Associated Press
Some conservatives made some wildly foolish predictions four years ago.
To be involved in politics is to look ahead and consider what's going to happen. Will a bill pass? Will a candidate win? Will a policy work?
With this in mind, looking back over the last several years, Republicans have come up short in the prognostication category. On economics, for example, It was GOP policymakers who were certain that Clinton's policies would be disastrous, Bush's agenda would work wonders, and Obama's Recovery Act would make the Great Recession worse. Their uninterrupted track record of failed predictions is rather startling.
But as my colleague Kent Jones reminds me, the right's forecasts on social issues aren't much better.
You've probably heard by now that if Obama wins a second term we will become a socialist nation, gun ownership will be made illegal, our country will be unrecognizable by the end of his term, and on and on. If you listen to leaders on the Right it sounds like this election is the most important election of all time and that all of America's freedoms are staked Romney defeating Obama. There's just one problem. I remember 2008.
In 2008 prominent Christian Right group Focus on the Family put out a sixteen page document called "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America." The document was in the form of a letter, a (fictional) letter from a Christian in 2012 writing back from the future about all the changes that had happened since Obama took office.
Focus on the Family was surprisingly specific in terms of its expectations for American life in October 2012. Democrats would disband the Boy Scouts; 1st graders would receive "compulsory training in varieties of gender identity"; after-school Bible studies would be banned in high schools; the Hyde Amendment would be repealed and abortion rates would soar; all FCC restrictions on obscenities would be nullified; private gun ownership would be banned in several states; home schooling would be made illegal; and the "Fairness Doctrine" would be imposed.
On health care, Democrats would pass single-payer health care and the elderly would have their access to care cut off. All of this would happen in the midst of an oppressive society in which "hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more [sic]."
I can appreciate the desire to scare the bejesus out like-minded voters, but given that none of these things actually happened, hasn't Focus implicitly argued that evangelicals should be pleasantly surprised by Obama's presidency?
Regardless, before anyone takes conservatives' new predictions for the next four years seriously, perhaps folks should consider how close they were the last time around.
Postscript: I should mention that Focus on the Family also predicted that Obama would eliminate the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. And this one actually came true -- though the right's warnings about the consequences of DADT repeal were completely wrong.
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"Mission Accomplished" says all you need to know about the right and their predictions.
You're just plain-awesome.
Predictions don't matter, it's about raising the level of "fear of/by/for" the future of the low information crowd. Everybody freak out has been the standard GOTP tool in the tool-shed, nothing new here, just be afraid - very afraid.
And we should all be afraid if the low/no-information politicians are voted back into office! VOTE them out!
Don't you know that the fact that he didn't do any of those things only proves he's planning on doing them in his second term. Or so I've heard. ;-)
Keep in mind that Focus on the Family does not call itself Focus on Reality and is engaged in the very lucrative business of raising money from rubes.
I used to live in Colorado Springs, the HQ of FOTF ... you should see their HUGE complex. The buildings plus the land must be valued in the multi-millions.
Plus, in Colorado, as I found out when looking for work, an employer is permitted to discriminate against you based on religion. Wonder who pushed to get THAT adorable little law passed?
"an employer is permitted to discriminate against you based on religion"
Can you tell me how that works? I have to be a little skeptical because it sounds unconstitutional and I cannot imagine that the ACLU would not challenge it.
The 1st Amendment says the government can't discriminate against you based on religion. Says nothing about private entities.
Under Colorado law as I understand it, a Catholic church, school, or hospital is not REQUIRED to hire people who are not Catholics for any job. (They MAY hire such people if they wish.) Similarly, a Lutheran church, school, or hospital in not required to hire people who are not Lutherans for any job. You can easily generalize the law to other religions by substituting "Synagogue" or "Mosque" where "church" is inappropriate.
I've never heard of any Moslem hospitals in Colorado or in any other state, but there may be a few. I did go to Moslem hospitals when I worked in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I never met any Saudi doctors or nurses. The doctors and nurses who treated me were mostly from India or the Philippines.
