Author: Cheri DelBrocco

As America is turning the clock back one hour this weekend, a group of religious terrorists in Mississippi are planning to turn it back at least 50 years. Under the “pro-life” rubric, this gang of anti-government fanatics, who are strikingly similar to the Ku Klux Klan, is parading an amendment to change the state constitution and turn Mississippi into the Saudi Arabia of the U.S. by removing almost all reproductive freedoms for women and girls.

Pro-life? If established, this measure will actually cost women’s lives. Small government? The amendment establishes a government that will fit into every womb in the Magnolia State.

The proposed amendment to the Mississippi constitution or “Initiative 26″, would define as a person “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof” would be the most radical, draconian law to come to the United States in a half century.

The logic is so absurd—so insane—it is essentially claiming that any fertile woman of child-bearing age who has just engaged in unprotected sex will actually split — bada bing! — into two separate human beings the moment sperm meets egg! Sort of an inverse of “Left Behind”—this has got to be the mother of all WTF ideas!

A few poorly funded women’s groups in the state have been working hard to inform voters of the ramifications, but their efforts have mostly fallen on the self-righteous and brainwashed in the churches who have been hammered by Brother Billy Bobs into believing that good, Christian women are to be submissive, ovum-filled citadels lying in wait for the babies God will be instructing his manservant, the head-of-the-household, to make.

A statement by the Feminist Majority Foundation said: “The implications are staggering. By giving constitutional rights to a fertilized egg, the amendment could ban emergency contraception, birth control pills and IUDs as well as all abortions, even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the woman or girl. It would eliminate medical choices for women, such as some cancer treatments and in-vitro fertilization. It could allow the state to investigate and even prosecute a woman for a miscarriage. Undoubtedly, it would lead to many court cases.

Mississippi—the poorest state, with the highest dropout rates, lowest number of people with health insurance, highest illiteracy rates, highest teen pregnancy rates, highest infant mortality rates, and greatest number of food stamp recipients in the country — will now become the state where 9-year old girls who are raped and impregnated by some sick pedophile—-a step-father, uncle, mother’s boyfriend or perhaps even a coach or preacher—- will be forced by the government to bear her rapist’s child.

Where the poorest women, who rely exclusively on community health services, will have more unplanned, unwanted pregnancies because birth control pills and other reliable forms of contraception will be outlawed.

The proposed amendment is so deplorabe, even Governor Haley Barbour, who has thumped his chest proudly for years for being one of the most strident anti-abortion politicians in America is expressing “concern” about the amendment’s implications. ‘Ol Haley has courted and stoked the extremist nutbaggery for years. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost. He is worried that state coffers, already thinned by hurricanes, oil spills, and other disasters, will be sucked dry by legal battles.

So who, exactly, would have so much contempt for women they would want to not only criminalize all abortion, but ban birth control and in-vitro fertilization? Who could propose laws that would seek government investigations for miscarriages? Who would want women and girls essentially returned to the Dark Ages?

The crackpot most responsible for dreaming up the ‘personhood” ballot initiative is a fellow named Les Riley. Mr. Riley is the founder and director of a far-right Christian separatist group called Christian Exodus. According to their mission statement, their goal is “to move thousands of Christian constitutionalists to South Carolina to accelerate the return of self-government based upon Christian principles with the ultimate goal of forming an independent Christian nation that will survive after the decline and fall of the financially and morally bankrupt American empire.”

Mr. Riley, a self-described “eighth-generation Mississippian who is proud to be an outspoken proponent of an agrarian lifestyle” is married with nine children, and serves as the chairman of the Constitution Party of Mississippi, a political group that advocates for secession. He is also a past member of the neo-Confederate League of the South.

Mr. Riley and his band of extremist whackjobs are so dangerous they can only described as The American Taliban. By working through churches and right-wing groups such as the Tupelo-based American Family Association (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tea-publican party) the fanatical have completely mainstream in Mississippi.

If they succeed in getting enough votes to remove women’s reproductive freedoms in their own state, they will feel emboldened enough to move on to other states, especially in the South, where religious fundamentalism is strong and well funded. Women in Mississippi have a lot at stake on Tuesday. Hopefully, voters will decide to fall back in time for only an hour, not a half-century.

