Emma Berry

Posts Tagged ‘Chuck Grassley’

Many Americans are being manipulated using Hitler’s propaganda techniques by right-wing neo-cons who fund and whip up the Tea Party movement such as the Koch Brothers and right-wing propagandist Dick Armey;  Republican politicians such as Chuck Grassley, Dick Cheney,  and others; mainstream media sideshow Bob opportunists like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin.  It’s ironic that these people smile benignly when ordinary Americans draw mustaches on photos of the President of the United States depicting him as Hitler, when it is in fact these right-wing fanatics who are using Hitler’s propaganda methods to manipulate the American people.

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The Big Lie (German: Große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, for a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

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“.  .  .   All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. “—Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X

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What big lies have the Republican leadership and the multibillionaire neo-cons who support them told over the past 8 years?  Here are a few:

• The Republican sponsored big lie about Weapons of Mass Destruction– They repeated this lie again and again and again.  Colin Powell even took it to the United Nations and repeated it before the world.  He has subsequently apologized for doing so.  They knew.  They all knew that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.  THEY LIED AND THEY KNEW THEY WERE LYING.
  
• The Republican sponsored big lie about Death Panels in the Senate Health Care Bill–I’m not a huge fan of the Senate health care bill but it does not and it NEVER did have anything in it about death panels for old people.  NEVER. Chuck Grassley, a Senator from Iowa, was on the Senate committee that crafted this bill.  HE KNEW THAT THERE WERE NO DEATH PANELS IN THIS BILL.  He knew that and yet he went back to his constituents in the summer recess of 2009 and deliberately told the big lie that the bill had death panels and they planned to kick grandma to the side of the road.  HE LIED AGAIN AND AGAIN TO HIS CONSTITUENTS.  HE KNEW HE WAS LYING.  If the people of Iowa re-elect Grassley, they are beyond self-destructive to vote for any representative who deliberately feeds them misinformation.  But Grassley is not the only Republican congressperson who repeated this lie.  Most of them did and they knew they were lying.  They just didn’t care.
• The Republican sponsored big lie that Obama is not a citizen. Obama’s birth certificate has been printed all over the internet.  Every ounce of evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt has been produced to prove that he was born in Hawaii.  There have even been photographs of his mother’s passport to prove that she was in Hawaii at the time of his birth.  Barack Obama is most certainly a US citizen BY BIRTH.  Yet the big lie of the birther campaign continues.  AND WORSE, REPUBLICAN US CONGRESSMEN, WHILE NOT OUTRIGHT LYING ABOUT IT PRETEND THAT THEY ARE NOT SURE.   THEY TOO ARE LIARS.  DID THEY SEE GEORGE BUSH’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE?  YET DO ANY OF THEM HAVE ANY DOUBT ABOUT THAT?
• The Republican sponsored big lie that the Obama administration has raised taxes! In fact the bare axxed truth is that they have lowered taxes for the majority of Americans.
  

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Obama is no socialist.  However, Americans need to be reminded that if many of those who telling the big lies get their way that we will likely have a government that looks more like the reign of terror that Augusto Pinochet and his thugs implemented for Chile.

We need to especially be mindful of this when we look at what is happening in Arizona, soon to be the first police state in the nation.

Now, thanks to  Scott Brown it looks like the Obama administration have finally realized that the Republican leadership have absolutely no intentions of ever compromising on any bill that will benefit the American people.

I don’t know why they didn’t realize it after this summer when they were willing to alienate their base and  give away the farm to the Republicans on the Baucus committee and still could not  garner a single Republican vote for health care.  Not only that but the entire bunch of the Republicans went back home in August and intentionally spread lies and misinformation about the Health Care bill.  No finer example of this than Chuck Grassley who even worked on the committee.  He went back and lied to his constituents again and again, telling them that there were death panels in the bill when he knew that there we not.  Chuck Grassley knowlingly lied to his constituents.

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DEMOCRATS AND ESPECIALLY THOSE FROM THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION NEED TO READ A 2006 ARTICLE FROM THE ROLLING STONE AGAIN ABOUT “THE WORST CONGRESS EVER” SINCE IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THEY HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW THE “HAVE MORES” ACT.

“…..  James Sensenbrenner Jr., an ever-sweating, fat-fingered beast .   .    .became apoplectic when Democrats who wanted to hold a hearing on the Patriot Act invoked a little-known rule that required him to let them have one.

“Naturally, he scheduled it for something like 9 a.m. on a Friday when Congress wasn’t in session, hoping that no one would show,” recalls a Democratic staffer who attended the hearing. “But we got a pretty good turnout anyway.”

Sensenbrenner kept trying to gavel the hearing to a close, but Democrats again pointed to the rules, which said they had a certain amount of time to examine their witnesses. When they refused to stop the proceedings, the chairman did something unprecedented: He simply picked up his gavel and walked out.

“He was like a kid at the playground,” the staffer says. And just in case anyone missed the point, Sensenbrenner shut off the lights and cut the microphones on his way out of the room.

