Rachel Maddow added some reality based journalism to the discourse yesterday. In her segment, she successfully debunked the fallacy of the true electoral clout of the NRA.
Make no mistake; the political clout of the NRA is immense. They control many politicians and continue to instill the fear in them by using the inexhaustible supply of funds they have access to.
What Ms. Maddow was able to do, is dispel the notion that the political clout of the NRA is based on their electoral prowess. This prowess is not based on the numbers. It is simply not based on facts. They are however powerful because of something every middle class American should become aware of. Just like corporations have preferred stock and common stock, there are preferred voters and then the rest.
Every politician on Capitol Hill knows the facts. This is only news to the lay person. It should be no surprise however. Did Americans not re-elect President Obama on the premise that tax rates would be increased for the 2% that benefitted the most from the 30 year pilfer of the middle class? Yet, the Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to acquiesce even as they lost the popular vote (they held on to the House because of gerrymandering not because of popular consent).
Inasmuch as all of Rachel's numbers are correct and the NRA is really not as powerful as the media would have one believe, Americans must be educated on the realities and not politically driven journalism. That is the only way the middle class and poor can realistically join the governance of this country.
This is BOR's Video of the Day, or VOTD, our nightly video clip segment that hopefully provides you with a laugh or a chance to think at the end of the day.
Who wants to gut Medicaid and turn Medicare into a voucher program? Who wants to cut financial aid to 10 million college students and slash Head Start? Who wants to cut taxes for the wealthy by $4.6 million while kicking 2 million mothers and their children off a food assistance program?
Republicans do!
Republican Congressman Paul Ryan's budget does all of these horrendous things, and more. It goes so far as to destroy basic civilization in America as anything I've seen in my lifetime. And of course, Republicans in the US House of Representatives passed it, with only 10 Republican members dissenting. Furthermore, Mitt Romney has, as Rachel Maddow puts it, "embraced it as tightly as anyone can embrace anything." He wants an identical version introduced on the first day of his Presidency!
Well, President Obama disagrees, and made what for him is an extraordinarily strong statement against this Lord of the Flies vision of America's future. Here's President Obama shredding Ryan's budget, and Romney's support for it:
President Obama, more of this, please!
Check out all of our BOR videos of the day on the VOTD tag.
I betcha that except for GOP minority leaders and Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and FOX Fake News, most members of the Republican tea party wing has no clue that it has major billionaire exploiters, puppeteers and ventriloquists that pull its strings, yank its chains and grows "frogs" called GOP/tea party political candidates. The frogs, according to Koch/BP/FOX/GOP spokesmen are spawned in order to serve and rubber stamp the private agenda of Koch Industries, BP and other corporate power houses.
Many of us have expected as much from the extreme far right given former U.S. House Speaker and lobbyist Dick Armey and his involvement with the rage fests of last summer over health care reform. Richard Scott and his Conservatives for Patients' Rights movement joined forces with Armey, all in a effort to foment fear and uncertainty about health care reform. Fat cats and pimped out shills for the health care industry, Armey and Scott threw the health care needs of the majority of the American people into the pits of denial and poverty.
But Dick Armey and Richard Scott are nano size potato players when compared to the far reaching tentacles of the power, money and influence of the Koch brothers of Koch Industries.
Kay Bailey Hutchison joins the vast majority of her Republican colleagues in Washington in the GOP Hall of Hypocritical and Cowardly Shame.
Many Republicans voted for the stimulus bill and now they trash it day in and day out, at least when they are in Washington.
And yet when Republican lawmakers visit their home districts, all take credit for the projects and jobs that the stimulus bill made possible. In Texas we received:
1148 contracts: $1,178,584,964=1,398,97 jobs.
8852 grants:
$11,229,522,199=27,057,60 jobs.
Loan: (partially because Governor Perry refused to accept extended federal unemployment benefits)
$25,517,309. What were you thinking, Governor?
So, Senator Hutchison, given your stance on the evil doing stimulus package in Washington, do you suggest that Texas send the above back?
When I learn of the appalling and pervasive corruption that has overtaken our state and U.S. government, not to mention our society, I have to admit that I feel as if I've been punched in the gut and kicked really hard in the butt.
Just when we think we've heard the absolute worst of the very worst, inevitably something even more awful will emerge.
The recent exposure of the Bush Administration's pervasive corruption, the Bush Administration's lies, the ginned up war in Iraq, Halliburton's criminal overcharges, Blackwater that prides itself on offing innocent Iraqis, and its bribes to the Iraqi government to buy silence, the deregulated banks, sub prime loans, Wall. St. and its U.S. government enabled reckless gambling casinos, at taxpayer peril, thank you, the discovery of FOX News as the undeniable propaganda arm for the GOP, the self-serving teabagging front groups that pretend to be grassroots movements that use and abuse well-meaning and misled teabaggers, and on and on...It is enough to suck all of the breath out of my lungs.
