Conservative Christian War on Women, just one step toward turning the US into a theocracy.

Rick Berg (R-ND) proposed a bill (House Bill 1489) giving women or girls LIFE SENTENCES if they have abortions after they are raped or are the victims of incest. If the woman was a single mom with 3 kids, the kids would become wards of the state & they’d lose their mom.

The right-wing fanatical Christian, Representative Rick Berg, also wants to criminalize some forms of contraception and the punishment for using contraceptions: LIFE IMPRISONMENT!
(Ref: ND House Bill No 1489)

How can a political party that touts itself as a ‘family values’ party want to destroy the lives of women, their children and their families by imprisoning them for life? Anyone who comes up with such a deviant punishment has to be full of hatred for women and families. Rick Berg and republicans have zero compassion, empathy or humanity to even think of such an evil thought.

Conservative Christians must agree with him because in Deuteronomy & Exodus it says if a woman (or little girl) is raped they MUST marry the rapist. And to further dehumanize females they are ‘sold’ to the rapist.

How any woman or sane person could vote for fanatical republicans defies comprehension. Sadly, the ones who do live in almost absolute ignorance letting themselves be duped by opportunist con men like Hannity, Beck (INSANE) & Limbaugh or Fox News, all of whom have made millions violating the 9th Commandment. Oh well, ‘bearing false witness against one’s neighbor’ is obviously okay to conservative Christians because they continue to listen to and believe every word they hear from rightwing hate radio and Fox News, without question, thought and especially without fact checks.

Right-wingers who are trapped in their cocoons of ignorance will never do fact checks. They eagerly lap up lies because their afflictions of rage, racism & ignorance far exceed even a glimmer of wonder about the truth. It’s amazing how those whose ‘faiths’ supposedly command them to always search for the truth do the opposite and willing choose ignorance rather than turn off their right wing radios & Fox News. For right-wing Christians to portray themselves as the ‘lights of the world’ they should look at how dark their hearts have become, if they ever had a heart to begin with. It’s obvious they are opposed to any critical thought that would enlighten them. But republicans have publicly admitted how they believe ‘critical thinking’ is a threat to their blind obedience to rubbish.

In Texas, GOP conservative Christians wanted to outlaw ‘critical thinking’ in schools because facts posed a threat to their ‘faiths’. It’s in the GOP party platform! They also said ‘critical thinking’ causes divisions between parents and their children. But if parents are filling their children full of insane nonsense the only refuge or promise for the future of their children is to be exposed to the truth in public education and from other children who haven’t been brainwashed. But that is why conservatives hate teachers & public education. They want their children to remain in the cocoon of ignorance and delusion they live in their entire lives.

“Those who preach faith and enable it are intellectual slaveholders. keeping mankind to a bondage of fantasy and nonsense.” – Bill Maher, Religiosity

Religious zealots, incredibly claiming to be libertarian, constantly want to use government to invade other peoples’ lives and force their demented will on others, even if it means making raped women serve life sentences in prison and destroying the woman, her kids and her family. Conservative Christians want to re-victimize women for the rest of their lives. Is there any difference to Islamic fundamentalists who believe if a man commits adultery, the woman is at fault and she could be put to death? In 31 states rapists can get visitation of the child of rape further victimizing women for the rest of their lives. (Imagine a raped woman being forced to take a child to a prison to visit her rapist) The level of evil cruelty from conservative Christians knows no bounds. The ‘god of love’ they profess to follow has no room in their hardened hearts because they are filled with hatred for their fellow man and women.

Conservative Christians conveniently pick and choose just the parts of the Bible & the Constitution that suit their agendas and disregarding, or deliberately misinterpreting lines that don’t fit into their agendas. Perhaps before they force their evil agendas on others they should ‘take the planks from their own eyes before trying to remove the splinters from another’s’. Instead of following that scripture they ignore it completely and readily condemn everyone who doesn’t share their mutant beliefs.

Deuteronomy equates women & girls as mere possessions to be bought and sold, and if raped they must marry their rapist. Ahh, yet another example of those perfect conservative Christian ‘family values’.Deuteronomy 22:28-29 states, “If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes (rapes) her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.”

Yeah, it’s okay. Sell your abused daughter, regardless of age, to the man who violated her so she can be abused for the rest of her life. What’s that line in the Bible about ‘do into others as you would have them do into you’? Forget that say conservative Christians! If they adhered to that line it would interfere with their extremist agendas to destroy others.

Why attack women (and little girls)? ‘For the Bible tells me so.’
Exodus 22:16-17 “If a man seduces a virgin (regardless of age) who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride price for virgins.”

Representative Todd Akins and the countless other religious fanatics in the republican party are not aberrations, they are the norm. They speak for all other republicans who believe women should be subservient to men and are lesser beings who should be sold, and if raped, should be forced to marry her rapist.

There is nothing more dangerous to the United States than domestic religious fanatics. They want to turn the US into a theocracy. A goal of religious universities like Liberty U, created by Jerry Falwell, is to put as many religious extremists in government to force the most draconian Christian laws on everyone. And of course, they want to overturn Roe V Wade to outlaw abortions above all else. They don’t care about the health of the mother, the state of the fetus (is it severely deformed?), the woman’s husband or her existing children. They have a total lack of compassion for others. Btw, Liberty University had the insane Glenn Beck speak at the commencement in 2011 and Mitt Romney in 2012, both of whom are habitual liars and who regularly bear false witness against their neighbors. But no one at Liberty University left as they spoke. They admired these two men though they violate the 9th Commandment daily. So much for any integrity from just one person at that ‘university’.

Pro-lifers aren’t pro-life, they are pro-birth. They don’t want a dime of theirs to go to help feed, cloth, educate or house a child. Instead of helping the most vulnerable, they savagely attack them with condemnations, like calling them deadbeats, drug addicts, lazy and a burden to society. They regularly attack the poorest in our society while virtually worshipping the richest. Of course, they say they love Jesus, but obviously they disagree with everything that Jesus taught. They also conveniently forget all the times Jesus spoke out against the rich.

