Economic "Simpletons" Have Tea Party

"...The Tea Party crowd would have more credibility if they had chanted calls to abolish all farm subsidies and student aid and waved placards to repeal the Medicare drug benefit, to shrink the Army and Air Force to 1938 levels and return the Navy to coastal defense as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson.

What these simpletons are unwilling to acknowledge is that if you don't cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, are not willing to shrink the armed forces drastically, and don't repudiate our contractual commitment to pay interest on the national debt, you could cut all other federal spending to zero and we still would have a substantial budget deficit.

You cannot close the deficit without raising taxes, period.

Other nations, including Canada, Germany and the Netherlands, which all faced similar deficits a decade or so ago, did that and found they could still prosper.

Until the general public is willing to face the facts in the choices we confront, politicians will continue to pander to self-delusion. And we will leave our grandchildren with a poorer nation..."

Read more by Ed Lotterman.

Ludlow: Playing Hardball in 1913

...At a ball game on Sunday between two teams of strikers the militia interfered, preventing the game; the miners resented, and the militia—with a sneer and a laugh—fired the machine guns directly into the tents, knowing at the time that the strikers' wives and children were in them...
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I just happened to looking through my bookshelf the other night and happened to pull out a book titled "Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman's MOTHER EARTH (1906-1918." Thumbing through the book I ran across a piece titled "Remember Ludlow!" by Julia May Courtney. By coincidence the evening was April 20 and the story told about the Ludlow, Colorado massacre on April 20, 1913. Fifty-five women and children died in the attack by federal militia.

Woody Guthrie wrote a song about it titled "Ludlow Massacre." It is a haunting song that will melt the hardest heart with lyrics like...

It was early springtime when the strike was on,
They drove us miners out of doors,
Out from the houses that the Company owned,
We moved into tents up at old Ludlow.
...
You struck a match and in the blaze that started,
You pulled the triggers of your Gatling guns,
I made a run for the children but the fire wall stopped me.
Thirteen children died from your guns.
...
We took some cement and walled that cave up,
Where you killed these thirteen children inside,
I said, "God bless the Mine Workers' Union,"
And then I hung my head and cried.
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Below are some excerpts from Remember Ludlow...

"...And the climax came when the first spring winds blew over the hills and the snows melted from the mountain sides. On the 20th of April the cry was heard "Remember Ludlow!"—the battle cry that every workingman in Colorado and in America will not forget. For on that day the men of the tent colony were shot in the back by soft-nosed bullets, and their women and children were offered in burning sacrifice on the field of Ludlow.

The militia had trained the machine guns on the miners' tent colony. At a ball game on Sunday between two teams of strikers the militia interfered, preventing the game; the miners resented, and the militia—with a sneer and a laugh—fired the machine guns directly into the tents, knowing at the time that the strikers' wives and children were in them. Charging the camp, they fired the two largest buildings—the strikers' stores— and going from tent to tent, poured oil on the flimsy structures, setting fire to them.

From the blazing tents rushed the women and children, only to be beaten back into the fire by the rain of bullets from the militia. The men rushed to the assistance of their families; and as they did so, they were dropped as the whirring messengers of death sped surely to the mark. Louis Tikas, leader of the Greek colony, fell a victim to the mine guards' fiendishness, being first clubbed, then shot in the back while he was their prisoner. Fifty-two bullets riddled his body.

Into the cellars—the pits of hell under the blazing tents—crept the women and children, less fearful of the smoke and flames than of the nameless horror of spitting bullets. One man counted the bodies of nine children, taken from one ashy pit, their tiny fingers burned away as they held to the edge in their struggle to escape. As the smoke ruins disclosed the charred and suffocated bodies of the victims of the holocaust, thugs in State uniform hacked at the lifeless forms, in some instances nearly cutting off heads and limbs to show their contempt for the strikers.

Fifty-five women and children perished in the fire of the Ludlow tent colony. Relief parties carrying the Red Cross flag were driven back by the gunmen, and for twenty-four hours the bodies lay crisping in the ashes, while rescuers vainly tried to cross the firing line. And the Militiamen and gunmen when the miners petitioned "Czar Chase" and Governor Ammons for the right to erect their homes and live in them..."


I don't know what made me pull that book of the shelf and I don't know what made my eyes fall on the words "Remember Ludlow" on the 96th anniversary of this tragic event. That's just how life is sometimes...

Read more...

Is "Populism" In Your Tea Party?

