I really have to wonder sometimes.
Are they truly so filled with Hate that they would take it out on the American people time and time again? We've seen it with Gov Walker insane and unnecessary attack on Unions in Wisconsin via his "Budget Repair Bill". Weeks of protests, and very likely illegal vote in the Senate and now a sudden $636 Windfall in Tax Reveneus that makes the point financially moot.
We've seen it in Ohio with Gov Kasich's radical attacks on Unions and Police, and in Michigan with Gov. Snyder's "Emergency Financial Martial Law".
We've seen it when all but 4 House Republicans, and all but 5 Senate Republicans Voted in favor of the Ryan Medicare Dismantling Plan and have just now begun to Reap the Whirlwind of that in the NY-26.
They support Torture, even when it's shown that the person they tortured Still Lied To Us about exactly the question we most wanted answered.
They attack President Obama for saying the exact same thing that President Bush, President Clinton and Prime-Minister Netanyau said about the Israeli/Palestine borders.
And now Eric Cantor has said we need to cut disaster relief in the wake of the most devastating and deadly Tornadoes in the last 50 years - or else we have to cut clean energy initiatives which frankly is just about the only thing we could do to reduce the likelihood of Super Tornadoes like these.
Meanwhile they criticize Obama for "Chugging a 40" in Ireland, and entertaining with the Queen in England, ignoring the fact that Obama is already scheduled to visit Joplin on Sunday and in the meanwhile FEMA has been doing a Great Job.
Besides, As we all now know - he can multi-task like nobodies business.
And they do all this while shamelessly sucking up to corporate Wall Street and energy interest like BP, Koch and Goldman Sachs with $Billions in subsidies, tax cuts, kick backs and regulatory capture.
They don't care about us, the American people, they only care about more and more Profit for their Cronies.
Time and time again we can see examples where their true constitutents which are Corporate Interest like Massey Energy who cut corners simply to save a few bucks repeatedly lead to negative consequences the ruin and destroy lives.
The investigation firmly pins blame for the accident on Massey. "The story of Upper Big Branch is a cautionary tale of hubris," it concludes. "A company that was a towering presence in the Appalachian coalfields operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk-taking."
The report's blunt tone reflects the clearer picture that has emerged since investigators began probing the causes of the accident more than a year ago. But it also underscores Massey's faded political clout. In January, Massey was acquired by Virginia-based Alpha Natural Resources in a deal that made Alpha the nation's second-largest coal company while retiring Massey's tarnished name.
Just as the massive malfeasance on Wall Street and the Mortgage Industry Tanked the Entire Economy Three Years ago.
The report concluded "the crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high, risk complex financial products, undisclosed conflicts of interest,and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street."
The report throws egg in the face of the OTS saying the regulator "displayed an unusual amount of deference to lender Washington Mutual's management, choosing to rely on the bank to police itself" when issues over mortgage lending and securitization practices arose. The report blames OTS for maintaining this attitude even after the agency identified "over 500 serious deficiencies (at WaMu) in five years." The report added, "OTS did not once, from 2004 to 2008, take a public enforcement action against Washington Mutual to correct its lending practices, nor did it lower the bank's rating for safety and soundness."
...
"These lenders were not the victims of the financial crisis; the high risk loans they issued were the fuel that ignited the financial crisis," the bipartisan Senate study concluded.
Investment banks Goldman Sachs (GS: 136.24 -0.07%) and Deutsche Bank (DB: 57.96 +1.77%) also are hit in the report for designing and promoting "complex financial instruments" such as residential mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps and CDS contracts linked to the ABX index.
But rather than limit this type of dangerous and risky financial vehicles, the GOP tries to blame the Poor, Freddie and Fannie for the crash - then take a hack-saw to regulating agencies while the Federal government just sued Deutsche Bank for Mortgage Fraud.
CANTOR: And you’ve managed to be able to serve that function in the CME Group for so much of this country and the world, and you’ve also managed to position as a true world leader. We want that in every arena. We want to help you continue to lead for America, that means we gotta do our part when you see the implementation of Dodd-Frank coming at you like a barreling train. We want to help control that so that we can get some sensible, sensible follow up to that legislation. [...] Whether it’s the EPA, the FDA, the FCC, the SEC, the CFTC, you name it, there is an acronym for a federal agency causing harm right now. We’re trying to pull that in.
The CFTC happens to be the agency that just sued Oil Speculators for Market Manipulation, yet they want to blame Obama for high gas prices while undermining the CFTC?
