Step further into the MoosePoop!

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

not here, not anymore. and no one seems to care.

"Divide and Conquer" Almost Always Works

A curious albeit heartless owner of two dogs devised an experiment. He contrived to set his dogs against each other by consistently feeding one much less than the other, although they were fed side by side at the same time. He stood and watched while they ate, with the dog eating from a full bowl between himself and the underfed animal. Within several days, the event he had anticipated transpired: the angry underfed dog viciously attacked the more fortunate animal and killed it.

The man was gratified that his expectations were upheld, and a bit pleased with himself. He decide to repeat the experiment, this time inserting the killer in the place of the well fed dog and a new dog in the position of the deprived one. As before, the underfed challenger eventually snapped and killed the original surviver.

By now the sadistic urges of the man were piqued as he started a third round. Again, the hungry dog snapped, but rather than attack the better fed dog he leapt over it to lunge at the mans throat. After that there were no more rounds of the experiment.

There are three conclusions to be drawn from this story. First, the last dog was intellectually superior to its predecessors. Second, the psychopathic owner reaped what he had sown. Third, the last dog had a better understanding of how the world works than the voters in Wisconsin -and perphaps the entire US. We'll see in November.

in wisconsin, things go better with koch (or so they think)

the good sheeple of wisconsin have decided that they will go along with "divide-and-conquer" koch minion scott walker because they think the only way back to prosperity is through his brand of austerity. they don't see that the reason they're in a hole is that for the past thirty years corporations have pocketed ALL the gains from increased productivity and they have shared none of the spoils.

to the contrary, in lieu of wage increases they have been offered easy credit card debt. so now they are debt slaves playing into the hands of the corporations and wall street bankers who gipped them to begin with. here's news for them: the uber-wealthy will use austerity to put more in their own pockets, the working stiff will NOT be restored to prosperity and in fact will be pushed deeper and deeper into debt slavery.

want to know why social security faces trouble down the road? because it was predicated on wages rising along with the expansion of the economy, which should have increased revenues. but that didn't happen. the sheeple didn't get the raises so social security got short-changed. and as for the drop in general revenues? the rich got a tax holiday and corporations in many states actually get to keep all of their employees' state withholding taxes. yes, seriously, they do.

instead of having the balls to demand more for themselves and their children, the sheeple have settled for becoming gun-owning supplicants. they can put those guns to their heads when their houses are foreclosed on and they can't take their grandchildren's hungry whining anymore.

and wisconsin is the wave of the future.

conservatives crave absolute security, which is unattainable. they will sell their souls and sell eveyone else down the river in the futile attempt to put themselves beyond the reach of life's vagaries. sissy fuckers.

given the choice between a murderer or a pickpocket, you choose the pickpocket. but we can't expect reelecting Obama-Hoover to be suficient unto itself. we have to, as Mario Savio implored, throw our bodies onto the gears of the machine. (of course, we're not gonna do that, we'll just become serfs.)

hey, know who were great job-creators? the pharaohs!

canada is over. why? they have oil. draws greedheads like flies.

take a corporate sociopath to lunch. he'll have yours.

President Obama is itching to cut Social Security. He will do it after the election, whether he's reeledted or not. Clinton tried to do it, working hand-and-glove with that great statesman, Newt Gingrich. The only thing that stopped their effort succeeding was the Lewinsky scandel.

Let's face it, beginning with Carter there have been few real Democrats, only DINOs. For that matter, there are no Republicanms left either, just fascists, or, if you will, the Neo-Confederate Party.

For Basic Necessities We Need Assurance, not Opportunity

Loaded words have meaning on more than one level, and they often state something trite on the surface while beneath they convey a scolding or repressive message.

The word "opportunity" is one of those. It's easy to imagine a polititician, any politician, of high or low office, Democrat or Republican, mouthing some platitude about America offering "OPPORTUNITY to all". This is spoken ostensibly to encourage and bolster the audience.

But implicit in the message is that because this is a land of roiling, effervescent opportunity, if we can't succeed it must be due to our own shortcomings. If we lack healthcare, food, or shelter, we must be too lazy and stupid to avail ourselves of all that lays about, nearly free for the taking. All that's required of the individual is that he/she be able and motivated enough to seize the abundance, to be willing to earn his/her way. If you don't have that much going for you, you'd best shut up and go hide, because you're a loser.

This message is wickedly manipulative. It presupposes that we have no right to anything whatsoever until we've paid for it somehow. That's not true. It denies there is any such thing as an inalienable birthright to anything. That's wrong. It ignores that opportunity is only relevant to acquiring things beyond the margin of subsistence. For the absolute necessities, we need assurance, not opportunity.

If we don't have that assurance, it's because somebody stole it. In the natural world in which we evolved there was enough of the basics for everyone. News flash: the "haves" took away that assurance, and have hamstrung us with the opportunity myth to cover their theft.

Screw opportunity. I don't need opportunity to breathe clear air, drink clean water, or ingest food uncontaminated by chemicals. I don't need to be given an opportunity to be treated when I'm sick. I don't need an opportunity to have open access to knowledge and facts. Your opportunity is standing between me and my birthright. Get it and yourself out of my damn way!

