The Season of Insanity

The season of insanity is truly upon us: the primaries.  The time when the populace looks again for yet another savior in the form of a greasy-palmed politician.  It has been some time since anyone felt bold enough to challenge a sitting president, so typically we only have the primary of the opposition party; in this case the Republicans, as if that mattered.  Each party and anyone they put forth, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, are firmly entrenched in the payola corporate state and running for the benefit of their financial supporters, which by the way is not the same as the people who vote for them.  So, it really doesn’t matter if it’s Republicrat or Demopublican, the result will likely be more of the same.  If one of the outsiders actually does capture much attention, the establishment, via the mainstream media, will ruin him/her–read Howard Dean.  To that end, you can expect Ron Paul to be grilled pretty badly if he continues to make a good show.

The system is rigged.  Over the years, we have become dependent on government to do things that the community once did.  That dependency and the taxation necessary to support it have grown to the point of becoming a monster, and a one-sided monster at that.  The taxes pour in at an enormous rate and the pigs line up at the trough to feed on the blood from the hand of taxpayers.  And despite the public’s dependency, the majority of the funds now go to war-making, which really doesn’t favor the majority of us at all.  I just heard the other day that the Pentagon is the largest user of fossil fuels on the planet.  All this at a time when America really isn’t threatened by anyone.  The straw-man of Muslim terrorism is only blowback from our misdeeds abroad.  If we were to stop meddling in the affairs of other countries, they would stop fighting back.  But that’s old news.  And I’ve been ranting about it for years now.

It’s relevant now that no one, with the exception of Paul, is considering anything else.  And I’m not so sure they need to.  There is an implied agreement between us the taxpayers and them, the collectors and spenders of tax, on how these taxes are spent and how much they interfere with our lives.  However, they have long discovered that they can basically do anything they want, and we, the taxpayers, can’t do a damn thing about it.  They don’t work for us.  They work for the lobbyists and campaign donors–the people who are lining up at the trough.  And it’s through being fed at the trough that they are even able to keep priming the system.  So, unless one happens to be one of the fortunate pigs, or be employed by said swine, one is left out in the cold–taxation without representation.  But alas, the voting public has other things in mind: abortion rights; civil rights; gun rights; gay rights; education reform; medical marijuana; terrorism; 9-11, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11; increasing (or lowering) taxes on the wealthy; health care; family values…blah, blah, blah.  And these are the things that will be discussed.  They are also the things that will be marginalized once the voting is all over and they go back to working for their bosses (not the voters).

Occupy your Mind

I am quite surprised at the sustaining power of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  After being a small part of the sputtering, then dwindling, anti-war movement during the Bush II years, and after watching in astonishment as the whole world seemed ready to deify Barack Obama, I honestly didn’t think America had enough awareness and spunk to maintain this kind of challenge to the staus quo.  Granted, I’m not quite sure what it is that everyone expects, or why some of those people are even there.  And, given my own political leanings, I probably disagree with the ultimate aims of many of them.  However, I not only support their right to protest, I hope and even feel optimistic that they might actually accomplish some real positive changes.  Finally it seems the people have some sort of voice.

I consider myself a traditional capitalist.  However, the economic system we have in the US is far from capitalistic.  And it’s not so much the taxes and regulations that hinder.  It’s the cronyism, the Mercantilsim, the corporate/congressional alliance that turns it into the nasty monster we call capitalism in the US.  So, really, who can blame the occupiers?  Who can blame any of us?  For some 30 +/- years now Americans have been using 401K plans for retirement savings, which has resulted in a tremendous increase in stock market participation.  The result has been a boom in legalized gambling with other people’s money.  Then, when the proverbial stuff hit the fan, the gamblers got the government to bail them out–with other people’s money.  But since that time the only people who seem to have benefited from the bailout were the bankers themselves.  All the other people (the rest of us) have been screwed.  So, what does that say about our social-economic-governmental system?  It sound a lot like National Socialism to me.  And it stinks.

