Dr. Lawrence Britt analyzed the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. While, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history, they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.
Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.
Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
Disdain for the importance of human rights.
Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
Rampant sexism.
A controlled mass media.
Obsession with national security.
Religion and ruling elite tied together.
Power of corporations protected.
Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
A Belcamp defense contractor has filed for bankruptcy protection about a month after a Harford County judge ordered it to pay $2 million to a subcontractor in a legal dispute over a pair of lucrative military deals.
Stem International Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore on April 28, listing assets of between $1 million and $10 million and liabilities of between $1 million and $10 million.
The contracts with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir in Virginia and with the Environmental Chemical and Biological Center are potentially worth as much as $110 million. Source
Advanced Solutions for Tomorrow, the Georgia-based firm whose president has been charged in an alleged $10-million kickback scheme, filed for bankruptcy Tuesday.
The defense contractor, which also operated in Middletown, filed for voluntary Chapter 7 liquidation in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Georgia one month after laying off all its employees.
The company’s founder and president, Anjan Dutta-Gupta, of Gerogia, and Ralph M. Mariano, a civilian program manager with the Naval Sea Systems Command who has residences in Warwick and Virginia, were arrested in early February and face federal bribery charges. Source
You’ll never see a Republican complaining about war profiteering or other abuse, though. They only express “outrage” when clean energy companies fail so they can use it for political gain. And the military industrial complex is a big source for their campaign funding.
Richard Dawkins believes that education is the only ‘antidote’ to religion. “We need to protect children from being indoctrinated. It goes on to the next generation and then they see that their children get indoctrinated.” “If children are taught, however moderately, that faith is a virtue, they are taught that they don’t need evidence to believe something; that they can believe something just because it’s their faith. . . He believes that atheism will soon become a more popular framework for …
Obama needs to learn how to frame his comments a little better to penetrate America’s “bumper sticker” mentality. There are two central issues facing our country right now: high unemployment and high deficits.
The Republican “solution” is to fire government workers, allow businesses to pollute our environment, and allow banks to gamble with our money. And then when disaster ensues, they just blame it on the Democrats! Yeah, that’s good for our country!
Obama outlined his plan, which includes higher taxes on the highest incomes, which would help balance the budget and have little (if any) negative effect on the economy. Our infrastructure is in dire need of repair, and this is the ideal time to put people to work repairing it. We need huge cuts in military spending. The war on terror isn’t fought effectively with bombs; it’s fought with intelligence, which only requires a small fraction of the money required for traditional wars. We also need to repeal the Republican deregulation that caused the near total collapse of our economy, which means restoring Glass-Steagall.
If his SOTU speech was truly a political speech (as right-wing pundits claim), he would have called out Republicans on all the damage they’ve inflicted on our country. Republican deregulation resulted in the near total collapse of our economy. They allowed us to be attacked in 2001 and responded by invading and occupying two countries at a cost of thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars. It took intelligence to finally get Bin-Laden — not wars. Republican tax cuts (the Republican stimulus) did little to create jobs but more than doubled the national debt. Obama’s Stimulus was 1/3 tax cuts, so why all the whining about spending?
Perception is everything. If we provide an actual description for these terms, the ratings would change dramatically.
Socialism. Our military is the largest socialized program in the U.S. If you asked right-wingers if they support the military in its current form, you’d see about 100% approval. The negative view would come from many on the left and even some libertarians. But many on the right have become convinced that any government intrusion into the free market is socialism and therefore is bad.
Libertarian. After it was obvious that Bush’s policies were disastrous, many people decided to call themselves libertarians instead of Republicans. There really is very little difference between the two in most cases. The extreme libertarians are the militia groups and various weird cults who don’t want the government telling them that they can’t be weird.
Capitalism. The term “capitalism” can be interpreted in various ways. Right-wingers who claim to be capitalists are referring to free-market capitalism. When some on the left voice opposition to capitalism, they’re also referring to free-market capitalism. Well regulated capitalism tends to work pretty well, but we’ve gotten away from smart regulation because of the vocal anti-government segment of the population who function under the facade of patriotism.
Conservative. “Conservative” in the political sense is a radical ideology: aggressive foreign policies, economic policies based on theories proven to be erroneous, and embracing religion over science. If they used the political meaning of conservatism in this poll, only the die-hard right-wingers would admit to embracing such an ideology.
What’s missing from the equation is corporatism (or fascism), which is what you get with the Republican party. We were on the path to fascism with the Bush administration in 2006 when enough people woke up and voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in the congressional elections. But people have short memories, and with the flood of right-wing propaganda and the birth of the corporate sponsored Tea Party movement, Republicans were able to regain control of the House in 2010.
If you were to ask right-wingers how they felt about the tax cut legislation passed during the past dozen years, the vast majority would say they approved, yet those same people are apposed to the Stimulus bill, which was 1/3 tax cuts. Right-wing propaganda defined the Stimulus to be a massive spending bill with no reference to the tax cuts. Propaganda is the primary tool used to promote fascism, and the overly emotional, scared, hate-filled, religious population is easily manipulated into voting against their best interests.
The United States added a robust 200,000 new jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, in a sign that the long-awaited economic recovery has finally built up a head of steam.
