My Dream Christmas Letter From Obama to the Republican National Committee

from tlj-news.com

Dear Republican National Committee:

First of all, Merry Christmas. See, I’m not against Christmas like you think, ha ha.

Seriously, I know we haven’t always got along these last three years. However, I want to thank you for the recent discussions of issues you’ve had at those debates. They’re priceless.

I loved to hear all those audience members cheer Governor Perry’s executions of U.S. citizens, some possibly innocent, in Texas. It makes our drone attacks seem downright humane.

And Ron Paul’s comments about people on their death bed and Tea Party support for death panels bolsters national support for the health care plan we passed in 2009. I appreciate it Representative Paul.

And Michelle Bachmann, what can I say? She thinks black families had it better during slavery than they do now. Thank you for that Representative Bachmann. Have you asked Herman Cain about that?

Thanks for reminding America that I was the one who ordered the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. Every time you criticize my foreign policy record, average Americans remember how I got the man who planned 9/11. So thanks. And now, remind them that I was the one who ended the fighting in Iraq. I love it when we can work together for my reelection.

I want to thank Rick Perry for angering not only gays, but all the Jews in America, the non-evangelicals, about 2/3rds of Christians, the intellectuals, and all the people who can fire more that two neurons at once and realize there is no war on Christmas.  And thank you Governor Perry for your continued ignorance of the separation of church and state.

In general, thanks for supporting an end to the minimum wage, and end of the education department, supporting child labor (Here’s to you Newt!), cuts to Social Security and Medicaid and cuts to billionaires taxes, and all the great things you say and do.

You Repubilcans make a guy feel loved, by the rest of America that you have petrified. You know how to make a guy feel welcome, to four more years in the White House.

Merry Christmas, see you in 2012. I can’t wait.

Your Black President,
Barack Hussein (suck on it) Obama.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

“Child Labor Laws are Stupid” and other Republican Ideas

from media.masslive.com

Newt Gingrich got to the crux of the problem in America when he said, “Child labor laws are stupid!” Why prevent perfectly healthy children from working when they can. Then we could reduce labor costs and businesses would hire more people as they do with their tax cuts.

Other Republicans had to get behind this stupidity so as not to be left behind by children.

Michelle Bachman came out and told us that, “Science is stupid. What’s the point anyway? If you have to be a nerd or like Denis Kucinich to understand it, you can have it.”

Mitt Romney was clear about this choice, “Reporters are stupid, especially Bret Baier. They ask about books and think it matters what we said and did in the past when it’s obviously not the past and they make up past positions they think you had just to get you.”

Sarah Palin concurs, “Yes, and reporters ask you about the Constitution and what newspapers you read, as if any of that matters.”

Rick Perry thinks that having to come up with three items in a list is stupid. “Why isn’t two enough, why do people always insist on  I also think that the ACLU is stupid for writing me letters not to execute people that might be innocent. What a waste of time it is trying to save those on a Texas death row.”

Herman Cain says that workers are stupid. “If they weren’t stupid, they would be bosses. The poor are also stupid. It’s their fault they don’t have work. And Democrats who lie about my sexual business are also stupid.”

Ron Paul says that, “My fellow Republican candidates are stupid for supporting the wars, and beyond that, anybody who supported the Civil Rights Act is stupid. Don’t people know that segregation and voting rights would have worked themselves out in the South without big government interfering?”

Rick Santorum, always trying to be a conciliator says that, “Obama is stupid. How can he think he can beat the brilliant team we have assembled here to beat him? Beating an old Man like McCain is one thing, but we all agree that you have to be pretty stupid to be a Democrat.”

Peace,
Tex Shelters

Michelle Bachman’s Not the Problem

From: http://www.citizenorange.com/orange/ice-raids/

Michelle Bachmann exists as a symptom and a distraction. While the left (and others) writes endlessly about Bachmann, what we need to do is address the ignorant nationalistic and dominionist right-wing ideology from which she sprang.

First, we must address religious intolerance and the moral superiority complex of the far right in the United States.

Bachmann believes in Dominionism, the idea that people of faith are mandated by God to be politically involved. They believe that they need to be politically involved because they are the chosen people and the only ones that can faithfully carry out God’s plan. But Dominionism did not start nor will it end with Bachmann. Dominionism has also been called, “Christian Nationalism”, “Kingdom Now Theology”, “Dominion Theology”, or “Restoration Theology”. Bachmann and her ilk, from George Bush, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, and others practice this politicized brand of faith. And even if a candidate is not a Dominionist, groups like the Southern Baptist Convention, the Christian Coalition with their legislative agenda, Assembly of God (known for funding John Ashcroft’s congressional campaigns) among others push candidates to accept their far-right religion infused legislative agenda. They help choose the Republican Congressional candidates, in many cases being King, or should I say Queen, makers.