Hale No, He Cain’t! Haley Barbour is out of the presidential race? Oh sure, the current governor of Mississippi could never have been elected, but I’m pretty bummed about Ol’ Haley’s taking the quitter’s path of Palin. I was looking forward to showing up at a campaign event and asking the Don Corleone of the Confederacy for the million dollars he owes me.

Let me explain about Haley Barbour’s “Million Dollar Medicare Challenge.” Like most Republican plans, it was a grand hoax. Back in December 1995, congressional Republicans, who had gained a majority in the mid-terms, were locked in a nasty political battle with Bill Clinton. Newt Gingrich was Speaker and was having a fine time throwing his weight around in legendary Napoleonic fashion.

• Cheri DelBrocco

The GOP had already enacted one governmental shutdown, and they’d soon force another. But Clinton and the Democrats were giving them a pounding for a budget proposal that called for $270 million in cuts to Medicare over seven years. Compared to the medeival Ryan budget plan of today, which would put Medicare on the scrap heap, that ’95 proposal now seems downright quaint. Nevertheless, the public had begun to figure out that the GOP’s real game plan back then was to cut and gut Medicare and Social Security, which, in Newt’s candid if artless phrase, would then “wither on the vine.”

During the lull between the two shutdowns, Republican National Committee chair Barbour, schemed up a gimmick so stupid and full of hokum that after it became public, he was branded the“Yahoo of Yazoo City”.

Splashed across a full-page newspaper ad in USA Today was Ol’ Haley’s round face and a toothy grin holding a promotional, over-sized check for $1 million, made out to “the first American” who could prove false the GOP claim that its 1996 budget actually increased Medicare spending by more than 50 percent.

“Your Name Here.”was on the giant check by Barbour’s mug. Chairman Haley exuded the graceand savoir-faire of a used-car huckster. “Heard the one about Republicans ‘cutting’ Medicare?”the ad said. “The fact is Republicans are increasing Medicare by more than half. I’m Haley Barbour, and I’m so sure of that fact I’m willing to give you this check for a million dollars if you can prove me wrong.”

Reading the ad as I sipped my morning coffee, I immediately decided to take Barbour up on his offer. A chance to make a million dollars? I thought that was worth the price of a stamp, so later in the day I stopped by the public library to do a little research, (this pre-dated Google) and then mailed in my “Million Dollar Medicare Challenge.” After weeks went by without a response, I forgot about it.

Thirteen months later, having just returned from President Clinton’s second inauguration on a freezing January afternoon in 1997, my doorbell rang and the postman handed me a big, yellow envelope and asked for my signature. “Watkins & Eager/ Attorneys-at-Law/ Jackson, Mississipp”i was the return address. I didn’t know a soul in Jackson and had absolutely no idea who Watkins and Eager were or why they would be sending me certified mail. Obviously, there was some mistake.

After reading the 28-page summons naming me and 79 others as defendants in a lawsuit by Haley Barbour and the Republican National Committee, I was both stunned and amused. I contacted my lawyer who assured me that the whole thing was totally bogus.

A lawyer who represented one of the other defendants put it this way , “Haley Barbour asked Americans whether they agreed or disagreed with him and then sued everyone who wrote in to say they disagreed.” By pre-emptively suing all of us (in a courtroom with a judge who just happened to also be named Barbour), Ol’ Haley and the RNC were denying their obligation to pay any of the claimants the $1 million. It was typical Republican bullying and scare tactics.

Ridiculous pranks like the Million Dollar Medicare Challenge are still being played by the Republicans. Lying about their true intentions comes as easily as breathing to them. When it comes to underhanded deception, they can be counted on to bring home the Mirror Ball Trophy every single time.

Like flatulent Keebler Elves popping out of a Hollow Tree Factory to announce some magical new name for the exact, same cookie they’ve been selling for forty years, the Republicans have some sparkly, spangled new name for their same old stale recipe for privatizing the government.