I thought employer anti-discrimination laws were federal and the protected classes included religion, private employer or not. That said, my daughter ran into the same thing in Utah (with the mormons).
thats right...its all about the money...keep them scared so they will keep sending those dollars in...just their way of controlling the ignorants....
After moving there, I considered applying to FotF for work (being new to the US I didn't know who they were). I was told to submit my resume and my statement of faith. When I asked a friend who worked for the US military family support office why I had to do that and how could it possibly be legal?, I was told that in Colorado, it is legal for an employer to consider your religion in the hiring process. Maybe my memory is foggy; it may just have been religious organizations.
"Any more" is properly spelled as either one or two words; I prefer two.
The letter is amusing, in a sad sort of way. Otoh I can think of a few liberal dystopian vapors too: the end of AFDC didn't lead to mass starvation in the streets, Bush 43 never imposed martial law, and innocent civilians who voiced political views to the left of Attila the Hun's never got shipped off to Gitmo en masse as enemy combatants.
these weren't dyistopian views these were views propagated in mass media by mainstream republicans current and former office holders and it happens every election cycle like the predictable liberal label on everyone who doesn't buy GOP disinformation
The very first thing Obama is going to do is take away our guuuuns!!!!!
As long as people keep eating their FUD, they'll keep shoveling it.
(FUD- fear, uncertainty, doubt)
It is amazing how much this stuff starts to wither and fade in the light of the truth and reality.
Its a shame that so many Republicans have been so inundated with false information and with FUD that they just can't see past the Faux news reports to see that America is as great as ever.
Microsoft and Intel used it for years...you can't possible be sure with "other " operating systems / chips
That I am personally aware of (having lived through the predictions) the Right has been wrong about everything since at least McCarthy. Looking historically, they were completely wrong about Roosevelt, they were wrong about collaborating with the Nazis through the America First Movement, and going allllll the way back, they were wrong about Lincoln's ability to win the Civil War.
There's a four word rule that works in all cases: The Right Is Wrong.
When your worldview is faith-based and ideological and disdains facts, evidence, and reasoning, then you're going to blow it when it comes to the prognostication game. That's why you get:
- wingnuts still believing in supply-side economics ==> trickle down, tax cuts paying for themselves, greater GDP growth, ...,
- wingnuts believing deregulation is just what the economy needs,
- every Republican predicting the '93 tax increase would result in big recession,
- wingnuts not understanding Keynes was right about the zero lower bound and depression economics,
- wingnuts thinking (or at least claiming to think) global warming is a hoax, ...
- and on and on and on...
When your worldview, the vantage point from which you model the world, is completely wrong, you're just not going to get a lot of things right.
Republicans: never right, never in doubt, and on the wrong side of history since at least the '20's.
Dr. James Dobson should get on Fox and apologize to the nation for Focus on the Family's fear-mongering and lying and useless future-projecting.
But since he is such a man of gawd, I won't hold my breath...
How can a group that refuses to remember the past, predict the future?
And you'd think they'd be good at it, since they only have about 6,000 years to remember...
Interesting..Democrats would disband the Boy Scouts, yet it is far right wingers who are attacking boy and girl scout organizations,1st graders would receive "compulsory training in varieties of gender identity"; after-school Bible studies would be banned in high schools ..yet it is the far right that imposes silly abstinance on the public schools and tries to replace learning with indoctrination,the Hyde Amendment would be repealed and abortion rates would soar; instead far right groups have pushed anti-contraception and personhood laws down our throats,all FCC restrictions on obscenities would be nullified no but again the far right tries to get rid of the FCC altogether
Wow it's as if they were letting us know not what would be done by Obama but what they were up to themselves.
"In 2008 prominent Christian Right group Focus on the Family put out a sixteen page document called "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America." The document was in the form of a letter, a (fictional) letter from a Christian in 2012 writing back from the future about all the changes that had happened since Obama took office In Republican Alternate World those things--and more--have actually happened."
