Cyclone's Real Deal

2007-10-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER ANNOUNCEMENT TO OUR READERS by Murph

This is a short post.

Freeacre and Murph have established a new campfire located at;
http://troutclancampfire.blogspot.com/

Here is what we are thinking. Cyclone was the originator of this site. Over time, it has changed quite a bit from its original formatting and subject material. If he ever decides to want to make use of the site again, it is left in tact for him. I hope he might visit the new campfire once in a while.

The new campfire will welcome post contributions from all that feel moved to write. Anyone that would wish to post an essay on the new site, please send it to us by email as a word doc for ease in working with it. Our email is Sunrise3@coinet.com.

This will be the last post that we will put on this site. So if we wish the conversations to continue do come to the new site and let us know you are there.

Love and good thoughts to all, Murph and Freeacre. Aho

2007-10-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

From Murph.

Folks, I am putting up a post from our friend Tom who we haven't heard from for a long time now. He doesn't write often, but when he does, it's worth paying attention.

Freeacre and I have decided to try a new blog site. So, in the meantime, until it gets up and running, we will have a post come on at the Real Deal as the spirit moves us, or someone else writes a missive to be put up. So, with no further comments, here is Tom's post.
TWILIGHT OF THE TOE DANCERS From Tom

We have recently witnessed some dirty pool in Congress. Needless to say the astute readership of this site is aware that there are more dominoes left to fall out of the Republican closet. I have tried to figure out what Mark Foley did wrong. No number of diddled pageboys could have ever unseated him, so his sins lie elsewhere. As for Larry Craig, his feet have been flying for years without a peep from those in the know, so why now? Foley held a place on the Financial Services Committee, and Craig was ranking member of the Veterans Affairs Committee. Both are in the middle of very explosive issues, with a potential banking meltdown and the true human cost of the war kept from the majority of Americans. But these men inhabited such fragile glass structures that it strikes me that they would be afraid to even look at a stone. Indeed the mere thought of stones must have sent them to the liquor cabinet, the medicine cabinet or most likely both. I can’t see them going out on any sort of limb. The suspicious decision by Dennis Hastert not to seek reelection adds to the mystery, though Warner may just have been tired and ready to quit. Though history shows men like that most often opt to soldier on for reasons of Party loyalty.
So I have theorized that this is part of a plan to demoralize and decimate the “Conservative Christian Republican” base. I hate that term because it is used to describe people who ignore Jesus, serve Mammon, enable Bush’s reckless spending spree, and have a stance similar to the Taliban on social issues. I expect Jesus, if he indeed existed/exists/plans to return, has long since wept his last tear. But this group is the one credited with the ascendance of the Republicans as well as their tenacity in office. These people consistently vote against their pockets on behalf of what should be seen as marginal issues. But do they really? Is their electoral participation overstated? Are significant numbers of this demographic too disaffected to participate? Does the spirit of Mayor Daley haunt the Bible-belt hollows where every resident identifies his or her self as Christian and opposition oversight is limited? Can this change in the wink of an eye? Yes, and the answer to the question why is a one word answer; Hillary.
I know that you gentle readers are not fooled by this woman, unlike my mum, who as a “genteel” New York Times reader holds out hope for deliverance from the Bush people. We shall not overcome, not with Hillary at the helm, but enough people hold out hope that a groundswell (or illusion thereof) will bring her to save them from the Fundie Christians who give them indigestion over their Sunday Times breakfast. Divide and rule. Create a situation where there is no clear majority, let one team run the program to the next stage, put a new label on the old bottle (reinserting the cork is optional here because the Britney Nation ain’t payin’ attention)and push the agenda till the glow wears off. Repeat. But how can Hillary win when so many Americans have a visceral distaste for her?
I can almost hear Murph’s ready reply- “cause votin’ don’t mean s**t”. Granted. But here in our role as tinfoil pundits we are pursuing the perhaps useless exercise (so many of the intellectual sort are) of determining how the system manages to fake it. First issue is voting chicanery. I think there is enough wiggle room in the system to “select” either of the given candidates in the race. Pundits will have plenty of talking points to explain the victory or defeat of a given candidate. The success of a candidate comes from support by major players.
The CFR/Trilateral/Bilderberg set clearly loves Hillary. Her support of Israel is unquestioned. Big Oil and Military Industry will be assured by her pledges to continue the war. Even if the big wheels in these organizations have a distaste for her, they will probably opt for consensus rather than division in the face of the enemy (primarily domestic). The rest should be easy. Put a few more voting machines in the poor precincts (ideally some that work), make a show of “getting out the vote”, keep the local police at bay and bingo! Democratic victory. Since poor people and people of color have been marginalized by the full-spectrum disenfranchisement of Republican operatives (about which the Democratic leadership was curiously quiescent, yes you Al, do you want the job now that the dirty work is done?), they constitute a reserve army. Since they did get screwed they will turn out (or we will told so, as the Daley apparition floats over to the wrong side of the tracks), if only for revenge, and Republican efforts to require voter ID cards have a good chance of being torpedoed by the courts through the influence of the aforementioned factions of the ruling elite.
Why do they love Hillary so much? They don’t love Huckabee. For clear reasons, Old-timey Southern Republican governors are passé, and since elites can manipulate the American “selectoral” charade, what flavor do they prefer to market abroad?
It seems to this observer that they need a change of label. Hillary can present a much better face to European electorates, and thus make their leader’s (necessary?) cooperation with US policy more politically palatable. Maybe this is the old game of “good cop, bad cop” that has served the authorities for ages. Hillary will help get support for continued hostilities from both nominally anti-war domestic liberals and chattering-class Europeans. The Japanese and Korean liberal/leftist/proles will like her better too. Not their business types, they know full well the Clinton/Rubin mafia hosed them in ’97. Our European and Asian allies thus may be able to keep the merry-go-round running for a few more turns. They are shitting their pants now, so incremental improvements, particularly in the realm of political spectacle will be welcome.
Picture Hillary’s “world-tour” upon inauguration. The punishing schedule may turn her hair as white as her husband’s but it will be worth it. World audiences will bask in awe, and those who bask insufficiently or whose awe fails to glow to the required number of lumens will be tucked away out of sight. The elites of both the European and Asian sectors deeply fear the breakdown of the American system, even though it chisels them . They pass on the costs to their own powerless populaces anyway, fretting only that this makes a difficult job potentially unmanageable. The other prospect- a Russian dominated oil cartel that will drip-dry them is unthinkable. Putin’s hardball has sobered them up to the need to prop up America in order to avoid another version of unipolarity”, one with potentially limitless capacity for extortion. Ask the Ukrainians. “The devil you know…. The recent action by European Central Banks to mitigate the sub-prime/hedge-fund/derivative melt-down is telling. As Franklin said, “If we do not hang together we will certainly hang separately”.
And who will beat her? Giuliani? He is a New York asshole (nicknamed “Adolph” by many city residents), and does not have the acumen or presence to play on the world stage. His strength, 9-11, is just as much his “Achilles-heel”. If the sound machine pumps up the complaints of the 9-11 responders (actual heroes, unlike photo-op Rudy), they can spray enough guano on him to put him out; if indeed, such a decision is made. Mitt Romney is qualified but uninspiring, much like Al Bore, and I hereby dub him Sir Much Somney, the knight without enough juice to get to the round table. As for Ron Paul, I expect him to be excluded by the GOP, but maybe pumped up by the opposition to pilfer and pluck the Republican chickens like Perot did for Bubba.
As for greater matters, like the world economy, it is being levitated by the collective (un)consciousness. While so many insisted this situation could not continue it has. It remains like a big potential avalanche. As for Iran, Bush and A-jad are made for each other (See Deek Jackson’s FKN News), and all the oil scares are sending their true constituencies to the bank. The amount of wealth this game sucks out of the US is staggering, so why spoil it with a messy war. Iran is years away from a bomb (their biggest technical problem is removing the molybdenum that taints their uranium supply, and would foul their precious centrifuges). I think the saber-rattling is about what they do with their money, and the fact that do not care for ours. What this means is every nation has a stake in the status-quo, however dysfunctional. China may not relish our devalued money, but the collapse of the American economy would destroy much of their savings and their largest market. Russia’s current oil lubricated boom would come to a halt with a world recession/depression sending the price of oil into the ground. The Japanese and Koreans would love to see cheap oil, but would be unable to pay for it if no one is buying cars. A grand collapse might call into question the viability of the various fiat currencies. War would likely cause this collapse, and that is why none of the players at the table is inclined to act rashly. The wildcard is Israel, with a leadership far more irrational than the “crazy” North Koreans (who seem to be playing their hand well), and the fact that their failure last summer ratchets up the pressure. The goal of that war was the capture of the Litani river in Southern Lebanon, and maybe a chance to paste Syria. Israel needs water, something money cannot buy them. They must take the Litani or abandon the Zionist project. Expect more fireworks there. As for “events” in the” homeland”, they strike me as more necessary in response than as an initiative. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, a concept the “liberally” ridiculed Bush can surely grasp, or at least the image of him with which we are presented. In his element he is credited with being a very sharp fellow. Do any of those among his sneering detractors think they could read lies off a teleprompter any better? It is undoubtedly a special skill, and any true believer in democracy should be more unsettled by a sitting or potential President who has it. There’s one woman who does sorta’ come to mind. As for the future the best words come from Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, who said “Breaks definitely. Through or down I do not know.”
Duck and Cover!
Tom
Aside #1 – Life in SW Florida has made me something of a naturalist. That means “bootleg” biologist these days. I have ample opportunity to observe the American Anole. The males attract females by displaying their “thingies”, not what you may lewdly surmise, but instead a different flap of skin under their throats that is essential for males to get to the plate, but not biologically necessary for procreation. The male making the best display gets his, and whatever else he is packing suffices for the continuance of the species. Watching two of these lizards attempt to hook up on opposite sides of an artificially imposed barrier (the screen to my porch) seems to serve as a telling metaphor for much of what our “higher brains” seem to replicate on a grander scale.
Aside #2 – Tin-foil experiments. I came across an article where several MIT students conducted an experiment into the potential effectiveness improvised electromagnetic barriers, those things we more commonly know as tinfoil hats. Their research concluded that the aluminum tended to act as an antenna rather than a filter, and that the concept was unsound. I decided on my own experiment which consisted of a three-layer tea-cozy that I placed over my wireless modem. The layers, tinfoil-20lb copy paper-tinfoil seemed to have no effect on the strength of the signal (as measured by my notebook), but cut the data transfer speed in half. I have no idea what this means. Am I still getting zapped but get halved performance? Or does the quality of the signal reflected in diminished speed reflect some safety advantage? I leave it to the technically able among the Cyclone community to help me find out. Which leads me directly to my new 2012 theory. As our solar system moves toward the center of the galaxy, galactic radiation may ’86 our technologies creating total chaos. I’ll bet Kissinger knows. The event may not make the planet unlivable, and the weather may only get marginally worse (or better, LaPine may get record rainfalls for the next 100 yrs.), but there will be no more business as usual, and the ensuing breakdown may make the movie “Omega-man” look like a picnic.
The “ITD” (Improvised Tinfoil Device). I really don’t
know what it does

2007-10-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

TO OUR FAITHFUL READERS AND FRIENDS
From Murph

Well, Freeacre is in California taking care of several pieces of business and hawking her book and I have way too much time away from honey-do jobs to think about the blog site.

You may have suspected by now that Cyclone is probably not going to be around the site any more. According to his e-mails to me, he has too much going on in his life to deal with the site, and has for all practical purposes turned it over to Freeacre and I to run. For those that have been at the site for a long time, you have noticed that it’s emphasis and subject material has gone through a change. We haven’t had a good old “Bush Bash Post” for some time now. We now have a more tribal atmosphere, and at least as a metaphor, we talk about sitting around the campfire and talk about whatever comes to mind, whether it is about the post or not.

You should have noticed that I haven’t been putting up very many posts in the last number of months also. This is because, mostly, I very infrequently have anything new to say. Mostly, I have said several times what I wanted to say in posts and comments. Once in a while something grabs my attention and I shoot out something about it. Frankly, I sometimes get to feeling guilty about having the same post up for so long. We all have done some predicting, issued some judgments about what we see going on around us, talked about how to get ready for shit heading our way (at least as we see it), discussed history, money, wage slavery, psychology, music, extensively on politics and how the world is going to end, at least as we know it. On an almost daily basis, we are appalled at what we see happening around us and the antics of those in power. I have written about and am having to deal with it on a local level also.

So the gist of this post is what to do about the web site. Do we keep the Real Deal going with whatever contributions people wish to make to it? Do we fold it up and stay in contact by e-mail? Do we move to another site? Do we make another site? Freeacre has been toying with the idea of using her other web site, which isn’t active at this time, as a new blog site. As you can see, I don’t have a new direction, a new paradigm, a new direction firmly in mind to tackle.

So, I am asking the people that frequent this site what they would like to do. If we can get an agreement on what to do, whatever that might be, it will be ok with me since I don’t have a direction to go charging off in anyway.

The people that frequent this site have formed some kind of a cyber bond in many ways. Some of us have formed some pretty neat relationships and friendships. I don’t think any of us will collapse on the floor in psychological lock up if we just stop the site. But I know that for 2 years now that it has become a cyber check-in place on a daily basis for us and for quite a number of others. So, for myself and Freeacre, I can say that outside of the no-blog-site idea, we would like to have a continuance in some way.

So folks, what ideas do you all have about this.

The Murph

2007-09-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a new post from our friend in Belgium. Doing his typical thing, he has again done research and has supplied references. Interesting stuff. Murph

Albert Pike and The Big Picture

A new post from Belgium

Albert Pike was a barrel chested Brigadier-General in the Confederate Army who had a Karl Marx beard and General Custer like shoulder length flowing hair. Born in Boston in 1809 he filled his sixty years with so many activities it would take others three lifetimes to do the same, assuming others had his ability to succeed. For the crime of being on the loosing side in the Civil War he was charged with treason along with other similar captured officers. A simple oath of allegiance to the North secured his release, as was the custom of the times, only his oath was delivered personally to President Andrew Johnson. Johnson later admitted in private that Pike had the superior intellect. There are unsubstantiated reports that Pike could read and write in sixteen different languages although not many saw him use anything other than English. This is not to disparage his character it is just an unproven quirk. Other interests and activities included being a poet; philosopher; frontiersman; soldier; humanitarian and philanthropist. He is the only Confederate ever to have had a statue of him erected in Washington DC and is reported, although not proved, to have held very high office within the KKK.

That is a half-interesting bio of scarcely known military figure from another century. So what is it about Pike that makes him worthy of our attention today?
Firstly he brought Scottish Rite Freemasonry to America then hijacked this organisation to hide a highly secret Cabalistic Group within it. He claims that whilst in a trance, a vision was revealed to him by Lucifer (Go along with this for the time being) of how to bring about a One World Order. He predicted, completely accurately the first two World Wars and the events within them and also predicted with frightening accuracy the events which are unfolding at the present time. He even predicted the existence of the State of Israel, which could not have possibly been known in the 1860’s. It is believed that shadowy world leaders are following this blueprint, knowingly or not, to engineer the third and final World War.

A Brief Overview of the Masons

Stone masons were the technocrats of the day. These were the people who built temples and cathedrals, they were a level above smiths and potters and were amongst the first to group together to form a Trade Guild. This was a fraternity of people who had attained a high standard of proficiency in their profession and in order to maintain this standard had made entry into it only open through the route of apprenticeship or honoury membership. In other words it was not a club where you could leave your name and address at the door, pay five dollars and receive a membership card through the post. Honoury members used this exclusiveness to form a secret order within an exclusive organisation that had certain allegiances to the underworld and it was certainly not for the foot soldiers to be privy to the Generals thoughts. Even today, rank and file Freemasons are puzzled by this need for secrecy and ritual within their organisation. Many years ago I lived next door to a Freemason whose full time job was to produce the glossy advertising brochures for Ford cars. Quite out of the blue one day he said to me “I don’t know why these people keep banging on about King Solomon and why we are not supposed to tell anybody about it, he was just a guy from history who lived and died”.

Two Views of History

There are two ways to view history, one is The Accidental View and the other is The Conspiratorial View. In the accidental view, which is the preferred doctrine in Western schools and is later reinforced by the controlled media, we are taught that all world events including wars, revolutions etc were the result of some surprising, unforeseen event that may cause some corresponding change. Whilst earthquakes, volcanoes and happenings in the Universe can be attributed to this view it is unreliable for events influenced by mankind. When many people are confronted with the alternative view, the shocked disbelief that results from their conditioned training will not allow them to see things a different way.

Conspiratorial History, on the other hand, teaches us that world events such as wars, revolutions etc are the result of planned events. Whilst this is not good for geological events, it is realistic and accurate for the interrelationship of people and nations. Because events concerning the interplay of peoples and nations are most often planned in secret, the term Conspiratorial History is used since this is the definition of a conspiracy.

It is believed that current world events are not circumstantial but are the result of an organised campaign by an elite group of unseen and widely unknown world leaders whose goal it is to exercise absolute dictatorial control over the world. This conspiracy is very large, deeply entrenched and therefore extremely powerful. It is working to achieve absolute and brutal power over the entire human race by using wars, depressions inflations and revolutions of their own making to further their aims. The Conspiracy’s one unchanging purpose is to destroy all religion, all existing governments, all traditional human institutions and out of the wreckage create their New World Order.

What Albert Pike Said

Albert Pike is widely reported to have written a letter to the Italian revolutionary; founder of the Mafia and high ranking Illuminate member Giusseppe Mazzini, outlining a plan whereby a One World Government could be brought about in the twentieth century by a series of wars and revolutions. Although the whereabouts of this letter is no longer known, it is widely quoted and its contents was known to selected people in the eighteenth century. This has brought Pikes authorship into some doubt, although there are few others who could have written it, no one else has claimed responsibility for it and its contents were not denied over 150 years ago.

This letter said the following things (extracts):

“The First World War must be brought about in order to permit the Illuminati to overthrow the power of the Czars in Russia and of making that country a fortress of atheistic Communism. The divergences caused by the "agentur" (agents) of the Illuminati between the British and Germanic Empires will be used to foment this war. At the end of the war, Communism will be built and used in order to destroy the other governments and in order to weaken the religions."

Students of history will recognise that the political alliances of England on one side and Germany on the other, forged between 1871 and 1898 by Otto von Bismarck, co-conspirator of Albert Pike, were instrumental in bringing about the First World War. One can appreciate why Kaiser Wilhelm II, at the outbreak of war in 1914, exclaimed that 'Nicky' had 'played him false'. For the rulers of the world's three greatest nations - King George V of Great Britain and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia on the one hand, and the German Kaiser on the other - were not simply cousins, they were first cousins. “If their grandmother Queen Victoria had still been alive,” said the Kaiser, “she would never have allowed them to go to war with each other”. So the whole history of the twentieth century could have been rewritten if the old Queen had been around to crack a few heads together.

"The Second World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences between the Fascists and the political Zionists. This war must be brought about so that Nazism is destroyed and that the political Zionism be strong enough to institute a sovereign state of Israel in Palestine. During the Second World War, International Communism must become strong enough in order to balance Christendom, which would be then restrained and held in check until the time when we would need it for the final social cataclysm."

After this Second World War, Communism was made strong enough to begin taking over weaker governments. In 1945, at the Potsdam Conference between Truman, Churchill, and Stalin, a large portion of Europe was simply handed over to Russia, and on the other side of the world, the aftermath of the war with Japan helped to sweep the tide of Communism into China.
Those who argue that the terms Nazism and Zionism were not known in 1871 should remember that the Illuminati invented both these movements. In addition, Communism as both an ideology, and as a coined phrase, originates in France during the Revolution. In 1785, Restif coined the phrase four years before revolution broke out. Restif and Babeuf, in turn, were influenced by Rousseau - as was the most famous conspirator of them all, Adam Weishaupt.

"The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the "agentur" of the "Illuminati" between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion…We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil. Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilisation, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view. This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time."

It is really of no importance what your personal religious views are or whether you do not have any. What is important is that you recognise what the world’s power brokers believe, how world events are being manipulated and how that will affect you.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, world events, and in particular in the Middle East, show a growing unrest and instability between Modern Zionism and the Arabic World. This is completely in line with the call for a Third World War to be fought between the two, and their allies on both sides. This Third World War is still to come, and recent events show us that it is not far off.

One confusing factor however is that after the predicted fall of communism, Russia’s black wealth was supposed to be sequestered by the so-called Oiligarchs. They did not reckon on its repossession by the highly nationalistic Putin. Thus the growing might of Russia is now being allied with that of China. A counterbalance grouping for energy and trade has been formed by the SCO. Although this is supposedly not an eastern NATO it is known that Russia and China are supplying arms and technology to the Middle East. What is uncertain is in the event of any new world conflict, China would play it straight with its multi-polar principles or whether it would make a grab for Taiwan. In all likelihood it would not see a conflict of interests here.

The re-emergence of Russia when it is supposed to be a broken force could explain the recent attempted accord between the NWO represented by the Kissinger group and Putin.

If a Third World War has been ordained then when will it start? Some of those who are skilled at looking to patterns in historical events claim that it has already started on 11 Sept 2001. In a similar way, the serious fighting of WW11 only started seven months after it was formally declared in Sept 1939. Between then and April 1940 both governments were attempting to broker a face saving peace whilst taking the time to build up their respective arsenals. Yes, U boats were attempting a war of attrition by sinking the allies merchant shipping and for the allies part they neutralised Germanys pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. Neutral Holland and Belgium braced themselves for attack but the winter weather of 1939 was atrocious and not suitable for Blitzkrieg air attacks. In a similar way, it is claimed that not all of the conditions for complete and overwhelming success are in place for WW111. When they are it will begin in earnest.

Have you noticed that after the derisory 9/11 Commission report, there has been no attempt by the authorities to clear up inconsistencies in the official story? This is quite deliberate. The best analytical minds are suspended in a time warp, looking backwards and people who spend their time looking backwards seldom see where they are going. The event organisers are quite happy with this situation. Action and reaction, cause and effect, people just don’t get it. The best time to hit someone behind the knees is when they are looking in the wrong direction.

This blog was started to vent outraged feelings over Plamegate. This episode however should be viewed as a single step in the context of the overall WW111 plan.

On a slightly lighter note, if that is possible, most of us remember Sleepless in Seattle. Shitfaced in Crawford sounds like a good movie title to me. At first, I think, Bush liked being the decider guy and maybe he is a Christian non entity and maybe he believes he has God’s ear but the leader of the free world has found he is struggling against the current in the stream of stronger forces. The enormity of what is required of him has finally touched brain base.

Yes simultaneous world insurrection would do the trick but those in command of the situation are now past caring. Likely active groups and individuals have been identified and all the plans dealing with Martial Law are now in place, which was the object of 9/11 all along. How their plan affects individuals, en mass, is of negligible concern to the event organisers.

On a separate observation, did anyone notice Rumsfeld’s timing of the announcement that the Pentagon had somehow just mislaid 2.3 Trillion dollars? It was the evening of 10 Sept 2001. What a coincidence! Try telling your mortgage company that you have just mislaid their next payment and see if you get the same reaction.

How Will it Play Out?

There are very, very few that know the answer to this one and even now there may be fine tuning going on. Has Korea been neutralised or was Kim’s great non-event part of a wily game on his part? What will happen in Pakistan? With Musharief’s position looking more precarious, could the Shiite minority gain the upper hand and support Iran with their nuclear arsenal?

Here is one possibility although your own guess is just as likely.

The US occupation in Iraq will be widened into a greater theatre with Iran the most likely candidate. Israel will isolate itself totally from Palestine and then join in the free for all to the East. Syria and Hezbollah will attack Israel from the North. Pakistan may neutralise any nuclear threat from Israel but Israel may go anyway. In a separate theatre, China may grab Taiwan. India could stay out or could join in on the US side to settle old scores with Pakistan. If Russia is attacked by US missiles from Europe, then this really is show time. The results of this are too unpredictable for me to conjecture.
In the US, the above events augmented by 9/11 (11)(possibly involving the recently missing Nuke) will cause the Constitution to be set aside and Martial law to be introduced. The collapse of the US dollar will probably take the Euro with it. Biological weapons will probably be used to further reduce what is left of the world population including Africa courtesy of the Gates Foundation.
The great unknown is what part the SCO countries will take in this but you can be certain the PTB will not start unless they can be sure of playing the game through.
If Iran is attacked then that is ‘Game On’.

What Can You Do?

As Freeacre recently reminded us, those who are prepared, have an enormous advantage over all others and there is much that can be done to prepare. JFK once said “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining”. When storm clouds appear over the horizon it is time to put the final plans into action to avoid being complete sitting ducks. Do not rely on your elected representatives to play the part of a second Moses, they are part of the plan. Little Belgium has not had a Government for three months now. Not only will they not help you, they may actually put you in harms way (remember New Orleans). The biggest advantage you have is what is inside your head and what many others do not have in theirs.

One thrust of this blog has been self-survival. - Visit as many survivalists web sites as you can and action the things from them, which you can relate to.

Make sure your financial affairs are in order. – Assuming you are still around when everything is done and dusted, do not believe that the Illuminati are going to let you off the hook with the credit for that shiny home cinema that you just had to have.

Get yourself in as good physical shape as you can – visit the gym if you can or at least engage in some physical outdoor activity like putting the winter wood by. Unfortunately for people like me, older and rounder are words that seem to go together.

Decrease your amount of TV time and compensate for it with reading. Printed word or Internet articles are both good. We have all heard the phrase, ‘100 channels and nothing to watch’. I know many people have not found out about it yet but I am reliably informed that your TV set has an off button. And there is the very old joke about the couple whose TV broke down and their marriage improved. Try to find others who may be interested in a mutual self-survival program. Choose them carefully, you don’t want them to take you into their confidence and behind your back send for the men in the white coats.

Do not expect the MSM to give you reliable information. Most that visit here have gigabytes of trustworthy URL’s assuming that the Internet is still up and running.

Cover your online tracks so that you cannot be accused of ‘terrorism’.

Try to develop more than one line of income.

Learn how to relax or at least not to become stressed out as events around you take a downturn.

Those of you that are in countries where it is legal to own weapons, make sure they work and are readily available and that you have plenty of ammo.

Try, so far as possible, to bring those closest to you along with you. When the time comes, you do not want to be fighting the enemy and each other. This is really a recipe for disaster.

Above all, Prepare, Prepare, Prepare. Cary a tent and survival gear or at least a grab bag in the back of your car or in the corner of your garage. Cash is negotiable, in a time of national crisis your plastic may not be worth very much especially if everyone else has emptied the ATM’s and there is no one left to fill them up. Make a ‘to do’ and ‘to take’ list. Have a plan of where you are going. Use off freeway routes and make sure you have enough gas to get there. Make a pre decision about house pets. Leave the tinfoil hat behind unless you are sentimentally attached to it and most importantly, let me know which bar you are going to be in.

References

The Wiki on Albert Pike:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pike

Most material for this post has come from the following site:

http://www.threeworldwars.com/index.html

It is claimed this site has over 1000 pages.
Individual pages used for this article include:

http://www.threeworldwars.com/albert-pike.htm

>From the above page follow the embedded link:

Albert Pike & Three World Wars

http://www.threeworldwars.com/intro.htm

http://www.threeworldwars.com/prepare/

http://www.threeworldwars.com/world-war-3/ww3-00.htm

http://www.threeworldwars.com/admin/faq-war.htm

For those wishing to explore more on the relationship of the Illuminati to Satanism which includes references to Albert Pike. This is a free e-book, which details the interlinking between terrorism, the Illuminati and Satanism.

http://www.terrorism-illuminati.com/book/toc.html

2007-09-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

AN ADVENTURE I COULD DO WITHOUT

I think most of you know I made a trip to Texas to visit my mother who had a stroke. She wanted me to come to say goodbye. In many ways, a sad trip. But the reason I am writing about this trip has to do with the getting there and back part. This is probably the last time I will ever fly again.

Four years ago, Freeacre and I made another trip to Texas by air. The trip had some stress to it and I disliked all the security stuff, but it was doable. This time, I might have gotten myself in some real problems because of the way people are being treated.

I think most of us can agree that this whole terrorist thing with the Homeland Security is bull shit. It was instituted for another agenda rather than protection of the population. The severity with which it has been implemented is something to behold first hand. I don’t know if any of the readers of this post have done any air travel lately. If you haven’t and are thinking of it, hang on, because you are about to be treated as a potential terrorists until proven otherwise.

When I got to the check in counter, I was told that there was a very small limit in the amount of gels, liquids and sprays that I could have with me in my baggage. What I had was a small travel tube of tooth paste and a very small travel container of Old spice in case I decided to trim my beard. These had to be in a sealed plastic bag that would hold no more than a quart I think it was. Freeacre had 2 small jars of jelly she had made to give to sis and mother, and it was a large enough amount that it had to go in checked baggage or it couldn’t go. She took it back home. I was changing planes three times and I’m not about to check baggage if I can help it. Now I find this interesting. I understand the chemistry of mixing common household substances together to make an explosive. I also understand the absolute mayhem and death and destruction one can inflict with fingernail clippers and pen knives and such articles. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to make an explosive strong enough to do significant damage on an airplane with a few ounces of liquids, sprays or gels. I guess I’m just going to have to set down and reread “the Anarchists Cookbook” again. I must have overlooked something.

After this got straightened out, Freeacre grumpily took back her jelly and retreated back to the bench with a now overloaded purse of explosive materials and I am wondering what is taking so long to get my boarding pass. The girl behind the computer looks at me and says, “I need a picture ID”. Hmmm. Ok, here is my driver’s license. “What’s the problem?” “Well”, she says, “You’re on the watch-no-fly list”. Now Freeacre and I had talked about this and speculated about whether I was on this list principally because of my rather extreme criticism of these thugs in Washington and writing about it. So I was prepared to go home, apply for ticket refund and call my sister and mother and explain why I couldn’t get there. Come to find out, if there is someone with your first and last name that has committed some terrible act against the country and threatened the security of our great and noble democracy, and is on the loose, anyone with that name is immediately on the watch or no fly list. In fact, I think you can’t get off the list once you are on, and nobody will tell you why you are on the list. Isn’t this a great country? The woman spent some time doing whatever security thing she had to do to clear my name for boarding. Now by this time I’m getting a little tense and wondering how long I could hold out in prison until the revolution sets me free. Plus it is 4:30 in the morning; I’m not at my best at this time anyway. Freeacre decides to wait and have me get through security before she heads off for the hour drive back home. Let’s see, with my pants falling down my ass, (my belt has a metal buckle, imagine that, and might be dangerous and has to be inspected), my hat, shoes and everything in my pockets in the blue plastic tray, including my glasses, I get passed through after 3 tries through the worm hole portal entrance to the sky. I noticed that every other person going through this has slip on shoes or flip flops. Bad preparation if the plane goes down on the high desert or the mountains. Geez. They didn’t question my sack of trail mix or the little bag of nitro around my neck. Just think what I could have smuggled on the plane in a bottle ½ inch high by ¼ inch diameter.

