The Biggest Anti-American Clowns of the Week: Erick Erickson, Lou Dobbs, Paul Ryan, Ken Cuccinelli and Bryan Fischer

The Biggest Anti-American Clowns of the Week: Erick Erickson, Lou Dobbs, Paul Ryan,  Ken Cuccinelli and Bryan Fischer: The following are just some snips from the full article at the link,

1. Erick Erickson: Self-administered abortions are a real yuck fest.

Shortly after the vote to approve the draconian abortion ban, right-wing blogger Erick Erickson tweeted a link to a wire coathanger supplier, telling “liberals,” and really, the women of Texas, to “Go bookmark this site.” Rather like Geraldo’s jackass comments, this can be an instance of the right wing making the case against itself: Yes, your laws will drive women to desperate life-endangering measures, that is what we have been saying. Perhaps Erickson realized his mistake because he later deleted the tweet. But wait, then he defended his tweet against detractors by saying that before Roe v. Wade “only” 39 women died from self-administered abortions. Oh, only 39. (Not that we accept his accounting.) He also stands by his view that working women are “against nature.” Yeah, that one is still good.

2. Lou Dobbs: Eric Holder is a radical racist. DOJ organized and paid for protests.

Since we revisited Texas, let’s revisit Florida and Trayvon Martin as well, just for the sheer perversity of the reactions to the case. On Monday, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs promoted the conspiracy theory that the Department of Justice organized the protests over the killing of Trayvon Martin. Why is that? Well, because Attorney General Eric Holder is a radical racist. Just like his boss.

Yes, this cabal of black men at the pinnacle of American power used “thousands” of taxpayer dollars to train people to go out and pretend to be mad back when Martin was shot. And they are doing it again, because black people have to be paid to be mad about having their innocent young men gunned down.

3. Paul Ryan: Undocumented immigrants don’t want to be citizens.

Wrongheaded on a number of issues—most famously the federal budget and the path out of deficit spending (now on the back burner)—Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has redeemed himself ever so slightly by at least advocating for immigration reform in the House, the version with a militarized, drone-patrolled Mexican border that the Senate passed in June. He has even used his own Irish-immigrant lineage to argue in its favor. But on Thursday, Ryan made the rather curious claim that undocumented immigrants don’t want a path to citizenship.

“Most people just want to have a legal status so they can work to provide for their families,” he said.

It’s one thing to oppose a path to citizenship, which many Republicans do unabashedly, but quite another to dishonestly project that opposition onto the very people asking for it. In fact, as Think Progress reports [4]:

 Almost 90 percent of undocumented immigrants said they would apply for citizenship if allowed. The vast majority have family members who are U.S. citizens. Moreover, citizenship opens up more job opportunities and wage gains. Granting citizenship would also boost the economy; immigrants would pay more in state and local taxes if they became citizens.

4. Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Republican and gubernatorial hopeful, has a problem with sodomy.

Woe to consenting heterosexual couples, consenting homosexual couples and people interested in having sex in positions other than the missionary, if Ken Cuccinelli becomes the next governor of Virginia. They’ll all have to wave bye-bye to all that oral and anal sex they are having. Cuccinelli wants to get that good ol’ anti-sodomy law back on the books.

Cloaking the push as an attempt to keep children safe from sexual predators, when everyone knows that he is targeting the LGBT community, Cuccinelli has launched a website [5] in his ongoing effort to reinstate a “Crimes Against Nature” law, which the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas.

5. Bryan Fischer: Being gay, robbing banks and dealing drugs are all comparable lifestyle choices.

American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is very mad at the Cheneys, especially Dick and Liz. He is not mad at Liz for the same reason other Republicans are mad at Liz, which is that she is dividing the party by running against a fellow Republican for Wyoming Senate. And he is certainly not mad at Liz and Dick for the same reasons progressives are, namely that they are evil incarnate. No, he’s mad because Liz being out and gay has made the whole family go soft on the issue of same-sex marriage.

“That complicates things for a lot of people,” Fischer said on the radio program he hosts. (Fischer and his pal Cuccinelli seem to think constantly, have never ending fantasies, about other people's private consetual behavior. Maybe these two need to check into some kind of clinic for weirdos who are obsessed with other people's sex lives.

I don't understand why Fischer doesn't like Liz Cheney, she loves violating the law, loves to torture people and thinks the president should have all the power and privileged of a dictator - as long as the president is an anti-American conservative anyway. 

 

Time To Face the Reality, Mark Zuckerberg and FaceBook Are Evil

Time To Face the Reality, Mark Zuckerberg and FaceBook Are Evil

Having solved the problem of people not wasting enough time on the internet, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is now tackling his first real-world political cause: immigration reform. With a slick new non-profit group funded by tech millionaires, Zuckerberg is rallying Silicon Valley's elite into a political force they hope might one day rival Wall Street. Zuckerberg's political moves are of a piece with his career as a tech mogul: hugely ambitious, painfully awkward, entirely self-interested, and surprisingly successful. And he's just getting started.

Earlier this month, Zuckerberg unveiled the vehicle of his political will: FWD.us, a bipartisan, non-profit political advocacy group that sounds like an iPhone app. FWD.us has attracted big names from both politics and technology, including former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart, Romney adviser Dan Senor, LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman, and Google chairman Eric Schmidt. The group hopes to raise $50 million to fund its lobbying for the passage of comprehensive immigration reform, which is currently making its way through Congress.

Why immigration? We need those smart foreign brains: In a Washington Post op-ed announcing FWD.us, Zuckerberg wrote that "in a knowledge economy, the most important resources are the talented people we educate and attract to our country." To that end, FWD.us says on its website it aims to "establish a streamlined process for admitting future workers" and increase the number of H-1B visas that let companies hire high-skilled foreign workers to "continue to promote innovation and meet our workforce needs."

The implicit argument behind FWD.us is that the U.S. doesn't have enough high-skilled domestic workers to meet tech companies' needs. This is a myth, and Zuckerberg and FWD.us are just the latest tech players to promote it. In fact there is no shortage of domestic IT workers, as shown in a new study from the Economic Policy Institute. While there is an unusually low unemployment rate among American tech workers (3%), they haven't enjoyed the large salary increases that would signal a shortage. There is also little evidence that the foreign workers tech companies hire are any better than Americans. The real reason tech companies want to hire more high-skilled immigrants is that they can pay them less than Americans, since immigrants are in a more economically precarious position. More than 80 percent of workers hired under the H-1B program are paid less than their American counterparts, according to the EPI. This kind of outsourcing benefits tech companies while hurting domestic tech workers.

