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Going all out for ...?
(Picture courtesy of flickr.com.)
‘Right wing concepts’ seems oxymoronic, as watching the officeholders brought in by 2010′s intense advertising of a nonexistent jobs program gives a whole new meaning to negotiation. In the winger viewpoint, it seems that incivility and outright hurling of insults is the appropriate way to run the U.S.
The encounter with Rep. Joe Walsh that Martin Bashir hosted on his show at MSNBC yesterday has been styled as a triumph of the right by several wingnut sites. That’s amusing to some one who actually watched it, and circles around Walsh’s refusal to back off his accusation that the president lied. The ‘Liar’ charge the right likes to hurl out seems particularly inappropriate as they change stances daily on what faces this country if their threats to end U.S. financial stability creep toward accomplishment.
The teaGOP congressman from Illinois joined Bachmann in denying that right wing refusal to act now in order to avoid U.S. default on its debts in any way threatens the financial stability of the country.
“President Obama, quit lying,” said Congressman Walsh. “You know darn well that if August 2nd comes and goes there is plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all social security obligations. And you also know that you and only you have the discretion to make those payments.”“I know you have a willing media that protects everything you say and do, but have you no shame sir? In three short years you have bankrupted this country and destroyed job creation. You are either in over your head, don’t understand what makes this country great, or are hell-bent in turning us into some European big government wasteland.”
Like other words from the right of the former GOP, Walsh’s statements draw on a large and dependable reservoir of ignorance among voters that was plumbed to great effect last November. The right’s huge victory in 2010 was brought about by massive claims that it would bring jobs to voters, and indeed it did bring jobs, but only to newly elected officials who now are destroying the workers’ rights.
Calling the president a liar is yet another evidence of the new tactic of incivility that seems to thrill followers while obscuring bases of actual fact. As Bashir pointed out, earlier statements – about President Obama’s winning because he is black, and of pushing ‘that magic button’ as an articulate black man – by Walsh indicate that nothing the president says will convince him, not because of being wrong, but because it comes from the man that the right is determined to beat by any means it can.
The present right wing officeholders are following a pattern we saw not long ago, in Tom DeLay, whose behavior lowered standards to a point that the then Speaker could feel comfortable with. I have watched CSpan covering floor fights in the House that were remarkably reminiscent of barroom brawls, with name calling and defiance of behavior standards flaunted as if they did credit to the brawlers.
When decorum is ignored, the country loses dignity.
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The tactic of refusing normal manners when dealing with the person in office that they’re determined to remove is one that, regrettably, I’ve seen before. Senator Ralph Yarborough, progressive Democrat from Texas, was refused seating with the Democratic contingent at the 1960 presidential nominating convention that put John F. Kennedy into the candidacy for, then the office of, President of the U.S. (Lyndon Johnson was Texas’ preferred candidate, while Yarborough supported JFK,) When he physically pushed himself into the seated area, he was encountered by pushing and shoving to keep him out. When I went to work for Yarborough a fellow Texan scorned the choice, on the grounds that he behaved deplorably in public. It was impossible to explain then, as it is now, that countering deplorable behavior towards him sometimes made scenes.
No, I don’t expect to see the president shoving anyone back. Sen. Yarborough grew up in a household that included eight brothers.
22 Comments
Obama is a liar.
Obama, more than anyone, has lowered the level of civility in politics time and time again— Obama attacked the liberals; he then attacked leftists and progressives in the most vile and pernicious manner.
And when he was criticized for the most hideous assassination of Osama Bin Laden, Obama said that those who opposed this bestial, barbaric, murderous act of revenge instead of bringing him to justice should “have their heads examined.”
This “Chicago group” of politicians of which Obama is a creation is not known for their “civility” and Obama has failed to break from this Capone “tradition.”
Guess I missed the video of Obama namecalling.
Funny definition of ‘attack’. And I have yet to hear any method offered inside the bounds of reality, of bringing OBL to justice.
Nice post. The Right Wing Extremist agenda could not survive a decent public conversation. They metaphorically scream because if they were speaking people might actually understand what they are saying and start ignoring them.
Start?
It’s a tragicomedy, enabled by a media disinclined to deal with the screeching when they treat this bunch as they deserve.
Aren’t there any courts that OBL could have been brought to trial in? He could have been handcuffed and shackled and brought to what the civilized world calls “justice;” not shot through the eye and had a slug pumped into his heart for “good measure.”
I don’t think it is very “civil” the way many people opposed to Obama’s wars are being treated, either.
You seem to be using the lack of “civility” on the part of the right-wing to silence opposition to raising the debt ceiling. Lots of us on the left are opposed to raising the debt ceiling to pay for wars.
‘He could have been handcuffed and shackled and brought to what the civilized world calls “justice’
And your evidence of this possibility is…..?
Being “The Party of NO!” and a lack of decorum go together hand in glove. A party of “maybe” might not behave this way, but then, as you say, “…the right is determined to beat [BO] by any means it can.”
On another point, please permit me to repeat my pet peeve about the 2010 election. I disagree that “The right’s huge victory in 2010 was brought about by massive claims that it would bring jobs to voters…” The right won because so many lefty voters – the ones who put the Ds and BO in office in 2008 – stayed home in 2010. The election results show a roughly 40 percent drop in vote totals for Ds in 2010 compared to 2008. Republican candidates received roughly the same number of votes, sometimes only slightly more, as they did in 2008. The lefty voters stayed home because the Ds and BO performed so poorly in the previous two years.