From the Wall Street Journal:

Conservative activists Wednesday sought to put a different twist on populism with a series of "tea parties" to denounce not corporations but government spending and taxes. Supporters and critics bickered over whether the parties amounted to a popular groundswell or false anger stirred up by cable-television hosts.

Tea parties aside, the anti-corporate anger hasn't so far led to a movement with specific demands, let alone a new political party, as in the past.

Read more...

Moldy Nuts...

On The Left Hand...What Comes Around, Etc.

I've been thinking about the striking similarity of the tactics, phrases and comparisons I've been noticing in today's "political debate." "Protest is patriotic" was a slogan on display during the Bush years. I saw pictures from the recent Tea Party rallies with the same phrase on it. Bush and Hitler comparison where big during the Bush years. The post below this post will shows some pictures comparing Obama and Hitler that are from the Tea Party rallies last week. Do you suppose the Right has accidentally come up with these phrases and Obama-Hitler comparisons accidentally? Could it be that protesters in the United States aren't very creative?

Along with the Bush-Hitler pictures below, I've included some comparisons by liberal opinionators comparing Bush and Hitler. Nazis, communists, socialists, whatever...was there ever a time when our President was an American trying to the best to make his vision of America come true? Probably not...



"...Neither Hitler nor Bush could have effected their radical plans without a party full of functionaries and a compliant national media, of course. Hitler relied on his “Nazi” party, a word derived from the name of his National Socialist organization. He had a brilliant individual named Joseph Goebbels to control the Reich Propaganda Ministry and rally the public behind Nazi policies. Bush relied on his “Nozi” party, a word derived from “Zionism,” with the first four letters Z-i-o-n remixed into N-o-z-i. He had a brilliant cartel of Zionists to control the American Mainstream Media and rally the public behind Nozi policies..."

Peter Guenther
Art History Professor
From “Amerika Über Alles” — Our Nazi Nation.



"...From the Third Reich, Bush learned how to exploit "terrorism" to consolidate his dictatorship. Bush is on the Hitler end of the political spectrum opposing the very principles of our founding. What Bush knows he most surely learned by way of his Grandfather's old trading partner --Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Lesson Number he summed up himself in one sentence.

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."

--Adolf Hitler

Bush learned how to rule ruthlessly. Hitler never got more than 37 percent of the vote in several elections called over a short period of time ending with an act of terrorism that Hitler would exploit to consolidate his dictatorship. That act was the Reichstag Fire, Hitler's 911..."

Richard Horton
The Guardian
2007



"The 2004 election--which Karl Rove's Nazi thugs stole for Bush II--revealed that many American citizens are as intellectually and morally debased as the Germans in the 1930s. Such incompetence and ignorance always lead to tyranny. The United States is exactly at the same point in national degradation as the German nation in the 1930s when Hitler assumed absolute power and began his regime of mass murder and war crimes against the people of the world.

We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it.

So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives!"

Norman D. Livergood
America 2009 Is Germany 1938.

A Different Lincoln...Same Kind of Hate

Recent talk in the news about surveillance of right wing extremists sent me thumbing through a copy of the book "Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell & The American Nazi Party" by William H. Schmaltz. Founder of the American Nazi Party, Rockwell has influenced Neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements in this country. He was assassinated by one of his follower on August 25, 1967.

The pictures below are from Tea Party rallies held across the America last Wednesday, April 15. The quotes are from Rockwell. You don't have to listen to carefully to the arguments around the fringe of these Tea Parties to hear some of the strains of Rockwell's voice. A lot has changed in the 40 years since Rockwell's death...and a lot hasn't changed.



“You have been brainwashed by the liberals, the peace creeps, you must hear both sides of the story. You do not hear both sides, look at the radio and TV – they are completely owned by three companies – ABC, CBS, and NBC. This wouldn’t be so bad, but these companies are controlled to the man, by Russian Jews.”

George Lincoln Rockwell
Colorado State College
May 14, 1964



“I am making an effort to do everything legal to stop the Communist-Negro Revolution now going on in our Country…We are almost all veterans who are simply sick and tired of communism and race-mixing – and the gang of Jews who are trying to force these filthy things down America’s throat.”

George Lincoln Rockwell
Virginia
August 25, 1963



“You’re working every day to pay taxes to breed little black bastards…You’re subsidizing Negro mothers who produce this little black scum for pay, and then when they don’t have any place to live, they want to come and take your house and neighborhood.”

George Lincoln Rockwell
Marquette Park, Chicago
1966

Stamp Recall Notice

The Post Office just recalled their latest stamps. They had pictures of politicians on them, and people couldn't figure out which side to spit on.