DownWithTyranny!: The Noah Diaries (20): "The largest threat to our democracy is the emergence of a radical right getting most of the ransom it demands" (Robert Reich)

Who are these people? I. Funeral fascists; II. Teabagging deadbeat dad. "Tar baby" and "coonskin"? What's next, "jigaboo"?

Noah asks, "What's the difference between teabaggers and 'Islamic terrorists'?" Wave all the flags you like, fascism is still fascism. "The Republicans held this country hostage and will continue to do so. How are they not terrorists?" (See 8/1, "Ransom paid.")

by Noah

8/1/11 -- Who are these people? I. Texas Nutbag Division

Sigh, Texas strikes yet again. This time it's Repug Rep. John Culberson, who has accused President Obama of censoring any mention of God at VA cemetery funerals.

Incredible stuff. Culberson claims to have gone "undercover" at a funeral at the Houston VA cemetery and witnessed the banning of God from a funeral. He is downright cartoonish when he says:

It makes my skin crawl that liberals are attempting to drive prayer out of a funeral ceremony for our heroes. . . . We're going to fix this so that no Obama liberal bureaucrat will interfere with the funeral of a hero.

The fact is that the choice of service and wording is left of to the family of the fallen. FOX has given considerable time to this manufactured story, but of course only from the side of those who wish to force their beliefs on others. American Atheists Military Director Justin Griffith has accused Culberson and fellow congresscritters Michael McCaul and Ted Poe of outright lying in order to use "military funerals for political gain." Say it ain't so!

It ain't, of course. All made up. The mention or lack thereof of God is not up to tinhorn crackpots like Culberson, yet. You know how Republicans always say that government should not interfere with our lives? Well, Culberson and his cohorts are fighting to insert God into funerals, even if it goes against the wishes of the hero's family.

There's a group that calls itself the National Memorial Ladies -- women who take it upon themselves to attend funerals, hand out a religious card, and say "God bless you" to the families --which is suing for the right to always be allowed to do so whether it meets with family wishes or not. Now that's what I call a nuisance suit. Two VA groups have joined in, and local hate groups of Christonuts such as Fellowship of Minds are bent on driving Houston VA cemetery director Arleen Ocasio out of town at the least. They have even published the address of her home. Warning, their site is one of the most deranged things you will ever see, but hey, it's Texas.

Four months later: Director Ocasio has been reassigned. She has run several other VA cemeteries, but it's safe to say that none of her previous jobs matched her experience in Texas. Once the foaming-at-the-mouth haters had her address and phone number, it was probably for the best. And Culberson won't have blood on his hands.

8/1/11 -- Who are these people? II: Deadbeat Dad Division

I heard something once about teabaggers wanting to bring "integrity" and "fiscal sanity" back to Washington. Childish teabag leader Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) probably got the memo. He certainly mouthed the words while campaigning. Ah, but once he won, like most politicians, he tossed the memo in the circular file, or gave it to his dog-walker.

You don't like ultimatums? Tough. I won't place one more dollar of debt on the backs of my kids and grandkids until we structurally reform the way this town spends money.

Walsh may have a hard time winning the annual Congressional Lying-Swine Hypocrisy Prize -- the competition in Washington is fierce. But he's making a valiant attempt, summoning all the arrogance he can. While he's talking about debt and using his own kids as props in his own theater of sickitude, maybe he could make those payments for child support he's $117,437 behind on for his own kids and his ex-wife, Laura.

That's years of being a delinquent. Can you say Deadbeat Dad? How's that for good old Republican "family values"? Walsh couldn't come up with the money to help his own kids, but he somehow managed to lend his own campaign $35,000. Oh, and there's that matter of talking the girlfriend (I bet she's a real prize) on vacations to Mexico. Such a frugal guy.

8/1/11 -- "Ransom paid": What's the difference between teabaggers and "Islamic terrorists"?

Perhaps comedian Andy Borowitz gave the best perspective on the deal to end the so-called "debt crisis" when he put these words in Senate Minority Leader McConnell's mouth:

"We deserve full credit for finding the antidote, even though we were the ones who administered the poison."

That the whole crisis was manufactured by the Republicans to begin with seems to have escaped the majority of those in our mainstream media. No surprise there. The bigger problem is that every time some asswipe in Washington puts on a suit and steps to the podium to say "spending cuts," the cuts are not only directed at the middle and working classes, and away from their wealthy cronies; they follow up the cutting with throwing salt on the wounds before they get back in their limos to fix a drink and drive off to the mansion with some groupie aide in their lap.

Here's what sane folks are saying about this deal:

"This deal is a sugar-coated Satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see."

-- Rep. Emanual Cleaver (D-MO, chairman
of the Congressional Black Caucus)

"The deal itself . . . is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy. . . . The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further."

-- Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist

"Anyone who characterizes the deal as a victory for the American people over partisanship understands neither economics nor politics. The deal . . . puts the nation's most important safety nets and public investments on the chopping block. . . . The largest threat to our democracy is the emergence of a radical right getting most of the ransom it demands." [Emphasis added]

-- former Labor Secretary Labor Robert Reich

The last part of Robert Reich's statement, from a piece called "Ransom Paid," is the saddest for me. President Obama has killed Osama bin Laden, but at home he has negotiated with terrorists. Whatever happened to "defend[ing] us against all enemies, foreign and domestic"?

The Tea Party and Osama bin Laden differ only in style and pace. Osama bin Laden said his aim was to crash the U.S. economy by destroying the WTC. The Tea Party said they would bring down the U.S. and even the whole world economy if they didn't get their way on the debt-ceiling deal. At the end of the day, the Tea Party will have damaged this country more than bin Laden, and they will have killed more U.S. citizens when the unemployment rate goes up and medical care goes down. Osama bin Laden at least killed his enemies quickly. Teabaggers prefer that we die of a thousand poison paper cuts. What's worse? A quick plane crash or a slow, excruciatingly painful death from cancer left untreated? "Pro-life"? How many babies will starve? How many won't even be born because of malnourished mothers?

The Republicans held this country hostage and will continue to do so. How are they not terrorists? Can I imagine that Eric Cancer is so sick and twisted that the deaths of Americans mean nothing to him if those deaths actually further his quest for power? Yes, I can imagine it, and John Boehner will drink to it. Miss McConnell even called it what it is: Republican hostage-taking. And Obama? He's the capitulator-in-chief. He would have felt at home in Vichy in 1943.

In the end, after all the insincere hot air emanating from Washington, both parties OK-ed a surge in the war against the middle and working classes. I'm tempted to say, "May they all rot in hell," but they would be taking us all with them.

8/2/11 -- "Tar baby"? "Coonskin"?

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R/KKK-CO) likens President Obama to a tar baby! And Republicans wonder why normal people accuse them of being racists. It never stops. Of course some Repugs will say "he's just one guy," "we're not all really like that," etc. That sorta sounds nice, but how many "just one guys" do we have to hear this kind of crap from? George Allen, Eric Bolling, Jim DeMint, Huckabee, Bill-O . . . .the list is as long as their copies of Mein Kampf.

Another asswipe, the white supremacist Hitler fan Pat Buchanan, used the word "coonskin" on Ann Coulter's "Human Events" blog. I guess he thought that only like-minded folks would be reading. Buchanan is now a "mainstream" Republican. He wrote speeches for Richard Nixon, after all. Some may try to dismiss his repeated white-supremacist comments as the ravings of a fringe player in the party or merely the words of a lunatic, but nowadays he's a prominent mainstream Repug, with more than enough supporters among the Republican element to keep his job at corporately correct MSNBC and be in demand as a spokescretin and writer in the Repug world, twisted and warped as it is.

Mocked by the Wall Street Journal and Sen. John McCain as the little people of the Lord of the Rings books, the Tea Party "Hobbits" are indeed returning to Middle Earth -- to nail the coonskin to the wall.

"Nail the coonskin to the wall"? That's hardly even code, is it?

The Republicans continue to get bolder and bolder. They used to use code words like "Muslim" and "Kenya" while circulating their pictures of the president dressed up as a witch doctor or a monkey eating a banana. Now they use any word or phrase they can come up with -- except the N-word, which nevertheless has appeared on some of their signs. (Does anyone doubt that they use it freely in private conversation?) Even when they say "socialist" or "Ay-rab," it's meant to convey a sense of "other."

"Tar baby"? "Coonskin"? What'll it be next, "jigaboo"? I can see Hannity using that one, even though, believe it or not, he actually toned it down when he went on national TV. You should have heard him in his early New York radio days. You would have thought he was broadcasting from Alabama in 1963.

Expect continued faux outrage from Bill-O, claiming that calling Republicans racist is unfair.

History in the making:
Selections from THE NOAH DIARIES 2011

Yesterday: (19): "I don't remember any terrorist attacks on American soil from 2000 to 2008" (FOX's Eric Bolling). Plus: Newtie & the Supreme Court, suspicious death? nah!, fashion arrest, Rush says it's not the heat -- it's..., and more (7/14-27/11)
Tomorrow: (21) If the Republican Party was a '70s horror movie, it would be directed by Wes Craven. FAA shutdown, "concerned" Repug mom, Rupert's mop-haired henchgal fired?, damn Methodists!, another "debate," and more (8/5-15/11)

FOR A COMPLETE LISTING OF THE SERIES, CLICK HERE

And don't forget 2010's Year in Review series and 2009's "12 Days of Christmas Scorn"!