HOW PROGRESSIVES CAME TO ELECTORAL POWER IN AMERICA

Amazona there is a difference between taking a short cut to the Moral High Ground and actually looking out from the Moral High Ground. I’ll give you this point you are absolutely right that it is as simple as voting for Progressive or Liberal candidates to get your moral superiority biscuit. As a group Progressives do stand for good things. Being against poverty, torture, corruption, misogyny, bigotry, abuse aren’t simply things that Progressives are against though. Conservatives are also against many of these societal scourges.

This is where things get confusing and clearly why conservatives are tripped up and find themselves unpopular both electorally and in general. Progressives don’t require a purity test, a loyalty test, or a religious affiliation to walk into our tent. Conservatives with their messages about tax rates being too high should, on that issue alone, have had a way in to the minds of the moderates and independents out there but for some reason they have a social agenda that is more important to them than the economic agenda.

Issues like same sex marriage, abortion and immigration are where conservatives fail simply because their tent is not as inclusive. I’m not going to be so closed minded as to say that this is because of some grand bigoted conspiracy but it is what it is. Conservatives offer little to blacks, Latinos, members of the LGBTQ community, single mothers or the non religious. The coalition that has been built by conservatives since the fall of Nixon of working class whites in the rural West and South and a few upper middle class and wealthy whites who have an agenda driven by heredity and inheritance. This coalition had a majority during the Reagan era and had the Moral High Ground in the dying age of the Cold War. This coalition drove America forward to a conservative vision that likely thought that with political power would come the power to change society; to pull it back from the brink. At this point in Reagan’s second term no one would have imagined that 18 states and the District of Columbia would recognize the marriage rights of same sex couples.

And yet, thirty years later, here you are in an America that seems nearly alien to you. Looking up at people like me who are standing on top of the mountain of Morality. What happened? Is the question most of you are asking and that is the smartest question you can ask and it has an easy answer. Three decades ago, the Greatest Generation were the electoral force in America. They were more conservative than even you Amazona having never dabbled in the experimentation of the 1960s and 1970s with Liberalism as you have said you did. These men and women who were adults in the 1940s and 1950s were around your age now in the 1980s and Reagan was an ultimate relief to them. Hey were afraid the Greatest were that all of their hard work to secure freedom and liberty for the coming generations of THEIR CHILDREN was going to wasted by the creeping Socialism, Diversity and Depravity that they saw in Liberalism.

The answer is obvious what happened. Those from the Greatest Generation had children, the Baby Boomers, and those Boomers had children in the 1970s. Those Generation X children had children Generation Y, or the Millenials. Being born now to the Generation Y women are the Digital Natives of the information age or Gen Z kids. The easy answer to the question of what happened to fear of authoritarian religious, political or corporate power is the last generation that never questioned them has nearly died entirely and has been replaced with an ever more questioning set of grandchildren.

Those grandchildren continued the trend of questioning all authority that began in the 1960s into the new Millennium. I’ll be the first to admit that the War on Poverty was a failure because it simply threw money at a problem that could not be solved so simply. However, in that time the Greatest Generation still held sway on all matters social and the ground was not yet fertile for the sort of change that one sees today.

In Hindsight
On my side of the great political divide Progressives worry about the pendulum swinging back toward conservatism on a daily basis. Maybe the generation that will be born to young girls that are infants now in America in the 2030s and 2040s will hearken back to the nostalgic days of the 1940s and 1950s. Who knows? By the time they go to the polls for the first time they will live in an America so saturated in information both for the good and the bad that the messages that resonated with 21 year olds in 1945 will seem as archaic as silent movies do today.

Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!

Fredrick Schwartz, D.S.V.J., CS, O.Q.H [Journ.]
Managing Editor—Research
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
100 1 Leviathan 3 AS

PROTESTS IN KIEV AND BANGKOK

I have been debating, I use that term loosely, Amazona at Blogs4Victory over the past few days about what course is right for America politically. I have been watching the events in both the Ukraine and in Thailand closely over the past few days in context with Amazona’s staunch conservative values. This leads me to clear conclusion, and trust me I am as shocked as you are that I have had this moment of clarity. I understand fully now what conservatives need to do to get their way politically in America. They must do what the Ukrainians and the Thais have done– take to the streets.

I understand that this is easier said than done. Americans in the past few decades have grown moribund in their desire to rock the boat politically in the form of mass protests. I large part of this is that protests in America are generally astroturfed events that are born in the minds of those who have too much political power already and far too much money to throw around. The TEA party has staged several events for politically profitable reasons just this year and the causes they “fought” for have been quickly forgotten and the right has moved on to their fallback positions of bigotry and pushing wealth up the hill to the 1% who care very little about the bottom 50%.

The left has done no better. The Occupy Wall Street movement too is less about informing voters or agitating than it is about shouting at the wall that is runaway capitalism and greed simply for greed’s sake. These things have to change in America no matter which side wins this major ideological war in American politics. Too much time is being wasted debating people like Amazona who while she admits that she was a Liberal in the halcyon days of her youth and admits as well that she had “bad experiences” and not invested in informing the American people that they actually have choices and don’t have to listen to the loudest voices shouting in the theater that is actually not on fire.

If America were as a ablaze as the conservatives believe it is things like the Knockout Game would be wider spread events instead of random acts of violence. Real issues like the constipation of the job market would be sources of outrage to both Liberals and Conservatives instead of brickbats they use to place blame. The goal really shouldn’t be who wins the grand debate about abortion, gay rights, gun control quantitative easing, the national debt or even what happened in Benghazi last year. The goal is to find a way to renew the power that the middle class held firmly in their graps for the better part of the 20th Century.