I don’t read newspapers or watch broadcast news anymore.  And I surely don’t listen to AM talk radio, but I expect by now the fat cats have gotten their conservative supporters in the media to balkanize this thing, to turn it into an ‘us against them’, to vilify the dirty hippies clogging up progress.  At the same time, I see Barack Obama has already tried to claim the movement as his own by promising to erase student debt (another stupid idea that needs an entry all its own).  But in the meantime, the occupiers have support from recent war vets and militia members, which really puts an interesting twist to this movement.  They are starting to look like us, maybe because they are us, or at least they are representing us.  This thing may turn stupid and or ugly before it’s over.  Only time will tell.  Hopefully it will not only bring about change, but will be the beginning of a new era of empowerment.  One can only hope.    Now, how is that for hope and change you can believe in?

Taking the “Giving the Farm Away” Concept to a New Level

“It (China) also noted that as its largest creditor, Beijing has every right ‘to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets.’”

It’s not like nobody warned us this would happen.  It doesn’t take a genius to see how it happened.  And you don’t have to be an alarmist or conspiracy theorist to believe it, be concerned over it.  But there is the thought in China now that they have the right to tell us, the US, how to run our fiscal policy.  And since they are heavily invested in US dollars, and our economy would crash very, very hard if they tried to cash them in right now, they have an intriguing argument.  Much like we have claimed the right of economic interest for many (most) of our military interventions, the Red Chinese actually do have an economic interest in the United States.  First we crafted trade policy that allowed US jobs to migrate to China, with the blessings of our leaders.  Then we sold them treasuries, that they bought with the new-found income from our old jobs, to finance our military voyeurism.  All the while, our economy and infrastructure has crumbled at our feet.  And now we are their investment and they want to tweak things to ensure a good ROI.

Somewhere in Texas, Ross Perot is shaking his head and thinking, “I told ya’ll.

Original article: http://www.cnbc.com/id/44050325

Look Beneath the Surface

The current battle in Washington over the debt ceiling is ridiculous.  It is not about if we should raise the debt ceiling, it’s about how, with what sort of attending deals.  Hello?  You are spending money you don’t have already, and in actuality pissing most of it away on things that do little to benefit the people you are stealing it from in the first place.  Somebody decided to place a ceiling, a limit, on what you spend, that already allows you to spend above income.  And you want the legal authority to spend even more?

What is really ridiculous is the spin the mainstream media are playing against this.  All the horrors and apocalyptic warnings.  Imagine all the bad things that will happen if we don’t allow these yahoos to continue their insanity.  Just look at the  evidence.  What has all the military spending post 9/11 bought us.  Freedom?  Please.  What about Obama’s economic recovery spending?  Prosperity?  Jobs?  Economic Security?  And how about all the corporate welfare the Republicans refuse to cave on?  More prosperity, jobs, etc..?

Reference:

Tearing Defeat From the Clenched Jaws of Victory

Wake Up

A Medal for Bradley Manning?

From Tomdispatch

Tomgram: Chase Madar, A Medal for Bradley Manning?

Posted by Chase Madar at 9:50am, July 7, 2011.

Dick Cheney got one (as secretary of defense), so did Donald Rumsfeld (back in 1977), not to speak of Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Walt Rostow, and General H. Norman Schwartzkopf (for Gulf War I).  Of course, so did Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, and (posthumously) César Chávez, not to speak of Estée Lauder.  President George W. Bush hit the trifecta in a single ceremony, awarding one to General Tommy Franks (who commanded U.S. forces in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and who, the president said, “led the forces that fought and won two wars in the defense of the world’s security and helped liberate more than 50 million people from two of the worst tyrannies in the world”), another to George Tenet (who oversaw the CIA through the torture and black-sites era), and a third to L. Paul Bremer III (the American proconsul in Baghdad during our ill-fated occupation of Iraq, whom the president praised for “work[ing] day and night in difficult and dangerous conditions to stabilize the country, to help its people rebuild and to establish a political process that would lead to justice and liberty”).  More recently, Barack Obama bestowed one on former British Prime Minister (and Iraq War enthusiast) Tony Blair and, in a surprise move barely a week ago, to “one of the nation’s finest public servants,” retiring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

I’m talking, of course, about America’s highest civilian honor (even if it can be awarded to generals), the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  The Gates award was bestowed unexpectedly at a Pentagon retirement ceremony for the Secretary of Defense who, visibly moved, ad libbed, “It is a big surprise. But we should have known a couple of months ago that you’re getting pretty good at this covert ops stuff.”  It was the same week that unnamed “American officials” leaked the latest covert ops news to the New York Times – that “the clandestine American military campaign to combat al-Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen is expanding to fight the Islamist militancy in Somalia” and that a U.S. drone aircraft had attacked militants there for the first time since 2009.  Consider this the seventh war the Obama administration is now pursuing in the Greater Middle East.

