How the US Became a Vassal State of China

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

China owns the United States --or, at least, holds a 'mortgage'. China props up the dollar just enough to ensure that its excess production can be dumped here by way of its US retail outlet --Wal-Mart! The value of the US dollar is almost entirely dependent on China. When it ceases to be advantageous for China to prop up the dollar, the dollar will collapse.

The decline and fall of the American empire is a sorry, tragic saga. It is the story of betrayals of this nation by the likes of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan , Bush Sr., the Shrub, and many lesser known 'agents' of the increasingly tiny cadre of ruling elites. It is the story of how GOP administrations paid off its elite base with tax cuts which have had, in fact, the effects of impoverishing the poor, enriching the rich, exporting the US manufacturing base, and exporting the jobs that it had supported.

There are many versions of the 'supply side' story, but the most famous one involved a napkin and a Pizza Hut. While Ronald Reagan still occupied the White House, an alleged "economist" is said to have drawn a fictitious curve on a napkin. [More about this 'curve' to come.] As a result, millions lost their jobs, tent cities sprang up across the country, the nation plunged into a great recession --the deepest, most severe, the longest since Herbert Hoover's "Great Depression! I saw some of those 'tent cities' in 'boomtown' Houston. I was inspired to publish an essay in a local magazine. My essay was entitled: "What happened?" In a word, the bulls had gone bear if not 'bare'; the captains of capital cashed out at the top and left many another holding real estate that was declining rapidly in values. The least fortunate were those whose interest in Real Estate was simply that of keeping a roof over the heads of family members. Many of these folk lost their homes and moved into the 'tent city'.

Under the occupancy of George W. Bush, the folly was repeated and the harmful effects left to Barack Obama whom it is hoped will take the rap.

Called "preppies", they consulted Republican political campaigns and were in a position to spread economic dogma like 'supply-side' or 'trickle down theory'. Economists Arthur Laffer and Milton Friedman lent an imprimatur of respectability. Laffer, for example, drew a "curve" on a napkin which some believed proved the preposterous idea that reducing taxes for the elite classes would reduce debt and deficit. In fact, when Reagan put the theory to work with his infamous tax cut of 1982, the opposite occurred. Both debt and deficit increased. Supply side, i.e, 'trickle down' theory was proved wrong. Sadly, the GOP has not gotten the memo.

• Wealth might have 'trickled down' IF the wealthy had invested tax cuts domestically!
  But they don't and probably never have! They squirrel away their windfalls in offshore banks, havens, shady investments or other ways which do not create new jobs, do not raise wages or stimulate capital investments or growth! The opposite has always occurred, i.e, the economy, rather, has always contracted with each GOP tax cut! If the government wishes to stimulate an economy by stimulating spending, it should just cut out the 'middle man' or, as John Maynard Keynes suggested, it should put bucks in mason jars, bury them in a landfill and let 'labor' dig them up! There is no point in letting the very, very, very rich SKIM OFF the top with idiotic schemes like 'trickle down theory'.
• Lower income citizens do not bear smaller tax loads as claimed.
In fact, their taxes are always higher as a percentage of income because the working classes do not have access to most forms of depreciation, offshore tax havens, capital gains, tax credits, etc. Because they have dodges which salaried people don't, elites pay much less tax as a percentage of total gross income.

Unfair tax cuts always make the rich richer. Reagan's tax cut, for example, benefited only the upper quintile. [See the GINI Indices at the Bureau of Labor Stats later published by Brookings ] Bush Jr's cuts benefited an elite of just one percent which, as a result of his policy, owned more than 90 percent of the US population. By the end of his reign of terror, this elite of just one percent had increased its share of total wealth, owning more than 95 percent of the rest of the population combined.

I told ya so!

During the 1920s, the wealthy accumulated such exorbitant stocks of cash, they couldn’t spend it all. Instead, they played the stock market, fueling a rapid run-up in stock prices. Lower and middle income households, on the other hand, lacked wealth enough to meet their daily needs and were forced to borrow heavily. Today --the elites have squirreled their tax cut windfalls offshore, effectively removing wealth from the US economy. That is called a 'contraction' and it is the source of many recessions or, more properly, depressions.

Many historians believe that a combination of growing personal debt and a widening wealth gap destabilized the economy and precipitated the Great Depression, characteristics that define the current collapse. Not so long ago, the media touted rising economic growth and a soaring Dow Jones. Those 'signs' of wealth likewise preceded Herbert Hoover's Great Depression. Certainly, the 20s are remembered for vast inequities of wealth financed by growing consumer debt. Neither 'elephant' has left the room.