The self-serving motives behind Zuckerberg's immigration reform push can be seen clearly in Facebook's corporate lobbying efforts. As FWD.us promotes high-minded ideals of openness and opportunity, Facebook's lobbying firms have been doing the dirty work of making sure immigration reform means they can freely hire high-skilled immigrants for less money than their American counterparts. Specifically, Facebook has been trying to insert language into the Senate immigration bill to eliminate a requirement that American companies make a "good faith" effort to hire Americans before looking abroad, according to the Washington Post. And Facebook wants to axe rules that would require companies to pay these foreign workers more. Facebook isn't just a fan of outsourcing its high-skilled jobs: Last year we reported that much of Facebook's dirty and unpleasant content moderation was done by outsourced third-world workers making as little as $1 an hour.

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy told the Post, "The real goal is to put Zuckerberg and Facebook front and center with the Washington elite … to better extinguish a growing call to regulate how his company does business.”

So FWD.us is just another case of a savvy businessman wielding political clout for his financial benefit. But how FWD.us and Zuckerberg have done this is worth considering as a model of tech industry political activism to come. FWD.us demonstrates a bizarre wedding of Silicon Valley idealism with the tepid realities of interest politics. The two worlds collided last week when news stories went viral revealing that the group had funded ads trashing Obama and praising oil drilling in the Arctic. One ad supporting South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham slammed Obamacare and the president's "wasteful stimulus spending." The liberal blogosphere was shocked: The same Mark Zuckerberg who once feted Obama in Silicon Valley and counts Corey Booker as a bff now sounded like a long lost Koch Brother.

While the ad was funded by Zuckerberg's group, it didn't represent a right-wing turn for the politically ambiguous mogul. It was a tactical strike in his immigration reform campaign. The ad was made by a subsidiary group of FWD.us called Americans For a Conservative Direction. Lindsay Graham is one of the few Republican supporters of the Senate immigration reform bill, and the ad is meant to bolster Graham's conservative bona fides so he can push the largely Democrat-backed immigration bill without seeming like a softy. If that means bad-mouthing Obama, so be it.

After the ad went viral, FWD.us tried to placate angry liberals by pointing out that the group had also created a left-leaning organization, the Council for American Job Growth, to support liberal immigration reform backers. A FWD.us spokesperson told ThinkProgress that "maintaining two separate entities… to support elected officials across the political spectrum—separately—means that we can more effectively communicate with targeted audience of their constituents." This is politics, Facebook-style: pandering as personalized as your Facebook Newsfeed! It's also about as craven as Washington gets. Even the Koch brothers lacked the devious ingenuity to back two competing teams, as BuzzFeed's Ben Smith pointed out on Twitter. They only disingenuously funded the Tea Party.

The ad fracas was not even the weirdest moment in FWD.us' brief history. Days before it launched, Politico obtained an enthusiastically creepy memo FWD.us president Joe Green sent to potential supporters that sounded like a dispatch from North Korea's propaganda ministry. While the bloviating of the tech elite sounds just a bit ridiculous in blog posts by venture capitalists pumping a new mobile payment service, it takes a more sinister tone when applied to politics.

Green's memo boasted that "technology executives would use their companies to 'control the avenues of distribution' for a political message in support of their efforts," according to Politico. In case the implications of that statement were unclear, the memo also listed three reasons why the tech industry can become "one of the most powerful voices" in politics:

    1: We control massive distribution channels, both as companies and individuals. We saw the tip of the iceberg with SOPA/PIPA.

    2: Our voice carries a lot of weight because we are broadly popular with Americans.

    3. We have individuals with a lot of money. If deployed properly this can have huge influence in the current campaign finance environment.

We control massive distribution channels is something that would issue from a Facebook lackey's mouth in the most conspiracy-addled daydream of an infowars.com power-user. And yet here is Green, Mark Zuckerberg's old Harvard roommate, essentially promoting technology-enabled subliminal messaging in a confidential memo to the tech elite.

Green said in a statement that his language was "poorly chosen" and gave "a misimpression of the views and aspirations of this organization and those associated with." But he made a very similar pitch Monday in a paid promotional presentation to the assembled geeks and entrepreneurs of the TechCrunch Distrupt conference in New York City:

"This is one of those urgent policy problems that demonstrates how broken Washington D.C. is," he said, "and where we can apply our patented tech community innovation skills."

This framing is important because as tech companies become bigger political players they're likely going to adopt a similar message. Last year, the tech industry spent $132.5 million on lobbying efforts, "placing them among the top lobbying sectors in the Capitol," according to the Washington Post. Many of these companies are taking the same route as Zuckerberg, creating non-profit "stealth PACS" that allow them to wield political influence in the name of some social good without disclosing their donors.

FaceBook has become no more than a captive audience of consumers to be studied by corporate marketeers - users are no more than guinea pigs.  If FaceBook is going to use and exploit their users the least they could do is start paying them.

George W Bush's $250 Million Can of Whitewash. In America, with enough time and money you can convince people you're not evil when you lose $17 trillion dollars of the nation's money and get 20,000 soldiers and marines maimed. Bush was just following the Conservative Road-map for America. He made the rich richer and the middle-class poorer.

Another proud day for the NRA ( National Right to Murder Children Association) 5-Year-Old Get .22 Caliber Birthday Rifle, Shoots and Kills 2-Year-Old Sister

How Republicans Are Using Austerity To Tank The Economy or Why Do Conservatives Hate America

How Republicans Are Using Austerity To Tank The Economy or Why Do Conservatives Hate America

Congress will not avert the dreaded sequester – the government’s latest wheeze to deal with the phony “deficit crisis.” Never mind that the very same deficit is projected to fall under $1 trillion this year for the first time since 2008, according to the CBO. Politicians and the chattering classes rail about the deficit, while in the meantime, Americans can’t find jobs. Our neighbors, friends and fellow citizens have suffered from a persistently high unemployment rate of 8 percent through 2012, and worse, an underemployment situation of around 15 percent. Why doesn’t this very real crisis generate concern? Why all of the fuss about a nonexistent emergency?

Conservatives talk indignantly about government profligacy to justify their deficit obsession. But our large deficits (which peaked some three years ago) can almost always be expected to result from recessions because of what economists call “automatic stabilizers.” These are safeguards that have been in place since the Great Depression – things like unemployment insurance, welfare, food stamps and the like. These programs were introduced precisely to avoid the kind of human misery a great many of our citizens experienced during that earlier catastrophe. These income transfers are also the reasons -- not the bailouts to our banks -- why the economy has escaped the kind of freefall experienced in the early 1930s.

A major consequence of this policy choice, which is supported by the vast majority of Americans, is that budget deficits in the US are largely automatic and non-discretionary. So recessions create budget deficits, much as private sector booms reduce deficits.

True, we are not booming by any stretch today. But even against this sluggish backdrop, over the last three years, the deficit has experienced a 30 percent drop as a percentage of GDP. That suggests the patient is slowly recovering, but not fast enough. The current rate of job creation is not only insufficient to replace the jobs lost since the crisis, but can’t even keep up with labor force growth. At the recent pace of job creation, we only fall further behind. Withdrawing the medicine prematurely risks creating a relapse in the economy.

