Hecklers Take Over Town Hall Meetings As Obama Urges Them On

Touring one of the few places in America where government investment had given American manufacturing a leg up in international competition, President Barack Obama Thursday urged constituents to let lawmakers know they were frustrated with Washington gridlock in a moribund economy.

"The last thing we need is Congress spending more time arguing in D.C.," Obama told a cheering crowd at Johnson Controls, Inc., in Holland, MI, where the company manufactured advanced batteries. "What I figure is they need to spend more time out here listening to you and hearing how fed up you are!"

Some lawmakers had already heard exactly how fed up the electorate was at a series of raucous town hall gatherings and street corner protests.

On Monday, Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) faced an angry crowd in Lincoln that demanded he raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to address the nation's budget deficit.

"Big corporations and the rich have to pay their fair share," said Jennifer Wendelin, one of the more civil constituents, who actually waited for her turn to speak. "If we have to bite the bullet, they do, too. We can't be forced to shoulder the entire burden."

Johanns, who specifically wanted to force Wendelin and ordinary Americans to shoulder the entire burden, continued to oppose ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

"The wealthy just horde the cash!" someone shouted.

Johanns allowed, "there are things you could do with tax reform," although, being a Republican, he probably meant there should be even more tax cuts, tax breaks, and tax subsidies for the rich. Johanns remained eager to gut Medicare and Social Security, and hand all the money from those programs to his wealthy cronies and patrons. "That's the most unpopular message I could deliver," he admitted, remaining intransigent nonetheless.

In Michigan, Obama told the crowd, "Tell Congress to get past their differences and send me a road construction bill so that companies can put tens of thousands of people to work building our roads, our bridges, our seaports!"

America needed $2 trillion in infrastructure repairs, a recent study revealed. With millions of unemployed  and trillions in infrastructure repairs going begging, "it doesn't take a genius to put the two together," New York University economist Nouriel Roubini told Charlie Rose.

Unfortunately, not only was America not governed by geniuses, it was in fact governed by brain-dead greed zombies. Instead of increasing spending to stimulate the economy, politicians were fixated on slashing spending to depress the economy. The greed zombies aimlessly roamed country clubs and golf courses across the land, moaning, "Tax cuts for the rich...tax cuts for the rich...tax cuts for the rich..."

Protesters gathered outside the Dublin, OH golf course House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was roaming to demand action on jobs. "What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now!" came the call-and-response.

Boehner declined to meet with the crowd.

Protester Sheri Dever, an unemployed MBA, had come down from Dayton. "I hope to explain to him...what it's like," she told ABC news. "Stop the bickering, get the jobs back to Ohio, not overseas, but bring them back here. We are dying out here."

Tax policies that over-emphasized profits encouraged downsizing, mergers, off-shoring and outsourcing to fatten the bottom line at the expense of jobs and investment.

Tea Party zealot Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), expecting the fawning accolades of sycophants enamoured with his unconscionable government hostage-taking and economy-busting plutocrat placating, was jolted by a seething crowd in Wauconda, IL.

Walsh, in full Tea Party mania, was blasting entitlements, and warming up to the GOP theme of dismantling Medicare and Medicaid so his rich cronies could run off their funding. "This country, for years, has put off the discussion, how are we going to pay for that? Let's have the discussion!"

"Let's tax the rich!" shouted a constituent. The crowd applauded. Discussion over.

Taxing the rich was understandably a recurring theme at town hall gatherings, as recent polls have revealed 66% of Americans wanted to raise taxes on the rich to address any deficit reduction, and 72% wanted to tax those making a quarter mil or more a year to maintain Medicare and Social Security funding.

Self-proclaimed war hero Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) didn't receive a hero's welcome at a Tucson town hall, where a jeering crowd repeatedly shouted him down.

McCain was booed and taunted as he tried to justify cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. "Sir, you've got to let me finish, and then I'll let you talk, OK?" McCain struggled, forgetting he was the public servant and not a medieval lord addressing his peasants. Cat-calls cascaded through the hall. "Let's cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%..." McCain started again, as the crowd shouted in anger. McCain stumbled on, trying to talk about closing loopholes.

