In the following article, Bob Livingston discusses some of the issues that he feels are effecting America and Americans. We believe it is a good starting point for a discussion of some of these issues. So we would like to know what you think about two issues. They are:
Will we invade Iran?
Is Ron Paul being treated differently than the other candidates?
Please comment on these items and any other ones that you would like. I hope that we can have a vigorous and intellectual discussion.
Conservative Tom
We live in strange times. Millions of Americans are out of work. Millions more live in fear that their job could go away at any time. The food stamp rolls are larger than they’ve ever been.
An untold number are homeless, not because they choose to be or because they suffer from some mental disease or defect, but because they have lost everything in the second Great Depression. And many more are one missed paycheck or one delinquent mortgage payment away from finding themselves on the street.
A growing number of young adults are now living with their parents or other relatives. Unable to find a decent job despite possessing a college diploma, tens of thousands leave college mired under an irrepressible and unmanageable debt burden.
Protests that began in the Middle East earlier this year over rising food prices and food shortages evolved and spread throughout the region and now find themselves smack in the middle of America in the form of the Occupy movement.
Our country suffers from an amoral rot. Secular humanism, nontheism, atheism and other humanist philosophies are attempting to elevate the creature above the Creator. As such, a belief that the end justifies the means is consuming society. It’s become, “Anything goes.”
Where America is headed is anybody’s guess. I think we are in store for a complete collapse of the system, because there are 10 things that are certain.
We should never underestimate the ignorance of the American voter.
After all, they elected Barack Hussein Obama, a man who openly campaigned on an anti-American socialist philosophy and had the least experience, fewest qualifications, thinnest resume and shadiest past of any serious Presidential candidate in United States history.
Of course, the alternative was really no alternative. That’s the way the elites wanted it. And now the global elites and their corporate media propaganda machine are deciding again who will be elected — and the American voter, with nary a whimper, follows blindly along, accepting that a two-horse race between Mitt Romney and some neocon anti-Romney are the only choices we have.
The trouble has been in selecting the anti-Romney. So far, Michele Bachmann’s star fizzled like a New Year’s sparkler, Rick Perry fell off his horse after he insulted most Republicans over illegal immigration in one debate and stepped on his tongue in two others, Herman Cain’s stock has begun dropping faster than Sharon Bialek’s perky mood in the back of a limo — as much because of Cain’s incoherent answers to tough questions as over the dubious sexual harassment claims — and now Newt Gingrich is the rising neocon star.
The same Newt Gingrich who twice (at least) cheated on his wives (he’s had three) while they suffered from serious illnesses. The same globalist, Council on Foreign Relations member, pagan ritual Bohemian Grove attendee Newt Gingrich who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi in an advertisement hawking the threat of man-caused global warming, who has a penchant for cozying up with people like race huckster Al Sharpton when it’s politically expedient and then denouncing them later, who devised the original government-growing Contract with America, who endorsed RINO (later to turn Democrat) Dede Scozzafava over a Tea Party candidate, who called Congressman Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan right-wing social engineering, who said the Tea Party will be the “militant wing” of the GOP, and who we now know looted American taxpayers of between $1.6 million and $1.8 million as a “historian” for the Freddie Mac corporatist slush fund (although Gingrich remembers only about $300,000 of it). And this is the same Newt Gingrich who once called for a Federal mandate to purchase health insurance, endorsed “cap-and-trade” legislation, said he would have voted for TARP and promoted Bush’s prescription drug bill. He also continues to support ethanol subsidies and is pro-amnesty for illegals.
That Gingrich, with all his baggage and pompousness, can be an attractive candidate to people who call themselves conservatives, tells you all you need to know of the ignorance of the average voter. And this ignorance continues because…
There is a concerted effort by the establishment to defeat Ron Paul.
It’s gotten so overt that even the corporatist media propaganda machine is chastising its own members over their treatment of Paul. It all seemed to come to a head after the Nov. 12 CBS News debate in which Paul got 89 seconds to speak during the only televised hour of the debate.