Welfare for Wall Street

The lessons of Enron and WorldCom were not learned. The GOP still schemes to PIRATIZE your Social Security and are, perhaps, even more motivated to do so now than during the Bush years. PIRATIZING Social Security i.e, letting Wall Street speculators play with YOUR money is the ultimate 'bailout' of crooks who brought you the current 'financial crisis'. There is simply no rational justification for allowing Wall Street to 'speculate', play the markets with your money.

What are 'private accounts' but a government give away, welfare for Wall Street? You already have the right to open a private account of your own anytime you wish. Giving Wall St speculators carte blanche to play the markets with monies you earned by working is foolhardy, stupid at a time when taxpayers have already underwritten a national debt of several trillion bucks. Privatizing Social Security means that when the next collapse occurs, you will pay for it twice --once with an immediate bailout out of tax revenues and --again --with your hopes for a comfortable retirement, the Social Security which you may never see again!

How right wing policies have robbed the US population with "trickle down theory" and other nonsense utterly unsupported with fact or evidence:

• In the late 1970s, the top one percent of the US population held 13 percent of the wealth; in 1995 it held 38 percent. [Source: Source: Levy, Frank. The New Dollars and Dreams ].
• The top ten percent of the US population owns 81.8 percent of the real estate, 81.2 percent of the stock, and 88 percent of the bonds. [Source: Federal Reserve Bank data in Left Business Observer, No. 72, Apr. 3, 1996, p. 5].
• One percent of the US population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth. [Source: Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: Harper Business, 1993].
• The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent....
• Since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most. They have just 3.6 percent of national income, down from 4.4 percent a quarter century ago.
• Indeed, the top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined...
  Rebecca Blank, who recently left the President's Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out, ‘We've gone back to levels of income and wealth inequality that this country hasn't seen since the teens and 1920s.’" [Source: Merrill Goozner, Crash of '99?, Salon.com, Oct. 1, 1999; addendum: since 1999, the date the source was published, the situation is much, much worse. Today --just ONE PERCENT own more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. GOP incompetence and criminality moves so fast these days, it's hard to keep up!].
• The top one percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 40 percent. [Source: Korten, David. When Corporations Rule the World, p. 108].
• Federal Reserve median family net worth by percentile for 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001 (Federal Reserve Bulletin January 2003, pp. 1-36). Note the small gains for the bottom 75% of the population and larger gains for the upper 25% and that the 1998 to 2001 gains were largest.

  --US Wealth Distributions 1989-2001

Republicans bought the scam because it made them feel good about being greedy, shallow bastards. The appeal is obvious: trickle down rationalized greed but only after the fact; it made one feel good about one's worst impulses, motives, and elitist bigotry.

To his credit, the Sr Bush called the Laffer Curve 'voodoo economics'. Two politicians, however, bit big. One of them was Ronald Reagan . The other was the Jr Bush, the Shrub, the idiot left behind!

It is a GOP promoted myth that the GOP does not pay attention to 'polls'. That they promote it, proves it's a myth and that 'trickle down' itself is a deliberate lie by which wealth is transferred upward. It the mechanism by which GOP pays off its base! Not surprisingly, trickle down tested well in focus groups. Everyone likes pie in the sky and greedy bastards will always support any measure that is sure to enrich themselves at the expense of those who must work hard for a living.

Republican campaigns are driven by polls, focus groups, and market research. They're rich; they can afford it. Modern sophistry --the teaching of politicians how to lie, how to con the media, how to couch a phrase or deflect a point --was and most surely remains a growth industry.

The Laffer 'curve' was worse than fiction, it was a fraud. But the 16 month long depression which resulted is a disastrous effect that is still with us.

• New job creation under Reagan was 2.1% per year compared with Bill Clinton's 2.4% job creation rate.
• Reagan's showing, however, may be misleading; almost half of those jobs were in the public sector. In other words, Reagan , though he had promised the opposite, added nearly 2 million jobs to the Federal Bureaucracy. Reagan GREW the government --but NOT the economy.(Incidentally, job growth under Bush Sr, was a mere 0.6% --the worst performance since World War II. ) Reagan tripled the national debt and left huge deficits to his successor --Bush Sr whom Reagan blamed for what can only be called the Bush/Reagan recession.
  
• The disparity between rich and poor grew during the Reagan regime, narrowed somewhat during Clinton but exploded nova-style under Bush Jr.
• Almost one half of all American taxpayers were victimized by Reagan 's so-called tax reform; in other words, over 40 percent of those workers had a bigger chunk taken out of their check at the end of Reagan 's misrule than was taken out at the beginning of his regime.
• And what about "real wages", i.e, income adjusted for inflation? That declined as well.