From gay marriage, reproductive planning, education, immigration laws, and other policy areas, Dominionists are actively trying to create public policy based on their theology. And if you are not of their faith, you are out of luck. Freedom of Religion is merely an obstacle to dominionists, not a right of all people in the United States. And if you are a practicing Muslim, dominionists won’t care about your immigration status, years of residence, community standing or law abiding history. All Muslims are suspect to the religious right. Herman Cain called forth the specter of McCarthyism by saying that Muslims would have to take a loyalty oath to work for him. Republican leaders fought the Muslim community center in New York City, Oklahoma banned Sharia law  (as if it was about to be applied), among other bigoted acts and fear mongering involving Islam and the far right. Attacks against innocent people in the United States solely because of their Muslim faith increased dramatically after Sept 11, 2001. The language of the Republican party against Muslims only makes such attacks more likely.

If Republicans take over the White House and gain control of the Senate, they will pass Jim Crow style laws against Muslims as soon as they take power. After they are done with the Muslims, the atheists will be next, then non-Christians and so on.

We must also educate each other and our children to fight Republican historical revisionism.

History and economics doesn’t deter the far right from promoting failed economic policies. We have had ten years since the Bush tax cuts, and the far right still argues that tax cuts create jobs. One look at the rise in unemployment since the Bush tax cuts will disprove that theory, and a look at historical tax rates show that high tax rates can be correlated to high employment. Notice, I didn’t say that correlation of high taxes with high employment proves causality, for I am not a Republican who confuses correlation with causality. The point is, there is no evidence that tax cuts create jobs and there is plenty of anecdotal and historical evidence that tax cuts don’t work.

Republicans and the far right also argue that cutting spending at a time of high unemployment will rescue the economy. The fact is that cuts in spending leads to public and private sector layoffs.  This leads to cuts into the amount if money in the economy and thus spending, which leads to further layoffs. But these economic and historical facts don’t deter the far right from demanding spending cuts, nor does it deter President Obama from considering them.

Bachmann and the right want desperately to have a gun in every pot, and so they make up history to meet their gun loving ideology. Sarah Palin, a staunch gun defender, told us that Paul Revere took his famous ride to warn the British not to take our guns. You see, she wouldn’t let historical facts get in the way of her ideology. The truth is that no Congress has ever tried to pass a ban on gun use in the United States, and they never will.

When fear of Islam was failing Bachmann, she called on the fear of the Soviet Union to rescue her. Recently on a Christian radio show, she reminded us what Americans fear, “They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward.” Doesn’t Bachmann realize that the Soviet Union is deader than Ronald Reagan?

But it fits in with her fear of the outsider and fear of the foreign, and she won’t let history deter her from calling on that fear to garner support.

Republicans like Representative Kurt Zellers ignore the fact that voting is right in order to pass laws to restrict the vote. When asked about laws restricting voting, he failed to get the facts straight, “I think it’s a privilege, it’s not a right.” Actually, it’s a right written in the Constitution in several places.

Republicans ignore the history of the Great Depression where unfettered capitalism created a run on the stock market, overproduction of goods with no buyers, and the worst economic collapse in world history, so far. They ignore this history because it interferes with their free market fetishism. They even ignore the recent history where over production and over investing in housing led to the recent recession.

Instead, the Republican leadership once again call on tax cuts as the solution, because as we have seen, tax cuts lead to reinvestment, right? And tax cuts lead to public spending cuts and leads to more layoffs. The trick is repeating that tax cuts will lead us out of the recession over and over again and convincing enough people that this is true to avoid a complete revolt.

There is also the myth that regulation hurts investment, but there are fewer regulations today then there were in the Clinton era when the economy did well. There is no evidence that a reduction in regulation helps our economy and will lead to investment, unless you count as evidence the self-serving statements of corporations who will benefit financially if they can pollute the environment and poison us with impunity.

“An analysis conducted by the Washington Post at the end of Bush’s first term found that since he took office, federal agencies had begun roughly one-quarter fewer regulations than President Clinton and 13 percent fewer than Bush’s father during their first terms.”

So, if cutting regulations will improve our economy, why after all the cuts in regulations under Bush isn’t our economy booming? The cutting of regulations leading to a better economy is a lie looking for evidence. Yes, we can find examples of over regulation and regulations that might cost us, in the short run. But regulations are put in place for the long term health of the economy.