The trouble is that in the Republican Alternate Universe, these things--and many more just as awful--actually happened.
Take a few minutes to watch Faux News, and you'll see reporting that gun ownership rights have been taken away, that we're virtually a socialist country, that confiscatory tax rates exist, and that freedom went the way of the dodo bird shortly after January of 2009.
The hatred for a black President is so great that the right wing can't accept reality, so they've concocted their own.
It's as though the nation has been "blinded by the right." (Sorry, Manfred Mann.)
Bruce Springsteen actually wrote "Blinded by the Light". He was getting ready to release it as a single, but Manfred Mann's version came out first and went to number 1. Love the pun, Blinded by the right. LOL.
Do you mean October 2008?
If you want to know what will happen to health care 'in the future' in detail under the Affordable Care Act and Mitt Romney's plan, please check out this site:
http://www.commonwealthfund.org
It presents a clear picture of the two futures of health care and costs, depending on the vote you make.
I hope commenters here will take a look!
This "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America." sounds like Paradise (at least some of it).
Focus on the Family don't want this? Who are they speaking for - Satan?
I have noticed that this blog opens the 2nd page faster if you clck on the Coments icon instead of 'Continue reading'. You then just scroll up a little.
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
The dead rising from the grave!
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Chuck Colson and Dobson's Focus on the Family is why I stopped listening to Christian radio, the night the dialogue and recrimination on that station became as hostile, political, and divisive as Talk Radio.
seems like the GOP are whoring after fortune tellers and ones that can't even get things right.
Leviticus 20: 6“If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.
Levitcus 20:27 A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.
Revelation 22:15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
Fear, fear, fear…. booga booga…. be afraid…... arghhhhhhh….
What's that about Charlie Brown going for Lucy holding the football for him and pull it away as he falls for it time after time? Uh yeah, the people fall for that every time.
These FOF people say they follow Jesus, love their fellow man as they love themselves… yet find ways to set "them" and "those" apart from themselves using judgement and laws to prosecute. But they view themselves as being persecuted if they actually do have to look at "teh gay" or "single women" or whatever they get "on about" controlling people (that isn't freedom).
There are plenty of faiths that accept all people as they are, but we keep having this "majority rule" argument by some folks. But, excluding these/those folks cannot be free. Religious freedom means free to have different religions, no religion and no laws respecting establishment of religion.
Not establishing your particular religious beliefs is not religious persecution. There are differing religious views on the same issue, so establishing one view is not consistent. Also, a republic elects representatives to be sure laws are consistent with Constitution. People being majority cannot oppress a minority by voting against them. The laws must be Constitutional, not only represent the "majority".
GOP PREDICTION HALL OF FAME:.
Tax cuts create jobs.
Iraq will pay for the war.
Holder will resign.
Obamacare will be overturned.
Zimmerman won't be charged.
Gasoline will be $5.
blah blah blah
Little is written of it except deep in the financial sections but the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has been quietly kicking bank butt, taking in the fines and getting rebates out to citizens. All this under the radar even though the Republicans swore after the President appointed Richard Corduray on that 'recess/non-recess' weekend that they would:
1. Sue the President
2. Impeach the President
3. Nullify it in courts
4. De-fund it
I hope the President brings up his 'go-it-alone' approach in getting some justice for the average citizen in spite of political gridlock and ideological threats. People need to be reminded of the quiet successes that the President (as usual) doesn't trumpet. Tonight's debate would be a good forum and it would send the fact-checkers scurrying to figure how much money the CFPB has won back and who they socked for it. Even Krugman, Klein, DeLong and others should give a shout-out to a government entity that definitely speaks for the 99% and follows through with the money. And it doesn't take the CFPB years of negotiations to reach deals like the SEC has to.
Yikes A thought entered my mind. It seems when the headers contain them thar long words we lose our trolls.
right, uh-huh, yeah uh-huh, uh huh, uh huh.
Turn left before it's too...