In the Clinton years, it was Haley Barbour who took on the role of creative director for all the toxic lies and stupid publicity stunts in the GOP’s efforts to put a wrecking ball to all domestic programs. Today, Congressman Paul Ryan has assumed the mantle of The Flim Flam man. In typical fashion, Republicans are putting the hoodoo on America by claiming the Republican Party is going to create jobs by cutting taxes on the rich. Then, they plan to save Medicare by turning it into an ineffective, undesirable, underfunded voucher program.

The lawsuits against the 80 “challengers” were quickly forgotten, but that same year, Haley Barbour received his own summons. He was called to testify before the Senate Government Affairs Committee regarding fund-raising practices that focused on a possible indictment for perjury and money laundering. Barbour testified that he never intended to funnel $1.6 million in Hong Kong funds to the RNC through the National Policy Forum, a GOP think tank. “Everything the National Policy Forum did was legal and proper,” drawled Barbour during the Senate hearings.

About as proper as suing people for producing the proof that your words were nothing more than big, fat lies.

What did you think the 2010 elections were about? If you listened to John Boehner in the weeks prior to the election, you might have thought the midterms were about jobs. When it came to mentioning jobs, he sounded like a veritable Mynah bird with Tourette’s Syndrome. “The American people are asking ‘Where are the jobs?’” “This election will be about jobs.”Jobs, jobs, jobs! Here-a job. There-a job. Everywhere a job-job.

But the self-proclaimed “small government”majority in the House have already made one thing crystal clear. Since taking over in January, the pursuit of creating and finding jobs for millions of unemployed Americans is no where to be found on their radar screen. If you were actually thinking jobs were going to trump The Great Culture Wars —well, consider yourself punk’d. It just doesn’t work that way in Tea-publican Land.

Tea Party Republicans who got elected in such overwhelming numbers have demonstrated they don’t think job creation was the reason they were elected at all. They have devoted their time to arguing, debating, giving speeches and writing bills on the subjects they believe are the most pressing issues facing the country: the defunding National Public Radio, which required an “emergency” meeting by House members; the declaring of English to be the country’s official language; and investigations of whether or not American Muslims are being “radicalized.”

The Defense of Marriage Act has been up for discussion, and later this week, the House of Representatives will vote on the very urgent crisis of whether or not to reaffirm the motto of “In God We Trust”!

But the one concern that reigns supreme, that is paramount in importance above all others is — are you ready? — the monitoring of every last pregnancy in America. From the bunch who claimed to be in such a rush to work on job creation, Tea-publicans have spent most of their time for the last three months focusing on human creation. Obviously, instead of studying economic incentives, wage rates, and manufacturing proposals, they have been devoting their hours on The Hill to studying wombs, ovaries, and fallopian tubes.

The amount of time invested by Republicans on women’s reproductive rights is so obsessive, it appears they may have established a new congressional tradition of writing an “Anti-Abortion Bill-of-the-Month”—— for in their three shorts months of governance they have drafted the same number of anti-abortion bills.

Although the Hyde Amendment, which barred the use of any federal funds for abortion, was passed in 1976, the GOP has written The“Protect Life Act” (HR 358) which would basically seek to doubly, triply, quadruply reaffirm the Hyde Amendment. The bill would also offer protection for anti-abortion healthcare workers who choose, on religious grounds, to refuse reproductive healthcare to women — including filling prescriptions for contraceptives.

Although the majority of families seeking the services of Planned Parenthood are there for birth control counseling, which actually prevents unplanned pregnancies that could lead to abortion, the Boehner led House has spent weeks drafting the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act (HR 217) which will cut all funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning services.

But the Motherlode of all anti-abortion legislation is the recently written No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (HR-3). It is yet another declaration of the denial of federal funding for abortion services, but this bill would require IRS agents to ask citizens undergoing a tax audit whether or not any woman in their family had been raped or had suffered incest which could have resulted in an abortion. Think about that for a second. Wrap your mind around the idea of having to describe your rape or a family member’s incest or an abortion to an IRS auditor.

Still thinking the election back in November was about jobs? Still thinking there is going to be “smaller government”?