And there is much more to do. We need to use this period of historically low interest rates to borrow so as to improve our productive capacity as an economy going forward. As anybody who wanders around major American cities can see, the country has fallen into disrepair. Just ride in any New York City taxi cab and see how well your back survives the journey. But before we can rebuild our pothole-ridden roads, repair our decaying grids, or deal with energy or climate change, we must challenge and reject all of the nonsense about long-term budget deficits, national bankruptcy or insolvency, and even “fiscal responsibility” that we are hearing from Congress and the chattering classes.

The real fiscal responsibility lies in understanding how we invest in the future with jobs, education and decent roads and bridges. Letting our country fall apart, on the other hand, is the height of irresponsibility.

If the US continues to make headway on the jobs front, it will do even better on the deficit front, which is why any sensible economist will tell you that deficit reduction per se should never be an object of government policy. In a market economy, employment is the main source of income for most of the population. Economic growth creates jobs. Without paying jobs, individuals are unable to pay taxes.  In capitalist, wage-labor societies, therefore, joblessness creates a long list of other kinds of waste that Congress never talks about—the breakup of families, rising alcoholism and drug addiction, higher crime rates, absolute and relative poverty, damage to social status and self-respect, adverse psychological and physical health effects, stress, suicide, crime and other anti-social behavior.

During WWII, the government’s deficit -- which one year reached 25 percent of GDP -- raised government’s public debt ratio above 120 percent, much higher than the ratio expected to be achieved by 2015. Further, in spite of the siren songs warning of the evils of high national public debt, US growth in the postwar period was robust—it was the golden age of US economic growth. And guess what? The debt ratio came down rather rapidly, mostly not due to budget surpluses and debt retirement, but rather due to rapid growth that raised the denominator of the debt ratio.

More here, Pundits Still Getting Sequester and Budget Debates Wrong and here,  The most striking and disconcerting thing about the latest round in the budget war is that the debate within the Republican Party is proceeding on the basis of completely false premises.

5 Terrifying Things about the Sequester

5 Terrifying Things about the Sequester. Just my top two, the rest are at the link.

1. The sequester will hurt job-growth

As we pointed out during the debates raging in the run-up to the “fiscal cliff," the sequester was the second-most damaging component of the austerity bundle set to take effect on January 1, 2013. The worst component was the non-renewal of the payroll tax cut, which is already dragging substantially on the economy. All told, if the sequester kicks in the economy will likely end the year with roughly 500-600,000 fewer jobs than if it were repealed. These are jobs the economy desperately needs. To be clear, the sequester alone won’t drive the U.S. economy back into outright recession, but it surely will make the agonizingly slow recovery that much slower. Further, it’s worth noting that even a full repeal of it with no offset will still result in an economy growing much too slowly to quickly return to full-employment. In a nutshell, arguments over the sequester are roughly about whether we’d like to be $900 billion or a full $1 trillion below economic potential in the coming year.

....5. Entitlement are commitment devices. That’s scary.

Given that much of the negotiation over the sequester is how to “pay for” its repeal with other spending cuts, it should be noted that legislated changes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA do not need annual appropriations, and hence are likely to be much longer-lasting than any agreed-to discretionary cuts. Replacing the sequester with cuts to these valued programs would be a disaster. We have shown, for example, that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined contributed ten times as much to income growth for middle-income households over the last generation than growth in hourly wages. These programs are, by far, the part of the U.S. economy that still manages to deliver some goods to low- and moderate-income households. Gutting them in the name of securing a better economic future is perverse indeed. Obviously, pure efficiencies that save these programs money—tougher drug bargaining for Medicare, or reforms to provider reimbursement that squeeze out economic rents and improve quality—are welcome. But simple cuts to these programs that shift costs onto households as a way to pay for the sequester is close to a worst-case outcome.

The Patriot Gospel: Guns Don't Kill People, Video Games Kill People

The Patriot Gospel: Gun Don't Kill People, Video Games Kill People

Republicans are more likely to place the blame for gun violence on video games, not guns, according to a recent poll from Public Policy Polling. Sixty seven percent of Republicans believe that such games are a “bigger safety threat” than firearms — only 14 percent think the reverse.

The only problem? There’s no data to support that position. There is evidence that limiting access to guns can help limit violence wrought by those machines. In particular, there’s evidence to show that the Assault Weapons Ban helped to limit gun violence on the Mexican-American border. And in states where gun ownership is high and gun laws are lax, violence rates are higher.

On the other hand, there’s absolutely no conclusive evidence showing that video games are the root cause of violence. There are countries with much lower rates of violence that have much higher consumption of video games.

It doesn't matter what reality says, conservative gun fetishists love believe stuff. Once they believe stuff, it is like trying to convince the member of a cult that the guy up there preaching is not a mini-god. Since conservatism has all the hallmarks of a cult, good luck with trying to get them to consume some reality.

Fox News and Torture Boy Sean /Hannity Uses Ex-LAPD Cop Killer To Dishonestly Smear Liberals

The Terrible Truth About the Republicans' Favorite Historian

Fascism Comes To America: How Republicans Plan To Rig The Next Presidential Election, In Six Pictures

Fascism Comes To America: How Republicans Plan To Rig The Next Presidential Election, In Six Pictures

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R), one of the architects of the Republican election-rigging plan
Yesterday, Virginia Republicans took the first step to move a GOP plan to rig the Electoral College forward in that state. Similar plans are under consideration in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

The Republican election rigging plan targets blue states that President Obama won in 2008 and 2012, and changes the way they allocate electoral votes to give many of these votes away for free to the Republican candidate for president. Under the Republican Plan, most electoral votes will be allocated to the winner of individual Congressional districts, rather than to the winner of the state as a whole. Because the Republican Plan would be implemented in states that are heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans, the resulting maps would all but guarantee that the Republican would win a majority of each state’s electoral votes, even if the Democratic candidate wins the state as a whole.

Today, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released a white paper detailing how this Republican election-rigging plan works — including this rather striking visual demonstration of just how effectively Republicans gerrymandered six states that are likely targets of their plan:

In 1936 the John Reed club said that Hearst and Coughlin are the two chief exponents of fascism in America. If fascism comes, he added, it will not be identified with any "shirt" movement, nor with an "insignia," but it will probably be "wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution." Now e can just replace Hearst and Coughlin with the Republican party and the Koch brothers.

Why Does Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Hate America, Children and the Truth, But Wants Rapists To Have Assault Weapons

Why Does Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Hate America, Children and the Truth, But Wants Rapists To Have Assault Weapons

In an email sent to his supporters on Sunday night, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned that the President and his Democratic allies were planning to take Americans’ guns away.

“You and I are literally surrounded,” McConnell’s campaign manager Jesse Benton wrote. “The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out-assault on the Second Amendment.”