Ok, I get to Portland and have to change planes to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Not too bad so far but in Portland, I had to do this security stuff all over again, all of it. I stagger through feeling somewhat like one sheep in a flock, sit and wait for a couple of hours, read a book and get on the plane to Albuquerque. In Albuquerque is where the fun starts. I have a 2 hour lay-over here and have to change planes going to Odessa, Texas. This terminal is a mad house; thousands and thousands of travelers. When I got off the plane, we were turned loose in the secure area, that is, we didn’t have to go through the security check again. We were literally let out in the loading area for the plane change. About this time I am tired of the whole thing, don’t want to eat any of the airport food, my back hurts and I’m getting grumpy. A half hour before the flight, we finally get the call to board the plane. We are all standing in line, and this guy in a security garb comes over to the line and begins pulling people out and literally frisking them, patting them down, and having them empty their pockets and open carry on bags and empty purses. He begins at the beginning of the line and starts working his way down it. I am near the end of the line. I watch this and my temper begins to take over. Bag at my feet, I start planning how I am going to put the guy down when he comes to me. I am rapidly getting into a berserker rage. The woman behind me must have sensed something and whispers, “hey guy, take it easy”. This S.O.B has a sneer on his face as he is doing this. As he finishes with a person and moves on to his next victim, I was absolutely astonished that his victims laugh and seem to think it is funny. I had this thought start coming to the surface of my mind that these sheep better not ever depend on me for help at anything. Honestly, I was thinking anyone that would joke about this kind of stuff doesn’t deserve to live in this society. Well, I was saved from a rather brutal mistake in action by the line moving to get on the plane and he didn’t stop me. I fumed all the way to Odessa and until I got to my sisters place. I’m still fuming, obviously. Thank goodness the trip back was uneventful except for the being herded along with a great many other bovines through the chutes for branding and inoculation. I have mentioned this incident to a couple of people, I’m still fuming remember, and their reaction is that we have to put up with this for our own safety. Now the question I ask is, JUST HOW MANY FREEDOMS DO YOU THINK IT IS APPROPRIATE TO GIVE UP FOR THIS FLIGHT SAFETY LIE? I guess we just keep giving up just one more freedom for a promise of safety, till there is no more freedom left. What ya think about this my friends?

Now I am writing about this because from my point of view this was one of the more intrusive and degrading experiences I have had, not the only one for sure, but at my age, I have a tendency to think more intently about bad ass resistance to such shit. I’m just glad I got home without landing my ass in jail or worse.

Whenever an airline says they aren’t making any money and are filing for bankruptcy, I am going to be real cynical about it. Every airport I was in had constant thousands of people going through it, and every plane I was on was filled to capacity. I suspect the 700 to 1 ratio for CEO pay has more to do with the bottom line than lack of passengers. Plus, I very much doubt that the little packs of honey salted peanuts you get in the air are taking much out of the bottom line. They do encourage you to bring your own food, but how to get it past security? That Big Mac has definite terror usage written all over the wrapping. At least they don’t charge for the water or coffee to wash it down with. By the way, the orange juice tastes synthetic, can’t prove it, but I do wonder.

Since I have been home, I asked my retired cop friend about security personal that are hired for things like airports. He wasn’t very complimentary about them at all. He says that with few exceptions, most of them can’t be good janitors. His experience is that a very large proportion of them are ex cons. I don’t know. These people are not hired by the government you know. It is a private contractor that does the hiring and training. So you know that they are interested in low overhead.

Now here is my take on all of this, and has been for some time. This whole deal with watch lists, no fly lists, airport security searches and homeland security has nothing to do with keeping us safe from aircraft hijackers wanting to fly airplanes into some building in Bend, Oregon. It isn’t an over enthusiastic government going to extremes about this. What is it then? It is preparation of citizens to endure identity papers, arbitrary searches anywhere anytime and not to question it. It is preparation for a police state. There is no other reason to go to this extreme. I suppose it also serves the function of keeping the unemployment stats down. Pretty good article on this at Alternet.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/62407/

So I know that there is small chance of my flying again. Besides, as fuel prices increase, so will air fare cost and it is pretty high now. It cost $550 to go about 1800 miles each way and I got the old guy price break. The regular price of the trip through the big airlines was from $1800-$2300, depending on the airline used. If I had tried to drive it, I could figure a minimum of 3 days driving both ways and an average of $150 per day if I elected to stay overnight at a cheap motel. Now when I say cheap, I mean it. If there are no bullet holes in the walls and I can’t see any rat shit on the floor, it’s good enough and that quality of room is beginning to cost more and more too. Last trip we took we were doing good to find a place to shower and sleep for less than $80 for the two of us. That is why I elected to fly down, 6 days on the road and it would cost more to drive it, and that’s not counting the wear and tear on me and the car. So I reckon if I can’t drive it, I won’t be going from now on. I refuse to voluntarily subject myself to that kind of humiliating treatment again. Now I got to be thinking what the repercussions are going to be in writing this essay for general consumption. Oh well, I rather imagine that we are going to be experiencing some pretty dark days coming up and my petty bitching about air travel security is going to be the least of my worries. I am supposing that all of you reading this have read how the military has lowered its standards way down for enlistees. Well, I figure that anything that has any connection with the government is going to be the same, including police. The few exceptional people are going to be snowed in by the incompetence surrounding them. I guess we got exactly what we’ve voted for over the years. It’s not a pretty picture.

I'm Not Buying It

2007-09-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

From freeacre.

Every day, it seems, I get entreaties to send money to let George Bush know that he’s the biggest dumbass, ever. MoveOn.org wants to take out a full page ad in the New York Times that says, “YOU DUMBASS!” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….. Like he gives a rat’s ass what we think. Somebody wants me to sign a survey or a petition, and by the way, save the Children, Save the Whales, Save the Polar Bears, End the War, fund Cancer Research, Muscular Dystrophy, Greenpeace, AARP, Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee. We all know what a great help they have been, don’t we?

Well, actually, no, we don’t. We know it has become Big Business to cash in on all of our various maladies and crises and malfeasance of every sort. They each come with their own clever campaigns and self-addressed stamped envelopes. They have somehow made us feel like we are doing something constructive by sending them money, even though every problem they have been addressing for years has gotten worse. Do I need to repeat that?

EVERY PROBLEM THEY HAVE BEEN ADDRESSING FOR YEARS HAS GOTTEN WORSE.

Send money anyway.

And then, there are the candidates. We “need” to send them money so that they can buy advertising time on the airwaves that we already own as citizens of this country. Our government licenses those airwaves and could make it a condition of licensure that the stations must give election campaign coverage for free as a public service donation, or they won’t be allowed to do business. That would wipe out much of the leverage that the lobbyists have with the congress in one fell swoop. Additionally, reporters could do their jobs and report what each of the candidates thinks and does and REPORT THE NEWS to their viewers. So, no, we don’t need to send them money. We need to stop sending them money and stop enabling this corrupt, bullshit system. They need to come to us and ask us how they can serve our interests – not the other way around.

Pull a dollar out of your wallet and look at it. What you are holding is the only true ballot that you have. Elections don’t matter anymore. The Democrats as well as the Republicans serve the interests of the Corporatists. Since they have been in charge, we have been defined as “consumers” rather than “citizens.” There is a big difference.

Recently, I re-watched “The Matrix.” In it, the Machines have taken over and are using the human beings on the planet as a self-replicating, unending power source. People are bred in vats and maintained in pods for their electrical impulses. They live in slime, but the illusion of a viable life and culture runs through their minds as a sort of collective hologram that keeps them docile and cranking out those volts.

Well, that is all well and good for the machinery. But, in our world, we don’t have machinery in charge. We have corporations in charge. They don’t run on electrical impulses. They run on money.

M.O.N.E.Y. Our money.

From the day our moms ran out to purchase those pre-natal vitamins until the satin-lined mahogany or bronze lids on our coffins are closed, we are milked like a vast herd and harvested like vegetables made from money. All the while the soothing slogans of advertising campaigns, the approved music on sale and downloadable, keeps us popping our fingers and dancing along. Self-serving television programming makes our bloated and self-absorbed life-styles seem cool and entertaining. Our “educational” system is reduced to a lock-step march into the service industries or the corporate wars. Our medical industries (all corporate), pick our pockets with ever-increasing efficiency as we advance towards deaths delayed just long enough to collect the last collective dime.

Does any of this make you anxious or fearful? No problem. We have drugs for that and insurance policies, therapists, and products.

You can put them on your Credit Cards.

What’s the meaning of all this? Gawdalmighty! Go to church and find out! Go to a really big church that accepts VISA, MASTERCARD, or DISCOVER. Send them millions of dollars to help you feel blessed and loved and innocent – even though the culture of which you are a product is guilty of every sin there is: greed, avarice, gluttony, lust, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Gosh, in this Seinfeld generation, they don’t sound so bad, do they? And, anyway, JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS, so it’s OK! Just send money.

Don’t trouble yourself that you have lost touch with your true nature as a natural being on this wondrous planet; that you are contributing to and participating in a die off of Biblical proportions; that we are being poisoned and sickened and are dying at an accelerating rate, as our jobs are outsourced and our rulers are moving to Dubai . Meanwhile, our congressmen and ministers, priests, and boy scout masters are molesting and being molested between services and sessions and sleeping bags. Just keep sending those checks. That way, nobody gets closed down and nobody goes to jail. It’s all good.

Well, you know what? I DON’T FUCKIN’ THINK SO! I am not buying it anymore. I’m not going to darken the doorway of any Walmart store. I’m not buying anything that I have to purchase with interest. I’m not contributing to any campaigns that aren’t local. I’m not buying anything made in a sweatshop. I’m not eating anything laced with poisons and produced by mistreating animals trapped in corporate food factories. I am not going to squander oil and other resources and add to the rationale for fighting resource wars.

I am going to withdraw my money from all that is sick and twisted, and let it all collapse. I have already cancelled my satellite connection, to withdraw my attention from the corporate mindfuck. I will look at my dollars for what they are – the only votes that make a difference. I vote for freedom from debt, saving up food for now, liberty gardens for next year. I vote for no incumbents. I vote for localizing food production, making useful products, reaching out to neighbors, helping each other come our of our collective coma. I’d like to see an honest-to-God Right to Life Movement going on – one where we support each other in our being free to live productive lives without exploiting or being exploited. This is not going to be a happy fix that makes everything all better so that life continues as we know it. That is not going to be possible. We are all going to die, and many sooner than they think. But, that is going to happen anyway.

I just want to be living a real life before I die. I’d like to set our children free, so that they are no longer tethered to their electronics and glued to the tube, fixed on a path toward fear, indentured servitude, mass delusion, electronic monitoring, and cradle-to-grave marketing and medication.

Actually, it is very simple to accomplish this revolution because the marketing geniuses have sold the whole thing to us! BRILLIANT!! All we have to do, is

STOP BUYING IT.

If you agree, just pass this message on. Maybe it will go around the world, and a whole lot of things will change and people will be happier and animals and the planet will have more of a chance. And, guess what? You don’t need to send me a check.

freeacre

2007-08-25T11:51:00.001-07:00

What a Way to Go
Freeacre

The Murphinator and I kicked back the other evening and watched the new documentary, “What a Way to Go.” It pretty much sums up the many ways the world as we know it is about to end, with input from the most astute writers and thinkers that we are familiar with on the internet.

It presents The Biggies: Peak Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot. Commentary by Daniel Quinn (“Ishmael” and “The Story of B” Must reads), Derrick Jensen (“The Culture of Make Believe”), Richard Heinberg “Powerdown”), Jerry Mander, Richard Manning, even Ran Prier. Tim Bennett wrote it and Sally Erickson produced it. Together, they have put together a cogent and sensitive portrayal of the situation that we find ourselves in with very few punches pulled. Taboos are violated. It suggests a radical fix – returning to a stepped up version of Hunting and Gathering to restore the balance of life on earth. Hunting and gathering…. Tell that to a Beltway pundit. No wonder you will never see this stuff on T.V.

My one criticism is that I wish the narration hadn’t been done so similarly to Michael Moore’s style of casual understatement. When I am told that five out of six of us are most probably going to die a lot sooner than we think, I want some affect going on. I want passion, anger, outrage - name-calling, head-banging, cursing, spit flying, and dire threats to those responsible – not just grief and angst. Maybe it’s just me.

When I think of trying to show this film to my central Oregon neighbors, I cringe. These are good people with usable skills. They are ones who can fix things and will lend you a hand, have parts on hand, and feed your animals for you if you are laid up. But, I’ve got a feeling they would view this movie with the utmost skepticism. Not because they don’t believe that the world is all fucked up, but because of the emotional disconnect, for them, with which the message is delivered. Much like their reaction to Al Gore, my neighbors, I think, would point and laugh.

Despite that, it is worth purchasing. Google “What a Way to Go.” I’m going to use it to remind me of what the hell I am doing all this for, when I’m up to my eyeballs in corn on the cob, boiling pears for jelly, and blanching and freezing mountains of kale. I’m from Napa and Tahoe. I used to get hot stone massages, reflexology foot rubs. I had manicured nails. I was in the newspaper business. I’ve got a Salesperson of the Quarter certificate on my wall.

Murph has three degrees. He walked into the college office in Tahoe and took the test to see if he could tutor math classes after an absence of five years from doing anything with mathematics. After the test, they told him he could tutor any math class they had. Now he’s digging holes to bury garbage cans in which to store potatoes and squash. He just finished hauling, splitting and stacking ten cords of firewood. That’s a lot of damn wood. Before that, he re-furbished the chicken coup and installed a wood stove in the garage so he can re-load ammo in the winter – and he’s 67 years old.

Are we nuts?

Well, maybe. Or maybe we are just sick to death of this somnambulistic, sick-assed, out of whack, death and cancer culture we live in. Maybe we’re mightily sorry that we’ve been a part of destroying the ecosystems of so many animals and fish and forests. Maybe we’re gearing up for the firestorm of anger, panic, theft, and viciousness that will come with hunger, homelessness, and disease as the money collapses and the wars come home. Maybe we are conscientious objectors to this war on the world.

I know what we are preparing for, but I’m not sure who we are preparing for anymore. I have a feeling that we might not be the ones to break into the stored food supplies. Maybe it will be our son. Maybe it will be someone else. It doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.

2007-08-09T22:41:00.000-07:00

Spin, Disinformation, The Weaponisation of Information and The Double Game.
New Post from Belgium.

Most of us are aware that many of the things told to us by our leaders, whilst seldom being outright lies are seldom the outright truth either. If our political representatives engage in a political slight of hand, if they play ‘Find the Lady’ with the truth, then what form might this misdirection take? Let us take a look at some of the main types of deception which can be employed singly or in combination in such a way that it is often difficult to say what is going on.

Spin

This has been defined succinctly as the practice of manipulating the facts to profit the politician and allay public concern. In fact the White House has a posse of spin savvy doctors whose function is to perform damage control on a whole range of subjects from financial misjudgements to romantic involvements. The White House has ways of effecting reprisals on reporters who attempt to circumvent the Department of Communication, for instance by not confirming the validity of a particular story until after the reporters deadline has passed. Those who go to press with the story anyway risk being shunned and effectively having their career ended. Also, in order to stay in the loop some objective reporters have had to compromise their objectivity.

Some SpinTechniques

Cherry Picking and Omissions

Cherry picking is the selective use of data to present your own case in a better light than it really is. For instance, throughout 2007 the White House has claimed that the US is doing better than Europe in greenhouse gas emissions. This seems to be a curious statement since if the USA intended to out perform other countries that are party to the Kyoto Agreement then there should have been no reason to prevent them from joining in the first place. An organisation called The Pacific Institute has analysed the data and found that the US administration has both cherry picked the specific data to analyse and a specific snapshot in time as a reference point. Kyoto monitors six different greenhouse gasses and produces a weighted average. If we take 1990 as a starting point and call the gasses that existed at that point 100, then between 1990 – 2004 Europe’s weighted average varied between 97 – 100, whereas USA emissions rose steadily over the same period and between 2000 – 2004 and varied between 112 – 115. What the White House appears to be claiming is that during the year 2000 their carbon dioxide emissions were marginally better than those from Europe.

Omissions are both easier and more sinister and technically are not spin at all but a special case of negotiating by doing nothing. These are the result of having a compliant media who just do not let disadvantageous news ever see the light of day. Any brave editor who makes a stand, risks having their journalistic career stopped dead in its tracks. Examples are legion and could include the following short selection:
51% of Americans including 29% Republicans wish to see both the President and Vice President impeached (Newsweek Magazine) but the general media, who have never met a poll they won’t publish will not now even ask the question leaving most people with the feeling they are isolated in their views.
Dennis Kucinich has filed a bill in the HOR calling for the impeachment of VP Cheney. Have you heard about it?
Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has ruled President Bush to be a class A felon for violating the first and fourth amendments with his illegal spying on Americans but your Pres decided the law didn’t apply to him and the media didn’t report it.
US war casualties are misrepresented and Iraqi casualties are not represented at all. The routine use of depleted uranium is never mentioned as are the casualties returning home with burning sperm syndrome. These are not treated by the administration so that statistics are never compiled.
Al Gore is reported to have a $1600/month electricity bill.
When was the last time you saw a list of the coalition of the willing since the rest of the willing took their ball home?
Ever heard of Camp Iguana? It is a special section of Guantanamo Bay for pre-pubescent enemy combatants.

Not Saying What You Mean

The perpetrator appears to say something reasonable but there is a hidden undercurrent in the message. Tony Blair used this technique masterfully in his statement “Weakness is not the way to defeat terrorism”. On the face of it, it is hard to pick the bones out of this one but it was actually a dig at the Tory opposition party who were perceived to be weak on terrorism thus under their control weakening the country and making the UK a soft target.

British police say that in their experience, hardened criminals start off as minor criminals. Therefore the way to combat future major crime is to build a DNA and fingerprint database of people caught in the act of such serious misdemeanours as throwing their cigarette ends in the street or allowing their dogs to foul the footpath. These clearly are going to be the rapists and mass murderers of the future. What a super method of paving the way for police state control but of course this only is the ravings of leftist malcontents and we all know that if you never do anything wrong then you have nothing to fear.

The Non-denial Denial

Forms of this are rubbishing a statement as ridiculous or absurd or not dignifying it with a response without addressing the question in hand. Impugning a source without addressing the allegation or denying a more specific version of events than that alleged. Finally there is good old amnesia.

Certain US politicians could hold their hand on their heart and say they never received monetary inducements from Tom Delay without mentioning any cost free fact finding jaunts around Austral Asia and the Far East.
The American Home Mortgage Investment Corporation for example could have denied plans to lay off 5,000 workers when they actually planned to lay off 6,250.
Bill Clinton managed a double whammy in nine words when he said “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. Apart from the issue of whether fellatio constitutes ‘sexual relations’, what woman was he referring to? It could have been Hilary.
When Condi Rice gave evidence before the 9/11 commission her job was one of damage control without implicating either herself or the government. She responded to a question “I don’t remember the al Qaeda cells being something we were told we needed to do something about. To the best of my knowledge this kind of analysis…. actually was never briefed to us”. “I don’t remember” and “To the best of my knowledge” are crawl out from under statements to prevent being caught in a lie.
This next one just about sums it up. Charles Haughey the former premier of Ireland said that “Coalition governments are against every fibre of my being”. When he formed a coalition government after his election a spokesman said “Charlie never said he would not lead his party into a coalition just that he was uncomfortable with the idea in theory. Listen to what he actually said, not what you thought he was implying”.

Euphemisms

This again is a large subject so here are a few brief examples to give the flavour. It is also interesting that the replacement for euphemisms can themselves become euphemisms.
Concentration camps, originally an innocuous term coined during the Boar War took on a different meaning after the discovery of Hitler’s death camps. Now we have internment camps.
Over the years lame became crippled which then became handicapped and finally disabled.
Shell shock became battle fatigue, which became operational exhaustion and ended up as post traumatic stress disorder.
Finally my particular favourite ‘friendly fire’, which is not so friendly for the poor bugger who is having bullets ripping through his chest.

The Thought Train of Spin

There was a woman in UK administration who e-mailed department heads on 9/11 whilst the towers were still burning, with the message “If you have any news at all which is going to be in any way unpopular, today is the day to get it out”. Unfortunately for her the message was in written form and after two witch-hunts she was eventually forced to resign. Hiding bad news whilst peoples attention is distracted is one of the techniques of spin.

President Bush has told us “I deeply care about the environment” and to prove it we have seen 30 second video bites of him dressed in neutral tones helping forest rangers in Colorado. Most Americans know however that he really, really wants to break up the environment and take it for a big business ride with his big business buddies.
In a leaked White House memo, Environment Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman offered her advice to President Bush on global warming, asserting “We need to appear engaged”. What a brilliant tactic; spin it like we care about the environment (instead of poll numbers) and leave the earth to the pillagers.

Disinformation and the Weaponisation of Information (Psyops)

Back in the days of the Crimea War, for instance, it took a week or more for news of events to reach back home. Modern technology allows the public to sit with their TV dinner on their knee and watch a battle in action. Whilst this brings many advantages, the West and American people in particular have become the unwitting victims of their own information warriors. US propaganda directed at the US’s enemies has instantaneously rebounded and formed a bridgehead in the American psyche. Often, the cheapest way to buy technology is to get it two generations old and Mr Rumsfeld did like to get things on the cheap. Here was a man who used his authority to show contempt for people and their often, sound advice without the foresight or intellect to see where all of this was taking him. And where it took him was to the destruction of the moral authority of the United States. Now it is too late, the damage to America’s standing in the world has been done. Rummy was not alone in this however, it is one facet of the Bush / Cheney / Neoconservative ethos which pervades this administration.

During the months following 9/11 and whilst the public was being brought around to accepting an invasion of Iraq, army Brigadier General Vincent Brooks in Qatar told the press of ongoing operations to eliminate terrorist death squads. Something began to feel not quite right here, the military do not refer to irregulars as ‘death squads’, so what was going on? It turns out to be a classic propaganda technique known as ‘the excluded middle’, designed to make people provided with incomplete but suggestive information draw a false conclusion, in this case that Sadam Hussein had ties to terrorism and hence Al Qaeda.

Flushed with the success of one false flag operation, Rumsfeld tried his hand at another by asserting that (1) Iraqi military planned to don exact replicas of UK and US military uniforms in order to commit atrocities against Iraqis and stigmatise the coalition. It makes you wonder if he learned his military training from Garrison’s Guerrilla’s (2) Iraqis had executed prisoners of war. (3) The Fifty-first Division of the Iraqi army had mass surrendered. Items (1) & (2) quickly withered on the vine and two days later General Khaled Saleh of the 51st division was interviewed by Al Jazeera in Basra saying “I am with my men. We continue to defend the people and riches of this city”. Although almost laughable in retrospect, item (3) may have been a legitimate tactic of war. If other parts of the Iraqi army had believed a major division of 8,000 men had been so quickly overwhelmed then it could have influenced them to also give up and reduce bloodshed on both sides. This is an example (not successful in this case), of how information can be used as a weapon of war. Since the time of the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu over 2,500 years ago, deception has been used as a legitimate military weapon. What has altered now is its scale of operation. It has expanded from the ‘insurgents’ and the Taliban to advisories of US policy in general and now to the world at large. With the modern speed of communications and almost instant internet critique, propaganda is finding targets which were never intended. The boundaries between truthful press briefing and military propaganda have become so blurred it is extremely difficult to navigate a correct path through and this has brought the credibility of both the military and the press into question. In other words, available information is based on the political objectives of the state, rather than the truth. Nowadays, the tide of public opinion is regarded as more important than the tide of conflict on the battlefield and deceptions are channelled through the mainstream media.

When Rumsfeld’s propaganda machine ‘the ‘Office of Strategic Influence’ was exposed (by opponents within the Pentagon) it brought the Pentagon into disrepute. It was broken up and driven underground. Some fragments had distinctly Orwellian names such as the Office of Countermisinformation, a unit designed to protect the government from charges of malfeasance, dereliction and deceit.

One thing about intelligent enemies is that they are quick learners. Now Zaqawi’s group and three others, host internet sites, publish magazines and routinely hold press conferences which often mirror Americas own publicity. Web sites announce new policy positions, alliances or strategic shifts, react to breaking news and address how the Western media is addressing the struggle.

Increasingly, the US is turning its information war over to mercenary corporate executives dedicated to manipulating the perception of political events for their own personal profit. Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a Fortune 500 company, of whom Robert Gates, Rumsfelds successor, was a board member, prides itself on “Information dominance”. It has experts in fields as diverse as Islamic studies; the Middle East and psychological warfare. With the credibility of the US Government sinking at an alarming rate the American taxpayer might consider they are being seriously short changed.

Another propaganda outlet, the Rendon Group headed by John Rendon, a latter day Joseph Gorbbels, took 100 million dollars profit for the contract of demonising Sadam Hussein. His operation consisted of setting up the Iraqi National Congress (INC) with Ahmad Chalabi as its head; hiring a posse of anti Sadam dissidents and serving as the PR medium for the operation.

SAIC and the Rendon Group design information warfare on a grand scale and also know how to charge a grand price. Meanwhile the American citizenry remain completely unaware they are paying highly with their tax dollars to be so scurrilously disinformed. Falling press circulation tells these gurus that their war of perceptions is failing as people increasingly obtain their news with their mouse finger. Sadly armies of cyber warriors are now employed to redress the balance in favour of their neoconservative sponsors. The words ‘Trusted Site’ could take on a new connotation as the battle for your hearts and minds continues in its seemingly never-ending spiral.

The Double Game

The double game is essentially a situation of double dealing or double crossing, usually played out in the international arena and can take a variety of forms. Typically this can be covertly supporting both sides in a conflict so that the double gamer will always finish up on the winning side. Agreeing to support one side whilst covertly assisting the other. Taking a position which is at odds with your own previous stance or covertly undermining the laws of your own country. Let us have a look at a few double games that have been played out in recent times to see how it goes.

Probably the one which sticks in most peoples’ minds is the IRAN CONTRA AFFAIR because of the unseemly way it all fell apart. This affair linked two quite unconnected issues. A Marxist government, the Sandinistas was installed in the Central American country of Nicaragua, which was unsympathetic to the aims of USA. The USA supported the efforts of a rival guerrilla force called the Contras but was prevented by Congress from funding them. At the same time in 1983, some members of Al-Dowa, an exiled militant Iraqi faction, were imprisoned for a series of truck bombings in Kuwait. In response, Hezbollah captured 30 hostages six of whom were American and demanded the release of the Al-Dowa prisoners in exchange. Iran was in the middle of the Iran Iraq war and could find very few Western nations willing to supply it. The Reagan administration believed that by supplying arms (illegally) to Iran, Iran would use its influence with Hezbollah to release the hostages. This was first done using Israel as a staging post and then later directly. The money from these sales was used to illegally fund the Contras in Nicaragua. The whole scandal was exposed after only three American hostages had been released.

The affair of IRANS 15 BRITISH NAVAL HOSTAGES was a dog in the manger exercise whereby the Bush administration cried foul when Iran played the game by American rules. The international boundary line between Iraq and Iran running through the Persian Gulf is a tad open to interpretation so when Iran apprehended the 15 British sailors for invading their waters, there was much US consternation. Bush was suddenly an indignant defender of international law, huffing and puffing about the axis of evil capturing British personnel who would sooner die than do a wrong thing, quite forgetting the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 that put the British there in the first place. Bush suddenly found the UN Charter and its ban on aggressive war, which he had previously regarded as some goofy exercise in multilateralism. In order to maintain consistency, he also needed to forget such things as the British colonial domination of both Iraq and Iran in 1953 and the CIA’s role in reinstalling the brutal Shah of Iran as a puppet of the West. This may have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths but so far as the 15 sailors were concerned the British and US Governments were innocent victims. This was in marked contrast to the previously US ordered raids on Iranian offices inside Iraq and the capture of five Iranian military officials when International law was something that didn’t need to be bothered with. If the 15 sailor incident was a retaliatory exercise then the Iranians clearly didn’t understand the rules of the game where you need a stacked deck, a forked tongue and a US passport to win. The British took umbrage against the sailors being video interviewed, eating and being generally well treated in marked contrast to US detainees in Abu Garaib; or even scenes of kneeling and bound Iraqis over the title Operation Iraqi Freedom. This however did not prevent President Bush lifting the Geneva Convention from the gutter, dusting it off and placing it on a pedestal. What did Iran get out of all this? They got the kudos of magnanimous détente when they handed the sailors back in first class condition. They got some good PR for those who understood it and managed to mark the US and UK’s cards. They said “Take us on if you like, we are not afraid of you”.

There is a belief that you shouldn’t believe any rumour until it has been officially denied but when IRAN SAYS IT HAS NOT BOUGHT 250 STATE OF THE ART SOKHO 30 RUSSIAN FIGHTERS because it doesn’t need them I would tend to go along with it. So where did the rumour come from? It turns out to be Mosad diverting attention away from recent Israeli massive arms shipments from the USA.

Conclusion

It was once considered an honour and a privilege to be chosen to represent your fellow men but now there exists a pervading government ethos of ‘if you don’t cheat, you can’t compete’. This deceit can be directed at the citizenry (largely spin); advisories (largely disinformation and psyops) and other nations (largely double game). It is certain that if our leaders felt it was unnecessary to do these things, they would not go to the trouble of doing them. So what makes them do it? Who are they afraid of? Could it really be us?

2007-08-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

SO WHY AREN’T WE MANNING THE BARRICADES?
From Murph

I’ve often commented that it seems like every day there is a new event
coming out of the government that scares the hell out of me, or enrages me. I hear a lot of talk and read a lot of material that indicates there is a lot of other people out in this world that feel the same way. I frequently come across stuff by authors asking why we are not in the street armed and ready to rumble.

It appears to me that only the most deluded and most ignorant and most uniformed person can possibly ignore what is happening to us as American citizens. I listen to the presidential candidates lie and avoid the really hard stuff. I listen to the present government officials lie and put spin on the actions of their bosses. We see, nearly every day, on the popular media, where parts of our infrastructure are decaying and crumbling and yet federal funding is being cut for civilian projects to finance the empires expansion. The bridge in Minnesota is just the latest. The whole Pat Tillman affair has not gone away and that is about two years old now. It appears that he was assassinated, and the reasons are ambiguous. The administration is sacrificing fall guys at a stupendous rate while the big boys walk away free and collect their 200 million when they pass go. The war in Iraq is a joke. We are pouring money into that venture at a stupendous rate. Latest information I have read is that the total cost before this is done, and that is if we start withdrawing troops right now, is 1.9 trillion dollars. Meanwhile, the wealthy that benefit most by this kind of expenditure are paying less for the privilege of looting the treasury and the pockets of the rest of the citizens of this country, and the public debt in total is now so large that it will take 3 generations at the current GDP to pay it back. So you know how that is going to turn out. The corporate control of the government is almost absolute now, and that by definition is called Fascism.

And if that is not enough, our president is assigning himself powers and authority that only belong in a country run by a despot. Edi Amine would be proud of his step child. Adolph would be chuckling. I suppose if they were all alive now they would be jealous as hell. My oh my, 350 million people in one country under his thumb and he can do anything he wants and get away with it. No U.N. sanctions, no internal revolution, no armies collecting along the borders, no international talk about stopping these mad men. How good can it get?

So ok, why aren’t we in the street? Why hasn’t a large segment of the population risen up in righteous indignation with guns in hand and stopped this shit? Well, here it is.