Wherever they have taken over — whether in statehouses or in our nation’s Capitol — Tea Party Republicans have made it clear their concern is not jobs. They haven’t spent a single moment on one piece of legislation regarding jobs. To no one’s surprise, the Tea Party is not in power to fulfill voter mandates. They are in power to fulfill their mandate. And their mission. From God.

Remember the Tilt-A-Whirl—that carnival ride with the big red cars that would spin you around so fast, there was almost a guarantee that you would end up throwing up? Mad As Hell is introducing a segment called “Rightwing Tilt-A-Whirl” featuring some essential news stories you may have missed—those stories the “ fair and balanced” found important to ignore. These are news items everyone should know. But be warned—if you are that rare right winger who considers logic and reason an essential part of formulating an opinion then be prepared to take some deep cleansing breaths in the cool outdoors to expand your mind. Or, perhaps reach for the old reliable bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

Rightwing Tilt-A-Whirl

• Cheri DelBrocco

Shariah law! Republican state officials throughout the land have been elected to solve the most pressing problem of our time – Shariah Law. Republican-led states throughout the land are tripping over themselves to compete for the distinction of sponsoring the most extreme, ridiculous response to the perceived threat of Shariah law. Congratulations to Tennessee— the Volunteer state appears to have won the prize!

State senator Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) has introduced Senate Bill 1028 that claims that Shariah law “continues to plague the United States generally and Tennessee in particular” by requiring Muslims to “actively and passively support the replacement of America’s constitutional republic” with an Islamic state. Thus, adherence to the “legal-political-military doctrine” of Shariah law “is treasonous and a felony punishable by 15 years in jail.” The bill further states that any adherence to Shariah law—including religious practices like feet washing and daily prayer is treasonous.

Reproductive Rights? – Wrong! Republican dominated states throughout the country have declared war on women’s reproductive rights in America. Over the last month, several states have proposed plans to deny women not only the right to abortion, but to restrict their availability to contraception. In Nebraska, legislation has been introduced that would authorize the use of “justifiable homicides” in defense of killings to prevent harm to a fetus.

The U.S. House of Representatives have three pending bills which would strip all funding for the 800 Planned Parenthood clinics around the country. Also, all Title X funding, which provides family planning for low-income Americans would be totally cut. Let’s hope these Republicans have the same success as their Republican predecessors have had in their wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, drugs, crime, education and poverty.

Government Service! As the War on Government Workers and the Middle Class continues in Wisconsin, there are some lesser known proposals in the 144-page bill that the governor, Scott Walker, wants enacted. One is the repeal of the rule requiring municipal governments to disinfect their water. Mr. Walker thinks treating drinking water is too expensive for his state. In 1993, 104 people in Wisconsin died and 400,000 got sick when the Milwaukee water supply became infected. Although municipalities in that state can keep their water clean for as little as $10,000 per well, the governor thinks that is too high a price to pay to keep citizens safe from deadly microorganisms and illnesses.

Birther Announcement! Yesterday, while hawking his new book, A Simple Government on right wing radio’s Steve Malzberg’s show, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee claimed President Obama had grown up in Kenya. “One thing that I do know is having grown up in Kenya his view of the Brits, for example, is very different that of the average American,” said Huckabee, a Fox News host and possible Republican candidate for President in 2012. Afterwards a Huckabee spokesperson said the former governor of Arkansas had “misspoke” when twice claiming on two different networks that the President grew up in Kenya.

Sharing the Pain! In New Jersey the Republican governor has proposed that middle class workers earning less than $50,000 should share the pain by taking a 25% reduction in pay and benefits. In the sharing however, he does not agree that over 225,000 millionaires in New Jersey should participate by increasing their taxes a mere 3% ($30,000) per annum. Repeat, the $50,000 per year worker can afford a $12,500 per year pay cut along with a reduction in their retirement and medical benefits but the folks earning $1,000,000 per year cannot afford an additional tax of $30,000 per year.

Tilt to the Right. Whirl. Nauseated yet?

• John Boehner

Now that President Obama has proposed a budget with plans to make deep cuts in domestic spending and reduce the deficit by a projected $1.1 trillion over the next decade, Republicans can be expected to fight like hell to kill it.