Austerity Cometh, Pray and be Prey

The austerity movement that's gaining momentum in government and press circles calls for "shared sacrifice" to avert future meltdown of the US economy. Here's a partial list of programs and services that will be cutback or eliminated as part of that sacrifice:

Teacher payroll, resulting in larger class size
Remedial Education
Music, Literature, and Art curriculum
Student Grants
Food Assistance to families and meals for schoolchildren, even while the need is growing
Medicare and Medicaid for the poor and elderly
Medicaid Coverage for Children and Pregnant Women
Infant Formula
Early Childhood Education
Social Security benefits (through deferral and reduction)
Government Oversight in the areas of Consumer Protection and Labor Laws
Fire and Safety, with possible privatization of those services
Public Roads and Bridges -sold to Saudi royalty, to be run for profit via toll collection
Water Works -sold to private corporations (If you go thirsty, you've made bad life choices.)
Parks and other land in the commons -sold for a song to mining interests
Public Transportation
Environmental Standards Enforcement, leading to accelerated pollution of water and air
Food Safety -the Invisible Hand of the marketplace is contaminated with salmonella.

Why is all this necessary? Simply because we are politically incapable of removing the medical insurance industry from the process of providing health care, and the cost of this alone will assuredly break the (already broken) bank. The costs of a maintaining a mammoth military empire and a vast prison system don't help either, but the biggest cost is privately insured health care.

Oh, and the "shared" sacrifices really affect only working people. The Wall Street financial pharaohs whose gambling created the present economic crisis are doing splendidly, thank you, and will not in be impacted in the slightest by these austerity measures. Quite to the contrary, they will be further enriched through the implementation, both as inheritors of previously public works and by enhancement of profitability through the elimination of protections and standards. It's winner-take-all. Has been for decades and will be forevermore it seems.

So when the "liberal" corporate media tells you to accept austerity measures because not doing so would be infantile, buy that line. Just sit down and take it when our corrupt, slavish politicians make those "hard" choices (hard for you and me, not for them or their masters). Accept being a serf, that'll be easier for everyone. Just pray and be prey.

frack it, frack it good

things like xylene and other organic solvents certainly have their uses in technology, but they aren't at all good for children or the developing fetus. this class of chemicals will cause birth defects and cancers, particularly leukemia, in children. so there is no excuse whatsoever to introduce them into, say, drinking water. none. no exceptions. end of argument. therefore, we as a people should, will, and do adamantly prohibit any use or process that might contaminate drinking water with these substances.

wrong.

in the US "free market economy" (read: one in which the overlords are free to do whatever the fuck they feel like doing to squeeze out another buck), the unseen hand will efficiently and effectively control events to produce the best outcome. so we the public dare not meddle with the "job creators" as they pump these chemicals into the ground at will in order to free up trapped natural gas.

after all, as they will tell you, they are doing this to make America energy-independent. if you decry their operations, you are clearly in favor of continuing our country's reliance on hostile foreign sources (e.g., Canada) for hydrocarbon fuels. you are effectively aiding and abetting the terrorists. in a nutshell, they are staunch patriots and you are on the side of terrorists (or actually one yourself). they are doing good by doing well, and if you're against that, you're as much of a socialist as that Kenyan in the White House.

by the way, supposedly no one really knows what's in the toxic stew the overlords pump into the ground because they don't have to tell the people (i.e., the government). why? because -get ready for this one- IT'S A TRADE SECRET! yah, like they're not all pumping the same shit down into the hole, and telling the public would give their competition an unfair advantage. horse shit. by the way, this particular exemption from the Clean Water Act is called "the Haliburton rule". take a wild guess who was ceo of Haliburton when the exception was enacted. (hint: rhymes with Dick Cheney.)

So, the choice comes down to either reelecting a courtier to Wall Street or else electing his oppoent who is the personification of Wall Street. The two evils get closer to converging all the time. However, one is still the lesser, and seeking to "teach Obama a lesson" by voting for the patrician Richie rich kid is wholely self-defeating.

Come Fly with Me

'After a lengthy investigation, an Air Force Accident Investigation Board could not find the cause of the [F-22] malfunction but determined "by clear and convincing evidence" that in addition to other factors, Haney was to blame for the crash because he was too distracted by his inability to breathe to fly the plane properly.'

Ok.

Thought he should be able to breathe. What a heel!

Gawd Bless America

a black teenager armed with leathel Skittles and iced tea is shot dead by an American psycho, abetted by the ALEC inspired and directed "sell more guns to racist paranoids" law.

working people have been reduced to debt slaves by the machinations of casino capitalism. on their way to serfdom they were forced to make a final payoff to the banks, which finalized the biggest heist in history, the theft of all wealth in the US. by the way, none of the banksters has gone to jail, and none ever will because President Obama-Hoover has too much respect for the wealthy to ever direct his attorney general to call them out on the fraud they have perpetrated. instead, the state busies itself putting away people for smoking flowers.

young people can't make a living, cannot afford to start a family because job opportunities are scarce and wages are too low. further, they graduate college with useless degrees and the unshakeable burden of student loans, catheters inserted directly into their veins by the vampire wealthy insiders who are the lenders. whereas other countries have made higher education a right, we allow the rich to use it as a tool to enslave our youth with debt they will never be free of.

oh, and see how the nice policemen treat people who try to speak out against their own enslavement? see them generously use pepper spray (forbidden in warfare by the Geneva Convention) on people even as those people attempt to comply with police orders? see the police electrocute nonviolent protesters with tasers and beat them with clubs and their fists. see the five foot two girl who after being struck in the head by police went into seizure? see the police stand by as the handcuffed girl, writhing senseless on the sidewalk, repeatedly smashes her head on the concrete as they watch disinterestedly, without a thought toward helping her? understand that this contempt was learned by these soldier-policmen while subduing the populace in Iraq and Afghanistan and they have brought it home and applied it to us now.