This population, as a whole and compared to the rest of the western countries, is young. We haven’t endured centuries of brutal leaders yet. In actuality, this is our first experience with an overt brutal leadership, unless of course you want to examine Lincoln carefully. He managed to get several million killed too. But we will put that aside for now. Our population, as a whole, simply doesn’t understand just how bad it can get.

We have endured over 50 years of intense propaganda preparing us for this. There has been a very gradual buildup to this point for over 100 years. The people that have the control over the political leaders have been working for this outcome for a very long time. Overcoming the propaganda that insists that the leaders have our interests and well being at heart is not going to happen quickly. These ass holes in leadership positions and that run for leadership positions have been and are lying to us almost incessantly. Politics and those that run for office are only a sham to convince us that we have some real control over what happens. The shame we bear is in believing them. For to believe them means that, among other reasons, our educational system has failed us. Our owners do not want an informed, rational, critical thinking population. That is not in their plans at all. We complain about the “sheeple” blindly following and doing and believing what they are told. Well, what in hell do you expect? We have been trained to be just smart enough to run the machinery, do the paper work, to be team workers, to not question decisions, to be compliant and non-complaining, to respect and acquiescent to authority. We have been supporting that kind of education since before the industrial revolution. Now we are getting the payoff. So the next time a school levy in your area is being put on the ballot, how are you going to vote?

This country has been, and especially now, fear driven in most of its policies. A fearful population is much easier to control. Promise to protect against some boogeyman, and most people will do whatever it takes to satisfy the people making the promise so they don’t have to deal with the real or imagined boogeyman. And just in case the population starts to question the boogeyman theory, you kill some of the population with false flag events to get them back into line. Works every time.

I have hit on this over and over. Western civilization, but not restricted to us, has some kind of mental fixation on elitism. A person that has a lot of money and/or has a lot of connections to money is held up as being smarter, more aware, more competent. I guess if control of other people is a sign of being smarter and more competent, it is true most of the time. So why in hell has the populations of every country on earth had this thing about paying homage to those with money? Giving them special privileges, giving them authority over others lives? Appears to me it is about jealousy, greed, being lied to, and fear of losing what little they have. I would think this would have a tendency to inhibit people from rebelling against their owners. A lifetime of slave mentality and living is damned hard to overcome.

Another repeated summary. Plus, the elites have just about everything sewed up right now; availability of money, information, ownership and force. Rebelling is dangerous stuff under these conditions. You have to see yourself as having nothing else to lose to those bastards. Either that or a very radicalized sense of righteous indignation. As long as the carrot is dangled in the face of the slave population, they will not rebel. Until they realize that they can’t get to the carrot, they will not rebel. So until the really big pinch comes on the average Joe in the street, there isn’t going to be any French type barricades in the street, or active rebellion. Few people, including myself, are willing to be martyrs for a population that likes and defends their slavery. When they become aware of what has been done to them and start to grumble and pick up arms, then I will come out of the closet. I suspect many who are reading this feel much the same way.

Until the general population begins to growl and paw the ground, it’s hunker down and protect ourselves as best we can. And no damn it, I don’t like having to say that. But I will be damned if I will expose myself by taking up arms to keep Joe and Ann able to go to the mall and keeping the SUV gassed up. Besides, I have firewood to put up for winter. So there!

REAL DEAL ALERT!!!!!!!!!!

2007-07-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

Hey kids. This is going to be short, sweet and to the point. I've been working on something re: Gonzales and that mess, but think that this may just be a wee bit more important right now.

The crash that we have been talking about for the life of this blog may truly be upon us, any time now. No, I'm not saying that because the DOW dove yesterday and appears to be doing the same thing today. I'm saying that because of the one thread that has held this phony economy of ours together for so long, CREDIT, is about to be cut off. When that happens, it's Katie bar the door time. It will be time to hunker down and take care of yourself and those whom you care about. It WILL get wild. Can you imagine if the average American, who is already in debt up to their eyeballs, is not able to borrow 10 grand to maintain their current lifestyles? Can you predict how they will react when Bill, their next door neighbor and the head of the bank tells them "no" when they ask for that car loan? Or grocery loan? I can offer a guess, probably an accurate one, but I don't really want to think about it.

Why do I say this? The main reason, actually 2 reasons, is the falling apart of the sale of Chrysler, and the same with the largest drug company in Britain. These purchases could not be completed because the consortiums put together to purchase these companies COULD NOT BORROW THE BILLIONS that they offered to purchase the companies. And no, these are not your typical bust out guys like myself who would be tossed out the door immediately after asking for a $500,000 loan during boom times. Instead, these are people who put together deals such as the Chrysler deal together on a routine basis. And they have been told NO DEAL, NO LOAN. The credit industry is shutting the door, and when it inevitably closes on the American people, it will be 1929 all over again. Only this time it will be played out with Uzi's and assault rifles tossed into the mix.

So, hang on to your hats and keep your eye on the financial news over the next little while. Look for what does not happen (such as buyouts) as much as what does happen, and you will get an inkling of what to expect. The hedge funds are exploding quicker than the housing market, the derivatives market is and has been in shambles for quite some time, on and on and on. Most importantly, keep your eye on China and what they attempt to buy, or do buy in the near future. I've told you many times over that they own us, and we are soon to learn that they are the only country on earth with enough "money" to stay afloat.

I do wish that I was a good enough writer to coherently state exactly what is happening, but I am not. Finance is not really my bag, but I can smell a fire when one is burning. It just so happens that this is a huge wild fire, one that a moron like me cannot even miss. So, oil your weapons and lock your doors. The day of reckoning is likely near.

I will keep everyone updated as things evolve,

Cyclone

Oh, and please read everything you can find on this subject, written by people (unlike me) who can explain this crap a whole lot better. Especially about hedge funds, derivative markets, buyouts, credit, etc.

Cy

Another Cyclone Rant

2007-07-13T03:03:00.000-07:00

I’m tired of it, all of it. What is Cyclone tired of, you might ask? Well, I’m gonna tell you. Just so you’ll know, the list might be kind of long. I don’t know yet because I’m working off the top of my head here. If I actually wrote it down, I’d probably blow my brains out before I finished. So, instead of leaving that mess for someone else to clean up, I’m just going for it.

I’m tired of “the Decider” claiming to decide things for me when in reality he is only deciding not to change anything he’s already decided. I’m tired of having a stubborn moron with an IQ of 80 deciding that I have to read about one more kid dying or getting his legs blown off in Iraq, in MY NAME, because some fool doesn’t know when to fold ‘em. Don’t fret, it’s in your name too because we won’t do anything about it, nor will we elect anyone who will. I'm tired of the Decider saying he' s listening to the general's on the ground when he has to shop for new ones every few months to find some who will agree with him. I’m especially tired of it when this “war” is being fought over oil, and last week I paid $2.46 for a gallon of gas and this week I’m paying $3.24, for no good reason. They bought the stuff in the last fiscal quarter, so unless their tank ran dry last Friday I’m being taken to the cleaners. I’m tired of the answer to that crisis being the invention of something called NOPEC, which some group of phony nimrods in the good old boys club is claiming will hold accountable all those Arabs who are screwing us. I’d feel better if they called it BPPEC or MOBILPEC or something. I'm tired of the Democrats not having the balls to de-fund this debacle in the desert, because the Decider says that the history books will show that we "lost" this war; they all know that we "lost" much more than a war the day we went in. I'm tired of the White House leaking a report saying that Al Qaeda is as strong or stronger than they were in 2001, a position agreed to by all intelligence experts, only to have the Decider say in a speech the next day that it is all a bunch of BS, that they are NOT stronger. I’m tired of the Vampire Dick Cheney, and maybe at least as much his wife. The odds of two people that evil meeting and falling in love at an early age have to be astronomical. I should have won the lottery or have been struck by lightening at least a dozen times before that's allowed to happen. I’m tired of having a Director of Homeland Security who tells me to be vigilant because he has a “gut feeling” that something “might happen this summer,” but no hard intelligence mind you. How about at least some “soft intelligence?” Now if something does happen, I’m going to have no choice but to wonder whether he, the Decider or the Vampire and his wife had something to do with it. I’m tired of having an entire Justice Department run by a guy who thinks he’s STILL the personal lawyer of the Decider, and refusing to represent ME, his true client. I’m tired of paying out the butt for health insurance and then receiving bills in the mail for stuff they don’t cover, usually a pretty hefty amount. I’m also tired of hearing about 40+ million people who are a helluva lot worse off than I am, those who have no insurance when we will have spent over a TRILLION dollars in Iraq before it’s all said and done. That’s a lot of zero’s, and could have paid for a lot of Doctor's visits. I’m tired of being told that the economy is great when the DOW keeps setting records while I have less money no matter how hard I work. I'm tired of being told in the next breath that I probably won't get the Social Security that I'm entitled to because we're broke. I'm tired of it taking 6 months to get a passport when they have only known the date that the rules were changing for 3 years and can't figure out how to do it right. I'm tired of corporations telling me what to buy, when to buy it, and what I can and cannot do. I’m tired of having a Constitution, which has served us pretty well for a couple of hundred years being stomped on and ignored by the above mentioned folks. I’m tired of a Supreme Court dead set on re-writing the damned thing. I’m tired of being told that everything that is imported from China might just kill me or my dog, when two thirds of everything I see has “Made in China” stamped all over it. I’m tired of an education system that does everything BUT educate, it’s more like a large group of “think they are adults” day care centers. I’m tired of hearing about how we are creating jobs when I see qualified people drawing unemployment because they make more than they would if they accepted the jobs that are being created. Good people too, not a bunch of lazy welfare mom’s. I’m tired of houses costing more than anyone can ever pay for them, and now can't sell them when they have to. I’m tired of the banks stealing them back from these same people. I’m tired of spending a minimum of $50 every time I walk out of the house. I’m tired of judges who think they are God. I’m tired of Democrats making promises that they refuse to keep, and I’m tired of them STILL blaming it on the Republicans. I’m tired of hearing about how bad “benchmarks” are, when they are really the only thing that we ever really see that helps us. I'm tired of the death penalty, where we spend $6 million dollars killing someone 20+ years after a crime when we could have locked them up for the rest of their lives for $1 million. I’m tired of Sara Taylor answering every fifth question asked by Congress, and everybody else answering with, "I don't recall" like they are a bunch of FBI agents or something. I’m tired of the Harriet Miers' of the world deciding they won’t show up when they are handed a subpoena by the Congress of MY COUNTRY, because the Decider tells her not to, when you and I would go directly to jail without passing go for doing the same thing. And YES, mr. Decider, this is MY COUNTRY too. I'm tired of the Scooter Libby's of the world walking away scot free because they are willing to sell their souls to the devil and lie for and protect the criminals who lead him. I'm tired of hearing about an election that is over a year and a half away, when I've already heard about it nonstop for four months. I'm tired of the Media swallowing this crap hook, line and sinker and making me hear about it 24/7. I'm tired of having a Commander in Chief that is so mentally unstable that one MUST wonder if he is actually a human being or some alien creature. I'm REALLY tired of hearing the name Karl Rove. I'm tired of the overall, utter incompetence in EVERY area. But, I’m mostly tired of the American people sitting back and taking this crap, while forcing the rest of the world to watch it.

And, I’m tired of the pothole a block and a half from my house that has become the size of a golf green. I pay taxes, so fix the damned thing before I lose my car in it.

Cyclone

Plamegate's Final Chapter, Maybe?

2007-07-09T07:42:00.000-07:00

The outing of Valerie Plame began Cyclone’s Real Deal and I feel like I have to visit the Scooter Libby saga one more time.

George W. Boosh has finally pissed off EVERYONE with his commutation of the Libby jail sentence. The left is pissed because the revenge they seek will not be exacted by Bubba in a jail cell. The right is pissed because Libby did not receive the full pardon that he “deserves,” and people in the middle are pissed just because everyone else is. Breaking down what actually happened and the repercussions of this action is what we will do today.

Boosh the Genius or Just Dumb Luck?

By commuting Libby’s jail sentence rather than issuing a full pardon for now, Boosh is playing to both sides. I cannot imagine why, unless someone actually thought it out. Since preplanning things is not a Boosh strongsuit, and he claims he didn't discuss this with the justice department beforehand, (or even if he did) I'm not sure this is a planned result. But, he did what he did, and depending upon one’s perspective it was either a stroke of genius or dumb luck that put him, the Vamp, and Libby in the best possible position. I’m betting on the latter, dumb luck, unless Karl Rove did the actual orchestration of this debacle. Here’s what I mean.

First, Boosh claimed that Libby was still paying a “high price” for his crimes. He had to pay a $250,000 fine, and serve probation for a couple of years, and couldn't practice law anymore. Well, the quarter of a million was no big deal as Fred Thompson’s “Libby Defense Fund” had a hell of a lot more money in it than that, and it is unlikely that Libby will ever actually be on probation. For one to be on probation, they have to serve some jail time first. Since Libby was never booked into the system, it is likely illegal for him to be placed on probation. As for his law license, he won't lose that before his appeal is over and he will be pardoned before then anyway. So, maybe buying Libby's silence is cheaper than Boosh claims.

Secondly, and most importantly, (listen up you dumbassed right wingers) Libby still has an appeal pending. Because of that, which incidentally would have removed the appeal if he were given a full pardon, Libby cannot be forced to testify before Congress. He will, if called, merely claim his 5th amendment privilege in order to not answer the questions that could get us to the heart of this matter, under the guise of “protecting” his appeal. An appeal, by the way, that two Republican judges said had no chance of success in the opinion issued on his appeal of going to jail immediately. And, an appeal that will last longer than Booshco is in office. So, it’s win-win for Libby and the ignorant right who can’t recognize a gift horse when they are handed one, and lose-lose for those of us who want to see what Cheney and Boosh’s roles in all of this really were. Granted, deep in our souls we already know what their roles were, but it needs to be opened up in Congressional hearings for the average American who gets their weekly news from the Sunday paper headlines. So, once again, the truth is thwarted by Booshco, either intentionally or by total accident.

What Will Happen Next

From Day One of this investigation, I told you that the ultimate target of this whole thing was the Vampire Cheney. Nothing has changed along those lines, and if there is a way to get there Fitz will do it. He will be called to testify before Congress, and will immediately dispel the right wing talking points that there was no underlying crime and that Libby should never have been prosecuted in the first place. The White House and the conservatives want you to believe that because Richard Armitage was the initial “leaker,” and that Fitzgerald knew that long before Scooter entered the picture, that there was no underlying crime and that this was a runaway prosecution that just wanted to get “poor somebody” to justify the money and time spent on this investigation. While it is true that Armitage was the “leaker,” and that Fitz did know that prior to Libby’s involvement, it entirely misses the point, which is this.

Did the Vice President or the President order the outing of Valerie Plame as revenge for Joseph Wilson’s stating that the reasons for going to war with Iraq were bogus? That is THE QUESTION, and unfortunately, the only way to get the answer is through Scooter Libby. I think it is clear that this is exactly what happened, and no non-partisan look at the evidence can bring one to any other conclusion. The point of all of this was summed up in one line by Patrick Fitzgerald, when he said, “Libby threw sand in the face of the umpire.” You see, when Libby refused to tell the truth and chose to protect his boss and his bosses’ boss, the investigation ground to a halt. With no where else to turn, Fitzgerald did the only thing he could by prosecuting Libby for obstruction of justice and perjury. His hope was, that assuming he could get a conviction, at some point either right before or shortly after Libby heard the jail door slam shut behind him he would break and tell the truth. It was all he could do at the time, and then hope that the stars aligned and that jail would bring Libby to his senses. Of course, he also knew that a pardon or commutation was likely, so this was a long shot at best.

When Fitzgerald testifies before Congress, you will hear the Republicans blast away at him about continuing an investigation without an “underlying crime” being committed, and about continuing the investigation when he already knew who the “leaker” was. I suggest that all of you listen closely to his answers, and you will see that Libby was merely a means to an end. The truth will come out, though not in the way we all hoped (with Cheney in belly chains) but through the voice of Patrick Fitzgerald. He will tell the story we all want to hear, and that will have to satisfy us as justice.

In one of the first pieces I did at the very beginning of Cyclone’s Real Deal, I did something about Jail for Libby, who cares? I meant that then, and I still do. Whether or not Scooter Libby ever spends a day in jail, and now he won’t, didn’t matter in the least. What matters, and has always mattered, is how the Vampire Cheney and probably Boosh (if he was even consulted) chose to out the identity of a CIA agent. By doing so, they put the lives of countless CIA operatives who ever had any contact with Ms. Plame in dire jeopardy; we will never know the true fallout of this choice made simply for revenge against her husband. We will never know how many people in the Plame network have been killed, had their careers ended, or what it has done to our national security. We will never know the fallout of people from other countries thinking twice about becoming double agents and acting on our behalf for fear of being outed themselves. It takes many years to set up an operation such as the one that Plame was involved in, and it was washed away with a simple phone call to a reporter. And in the end, once justice is quashed for good, Boosh will give Libby the full pardon that the right believes he deserves.

This administration, which claims that the security of the American people is their top priority, has proven over and over that the opposite is true. They have their own secret agenda, and you and I and the rest of the typical American people are not even a passing thought in that agenda. These pathetic bastards don’t care one iota about us, never have and never will. They can’t even build a damn fence. The saddest part about it all is it is too late to matter now. It doesn't matter because,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Not Sure How I Got Here, I Just Can't Help Myself

Forget Scooter Libby, forget Valerie Plame, forget border security, forget the economy, and forget Iraq just for a second. If you recall, I told you a long time ago that aside from the 2000 election the 2004 election was the most important one of my lifetime. For the next 50 or so years, assuming we survive that long, we will live what I was talking about. You that think there is no difference in the Republicans and Democrats are for the most part correct. But where you are not correct is the one place that the most damage can be done, and the one place that people think of the least. The single most important reason that a Democrat HAD to win the 2004 election was to prevent George W. Boosh and the Republican Congress from stacking the Supreme Court with conservatives, something that they have now managed to do. Young conservatives at that. So, we will now pay the price, giving up our liberties a chunk at a time as decisions come down that allow the corporations take over what little they don’t already control. If you thought we were a corporatocracy before, just wait a little longer. You haven’t seen anything yet.

Cyclone

Cyclone Saves the Republican Party (Gag)

2007-07-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

The Republican Party is in deep shit, and is likely too far down to make a comeback in my lifetime. One can only hope so, anyway. But, there are a couple of ways they can play this to try to salvage something from the mess that they have created for themselves. Both options, of course, revolve around the Boosh administration, specifically, the Vampire Dick Cheney. Here we go.

Option 1:

Maintain the insane status quo and write off being a viable political force as a party for the next several decades. The current crop of Senators and members of Congress don’t like this option one bit, but thus far they have shown no ability to sway the immovable policies of Booshco. They did themselves no favors in defying the Moron in Chief on the recent immigration issue, which incidentally was the right thing to do in my opinion. But, it might not have mattered anyway. As we know, Boosh has thus far been immune to any outside pressures no matter how reasoned they may seem.

When Richard Lugar, of all people, says that the gig is up in Iraq and that is brushed off by the White House, there is likely little chance that Boosh can be moved prior to next year. The administrations response to Lugar’s brilliant dialogue was laughable. For those that don’t know, they simply said that his views had been known for some time in the White House and this was nothing new. No biggie, just one Republican Senator caving to the polls. But, to put this in proper perspective, we should probably back up and take a look at just who Lugar is and what this really means, regardless of the spin the White House chooses to put on this event.

Richard Lugar is a Senator from my home state, Indiana, and is about as staunchly conservative as they come. He is also one of the most respected foreign policy experts in the Senate. It is true that he has privately been telling politicians both in the White House and on Capitol Hill that we need to start pulling back in Iraq for some time, but has never said so publicly. Why? Because he is a true Republican, and believes that overall they have the right vision for America. But, though I disagree with nearly everything Dick Lugar stands for and represents, he has finally had enough with the fiasco in Iraq. For him to make the speech that he made on the floor of the Senate is no small thing, despite Booshco’s attempt to downplay it. Lugar will be a Senator from Indiana for as long as he wants to be. He generally garners 70-80% of the vote regardless of who runs against him. No truly credible Democrat even bothers to run against him in any election because they don’t have a prayer, and they know it going in. So, why waste the money and a possible viable candidate merely to be thrashed come election day? Lugar could probably gun someone down in the middle of an Indiana street at lunch time and still carry 65% the following election, so polls don’t matter in his case. He has warned Boosh over and over in private that they had better make some changes in Iraq, changes similar to those Jack Murtha has been touting for a long time. After being ignored for so long, he finally became fed up with it and went public. For that, he has to be admired, and you will soon see many more Republicans jumping on his bandwagon in an attempt to save their Party and their jobs.
So, that’s what Option 1 boils down to; get Boosh to move on Iraq and they might be able to resurrect some glimmer of hope for the next election cycle. It’s really all about Iraq and the Mid East, and they know it.

Option 2:

This requires some drastic action, and is not as unfeasible as you might initially think. So before you go off thinking that Cyclone has gone mad, hear me out because this revolves around the Vampire and really could happen.

As anyone who has read this blog for a long time knows, I said long ago that Cheney and Boosh would not finish their terms in office. I would currently amend that to say that Boosh will likely finish his term, which shows just how pathetic a nation we have become. But, if the Republicans are to be saved, Cheney will not. Were I running the Republican show, the Vampire’s heart would suddenly start beating a little irregularly and he would need to resign for “health reasons,” and here’s why.

There is no Republican currently in the Presidential race that can defeat whoever the Democratic nominee happens to be. That’s not just me talking, that is also the Republican strategists talking. Guliani has no chance, McCain has become a joke and is taking on water faster than the Titanic, and Romney is simply unelectable. Those are your Republican top three at the moment, and they are desperately looking for a new candidate to enter the fray. For that to happen, and for a Republican to have a sniff of a chance to win, a couple of things have to happen.

First, Dicky the Vampire must resign. Second, he must be replaced by none other than Fred Thompson, the current darling “outsider” of the Republican Party. Actually, despite his acting career, he is an outsider in the fictional world of D.C. only. He has owned a lobbying firm since he left the Senate. But that is merely a small detail that the Right is more than willing to overlook. He would then be running as a sitting Vice President and would win the nomination by default, avoiding the scrutiny that he would undoubtedly face should he announce his candidacy in the normal fashion. Should these two things occur, AND Boosh take Lugar’s advice and make a drastic change in Iraq, the odds greatly increase for the Republican’s holding the White House for a few more years. But, it must happen soon, before Thompson officially announces his candidacy.

Think about it. The Repubs are seeking the man on the white horse to save them, and the polls show that they believe Thompson to be the man. He would not be properly vetted until the general election, where all of the insults would be coming from the Democratic Party rather than through Republican infighting during the nomination process. He would be credited for giving some proper direction to the White House and Boosh administration by changing direction in Iraq, something that would return the majority of their base to the “right” side and bring them back into the fold.

So, it boils down to this. Is Dick the Vamp willing to sacrifice himself, ego and power for the good of the party? I’m betting no, but never underestimate Karl Rove’s ability to get done what is good for the Repubs. If Cheney chooses to take the high road for the first time in his life, ’08 could become a viable option again, perhaps creating another election close enough to be stolen. If not, may the Republican Party Rest in Peace.

Cyclone

****This post was written before Boosh finished the GOP for good by giving Scooter Libby a get out of jail free card. But, I'm going to run with it anyway. Now that Scooter is free, the viability of the above decreases dramatically, though I doubt that it is seen that way from Boosh World. I will comment on the Libby farce in the very near future.

Cyclone

DickVille

2007-06-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite movies of all time is Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. It’s an old movie, released in 1974 and was Roman Polanski’s last film before he fled the country. I don’t know, maybe Roman knew something we didn’t and was smarter than we thought. Anyway, late in the movie Nicholson’s character discovers that Dunaway’s character has been less than forthcoming and he becomes angry. He asks her who the child in the movie really is, and she says “she’s my daughter.” Nicholson slaps her, so she says, “she’s my sister.” He slaps her again, and she says, “she’s my sister and my daughter,” indicating that her father had raped her and that the girl actually was her “sister and her daughter.” Mystery solved. The scene reminds me of our world today, mostly when I think of the vampire Dick Cheney.

While I’ve been withdrawn from society and watching from afar, the Boosh administration has created and executed the most horrific “secret society” that has ever led this nation. I have kept thinking that they can go no further nor become more absurd, but naturally I’ve been wrong. I actually thought the pathetic Alberto Gonsalez saga was about the furthest they could go and get away with it, but that turned out to be nowhere near the truth. I can't imagine how they can possibly top DickVille, but if I’ve learned nothing else, it is NEVER to underestimate what these evil creatures are capable of.

In a move to subvert Congress’ ability to provide oversight over this administration by recently stating that he is not a part of the executive branch, Dick Cheney has become a nation of one. He is not the Vice President of the United States; he is not the leader of the Senate of this country. He has become a country within himself, one that incidentally is without boundaries or laws other than those set by him and him alone. He does what he wants, when he wants, and there is no one to stop him. He deals in oil, arms, and Haliburton cash. He hires mercenaries to do his dirty work, has co-opted the US military to die for oil for as long as he can get away with it. George W. Boosh, the one man on earth who could do so, has neither the balls nor the wherewithal to stop him. Or, for that matter, the desire to do so. Meanwhile, our constitution has become irrelevant.

His argument is so absurd on its face that the Republican lawyers cannot begin to defend it. Hell, they can’t even keep a straight face while talking about it, so they don’t. Way back when, Cheney was asked by Congress for records regarding his little secret energy meetings. They started with simple questions, like who in the hell was present, and were told that he would not give up that information using the “executive privilege clause” as cover. He did this knowing full well that the follow up to that was to be, “hey, and what did you guys talk about?” I’ll give you a clue, not that you need it. Those present were the leaders of Exxon, Mobil, BP, etc., and they talked about how to maximize profits from us poor suckers in Middle America, (see price gouging,) and discussed just how to divide up all the profits on the Iraqi oil that they were soon to steal. Everyone already knew this; they just wanted it on the record for future reference and likely prosecution.

Fast forward to today. Now he’s being asked for information regarding certain communications involving the fired prosecuting attorneys and he now says that he is not a part of the “executive branch” at all but the leader of the Senate. In other words, he said “bite me.” He might not be the first Veep to tell Congress to shove it, but is clearly the first who is allowed to do so by his boss. Tony Snow won’t even touch this one. He sends his merry band of Bimbo communication hacks out to answer questions these days and they can’t keep a straight face. They just say that they don’t really know what “theory” the vampire is working under, and that you really need to ask his office for clarification. That’s great, except they don’t answer the phone in DickVille. Or, if they think it’s Aunt Sally calling and accidentally pick it up only to find a member of the press on the other end, they say “bite me” and hang up. That’s how it works in Dickville, and if you don’t like it, tough shit. Sue me, and we’ll drag it out until we’re out of office and then it won’t matter. Now that Alito and Roberts are in charge of things, Dick might even win. But then you have jurisdictional issues; I’m not sure that SCOTUS has any say in what goes on in DickVille. They would probably refuse to hear the case anyway. After all, they put the bastards in office in the first place.

Rob Emanuel has it right. De-fund the Vice President, take away his salary, secret service detail, Air Force II, give him one damn secretary and pay him a Senator’s salary. Great thought, but it will never happen. You’ll just be told “bite me” when you try to take the plane.

Slap/ I’m in the Executive branch, Slap/ I’m the head of the Senate, Slap/ I’m in the Executive branch AND I’m the head of the Senate. Welcome to DickVille.

We’re in serious trouble folks.

Cyclone

2007-06-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

IT WAS NOT UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Or, this was all planned out ahead of time. from Murph

Since the last post on the 9^th, I have been trying to get a feel for how the forecasters on several fronts tie in together. I am sure that most of you are seeing much the same forecasts as I am. It is looking pretty grim, but of course, for the last 2 years it has been looking grim.

Looking at what appears to be happening.

Food prices at the grocery store and restaurants have been increasing steadily since last year. The primary reason? Ethanol production.

Gas prices at the pump have been fluctuating all over the place, but keep increasing overall. The primary reason? Lack of refinery ability to keep up.

Inflation is in full swing. The Feds are in a bind. If they do what has traditionally been done to slow or stop inflation, that is, to raise interest rates the economy will tank. The primary reason? Running the printing presses full blast has increased the money supply beyond the ability of the economy to support its value. You increase money supply beyond production and capital investment needs and the value of the money goes down. That is called inflation.

Currently, according to some figures I have recently read, the economic top 25% or the of the population control 55% of the national assets. That is, the gap between wealth and low income is widening and becoming more severe. The primary reason? Policies of the Federal Reserve and the government. Every economic policy since Reagan has resulted in a further concentration of wealth into fewer hands. You think we learned that trickle down economics doesn’t work? But nooooo, more of the same is what we need.

According to everything I see, our military is stretched beyond its ability to be affective. We have too many military bases all over the world and our million personnel force is scattered also. Why do you think we have hired over 500,000 mercenaries? The primary reason? The present administration has ambitions of having controlling interest in world affairs, that is, empire building. Plus, we need energy in the form of fossil fuels to keep things rolling while that last of the loot is carried away, and currently, the last of the big oil is in the east under countries that really don’t like us much. They must come under our control or our economy will all fall apart. Think it’s possible?

The U.S. is now the biggest debtor nation in the world, exceeding many nations in conglomerate.
This debt is so huge, there is no way it can be paid. China and Japan hold most of it. Latest figures I have read say the debt is increasing by $800 billion per year and in aggregate, stands at around $17 trillion, including consumer debt. The primary reason? Government policies on money and the ambitions of the Bush dynasty to own the world at any cost.

Already, the administration is preparing the American population for explanations of why we aren’t going to get out of Iraq later this year. In September, there is supposed to be some kind of fork in the road for a decision about this, depending on how the Iraq government is performing. It sure appears to me we have a one way 6 lane expressway rather than a fork in the road ahead of us. Let’s admit it, this government is not going to give up Iraq. If they do, the power shift in that part of the world will be to our long deserved detriment. Iran, our hated part of the ‘axis of evil’, will gain enormous influence and will virtually, if not actually, control the remaining large reservoirs of oil, and this cannot be allowed to happen. Unless the U.S. can somehow establish a puppet government in Iran that is entirely beholding to Western interests, we have no choice but to ‘stay the course’.

The ‘greenies’ and ecological buffs are screaming for alternative sustainable sources of energy. None of which are sustainable. The American public is gaily paying higher prices for energy with no thought of having to give up even a part of the lifestyle we are so entitled to due to birthright.

Now, back to the title of this post. Is all of this just unforeseen consequences? I haven’t event touched on other aspects of what is going on. The consequences of the events and circumstances going on around us is horrendous. The biggies are going to be huge social disruption, rebellion and eventual die off. Could this be by mistake by those people that have the ability to affect policy? Could they really be that stupid?

Despite anything else that can be said about the elites that have control of how things are done, they are not stupid. I personally suspect that we are not seeing unforeseen consequences. I think this has been carefully planned out for the most part. Now that most of the wealth of the world has been focused into the hands of a very small minority, I think that they are going to let it all come tumbling down. Thus reducing the population to more manageable size, and keeping and iron control over just about everything and everyone.

