Politics Plus

Pick virtually any issue facing America today, and you will find a generous collection of Republican lies on the subject.  Some are actually well-crafted lies, difficult to disprove, but some are so totally over the edge that a fifth grader could expose them, like this one, so why do they do it?

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., delivered one of her signature hard-hitting speeches at the Values Voter Summit, a conference for socially conservative activists on Sept. 17, 2010. At one point, Bachmann took a shot at the woman who leads her chamber, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Pelosi, Bachmann said, "has been busy sticking the taxpayer with her $100,000 bar tab for alcohol on the military jets that she’s flying." Bachmann was referring to the Air Force jets that Pelosi uses to fly internationally and back to her home in San Francisco. (Her Republican predecessor, Dennis Hastert of Illinois, used them as well, under a program approved under President George W. Bush.)

Bachman’s claim drew a rapid counterattack from the Speaker’s office, as aides revived arguments they’d used when the allegation first surfaced months earlier. Among other things, Pelosi’s office noted that the Speaker "does not drink alcohol" and that there "is no alcohol service on the domestic flights the Air Force operates for travel from Washington to San Francisco for the Speaker."… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Politifact>

Of course Batshit Bachmann was busted on her lie, as she has been dozens of times before.  So why bother?  Two paradigms come into play here.

First, if Republicans told the truth, nobody would vote for them, except for the richest and most hate filled in our culture.

Second, the Republicans know they are lying and know they are not going to get away with it, but these lies distract attention from the real issue in the upcoming elections: Republicans govern only on behalf of the richest 1%.  If America realizes that, it’s all over.

As I am feeling somewhat ill, today’s offering is quite limited.  The truth is that I slept through most of this, so I am not qualified to write a substantive review, but here is the video in seven segments and a link to the transcript.

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Transcript: Click Here

I did see just enough to realize one key thing.  This audience contained non-supporters: lots of them.  It was not a Potemkin Village of the type that Republicans universally employ, and I commend Obama for facing his critics.  We would not see such courage from a Republican, because they govern exclusively for the benefit of criminal corporations and the richest 1%. To me, it demonstrates that Obama cares.

Personally, I have spied out three local Tea Party events here in Portland.  In all I saw signs racially degrading Obama.  In none did I see a single non-white face.  They love to support racist causes like Arizona’s unconstitutional profiling law and trashing the Fourteenth Amendment.  But Republicans continue to claim that the Teabaggers are not racist.

Are the Tea Parties racist organizations? No, said three African-American panelists presented with that question at the third and final day of the “Taking America Back” conference here on Saturday.

But given the fact that the conference was organized by the far-right World Net Daily (WND) and two of the panelists work for the online organization, their verdict was about as surprising as balmy nights and swaying palms on a South Florida summer night. Still, it reflected the anger and resentment that many conservatives have felt over the characterization of the populist Tea Parties as racist.

Many liberals and reporters have pointed out various signs of anti-black racism within the movement, which took root after Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first black president in late 2008. The NAACP brought that criticism to a new level this July, when it passed a resolution asking Tea Party leaders to repudiate followers who use racist language and symbols. The movement was set back on its heels again a few days later, when Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, was expelled along with his group from the National Tea Party Federation after he wrote a satirical letter in which he called slavery as “great gig.” Earlier, Dale Robertson, leader of TeaParty.org, wrote an arguably racist E-mail to his followers.

The World Net Daily crowd stands considerably to the right of most Tea Party followers, and it is overwhelmingly white. But the WNDers feel the Tea Parties’ pain, and so the conference offered up what black speakers it had to take on the allegations of racism. They included Erik Rush, a WND columnist; Albert Thompson, executive assistant to Elizabeth Farah, who started WND with her husband Joseph; and Alan Keyes, an ultraconservative activist and oft-times candidate who has called President Obama “a radical communist.”

“There are a few racists in there. In any group, you’re going to find a few people of low character,” Rush said. But, for most in the movement, Rush said, “This has never been about Barack Obama. It’s certainly not about his skin color.”

He spoke to an audience of some 70 people. One of them was black… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <SPLC>

Now, I have no doubt that there are some Teabaggers who are not racists, just as there are some Republicans who are not racists.  However, they are a racist party, simply because they are Republicans, who abandoned their commitment to equality when they adopted the Southern Strategy.  They consistently use every dirty trick their vile imaginations can muster to disenfranchise minority voters, taking away their right to vote.  Why?  Most minority voters are poor or middle class, so the Republican party does not govern on their behalf.  Republicans govern only for criminal corporations and the richest 1%.  So Republicans, and their Teabagger Brown Shirts support racism, and in my book, anyone who supports racism is a racist.