Now I know that sounds terribly nostalgic coming from a guy who regularly pounds conservatives over their desire for the good old days but in this case it fits. If the American Right wants to make their belief that America isn’t being run according to the Constitution they need to push away from their computers and smartphones and take to the streets. They need to cast off FreedomWorks and Rush Limbaugh and speak for themselves and let the rest of the nation hear their voices clearly. In doing this they do not need a united front but a united spirit like that being displayed today in the streets of Kiev and Bangkok. Only then will those in the political middle and the young take them seriously. A great man once said, “politics ain’t beanbag” and that witticism still rings true today.

In Hindsight
Personally, I doubt if people like Amazona are going to do this because in the end they don’t want life to be better for all Americans because the only people they feel are “true Americans” are those who share their wish to have more power than they deserve under the terms and conditions that they can accept because of their moral, religious or political beliefs. As a Progressive, I feel that if Americans have a bit more skin in the game, and if the wealthy were to dip their toe in the pool of wealth redistribution just a bit the government could back off a little and allow for a new age of technological prosperity unseen in the history of Terra. There is a lesson for everyone here– if you want change, real change, you have to willing to risk everything.

Pax Terra!

Fredrick Schwartz, D.S.V.J., CS, O.Q.H [Journ.]
Managing Editor—Research
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
48 1 Leviathan 2 AS

THE MEDITATORS SPEAK: A RESPONSE TO RON MAPES OF CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Yesterday Ron Mapes of Concord, New Hampshire wrote the following letter to the editor of the Concord Monitor:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”– Sen. Barack Obama, March 2006

I think this statement by Obama, failed leader of this nation, pretty much explains to all honest, true red-blooded American patriots who love God and country what exactly is wrong with the United States of America right now. The time for Obama’s impeachment is now; the proof is there many times over. It’s time to get rid of those we elected last time and bring in honest, faithful political leaders who have the guts to get the job done and get it done right the first time.

It’s obvious those we elected last time were bought and paid for, not elected. Wake up and get it right this time.

Mr Mapes selectively quotes then Senator Obama’s speech of 16 March 2006 on the floor of the United States Senate. The full text of that speech is archived here at Snopes.com. The point the letter writer is trying to make is not a simple one, however, We, Ourselves, see the message as very clear. President Obama, to Mr Mapes and millions of other like minded Americans, is not an honest person. To the conservative element bent on having its way despite being a retrograde minority view sees the 44th President of the United States as the antithesis of a “true red blooded American patriot.” The leader of the free world therefore to the far right does not love the G-d that all conservative white Americans worship on this very day. And most definitively this man that was twice elected President does not love the country despite garnering 135 million votes in those two elections and presiding over the most difficult economic recovery in American since the Great Depression.

Mapes says the time for Impeachment of the sitting president is now. We, Ourselves of The Collective and the Meditators feel America, to use a popular colloquialism has bigger fish to fry. We believe that those who believe as this man does are fighting a war long lost on behalf of the memory of those long dead who reaped the benefits of generations of misogyny, bigotry and power concentrated in the hands of a tribally loyal few. The Collective understands that there is huge profit in telling people with closed minds exactly what they want to hear. Rush Limbaugh has made a career of doing just that. We, Ourselves, would ask you, the reader of this post, what has Limbaugh ever offered as a solution to any of the problems that America has today? Better, when his ideology ruled in Washington did he do anything other than to support his side blindly?

The Meditators often ask why people, no matter how tribally motivated do such things? We ask the same question in regard to minority violence in urban centers all across America? But unlike the far right which seeks only to blame others for its ills while offering nothing new as a solution, We Ourselves do strive to put measures forth to stem the suffering of the American middle class. Ron Mapes ideology is not the disease it is a symptom of the inability for a segment of America not to be able to let go of the need to have someone to struggle against vice joining the fight for Progress. Trillions have been wasted on the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty which were doomed without utilizing the proper tools. The solutions to both are legalization and education. To be a member of free society demands both responsibility and sacrifice and to that end ideological conservatives and thugs that want to hurt people and damage property are joined at the hip. Neither see what they are doing to their reputations as a group as harm because they are enjoying their moment in the sun.

Impeachment is not the solution to the problems that Ron Mapes sees that are a cancer in America, because Obama is not the problem. The problem in America now is that the conservative ideologues on Main Street USA have taken the Middle Class hostage piled them onto a train speeding toward a mountain tunnel where the poor are forced to roam and are smiling all the way to the bank with overflowing campaign coffers thanks to Citizens United. If you want more freedom and prosperity in America do not vote for the party that wants to send America back to back alley abortions, racial segregation and criminal prosecutions for LGBT persons; vote for a party that wants all people to be at least middle class and if you falter will be there with a safety net to allow you to reach for the brass ring. Bruce Currie who comments on the letter makes the obvious even more clear:\

This letter illustrates the extent to which some in this country are completely divorced from reality–when it comes to economics, politics, and virtually anything that requires coherent thought. That’s a summary description of those who identify as Tea Party members or their fellow travelers. Ted Cruz and his merry band of pranksters have led the Republican Party to the brink–and are taking the country with it. They’re getting hammered in the polls, and dragging the greater Republican Party down with them. Their recklessness is hurting millions of Americans who depend on the government, and yet we have some here who are cheering them on, and blaming the president and the Democrats for what is entirely the fault of a few extremist Republicans. Have they no appreciation for facts and the truth? Have they no shame?