Do you remember the stuff going around the internet by J. Gould some time back? The attitude in his writings was dominated by the concept of the majority of people should shut up and do what they were told by their betters. When you look at the mechanizations and thinking of the elitists groups, it sure looks to me that this is how they see the rest of the world. Well, controlling 6 billion people to that extent is simply impossible. We got to be trimmed down to size that can be controlled. On top of this attitude is what sure seems obvious to me. Right now, the third world countries are increasing their population by 80 million per year, and most of those populations exist in a state of hunger, much less arguing about what movie to watch tonight. This earth, obviously, has overshot the amount of people it can support. And it is all due to oil. If the elites want to continue to live their life of luxury and being waited on hand and foot, a bunch of us have to go. If the population of the world is to be fed and housed to make them productive for the elites, a bunch has to go.

I speculate that the biggest problem for the elites in accomplishing this is avoiding the die off themselves. That is one of the problems with the chemtrail conspiracies, the introduced viruses conspiracies and others that are circulating around. How do you keep from being adversely affected by what you do to reduce population? That could just be the ‘unintended consequences’ for unleashing stuff to get it done and over with post haste. Of course, there is the preemptive nuclear war solution, the starve ‘em solution, and God knows what else that can be dreamed up.

In any case we might imagine, I do not think all that we see going on right now is unintended. If I am correct, we are indeed toast.

2007-06-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

BOY, THE PROBLEMS RIGHT HERE IN RIVER CITY,

Or am I (Bush) in trouble or what? By Murph

It almost borders on the absurd. You and I as citizens can read about what is going on, with little or no direct experience and only be in awe and wonder at what these people in Washington are thinking. How can anybody be so wrong all the time on everything?

The Kurds, Israelis, Turks and the U.S. now have another problem. I am sure it is another example of ‘unforeseen consequences’. The Kurds and the Turks have been at it for a long time now, constant border clashes and they hate each other. The Kurds have Israeli people setting up oil infrastructure at the behest of the U.S. in a secrete agreement. The Kurds are making incursion across the border in Turkey. The Turks are sending all kinds of military stuff to the border. The Israelis are spying on the Kurds, noting where their military stuff is located and deployment of troops to give the information to the Turks. Now into this situation, the Kurds don’t like the Sunnis or the Shiites and the Kurds are sitting on a whole bunch of oil. Not only that, but the Kurds are not very fond of us either since we supplied the gas that Saddam used to gas them and with our blessings. The Turks don’t like the Israelis monkeying around with the oil the Kurds are supposed to be in control of. If the Turks do a military operation on the Kurds, the Israelis are in danger of being hurt or driven out and yet we want to keep the Turks on the side of the U.S. It appears that there most certainly will be some kind of Turkish military action on the Kurds and with the help of the Israelis. In fact, it has been reported that the Israelis have cut off any kind of retreat by the Kurds if that happens. Does this sound like a catch 22 situation for Bush? I wonder how he figures to pull his chess-nuts out of the fire on this one. If this didn’t have such dire consequences it would be a hoot. I did laugh when I first read about this, but now the humor escapes me.

On another front, the Greenland Ice cap is melting fast enough that it will be gone in 5 years, not the 500 that was originally predicted. Gosh, I wonder if Washington D.C. might actually be under water soon. Course, we might blow a couple of bridges and close off some highway escape routes and let them drown, but I guess that’s just wistful thinking. Sort of like the burlap sack and the pond way of solving problems.

But of course the really really big story on the news for that last couple of days is Paris Hilton.

And on the Home front, the economy. I got to admit that I really would like to know what the big boys are doing or planning on doing about that situation. This country and the rest of the world is awash in money (money? Really?), right now, that is called liquidity. It is driving incredible amounts of inflation, and not just in the U.S. If you haven’t been paying attention, food prices have gone up by 7% this year alone. That works out to about 15% if it keeps up for the year. I really wonder what the economic advisors to this administration are going to recommend when about 50 million retired people can’t buy food anymore. Us old farts can get real ornery when we get hungry or cold.

And, oh yeh, there is the price of fuels. Notice that the national average price of gas went down 9 cents lately? Just in time for the tourist season? Now that is unusual since normally it goes up. I thought our reserves were down and refinery capabilities were depressed for maintenance and the cost per barrel had gone up. Who is lying to us about what? According to what I read, there is no big influx of oil anywhere. And then we got the hurricane Gonu in the shipping lanes in the Gulf of Arabia. They don’t build infrastructure for hurricanes over there since hurricanes have never happened in that area before. Are we going to see $100 per barrel soon? Last analysis I read was that if it hits land and does much damage it will be no less than 18-20 days before things are back on line. That is a lot of interruption. I haven’t seen any damage reports as of this writing.

According to the news services, the Iraq parliament has not yet decided whether to take one or two months off for the hot part of the summer starting on July 1. I bet that has Bush tied in knots too. If them folks don’t get their act together then Bush is going to have to make a decision concerning why we are there at all. Of course we could bomb them some more, and Iran too while we are at it and just take over the oil fields and screw Russia, China and Europe.

And talking about oil, a little Michigan piece of news. The oil companies want to get the states to subsidize the reopening of the oil fields there that have at least half the oil that cannot be recovered unless a very large amount of money is invested in the newest CO2 state of the art oil recovery technology. But, they want the states involved to put up guarantees and the money for the infrastructure that involves capturing all the CO2 from polluting industries. According to the information I read, the total amount that could be recovered in two of the four states is around 11 billion barrels, about enough to make up our imports for 90 days. So, 11 billion divided by 12 million (the amount we import) is less than 100 days. Oh boy!

For those that are curious about this, the U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day, approximately 25% of world production and which we import 60%, or about 12 million barrels per day. The current world production is about 84 million barrels per day.

Oh yes, one final thing. The terrorist plot for blowing up the fuel at Kennedy Air Port. That one is turning out to be a hard one to sell to a lot of the population. The experts say not even possible. The guys involved sure spent a lot of time being homeless too. I am sure they had access to what is needed to do the job. Yeah, right!!

So, I reckon Bush ol’ buddy has his plate full. All them decisions about stuff that he would really rather not have to deal with, after all, he has some wars to run and congress to keep buffaloed and a population to keep terrified and on his side, although that doesn’t seem to be doing very well lately. Reckon he will just have to put the boys in the basement on the problem of keeping people in line. Probably have to dream up another terrorist event to keep the wheels greased. Sure puts a crimp in having to be pleasant at state dinners and this is not even to mention vacation plans at the ranch.

2007-06-04T21:18:00.000-07:00

A REPUBLICAN DEMISE? by Murph

Freeacre and I listen to the Sunday morning news most of the time. This last Sunday, we turned it off not very far into the talking heads spewing forth more of their drivel. There seems to be absolutely no ability of these people to recognise or deal with the reality that seems so obvious to us, that is observable every day. Of course, I would suspect that big fancy paychecks are not dependent on dealing with observable information and then commenting on it. News and discussion of events are trivialized to the point of absurdity. One of the subjects they were talking about last Sunday was the viability of the Republicans as opposed to the Democrats in the next election. The Repug guy was saying that they would do just fine since the Dems have nothing more than bitching and whining about the Bush administration. The Dem guy was just smirking about the Repugs being dead meat.

Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speech writer, came out with another analysis and comparison of various presidents on June first. I presume it first appeared in the Wall Street Journal. In this piece titled “TOO BAD”, she moans over the Republican base being eroded by the ineptitude of Bush. Of course, one thing she does not do is a definitive analysis of what his base really is. She manages to blither on about a lacking of wisdom in the administration and how both Bush presidents have squandered their political capital. It is so bad, in her opinion that the Republicans are going to have to put tremendous effort into rebuilding the Party, I assume she is referring to the misbegotten tenure of the failed actor Reagan’s administration as an ideal. Personally, it always appeared to me that his presidency was only an extension of his acting career, mostly trite and full of himself.

Frank Rich, an op-ed columnist, put out a piece comparing presidents and states he actually shed a tear for Nixon when comparing the Bush and Nixon administrations.

One of his statements; “Yet if he lacks Nixon’s larger-than-life villainy, he will nonetheless leave Americans feeling much the way they did after Nixon fled: in a state of anger about the state of the nation.” And; “at the personal level his [Bush] is not a grand Shakespearean failure.” He further laments the internecine warfare within both parties.

Other than on the internet, I have heard no comments anywhere concerning the shift in the Republican party from what its platform was in the 1800’s. Nowhere on the popular media do we hear about the corporate influence in government, nor the background for the economic policies that this country has been tracking down since the Lincoln presidency. I hear or read nothing in the mainstream news about the really dismal news concerning the economic situation in this country and how it relates worldwide. I suppose there is reasons’ enough for this, but it speaks volumes about investigative reporting and dissemination of information. I am presuming that the regular readers of this site are firmly cognizant of how the mass media is misleading and promoting trivia to the population. In the past, we could always count on a few brave publications and investigative reporters to eventually get some real information out to the population. We were also able to count on at least a few columnists to put out some in depth analysis of what was being revealed. Now, we have to sort through an ever increasing array of commentaries and reports on the internet to catch a gleam of truth.

BTW, did you catch on CNN internet, additional information concerning that 1000 lb. boar hog that was killed by an 11 year old kid with a 50 caliber S &W scoped handgun? Seems that the ‘wild feral hog” was a farmer raised hog that was sold to the hunting reserve of a fenced 150 acres. He was sold because the family was getting out of the hog business and this huge boar was becoming a nuisance and was too big to send to slaughter. So much for the advocates of shooting these ‘wild feral hogs’ because they cause so much damage. When I lived in Arkansas, there was a hunting lodge not far from where I lived that did the same thing. They would buy farm raised hogs and put them in a restricted area then charge big bucks for ‘city hunters’ to come in and kill wild feral hogs as a hobby and an enlightening hunting experience. The locals thought it was a hoot. As we can see, there is much more to the story than was originally put out. How much worse when the political story is not told?

I digress. Back to politics.

The talking heads on TV and in print, are having a heyday with the early announcement of candidates, examining voting records and speeches, never really getting down to the basic elements of these people. I suspect that this is on purpose. By the time the elections actually get here (if it ever does) the public will be so fatigued that voting will be on personality and appearance only. How can you even try to make an objective choice when the information is not out there to look at?

We hear very little about where the money for these campaigns is coming from, only snippets.

We hear almost nothing about where the allegiances of the candidates lay.

We hear nothing about their actual political outlooks. What they say in a speech or write about tells us nothing. We know what they say up front is what they perceive we want to hear.

We are hearing precious little about most of the candidates background. Introducing more wealthy families into the political stage seems to by pass most commentaries. Do we really want more Bush type families as a dynasty telling us how to live?

I have seen very little on the economic concepts of the various candidates. Ron Paul is one of the few that publicly has made any kind of a definitive statement.

I haven’t heard anything publicly stated about constitutionality, or the packing of the judicial system.

I haven’t heard anything concerning the whole new world order concept; NAFTA, and CAFCA and all the other three and four letter designations that center on consolidation of corporate power.

We hear nothing about overall corporate influence in the government.

In short, we hear nothing that is about the underlying basis for the messes that have been created. Instead we hear about agendas that are pabulum in the political arena.

One concept that I think is very true is the attitude of the American public toward war in general. If we were winning hands down in Iraq, how many people would then be against it? Does the fact that we aren’t kicking the camel jockeys asses have anything to do with wanting out? In fact, a great deal of the dissent about the war has to do with the observation that we can’t win, not that it was an immoral and unnecessary war to begin with. Americans are used to winning wars, or at least the appearance of winning. When it becomes obvious that we can’t or aren’t winning, then they are against it. Was there many voices dissenting to the first invasion of Iraq? No, it was won hands down and the evil guy was pushed back inside his own line. That Sadam had a legitimate bitch against Kuwait was beside the point. We won. How many people dissented about the invasion of Afghanistan? Hell no, we won that one too, or at least aren’t losing it yet. Besides, there are all those poppy fields to prop up the stock market. Hear any dissent about the Falkland conflict? We offered military support and gave $60 million to our staunch allies in that one and the Brits won hands down. Viet Nam? When it became evident that we couldn’t win that either is when the really heavy dissent started. How about Granada, the invasion of Panama and all the covert operations in South America? Just how much dissent did we hear at the time? As far as I am concerned, the dissent over Afghanistan and Iraq is hypocrisy on the part of most of the dissidents. A very few people genuinely opposed those wars at the beginning for at least some reason. You also don’t hear much from the Dems anymore about the Iraq mess that was drummed up on false evidence. But then I guess that was old news and time to get on down the road to new issues. If we bomb the hell out of Iran, then we can decide again whether kicking ass was worth it. Ho hum. I don’t think the neocons are going away at all. They just change clothes and put on a new face.

Aw well and what the hell. I even doubt that there will be another presidential election; rather I expect the current administration to either take advantage of some event or create an event to facilitate more of the same agendas and ideology. And even if by some chance we do have an election I do not expect a reversal of direction. If we did it would be to the detriment of the money people, the bankers. They simply are not going to allow that to happen if they can help it. The 1% or so of the population now hold all the cards and looks like a royal flush to me with no need to try a bluff.

More optimism from Murph.

2007-06-02T10:38:00.001-07:00

Notes from the Preparedness Front – RIP Otis

freeacre

I am going to feature my last comment from this site with Palookas’s Revenge’s response as a post of its own. The subject matter has drifted from “Bush as Dictator” and the conversation has taken a turn that deserves its own space, I think, however briefly. So, here goes:

“Well, on the Preparedness Homefront, I have some news for the collective memory banks...
Our rooster, Otis, who was a very spectacular, committed, and determined bird, became quite difficult to live with. He had begun to grow spurs and became very aggressive to the Murphman and myself. But, when we discovered severe injuries to the females, we decided that he had to go. So, this morning, after thanking him for being a terrific rooster in many ways, and wishing him well on his journey, we dispatched him with as little trauma as we could, although beheading is not exactly a peaceful act. He was a tough bird. I had to boil him for about 3 hours before he became tender enough to eat in a pot pie. Not bad, though.
All in all, I believe that if we have to butcher all the meat that we eat one day, we'll be eating a lot less meat.
I'm hoping that the hens will grow some feathers back and learn to stick together on their own. Time will tell.
The four new chicks are getting bigger, and probably at least one will be a male. Also, one new dove has hatched from the 3 new eggs, so life, as they say, goes on..”.

Palooka’s Revenge said…

“rip otis!

i wonder if he'd mind one final indulgence post feast to speak to murph's last question to me... how does this (by "this" you meant the role of denial?) tie into the deterioration of specific parts of the brain from environmental stress and the hard wiring of nerve synopses.

i really can't prove a connection there. but something was going on for him to become aggressive. was it just the old rooster syndrome? was he just being a rooster gettin cantanquerous in his old age cuz he's wired to do so? or did something happen in his environment to trigger it? and, if so, why did it manifest in this form?

whatever was going on on an energetic level likely was instrumental. his body responded by growing spurs to help him carry out the agenda of aggression. the aggression is a reflection of him using his power to over-ride and prey on his environment for some reason in his energetic politic relative to his environment.

something happened for him to respond this way and 10 to 1 he felt threatened for some reason. i grew up on a farm and not all roosters get aggressive in their old age. but they are wired with a tendency to be aggressive, even in young age. and they all grew spurs. we had chickens free-ranging around the homestead. the roosters used to chase my baby sister all the time. certain ones more than others but they were all in on it.

8 of us in the family and she was the only one they chased. she was afraid of them. i asked her once if she could remember if she was afraid of them before they started chasing her but she couldn't. all she could remember was being terrified.

yet she was the only one they chased. were they picking up on the fear and preying on it? what in her energy field mixing into their energy field triggered 'em? if she had been able to move with that fear allowing it to express in a state of acceptance for it to teach her what it was really all about and rooted in, would she still be afraid of roosters? would the roosters still have chased her?

only the fear and otis know.”

Back to me again…

Well, Palooka, that’s a damn good question…and, I don’t know if relates to the larger concepts of energetic responses and how we deal with aggression in society and in our personal lives. I know that when Otis would attack Murph, Murph’s reaction was warrior-like. He didn’t get mad, particularly, he just grabbed him by the throat and shook him until his attitude changed.

Now, being a female, I found myself identifying with the hens, who were getting quite beat up by this aggressive rooster. Two out of three had big bald spots on their backs and about a third of their wing feathers broken off, due to Otis being more of a pig than a rooster. Why did your roosters pick on your little sister? Probably because she was the smallest. Those who like to dominate, usually pick on the easiest to dominate. I was beating Otis off with a broom or a stick every time I walked out the back door to go to the garden or the greenhouse. It was becoming a hassle, as I am usually carrying something and didn’t have hands free to defend myself. Once we discovered deep puncture wounds on Cindy’s back, I felt keeping him around was becoming a form of “enabling” Otis to be abusive. Otis had to go.

Now, is it a coincidence that I was raised in an abusive home? That I am better equipped now to protect my hens and myself than I was to protect my mother? That I found a certain sense of “closure” and satisfaction in Otis’s demise? Maybe my step-father came back as Otis! Am I nuts? Who the hell knows?

I think you are right, though, that our lives and our culture play out our own often denied or repressed issues. If we are to make any real progress, I think forgiveness, big time, is in order. But some things are hard-wired. If you plant carrot seeds, you are going to get carrots, not apples or rutabagas, no matter how free they are.

It’s a new day on our little farmlet. We’ll try to make it a little better this time around.

As for The Empire? Darth Chaney, the Pod People, the Waterboarders, the Greedheads, the Frankenfiends, Pharma-fuckers, Moneymonsters, and other assorted misbegotten minions – for now, I am going fishing.

2007-05-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

BUSH AS DICTATOR from Murph

Folks, we better start paying attention to what is happening. In the last post, I included a paragraph asking if you have looked at the latest law Bush signed. This post is concerning that law. This is going to be a short post because all I can do is warn you about this and encourage you to get ready. The full force of the law of the land is coming at us full speed ahead now.

This law is called; National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive. It can be read in its entirety except for some secrete directive at

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html

And by the way, there is a secrete part to the document that is not included in the posted law. Sure would like to see what that contains. It is called Annex A.

Folks, this document allows Bush to declare absolute unconditional dictatorial powers for whatever reason he deems necessary, including events that take place outside of the United States. Nothing about this has been put into the media and it was signed on the 9^th over 20 days ago.

Since there is good reason to believe that in the next election, there will be at least some kind of change in the government that may not include the neocon agenda, what do you think this law is a prelude to?

Here is the purpose of the bill.

Purpose

(1) This directive establishes a comprehensive national policy on the continuity of Federal Government structures and operations and a single National Continuity Coordinator responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of Federal continuity policies..... 6) The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. In order to advise and assist the President in that function, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (APHS/CT) is hereby designated as the National Continuity Coordinator.

-- "Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions;

Do you understand the full meaning of the last paragraph?

This has been allowed to happen by the population of this country. We are getting exactly what we deserve from the way we vote and the way we think. Even if the word gets out about this law, it probably is too late to do anything about it. He now has the legal authority to suppress any dissention over it anyway. The Democrat majority is not objecting to it either, at least publicly, which indicates to me that they are all woosys or they agree with it. In either case, we are, in the words of Cyclone, burned toast.

I absolutely expect to see dissent over this law to begin to be quashed very soon, even though you are not seeing much said about it right now. This site may be censured, who knows what they are going to do now. You can see one article about it here;

http://newsforreal.com/ You might also want to see the second article at this site. I could understand that after Katrina that some reorganization of government agencies dealing with catastrophic events was needed. But this far surpasses anything like that.

Get ready folks. This is indeed serious stuff happening now. Good luck.

2007-05-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

A STATE OF MIND by Murph

Today I don’t have anything pressing on me to get done, and I feel sufficiently motivated to write a new post. While I haven’t been putting up much in new posts lately, I have been spending time reading and analyzing what I can find out on the web concerning our state of affairs and where we are headed.

Some of the sites I wallow in frequently are coming out with all kinds of information. One of my favorites is LATOC (Life After The Oil Crash). Matt Savinar must spend 10 hours a day on the computer to keep coming up with the rather extensive list of links that are constantly changing. He covers a very broad range of subjects, most of them are flat out depressing to read, but do give a good indication of what is happening.

The Mogambu Guru has his take on the economic situation and The Independence Journal that he writes for has links all over the place concerning money and economics. Plus, Mogambu has a style of writing that is very different and entertaining.

Deconsumption and Cryptogon are putting out new stuff that takes hours to comb through.

I probably have 150-200 web sites bookmarked that I try and get to at least once a week, and never quite get through them all. Some sites I regularly do keep up on for a variety of reasons. The writing is so well done, the data appears compelling, the perspectives are unique. Joe Bagaent is one site that I try not to miss. His essays and the replies that he prints are great writing and very interesting perspectives.

In fact, the amount of material out there with perspectives on a very broad range of subjects seems to me to be growing exponentially. This has its good and bad points. The good part is that if you are into immersing yourself into a huge pool of observations, data and opinions, the pool has gotten very large of lately. The down side is the time to go through it all and trying to absorb it. Then, if you have an argumentative bent, replying to but a small fraction of it is more time if you try and be thoughtful in your responses.

I am going to focus on one little aspect that I am finding.

I am finding a lot of stuff written about voting lately. How we have to exercise our voting ‘privileges’ (geez, and I thought that was a right, not a privilege), how we have to change the direction of our government by voting, how favorite policies need to be influenced by voting.

With very little exceptions, I am finding most of this stuff to be naïve at best, and damaging at worst. The damage is caused by trying to convince folks that they can exercise their democratic options and expect some changes. The naivety is that these folks purporting this remedy have no idea what they are up against. That they can look at the 2000 and 2004 elections and think that voting will influence the workings of the government is astounding to me. Some of these writings point to the 2006 midterm elections as proof of change, the exhibit of the power of the people. There are times when I am not sure whether to laugh or cry over this kind of stuff. Cry because of the ignorance shown, or laugh at the obviously ridiculous conclusions.

In the coming 2008 elections, we have ample proof that those running for the office of president are all cut from the same cloth. Oh, they may differ on some side issues, but when you look carefully at what they say, their concept on governance varies not much. And before you jump up and scream about Ron Paul, or Edwards or any other of your favorite candidate, first take a look at the actual chances they have of winning a nomination or the election. Then look at voting records and who they are pals with.

First, take a look at Ron Paul. What he has said in his speeches and what he has written, I can, to a large extent agree with what he says. It is largely radical, and in all considerations, probably most of what he advocates SHOULD be done. Now what would have to happen for him to have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning? If he is sincere and being completely honest about what he stands for, who is he opposing with his stances? The big money people are not going to stand for it. Abolishing the Federal Reserve, ending corporate influence in government? Nope, not going to happen. If that is to take place, it will not happen at the voting polls. Why, you might ask? Because those two issues alone are two of the very basic issues that are influencing how the government works. Just how many people of voting age have even the faintest idea about those two issues much less how they work and the influence on the government? Oh no, what is going to be the hot issues is the war, abortion, gun control, immigration and god only knows how many other side issues they can come up with to keep us distracted from the basic issues, namely money and how that works. And it is not that these issues are unimportant, because they are. But they are side issues. Nothing significant is going to change in this government as long as we allow money to operate as it is.

It is fairly easy to lump all of the candidates into two groups; those that stand a chance and those that have no chance, at least under the current conditions. Then take those that appear to have some chance and compare all of them by what they say. Then start looking deeper into their background, the information is out there. You want a fear factor? Take a really deep look at Hillary, one of the current front runners. From my perspective, most of the candidates produce a fear factor in me.

We can read the statements; we can listen to the speeches by the contenders for political office. For me, the first thing to ask; is this how the contender really looks at the issue? It is naïve to think that these people do not say what any particular audience wants to hear. If you notice, their message changes depending on who they are talking to. And, none of the major contenders are going to address the basic issue at all. Just who do you think they owe allegiance to? How do they raise the huge sum of money it takes to run a major campaign? Folks, it is the big money people. The big money donations go fairly equally to both party candidates. If any one of them is cut off from this money flow, they are dead in the water. Now just what do you think is going to be a candidates allegiance? Us or the money flow? At this time in our history, the corporations have pretty much taken over the decision making of the government. The corporations control the media, they make the rules on voting, they rig the voting machines with no paper trail and they finance the runners for office.

We live in a democracy by name only. We live in a country run by a Fascist government. The only way voting will change anything is to have a ground swell of a huge majority of people that realize what the real issues are and are willing to stand up for it. Do you really see that happening before the next election? How are you going to get even a modicum of political savvy in the voting population that can’t identify where Iraq is located, or know how many sides a triangle has? I am not exaggerating about the lack of information or misinformation there is out in our society. The deliberate dumbing down of the population through our educational system has been systematic and with malice.

So does this mean that you shouldn’t bother to vote? Well, I will probably continue to vote, and I know Freeacre will also, even with the realization that it has no practical chance of making a significant change in anything. But, our main emphasis is now centered on local issues and organizing the local community. If any one of the big changes (climate, oil to name only 2) that we have no control over at all come at us and begin to be felt in earnest, the local organization is going to be what is viable if there is to be any viability at all.

I presume all of you have heard by now of the law Bush signed just lately. It gives him and Cheney absolute power (dictatorship) over the country for any sufficient excuse that Bush wants to use. Bet you haven’t heard that bit of news on TV. Notice the fact that the Dem majority in both house and senate aren’t saying anything about it either. Does that tell you whose side they are really on?

Darn, I keep waiting to be voted in as world dictator for life and that doesn’t seem to be happening either. Maybe I am aiming too high?

2007-05-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

CATCHING UP from Murph

Several posts back, I wrote a piece about the battles we are fighting in this community with the county commission over ground water quality and septic systems. This is an update for community action people that have issues with the bigshots trying to ram policies down people’s throats.

I left off in that post with the second of the 3 public meetings with the commissioners. We packed the house again for the third meeting. The people that did not have a chance to make presentations at the last meeting got their chance this time around. It was very much the same. Retired professional people in all kinds of related disciplines to the issue put up data and research showing that the commission and its staff were wrong. We also had a lot more of non professional citizens get up and present also, all of them thoughtful and articulate. Three hours of this. The commissioner that had insisted that we could never get the community together on this was dumfounded and snuck out after the meeting, not talking to anyone. The commissioners even had a police escort home after the first meeting because they were afraid of someone getting violent. Three meetings and not one word of encouragement or agreement with the county. Score one for our side.

During these three weeks of meetings we had representatives from our community action committee attend every single other meeting the commissioners held and all the other agency meetings pertaining to this issue. At one of them, they approached some of our people attending and asked if they had come to beat up on the commission again. They were told that they hadn’t seen anything yet.

In the 1 1/2 months since the last public meeting, we have learned a whole lot of additional information that indicates they have even more plans for our area that is not to our liking at all. So, our community action committee has reorganized. We are now a county action committee to cover more issues than septic and ground water issues, and are covering the whole county. Our emphasis and focus is currently on the septic/ground water issue until it is resolved, but there is so much more to deal with also. Two of the commissioners are up for reelection next year. They are showing a great deal of nervousness. They have been informed that recall may be on our next agenda.

We have gotten registered with the IRS so we can collect donations legally. We have officers and the whole kit and caboodle needed for this kind of action. We have put on retainer an attorney that will take on legal issues for us. We are appealing to other legal professionals to work pro bono. Believe me, there is all kinds of irregularities we have dug up that this group has been indulging in. They did not count on such heavy opposition and they have now got a big can of worms to deal with. It promises to get a bit messy at this point.

We had a Saturday meeting with the Republican Representative to the State. He expressed that he really didn’t want the state to get involved in this issue since they had enough problems to deal with. We informed him that if this commission didn’t back off, the state would get involved. We informed him that he better put out the word that we were dead serious and going to fight this all the way. We found out that he promptly had a meeting with the commissioners and the DEQ (which had done the original data collection on wells) and so far, the commissioners have delayed voting on this ground water issue. They originally were supposed to vote the end of March, it was put off to the end of April and now it is on indefinite hold, presumably until they finish getting the rest of the study data in and to regroup. Meanwhile, the county action committee is gaining members, getting some money in and we had a county wide meeting on the 15^th of this month sponsored by the citizens’ action committee to decide how we want to proceed. We had about 300 people in attendance.

Now here is a kicker for you to consider. All of the people that started this whole citizen’s action are women. They are the ones putting in 15 hour days and attending every single meeting that affects us at the county level. Since the very beginning, this group has held the high ground and they are adamant that we continue to do so. They have made no mistakes, they ask for advice and information, and these women have my full and unqualified support, plus, they are really nice people. The rest of the men in the organization feel the same way. These women have been elected by unanimous decision to the offices of the group. They have formed a relationship with the state DEQ personnel and it appears that they are on our side. As we gain strength and support of more elements of the county, we are to be a force to be reckoned with. Our aim is to enforce transparency and honesty in the politics of the county. No more of this ‘good old boy’ crap and special interest power bases.

In the meantime, one of our members and researchers has turned up that this whole thing was started in Washington. It appears that a lobby group for the big corporations dealing with septic systems wanted a national standard for individual systems; there are millions at stake here. Congress approved a national study on this issue, wherein our area was one of three. This area was picked because the ground water is of such high quality and, incidentally, was also the poorest of the three locations. Of the total of $10 million allocated for the study, $5 million was for this area. Where we were under the impression that the beginning of this was local politics, but, we find out that the local politicos were only taking advantage of the situation. It appears now, that the whole agenda, locally, revolved around tax revenues. If they could get this part of the county to develop into vacation destinations for the wealthy, the tax revenues for the county would increase dramatically. It appears that driving out the lower income and retired people with this septic issue was one way to accomplish this.

Meanwhile, yours truly and many others are researching alternatives to the local rule proposals that the county tried to ram down our throats (alternative methods of removing contaminants, they do exist), other sources for nitrate appearing in the ground water, the community affects of this proposal (there is a moral issue at this time), the lack of political transparency, lack of public notification on the issue in the past and getting together a group of qualified people to review every single part of the data and science that prompted the county proposal.

So far the community has truly rallied around this issue. It is one of the most interesting community actions I and Freeacre have ever witnessed and we have been involved in these kinds of actions for a great deal of our lives.

I am writing this post about how this action committee is doing because, I want to emphasize that if there is sufficient interest at a local level, you can do something about bureaucrats running roughshod over the citizenry. I say, give the women a chance (except for Hillary) at a local level and you might get a real pleasant shock.

2007-05-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

THE PRESIDENT

Folks, I wouldn't normally post a big essay by someone that I don't know. I have been considering writing something like this and Steve Pizzo from News For Real sent this to me. It is so much better a job of it than I can do so I have decided to post it. It is some read.

The President

Ian MacLeod on Fri, 05/11/2007 - 15:35.

George Walker Bush is a counterfeit – everything. He is a coward who wants desperately to be a war hero. He was born to old money, but he is rude, crude, and even sober, he is an embarrassment whenever he is thrown onto his own resources; he has the wit of a drunken stevedore with the intellect of a slow eight year old. Even when he is given the words of others to speak, they come out mispronounced and disordered; he doesn’t understand all of them, and fails completely to understand what they taken all mean together. He’s a silver–spoon city boy who, if he had to saddle his own horse – if he can ride at all – would end up riding as Odysseus did the sheep of Polyphemus: underneath. Nor would he, with his bought and paid for University degree (they wouldn’t have dared fail a legacy like him anyway), understand the reference.

