When Will You Leave the U.S.? Will It Be After the Next Unexplained Catastrophe? Israeli Paranoia Games Imperil ALL

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Remember bragging about how wonderful life was in the U.S. when you were much younger? How freeing the feeling of living in a freedom-loving land was (versus the authoritarian types of government that you studied in school and saw reported about in the news)?

Bet it never occurred to you that local police in the USA would ever feel free enough to spray a poison (mace) at young girls who were peacefully (although loudly) demonstrating in our "freedom of speech" land.





John Atcheson reports from the clown tent in Common Dreams:

Perry is merely the leading clown of nine evil clowns vying for the Republican nomination. They all seem more interested in making you afraid and making you hate than in making you laugh. They also display a contempt for reality and truth. Yet their individual lies – as destructive as they are – are small potatoes compared to the faulty map we’re using to set national policy.

We can start with Reaganomics and its toxic legacy. You know, government-is-the-problem-shrink-it-until-you-can-drown-it orthodoxy, combined with the notion that the free market is the font of all good things, if we just leave it alone and get gubmint’ off its back.

This particular bit of idiocy has been tried three times. First in the 1880’s through the 1890s, then again in the 1920’s, and finally between 1980 and 2008. Each period featured laissez-faire economic policies like low taxes, small government, deregulation, and corporate-friendly policies. And guess what?

Each period brought extreme income inequality and the inevitable economic collapse that follows.

It’s possible after the Great Depression a few folks still believed these policies could lead to prosperity. But after 2008? After going 0 for 3? In baseball, there’s a name for that: striking out.

But that’s reality. And we don’t need no stinkin’ reality.

Want another dose of reality defying mythology? How about notion that cutting debt will increase economic growth - the prevailing view of the Republican Party, and apparently Obama and the press. Has this particular antidote ever cured the patient?

Nope. Killed it, more often than not.

But that’s reality. And we don’t need no stinkin’ …

Here’s another. Trickle down economics. Seen anything trickling down, lately?

No, you haven’t. In fact, since Reagan introduced this “theory” from the back of a crumpled napkin, the income of the top 1% has doubled. Yours? Not so much. You've lost ground.

But that’s reality. And we don’t need no…

How about the idea that the rich are the “job creators?”

Again, not so much. Right now corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in assets because there's not enough consumer demand to justify hiring.

Throwing more money at the ultra rich will make them even richer, but it will have no effect on the economy until consumers start buying – and the only thing that can make that happen is a government stimulus large enough to create jobs and restore confidence.

But that’s reality. And we don’t need …

And how about the wellspring of right wing whackiness? Specifically, the notion that unconstrained capitalism is a necessary pre-requisite for freedom. That the two are joined at the hip, inseparable – that one cannot stand without the other.

This particular bit of reality-bending lunacy was popularized by Milton Friedman. It explains why, to right wingers, socialism is bad, why regulations are perceived as a commie plot (especially environmental regs), why the free market is sacrosanct, why the entire Republican Party is anti-science and in thrall to climate denial.

Each implies a legitimate role for government intervention in the market; therefore – in the minds of the wingnuts - each threatens freedom.

Here again, reality differs. With totalitarian China practicing virulent capitalism, with successful examples of social democracies, and with the advent of a new kind of tyranny – the tyranny of the unconstrained corporation – Friedman’s linkage of capitalism and freedom is revealed as nonsense.

But that’s reality and we don’t . . .

Yes we do, damn it. We do need some stinkin’ reality. We need a whole lot of it, and we need it now, or the whole damn country will follow Rick Perry or some other lying demagogue off the ragged edge of civility and into the mouths of dragons.

Are we likely to get it? Hell no.

With the mainstream media playing the part of a mute stenographer, the Democrats trembling at the first sign of opposition and coughing up our lunch money like a pre-pubic nerd trapped in the bathroom, and Citizen’s United turning our elections into a bidding war, we’re about out of stinkin’ reality.

And that makes us out of luck.

