While The North-East Waits For Sandy Relief, Wacky Freedom Hating Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal

While The North-East Waits For Sandy Relief, Wacky Freedom Hating Republicans Reintroduce Obamacare Repeal

The 112th Congress gaveled to a close on Thursday afternoon without passing a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy or reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, but Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) isn’t too concerned about finishing what Republicans had left undone. Instead, at 12:00 PM she introduced the very first piece of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which states are now busily implementing.

House Republicans have unsuccessfully voted 33 times in the last two years to eliminate health care reform and wasted at least 88 hours and $50 million, while failing to pass a single piece of job creation legislation in the last session of Congress.

Dozens of Republicans, including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, ran against Obamacare, yet the party suffered losses every step along the way. The Supreme Court upheld the law, House repeal efforts went nowhere in the Democratically-controlled Senate, and President Obama has pledged to veto any effort to rescind the measure. Even newly reelected Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was compelled to admit in November that Obamacare is now the law of the land (though he later backed away from his own comments and pledged to do everything in his power to undermine it).

But House Republicans are apparently not quite ready to give up the fight. At this rate, they could be on track to becoming even less productive than the least productive Congress in U.S. history.

Michele bachmann and her husband are welfare queens who have probably defrauded the public by failing for Medicare payments for practicing dubious medicare care. They and the family have also sucked down as much in subsidies as they can. Bachmann enjoys government health care benefits along with other House Republicans who make about $179,000 a year. This is the same Michele Bachmann who hoped that the unemployment rate would remain high and said that workers who do not pay federal income tax have no vested interests in the well being of the country. Why hasn't the deeply unAmerican Bachmann and her conman husband been deported to Russia? 

Wackos start trying to use their hate filled trigger happy minds to rationalize not having sensible gun laws, ,New NRA Talking Point: Banning Assault Weapons Is Just Like Racial Discrimination

Awful and UnAmerican Things The Conservative Media Did This Year

Awful and UnAmerican Things The Conservative Media Did This Year

1) Romancing Petraeus: Fox News CEO Roger Ailes tries to recruit for the GOP [4].

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward revealed that Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had dispatched a Fox News defense analyst, to Kabul, Afghanistan to recruit Gen. David Petraeus as a GOP candidate for president. The notion of a news network soliciting candidates for political office is a perversion of the role journalists play in society. In response, Ailes claimed that it was “a joke” and that he “thought the Republican [primary] field needed to be shaken up.” Where Ailes got the idea that it was his right and/or duty to shake up the GOP primaries is unexplained. News people are supposed to report the news, not make it. Woodward’s story affirms that Fox News is a rogue operation. Its intrusion into the political process debases journalism by breaching all standards of ethical conduct. And it debases democracy as well by exploiting its power and wealth to manipulate political outcomes.

2) Fox News produces its own anti-Obama video [5].

Last May on Fox & Friends, the program’s hosts introduced a video that purported to examine “Four Years of Hope and Change.” What it was in reality was a four-plus minute campaign video that presented a variety of soundbites by President Obama accompanied by ominous graphics and eerie music that falsely implied his campaign promises were unkept. The video (which Media Matters thoroughly debunks here [6]) could not have been a more pro-Romney, anti-Obama attack had it been produced by the Republican National Committee. Apparently Fox News also recognized the gross inappropriateness of its anti-Obama attack ad. Minutes after the video was posted online it was removed. Later, an edited version was re-posted, and then that too was removed. Eventually, Fox EVP Bill Shine issued a statement scapegoating an “associate producer” and concluding that the matter “has been addressed.” But it’s difficult for Fox to absolve itself of responsibility for this atrociously unethical affair. By now it is so obvious that Fox exists only to promote Republicans and bash Democrats that this video fits squarely within its mission.

