Is Rick Santorum A Paranoid Psychopath? YES!!!!!

by Dana Milbank from the Washington Post

"Rick Santorum Cries Nazi"

Rick Santorum sees Nazis everywhere: in the Middle East, in doctor’s offices and medical labs, in the Democratic Party, and now in the White House.

The Republican presidential candidate told a group of supporters Sunday night that this year’s election was like the time between 1940 and 1941 when Americans didn’t act against Adolf Hitler because they thought he was “a nice guy” and not “near as bad as what we think.”

“It’s going to be harder for this generation to figure this out. There’s no cataclysmic event,” he explained, but similar urgency. “Is anybody reminding us who we are, what made us great, and what these assaults are all about?”

The obvious implication — later denied by the candidate — was that Santorum is some modern-day Churchill and President Obama is der Fuhrer. It was outrageous and yet, for Santorum, routine.

Six years ago, in his losing bid for reelection to the Senate from Pennsylvania, Santorum had a remarkably similar take on the stakes. “If we are not successful here and things don’t go right in the election, there’s a good chance that the course of our country could change,” he said, according to an account in the Lebanon (Pa.) Daily News. “We are in the equivalent of the late 1930s, and this election will decide whether we are going to continue to appease or whether we will stand and fight while we have a chance to win without devastating consequences.”

His opponent, Democrat Bob Casey, won the election, and yet the country somehow did not fall to the brownshirts.

In explaining why his remark over the weekend wasn’t linking Obama to Hitler, Santorum said that “the World War II metaphor is one I’ve used a hundred times.” This is not an exaggeration — and that’s Santorum’s problem.

Nazi comparisons are the most extreme form of political speech; once one ties his political opponents to the most deplorable chapter in human history, all reasoned argument ceases.

Yet this is where Santorum exists, in a place of binary extremes of good and evil, where his political foe isn’t just wrong but adheres to a “phony theology” not found in the Bible. His frequent tendency to go from zero to Nazi over ordinary political disagreements is typical of the emotional appeal he has to conservative primary voters, but it also shows why he’s outside the bounds major political parties have applied to their past presidential nominees.

Some of Santorum’s opponents have suggested that his Hitler tic reflects his own autocratic tendencies; his opponent’s campaign manager in 2006 called Santorum “one notch below a Nazi.” But while Santorum favors more coercive government — one that could, for example, ban birth-control pills — he isn’t a Nazi. He worked against anti-Semitism in the Senate and tried to get a German physician prosecuted for Nazi war crimes. The problem is Santorum is such a stranger to democratic give-and-take that he thinks it’s okay to label everybody else as Nazis.

His most famous episode came in 2005, when Democrats criticized Senate Republicans for threatening to do away with the filibuster. “The audacity of some members to stand up and say, ‘How dare you break this rule?’ — it’s the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, ‘I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me? How dare you bomb my city? It’s mine.’ ”

That same year, Santorum published a book, “It Takes a Family,” in which he tied fetal genetic testing, evolution theory and embryonic stem-cell research to Nazism. He quoted with approval the view that diagnosing and aborting fetuses with genetic malformations “can be considered an earlier phase” of the “German negative eugenics movement.”

Of the Darwinian view of a “purposeless universe,” Santorum wrote that “the Nazis built their pseudoethics with its grim logic on precisely this Nietzschean cosmological view.” Embryonic stem-cell research, he added, makes him “wonder if we have merely been momentarily delayed in our slide” toward the Nazi ethics.

In his unsuccessful 2006 campaign, he often invoked Churchill’s “gathering storm” phrase and compared Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler. He also called for more active use of the term “Islamic fascism.” Last year, Santorum warned that if the Muslim Brotherhood prevails in Egyptian elections, it would be like the Nazis winning in 1933: “That was the last democratic election.”

When used on Ahmadinejad or the Muslim Brotherhood, the Nazi talk is provocative, but defensible. When used on an American president and a rival political party, it shows an alarming lack of perspective.

More From Rick Insantorum:

Santorum Compares Democrats Use Of Filibuster To Hitler:

Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said Democrats have abused the filibuster. "The audacity of some members to stand up and say 'How dare you break this rule,'" Santorum said on the Senate floor Thursday. "It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' " Yeah Santorum, an all those blacks who said "how dare you say the N word and raise the confederate flag" were just communist sympathizers. What the hell are we doing allowing this prick to talk to use this way. I would take him out back and beat him within an inch of his life, but he's now worth going to jail over. I WANT A CAMPAIGN AGAINST SANTORUM TO SMEAR HIM AND TO END HIS CARRER NEXT YEAR. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS QUOTE? SEND IT TO THE MSM, I KNOW THEY WON'T CARE, BUT JESUS JUST READ THIS IGNORANT BASTARDS WORDS. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/19/filibuster.fight...