For similarly petulant moves by a committee chair, one need look no further than the Ways and Means Committee, where Rep. Bill Thomas -- a pugnacious Californian who was caught having an affair with a pharmaceutical lobbyist — enjoys a reputation rivaling that of the rotund Sensenbrenner. The lowlight of his reign took place just before midnight on July 17th, 2003, when Thomas dumped a “substitute” pension bill on Democrats — one that they had never read — and informed them they would be voting on it the next morning. Infuriated, Democrats stalled by demanding that the bill be read out line by line while they recessed to a side room to confer. But Thomas wanted to move forward — so he called the Capitol police to evict the Democrats.

Thomas is also notorious for excluding Democrats from the conference hearings needed to iron out the differences between House and Senate versions of a bill. According to the rules, conferences have to include at least one public, open meeting. But in the Bush years, Republicans have managed the conference issue with some of the most mind-blowingly juvenile behavior . . . GOP chairmen routinely call a meeting, bring the press in for a photo op and then promptly shut the proceedings down. “Take a picture, wait five minutes, gavel it out — all for show” is how one Democratic staffer described the process.

Then, amazingly, the Republicans sneak off to hold the real conference, forcing the Democrats to turn amateur detective and go searching the Capitol grounds for the meeting. “More often than not, we’re trying to figure out where the conference is,” says one House aide.

In one legendary incident, Rep. Charles Rangel went searching for a secret conference being held by Thomas. When he found the room where Republicans closeted themselves, he knocked and knocked on the door, but no one answered. A House aide compares the scene to the famous “Land Shark” skit from Saturday Night Live, with everyone hiding behind the door afraid to make a sound. “Rangel was the land shark, I guess,” the aide jokes. But the real punch line came when Thomas finally opened the door. “This meeting,” he informed Rangel, “is only open to the coalition of the willing.”  SOURCE

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Democrats need to toughen up for the sake of the American people and remember who they are dealing with here.  At least half of the Republicans from the Worst Congress ever are still in Washington.  Sam Johnson is one of them.  They are among the Congressmen who rubber stamped every single one of George Bush’s unfunded requests for military appropriations.  They are the ones who drove our deficit into the stratosphere.  And yes, they are the ones today who are crying “fiscal responsibility” at every turn.

1. TOM COBURN – “To our seniors, I have a message for you: you’re going to die sooner,” if the health care bill passes, Sen. Tom Coburn (R- Okla.) said on the floor of the Senate in December. This ridiculous nonsense just adds to the long list for Tom Coburn:  his membership in the religious cult THE FAMILY;  his advisement of John Ensign; his vote with the other Republican rape nuts to allow corporations and not a court of law to rule on gang rapes; his “prayer” in the Senate “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight,” he said. “That’s what they ought to pray.” At the time it was questionable if 92 year old Robert Byrd who was at home sick would be able to make it to the Senate to vote for a bill that Coburn objected to.

2. Rep. Paul Broun (R- Ga.) took the floor of the House of Representatives Thursday to say: “If ObamaCare passes, that free insurance card that’s in people’s pockets is gonna be as worthless as a Confederate dollar after the war between the states — the Great War of Yankee Aggression.”

Mr. Broun calls Nancy Pelosi “a domestic enemy of the Constitution” and yet Mr. Broun has introduced a bill into the House of Representatives that would make 2010 THE YEAR OF THE BIBLE.Judging from the content of our Constitution, it would appear that Mr. Broun, like George Bush who said that our Constitution was no more than a gd piece of paper,  is the  true enemy of the Constitution. Separation of church and state is a legal and political principle derived from the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . .”

3.Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “Nancy Pelosi, I think, has got them all liquored up on sake and you know, they’re making a suicide run here,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on a local radio program last week of the Democrats’ final push for the health care bill.  I don’t think that it is the Democrats who are making the “suicide run”.  I think the Suicide Run was already made by the Republican Senators who chose corporations over rape victims a few months ago.  If Senator Graham thinks that is not going play and play and play again, he is a fool.

4.Orrin Hatch R- Utah “It is going to be outright war and it should be, because it would be such an abuse of the reconciliation rules,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R- Utah) said in January. “If they abuse those rules it is going to lead to even more heated animosities between not just the two parties, but even between individual senators.”  Of course it just happens to slip Senator Hatch’s mind that since 1981, reconciliation has been used 21 times—the vast majority of those reconciliation efforts have been by Republicans.  But then that doesn’t fit into the double-standard world of Orrin Hatch.

5. Chuck Grassley - The people of Iowa may “pull the plug” on Grassley in November for lying to them about death panels.  Here is one Iowan’s opinion of the liar:

The tables could turn against Republicans who don’t support health care reform.  Ironic, since the Republicans have been yammering about how health care will cost the Democrats.

For certain it will be the Republicans from poor areas who don’t endorse the health care bill who will suffer the most.

Yep that’s how it’s shaping up.  Many of the Republicans who long touted that  the Democrats will lose the House and the Senate if they vote for health care reform look like they could lose out in November if they vote against the health care bill.