What would St. Ronnie say if he knew? Gee whiz, what happened!? Or, I know it all sounds terrible and really scary, but in the end, all of the above will be really good for the American people. Trust me folks, there will be 25 chickens in every pot next year and a pony in every back yard. Be patient. Work harder. You don't have a job? You are not working hard enough, you lazy, shiftless bum! Go to the mall. Buy a house full of garbage you don't need. Just be happy and all of of our troubles will disappear.
But the grand old actor wizard and the master of deep deception has long since departed. And there is no St. Ronnie today who can sugar coat the awful and the scary.
What truly sends chills down my spine this time is the discovery that a group of Christian Republicans and Democratic U.S. lawmakers, thank you, seem to be on a crusade to turn our U.S. government into one that is "led by God."
Why does this imperative remind me somehow of the Taliban and the so-called God run governments Iran and Saudi Arabia?
It all starts with pro-slavery driven and unfettered corporate imperatives.
Liz Cheney, whose father served as one of the architects of two wars, one of which is unnecessary and which has broken us in terms of blood and treasure, and her father, who had also received five deferments during the Vietnam War, attacked President Obama for greeting our fallen soldiers at the Dover Air Force Base.
Only a Republican could turn a respectful and well-meaning Presidential act into an inappropriate or self-serving one.
How low can they go? Apparently the pit is bottomless, as readers will see later in the post.
Nor should we forget how former CEO Cheney has personally profited enormously from Halliburton's no bid contracts in our federal government's military/industrial war complex.
Veterans over at Daily Kos have much to say about Liz Cheney and her father.
This President rocks. It's daunting to think about how many warehouses of socialist mops and vats of extra strength socialist Lysol we'll need to clean up Republican Texas.
Aside from the need for socialist mops, the really good news this week is that it looks like we are getting closer to HCR that includes a public option. We have the AHIP (American Health Insurance Plans) to thank for this. According to Paul Krugman of the New York Times AHIP's threat to increase rates b/c it didn't like the Baucus bill backfired.
A Hatchet Job So Bad It's Good
It seems that a bunch of selfish greed mongering fat cats had become so desperate and crazed by the mere thought of losing one penny that the fat cats blew up the very building they were protecting.
Shall we cry 'em a river folks?
I didn't think so.
Meanwhile, there were other pressing developments at the U.N and in the U.S. Congress:
Big thanks to the 44 Diaries for sharing this with us.
It was so very naive and silly of me to suggest that the GOP should step up and take responsibility, as any adult would do, by calling a halt to the brown shirt shout downs at town hall meetings on healthcare reform.
Silly, silly me. That won't happen. Never. Ever. Even if hell freezes over and the entire country is in the throes of death, the answer remains to be no, never, in your dreams, not even if hell freezes over.
Despite GOP cries for freedom, its flag waving, its prominence of lapel wearing flag pins, its highly orchestrated scenarios of patriotism and noble words about freedom, the GOP's behavior has nothing to do with any of the principles mentioned above.
Actions speak louder than words. Shouting down and shutting out the questions and opinions that fellow Americans want to ask and share with their elected representative is:
anti-democratic,
anti-patriotic and
anti-American.
When political rhetoric goes over the top, inaction by a party's leadership is the same as blind acquiescence.
According to former right wing Republican and evangelical Christian leader, Frank Schaeffer, the GOP, its conservative pundits and the self-serving corporate sharks in the healthcare industry know no bounds in pulling off what is best for them.
For right wing Republicans, conservative pundits, the corporate sharks and their now enabled fruit loop nut jobs, it is a fight to the death.
Just when you think the Republicans and their love mates in big insurance and pharma have sunk to the lowest hole in a snake pit, they manage to creep into an even deeper one. Their latest stunt goes beyond the pale in much the same fashion as the GOP did in the Terri Schiavo case. But the Schiavo incident was child's play when compared to the cruel and sinister stuff Republicans and their love mates are up to today.
In a recent multi-million dollar PR campaign to kill off health care reform, insurance companies, special interest groups and Republicans are lying to and scaring the daylights out of senior citizens in the most appalling manner. The self-serving, unconscionable and greedy ghouls are telling older folks that health care reform will literally kill them. They will be euthanized, or they will be required to have five- year medical reviews that could result in death sentences.
I am not making this up or telling a really sick and inappropriate joke. This ruthless fear and smear campaign is happening while I type. And, as I mentioned in a diary posted below, Republicans in Congress are completely on board with this beyond the pale campaign of terror against senior citizens.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has revealed much about the despicable "deather" movement.
Rachel Maddow added some reality based journalism to the discourse yesterday. In her segment, she successfully debunked the fallacy of the true electoral clout of the NRA.
It is simply not based on facts. They are however powerful because of something every middle class American should become aware of. Just like corporations have preferred stock and common stock, there are preferred voters and 