Occupy Wall Street Super PAC

Occupy Wall Street Super PAC: Activist Looks To Form Political Action Committee

from Huffington Post 2-17-12

One Occupy Wall Street activist wants to put the protest's money where its mouth is.

(CLICK HERE FOR LIVE UPDATES)

John Paul Thornton, a member of the Occupy Alabama movement, filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to form the Occupy Wall Street Political Action Committee, Mother Jones reports. But Thornton's group probably won't get a boost from the Occupy leadership. Occupy Wall Street spokesman Karanja Gacuca told MoJo that if it ever were to come to a vote it's unlikely Thornton's move would be approved at by the movement's General Assembly.

Thornton said he was inspired to file the papers after watching comedian Stephen Colbert discuss his super pac on his TV show. Colbert’s organization, called Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow has raised $815,000, according to Politico.

SuperPACs -- the category of fundraising group that Colbert's and Thornton's groups fall under -- have been a flash point for controversy during the campaign season. There's no limit on the amount of money they can collect from an individual donor or the amount of cash they can spend campaigning, but they can't coordinate directly with any candidates.

Super PACs advocating for Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have poured millions into buying ad space on Michigan's airwaves ahead of the state's primary on February 28, according to MSNBC. President Obama came under fire earlier this month after he reversed his stance on super PACs, dropping his opposition to the organizations.

That could be because the groups are so popular. More than 300 organizations have filed papers with the FEC to become super PACs since 2010 court decisions paved the way for their creation, according to The Hill.

The concern that Super PACs will boost the influence of money in politics, likely hasn't fallen deaf on the Occupy movement's ears. Demonstrators marched in New York City and in Washington, D.C. late last year to protest against pricey fundraisers hosted by the Obama campaign.


(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

The GOP -- An Enemy of the People

Here is a piece by Truth-out.com explains just another reason why this is true. The GOP continues to show how much they hate Democracy.

Legislators Who Sign the Anti-Tax "Norquist Pledge" Are Enemies of the People and the Constitution

Thursday 16 February 2012

by: William B. Daniels, Truthout | Op-Ed

A recent lawsuit mounted by former UCLA chancellor Charles Young and former Ninth Circuit Appellate Justice William A. Norris brings renewed attention to California's 30-year-old Proposition 13.

The Norris/Young suit claims that Proposition 13, requiring a two-thirds vote of both houses of the California Legislature to increase taxes, is unconstitutional. The suit argues that Proposition 13 was a revision of the California Constitution, not a mere amendment.

Revisions are changes that fundamentally alter the structure of government, whereas amendments are just additions. Proposition 13 altered the government's constitutional authority to raise public funds. To be a valid revision, Proposition 13 would have had to pass with a supermajority in both houses of the California Legislature, and with a majority vote of the people. Because Proposition 13 received only a majority vote of the people, it must be stricken.

The Norris/Young lawsuit, along with a November 2011 statement by Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) that Grover Norquist, as the "thirteenth member" of the bipartisan supercommittee on fiscal reform, was responsible for its failure, raise two questions:  Have Norquist pledge signers violated federal and state criminal laws? and, What is the connection between Proposition 13 and Norquist pledge signers in the California Legislature?

In the 112th Congress of the United States, 235 members of the House of Representatives and 41 members of the Senate have signed the pledge created by Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform. The pledge states :

I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

Norquist and his organization give political support to candidates who make the pledge and work to defeat candidates who do not. To assume office and be paid a salary, members of Congress must take an oath:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

The Constitution of the United States, to which signers swear their true faith and allegiance, provides, in Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and General Welfare of the United States ...

The Sixteenth Amendment says:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived ... 

The preemptive and unconditional pledge to Norquist by each signer is a knowing and willful repudiation of Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution and the Sixteenth Amendment. The pledge to Norquist makes signers' oath of office to uphold the Constitution a fraud on the Congress and the American people. It is also a probable violation of federal criminal law. 

Title 18, Section 1001, of the United States Code says that whoever willfully makes any false statement or representation in any matter coming within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the government of the United States shall be fined or imprisoned for not more than five years. Section 1001 specifically applies to claims for payment of money submitted to Congress. Accordingly, by fraudulent oath of office, Norquist signers claim Congressional salaries in violation of Section 1001. 