The Presidency of Jimmy Carter is often tarred with a made-up, focus group word that has a GOP stench about it: 'stagflation'. Diplomatically, 'stagflation' is a myth and will remain one until I find the memo that proves that it was all just made up, validated, perhaps,by a focus group. In any case, it is a GOP fabrication with which the GOP would forever tar the Carter legacy. In fact Carter is among the best US Presidents in economic terms. Here are the FACTS that the paid liars of the GOP will not tell you:

Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents⁸

Johnson   3.8%
Carter    3.1
Clinton   2.4
Kennedy   2.3
Nixon     2.3
Reagan    2.1
Bush      0.6

-- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey

Stagflation, my ass!

How the GOP Exported Your Job

But, it is objected, the 80s were a period of great prosperity and, surely, Reagan 's tax cut must be credited! The quick response: the 80s, adjusted for inflation, were, in fact, a period of stagnation, increased poverty, and lost job opportunities defined by the export of US jobs, primarily Japan and China.

This was a point about which Milton Friedman reacted very testily, defensively when pressed about it in the grand ballroom of one of the luxury hotels in Houston's famous Galleria. I know. I was there! Friedman said that US jobs are not exported. He was either wrong or excessively pedantic! It was not --after all --a meeting confined to professional economists. For those who must work for a living, Reaganomics represented in a very real and practical sense the export of his/her job! For the real story about the phony 'prosperity' in the 80s, check out: Playing with the Numbers, How So-called Experts Mislead Us about the Economy, Richard A. Stimson

Reagan 's legacy lives:

• US manufacturing is all but non-existent as the shelves of Wal-Mart remind every shopper!
• Labor never regained a pre-Reagan living standard
• wages never kept pace with inflation
  
• 'good paying' and/or skilled jobs never rebounded.

The US had only begun to recover in Clinton's second term. [Bureau of Labor Statistics, BEA; summarized by Kangas, Economic Performance] It was left to Bush Jr, then, to finish the job that had begun with the administration of Ronald Reagan, that is, the collapse of the US economy.

The US boasts the world's largest NEGATIVE current account balance while China boast the world's largest POSITIVE current account balance. [CIA, World Fact Book, Current Account Balance] China owns us! China props up the buck because it is still in their interests to do so. China will pull the plug on the buck when it is in their interests to do so! As a result of the GOP policies of Ronald Reagan , Bush Sr and Bush Jr, the US has become a vassal state even as it indulges the delusion of empire! Pathetic!

Supply side --though discredited --reared its stupid head again some twelve years after Bush Sr. failed to grasp the simple maxim:

It's the Economy, Stupid!

For measuring the economic welfare of individuals rather than the strength of the nation, it is necessary to convert the national measure to the amount per individual, family or household. Otherwise, a nation could double its GDP and its population without anyone benefiting. Such an individual measure is real per capita GDP, obtained by dividing real GDP by the population, and this can be very useful for comparisons over time, although it contains the same weaknesses as GDP itself.

Another such measure is per capita personal income, which is the share each individual receives, on average, of total personal income. The latter parallels GNP and GDP, differing only moderately because of adjustments explained in first-year college economics courses (for example, corporate retained earnings and some taxes are deducted, while Social Security benefits, private pensions, and welfare are added).

A paradox almost always arises during recessions. Wages are stagnant, unemployment grows, and yet the media broadcast and print government reports of increasing per capita personal income.

This misleading result can be explained by considering the average income of a population of two: namely, billionaire Bill Gates and almost anyone of the rest of us. Take the total, divide by two, and you have an enormous amount. If Gates adds another billion it raises the average but does nothing for the other individual.

Rising per capita personal income during recessions reflects the gains being made by a small fraction of the population, which are enough to offset the losses of all the rest and thus bring up the average.

A per capita figure has the characteristics of a simple average (the arithmetic mean), but people’s economic well-being depends on how evenly or unevenly the fruits of production are shared in the population. For this reason, the median (that is, the value at the middle of the range, with as many lower instances below as there are higher instances above) is a better measure. It is available statistically in the form of median family income and median weekly wages and salaries.

Another complication is that when a household has more wage-earners and/or people work longer hours, often taking more than one job at a time to make ends meet (as has been happening to an increasing degree), a given amount of real income is not as beneficial as when it came from fewer hours.