The EPA, FDA, SEC and CFTC are "causing harm"? Didn't we have a Salmonella Food Recall just last year? And these people want to defund that?
Or how about something even more crazy, like defunding the Department of Energy?
BROUN: I want to make this clear. I will not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless we have major cuts in the size and scope of the federal government.
MULTIPLE CONSTITUENTS: Can you define major?
BROUN: I propose getting rid of the Department of Education. I’d like to get rid of the Department of Energy as well.
Here are just a couple things the Department of Energy Does.
Cyber Security Protection
Cyber Security programs protect the information and systems that the Department depends on as DOE increasingly relies on new technology. The Department works to preserve the integrity, reliability, availability, and confidentiality of important information while maintaining its information systems.
Managing Operations Security
Managing security operations for DOE facilities in the national capitol area, as well as, developing policies designed to protect national security and other critical assets (such as Nuclear Power Plants) entrusted to the Department is an important responsibility.
Preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction
DOE plays an integral part in nuclear nonproliferation, countering terrorism and responding to incidents involving weapons of mass destruction. We provide technology, analysis, and expertise to aid the United States government in preventing the spread or use of weapons of mass destruction.
Does shutting down the agency that helps track and secure lose nuclear materials around the world while we have terrorist groups actively seeking to attack us with them seem like a rational plan to you?
I understand some people are doing what they're doing because that's what they get paid to do. It's how they make their (blood) money. Some of these people are true believers in the Ayn Randian ideal of total power to the private enterprise and minimum power to government and public elements.
Some of them are professional liars. Some of them have been lied to. Some of these people are dangerously self deluded.
Some of them are authoritarians, and I feel, deeply trapped in the cognitive dysfunction of confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions; this is related to the concept of cognitive dissonance.
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series) and illusory correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
These people can't be argued with, they can't be debated. Like a drug addict they will continue to cling to their non-factual delusion with rationalizations and excuses no matter what they are confronted with.
They'll blame to poor for their not having any money. They'll blame children for not having access to an education. They'll blame the sick for their own illness, and blame the old for their inability to continue working until the age of 90, and they'll blame those who lost their homes and lives as the result of a wildfire, or flood or tornado as not taking care of themselves.
Ron Paul on CNN arguing for the abolishment of FEMA: Why shouldn’t I have to buy my own insurance and protect about the potential dangers? I mean it’s – it’s a moral hazard to say that government is always going to take care of us when we do dumb things.
Is it just me or does his argument to get rid of FEMA include an insurance mandate?
They'll use every excuse possible not to take any personal responsibility for the state of our common Republic.
Meanwhile Wall Street and U.S. Corporations continue to have absolutely Record Breaking Profits Quarter after Quarter and doing it by taking it out on their workers.
The Commerce Department reports that corporate profits have never been higher in American history, so why aren't Republicans -- the party of business -- celebrating the news? After all, those profits are coming not from revenue growth -- which would benefit workers and executives -- but from cost cutting. It's that cost cutting that is keeping the unemployment rate at 9.5%, while allowing more of companies' meager revenue growth to flow to the bottom line.
How historic is this accomplishment? The New York Times calculated that at $1.66 trillion, U.S. corporations are on track for annualized profits that are the highest since such records were first kept back in 1950, and notes that the gains in profits are due mostly to rising productivity.
That productivity boost came as workers spent more hours working, and getting paid less to do it. Specifically, between the third quarter of 2009 and the same period on 2010, productivity was up 2.5% as output rose 4.1%, hours worked increased 1.6%, and unit labor costs fell 1.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/...
But not everyone is fooled by this. Not everyone who may be a Republican has been taken in by the Tax Cut Cult. Not everyone thinks making children and seniors pay more and more while getting less and less and continuing to pad the profits of the rich is a good plan for America. Going along this path is edging us closer and closer to a form of Corporate Feudalism, with a massive gulf between the working poor and the super-rich who don't need to care about public services because they can afford their own private security, their own private health care, their own private roads and private airplanes.
They only need the rest of us - to be their serfs, while they live like a new age of corporate aristocracy, passing down their wealth from generation to generation like the Lords, Dukes, Duchesses and Monarch's of the old countries. No longer will this be a land of hope or prosperity. We will become pre-revolutionary Russia under the Oligarchs or worse yet - Somalia with a completely defanged and destroyed government, controlled by armed gangs of roving lawless gunmen and thugs.
What I want to know is, how do these people hold their heads up while they destroy the American Dream bit by bit, plank by plank?
How?
Vyan