John Atcheson's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, as well as in several wonk journals. He is currently at work on a fictional Trilogy that centers on climate change. Atcheson's book reviews are featured on Climateprogress.org. Email to: jbatcheson@gmail.com

Paul Krugman dissects the latest "class warfare" nonsense here (and yes, I know I've run this before, but it seems worthwhile to emphasize it again):

This week President Obama said the obvious: that wealthy Americans, many of whom pay remarkably little in taxes, should bear part of the cost of reducing the long-run budget deficit. And Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan responded with shrieks of “class warfare.” It was, of course, nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it’s people like Mr. Ryan, who want to exempt the very rich from bearing any of the burden of making our finances sustainable, who are waging class war.

As background, it helps to know what has been happening to incomes over the past three decades. Detailed estimates from the Congressional Budget Office — which only go up to 2005, but the basic picture surely hasn’t changed — show that between 1979 and 2005 the inflation-adjusted income of families in the middle of the income distribution rose 21 percent. That’s growth, but it’s slow, especially compared with the 100 percent rise in median income over a generation after World War II.

Meanwhile, over the same period, the income of the very rich, the top 100th of 1 percent of the income distribution, rose by 480 percent. No, that isn’t a misprint. In 2005 dollars, the average annual income of that group rose from $4.2 million to $24.3 million.

So do the wealthy look to you like the victims of class warfare?

This gentleman speaks to my heart and mirrors all my concerns.

And history.

Why We Left The United States

By Bob Alexander

September 17, 2011

TVNewsLies

Because on December 12, 2000, the United States Supreme Court nullified the results of a national election and installed George W. Bush as president. And then I saw millions of my fellow Americans deliriously happy the Rule of Law was broken by the Supreme Court of the Land so “their guy” could … “win.”

That’s when I knew partisanship had ultimately won out over reality. More Americans believe in angels than election fraud. If millions of Americans could turn a blind eye to a stolen election, simply because their side stole it, and then have that coup legitimized by not only the Supreme Court … but by all of MainStreamMedia … then I knew the country I lived in was not the land of my birth. I can’t emphasize this enough. Millions of Americans were ecstatic that George W. Bush won regardless of how he won. Unquestioning blind partisanship was more important than the law to these people. But more ominous was Main Stream Media ratifying the coup. At that moment Corporate Media proved they were committed to the destruction of our democratic republic.

That was pretty scary to witness. We’ve all heard of similar ham-fisted tactics used in banana republics south of the border … but this was happening … here.

That’s when I began formulating my Crazy Stupid People Theorem. Whoever thought the Supreme Court’s decision was part and parcel with a “Normal Transfer of Power” was either Stupid, Crazy, or … Evil. Americans who didn’t know it was essentially a coup were either Stupid, or Crazy, or a little bit of both. If anyone knew it was an outright theft of Americans’ votes … and they were perfectly ok with that … well … what else could you call it other than Evil? The subversion of our right to choose our elected representatives strikes at the heart of our country’s founding principles. But again, and this is what continues to confound me, millions of Americans thought it was just fine and dandy.

Along with millions of sane Americans … I didn’t “Move On.” I could not understand why it was so important the institutions Americans trusted most to protect its freedoms and principles had crammed George W. Bush down our throat.

Then 234 days into Bush’s first term as president … the attacks of September 11th 2001. And from that day on … everything the Bush/Cheney regime did to distort and transform the United States of America into something … unrecognizable … was because of 9/11. It all came down to 9/11 … period. The buck stopped there.

And as we were all walking around in a daze, coated with the ash of human beings and pulverized concrete, we were spun into the Ultimate War Crime; wars of aggression. As Chris Hedges wrote, “ … We became what we abhorred. The deaths were used to justify pre-emptive war, invasion, Shock and Awe, prolonged occupation, targeted assassinations, torture, offshore penal colonies, gunning down families at checkpoints, massive aerial bombardments, drone attacks, missile strikes and the killing of dozens, and soon hundreds, and then thousands, and later tens of thousands, and finally hundreds of thousands of innocent people.“

Then the dawning realization … the 9/11 trigger mechanism that caused Hell on Earth for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq … was a grotesque lie. This was the ultimate Horror piled upon horror.

Hundreds upon hundreds of statements from members of the Senior Military and Intelligence Services, Law Enforcement, Government Officials, Engineers, Architects, Pilots and Aviation Professionals, Professors, 9/11 Survivors and Family Members, Artists, Entertainers, and Media Professionals, are on record saying the Official Account of 9/11 is: "False", “Impossible”, “A Bunch of Hogwash”, “Total B.S.”, “Ludicrous”, “A Well-Organized Cover-up”, “A White-Washed Farce”, “Absurd”, "Fatally Flawed", "Not Possible.”