3) Question for Fox News: How much rape is too much? [7]

In a discussion of the role of women in the military, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta expressed an opinion about new rules from the Pentagon that would permit women to serve closer to the front lines. Trotta’s take on this centered on the problems faced by servicewomen who are sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers whom she regards as whiners because they won’t shut up and accept the fact that if they work closely with men they should expect to be assaulted. And if that weren’t bad enough, Trotta went on to complain about the expensive military bureaucracy set up to “support women in the military who are now being raped too much.” I would really like to know precisely how much rape is acceptable before it crosses Trotta’s line. Is there any context in which she might have meant that that isn’t unfathomably repulsive?

10) Fox News “Democrat” Kirsten Powers accuses Obama of sympathizing with terrorists [14].

The next time you hear the Fox News slogan “fair and balanced," be sure to remember that its rendering of fairness is to trot out covert conservatives and label them Democrats. A perfect illustration of this is alleged Democrat Kirsten Powers, who took to Fox News to attack President Obama in an article titled “President Obama, stop blaming the victim for Mideast violence.” Powers was addressing the violence at American facilities in Libya and Egypt when she wrote that respecting religious beliefs “is implicit sympathy for the claims of some of the attackers and rioters.” So Powers thinks that respect for the diversity of faith is tantamount to sympathizing with terrorists. She cannot comprehend that such respect is offered to the vast majority of peaceful Muslims who had nothing to do with the violence. And allowing her to spew that bile while posing as a Democratic analyst is part of how Fox distorts its presentation of fairness and balance.

11) Fox News spinning furiously on unemployment rate. [15]

Behaving entirely consistently with a network that harbors politcos who want to see President Obama fail, Fox News cavalierly dismissed the October unemployment report showing a drop from 8.1 to 7.8 percent. Heaven forbid anything good happens in this country while President Obama is in charge. Fox spent the whole morning trying to hatch skeptics. It brought in former General Electric CEO Jack Welch to explain his delusional Tweet: “Unbelievable jobs numbers...these Chicago guys will do anything...can’t debate so change numbers.” Fox’s Stuart Varney concurred along with Donald Trump and a bevy of correspondents and guests. None of them could explain why an independent agency of career economists, without a single Obama appointee, would fudge the numbers for a president to whom they owed nothing.

It is beyond me to explain why conservatives and their media puppets hate America and its ideals. The people mentioned above are not exactly hurting they make well into 6 figure salaries and more. They live in houses most Americans can only dream of. The men wear suits that cost more than a coal miner's salary for a month and yet complain about how terrible things are in America. During the 2012 campaign we actually had radical conservative billionaires on TV complaining about how hard they have it because of something Democrats did or will do.

House GOP scraps Sandy relief bill. Republicans abandoned a vote this session, infuriating NY lawmakers in both parties

Beware of conservative math when discussing the national debt - The National Debt? Republicans Built That

Wacko Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte K & L Contractors Think Their Religious Freedom Means The Right To Tyrannize Their Employees

Wacko Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte K & L Contractors Think Their Religious Freedom Means The Right To Tyrannize Their Employees

On Friday, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an order joined by two conservative Republican appointees, temporarily immunized a company from the Obama Administration’s rules guaranteeing that employer-provided health plans cover birth control. Judge Ilana Rovner, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dissented.

The order is brief, and it mostly deals with the most significant issue in this case in just a single paragraph — holding that a for-profit corporate employer can claim that its religious liberties were somehow violated:

    [T]he government’s primary argument is that because K & L Contractors is a secular, for-profit enterprise, no rights under RFRA are implicated at all. This ignores that Cyril and Jane Korte are also plaintiffs. Together they own nearly 88% of K & L Contractors. It is a family-run business, and they manage the company in accordance with their religious beliefs. This includes the health plan that the company sponsors and funds for the benefit of its nonunion workforce. That the Kortes operate their business in the corporate form is not dispositive of their claim. See generally Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010). The contraception mandate applies to K & L Contractors as an employer of more than 50 employees, and the Kortes would have to violate their religious beliefs to operate their company in compliance with it.

As a matter of current law, this decision is wrong. As the Supreme Court explained in United States v. Lee, “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.” Lee established — with no justice in dissent — that religious liberty does not allow an employer to “impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees,” such as by forcing employees to give up their own rights because of the employer’s objections to birth control.