I know a conservative Christian who said anyone who showed up at an emergency room and is wearing a gold necklace shouldn’t be treated. He wanted to be a one-man death panel. It didn’t matter how the sick person obtained the necklace. Did his mom or dad leave it to him? Did he have a job and paid for it himself? Nothing mattered to this conservative Christian because he had already condemned this sick person to death, just for wearing a necklace. This same person didn’t even have insurance for his own family. He had 3 small children and a wife. Just a couple of years earlier, this deadbeat conservative’s wife gave birth to a baby girl. There were complications and the baby stayed in the hospital for 30 days, but he didn’t pay a dime to the hospital for saving the life of his daughter. He condemns others for being irresponsible, but he is perhaps the biggest deadbeat I’ve ever known.

At the same time he was condemning the sick person trying to get healthcare this conservative Christian was posting on social media for the best gun to buy. His ‘Christian’ friends on a social media site all offered a myriad of weapons to buy along with ammunition capacity for each weapon. I wish they had the capacity to have the empathy towards others equal to the size of one particle of they gun powder that fascinates them. But they don’t see other’s like normal people do. They see everyone who is poor, hungry and struggling as losers and their enemies, while praising their real enemies, the rich and powerful who seek to destroy them. They are all busy weaving nooses from rope they were given by the wealthy not realizing they are making nooses from which they’ll be hung. Sadly, while they are essentially willingly parading toward unregulated capitalism’s gallows, they are taking us with them.

This ‘Christian’ also said he wanted to get a concealed carry permit. So he was willing to spend about $500-700 for a gun, ammunition and concealed carry permit, but he didn’t even have health insurance for his family. But like most conservative Christians, that doesn’t stop them from condemning others and even wanting them to die if they dared to wear a necklace to an emergency room. He said he wanted a gun for protection. But if he and his family had any real ‘faith’ he would trust god, not Smith & Wesson to protect him.

The biggest threat to America is not for any external threat, but from enemies within. These enemies take many forms, like the extremely wealthy who want the US to be a plutocracy to religious fanatics who want the US to be a theocracy. We’re no longer fighting against a political party, we’re fighting against insanity that has been sweeping across the US for two generations.

“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”

IS MITT ROMNEY A LIFELONG SOCIOPATH?

Mitt Romney bullied a gay boy by having five fellow bullies hold him down and Mitt Romney cut off his hair, laughing at the boy.

Mitt Romney coaxed an almost blind teacher to walk into a door and Mitt Romney giggled hysterically, again getting great delight in preying on a vulnerable person. “…Romney opened a first set of doors for Wonnberger (a teacher), but then at the next step with other students around, he swept his hand forward, bidding the teacher into a closed door. Wonnberger walked right into it (the door) and Getsinger said Romney giggled hysterically as the teacher shrugged it off as another of life’s indignities.” (source: Washington Post)

Mitt Romney and his friends (aka: ‘gang’) lured students from the University of California into a trap where they “shaved their heads and painted them red”. (source: Politicker) Again, no expressions of remorse from Romney for the possibly lifelong damage he did to others. Romney said “It was wrong, they just can’t look like that” (the kids were guilty according to Romney for simply having longer hair). Romney’s intolerance isn’t just a boyhood trait because he has the identical feelings today toward gays, the poor and others he ‘feels’ doesn’t fit his warped mold.

When Mitt Romney was a bishop in his church while in Boston he counseled a young woman who was pregnant and he told her to keep the fetus even though the pregnant girl had a 50% chance of dying if she kept it. When questioned, Romney said he wasn’t worried about her. Mitt Romney said, “As your bishop,” she said he told her, “My concern is with the child.” The woman wrote, “Here I-a baptised, endowed, dedicated worker, and tithe-payer in the church-lay helpless, hurt, and frightened, trying to maintain my psychological equilibrium, and his (Romney’s) concern was for the eight-week possibiliy in my uterus-not for me!” (source: Vanity Fair)

Mitt Romney went on a family vacation and put the family dog on top of his car for 12 hours, even though the dog was sick and the Romney kids saw feces running down the back window. Neither Mitt, Ann or their five sons had any empathy for the dog or demand that Shamus be put in the cabin of the car. There was a total lack of any compassion from anyone in the Romney family.

Mitt Romney, with no prompts, told what he said was a ‘hilarious’ story about his dad closing down a plant and firing workers in Michigan and joking about how a band kept playing On Wisconsin (where the Romney-fired workers were from) to the cegrin of the political operatives of Romney’s dad. Romney laughed all through the story not once expressing any concern for the people his father fired and the devastation caused to the fired workers and their families.

Later Mitt Romney preyed on companies, fired workers, gutted company resources, shipped jobs overseas (Bain Capital later even fired American’s who made the Etch a Sketch in the US and had the work down by virtual slaves overseas). Romney at Bain showed zero regard for the feelings of those he was hurting or destroying their lives. He even bragged during the campaign saying “I like firing people”. What normal human being ‘likes’ firing people and disrupting or destroying their lives? Romney does. Romney claims he owes all of his monetary ‘success’ to himself, but doesn’t tell others how Bain was bailed out by government money and without that bailout Bain would have collapsed and Romney would probably be squeegeeing windshields on street corners, if he could figure out how.

When Romney was questioned about how he treated his family dog he laughed and showed zero signs of regret. He further said he didn’t know it was against the law to carry a dog on top of a car. He thought it was okay to just hose off the dog and then put it back onto the roof of the car wet from being hosed down. The poor dog was wet, lonely and sick but not one Romney, including Mitt, Ann or their five sons had any regard for the dog they were abusing.

When Romney was questioned about his brutal attack against a gay student he again laughed his familiar laugh while first saying he couldn’t remember his brutality, but he could remember that he didn’t attack the vulnerable boy because he was gay. If Romney couldn’t remember the story then how could he know he didn’t attack the gay boy?

Romney recently (May 2012) said he apologized ‘IF’ he caused any harm, but anytime someone uses the word ‘IF’ when apologizing it’s not a real apology, and especially if while he is apologizing he is laughing the entire time like it was a big joke. It’s like someone saying “I’m sorry if I hurt you while cutting off your arm”.

