sweetcharmedlife
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[quote author=Edith Grove link=1272828470/625#644 date=1279756188]Obama To Louisiana: Drop Dead
by Jeff Crouere (excerpt)
BAYOU BUZZ
The administration is not content to stop all deep water drilling in the Gulf. For all practical purposes, all new drilling in the Gulf has been brought to a standstill. Industry officials report that the permitting process for all drilling has been made so cumbersome that there is no new oil and gas activity in the Gulf. Reports are that major oil and gas employers in Louisiana are getting ready to cut massive numbers of jobs in the days ahead unless this moratorium is lifted and the permitting process is changed. Does the President care that his decisions are causing major economic harm to Louisiana?
It seems the goal of the administration is to inflict economic harm on the red state of Louisiana. Yesterday, it was announced that a major shipyard, Avondale, located right outside of New Orleans will be closing in 2013, which will result in the loss of 5,000 direct jobs and 7,000 indirect jobs. These are high paying positions that will not be replaced anytime soon. Next to Tulane University, this shipyard is the largest private sector employer in the New Orleans, so the blow to the local economy is major. The defense contractor Northrop Grumman which manages the shipyard announced that they will be closing the shipyard and moving the jobs to another site. This was caused by an overall decline in the administration’s ship building budget. Coupled with the drilling moratorium and the cancellation of NASA’s Constellation program and the loss of 2,000 aerospace jobs at the Michoud facility in New Orleans East, the policies of the Obama administration are costing the State of Louisiana approximately 60,000 top quality jobs. When Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph complained to the President that his actions are costing Louisiana thousands of good jobs, he recommended that the newly displaced workers apply for unemployment benefits. The revealing response was an insight into the mind of Obama. Obviously, in his view, seeking government assistance is a viable answer, not a last resort. Yet, his response is an insult to the hard working people of Louisiana, who want to provide for their families, not become dependent on government.
Sadly, Obama’s polices are negatively impacting the state, which delivered 59 percent of its vote to John McCain in 2008, In that election, Louisiana voters were smart enough to understand that the Obama agenda was misguided and would be detrimental to our state and national economy. Everyday the wisdom of Louisiana voters to reject Obama is becoming more apparent. It is a real tragedy that the voters in the blue states did not possess the foresight of the voters in Louisiana.
Republicans suck because they lie.
I want to get one thing straight; not all Republicans lie. Some of them are just incredibly wrong. Not all Republican’ts are conservatives and not all conservatives are part of the new neo-conservative movement. It is these people, these neo-cons that are the problem. It is this group of “patriots” that is destroying our economy and creating an atmosphere of fear, hate and bigotry in our country. And, by and large, the leaders of this movement create this atmosphere by lying to their audience. Since these lies often appeal to the conservatives’ deepest fears and basest emotions, they almost always go unchallenged or investigated by the right-wing voters.
The neo-cons can be broken down into types: the voters and the leadership. I’ll start with the average citizens who vote along the neo-conservative ideological lines.
1. The Religious Right. This is the group of conservative voters who vote primarily on social/moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. They don’t let little things like the national economy get in the way of
Jerry Falwellushering in the Nation of God. They don’t pay too much attention to history however. In spite of what conservative candidates say, they seldom, if ever, make any change in these issues if elected. Despite having control of the three branches of government for the majority of the Reagan/Bush I/Bush II administration, Republicans have not overturned Roe v. Wade, have lost ground in same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian rights and were responsible for The Brady Bill, which is the largest gun control legislation in US history.
2. The Self-Interested. These are the voters who care nothing for the national economy, the plight of their fellow Americans or anything other than their own personal wealth. They vote Republican because Republicans favor business, lower taxes for the wealthy and disfavor social programs. Despite all historic evidence to the contrary, they may pretend, or even believe, that supply-side economics works for the nation as a whole, but even if they don’t believe it, they know what is good for them; screw everyone else.
3. The Frightened. These people are afraid of everything: big government taking their money, minorities, homosexuality, foreigners, and change – especially change. They vote for the man who tells them everything will be alright as long as those evil progressives don’t get into power. The more powerful the candidate seems, the safer they feel. A candidate who says with great vigor they are going to “hunt down” all the terrorists, is much more likely to get this vote than a candidate who expresses any interest in diplomacy, even when brute force is demonstrably making the situation worse.
Of course, many conservative voters don’t fit neatly into only one of these categories, but share attributes of any combination of the three.
Now the politicians and the pundits can easily be sorted into the same three categories, and sometimes are. However, the overwhelming majority belong to the Self-Interested. Why? It’s all about the bottom line, and not yours.
It is obvious to anyone who looks at the relationship between the Bush family and oil, with gold, and with big money in general, where their personal interests lie. Cheney and Halliburton, anyone associated with Jack Abramoff, Enron, Carl Brizi and Tim Durham, the list goes on and on. And on and on. Are there any democrats with ties to big business? You bet there are. The difference is that democrats, as a body, don’t seek to exploit their elected positions by introducing and voting for legislation to enhance their personal finances and power.
Cons romance the voters in the religious right, and then do next to nothing to advance that agenda. They appeal to the fears of the frightened, even going so far as to manufacture fear in order to do so. They court the angry disenfranchised middle class white voters with tales of welfare fraud and reverse racism. They lie to those that are self-interested, but not completely without a sense of patriotism or concern for their fellow citizens – they help them to believe that lowering taxes for the rich, deregulating business and cutting social programs is good for our economy.
Would Rush Limbaugh, a multi-millionaire, have any reason to have voters believe that the rich should have a lower tax burden? Would Dick Cheney, who is a major stockholder in many corporations and sits on the board for several, have any reason whatsoever to have the voting public believe that business should be free of regulations, thereby increasing profit shares?
Consider the source, and then investigate the evidence, check the historic precedence and then ask yourself who stands to gain?
Read this book to find example after example of Republicans lying to you:
“State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration” by James Risen
James Risen, a New York Times writer exposes some of the most serious and concerning facts about what Bush knew before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Were we committed to Iraq from the moment W was elected? Were the attacks preventable?
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