The email falsely claimed President Barack Obama planned to issue 23 executive orders “to get your guns.” Obama plans to nominate a director for the ATF and direct the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes of gun violence, among other executive actions. None of the executive orders he outlined last week involve anything remotely like gun confiscation.

“The gun-grabbers are in full battle mode,” Benton continued. “And they are serious. What’s at stake? There are almost too many schemes to list.”

The email notes that Obama has called on Congress to renew the assault weapons ban, restrict high-capacity magazines, and require universal background checks on gun purchases. Benton alleged the background checks were actually part of a secret plot “for full-scale confiscation.”

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) blasted McConnell for sending out the inaccurate and conspiracy-filled email.

“He’s misleading the people he sends that to, because what he’s saying is absolutely dishonest,” Yarmuth told LEO Weekly. “And it can also be dangerous, because people get that email who may not have been following the debate, and they all of a sudden get anxious and who knows what can happen from that kind of provocation.”

A complete and honest list of Democratic gun safety measures. None of which take away people's rights to buy a hand gun, a hunting rifle or anything that could be construed as an attack on the 2nd Amendment. Heck, they might even save a few lives. Mitch, as usual is looking out for the best interests of evil, making sure that rapists, murderers and the criminally insane have access to high powered weapons. Mitch has a long record of hating America and American values with a passion.

Gendercide: Over one hundred million women in the world are estimated to be “missing” from the world’s population

They are the death mongers. They don't care about the constitution. The more people that die by gun, the more guns they sell, Major Gun Company Begins Asking Customers to Fight Obama's Proposed Reforms

E-mails Reveal Walmart CEO Was Repeatedly Informed of Bribery Scandal in 2005

E-mails Reveal Walmart CEO Was Repeatedly Informed of Bribery Scandal in 2005

Two Democratic Congressmen today released internal Walmart documents which they said appear to directly contradict Walmart’s recent claims regarding alleged rampant bribery by its Mexico subsidiary. They include what appear to be seven year-old e-mails in which current Walmart CEO Mike Duke was directly informed of the scandal. At the time, Duke was serving as Walmart vice chairman, responsible for Walmart international.

“We are concerned that your company’s public statements that the company was unaware of the allegations appear to be inconsistent with documents we have obtained through our investigation,” representatives Henry Waxman and Elijah Cummings wrote in a letter to Walmart CEO Michael Duke released this morning. “Contrary to Wal-Mart’s public statements, the documents appear to show that you were personally advised of the allegations in October 2005.” Cummings are Waxman the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Education & Commerce Committee, respectively. Walmart did not immediately respond to The Nation’s request for comment.

The congressmen’s findings echo those of a separate investigation by the New York Times, the paper that first broke news of the scandal in April. In a 7,600 word expose published three weeks ago, the Times found that in 2006, Walmart headquarters shut down an internal investigation of bribery in Mexico, despite “a wealth of evidence” supporting the allegations, and thus “authorities were not notified.” Unlike today’s letter, the Times story did not mention Duke himself.

The December 17 New York Times story reported, also based on confidential documents, that Walmart de Mexico used illegal payoffs in its pursuit of at least 19 Mexico store sites. According to reporters David Barstow and Alejandra Xanic von Betrab, those included a field just outside the historic pyramids in Teotihuacan, an area where Walmart otherwise “almost surely would not have been allowed to build…”

Many Americans might be under the impression that since Republicans are constantly whining about  pro business policies, that conservatives are pro business. That is not the case. Republicans are pro organized crime. They do not want Congress to interfere with businesses like Walmart or Monsanto or BP perpetrating their crimes. It is all code words. Conservative business policies are pro organized crime policies. As simple as that. To add insult to injury - see chart above - middle-class and low wage Americans subsidize Walmart's crimes. 

Why Do Republicans Hate America. They're Proponents of Economic Austerity, a Proven Failure as a Means of Economic Recovery

Why Do Republicans Hate America. They're Proponents of Economic Austerity, a Proven Failure as a Means of Economic Recovery

With all the theatrics going on in Washington, you might well have missed the most important political and economic news of the week: an official confirmation from the United Kingdom that austerity policies don’t work.

In making his annual Autumn Statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was forced to admit that his government has failed to meet a series of targets it set for itself back in June of 2010, when it slashed the budgets of various government departments by up to thirty per cent. Back then, Osborne said that his austerity policies would cut his country’s budget deficit to zero within four years, enable Britain to begin relieving itself of its public debt, and generate healthy economic growth. None of these things have happened. Britain’s deficit remains stubbornly high, its people have been suffering through a double-dip recession, and many observers now expect the country to lose its “AAA” credit rating.

One of the frustrations of economics is that it is hard to carry out scientific experiments and prove things beyond reasonable doubt. But not in this case. Thanks to Osborne’s stubborn refusal to change course—“Turning back would be a disaster,” he told Parliament—what has been happening in Britain amounts to a “natural experiment” to test the efficacy of austerity economics. For the sixty-odd million inhabitants of the U.K., living through it hasn’t been a pleasant experience—no university institutional-review board would have allowed this kind of brutal human experimentation. But from a historical and scientific perspective, it is an invaluable case study.

At every stage of the experiment, critics (myself included) have warned that Osborne’s austerity policies would prove self-defeating. Any decent economics textbook will tell you that, other things being equal, cutting government spending causes the economy’s overall output to fall, tax revenues to decrease, and spending on benefits to increase. Almost invariably, the end result is slower growth (or a recession) and high budget deficits. Osborne, relying on arguments about restoring the confidence of investors and businessmen that his forebears at the U.K. Treasury used during the early nineteen-thirties against Keynes, insisted (and continues to insist) otherwise, but he has been proven wrong.

With Republicans in Congress still intent on pursuing a strategy similar to the failed one adopted by the Brits, this is a story that needs trumpeting. Austerity policies are self-defeating: they cripple growth and reduce tax revenues. The only way to bring down the U.S. government’s deficit in a sustainable manner, and put the nation’s finances on a firmer footing, is to keep the economy growing. Spending cuts and tax increases can also play a role, but they need to be introduced gradually.

Before the last election there, which took place in May, 2010, the U.K.’s economy appeared to be slowly recovering from the deep slump of 2008-09 that followed the housing bust and global financial crisis. Just like the Bush Administration (2008) and the Obama Administration (2009), Gordon Brown’s Labour government had introduced a fiscal stimulus to help turn the economy around. G.D.P. was growing at an annual rate of about 2.5 per cent. Once Osborne’s cuts in spending started to be felt, however, things changed dramatically. In the fourth quarter of 2010, growth turned negative and a double-dip recession began. So far, it has lasted two years. While G.D.P. did expand in the third quarter of this year, the Office of Budget Responsibility, an independent economic agency that Osborne set up, has said that it expects another decline in the current quarter. For 2013, the O.B.R. is forecasting G.D.P. growth of just 1.3 per cent. With the economy so weak, the O.B.R. says that the unemployment rate will tick up from eight per cent to 8.2 per cent next year.