Romney’s reactions to how he treats other human beings has been constant through his life. He has no understanding of how his actions hurt or destroy other people. He doesn’t care about them. And his laughter further reinforces how his actions are those of a sociopath. Romney lacks any ability to feel how another human being he hurt feels. If he can profit off of the vulnerable he will do it. Just a couple of weeks ago he selected Paul Ryan to be his running mate and Ryan has such little regard for other human beings nuns and bishops in his own church are condemning his plans to gut programs that help the most vulnerable while giving huge tax cuts to the most powerful. It’s obvious Ryan knows nothing of Jesus’ teachings and is nothing but a political prostitute for his wealthy pimps.

Romney’s campaign is based on stripping help from the most vulnerable people in society and giving huge tax breaks to the extremely rich. He said he “isn’t worried about the poor” because there are already safety nets in place for them, but Romney and republicans want to eliminate all the assistance to the most vulnerable in society while giving the wealthiest even more money, effectively taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Again, only a sociopath could be motivated by hurting the weakest and most vulnerable while siding with the most powerful, but Romney has been consistent all through his life, showing zero regard for the vulnerable. He not only has zero regard for the most vulnerable, Romney laughs at their plight, just as he laughed at how he abused his dog and his fellow student.

I don’t have to go far to understand how bullies act. My older brother is a sociopath with zero regard for how much he hurts others. When I was 12 my older brother deliberately hit me in the head with a bat as hard as he could to try to kill me and I ended up in the hospital with a severe concussion and had blood in my spinal fluid. Another abuse was when my older brother and his friend said they would help me release my pet homing pigeons into the wild because I was no longer allowed to keep them. When we arrived at a remote place to release my pigeons I was horrified when my older brother and his friend both pulled out rifles and began shooting my pigeons while they were in the cage. They slaughtered all of the pigeons and couldn’t care less about killing defenseless animals or the emotional toll on me. I was crying and pleading with them to stop but they kept firing their rifles. I’m sure they felt just like Romney felt when Romney had a defenseless boy on the ground and laughed as he cut off the boy’s hair because he was gay. Of course, my older and abusive brother couldn’t care less about my Mom, Dad and my little brother Jody when they became sick and later passed away. I was their caregiver while my older brother ignored them and pursued his lust for money. He is a conservative and a self-professed ‘christian’. My older sister is also abusive and has done horrific things to me and many others and she is also a conservative and claims to be ‘christian’. Both pray, while they prey on others, just like Mitt Romney has done throughout his life.

Romney is not only a bully, he’s a pathological liar as well, saying anything at a whim without even caring if he’s telling the truth or not. He’s flip-flopped on countless issues knowing most of his ignorant base will vote for him regardless of what kind of person he is and how much he lies or bears false witness against his neighbors. Sadly, the people who will vote for him won’t care about how he treats his fellow man, his lies and his complete lack of empathy and compassion. Those are positive attributes to ‘Christian’ republicans.

They will vote for Romney just because he is a republican and because Romney has vowed to use the office of the presidency to hurt the most vulnerable people in society. It’s truly sickening how those professing to be followers of Jesus would even consider voting for a sociopath like Romney, but sadly, conservative extremists are filled with hatred, racism, rage and ignorance because they get all their information from talk radio and Fox News.

Every right wing talk radio host I’ve ever heard, like Limbaugh, Levin, Hannity, Beck and the rest are making fortunes peddling hatred, lies, fear and racism. Every one I’ve heard bears false witness against their neighbors while their listeners lap up their every word as the gospel without questioning what they are hearing and certainly without doing fact checks of the things they are filling their minds with. All right wing radio hosts claim to be Christians, but their entire shows are filled with lying about their neighbors and spreading hatred, division, racism and anger. Jesus wouldn’t condone anything they do and would condemn them for how they are spreading hatred to people who are filled with hatred of the poor, the vulnerable and the sick. They eagerly listen because dishonest talk show hosts exploit their primal fears easily manipulating them to support the very people who seek to destroy them, the wealthiest people in the country. Both groups share one trait and that is greed. And from that greed and selfishness, talk show listeners busily make nooses from the rope they are being given totally oblivious that they will be hung from the nooses they are making.

By @FullOfBalogna 8-29-12 110pm

ROMNEY DIDN’T BUILD THAT!

The Federal Bailout That Saved Mitt Romney
BY TIM DICKINSON (Rolling Stone)
AUGUST 29, 2012 | 7:00AM EDT

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JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GettyImages

Mitt Romney likes to say he won’t “apologize” for his success in business. But what he never says is “thank you” – to the American people – for the federal bailout of Bain & Company that made so much of his outsize wealth possible.

According to the candidate’s mythology, Romney took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain & Company, preventing the collapse of the consulting firm where his career began. When The Boston Globe reported on the rescue at the time of his Senate run against Ted Kennedy, campaign aides spun Romney as the wizard behind a “long-shot miracle,” bragging that he had “saved bank depositors all over the country $30 million when he saved Bain & Company.”

In fact, government documents on the bailout obtained by Rolling Stone show that the legend crafted by Romney is basically a lie. The federal records, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Romney’s initial rescue attempt at Bain & Company was actually a disaster – leaving the firm so financially strapped that it had “no value as a going concern.” Even worse, the federal bailout ultimately engineered by Romney screwed the FDIC – the bank insurance system backed by taxpayers – out of at least $10 million. And in an added insult, Romney rewarded top executives at Bain with hefty bonuses at the very moment that he was demanding his handout from the feds.

With his selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has made fiscal stewardship the centerpiece of his campaign. A banner at MittRomney.com declared, “We have a moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in.” Romney also opposed the federal bailout for Detroit automakers, famously arguing that the industry should be forced into bankruptcy. Government bailouts, he insists, are “the wrong way to go.”