In addition to the snubs, which have left Paul with the least speaking time in all the debates — even much less than Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum, who are barely registering in the polls — networks have a habit of taking down or dismissing as irrelevant any polls that show Paul doing well. Despite it all, Paul is in a virtual tie for first in Iowa and is a strong second in New Hampshire, a State that Romney will probably carry hands-down. And Paul is polling the best of all Republican candidates against Obama with independent voters.
The media and political elites fear Paul because he has not been corrupted and will expose that…
Government is a criminal enterprise.
News this week that members of Congress have been involved in unethical, if not illegal, insider trading based on information they possess before anyone else or on laws they know are about to be considered is just one more straw to put in the camel’s pack. How many more can that poor camel hold before the American people really wake up?
We have long told you here about the crony capitalism and fascism that infest the capital. And while Congress, former Congressional staffers and big businesses dip into the money-printing till and pass dollars around like the Monopoly® money it is, bureaucrats, paper pushers, statist judges, on-the-take regulators, Department of Justice thugs, Congress and an increasingly-militarized Federal government create dozens of new statutes and regulations because…
The Federal Government wants to make everyone a criminal.
Just last week, it was announced that the Department of Justice wanted to criminalize lying to a website. So, if you violate the “Terms of Use” policy by fibbing on online dating sites, social networks, etc., you could become a felon. The government wants to treat those terms as contracts.
In his book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, Harvey A. Silverglate writes that “federal prosecutors are abusing their power by using the criminal law to prosecute law abiding citizens…” They are seizing illegal power by twisting marginal and highly questionable interpretations of criminal law.
We are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences makes it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure. The pattern is to intimidate all criminally charged defendants into pleading guilty to “reduced” charges rather than risk going to trial with the threat of draconian sentences in the implied event of conviction. And remember, government prosecutors have unlimited funds to use to pay an unlimited number of lawyers and investigators to spend an unlimited number of hours to snoop, dig and scratch around in every aspect of a citizen’s business, thanks to the USA Patriot Act.
No trial? This means that the Federal prosecuting attorney is the judge and the jury.
We now have a huge volume of Federal criminal laws which are broad and impossibly vague, and Silverglate believes it’s possible the average citizen unknowingly violates at least three of them every day. They have become dangerously disconnected from English common law tradition. And since most Federal judges are selected from a pool of former Federal prosecutors, it’s rare if ever that a judge rules against the government’s case.
Liberty-loving Americans are now considered the enemy of the State. The Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies have issued memos and directives describing who they see as potential “domestic” terrorists. They include military veterans — both retired and those returning from overseas engagements — Tea Party supporters, Ron Paul supporters, 2nd Amendment supporters, 10th Amendment supporters, people who display American flags, people with Gadsden Flag bumper stickers, anti-Obamacare protesters and anyone who advocates for smaller government.
But this is only part of our government’s war on us because…
Government creates crises and uses them to steal liberty and transfer wealth.
In the days following the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush and Congress acted quickly to pass overarching laws that allowed increased surveillance of Americans. The meme was that law enforcement agencies needed increased “power” to snoop, spy, eavesdrop and invade in order to identify terrorists. With the passage of the law, government has almost carte blanch to go anywhere, look at anything and listen to whatever it wants on any and all conversations, transactions and correspondence Americans have. And Americans can no longer travel without subjecting themselves to radiation-emitting scans or humiliating searches.
Meanwhile, the FBI infiltrates mosques, Muslim communities, militias and other “subversive” groups looking for ignorant patsies they can turn into potential terrorists. They then provide them with dummy bombs or weapons and ridiculously ineffective plans for terror plots and wait for them to try to pull them off.
These “terror plots” give the government more excuses to intrude on civil liberties.
With the bursting of the housing bubble (created by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s easy-money policies), Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke went on television claiming the sky was falling and predicted the end of the world if “government” didn’t bail out Goldman Sachs, AIG and their other corporatist buddies in the financial sector. We got the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and Bush claimed he had “abandoned free-market principals to save the free-market system.”