Norquist signers in the California Legislature pledge that they will "oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes." To assume office and be paid a salary, they must swear an oath to uphold both the federal and state constitutions. But the California Constitution says, in Article 13, Section 31:

The power to tax may not be surrendered or suspended by grant or contract.

In view of their pledge to Americans for Tax Reform, signers make a false oath of office, because they have surrendered their power to tax to Norquist, in violation of Section 31. The California Government Code makes each Norquist signer's false oath of office an act of perjury, punishable by imprisonment for two, three, or five years.

Considering the party composition of the California Legislature, the close connection between the Norquist pledge signers and Proposition 13's requirement of a two-thirds majority in both houses to increase taxes becomes clear. The California Senate is composed of 40 members, 15 of whom are Republicans and signers of the Norquist pledge. The California Assembly has 80 members, 28 of whom are Republicans, 25 of whom have signed the pledge. Norquist controls 37 percent of the Senate and 31 percent of the Assembly.

With Norquist pledge signers in place, the two-thirds supermajority required to raise taxes can never be achieved. Under the requirements of Proposition 13, Norquist controls the revenue lifeblood of the California republic. He is the unelected, dictatorial member of the California Legislature. He is the reason there are annual budget crises in Sacramento. He is the cause of the crumbling infrastructure of California. He and his signers have starved public safety services and educational opportunities for Californians. 

If the Norris/Young lawsuit succeeds in removing the Proposition 13 supermajority rule, the State of California can once again exercise its constitutional authority to raise revenues for the public good, to restore infrastructure, public safety services and educational opportunities for Californians. In the meantime, the voters should remove the Norquist signers from office, because they are the enemies of constitutions and the people.

WILLIAM B. DANIELS

William B. Daniels is an attorney and mediator practicing in Monterey County, California.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Occupy Movement Regroups, Preparing for Its Next Phase

By ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: February 11, 2012 from the NYT 

The ragtag Occupy Wall Street encampments that sprang up in scores of cities last fall, thrusting “We are the 99 percent” into the vernacular, have largely been dismantled, with a new wave of crackdowns and evictions in the past week. Since the violent clashes last month in Oakland, Calif., headlines about Occupy have dwindled, too. Far from dissipating, groups around the country say they are preparing for a new phase of larger marches and strikes this spring that they hope will rebuild momentum and cast an even brighter glare on inequality and corporate greed. But this transition is filled with potential pitfalls and uncertainties: without the visible camps or clear goals, can Occupy become a lasting force for change? Will disruptive protests do more to galvanize or alienate the public?

Though still loosely organized, the movement is putting down roots in many cities. Activists in Chicago and Des Moines have rented offices, a significant change for groups accustomed to holding open-air assemblies or huddling in tents in bad weather.

On any night in New York City, which remains a hub of the movement, a dozen working groups on issues like “food justice” and “arts and culture” meet in a Wall Street atrium, and “general assemblies” have formed in 14 neighborhoods. Around the country, small demonstrations — often focused on banks and ending foreclosure evictions — take place almost daily.

If the movement has not produced public leaders, some visible faces have emerged.

“I’m finally going to make it to the dentist next week,” said Dorli Rainey, a Seattle activist. “I’ve had to cancel so many times. It’s overwhelming.”

Ms. Rainey, who is 85 and was pepper-sprayed by the police in November, has been fully booked for months. On a recent Thursday, she joined 10 people in Olympia, Wash., who were supporting a State Senate resolution to remove American soldiers from Afghanistan. She led a rally near Pike Place Market against steam incinerators, which the protesters complain release pollution in the downtown area. In March, she plans to join Occupy leaders in Washington for events that are still being planned.

“People have different goals,” Ms. Rainey said. “Mine is, we’ve got to build a movement that will replace the type of government we have now.”

Jumping on a proposal from Portland, Ore., groups in 34 cities have agreed to “a day of nonviolent direct action” on Feb. 29 against corporations accused of working against the public interest. Then on May 1, they will try to persuade thousands of Americans who share their belief that the system is rigged against the poor and the middle class to skip work and school, in what they are calling “a general strike” — or “a day without the 99 percent.”

“Inspiring more people to get angry and involved is the top priority,” said Bill Dobbs, a member of the press committee of Occupy Wall Street and a veteran of the Act Up campaign for people with H.I.V. and AIDS. He added that people could “take action on whatever issue is important to them, whether economic justice, the environment or peace.”

