amazon.com
Beth Byrnes 
I read that same article yesterday.Thanks for the link to the Rolling Stone one; it at least in part explains how such a small group with such unpopular views can still hold so much sway.
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This has been so deliberate and diabolical. The way these people have been plotting to take this country backward, and take down the middle class is downright seditious. They are in their death thoes and that explains why they are acting the way they are. I am sick of the lot of them and I feel sorry for their dupes.
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I can’t feel sorry for them – it is so willful to believe their crap. And most of my family are dupes, but it is very very simple to see through the ruse. So it’s on them if they get brought down by their own desires to remain uninformed and hateful, IMHO.
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I know how you feel. I skipped a major event last night because I could not bear to sit and hear Geoff’s family sneer over the ACA issues. I just cannot trust myself not to blast them, which Geoff hates (although he is more of a liberal than I am – how did that family produce him, I want to know!).
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NO!
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Amen! 🙂
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Willful obtuseness. I like that phrase. Only I truly don’t think they are obtuse. I think it is fear. The reactionary right has done so much to instill fear, that people have constructed brick barriers of the heart. No one will get in because it is too fearful to admit that the leaders they have followed for so long might be wrong. They leaders they have based their decisions on, their ethical choices on, their friendships on, might be manipulative, greedy Gordon Geckos who have their own self-interests at the forefront. This would make them at worst, suckers, at best fools, for sticking their heads in the sand for so very, very long.
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Fear certainly has a large role in the way the American public is acting, I was more speaking about the ‘professionals’ who are lying to the American people in the hope that they can hang on to their cushy, high paying jobs working for the global plutocrats. Taking the economy down keeps all the average people working harder and harder, with no time to think. Hearing Boehner today, you would think he is suffering from a lack of sleep, low wages, and hardship himself. His quote today on the ACA was “It can’t be fixed” “It is going to destroy the best health care delivery system in the world” — Is this what we want in a leader? Negativity, defeatism, lies (we do NOT have the worlds best health care system, far, far from it). That man is largely responsible for taking the world’s economy to the brink of disaster just a few weeks ago, merely to protect his little job.
Unfortunately, as the Rolling Stone article points out, we are going to have to put up with this for a few more years, then the catastrophic collapse of the stock market, then these people will be done for good. But, they are going to make all the rest of us suffer, while they go down kicking and screaming.
Thank you Susan. 🙂
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Totally agree on leadership’s role in all this. They want their greedy little pickings and don’t really care about anyone else. I can still recall GHWB talking about a “kinder, gentler,” leadership. Bah, humbug! Anytime they subscribe to trickle-down Reagonomics, you can bet the folks at the bottom of the trickle are getting screwed.
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Oh yes. This all began with that man and his selfish philosophy. Thirty years of this – whole generations raised in an atmosphere of increasing tension and worry. It is appalling. The blue-blood Bushes pretending to be on the side of the average guy. And now Dubya is speaking to that extremist group of religious fanatics who want Jewish people to convert to Christianity. He ought to be ashamed of himself.
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I know of two theses that would explain what you’ve documented, and both are heretical. The first is definitely in conspiracy theory territory, and suggests that the international fascist element grafted itself onto America in the post WWII years via PAPERCLIP, “white” Eastern Europeans immigrants fleeing Communism, and other means.
The other argues that we’re in the midst of the same narcissistic process of social decay as befell the Roman Empire.
Regardless, you’ve raised some disturbing points. A provocative post that I, for one, enjoyed. Thank you.
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I think both of those are likely. I would put Ayn Rand in the first category and her twisted writings have caused untold harm. The romanesque decay, definitely. Eisenhower warned us, I think even de Tocqueville warned of this likelihood. You know, in the 1990s we seemed to be pulling it together. The Bushes really took this country back, almost irreparably. It is disgusting.
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Are you familiar with GHWB’s grandfather’s history?
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On which side, the Bush or the Pierce? I have read several biographies on the Bush family.
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Maybe that was father – hope I’m not confusing generations.
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Prescott and Samuel. Not much better than their offspring, imho.
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