What really happened is that trillions of dollars were transferred from hard-working Americans to the coffers of big business and big finance, both in the United States and abroad. Of course, there is nothing new about this. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Great Depression to reward his labor friends and grow government’s power under the interstate commerce clause. And while Americans starved, thousands of farmers were forced by the government to destroy crops and livestock.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt began issuing executive orders by the handfuls, locking up Americans without cause and stealing liberty, wealth and prosperity from citizens in the process.
But this is not the history that people are taught. And schoolchildren certainly never hear in school that…
The Federal Reserve is looting your bank account right out from under your nose.
Few people have a real understanding of just how insidious the Federal Reserve and inflation are. But no matter where you hide your money, through its money-printing, the Federal Reserve steals a portion every day.
That’s because every dollar printed reduces the value of those you hold. Think of it like pouring water into a glass of milk. The more water that is poured in, the less milk remains. Pretty soon, there is no milk left.
Right now the official rate of inflation is about 3.5 percent. It is, in fact, much higher. But the highest-paying interest rate on a certificate of deposit is about 1.1 percent. You do the math.
Face it. The system is stacked against you because…
Financial interests control the world.
Of course, that has long been the ultimate goal of the elites. They have been, throughout history, ruthless and unwavering in their efforts. They are the true 1 percent.
I and others have long warned about the growing power of the financial elites. We write often about their growing power and the increased fascism of the system. Now a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have uncovered the 147 “super-entities” that control the world’s wealth, according to an article in New Scientist.
Here’s a list of the Top 25. See any familiar names?
“When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a ‘super-entity’ of 147 even more tightly knit companies—all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity—that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. ‘In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,’ says [researcher James] Glattfelder.”
Now you see why the buddy system operated so well when the Fed began bailing out the “too big to fails.” And the big corporations got there with the help of their corporatist partners in crime in Congress.
The truth of the matter is…
We are no longer operating under Constitutional government, but people are completely unaware.
The government-controlled non-education system, corporate-controlled media and government propaganda machine have succeeded in producing an uneducated generation that is so ignorant it doesn’t even know it’s ignorant and, therefore, can’t do anything about it.
Rather than teach history, government indoctrination centers focus on less-significant, politically correct characters — in order to prop up the self-esteem of the “underpriviledged” and “underrepresented” — and singular, historically insignificant events. One specific example I know of is of a middle-school child whose teacher spent three class days on the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s upset of the Soviets in 1980, and about 15 minutes of class time on World War II.
Of course, a discussion of the founding of our country, the conditions that sparked the revolution, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution that resulted from their discussions, or the greatness of the Founding Fathers received little or no attention in that class. I’m afraid it’s the rule rather than the exception.
Ask someone on the street about the Constitution and you’ll probably get some lame answer about “separation of church and state” or “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” like Herman Cain gave in one of his speeches.
And rather than work to gain knowledge of the country and its politics, most would rather devote their time to voting for the next “Idol” and debating who should get voted off the island and whether college football should have a playoff. These and other unimportant events completely consume the general public.
So when government does pass new unConstitutional laws, no one is the wiser. Most people are concerned about — if they think about it all — “what’s in it for me?” and “how much ‘free’ money do I get?” Many are still waiting for the “free money” from “Obama’s stash.” Unfortunately, because they weren’t large corporate donors, they got nothing but disdain from the teleprompter in chief.
Congress, aided by a willing Judiciary and President, long ago left any pretense of governing according to the Constitution. When they’re sworn in, they pledge their fealty to it, then put it away never to be read again.
Meanwhile, the two-party system of governance entraps people who do pay a modicum of attention into a false left/right paradigm and the corporate-controlled government propaganda machine pushes the false notion that there is a difference between the parties. But Democrat or Republican is irrelevant. It’s all class warfare, dissembling Kabuki Theater.