Does this sound familiar?

Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!

Pain
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147 Colnu 2 AS

WHY THE GOP IS IN DECLINE: WORDS FROM A TYPICAL REPUBLICAN VOTER

Yes indeed more conservative fertilizer from Blogs4Victory a place where dissent isn’t tolerated but religion based conspiracy theories are!

This is the response from Jeremiah who for quite a long time has been thumping his Bible and praying hard that A BRUTAL THEOCRACY WOULD RISE UP FROM THE ASHES OF SOME MAJESTIC CIVIL WAR FILLED WITH MIRACLES HAPPENS. Of course all the screaming and shouting aside this isn’t going to happen because America is fully a corporate oligarchy today and it will be a progressive corporate representative democracy in 20 years or so despite Jeremiah’s prediction of an Imam being elected President in a generation. And anyway what would be wrong with that? I thought the Constitution said whomever got the most electoral votes wins the election and that there was no religious test to hold office. Maybe Jeremiah has a different allegiance more similar to radical theocracy than he’s willing to admit. It doesn’t matter what religion you are a fanatic of religious fanatics are dangerous to any form of representative government with a free population.

I agree, Spook.
I call bull butter on Ms. Bloch’s predictions.
Saying there will be “no chance” of another Conservative presidency after 2014. Nah.

Polls are now agreeing that a majority of Americans do not trust the government, and for good reason considering the latest developments concerning the IRS, the NSA, and Benghazi.

As far as her statements regarding religion, she is just repeating the liberal mantra cooked up by the likes of Bill Maher, and her other handlers.

I do believe that at the rate we are going that America will be a majority Islamic nation in 20 years considering how fast it is infiltrating our colleges and universities. Some predict that in 20 years there will be enough Muslims in America to elect an Imam for President. But even that is questionable if America has a major turning point in a more positive direction.

All of this prediction poopy by the likes of the far-left libs who visit here get kind of old. They like to make those predictions here to make themselves feel good about their side, and their hopes for an America to the liking of Germany when it was controlled by the Nazis and Hitler in the 1930s, yet thinking they will not be the target of such a type of government. While true that Christians, Jews, and other ethnicity groups would be targeted by such a regime in Washington, those advocating for such a takeover do not realize the repercussions for such a regime change. Most of those advocating for such a type of government in America reside in other countries, and are immune from such a catastrophic regime…though they are lucky, because they have escaped the sword of the Muslims in their own country.

While it wouldn’t surprise me to see the American flag replaced by such as say, a Chinese flag, or Muslim flag…I still have faith that America won’t allow it to happen. If it were to transpire that America comes under such tyranny, I can only say that it is because Americans failed to follow God’s Word. And if such a time were to come, we can only hope that we are following Jesus Christ, because without Him we won’t stand. I mean, how can we expect to stand without Him?

Here’s my comment that got Jeremiah’s undies in a bunch:

Cluster you are half right. America will not become a true oligarchy but by 2028 it will be a a nation controlled by one political party. That party will be the Democratic Party. The problem for the GOP is that they never took any opportunities to reach out to those they would need to be elected that many years down the road. Government works for the voters I have been told many times and the Democrats are the party of handouts and hope for those who have had little voice in America for the bulk of its existence.

The 2014 midterms will be your last hurrah if you are a conservative. Hopefully enough far right conservatives will win in gerrymandered districts that were safe anyway to give the Right an even deeper and more false sense of electoral security. That will lead to more gaffes on women’s rights, gay rights and immigration that will further alienate those fast growing groups plus the American voter between 18 and 25 from your beliefs.

You likely will have the hinterlands well into the middle of the century but as we all know nobody really lives in the hinterlands. The goal should be to win back New York and California but you all know that is impossible. Pennsylvania is now blue as is Michigan. Florida is growing bluer by the day even north of Orlando. Texas, by 2020 will be a blue state as Latino kids who are now eleven years old will be of voting age then. What could your side possibly offer them if their parents are undocumented that would make them vote for your side? Nothing. At best the GOP by then will be a regional party having lost both the House and many governorships nationally. In seven years this will be all over and even you Cluster will have tired of talking about a political battle that cannot be won without a major catastrophe taking place. It’s this simple when Hillary Rodham Clinton announces her candidacy the GOP gets taken off life support and those who support that party can start to plan both the party and how to divide up the estate.

Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!

Sarah Bloch, D.S.V.J., J.F., O.Q.H [Jur.]
Amici Bax Demvolu Comnu
Politics & Culture Wars Managing Editor
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
35 Colnu 2 AS

WILL MCAVOY EXPLAINS IT ALL

A clear analysis of what is wrong with American Conservatism as manifested by TEA Party ideology.

Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!