ALEC also pushes legislation to disenfranchise black and poor voters, based on the specious premise that there is rampant un-checked voter fraud. the reality is that while individual voter fraud is practically nonexistent, entire elections can be stolen via tinkering with unverifiable electronic voting machines that afford the voter no assurance whatsoever that his or her vote will be counted as cast. it's merely making a wish on a smart card. of course, the supreme court will have the final say on who wins and who loses an election anyway.

very soon, if not already, every telephone conversation, tweet, and email will be examined by the state security apparatus as it fishes for enemies. and over the last decade the definition of "enemy" has shifted from actual terrorist suspects to those among us with the temerity to express disagreement, especially by protesting, with government over issues. the net cast is broader than any in history, one the Stasi would have envied. there is little need for this pervasive survailance and it only exists because corporations have gotten used to making unlimited amounts of money cashing in on the post 9-11 security paradigm. the cold war is over, so corporate welfare must be extended into other arenas, like that of omniscient spying on the citizenry.

America is engaged in a war on the poor. it incarcerates more people than any other country, and primarily for the crime of being poor. the US incarceration rate is greater than that in any third world dictatorship and it towers over that of all other industrialized countries. the reason for this is simple: it is easier and cheaper, at least in the near-term, to jail the poor rather than share with them.

jobs are continually off-shored because doing so increases profit for US corporations that supply goods for sale in the US. the buyers are working people who have come to rely on credit cards to buy these goods they can no longer afford. further, lower price enables big box discount stores to drive out smaller competitors. the result of these things is a downward spiral in wages and depletion of the majority's wealth. but even our Democratic President signs trade agreement after trade agreement that perpetuates and accelerates the loss of jobs, closing of small businesses, and the decimation of US wages. in addition, corporations continue to be rewarded for off-shoring through government subsidies and tax laws. the ghouls are kept very happy at the expense of the vast majority of the people who work.

there are over 40 million people going without medical care in this country. meanwhile, we spend twice what the nearest industrialized country spends per capita on healthcare, and our outcomes are worse than any of them. we pay twice what anyone else pays for prescription drugs, and insurance companies take a whopping 30% off the top of every dollar spent on medical care. that doesn't even count the cost of filling out the copious and complex paperwork they require healthcare providers to fill out, the purpose of which is to slow or eliminate the paying of claims. by the way, most middle-aged Americans don't give a damn about this because they believe that it's only people of color who are denied care. they are wrong --as much as they are assholes.

beginning in the Reagan era with supply-side/trickle-down economics, we stopped getting wage increases and were instead showered with credit cards. productivity has increased by a factor of 2.5 since then, but the rewards have gone entirely to the top 1%. meanwhile, we have had our wealth mined out from underneath us. we were cajoled into accepting this situation by means of a divide and conquer strategy predicated on racial prejudice. politicians like reagan tacitly promised whites that blacks would be kept in check, put back into their place, and in exchange we traded away unions and a living wage. for the assurance liberty would continue to be the sole provence of light skinned people, we screwed over our children and grandchildren, not to mention people of color. we are first class fuck-heads and deserve what we've ended up with. sadly though, our children are already paying for our ethical failing, cowardice, selfishness, and racist sickness.

lastly, while there is little to spare in the average household budget, the price of gasoline climbs ever higher. a fifth or more of the cost per gallon goes right into the pockets of Wall Street speculators. we are in the era of pure financial capitalism, where nothing is produced and wealth is only garnered by extracting a tribute on anything the schmucks at the bottom need. there is nothing created under predatory capitalism, it consists entirely of legalized theft. of course, in a world that's about to experience the reality of ever scarcer oil, you'd think planning and conservation would be hot topics, but the fractious screechers in congress would rather howl at the moon and engage in a fight to restrict access to birth control than address any real problems.

we have come upon a cultural perfect storm which has ushered in fascism through a combination of racism, brutality, authoritarianism, hatred, and avarice. all we need now is a guy with a funny mustache to ride in front.

Dear President Obama, Congresswoman Pelosi and Senator Reid,

I'm crestfallen that you're considering cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Cutting these programs now would be a kick in the gut to the American people, following their being sucker-punched by the big banks.

Enough is enough. This form of austerity is unnecessary and unfair. There is wealth in abundance in this country, it's just migrated up to the thin stratum at the top.

If politics preclude your taxing the super-wealthy who stole our savings and wrecked the economy, then that's an admission the system is corrupt beyond redemption. Has the time now come when, as in ancient Rome, the elected representatives can be sent home and replaced by the wealthy elite?