Author Nomi Prins worked at Goldman Sachs before writing books on economics from an insiders perspective including, “It Takes a Pillage.” The book lays out the facts that a large part of the mortgage industry collapse that lead to the current recession was due to deregulation of the banking and mortgage industry. So much for deregulation saving us. It has instead lead to the biggest economic collapse in decades. Republicans lie about deregulation being the cure all because it would help out their patrons if they didn’t have to be concerned with ethical, ecological, and health and safety concerns when creating and selling their products. Again, they demand larger profits at the expense of people.

Republicans also ignore the history of abortion before and after Roe V. Wade to promote their pro-fetus agenda. Certainly, no one is “pro-abortion.” However, as this doctor points out, it is only option for some women, “The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous “coat hanger” — which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it.”

And what of the women that didn’t make it to the hospital for medical help? While the statistics on abortion related deaths are uncertain, ranging from 1000-10,000 deaths a year before the Supreme Court Roe V. Wade decision, a thousand deaths is too much to tolerate, and banning abortion won’t change the reality that some women will die during an illegal procedure. But in the world of Republicans, a woman’s life isn’t worth that of a fetus, so safe procedures, and contraception, should be banned.

It is clear by all accounts that making abortion illegal won’t end abortions. It will, however, make them less safe for women without means. On the other hand, abortion will remain safe for the wealthy who can travel or hire private doctors to do the procedure. Republicans want to ignore this reality because they live in a fantasy land where unwanted and unsafe pregnancies won’t happen to them and theirs, and everyone has options when they become pregnant. This is not true. Not all women have options when they become pregnant.

Many of the religious right are also against the main tool used to reduce unwanted pregnancies, contraception. No one is “pro-abortion”, and it’s the far right that ignore the real consequences of a ban on abortions for their fantasy-land ideology and hatred of reproductive freedom.

We must acknowledge that Bachmann, Perry and Palin are symptoms and act accordingly.

If Republicans didn’t have Bachmann, they’d have to invent her. For too long the Democrats, progressives, liberals and moderates have let the racism and nationalism of the far right go unaddressed in policy forums. And “professional liberals” spend too much time mocking easy targets like Bachmann while ignoring the systematic exporting of jobs and cash by large corporations and the criminal military contractors like Blackwater that Jeremy Scahill writes about.

While the largest media outlets in the United States talk about Bachmann, apparently unimportant issues like corporate earnings, corporate welfare, poverty, unemployment, and a growing income gap get largely ignored. Poverty continues to be overlooked because it’s depressing and we don’t want to read or watch stories about things we can’t solve. However, “In the past six months, the Post has published online or in print 34 staff-written stories plus 12 wire service stories on Bachmann” and only five about Ron Paul who has spent twelve terms in Congress compared to Bachman’s three. Liberals need to stop adding to the Bachmann chorus and start writing about the issues.

Other underlying issues that must be address so fewer Bachmanns get undeserved press attention include: poverty, income inequality, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, fear of change, election laws and corporate speech, and lies about “family values”.

Let’s work on the issues that concern us and fight the Bachmanns of the world by promoting education, inclusiveness and good governance.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

Tex Shelters’ Speech at the Conservative Republicans Engaged in Excessive Politics, C.R.E.E.P

From http://peoplesworld.org/the-rich-are-dying-to-avoid-paying-taxes/

Tex Shelters’ Speech at the Conservative Republicans Engaged in Excessive Politics, C.R.E.E.P., meeting at Rancho Mirage in Palm Springs.

(yelling) FELLOW SELFSERVATIVES! (raising hands in what looks like a combination Nazi salute and black power fist)

(Tex waves his hands to calm down the hooting and hollering of the crowd)

Thank you, thank you! I am so glad to be here with you fellow conservatives of CREEP. President Obama couldn’t be here tonight, he’s out asking forgiveness from Wall Street for talking about raising taxes. (the crowd laughs, hoots and hollers)

Our triumph is nearly complete. We are on the doorstep of making everyone in the United States beholden to corporations, for everything. A special thanks to those that arrived here on the Greyhound bus today, you Tea Baggers. Without you hard working class racists and paranoid white folks, it would be a lot harder to take your Social Security and Medicaid money to reinvest in jobs, (pause) overseas. (A scattering of laugh among the well healed)

And to the folks that arrived in Jets, now that we have extended your tax cuts for years to come, I am sure you met no turbulence. (chuckles)

So we have extended the tax cuts and are now chipping away at the last defense against complete fascist rule! (Yeah!) But there is more work to do.

We must continue to go after a woman’s right to choose and force women to be baby incubators for future soldiers and slave labor.

We must also continue to take voting rights away from college students, the poor and others living on the margin. Without the vote in the wrong hands, we won’t have to rig the voting machines and scare voters away from the polls or use other means of persuasion.

We must rid our nation of the minimum wage. It’s too much to pay, and it’s not the starvation wage we had hoped for.