He is foul-mouthed, his sense of humor runs to the low, the cruel, often the filthy, and is always inappropriate. One has to wonder how many heads of state have been invited to pull his finger... He was genuinely incredulous that the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, didn’t want him manhandling her in public. Nonetheless, he has a sterling record, also bought and paid for, with only a few hard to see ghosts of things that don’t belong, ghosts that are not healthy to bring up or try to see. He believes the family’s money and connections can buy or fix anything; they always have before. He is vengeful and vindictive, even towards those closest to him. As for those who cross or harm him or his in any way – which includes asking questions he doesn’t like or disagreeing with him, he tends towards hatred and overkill. If he could have, he would have called in an airstrike on Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks.

He is easily led by those he sees as truly intelligent, though they have to put up with his gloating about him being their "boss" even so. He tends also toward fanaticism or obsession in anything that takes his fancy (until he tires of it, anyway, or until stress or difficulty makes it work), nor does he feel that rules or laws should apply to him, as the president, as a scion of Old Money, or as a Dominionist Christian, so he constantly tries to undermine any laws that might become obstacles – like the entire Constitution, though he doesn’t seem worried about the Third Amendment (quartering of the military in the homes of citizens) - yet. In religion, as in most things, he likes to come across as "one of the guys" until someone treats him that way; otherwise, he takes the aristocrat’s view: he is to be treated as the royalty he believes he is or else; that way he can do his "Aw shucks routine. As with the priests of the Middle Ages who sold indulgences, his religion has told him that he is forgiven anyting he might do, and anyone who believes differently isn’t just bound for Hell, they’re fair game for any torment he can arrange here on earth as well, and with his connections, he can create Hell right here on earth from almost anyone. In economics, he fastened onto an outdated, disproved theory that takes everything away from those who produce the wealth of a country and gives it all to the deserving rich – like him and his family, and any crony corporations in his good graces. It also incidentally has essentially bankrupted and destroyed every country it has been forced on, and is doing the same here.

He is a liar by preference, whether there is a necessity for it or not, but being called on it can call up a destructive, self-righteous rage against the one(s) who saw and exposed the truth. It is as though he feels that even though he lied, his status as a superior being by birth and unearned wealth should dictate that the peons must treat anything he says as gospel truth. Although once, on television, he essentially said that he had lied so the truth wouldn’t influence the upcoming election (this was after the election), as it would have: against him. He was matter-of-fact, as though of course anyone would do the same thing, and there was nothing wrong with it.

He has no empathy save as an abstract concept. He says he doesn’t "know how poor people think." One wonders how difficult it could be to imagine not being able to afford rent and heat and medication and everything else your family needs. Or simplify it: what do you do when you have no roof over your head, can’t work, and the government has cut off any aid to single men your age? According to him, as far as anyone can tell, you die - you deserve it as the lazy, improvident sinner you are. It’s God’s punishment, just as the wealth his grandfather and father stole or got by bankrolling the Nazis, by insider trading, or by any other means they could use God’s reward to His Own, and he deserves the money he was born into because he’s a real Christian, and therefore is "forgiven from the beginning of time," meaning anything he ever does from now on is already forgiven.

His religion, a fanatic, cruel and controlling cult version of Christianity (called Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism), tells him he is God’s Chosen, shown by his wealth and position; all others deserve not only whatever trouble they already have, but whatever he does that makes life even harder for them. Those who work for a living are resources: they cough up votes and taxes for people like him, and sometimes have other things that can be taken from them to his benefit. It is also his belief that a government must lie to the people it rules, and the people he and the other Dominionists admire and quote often (well, other, more literate Dominionists like Karl Rove do, and George agrees, of course) are people like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Genghis Kahn and others they call "great leaders" not afraid to kill and conquer, torture or do whatever needed to be done. They teach that rulers must rule by terror, violence, and lies. As Machiavelli, another man they admire, said in "The Prince", a manual fortaking over a country and ruling it which they have used as it was intended, "A leader must only appear to have the qualities of goodness — he need not actually possess those attributes." He said that, in fact, it was better if those qualities were only a pose. In George’s case, it isn’t a problem.

George Walker Bush talks about freedom a lot – and liberty, our compassion as a nation and the other things that have made us great. Like freedom of speech. He then follows the advice of his idols, working to remove all of these things from Americans and everyone else. He has taken our right to dissent, to gather peacefully and to protest, to have a say in our own government, our right to privacy, and to make our own choices about our own lives so long as they harm no others, our right to know any charges against us, our right not to be tortured or held incommunicado, to travel anonymously, and to be able to expect to have our taxes go to maintaining the infrastructure necessary to the well-being of the country and everyone in it as those we elect are supposed to do. He wants to tell us who we may and may not marry and live out our lives with, what we can watch on television, read or write, and to force us to allow our children to be taught (his) religion in our schools – which he is defunding and destroing as fast as he can anyway so that children must be taught in churches or at home, not stealing government money for something rightly not the government’s responsibility – and he wants to forbid all contraception, abortion for any reason, including to save the life of the mother or in the case of incest and rape, as well as demands that lying and harmful "information" is all our children may be taught in school about sex (this is abstinence education), making them far more vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies, and STD’s, including HIV, which he views as God’s punishment for fornication and sodomy.

Our roads are falling apart for lack of maintenance, and a full one-third of the dams in the country are a danger to human life. Our electrical grid is an antique, and will fail when it’s most needed. The regulatory agencies that were set up to protect the people of the U.S. from rapacious, destructive business practices are being gutted, and ethics investigators are routinely fired, to be replaced by crony appointees that favor the administration. Deregulation and the laws promulgated by the neocons have changed things enough so that our medical care system is rated forty-ninth in the industrialized world and falling, based on, among other things, infant mortality. Scientists whose research finds information that Bush doesn’t care for or which offends his backers, or is otherwise inconvenient – which might, for instance, cost Big Business at the all-important "bottom line" – are also routinely censored or gagged, their results redacted or even rewritten by a political crony, keeping the public "properly misinformed, as per the president’s preference. This applies to the FDA, the EPA (he has rendered their vast library of studies and other knowledge unavailable to it’s own scientists as well as to everyone else), the CDC – or any agency that once protected and informed the public. To Bush’s mind, they owe him loyalty before anyone or anything else. Their only function is to write things that back up what he says.

The radical right is paid back for their votes – and perhaps some of it is Bush’s attempt to practice his own relatively newfound religion – by keeping any research that has to do with stem cells, contraception or sex in general under-funded or unfunded, even illegal if he can manage it. Attempts are also frequently made to remove rights and benefits from gays, Muslims, the disabled, the homeless, the mentally disturbed, the old, veterans and others who have few resources with which to defend themselves. The Neocon view is that taxes on the rich or on business are theft, especially if they are given away in social programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to "the undeserving poor, who have done nothing to deserve this stolen money." Taxing the working poor or keeping the minimum wage as minimal as possible, however, is fine. Bush somehow thinks that such people have money to invest, too, which is how he keeps trying to arrange medical and welfare programs "to help the poor." Making theirlives even more difficult, government restrictions, requirements and rules have made it impossible for many to meet the work requirements, to take care of children, and to continue schooling, and has forced many people off of welfare, out of school and into low-paying, dead-end jobs, even rendering some single-parent families homeless just months or weeks short of a degree or certificate. To Bush, this is a success: he’s improved the economy and the welfare program so much, people are coming off "the public dole" and going on to live their lives. He never mentions their continued poverty, lack of medical care and homelessness. It doesn’t register with him, really; he sees it as their own fault for being lazy and sinful – if he sees it at all. In Bushworld, people’s troubles are always their own fault, no matter that they had no other options. That is God’s doing in punishment for their sins, so they deserve that and more. He has no twinges of conscience, and he reports no trouble sleeping.

To George W. Bush, the business of government is pouring money into business and the military, which exists to conquer countries and competitors that have what Big Business wants. Throwing the entire country into what must become crushing debt is also no problem, and he pours the borrowed cash into crony corporation coffers without a qualm. Other generations of American poor can pay it back – eventually. To his way of thinking, despite the record numbers of unemployed, homeless and other needy, the failing infrastructure, an American icon of a city still not even close to recovery, no rebuilt Twin Towers and eighty-some dead newly found after having been missed and left in a basement level since 9-11, despite thirty-five million people without health insurance having become forty-seven million, two and a half million citizens (mostly with dark skin) in prison mostly for nonviolent and inflated offences (bigger numbers=better PR) with closer to seven and half million otherwise entangled in the system, - te economy is in fine shape because Big Business is making money hand over fist, much of it by not having to pay their employees a living wage or benefits, and often, especially in Iraq, by not having to actually do anything for it at all. Of course, a lot of his evaluation of the economy may have to do with his anticipation of the forests and all of our national Parks almost being ready to be opened to gas and oil drilling, chemical plants, road building and logging with no regard whatsoever for any animal populations at all, or for better air quality standards – if you happen to be a power company – because the tons of mercury they spew into the air (and therefore the water, the fish, and our dinners) is officially to be treated as non-toxic, along with the increased arsenic and other poisons. Utility companies, if they find cleaning the water they sell to us to drink and wash with an undue burden, they don’t have to: then, if we go and drink or wash in poison, it’s our problem, not the government’s or thewater company’s (who can still promote their product as "promoting good health"), and it’s certainly not the power company’s problem. They can all afford bottled water.

Bush is American only by courtesy of birth. He feels no debt of honor or loyalty to his natal country, or to the people who depend on the government to do the jobs it was created for. Our forests, the environment that literally keeps us healthy and alive, he labels "resources to give away to corporations" and forgets about it; it’s a big world, and there’s always more – somewhere. For him, at least. He has no problem with stealing elections by any means necessary, as long as he and those he supports win. Besides, as long as "his own kind" control the laws, the courts and the information, no one can prove anything. The deaths of our young men and women are simply what they’re for to him. That’s what all peons are for: if a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand or however many die in securing MORE – more oil, more control, more for the holy "bottom line" for him and his, then they have fulfilled their purpose, and it’s an equitable trade. His oath to defend the Constitution is simply a silly ritual that e had to go through and nothing more. This is clearly shown in this quote of Bush from a staffer: "Quit throwing the Constitution in my face! It’s just a Goddamned piece of paper!" That it is also the core document that defines America and Americans, that it is the single most magnificent piece of ethical and philosophical poetry in legislation since Hammurabi also means nothing to him. It is just an obstruction that keeps getting in the way by making people think they actually have rights and can make demands on him based on them. If he could, he would simply burn it and forget about it. Anyway, he’s gotten around almost all of it now. For all the force it has, it may as well have been burned.

The spying he is having done, and the collections of every piece of data on every American and everyone else possible, is touted as being for the War On Terror, though in reality, the Neocons and their creations are the true terrorists in the world. Anyway, it’s all another lie. Experts have said that such an eavesdropping and spying network is utterly useless for finding terrorists. Witness that it has found none so far. What it is good for is finding information that can used for blackmail (note several sudden turnarounds of some in Congress who had disagreed with Republican bills up for a vote until the last second), or for getting obstructive individuals out of the way and forestalling dissenters, protests and other legitimate – for the time being – activities of citizens.

Now he is sending more troops into Iraq, despite the opinions of almost every expert in the country and elsewhere; the reasons he gives to the public are lies, as always. He needs someone there to support Maliki until he can force a law through giving Halliburton and other private oil companies what is essentially ownership of Iraq’s oil. He will also try to use the situation to keep a large, permanent base and an embassy (the largest in the world, which, itself, constitutes a military base), manned, and a U.S. force there to keep control of the oil and a U.S. forward base in the Middle East. The Iraqis will, at some point, object to getting such a minuscule portion of the sales of their own oil – 25% for the first thirty years, then a bit more – and are bound to rebel. Bush wants people with guns there that the Iraqis are afraid of to make sure the "law" forced through by his pet Prime Minister is enforced.

Until very recently, Bush had no idea there were different kinds of Islam, like the Shia and the Sunnis. He understands the culture not at all, and doesn’t care to learn; it simply isn’t important. They’re all Arabs, all heathens, all savages, and that’s all he needs to know. As long as they’re afraid of him and do what they’re ordered to do, things are as they should be.

Over the time of his presidency, Mr. Bush has packed the federal judiciary with demagogues, the legislation and cabinet with cronies who will back him no matter the law. He has claimed powers that no president has ever had, even in a war actually declared by Congress; he has twisted the laws of the land, and has passed laws by stealth and other methods that are unconstitutional, unethical, and destructive, but no one in government now seems to have the authority to go against him. With what is now almost ownership of the Supreme Court, still a huge Republican support in Congress, and appointees in the Justice Department who owe for the jobs or believe as he does, he is all but unassailable – for the time being. It would require almost all others, including the electorate, to go against him all at once to oust him. So far, the courage and the leadership simply doesn’t exist, especially not in Congress.

It is my fear that he will finish at least a part of his program: the destruction of the Social Contract, and the opening of the Commons – all National Parks and all public lands, with immunity to polluting industries entrenched in the law for decades designed to protect them from the consequences of their own actions (like poisoning the air, water, food and people around them for hundreds of miles, and destroying plants and animals, the function of which in the ecosystem that keeps us alive we still don’t understand, beyond any hope of recovery) – before he goes. America would never recover. It would take generations now. He has some of the most brilliant and sociopathic strategists and tacticians there are working for him, constantly devising attacks on all of these things from many directions, while others work on keeping opponents busy defending themselves. All Bush has to do is wait, read what he’s told to, and it’s almost certain that the people who are trying to defend America from this relentlessattack on absolutely everything we have ever valued will miss something, and he will win again. America will be dead except as a poisoned resource, a third-world country that exports to Bush and his kind the vast majority of it’s labor and produce, leaving nothing for those who produce it.

That’s the plan.

Especially since the whole-hearted – well, let’s call it just almost "unlimited" since I’ve seen no evidence of a Neocon with an actual heart – entrée since the start of the Bush regime, the corporations have an access to and a control of government not seen since the robber-barons of yore. They write our laws, or they ignore them with impunity – and with government complicity, because the regulatory agencies are run by their own. Worst of all though, the single thing that can keep this going, is this: both parties are controlled by the corporations, so despite their apparent differences, their agenda, minus the Neocon slant, is the same! The corporations contribute the major funding that gets people elected, and they contribute to both parties, always! That way, whoever wins, they owe the corporations. They know that if they don’t pay that debt with influence peddling, laws that benefit businesses instead of We the People, they won’t get that money for the next election, and they will lose their great jbs, their benefits and gifts, and their illusion of being powerful people. The electorate who votes them in keep voting for the same people, the same parties, often knowing that they’re all under the influence of the corporations, because they’re afraid that if they vote for someone who might be good for the people, their vote will be wasted. WE VOTE OUT OF FEAR! We vote for what looks like the lesser of evils, but it’s only the lesser face – the truth is the same on both sides, and that’s what we need to change.

2007-04-28T11:52:00.001-07:00

THE BUBBLE from Murph

I have met several women recently that expressed the idea that they didn’t want to know about all the bad stuff going on out there, they liked the bubble they were living in. I got to admit that this was the first time it had been stated so emphatically to me. Got me to thinking about this.

On this web site and many others, there are numerous references to the ‘sheeple’ that are being led around by the nose rings they install themselves. These metaphorical nose rings are attitudes and thinking. It seems that in any large population there is a certain amount of the population that would just as soon be told what to do and how to do it and what to think on a constant basis. To be otherwise can be rather disruptive to day to day life. Having to critically examine events and ideas circulating around you is hard work. My favorite quote on this; “Thinking is hard work, that is why it is so unpopular”. And, at the least, it is time consuming.

Taking a look at our society, one of the things we have to understand is that our society has changed a lot over the last 50 years or so. Today, for a substantial amount of our society, people are working multiple jobs, both husband and wife work, and time for examination of events and ideas is rather short to non existent. That I suspect this is a deliberate condition imposed on our society is beside the point.

Another factor to look at is the mental ability to be critical and closely examine what is being expressed and the nature of events. We have to face the fact that at least half of any given population is mentally not equipped for this kind of thinking. That is what average IQ is about. The latest stuff I have seen on this issue indicates that, in American society at least, the average IQ by traditional measurement is less than 100. That means that half the population is under an IQ of 100, or at best slightly more. It used to be that it was figured that to get a university degree took a minimum of 115 IQ. Now this has nothing to do with the moral values and living strategies that people use to live their life. But it is going to have a lot to do with abstract thinking and ability to analyze what is going on around a person. As near as I can figure, it is a sad state of affairs perhaps, but nevertheless true.

So right of the bat, we have 150,000,000 of our population that are simply not able to deal with high level critical thinking. Of the other 150 million, a very large percentage are engaged in so much activity just to stay healthy, raise a family, and keep a roof over their heads they haven’t the time to examine things closely.

I am going to take up one issue to point this out dramatically.

We have had a series of events take place in a relatively short period of time that has given imputes to the advocates of restrictive gun laws. Columbine and Virginia Tech are two big ones. Already, the Democrats are pushing legislation in this area. The idea is that if guns are limited to military and police, violent crime will be reduced. This is an area that is of high interest to me since I am very much opposed to anti gun legislation. So, I have been doing a bunch of research in this area. One of the first things I noticed is that depending on what batch of data is being used, the same data can have exactly two sets of opposite conclusions drawn. If you move into several sets of data, you find very obvious contradictions.

One of the justifications used for disarming the public is the experiment in Australia with anti gun legislation. One set of data indicates that they were marginally successful with it and another set of data indicates a total failure. Here is one analysis.

http://home.overflow.net.au/~nedwood/guns.html

If you Google up Australian gun control you will get more web sites than any of us have time to examine, pro and anti stances. I went through a good dozen of them and found about a ratio of 4 to 1 showing it was not effective. This took me several hours to read and try to analyze the data, and how it was arrived at.

In our own country, this fight has been going on since the Lincoln presidency. In all cases I have found.

There are far and away more example of defensive gun use being legitimate than you will ever hear on the popular media. See for a well researched web spot;

http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/noframedex.html

In every society, there are going to be those that for a variety of reasons are going to be violent and will use any means at their disposal to be violent.

When you look at the legal ownership stats on firearms in this country, the amount of illegal gun usage against other people is very small. Supposedly 70 million households have guns of some amount.

When I look at the role that law enforcement in this country, very little actual effort (despite the propaganda to the contrary) is put into crime prevention. It is mostly a system of punishment. Therefore, a disarmed public is at the mercy of violent crime with no way to effectively resist. To complicate this, it appears that a very significant amount of law inforcement, at all levels, engages in illegal acts on a regular basis. In effect, we have illegal activity being used as an excuse for enforcing existing laws and law enforcement personal engaging in the very acts they arrest people for.

Our constitution was rather explicit in advocating an armed citizenry to hold off or resist government tyranny.

This is my short list of conclusions. They have been arrived at after considerable time and energy spent in looking at both sides of the argument. Now take a look at the shear amount of issues facing us. The incredible hours that have to be spent examining both sides of a contentious issue. No wonder we have such a large proportion of ‘sheeple’. It is overwhelming endeavor to examine all of it.

This also ties into what is called single issue voting. We each have a favorite area that we are adamant about concerning social and national policies. I know many people that voted for Bush only because of his stated policy stance on gun control, which was none. How many people do you know that voted for him based only on his stance on abortion? It takes a lot of time and effort to do a balancing act for the lesser of two choices of evil, which unfortunately is what we are left with in national politics that affect us all.

So, on the bigger issues, we do the best we can. This web site is interesting because of the large variety of issues that are taken up on a regular basis. Thank you all for your input and research.

2007-04-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

Evil Spirits

By freeacre

As I got dressed this morning, I found myself wishing that I had some sort of talisman to ward off evil spirits.

I can’t help it. This Cho Seung-Hui massacre has just sent me over the top of my capacity to deal with the troubles that surround us. Thirty-two people gunned down on the Virginia Tech campus in a shooting spree that seems to have been copied in many respects from the Korean revenge film, “Oldboy,” which it is said that Seung-Hui had watched repeatedly. Additionally, in a Columbine-like milieu of institutional violence, his sister is reported to be working at a black ops support organization after graduating from Princeton. (Link to cryptogon.)

We are horrified to hear of 32 students massacred on a Virginia campus. I wonder how it is that I have not felt so acutely the senseless deaths of innocent bystanders in the hundreds of gang-related murders in our inner cities or the daily deaths of children and their parents while shopping in the Middle East by roadside bombs targeting whatever civilians happen to be walking down the street.

I don’t think that removing guns will in any way solve the problem here. It’s not about the trigger or the trigger fingers. It’s about the minds and hearts so disconnected and resentful of the people around them that they feel compelled to kill. And, it’s also about the ineffectual mental health care system that continually falls short in their efforts to protect the emotionally tortured souls that beg for help.

Cho Seung-Hui became a pain and hate-filled monster who could no longer stand to live another day. He went for years to classes and refused to speak to anyone, and made no eye contact even with his roommates. He wrote violent, hateful, twisted messages in plays, poems, and essays that intimidated his teachers and classmates. It is almost incomprehensible that he was on the verge of graduation with this history of sickness and alienation.

For him, at least on this plane of existence, it is over. But, the parents and loved ones of those killed are experiencing a sorrow that will never go away. Having a son that age myself, it makes me almost physically ill to contemplate it. When I extend my empathy to the mothers and fathers of the victims of the gangs, domestic violence, child abuse, prison populations, soldiers, and “collateral damage” or our assorted wars, it is just too much. My mind TILTS like a shaken pin-ball machine.

Maybe that’s why we don’t do it. Maybe we can’t do it.

What I fear is that we are in for more of the same as our culture continues to deteriorate. The pressures on the maxed-out families that are losing their homes, their jobs, their health care, their ability to cope with the larger forces of collapse and depletion are increasing daily. We usually think of the adults in this picture. But, these adults have children. These children have had no say in the decision-making that has led to their disenfranchisement. Headlines in cryptogon and speakingtruthtopower today report an 800% increase in foreclosures in California this month compared to last year. How many children are going to be turned out onto these mean streets?

After WWII, Americans created the first truly middle class nation. But, all that has changed. The income gap between the the ruling class and the middle class is wider here than in any other advanced country. The least wealthy 50% of families now hold only 2.5% of the wealth of the land.

We are awash in astonishing levels of private debt, adding excruciating tension to family life. The Washington Spectator reports that “American families have amassed record housing, auto, education and credit card debt. In the last decade, the average family’s credit card debt increased by 137 % and its mortgage debt jumped 154%. Debt payments now consume 19.4 % of the income of the average American family.” Public college costs have increased 25% since 2001. Private schools are averaging $29,026 per year. Graduating students are hitting the streets owing around $60,000 dollars at interest rates that are a crime compared to what they were in the seventies.

And, they are going to have to pay off these loans with jobs that are from the service sector, have reduced or no benefits, get little or no over-time pay, have no collective bargaining power, and may be out-sourced anyway to third world countries.

This is not even factoring in the oil and natural gas depletion that will make feeding ourselves much more expensive (already 17% increase since last year) and the all but inevitable collapse of the retail economy which relies on shipping goods thousands of miles, or the environmental challenge of global warming. Oh, and the crisis in social security as us Boomers retire, as well as the crushing debt of the trade imbalance and projected currency insolvency.

So far I have been referring to the squeeze on middle class kids, which is bad enough. The working class and underclass – those children of immigrants and the ghetto, the rural and migrant workers, single parents and the working poor, are the ones who have it the toughest. These are the ones who have faced childhoods of lack and humiliation in the all-too-cruel mall world created by advertising hype and compromised public school systems. These good and honorable kids trying to “Be All That They Can Be” have joined the military in order to feel a part of something valuable, with a future they can be proud of, despite their lackluster childhoods.

We have armed and trained these kids to do battle on the city streets of Iraq. They have been traumatized, stressed, wounded, poisoned with depleted uranium ordinance and god-knows-what-else, had their tours extended and been taken advantage of until they are on the verge of snapping like twigs – and still it doesn’t stop.

The counseling services of one of the best colleges in the country couldn’t deal effectively with the pathology of an upper-middle class kid with a history of watching violent movies and playing video games. What is going to happen if the young veterans come home traumatized from a real war and find that, once again, there is nothing here for them?

One can only hope that their compassion and strength is greater than our own. It is going to take much more wisdom than we have heretofore demonstrated to avoid the consequences of a battle over diminishing resources and opportunities in the coming culture of less instead of more. The potential for race wars, class wars, and undifferentiated hostility in the near future is sobering.

Let us use this tragedy to learn how to reach out to each other in solidarity and support, rather than try to insulate ourselves from the suffering that seems to be in store for our next generation of children.

2007-04-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

EXAMINING WHAT IS SUPPORTED BY WHOM by Murph

I have been up to my neck in meetings and a questionable public service duty (Grand Jury duty) for two weeks now; and have two more weeks of it, and have spent precious little time researching what I wanted for my next post. On top of all of these time consuming activities, I have an innumerable amount of home project that either need to be finished or started. However, I feel a real need to revisit some points that I think are really important.

This site has a fairly strong leaning toward a more liberal political ideology. I know that most of the steady readers at this site have little or no respect for the neocon politics. I suspect that most voted for all democratic hopefuls in the last election, and with predictability, they got a majority in the house and senate. I further suspect that most of this voting was a denunciation of the neocon agenda, and not necessarily in support of the democratic rhetoric. I predicted before the election that no real changes would occur, and so far, that has turned out to be true. It is true that the democratic majority is addressing some important issues. However, when you make a list of all that needs to be addressed and what has to be done to reverse the damage to this society that Bush and crew has done, it is an overwhelming job. What I fear from that front is more failing social programs from the liberals that cost lots of bucks. What the future holds is open to question.

It appears to me that few people are willing to take a hard look at just what is happening up on the hill. I further suspect that few are willing to put in the time to examine what the neocon and general conservative supporters are saying about what is happening. So I took a couple of hours and wandered through a bunch of the more conservative sites (there are several hundred at least) to see what their take was on the present shenanigans on capital hill. I went through 22 sites and here is a list of some of the current subjects being written about.

Nancy Pelosi wearing a scarf when she visited a mosque in the mid east and how stupid and demeaning it was. Talk about BS politics. 2 sites went off on this one.
The now democratic control of the House Armed Service Committee is eliminating the wording of “global war on terror” because the dems don’t like the term. The neocons think this is bad bad bad. Diverts our attention from the war on terror and is more political correctness pushed out by the dems.
McCain has a new spot on his head and may indicate a return of melanoma.
A new movie put out by HBO on voter recount is feared because it won’t be balanced and fair because it is supported and put out by democrats.
The Mike Pence (R, Indiana) made a tour of the Shorja market in Bagdad and his statements concerning progress of the surge and how safe the area is. No mention of the snipers and helicopters all over the place and the fact that all the shops close down well before dark. Lol, safe indeed.
Article about Bush ripping into politicians over the war funding.
One site spent considerable space attacking the 9-11 conspiracy theories with great vigor. Of course, the site was not into answering any of the questions around the event.
The site titled “Atlas Shrugs” (from the Ayn Rand) soundly slams everything the Muslims have to say about anything that opposes American policy.
One Conservative site took on Ann Coulter for her “raghead” and “faggot” remarks. Said this was entirely inappropriate. At least I can agree with that one.

Frankly, at this point I quit searching around. There were a bunch of other sites I went to that didn’t have anything significant to say about anything that I could find. Mostly just blather and bla bla bla. So, it appears that the conservative sites are bogged down in nonsense issues as well as the more liberal sites.

So then I started to dig around into what the dems are pushing for in bills. Now this really gets interesting. Take a look at this site listing of the spending bills the dems are pushing.
http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/03/27/the-democrat-bill-to-embolden/

What ya think about this information? Let’s see, 24 million for funding new sugar beets? I had no idea we needed that. 3 million to a single co-op in Hawaii for sugar cane? The next one on the list is interesting. 20 million for insect infestation damage in Nevada. Ever been to Nevada? There isn’t enough farm land to hardly count in that state. Looks like the moon at high noon. Some of the stuff on this list looks viable but a bunch sure looks like pork barrel to me.

On top of that, I see almost nothing anywhere pointing out that Polosi and her compatriots are pushing for a new gun ban law. They want to bring back the Clinton gun bans and greatly expand it. Were coming back into the era of: “---my cold dead fingers” again. What is interesting about the reintroduction of this kind of legislation is that when looking at the statistics around the issue, there is no reason to even consider it for any reason other than to polarize dems and repugs. It didn’t work then and won’t work now. It is another example of taking a failed policy and trying it over and over again and expecting a different result. Pure insanity. Not to mention the cost of enforcing it. Somewhat similar is the policy of “war on drugs” that doesn’t work, cannot work, and drains huge amounts of money that could be used for other things. Aw well, it at least keeps the private prisons making a profit.

Now I will admit that I frequent the more liberal sites most of the time, except when I want to induce a head ache of a stomach ache. It’s my more masochistic side I guess. Today I have both.

Let’s take a look at what some of the more popular liberal sites are talking about.

Almost all of them concentrate on bashing the current administration and its policies and agendas. Some get into the more abstract view concerning general population trends, thinking and problems. A lot of them are presenting ‘surges’ in new age thinking, religious concepts and solutions.

I find it distressing that few are making any examination of causality as an overview of the present state of affairs without getting into religion and philosophy. Not all, but much of what I read impresses me as prayers for intervention by deities, general consciousness changes and just another form of denial.

Only one columnist that I have read gets down to the basic causes:-that is us, all of us. Joe Bageant at least is willing to admit complicity and what he is doing about it. But few of the other liberal sites want to deal with this, it seems. It sure looks to me that in the end analysis, the bottom line, we as a society, have brought on this calamitous situation. We have no one else to blame for those we gave power to and their exercising it. There is no one else to blame for our materialism, our dependence on rapidly diminishing resources, the cruelty and killing that is dominating the world at this time. We have gotten exactly what we voted for as a society for the last 200 years. That we try to claim ignorance of the consequences is a weak and stupid defense. We were warned, over and over again of the consequences of the type of thinking and actions that would lead to what we have going on today. Claiming that those that came before us are responsible and that we aren’t responsible because we weren’t born yet, is not a justification for what has been done at the voting booth in the last 50 years. I fear that the only remedy for this is going to be a world wide calamity. When enough stupid decisions take place, the bill will be paid sometime, and there is strong evidence that the bill has come due.

A good friend has repeatedly reminded me that “humans will be as bad as they are allowed to be” without the extrapolation that “humans will be as good as they are allowed to be” as a counter argument. If we can assume that at least at some time in the past, humans were as good as they were allowed, where did it start to swing the other way? There are tentative explanations all over the place, not expressed in that context of course, but nevertheless being concerned with where we went wrong. We can argue all day long over these concepts, but it does little to solve the problem. Nor does it excuse our personal excesses for most of our lives and our contribution to today’s problems.

So to appease the folks that say that if you are going to criticize something, offer a solution, here is mine. The gross and horrible problems we have generated have no political solution. We do have solutions on an individual basis, but politically it is not going to happen. We have allowed the 10 ton shark into the arena and you aren’t going to convince him to leave nor is a consensus that he aught to leave going to work. Most of his friends are there with him and there aren’t enough harpoons in the audience to end it. Sorry I can’t be more positive. Maybe I’m just too pessimistic for my own good.