Has it? And if it has, what's the point of voting?

Deflationary Dystopia -How We Lost Everything by Buying the Cheapest

Discounters sell items to the customer cheaper, taking a lower margin of profit per item and making their money from a larger volume of sales. That's good for the purchaser, because he or she is paying a smaller mark-up, the price above what the discounter pays the manufacturer. You get the most for your money by buying at discount.

Or perhaps not, not in the long run anyway.

When a discounter absorbs an increasingly large proportion of what a manufacturer produces, it gives the discounter power over the manufacturer. There's a story about how, many years ago, a prominent retail chain would buy from a manufacturer, taking only a small percentage of the producer's total output to start with. Year after year the chain increased the order, a larger and larger portion of the manufacturer 's total output, until ultimately the size of the chain's order was so large that canceling would bankrupt the manufacturer.

At that point the retail chain told the manufacturer what it would pay and what quantity was required, and the manufacturer had to agree to those terms, accept less profit per item produced, or else go under. That's the power of being one of the dwindling number of ever-larger discount stores, power taken away from the producer.

We now have a situation where the discounter can squeeze suppliers so hard it forces them to go overseas to manufacture. The price the discounter dictates isn't enough to pay the salary of the worst paid American worker, so the manufacturer has to go offshore if it wants to stay in business. In some instances the discount retailer blatantly tells the manufacturer to move production to China.

Who loses in that exchange? The manufacturer does in that he/she has to scramble to stay in business, but there's another loser: you, the American worker. Without a job, or with a lower-paying job now, you can't afford anymore to buy anywhere else other than at the big box discount retailer, and ultimately you'll be forced to shop at the dollar store because even the discounter's prices will be too high for you.

Discounting + offshoring = unemployment and poverty for the American worker. Funny that neither US politicians nor the corporate news media ever says a word about the economic paradigm in place now, one that's rendering most of us paupers. Be a good chump and vote values next election. Forget economics, they're too complicated for you to understand -because we make it that way.

Isn't inflation a bad thing, daddy?

Inflation is bad, bad, bad. If there were inflation, the price of everything would go up, up, up! Of course, wages would follow so that the pain wouldn't be that awful, really. Then too, if the mortgage payment stays fixed and your paycheck gets bigger, the mortgage would become a shrinking portion of the pie. Also, the price of your underwater house would inflate along with everything else, so after a couple of years your house might at least bring what you owe the bank for it...

Oooh... that's why inflation is so very, very bad: it would loosen the grip the banks have on our throats and the 0.1 percent that owns everything would take a hit! Can't let that happen in a US-style "democracy". Glad the FED works 24/7 to ward off inflation, as it has been doing for thirty years.

final answer

once upon a time the majority of the people did not live very well. medical care was sparse, education beyond high school or even elementary was unattainable for most, and the contrast between those at that top who lived well and the masses was stark. that is to say, it was then as things are coming to be again.

New Deal programs and laws changed the distribution of wealth, if only for a few short decades. as a result of the New Deal, economic and educational opportunity existed for the many, not just the few, and the country flourished. but those laws have been attacked, weakened, and are now on the brink of being removed completely.

the amazing fact is that american workers fared so well only because of the threat of communism during that period. fdr knew that unless he toned down the harshest aspects of predatory capitalism, there was a real chance that communist ideas might penetrate even further than they already had. so to save capitalism, he instituted reforms that distributed wealth downward.

but when the ussr caved in on itself, american businessmen immediately realized they didn't need to make nice anymore. their competition in the realm of ideas was vanquished, and there was no damn reason not to go back to a winner-take-all system. none.

so, we're awash in the tide of trickle-down that uncle ron brought us. things will not get better for my children and my grandchild, because there is no incentive for the overlords to do anything other than continue taking, stealing, grabbing everything for themselves. there's no silver lining and no way out because the very rich now control the levers of power even more pervasively than they did before fdr.

Sorry, No Room for The Average Anymore

This is not a democracy. A democracy enacts the will of the people, but here and now the average person has very little influence on the conduct of domestic affairs and none on foreign. Further, the average person's welfare is not factored into decision-making by elected officials. The people with real power, the people politicians listen to and seek to please, are the corporate moguls, pharaohs of finance, and their lobbyists. There are also foreign lobbyists pulling strings. Everyone but the average person has a say, and he or she is lucky to get even a condescension from a campaigning pol just prior to an election.

Given the size of the economy, if income distribution were the same now as it was in 1960, the median household income would be $106,000 per year. It isn't, of course, it's $50K. This says very clearly that the value in economic terms of the average person has been reduced to less than half of what it was fifty years ago. Make no mistake, with a reduction in economic clout comes a matching reduction in social regard. The life of the average person has increasingly become cheapened and fallen under control by higher ups.

There remains little-to-no need for the contribution the average person makes. His or her function in society has either been taken over by automation or is being performed by a low paid, exploited laborer overseas. When the average person reflects on this, he or she might wonder, "Why wasn't I told this was happening? Why wasn't there an alarm sounded? Why wasn't it in the news and all over the TV that my role was being scaled down and eliminated?" The answer is obvious: it was much easier to discard you if you could be kept unaware of what was happening. You were dazzled with electronic trinkets and diverted with petty social vendettas while the knives were being sharpened.