That austerity has led to recession is undeniable. Despite the Bank of England slashing interest rates and adopting a policy of quantitative easing, consumer and investment spending have remained depressed. Osborne places much of the blame on continental Europe, Britain’s biggest trading partner, but that’s a lame excuse. It was perfectly clear back in 2010 that Europe was headed for trouble. The proper reaction to a negative external shock is to loosen fiscal policy, not tighten it, much less tighten it violently. But Osborne was determined to go ahead with his grisly exercise in pre-Keynesian economics.

If all the pain he has inflicted had transformed Britain’s fiscal position, his policies could perhaps be defended. But that hasn’t happened. Back in 2009, the O.B.R. predicted that by the end of 2013-2014, the deficit would have fallen to 3.5 per cent of G.D.P. Now, the O.B.R. says that the actual figure will be 6.1 per cent. And since most of its forecasts have proved too optimistic, this might well be another underestimate. Even by Osborne’s preferred measure, which adjusts the headline figure for the state of the economy and doesn’t count capital spending, the deficit won’t be eliminated before 2016-17 at the earliest. The debt-to-G.D.P. ratio, which Osborne originally said would peak at about seventy per cent, has now hit seventy-five per cent, and it is forecast to come close to eighty per cent in 2015-2016. It was supposed to start falling next year. Now, it is set to keep climbing until at least 2017-2018.

A comparison with what has happened on this side of the Atlantic is illuminating. For the purposes of the natural experiment, the U.S. can be thought of as the control. In adopting a fiscal stimulus of gradually declining magnitude over the past four years, the Obama Administration has administered what was, until recently, the standard medicine for a sick economy.

As one would have expected on the basis of the textbooks, the American economy, while hardly racing ahead, has fared considerably better than its British counterpart. Between 2010 and 2012, G.D.P. growth here has averaged about 2.1 per cent. For the U.K., the figure is 0.9 per cent. What may be more surprising—at least to those of you who have been listening to the deficit hawks—is that the United States, while sticking with Keynesian stimulus policies, has also managed to bring down the size of its deficit, relative to G.D.P., almost as rapidly as hairshirt Britain has. Back in 2009, at the depths of the recession, both countries had double-digit deficits. Today, the U.S. deficit stands at about seven per cent of G.D.P., and the British deficit is about five per cent of G.D.P. But with the U.S. growing faster than the U.K,. the gap is set to close. Next year, according to the latest forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office and the O.B.R., the U.S. deficit will be considerably smaller than the U.K. deficit: four per cent of G.D.P. compared to six per cent.

Let’s go over that one more time. Having adopted the policies of Keynes in response to a calamitous recession, the United States has grown more than twice as fast during the past three years as Britain, which adopted the economics of Hoover (and Paul Ryan). Meanwhile, the gaping hole in the two countries’ budgets has declined at roughly the same rate, and next year the U.S. will be in better fiscal shape than its old ally.

This is just so much noise to the cult of conservatism. They're like modern witch doctors, they believe that dancing about howling at the moon is the solution, not rationalism and proven economic policies of the past. It doesn't phase them in the least that they cannot point to any major example of austerity causing a rapid economic recovery.

Conservatives have values? They must be joking. Christian right leader lauds homophobic Ugandan dictator. As the Ugandan Parliament revives its "Kill the Gays" bill, Republican nutbar Tony Perkins offers his support for Yoweri Museveni

There is No Reasoning With Republican Freaks Who Have No Values: Conservatives Invent New Bengahzi Conspiracy Theory: Top U.S. Intel Official Is A Liar

There is No Reasoning With Republican Freaks Who Have No Values: Conservatives Invent New Bengahzi Conspiracy Theory: Top U.S. Intel Official Is A Liar

The Republicans’ new focus of attack in the faux “Benghazi-gate” scandal is Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, claiming that he lied about the source of changes to talking points on the Benghazi attack given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Yesterday, a DNI spokesperson debunked accusations made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other Republicans that the White House changed Rice’s Benghazi talking points, saying that it was the intelligence community that made the “substantive” changes to the talking points. Moreover, former CIA head David Petraeus and other top intelligence officials have said there was no politicization of the process and that the talking points were not altered to minimize the role of extremists but to reflect the best intelligence at the time.

McCain appeared to accept the new information but wondered why Clapper and other DNI officials did not provide this information during closed door hearings last week. And now that all their earlier attacks on Rice have fell apart, Republicans and conservative media figures are directing their attacks at Clapper, a George W. Bush appointee:

    – BILL O’REILLY: Now it’s James Clapper, President Obama’s national security guy who is saying, “Oh, it’s me. I sent Rice out there and I took out all the al Qaeda stuff.” I’m not buying it. None of this adds up. … All right so there’s a lot of lying going on here.

    – CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I’m not buying it because the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said that a week ago in classified testimony that same Clapper said that they had no idea who changed the talking points and now a week later he seems to say he did? That’s kind of strange. I mean I’ve seen amnesia in my day in my clinical days and that one is pretty quick, one week.

    – TUCKER CARLSON: I hate to think that the director of National Intelligence lied, is a liar. But I’m not sure I see an alternate explanation. Apparently, he’s contradicting what he testified to just last week. Is there another explanation for this?”

    – FOX NEWS’ STEVE DOOCY: They did say it is out of the [DNI] office. It’s not him per se, so we’re supposed to believe that a Clapper aide changed what Petraeus had said? That’s very, very curious.

[   ]....The right wing has spent months trying to bring down the Obama administration in politicization the attacks in Benghazi that left four Americans dead and after all of their conspiracy theories and baseless attacks have been debunked, the rabbit hole appears to have led to Clapper and who knows where it will end.

Everyone one of these conservative truth seekers has a record of lying over and over again to the American people, here, here, here and here. They have no credibility, they have no integrity and lack the humility and moral backbone to apologize for their serious lies. If Republicans hate the USA so much maybe its time for them to start packing. They can start the totalitarian theocratic dystopia they have always dreamed of.

Macy’s CEO to American People: Drop Dead

Science for Hire: Why Industry's Deep Pockets May Be Depleting the Last of Our Fisheries

Corporate Welfare Queens Walmart Owners Look to Slash Federal Tax Payments

Bill O'Reilly Says Single Women, Hispanic-Americans, and African-Americans Are Not Part Of Traditional America. Pasty faced Anti-American proto-fascists such as Bill are not part of traditional America.