Nevertheless, the Seventh Circuit’s citation to Citizens United is an ominous sign. Lee was decided at a time when the Court understood that corporations should not be allowed to buy and sell elections. That time has passed, and the precedents protecting against corporate election-buying were overruled in Citizens United. It is not difficult to imagine the same five justices who tossed out longstanding precedent in Citizens United doing the same in a case involving whether employers can impose their religious beliefs on their employees.

It is likely that we will know soon whether those five justices are prepared to do so. The Seventh Circuit’s decision is at odds with a decision out of the Tenth Circuit, and the Supreme Court typically agrees to hear cases where two federal appeals courts disagree.

What is Anti-American Zealots Cyril and Jane Korte of K & L Contractors religious beliefs included thinking that pants were sinful, would the male employees have to wear skirts or go pant-less. Cyril and Jane Korte, and K & L Contractors have a lot in common with the Taliban and Iranian fundamentalists who think what they believe trumps basic human rights and dignity.

10 Dumbest Things Fox Said About Climate Change In 2012 

3. Fox "Expert": Carbon Dioxide "Literally Cannot Cause Global Warming." Joe Bastardi is a meteorologist that is often presented as a climate change expert on Fox News, even though he has no climate science training. Bill O'Reilly has cited Bastardi as the reason that he is "skeptical" about global warming, but scientists have called Bastardi's statements "completely wrong," "simply ignorant," and "utter nonsense." In March, Bastardi attempted to "throw out 150 years of physics" by dismissing the greenhouse effect -- the reason there is life on Earth -- as impossible. Bastardi stated on Fox Business that carbon dioxide (CO2) "literally" -- yes, literally -- "cannot cause global warming" because it doesn't "mix well in the atmosphere." But physicist Richard Muller told Media Matters that CO2 is actually "completely mixed."

 This is the way radical anti-American Rupert Murdoch's news organizations always act - they shout falsehoods with an attitude of absolute certainty - that creates some kind of voodoo magic that makes their crazy bogus claims true. What century are we living in?

Former Republican Vice President and Noted America Hater Dan Quayle, Up To His Neck in Corruption

Former Republican Vice President and Noted America Hater Dan Quayle, Up To His Neck in Corruption

How fitting that Dan Quayle, a bumbling excuse for a vice president of the United States, should end up as a top executive of a $20 billion private equity firm mired in controversy. Quayle, who signed on with Cerberus in 1999, was with that company during its takeover and subsequent bankruptcy of Chrysler, questionable military contracting deals in Afghanistan and, most recently, manufacturing the assault rifle used in the Newtown massacre.

The former Indiana senator, to whom most of us in the press corps covering George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988 referred to as the Ken doll, must have found life in the private sector so much more rewarding, but how much so is not known, since Cerberus is privately held.

Dan and his son Ben Quayle, a congressman from Arizona, have been ardent supporters of the NRA, but even they must have been shocked by the latest—and not only—incident involving one of Cerberus’ product lines. The company now acknowledges that its gun unit, Freedom Group Inc.—which refers to itself as “the largest manufacturer of commercial firearms and ammunition,” sold in eighty countries—is a public relations embarrassment and has put it up for sale.

In case you missed the connection, as did too many in the mainstream media, the former vice president was rewarded for his gaffe-filled performance in that job with the far more lucrative position of chairman of Cerberus Global Investments LLC. He was hired for that post by Cerberus CEO Stephen Feinberg, an alum of the disgraced and defunct junk bond emporium Drexel Burnham Lambert.

In addition to owning Bushmaster, the manufacturer of the assault weapon used in Connecticut, Cerberus’ holdings have included Chrysler Corp., bailed out by US taxpayers, and DynCorp, the military construction contractor that is the subject of a major special inspector general’s investigation of its activities in Afghanistan. All three businesses are deeply dependent on decisions of the federal government once served by Quayle and other high members of the Cerberus team.