To demonstrate how far we’ve traversed from the Constitution, the government can now prevent you from drinking raw milk, can force you to have your children vaccinated for non-existent maladies, can search you without cause, can arrest you for videotaping in public, can murder American citizens at will and can twist and turn obscure statutes and use them to incarcerate and fine you.
The Federal agencies designed to protect us from bad foods and bad drugs instead promote bad foods and bad drugs and make natural foods and supplements illegal or difficult to obtain. That keeps Americans fat and happy and stupid.
In addition to loving the increased power they get by ignoring the Constitution, it’s a fact that…
Politicians love war and an attack on Iran is inevitable.
War is yet another way for government to steal the liberty of the American people, and war with Iran is inevitable, Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding. The drumbeats for war are reaching a crescendo, and the same rhetoric used in the run-up to the Iraq war is being replayed in the run-up to Iran.
The frightening thing is that the anti-war Democrats have gone silent. Some protested loud and long over Bush’s wars, but Obama has been given a pass — by Congress and the American people — to invade any country he chooses over the most dubious of reasons. And it seems from the cheering the neocon warmongers get during the Republican debates, Americans have grown to love war as much as the politicians.
Sources tell me U.S. Marines will be on the ground in Libya in January, news reports indicate a Marine contingent will soon land in Australia, and Obama recently sent “military advisers” to Central Africa. The French just recalled their diplomat from Syria, an indication a Libya-style attack is in the offing. This is all proof that…
The American government is seeking world conquest.
The globalists and One World Government crowd will not rest until all the world is in subjection. Moammar Gadhafi was taken down because he wouldn’t play in the OWG pool, and Syria and Iran are next. The Marines going to Australia will be a foil to China. Then, who knows?
Will we invade Iran?
Is Ron Paul being treated differently than the other candidates?
Please comment on these items and any other ones that you would like. I hope that we can have a vigorous and intellectual discussion.
Conservative Tom
10 Certainties
November 21, 2011 by Bob Livingston
PHOTOS.COM
We should never underestimate the ignorance of the American voter.
An untold number are homeless, not because they choose to be or because they suffer from some mental disease or defect, but because they have lost everything in the second Great Depression. And many more are one missed paycheck or one delinquent mortgage payment away from finding themselves on the street.
A growing number of young adults are now living with their parents or other relatives. Unable to find a decent job despite possessing a college diploma, tens of thousands leave college mired under an irrepressible and unmanageable debt burden.
Protests that began in the Middle East earlier this year over rising food prices and food shortages evolved and spread throughout the region and now find themselves smack in the middle of America in the form of the Occupy movement.
Our country suffers from an amoral rot. Secular humanism, nontheism, atheism and other humanist philosophies are attempting to elevate the creature above the Creator. As such, a belief that the end justifies the means is consuming society. It’s become, “Anything goes.”
Where America is headed is anybody’s guess. I think we are in store for a complete collapse of the system, because there are 10 things that are certain.
We should never underestimate the ignorance of the American voter.
After all, they elected Barack Hussein Obama, a man who openly campaigned on an anti-American socialist philosophy and had the least experience, fewest qualifications, thinnest resume and shadiest past of any serious Presidential candidate in United States history.
Of course, the alternative was really no alternative. That’s the way the elites wanted it. And now the global elites and their corporate media propaganda machine are deciding again who will be elected — and the American voter, with nary a whimper, follows blindly along, accepting that a two-horse race between Mitt Romney and some neocon anti-Romney are the only choices we have.
The trouble has been in selecting the anti-Romney. So far, Michele Bachmann’s star fizzled like a New Year’s sparkler, Rick Perry fell off his horse after he insulted most Republicans over illegal immigration in one debate and stepped on his tongue in two others, Herman Cain’s stock has begun dropping faster than Sharon Bialek’s perky mood in the back of a limo — as much because of Cain’s incoherent answers to tough questions as over the dubious sexual harassment claims — and now Newt Gingrich is the rising neocon star.