First, they will fog up the airwaves with sulfuric lies and feigned concern over the nation’s debt and its effect on future generations. Of course, they had no problem during the Bush years spending a billion dollars a week in money borrowed from China to fight two wars. It was of so little concern that the war expenditures were not even part of the Bush budgets, but with a Democrat in the White House, Republicans will repeat the fabrication that they have got religion now when it comes to spending.

What they refuse to acknowledge publicly, however, is that it really doesn’t matter what this President does fiscally—-how much he reduces the deficit or slashes spending or cancels out debt. None of that matters at all because Republicans know that what really matters between now and November 2012 is keeping alive The Lie that won’t die. You know the one I’m talking about.

• Cheri DelBrocco

The Republican Party has no plans to run against President Obama based on anything he has accomplished or failed to accomplish. Nothing so fact-based. Republicans plan to run against Barack Obama based not what he has done, but on who they say he is — or isn’t. . They plan to win by repeating the lie that he is not really an American and not a Christian and that our real national need is to take our country back from a masquerading Commie Muslim, a shadow Socialist and secret furriner who actually wants to destroy America because he hates it so much. The Republican Party is now a Birther Brigade.

For evidence there was the CPAC spectacle held a few days ago in Washington. While a hopeful revolution was under way among the youthful masses of Egypt, a bizarre pageantry of a wholly different sort was going on among the jades in our nation’s capital — a fantasy revolution of delusional paranoiacs, a Marat-Sade of right-wing loonies. Although CPAC stands for “Conservative Political Action Conference” the acronym could with equal justice have meant “Crazy People Are Coming.” There were more nuts in D.C. for the occasion than in a boxcar-load of Planters Deluxe Mix.

The Usual Suspects were there, of course—Michelle Bachmann, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, and Ann Coulter. Sarah Palin was represented by an imposter, and there was even a touch of the exotic like Donald Trump. It was all about feeding the base of a Republican party which these days manages to exist wholly outside history, truth, or reason. In fact, there is something of an inverse relationship between Republican politicians, even the more normal ones, and the reality-based world.

The saner you actually are, the crazier the things you have to say to order to inoculate yourself in the GOP against accusations of apostasy. You have to “crazy it up” to even get in the game and to prove your bona fides as a real Republican, which is why even conventional sorts like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, who were once considered to be legitimately sane and responsible, had to do their Birther thing, babbling about the President’s supposed lack of American citizenship like second-string comics working side rooms on the dark side of the moon.

The overall theme of the conference was this: Barack Obama is a president for whom we should harbor distrust rather than loyalty. Evidence of his actual birth in Hawaii or his Christian history (they used to pillory him because of his Church of Christ pastor, Jeremiah Wright; remember?) is to be ignored or cast out of mind, lest we forget that the President is not One of Us..

No one understands the way this motif works better than John Boehner, the most powerful symbol of the Republican mainstream these days, who felt compelled to say on Meet the Press the day after the CPAC circus was over that it was not his job, as Speaker, to tell any of the hard-core birthers among Republican House members (one of whom is Tennessee’s own Marsha Blackburn) what to think on the score of the President’s citizenship — still less to set the American people straight..

(Mr. Boehner is a veteran dissembler, of course — adept at perpetuating the fiction that he and his party are seriously focused on creating jobs and fixing the horrendous unemployment problem that was created during the Bush years.)

Once President Obama gets a fix on America’s financial deficit, he should start tackling the even more serious Truth Deficit. This country is up to its eyeballs in lies, propaganda, and right-wing indoctrination. A growing segment of our population is living in a parallel universe of media-contrived lies which metastasize like a cancer on the body politic.

President Obama needs to end this charade by confronting the liars, summoning every Republican member of Congress to the White House for a nationally televised debunking— broadcast live on all networks—- in which the Birthers and their fellow travelers and enablers will be forced to put up some real evidence or shut up. Finally.

Cheri DelBrocco, the Flyer’s “Mad as Hell” online columnist, is a featured guest every Wednesday morning during the “Eyes on Memphis” show on KWAM-AM 990.

Keith Olbermann stunned viewers Friday night in announcing that to be his final show. It was the briefest of good-byes, with no details of the circumstances leading to the shockingly abrupt farewell.