But the FDIC documents on the Bain deal – which were heavily redacted by the firm prior to release – show that as a wealthy businessman, Romney was willing to go to extremes to secure a federal bailout to serve his own interests. He had a lot at stake, both financially and politically. Had Bain & Company collapsed, insiders say, it would have dealt a grave setback to Bain Capital, where Romney went on to build a personal fortune valued at as much as $250 million. It would also have short-circuited his political career before it began, tagging Romney as a failed businessman unable to rescue his own firm.

“None of us wanted to see Bain be the laughingstock of the business world,” recalls a longtime Romney lieutenant who asked not to be identified. “But Mitt’s reputation was on the line.”

Mitt Romney’s Federal Bailout: The Documents**

The trouble began in 1984, when Bain & Company spun off Bain Capital to engage in leveraged buyouts and put Romney in charge of the new operation. To free up money to invest in the new business, founder Bill Bain and his partners cashed out much of their stock in the consulting firm – leaving it saddled with about $200 million in debt. (Romney, though not a founder, reportedly profited from the deal.) “People will tell you that Bill raped the place clean, was greedy, didn’t know when to stop,” a former Bain consultant later conceded. “Did they take too much out of the firm? You bet.”

The FDIC documents make clear what happened next: “Soon after the founders sold their equity,” analysts reported, “business began to drop off.” First came scandal: In the late 1980s, a Bain consultant became a key figure in an illegal stock manipulation scheme in London. The firm’s reputation took a hit, and it fired 10 percent of its consulting force. By the time the 1989 recession began, Bain & Company found itself going broke fast. Cash flows weren’t enough to service the debt imposed by the founders, and the firm could barely make payroll. In a panic, Bill Bain tapped Romney, his longtime protege, to take the reins.

In Romney’s own retelling, he casts himself as a selfless and loyal company man. “There was no upside,” he told his cheerleading biographer Hugh Hewitt in 2007. “There was no particular reason to do it other than a sense of obligation and duty to an organization that had done great things for me.”

In fact, Romney had a direct stake in the survival of Bain & Company: He had been working to build the Bain brand his entire career, and felt he had to save the firm at all costs. After all, Bain sold top-dollar strategic advice to big businesses about how to protect themselves from going bust. If Bain & Company went bankrupt, recalls the Romney deputy, “anyone associated with them would have looked clownish.” Indeed, when a banker from Goldman Sachs urged Bain to consider bankruptcy as the obvious solution to the firm’s woes, Romney’s desperation began to show. He flatly refused to discuss it – and in the ensuing argument, one witness says, Romney almost ended up in a brawl when the Goldman banker advised him to “go fuck yourself.” For the sake of Romney’s career and fortune, bankruptcy was simply not an option – no matter who got screwed in the process.

According to the government records obtained by Rolling Stone, Bain & Company “defaulted on its debt obligations” at nearly the same time that “W. Mitt Romney . . . stepped in as managing director (and later chief executive) in 1990 and led the financial restructuring intended to get the firm back on track.”

Romney moved decisively, and his early efforts appeared promising. He persuaded the founders to return $25 million of the cash they had raided from Bain & Company and forgive $75 million in debt, in return for protection from most future liabilities. Romney then consolidated Bain’s massive debts into a single, binding loan agreement with four banks, which received liens on Bain’s assets and agreed to delay repayments on the firm’s debts for two years. The federal government also signed off on the deal, since the FDIC had recently taken control of a bank that was owed $30.6 million by Bain. Romney assured creditors that the restructuring would enable Bain to “operate normally, compensate its professionals competitively” and, ultimately, pay off its debts.

Almost as soon as the FDIC agreed to the loan restructuring, however, Romney’s rescue plan began to fall apart. “The company realized early on that it would be unable to hit its revenue targets or manage the debt structure,” the documents reveal. By the spring of 1992, Bain’s decline was perilous: “If Bain goes into default,” one analyst warned the FDIC, “the bank group will need to decide whether to force Bain into bankruptcy.”

With his rescue plan a bust, Romney was forced to slink back to the banks to negotiate a new round of debt relief. There was only one catch: Even though Bain & Company was deep in debt and sinking fast, the firm was actually flush with cash – most of it from the looted money that Bill Bain and other partners had given back. “Liquidity is strong based on the significant cash balance which Bain is carrying,” one federal document reads.

Under normal circumstances, such ample reserves would have made liquidating Bain an attractive option: Creditors could simply divvy up the stockpiled cash and be done with the troubled firm. But Bain had inserted a poison pill in its loan agreement with the banks: Instead of being required to use its cash to pay back the firm’s creditors, the money could be pocketed by Bain executives in the form of fat bonuses – starting with VPs making $200,000 and up. “The company can deplete its cash balances by making officer-bonus payments,” the FDIC lamented, “and still be in compliance with the loan documents.”

What’s more, the bonus loophole gave Romney a perverse form of leverage: If the banks and the FDIC didn’t give in to his demands and forgive much of Bain’s debts, Romney would raid the firm’s coffers, pushing it into the very bankruptcy that the loan agreement had been intended to avert. The losers in this game would not only be Bain’s creditors – including the federal government – but the firm’s nearly 1,000 employees worldwide.

In March 1992, according to the FDIC documents, Romney approached the banks and played the bonus card. Allow Bain to pay off its debt at a deep discount, he demanded – just 35 cents on the dollar. Otherwise, the “majority” of the firm’s “excess cash” would “be available for the bonus pool to its officers at a vice president level and above.”

The next month, when the banks balked at the deal, Romney decided to prove he wasn’t bluffing. “As the bank group did not accept the proposal from Bain,” the records show, “Bain’s senior management has decided to go forth with the distribution of bonuses.” (Bain’s lawyers redacted the amount of the executive payouts, and the Romney campaign refused to comment on whether Romney himself received a bonus.)

Romney’s decision to place executive compensation over fiscal responsibility immediately put Bain on the ropes. By that July, FDIC analysts reported, Bain had so little money left that “the company will actually run out of cash and default on the existing debt structure” as early as 1995. If that happened, Bain employees and American consumers would take the hit – an alternative that analysts considered “catastrophic.”