--Playing with the Numbers, How So-called Experts Mislead Us about the Economy, Richard A. Stimson

Die hard, embittered supply-siders tried to effect a coup by impeaching a popular President who presided over the creation of some 35 times the number of jobs than were created under Bush Sr! The coup didn't work, of course, but the die-hards failed to get the message.

It's the Stupid Economy!

Following the closest election in the history of the nation, an election in which the winner was defined [by Scalia's 'majority opinion'] as the one getting the fewer number of votes, a mediocre, self-described 'retail politician' of few achievements and fewer ideas presumes to lead a nation while declaring:

"This would be a lot easier if this were a dictatorship...and I was the dictator!"

Those are the words of a someone who places loyalty to his ideological party and his corporate constituents above his loyalty to his nation. This is the kind of man who subscribes to "supply side" economics because it justifies his largesse to his corporate sponsors --the Enrons who bought him a public office.

But --it is hard to comprehend the near mass hysteria that accompanies debate on this issue --exploited as it was by Bush Jr's hero, Reagan, who somehow managed to make people feel good about themselves, when, perhaps, they should not have.

Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr, indeed, the GOP, must take the responsibility for the US debt which was, last time I checked, some 7.4 trillion dollars, the highest in US history, perhaps World History. Since Ronald Reagan bankrupted the nation, the US has been a net debtor nation which survives, literally, at China's whim.

You can pay off your old credit cards with new ones for as long as you can find another card willing to extend you credit! Eventually, however, someone will refuse, and you will have to cough up the cash --and, if you can't cover what's due by selling off your assets, you must declare bankruptcy. The US is bankrupt!

Why was the US able to sustain the fraud for so long? Europe was willing to buy our T-Bills because the world's fuel --oil --was traded in dollars. Nations wanting to buy oil, had first to exchange their currency for dollars as oil producer nations demanded payment in US dollars. A crack in the dike was the creation of the Iranian 'oil bourse' where oil would be traded in currencies other than the dollar. That and other less publicized moves explains US antipathy toward Iran and US determination to seize the oil fields of Iraq, specifically, the Bush/Cheney/Carlyle/Halliburton attempted "oil grab" in the Middle East --the raison d'etre for war, the plan behind the convenient pretext called '911'. The history of the US since 1980 is the history of US attempts to seize and/or dominate the world's oil resources and markets.

This was all predictable! It was shortly after the US attack and invasion of Iraq that I posted the following comment on one of NPR's long defunct 'How's Bush Doing Board'.

The most absurd invention in the history of technology --the SUV --will go out of fashion overnight --and so will jobs!

It will make the Great Depression of Herbert Hoover --another GOP charlatan --look like a casual walk in the park.

Nixon Ends US Agreement with Bretton Woods

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Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It was not so long ago that GOP Senators Chuck Hegal and Richard Lugar described the Bush administration as "incompetent"! And they were being polite. CONSERVATIVE commentator George Will referred to the Bush administration as "...the gang that couldn't shoot straight!" In Iraq, Bush's "puppet" Allawi said of WMD: "...they must be somewhere!"

WMD are where you find them! But that's not to say that WMD were ever in Iraq! It does not follow that because something is not 'here', it must be 'there'! It does not follow that because something is 'not' then something else 'is'.

The Bush regime was as utterly incompetent as it was evil. Otherwise, Dick Cheney, who supervised 911, would have just ordered his minions to 'plant' WMD in the areas his 'task force' had already targeted for theft! In retrospect, the Bush regime turns out to have been half-assed crooks, half-assed murderers, half-assed liars, a ludicrous gang that couldn't shoot straight.

It might have been Kant who said that there is a moral imperative to be intelligent. By that standard, the GOP grows more evil as it grows more stupid!

The cure that kills!

The GOP under Bush was determined to stay the course if it killed us. It killed many of us --those 'left behind' by Texas' 'dead last' educational system and millions more for whom murdering Iraqis and stealing oil was, perhaps, their career path of last resort!

It was Ronald Reagan who put a smiley face on "psychosis", i.e. the indulgence of delusion as long as it makes you feel good or, at least, better about yourself. Reagan did this for millions who returned his utterly failed administration to office. Thus, the GOP perfected the 'big lie' with research and focus groups. There was simply no way to get a GOPPER elected on fact or reason. Insanity became and remains the campaign strategy of choice for a party that could not, cannot think straight, a party that is either delusional or is dishonest and just pretends to be insane as a cover!

