When I watched the video of Sean Hannity's Tuesday night show, I was half expecting him to leap out of his chair, grab his producer by the lapels and scream something about a goblin on the wing of the airplane -- all puffy and bloodshot, hair mussed, tie undone, spittle and sweat flying all around.
There was Sean Hannity on television: breathlessly announcing the red dawn of "socialism you can believe in." "The New America." He called the recovery bill, "a liberal hijacking of the American way of life." Uh-huh. Hijacking. Terrorists rather than goblins on the wing. I get it. And even though we just wrapped up eight years of the largest government expansion in our country's history, Hannity derided the recovery bill as "the largest government expansion in our country's history."
But, unbelievably, that wasn't the most ludicrous part of the show. The frantic announcement was preceded by a newsreel-style montage featuring video of the various congressional floor debates about the bill, footage of Boehner throwing down the bill and, naturally, President Obama signing the bill. All backed with the frighteningly pulse-pounding choir chants of the apocalyptic anthem "O Fortuna."
There's no gray area in what he was suggesting. Socialism is here, said Hannity, and it's really scary. The choir music said so.
Hannity is once again joined in this crusade by very serious pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Steve Doocy, Alex Castellanos, Joe Scarborough, Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck who, at one point, claimed that President Obama is both a socialist and a fascist -- a feat that calls to mind an old George Carlin joke about how it's physically impossible to "put your seat-back forward."
The message is clear. The voices on the far-right are unanimous.
Therefore, I'm calling upon Sean Hannity to use his prime time television program as a platform to rally Republican politicians, cable news hacks and citizens alike to refuse delivery of not just recovery bill spending, but all so-called "socialist" government programs. Send it all back. End American socialism now! All of it.
Refuse to send your kids to socialized public schools and universities; refuse to use socialized roads and highways; refuse to call upon socialized police and fire departments; shut down the socialized air traffic control; refuse to visit socialized national parks; tell grandma that her Social Security and Medicare will have to be sent back to the government; demand the immediate dismantling of our socialized American military. Sarah Palin and her supporters in Alaska should refuse all forms of "redistributed wealth" by sending back their checks from the socialized oil program there.
Send it all back. I'm sure the entire roster of Neo-McCarthyite pundits enumerated above -- Limbaugh, Scarborough, Hannity and the like -- have already forgone their usage of these socialist services so we can assume they've figured out a ways to get by. How hard can it be really? I mean, who needs roads when there are hot-air balloons and jet packs. Socialist fire departments? A house fire will eventually burn itself out, won't it? As for the pre-socialist 50-percent poverty rate for the elderly? If we can put a man on the Moon (also a socialist program), we can invent some bootstraps that'll fit over grandma's therapeutic stockings.
As for the recovery bill, the states aren't forced by law to accept the funding. They're entirely within their rights to, borrowing Hannity's spasmodic metaphor, thwart the hijacking.
Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is apparently mulling the idea of refusing the recovery funds. Paul Begala, in his weekly column, has already dared Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina to send it back.
Meanwhile, on her MSNBC show Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow asked Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota if he would refuse his state's share of the recovery plan. Pawlenty hemmed and hawed and finally relented that he wasn't totally opposed to the recovery bill -- just the yucky parts. I assume Pawlenty meant the totally nonexistent parts like the fake ACORN thing and the fake mouse thing, both of which were entirely conjured from thin air by the Republicans. Or did he mean the part of the bill that's otherwise known as, you know, the largest middle class tax cut in American history? Was he opposed to that part?
The recovery bill is expected to create or rescue an estimated 50,000 jobs in Louisiana, and Jindal would be refusing $7.68 billion in federal funds. The recovery bill allocates $7.7 billion and 50,000 jobs for South Carolina. $9.34 billion and 66,000 jobs for Minnesota. John Boehner's home state of Ohio will be receiving $20.09 billion and the recovery bill is projected to create or save somewhere in the range of 133, 000 jobs. Mitch McConnell's home state of Kentucky? $7.18 billion and 48,000 jobs. John McCain's Arizona? $10.27 billion and 70,000 jobs. In Rush Limbaugh's adopted home state of Florida? $28.33 billion and 206,000 jobs. Glenn Beck's home state of Washington? $10.41 billion and 75,000 jobs.