Pain
Knight Slayer of Shai’ tan
الافتتاحية من الفتاحات
Majordomo of Hell and Terra’s Skies
Order of the Black Rose of the Empire
Ayatollah of Rham and its Shadow
Fair Judge Executioner of Souls
Quarterer’s Order of the Descending Aorta, 1st Class, with diamonds, rubies, platinum concertina, golden concertina, gilded pancreas, emerald gall bladder, platinum spleen, mesentery and lymph nodes
Lady Gaoler of Dis
Chief Engineer Hellac Power & Light
Womb of Empires
Order of the Superior Vena Cava
先生 立石 上様
Fifth Sea Lord of Hell
Comptroller of the Currency
Chair, Hellac Consumer Products Safety Commission
Oracle of Elections
Order of the Obsidian Heart [Mot. Pict. Arts & Sci.]
Order of the Obsidian Heart [Tort]
Order of the Obsidian Heart [Fluid Dyn.]
Chair, Hellac Commission on Sentient Being Rights
Lady High Justice of the Court of Acts & Merits
Knight Commandrix of the Hellac Gordian Knot of Gold
Knight Commandrix of the Hellac Gordian Knot of Silver
Keeper of the Keys of all the Gates of Hell
Qadi of Hades
Chamberlain Imperial of the Necropontiff of the UniversalFateanChurch
Order of the Quartz Heart [Eng.]
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Order of the Quartz Heart [Metaphys.]
Order of the Quartz Heart [Philos.]
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Marquise di Gehenna
Empress Consort
White Rod
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The Dis Brimstone Daily Pitchfork
143 Low Lux Negro  2 AS

OUR AMERICAN COUSIN

As you likely have noticed, the Dis Brimstone Daily Pitchfork has taken a well deserved break from terrestrial matters over the past few weeks. This respite will continue for a brief period as we shift from American political and social matters, which I as Editor-in-Chief feel are decided at least for the near term, to focus on the larger and more pressing matters that affect all of Terra’s population. The new and more global vision of Hell’s leading daily newspaper will debut on the day many feel the Mayans predicted your planet would cease to exist, 21 December 2012.

Until then our writers will post opinion pieces from time to time about the subjects of their choice. I begin this soft period of transition with a return to American social and political matters. I read this morning at Blogs for Victory a post by Mark Edward Noonan that made me think very deeply about the future of American politics. Mr Noonan, who is keen to make predictions without taking all the myriad forces at play, stares into his conservative crystal ball yet again. This time he looks toward his latter years and even predicts the age of his death, 77 in 2041, and the cause, liberalism:

I’ll have died at the age of 77 of an easily treatable disease which I could not get care for because the National Health Service didn’t have sufficient resources to treat me before the disease went too far.

I’ll have been living from the age of 67 forward in a one-room, government-supplied retirement home which I was forced in to because given the way the economy developed I was never able to secure enough wealth to replace the home I lost in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.

My 401k had been destroyed years previously. First by a government program to start taxing it, secondly by the massive inflation which was necessary to get our annual deficit to become 15% of GDP.

While I officially retired at the age of 67 and started to collect my Social Security (worth about 50% less than it is today because during that bout of inflation the government kept insisting, in spite of rising food and fuel prices, that inflation was non-existent and thus SS payments remained constant in dollar amounts while going down in actual value), I actually quit work at the age of 60 because I found out that by a varied combination of government benefits, I could actually get more income by sitting on my duff than by working 40 hours a week. At that point, it stopped bothering me so much that a cheeseburger costs $12 because Uncle Sam was picking up the tab. Until, that is, they banned the purchase of cheeseburgers in the interests of cutting National Health Service costs.

I did get some exercise from the age of about 57 on because the government mandates on fuel efficiency priced me out of automobile ownership. This resulted in a great deal of walking on my part as the inefficient bus system provided by government didn’t get me to where I needed to be when I needed to be there. I moved out of the suburbs and in to the city center because at least there were stores closer to home: on the other hand, I had to pay higher prices for the basics because government policy was to forbid “big box” stores in the area because they provided “unfair” competition to the small shops.

I found as I entered my 50′s that food was harder to obtain – the price kept rising and there kept being less of it. Various agricultural policies were taking more farm land out of production while various taxes were making the production and consumption of things like beef out of the question. I was given Supplementary Food Insurance which allowed me to buy whole grain bread, government cheese and all the potatoes I could eat.

I got a boost to my health as I gave up cigarette smoking when the banned it outdoors, where I did most of my smoking. Also, even buying generic smokes at the Indian reservation was running me $80 a carton. On the other hand, I found out that ‘Capulco Gold Lights were an admirable substitute, though they did make things a bit hazy; on the plus side, I was permitted to fire up a joint even indoors at work!

My initial reaction to this post was that Noonan was suffering from eating to many sour grapes. However, there is something more deeper and more telling about this post than first met my eyes. The writer is clearly anguished that his worldview has been rejected, in clear electoral terms, by million of people in the United States of America. Terrans like Mr Noonan believed that the election of 2008 and the attendant social struggles that have been championed by the Democratic Party [steps toward single payer health care, tax relief for the middle class, gay rights, worker’s rights, women’s reproductive rights and pay equality] was an historical outlier driven by the desire for minorities and liberal voters to elect the first man of color to the highest office in the land. They did that and nearly immediately forces in the conservative power camp lept into the fray with hundreds of millions of dollars to give birth to the TEA Party which was able to disguise bigotry behind a hood of lowering taxes for the middle class.

Of course, it is well realized now that this was not only a waste of treasure by the Kochs and Adelsons of American conservatism but also a group delusion on the part of their lesser heeled followers. All of the lies failed in the end for the conservatives refused to admit the clearest of truths–their numbers are smaller than the numbers of the coalition built by liberals. Plainly, the right does not know how to attract blacks, gays, Latinos or women to their ranks because their policies have a negative impact on these groups and they will continue to do so as they triple down and move more to the Right.

