Rush Limbaugh and Herr Karl completely control every Clear Channel listener and FOX TV viewer. These dittoheads are every bit as apathetic as "1984's" proles and Rove has their every characteristic analyzed and every pitch which appeals to their darkest sides determined. The GOP can phony up a Reverend Wright or Weatherman Ayers scandal whenever they want and the GOP can always have the populace talking about scandals.

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If Obama had barreled ahead with impeaching big bro 43 as his first priority, would he have kept the 3 Republican Senators (Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), and Arlen Specter (PA)) that passed his recovery bill in Congress? No, it would be a return to completely partisan votes again--the death knell to our government accomplishing their role of providing legislation for the people.

Look-the GOP has control of their addle-pated red staters, and they will use any propaganda to keep them. An example of this is Rep. Steve Austria saying that FDR caused the Great Depression. Once this concept was thrown out there it was instant polled, and the GOP propagandists noticed that the voters in their districts of lost souls were happy to believe their latest hypocrisies. This spurred them on to new attempts, such as Eric Cantor's pitch denigrating unions. For the GOP their statements don't have to pass the stink test, they just have to be thrown out there to act as cover for the always impending next election.

In a new interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Rep. Steve Austria (R-OH) stated "When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression. He tried to borrow and spend; he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

It is too Orwellian. Those who control history control the truth. The GOP does as far as their base of envious, fearful, eager to latch onto any non-inclusive sentiment possible losers are concerned.

Of course there is objective reality. The GOP interpretation of reality is simply untrue and can't be "spun" in any manner to be anything other than hypocrisy, as the Columbus Dispatch then notes, "Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929; Roosevelt took office in 1933." As Dean Baker has explained, "Roosevelt's New Deal Agenda lowered the unemployment rate from 25 percent in 1933 to 10 percent in 1937.
The economy turned bad again when the "Blue Dogs of the Roosevelt era won sway and got Roosevelt to cut spending and raise taxes."

The broader populace won't let lies remain out there forever, but Austria has his statement and when he is running in 2010 he can take comfort in knowing it is out there, but Austria has now backed off his comments, saying, "I did not mean to imply in any way that President Roosevelt was responsible for putting us into the Depression, but rather was trying to make the point that Roosevelt's attempt to use significant spending to get us out of the Depression did not have the desired effect. Roosevelt did not put us into the Depression, but rather his policies could not pull the nation out of the recession."

Even that is a lie! Roosevelt relented and for a period allowed the GOP have their tax cuts for the top 1%, which caused problems back then, as they have done now. When the US had to produce munitions for World War 2 - then the US' economy improved.

The GOP had only 3 Senators agree with the stimulus. If there were investigations now about big bro 43's war crimes, the Democrats wouldn't even have these 3. Obama has to be concerned that his ability to govern would end-just as Clinton's did when he had to defend himself from the GOP impeachment proceedings.


That marks the great difference between the parties. The GOP was happy to let the US government waste all those years in which Clinton had to defend himself instead of governing. The Democrats have a similar choice now. How much of our Congress' time and energy will be consumed investigating and conceivably prosecuting big bro 43 for their crimes? There is another problem though. The international community has determined that big bro 43 has committed crimes against humanity. If we don't act, then they might. On January 21st, 2009, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, on German television urged the U.S. to pursue former President George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld on charges that they authorized torture and other harsh interrogation techniques.

He said "Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld."

He continued that "Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.
We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld against detainees at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."


What an ugly corner "bubble boy" has placed. Because of his crimes, either Obama has to expend a significant part of his time investigating the crooks of the previous regime, or allow the standing the US has in the international community to deteriorate!

When big bro 43 and Cheney were engaging in exit interviews to burnish W's lousy legacy, these ghouls flaunted waterboarding as a strength of the GOP. For us to regain our standing we must place these louts in a zoo with all of the other rabid animals!

Obama can only talk about preferring to look forward for so long. The tide has turned against this view as nearly to two-thirds of Americans believe "there should be investigations into allegations that the Bush team used torture to interrogate terrorism suspects and its program of wiretapping U.S. citizens without getting warrants," a new USA Today/Gallup poll finds. While 40 percent "favor criminal investigations," about 25 percent "want investigations without criminal charges."

What is there to investigate? Big bro 43 and Cheney bragged about waterboarding!

Obama must follow what the US and international community want. We want to see him as liberal even though he isn't. It is called idealization! I'm a liberal peace lover, and I wished for my qualities to be shared by Obama, who has signaled he is planning to continue the war in Afghanistan. In Freudian psychology there is a term "Idealization," which can be defined as subconsciously choosing to perceive another individual as having more positive qualities than he or she may actually have.

Obama during his campaign frequently espoused centrist--slightly leaning leftward, but not leftist, policies. He isn't what he hoped to be, but rather what he said he was.

Our country needs to restore its national dignity. We have to atone for attacking a country --Iraq, which wasn't involved in 9/11. We have to bring to justice the ghouls who spit on US and international standards of dignity and tortured detainees.

That is the minimum of change we can expect. If we don't get it, then what was all of the mouthing of phrases with change in them during Obama's campaign?

Authors Bio:
Winston Smith is an ex-Social Worker. I worked in child welfare, and in medical settings and in homeless settings. In the later our facility was geared as a permanent address for people to apply for welfare. Once they received that we could send them to facilities in which their welfare paid the bill and provided enough for a meager existence. We also referred people to vocational rehabilitation services. Many of the people who came to us were people who were clearly emotionally ill, but Reagan's slashing of the services for these people caused them to become homeless. One woman I dealt with-St. Jane, believed she was in direct communication with God, urinated freely without using the facilities and she had 47 bags of trash which were prized possessions. She got welfare and was sent to a facility were she could survive. The rule was that our facility could be used 1 time only as we had too many people who thought that the services that we provided we would lift them from the dire straights that they were in. Well, we provided our services for St. Jane around Thanksgiving. On Christmas Eve she was back with her 47 bags of trash and wanted to stay at our facility. I informed my superior of this situation, but we declined to provide services for St. Jane. She slept in front of our facility in a snowstorm. The local rag took the picture and excoriated us for what we did. The local welfare department asked her where she would like to live. St. Jane said Chicago because she liked the wind. She knew on one there. She and her 47 bags of trash of were carted onto a train for the windy city and never of again. The local welfare department was glad to get shed of her. Social welfare in the mid-1980's was geared to blame the victim. Ill people were sent home from hospitals were no one was going to help them because social welfare budgets were slashed by Reagan. Bush 41's â"thousand points of lightâ" was just another way to shaft the weakest in our society. Bush 43's faith based initiative was just another attempt to reduce social welfare services. Reagan's â"Just say Noâ" was the pinnacle of hypocrisy. No services for those who desperately needed them under the guise of tough love.

Obviously I became burnt out by too much indifference regarding our weak and weary. I couldn't look at desperate people and could not get myself to say that what I could offer them wouldn't really help themâ"?it would only get them out of my office to be another person's problem, until the local welfare department carted them away.

I had little interest in politics until the illegal Iraq War started. Growing up in the 1960's caused me to understand that the GOP used war to attract right-wing extremists to vote for them. When â"Tricky Dick'sâ" secret plan to end the Vietnam War unfolded into elongating our presence there for 8 years I knew that I would never believe a GOP war-monger again. I dislike Obama's plan to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and see it as a craven attempt to placate the GOP. Maybe he'll reduce the GOP's attacks against him, but it will at the expense of alienating his base.