Unabashedly liberal, Olbermann insisted on reporting facts, modeling his style after legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow, who stood up to Senator Joe McCarthy, the fanatical communist hunter of the 1950’s. He even borrowed Murrow’s closing: “Good night and good luck.”

In his nearly eight years on MSNBC, ,the host of “Countdown” was the first in the media who had the temerity after 9/11 to criticize George W. Bush and help charter the course for others in the mainstream media to also challenge Bush. He gave voice to some at his own network, as well as countless viewers, by demonstrating a style that could be simultaneously over-the-top and elegantly intellectual to demonstrate a righteous anger at the constant barrage of lies and propaganda perpetrated by the right wing, particularly on Fox News.

After it became obvious that the WMD tale promulgated by Bush to lead us into war was a complete and total fabrication, he read one of his many stem winding commentaries, which became legendary, and punctuated it by looking at the camera and stating, “You, sir, are a liar!”.

Olbermann hosted the top rated news show at the network so it wasn’t poor ratings or lack of ad revenue that resulted in his expulsion. For eight years his passionate dedication to the profession of broadcast news led to a string of other liberal shows on the network hosted by Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell. Even politically ambidextrous types like Chris Matthews displayed responsiveness to liberal viewers and their concerns. Ratings for the network and the prime time news block were never higher. While it might have been just a simple parting of the ways, Keith Olbermann’s sudden exit from television looked suspiciously like something other than good business and good broadcast journalism.

Although so far unsubstantiated, informed speculation has so far abounded that the ouster was triggered by execs at NBC to assuage the demands of Comcast ownership in advance of their takeover. Merely two days earlier, Comcast’s historic proposed merger with NBC Universal won approval from the FCC and Justice Department, clearing the way for the largest U.S. cable company to combine with a national broadcaster. It is easy to imagine the new right-wing honchos at Comcast as being unwilling to stomach Olbermann’s in-your-face displays of the cold, hard, truth.

It is well understood in the corporate media world that Comcast chief, Brian Roberts, is a political über-conservative who served as co-chairman of the 2000 Republican convention and allegedly achieved Bush Ranger status for having raised at least $200,000 for George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004. It was clear that,t from his new perch as CEO, Mr. Roberts would not easily tolerate an employee who was as brazenly critical of Bush and the Republican Party as Keith Olbermann. So it is no great leap to imagine Roberts considering it his patriotic duty to destroy the only foothold of liberal-oriented broadcast news on television.
Olbermann’s swift departure by NBC/Comcast should serve as a wake-up call, for progressives. They could soon find themselves systematically silenced, just like Olbermann, with no voice for their political interests. While Conservatives have built a vast media infrastructure—from newspapers, publishing houses, and ownership of 90% of AM radio stations to a major TV network serving purely Republican Party purposes- progressives have treated the media as a low priority.

In time, unless liberals work to build media counterparts to the ever increasingly popular personalities on Fox News and to talk radio titans like Rush Limbaugh, their voices will be no more than cries in the corporate right-wing wilderness. The mainstream media in America is now held by six corporate conglomerates—- Westinghouse/CBS, Walt Disney/ABC, News Corp/FOX, Time-Warner TBS, Viacom, and GE/NBC Universal. Not a liberal outfit in the bunch.

This latest purchase of NBC by Comcast and the elimination of Keith Olbermann are prime examples of the inexorable movement of the nation toward a feudal Corporatocracy maintained, in large part, by complete mass media control.

“Good luck” is right. As a free press slowly disappears and dissenters become voiceless, we will need it.

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• Cheri DelBrocco

Last week’s transfer of power in Washington dominated the news for four days while the three-foot gavel selected by John Boehner epitomized the asinine immaturity of the Tea-publican movement.

Then the news broke that a mass shooting and attempted assassination of a member of Congress had occurred. Six dead in Tucson, Arizona. It is human nature to try to figure out why such an unspeakable tragedy like this one would happen in our country. We look for something or someone to blame. Since the day President Obama was sworn in, reasonable people have feared such a sickening event would actually happen. Although shocking, it is not surprising.