Noonan believes he will die from the lack of health care to which he can be exposed due to ObamaCare in 2041 at the age of 77. More than likely Mr Noonan will die of stupidity and fear long before that if he continues to believe that his worldview has a national following large enough to have a majority in both houses of Congress. Noonan is angry that his beliefs have been rejected by the voting public and to be fair we likely would have seen a similar reaction from liberals had Obama lost the election. That die has been cast; the American people have spoken and Noonan and the Religious Right and the TEA Party bigots still are far more free than virtually anyone in opposition politically anywhere else on Terra.

The suffering for Mr Noonan must be horrible. His wishes of a Cold War apocalypse where his End Times beliefs would come to fruition were dashed so he joined in the worship of conservatism’s only deity–Ronald Reagan. Years later his own religion was exposed as corrupt as countless priests were found guilty of the sexual abuse of children not only abroad but in the United States. Then comes the criminal behavior of the Bush administration post 9/11 to restrict freedom strictly out of fear that corporations and the wealthy would flee and America bombarded with terror attacks. Now Noonan is staring down a recovery for which a liberal government can take credit with a man of color at the helm. These are dark times for the man who feels that America is devolving into communism when actually what is happening is America is becoming just socialist enough to assure that capitalists continue to be prosperous. As a demon journalist I wish for Mark Edward Noonan, our American cousin, two things, that he have a long life so he can witness all the prosperity to come and that he live in interesting times.

Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!

Cavalor Epþiþ, Esquire, O.B.R.E., O.D.A.J.[1er], O.Q.H.[Journ.], D.S.V.J., J.F.
Editor-in-Chief
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
101 Low Lux Negro 2 AS

THE WORD THAT CONSERVATIVE BLOGGERS DARE NOT MENTION

Every morning I awake and trudge to the office at my flat here in the 71st arondissment of Dis and turn on my computer. My hour or so of research before I head Uptown to the main office begins with conservative blogs. Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, RedState, Fox Nation and the Blaze. occasionally, I visit Atlas Shrugged and Malkin if I’m feeling particularly frisky.

This morning was no different than any other in an election year; I am looking for trends in the speech of the opposition. If you hadn’t noticed I’m a social and economic Progressive. Gotcha politics is easy for people who don’t think; making connections in how the opposition speaks to the issues is like panning for gold. This morning I found a really big shiny nugget in my pan.

The US economy is not really winning any gold medals right now. I’m a firm believer in the policies of Barack Obama will bring the economy out of its sluggishness sometime in Q2 2014 as our in house economic expert Carl Pryor has been saying for nearly three years. Actually, Pryor has pushed his full recovery date [Pryor measures this with the rate of unemployment being below 6%] back from Q3 2015 a few months ago when Romney became the de facto GOP nominee noting, “There’s no way this man will win and this being the case the Affordable care Act is in no jeopardy.” This makes me wonder though. If I were running as the challenger to a man that’s presiding over a nation that is since 1946 been used to having a wasteful abundance but finds itself in a employment challenge recovery I would be hammering the incumbent on his failure to create jobs.

There’s a problem with this though. Mitt Romney is the candidate. A man, who to quote one of the least intelligent men on the Internet, Mark Edward Noonan, has never been in the business of “make, mine and grow.” Now this distributist belief of Mark Edward Noonan isn’t a tongue in cheek homage to penis enlargement ads it’s really a tenet of his brand of Roman Catholicism. Romney is a very wealthy man and despite this there are going to be millions of people in that 47% about which the candidate cares nothing that are going to give him their vote because they would do anything to deny President Barack Obama a second term. The real problem here is that Romney doesn’t have a voice that can clearly state what he would do to give Americans the jobs they crave and need.

The nugget I panned this morning is that across the conservative blogosphere on the front pages there are only two mentions of the US economy. Out of a biblical torrent of words and images only two, The Blaze and RedState mention the word. Conversely, here at the Dis Brimstone Daily Pitchfork there are four mentions. Why is this? Well fellow traveler I will tell you! Romney’s wealth is a burden on his campaign. I know the man is a generous giver to charity but the word economy makes people think about taxes and tax rates. America is no longer a nation with an expanding middle class. While this isn’t Mitt Romney’s fault it is the fault of people who worked in the shadows of capitalism to make money out of the investment game. Lower middle class Americans have voted in their minds already. They like ObamaCare as it has been dubbed even if they won’t tell a pollster on their tracFone that they do.

Even now, the lovely and talented Mika Brzezinski and the erudite Joe Scarborough are shaking their heads at Romney trying to lead a “Romney Ryan!” cheer at a campaign stop. No one was cheering back. That’s because it is known that Romney doesn’t see America as being populated with people; he’s a human resources guy not a human beings guy. He hasn’t had the humanizing experience of having to come up from poverty and live outside of the US as anything other than an America citizen of privilege. Barack Obama, like him or not has been blessed with the ability because of his upbringing to meet people and talk to them as a living breathing Human being with a Soul. Mitt Romney isn’t connecting because when he meets a person he’s assessing their value to him.