The crowd was fed up with multi-national corporations like General Electric posting $14 billion in profits without paying any corporate income tax. GE took advantage of a loophole shielding overseas profits. It was not immediately known whether this was a loophole McCain favored closing, as his interrogation session at the Tucson-Hanoi Hilton descended into more shouting.

GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was also sick of people picking on the multinationals, and told fair goers in Iowa that "corporations are people, my friend!"

"I'm not going to raise taxes!" Romney insisted while the jeering crowd chanted, "Wall Street greed!"

As America desperately needed a robust stimulus program to kick start the moribund engine of the world's economy, Republicans remained focused on slashing spending, and dismantling the entitlements that millions of Americans depended on and that pumped billions of dollars into the economy.

In certain small corners of the nation, some voters, at least, recognized that continuously coddling the wealthy hadn't created jobs, or improved conditions, or strengthened the nation despite thirty years of GOP greed zombies moaning it would.

And, in some certain tiny, tiny corners of the zombie-infested Republican nether world, minuscule hairline cracks might have been appearing.

"I did sign that pledge when I was first running (in 2004)," Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) told his town hall gathering how he'd once knelt before Grover Norquist and proclaimed himself Norquist's liege man. "I informed the organization I don't consider (the pledge) binding. I don't care to be associated with it."

"We have a broken tax code that is skewed to the wealthy and corporations (that) know how to move capital around," he said.

Dickinson wrote, "Hope is that little thing with feathers..."

Polls Show GOP Scorns Americans' Wishes With Super Committee Picks

Two new polls revealed once again that the vast majority of the American people believed the rich should pay more in taxes, but Republicans appointing half of the so-called Super Committee tasked with working out the second half of the recent deficit-reduction package were adamant that Americans' wishes would have no impact on their unwavering commitment to coddle the rich with more and greater tax cuts, tax breaks, and tax subsidies.

"What I can pretty certainly say to the American people, the chances of any kind of tax increase passing with this, with the appointees of (House Speaker) John Boehner (R-OH) and I, are going to put in there, are pretty low," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sneered his utter contempt for the wishes of the electorate he was supposedly sworn to serve.

63% of Americans wanted McConnell and Republicans on the Super Committee to increase taxes on businesses and higher-income Americans as part of any deficit reduction package, a new CNN/ORC poll revealed Wednesday. However, all six Republicans selected by Boehner and McConnell were Grover Norquist sycophants pledged never to raise taxes on their ultra-wealthy patrons.

Only 35% wanted the Super Committee to make major changes in Social Security and Medicare, while 64% believed such changes should be off the table.

McConnell, however, wanted the Super Committee "to come back with a wholly significant entitlement reform." Republicans were rebooting their disgraced plot to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to their insurance company cronies, and pawn off future seniors with worthless vouchers. Most Republicans also wanted to plunder Social Security and hand all its money to their Wall Street money moguls to pile on the roulette wheel of international equity markets.

The Super Committee was part of the ransom Republicans demanded for releasing the federal government debt ceiling they had kidnapped. If the government hadn't been able to raise its self-imposed credit limit, it wouldn't have been able to fund operations, pay off existing obligations, or send out Social Security or Veterans' benefits, eventually leading to the first-ever default on sovereign American debt.

The Republicans' ransom also included a $2.8 trillion all-cuts deficit reduction package that has created havoc in global equity markets. In dicey economic times, when the government becomes the consumer of last resort, government should be increasing spending to stimulate the economy, but Republicans continued to insist that government slash spending to depress the economy.

The Super Committee was slated to develop the second half of the deficit reduction package, allowing Republicans another chance to heed the electorates' call for revenue reforms to reduce the nation's debt.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll also released Wednesday revealed 66% of Americans they surveyed wanted to raise taxes on upper-income Americans as a way to reduce the federal deficit.

60% believed major changes should be made to the tax code to increase tax revenue.

However, right-wing firebrand and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), espousing the party line, declared, "the House won't support increasing taxes."

The six Republicans selected for the Super Committee were all right-wing stalwarts committed to coddling their rich cronies with more tax cuts and subsidies, not to reducing the deficit by tapping the horded billions in their rich cronies' coffers.