Sorry, but unless you are very good at math and finance there is no room for you -or for your disappointingly average children. You will be made to feel responsible for this. It will be portrayed as your own failing, just being average, and in the end you will accept this. You will because this has been repeated in your ear endlessly for most of your life. From the perspective of the masters of the universe, this is quite handy, because not only do you not go after them, but your self-loathing can be harnessed to set you against other hapless average people, all to the advantage of the lucky ones at the top. That too is being done now, has been done all along.

It's a new, a winner-take-all world. This necessarily engenders throngs of losers. Too bad for you if you're not one of the anointed. Too bad for your kids, because they will receive no mercy.

This began with the statement, "This is not a democracy." The powers that be signaled their strong distaste for democracy over a decade ago. I remember very clearly the Rushandians of conservative radio denigrating democracy and equating it to socialism. Their hammering was really picking up momentum too, but then 9-11 hit and openly attacking democracy in the aftermath seemed unwise. What's surprising is that the overt attack hasn't been resumed by now. Perhaps it will once Afghanistan has been put to bed.

Well, the Israeli lobby wants us to go to war with Iran now, and if the financiers in the US don't object, that's where your children will be sent to kill and die next. If they don't, they instead will be put in jail for smoking pot. You will pay the bill for their incarceration too, and the money will make their private jailers richer. According to Ayn Rand's social-Darwinistic worldview, that's what you average SOBs deserve. What the Kochs, the Summers, the Blankenships and the Greenspans would like you to continue to forget is this verity written in Max Ehrmann's Desiderata of Happiness: "You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here."

Either think for yourself now or perish.

Small Tragedy, Keep Walking

Two women walked through the office door and stepped up to the counter, behind which the clerk was sitting. They were a mother and daughter. The mother, in her sixties, was grim and resolved. She was dark skinned, neat, unattractive, and seemed well aware of the losing hand she and her daughter were playing. Sternly but without belligerence she asked about her daughter's storage rental.

The answer shot back quickly, matter of factly, almost cheerily, "The lock was cut on that one a long time ago."

I didn't want to eavesdrop, I didn't want to embarrass them by seeming to pay attention their crisis. I carried on my business with another clerk at the end of the counter near the back.

The daughter did not speak. She was mute, powerless. Where had she been and why didn't she pay the storage rental fee for an extended period? In jail? Drug re-hab? Perhaps just down-and-out and unable to make that monthly payment? She remained silent. To her this was just one more punch, one more stone placed on her chest. I wouldn't think it was perceived as an indignity simply because I don't think she'd ever reached a high enough perch to be prideful. I thought of my own daughter, often unwilling to speak on her own behalf. And of the situation of her mother, straddling dual and opposing emotions: exasperation toward, and outrage in defense of, her grown child.

Perhaps the daughter is guilty of irresponsibility or inattention, but there's sadness none-the-less in this situation. Whatever keepsakes, heirlooms, or even clothing she once had were gone. She could not retrieve them. She begins again with nothing.

Here today was a small tragedy, which went unnoticed.

What's your game?

The "ownership society" has transformed working people into serfs. The economic elite whom Newt G. speaks for are still exploiting racial animosity to shift the blame to dark-skinned people. Too many are still ripe to fall for it and continue to vote against their own interests. It's not that they will realize too late that they have been duped. They will never figure it out, even when their children and grandchildren go unfed, uneducated, untreated, penniless, and homeless. To them it will all have been the fault of minorities, and the wealthy few will grin self-satisfied at the ruse they've pulled.

Of course, lower class AWMs (and many AWFs) could have an agenda of their own in collaborating with the overlords: perhaps they desire the imminent economic depravation and devastation to culminate in a race war. That would explain all the guns. They want to take their country back.

21st Century, right? No, not really, not everywhere.

go back to sleep

the buzz around st. louis is that boing (nee mcdonnell douglas) has a new contract to build a flock of fighters for sale to saudi arabia. this will bring badly needed jobs to the area, so you can't blame people there for being enthusiastic. however, isn't it absurd that we're selling advanced military jets to the country that underwrote the 9-11 attack a decade ago? the money for the operation came from saudi arabi, and not from average joes, but from the ruling class. also, most of the hijackers were saudi. but business is business!

funny how we thumped afghanistan in the early going, then turned our furry on iraq (?). later it came out that the afghani taliban were actually working with our government in the lead-up to 9-11, trying to find a way to turn over bin laden to a western power like france. they didn't dare give him directly to the us because they were afraid we'd execute him, and that would destroy their street cred. that makes invading afghanistan over 9-11 seem analogous to bulldozing the cheap motel timothy mcveigh slept in the night before he bombed the murrah building in oklahoma, blindly vengeful and heavy-handed.

that's ok though, once we'd stomped iraq into a stupor, one sufficient to assure it couldn't flare up again while we withdrew, we went back and redoubled our fury against afghanistan. (but we did leave behind ten or fifteen thousand contract fighters in iraq, a small private army under direct control of our state department.)

none of this seems to make any sense, and if you get your information from context-free, amnesiac tv news, it all just seems infuriatingly inane and stupid. there has to be more to it, but without real information to explain, we can only surmise what the point of all this is. whenever we try however, we we leave ourselves open to being branded conspiracy nuts. so rather than attempt to understand what the hell is going on and be an informed electorate, the corporate-approved answer is just keep buying electronic trinkets and watching reality tv. go back to sleep.