Original Article from Tomdispatch

The End is Upon Us

It is not a dystopian dream anymore.  The nightmare is reality.  Driving around in Anywhere, USA is like navigating shark-infested waters.  Radar-toting cops are everywhere; gun-toting cops are everywhere; grandma-groping cops have infested the airports; SWAT teams are knocking down the doors of , and shooting innocent people–every day.  I think the biggest part of this started with Bill Clinton’s goal to put 100,000 cops on Main Street with federal funds, which only got bigger and badder under King W.  The idea that we may have to give up a few basic liberties with Bush’s Patriot Act soon became an act of giving it all away.  Unfortunately, it really seems to be too late to change.  They have the guns, the personnel, the authority, and enough consent to have gained the upper hand before anyone noticed.  At this point they don’t care anymore if they have consent.  Don’t like what’s happening?  Tough!  Resistance is futile.

Reference: Why do the Police Have Tanks?

And: Abolish the Police

Jack Hunter on the Real Debt Problem

Jack Hunter is someone with whom I can agree on many, many things;  in particular, the pitiful state of the Republican Party and so-called conservatism in America.  As I have noted for some time, military spending is our greatest threat.  It’s not that other spending is not problematic.  It’s that we are going broke trying to rule the world and bombing the shit out of people who pose little to no real threat to us.

“It was reported last month that the total cost of our Middle East wars post-9/11 stands at $3.7 trillion. This is just the official number—which should be taken about as seriously as Obama’s official cost of national healthcare. $3.7 trillion is also roughly four times the cost of Obamacare—which virtually every Republican agrees America cannot afford.”

The Full Article

The Persian Policy

Possible strategies for gaining the upper hand on Iran, from the Brookings Institution.

A signed confession that indeed the US does conspire to fund, arm, and abet terrorists, sedition, popular revolutions, and even provoke unnecessary wars all for their “regional interests.”

If you don’t think we are living in dangerous times, surrounded by dangerous, yet influential people, this should change your mind.

Thanks to the Pecan Group for sharing this.  pdf file link below:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/files/rc/papers/2009/06_iran_strategy/06_iran_strategy.pdf

Jim Rogers on the Next (Imminent) Financial Crisis

OK, this is from the mainstream, but it only boosts what everybody seems to be saying and predicting.  And while I’m not trying to belabor the point, or revel in pessimism, this is what we (fiscal conservatives) have been saying for some time.  To now hear it from the mainstream makes it all the more ominous.

Jim Rogers:  ”The debts that are in this country are skyrocketing,…”In the last three years the government has spent staggering amounts of money and the Federal Reserve is taking on staggering amounts of debt…When the problems arise  next time…what are they going to do? They can’t quadruple the debt again. They cannot print that much more money. It’s gonna be worse the next time around.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43328325

Would that it weren’t true.

It’s the Debt, Stupid

I never understood, beginning with that genius Ronald Reagan, why the US government insisted on running debts.  Reagan was bad–terrible at the time.  But George Bush I exceeded him exponentially.  I knew we were in trouble when candidate Bush insisted that we “stay the course”, and that we could “grow our way out of debt.”  And as big an idiot as he was, his son, Bush II exceed him and Regan by an even higher standard of ignorance.  And unfortunately, instead of Obama being the anti-Bush, he has proven to be the another-Bush, aided by the Bush-appointed Helicopter Ben Bernanke.  With the exception of the Bill Clinton years, America has been on an extravagant spending and debt binge that has finally begun to catch up with us.  And unfortunately it’s probably too late to do anything about it.

Reference the following sober analysis form Chris Martenson: http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/death-debt/58941

And batten down the hatches, this is gonna be long, cruel, and nasty.