Among the GOP Senators, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) was McConnell's trusted henchman, Rob Portman (R-OH) was the Bush Administration's budget director, and Pat Toomey (R-PA) was a Tea Party ideologue.

Among the GOP members of Congress, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) was the staunch Norquistist chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) was the Energy and Commerce Committee chair committed to giving coal and oil companies free reign to devastate the environment, and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) was the rabid anti-tax fanatic who chaired the House Republican Committee.

None demonstrated the least interest in representing the desires of the vast majority of Americans. All were committed to shielding their cronies' tax subsidies, shelters and havens.

Gallup found 66% of all Americans wanted the rich to pay higher taxes, but only 37% of Tea Party zealots felt the same way.

The Republicans were wholly committed to representing the interests of the tiny Tea Party extremist minority.

CNN/ORC found 63% of all Americans wanted to raise taxes on business and high-income earners, but only 24% of Tea Party zealots felt the same way.

The Republicans were wholly committed to representing the interests of the tiny Tea Party extremist minority.

64% of Americans didn't want major changes to Medicare or Social Security, but 47% of Tea Party zealots wanted to gut Medicare and dismantle Social Security, and let insurance company moguls and Wall Street tycoons run off with all the money.

Other recent polls revealed that 72% of Americans wanted to raise taxes on those making $250,000 or much, much more a year to keep Medicare and Social Security benefits secure, but Republicans and Tea Party zealots were committed to ransacking those programs so the wealthy could party in Ibiza.

"I think the focus needs to stay on spending. This select committee has been tasked with the job of trying to identify those cuts," Cantor rejected revenue reform to address the federal deficit.

Supply side ideologue Camp chimed in, "Last Friday's downgrade of our debt by S&P is a strong reminder of how important it is for this committee to lead and focus on restoring confidence in America by further cutting out of control spending..."

Never mind S&P felt it was Republican intransigence on taxes that imperiled America's sovereign debt.

The Republican juggernaut blundered blindly ahead, coddling the rich while devastating America's economy and wreaking havoc in global financial markets. Again. Still. Once and forevermore.

London Riots Spread, Engulf Nation

London was burning.

So, Prime Minister David Cameron threw 16,000 police on the streets of London and locked down the capitol.

The violence spread across the rest of the country.

Manchester burned. Birmingham burned. Liverpool burned. Towns in Kent suffered smashed windows and looting. A police station in Nottingham was firebombed. It was not immediately known whether the sheriff had been there.

What began with the fatal police shooting of 29-year-old Mark Duggan Thursday in Tottenham, north of London, escalated into a nationwide outpouring of pent-up frustration with a faltering economy, draconian service cuts, and an isolating disenfranchisement that disconnected a teeming underclass from the nation in which it lived.

"I was one of these kids but it's bloody hard for them," said one witness in Hackney. "There's nothing to do at all. University fees have gone up. Education costs money. And there's no jobs. This is them sending out a message."

What witnesses saw on the streets was more complex than the characterization that black youths enraged by the Duggan shooting were rioting. The rioters were for the most part young, and many were black, but many were also Asian and white. There were young men and young women. And some were not so young. 

"I've seen Turkish boys. I've seen Asian boys. I've seen grown white men," said Jay Kast, an East Ham youth worker who had witnessed three nights of rioting. "They're all out taking part," he said. "They're disconnected from the community and they just don't care."

Multi-ethnic areas of London, Bristol, Liverpool and Birmingham exploded in rioting and flames. The mobs were organically coordinating themselves with Blackberries and cell phones.

"Hampstead, bruv. Let's go rob Hampstead," one said.

"Kilburn. It's happening in Kilburn and Holloway," said another, consulting his Blackberry.

The riots have also been characterized as being non-political, but a riot didn't need to voice arcane parliamentary demands to make them political. The rioting itself demonstrated political failure. The rioting itself was an act of the body politic. The government's response to the rioting was a political response.