The lies the Bush/Cheney Regime told us that led our country into The Ultimate War Crime were predicated upon the lies the government previously told us about the attacks of 9/11.

As Ralph Lopez wrote, “The biggest problem with the 9/11 Truth Movement is where it leads: a place dark and evil beyond imagination. … when hundreds of American military officers, pilots, engineers, and CIA veterans stepped forward to say they believed the official story to be a monstrous lie, I was shaken to the core. … The conspiracies led to the deep dark hole that we are ruled by criminal psychopaths.

This is about as bad as it gets. We knew the government covered up how and why 3,000 people died on 9/11, and then went on to use the attacks as an excuse to do everything we find reprehensible today. And again … corporate media ran cover for the government.

If we can’t believe the government’s cover-up, we’re left with three options:

Conclusion One: They Made It Happen.
Conclusion Two: They allowed it to happen.

Or …

Conclusion Three: The attacks of 9/11 were possible because of massive incompetence on the part of the Bush/Cheney Regime.

If Incompetence is the least offensive rationale to explain the actions of the Bush/Cheney regime, then … why has there been no accountability?

Involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional killing that happens during the commission of a misdemeanor or because of gross negligence or carelessness. According to Federal sentencing guidelines, Involuntary Manslaughter is punishable by 6 years in prison.

Shouldn’t someone (or a lot of someones) from the Bush/Cheney Regime be prosecuted for the gross negligence that led to the deaths of almost 3,000 people? Not in post-9/11 America.

But while we struggled to map out just exactly what a post-9/11 America looked like … another stolen presidential election knocked us to our knees.

We knew it was stolen in Ohio. We knew how it was stolen. And once again the corporate media buried the truth by ignoring it. And the blind partisan Crazy Stupid People rejoiced in the prospect of “Four More Years” of the Bush/Cheney Regime.

Throughout it all the majority of Sane Americans made the same strategic blunder over and over and over again. We were used to signing petitions and having protest marches. We treated these people like they were politicians. But the Bush/Cheney gang were not politicians. They were Gangsters and Thugs. Politicians periodically bend to the will of the people. Thugs. Don’t. Care. These people wipe their ass with petitions. When Dick Cheney was told that two-thirds of Americans said the war in Iraq was not worth it, Cheney replied, "So?"

That’s who we were dealing with. Gangsters who completely ignored the will of the people. We could write all we want, and call all we want, and demonstrate all we want … but by following their rules … we had the unlimited freedom to be ineffectual.

The Republican Machine, aided and abetted by Corporate Media, stole the presidency of the United States twice. Together they started two wars and have killed over a million people. How could we think they would back off and play nice because we all wrote scathing e-mails or marched in protests? They were Thugs. We were supposed to arrest Thugs, put them on trial, and if guilty, put them in jail. But we didn’t do that.

We decided to hope instead. We hoped the Bush/Cheney Regime wouldn’t completely destroy the country before 2008. We hoped the same corrupt voting systems that delivered us George W. Bush would magically allow us the autonomy to elect someone to save us from “the Evil-doers.” We hoped a Constitutional law professor would restore the Constitution. But most of all we hoped, for the first time in living memory, that a politician would deliver on his campaign promises.
The policies of the Bush/Cheney Regime are still in place under the Obama administration. We still have the wars of aggression and occupation. Innocent people are still killed every day. We still hold prisoners in Guantanamo Bay who after almost ten years have yet to be charged or tried for any crime. The Bush/Cheney/Obama Regimes have given away trillions of dollars to people who engineered the largest financial swindle in recorded history. And they, along with our honest-to-god war criminals, continue to walk free, unindicted, unaccountable, and above the law.

As Michael in NY wrote . . . in October 2009, “ … my belief is that the American system has lost its capacity for reform.” I’ll take that to the next step … the American system has lost its capacity to govern. Corporate interests under the guise of Partisanship über alles.
And as Paul Craig Roberts wrote the other day, “Obama regime appointee Cass Sunstein, a Chicago and Harvard Law School professor, thinks the 9/11 movement, for challenging the official “truth”, should be infiltrated by US intelligence agents in order to shut down the fact-based doubters of government propaganda. When a law professor at our two most prestigious law schools wants to suppress scientific evidence that challenges government veracity, we know that in America respect for truth is dead. The notion that a country in which truth is dead is a “light unto the world” is an absurdity.”