Post Script, 5-8-12: Recently learned from watching a filmed interview with the most honest, courageous, intelligent American conservative alive, Gore Vidal, that in the week before the 9-11 attack the head of Pakistani intelligence was in D.C. hobnobbing with our intelligence chiefs. From here he instructed his second-in-command back in Pakistan to send $100K to Mohammed Atta, the operational leader of the 9-11 attacks. Weird, ain't it?

Sad to Say

For a period after the second world war, the US saw enormous growth of its middle class. This resulted from laws that favored unions and prevented the financial sector from again becoming a casino, as it had been leading up to the Great Depression. It was a time when nearly everyone, if they were white at least, could work and benefit in direct proportion. There were jobs aplenty, they paid well, and a young person emerging from the war could expect to achieve his particular version of the American Dream. The period lasted long enough so that even the next generation, the baby boomers, enjoyed a promising start in life and a secure future.

All that's changed. Expectations for children of the working class majority are severely reduced. Most jobs don't pay well enough to live on for millions, there are no benefits, and the past norm of fair wages, benefits, and an attainable retirement has evaporated. Without unions, without worker protection laws vigorously applied, or regulations on the financial industry, a well paid working class has been plunged into a form of serfdom in a comparatively short time as New Deal laws have been rolled back.

The paradigm has shifted back to the Robber Baron era, when a small percentage of psychopaths garnered all the benefits of productivity, and we the people fought each other for the crumbs that fell from their table. How this paradigm shift occurred is intriguing, disappointing, and infuriating, but it is sufficient to say that the crafty elite drove the change and we the people bought into the selfishness of a winner-take-all society. Consequently, serfdom is the new normal, and without a revolution cannot be changed.

These ultra-wealthy have no empathy for the majority. Quite the contrary, they disdain and despise average people. Having plundered the wealth of the middle class the elite are actively engaged in engineering the system to preclude working people's ever regaining any of their former power. The abominable Citizen's United Supreme Court decision is a glaring example of this. Further, the elite see the people as a potential threat and invest great sums in security to fight them off should they revolt, as unlikely as that seems.

Don't expect redress through government action. The cold fact is that politicians of both parties work exclusively for the wealthy elite. It is they after all who make the large campaign contributions necessary to return sitting politicians to office. This money was once offset by union support, but with the decline of unions the Democratic Leadership Council found it necessary to recast their party as courtiers of the rich. Clinton and Obama certainly exemplify this pragmatic conversion.

Even Democratic governors engage in selling off the commons to private interests like Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. Ultimately roads, bridges, and water supplies will be in private hands and the cost of using them will be set by a rigged market. Even now the global price of food is affected by commodity speculators, with the result famine is not a function of food shortage, but an inability to pay inflated prices.

So the defeat of ordinary people is complete, irreversible, and global. Predatory financial capitalism has the world by the throat, and there is no incentive for it to change. There is no room for empathy in an unbridled free market. The rich are getting richer around the world, while the little people are being ground to dust.

The Dog Whistler

Newt is pandering again when he facetiously suggests putting poor children to work as janitors. He's blasting a dog whistle audible to those outspoken and obnoxious Tea-baggers. They perk their ears up, and what they actually hear is "put them in the fields picking cotton", and they love it. It's a coded transmission between a lifelong opportunist and a group of selfish, racist, coddled curs who are howling out one last chorus of "I've got mine" before they contaminate the soil with their carcasses. And they vote.

In Greed We Trust

Congress recently passed a resolution affirming the motto "In God We Trust" on US currency. There are 50 million people without medical coverage at present. Young people aren't paid enough to live independently, don't receive benefits, and have no real future. One in five children in the US knows what it's like to go hungry, but continuously views TV commercials hawking luxury cars. Sixty cents gets added to the price of a gallon of gas to put money in the pockets of commodities speculators at Goldman Sachs. Corrections Corporation of America successfully pushed legislation via A.L.E.C. to lengthen jails sentences solely to make more money warehousing prisoners. The Washington clowns almost got the wording right, it's "In GREED We Trust".

the weakest link

you've heard him spouting off at at work. he starts with a story about people on welfare gaming the system. the story is either cherry picked or completely made up, but either way, he poses himself as the long suffering, hard working victim of calculating freeloaders. after bashing the supposedly undeserving poor he switches to carrying water for the rich, championing a flat tax and decrying the perfidy of the graduated income tax.

in truth, he neither believes his own story about the poor nor cares about some purported unfairness in the tax code. he knows full well being poor sucks and he also knows he will not gain by a flat tax because he himself earns only a modest income. then what motivates him? he is a hater, an opportunistic hater.

more than that, he is a coward who openly targets only the poor because they lack the power to defend themselves and because they have few outside defenders. just to be safe though, he cloaks himself in mores of the wealthy to purchase safety in the same way the imitative viceroy moth mimics the truly poisonous monarch butterfly to ward off attack.

he is the angry white male who listens to conservative talk radio every day, reveling in that free-hate zone tended by indignant gargoyles. the unfortunate thing is, this human dreck represents a plurality now, which means we are very unlikely to address the impending disintegration of our society due to increasing wealth stratification, marauding of middle class wealth by Wall Street, or the atomization of working people which renders them incapable of defending themselves against the onslaught.