The riots were the result of many political decisions over many years that shaped the society the rioting sprang from. A society decided to disenfranchise its youth and its poor and its marginalized communities, and decided to criminalize the reactions of those disenfranchised youth and poor and marginalized communities.

"When you have police officers jumping out of vans, calling 18-year-olds bitches and niggers; I'm a youth worker, I see it all over," said one witness. "That's what's happening. They are thinking, 'who the fuck are you?' And so it starts."

The riots might be rampant thuggery or hooliganism, but it has clearly risen from some breakdown in the society's order. Large demonstrations had protested Britain's austerity measures and service cuts for months. Polite placard waving and rhythmic chanting weren't the only responses a government throwing its people under the bus might expect. Organic violent uprisings, regardless of whether they articulated political demands, have been a common enough response throughout history. The riot itself was the articulation of something gone terribly wrong.

England was still near enough to freedom that frustration and anger could foment an uprising that implied disappointment of expectation.

Mark Duggan was shot and killed when officers from the Metropolitan police's Operation Trident, a special violent crime unit tasked to black communities, and Special Crimes Directorate 11, the Met's intelligence unit, along with officers from CO19, a special armed unit, stopped the vehicle Duggan had been riding in near the Tottenham Hale tube station to arrest him. The Independent Police Complaints Commission announced Tuesday that Duggan had a loaded firearm in his possession, but concluded he had not fired at police. Duggan was shot once in the chest and once in the arm, and pronounced dead at the scene.

The shooting triggered a series of riots that escalated in scope daily, culminating in the widespread destruction splashed across televisions around the world. A huge Sony distribution center near Enfield was burned to the ground, after looters reportedly ran off with goods. Shops, restaurants, hair salons, and homes were attacked, vandalized and looted. Cars and buses were burned on the streets.

Gang bangers get gunned down by cops in America all the time, and no one protests. American cops gun down young people of color in the streets, in front of their homes, on train station platforms seemingly every week, and people act as though they're too numb to care.

But in England, a poor and disenfranchised underclass had taken the streets in cities and towns across the land. In England, despite the poverty, the service cuts, and the disenfranchisement of communities finding it harder and harder to access a better world, people were still impassioned enough to act out.

In London, there was still outrage. In England, there was still fury at the unfairness of a system that coddled the rich and dispossessed the poor. In England, the rioters might be black, or white, or Asian, or Middle Eastern, but it was the English tradition of civil disobedience that had won out. The violence was a condemnable tragedy for homeowners and shopkeepers and commuters and parents and a great nation. But, at least in England, there was still a will to fight.

75% Say Things Pretty/Very Bad As Tea Party Downgrade Heralds Recession

Aided by the Standard & Poor's credit-rating arm of their party, the Republicans' Tea Party Downgrade broke through America's financial defenses, and plunged the nation, and the world, toward a Tea Party Recession.

"Everyone's looking and seeing a strong possibility of a global recession now," Princeton economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman told the PBS News Hour Monday.

It was not immediately known how many GOP moguls were making a killing short-selling the plummeting global bourses. More than $4 trillion had vanished since markets peaked July 21, even before Monday's 600-point Dow Jones downer. Much of that cash doubtless went into the well-hidden numbered accounts of well-connected tycoons.

A new CNN poll revealed 75% of those surveyed were conscious enough to realise things from sea to shining sea were going either "pretty badly" or "very badly."

60% of Americans figured the economy would get worse before it got better, probably because 48% of Americans had drunk the supply-side Kool-Aid and believed the recent economy-killing $2.8 trillion all-cuts deficit-reduction bomb Tea Party zealots forced onto President Barack Obama, Democrats, the nation and the world actually hadn't cut spending enough.

Which, of course, is what the GOP's credit rating agency S&P claimed Friday, downgrading the nation's AAA credit rating to AA+,  then Monday slapping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to boot. The Tea Party Downgrade triggered another market slide Monday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged another 634.76 points, or 5.55%. The NASDAQ was down 174.72 points, or 6.9%.

Krugman described the synergy of GOP budget-cutting mania and S&P credit-rating slashing as "bad ideas being reinforced by bad agencies."