But Romney didn’t dole out all of Bain’s cash as bonuses right away. According to a record from May 1992, he set aside some of the money to put one last squeeze on the firm’s creditors. Romney now demanded that the banks and the government agree to a deal that was even less favorable than the last – to retire Bain’s debts “at a price up to but not exceeding 30 cents on the dollar.”

The FDIC considered finding a buyer to take over its loans to Bain, but analysts concluded that “Bain has no value as a going concern.” And the government wasn’t likely to get much out of Bain if it allowed the firm to go bankrupt: The loan agreement engineered by Romney had left the FDIC “virtually unsecured” on the $30.6 million it was owed by Bain. “Once bonuses are paid,” the analysts warned, “all members of the bank group believe this company will dissolve during 1993.”

About the only assets left would be Bain’s office equipment. The records show FDIC analysts pathetically attempting to assess the value of such items, including an HP LaserJet printer, before concluding that most of the gear was so old that the government’s “portion of any liquidation proceeds would be negligible.”

How had Romney scored such a favorable deal at the FDIC’s expense? It didn’t hurt that he had close ties to the agency – the kind of “crony capitalism” he now decries. A month before he closed the 1991 loan agreement, Romney promoted a former FDIC bank examiner to become a senior executive at Bain. He also had pull at the top: FDIC chairman Bill Seidman, who had served as finance chair for Romney’s father when he ran for president in 1968.

The federal documents also reveal that, contrary to Romney’s claim that he returned full time to Bain Capital in 1992, he remained involved in bailout negotiations to the very end. In a letter dated March 23rd, 1993, Romney reassured creditors that his latest scheme would return Bain & Company to “long-term financial stability.” That same month, Romney once again threatened to “pay out maximum bonus distributions” to top executives unless much of Bain’s debt was erased.

In the end, the government surrendered. At the time, The Boston Globe cited bankers dismissing the bailout as “relatively routine” – but the federal documents reveal it was anything but. The FDIC agreed to accept nearly $5 million in cash to retire $15 million in Bain’s debt – an immediate government bailout of $10 million. All told, the FDIC estimated it would recoup just $14 million of the $30 million that Romney’s firm owed the government.

It was a raw deal – but Romney’s threat to loot his own firm had left the government with no other choice. If the FDIC had pushed Bain into bankruptcy, the records reveal, the agency would have recouped just $3.56 million from the firm.

The Romney campaign refused to respond to questions for this article; a spokeswoman said only that “Mitt Romney turned around Bain & Company by getting all parties to come to the table and make difficult decisions.” But while taxpayers did not finance the bailout, the debt forgiven by the government was booked as a loss to the FDIC – and then recouped through higher insurance premiums from banks. And banks, of course, are notorious for finding ways to pass their costs along to customers, usually in the form of higher fees. Thanks to the nature of the market, in other words, the bailout negotiated by Romney ultimately wound up being paid by the American people.

Even as consumers took a loss, however, a small group of investors wound up getting a good deal in the bailout. Bain Capital – the very firm that had triggered the crisis in the first place – walked away with $4 million. That was the fee it charged Bain & Company for loaning the consulting firm the services of its chief executive – one Willard Mitt Romney.

This story is from the September 13, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.

REPUBLICAN REDEFINITION OF RAPE & THEIR LUST TO ELIMINATE ABORTION USING ANY MEANS

Conservative zealots have misguided beliefs going back 1900 years. Most think exactly like Rep Todd Akin does. As layers of camouflage are peeled away more and more ignorance is exposed in the republican party. It’s beyond belief how absolutely ignorant they truly are. But when you consider they get all of their information from rightwing radio and Faux News, all of whom make fortunes by bearing false witness against their neighbors, it’s easy to see how they became so deluded with hate, racism & rage.

Conservatives believe raped women can’t get pregnant even though there are 32,000 women who bear rapist’s children every year. These are only the reported rapes. The actual number could be five times that number or more.

The GOP just completed their party’s platform and it states there should be no exceptions for rape or incest regardless of whether the victim could die during pregnancy. And of course not caring what the emotional impact would be on the women they violate using the government. Across the country republican dominated state governments have passed a record number of draconian laws against women. Gov Bob McDonnell of Virginia is now known as Gov Vaginal Probe because he wanted to force all women to submit to government-mandated probes of their vaginas, or GOP-mandated government rape. The same ‘pious’ people who were for this procedure are also the same people who say they want government out of their lives. So much for their fake libertarian beliefs. What is more intrusive than a GOP government forcing probes in women’s vaginas?

Thirty-one states give rapists the legal right to visitation (along with other ‘parental’ legal rights), even if they are in prison, so the woman who was raped gets violated again and again the rest of her life.

There is no room for empathy or compassion in the GOP platform because that would mean conservatives would have to actually think about the inhuman acts they are subjecting THEIR victims to.

The GOP has tried to pass into law bills using terms like ‘forcible’ rape which makes different distinctions between the types of rape. Todd Akin wasn’t a lone wolf in the GOP. He IS the GOP. His ‘legitimate’ rape comment was not a misstatement. Akin was just saying what all conservative Christian extremists believe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joxny3rco_4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Akin & Paul Ryan co-sponsored legislation using the term ‘forcible’ rape so women would have to prove they were raped, regardless of wounds to her body and her emotional distress. Their goal is to eliminate citizens’ legal rights to abortion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=golAm9Sk1Nk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

In 2011, Paul Ryan & Todd Akin co-sponsored the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill which, among other things, introduced the country to the bizarre term “forcible rape.”

Another point I find disgusting is conservatives say they want less government, but bills proposed by radical extremists in the republican party would empower government to monitor every woman’s pregnancy and if the woman had a miscarriage she could be the target of an investigation and possible arrest and imprisonment. But conservative hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. They ‘say’ they don’t trust government but they love executions, war based on lies & torture. In one GOP debate the conservative audience erupted into wild applause when Rick Perry proudly responded to a question about the number of people executed in Texas. In one case there was more than enough evidence to exonerate a death row inmate but Gov Perry ignored it and forced the man to be executed. Perry knew executing people would get him votes and play to the conservative base, who love executions. Because Texas is mostly conservative and filled with people ‘claiming’ to be ‘christian’ no one can realistically compete for a high office in Texas without being FOR the death penalty. Again, conservatives ‘say’ they don’t trust government and don’t like government intrusion but it’s okay to them for the government to execute people, many of whom were probably innocent. I’m sure when conservatives were watching Perry being questioned about executions during a GOP debate they were cheering and applauding like their fellow conservatives in the debate audience.