We must privatize the police to ensure they spend even more of their time protecting and servicing us, the top 1%, not you Greyhound bus riders…(pause) who of course can continue to defend yourselves with the guns we protect from liberal regulation. It’s a slippery slope from keeping automatic weapons away from serial killer rapists and taking away guns from everyone.

The military, keep it up. The earnings from military contracts couldn’t be better. And now, our media has convinced the joint chiefs that Libya is a threat (laughter). (raising a glass) Onward to Iran!

And to the media, you are doing one hell of a job focusing on the elections almost two years in advance, talking about Casey Anthony and the Norway “crazy” killer, Anders Breivik, and talking about the debt ceiling instead of discussing unemployment and the jobs crisis. Way to go! (Tex salutes).

I would also like to put a special thinks out to the Koch Brothers and their (finger to lips, in a whisper), shhhhhhh, Americans for Prosperity  for funding the Tea Party and writing so many damn good talking points for the media and Michelle Bachmann. Way to go on the “job creators” (thumbs up) line about the wealthy who avoid creating jobs and the idea that “Social Security is insolvent”. We’re selling shit, and public is buying.

(Looking at the camera) And special thanks to the American public. As the Bible says in Proverbs 22:6-8,  “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”

(Raising hands) God Bless America.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

Republicans are Losing Their Best and Their Brightest by Tex Shelters

Huckabee and Nugent Wango Tango from http://thedailydeets.com/archives/47449

Republicans are losing their best people in droves as we head toward the 2012 presidential race faster than a Sarah Palin tweet become irrelevant. And I am not talking about women, Latinos and Blacks.  Those minorities will never be American enough to be true Republicans. And remember I said, “The Best and Brightest.”

No, I am talking about Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump who have decided to put their own financial interest above America. I salute their decisions, but it is a loss to the Republican cause. Who now with step forward with the twin flags of evangelicalism and hypocritical free market, anti-government talking points. Who will stand against the facts about Obama’s birth certificate in a time of crisis in America? Who will fight for the facts of creationism, the facts that make this nation great, over the liberal dogma of science in the classroom?

Donald Trump is a stunning loss. Who thought that The Donald would drop out when he still had work to do fabricating issues from the flotsam of previous failed billionaire bids for the White House?  In his concession speech, he said that, “”Business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.””  He also made the unfalsifiable claim that he could win the Republican primary and the White House, if he wanted to.

Trump could see that all the attention he was getting for making up factoids was damaging his clean cut image as a paragon of virtue, so he had to drop out.

Other reasons Trump dropped out include:

His hair has a higher Q rating.

His slogan “You’re fired” didn’t test well.

Oprah wouldn’t interview him on her show.

America’s sweetheart Rachel Maddow didn’t give him enough attention.

Donors were afraid that giving money to him was a big gamble.

Trump has spent less than fourteen years in the United States having spent the rest on Mars.

Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin know more about American history and the Constitution than him.

Not to be outdone, former Arkansas Governor and current Baptist Minister and radio show host Mike Huckabee also says he could have won the nomination. However, God told him not to run. As Huckabee pointed out, “All the factors say go, but my heart says no”, and “Being president is a job that takes one to the limit of his or her human capacity. For me, to do it apart from the inner confidence that I was undertaking it without God’s full blessing is simply unthinkable.” (link) 

So, just like Trump relied on his own God, Trump, to make the decision for him, Huckabee relied on his God for he can’t think with the assist form Yahweh.

Other than his calling from God to continue making money from his television show and thus not run for President, Huckabee’s reasons for not running for President include:

The possibility that Huckabee could tour with Ted Nugent on his evangelical “Pussys Purring for God” tour.

Huckabee wants to spend more time reinventing history with sound bites for kids. http://learnourhistory.com/ on Youtube
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54794.html

He wants to spend more time idolizing Reagan.

Huckabee wants to spend more time exploring same sex marriage and how it will ruin America.

Huckabee dropped out because they refused to change the title of President to “Baptist in Chief”.

He is organizing “month of prayer” events to pray for an end to abortions.

Other notables who have dropped out of the race before starting include Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence.

Barbour dropped out because Mississippi wouldn’t support a commemorative license plate to Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General and early KKK Grand Wizard. How dare the racist left prevent the commemoration of a Grand Wizard. I would drop out too.

John Thune will be dedicating himself to learning English, which he hopes one day will become the official language of the United States.

Mike Pence is going to stay in Indiana and run for Governor where he can easily refuse federal funds and not burden taxpayers using Air Force 1 like Comrade Obama does. (link)

I don’t know what we are going to do without these paragons of Americanism. All we can do is hope that Bachmann and Palin jump into the race. Really, how excited can anyone get over writing Mitt Romney jokes?

Peace,
Tex Shelters