Send it all back.
But if the money somehow gets through Hannity's blockade and steams its way to socialist Republican governors like Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger (embracing "economic girly man" status), and if those jobs are created anyway, Sean Hannity ought to heroically command his viewers in these states to not accept those jobs. They're socialist jobs, after all.
While he's at it, Hannity might as well refuse delivery on the president's new socialized home rescue plan as well. I wonder how many McCain-Palin voters who ripped into Barack Obama for "redistributing the wealth" will actually participate in the program.
Funny what happens to ridiculous Neo-McCarthyite sloganeering when the shit really hits the fan. I expect that a year from now we'll be able to look at statistics indicating that zero dittoheads and zero occupants of Hannity's America chose to have their homes rescued by the socialist federal government.
No?
Of course not. It'll never happen because it turns out that most Americans are, to some degree, closeted socialists, especially when they're suddenly confronted by the darker realities of free market capitalism and the destructive long-term effects of both Reaganomics and Bush Republicanism. In practice, this week's cover of Newsweek is only half right. We've always been socialists (with some obvious and necessary limits). A system in which the federal government provides commonly held services while also regulating industry isn't a brand new concept in America, no matter how apoplectic Hannity pretends to be on his show. Hell, even the Republicans who voted against the recovery bill are scrambling to make sure they get their chunk.
But if, in fact, Hannity is right and I'm missing the big picture on this thing, then every Republican who voted against the recovery bill and every Republican dittohead who is currently joining with the far-right talkers in this red scare uprising has an obligation for the sake of consistency to send it all back.
If it makes them feel better, they can even play some scary music via our socialist radio airwaves while they're doing it.
Order my book: One Nation Under Fear, with a foreword by Arianna Huffington. Also available in stores.
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class,
that’s making war, and we’re winning.” - Warren Buffet
1) Upper Class... Empowered!
Deregulation
Global Economy
Tax Advantages
2) Middle Class... Distracted!
Terrorism
War
Abortion Rights
Gay Marriage
School Prayer
Immigration
Scandal
3) Lower Class... Controlled!
Minimum Wage
Law Enforcement
Prisons
Government Assistance
"America wasn’t founded as a nation where winner takes all but over
the last couple of decades, that’s the way it has turned out. The
central vision of “We, the people” has been distorted and manipulated
by the powerful and privileged doing their damnedest as they wage
class war to sustain their way of life at the expense of everybody
else, even in this current crisis." - Michael Winship
All socialism is good.
If we cannot agree on what socialism is... then we cannot debate anything. If we cannot agree on what "good" is, then we may as well stop talking.
For a logic 101... see here: http://absolutaveritas.blogspot.com/
Glenn Beck's legacy will be, at least to me, the night he agreed with an author that Liberals were really Fascists.
Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter and Beck, remind me of Lord Haw-Haw during World War Two.
He was infamous for spreading the National Socialistic Party's word.
Every time I catch a spoonful of the gang's negativism all I can think of is Haw-Haw.
Capitalism is defined as "the economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately owned and operated for profit." ibid.
Communism is merely the next step beyond socialism.
These systems are antithetical in regards to ownership of property. If you are a socialist, you tend towards government ownership of the means of wealth production. If you are a capitalist, you tend towards private ownership.
These systems are similar in regards to greed. Both systems have greedy people wanting to steal money from the less fortunate and use it for their own means.
Socialism utilizes BIG GOVERNMENT to accomplish its goals of redistribution of wealth. They see it as the government's responsiblity to confiscate the wealth and take care of the underpriveledged.
Capitalism utilizes SMALL GOVERNMENT to accomplish its goals of increasing wealth production by reinvesting capital which they gain by being in control of their own money.
IMPORTANT NOTE: BOTH SYSTEMS AGREE THAT WE ALL SHOULD TAKE CARE OF THE POOR.
The question is NOT... SHOULD we take care of the poor, but rather HOW? Socialism, or Capitalism?
Karl Marx's first plank of Communism was "Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes." Socialism is the economics of Communism.
But, which is right? Who decides?