Republicans use information that to all intelligent and aware people sounds ignorant to insane. In the 13th century Fleta said: “If the woman should have conceived at the time alleged in the appeal, it abates, for without a woman’s consent she could not conceive.” – Fleta 13th century Source: Guardian.co.uk, Wednesday Aug 22, 2012

The above is ridiculous but conservative fanatics like Todd Akin use ancient nonsense just to impose their cruel and inhuman beliefs on others.

In the 2nd century Claudius Galenus implied a woman’s arousal had to equal a man’s to get pregnant.

The #GOP is 19 centuries behind the rest of the world. This is one more example of why conservatives are against education, teachers, professors, science and reality. They’re big proponents of home schooling so they can prevent their children from being exposed to the truth. The Texas GOP platform is against ‘critical thinking’ because they say it is a threat to their faiths and because critical thinking interferes with parental control over their children. In other words, republicans want to shield their children from facts so they will remain ignorant. And in regards to faith, anyone who believe facts and truth are threats to their faith have no faith at all. They instead have a pathology.

Notice how similar GOP Representative Todd Akin’s comments are to the examples I gave from the 2nd and 13th centuries: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” A lot of people believe republicans want to take the US back to the 50s, but it’s not the 1950s. They want to take us back to 50BC.

The Todd Akins in the republican party are not the exception, they are the rule. The reason why GOP leaders wanted to quickly silence Akin is because he exposed what they all believe. GOP leaders know if all their extreme beliefs were known by the general population they’d never win another election, except in areas where nests of conservatives have huge majorities.

And in the other areas in the country where there are people who have the capacity to think the GOP has been systematically using voter suppression, voter purging and voter intimidation to stop others from exercising their rights to vote.

The same people who wave flags and talk about how much they love the Constitution are actively trying to deny others of their constitutional right to vote. They dishonestly use the ruse that they are trying to stop illegal voting but when questioned the Pennsylvania GOP said there were ZERO instances of past voter fraud. For republicans not to stand up to their party for actively trying to deny other citizens their rights to vote makes all of them equally guilty. But they don’t care about the Constitution or other people. All they care about is stealing elections and forcing their deviant beliefs on others. The GOP is no longer a political party, it’s a cult with all the signs of irrationality, blind obedience and extremism cults rely on to exist.

Ignorance isn’t bliss. It’s dangerous and sadly a huge segment of the US population cling to their ignorance with pride. “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross,”

The Discovery of Ghomertites

CHAPTER 1: A Journey to the Past

Being close to Louie Ghomert’s Congressional District 1, we decided to go on an exhibition to see if we could spot a Ghomertite in its natural habitat. The creatures in the district are called Loooeees, named affectionately after the leader of their tribe, Louie Ghomert. Because of their primitiveness they were just often just called Looosssers.

We arrived at night on a very moonlit night. We could still see the trees and hear the slight rustling of the leaves. But the first peculiar thing we heard were rustling sounds in the brush beneath the trees and very loud grunting sounds. Were those the sounds of an impending attack, or were the grunts just normal ways the Ghomertites communicated.

Occasionally, we’d see a dark, shadowy, creature dart by in the darkness and the relative quietness of the night led to great feelings of anxiety. How many creatures were out there? What do Ghomertites eat? Are they meat eaters or herbivores? Did they sleep upside down like a bat? Were they edible? Are they nocturnal creatures? Do they eat their young? We wondered what were the mating habits of Ghomertites and is it true the male of their species kills the strongest of their female’s litters to prevent competition so the males of their species could feel better about themselves?

So many questions and all that stood before us was darkness and the unsettling sounds of creatures moving in the shadows.

Instead of trying to determine what a Ghomertite looked like at night we decided to camp in a large clearing. We built four fires to keep these unknown creatures from attacking us while sleeping. We left one person awake through the night to make sure we’d be ready in case of any attacks by these mutant creatures. The lookout was armed with a library book because we heard Ghomertites were terrified of books or learning.

When we woke the following morning all was quiet in the woods. Maybe the Ghomertites were sleeping. We later learned from two of our scouts that over two large hills were primitive looking habitats. They were poorly-made structures of adobe and grass. It was like we went back in time 500,000 years.

Although all we heard the night before were rustlings of Ghomertites they had either left ir were asleep. It was clear in the morning sun that these creatures left strange looking patterns while they scurried around. It was obvious that Ghomertites were four-legged creatures. The two rear markings in the ground were noticeably pronounced while the front two markings were uneven lines, like the creatures drug their front paws over the ground as their rear legs propelled them.

We spent the first day establishing a camp that was easier to defend. Instead of building a huge wall, setting up electric fences or moats we instead just circled our compound with 100 dictionaries that we knew would ensure our safety from the Loooeees.

NEXT CHAPTER: Our discovery of a four-paw voting machine.

QUESTIONS for Mitt Romney

HAIL MARY QUESTIONS TO ASK MITT ROMNEY because almost all previous press attempts to ask Romney questions have been ignored by the candidate & his staff.

If anyone has the opportunity to personally ask Mitt Romney any of the following questions, please do so. Use a camera or other recording device to capture video+audio or audio of the event.

This challenge is open to everyone. A question directly to the candidate would be best, but you can also write local and national news services to ask them to ask Romney these important questions. Write news organizations or letters to the editor, write all the moderators of the upcoming presidential debates as soon as you learn who they will be, tweet a link to this list of Rachel Maddow’s questions to others on twitter or in other forums where there might be journalists, call as many networks as possible and present these questions to their news staffs. Email them everywhere.