But some experts who credit Occupy’s achievements to date wonder if the earnest activists will overplay their hand. Some question how many people will heed a call to stay home from work on May 1, especially since labor unions, which have generally supported Occupy’s message, say they will not strike for the day. And beyond that, Occupy’s utopian calls for democracy and justice may be drowned out by the presidential campaign.

“They’ve gotten the people’s attention, and now they have to say something more specific,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow and an expert on political strategy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Average Americans want solutions, not demonstrations, and their patience for the latter won’t last indefinitely.”

Some of Occupy’s dilemmas are those of any emerging movement. “Some of the stuff you do to get attention often puts off your audience,” said David S. Meyer, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies social movements. “It’s a delicate balance, being provocative enough to get attention and still draw sympathy.”

The issue has been posed most starkly in Oakland, where a militant faction is openly courting conflict with a hostile police department, undermining public support and leading to sharp ideological divides. Some activists have formed separate groups dedicated to nonviolent methods, though tensions are not as acute elsewhere. Crimes reported in some of the camps in the fall also discredited the movement in the eyes of its critics.

But without question, the unfurling of sleeping bags by a few dozen people near Wall Street on Sept. 17 struck a national chord. “In three months, this movement succeeded in shifting political discourse more than labor had been able to accomplish with years of lobbying and electoral campaigns,” said Robert Master, the Northeast political director for the Communications Workers of America, which represents more than half a million telecommunications workers.

“I think there are going to be tremendous opportunities for labor and the Occupy movement to work together,” Mr. Master said. “We have different roles— as labor we are much more embedded in mainstream politics. But we understand that without the pressure of more radical direct-action tactics, the debate in this country won’t change substantially.”

Though President Obama has not publicly embraced the Occupy movement, its fingerprints are evident in his increased focus on economic fairness.

Mr. Galston, the political expert in Washington, said the movement’s success in making inequality more visible “could have an impact down the road on campaigns and elections and agendas.” But he also said that “to this day, the movement has never crystallized its ideas into an agenda.”

So far, home foreclosures are the most consistent target. Groups in Minneapolis are currently camped in homes facing foreclosure. In Atlanta, they take credit for using this method to save the house of an Iraq war veteran, pressing the bank to offer her refinancing after it had already set a date for eviction.

In Providence, R.I., protesters made a deal with the city, agreeing to abandon their camp peacefully this month in return for the city’s opening of a new day center for the homeless.

But many in the movement appear to be pinning their biggest hopes on the nationwide protests planned for the spring and summer. To foster personal ties, Occupy Wall Street veterans, mainly from New York, embarked on a five-week bus tour of a dozen Northeast cities to exchange ideas on protest goals and methods and to hold training sessions with other Occupy groups.

“Without the camps, we’re in a bit of a lull,” Austin Guest, 31, said in New York. He is one of the many younger men and women who have given over their lives to Occupy, often sleeping on sofas and scraping by with donated food or part-time jobs. The actions planned for the spring “will be more substantial and a much greater threat,” he said.

On a recent Saturday evening, some 50 volunteers met in a Greenwich Village church to discuss May Day activities for the city. The group included a mix of ages and races, with graduate students, teachers, older labor veterans and some full-time activists.

In the style of the Occupy movement, it operated with a requirement of consensus. A person designated as the “stack taker” directed the order of speakers and people wiggled or “twinkled” their fingers in the air to show agreement. They discussed a possible schedule of protests for May Day: disrupting commerce that morning, perhaps, and then joining an immigrant rights demonstration at midday and staging a march in the evening.

“Is this O.K.?” the designated facilitator politely asked every few minutes as he moved along the agenda. “Does anyone object?”

A danger for a movement like this, driven by a committed core group with strong views, is political marginalization, said Todd Gitlin, an expert on social movements at Columbia University. Mr. Gitlin, whose book “Occupy Nation” will be published electronically by HarperCollins in April, said, “You can be big but still isolated,” which he said was what happened to the radical antiwar movement he joined in the 1960s.

Another challenge will be sustaining public anger if the economy continues to show signs of recovery and unemployment falls. Jessica Reznicek, 30, a protester from Des Moines, said the economy in Iowa “is much stronger” than in other places, adding, “there’s not the level of escalation here.” After five demonstration-related arrests in recent weeks, she is taking a step back and refocusing on specific efforts, like challenging companies that make genetically modified crops.