I find that nothing short of terrifying. And real solutions are nonexistent.

And so . . . after 10 long years, and finally having enough money … we left. It may be completely illusory, but it feels like we have a future here. It feels more substantial than … hope. It feels like we finally have come home.

Regards,
Bob Alexander
Founder of Superbeans.com

Obama, the Palestinian State & Zionist Schizophrenia

By Gilad Atzmon

Some may be surprised to learn that Israel and most Israelis actually want the Palestinian initiative to go ahead and to succeed. They want a Palestinian State because this is the only solution that would save the 'Jews only State' from a demographic meltdown.

Congress Sees Middle East Through AIPAC-Colored Glasses

 Tapping the Israeli Embassy

By Philip Giraldi

 What the FBI uncovered was a massive and highly focused campaign referred to by the Israelis as "perception management," but which the CIA would refer to as a covert action.

Bullsh*t: The Perfect Academic Word for US Debt, Economic, War Policies

Carl Herman

Nonpartisan Examiner

Examiner.com

On Bullsh*t, Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt’s 2005 best-seller, defines “bullsh*t” as saying whatever necessary to dictate an audience’s interpretation of a subject. Bullsh*t is comprised of lies of omission and commission, of course, but shifts as needed to maintain the desired dictatorship (the literal “say” of what people perceive).

Frankfurt observes that bullshit is more prevalent in politics than ever before, has zero respect for the truth, and is intentional and ongoing to replace facts. He explains in the video.

Frankfurt provides academic permission for Americans to use “bullsh*t” to describe US “leadership” obvious use of bullshit in debt, economic, and war policies.

Use this academic term at your command.

The American public struggles with political and US corporate media bullshit to discern fact from spin.

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” -  unsourced and attributed to Andrew Carnegie

Here are leading US “leadership” areas of bullshitting the American public:

1. Congressional reports disclose that all “reasons” for war with Afghanistan and Iraq were known to be lies as they were told.
2. avoiding the obvious answer of ending an Orwellian "debt supply" and replacing it with money. A national debt is simply bullshit.
3. a million children a month to die of preventable poverty, even though historically ending poverty reduces population growth rate and the investment is less than 1% of the developed nations' gross national incomes (GNI).
4. Orwellian unlawful wars, including using depleted uranium weapons to damn victims with continuous misery and death.
5. torture, extrajudicial assassinations (including against American citizens) and indefinite detentions. 
6. destruction of the US Constitution into a form of government closest to fascism and nowhere near a constitutional republic.
7. literally throwing Americans onto the streets rather than take any of a dozen acts to allow them to stay in their homes.
8. intentional unemployment, crime, infrastructure decay, fear, anger, depression (both economic and psychological) rather than create money for full employment.
9. allowing 45,000 Americans to die every year from lack of health care, even though universal single-payer saves the nation $100-$300 billion every year.

With all respect, these bullsh*tting literal psychopaths in US “leadership” knew/know exactly what they're doing. A psychopath has a veneer of social grease thinly covering vicious acts.

The bullsh*tters’ last strands of support are dissipating; cognitive dissonance of the American public is embracing the “emperor has no clothes” facts.

The good news is that every step "leadership" takes down their path of deceit and destruction, they become easier to see for what they are.

We will win with critical mass of public recognition of what’s right in front of everyone to see (and smell).

You, citizen, have unique opportunity to contribute your unique, beautiful, and powerful self-expression to building a brighter future if you choose the intellectual integrity and moral courage to do so.

Please do.

Millions will live or die, billions will have a life worth living or misery, and trillions of dollars of power are directed at our collective choice.

Video

Class Warfare My Ass

Saturday 24 September 2011

William Rivers Pitt

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, speaks at the Florida P5 Faith and Freedom Coalition Kick-Off event at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, Florida, September 22, 2011. (Chip Litherland / The New York Times)

I have to live for others and not for myself: that's middle-class morality.

- George Bernard Shaw

I have been saying this for years upon years, but it bears repeating: the most awesome, fearsome, and effective weapon in the arsenal of the modern Republican Party is their total, utter and complete lack of shame.