Despite the downgrade, investors were dumping equities and stampeding pell-mell into supposedly non-AAA US Treasuries. Yields on the benchmark 10-year note fell 20 basis points to 2.35%, the lowest level in two years, confirming that anyone and everyone was eager to buy up as much of the S&P-shunned US debt as they could get their hands on. If you have crummy credit, you're supposed to have to pay higher interest, but US Treasuries were paying lower and lower interest every day.

"I believe this is without question a Tea Party downgrade," Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told NBC's Meet the Press Sunday. "This is a Tea Party Downgrade, because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered even the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal."

President Obama and Democrats had sought a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction which included closing some tax loopholes and ending a few tax subsidies.

Not that anyone should have been messing with deficit reduction or considering spending cuts in the middle of a dicey economy, when governments, acting as the consumer of last resort, should have been stimulating the economy with more spending, rather than depressing the economy with huge spending cuts.

"We actually need stimulus now," said JP Morgan Chase's Terry Belton on the News Hour Monday.

Financial markets around the world were taking a beating, and as ordinary Americans watched their retirement savings vanish, short-selling opportunists were doubtless raking it in.

S&P Monday pontificated, "the August 5, 2011 lowering of the United States of America sovereign credit rating to AA+ from AAA does not have an immediate or direct impact on our ratings on US banks."

Swing-and-a-miss, strike two, on another belt-high fastball right over the middle of the plate. While investors were scrambling to buy the US sovereign debt S&P said was garbage, investors were scrambling to dump the stocks of big banks S&P touted.

Bank of America stock was down 20.32% to $6.51 a share. Citigoup was down 16.42% to $27.95. Wells Fargo was down 9.04% to $22.93. Rounding out the Big Four, JP Morgan Chase was down 9.41% to $34.06.

S&P was heretofore best known for taking any pile of bundled sub-prime mortgages and rating them AAA during the 2000s real estate bubble. It was not immediately known how long S&P had been planing their anti-American rating perfidy, although a sudden spate of modest post-2008-crash contributions from S&P execs to some Democratic politicians, cultivating the appearance of impartiality, appeared suggestive.

S&P's own parent company's stock tumbled 8.6% Monday. McGraw-Hill dropped $3.62, closing at $36.87.

Global markets continued to implode as it began to dawn on investor after investor that built-in spending caps Republicans extracted from the Obama Administration would preclude any possibility of US government stimulus spending.

While corporations had plenty of money to hire more workers and invest in new equipment, the dearth of consumer demand had discouraged business expansion. Now, Republicans extended that demand gap by proscribing the US government from fixing any of the $2 trillion worth of infrastructure in need of repair, or investing in any of the billions of dollars worth of research opportunities promising the new technologies of the future.

Doubtless, Republicans were heavily leveraged on China developing those new technologies. China, for their part, chimed in through their state-run Xinhua News Agency, "China, the largest creditor of the world's sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets." China was even more leveraged on China developing those new technologies, and wanted to be sure American industry wouldn't be innovating any time soon.

With no demand to expand business, corporate plutocrats were doubtless happy to simply pocket the money sitting on their ledgers. Crash the market, short-sell the stock, pocket the difference. It beats working for a living.

And, Republicans were already clamoring for even more cuts from the bipartisan, bicameral commission that's supposed to figure out the second half of the $2.8 trillion in cuts they'd won. Tea Party zealots were feverishly dreaming of $4 trillion in all-cuts deficit reduction. Tea Party zealots wanted to make sure any economy they crashed, stayed crashed.

The ultimate Tea Party goal, of course, was to eliminate Medicare and hand all its money to their insurance industry cronies while leaving seniors with worthless discount coupons, then to dismantle Social Security and hand all its money to their Wall Street cronies while leaving all but a handful of Americans penniless in their retirement years.

With consumers tapped out and government purse-strings held hostage by Tea Party terrorists, the economy was doomed to a death spiral. Wall Street money moguls, wallowing in their mountains of cash, appeared unaware they were gutting the financial system that supported them. But, investors seemed to understand the line score, as they dumped everything in sight and dove into the safe haven of the US Treasury notes S&P disdained.