The same Newt Gingrich who twice (at least) cheated on his wives (he’s had three) while they suffered from serious illnesses. The same globalist, Council on Foreign Relations member, pagan ritual Bohemian Grove attendee Newt Gingrich who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi in an advertisement hawking the threat of man-caused global warming, who has a penchant for cozying up with people like race huckster Al Sharpton when it’s politically expedient and then denouncing them later, who devised the original government-growing Contract with America, who endorsed RINO (later to turn Democrat) Dede Scozzafava over a Tea Party candidate, who called Congressman Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan right-wing social engineering, who said the Tea Party will be the “militant wing” of the GOP, and who we now know looted American taxpayers of between $1.6 million and $1.8 million as a “historian” for the Freddie Mac corporatist slush fund (although Gingrich remembers only about $300,000 of it). And this is the same Newt Gingrich who once called for a Federal mandate to purchase health insurance, endorsed “cap-and-trade” legislation, said he would have voted for TARP and promoted Bush’s prescription drug bill. He also continues to support ethanol subsidies and is pro-amnesty for illegals.
That Gingrich, with all his baggage and pompousness, can be an attractive candidate to people who call themselves conservatives, tells you all you need to know of the ignorance of the average voter. And this ignorance continues because…
There is a concerted effort by the establishment to defeat Ron Paul.
It’s gotten so overt that even the corporatist media propaganda machine is chastising its own members over their treatment of Paul. It all seemed to come to a head after the Nov. 12 CBS News debate in which Paul got 89 seconds to speak during the only televised hour of the debate.
In addition to the snubs, which have left Paul with the least speaking time in all the debates — even much less than Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum, who are barely registering in the polls — networks have a habit of taking down or dismissing as irrelevant any polls that show Paul doing well. Despite it all, Paul is in a virtual tie for first in Iowa and is a strong second in New Hampshire, a State that Romney will probably carry hands-down. And Paul is polling the best of all Republican candidates against Obama with independent voters.
The media and political elites fear Paul because he has not been corrupted and will expose that…
Government is a criminal enterprise.
News this week that members of Congress have been involved in unethical, if not illegal, insider trading based on information they possess before anyone else or on laws they know are about to be considered is just one more straw to put in the camel’s pack. How many more can that poor camel hold before the American people really wake up?
We have long told you here about the crony capitalism and fascism that infest the capital. And while Congress, former Congressional staffers and big businesses dip into the money-printing till and pass dollars around like the Monopoly® money it is, bureaucrats, paper pushers, statist judges, on-the-take regulators, Department of Justice thugs, Congress and an increasingly-militarized Federal government create dozens of new statutes and regulations because…
The Federal Government wants to make everyone a criminal.
Just last week, it was announced that the Department of Justice wanted to criminalize lying to a website. So, if you violate the “Terms of Use” policy by fibbing on online dating sites, social networks, etc., you could become a felon. The government wants to treat those terms as contracts.
In his book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, Harvey A. Silverglate writes that “federal prosecutors are abusing their power by using the criminal law to prosecute law abiding citizens…” They are seizing illegal power by twisting marginal and highly questionable interpretations of criminal law.
We are in danger of becoming a society in which prosecutors alone become judges, juries and executioners because the threat of high sentences makes it too costly for even innocent people to resist the prosecutorial pressure. The pattern is to intimidate all criminally charged defendants into pleading guilty to “reduced” charges rather than risk going to trial with the threat of draconian sentences in the implied event of conviction. And remember, government prosecutors have unlimited funds to use to pay an unlimited number of lawyers and investigators to spend an unlimited number of hours to snoop, dig and scratch around in every aspect of a citizen’s business, thanks to the USA Patriot Act.
No trial? This means that the Federal prosecuting attorney is the judge and the jury.
We now have a huge volume of Federal criminal laws which are broad and impossibly vague, and Silverglate believes it’s possible the average citizen unknowingly violates at least three of them every day. They have become dangerously disconnected from English common law tradition. And since most Federal judges are selected from a pool of former Federal prosecutors, it’s rare if ever that a judge rules against the government’s case.
