DeMOCKracy

Oh! what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
A Palmer too! No wonder why
I felt rebuked beneath his eye
-Sir Walter Scott


While skimming over the Drudge Report I noticed that the radical right wings, Limbough and Coulter had their knickers in a twist again and have turned up the whining, bashing, bitching, moaning and groaning volume. 

From Coulter:

DEMOCRATS TO AMERICA: WE OWN THE GOVERNMENT!

October 9, 2013

In the current fight over the government shutdown, Republicans are simply representing the views of the American people.

Americans didn't ask for Obamacare, they don't want it, but now their insurance premiums are going through the roof, their doctors aren't accepting it, and their employers are moving them into part-time work -- or firing them -- to avoid the law's mandates.
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-10-09.html

From Limbough:

Obama Approval Down To 37% and Republicans Still Think They Are Losing?  

I have long since stopped expected these two shock jocks ( and many others ) to be silent. They earn their substantial incomes by propagating fear and partisan maliciousness. You don't kill the goose that lay's the golden egg. You keep feeding it.

But I question why so many listen to them.

The reality is, in partisan politics no-one wins, and the voters are always the losers all the way around.

The government had  over 3 years to write, re-write and settle the healthcare bill and end the debate on the contents.  If they could not do that in the allocated time frame what are we tax payers paying for?

I want a refund!

Many issues will thwart peaceful resolve. As a Christian I am pro-life. But as a Christian I understand that the United States is a democratic republic and not a theocracy.
If one is pro-life in a democratic republic it's time to roll your sleeves up, foster children who would otherwise be aborted and save a life, one at a time. We should also not impede government programs established to help babies and children.
God assures us that nothing is impossible. We should lead by example..

And we should expect our elected officials to do the same.

We watch candidates jump from the Republican platform, to the Democratic platform. Changing horses mid-stream; first running as one and then the other, their voting records reflecting muddy belief's or no substantial convictions to "prove" that they are right wing or left wing outside of campaign promises.

I am always amazed at how many candidates suddenly become "Christian" when they are running for office. If anyone truly believes that G.W.Bush is a Christian they need psychiatric care.. "You will know them by their fruit."
Scripture say's nothing about "nuts."

Mitt Romney ran in the last Presidential election and I kept hearing Christians say, "He reflects our ideals and Biblical standards."
He was pro-choice and part of the Affordable Care Act - the part everyone is disagreeing on - was written under his governorship.

If this level of partisan discourse in the government continues, we are the ones who will suffer the consequences.

“An irony of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is that one of its key provisions, the individual insurance mandate, has conservative origins. In Congress, the requirement that individuals to purchase health insurance first emerged in Republican health care reform bills introduced in 1993 as alternatives to the Clinton plan. The mandate was also a prominent feature of the Massachusetts plan passed under Governor Mitt Romney in 2006. According to Romney, ‘we got the idea of an individual mandate from [Newt Gingrich], and [Newt] got it from the Heritage Foundation.’”

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/the-irony-of-obamacare-republicans-thought-of-it-first.html/?a=viewall
http://www.kenbenoit.net/pdfs/NDATAD2013/PolicyIdeas2013TextasData.pdf

But despite the Republican involvement in writing the bill, the rhetoric has continued, and, like the black plague, it has spread at an alarming rate.

Oct 2008: "You'll never get elected and pass healthcare."
Nov 2008: "We'll never let you pass healthcare."
Jan 2009: "We're gonna shut you down every time you try to pass healthcare."
July 2009: "We'll fight to death every attempt you make to pass healthcare."
Dec 2009: "We will destroy you if you even consider passing healthcare."
March 2010: "We can't believe you just passed healthcare."
April 2010: "We are going to overturn healthcare."
Sept 2010: "We are going to repeal healthcare."
Jan 2011: "We are going to destroy healthcare."
Feb 2012: "We're gonna elect a candidate who'll revoke healthcare NOW."
June 2012: "We'll go to the Supreme Court, and they will overturn healthcare."
Aug 2012: "American people will never re-elect you - they don't want healthcare."
Oct 2012: "We can't wait to win the election and explode healthcare."
Nov 2012: "We can't believe you got re-elected and we can't repeal healthcare."
Feb 2013: "We're still going to vote to obliterate healthcare."
June 2013: "We can't believe the Supreme Court just upheld healthcare."
July 2013: "We're going to vote like 44 more times to erase healthcare."
Sept 2013: "We are going to leverage a government shutdown into de-funding, destroying, obliterating, overturning, repealing, dismantling, erasing, and ripping apart healthcare."
Oct 2013: "WHY AREN'T YOU NEGOTIATING???"

