Many will find these upcoming columns to be quite controversial; but “c’est la vie”. You see, the truth by its very nature is controversial. So strap in folks.
In the good old United States of Amnesia (USA), the radio and television industries -like most other conventional mediums- are controlled by corporate interests which are often adverse to the public good. The owners, controllers, comptrollers and gatekeepers of mainstream media are mainly driven by the profit motive. Their motivations are not of honesty, integrity, equal rights, justice and the like; their motivations are more along the lines of greed, power and status-quo maintenance. Here is the problem: it appears that most people who are plugged in to mainstream media cannot grasp all this.
Some political analysts have posited that despite living in a country where around twenty eight out of every hundred citizens hold college degrees, the average US voter is as dumb as a friggin doorknob. I am not sure this is true but sometimes it is hard to ignore. When you analyze election results, exit polls and overall voting patterns/behavior over time, your consternation level will surely rise.
For example: Congress has an 11 per cent approval rating, and yet more than 96 % of those who ran for reelection earlier this month, were victorious. That means twenty-four out of ever twenty-five incumbents facing the voters were returned to Congress. Furthermore: Republicans have an approval rating many points lower than democrats; but they control more state legislatures nationally when compared to Dems. Add to this the fact that there are almost 10 million more voters registered as democrats nationwide, when compared to republicans. And yet, the last time democrats held so few state legislatures was in 1860. The last time they held so few members of Congress dates back to pre-depression era.
Let that sink in for a moment then ask yourself why. What has happened in such a politically-cataclysmic way to warrant all this? Could it just be the “mulatto” in the White House?
Let’s even go a little deeper. In 2008 that historic figure named Barack Obama garnered roughly 70 million votes. This is the highest raw-vote total for an American president ever. He whipped John McCain by roughly 10 million. In 2012 Obama received the second -highest raw-vote total ever: with roughly 66 million. He defeated Mitt Romney by about 5 million votes. Republicans won the House in 2010 and again in 2011; but even though they defeated democrats, their combined congressional vote total in 2012 was nearly three million votes less than democrats: so much for gerrymandering and election-subterfuge.
In the 2014 midterm election more than thirty million voters disappeared in two years: was some of this due to republican voter-intimidation and repression? Or was some of it due to the fact that most Dem-candidates distanced themselves from President Obama but still expected his core supporters to show up? Either way it’s moot. The bottom line is this: for a country wherein most ordinary people appear to honestly believe, that it has developed the world’s best democracy; nearly three out of every four people who are legally qualified to vote, refused to either register or vote: so much for “American exceptionalism”. Of those who are registered to vote less than forty per cent showed up.
Look; there are quite a few well known politically-conservative speakers on both talk-radio and cable television. To name a few, let me list Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter. They command huge audiences: I am talking tens of millions. Most of these folks operate on the Fox News Networks (radio, television, internet, cable outlets, et al). They influence many voters of all affiliations. And yet, when you examine over time, what these folks say, you find absolute falsehoods, half-truths, and awfully terrible contradictions. They posit statements which are classics in mendacity. They often display faulty reasoning, illogical thinking-patterns, deceptive posturing, deceitful stances and indecent expostulations. And all these things happen daily. Do we really believe that the cumulative effect of all this isn’t negative? I will posit that non-voting is just one expression of people’s frustrations.
These afore-mentioned folks suffer no consequences whatsoever while continuously harming (what I call) our “unfinished democracy”. These folks destroy national morale, race relations, national unity and trust in government. If you undermine government daily, do you really expect people to trust governmental institutions? As Americans we should be striving to make government more efficient; more responsive to the needs of the people; more inclusive; more accountable.
Instead of informing the public political debate and general dialogue, the aforementioned folks tend to perpetually ridicule anyone they view as having opposing views, interests and objectives. They make big bucks doing it; and the fools they influence have no fucking clue as to what is really going on. By the way: those behind the publication called the “New York Times” are only a little better; definitely not worse. I say that because the Times has a responsibility to expose these lies, half-truths, deceptions and distortions, whenever they blatantly occur.
Let me give you a few examples of what I am talking about here. Let’s take Glen Beck firstly. In 2012 when the price of gas was high he blamed it on President Obama, and said that Obama is using high gas prices to “destroy America”. When gas prices started dropping precipitously over the last few months, Beck started implying that said gasoline prices, dropping under three dollars per gallon, was happening because “we are being led into war”.
Let’s not forget that on Obama’s inauguration day, Rush Limbaugh said:” I hope he (Obama) fails”. Limbaugh’s exhortations came while the country’s economy was suffering through the worst recession since the “Great Depression”: some patriot he is.
Tom Brokaw of MSNBC, claimed that he recently heard some other conservative talk-radio personality say this: ”Obama’s voters/supporters, are people who live in excrement; and they expect (the rest of) us to lift them out of the excrement”. This seems to have come right out of Mitt Romney’s 47-percenters play book; no?
Recently on CSPAN (probably the best cable station for political news), a caller referred to the president as a”nigger”. Barack Obama has seen a record number of hate groups emerge during his tenure. I am told that he has also seen more death threats on his life than of all presidents combined.
Then there is Sean Hannity with his relentless personal attacks on Obama from away before the 2008 presidential primaries. This Nazi-sympathizer (YES!!) has demonstrated a visible nastiness towards BO, which could only be coming from a place in his heart where racism happily and consciously resides.