Over the next few weeks, we will see an aggressive attempt by Republicans and their lackeys in the right wing media to whitewash the Tucson shootings. Sarah Palin has already scrubbed her website of the infamous “crosshairs” map, with those infamous superimposed gun sights in tandem with her voter instructions to “reload and take aim” at Democratic candidates. The Fox News talking heads have already started repeating the meme that “both parties” have a problem with inflammatory, violent rhetoric and, oh yes, that the Tea Party may, just may have made impolitic remarks.

They just forget to identify which incendiary statements were made by Democrats or liberals. Probably because they cannot find any.

The Fox Tea-publicans will distort and lie until, before you know it, all the media will join into the malarkey that “Both parties are guilty of contributing to the climate of political hatred, etc., etc.” They are counting on the majority of Americans to fall for this phony false equivocation.

But what we know for sure is that the rhetoric and actions can be laid at the feet of the Grand Old Tea-publican Party.

In the recent elections it was the Republican Party that manufactured the kind of vitriol that caused a young woman holding a poster at a Rand Paul rally to get knocked to the ground and her head stomped by GOP-certified “freedom fighters.”

We know it was the Republican Party that fielded a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada who called for people to “exercise their Second Amendment rights” if the election didn’t turn out the way they wanted.

We know it to be the Republican Party that has a base calling for acts of violence against immigrants, Muslims, and everyone else who doesn’t fit their self-imposed guidelines for true Americanism.

It was Republicans for over two years attended public rallies and town hall meetings with guns strapped to their legs, promising to “take the country back”.

It was Republicans who sold “America’s Most Wanted” playing cards with pictures of Democratic leaders on them.

It was a Republican candidate who, running against Florida Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, stepped up at a shooting range to show his marksmanship skills by firing at a human silhouette with the letters “DWS” written next to the head.
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It was a Republican Vice Presidential candidate who made unsubstantiated claims that the President had “palled around” with terrorists.

It was the Republican Speaker John Boehner who, when speaking of Democratic office-holders, blithely blew off threats against them by saying there were “always a couple of anarchists who want to kill all of us in public office.”.

We know that what happened in Tucson was a logical, predictable outcome to the growing, hyperbolic rhetoric that has become the stock and trade of the Republicans and the Tea Party. A nine-year- old girl is dead. A Federal judge is dead. A member of Congress is fighting for her life. Four other American families are planning funerals. Like a Kudzu vine that smothers trees with its fast growing tendrils, the politics of hate and fear is spreading. Ultimately, it will suffocate and snuff out democracy.

It is time for the charade to stop. As much as the GOP’s talking heads attempt to cover their asses, it is their party which has a problem, and it is time for Republican leaders to denounce and repudiate the despicable antics of their followers.

Now that the agenda in Washington for the next two years will be driven by the far right wing of the Republican party, you might think economic issues have trumped cultural issues in the public mind. After all, this is the bunch who have taken over the House based on promises to slash the federal debt and shrink government.

Perhaps you have figured out by now that the Tea Party is a sham— a gigantic ball of self-serving, self-righteous faux outrage bounced back and forth by Republicans. After two years of marching and bellowing — of dressing up in stupid costumes with three-cornered hats and carrying misspelled signs—-of going apoplectic at town halls about the mountains of debt and deficit spending that are “destroying our children’s future,” the Tea Party finally had an opportunity to display their fury, wrath, and indignation. When Republicans fought for and voted almost unanimously to add $858 billion to the budget deficit by extending the Bush tax cuts, the Tea Party was quieter than little church mice. There wasn’t even a whimper of an outcry. Confirmed was what we already knew — they are hypocrites for hire.

This “movement” has never really had anything to do with making serious fiscal policy change — no, the Master Thespians of the right wing are simply tools who were bought and paid for by the billionaire Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks for the explicit purpose of Bringing the Crazy and distracting us yet again with—you guessed it—a culture war!

When Congress convenes in a few days, the John Boehner-led House Republican majority has laid out an agenda to do exactly what Republicans have always done(and will always do) — throw a good, old-fashioned culture war with aggressive, over-the-top rhetoric so people will be too distracted and divided to notice that the plan is the same one its always been — of cutting taxes for their donors, thus creating deficits that require spending cuts or bankruptcy.