After all, even though gold shot up $56 to $1719 an ounce, Treasury notes were so much more convenient to deal with than a yellow metal that was bulky, heavy, and required a fortress and a small army of machinegun-toting sentries to guard it.

Bachmann, DeMint, Lunatic Wing Leads GOP's Extreme Post-Debt Deal Charge

The Lunatic Wing dominating the Republican party, drunk from their debt-ceiling victory, redoubled their efforts to dismantle Medicare and the Environmental Protection Agency, and jeered for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's resignation.

"I am calling on the President to seek the immediate resignation of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and to submit a plan with his list of cuts to balance the budget this year, turn the economy around and put our people back to work," Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) shrieked on disgraced phone-hacker Rupert Murdoch's Fox News.

Bachmann called for even more cuts on top of the $2.8 trillion in cuts the Tea Party extracted from President Barack Obama and Democrats as ransom for raising the nation's debt ceiling and avoiding defaulting on existing obligations. Those draconian cuts precipitated a 10% drop in global equity markets, as Republicans replaced uncertainty in the business community with absolute certainty that the US government would not be stepping up to fill the demand gap miring the economy in its prolonged slump.

Bachmann's Senate Tea Party compadres were in full voice as well. Republicans were keen to pin the blame for the economic catastrophe they caused on Obama and his Treasury Secretary

"The President should demand that Secretary Geithner resign and immediately replace him with someone who will help Washington focus on balancing our budget and allowing the private sector to create jobs," howled Senate Tea Party leader Jim DeMint (R-SC). By "balancing our budget," DeMint meant more tax cuts for the wealthy paid for with more economy-depressing spending cuts. By "allowing" plutocrats to create jobs, he meant repealing all environmental protections, and all business and financial oversight.

"We must get new leadership," chimed in Tea Party zealot Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), "and put in place people who have seen problems coming and offered credible solutions..." meaning the President should install the right-wing ideologues who crashed the economy in 2008 and kept it crippled ever since by obstructing every effort to resuscitate it. By "credible solutions," Paul, of course, meant more tax cuts for the wealthy, paid for with more economy-depressing spending cuts.

Tea Party zealots were taunting and screaming for Geithner's head following Standard and Poor's politically motivated downgrading of America's credit rating from AAA to AA+. S&P had been criticized for credit rating practices that contributed to the 2000s real estate bubble.

Moody's and Fitch, the other two major credit rating agencies, have not changed their AAA rating of American debt, and US Treasuries remained investors' most popular haven during the recent flight to quality.

Bashing Geithner was only a passing distraction, as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was eagerly rebooting the GOP scheme to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to insurance company cronies, and pawn off seniors with worthless vouchers.

"Promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept," Cantor taunted, as he relished the idea of sick and injured seniors forced to empty their bank accounts in vain attempts to obtain medical care, then dying horribly and miserably as loved ones looked on in helpless anguish.

"What we have to be, I think, focused on is truth in budgeting here," Cantor sneered, giddy to break the nation's promise to care for its elders so he and fellow Republicans could keep their promise to Grover Norquist to never tax the rich.

The Republican cohort was also unabashedly moving to further subjugate America beneath the oil moguls who have pumped millions into Republican coffers over the years. Republican Senators alone have gotten more than $21 million from the oil companies.

"Millions of American jobs are in jeopardy because of the costly rules proposed or under development by the EPA," roared House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Fred Upton (R-MI). "If the administration is serious about job creation and not just paying lip service, it should begin by putting the brakes on this regulatory train wreck."  In other words, oil companies should be allowed to drill, spill, and devastate land, sea and air unfettered.

And, Bachmann wanted everyone to guzzle as many gallons of gas and burn as many tons of coal as possible.

Bachmann and right-wing lunatics were waging a war against sustainability. They claimed the Earth should be drilled, strip-mined, gutted and left as a toxic slag-heap, because the alternative would be submitting to a vast sustainability conspiracy whose true aim was to force the Aryan super-race into cities and make them ride public transit with subhuman mongrel races and homosexuals.