These questions aren’t trivial. They go to the heart of the reasons Mitt Romney refuses to answer these questions. Romney’s abnormal secrecy surrounding the following questions reveals almost more about Romney than if he just answered the questions. But in all likelihood any truthful answer would be so damning it would sink his presidential ambitions immediately, hence the reason for his extreme secrecy.

If you are able to get these answers though any means you can possibly change history and greatly help your fellow Americans.

QUESTION 1:
Mr Romney, when you ran for president in 2008 you personally contributed more than $42 million, of your own Romney bucks to your presidential campaign war chest, $42 million bucks. This time around you and your wife Ann have so far contributed $150,000. You earn that much in 2 1/2 days. Why is that you have contributed so little in this campaign? Why not spend your tens of millions of dollars on your own campaign this year like you did last time around. What’s the difference between this time and last time?

QUESTION 2:
Mr Romney, you announced that earlier this year the chairman of your energy advisory group is an Oklahoma oil billionaire named Harold Hamm. A few weeks after that announcement Mr Hamm made a donation of nearly a million bucks to your Super PAC. Are those connected? Aside from Mr Hamm, who else is advising you on energy policy? Why haven’t you disclosed any of the other names? Are they also people who have contributed to your Super PAC?

QUESTION 3:
Mr Romney, you and your wife Ann own a dressage horse named Rafalca that is competing in the Olympics, congratulations. Despite the fact that dressage appears to be a hobby of your family’s, um, you classified the horse as a business on your taxes in 2010 allowing you to take a tax deduction of $77,000 on the horse. Why did you classify your horse as a business as opposed to just a hobby? Your wife Ann even stated the reason you have the horse is for its therapeutic effect on Ann, as pets often do, so are you receiving a huge tax cut for your ‘pet’?

QUESTION 4:
Mr Romney, why were you registered to vote in the unfinished & unfurnished basement in your son’s house in Belmont, Massachusetts. Did you ever really live in your son’s unfinished basement? Do you have any proof you stayed there such as photographs, legal residency documentation or have any unbiased collaborators you actually stayed there?

QUESTION 5:
Okay Mr Romney, just one more question. You have explained the change of heart that you had on the issue of abortion between your US senate run in 1994 and today, but in that same senate run you said that you would be to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights if you were elected. Have you also had a change of heart on that? If so, what changed your change of heart on gay rights. Or do you still think you are to the left of the late Ted Kennedy on the issue of gay rights?

(Source: Rachel Maddow Show on 7-31-12, with additions by the blogmaster)

‘We the People’ are mere dogs waiting for table scraps to fall

“[A]nother warmed-up version of the “trickle down” theory, the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.” – William Blum, Killing Hope (1995), Introduction

How long will the GOP, corporations and the rich be able to succeed at duping people into supporting the very organizations created to destroy them? Will conservatives someday be able to figure out they are being played for fools and being used as patsies so the rich can become even richer at the expense of every working person in the country?

I’m not hopeful. The dumbing down of the population began just before Reagan took office, and with the addition of right wing talk radio, Fox News and radical right wing websites, people are becoming stupider by the day.

The greatest threats to the United States are not any external forces. Our greatest threat is ignorance. Thomas Jefferson said the best defense against any enemies to our country is a well informed and educated population. The GOP is against education and all programs to raise the awareness and educational levels of the population. The GOP needs an ignorant electorate to even survive. And to further insure their survival they are actively trying to deny voting rights to as many people they know will vote against them as possible.

The GOP waves their flags, religion, and the Constitution to unwitting masses who give them their complete loyalty, totally unaware they are participants in their own executions.

But as dimwitted conservatives elect enemies of our country to run the government, all of us will become victims of their absolute ignorance.

Conservatives are unwittingly fighting to make the US a serfdom, while liberals are fighting to rip our country from the hands of corrupt corporations, corrupt politicians, the corrupt rich and the corrupt supreme court.

The United States is facing its greatest enemy in its history, willful ignorance.

FAITH as described by Craig Fergeson (9/19/2010)

“If you know about God, that he exists and you know what he wants and you KNEW all of this stuff, you don’t need faith. Because faith is only for people who experience ‘doubt’, because if you have no doubt you have certainty, or in other words, ‘pathology’. So in order for you to experience faith you must have doubt.”

But extremists in any religion would never think this deep or even have the capacity to do so. They either live a fairy tale world wearing their rose-colored glasses or in a demented world full of delusion and mired in hatred of everyone who doesn’t believe exactly as they do. They believe others are wrong and going to what they perceive as HELL.

Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take what Craig Fergeson said over MAN-made religious beliefs anytime where people are unable to think for themselves. Critical thought is not permitted in any religion because if people truly questioned their religion they would no longer remain a victim of it. Ignorance is a prerequisite to becoming religious. Bill Maher said “religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do” and “faith means making a virtue out of not thinking”. Maher also said, “Those who preach faith and enable it are intellectual slave-holders keeping mankind in a bondage of fantasy and nonsense”.

My Letter to Newt to Get Reimbursed for All Money I Spent Over $2.50 a Gallon

Dear Newt’s Campaign Staff,

I just bought $80 worth of gas at $4 a gallon. Since Newt has promised that I should pay no more than $2.50 for each gallon then I want Newt to reimburse me the $30 for the amount I paid over $2.50 a gallon. 

As a very gullible, uneducated and not very bright conservative I know Newt is right and market forces, threats of war (which Newt contributed to), oil speculation, corrupt oil companies, collusion and market manipulations have nothing to do with the cost of oil and gasoline. 

As a dimwitted conservative I will also ignore the facts showing how oil production has increased a whopping 8% in just 3 years under President Obama and there has been a huge increase in the number of offshore oil wells. 

As a total right wing dolt who only listens to Newt and other military-dodging cowards on right wing radio and Fox News I will also ignore the fact that the Keystone pipeline won’t add any significant amount of oil to the US because it will be sold on the world market and because it is a very good quality oil it will be sold for a premium price thereby increasing the cost of oil. 