That weapon - the ability to say or do anything, literally anything, even as it flies in the face of on-the-record comments made just the day before, or contradicts thousands of votes cast in congresses past - is the equivalent of a battlefield-deployed tactical nuclear weapon. It clears the field, but good, and if everything is ashes in the aftermath, so be it.

So long as effective spin makes the news cycle, it's a victory for them, and screw the people who get hurt.

The GOP wins when that is the contest, and that is all they care about...and the awful irony comes when the very people getting screwed are up on their feet cheering after the deal goes down, because "their team" won the day.

Watching these recent GOP debates has cracked me up for any number of reasons, but nothing can top watching those millionaires square off in an attempt to prove who among them is the most "folksy," the most in tune with the working stiff. Mitt Romney, whose personal fortune roars deep into nine figures on the left of the decimal, actually claimed he was a middle class guy during a recent campaign appearance.

Ah, yes, the irony again...just think, if people banking nine figures of personal wealth were actually considered middle class, all of our problems would be solved, right?

Or something.

Which brings us to the subject of "class warfare." The term has been a favorite broadside of the right-bent rich-people-first set going on forty years now, and in times past has always reaped them rich rhetorical benefits. We're a classless society here in America, don'tcha know, so accusations of "class warfare" have all too often sent lily-livered liberal-leaning politicians scuttling for the exits, for the apology, for the eventual retreat.

Oh no, it isn't class warfare, this is only fair...which earned, invariably, a reply of "CLASS WARFARE SOCIALISM WHAAARGARBLE" . . . which, in turn, earned another hasty retreat instead of a proper and just reply.

Which is, should have always been, and should now be: kiss my ass, you leech, you bloodsucker, you greedy whore, you war profiteering glutton, you disgrace, you betrayer of America.

Oh, I know the argument. I know it as well as the spit I leave on the sidewalk when there is a bad taste in my mouth. The rich are better than us, they are the ones making the jobs, they have earned their esteemed position through a Randian process of natural economic selection, etc...except for the sneaky fact that a large number of these "business titans" inherited their wealth, and today increase their wealth not through hard work, but through favorable interest rates and even more favorable tax rates on money that is already in the bank.

The top-earning businesses in America today, across the board, are wallowing in record profits, and yet somehow hiring is stagnated. Why is that?

Could it be that these titans are holding off on hiring in order to affect the number of jobless Americans, so as to influence public opinion as we head into an election season? God almighty, to have such astonishing reach...to be able to keep millions out of work in order to put one black guy out of a job...now that's real power.

Class warfare, indeed.

Poverty has increased locally and nationally across the board, joblessness is reaching Great Depression-era levels, and millions have lost houses to those whose own homes resemble castles, to those who are secure in both funding and foundation. Money does not disappear. It has to go somewhere; what is lost is always found. Most all of us have spent the last several years losing money hand over fist, while Forbes tells us that the richest among us have increased their wealth by vast amounts in one year.

Try to contain your shock.

There is work available for the doing, on infrastructure and new technology fields and any number of other areas, but the GOP majority in the House of Representatives won't have any of it, because their marching orders are to screw the American economy in as many orifices as are available to try and unseat the sitting president. Period, end of file, and if you still think that isn't their intention, I have a big red bridge over San Francisco Bay to sell you.

Class warfare? These cretins have the unmitigated gall to accuse other people of class warfare?

It is a wonder of American politics, this absolute and astonishing lack of shame on the part of the modern GOP. They have spent the last thirty years stifling a minimum-wage increase, they blocked legislation to help 9/11 responders pay for very present health concerns, and spent the latter part of this last week trying to screw disaster relief funding for people who lose homes to tornadoes, floods, wildfires and earthquakes.

They hate Social Security and Medicare down to their gold-plated bones. Now they are deliberately and intentionally stifling the very economy they themselves tore up, for no other reason than to win the next election.

How are they doing it? Money and power, power and money, and be damned to those who suffer for their desires.

Psssst...it is class warfare: full-throated, no-bullshit class warfare, and the rich ones whining about it are the ones who are winning. Be on your own side for a change of pace. They got the guns, as a man once said, but we got the numbers.

It is class warfare, and has been for a generation. We've been losing, badly.

For now.

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