The 2012 Election Was About The Takers Versus The Workers, The Takers Are Still Winning

The 2012 Election Was About The Takers Versus The Workers, The Takers Are Still Winning. Ten Numbers the Rich Would Like Fudged

1. Only THREE PERCENT of the very rich are entrepreneurs.

According to both Marketwatch and economist Edward Wolff, over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate. Only 3.6 percent of taxpayers in the top .1% were classified as entrepreneurs based on 2004 tax returns. A 2009 Kauffman Foundation study found that the great majority of entrepreneurs come from middle-class backgrounds, with less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs coming from very rich or very poor backgrounds.photo: withayou via flickr

2. Only FOUR OUT OF 150 countries have more wealth inequality than us.

In a world listing compiled by a reputable research team (which nevertheless prompted double-checking), the U.S. has greater wealth inequality than every measured country in the world except for Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, and Switzerland.

3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.

The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.

Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion.

4. Corporations stopped paying HALF OF THEIR TAXES after the recession.

After paying an average of 22.5% from 1987 to 2008, corporations have paid an annual rate of 10% since. This represents a sudden $250 billion annual loss in taxes.

U.S. corporations have shown a pattern of tax reluctance for more than 50 years, despite building their businesses with American research and infrastructure. They've passed the responsibility on to their workers. For every dollar of workers' payroll tax paid in the 1950s, corporations paid three dollars. Now it's 22 cents.

5. Just TEN Americans made a total of FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS in one year.

That's enough to pay the salaries of over a million nurses or teachers or emergency responders.

That's enough, according to 2008 estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN's World Food Program, to feed the 870 million people in the world who are lacking sufficient food.

For the free-market advocates who say "they've earned it": Point #1 above makes it clear how the wealthy make their money.

6. Tax deductions for the rich could pay off 100 PERCENT of the deficit.

Another stat that required a double-check. Based on research by the Tax Policy Center, tax deferrals and deductions and other forms of tax expenditures (tax subsidies from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes), which largely benefit the rich, are worth about 7.4% of the GDP, or about $1.1 trillion.

Other sources have estimated that about two-thirds of the annual $850 billion in tax expenditures goes to the top quintile of taxpayers.

7. The average single black or Hispanic woman has about $100 IN NET WORTH.

The Insight Center for Community Economic Development reported that median wealth for black and Hispanic women is a little over $100. That's much less than one percent of the median wealth for single white women ($41,500).

Other studies confirm the racially-charged economic inequality in our country. For every dollar of NON-HOME wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.

8. Elderly and disabled food stamp recipients get $4.30 A DAY FOR FOOD.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has dropped significantly over the past 15 years, serving only about a quarter of the families in poverty, and paying less than $400 per month for a family of three for housing and other necessities. Ninety percent of the available benefits go to the elderly, the disabled, or working households.

Food stamp recipients get $4.30 a day.

9. Young adults have lost TWO-THIRDS OF THEIR NET WORTH since 1984.

21- to 35-year-olds: Your median net worth has dropped 68% since 1984. It's now less than $4,000.

That $4,000 has to pay for student loans that average $27,200. Or, if you're still in school, for $12,700 in credit card debt.

With an unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds of almost 50%, two out of every five recent college graduates are living with their parents. But your favorite company may be hiring. Apple, which makes a profit of $420,000 per employee, can pay you about $12 per hour.

10. The American public paid about FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS to bail out the banks.

That's about the same amount of money made by America's richest 10% in one year. But we all paid for the bailout. And because of it, we lost the opportunity for jobs, mortgage relief, and educational funding.

Bonus for the super-rich: A QUADRILLION DOLLARS in securities trading nets ZERO sales tax revenue for the U.S.

The world derivatives market is estimated to be worth over a quadrillion dollars (a thousand trillion). At least $200 trillion of that is in the United States. In 2011 the Chicago Mercantile Exchange reported a trading volume of over $1 quadrillion on 3.4 billion annual contracts.

A quadrillion dollars. A sales tax of ONE-TENTH OF A PENNY on a quadrillion dollars could pay off the deficit. But the total sales tax was ZERO.

It's not surprising that the very rich would like to fudge the numbers, as they have the nation.

Who is getting a free ride or almost free? Exxon, the Koch brothers, Mitt Romney, Karl Rove, Microsoft, Sheldon Adelson...the list goes on and on. The total Gross Domestic product could be called the nation's cake. That is the value of all the goods and services produced. The workers make that cake. The very wealthy take the biggest slice and pay the lowest - in terms of percentage of taxes. You know, taxes are the admission price for the civilization that makes it possible for these modern robber barons to amass such great wealth. Wealth that is far out of proportion to what they contribute. Related - Defending the Right to Treat Your Employees Like Dirt.

There are moral responsible millionaires in the USA. They're just out lobbied by the conservative elite.

Petraeus Says U.S. Tried to Avoid Tipping Off Terrorists After Libya Attack. The whole conservative Republican conspiracy theory about Libya is falling apart faster than George Bush's lies about Iraq that got 4000 Americans killed.

John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) and Fox News Join In On Shameless Lies About Susan Rice and Libya

John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) and Fox News Join In On Shameless Lies About Susan Rice and Libya

Fox News has seized on what it believes is a new angle to continue making an issue of the Obama administration's response to the Libya terrorist attack. Discussing President Obama's news conference on Wednesday, Fox treated Obama's statement that the White House chose Ambassador Susan Rice to discuss the attack publicly as new and "significant," claiming Obama's admission is "one of the most important parts" of what he said during his press conference.

It's unclear why Fox believes Obama's statement is significant considering Rice's position as a top official in the Obama administration.

In her capacity as one of the United States' top diplomats -- she was nominated by President Obama as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in January 2009 -- Rice is a member of the Obama administration whose job is to speak for the White House on government decisions and policy.

Not only that, but the White House's reasons for why it specifically asked Rice to discuss the situation in Benghazi publicly have been known for at least a month. The Washington Post reported on October 15: "The White House has said that it turned to Rice to make the administration's case on the Benghazi attack because it made sense to have a top diplomat speak to the loss of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens."

On September 16, five days after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Rice appeared on the Sunday talk shows to talk about what the administration knew about the attack. In the interviews, Rice made clear that definitive conclusions would only follow from an administration investigation, which she stressed was under way.

On Wednesday, during his first press conference since being re-elected, Obama addressed Republican criticism of Rice, saying:

    OBAMA: [L]et me say specifically about Susan Rice, she has done exemplary work. She has represented the United States and our interests in the United Nations with skill and professionalism and toughness and grace. As I've said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.

    If Senator [John] McCain and Senator [Lindsay] Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.

Discussing his comments on Fox News' America Live, however, host Megyn Kelly and Fox contributor Kirsten Powers expressed surprise at Obama's statement that Rice's appearances on the Sunday talk shows were "at the request of the White House."

Powers claimed the admission was "probably one of the most important parts" of what Obama said, "which is admitting that the White House is the one who told her what to say and that this did come from the White House, which had been mostly been speculated upon."

Kelly went on to say that "the reason she's been taking such incoming fire is because now according to President Obama, he told her to. He's the one who put her in the line of fire."