Liberty-loving Americans are now considered the enemy of the State. The Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies have issued memos and directives describing who they see as potential “domestic” terrorists. They include military veterans — both retired and those returning from overseas engagements — Tea Party supporters, Ron Paul supporters, 2nd Amendment supporters, 10th Amendment supporters, people who display American flags, people with Gadsden Flag bumper stickers, anti-Obamacare protesters and anyone who advocates for smaller government.
But this is only part of our government’s war on us because…
Government creates crises and uses them to steal liberty and transfer wealth.
In the days following the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush and Congress acted quickly to pass overarching laws that allowed increased surveillance of Americans. The meme was that law enforcement agencies needed increased “power” to snoop, spy, eavesdrop and invade in order to identify terrorists. With the passage of the law, government has almost carte blanch to go anywhere, look at anything and listen to whatever it wants on any and all conversations, transactions and correspondence Americans have. And Americans can no longer travel without subjecting themselves to radiation-emitting scans or humiliating searches.
Meanwhile, the FBI infiltrates mosques, Muslim communities, militias and other “subversive” groups looking for ignorant patsies they can turn into potential terrorists. They then provide them with dummy bombs or weapons and ridiculously ineffective plans for terror plots and wait for them to try to pull them off.
These “terror plots” give the government more excuses to intrude on civil liberties.
With the bursting of the housing bubble (created by former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s easy-money policies), Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke went on television claiming the sky was falling and predicted the end of the world if “government” didn’t bail out Goldman Sachs, AIG and their other corporatist buddies in the financial sector. We got the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and Bush claimed he had “abandoned free-market principals to save the free-market system.”
What really happened is that trillions of dollars were transferred from hard-working Americans to the coffers of big business and big finance, both in the United States and abroad. Of course, there is nothing new about this. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Great Depression to reward his labor friends and grow government’s power under the interstate commerce clause. And while Americans starved, thousands of farmers were forced by the government to destroy crops and livestock.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt began issuing executive orders by the handfuls, locking up Americans without cause and stealing liberty, wealth and prosperity from citizens in the process.
But this is not the history that people are taught. And schoolchildren certainly never hear in school that…
The Federal Reserve is looting your bank account right out from under your nose.
Few people have a real understanding of just how insidious the Federal Reserve and inflation are. But no matter where you hide your money, through its money-printing, the Federal Reserve steals a portion every day.
That’s because every dollar printed reduces the value of those you hold. Think of it like pouring water into a glass of milk. The more water that is poured in, the less milk remains. Pretty soon, there is no milk left.
Right now the official rate of inflation is about 3.5 percent. It is, in fact, much higher. But the highest-paying interest rate on a certificate of deposit is about 1.1 percent. You do the math.
Face it. The system is stacked against you because…
Financial interests control the world.
Of course, that has long been the ultimate goal of the elites. They have been, throughout history, ruthless and unwavering in their efforts. They are the true 1 percent.
I and others have long warned about the growing power of the financial elites. We write often about their growing power and the increased fascism of the system. Now a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have uncovered the 147 “super-entities” that control the world’s wealth, according to an article in New Scientist.
Here’s a list of the Top 25. See any familiar names?
- Barclays PLC
- Capital Group Companies Inc.
- FMR Corp.
- AXA
- State Street Corporation
- JP Morgan Chase & Co.
- Legal & General Group PLC
- Vanguard Group Inc.
- UBS AG
- Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.
- Wellington Management Company LLP
- Deutsche Bank AG
- Franklin Resources Inc.
- Credit Suisse Group
- Walton Enterprises LLC
- The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation
- Natixis
- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
- T. Rowe Price Group Inc.
- Legg Mason Inc.
- Morgan Stanley
- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.
- Northern Trust Corporation
- Société Générale
- Bank of America Corporation
“When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a ‘super-entity’ of 147 even more tightly knit companies—all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity—that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. ‘In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,’ says [researcher James] Glattfelder.”