One of those is John W. Snow, listed on the Cerberus website as another member of its “senior executive leadership.” Snow was secretary of the Treasury in the George W. Bush administration. He resigned from that position effective June 29, 2006, and four months later, on October 19, Cerberus issued a press release announcing that Snow had been named chairman of Cerberus Capital Management LP. The appointment proved helpful, given Snow’s government experience, when Cerberus took over Chrysler in 2007 and soon went shopping for Washington’s assistance to keep the company afloat.

Feinberg, who in reality runs all of Cerberus as its CEO and chief investment officer, is one of those financial backers of the GOP who derides government interference in the market any time it threatens to help ordinary folk. But when he bought Chrysler, one of those distressed companies that he specialized in dismembering, he quickly found a need for massive federal intervention to preserve a fraction of the Cerberus investment.

With the aid of Quayle, Snow and other politically connected members of the firm, Feinberg made the rounds in Washington at the end of the Bush administration begging for what right-wing free-marketeers would label as the socialization of Chrysler to the tune of $4 billion in federal aid. It was not enough to avoid eventual bankruptcy and additional government support, but by then Feinberg and Cerberus had bailed.

Cerberus’ use of the various Bush administration veterans was on full display in a call between Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and his predecessor Snow, then chair of the investment firm. “That investment company,” wrote New York Times reporter Louise Story, “is Mr. Snow’s employer, Cerberus Capital Management, which has used its wealth and deep connections in Washington to shape the debate over the foundering automakers to its advantage.”

In its attempt to save Chrysler, Cerberus had hired former Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli to turn the company around, but he failed. He reappeared in 2010 as CEO of Cerberus’s Freedom Group Inc., with its “family” of fifteen gun and ammo companies including Bushmaster, Remington and other top selling brands. Nardelli continued in that position until March of this year, when he stepped down. During his tenure, he was instrumental in advocating against stronger gun control as well as enlisting endorsements from the NRA, and he remains a senior adviser to Feinberg.

In mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades. How perfect a name for a company whose leaders have sold their souls.

This story originally appeared at Truthdig by Robert Scheer.

Feinberg and the Quayles are not just cancers, they are cancers aided by corporate welfare. They're the kind of conservatives who hate the idea of someone working for slave wages getting some food stamps to feed their kid, but tale millions from tax payers.  

Why food-stamp bans are perpetuating risky behaviors among America’s most vulnerable

Why food-stamp bans are perpetuating risky behaviors among America’s most vulnerable

Carla walked into my office with despair in her eyes. I was surprised. Carla has been doing well in her four months out of prison; she got off drugs, regained custody of her kids, and even enrolled in a local community college.

Without much prodding she admitted to me that she had retuned to prostitution: “I am putting myself at risk for HIV to get my kids a f---ing happy meal.”

Despite looking high and low for a job, Carla explained, she was still unemployed. Most entry-level jobs felt out of reach with her drug record, but what’s worse, even the state wasn’t willing to throw her a temporary life preserver.

You see, Carla is from one of the 32 states in the country that ban anyone convicted of a drug felony from collecting food stamps. With the release of the Global Burden of Disease Study last week, it bears looking at how we are perpetuating burdens among the most vulnerable Americans with our outdated laws.

If she’d committed rape or murder, Carla could have gotten assistance to feed herself and her children, but because the crime she committed was a drug felony, Carla joined the hundreds of thousands of drug felons who are not eligible. ......Women with children are especially affected. It’s estimated that 70,000 women and their children are banned from obtaining food stamps. This means mothers who are simply trying to feed themselves and their children, and who are trying to get back on their feet after serving their time, are banned from receiving the money to pay for the basics necessary to survive.  Meanwhile, 46 million others, including college graduates and PhDs with far more resources, can receive food aid.

 This is a cultural legacy of America's Puritanical and hypocritical history. White men can get away with stealing millions, beating their wives and still have a relatively comfortable life.

Few of our fellow Americans are scholars, but basic reading comprehension is not too much to ask, Radical Anti-America "news casters" at Fox New - Self-Congratulation Over Benghazi Report Undermined By Report Itself. Conservatives are so desperate and deeply immoral they have to make up scandals when there are none.
The Craziest UnAmerican Republican Legislative Proposals Of 2012. I don't know why Republicans hate America and freedom. They're certainly free to leave if they hate living in a democratic republic so much.