We scream for individual freedom. Yet we expect the government to legislate morality when it comes to gay marriage and things we don't agree with.

What happened to individual freedom? It is a double edged sward, it cannot cater to one ideal. Freedom is freedom to make choices others may not agree with.

We say we want honesty, yet devour twisted truth with relish. 

A few weeks ago I got into a heated debate with a woman in Florida about Muslims.  She is convinced that they are going to take over America because of something Coulter wrote. The conversation was not directed at "radicals" or "terrorists'.. but "all" Muslims. So it was her opinion that we should ban Muslims. Make them all leave the United States.
She continued on to say:

Neither Communism nor Islam belong in America. They are enemies of a Republic.

Before the dust settled I was anti-American, an enemy of the state and a horrible Christian. But the facts still remained.

Muslims have been in the USA since Columbus arrived. They have fought in every U.S. war since the revolutionary war. Census records show nearly 300 men with surnames from Muslim areas fought in the Civil War. Muslims were incredibly active in the anti-slavery movement, So much so that President Andrew Johnson praising a Tunisian Muslim, Gen. Otman Hashem, for his anti-slavery humanitarianism. Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, described Islam's position on the just treatment of slaves and preference toward emancipation as "words worthy of adoption."

And they DO belong in the USA because ones faith is protected under the First Amendment.  If people do not want other religions they must get rid of the Constitution and Bill Of Rights.

If someone become a Muslim they have to leave the USA. How ludicrous is that?

Despite the argument that ensued, I do not believe that Sharia Law belongs in the west, because I truly believe in one law for all - none excluded. I believe that all civilized nations in the western world should have a form of Universal Healthcare.. the fact that the US is the only country that doesn't silently speaks volumes. I do not know if the Affordable Care Act is the right one. I believe that we should fire ALL members of Congress. Get rid of them all. If they cannot put together a suitable bill that satisfies the majority in over 3 years they have made a mockery of democratic process. More important, people should stop listening to the shock jocks who earn an incredible amount of money raising the volume.. making their followers believe that they have "insider information" and a higher IQ than their fan club. 
 

People like Limbough, Coulter -  ( and there are plenty on the left wing the same ) are predators preying on our frailties.  More important, on our ignorance. 

No one should tell you what to believe. 

The History Of Political Spin

We can blame Ramses for introducing "spin" into the political arena - not that it wouldn't have been invented by someone else at a later date, for necessity is the mother of invention after all.

Ramesses went to the throne at the age of just 15. He immediately faced serious challenges. The Egyptian empire was under threat from the Hittites, who lived in what is now Turkey. They were far more advanced than the Egyptians and were already pushing against the northern border of Egypt's empire.

An inexperienced, young king presented them with the perfect opportunity to extend their own empire. Within a few years, they had invaded and captured the strategically important trading town of Kadesh.

Ramesses raised an army and sped off to fight the Hittites. He was a young man, highly confident, but also impulsive. This would cause him some serious problems. 

The Egyptian advance party camped outside Kadesh and waited for the others to catch up. He was not expecting battle any time soon and the capture of two spies confirmed that the Hittites were still some distance from the Egyptian camp. Ramesses believed them and didn't bother sending out any scouts of his own.

This was a massive mistake: the spies were Hittite agents sent to lull the Egyptians into a trap. The Hittites were actually camped just across the river, ready to attack. At the very last minute, Ramesses discovered their plan and immediately sent for reinforcements.

But it was too late. The Hittites attacked. The Egyptians soon crumbled and the battle looked all but lost. Luckily, the reinforcements which Ramesses had ordered arrived just in time. They surprised the Hittites and left the Egyptians holding the battlefield.