Now you see why the buddy system operated so well when the Fed began bailing out the “too big to fails.” And the big corporations got there with the help of their corporatist partners in crime in Congress.
The truth of the matter is…
We are no longer operating under Constitutional government, but people are completely unaware.
The government-controlled non-education system, corporate-controlled media and government propaganda machine have succeeded in producing an uneducated generation that is so ignorant it doesn’t even know it’s ignorant and, therefore, can’t do anything about it.
Rather than teach history, government indoctrination centers focus on less-significant, politically correct characters — in order to prop up the self-esteem of the “underpriviledged” and “underrepresented” — and singular, historically insignificant events. One specific example I know of is of a middle-school child whose teacher spent three class days on the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s upset of the Soviets in 1980, and about 15 minutes of class time on World War II.
Of course, a discussion of the founding of our country, the conditions that sparked the revolution, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution that resulted from their discussions, or the greatness of the Founding Fathers received little or no attention in that class. I’m afraid it’s the rule rather than the exception.
Ask someone on the street about the Constitution and you’ll probably get some lame answer about “separation of church and state” or “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” like Herman Cain gave in one of his speeches.
And rather than work to gain knowledge of the country and its politics, most would rather devote their time to voting for the next “Idol” and debating who should get voted off the island and whether college football should have a playoff. These and other unimportant events completely consume the general public.
So when government does pass new unConstitutional laws, no one is the wiser. Most people are concerned about — if they think about it all — “what’s in it for me?” and “how much ‘free’ money do I get?” Many are still waiting for the “free money” from “Obama’s stash.” Unfortunately, because they weren’t large corporate donors, they got nothing but disdain from the teleprompter in chief.
Congress, aided by a willing Judiciary and President, long ago left any pretense of governing according to the Constitution. When they’re sworn in, they pledge their fealty to it, then put it away never to be read again.
Meanwhile, the two-party system of governance entraps people who do pay a modicum of attention into a false left/right paradigm and the corporate-controlled government propaganda machine pushes the false notion that there is a difference between the parties. But Democrat or Republican is irrelevant. It’s all class warfare, dissembling Kabuki Theater.
To demonstrate how far we’ve traversed from the Constitution, the government can now prevent you from drinking raw milk, can force you to have your children vaccinated for non-existent maladies, can search you without cause, can arrest you for videotaping in public, can murder American citizens at will and can twist and turn obscure statutes and use them to incarcerate and fine you.
The Federal agencies designed to protect us from bad foods and bad drugs instead promote bad foods and bad drugs and make natural foods and supplements illegal or difficult to obtain. That keeps Americans fat and happy and stupid.
In addition to loving the increased power they get by ignoring the Constitution, it’s a fact that…
Politicians love war and an attack on Iran is inevitable.
War is yet another way for government to steal the liberty of the American people, and war with Iran is inevitable, Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding. The drumbeats for war are reaching a crescendo, and the same rhetoric used in the run-up to the Iraq war is being replayed in the run-up to Iran.
The frightening thing is that the anti-war Democrats have gone silent. Some protested loud and long over Bush’s wars, but Obama has been given a pass — by Congress and the American people — to invade any country he chooses over the most dubious of reasons. And it seems from the cheering the neocon warmongers get during the Republican debates, Americans have grown to love war as much as the politicians.
Sources tell me U.S. Marines will be on the ground in Libya in January, news reports indicate a Marine contingent will soon land in Australia, and Obama recently sent “military advisers” to Central Africa. The French just recalled their diplomat from Syria, an indication a Libya-style attack is in the offing. This is all proof that…
The American government is seeking world conquest.
The globalists and One World Government crowd will not rest until all the world is in subjection. Moammar Gadhafi was taken down because he wouldn’t play in the OWG pool, and Syria and Iran are next. The Marines going to Australia will be a foil to China. Then, who knows?
I find this the most interesting link in the article….
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html#bx283545B1
As the link states, the network that runs the world is dominated by the world's largest banks.