So Palooka, denial is a big problem. We simply do not want to deal with the reality of our situation as a society on any level. It will bite us on the ass.

THE SECRET OF ENOUGH

2007-03-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

Here is a Post from Freeacre that is on a subject that we discuss peripherally on a frequent basis.

Murph

The Secret of Enough

freeacre

A couple of weeks ago, I caught an Oprah show devoted to “The Secret” of creating an abundant life. On it, James Ray and Rev. Michael Beckwith were discussing the pretty classic teachings of Abundance Consciousness or the Law of Attraction. In a nutshell, they teach that “like attracts like”. The energy that you put into the world, both good and bad, is what comes back to you. You create the circumstances in your life with the choices that you make every day. Another way to put it is “what you put your attention into, you get more of.”

Personally, I have benefited from this type of thinking. A minister of mine once asked me, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” in reference to relationship difficulties I was having with my late husband. Most of my focus had been on in depth analysis of what was “wrong” with him, down to the bitter detail. But, when I chose to look at what was right, and go for the good, the relationship substantially changed for the better.

The idea that we come from an abundant universe and that we are limitless spiritual beings having a human experience can be somewhat misleading, however. In fact, it can be downright destructive and annoying, as portrayed by Matt Savinar on his Life After the Oil Crash website. He writes concerning “The Secret”…

“…it makes negative thinking almost heretical. As though there is something fundamentally wrong with you for being upset that your children's' futures have been mortgaged to die in the Middle East so that bloated Oprah viewers could drive their Urban Assault Vehicles from their McMansions to the movie houses at the shopping malls they've been so lustfully attempting to manifest themselves.

Turning positive thinking into a religion while making negative thinking heretical is great for the interests who don't want you getting upset should you realize there's a connection between the giant McMansion you've been visualizing and the dead bodies coming back from Mesopotamia. This is the real "mark of the beast." Bullsh-t propaganda designed to get you to smile as you sacrifice your freedom, your sovereignty, your children, your neighbor's children, etc for the gratification of your own beastly nature.

Of course they've got your son watching "300" so he can't wait to go die in Mesopotamia so I guess it all works out in the end. Wow, what a coin-inky-dink.

The really sad thing is even if you do figure out what the game is, most of your neighbors will not as they've been totally suckered and atomized themselves. That's the whole point, as long as they've got everybody visualizing their own personal aggrandization, nobody is going to band together. After all, why should I care about what is happening to other people when I believe it's just a matter of time before I manifest myself a career as a rock star or business mogul living in a giant home, driving a giant car, wearing a giant fake hair-piece and married to a blonde bimbo with giant fake boobs?”

Lololol… Matt pretty well summed up my own objections to “The Secret” as it is portrayed in the popular media. If one is a shallow narcissist, then one’s idea of their greatest good will most probably be status symbols – big cars, fancy houses, designer clothes, etc. etc. They’ll have no thought of the consequences of their purchases or of their actions. With that outlook, it is easy to blame people with less on their own sense of lack and let them stew in the products of “their own limitation”. It’s easy to discount our own complicity in the culture of corruption and greed which brings death and destruction to the millions who are systematically denied the prerequisites for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” while they labor in sweatshops or mines to produce our trinkets and toys. Or fight or die in our resource wars.

But, on the other hand, I have been able to manifest my dream of relocation and preparedness for the coming meltdown in a way that I would have thought to be a miracle, even though it is admittedly small potatoes compared to others that are more financially endowed. In fact, living in our forty year old mobile home in Central Oregon, on less than twenty thousand dollars a year, with a flock of chickens providing our main source of entertainment, would be considered pitiful by a lot of people’s standards. And yet, in many ways, I feel rich.

I have a loving and supportive relationship with the Murphman, who is my husband and best friend. Our place is paid for free and clear. We have a year’s worth of food stored up. And, I have been able to manifest FREE TIME and not have to be gainfully employed so I can take care of my health until I can collect social security in a couple of years (hopefully). It is enough for me. In fact, it is plenty.

When I started on this quest to cultivate abundance consciousness, I was dead broke. I began Science of Mind classes at the United Church of Religious Science back in 1985 or so. I figured that if the class worked, I’d somehow manifest the money to pay for it. Surprisingly, it worked. I took the classes for five years, and it was truly transformational. I became a licensed practitioner and practiced for twelve years at the Carson City church in Nevada. During that time, I was also in a women’s spiritual drumming circle for eight years in Tahoe. I studied “A Course in Miracles”.

In that time, in my own way, I did experience miracles. I did open up to a sense of personal power and the loving support of an intelligent and responsive universe. But it wasn’t quick or easy. It did require self discipline. It required being in integrity and not lying at all. Not cheating on anything. Not going back on my word. And, that was just for starters…

Now, I am no Deepak Chopra or Neale Donald Walsch, that’s for sure. But, I think I have something to add to the mix that is missing from the greater New Age culture: the concept of “enough”.

If one truly recognizes the beauty and integrity of this limitless universe of which we are all a part, then one will also note the balance and connection that keeps it all functioning. Our system of unlimited growth to support capitalism and our lifestyle of more and more to sustain that cancer-like growth of money or goods, is what is killing us now. Our land, air, rivers, and oceans are polluted, dying, and making us sick. There are too many people for this planet to sustain.

But, it is almost “un-American” to say “enough.” The very dollars that we use for currency are loaned to us with interest. So, right there, we constantly need more of them just to stay even. The struggle for more is the fabric of our culture. More products, more services, more buyers, more sellers, more profits, more dividends – and all these require ever more resources. But, there are a finite amount of resources on this planet. So, until we have the ability to exploit additional planets, we better begin to get our minds around the concept of “enough.” We don’t have a “Miracle Max” (Billy Crystal in “Princess Bride”) to pull us out of this one.

I have a ways to go in terms of wrestling my own consciousness around this issue. I think it is the challenge of our generation to come to terms with “How much is enough?” How much money is enough? How many things are enough? How much food is enough? How much recognition is enough? How much power is enough? How much control is enough? How much time is enough?

At this time, for instance, many Americans spend more money on medical drugs and procedures just before they die than in any other part of their lives. This is in order for them to extend their lives for a few extra months or years while the medical industry picks whatever they can get from their pockets, savings, pensions, or estates until they are finally allowed to croak and their families are disinherited. What if people decided that it was not necessary to have that open heart surgery at 85 or that colostomy at 90 or a lung transplant at 50? What if they just decided to be grateful for the life that they’ve led and move on before the big transfer of their resources to the medical establishment took place?

What is enough? How does it feel to have enough? What will I do differently when I have a sense of enough?

These are questions that need to be addressed if we are to prepare for the scarcity that is to come or make plans that are sustainable. We won’t be free until we can create a sense of what is enough.

ARE WE LOCKED UP?

2007-03-22T13:58:00.001-07:00

ARE WE LOCKED UP?

An analysis and story from Murph

As we continue to be amazed at the sordid escapades of the political elite, the brazen pursuit of power and privilege, the unbridled lack of respect for the less than rich citizens of this country, we can wonder at what to do about it. All we see is just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg from articles and exposés on the internet and occasionally in national news media. I get to speculating about how far down the power ladder this corruption falls. Here is what I am observing.

I am seeing more and more of the neocon method of governance trickling down to the local community governance. I suppose we could assume that attitudes and political agendas at the national level might take a bit of time to filter down to local politicians. Now I realize that corrupt local politics have always been around, I’ve seen too much of it to deny its pervasive intrusion in our lives. But I also see intensification at the local level to run things along the neocon line, namely, ‘it don’t matter what the citizens want, or whether they take us to court, we are going to do what we want’, attitude.

Why would the citizens at the local level or even at the federal level be willing to put up with this? I suspect there are a very few basic replies to this. One of which is fear:

fear of losing income, fear of losing privilege, fear of incarceration (or worse), fear of losing respect. The amount of fears we can list can be quite extensive. Fear is probably the most effective means of keeping citizens from objecting too heatedly to policy and corruption.

I suspect that all these fears that keep us inactive or paralyzed from taking action against the power brokers has more to do with a desire for security. In order for any society to be able to have security for its population, it demands a certain amount of conformity; there are some things that simply can’t be allowed to happen if you want security. The more security that is demanded by the population, the more regulation accompanies it. While we haven’t quite reached the extreme position of Orwell’s book “1984”, we are sure getting close to it. Part of the regulations that we are going to have is going to be loss of individuality, loss of decision making, loss of independence. This is accompanied by a very steep increase of authority and authoritarian governance. It is a vicious circle, each increasing component creating an intensification of the other components. It is easy to view this process and conclude that individual freedom is a long past glitch in the human condition.

I would like to propose that it is not long past. Admittedly, it sure looks grim at this time, but we do have 5000 years of recorded history to look at to see there is reason to believe it has not always been so, and that it will not always be so into the future. I would assert that the complexity of a society is not a necessary condition (it can be a sufficient condition), for this search for security, nor is the loss of freedoms for the individual. It does not appear to me that there is any logical reason that there cannot be a complex society and still have freedom. This of course would necessitate a change in the rank of what we consider important in our lives. If security is at the top of the list, yes, nothing will change. The problem that I see we have as a complex society and civilization is that we have been sold the concept that security is something that can be legislated, can be enforced by law. I assert that is bull shit. I will assert that there are degrees of security. If you want no risks in your life, you are making a wish for something that is not possible. Anyone, and I mean anyone that tries to make a promise to you that they can provide security in this life is a liar. And if you accept this as a possibility, you will notice what accompanies the statement: “you got to give up freedom to get this security”. At the present time, we are promised security in the form of protection from terrorists at the expense of having none of the freedoms that were guaranteed in the original document contract with the government and its citizens. The liberal administrations had their own version of selling security at some expense.

So what we have currently ended up with is a society of cowed, non independent fearful citizens that increasingly are willing to sell their souls for the mythical god of security.

It is my observation that this type of society is more a product of human density than anything else. What I have observed and experienced is that the less human density, the more independence and freedom the individual exercises. And that is what I am going to point out now.

I live in a fairly low density populated area. The town that is a mile down the road has, by last census, 6500 people. The close surrounding area that is about 20 square miles has maybe another 8 to 10 thousand people. I have lived where there is far less than this. I lived in a county that was the largest in the state that had only 5000 residents. I could see my closest neighbor’s roof in the fall when the leaves were off the trees, and it was a long way to the next neighbor. I assert from these living experiences that as I went down in population density, the self reliance went up, the independence went up, and the relative freedom to do as you please went up.

In this community I now live in, we are in the process of fighting the very forces that try and keep us in fear and subjugation; the county commissioners. I want to give a brief description of the issue and how it is being handled in an effort to show that independence and self reliance and freedom is not entirely dead, in bad shape and struggling for breath, but it is still there.

In 1995, long before Freeacre and I moved here, the county got its ass on a drive for clean water. Incidentally, this area has the national rep of having some of the cleanest ground water in the country. As an advanced projection of increasing population density that is going on in the county, they concluded that a study must be made of how to keep the water clean with the increasing population pressure. That I find to be admirable. Advanced planning by the government? Holy wowsee! You don’t see that every day. So, they got the grant money (holy s—t, 5 mil folks) and started studying the ground water, focusing their study on the south county area where we live. The EPA, CDC, DEQ and god knows what other 3 letter government bodies got in on the act. At the present, the methodology and data isn’t complete, parts of the study have not been concluded even, and when requests for the study data and methodology are requested, you are turned down with the statement that it isn’t complete. Oh oh, does this sound familiar?

Well, moving on. So in the year 2000 they decide to declare some kind of emergency. This supposed emergency was to take place anytime between 10 and 40 years down the road. The emergency to the ground water aquifers was nitrate contamination from individual home septic systems. They were also focusing their attention on contamination of the river waters, which, believe me, are pristine and gorgeous, trout fisherman paradise. Depending where you live in the county, you can have ground level water as high as 2 feet in some areas. In our particular area it is 15 feet. So, the county commissioners hired a staff to put this information all together as it came in and to make recommendation at the prompting of the CDC on what to do about this coming emergency. They have proposed a thing called the “home rule policy” which mandates that in 10 years every person not hooked up to some kind of municipal sewer system must put in what amounts to an approved nitrogen reduction system that costs anywhere from 8-25 thousand dollars, depending on who you talk to about it. To even build in the area at this time, or in our case, get rid of the single wide trailer and put in something better, there is the prerequisite that you install a 14-18 thousand dollar sand filter system which does not do anything at all with nitrates. So to take care of the non existent nitrate problem at this time, you have to retrofit ALL existing systems with this nitrate reduction system for the 8-25 thousand dollar cost, and they want to mandate it happen in 10 years. To enforce this, they will institute fines for every year you are out of compliance, put a lien on your property and make you install the system and if you can’t pay the lien, take the property. I am assuming that all of you reading this understand the impact this will have on people with fixed incomes, those that are working poor, and to property values. I think I saw a figure that over 40% of the south county residents are either retired on fixed incomes, or are at or just above the poverty level.

So since the county commission has not for the last 15 years notified people of this and not encouraged or allowed public input, clear up to 5 months ago, when the information came out about this proposal, a citizens action committee was instantly developed. Freeacre and I were in on that at the ground floor. We now have a whole bunch of very pissed off older folks that are threatening physical retaliation, like about 5,000.

The commissioners then had to have public hearings. The first one was two weeks ago and was a disaster. Held at the high school auditorium that wouldn’t hold more than 800 seated because of fire regs, they turned away close to 300 people. Standing room only. For 3 hours. Needless to say the meeting got a bit testy and some verbal rowdiness happened with the effect that the commissioners said we either acted ‘professionally’ (whatever in hell that was supposed to mean) or they were going to take their slide presentation (bat and ball) and go home. They proceeded to give one of the most ridiculous presentations I have ever seen for a public hearing. If you were a professional hydrologist or lawyer, it would have been informative. They even had the gall to put on the screen a calculus formula showing how smart they were in programming a computer model for the next 50 years of ground water contamination. Thank goodness they said they would be back next week, same time same place, for public input.

Now here is the important part of this story. About two weeks before this meeting, during meetings of the action committee, (2-3 per week) we laid out how to deal with this and what the issues really were. After that 3 hour meeting with the commissioners, the one that was in charge of the meeting said the attendance was a “fluke” and would never happen again. After all, we were south county and we couldn’t get together on anything. The woman that had headed up the action committee told him, just wait, there will be even more at the next meeting. His statement was the momentous neocon attitude, that in effect said, “dumb tobacco chewing drooling hillbillies don’t cooperate”.

Next meeting this last Tuesday, more showed up. They had a large amount of additional seating and the place was packed again, with even more people and standing room only. You could literally see the commissioners faces becoming longer and longer. It is true, that for this little community, this was very unusual. But, now there was an issue that affected every single person in the area.

During the meeting, the first 40 min. was taken up with written questions that they hadn’t gotten around to answering during the last meeting. That involved a lot of prevarication on the part of the people supposedly answering the question. THEN came the presentation period, you could get up and make a presentation to the commissioners and their staff. Because so many people had put their names on the list, we were held to 5 min each except for the first one. The first one was from an executive of the Orenco Co. which is one of the approved systems to put in. He has a doctorate in 2 disciplines. He chewed up and spat out every single rational that the commission had put forth to justify this new proposal. Every single one. He got a standing ovation. Then 40 more presented their statements. Freeacre and I were two of them. People that had signed up for a presentation that had their points covered by someone ahead of them graciously surrendered their place. I was blown away. Retired engineers, retired bio engineers, medical people, a few housewives, chamber of commerce, mechanics, ranchers and cowboys, and just plain folks got up and laid out well thought out articulate condemnation of the commissioners and what they propose, disputing every thing these people have been saying since 1995. All of this done by internet research on an individual basis and it didn’t even cost 5 million dollars to do it. Amazing, right? Even our local wing nut got up and presented a thoughtful commentary. (But, keep in mind, he is OUR wing nut) The commissioners were put on notice that if they pass this, they are going to be involved in an extensive legal battle which will eat up funds and a probable recall action initiated.

The point of this narrative? Well, it is what I consider a rare example of a small community pulling together regardless of social or economic background. Showing once again that cooperation and passion can accomplish a block for these power people. The issue is to have the final vote the end of the month with the one more meeting for public input which I anticipate will be very similar to the last one I described. I know that if they fly in the face of public pressure on this issue, the real fight will be on, Freeacre and I in the middle of it. If they turn it down, we plan a whole south county party in celebration for the community coming together.

In response to those people that say that this society is completely made of up sheeple who will not resist the power brokers, I offer the preceding story as a refutation. The drive for independence and freedom is not gone, only seriously crippled. Get your communities together and learn how to fight these ass holes.

Anyone else has a similar story? Write me, Sunrise3@coinet.com.

2007-03-16T15:09:00.001-07:00

More musings from Murph

Let’s Take a Look at the Money

I have been spending more and more time reading the economic sites referred to on LATOC and at other sites on the web. Hopefully, in an attempt to understand what is happening to this country financially, and this insane system we are trying to operate under. I am coming to the opinion that it is like a lot of the systems in our society - it has been deliberately made so complex and intertwined that even the experts don’t grasp the full ramifications of what is happening, much less being able to project accurately even a few months down the road. One example of this complexity is the official figures for unemployment. As I mentioned in a few post back, from what I have read, the actual unemployment is around 10% and not the under 5% of official figures. With the housing market going down the tubes, it is going to increase a whole bunch more too. In actuality, it appears that official unemployment figures are only composed of the number of people collecting unemployment insurance and those that have applied. One of the ways they can keep the figures from rising too much is making everything so complex that it takes an expert to do anything at all about it. That keeps a whole bunch of people employed. For many aspects of our society, as an example, it is mandatory that you hire an attorney for a variety of reasons. If we took all the tax attorneys and tax accountants and threw them out of work because the relevant codes were made very simple, the unemployment rate would bloom big time. Can’t have that now can we? Let’s keep employment higher by only having mostly less skilled or less educated people not working. Besides, it would take away the incentive to hire more high-powered lawyers to squelch law suits and find loopholes so the wealthy don’t have to pay taxes and be responsible for their actions in the market place. Not coincidentally, who makes the rules? Lawyers! Nope, it is going to get worse until these elites have absolute total control, then they won’t have to justify legally their theft, they can just say ‘get used to it’. So far, Bush and crew have done a monumental job progressing toward this very goal.

In this mixture of opposing views and analysis of economics (depending on who is spouting off today) several general principles seem to stand forth: 1. The higher the liquidity in the society (how much cash is available for use), the higher the rate of inflation (increasing relative cost of stuff, or the less your money will buy). (In terms of 1940 dollars, you dollar will buy 4 cents now). 2. Historically, any nation that engages in increasing the liquidity of the money supply in the society will self-destruct the economic system and create chaos within the society, eventually and without fail. 3. Every government that has tried to spend its way to prosperity fails eventually. 4. Every government believes that it has found the secret to avoid this (but it never has worked). In all cases every time, it is the general population that pays the price for this folly. It sure isn’t going to be the top financial people of the world. They have their private estates and islands they can snuggle down in and wait out the caused chaos.

In almost all the countries of the world, this increasing of the liquidity of the markets is taking place with a vengeance. This is especially noticeable in America. The Federal Reserve is printing money at an alarming rate to allow the government to have money to pursue its goals (like Iraq). They do this by exchanging this newly printed money for government bonds and securities (which of course have a rate of return on them). So, in effect, the government is borrowing money from a private entity (the Federal Reserve) that prints the money with nothing of tangible value behind it and charges the U.S. government interest on it. In actuality, it has no value beyond the paper it is printed on, and this makes money for the people running the whole scam. In turn, we pay the interest on this paper money by taxes and inflation, of course using this paper money that has no value other than what the government says it has. So those that can accumulate money faster than the taxes and inflation take it away, make out like literal bandits. But, that is just the beginning.

This increased debt liquidity is being poured into all kinds of newly created financial entities, like bundled bogus mortgage packages and hedge funds and smoke and mirrors devices. Huge amounts of American workers’ mutual funds have been poured into the big gambling hall racket on Wall Street. In this scam, the truly rich are getting richer by making sure that wealth is being transferred to them through market manipulation. If the workers’ pension funds get lost in the process, who gives a rat’s ass? The Plunge Protection Team is there to save the rich not the middle class or the poor. According to what I read, the banks, mortgage companies, and the big players in the markets are so over extended with leveraged debt that it won’t take much of a cage rattling to bring the whole kit and caboodle down. Who gets hurt if that happens? All the people with the Ira’s, the 401K accounts, and the poor suckers that have their life savings into the markets. The really big boys in finance won’t get cut bad enough to notice.

They will do whatever it takes, even if it means increasing the heroin trade to prop up the banks and stock markets. If you haven’t been keeping up with what is happening in Afghanistan lately; since we kicked out the Taliban and are effectively running the country, the drug trade has exceeded what it was before the Taliban. The Taliban dropped the growing and harvesting and processing of the hard narcotics to 5% of what it was before. Who says the Muslims are stupid? They knew perfectly well that Allah wouldn’t approve and banned the growing and processing of the stuff. Talk about an effective war on drugs! But our good Christian Judea-praise-the-lord-government can’t do that. Instead, since we took over, the growers and processors of opium are going full blast. Where are these billions of dollars going? Spell stock markets through laundered drug money through American owned banking systems, (of course our country isn’t the only one doing so). So in effect, the drug markets are being supported essentially by the U.S. and British governments. Is your bullshit antenna quivering yet?

Of course we have the war on drugs to oppose this, right? Wrong again. Since we have privatized the prison system making it a bottom line business, you can’t make money without having the beds filled and cells stuffed. So who is being used for the stuffing and filling? Oh my goodness, 30% of the Afro American male population in this country is either incarcerated or has been incarcerated to make money for the privatized prison system. This was accomplished by introducing hard drugs in huge amounts into the black urban areas where they were embraced (of course), with passion, as a means of making money in an otherwise hopeless economic situation. It also provided an easy way to numb a hopeless social situation, and this despite the heavily promoted few that made it out without drug addiction. We make drugs illegal (unless you’re a big pharma outfit) then distribute drugs to those parts of society least able to say ‘no’. It is a win-win situation for the capitalistic way, don’t ya think? I am sure you all have read the statistics that the good old US of A has a higher prison population than the combination of the other top five industrial countries in the world. Most of this population is from minor drug offenses. By the way, the Democrats, for years, have been sitting on their hands regarding this one. It reminds me much of how our medical system works. You first create a medical situation where a large amount of the population needs treatment; then you create the treatment at exaggerated cost and you never do address why or how the medical situation came about in the first place. Same old bullshit in a different package.

Economically, the only positive information I find circulating around is put out by the government itself or assorted chambers of commerce. It centers on what I have mentioned before: low unemployment, booming stock market. Neither of which is true and the figures have to be heavily doctored to get people to accept the statements. The very few (but increasingly larger group) that is trying to put out accurate information on the internet (seemingly the only mass media that consistently publishes this information) are starting to gain some traction. It further appears that this year has a high probability of being the year where it all ends economically. But then again, this has been predicted since the late 70’s and it hasn’t yet all come crashing down, which gives substance to the supporters of this insane system more leverage. “Wolf” has been cried too many times and it didn’t happen. But it sure looks like we are on the edge of the cliff again. While the country is being looted of every single tangible asset and a consistent increase in the poor or marginally poor is taking place, we are being bombarded with “how good it is” and, “some sacrifices are going to have to take place” propaganda. Meanwhile, the neocon supporters, wealthy and poor alike, keep screaming their invectives at those warning of doom.

I think I am going to do another post on this subject, taking a historical and analytical look at what happens when a country loses its currency. But for the time being, amid all the confusion and technical talk buzzing around at economic sites, try and understand what they are saying and what it means to us personally and the country at large. One of the more entertaining and interesting writers on the economy is Mogambo Guru with a new post every Wed at:

http://www.independencejournal.com/mogu/

I haven’t found a way to access his back issues yet, have to keep up with him on a weekly basis. (I would surely plagiarize his style of writing if I thought I could get away with it)

Follow the money if you can. Just doing that is a full time proposition with the incredible intertwining and complex system around money and who handles it.

2007-03-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, I issued an appeal for posting help last post, and I have started to
get some response.

This post is by Stoney. He has done some research that I had been thinking
doing and just never got around to it. Thanks Stoney. Reads somewhat
similar to a synopsis of Old Testament history. Murph

What's the Deal between Sunnis and Shias?

Why the hell can't these people just get along? Why are
they trying to kill each other off in Iraq? What the fuck
does this have to do in any way with us? And finally, what's
the difference between Sunnis and Shias anyway?

Let's try to get some answers!

Shias and Sunnis split back in 632 CE when
Muhammad (praise be upon him, PBUH) went flying off
the "Dome of The Rock" to be with Allah. It seems
that there were two chains of thought as to who
would be his successor.

The Sunnis. (Their name means "One who follows the
traditions of The Prophet"), decided that the new leader
of Islam should be elected from those who were most able
to fill the job. When the voting was done, Muhammed's (pbuh)
close friend and advisor Abu Bakr became the first "Caliph" of
the Islamic Nation.

The Shias felt that the leadership should come directly
for Muhammed's (pbuh) own family, and chose his cousin/son
in law, Ali to be the next "Imam". The word "Shia" is
shortened from "Shia-t-Ali" or "The Party of Ali"

After Abu Bakr became Caliph in 632 CE, he held the post
until 634 when he died. Next came Umar who served from 634
until 644, then Uthman who served from 644 until 656 when
he was murdered at prayer, which really pissed off the Sunnis
who considered this (and rightly so) a seriously chicken-shit
way to kill a man!

Ali finally got his shot at the title and was elected
in 656, but was opposed by Aisha ,Wife of Muhammed (pbuh),
and the daughter of Abu Bakr, who thought he was being a
slack-ass when it came to bringing the murderers of Uthman
to justice, and raised an army to fight him. However, Ali's
forces soundly thrashed Aisha's army at The Battle of Camel
in 656, and that took care of that! However Ali allowed Aisha
to seek his forgiveness which he gave her, and allowed her
to return to her home in Madinah. There to live out her last
years in peaceful seclusion.

After that was all done with, along came Mu'awiya Umayyad,
who was Uthman's cousin, and the governor of Damascus.
He also had the ass about poor old Uthman getting snuffed
on his rug, and refused to accept Ali as Caliph until Uthman's
killers had been hooked and hanged! Ali and Mu'awiya met on
the field of battle at the Battle of Suffin, where the
soldiers of Mu'awia attached verses for the Quran onto
their spears! The devout men of Ali's army refused to fight
against them!

Ali had no choice but to try and establish a compromise
with Mu'awiya, but this shocked and outraged some of his
die-hard supporters! So much so, that one of his own men
whacked him in 661!

Mu'awiya declared himself Caliph. Ali's oldest son
Hassan was offered a pension if he didn't pursue the
Caliphate, which he accepted.  Hassan was dead before
the year was out, thought by many to have been poisoned.
Ali's younger son Hussein agreed not to purue the Caliphate
until after Mu'awia's death, but in 680 when Mu'awiya kicked
the bucket, his son Yazid usurped the Caiphate! Hussein
led an army against Yazid, but he and his men were slaughtered
in mass at the Battle of Karbala. Yazid went on to establish
the Ummayad Dynasty, splitting the Sunnis and the Shia even
 further until the 750's.

In 750 The Umayyad family had been wiped out (except
for a few that managed to escape to Spain) after The Battle
of Zab in Egypt, in a revolt which was led by
Abu Al Abbas al-Saffah. This revolt was assisted a great
deal by Shia support. So much, in fact that the Shia spiritual
leader Jafar As-Saddiq, (great-granson of Hussein), was
promised the Caliphate after Abbas' death in 754. However,
this arrangement had never been finalized, and Abbas' son All
Mansur murdered Jafar and seized the Caliphate for himself,
founding the Abbasid Dynasty which based itself in Baghdad
until Baghdad was sacked by The Mongols in 1258.
The line of Muhammad (pbuh) died out in 873 when the last
Shia Imam Muhammad Al-Mhadi, and only son, disappeared
without a trace just a few days after inheriting the title
at age four. For centuries The Shia proclaimed that the child
was not dead, just "hidden" and would return when the time
was right. When it became clear this was not going to happen,
the spiritual power of The Shia was delegated to the "ulema"
or "Council of Twelve" who were given the task of electing
the supreme Imam. This has pretty much been the system ever since.

What's the difference now?

It works best if we think of the Shias as the Catholics and
the Sunnis as the Protestants.  Like the Catholics, the Shias'
supreme Imam is considered infallible and imbued with Pope-like
power. The religious hierarchy of the Shia is also quite similar
to The Catholic Church.

Sunnis on the other hand have no formal clergy, just scholars,
and jurists which offer their people non-binding opinions,
much like the many independent American Protestant churches.
Like the Catholic and Protestant faiths, there has been a lot
of bad blood between them, and nobody on either side
(who has the power to do so), has decided to let it go!
Both believe in the tenants of Islam and The Five Pillars
of Islam. Both believe in Allah as the supreme, one and
only god, yet they have displayed all the fear, loathing,
and intolerance as the Catholics, and The Protestants against
each other.

Both Shia, and Sunni are losing hundreds of members
a day to the more laidback Sufi Muslems, who believe in
brotherhood and charity, and show their love for Allah
with songs and dancing, not dressing up in explosive clothing,
and killing innocent people!

It really doesn't matter whether the reason is high
ideals, or lowly political ambition, killing yourself
to kill your enemy is stupid! Besides! Allah said to
knock it off down here! He's running out of virgins!

2007-03-07T22:46:00.000-08:00

New post from Murph and Freeacre. An appeal.

A SMALL PART OF THE FUTURE

I have been sitting in front of my keyboard for some time now trying to decide how to approach this subject. So far I can’t come up with some clever introduction, so I’m just going to jump into it.

The subject today is this blog. It appears to me that we are at some kind of intersection, decision point, whatever we want to call it. Something is about to change. First, a bit of history and my perspective.

This blog has been in existence since November 2005. What started out by Cyclone as a political exposure and commentary on political happenings at the time has morphed into a lot more than that. Our discussions have wandered all over the place. The blog has, overall, attracted few continuous readers, but the ones that do frequent this site have formed some interesting bonds. We are continuously sharing information and personal perspectives on a wide range of subjects. I know that for Freeacre and myself, a significant amount of time every day is spent either reading what has been written at the site, following links from comments, doing some of our own nosing around to contribute to a particular subject, and of course periodically writing posts, and this doesn’t include the time spent with emails back and forth with the regular readers. Both Freeacre and I have commented on several occasions that we consider this site unique and having value to both of us and I surmise, for you reading this also. In the last year, Cyclone has had (for what I understand is a variety of reasons) less and less time to devote to the site. I suspect this situation is not going to change any time soon.

I expect that in the next year, you are going to see a lot of sites that are devoted to commentaries somewhat similar to Cyclones site fold up and go away. This is going to be the result of several factors; Burn out by the authors, Government intervention, Changing circumstances by the blog initiators, lack of readers, the list can be quite extensive. It is the same for why blogs are started, a whole variety of reasons. I do expect the government to get more involved in web sites that are critical of the government. How this will be manifested is open to speculation. So, in reality, sites critical of the shenanigans of elected and unelected officials I expect to be taken down under duress.