Ramesses had been fortunate, but had not achieved the decisive victory he wanted. He knew the Hittites would return to attack towns like Kadesh.

Despite this, Ramesses began a huge campaign that claimed that he had won the battle single-handed. Across Egypt, temple walls were carved with this official version of the battle. It was spin-doctoring on a grand scale.

Today, with the internet highway in almost every home, there are no limits or boundaries to the spin the average person is subjected to. It costs a lot of money to spin. It costs a lot of money to shut a government down by 20%.

But somehow along the way humor is interjected, and when it is, it becomes priceless.

Here come the political cartoonists, not quite as impressive as the battle Ramesses portrayed on his monuments, but twice as funny :

But we have to be very cautious not to allow voter apathy prevail for the United States government officials ARE elected officials, public servants. They are not demigods, even if they think they are.

Across the globe reactions cannot be ignored.

From the Chinese government:

"Zhu Guangyao, the vice-finance minister, told reporters in Beijing: “The United States is totally clear about China's concerns about the fiscal cliff. We ask that the United States earnestly takes steps to resolve in a timely way before 17 October the political [issues] around the debt ceiling and prevent a US debt default to ensure safety of Chinese investments in the United States and the global economic recovery. This is the United States' responsibility.”

From the South China Morning Post:

The world looked on with a little anxiety and a lot of dismay, and some people had trouble suppressing smirks.

"To be honest, people are making a lot of jokes," said Justice Malala, a political commentator in South Africa.

Over the years, Malala said, South Africa often has been lectured about good governance by the United States as well as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are heavily influenced by Washington.

"They tell us, 'You guys are not being fiscally responsible'," Malala said. "And now we see that they are running their country a little like a banana republic. So there is a lot of sniggering going on."

Many analysts abroad said they were dumbfounded at the game of political chicken playing out in Washington. They worried that instability in the United States would further damage the already shaky world economy.

"It would be great if we didn't add something more onto this precarious recovery; we really don't need this," said Jorge Castaneda, a Mexican academic and former foreign minister.

"Everything that happens in the United States affects us directly," he said. "The last thing we want right now is another problem in the United States which will make things worse in Mexico."

In Britain, there was a sense of incredulity about the looming US shutdown.
In the Guardian newspaper, columnist Michael Cohen decried Senator Ted Cruz as the Republican Party's "self-made monster".

He argued that Republicans had reached the "point where Cruz's brand of crazy, heartless, morally wanton, uncompromising conservatism is now the default position of the party".

A Times of London editorial slammed President Barack Obama along with the tea party, saying: "An argument that is so bitter, prolonged and apparently incapable of resolution cannot but damage America's diplomatic standing."

In South America, where US proselytising about fiscal responsibility has rankled with some countries, economists and policymakers watched the shutdown drama with disbelief.

"It's incredible, it's surrealism," said Jose Antonio Ocampo, a former finance minister of Colombia. "I had to negotiate budgets and debt ceilings in Colombia, and this situation is frankly unreal."

Ocampo said he was astonished at Republican efforts to overturn Obama's health-care law, a key factor contributing to the potential shutdown. "I don't remember, as minister of finance of Colombia, a blackmail so absurd," said Ocampo, who teaches at Columbia University.

In Pakistan, analysts noted that the country's 66-year-old national government has never had a formal shutdown.
Economist Saqib Shirani said there "are lessons to learn" for Pakistan from events in Washington. In a country with 12 major political parties, he said, "there must be political consensus on economic issues, and taking the political bickering to extreme can backfire".

In India, a government minister said the US problems were similar to the struggle between his government and political opponents trying to block its policies.
"It's heartening to note that administrative paralysis is not unique to a particular democracy," said Manish Tewari, India's information and broadcasting minister.In the Middle East, few expressed interest in a crisis seen as complex, distant and unlikely to affect the Arab world.

But in a region where political strife stemming from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings has battered economies, some analysts were sympathetic to Washington's politically driven financial woes.
"It's a political struggle that is being played out on the economy's battlefield," said Rashad Abdo, a finance professor at Cairo University.

The US crisis has received only fleeting attention in Moscow, where the government is wrestling with budget problems.
http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1322428/us-government-shutdown-greeted-disbelief-around-world