And yet, a day ago, Kelly told viewers that the reason Rice has been repeatedly criticized is because "she's the one who went on all the Sunday talk shows and told us that everything that happened in Benghazi was linked to this video, which we now know was not the case."

Indeed, Fox has led a sustained campaign against Rice, alleging that she made inaccurate statements about the attack when in fact her remarks were in line with assessments from the intelligence community.

Later on America Live, Kelly again brought up Obama's statement about Rice, asking Fox senior White House correspondent Ed Henry his thoughts about this "explicit admission from the president." Henry replied that "it's significant" but "not surprising -- it just hadn't been said by the president yet perhaps."

He then seemed to undermine the significance of Obama's statement by saying: "But whenever a top official goes on the Sunday talk shows, they're being put out there by the White House."

The public is now well aware of the Benghazi time-line. While some details were slow to emerge - as is usually the case when facts still needed to be sorted out, the only people lying now are anti-American conservatives out to exploit those tragic deaths for political gain. Still more pathetic irony from the uber fake patriots, John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) Supported Condi Rice for Sec. of State After Massive Intelligence Failure. Concerned Americans should contact the Senate Ethics Committee and call for the impeachment or resignations of the sleazy lying senators McCain and Graham. McCain's bitterness at being defeated by president Obama in 2008 seems to be clouding the irreverent old fart's judgement.

2012 Election: The USA Stuck To Its American Values and Sent the Republican Plutocrats and Racists to a Brutal Defeat

2012 Election: The USA Stuck To Its American Values and Sent the Plutocrats and Racists to a Brutal Defeat

On Tuesday night Barack Obama – who had led Mitt Romney in most Electoral College projections every single day of this race – won the election that he was supposed to. But that win represented so much more than a victory for a moderate Democrat. We hear that every election is the most important election of our lives -- it's a cliché. This year, it may well prove to be true.

The diverse, creative, younger coalition that propelled the first black president – a guy whose middle name is Hussein – to the presidency, beat back what may well have been the last stand of Ronald Reagan's coalition of plutocrats, white working-class men and religious conservatives. The Republican party, with its deep-pocketed donors and extensive network of supportive media and think-tanks remains viable for the immediate future – thanks in part to some dramatic gerrymandering in 2010 – but the demographic head winds it faces will soon be too powerful to overcome. The GOP's most reliable supporters remain white, married couples who identify themselves as Christians [3], a group that continues its sharp decline in numbers.

Women, especially unmarried women, delivered a sharp blow to those “limited government” conservative men who feel entitled to regulate their reproductive choices and are intent on making them miserable – with waiting periods and vaginal probes and the forced consumption of anti-abortion propaganda – if they make a choice that conflicts with the beliefs of the religious right.

A fifth hard-right justice won't be seated on the Supreme Court for the next four years -- a lost opportunity for the Chamber of Commerce and a potential victory for Roe v Wade, the Voting Rights Act and a slew of other key precedents.

Although it's unlikely that the war is over, the politics of playing on white racial anxiety lost a major battle on Tuesday night as well. The Romney campaign, as my colleague Adele Stan wrote [4], “pushed the boundaries of 'acceptable racism' to extremes.” The dog-whistles from the conservative media went far beyond, yet it wasn't enough to win it for Romney.

Tens of millions of Americans who were priced out of the insurance market won big on Tuesday. Rather than seeing a concerted effort to strangle “Obamacare” in its cradle, the administration's signature achievement will be fully implemented, and hopefully then built upon and improved in the same way Social Security and Medicare were. Millions of poor people will get tax-funded, single-payer healthcare through an expanded Medicaid program and tens of millions more will come to realize that there are no death panels, but there are subsidies for small businesses to provide insurance for their workers, and more subsidies for middle-class families that have been getting squeezed to death by the growing burden of their heal-care costs. Watch the popularity of Obama's health-care reforms rise over the next four years. That will also be a victory over the right's almost religious belief that “the market” can cure all our ills.

Voters and election protection activists scored a very hard-fought win over those who believe that some Americans have a greater right to vote than others. Efforts to suppress the vote among typically Democratic-leaning groups was flagrant and widespread. But Americans waited in the cold on those 6-hour lines, they got the right ID and jumped through whatever hoops they had to. And the lawyers blocked or blunted many of the worst restrictions on our right to vote. Small-d democracy won on Tuesday. Karl Rove, with his plan to use the concocted specter of voter fraud to gain a structural advantage lost.

A unified America was a winner as well. It's likely that most voters didn't grasp just how reactionary the Romney-Ryan agenda really was. They would have turned vast swaths of our already threadbare social safety-net over to the states to administer, making deep cuts in the process. As a result, people living in “blue” and “red” states would have effectively become citizens of different countries. The poor and working class in those red states would have been eligible for far fewer public benefits. The disparities that now exist in funding education, job training and the like would have become far more pronounced. We would have no longer been citizens of the United States who happen to live in Alabama or Vermont; we would become Alabamians and Vermonters, citizens of states with markedly different philosophies of government.

Gays and lesbians emerged victorious on Tuesday. Not only did the first president to come out in support of marriage equality win – one whose administration has worked tirelessly, often below the radar [5], to advance LGBT rights – but Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin will also be seated as the first openly gay senator in the history of the United States. As of this writing, marriage equality passed by a popular vote for the first and second times in history – in Maryland and Maine. A third ballot initiative recognizing marriage equality is ahead in Washington State; a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage is trailing in Minnesota.

After the running the most opaque and mendacious campaign in memory, “post-truth politics” lost on Tuesday. Never again will a candidate think he or she can promise to reveal his or her plans after the election and hope it will fly with the public.

Fat-cat, right-wing donors spent billions for nothing. As Paul Blumenthal notes [6], Casino Magnate Sheldon Adelson went 0-5 in campaigns in which he invested over $50 million. As much as $6 billion was spent in an election that returned the same Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader, and the same man in the Oval Office.

Reality-based analysis, personified by nerdy number-cruncher Nate Silver, landed a devastating blow to a legion of lazy pundits who make their living relaying what their guts are telling them. Who's got “the MoJo” -- who's winning the soccer mom vote or the waitress vote or white working class men – is now an irrelevance, trivia.

Now is not the time to be over confidant. Conservatives are called zombies for a good reason - they are relentless in pursuing their goals of turning America into something like the Confederate states of the old South. Just as the treasonous Confederacy used Bible quotes and fraudulent patriotism to sell their agenda, their modern iteration - The conservative movement - continues to do the same. Republicans will continue to deal in bumper sticker slogans instead of solutions. They'll keep nibbling away at women's rights and thus men's rights as well - when they take way the rights of our sisters, mothers and wives - they're taking away everyone's rights and freedoms.

Small Businesses Grew Twice As Fast Under Clinton Tax Rates

Why Should You Vote? Visualize The Nightmare of Romney World

Why Should You Vote? Visualize The Nightmare of Romney World

My wife, Jan Schakowsky, and I are friends with a wonderful woman named Bea. Bea is now 95 years old. Bea was born in 1917.