Virginia Foxx, a Republican Congresswoman from the 5th Congressional District of North Carolina might be among the Republican casualties in November.

12,000 people with preexisting conditions could get insurance; 119,000 Medicare beneficiaries would have the doughnut hole closed in their prescription coverage; 800 families would be kept from going bankrupt from medical costs; and more than 14,000 small businesses would be subsidized to provide health insurance to their employees.

One Foxx constituent challenged her at a recent town hall, saying he was tired of Washington’s excuses for why health care reform couldn’t pass.

The bill would extend coverage to 53,000 people in Foxx’s district, according to an analysis.

That’s a lot of potential voters to lose.  All it will take is a little education over the next few months.

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If Democrats really get serious about real health care reform as Harry Reid has promised and pass the public option in the next couple of months, it’s all over for the Republicans in November.

The Democratic health  care reform would have the full support of 82% of the American people.

The Republican liars like Ghuck Grassley with his lies about “death panels” and other Republican poliiticians with their lies about the bill supporting abortion could very well be toast.

But if the Democrats are not careful and do not support a strong public option they can lose as well–not to Republicans, but to independents.  More and more Americans are beginning to get the ties of Congress–both Republicans and Democrats–to Wall Street.  We are not so dumb that we don’t get the connection between 50 million forced Wall Street Health Insurance customers and the stock portfolios of the 263 multimillionaires in Congress.

In one of my videos I speak about the sheer lack of moral responsibility and utter mendacity of Senator Chuck Grassley who went  back to his constituents and knowingly lied to them about the contents of the Senate Health Care Bill.  Grassley knew what was in that bill because he is a member of the Senate Finance Committee who wrote it.  He knew that the bill had no death panels in it.  Yet he is the one who started AND continued to fuel  the rumors in Iowa regarding “pull the plug on Grandma”.

Senator Grassley knowingly lied to his constitutents He is supposed to be a trusted elected official and yet he intentionally spread lies and misinformation to his voters–the people who gave him the trust of their votes.  Then after almost three weeks of repeating the same lie again and again and again, Grassley admitted that he was “mistaken”.  He was not “mistaken”  he knowingly lied.  As far as I’m concerned, he should be impeached from his public office for this.

If  you want to know how the people of Iowa feel about Chuck Grassley, look at this angry Republican Iowa farmer:

I’m sure David Koch, the 19th richest  man in the world, (son of the man who invented the process for converting oil into gasoline and also the money behind “Americans for Prosperity”) is cranking up his lie machine, Tea Party puppets,  and Congressional Monkeys to rally against health care reform.

NOTE:   Even though I consider Koch and those who support “Americans for Prosperity” as misguided at best, and evil at worst, I will be on their side IF the health care bill has a mandate for Americans to purchase their health insurance from Wall Street Predators without also offering a public option.

[Groups like Koch's purposely name their themselves accordingly so they can retort--"How can any 'real'  American be against Americans who want prosperity."]  Their propaganda and BS do not intimidate me because I know who they are and what they do.   Koch’s group would be better named “Status Quo for the Rich”.  They are NOT for prosperity of ordinary Americans. This bunch actually are recorded on TV clapping and cheering when the USA lost the bid to have the Olympics in Chicago.  A loss of thousands of potential jobs for ordinary Americans and billions of dollars for  our economy and they clap?  No they are not for prosperity.  They for advancing their own broken ideology.  That is what they are for and amazingly they dupe some ordinary Americans to fall in with them.

One of the ways they do this is to create fear by lying and creating false impressions and issues where done really exist.

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NO MORE FERTILE GROUND THAN THE ISSUE OF ABORTION
What lies can we expect to be forthcoming within the next few days regarding health care?

Well the one they are most likely to try to parade around is the notion that our taxpayer money will be spent to fund abortions.

We have a law already in place that prohibits federal money being used to pay for abortions or for health care plans that include abortion except to save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest.  It is called the Hyde Amendment.

THERE IS NOTHING IN THE HOUSE OR THE SENATE BILL THAT EVEN SUGGESTS THAT FEDERAL FUNDS BE USED FOR ABORTIONS OUTSIDE THE GUIDELINES OF THE HYDE AMENDMENT.  Anyone who suggests  otherwise is mistaken and perhaps even an intentional liar.

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On the topic of lies circulated, not only by propaganda groups like “Americans for Prosperity” and members of Congress, nothing tops the lies told by Senator Chuck Grassley last summer.  He is single most the one who started the rumor about death panels being in the bill.  He intentionally fueled that lie at town hall meetings for two solid weeks.  Grassley KNEW that it was a lie.  He was a member of the Baucus Health Care committee that wrote the Senate version of health care.  Grassley knew and still he lied for two solid weeks.  THEN, after the damage was done, he admitted that he was ‘wrong” and that indeed there are no death panels in the bill.

Chuck Grassley should have been kicked out of the Senate for his unethical behavior.  But then I guess if we started with that, there might be 10 members of the Senate left when we were finished.