As for Liberalism I am morphing into calling our present situation with a most Liberal President, Liberal Democrat-dominated Congress helped into being by a Fourth Estate of predominantly self-admitted media, Liberals or Liberalism Unleashed or Running Amok.
Call ‘em Progressives as many of them want to be called now since Liberals took on meaning as a pejorative or Progressivism if you wish. By any name they are the same, hoping, striving for change. That is the definition of both Liberal and Progressive. Look up the words in your own dictionary please.
Let me help: I did not say socialism and communism were or are the same. Nor did I say “being liberal (or progressive) is the same as socialism and/or communism. As to Liberals/Progressives “prescribing to either belief” that is a topic for a much longer discussion with facts and examples to prove or disprove your assertion of opinions.
“Kool-aid,” “bloated- ridiculous,” “throw the whole nation of centrist and liberals off as the enemy,” “agenda of hatred,” “England … our BFF,” “Maggie Thatcher a …” and “Sober up!” – what are you ranting about, son?
You might look in your mirror to see the Kool-aid drinker, bloated and ridiculous, any imagined enemies – whole nation doubtful, more likely majority or minority - haunting you, hatred and the one who needs to sober up! Your texting skills – BFF – fail you in your communication attempt. I am not an intimate or family member of PM Thatcher, close in age though to her son, and I refer to her as PM Margaret Thatcher.
Reading suggestions for you: Deficit of Decency by Zell Miller, and Dr. Lyle Rossiter’s The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.
He uses the term Neo-Carthyite as a maneuver to polarize the already polarized Sean Hannity, and that is exactly what Mr. Hannity wants. That is, to brand Obama as a Socialist as quickly as possible. And, it is looking more each day that Obama is willing to accept the Socialist brand as palliative to the Left, which is beginning to wonder if they truly have the Socialist in Obama they voted for.
Mr. Cesca is the very man the Sean Hannities of the world are looking for. He clearly doesn't understand the political power and potential gains to the Republican party behind the traditional strategy of polarizing American voters along the Socialist-Capitalist spectrum, the "corner" solution's battle now beginning to rage.
/quote
I guess I also don't "understand" -- how marginalizing himself is Sean Hannity's diabolical plan for world domination. Or just self-parody?
High taxes. higher taxes, highest taxes then jail time forever all under the guise of helping people which the democrats never do they just want their vote.
I have never even seen an attempt by any democrat in power to start a heath care program you can't blame Bush for that one, in fact you cannot point fingers or blame Bush anymore he always been an easy target and scapegoat because he is too nice and does not fight back on that level, lower level. the 4th dimension level
HIS REFERENCES TO JESUS WITH RESPECT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
BORDER ON SACRILIGE and BELITTLE THE BIBLE!
He has every right to criticize and even bash President Obama and he can find many ways to do that other than making comments that refer to Jesus.
Periodically, he refers to President Obama as THE MESSIAH, THE ANNOINTED ONE and THE CHOSEN ONE.
He repeatedly comments, CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR WHEN OBAMA WALKS ON WATER or WHEN HE CHANGES WATER TO WINE.
Such REFERENCES TO THE LIFE OF JESUS and THE BIBLE are at the least, inappropriate, if not outright sacriligious.
Loke most of America, I've had it with Yahoos in the South running things.
I don't understand how these people can carry on, when their whole raison d'tere is to see the Obama Administration and ultimately the whole country collapse.
I cannot, for the life of me understand this whole line of reasoning.
Did I just say 'reasoning' in the same breath as the names Hannity et al?
The ‘rich’ that have not committed crimes to achieve their fortunes should not be hated. To me, they are inspirational. I have seen how hard they work. They made it. Now, it’s my turn. I am making my fortune, (well, someday). Please don’t tear down the system that, for the most part, works. This system I speak of has a negative but completely necessary component, the chance to fail. Most of the ‘rich’ people took a chance. Failed. Took another chance. Maybe failed again. Then made it. If we take away the chance to fail, it’s all over. Our country will be ruined.
I like to add a couple of my favorite quotes;
“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” [Abraham Lincoln]
“I never worked for a poor man” [steve-in-abq’s neighbor]