The 12 Days Of Crony Conservative Capitalism Christmas

The 12 Days Of Crony Conservative Capitalism Christmas

On the first day of Christmas my employer gave to me a penny for every $3 [3] the richest 130,000 Americans make. It's been a national tradition since 1980.

On the second day my doctor showed me TWO Americans needing mental health care, but only one of the two could afford treatment [4]. The doctor informed me that the fifty states have cut $1.8 billion [5] from their mental health budgets during the recession, and that the 2013 Republican budget proposes further cuts. "It's crazy," I protested. "Some states are allowing guns [6] in schools and daycare centers and churches and bars and hospitals, but they're cutting mental health care?" The doctor just nodded in frustration.

On the third day The Economist [7] told me that it costs just THREE cents [8] in administrative expenses for every $100 raised through a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) in the United Kingdom, versus $1.42 for the personal income tax and $1.25 for the corporate income tax. With up to THREE quadrillion dollars [9] in total U.S. financial transactions, we could replace federal income taxes with a tiny FTT.

On the fourth day a food pantry gave me FOUR dollars worth of food. That's about what food stamp recipients [10] get each day through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). To pay for rent and utilities, a family of three gets $400 per month [11] from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which comes to about FOUR dollars a day per person.

On the fifth day a financial advisor introduced me to his FIVE richest investors, who were the only ones out of 100 Americans to increase [12] their wealth over the past 25 years, by the impressive rate of almost 20% [13]. It's like that throughout the entire country, the advisor said: only 5% took almost all the gains.

Five golden rings, indeed.

On the sixth day, as the traditional 12-day song started to get annoying, Santa appeared to take me by the hand to the U.S. corporate offices, where the tax lawyers gave to me SIX cents [14] for the national treasury. "Hey," I said, "this used to be twenty-five cents. You've doubled your profits [15] in the last ten years, but individual and payroll taxes have to pay 94 cents out of every dollar!" The lawyers just smiled. Santa shook his head in frustration.

On the seventh day a guidance counselor informed me that one out of SEVEN [16] Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 is neither working nor in school.

On the eighth day an IRS agent gave me these matching facts [17]: Over EIGHT percent of the GDP (8.4%) goes for tax expenditures (subsidies provided through the tax code, mostly to the very rich). That's almost exactly the same amount (8.4% of the GDP) that goes to Social Security and Medicare.

On the ninth day an unemployed dietitian told me that the average male has increased his weight by NINE percent [18] over the past 20 years (180 to 196), and the average female by TWELVE percent (142 to 160). As a NINE dollar per hour [19] food-service worker gave me and Santa our burgers and fries and shakes, my jolly old partner chortled, "Ho Ho Ho, soon you'll all look like me!"

On the 10th day a Forbes article confirmed that the TEN richest Americans [20] made more than our entire national housing budget [21] in just one year [22]. That's over $50 billion. The twenty richest Americans made more than our entire education budget. Santa assured me that the transfer of wealth from society's needs to a few individuals was not the norm around the world.

On the eleventh day a creditor gave me a bill for ELEVEN trillion dollars [23] of debt incurred by the American consumer, including mortgages, student loans, and credit card liabilities.

And on the twelfth day Santa gave me an IOU for TWELVE trillion dollars [24], the U.S. share [25] of up to $32 trillion [26] held overseas, untaxed. "One problem," cautioned Santa, "my reindeer haven't been able to find any of it yet."w

After all this I stood perplexed. "What does it all mean?" I asked Santa.

"Well, that's capitalism," I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight. "It's all about the individual getting all he can, because that will benefit everyone. And let me tell you," he added with a twinkle, "those benefits are just as real as I am!"

It does not have to be like this, a USA that conservatives have made to look like 17th century France with most of the population working to make the elite aristocracy wealthy. We need to break back morality and the social contract.