In Hindsight

That is my take on why conservative bloggers are staying away from the economy; Romney’s wealth makes him an easy target for things like taxes so they dare not go there. Romney’s Internet surrogates would rather do the 1950s all over again conflating the anti-West uprisings in the Middle East with some foreign policy failure on Obama’s part. The news flash for Breitbart et al is that the people who would point and scream at this are already in the Romney fold. There are still roughly 7% of voters who haven’t made up their mind and many of them are in places like Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia; states that Romney currently trails in and must win to achieve the Oval Office. If Romney doesn’t change his tack and stop pandering to the white male bigots who hate Obama not based on policy but based on his race he will not only cost himself the White House but possibly cost his party the Senate and put the House back in play. If Romney does tack to the center, he will become the 21st century incarnation of a Republican Walter Mondale. The GOP will fracture by 2014 into an establishment party and those who will blame the establishment for not running conservative enough candidates. In this case a three party system will become a one party state in two election cycles. Democrats will own the House in perpetuity after the recovery of 2014 because TEA Party politics will demand a harder shift to the Right and that is a recipe for disaster for the unicorn of American politics–the Republican moderate.

Pax Terra!

Fredrick Schwartz, D.S.V.J., O.Q.H [Journ.]
Managing Editor—Research
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
34 Low Lux Negro 2 AS

RICK SANTORUM EXPLAINS IT ALL: “WE WILL NEVER HAVE THE MEDIA ON OUR SIDE, EVER, IN THIS COUNTRY. WE WILL NEVER HAVE THE ELITE SMART PEOPLE ON OUR SIDE, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THEY HAVE THEY SHOULD HAVE THE POWER TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO.”

Rick Santorum speaking yesterday at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., gave a curious insight into just who the powerbrokers on the Religious Right want their base to be. If taken directly in context, which is something the Right rarely does in regard to the sitting President of the United States, Mr. Santorum speaking to a largely white and boisterous crowd at the Omni Shoreham Hotel said this:

I don’t even know what kind of revolution we’re in right now. We seem to be creating dynamism in the marketplace like it’s never been seen. Why? Freedom. Freedom, not government dictates, not planners who are going to invest in solar energy companies and tell us what our future is going to be by some bureaucrat making those decisions. No. No, we’re going to trust you.

That’s why the media doesn’t go along with us. You have to understand that. They don’t like conservatism. They like the other side, not necessarily, I would argue, because they necessarily agree with them. It’s because they can influence the country more. You see, if just a few people make decisions about what this world looks like and what this country looks like, well, then you can have people sitting in offices in the major media outlets and in Hollywood who can – they can deal with a small group of people and influencing them, getting them to jump through the hoops they want to. It’s much harder if all of you collectively build America. It’s much harder to influence you.

We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do. So our colleges and universities, they’re not going to be on our side. The conservative movement will always be – and that’s why we founded Patriot Voices – the basic premise of America and American values will always be sustained through two institutions, the church and the family. (Applause.)

And so economic conservatism – libertarian types can say, oh, well, we don’t want to talk about the social issues. Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement. There is no basic values in America in force, and there is no future for our country. (Applause.)

So it is our job in this election, it is our job, to go out and make a difference. It is our job to go out and talk to fellow believers. And I don’t mean Christians. I mean fellow believers in the American creed, fellow believers in those basic principles that built our country.

Go out and preach to them the American ethic. Preach to them what made us great. And remind them that that greatness does not lie in Washington, D.C. or in the hands of a president. It lies in each and every one of us and in our families.

I’m excited, because I think we have a nominee who understands that. I read – I didn’t see it, but I read the transcript of what Governor Romney said here. I could have given that speech. I feel good. I feel good. (Laughter, applause.) We have to do our part.

So I encourage each and every one of you to leave here energized. It is our watch. At the end of the Declaration of Independence, we all know those words. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are – excuse me. We know these words, that we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortune and our sacred honor.”

What we have here from Mr. Santorum is telling on many levels. Clearly, there is an us against them sort of dynamic going on but these sorts of rifts are created by the Left as well just not to so much of an extreme. Marshall McLuhan famously said in 1946 that “the medium is the message” and that is as true today in American politics as it ever was. Santorum makes the point, however, that anti-intellectualism and satisfaction with being economically middling should be coupled with a drone-like adherence to religious and social beliefs. That makes no sense when you cosider that Mitt Romney is an Ivy League educated man worth more than $250 million whose family will have inherited wealth for many more generations into the future. So here the dynamic is clear as well. Santorum uses his Theocratic beliefs which are similarly held by middle class conservative white voters throughout the rural North, the South and the Midwest, to build a bridge in the air between the class animux that should exist between an elite intellectual businessman who has desires to be the highest elected official in America and the hoi polloi of the Right.

The only problem is that the Religious Right have seen this movie before. They saw this with the election of George W Bush in 2000. In that election the race became a watershed both for businesses and for individuals that was about what the future direction of America would be; a path toward neconservatism, a curious amalgamation of social values and military might a global cop, or neoprogressivism where the environment and social safety net issues would finally get the treatment in the public sphere they deserve by way of making hard choices now to assure a better future for for the generations of Americans to come.

America did not, I feel, fail itself by electing George W Bush. That lesson needed to be learned by Conservatives and Liberals alike. That path took America to trillions of dollars wasted in Iraq for a victory that was not won because of a lies told to heat the blood of the same Americans that Santorum spoke to at the Values Voter Summit. In this race Mitt Romney, a man who inspires no one is not seeking to inspire anyone. He, like George W Bush, is willing to offer lip service to the far Right and the Religious Right to get their votes on 6 November 2012. Romney is not a “true believer” like Catholic Rick Santorum is. Romney needs “true believer” surrogates like Santorum to get out there and energize the base.