But deeper concerns about inequality are not likely to disappear, said Damon A. Silvers, policy director for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., nor is the widely shared desire “for the economy to be run for the interests of the majority, not a tiny wealthy minority.”

“Whether the individuals in Occupy Wall Street and their organization turn out to be the center of this sentiment in the next year, I don’t know,” Mr. Silvers said. “But that sentiment will be a powerful force in our country, and the Occupy movement deserves credit for that.”

The American Middle Class Is Becoming Poor, and Mitt Romney Doesn’t Realize It

Those who vote for GOP candidates, and  are NOT in the one percent, don't realize that they might actually be one breath away from losing it all; yet, out of ignorance and shortsightedness, they cast their votes for the most regressive people in America who actually want to take it all away from them, if they can. Their only aim is to enrich the richest among them, and, of course, their benefactors--the corporate predators and job destroyers.

"The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth

Monday 6 February 2012

by: Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog | Op-Ed

January’s increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story – the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.

Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy – hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary workers, retail and restaurant. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain working only because they’ve agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. Others are settling for jobs that pay less than the jobs they’ve lost. Entry-level manufacturing jobs are paying half what entry-level manufacturing jobs paid six years ago.

Other people are falling out of the middle class because they’ve lost their jobs, and many have also lost their homes. Almost one in three families with a mortgage is now underwater, holding their breath against imminent foreclosure.

The percent of Americans in poverty is its highest in two decades, and more of us are impoverished than at any time in the last fifty years. A recent analysis of federal data by the New York Times showed the number of children receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million in the last school year, up from 18 million in 2006-2007. Nearly a dozen states experienced increases of 25 percent or more. Under federal rules, children from famlies with incomes up to 130 percent of the poverty line, $29,055 for a family of four, are eligible.

Experts say the bad economy is the main factor driving the increase. According to an analysis of census data by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, 37 percent of young families with children were in poverty in 2010. It’s likely that rate has worsened.

Mitt Romney says he’s not concerned about the very poor because they have safety nets to protect them. He says he’s concerned about the middle class. Romney doesn’t seem to realize how much of the middle class is becoming poor.

But Romney doesn’t like safety nets to begin with. He’s been accusing President Obama of inviting a culture of dependency. “Over the past three years Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society,” he says over and over, arguing that our economic problems stem from a sharp rise in dependency. Get rid of these benefits and people will work harder.

He and other Republicans point to government data showing that direct payments to individuals have shot up by almost $600 billion since 2009,  a 32 percent increase. And 49 percent of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit such as food stamps or unemployment insurance, up from 44 percent in 2008.

But Romney and other Republicans have cause and effect backwards. The reason for the rise in benefits is Americans got clobbered in 2008 and many are still sinking. They and their families need whatever help they can get.

The real scandal, as I’ve said before, is America’s safety nets are too small and shot through with holes. Only 40 percent of the unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits, for example, because they weren’t working full time or long enough on a single job before they were let go. The unemployment system doesn’t recognize how many Americans work part time on several jobs, and move from job to job.

And even those who are lucky enough to be collecting employment benefits are about to lose them. A record and growing percent of the unemployed have been jobless for six months or more, and Republicans in Congress are unwilling to extend their benefits.

Romney’s budget proposals would shred safety nets even more. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his plan would throw 10 million low-income people off the benefit rolls for food stamps or cut benefits by thousands of dollars a year, or some combination. “These cuts would primarily affect very low-income families with children, seniors and people with disabilities,” the Center concludes.

At the same time, Romney’s tax plan would boost the incomes of America’s most wealthy citizens, who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of that nation’s total income. Romney wants to permanently extend George W. Bush’s tax cuts, reduce corporate income tax rates, and eliminate the estate tax. These tax cuts would increase the incomes of people earning more than a million dollars a year by an average of $295,874 annually, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

By reducing government revenues, Romney’s tax cuts would squeeze programs for the poor even further. Extending the Bush tax cuts will add $1.2 trillion to the nation’s budget deficit in just two years. That’s the same as the amount that’s supposed to be saved by automatic spending cuts scheduled to start next year – which, by the way, will hit the poor especially hard.

Oh, I almost forgot. Romney and other Republicans also want to repeal of Obama’s health care law, thereby leaving 30 million Americans without health insurance.

The downward mobility of America’s middle class is the big news, but the GOP apparently hasn’t heard about it. Maybe it’s too hard to hear about from that far away – and Mitt Romney is certainly far away. His unearned income last year was more than $20 million. That’s about as much as the combined earnings of a thousand American families at or just above the poverty line.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)