In the last few days, House Republican leaders have actually unveiled major changes to House procedural rules that are clearly designed to pave the way for more deficit-increasing tax cuts in the next two years. That’s right! The Republicans are planning to put us further into debt so that the corporations and billionaires who bankroll their campaigns will get even bigger tax breaks!

The Tea-publican game plan will go like this: While John Boehner, Mitch McConnel, and other GOP professionals are making sweeping and symbolic but completely inconsequential points about fiscal responsibility, Michelle Bachmann, Rand Paul and the Tea Party will use proposals on moral and social issues to divide, distract, and divert by convincing some Americans that they are real Americans and that other Americans are their enemies.

There will be railing against environmental programs because these are supported by elitists who believe in “unproven” science like climate change and evolution. Proposals for defunding National Public Radio with its Prius-driving, latte-drinking liberal listeners will be made. National art endowments will need to be cut because of their offensive, blasphemous, anti-Christian exhibits. And of course what culture war would be complete without fighting about abortion? Prepare to see one bill after another come to the floor to revise the Obama healthcare plan so that it bans access to contraception, family planning, and reproductive rights to as many women as possible in the name of “defending life”.

Like a scene in Groundhog Day, the GOP will keep giving us their failed trickle-down economics while the birthers, death-panelists and the “Obama is a Muslim/Hitler/Socialist/Fill in the Blank”crowd have a field day calling for government shutdown based on sanctimony and vilification of their imagined enemies. They will finally have the chance to fight the war they have really wanted for two years — the one that will help them make good on their claim of taking the country back—- all the way back to the days of Herbert Hoover.

Happy Fresh Hell New Year!

• Cheri DelBrocco

For the past two years, the former half-term governor of Alaska has been crammed down our throats via the most cunning PR campaign in political history. Let the sheeple in medialand and the blogospheres stay on top of their mountaintops bleating “We Can’t Quit You Sarah!”—— I’m coming down. It is time to put Grizzly Mama in hibernation during the holiday season by pledging to “Keep December Free of All Things Palin.”

Now that Baby Mama Bristol has failed in her hope to (exact quote)“give a big middle finger to everyone in America that hates my mother and hates me” by winning Dancing with the Stars, the Quitter from Wasilla has fallen back on an expedient.

Big Mama Sarah has, of all things, signed off for her daughter to do an abstinence Public Service Announcement with Mike“The Situation” Sorrentino of MTV’s Jersey Shore and DWTS. That oughta keep the Palin name in the public spotlight!

A new book, a stint as a Fox News contributor, and a “reality” show on TLC: None of that can provide enough exposure for Dame Sarah. What’s next? A Potty Training video for Patriot Babies? A Freedom Fighter app for iPad?

Most likely, Sarah will resort to one of her tried and true tactics: hurling a venomous tweet at the President, submitting some snarky Facebook rant about her valiant fight to restore our freedom, or merely (fallback scenario) repeating — and often mangling — hand-me-down GOP talking points in a TV interview.

Above all, she will monopolize as many news cycles as she can to transform her own gaffes into cases of being attacked and maligned by those nasty Liberals. The guilt-trip media will take the bait and allow her to manufacture yet another controversy that can keep her in the public eye for another day.

While all of her self-promotion tactics have been masterful, Palin’s real accomplishment has been to manipulate the Beltway hacks on cable news and talk radio——Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Chris Matthews and others — into a daily discussion of every bit of minutiae stemming from her manufactured controversies. Before we know it, the country has had yet another conversation about what’s up with Sarah foisted on it.

Although she craves to be taken seriously, Sarah Palin is nothing more than a walking media contrivance — the Paris Hilton of politics, famous for being famous. Is she a contendah or a pretendah? Or merely America’s biggest teasah?

Until and unless she gets dead serious about seeking the nomination for President (gulp!), we should tune her out or turn her off.

You, too, can join the effort to ignore Sarah Palin this month. It’s easy! Just go to facebook.com and sign on to this premise: “Let’s Keep the Month of December Free of All Things Palin”.