Then there is Bill O’Reilly. This pompous pseudo-intellectual unknowingly contradicts himself over and over, simply because of his dislike and disdain for Barack Obama: who is only the first half-white (and simultaneously half-black) president. O’Reilly once went to dinner at “Sylvia’s” in Harlem, with the admitted expectation that blacks would be cussing and fighting over fried chicken and iced-teas being served late; while not eating with knives and forks but using their fingers instead. This is the same joker who now tries to speak authoritatively about blacks and their issues, near every darn week of the year.
This joker has no idea that the patience of blacks all over the world is running thin. You see, the investment of “white-skinned privilege” in global racism -since the “Age of Discovery”- has been somewhat exposed nowadays: it’s only a matter of time before serious reprisals come forth. You simply cannot treat other humans badly, just because they aren’t of your race, ethnicity, religion or nationality. And to add to the absurdity, you let the very people you are callously ill-treating and dehumanizing, become nannies to your kids; cook and clean in your homes or workplaces; fix and drive your cars; and do so many things for you that leave you vulnerable at most times. Just because you are financially better off, you take these chances with hopeful impunity; you see one of these days, that same wealth (some of it ill-gotten) may very well become chickens returning home to roost.
Then there is Charles Krauthammer. Every time Republicans win a national election, this angry man with some deep psychological issues, states that “liberalism” has been repudiated (go check the videotapes); but when Democrats win voting majorities in five of the last six presidential elections, he never once reversed that claim to say “conservatism” has been rejected. Some academic he is.
Even as respected a columnist as Thomas Sowell has fallen to the “hate-Obama malady”. He recently attacked Obama’s executive orders on immigration from a place where truth appears to be a stranger nowadays. “E tu Brute?
And it’s not just media-personalities who make these inane comments while still retaining their day-jobs. In this column I refuse to discuss the “rectum” named Donald trump. I did a column on him a few years back: go dig it up.
Last year, during the illegal-immigration crisis on our southern border, the republican speaker of the House of Representatives (Boehner) said that President Obama can simply solve the problem with executive-action (“one stroke of the pen”). When the president decided to take executive action in dealing with pressing national issues (including illegal-immigration) which Congress wouldn’t address, Boehner decides to hire lawyers and sue the president for”over-reaching”. Now today he is warning the president that his executive action on the immigration issue “poisons the well”. Here is a little known fact: every president since Dwight Eisenhower has taken executive action on the immigration issue.
Relative to executive-orders overall, let me give you some numbers over the 40 years I have lived in New York City: Carter issued 319; Reagan had 380; G. H. Bush came in at 166; Clinton issued 364; G. W. Bush issued 291; and Obama has done 194 so far. To put this in better perspective, let me say this: Obama is on pace to average about 33 per year. This means that he has the lowest annual average since the first term of President Grover Cleveland (1885-1889).
Here is another little known fact: the rate of government- spending increase under Obama is the lowest since President Eisenhower. The average rate of increase is 1.4 per cent. And also note that today, ninety-five per cent of the workers in the USA, pay the lowest tax rates since the ‘50s.
Here are some other facts: (1) The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 7,949 when Obama swore in; today it is flirting with 18000: another historic milestone. A gain of over a thousand points during any administration has never taken place in the economic history of this country. (2) The S&P number was 805 then, and today it flirts with 2000. (3) The unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent (and peaked at 10.1 per cent in October of 2009) now it is down to 5.8. (4) In January 2008, GDP showed a negative growth of minus 5.3 per cent; in the most recent quarter it was positive 4.2 per cent. (5) We have had more than five years of positive economic expansion. (6) We are heading to 54 straight months of private-sector job-growth: another historic milestone, wherein over 200,000 new jobs were created in more consecutive months than at any point in our economic history.
It seems as though facts elude republicans who have been elected to Congress. It also seems that facts elude too many of those in mainstream media, who appear to be fixated on this “mulatto” in the White House. And let me repeat something I have written umpteen times before: when I use the term “mulatto” I am simply using the anthropological term given to someone whose parents happen to be one Negro, and the other Caucasian; in other words a person of mixed race (black and white). It is a biological fact that even Barack Obama refuses to accept. He keeps referring to himself as being black; but that’s another column.
Let’s get to Mitch McConnell, the soon to be majority leader of the senate. Merely hours after Obama swears in for the first time, Mc Connell treasonously stood in the senate chambers and sated this:”my objective is to make him (Obama) a one-term president”. With millions of people out of work due to Bush’s recession and the attendant high-unemployment rate, that was his motivation. So for six years now, he and his republican co-conspirators have attempted to obstruct any and everything proposed by our president in terms of policy; no matter what the benefits were to the general public.
You don’t believe me? Then, let’s take the Affordable Care Act (aka:”Obamacare”).
Republicans will gladly stay on the opposing side of potentially fifty million uninsured people getting health insurance, in order to viciously deny president Obama a major policy victory. And yet, they will boldly claim that the health care system needs reforming; while offering up no real suggestions for reform. And they have done this for decades. They will allow people with “pre-existing- conditions” to be stiffed by greedy health- insurance companies. They will let taxpayers pick up the tabs for emergency-room visits by the uninsured, rather than support a policy that mandates all citizens carry health-insurance. They refuse to expand Medicaid and Medicare, which were two planks in an FDR-led social-services-initiative: an initiative which included the present-day social security system.
Remember this: “repugnicans” opposed the social security system too; and has continuously attempted to undermine it over the 60 years. They opposed unemployment insurance. They are always scheming up new ways of cutting welfare, food stamps and other social services to the poor and needy. They do this while ironically professing to be the party of “evangelicals”: (followers of”Christianity”: a religious doctrine which admonishes that adherents treat the poor and needy with loads of compassion, understanding and love).
I tell you all this as a preface to analyzing the 2014 mid-term election results.
Stay tuned-in folks: part two is on the way.