Tony Baloney's Picnic

"Inspector Bologna, who formerly led the 1st Precinct and now works in counterterrorism" --that was the buried lead. Countless government manuals now list protest as "low grade terrorism". Protesting Wall Street Robber Barons is terrorism, get it? Heck, if a guy can't even pepper spray a terrorist, what's this world coming to? Back in the day when cops clubbed, beat, and shot at union strikers they were just being thugs. Now they're patriots. This is the new "Freedom" of the burgeoning authoritarian police state. And by the way, a portion of the NYPD is now the domestic spying arm of the CIA and operates in several states. So sleep tight while you wait for the knock on the door.

Austerity, reducing the federal budget in order to shrink the federal debt, will mean cutbacks in Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutritional supplements among other things. Down to brass tacks, that means millions of pregnant woman will not receive food supplements during pregnancy, jeopardizing their baby's normal development and increasing the chance of birth defects. After that, because supplements to infant and toddler will be cut, in countless cases the developing child will not only be more vulnerable to disease, but its full mental and physical potential will not be reached. In a real sense, this is a tradeoff of IQ points against debt dollars.

A lot of average working people support the Austerity movement despite the fact it will affect many of their families directly in a profound way. For everyone, the cost of shortchanging mothers and children will also be massive down the road. The diminution and stunting of a generation will require vast future expenditures in special education, ballooning of otherwise preventable medical costs, and in twenty years, skyrocketing increases in crime and incarceration.

Of course, it isn't just WIC, Medicaid's under the budget cutting knife too. Forget about vaccinations then, and childhood diseases could regain some of the power of life and death they had in olden times. In a way, the suffering will have been a tradeoff for the satisfaction of bringing the budget in line. And to the contention it will spare future generations burdensome debt? Perhaps, but it's no bargain for the price they will pay.

Who's Your Class Warrior, Baby!

There has been a thirty year campaign waged by business to suppress wages. A lynchpin of this war has been to eliminate unions, and it has been very, very successful. As a result, wages have not increased over that entire period, while the wealthy have benefited vastly.

If income distribution were the same today as in 1960, the median household income would be $106,000. Instead, it is $50,000.

When the wealthy are publicly confronted with this, they act horrified and cry, "Class Warfare!" Their hypocrisy and gall is astounding, considering they have been in full battle mode for three decades, and now when the vanquished present minimal push-back they act horrified.

I've heard the term "chutzpah" defined by an example: a boy murders his parents, then asks for leniency in court because he's an orphan. These wealthy guys present another good example of chutzpah. (Consult US Rep. Michelle Bachman for correct pronunciation.)

How one man felled an empire.

Bin Laden had goals: get US forces out of Saudi Arabia; drag the US into a quagmire in Afghanistan for the purpose of bleeding the US economically and thereby weakening it, just as had been done with the Soviet Union. Within a year of 9-11 Donald Rumsfeld had removed US troops from Mecca, and the US is now entrenched in a never ending bloody occupation in Afghanistan that is sapping the country's wealth. Our economy is on the edge of implosion. Osama bin Laden will forever be remembered as a murderer, but he will simultaneously be credited with bringing down an empire.

He was inadvertently abetted by forces within the US that had long wanted a military incursion in the region. The Cheney Administration was spoiling for a war in Iraq for the purpose of controlling enough of the world's oil to put the Chinese at a disadvantage, causing them to pay Western powers (US and British corporations) a tribute for every drop of oil they used in the future. Cheney would have done to the Chinese with oil exactly what the British had done with opium.

Cheney, although a psychopath, was not a fool. He eschewed spending too much time in Afghanistan on his way into Iraq. President Obama however, apparently did not see bin Laden's trap.

By the way, having captured bin Laden, why would we kill him? That would be like blowing up the entrance to a gold mine. My bet is he's being held in a basement somewhere, information being extracted from him bit by bit, day by day. That's what Cheney would do.

Forget the Media

The media is insisting on being told what the demands of the 99 Percenters are, as if the reason for occupying of Wall Street were some incomprehensible mystery. This doesn't surprise in light of the media's long standing practice of obfuscating the financial elite's three decade old campaign to marginalize and fleece working Americans, the very thing that has precipitated the occupation.

Here's a recap of the undoing of the other 99%. The picture's dirt simple, really. The top 1% have harvested the wealth of the other 99% in four easy steps, which began in the 1980's:

Step 1, Undercut wages. Off-shoring jobs is merely a new twist on the old ploy of flooding the market with immigrant labor to drive wages down. Now because of technology and innovation in shipping the the replacement workers can stay put and the factories come to them, with the same effect. Thanks to Bill "NAFTA" Clinton for this, and a special shout out to Reagan for paving the way by busting the unions.