[3] http://wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/17/seven-facts-about-americas-mental-health-care-system/
[5] http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/news/2012/07/31/11871/cuts-to-mental-health-services-could-lead-to-more-spree-killings/
[6] http://www.alternet.org/7-craziest-gun-laws-america
[7] http://www.economist.com/node/7855196
[8] http://truth-out.org/news/item/10232-can-a-financial-transactions-tax-work-in-america-an-ftt-faq
[9] http://simonthorpesideas.blogspot.fr/2012/10/bis-transaction-data-for-2011-roughly-3.html
[10] http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/05/linden_rebuttal.html
[11] http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3625
[12] http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2009/200913/200913pap.pdf
[13] http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf
[14] http://www.nationofchange.org/myth-free-market-1340630005
[15] http://www.payupnow.org/CorpTaxByYear.xls
[16] http://www.measureofamerica.org/one-in-seven/
[17] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/julyaugust_2011/features/20000_leagues_under_the_state030498.php
[18] http://www.fitsugar.com/Average-Weight-Americans-20-Pounds-Heavier-Than-20-Years-Ago-20605443
[19] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/mcjobs-should-pay-too-its-time-for-fast-food-workers-to-get-living-wages/265714/
[20] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/
[21] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budget
[22] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pf_article_113540.html
[23] http://www.creditscore.net/u-s-consumer-debt-in-2011/
[24] http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/19-3
[25] http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Inequality_120722_You_dont_know_the_half_of_it.pdf
[26] http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_120722.pdf
[27] http://www.alternet.org/tags/economy-0
[28] http://www.alternet.org/tags/christmas-0
[29] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Conservatives Against Any Gun Regulation Know Nothing About American History

 Conservatives Against Any Gun Regulation Know Nothing About American Historyand The 2nd Amendment

Right-wing resistance to meaningful gun control is driven, in part, by a false notion that America’s Founders adopted the Second Amendment because they wanted an armed population that could battle the U.S. government. The opposite is the truth, but many Americans seem to have embraced this absurd, anti-historical narrative.

The reality was that the Framers wrote the Constitution and added the Second Amendment with the goal of creating a strong central government with a citizens-based military force capable of putting down insurrections, not to enable or encourage uprisings. The key Framers, after all, were mostly men of means with a huge stake in an orderly society, the likes of George Washington and James Madison.

President George Washington, as Commander-in-Chief, leading a combined force of state militias against the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

The men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 weren’t precursors to France’s Robespierre or Russia’s Leon Trotsky, believers in perpetual revolutions. In fact, their work on the Constitution was influenced by the experience of Shays’ Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786, a populist uprising that the weak federal government, under the Articles of Confederation, lacked an army to defeat.

Daniel Shays, the leader of the revolt, was a former Continental Army captain who joined with other veterans and farmers to take up arms against the government for failing to address their economic grievances.

The rebellion alarmed retired Gen. George Washington who received reports on the developments from old Revolutionary War associates in Massachusetts, such as Gen. Henry Knox and Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. Washington was particularly concerned that the disorder might serve the interests of the British, who had only recently accepted the existence of the United States.

On Oct. 22, 1786, in a letter seeking more information from a friend in Connecticut, Washington wrote: “I am mortified beyond expression that in the moment of our acknowledged independence we should by our conduct verify the predictions of our transatlantic foe, and render ourselves ridiculous and contemptible in the eyes of all Europe.”

In another letter on Nov. 7, 1786, Washington questioned Gen. Lincoln about the spreading unrest. “What is the cause of all these commotions? When and how will they end?” Lincoln responded: “Many of them appear to be absolutely so [mad] if an attempt to annihilate our present constitution and dissolve the present government can be considered as evidence of insanity.”

However, the U.S. government lacked the means to restore order, so wealthy Bostonians financed their own force under Gen. Lincoln to crush the uprising in February 1787. Afterwards, Washington expressed satisfaction at the outcome but remained concerned the rebellion might be a sign that European predictions about American chaos were coming true.