She was born in a country where women couldn't vote. In some areas of the country, just fifty years before, slavery had been legal. Collective bargaining was not recognized under the law. Poverty was rampant -- especially among the country's oldest citizens.

Bea was born in a country where there was an unimaginable gulf between a few fabulously wealthy oligarchs, and the masses of ordinary people. It was a country where only a tiny fraction of the population ever went to college -- or even graduated from high school -- a country were hardly anyone was considered "middle class." It was a country where there were few regulations to protect health and safety on the job, no national child labor laws, no federal minimum wage, and very little to prevent corporations from recklessly destroying the environment.

Bea was born in a country where people of color were considered second-class citizens and discrimination against them was enshrined into law -- a country where gays and homosexuals could be prosecuted for their sexual orientation.

Bea was born in the United States of America.

Over her lifetime, Bea has been involved in many of the great social movements of our time -- movements that helped transform our country into the envy of the world.

She was active building the labor unions that build the middle class. won a living wage, weekends and a 40-hour work week, pensions for retirement, and the passage of Social Security and Medicare that ensured a retirement free of poverty.

She marched with the civil rights movement that gave people of color an equal status in American society.

Bea became a public school teacher and helped educate an ever-expanding number of ordinary Americans -- watching more and more of them go on to college to fulfill their dreams.

She was part of the women's movement that demanded equal status and equal pay for women -- as well as the right for women to control their own decisions about contraception and abortion.

This year, Bea -- at 95 years old -- is working on a phone bank to turn out voters for Barack Obama. She says that if Mitt Romney and the Republican Right win the election on Tuesday, they have made clear that they absolutely intend to destroy all of the things for which she has struggled her entire life. She's right.

Mitt Romney has demonstrated over the years that he has only one real core value: his own success.

Throughout his career, Mitt has demonstrated that he will do whatever is necessary to benefit himself -- and his investors. At Bain Capital he didn't flinch when it came to destroying other people's jobs and lives if it would make him and his investors money.

Now his "investors" are the oligarchs of the Republican Right -- people like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson -- who, between them, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get him elected. Many are the same people who funded the Tea Party movement. Others are the Wall Street hedge fund barons whose recklessness collapsed the economy and came very close to recreating a Great Depression.

These people -- and their Tea Party allies in Congress -- have shown the country that they have no intention of compromise. They are intent upon rolling back all of the things Bea has fought for -- on sending us back to the Gilded Age. They truly believe that America would be a better place without labor unions. They want to eliminate Medicare and replace it with vouchers of ever-shrinking value that pay private insurance companies.

They want to be free to despoil the environment, do away with public education, eliminate jobs, cut wages, and continue to appropriate every dime of economic growth that is generated by our increasingly productive labor force.

As President Obama said in the second presidential debate, they want send us back to the foreign policy of the 1980's, a social policy of the 1950's and an economic policy of the 1920's. They believe in a society where the law of the jungle reigns supreme -- where you look out for yourself above all else -- where, if you believe you are your brother and sisters' keeper, that we shouldn't leave anyone behind, that we should have each other's back -- you're simply a chump.

If Mitt Romney becomes president, Republicans keep control of the House and win the few seats necessary to control the Senate, there will be nothing to restrain them from making their vision of society a reality in America -- from taking America backward to a time most of us cannot imagine.

What are some of the things a President Romney has promised to do?

    Eliminate Medicare and convert it into a voucher for private insurance -- ending the most popular and successful health care program in American history and raising out of pocket costs for seniors by6,500 a year.

    Privatize and cut Social Security - handing over the Social Security Trust fund to Wall Street and eliminating guaranteed benefits.

    Appoint -- most likely two -- Supreme Court justices who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, outlawing abortion rights -- and most likely make the Court a firm ally of unrestrained corporate and Wall Street power for generations.

    Repeal Wall Street Reform. Return us to the pre-crash law that would allow Wall Street to once again run wild, gamble with more and more exotic financial instruments, make a fortune for itself -- and once again wreck the economy.

    Repeal ObamaCare. That by itself would end the promise that no one will ever again be bankrupt by a sudden illness. It will return us to a very recent time when someone who has a pre-existing condition can be denied insurance coverage - and that insurance companies can call the shots when it comes to your health care.

    Pass the Ryan Budget. That would mean slashing critical federal expenditures that benefit the middle class and those who aspire to the middle class, like cutting Medicaid that pays for health care for the poor, children and those in need of nursing homes or home care -- and slashing funds for education and college grants.

    Increase military spending by two trillion dollars above the amount requested by the military leadership. That might benefit big defense contractors, but it would make it practically impossible to reduce the giant federal deficit.

    Give the wealthy an additional 5 trillion dollar tax cut and pay for it by increasing the effective tax rate paid by the middle class.
    Stop funding for Planned Parenthood and any other family planning programs that we fund around the world that use their own funds to pay for abortions.

    Try to pass the "Personhood" Amendment that would effectively outlaw all abortions and many forms of hormonal contraception.

    Allow many of the same Neo-Con foreign policy advisers who got us into the Iraq War to once again take control of American foreign policy.

    Veto the Dream Act that would allow young people who were brought to America as children to apply for citizenship.

    Eliminate the Presidential Directive that prevents the deportation of Dream Act-eligible young people.

    Empower people like Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who wrote the Arizona "papers please" law and now serves as Romney's chief adviser on immigration.

    Slash environmental regulations and investment in clean energy development.

The list goes on and on.

But worse than the individual initiatives that Romney and Ryan have made clear they would undertake, is the attitude they would bring to decision-making.

Romney's true views were laid bare in the now famous "47 percent video" where he explained how he could not convince 47% of Americans to take responsibility for their lives -- people like retirees who worked all of their lives for their Social Security and Medicare -- people like veterans who risked their lives for the country -- people like the disabled -- in fact, pretty much anyone who doesn't agree with his "we're all in this alone" view of American society.

If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are elected on Tuesday, they will turn back the clock on progress in America. If they are allowed to do so by a Republican House and Senate, they would return us to a time we could scarcely imagine.

For those who believe in a society where we're all in this together, Tuesday's election is the mother of all battles.

Every conservative Republican president since Nixon has moved further and further to the extreme Right. Many thought George W. Bush would be the last radical right-wing president. Most Americans saw that radical conservatives had lied us into a $3 trillion dollar war and their accumulated economic policies were the cause of the worse economic crash since 1929 - Americans lost between $14 and $17 trillion dollars of their wealth. yet somehow here we are again with a clueless plutocrat that wants to mold the USA into 17th century France, with the overlords at the top and everyone else working hard just to get survive.

Obama Gains Edge in Campaign's Final Days - still every vote is needed.

Romney staff refusing to let frostbitten children leave PA rally