The Conservatives now are being told, by one of their pious masters, that they are mediocre and stupid to paraphrase Mr. Santorum. I will admit here that the GOP is depending on those with negative attitudes toward President Barack Obama to constitute the majority of their voter base. The average TEA Party voter in 2012 can quote chapter and verse the lies about welfare to work requirements, their theories about corruption of the Supreme Court in the Affordable Care Act decision and most recently their refusal to believe that Muslim take their religion so seriously that a film trailer could inspire violence on a regional scale and thereby conflating the tragedy of four dead diplomtic service workers including Ambassador J Christopher Stevens into the failure of the Carter administration in 1979.

To the delusional voters on the Right this morning the sitting president is the “other.” This belief changing before 6 November 2012 is as unlikely as MSNBC becoming a digital parrot of the Koch Brothers’ goals for America. Yet Barack Obama is the sitting President of the United States. Getting there was the easy part; keeping Obama in office is what will be difficult. I, personally, still believe that the President will be re-elected. The violence in the Middle East will be a campaign footnote before the first debate is held on 3 October 2012 in Denver, Colorado; the teacher’s strike in Chicago will likely end next week.

By this time next week, the American electorate will be talking about the striking differences between the Right and the Left. Their choices are defined clearly by what has been said about women’s health on both sides. Their choices have defined by the Right wishing to exert controls on a society that no longer looks as it did in the post World War 2 era. Santorum and the “true believers” want to go back to those days when women could not choose to have or not to have a child, to have birth control options. The Religious Right want to go back to a time when the electorate was dominated by middle class white men who feared religion and who had wives who voted as they were told by their husbands and fathers. Conservatives who are being duped yet again by Mitt Romney want the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people of America to go back in the closet at best or be rounded up by the Sheriff Joe Arpaio types doing the same work of Bull Conner in the 1960s. This election is about being a Human Being who has a choice in charting one’s own path in freedom, vice being a cog in a religion actuated corporate profit driven machine where your only choice is to pray to someone else’s deity that the law will not find fault in your personal decision and come for you.

Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!

Sarah Bloch, D.S.V.J., J.F., O.Q.H [Jur.]
Amici Bax Demvolu Comnu
Politics & Culture Wars Managing Editor
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
24 Low Lux Negro 2 AS

THE ISSUES THAT MATTER TO THE CONSERVATIVES IN AMERICA: ABORTION, RACISM AND THE WAR ON WOMEN

I read a Blogs 4 Victory post entitled, “The False Narrative” last night and went to bed with the words of a commenter turned poster Cluster ringing in my ears. That ringing turned to laughter as I thought of how I would reply to his positions on abortion, racism and the War on Women. Here’s the gist of his argument:

– Abortion –The party with the extreme position on abortion is the democrats. They currently support federal funding, partial birth, and live birth abortion, and essentially the right to kill the unborn without question at anytime. This position is far out of the mainstream, and voters need to know this. Conservatives support life with the rape/incest exception, which is optional, and that position is actually the real pro choice position.

– Racism – Honestly the political party that harbors racists, are the democrats. Most of them simply believe that people of a darker skin color are victims of this society solely because of their pigmentation, and that without government help, they are incapable of living a productive life. This mindset is deplorable and offensive. They also believe apparently that they need to be the protectors of our first black President, because obviously he is unable to withstand criticism of most any kind, due once again to the color of his skin.

– War on Women – Once again, the political party that is waging war against women is the democrats. How offensive is it for most women to know that Obama and Sandra Fluke believe that women are incapable of providing for their own contraception needs? How hypocritical is it for liberal feminists to say “keep your hands off my body” but then expect us to pay for their abortion and healthcare needs? How denigrating is it to believe that a pregnancy is an obstacle in a woman’s life? The fact is, women are incredibly strong and more than capable of determining, and paying for, their way through life without anyones help.

Here is my response:

Abortion—The facts on this are simple. The Democratic Party supports a woman’s right to choose when she has a child. Thereby, a woman to the Left has a right to choose to have an abortion that takes place within the time allotted by federal law. I repeat federal law dictates the time span of fetal development where an abortion is legal. In some cases, where the life of the mother is in jeopardy, an abortion is medically necessary beyond this federal limit. I woman cannot, in any jurisdiction in the United States of America have an abortion procedure beyond 21 weeks simply by saying she wants and abortion. I do not know anyone who supports partial birth abortion on demand. I also understand the law that says any viable fetus born alive even in an abortion clinic must be kept alive or the physician and anyone attending can be charged with murder. What you have written is hyperbole for the conservative base and nothing more.