“If three years ago [at the end of the American Revolution] any person had told me that at this day, I should see such a formidable rebellion against the laws & constitutions of our own making as now appears I should have thought him a bedlamite – a fit subject for a mad house,” Washington wrote [3] to Knox on Feb. 3, 1787, adding that if the government “shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws … anarchy & confusion must prevail.”

Washington’s alarm about Shays’ Rebellion was a key factor in his decision to take part in – and preside over – the Constitutional Convention, which was supposed to offer revisions to the Articles of Confederation but instead threw out the old structure entirely and replaced it with the U.S. Constitution, which shifted national sovereignty from the 13 states to “We the People” and dramatically enhanced the power of the central government.

The drastic changes prompted strong opposition from some Revolutionary War figures, such as Virginia’s Patrick Henry, who denounced the federal power grab and rallied a movement known as the Anti-Federalists. Prospects for the Constitution’s ratification were in such doubt that its principal architect James Madison joined in a sales campaign known as the Federalist Papers in which he tried to play down how radical his changes actually were.

To win over other skeptics, Madison agreed to support a Bill of Rights, which would be proposed as the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Madison’s political maneuvering succeeded as the Constitution narrowly won approval in key states, such as Virginia, New York and Massachusetts. The First Congress then approved the Bill of Rights which were ratified in 1791. [For details, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative [4].]

Behind the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment dealt with concerns about “security” and the need for trained militias to ensure what the Constitution called “domestic Tranquility.” There was also hesitancy among many Framers about the costs and risks from a large standing army, thus making militias composed of citizens an attractive alternative.

So, the Second Amendment read:  “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Contrary to some current right-wing fantasies about the Framers wanting to encourage popular uprisings over grievances, the language of the amendment is clearly aimed at maintaining order within the country.

That point was driven home by the actions of the Second Congress amid another uprising which erupted in 1791 in western Pennsylvania. This anti-tax revolt, known as the Whiskey Rebellion, prompted Congress in 1792 to expand on the idea of “a well-regulated militia” by passing the Militia Acts which required all military-age white males to obtain their own muskets and equipment for service in militias.

In 1794, President Washington, who was determined to demonstrate the young government’s resolve, led a combined force of state militias against the Whiskey rebels. Their revolt soon collapsed and order was restored, demonstrating how the Second Amendment helped serve the government in maintaining “security,” as the Amendment says.

Beyond this clear historical record – that the Framers’ intent was to create security for the new Republic, not promote armed rebellions – there is also the simple logic that the Framers represented the young nation’s aristocracy. Many, like Washington, owned vast tracts of land. They recognized that a strong central government and domestic tranquility were in their economic interests.

So, it would be counterintuitive – as well as anti-historical – to believe that Madison and Washington wanted to arm the population so the discontented could resist the constitutionally elected government. In reality, the Framers wanted to arm the people – at least the white males – so uprisings, whether economic clashes like Shays’ Rebellion, anti-tax protests like the Whiskey Rebellion, attacks by Native Americans or slave revolts, could be repulsed.

However, the Right has invested heavily during the last several decades in fabricating a different national narrative, one that ignores both logic and the historical record. In this right-wing fantasy, the Framers wanted everyone to have a gun so they could violently resist their own government.

This bogus “history” has then been amplified through the Right’s powerful propaganda apparatus – Fox News, talk radio, the Internet and ideological publications – to persuade millions of Americans that their possession of semi-automatic assault rifles and other powerful firearms is what the Framers intended, that today’s gun-owners are fulfilling some centuries-old American duty.

If radical conservatives want to live in a perpetual fantasy land called the United OK Corral where they get up every morning, strap on some high powered firearms and shoot their way through the day; well there is nothing stopping them from packing their bags and founding that country. me and my neighbors are gun owners and none of us free threatened by some sensible gun regulations. That says a lot about the freak out that conservatives are having. They're gun worshipers, not gun rights advocates.

What liberal media? Will Media Fact Check Misleading Claims From NRA's Question-Free Press Conference? 

8 Deficit Reducers That Are More Ethical—And More Effective—Than the 'Chained CPI'