In December 2010 BO set up this crisis by endorsing the extension of the Bush tax cuts. On Monday of this week, he said that he would stand up to his own party on the issue of slashing entitlements. (Yikes!!) These facts raise two questions. Will lefty voters who deserted the Ds in 2010 return if the party goes along with BO the R? I think the answer will be “no”. How on earth can the Ds renominate a person who did not have the spine to push back against the Rs in December 2010 but who now has plenty of spine – and no reluctance to declare it – when it comes to fighting his own party on an issue that is supposedly so important to them that it is ensconced in the party bylaws?? I predict that unless BO can fill the D convention with Republicans, the 2012 Democratic convention will be astonishingly somber as delegates are stunned into immobility by the contradiction of being Democrats and voting to nominate a Republican.
I wish that there were a center-right party that could nominate BO as their Presidential candidate. Maybe that act would wake up the Democrats and induce them to nominate a true Democrat in 2012.
Sadly, the kabuki of political maneuvering (pseudo debt limit and SS/Medicare/Medicaid cuts/adjustments) and overt and not so overt hints of racism are merely shiny distractions aimed to keep our minds from wandering and wondering about the corporate fascist death grip on our politics and polity both.
Don’t fall for it, ma’am.
As Foghorn Leghorn used to say:
“Ya got to keep yer eye on the ball, sohn, eye ball. Get it? A’heh heh heh.”
There is truth to what you say, that D;s stayed home. Now they’re losing their right to collective bargaining. There’s no good way to present that as any gain, and not a recommendation for the policy.
sorry but I’ve lived with racists for all my life, and know that it’s behind a lot of the rottenness toward working people in general. It’s not Obama inciting them to react against him, it’s attack on anyone different, in any way.
I understand, I have encountered racists all my life as well. N I’m white as New York snow . . .
However, hate and racism are merely dog whistles, cow bells, to be rung to distract.
It’s the people pulling the levers of those who hate and are racist that are the REAL problem, for except the corporate fascist fucks who own it all, including we the people, the racists would have been neutered long ago.
IMO the biggest and most threatening enemy to our lives and society are the corporate fascists and the politicians and politics they own and control.
Make no doubt, they own the judiciary, executive, congress, military and all our jobs, healthcare, housing, banks, and they own us.
They are the yoke what chokes we the people.
It is they, not the racists, who would leave us to die on the streets in our older ages, when we are poor, when we are unemployed, unhoused.
The rest is kabuki, ma’am.
But I guess, we all have our lenses with which to filter our realities . . . always love yer work ma’am . . . even when I quibble . . .
Rcc’d. Always.
And I’m a “f**kin’ retard” because I don’t believe that Obama is a Democrat….
i think walsh is mostly correct.
whether or not the president is lying about something as important as this matters a heck of a lot more to me than whether or not walsh is being sufficiently polite.
Lying about the facts that got the debt ceiling raised every time over the past few admin’s – oh, that’s hardly worth even arguing abut. It’s the present admin that the wingnuts want to undercut, and they’re not pretending otherwise. Suggest you look for better masters.
and I do not cede all the powre to them that are trying to control us. Never have, never will. When they seem to be winning it’s because we take the media’s word for it. which I will not do. I think you have given up too easily, and shouldn’t because there are more good than bad fokes. and agree with you, we get along even when we disagree which is the best thing about us all.
??? i have no idea what you are talking about.
that wasn’t the issue you quoted walsh on, and it has nothing to do with my comment.
obama or bush, D or R, i prefer to see lying called out for what it is. doesn’t mean i support walsh (or obama).
my comment was about whether walsh was right about obama lying and whether those lies are more important than walsh calling obama a liar.
what does this have to do with my comment?
please withdraw your implied accusation. i speak freely and for myself only. no masters.
If that’s the case, count me as a Fing retard as well.
The guy is right of Reagan, B1, and B2 combined.
They killed OBL in cold blood. According to the accounts from Obama himself, OBL never even resisted and he was unarmed.
If they could carry away his dead body they sure could have carried him away handcuffed and shackled.
Neither could Obama’s Wall Street agenda survive a decent public conversation, dialog, discussion and debate.
Does anyone doubt that Obama’s agenda is Wall Street’s agenda? Well, what could be more right-wing than Wall Street’s agenda? Therefore Obama, also, has a right-wing agenda and this is the reason he despises public dialog with the left because his agenda could never survive public scrutiny.
What is a “true Democrat?” Who would the Democrats be nominating if not Obama?
*standsupstepsforward*
“I am a fucking retard.”
Maybe we should be talking about the PROPER way of dealing with this huge government debt since we know the right-wing way is the wrong way but their wrong way of dealing with this debt has nothing to do with “civility.” By suggesting that the issue is “civility” when dealing with debt is wrong in my opinion because the debt is not caused by uncivil, right-wing, racist degenerates by the way they act in publicly “discussing” this issue.
Wall Street bankers— the bankers who Obama helped survive— are the ones who profit from this government debt.
These same bankers are bankrolling both Obama and the Tea Party Republicans.
The way I see it there are three things that can be done to begin solving the debt crisis— and “raising the debt ceiling” isn’t one of them.
1. End the wars and all of the U.S. occupations— Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya.
2. Tax the hell out of the rich who have been profiting from this government debt.
3. Create a national government owned bank like the State Bank of North Dakota. This way when the government has to borrow money for socially useful and necessary projects we are borrowing the money from ourselves. Mandate by legislation that all government funds and taxes collected by local, county, state and federal agencies be held by this publicly owned bank and that all union pension funds must pass through this bank. This bank would disburse all government program funds like Food Stamps.
The right-wing happens to be correct— but for all the wrong reasons— that the debt ceiling should not be raised but just because the right-wing is saying the debt ceiling should not be raised doesn’t mean the debt ceiling should be raised.
Debt equals poverty; any nation heavily in debt will be poor. In fact, raising the debt ceiling is going to cause massive poverty in this country and this poverty will be enforced through austerity measures much worse than we are experiencing now compliments of Barack Obama.