So, here is our particular situation. Neither Freeacre nor myself are prolific enough writers to keep even a post a week going, and even if we did, being critical of the government might bring the wrath of Homeland Security down on us, force the site to register as a lobby, or any other sort of limiting regulation since of course we would be contributing the perception that your either for us or for the world wide terrorists, which of course is not the case, but we aren’t dealing with people who take criticism easily. A classic tautology. So we might just have this to deal with somewhere in the future, with or without Cyclone’s contribution.

Which means that to have something meaningful and timely, there is by necessity, going to have to be contributing writers for the site besides Freeacre and Murph, and on a steady basis. If we don’t have fairly steady input, it is going to get pretty clumsy in the comments. If in a week, we have 40-70 comments, how many would there be in 2-3 weeks of the same post. We start having much over 70 or so comments, there is going to be a lot of wading around in old material that for sure is not going to attract new readers and will make further comment contribution clumsy. I am sure many of you have been to sites where they have significantly more than a 100 comments, it becomes very difficult to go through all of them, and then to add more thought on a subject. There are other formats that would make that more viable, but I have no idea how to do that, and I suspect that it would cost money, and that, I sure am not in a position to deal with anyway. I have been to forums as part of a site that may have over 1000 comments but they are catalogued

So, from all of this above, I conclude that to keep things moving at a sustainable pace and keep interest going, there is gong to have to be several more contributing writers that are able to write in a manner that is fairly consistent with how we have been doing it to this point. We are going to need reasonable documentation, (not necessarily exhaustive research) for assertions, reasonably stated positions and thoughtful analysis. I know that Freeacre and I do not have contacts outside of the web that can validate information I would present for most subjects that deal with the government. Cyclone had those kinds of contacts. So what we would be doing is summarizing a lot of what we researched on the web.

For myself, I have contributed about 50 posts to the site. I find that except for spurious moments, I am running out of new information to present for discussion, running out of fresh perspectives on situations, events and concepts. You cannot imagine the admiration I have for the writers that can continue to do this on a steady basis, for very long periods of time.

We are at another turning point. Some decisions need to be made, and because of the nature of the steady readers on this site, I think it needs to be taken up at a council fire. Aho.

Okay, now it’s My Two Cents…

Freeacre

Our venerable leader, Cyclone, has contacted us and told us this morning that he is sick once again and also swamped with work from his two jobs, both of which take him out of town. He is planning to purchase a lap top computer so that he can contribute to the blogsite from wherever his jobs take him as he has time. But, he’s not going to have much time. He’s asked us to appeal to all of us regulars to keep the site going.

So, that’s what we are doing. Murph and I will contribute posts as they occur to us and for which we have the wherewithal. But, we need your help if we are to post things regularly enough to keep the site viable and interesting.

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail message with a quote from Bill Moyers:

"I mean, think about it. Other than the war
in Iraq, the Katrina disaster, the deficit, the
CIA leak, torture, stopping stem cell research,
homeland security, global warming and
undercutting science, we've yet to really feel
the negative effects of the Bush administration."
-- Bill Moyers

These are the Ides of March. It’s still a very pivotal period with lots of implications for our country and our selves. I know that I have come to rely on this site and its people for emotional support as well as information with which to prepare and come to terms with events. I would like to see it continue as long as it serves us or as long as it can be maintained.

So, the question is: what do you think? And, would you contribute to posting to help keep it going?

That’s it, My Friends. We are looking forward to your thoughts.

aho

2007-02-26T12:58:00.000-08:00

Musings from Murph.

PEAK OIL AND MY ALUMINUM FOIL HAT.

I am addressing this to all of you that are being accused of extremists positions and holding tin foil had conspiracy theories. Oh yes, you are being alarmists, you know who you are and you know the effect you are having on people around you when you take to your soapbox and espouse all these nonsense ideas that are obviously un American and will not solve any hypothetical problems you may put forward anyway. Oh yeh, very un American to say the least, and very socially disruptive and just get the hell out of the way, I’m on my way to Wal Mart you commie sympathizer. Whoops, excuse me, I get carried away with paraphrasing the opposition I guess. Sorry.

Lately, along with several web sites that are dedicated to debunking the peak oil concepts, there has appeared on a personal contact level, increased resistance to the concept and its impact. After all, all the frenzy about oil going up to $100 per barrel hasn’t happened and please fill-up my hummer while you’re at it. I find it interesting that I have been running into more and more resistance in the generalized form that ‘technology and inventiveness will save the day’, or at least it well never be allowed to get as bad as some people are concerned that it will. The consequence of this disagreement about the concept is starting to throw all the doom and gloom projections into the tin foil hat extremists box and discounted as such. I have been poking into the debunking web sites periodically and it appears to me that the controversy is not about interpretation of data that anyone can look up, but is rather a disagreement of the validity of the data itself. The debate, primarily, does not seem to be any longer over whether oil is a finite resource, (except of course for the abiotic oil advocates) but rather how much longer we have enough of it to keep things running as they are now and with the increased demand of the developing countries. The disagreement over when peak oil happened, if it has at all, is pointed to as flawed data, and is used to support the concept that we are at minimum 15-50 years from any kind of peak, which the recent CEMA report tried to substantiate. To top it off, even if and when we reach a peak, it will level off and not decline. (WHAT? You mean it will last forever?) My god, talk about interesting ways to manipulate data and use of unverifiable suppositions. Like the 9-11 questions concerning the official account, I have some question concerning the non peak oil accounts. If those in charge of things worldwide are indeed not concerned with peak oil because we have so much of it left to exploit, why are we engaged in all these national wars over the stuff? If you believe that these conflicts have nothing to do with oil and we are killing people on a rather large scale in order to save them from repressive governments, I have a one-size-fits-all-foil-hat waiting for you too. That foil hat is starting to feel real comfortable on me.

I tend to think that most of this debate is distracting us from the more immediate and extreme problems we are facing. Not that either running out of oil or its becoming so expensive that we have to power down is not a serious problem, but we do have some more immediate things that do need to be addressed. I suspect that this distraction is deliberate. But of course my tin foil hat has been amplifying those voices in my head lately too.

So, for me anyway, any arguments that wants to radically extend the pool of below ground hydrocarbons is immediately suspect, either that or the world controllers are thinking within some very long term plans. Again, in either case, we are going to run out of the affordable stuff, and the way we live will, sooner or later, change rather dramatically

One of the justifications that is being used for nearly everything that is going on, to the point of ridiculousness, is the terrorist threat argument. Most of what we call ‘terrorist’ activities against the US are reactions to some big government’s policies, (namely the US Israel and England), not an aggressive unprovoked act. After all, what does a smaller and weaker society have to fight back with when a big powerful country leans on them? Any direct confrontation is immediate annihilation. (The Iraq military as an example) In any case, it sure looks to me that all of the policies, domestic and international, that have been enacted around terrorism qualify as false flag operations, and that is to conceal the national need for below ground hydrocarbons. And, I would sure be interested if anyone can find an official government definition of ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorism’. I suspect that is also on purpose because no matter how you define it, the US does it. I’m going to keep the foil hat on for this issue I guess.

So, let’s take a look at some of the more immediate problems I alluded to above. We have, in my opinion and with the information I have, a serious economic problem that is world wide, and that is fast approaching a truly catastrophic event. I have yet to see ANY economic projections that advocates everything is hunky dory that does not lean on the doctored figures indicating low inflation, low unemployment, and active and healthy stock and commodity markets. Outside of the inane statements by Bush and the Federal Reserve and the lay people on the street, the people actively engaged and involved with economics say we are in big trouble. So the sole reason given for why we shouldn’t be concerned about the economy and to take off our tin foil hats, is based on known and documented false data. Unemployment is up, not down; inflation is much more than the government released information (10% last I read); and the stock and commodity markets figures are known to be manipulated. What the true state of affairs in all three areas is, is up for grabs, but it sure isn’t what the government and its spokesman are saying. So I think I will keep my foil hat on for this issue too.

Another of the really pressing problems is the changing weather cycles. What I am reading that is debunking the man made global warming idea may or may not be true. But that weather cycles are changing is for sure happening. This is causing all kinds of havoc world wide and this havoc is not being addressed with any policy. Instead, we are addressing the issue of whether it is man made or not. Now, it may indeed be true that sun activity causes periodic and severe weather changes. And, it may or may not be true that mans activities are making the problem worse. Because all we have is statistical data concerning this, we are not able to demonstrate with absolute certainty on causative affects. But we simply seem to be unwilling to address the FACT that it is happening, and we have no national agenda on the issue. We all know damned well that even if we could prove conclusively that man’s activities were the cause or a contributing factor, we have neither the political or social will at this time to do anything significant about it. Thank you, but I will retain the foil hat on this issue also.

Of immediate concern is the perpetuating of more war, for whatever ostensible reason. If we really aren’t preparing for more war, what in the hell are we doing sending so much heavy weight war machinery to the areas in question, primarily Iran? How interesting that Iran holds so much in oil reserves. Of course we are told that if Iran puts in nuclear reactors of any kind, they will immediately make weapons and then we can expect bombardment of American cities. We also sure don’t like the fact that Iran may,-MAY-, be helping the insurgents in Iraq against the American occupation. The gullibility of the American public concerning this is amazing. You mean to tell me that if Canada or Mexico or countries in Western Europe were being occupied that we wouldn’t help an insurrection? We have done the same all over the world. One of the more recent examples is Afghanistan against the Russians. Why would anyone think that Iran or any other Muslim country wouldn’t do the same for Iraq? We can spend all day talking about the probable outcomes of bombarding Iran. None of them are going to be good for me or you. There are going to be people that will benefit from another invasion, but the consequences will be worse than anything that has come about in Iraq for most of us. Of course if you have invested heavily in war industry stocks, you will benefit in the immediate future. So, do I think there is collusion and conspiracy involved in this war preparation? You Bet! And, oh yes, supporting the troops. You been listening to interviews with members of the military? Rather mixed response it appears, but weighted with the pro policy interviews. At the risk of offending some people I am going to assert that the reason our military is in Afghanistan and Iraq is to make money and keep power for the elites, , and not to preserve our rapidly disappearing freedoms and the Bill of Rights. (Which is asserted constantly and being blown up our collective asses) People, that means our military and its leaders are either in collusion with the elites on this issue or have been taken for chumps. I’ll keep the foil hat on this subject also.

Of major concern in any argument concerning domestic and national events and planning is the known FACT that our government lies all the time. Let’s go back a number of years when Clinton lied to us about CAFCA and NAFTA. He at least was honest enough to let us know that the outcomes would be dependent on how we dealt with the issue, but he never did lay out what the negative consequences could be, and that is exactly what has happened, a whole bunch of negative consequences for all but the very wealthy to begin with. Would the American public have been willing to go along with this if the government had laid it all out and not just the projected rosy consequences? Probably not. Of course, we might argue that the government would never get anything done if they laid out the negative consequences beforehand. People would not stand for that. So they lie to us to get us to go along with policies that benefit very few to the detriment of many. I remember back in the 70’s having the John Birch Society warning us in no uncertain terms about the Federal Reserve. Well, they were branded extremists, racists, conspiritists and tin foil hat people. I am not a lover of that group, but were they right, at least on this issue? Back in 1913, there were a lot of warnings about the Federal Reserve System and was finally pushed through by (hold on here) a Democrat, President Wilson. Makes you proud to be a liberal doesn’t it? My head is listing to the side by the weight of all the foil hats being piled on.

So, overall, I guess I’m going to keep the foil hats on for the time being. I find it to be an interesting set of company I keep. How about you?

2007-02-21T22:05:00.000-08:00

A True Story that Just Hasn’t Happened Yet

Freeacre

The timing of this missive is just after I read the headline that the British report an attack by the U.S. on Iran could happen "any day now." I thought I should share my worst case scenario, just in case, with my son - and with you all, to get you thinking of your own worst case response. If it doesn't come down this way, great! We can work on creating a better world.

A middle-aged woman lies awake in the middle of the night. She glances across the sleeping body of her husband at the clock glowing in the dark. It says 3:30. She gets up and goes into the kitchen in her pajamas. She lives in a single-wide trailer in a rural area in Oregon.

She makes herself a cup of tea, and drinks it while she writes a letter to her son.

Dear Bean,

There is going to come a time of total disaster in this country and eventually most of the other countries of the world as well. It has been developing for years, of course, but the powers that be have been hiding the knowledge of it. As it became apparent to the ruling class that our world would soon run out of recoverable oil, natural gas, uranium, and by 2035, even coal as well, they bought up the mainstream media and suppressed information about the depletion of resources. The American public has been distracted by relentless programming that has fostered consumer debt and shallow materialism with bogus “reality” shows and “news” that is insipid and inaccurate. The political pundits, the “experts,” and consultants are bought and paid for by corporatists who are determined to funnel every dime that they can get from the working class to those of privilege. In the last thirty years or so 90 percent of all the wealth in this country has been transferred to them.

Until now, it has been in their interests to keep us alive so that they can continue to harvest and milk us like a vast herd of obedient cows for our money and labor. We work at their jobs, buy their products, inhabit their buildings, purchase their drugs (legal and illegal) that prop up the stock market, frequent their hotels, spas, restaurants, hospitals; attend (and vote from) their mega-churches, invest in their schemes, and fight their wars. Taken as a whole, the foremost function we perform is to service the debt and financial institutions that the central banks have created. This is the matrix that the Wachowski brothers so aptly portrayed in their metaphorical movie trilogy.

But these are the end days, Bean. You’ve heard the Murph-man and I rail about Peak Oil for years. Now it has happened. The peak has been reached as of November of 2006. Now we are at a plateau level. Because the developing nations of China and India are increasing their use of oil by prodigious amounts, the plateau will quite quickly become a decline. We’ll be lucky if there is recoverable oil for ten years, natural gas for another fifteen years, uranium - twenty, maybe. Coal will be gone by 2035. Top soil, water, copper, silver, even silicone are depleting. That’s the “good” scenario. It does not take into account the venality of those in charge.

Just because the general public doesn’t know about this, don’t think that the global corporatists (fascists) don’t know. The United States got red-lined the minute that our domestic oil supply peaked in 1974. From then on, it’s been about shifting our manufacturing base to countries with cheaper labor or a closer proximity to oil in the ground. America was changed from a producing to a consuming society. Citizens became consumers. Workers who used to be iron workers, oil riggers, unionized trades people, scientists, and engineers have become valets, chefs, real estate agents, daycare workers, timeshare salesmen, "professional” snowboarders, and soldiers. We are now a service (read that “servant”) society. We have been marginalized and milked to the point that we are not longer useful. At some point, we become a liability, and we won’t be missed.

Three or four significant additional elements are now in play that could bring this on sooner rather than later: resource wars, climate change, and currency/housing collapse. We could have a military event (like the bombing of major oil fields or the closure of the straits of Hormuz, or a domestic terrorists event, real or contrived) that would stop the flow of oil and lead to WWW as all the major powers attempt to secure the last oil supplies. Countries would re-align for their own perceived self-preservation. The U.S. produces almost nothing, and yet uses 35% of the world’s natural resources, and forces the world to use American dollars for petroleum transactions. This is objectionable to the rest of the world. The countries that hold the majority of the U.S. debt are OPEC (the oil producing nation consortium) and China. To conserve the world’s supply of oil, China and OPEC will dump the treasury notes they currently own and collapse our currency. The stock market is a house of cards anyway, so it will go into free fall reminiscent of the Trade Towers collapse. Watch the real estate crash in the coming year as well. This is an exercise in transferring wealth, big time, by the central banks.

Another triggering event might be global warming. A couple of more hurricanes, levels 5 or 6, might devastate another city or two this summer and also take out what is left of our oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Once again, OPEC and China can see the writing on the wall as rising temperatures are creating more and more drought, severe storms, arable land is becoming scarce, water is at a premium. The U.S. is using much more than its share, and we are on the brink of bankruptcy. This is one more reason to pull the rug out from under the U.S. and switch to Euros for petro-dollars. We are the biggest energy and resource hogs the planet has ever known and the biggest bully on the block.

This leads us to “Demand Reduction” or “The Die-off.” The End Game. There are too many people on the earth to be sustainable. In my lifetime, we have gone from 2 to 6.3 billion people, and it is projected that I could live to see 9 billion. The food production has been so incredibly intensified by petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides and gasoline based machinery that it has produced this hellacious population increase. Once the oil runs out, the planet cannot begin to feed us all. Combined with the alarming dwindling arable land, water, fish in the ocean, top soil, wildlife, climate change, etc., it is estimated that 5 out of 6 born since 1960 will die of starvation, violence, or disease world-wide.

Of course, the elites figure (much like our Rapture-driven Christian brethren) that the few to be saved will be themselves. Once the God-favored, 144,000 begin to glow, and their clothes evaporate, and they float up into the Light, that still leaves oh, say, six billion still on the planet to fight for the leftovers. The newly outfitted Homeland Security Gestapo will stay busy for awhile rounding up scapegoats and dissidents while the privileged tip-toe past the masses and head for the hills of their private islands and fortified havens in Patagonia or whatever.

Actually, it is this point that I am actually writing to you about.

This collapse could come relatively slowly as the whole country starts to look like Flint, Michigan. Or, it could happen very soon and all at once. Once it is full blown, what is the point for our owners, to drag it out longer and have less to scoop up later when the dust settles? I mean “soon” like next month soon. By the middle of March or so, our navel forces will be in place to attack Iran. Iran is not going to take a nuclear assault on the Cradle of Civilization lying down. They might just strike first. Anyway, however it shakes out, be ready to recognize the signs of time to bug out. Where you are is not sustainable. The town relies on tourism, and tourism will be dead in a weekend once gas goes to $7.00 per gallon and people are looking in the rear-view mirror hoping not to see a mushroom cloud. It will be Time to Get Your Hat (TGYH).

It takes at least two refills of gasoline to get here in a car from there, and that’s assuming that you can drive straight here. But, you may not be able to because there is a rumor that there are Oregon survivalists who are poised to blow up or otherwise block the traffic on the main highways leading into Oregon from California in the event of a mass exodus. Forget I-5, for instance. Try 395 from Nevada. The best idea, if the weather co-operates, might be to travel light on a motorcycle. Bring as much cash as you can (credit cards and ATM’s will not function long. Maybe days, or hours.) Bring a gas can and a hose for siphoning. Bring a small tent and camp gear. If you are running from authorities, ditch the cell phone. You can be tracked by it. Don’t call me on a cell phone. You may have to go cross country to avoid highway check stops. Bring your copy of my will and deed to the house so you can show good reason to be in Oregon. You may want to bring Newy and Whitney and Katie with you. They are welcome, as long as they are willing to defend the place once they get here.

This place, such as it is, has been created, after all, as a lifeboat for you and yours. It’s paid for. It has water. It has a greenhouse, woodstoves. The area has a railroad and a low density population. The climate is challenging and the soil quality sucks, but we’re working on it. It’s the best we could do. But, you do have a chance here.

Just get here, Bean. When the internet goes down, the ATM’s won’t work, the credit cards won’t scan, martial law will be declared, people will begin to be rounded up. It will be too late by then, probably. They’ll say it is for National Security, illegal immigrants, terrorists, domestic insurgents, etc. etc. They’ll use all the reasons we’ve been hearing and accepting and were complicit with over the years as our government victimized other nations while we watched “Survivor” or football or MTV or listened to iPods and played “Doom” and rode around like Mac Daddy in cars with built-in boom boxes.

The real reason will be Demand Reduction. With so little natural resources left to go around, the fewer people alive to use them, the better for those that plan to survive at the expense of everyone else. The Owners-of-It-All will want to keep some viable people around for labor and some for security forces and the rest will be scheduled for death. If you look up and see tick-tack-toe configured chem trails in the sky overhead, it may be too late, My Dear. People may begin to get sick with a pandemic or some killer mold or some unidentified widespread virus. I can hardly imagine that a government would actually take measures to exterminate whole populations. But, then I ask myself "What do I think our biological weapons are for?" In that event, probably there is no defense other than a strong immune system. Know that I have loved you throughout every breath you have taken from the day that you were born. You have given my life its meaning and purpose. Your life has been one filled with adventure and fun to balance the challenges. Better, by far, than most on this struggling planet.

Just get here, My Love. We may be able to create a new, smaller, better little corner of the world and call it “Cascadia.” We may get it right, yet. The future is not yet written. Just get here. Tune into your inner core and move when the time is right.

But, if you can’t, and if you hear that I have died, comfort yourself with the knowledge that when I died, I fell into the loving embrace of our Mother, the Earth. From there, I will wait for you. It will be okay. We will go back to being that sacred star stuff from which all life springs.

Aho

mom

The Forgotten Trial of Scooter Libby

2007-02-20T07:21:00.000-08:00

Now that the Scooter Libby trial is over, I think it might be time to reflect upon what the impact of the proceedings have had and will have in the future, assuming that there is indeed a future for America. As most of you know, the Real Deal began as a venture covering the outing of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame. This was an event that I incorrectly thought would lead to the downfall of Booshco. I fully expected to cover that event, have a few people look at it and then have the Real Deal disappear forever. As we now know, that is not exactly how it worked out. So, let’s do it.

Libby trial over? What is wrong with you, Cyclone? The jury is just getting the case today and you say it’s over? Well, yes, I do say it is over. Later I will tell you what I believe will happen after the jury completes its deliberations. But first, let’s review what occurred during the trial, and perhaps more importantly, what did not occur.

The Trial

I do not intend to re-hash what every witness testified to, but to paint a brief overall impression of what happened at the star studded trial. If you want to read exactly what happened, every word of the testimony of every witness is available on the “internets.” I would not suggest wasting your time; it is not terribly interesting. Patrick Fitzgerald presented his case in a thorough, professional manner. He brought many witnesses who spoke of learning from Libby that Plame was a CIA operative, all before the actual outing occurred. Perhaps most damaging was the testimony of Cathie Martin, a Libby/Cheney assistant who stated that she told Libby of Plames’ identity and employment status prior to it becoming public knowledge. Mrs. Martin also testified about the White House strategy of allowing “strategic leaks” under the direction of Vice President Cheney. Other White House employees were called, including one who said that Cheney had circles drawn around certain phrases from Wilson’s Op-Ed piece that appeared in the Washington Post and began this fiasco. He said that Cheney was clearly concerned and frequently talked to Libby about how to control the damage that was done by Wilson’s article. Fitzgerald called Tim Russert, from whom Libby claimed to have learned of Plame’s covert position. Russert testified that this wasn’t true, that actually he had never heard of her until he read it in the Robert Novak column where her identity was first publicly revealed. He called Ari Fleischer, who had requested and received immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony. Fleischer said that he was “stunned and scared to death” once he learned of Plame’s status, and that he was concerned that he might be in legal jeopardy because, as the President’s press secretary, he had spoken about it many times from the White House podium. This was done during the routine course of his duties before he realized who Ms. Plame actually was. Judith Miller reluctantly testified that she learned of Plame’s identity from Libby. It is surprising that she was so reluctant with this information since she spent over 80 days in jail and lost her job and what little credibility she had trying to protect what Fitzgerald knew all along. But, someone has to play the role of the martyr, I guess.

Fitzgerald put his case on very convincingly, bringing in just the proper amount of witnesses to weave a web around Libby that he could not possibly escape from. Before he was finished, it became obvious that it would be more difficult to find out who had NOT leaked this information rather than who had. But, that is not what this case is about. It is about Libby’s propensity for not being truthful with the grand jury, and then attempting to cover it up with more lies. Now to the case presented by the defense.

They called very few witnesses. Robert Novak, the person who actually wrote the article revealing Plame’s identity, testified that he learned of her identity from Karl Rove and Richard Armitage, but “couldn’t remember” if he had heard it from Libby or not. Nothing he said was surprising, consider the fact that he has turned into nothing but a shill for the current administration and should not even be honored with the title “journalist.” They called Walter Pincus, an editor at the Washington Post, who said that he learned the information from Fleischer, something that Fleischer had already denied under oath. They also called Bob Woodward, who testified that his source was not Libby but instead Armitage. None of this was new information, but stuff that had been common knowledge for months. So, in simple terms, the defense did not really put up a defense. They did call one person, whose name escapes me at the moment, to say that Libby “has a terrible memory.” They did not call Libby to testify, which led to a tongue lashing from the judge who then refused to allow certain “memory impairment” evidence to be presented in front of the jury. The refusal to allow some of this evidence could come back to haunt the judge on appeal, but it did move the case along and besides, there will be no appeal. Fitzgerald had many rebuttal witnesses lined up and ready to go, all willing to testify to the fact that Libby actually is a brilliant man who rarely, if ever, forgets anything. Calling these people turned out not to be necessary because of the rulings of the judge, so Fitzgerald declined to call any rebuttal witnesses.

That’s pretty much the gist of the happenings at the trial, and it should be a slam dunk conviction for Fitzgerald. We will move on now.

Many months ago I told you that this “outing” of a covert CIA operative would land right at the door of the Vice President. I was wrong, I admit it. Well, partly wrong, anyway. The fact is that it didn’t actually LAND at his door, but it did pass through there on the way to another door. And this door, my friends, is the door of George W. Boosh.

The New Revelation

One new thing came out during all of this, though the jury did not hear it. In reality it shouldn’t matter as it has nothing to do with the charges against him. Libby’s I “knew and then forgot and then remembered I had forgotten or whatever the hell I’m trying to remember or not remember” defense isn’t going to work. The new thing is this. Robert Novak gave a draft of the article to someone who passed it along to Karl Rove three days prior to its publication. And if you believe that Karl Rove had this in his possession in advance and didn’t share it with Boosh, I’ve got some swamp land to sell you. Novak has claimed that, of course, he had no way to know that this third party would pass it on to Rove or anyone else inside the administration. Oh wait, I just found some more swamp land to sell.

Now whether or not this had any impact on the dimwit or his actions is up for argument. But, this does prove that Boosh did have knowledge of the leaking of a covert CIA operatives name before it was published, and that he could have stopped it from happening had he so chosen. And maybe worse than that, he knew exactly where it came from before he spewed his “if I find out that someone in my administration leaked this information they’ll be gone” BS. What does any of this have to do with the Libby trial, you might ask? The answer is absolutely nothing. It does show, however, that our Commander in Chief is a lying scumbag. Like we didn’t know that already. It is too bad that the Mainstream Media is paying little attention to any of this, or if they are, they certainly aren't sharing it with the American people. Someday soon, however, they will be forced to examine this stuff yet again.

What Does Any of This Mean?

Patrick Fitzgerald, when announcing the indictment of Libby, said that what Libby had done was the equivalent of “throwing sand in the face of the umpire” and then asking him to make a call at the plate. He could not pursue the investigation of the leak because Libby obstructed him from doing so by lying to the FBI and to the Grand Jury. As it turns out, this is a perfect analogy and a perfect strategy for Booshco. I can no longer claim that they have screwed up everything they have touched because they are now in position to do the unthinkable, and they planned it flawlessly. They will also pull it off.

Scooter Libby will be convicted of the charges he faces, maybe as early as today. It should take longer to elect a foreman for the jury than it will to get a unanimous guilty vote. Justice, however, will not be served, and I would bet my house on it. Boosh will Pardon Libby before he spends one minute in jail. This is why they did not put on a defense, they knew going in that a Pardon would occur if Libby protected his boss, the Vampire Cheney. If anyone actually believed the pre-trial nonsense that Cheney would testify, well I’ve talked enough about swamp land. First, they would have needed to have night court since being in the sun would undoubtedly cause Cheney to dissolve. Second, Cheney under oath? Get real; it ain’t gonna happen, now or ever. To realize why I am so certain of this, one must go back a ways and look at what happened during Watergate, and look at one of the key players in that debacle.

I’ll begin by stating this. Scooter Libby is no G. Gordon Liddy. If you recall, during the Watergate crimes, the prosecutors jailed the entire lot of co-conspirators and waited for them to break and turn on Nixon. One by one they did so. But not Liddy. This masochistic psychopath went so far as to hold his hand in the flame of a cigarette lighter the entire time he talked to investigators, and as they smelled his scorched skin, he asked again and again if they really thought that sitting in a jail cell would make him turn on his boss, Richard M. Nixon. I guess he proved his point, and he spent upwards of eight years in jail as a result of his faithfulness. To this day he has never spoken in a negative light about Nixon. Scooter Libby does not strike me as that type of person. He doesn’t appear to have the fortitude to sacrifice himself for anyone. In essence, he is a wimp, and would turn on a dime if given the proper incentive. If we look further, we can now begin to see, through him and Booshco, what is really wrong with this country today.

I was in favor of the Pardon of Richard Nixon, though not necessarily for the reasons that Gerald Ford gave for doing so. My thoughts were and still are, with a guy like Nixon, it was a power thing. Jailing him would have done nothing further to damage him than stripping him of power and forcing him to essentially live in isolation for the rest of his life did. For most President’s, power means everything. And for most, the loss of power is proper punishment for whatever crime they participate in. (the current leader is NOT among that group, however) That being said, there is a big difference between the Pardon of Nixon and the upcoming Pardon that will be given to Libby.

You see, Nixon himself was the cancer and had to be removed. He was, and we survived. In the current case, Libby is merely the cancerous lesion and removing him will have no deterring effect on the cancer that is spreading throughout Washington and across America. To stop this spread, you must remove the inside source of the cancer, not just scrape off the top layer. Libby is merely the top layer and is easily expendable, so long as you can keep him quiet. The real cancer lies in Rove, the Vamp and Boosh. Unfortunately, they have won, unless this man and his entire staff are impeached and removed from office. It took that to remove Nixon, a herd of Republicans walking into his office and telling him that it was over. It will take that and maybe more to remove Booshco.

The Ending

Boosh will Pardon Libby, claiming that the real purpose of the special investigation was to find out if anyone broke the law by outing a covert CIA operative. He will say that while he has the utmost respect for Patrick Fitzgerald, he knows Scooter Libby “the man” and knows that he wouldn’t deliberately lie to the FBI, a Grand Jury, or anyone else. Then he will say that since no charges were brought against anyone for the “outing itself,” that Scooter boy should not have to go to jail because of his unfortunate forgetfulness. He’ll say that the pressure of the war was first and foremost on Scooter’s mind, and that all should understand how it would be in such a situation. He’ll say that the whole Wilson affair was minor in comparison to his “war on terror” and that they gave it little thought. The press will dig in, the documents prove otherwise, everyone will be pissed off for a while, but it will eventually be shoved aside. Cheney will remain in his bunker directing the next insane war to cover up the current dirty and failed war; it will be business as usual.

Sorry Kids, but in today’s America, the good guys seldom win.

Cyclone

Does Anything Ever Really Change?

2007-02-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

I have been gone for a while, mainly because I haven’t had much to say. Actually, I’ve had a lot to say but haven’t really known how to say it. I haven’t known how to say it because this world has gone totally nuts, and I’m not sure what more can be said but that. Anyway, here I am again.