Step 2, Keep up consumption. Lost jobs and lower wages naturally lead to reduced consumer spending unless something is done to prop it up. Voila, CREDIT CARDS!

Step 3, Mine the accumulated wealth of the 99%. Once the plastic was max-ed out, a way had to be found to get the peons to keep spending. Presto, HOME EQUITY LOANS! These allowed the 99% to tap into their only major source of wealth to pay off card blances and keep on buying the cars and electronic trinkets their overseas replacement workers were grinding out.

Step 4, Make them debt slaves. Having drained the wealth of the 99%, the plutocrats needed to keep the game going until they could shift revenue stream to the developing markets overseas and begin collecting from the new class of consumers being cultivated there. But how to get the peons to extend spending beyond the point of being broke? BINGO, inflation in the housing market!

This was tricky, but avarice will always find a way. With the help of able men like Alan "Mr. Bubble" Greenspan, it was accomplished. (Artful Dodger Clinton assisted here too, by overturning Glass-Steagall at just the right moment.) Who though, could be found to underwrite loans for these obviously inflated assets? Why, the peons themselves, through their own pension funds, of course! Now their mortgages are under water, they're facing foreclosure, and unable to retire. SHAZAM, you're a serf!

So there in four easy steps is how the 99% came to be where they are. The media must have seen it coming, could have said something and might even have averted the collapse of the middle class, but they were too preoccupied practicing the steps to the Fair and Balanced Tango, sitting in makeup, and writing checks for their kids' private school tuition. Anyway, let the fatuous media fret that they can't get a list of demands, who cares? The media is at best irrelevant, and has been for decades.

Mazel tov, Mother Fuckers

Greed is good. Greed is a mindset that displaces charity, empathy, and communality. Greed is however consistent with heartlessness, fear, hate, envy, and mutual victimization. WE as a nation have evolved to embrace greed as our main tenet. That is why our political system is in thrall to psychopathic CEO's and why our only remaining industry is pure financial capitalism, not production of goods. It is why the pendulum has swung back to the pre Depression Gilded Age. Our world has become the dreamland of Gordon Gecko, sold to you by the avuncular Ronald Reagan. And now the only way forward is down.

Tax cuts create jobs? give me a break.

Let's cut the baloney, tax cuts to businesses don't create jobs. The claim they do presupposes that business owners would put more workers on payroll if only they had the money, as if giving people jobs were a business manager's priority. This is poppycock: a business's goal is to make money, and it only pays workers as necessary to produce the goods or services it sells in order to make money. What leads to job creation is DEMAND, and this exists only when consumers have money in their pockets to spend.

Actually, putting more money in the pockets of the wealthy during an economic downturn not only fails to spur hiring, but tends to create market bubbles because there's no productive place for them to put the extra cash. Thirty years of devastation from Voodoo Economics and we're still clueless. Meanwhile, our descent into fascism is picking up momentum.

Something Doesn't Add Up

If nearly everyone is working for low subsistence wages, how can a consumer based economy ever be restored? Isn't that the gorilla at the end of the kitchen table? How is a broad recovery even mathematically possible under these circumstances? If politicians were ever to address this, assuming they could take a mini break from heeding the voices of their corporate bosses, the next question would be: will you tax the wealthy to compensate the general population for its inability to provide for itself, or is this a simple case of "Let the poor die in the snow"? Of course, Washington's answer to this, as everything, will be: Austerity!

Don't let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches, just saved from shipwreck: can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger swallowed by the waves?
-George Eliot

(Try telling that to a Teabagger!)

Whiplashed by Hate

We succumb to the politics of envy, piling on the remaining unions in the public sector because those workers enjoy the last vestige of a dying era of good pay, security, and benefits. Rather than challenge the paradigm that drove us down, we denigrate teachers and other public workers on command like obedient attack dogs. We are seemingly unaware that the media is carrying water for the economic elite that has calculatedly (Re: the "Powell Memo") wrought our economic downfall. We passive-aggressively tear into teachers, firefighters, and letter carriers to bring them down to our own new level of hand-to-mouth existence. Well, I guess that's just a part of human nature, a trait that dominates in a climate of misinformation and hate mongering.

Reagan's Tragic Verity

It's thirty years since Ronald Reagan stood in front of the American people and told them "Government IS the problem." That's the government that stood in the way of corporations' doing whatever they damned well pleased, not the government that fostered and protected unions to bring us the 8 hour work day, sick leave, vacation, and pensions. Not the government that oversaw inspection of our food supply, that monitored and enforced laws to prevent our air, water, and soil becoming laden with poisons. Not the government that regulated wall street practices to prevent its becoming, once again, a wild west casino. Nope, not that government.

Now what we have is a government that didn't shrink in any dimension except it has become far less democratic and is dominated by Wall Street. It is simply an organ of control for very wealthy corporations and individuals, and the ordinary people's interests are ignored, their modest wealth has been torn away from them, and their children's future savaged. Democracy is gone, having actually been made a bad word by the well-funded right wing propaganda machine. Ironically, Reagan's assertion has become the truth.