Racism—It is easy to throw this term around but I find this very dangerous. I think America has progressed concerning race more in the period from 1950 to 2000 than it has at any other time in its history. Since 2000 however, there has been a turn from the institutionalized racism of the last century to a reactionary bigotry over the last 12 years. One has to understand the difference between bigotry and racism to even engage in this conversation. Racism needs power to fuel it. The power comes from politics. If those in charge all come from the same racial demographic then it is far more easy to keep another racial demographic at bay with laws that segregate them. The post Civil War Democratic Party in the South, made up of the most ardent conservatives of the time, saw the opportunities they had once the Reconstruction ended to initiate laws that would secure them power for what they thought would be forever. Those conservative Democrats could not have seen the Federal Government ever exercising its power below the Mason-Dixon line again and for over one hundred years they were right. So instead of having the vision for the future that Grant held blacks were put into a lower caste by the ruling white elite in the South and life for them remained that way until 1946 when the first stirrings for a second emancipation began. By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and signed by President Lyndon Johnson the white powerbrokers in the South realized they needed a new strategy, one less embarrassing than the overt bigotry supported by racist thinking that has been broadcast to the world by CBS News night after night. It took four years for a savior to come to the conservatives in the South who while Democrats were more than willing to shed that label to keep the suffering status quo in regard to the Negro. President Nixon utilized the animus between working class white and working class blacks in the South to march to victory in 1968. Reagan in his very first campaign speech did the same in Neshoba County, Mississippi and reinforced the new ethic of conservative views on race with his alliance with the Moral Majority in 1980. Race was cast aside in the late 1980s by President George H. W. Bush in the name of continuing economic prosperity. Demographers, however, knew that in a generation a great decline was going to take place among the white electorate. Younger white voters were becoming more and more liberal. Black voters had allied squarely with the new Liberal post-Kennedy Democratic Party led by Northern Liberals and Midwestern moderates. The GOP once a party of Ed Burke of Massachusetts and Barry Goldwater was now the party of Strom Thurmond and David Duke. The overt race baiting politics of the 1930s and 1940s no longer had a place among the Conservatives as it was no longer socially acceptable. The bigotry had to come from a dedicated and older bloc of conservative voters who see blacks and Latinos as a drain on their wealth [keep our taxes low], see minorities as a violent threat to their personal security [flash mobs] and demand that any leader of the country be able to prove he is American even if it is clear he was born in the US [birtherism]. Conservatives don’t need Racism because as their demographics shrink over the next 20 years, with the dying off of the Baby Boomers having begun in earnest, the power base that would have driven it too will have died off. Young Conservatives will take a new more inclusive tack. They will put the moralizing and religious traditionalism behind them and work to make their party a more populist and albeit nationalist simulacrum of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. The next fifty years will be very interesting politically for America. On December 31, 2064 the last Baby Boomer will be 100 years old. The country that you know now will be long gone. I imagine it will still be prosperous but that prosperity will be dominated by Liberal married couples made up of majority that is composed of those that conservatives most fear the most. Educated white women will marry outside their race more as more and more blacks and Latinos earn higher education degrees in a truly level playing field. Gay and Lesbian couples will become full citizens as their marriages will be recognized as marriage in every state in the Union. Abortion will become rarer as government provided contraception is made cheap and widely available as Obamacare proves to be as effective for the young worker as Social Security is for the elderly. Churches will once again be filled with people of Faith rather than peasants of Fear. I feel that America in 2064 might be in the shining diamond midst of a new global golden age and she cannot be that with retrograde racial thinking but only by the continuing efforts of Progressives to keep up the pressure on the wobbling old man of Conservatism.

The War on Women—Post Clinton America finds itself in that phase the demographers of the 1980s warned conservatives about. Not to beat the issue to death but the pro-life position on abortion, as a political issue, while cloaked in the sweet intentions of preserving life is really nothing more than the most desperate reaction to a societal failure by white conservatives. The birth rates of Latinas and black women outpace that of white women nearly 8 to 1. Double that number for college educated white women over the age of 30 while the same demographic of black and Latinas is still a 4 to 1 advantage. It is politically perfectly understandable why a group of people who wants to stay in power, to have the America that they want would turn to issues of abortion and contraception when they are being beaten in the breeding race by such a wide margin. Also, marrying race with gender, this gives the Right another canard they can use—that women are to blame for the loss of white conservative political power through their desire to hold positions of power in a world they see as a man’s domain. American women don’t like this and they don’t like Mitt Romney no matter how many times Ann Romney begs for America to get to know her husband.

Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!

Sarah Bloch, D.S.V.J., J.F., O.Q.H [Jur.]
Amici Bax Demvolu Comnu
Politics & Culture Wars Managing Editor
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
12 Low Lux Negro 2 AS

QUOTE OF THE DAY: AN EXPLANATION OF HOW AMERICAN CONSERVATISM WAS BUILT

Last night our Boss Cavalor Epthith found himself in a heated debate with a Mouvranian conservative MP from Sheol E Jack Hanratty about the comments made about rape by Rep Todd Akin R MO-2. Hanratty was clear in his defense and was even by the standards of TV here in Hell a bit harsh to the Boss. In the end Cavalor leaned forward and offered this as the origins of the ideology of the American Conservative circa 2012:

“I want to be clear on where I see current American conservatism coming from. Stupidity is a bartender at a bar called the Echo Chamber. This bartender over serves his best customer, Bigotry, drinks of 100 proof hate. Bigotry sits at the bar lamenting to Stupidity that he has not had sex with his wife in years and in walks Ignorance and her twin sister Intolerance. By closing time these two unattractive but willing sisters appear to be goddesses to Bigotry but they aren’t willing to share their bodies for nothing and they need a place to make their trade. So Bigotry takes the twin sisters to a hotel called Religion and he sets their pay for services in Lies on the nightstand and they spend a night engaged in the best sex Bigotry has ever had. A year later the twins are both back in the Echo Chamber pushing strollers Intolerance has a child called Family Values and Ignorance has a child she calls Anti-Intellectualism. Since Bigotry is married to a woman called Nationalism he builds them a house away from his exurban life and he names that house Conservatism.”

I hope every American gets to read this quote.

Qu’ul cuda praedex nihil!

Sarah Bloch, D.S.V.J., J.F., O.Q.H [Jur.]
Amici Bax Demvolu Comnu
Politics & Culture Wars Managing Editor
The Dis Brimstone-Daily Pitchfork
6 Low Lux Negro 2 AS