The nation’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in December, from a revised 8.7 percent in November, the government said. The Labor Department revised the number of new jobs added in November to 100,000, from 120,000.
The employment report built on a flurry of heartening economic news in December, when consumer confidence rose, manufacturing came in strong and small businesses showed signs of life. It was the sixth consecutive month that the economy added at least 100,000 jobs — not enough to restore employment to pre-recession levels, but enough, perhaps, to cheer President Obama as he enters an election year.
Republicans have done all they could to block a recovery, purely for political gain. Their “solution” is to fire government workers and allow companies to destroy our environment.
It’s been a long battle for top fly in the garbage can that is the Republican party, but tomorrow, the people of Iowa will decide which candidate’s lies have been most effective. It’s impossible to defend conservative policies without lying, and they know Obama is better for America than they would be, so all they can do is lie.
Japan tsunami and nuclear disaster killed nearly 20,000 people
Death of Dennis Ritchie. Ritchie created the “C” programming language around 1970 to rewrite the UNIX operating system. It made the porting of software to various platforms much easier than with assembly language. Most software is still written in C/C++ including Windows, Linux, UNIX, Mac OS X, MS Office, most browsers…
Death of Steve Jobs. A visionary who changed life for many with the iPad, iPhone, iPod, and many others.
Occupy Wall St. People around the world have been protesting the right-wing policies that have destroyed our economy and ruined countless lives. America finally got into the game.
Arab Spring. This year we saw the fall of the Tunisian, Libyan, and Egyptian governments. The fate of Syria is unknown with the government murdering 100s of protesters.
Tim Tebow mania. A mediocre quarterback gains legendary status because he’s a religious nut.
Killing of Osama Bin-Laden. Obama makes Republicans look bad by taking out the terrorist responsible for the 9/11/2001 attack. Republican tactic: bomb them into smithereens. Democratic tactic: use intelligence.
Withdrawal from Iraq. One of the biggest blunders in U.S. history ends with the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. No one has been prosecuted for lying us into war, nor has there been a serious investigation into how we got it so wrong.
Space Shuttle program ends with final mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis. George W. Bush canceled the Space Shuttle replacement program as one of his first acts as president. Right-wingers blame Obmaa.
Christian terrorism in Norway leaves 76 children dead.
Consumer outrage stops BOfA credit card charges and Verizon fees. That’s evidence that we’re not powerless to fight abuse.
And the biggest news of 2011… I wrote 3 songs! For years I’ve wanted to try my hand at writing songs and finally did it. My next goal is to write a GOOD song.
I hope you all had a good year. We need to be more active in the upcoming election to win back the House from the radical right. Get involved in local elections. Expose Republicans for the SOBs they are.
Right-wingers choose their candidates mainly through the use of emotional reasoning. How the candidate looks and talks are extremely important to them, as are superficial things in the politician’s life such as how often they go to church and their level of religiosity . These qualifications are selfish reasons, because it really comes down to how the candidate makes the voter feel.
Bush made right-wingers feel good because he seemed like he was one of them, even though he had lived a life of privilege. He was the candidate they’d want to have a beer with. Reagan made them feel good about our country through the use of rhetoric, even though he caused enormous damage while in office.
Obama makes right-wingers feel bad about themselves. First of all, he’s of a different race (half different, anyway), his father was a Muslim (only half-Christian), and he was a professor (another strike).
A reporter ventured into Republicanistan to interview voters. Here’s what some of them had to say…
DES MOINES — Jonathan Gabhart, a 21-year-old college student from Spencer, Iowa, is leaning toward voting for Ron Paul because of the Texas lawmaker’s unpolished speaking style — a “high-pitched, squirrelly voice,” as he put it. “He seems like a real person because of his eccentricities.”
Andy Schwaegler, a 45-year-old tree farmer from Orford, N.H., is drawn to Mitt Romney because the well-coiffed candidate reminds him of his father, a business executive. “It’s something about the way he carries himself,” Mr. Schwaegler said.
Nancy Weaver, a 60-year-old retiree in Grinnell, Iowa, favors Representative Michele Bachmann because the congresswoman raised 23 foster children. “That’s a huge endeavor for any man or woman,” she said.
“Personality does matter,” said Michael Dee, a lawyer in West Des Moines. “Because this person is going to be on TV all the time as president.”
[The fact that Rick Santorum home-schooled his children] was well known to Dwayne Kriegel, a postal carrier in Grinnell, who is backing Mr. Santorum in the caucus on Tuesday. “He’s passionate about his dedication to family values,” Mr. Kriegel said. “The others say what they think the voters want to hear, while he lives it.”
This article, as many in the mainstream media, shows the conservative bias in reporting. The author makes blanket statements claiming that because conservatives choose their candidates in a certain way, all people must use the same method.
We see this over and over in the media. Republicans block bills in Congress and the MSM reports “neither side willing to budge.” The pubic sees both sides as being equally incompetent and corrupt. The problem is with media ownership in America. News media outlets are afraid they might offend some of the higher-ups, so they water down stories or “balance” the facts with a right-wing spin on the facts.
U.S. Debt before Bush tax cuts: $5.7 trillion
Current debt as result of Bush tax cuts, two wars, reduced revenues and increased unemployment benefits due to high unemployment, Medicare Part D, and Obama tax cuts: $15 trillion