"This is their agenda. I know it's hard to believe, its hard to fathom, but this is Mission Accomplished for them," Bachmann recently railed in Mother Jones magazine as reporters undoubtedly backed discreetly away and scanned the room for sharp objects. "They want Americans to take transit and move to the inner cities. They want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs."

Bachmann's none-to-subtle references to "inner cities," tenements," and "urban core," were clearly intended to incite white separatists huddled in rural enclaves clutching automatic weapons and scanning the skies for black helicopters.

Right-wing Republicans were worked up over an old United Nations initiative called Agenda 21 that sought to mitigate the effects of development with sustainability goals, including managing forests and curbing pollution. Republicans saw this as proof black helicopters were coming to destroy the oil companies and eradicate the Aryan race.

In their anti-sustainability harangue, Bachmann and Republicans have defined freedom as white Aryans driving gas-guzzlers flat out across remote exurban expanses devoid of ethnic diversity. Apparently, Michele Bachmann was as obsessed with Mad Max movies as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) was with Ayn Rand. At least Atlas Shrugged was a book. Of course, no one could seriously expect Michele Bachmann to read a book. Pausing and rewinding while ogling Mel Gibson's leather-clad posterior was presumably more Bachmann's speed.

Bachmann voted to cut off funding for light rail projects as a state senator, crafted home-made anti-transit videos, and toured right-wing churches spreading the pro-pollution gospel.

Not only must public transit, energy-efficient refrigerators and twisty compact fluorescent lights be abolished, everyone must consume as much fossil fuel as possible for the very survival of the Aryan race. Their battle against the environment was an apocalyptic struggle to save the white race from the hated multi-ethnic United Nations, in which oil and coal companies were the Master Race's last, best hope.

Why oil and coal companies were the white race's last, best hope remained unclear, although it certainly had something to do with the aforementioned millions and millions of dollars oil companies have lavished on their GOP vassals.

Republicans destroyed the world's nascent economic recovery with their debt-ceiling budget bomb, and this victory of delusional extremism over reason has emboldened the GOP to pursue every delusional extremist demand on their laundry list. From dismantling Medicare to dismantling the global ecosystem, an agenda impossible to enact through democratic legislative processes has become an agenda assured of enactment through hostage-taking and ransoming.

By yanking $2.8 trillion out of the economy, Republicans crushed the nation's fragile economic recovery and plunged the world's financial markets into chaos. More than $4 trillion dollars have vanished since the markets began their slide July 21. Intoxicated by their orgy of devastation, Republicans have embarked on enacting the rest of their lunatic agenda, each item of which was exponentially more destructive than the last.

GOP Debt Ceiling Bomb Was Economic Weapon of Mass Destruction

Republicans bent on destroying Barack Obama's Presidency and avowed to holding the President to a single term were doubtless jubilant surveying the devastation wrought Thursday by the detonation of their economic weapon of mass destruction.

Even as news of the Republican-coddling cuts-only deficit reduction package hit the media, the world's financial markets were tumbling. A couple of days later, they collapsed. The Dow Jones Industrial average dropped 513 points in a day, and markets around the world fell 2%-4%. The New York Stock Exchange was down 10% in two weeks.

Financiers and money moguls took a breather Friday as they gleefully contemplated gorging themselves on the billions of Euros they'd succeeded in brow-beating out of the European Central Bank. Friday's global equity slide was temporarily mitigated  by news the ECB would be dumping billions into the money moguls' troughs by buying dodgy Spanish and Italian debt, allowing the plutocrat gluttons to briefly feast on European taxpayers rather than American ones.

Slightly better-than-horrific July employment figures temporarily distracted the tycoons as well, as the US economy added 117,000 jobs and unemployment fell to 9.1%, the latter mostly because more discouraged workers had just stopped looking.

Every credible economist knows that in dicey economic times, governments become the consumer of last resort and must pump stimulus into the economy. Only right-wing idiot logs feverishly ingratiating themselves with Rupert Murdoch and his ilk on Fox News and at Tea Party conclaves spout the long-disgraced boiler-plate supply-side drivel that's never done anything except sow misery while concentrating 84% of America's wealth in the hands of just 20% of its people.

In the midst of a very dicey economy, Republicans brow-beat Obama and Democrats into accepting a scheme to hack $2.8 trillion out of the it. If, in dicey economic times, governments are supposed to be stimulating the economy with spending, they certainly shouldn't be depressing it with egregious spending cuts. If governments are supposed to be passing stimulus bills, they certainly shouldn't be passing depressant bills.

But that is exactly what Republicans harangued America into doing. In a New York minute, the uncertain business climate magnates huddled in their counting houses worried over was replaced by the absolute certainty that there would be no stimulus spending coming from the world's largest economy.

As the world's economies plummeted toward the second dip of a double-dip recession, there was doubtless dancing in the halls of Republican office suites. Having orchestrated skyrocketing gas prices and plunging government spending, they'd succeeded in destroying the nascent economic recovery, and could hang all the blame on Obama.

Whether you call it the Boehner Bomb or the McConnell Massacre, the disastrous slashing of $2.8 trillion dollars out of an economy desperately treading water was guaranteed to plunge the world into economic oblivion. The debt worries in Greece were an infinitesimal annoyance. The concern over Italian deficits was a mild inconvenience. Spain, Portugal, and Ireland were unconscionably choreographed crises manufactured by greedy bankers. The Republican crippling of American economic vitality was a nuclear Armageddon.

The only question was which Republican cronies made fortunes short-selling the down market Republicans engineered.

And having detonated their weapon of economic mass destruction, Republicans, drunk with success and power, erupted into an orgy of hip-swaying, fist-pumping, finger-shaking, football-spiking end zone dances.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) Wednesday gleefully taunted, "promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept" as Republicans focused once again on gutting and voucherizing Medicare. Cantor's taunting proved Republicans would stop at nothing to keep their pledges to Grover Norquist, while blithely breaking their pledges to the American people.

"When you see what the President has done to the economy in just three years, you know why America doesn't want to find out what he can do in eight," howled Presidential pretender Mitt Romney, confident audiences with protozoan attention spans wouldn't recall it was Republicans that crashed the economy and made sure they keep their jackboots on its throat.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) shook her pom poms and jeered, "with 9.1% unemployment, it is still evidence that the President's failed economic policies are digging us deeper into a hole," without elaborating that it was Republicans who were holding the guns while they forced their hostages to dig their own graves.

Even the pitiful lesser Bachmann, Tim Pawlenty, crowed, "Today's dismal jobs report is a far cry from the hope and change that President Obama promised," without explaining it was Republican intransigence that obstructed any real economic stimulus package capable of extricating the nation from the elephantine catastrophe Republicans had created.

In every case, the Republican solution, as always, as ever, as once and for all eternity, was More Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, More Spending Cuts on Everyone Else. Whatever else they might do, Republicans do spike the football, right in their victims' faces.

All across the nation, through the Republican tirade of taunting could be heard Jim Jones' chilling exhortation to drink the Kool-Aid. All across the nation, Americans, in their tens of millions, were lining up to eagerly guzzle their grape-flavored draught of economic death.

Or were they? The latest New York Times/CBS poll revealed 72% of Americans disapproved of Republicans' handling of the debt ceiling deal. 75% of voters didn't think most lawmakers deserved to be re-elected.

59% believed the federal budget deficit was caused either by George W. Bush (44%) or Congress (15%), versus only 15% who thought Obama was to blame.

While President Obama's 48% approval rating was nothing to write home about, the NYT/CBS poll found Congress' approval rating was an infinitesimal 14%. Fully 82% of Americans disapproved of the job Congress was doing. Clearly, Obama's low approval rating was largely due to his obeisance to Republicans.

And, despite Republican exhortations to drink the supply-side Kool-Aid and slash taxes for the rich, 63% of Americans wanted to raise taxes on those making $250,000 a year or more to reduce the nation's deficit.

Clearly, Obama must tax the Republicans' ultra-wealthy patrons and cronies, and embark on a vigorous campaign to rebuild and revitalize America. America needs $2 trillion just to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure. America needs trillions more to pioneer the innovations and technologies of the future. Americans are ready.

But is the President?