This post is going to be a little different. I am going to begin with many quotes, from sources that will not be named, yet anyway. These quotes will have a central theme, are paraphrased when necessary, and are in no real particular order. Then we will talk about it, and I’ll explain where some of them came from. Many I will not be able to tie to a specific person, simply because I don’t know who some of these people are. Many are from the “man on the street.” But, where possible, I will eventually give credit where credit is due.

The Quotes

“We don’t care what the American people say, what Congress says, or what other oversight organizations say.”

(On democratizing the world) “We’re going to do it and we don’t care who gets killed in the process.”

“This is not how the Constitution was set up, not what the Founding Fathers intended. When you start by breaking foreign laws and overthrowing foreign governments, sovereign or not, you then find yourself breaking laws at home.”

“Sometimes you must be willing to go above and beyond the written law.”

“Some people are obviously willing to put the Constitution at risk because they believed there was a ‘higher order thing.’”

“We have liberty and the only way to keep it is to have strong leaders.”

“If we continue to rob ourselves to feed this security monster we are going to continue to degrade American life.”

“After all, we are only talking about upholding the Constitution.”

“A government in shadows, a secret government, will only occur if the people let it happen.”

“Abuse of power is simply a breach of faith.”

“We’ll never know the truth. I think it’s been happening all along only this time they got caught.”

“This has been a wholesale policy of lies, total fiction and deception.”

“To maintain military and moral prestige, we must be tough on terrorists.”

“America will never make concessions to terrorists.”

“What we have done does nothing but undercut our allies and the American people.”

“The Constitution states that the President shall take care that laws are faithfully executed.”

“The President has the right to act unilaterally. This is government speak for acting without Congressional consent or knowledge.”

“I see nothing wrong with creating forces to overthrow legal foreign governments, including democratic ones.”

“The President uses this as a way to keep war going despite Congress, public opinion, and the law.”

“To get around the law, you need a group of companies willing to set up private funding and a group of advisors to take control of policy.”

“…….a shadowy government with its own air force, its own navy, its own fundraising, with its own ideas of national interest free from checks and balances and most importantly, free from the law itself.”

“Its leaders are a creation of the US government, they are not first rate people but liars, motivated by power and greed. This war is a business to many of them.”

“This secret government has utter contempt for Congress, makes profits by shaking down foreign governments. It’s done in the dark of night because it can’t stand the light of day. There is no watchman at the door, no accountant to check the books, no judge to check the law. Secrecy is the freedom zealot’s dream of, a government without a constitution; the rules it follows are the rules it makes up.”

“This is an off the shelf, stand alone entity necessary to protect the United States.”

“These people are willing to put the Constitution at risk because they believe in a higher order; the ends are justified by the means. It’s the most Marxist, totalitarian doctrine I’ve ever heard of. When you hide things from the American people with no accountability, you’ve accomplished what Madison and others struggled with while putting the Constitution together, which was to prevent runaway power. They did not intend for power to be concentrated in one hand where one person runs off and makes a decision against the will of the American people.”

“We cannot abide with having terrorists run free in North America.”

“The terrorists know exactly what we are doing; the only people fooled are the American people.”

“How can people judge what they do not know or were lied to when they were told?”

“Politicians used to be bureaucrats. Now they are thrown in with slick used car salesmen and lawyers. Now everyone only talks about them as liars.”

“We don’t realize how close we are to surrendering popular control of government to the national security state. We’ve never come closer to bestowing absolute authority on the President,……”

“The men who wrote the Constitution tried to make it difficult for us to go to war because human life was at stake and national standing was involved. War should be soberly decided, publicly debated, and mutually determined by the peoples’ representatives. It is the people who must fight, pay and die once the choice is made. The Constitution wants to protect them from dying for the wrong reasons and from killing for the wrong reasons.”

And finally,

“We’ve turned war powers over to those we never know who or what they are really doing, what it costs, or who is paying for it. We are sure that this global war carried on with less and less accountability to our democratic institutions has become a way of life. Now we are pressed with a question never before faced: Can we have a permanent warfare state and democracy too?”

As I was doing this, I realized that I have four more hand written pages of quotes to use, but they are all along the same lines so I will stop now. Actually, I think I will use one more, from a war veteran.

“I think the country has finally learned very graphically that we must be sure if we are going to send our young people off to die like this it had better really be in the interest of every person in the United States before we make that sacrifice. We ask a lot of questions now that we didn’t use to ask, we want to know why, just what we are really involving ourselves in when we go to do that.”

What Exactly Is Your Point, Cyclone?

The above quotes came from various characters. They include; the “man or woman on the street,” war veterans, the despicable Oliver North, several Senators and Congressmen including John Kerry, law professors, one journalist, Bill Moyers, who produced the film that the majority of this information came from, practicing attorneys and various legal scholars. Kudos to you, Mr. Moyers, this is your work. And fabulous work it is. It has blown me away.

I find this a pretty accurate look at what can happen to a country that does what we have done, that being to give unfettered power to wage war to one man based on lies, deception, and by allowing him to use fear as a weapon against the American people.

But, that is not what is most interesting about this, to me at least. You see, this film was produced in the mid 1980’s, as a direct response to the Iran/Contra scandal. It was sent to me by a regular reader of the Real Deal, and for which I am forever grateful. The film includes other time frames as well, from WWII, which incidentally was the last war actually declared by Congress, up through the Viet Nam war. Its main focus and impetus though, was the Iran/Contra affair. That is what they were saying THEN. If that is the case, what should we be saying NOW?

These days everything comes full circle, but one thing seems to be consistent. That is that lies eventually catch up with administrations, with the Republicans lies generally resulting in wars. A thing that surprised me was that the fear of us being involved in “perpetual war” was there well over 20 years ago, and was actually recognized and pointed out at the time. Unfortunately, I had forgotten more about Iran/Contra than I remembered. I was “busy” during that period of my life, being a degenerate living on the beach. I remember watching the hearings, hating the arrogant, repulsive Oliver North and Ronald Reagan, but few of the specifics. Perhaps some of you recall this period better than I do, or have already seen this film. If so, this probably won’t have the same meaning or impact as it has had on me.

Another thing that strikes me is something that I hadn’t really noticed before, perhaps because of my age. It appears that the American people have essentially had their heads in the sand for a heckuva lot longer than I imagined. I found most interesting that the last quote I posted came from a Viet Nam veteran. Stating that he thought we had, as a people, finally began asking the hard questions before sending people to war.

Have we? Though that may have been the case in the immediate aftermath of that conflict, it didn’t take long for business as usual to become the rule of the day at the time. It looks like the same routine to me today, a fear based somber tale by a dimwit President telling us how we are in grave danger. The only real difference is that now it is a “war on terror” when then it was a “war on communism.” And, of course, it is all full of lies with the “ends justifying the means” being the operative words, as John Kerry mentioned above.

Now, I feel the need to get philosophical for a moment. (I'm getting soft in my old age)I think that more than anything this exercise has taught me one thing, and that is this. There are some of us who have a passion, a need, a calling if you will to be the watchmen for others. It is our job to see outside the box, to point out what might be coming down the road to those who won’t, or can’t, look for themselves. It is something that we MUST do, we simply can’t help ourselves. We have to know, and we have to tell. I consider the majority of us to be a part of that "watchmen" group, not just those of us who write here. But, to expect any positive results to come from our actions or to have a great revelation or any action occur among the masses is nothing more than a pipe dream. It just ain’t gonna happen. That is humbling, and at the same time relieving.

It is also not all bad, as we have somehow found each other. We have a growing group who really do give a damn what happens to this place called America, and this place called Mother Earth. Unlike Boosh, we are not alone on an island, we are instead communicating daily with many people of like mind. We are tossing out ideas for the good of others, though in the end they will likely only result in good for ourselves. But good nonetheless. So maybe our focus should be mainly on those already at our own council fire, and those that we will welcome to this place in the near future. Maybe it always has been this way and I just didn’t realize it. Others will come, one at a time or ten, but it matters not. They will be welcomed with warmth, common sense, and if they seek it, a kind community genuinely asking for their input and ideas.

My reality has changed and I have grown some over the last month or so, for the better I think. Before what we all know will happen does happen, we should perhaps think about finding a place to hole up together and protect one another from what will likely be a hellish period for those who manage to survive the crash or war, whichever arrives first. I remember thinking from a self induced Oklahoma haze back in the 60’s that I wanted to see what it would be like to live in a commune. It may be nearing time to make that dream a reality.

Cyclone

Cyclone's Real Deal

2007-02-04T19:31:00.000-08:00

Cyclone's Real Deal

From Murph and edited by Freeacre, thank goodness.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER 2

There is a very interesting 3 disk documentary out called “The Commanding Heights, the Battle for the World Economy” that has some interesting information. It goes into the history for this push for a world economy, no borders, and corporate control. It is worth the effort to go through the documentary, but do keep a critical view on it too.

One of the interesting parts of this documentary is Clinton. Remember when he publicly talked about the new world economy? They replayed some of his statements. Of consequence to me was his saying that the one world economy was “inevitable and what we made of it, good or bad, was up to the governments of the world.” Well, it appears that he was right, but not in the way I would like to see it. It sure appears to me that this new world economy and new world order is far more Orwellian than I would like.

Some time back I mentioned that I was reading David Korten’s book “When Corporations Rule the World”. Well, among the other six books on my desk to get through, I finally finished it. He made some interesting statements. One such statement was concerning the ideological doctrines of the neoclassical economics:

1. People are by nature motivated only by greed

2. The drive to acquire is the highest expression of what it means to be human

3. The relentless pursuit of greed and acquisition leads to socially optimal outcomes.

4. The interests of human societies are best served by encouraging, honoring, and rewarding the above values.

Whew! Now that is some set of values isn’t it? One of the interesting things about this economic concept is that in the U.S. it has never been named except in esoteric discussions. Most of the rest of the world has names for this economic system, the most common is Neoliberal or Libertarian economics. The fact that our country has not either informally or formally recognized what is happening is deliberate, because when you get a name tacked onto something, identify it, you can talk about it. So, this country is largely ignorant about what is happening economically because we will not even identify what we are dealing with.

I rather suspect if the majority of the population could witness a debate on this system, that for the most part it would be rejected. Or at least I hope it would. The values and assumptions that underlay this neoliberial economic system are very contrary to what I think most people would buy into. The assumptions that lead to the values I named above are; (again from Korten’s book)

1. Humans are motivated by self interest, which is expressed primarily through the quest for financial gain.

2. The action that yields the greatest financial return to the individual or firm also yields the most benefit to society.

3. Competitive behavior is more rational for the individual than cooperative behavior and ultimately more beneficial for society.

4. Human progress and improvements in well-being are best measured by increases in the aggregate market value of economic output.

From what study I have done concerning this neoliberial system, these assumptions ring true to me. Let’s take a look at each one.

1. Indeed, humans may be motivated by self interest, at least most of the time, but not always. But to say it is always the quest for financial gain is simply not true. There are a variety of self interest goals that do not have anything to do with financial gain, in fact, many of the goals will depreciate financial gain: like having a family, children, taking care of parents, giving to charities. I’m sure you can think of more. One erroneous assumption put to rest.

2. The greatest financial return is also the most benefit to society. Well, look around you today. Think that is true across the board? I can admit there is a very small proportion of people in the society that definitely do benefit, but society across the board? Simply not true. Second assumption is also erroneous.

3. Competitive behavior is best? Hah, tell that to the military man, or those involved in team work of any kind. Benefit to society? Well, again, look around you and examine how being competitive has helped society. You really want a dog-eat-dog world? Further, this assumption is flat out contradicted by the overall ability of any species to cooperate to insure survival. In human society, the most smooth-running societies with the least conflict are run on cooperation, not competition. This assumption is just too weird to go further.

4. So now we have that aggregate market value of economic output is the sole measure of human progress and improvements. In other words, everything has a price. Of course this says nothing about human progress being measured by any other yardstick, like compassion, love and all the other higher abstract values that we profess. It puts economic output at the top of the pile of human endeavor. And look at what it has done to us. Created a society of consumers that are so addicted to consuming, they go into a rage at missing the best deal on some electronic gizmo that they can spend relentless hours of mind numbing time being involved with. Or the ridiculous spectacle of people punching and kicking each other trying to get to the sales table to buy another article they don’t need. And of course, the push for ever expanding markets and production, thus polluting the environment, depleting every bit of the resources and possibility threatening the very survival of humans as a species on this planet is inexcusable. The unstated premise of this assumption is that resources are infinite, which we know is not true.

It is obvious that the people that come up with ideas like this do not live like the rest of society. Take a look at the backgrounds of the perpetrators of all these economic theories. I think you will find that most of them come from the privileged classes. Like all of the privileged elites, they have no conception of how humans really live. They manage to come up with all of these economic theories that only serve to benefit a very few, mostly themselves and their loyal minions. These theories that were sold to the Lincoln administration and afterwards is what brought on the Federal Reserve. Sort of gives some weight to the idea that this bunch come from a “reptilian” background doesn’t it? These snakes are given prestigious awards, put at the head of prestigious universities, given honorary degrees and proclaimed to be thinkers and contributors to the common good. In actuality, they have figured out how to steal from the people that actually produce goods and services and have these dupes praise them at the same time they are pilfering your pocketbook.

All these liberal economic concepts have accomplished the goal to place societal control into the hands of the bankers and other economic elites. It is true, they have also piled into the society a blistering campaign of propaganda, advertising and corrupted politics and given us all a multitude of some useful stuff along with a majority of kitsch and stupid stuff to buy. It has created a madly paranoid obsessed consumer society. We have all taken part in it to some degree or another. It has broken up community relationships, isolated people from their environment and isolated us from each other.

A friend the other day says he has a relative that has spent 35 years in the loan business, working for a variety of banks and this qualifies him as an expert in economics. This relative told my friend that the economy is in great shape because unemployment is down and the stock market is up. Neither of which is true. Unemployment is way up, the figures given by the bureau of labor (today at 4.6%) is only those that are on or have filed for unemployment. The actual unemployment figure is very close to 10%. That is close to 30 million, which accounts for nearly ½ of the people at or near poverty level. Even if we accept the 4.6% figure, that is over 12 million people that are unemployed. Of course, according to Greenspan and the Neoliberal boys, this is right where it should be; the economy is best when we have around 4% unemployment so people fight each other for jobs and they can keep the pay down. Neat, huh? And the stock market being up? Well, in actual terms and factoring inflation, it is not as high as it appears. But, the big issue is how over extended the commodities market is, and the sheer manipulation of prices. Hear Mogambo Guru below, he will tell you how it is. It is sheer foolishness to point to either set of figures as a sign of economic health. After all, think about what the situation was before the ‘29’ crash. Stock market up and unemployment was low. Was it a robust economy?

For all of you who think the Dems were put in place in congress to bring some sanity to what has been happening, did you know they just quietly passed bills to increase the national debt, is pushing for a bunch of the dreaded earmarks, have limited debate on the bills, have pushed through a $463.5 billion dollar omnibus spending bill? Yeh, right. Sure sounds like sane and measured policy to me too. Ha!

For those of you who are interested, take a look at what appears as an accurate commentary on the economic situation. http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Writers/Mogambo/DREssays/MG012907.html I really enjoy this guy’s writing style. None of the economic issues are being addressed. Maybe they can’t be addressed. The Dems are not going to be successful in shutting down the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Until these suckers are removed from power, it will go on and on anyway and even when they are out of power, it will not stop. Our economy was allowed to be built on the war industry and the big boys are not going to let it stop. Way too much money would be lost. And all we need is another dramatic false flag operation to get everyone behind them again, Dems as well as the errant Repugs. And even if that does not happen, if we pull out of both or either one of those countries, power is going to be consolidated in those countries and they don’t like us much at all. So where are we going to get the oil to run this much touted economy? Oh yes, sorry, I forgot, from ethanol of course. Of course, then we have to make the decision about whether we want exceedingly higher food prices and scarcities, or outrageous fuel prices. Me, I’ll opt for the lower food prices. I think we better figure out how to drive a lot less.

The denial of the true situation in this country and most of the world is astounding. Our uniformed citizenry also astounds me. It is interesting to note that global warming is finally hitting the popular media and also peak oil is now starting to get some play. When the shit comes down there are some folks that I am rather gleefully going to look them in their glazed questioning eyes and say, “YOU WERE WARNED, YOU DID NOT PAY ATTENTION. The information was in front of you and you ignored it. You didn’t even bother to find out what the hullabaloo was about, much less have any rational for your position, YOU SHIT FOR BRAINS!”

Cyclone's Real Deal

2007-01-31T14:35:00.000-08:00

Cyclone's Real Deal

By Murph

HEADS UP

Before I get into the subject of this post, here is some links that are about this post. Take a look before you get into the rest of this.

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2007/ReaderSubmission.html

http://www.newsforreal.com/ This article is about WWIII

We currently are seeing all kinds of articles on both subjects; what to do personally and what is going to happen in the mid east over oil resources. I am going to talk about the first link right off the top.

I was gratified to see that first link article. My personal experience verifies it right down the line. The only difference between my experience and the writers is that I was raised primarily in a country and small town environment and spent considerable time in farm work, plus my parents raised various livestock as a supplement to our food supply. My dad was a frustrated city boy who wanted to be a farmer, but even when I was growing up, the money investment for that in the 50’s was high , resources for which we did not have. So I grew up learning to butcher livestock for food, learned something about animal husbandry and growing food.

Then, at the end of the 1970’s, when I thought then also that the country was coming apart at the seams, I took a family of 4 kids and did a sort of survival trip in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas. My folks, in preparation for what we thought was a good probability of economic collapse and the resultant social chaos, had bought a 102 acre plot of mostly up and down walking around land in Arkansas. It had approx. 20-25 acres of bottom land that could grow something. The rest was hillside and flint rock. It had one house that my parents occupied and my wife and kids lived in a tent for the first year. No electricity or running water available. We did have one of the largest springs in the county and we camped out next to it. It was rough living.

For five years, we built buildings to store hay and grain for livestock and to house livestock, built up a small herd of milk goats, and built up the soil for growing a garden and built a lot of fence lines. It was a day light to dark kind of endeavor, lots of hard work. There was an open very old hay barn next to us. We finally ended up moving into it. Built an extension on one end that was where the kids slept and we did the cooking and eating. I wrapped the barn in plastic to keep the wind, rain and snow out. The small extension had a gravel floor and finally got electricity into it. Still had no running water and did have an outhouse. Except for the small extension, there was no heat in the rest of the building. At the same time all of this was going on, I decided to build a log house on the slope above us since where the barn was located would flood in really wet weather. This is where I found out that I simply did not have the energy to do it all. The older of the kids were not sympathetic to this project and resisted doing much at all and finally when turned 16, split to go back to Michigan with friends, TV, the night life and all the amenities they were used to. I found out that the amount of work at this level was more than I could handle alone. Socially, our two families were treated with respect and friendliness. But, we were outsiders. My parents lived in the area for 20 years and were still outsiders. I left after 10 years.

If you live in a more urban situation now, that is reasonably sophisticated and knowledgeable, your moving into this kind of environment is going to be a real shock for you. A lot of the jokes and fun poking of the redneck lifestyle is pretty much true, not all of it of course. And back country living is not composed of 100% tobacco chewing dumb shits. But nevertheless, it is going to be cultural shock. Attempts at dragging your previous attitudes and lifestyles with you are going to fail miserably. It took me nearly a year to understand that talking about politics and religion was reason for fist fights or rejection. In the area I was living in, the closest town of 150 with its own school, had school board elections. The two contenders for a seat had their supporters and they lined up on opposite sides of the street and went at it. Last man standing got to run. I’m not joking. While this sort of extreme living is not necessarily true for all of country life, variations of it are. You will probably be going to an area where there are multiple firearms in every household and everyone there knows how to use them. You do tend to be a bit careful upon whose toes you tread on. Interrelated families are the rule and tend to be very protective of each other, even if someone is dead wrong. It is often possible to get a feud going at the drop of a hat, I’ve seen that happen.

Now the reason I bring all this up is that even if you have a substantial amount of money to hire work done that you can’t or don’t want to do, and to buy equipment, put in water systems and electricity in a real rurally area, the amount of work is prodigious. The first link article indicates that they had a pretty good availability of resources to draw from to do what they did. Doing these kinds of projects without resources is tough, as I experienced. Also, keep in mind, if the collapse hits you during the process of building up everything, you are suddenly going to be doing it like I did. No electricity, no running water, no working indoor plumbing. And even if you manage to get most of the projects done, and then everything collapses, you are going to be in the same situation. Believe me, doing EVERYTHING by hand, no power tools, having to fix and build everything by yourself is a whole new ballgame. I rather imagine few have the stomach for that, and in social chaos and the depreciation of the infrastructure of this society, most are going to become predators. Be forewarned.

Now, the second article. I like Steve Pizzo and his web site. He puts out a lot of effort on his writing and most of the time I think he has it dead on. That second link is to his latest article about the coming absolute chaos in the East and WWIII that Bush and the neocons are heading for full speed ahead. That these people do not understand the ramifications and consequences of their policies; that they seemingly have absolutely no understanding of the culture and societies they are trying to dominate is amply evident. Either that or they figure that the American military with what is left of our allies are capable of dominating that whole region of the world and the consequences be damned. In either case, I expect somewhere down the road that this is going to get real serious, more than it already is.

So putting the two articles above with information from Demetrie Orlov about the collapse of The Russian Soviet state, and the collapse of Cuba after Russia tanked and what they did, and looking at what North Korea did and looking at what life was like in this country before the industrial revolution, you might want to put some serious thought in how you are going to manage when the shit hits the fan around here, as I surely think it is going to do. Time, nature and speed of collapse are what is in question, but something drastic is coming. The current administration and congress are not going to address this, it is not politically expedient to do so. When it comes, there will be no national program to ease the transition, to make things bearable for the majority of the population. It appears the government elitists have absolutely no concern for this picture and definitely no will to address it. The time will come that the government will have to address it, but it will be in the context of more repression, probably some form of a martial law, movement around by parts of the population will be very restrictive. They will do this out of necessity, because when things get bad, there is going to be absolute chaos in high population areas for sure. There will be large numbers of desperate people looking for a way to survive. Because of the way our society is currently structured, there will be no means of keeping any type of housing outside of squatting somewhere in the urban environment. Then, getting out and trying for a more rural living is going to be nearly impossible. As the writer talked about, city dwellers are viewed with suspicion by country folks and you are not going to be welcomed. You need to get it done now and start getting integrated into some kind of community, now. It would not be wise to wait till the last minute. But, then again, when are thing going to start getting real bad? We have some real conundrums to deal with. Good luck.

Cyclone's Real Deal

2007-01-25T19:25:00.000-08:00

Cyclone's Real Deal

Checkmate…

By Freeacre

I am not much of a gamer. I have been beaten at chess by every emotionally disturbed adolescent I ever worked with. Sadly, I have even had retarded opponents take pity on me. Recently, Murph looked at me as if I were from Mars when I asked him if we could get a copy of “Pong” for me to play on my computer. So, more precisely, I am probably the worst gamer ever.

That said, even I could recognize the potential threat in an article posted today on LATOC (Matt Savinar’s site, Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash). This site, by the way, is the best in terms of consolidating the latest information about resource depletion and economics and preparedness. The article that I am referring to is entitled “Is Iran a Trap for America??” put together by Dennis from Oregon. Read it yourself. There are a zillion links for footnotes to substantiate the information.

Basically, it poses the question, “What if Russia, China, and Iran have been planning the End Game for global resource control all along?” What if the arrogance of the Bush administration has blinded them to the larger game being played here?

Let’s think about this for a minute. Who invented the game of chess? Surprisingly, it was the Chinese. Then it was taken up and morphed and played in India, then Persia. More recently, Russia has taken it to heart and given us most of the chess masters in our lifetimes. When the Soviet Union broke up and the West let Russia twist in the wind, do we really think that Russia wouldn’t devise a plan to come back and nail our asses to the wall? When they learned the hard way that a country could be brought to its knees by spending too much of its money on its military and under-funding its infrastructure, don’t you think that “turn about” would be seen as “fair play“? I bet it took the KGB about five minutes to decide to pick the brains of their chess masters for a plan to bring us down. They probably called it some sort of Russian equivalent to “Eat Shit and Die” or, ESAD.

While the globalists have been congratulating themselves on the demise of central planning and the takeover of the “free market” economy, a coalition of Russia, China India and Brazil has formed that could soon re-shape the United Nations. “This coalition has three fourths of the world’s population, the largest amount of natural resources, and the largest pool of technical and scientific talent.” I am quoting Dennis’s article. “It automatically includes the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is presently comprised of China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Iran.” These countries have contractual agreements with each other for billions of dollars worth of natural gas pipelines and oil drilling, etc. that puts Iran and the “stans” all under the protection of Russia and China. Oh, and let’s not forget the new alliance between Iran and Venezuela.

Let’s see… the majority of the U.S. Treasury notes are owned by the Chinese. The manufacturing base of the nation has been exported to China and India and other “developing” nations who pretty much hate our guts because of the exploitive policies the neo-cons, IMF, and central banks have put them through over the years. The world is gradually tip-toeing away from the dollar and switching to the Euro to use for petro currency. And, Iran and China are armed with the most sophisticated missiles, the Sunburn, manufactured in Russia and India. These could take out the carriers heading for the Gulf. That would, of course, disrupt the world’s supply of oil in a big way.

But, that’s not all. What was that Chinese space shooting of its communication satellite a few days ago? “Just seeing if we could do it?” What if they did it to our satellites? What? No cell phones? No TV? No satellite transfers of money?? Do you think they might be trying to tell us something? Huh?

Then, there’s that pesky Hugo Chavez. Just because he’s pissed at us for all the shit we’ve pulled on his compadres in South America (assignations, death squads, torture, coups, etc. ) he’s equipped Venezuela with the latest Russian fighters and 40 or so Onyx missiles. It is figured that (quoting “Is Iran a Trap for America?” again)

in “less than 30 minutes every major US Gulf of Mexico oil platform and oil refinery could be destroyed with no warning.”

Well, there ya go. Now, all Iran has to do is provoke our dumbass Decider to do something stupid (what are the chances of that??) or provoke Israel (“Holocaust? What Holocaust??”). We attack them, the coalition fights back, and it’s the end of our country as we know it.

Checkmate.

Cyclone's Real Deal

2007-01-23T23:26:00.000-08:00

Cyclone's Real Deal

From Murph

THE STATE OF THE UNION

Freeacre and I listened to the State Of The Union address by our fearless leader on Tuesday night. I could barely contain myself, what with all of the cheerleading going on with 400+ suit and tie people jumping up and down and punishing their hands in masochistic delight at the spoken words of so great and powerful a man. There did seem to be a very few miscreants with minimum amount of leg exercising and hand bruising but for the most part is was so contagious that hardly anybody could sit still and not cheer for the home team.

I found it interesting that there were no detectable Bushisms to point to with glee. I suspect they had drugged him out so he only said what was on the paper and somebody had obviously edited it carefully. I didn’t even have an excuse to get nauseous, not one smirk in the delivery. Very un Bush like. Hey, maybe it was a stand in. I noticed the forehead wrinkles weren’t so pronounced and he didn’t squint so much. Hmmm, maybe duped again?

When Bushco made a 3 point jump shot, the cheering was loud and boisterous. Like the fast dribble, spin shoulder shake and shot from the ‘balance the budget line’. However, there didn’t seem to be all that much enthusiasm for the free throw on immigration and some of the bobbled jump shots under the basket such as the ‘must protect the people’ shot. However, he did get a rousing standup ovation for the ‘support our troops that protect our freedoms’ slam dunk.

I must say I sure didn’t have much trouble picking apart this little game. It will be interesting if they release the full report on the state of the economy report next week.

So let’s take a look at some of the more embalmed points that scare the hell out of me. The economy. “A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy”. Sure not much about sustainability is there? “We are now in the 41^st month of uninterrupted job growth, in a recovery that has created 7.2 million new jobs, so far, unemployment is low, inflation is low and wages are rising”. Now lets see, how many of these new jobs are above $10.00 per hour? Evidently Bush hasn’t been to the grocery store lately since he thinks inflation is low, and I guess 4.5% unemployment is ok with him. Hmmm that is right around 12 million folks. And of course that figure does not reflect those that have given up looking for work, hadn’t worked long enough to draw unemployment before being laid off (love those employers), it is only those who are on or filing for unemployment.

So for whatever it is worth, who do you think he is talking to concerning this robust and cheery economy? Sure ain’t me.

Next was balancing the budget. Now that got a good whimper from me. He says it is going to be done by spending limits in Washington and without raising taxes. “We set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, and met that goal three years ahead of schedule”. Oh, really? Well, I guess we can’t include the cost of the military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, now can we? “In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years”. Oh, really!! Now come on. Our total deficit to the best of my knowledge is over 10 trillion dollars. That’s a bunch of tax revenues buddy. But we aren’t going to raise taxes? I’m confused, where is all this money going to come from? Maybe the drug trade? Or when they take over the oil fields in Iraq? I hate to be so naïve, but would someone tell me how we are going to eliminate the federal deficit within 5 years, keep conducting wars overseas and keep shipping what is left of our industrial base to other countries? Maybe he is figuring that the tourist industry is due for a real big surge. The housing industry sure isn’t going to make ends meet anymore. I really don’t get it. Help me, some one educate me on this, please.

Now cames a doozy of an economic lesson and politics. “Now, there is the matter of earmarks. These special interest items are often slipped into bills at the last hour-when not even C-Span is watching”. That was a Bush joke folks, if you didn’t catch it. He says in 2005 there were 13,000 of these babies that totaled $18 billion. Awww come on G.W. That’s pocket change. Now here is the good part. (long quote coming up) “Even worse, over 90% of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate- they are dropped into Committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You did not vote them into law, (I presume he is talking to the congress people now because I sure didn’t even get asked to vote on any of them), I did not sign them into law. Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law”. How does that one grab ya, huh? “So let us work together to reform the budget process-expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in congress-and cut the number and cost of earmarks at least in half by the end of this session” Have you started to chuckle yet? Maybe throw up? He is actually standing in front of congress and admitting duplicity, grand theft, pork barreling, and unconstitutional activities in congress while the Republicans were running the show. Now the Dems have some control, let’s end it. And then has the gall to not want to eliminate them totally.

He then went on to entitlements. He mentions Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as commitments of conscience and must keep them permanently sound. But, if we don’t do something, our children will be faced with one of three options; huge tax increases, huge deficits or huge and immediate cuts in benefits. Oh my, he sure avoided that bad dream of privatizing social security he pushed so hard for. Of course he did now and would not mention the entitlement group we call ‘corporate entitlements’ that just happen to exceed by a ratio of 5:1 the social entitlements.

This is starting to get a little long so I will end it shortly. Folks, I am into only the first 350 or so words of the speech, the first page of 7. In my opinion, ANYONE that heard this mish mash of garbage and thought is was a good speech, or good ideas, or anything good in it better take some pills, I recommend the red ones. The blue ones will only put you deeper into denial. Now we get to see what the Dems will really do. I haven’t even started on his homeland security and the war agenda part of the speech. I heard some of the immediate replies by the Dems assigned to counter the address. If that is the best they got, we are in deep shit folks, very deep shit.

Here is a bit of amplification on this subject of the economy;

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/
JubaksJournal/StateOfTheNationBroke.aspx?
page=all