As a backwoods hillbilly who is terrified of the truth and facts I will ignore the fact that the Keystone pipeline will go from Canada to our coast near Houston and then be put in ships that will take that oil to other countries and not remain in the United States. I am willfully making myself ignorant of the fact that all of the countries in the world produce 82 million barrels of oil a day and the United States produces 7.5 million barrels a day. Even with the oil through the Keystone pipeline, US oil production would only be impacted at an almost insignificant amount so there is no possibility it could lower gas prices, especially to the laughable amount of $2.50 a gallon! 

With Newt’s plan to end the EPA, the addition of the Keystone pipeline and turning the United States into an oil sludge-covered country from coast to coast it would increase our country’s output by only 500 thousand barrels a day in EIGHTEEN years!!! Not only would the cost of oil not go down, but because the US would become one large toxic sewer, disases linked to contaminated air, water and soil would cost our country hundreds of billions or trillions in medical costs alone. Newt is like Ronald Reagan’s Department of the Interior James Watt, who would have loved to have destroyed every part of America’s environment so the rich could make a quick buck while costing average Americans huge amounts of money on top of their diminished quality of life, if they could even remain living. 

As an infinitely ignorant conservative I will also ignore the fact that even if the US could increase its oil production by 500 thousand barrels of oil a day the cost of oil wouldn’t decrease, because for every barrel added to world production OPEC would decrease their oil production by a barrel to keep the cost of oil at the same rate. But those are facts and since I’m a slow-witted conservative I will ignore all of them because I love the feeling of having my brain washed. It reminds me of that other sound I like, the flushing of a toilet I unfortunately rarely hear because right wingers like me just have outhouses. 

As a complete right wing dolt I will laugh along with Newt about proposed ideas about using algea as a fuel. Because I am almost totally brain dead I will ignore the fact that all fossil fuels come from plant and animal life, LIKE ALGEA! 

As a total fool, I know we should use ALL of our country’s resources first, so as our fossil fuels diminish our dependence on foreign fuels will increase, thereby threatening our national security even more, which would lead to astronomically high energy prices. BTW, although Newt and all conservatives are lying saying the US is becoming more dependent on foreign oil, just the opposite is true. For the first time in THIRTY years the US reliance on foreign oil has gone below 50% and it was done under President Obama. 

As a conservative with a brain the size of a single amoeba I am opposed to using renewable energy sources because all I listen to are corporate whores on right wing radio and Fox News, all of whom are owned by their corporate masters that have zero allegiance to the United States or Americans. They tell me what to think and I just regurgitate everything I am told without question, thought and certainly without performing a fact check. 
 
Okay, having said all of the above would you please describe your process how I can get reimbursed for every gallon of gas I buy over $2.50 a gallon? I have saved all of my receipts so I just need Newt’s personal address so I can mail them to him. I know Newt would never try to lie to me or deceive me in any way and definitely never make any false promises. That would be dishonest and unethical and I know Newt could never do anything unethical. As a non-thinking conservative, I know Newt was framed by both democrats and republicans in the 1990s when Newt was Speaker of the House. And as a conservative I also reject the notion (and facts) that Newt’s current enterprises are really scams and swindles designed to enrich Newt using the gullibility of conservatives, who either have no brains or don’t have the ability to use them. 

Lastly, say hi to Newt’s wife for me! Excuse me if I forgot which one Newt is still married to. Is her name Jackie, Marianne, Callista, or has Newt made another ‘purchase’ lately? Oh well, just say hi to Newt for me. It’s easier trying to keep track of cards in Three Card Monte than Newt’s current wife. Coincidentally, Three Card Monte is known as Find The Lady in Briton. Funny eh?

Thank you for your very generous offer Newt! I greatly appreciate it! 

Signed,
A Wrong-Winger
 

BTW: To contact Newt to get reimbursed for every penny you spend above $2.50 a gallon just contact Newt at:

http://www.newt.org/contact/

As Worker’s Produce More, they are Paid Less

The chart below shows the growing disparity between worker productivity and their salaries between 1947 and 2011. Since 1947 productivity was exactly in line with salaries until the early 1980s. If you notice as productivity increased, salary increased at the identical rate.

But then came Reagan & the 1980s. Since then productivity increased to over 270% (red line) while salaries flatlined (the blue line). So for all that additional productivity people are paid less than half what they should be paid (specifically 170% less). And year by year it’s getting worse.

If employees were paid for their productivity they’d get an automatic 170% increase in salary overnight. But the money keeps going to the top 1% and NOT the true producers. Why aren’t we having a revolution right now over this issue? Of course, the main street corporate-owned media won’t ever act like journalists and give people facts. They are too busy reporting on Snookie’s pregnancy and the Kardashians.

The right wing says those who work the hardest get ahead but they are clueless and totally brainwashed. You’d think conservatives would figure out that they are producing more and getting paid less, while the heads of the companies they work for are looting their businesses’ vaults. But in the right-wing bizarro world 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4. They live in an opinion-filled world fed to them by right wing radio and Faux News and they never try to search for the truth. It’s easier (and more infantile) to blame President Obama for everything instead of searching for the truth.

No matter how productive a person is their salaries have been virtually flatlined since the early 1980s. Corporations take that extra employee productivity and use it to increase their profits and dole out huge amounts of executive pay, but the real producers (the workers) in the businesses get nothing for their extra efforts and hard work.

All anyone has to do to see who the actual producers are is to look around at everything they see. The middle class, poor and even slaves built everything in this country. Slaves were used to build the White House and virtual slaves built the railroads which led to the expansion of the United States. Countless people died because workers didn’t have any rights and were forced to work long hours, with little pay and often in very dangerous working environments. The 1% didn’t build our country, the 99% did. But with every passing day the richest are getting richer while the true builders of our country are getting poorer. In 2011, the top 1% received 93% of all gains. They received an average of almost $110,000, while each person in the bottom 90% lost $147. It is beyond belief how conservatives so worship the extremely wealthy. It’s as if they are choosing to be willfully ignorant, admiring the very rich while attacking the most vulnerable and the poorest, the same people who built everything around them.

This chart is from the Economic Policy Institute: