I was saddened when I opened my local newspaper on Independence Day and found a half page ad quoting and taking Thomas Jefferson quotes out of context. I’ll run through the list of quotes they have poisoned our newspaper with and give you the context so you can know what is really being said. One must ask, why would Scheels spend money on such a deceptive ad. To come up with a list of quotes, they must have spent the time to actually read the context, right? Right?

I just can’t believe that Scheels intended to disrespect the readers and America by publishing a biased political screed, but it’s hard to believe they didn’t research the quotes before publishing them. Shame on you, Scheels.

Here are the quotes and the context is described below.

1. My reading of history convinces me that most bad governments result from too much government.
2. I predict future happiness for Americans if they prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
3. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
4. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle if acted on would save on-half the wars of the world.
5. To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
6. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
7. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

Let’s start with the list as a whole. One would think from this list that these are the only things that Jefferson believed and never expressed views contrary to these. Obviously he has. No one is that one sided. Hence, just the fact that Scheels decided to only print quotes that are biased proves they have an agenda and are deceiving us.

Let’s take these quotes and look at them in debth:

1. My reading of history convinces me that most bad governments result from too much government.
   This sounds simple and true on the surface but as we’ve discussed in a previous post, we need to know the right size of a government and not just strive for smaller and smaller government. Only the rich, greedy, and unethical benefit from too small a government. Worse, still, this is the dog-whistle call to the unthinking tea baggers who chant all government is bad. Believe me, Jefferson didn’t think “We The People” was bad or too big.
2. I predict future happiness for Americans if they prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
   This is a misquote and in the context means something quite different than is implied in the context of the Scheels’ ad. Here is the real quote:

   As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more. I think you will be sensible that our citizens are fast returning, from the panic into which they were artfully thrown to the dictates of their own reason; and I believe the delusions they have seen themselves hurried into will be useful as a lesson under similar attempts on them in future. The good effects of our late fiscal arrangements will certainly tend to unite them in opinion, and in a confidence as to the views of their public functionaries, legislative & executive. The path we have to pursue is so quiet that we have nothing scarcely to propose to our Legislature. A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

   You can read the entire text of the letter. As you can see here, Jefferson is talking about the country’s citizens becoming smarter and not feeling they need the government to make decision on their behalf. And, yes, we are happier when we don’t rely on the government to make our decisions, hence, “taking care of us”. This has nothing to do with taking care of our poor and mis fortunate. It has nothing to do with “We The People” uniting to fix the broken health care system.

3. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
   Sorry folks. This is just a lie. Jefferson never said any such thing.
4. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle if acted on would save on-half the wars of the world.
   Wonderful statement. Too bad republicans didn’t complain when the republicans were building up this debt, but only now find it appropriate to complain about it. Those who complain about the debt when the democrats are in power but are silent when the republicans are building up the debt are not just fools but are harmful to America.
5. To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
   This is a misquote as well. The real text says:

That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.

This is a quote from his rant on freedom from religion. This quote has nothing to do with taxes. In fact, the idea of taxes to pay for what the majority votes is the founding principle of a democracy. To refuse to be part of a system because you can claim you don’t agree with how part if of it works is foolishness. If that were the case, no one would pay taxes and America would cease to exist. Not too bright, but it plays straight into the hands of the rich who don’t want to pay their fair share.

6. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
   This is one of the most over-quoted and deceptive quotes one hears from Jefferson. Jefferson was not condoning violent revolution as a way to fix problems in a democracy. In fact, later in life wrote to say that a democracy does not need such forms of correction since we have elections. There is a good comment on this at Huffington Post.
7. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
   As sad as this comment is, we have become much more corrupt than Europe. Few nations have allowed corporations to take control of their governments. Big business has corrupted our country. Still, I agree. It’s time to reverse our over-population problem.

In conclusion, many these comments are wrong, fabrications, and mis conceptions. Why would a major corporation like Scheels feel the need to publish such a biased advertisement?

The republicans and the libertarians are mindlessly chanting for smaller and smaller government. In order to decide how much smaller our government should be, we need to decide how big is big enough and how small is too small.

Those who are incapable of thinking about the facts or are unwilling to admit the facts would argue that no government at all is the best target, well, maybe no government except the military. These same people will refuse to even let you talk when you explain that the military consumes the vast majority of our government. We spend more than 50% of our national tax dollars on military, not to mention the silly little pet projects like Iraq and Afghanistan that aren’t even included in the total.

If you add in all the local police, county police, state police, and state military reserves, it come up to way over 50%.

So for these unthinking zombies, they want to cut out the little things but leave the nanny state (military) untouched. Not too bright, huh?

How much military is too much? Face it! The bigger the military becomes, the more protection we need because the more of the world hates us because we’re so violent and militaristic. Personally, I’d like to see us reduce our military expenditures to no more than the international average.

Beside military, how big should the rest of our government be?

Should We The People ever be weaker than the strongest and richest corporations in America? Of course not. If a business gets stronger than our government, they become the government. The only protection we have from big business is government, is We The People.

The best way to reduce the size of the non-military government is to reduce the control business and aristocracies have in our country. We need to start enforcing our laws against monopolies. That would be a good start. We need to re-enact the taxes that were implemented to stop the landed gentry from becoming stronger than our country.

Ah, Jim Gibbons. You make a tea bagger proud. Too bad that you disgrace the rest of the state of Nevada. I’ve seen five year olds act more mature and sensible than you.

Gibbons doesn’t think that we’re wasting enough of our bankrupt state’s money. He wants to cancel education and any investment in Nevada’s future but he certainly has some money to jump on the Republican Crazy Train and file yet another frivolous lawsuit against health insurance reform like one more lawsuit is going to make a difference. Just how stupid is it for Nevadans to pay our scarce Nevada tax dollars pursuing lawsuits that we will have to spend our federal tax dollars to defend. I know that this sounds awfully immature by anyone’s standards, but at a time like this, it has to make a tea bagger proud.

It’s really no surprise that the majority of Nevadans have been against Gibbons from the start, but this an obvious example of Nevadan tax payers getting what we deserve for not getting out there and voting. Now it’s costing every Nevadan cold hard cash because of this man-child.

Knock, knock — wake up Nevada!

Update:
You’ve just got to read the AG’s Response to Gibbons 3-26-10.

In retrospect, it is quite ironic how the Republican party during the awful Bush years was trying to quiet the critics by calling anything critical of Bush as being not just unpatriotic but being hate speech. Has anyone heard the Republican party lately and their pet project, the Tea Baggers?

There are so many examples from vulgarity to racism Republican congressmen calling Democratic congressmen “Baby Killer”. The list of absolutely awful and distasteful rhetoric seem to have no end. For just a short list of the most recent examples, check out the links below, if you really have the stomach for it.

There is no doubt that this violent and disgusting speech coming from the Republicans is doing harm to America not just in making it impossible to resolve our differences of opinions but because it brings outright violence.

Now, please don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s just a few bad apples or that it’s not really the Republican party’s fault. It is the fault and the bad apples are killing people.

If it wasn’t the Republican Party’s intention to fan the flames of this hatred and racism, they would denounce it, but alas, they just support it more and more with each breath. The Republican part is not doing America any service by this, it is only for the benefit of the party.

If you are thinking of supporting this party in any way, think again. They are not helping anything that matters to the American people. They are only dividing us. They are responsible for the violence and the hate and the killings. What ever happened to the real Republican party? It is long gone.

Here is a sample of the awful and hateful things this party has given us just recently:

• New Orleans Joseph Cao
• Body Guard Attacks Demonstrators
• Democratic Offices Vandalized
• Right Wing Rage
• Threats of Secession
• Canada Tells Coulter to Tone it Down
• TeaBaggery Violence
• right wing violence rhetoric and its GOP mainstreaming
• Neugebauer
• Bill Bennett
• Steve King
• Texas Fools
• Military Coup
• Devin Nunes
• The END OF AMERICA

I went to a house party for Rory Reid to find out what his candidacy really meant. Of course, one never gets the “truth” at these neighborhood parties, but it’s very interesting to talk with other Nevadans and even more interesting how the candidate addresses the issues everyone is talking about.

Let me be straight up, here. Nevada has been run into the ground by an endless list of Republican governors. That is the reason Nevada is dead last at everything that matters and almost last at everything that matters even a little.

This isn’t a coincidence and Nevada is waking up to this fact. Republican governors have destroyed this state and our current disaster of a governor, Gibbons, has been one of the worst. So, let me be clear, I’d vote for almost anyone before trusting the Republican with anything in this state ever again. However –

Rory Reid is not what I expect and not progressive enough to fix the disasters the decades of Republican rule have brought Nevada.

Two things make Rory sound just like any other REPUBLICAN candidate. If he doesn’t fix both of these (and hopefully many more) he has no chance as a serious Democratic candidate. Rory’s Republican rants that need to change:

1. No New Taxes. What is this garbage? This is the Republican sound byte that has caused this current economic disaster. No new taxes means we won’t expect the corporations or the wealthy to pay their share of the taxes. So, here, at a time when Nevada is hemorrhaging in red ink, the Democratic candidate is using Republican talking points for what has failed Nevada for so long. If we don’t start expecting the corporations and billionaires to pay their fair share, Nevada will cease to function as a state and Rory has no plan to fix it.

Hey, Rory, Nevadans will vote for a real Republican long before they’ll vote for a Democrat running as a Republican. Stand up and be a Democrat and denounce the Republican failed policies. Don’t embrace them. Nevadans want to vote for a true Progressive, a true Liberal, and it’s time someone stepped up and filled those shoes.

2. Bring in more jobs, any jobs. There is no shortage of jobs in America. If Americans and Nevadans would work for wages comparable to slave labor, there would be endless corporations flooding to Nevada to take advantage of the slave labor. If we all worked for free there would be no unemployment. So, bringing in just any job to Nevada is not helping Nevada.

Hey, Rory, we need real jobs that pay real wages. We already have enough poverty level jobs. Stop encouraging the bottom feeding companies to come to Nevada to exploit our near slave labor wages. Double our minimum wage limit, outlaw H1B and H2B visas and any other such schemes for bringing in cheap labor to compete with our already rock bottom wages in Nevada.

So, Rory, the bottom line is, do you want to be just another Republican and hand the state off to another blood sucking Republican governor or do you want to run as a true Democrat and quit with the failed Republican talking points.

In an interesting and most entertaining twist, the Nevada/Reno Tea Party is all up in arms because the real Tea Party has started a political party and has put forth a candidate. The pretend Tea Party, you know, the one run by the Republican Party, is all up in arms. Holy Cow!! How dare someone introduce a candidate that challenges a Republican!

The whole hysteria just makes so obvious the fact that the Republican Party has co-opted the Nevada Tea Party and now they’re angry that the Tea Baggers feel disenfranchised and want to run a party their own way.

One can only hope that the Nevada Tea Party has come to the realization that they were being played as fools by the Republican Party. Good on them, and shame on the Republican party for trying to take advantage of a group they thought too stupid to see what they’re doing to them.

So here’s another strange personality defect present in today’s tea baggers and in the typical conservative. It’s called the Lemming trait. Of course, if’ you’re a conservative, you’ll find endless reasons why this isn’t you, regardless of the facts, but do yourself a favor and just think about it.

In the conservative (Authoritarian follower) mind set, being part of and being accepted by his group is as important as life. This makes for some of the most ridiculous behavior.

We can take examples from all around us in every day life, but we’ll just take an obvious one and leave it up to the readers (and commenters) to come up with their own examples or denials.

Example #1: News commentator Joe on one channel says there’s no such thing as global warming. Commentator Sue on another station says the same, and a third. When it is finally so obvious that temperatures are rising that no one can deny it any longer, these three commentators all come back with version two of their denial. Oh, it’s getting warmer, but not everywhere so it’s not getting warmer at all.

Your typical human with a functioning logic processor will say, hum, these people have been wrong and are now making up silly excuses why they’re not. But, everything else they say seems to make sense in my view so I’ll just ignore the inconsistencies.

Well, the next day these same commentators say, finally, oh bugger, I can’t deny it any longer so I guess we’re experiencing global warming, but the new twist is, oh, it’s not man’s fault.

Some even go so far off the tracks as to reverse themselves and say there’s still no warming just because they can find an area that is having a snow storm or because there was one flaw in the reams of evidence gathered.

Most people would quit believing commentators that are this often wrong and who refuse to adjust their positions based on evidence. But the conservative tea-bagger will just continue to follow them as if there’s nothing wrong with being wrong.

Why do conservatives continually follow those who are proven wrong so reliably? It’s because these commentators are their leaders, part of their cult or clan or group or political party. Group affiliation is more important than anything else.

No, I’m not talking about a violent revolution. But is it time for another American revolution?

The American colonists were in almost the same position we find ourselves in today. We have a foreign government controlling and taxing our people that is unresponsive to us. Why do I say foreign? Most of the corporations that control our government today are multi-national corporations. The original Tea Party was a revolt against unfair corporate control, mainly the Honorable East India Trading Company.

If not us, then who, if not now, then when? Well, look around the world and see what people revolt against their governments. Note that it is not the destitute and down-trodden. If we wait till it gets to that point, it will never happen. Revolution happens when the middle class loses faith in the government and it happens BEFORE they’re all poor.

The current tea-baggers have the right idea but they’ve been taken over by the very corporations that are the root of the problem. Today’s tea-baggers are only so very anxious and happy to force through legislation that hurts them and helps the corporations. Just look at tort reform as a very obvious example. This reform only helps the corporations and hurts the people they destroy.

Is it time for a peaceful revolution? It sure seem to look that way. Enough corporate welfare.

There’s no shortage of amusing stupidity in the lies told to the poor naive tea baggers. From today’s mail box, the honorable (convicted felon criminal) former mayor Roger Hedgecock spews lie after lie after just plain stupidity. Check out how low this man goes in deceiving the poor scared tea baggers. Why do you still listen to those you know are lying to you? Wake up tea baggers. There are real problems we ALL need to be addressing and we can’t while you’re distracted with these silly foolish lies.

Here goes — watch out, be scared, wet your pants, Obama wants to steal your retirement.

The idea to confiscate your retirement money came (no surprise) from academia.

Do you get that? Mr. felon criminal Roger Hedgecock warns you about how Obama wants to confiscate your retirement. Does anyone really believe this filth? Well, obviously a few here and there will be inclined to follow this garbage. It’s sad, but some people don’t have the critical thinking skills required to know up from down. But this is just sad to be taking advantage of the poor Americans that don’t know any better than to believe this nonsense.

Just think about that for a moment. An American president wants to confiscate your retirement? Really? And what’s next? Is he having an affair with an alien from outer space? It’s sad, but yes, some poor people don’t know any better than to believe this stuff. Shame on conservatives like Hedgecock for taking advantage of the less fortunate. Shame on them for taking advantage of our friends and neighbors.

Some people don’t remember much past last week, but about 30 years ago employers used to provide pensions for retirement benefits to their employees. A pension is like an insurance program. The longer you live the more you take out. The shorter you live the less you take out. In the long run, the same amount is taken out as is put in and everyone gets paid until the day they die.

The conservatives have brainwashed us all into thinking 401Ks are the way to go. Think for a moment about your 401K. If you are lucky enough to live a long healthy life, you’ll run out of retirement money and end up homeless or on Social Security or Welfare. Nice! Thank you Republicans for the 401K.

If, on the other hand, you die early, then you don’t get to use all the money you saved up. Thank you again, Republicans, for the 401K.

In other words, you lose either way. Who ever thought up such an awful retirement plan and who sold this lie to us? But, that’s another story.

So, Theresa Ghilarducci (repeat after me, OBAMA’S name is OBAMA, not Theresa), suggests many possible changes to the handling of 401Ks. For anyone alive today and who still has a brain cell, our 401Ks are worthless! The current Republican Depression has wiped them out. Theresa’s recommendations would prevent this from happening again and again. Shame on her for trying to come up with solutions. Let’s all hope the Republicans in Congress continue to obstruct everything that can possibly help us.

Yes, my dear tea baggers, Obama is after your worthless 401Ks and he plans to spend them on dinner and a night out with his favorite alien from Mars.

Oh, and by the way, Hedgecock’s bribery case and lying under oath was mysteriously tossed out by an appellate judge on a technicality. Do you really want to take the word of this man?

More excitement from the tea bagger emails. No wonder these poor uninformed souls are so well, uninformed. Just look at what they get in the mail box. This is from the same “expert” promoted by the tea bagger education system from my last post.

As a serious student of history, I thought I would
never come to experience what the ordinary,
moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s In
those times, the “savior” was a former
smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets,
about whom the average German knew next to
nothing.

…

Do not forget that Germany was the most educated,
the most cultured country in Europe . It was
full of music, art, museums, hospitals,
laboratories, and universities.. And yet,
in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U.
S. presidency) it was rounding up its own
citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws,
turning children against parents, and neighbors
against neighbors.

This is some pretty amazing crap. Normally America would just ignore the people who are so detached from reality, but with Republican tax cuts destroying our education system, more people, aka, tea baggers, believe the misinformation.

Anyone who wasn’t drinking whiskey and snorting cocaine (hey, am I talking about Bush here?) in school knows that six years is an eternity for an American president who only gets 4 years unless he is doing something right and gets re-elected.

More importantly, though, is the crux of the fable. Hitler didn’t take over the country by himself. He had a cult following him that was unable and unwilling to question him. In other words, he had a typical Republican party behind him.

Obama, on the other hand, has the Democratic party (and most of America) behind him and we are watching him closely and are quick to object to corrupt or even questionable behavior. If you have spent any time at all reading what the Democrats have to say about Obama you would know this, but alas, I suppose your Republican education stream (Fox?) is failing you.

What allowed Hitler to reign was a group of followers who placed party above country and, if you’re a Republican, you recognize this trait. It’s what the lock-step Republican party is all about. You’re either with us or against us.

It breaks my heart to see my poor neighbors getting their information stream polluted with this kind of deception. Hey, tea baggers, wake up before it is too late. Your people are lying to you.