The conclusion is obvious: If you are not happy with the direction the world is going (or the American economy), you might consider giving more attention to the banks and less to discrediting the people who are protesting Wall Street's stranglehold over our political system.
Giving the "pink slip" to all incumbents will solve nothing. They will be replaced by other politicians who serve the same master.
--David
So David, by your analysis, we should just give up and let the uber controllers run the world through the banks.
ReplyDeleteThat is depressing that we cannot control our selves anymore!
I still say fire the incumbents and the new people will not be so willing to do what the "masters" say.
Has your plan been working? We fired a ton of incumbents in 2008. The banks still got nearly everything they wanted, didn't they? We fired a ton more of incumbents in 2010. The banks are still getting everything they want, don't they? They control BOTH parties.
ReplyDeleteWe both know the real solution (campaign finance reform, term limits, etc.), but that requires the incumbents to vote against their political self-interest. Other countries have done it, but not here. We, in fact, got the reverse -- Citizens United.
Maybe steady pressure from the outside (OWS and others) can scare the banks enough to give back a little. What happened in Egypt could happen here if people get desperate enough. Basic human nature is the same everywhere. Right now, we have around 100 million people living below the poverty line or just above it. The banks might want to think about that before they squeeze even more money out of the 99%. They are playing with fire, but it is not that we are going to elect too many statesmen in 2012.
--David
I do not think that there was a big turnover in 2008 where there was one in 2010. In the latter case, there were only 90 or so new Representatives (both repubs and dems). The power base remained the same as new reps have to learn the ropes. So yes, there was change but you are making it seem that there should have been a complete change because there was the biggest change in years. I think you expect too much.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that we will have riots here, the same as Egypt. It will be the result of cuts in benefits that people believe are their rights and what they deserve having because they live in the US.
We need to have 250 new reps to get change.
Fact-check: Dems gained net 8 seats in Senate in 2008, and Reps gained net 6 Senate seats in 2010 -- giving McConnell a more reliable filibuster than he had in 2008 because he no longer needs to rely on Ben Nelson or Lieberman to get the magic 40 votes.
ReplyDeleteIn the House, the Reps gained net 63 seats, which was basically taking back what they lost in 2006 (31) and in 2008 (21).
My point is that all this musical chairs game has nearly ZERO effect on Wall Street. They get mostly what they want from both parties.
As for riots, the common denominator is not living in the United States. It is basic human nature. People in Tunisia, Kyrgyzstan, Egypt, Syria, etc. riot, and none of them live in the United States. What was it that Thomas Jefferson wrote? Something like: "When in the course of human events,...." That was over 200 years ago, and human nature hasn't changed.
--David
My point was the new representatives and senators do not have instant power when they come to Congress. It takes a while for that to occur. Just because the Republicans (powered by the Tea Party Movement) made gains, does not immediately change the very nature of Congress. The only way for an immediate change would be to elect a brand new herd of reps. That will never happen. A representative republic changes slowly and to expect immediate 180 degree turns is a bit unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteMost people living in the US at the time of the Revolution initially DID not want to change governments. They wanted to remain loyal to the King. It was the rebels who made the change.
Jefferson also said that there should be a revolution every 40 years.
Both parties vote as a nearly solid block on all major legislation. As I said, the "moderates" who might sometimes cross the aisle and vote with the other party on critical bills have been forced to the sidelines. Seniority is, therefore, not so important when the whole party is following the same script. What counts is simply pure numbers. The winning formula is...
ReplyDelete1. Elect the president.
2. Elect a comfortable majority in House.
3. Elect 60+ dependable partisans in the Senate
Without all three conditions met, you get gridlock, and a supercommittee that watches football games!
Jefferson may have overestimated how long it takes for "of the people, by the people, for the people" to revert to an aristocracy, and it really doesn't much matter whether the aristocrats are Islamic clerics and bankers in pin-stripped suits, does it? Either way, the population becomes economically impoverished and politically disenfranchised.
--David