Wealth would trickle down, Dr Feelgood (Ronald Reagan) assured us, if we would but help him make the privileged elite even richer. Wealth didn't trickle down and never has ...but millions swooned as the aging actor made them feel better about themselves [GOP Convention, 1992, Houston]. The effect was as short-lived as are many 'feel good' remedies and sex toys. Come to think of it --every GOP administration is a circle jerk of old cronies, limited intelligences and the morally bankrupt.

'Let them eat cake and live in houses'

Ronald Reagan told us that those made homeless and forced to live in tent cities were "mentally ill". It was the middle class that had been made homeless during those Reagan nightmare years and while Carter occupied the White House, they had lived in houses. I suppose that as long as they were in a house, they were considered by the GOP to be sane. If you don't have a house, the GOP thinks you are nuts!

Official government statistics [Bureau of Labor Statistics, BEA, Census Bureau] prove that job creation and GDP were higher during the Carter years than in any GOP regime since WWII. As they would say in Texas: the GOP 'cain't carry Carter's shit!' Carter is --therefore --a GOP whipping boy not because he failed but because he succeeded.

Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents8

Johnson   3.8%
Carter    3.1
Clinton   2.4
Kennedy   2.3
Nixon     2.3
Reagan    2.1
Bush      0.6

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey

It must be pointed out that under Clinton, the recently insane went sane again and moved back into houses! The GOP never figured it out! I was surprised when the GOP failed to lambast the Democrats for the dramatic drop in tent sales during the Clinton years.

GOP thought processes are scrambled. GOP logic works backward from conclusions to premises. The late Barbara Olson said that Gary Condit was guilty of murder not because there was evidence against him but because there was none.

Similarly, it was during the 2000 election debacle that Robert Novak said Democrats were 'trying to steal this election by counting votes!' Antonin Scalia would not be outdone. He said that continuing the recount would be harmful to Bush! Indeed! Bush would have lost!

Scalia did not know when to shut the flock up, adding:

Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.

--Antonin Scalia, U. S. Supreme Court Justice

'Scuse me!

Anyone getting the fewer number of votes is supposed to lose. Scalia was just puking up something that sounded 'scholarly' but, in fact, meant: stop the count while Bush is still ahead!!

Bush v Gore majority opinions are pure bunkum, lousy law, worse legal scholarship. The BEST critique of Bush v Gore is found in the dissenting opinions, primarily Ruth Bader Ginsberg who laid bare Scalia's idiocy and hypocrisy.

I might join THE CHIEF JUSTICE were it my commission to interpret Florida law. But disagreement with the Florida court's interpretation of its own State' s law does not warrant the conclusion that the justices of that court have legislated. There is no cause here to believe that the dissenting members of Florida' s high court have done less than ''their mortal best to discharge their oath of office,'' Sumner v. Mata, 449 U. S. 539, 549 (1981), and no cause to upset their reasoned interpretation of Florida law.

JUSTICE GINSBURG, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS joins, and with whom JUSTICE SOUTER and JUSTICE BREYER join as to Part I, dissenting. [emphasis mine, EC]

GOP brains should be dissected, studied, diagnosed and then quarantined! Scalia's condition should be written up by someone like Carl Jung who estimated that as much as thirty percent of any population is certifiably psychopathic and/or delusional. The GOP, meanwhile, consulted swamis or anyone who could justify ex post facto the conclusions already drawn, the results desired but not really ever achieved.

Scalia displays psychopathic symptoms which Dr. Gustav Gilbert identified among the Nazi war criminals he studied at Nuremberg.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently claimed that the Constitution does not prohibit the execution of an innocent man provided that he has had a fair trial. While this is astonishing enough coming from a man who holds himself out as a Catholic -- even more astonishing is how Justice Scalia substitutes his personal religious beliefs for the law and the Constitution.

This extraordinary tale of what we might call substitutionalism, begins with the case of Troy Davis who was sentenced to death by the State of Georgia in 1991 for the murder of a police officer. Davis has always maintained his innocence and sought a new new trial. "Seven key witnesses have since recanted," according to an editorial in The New York Times, "and several people have charged that the main prosecution witness was the shooter. Rather than arguing that there were procedural flaws in his trial, Mr. Davis is making the more basic claim that he is innocent and that new evidence proves it."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens declared "the substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification." The majority of his colleagues agreed and ordered a federal judge in Georgia to review the new evidence and rule whether it "clearly establishes" Davis' innocence.

But Scalia and fellow traditionalist Catholic, Clarence Thomas, didn't see it that way. "This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial," Scalia opined, " but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent."

--How Do You Solve a Problem Like Scalia?

Again --Scalia, typical of his ilk, thinks 'backward'. Certainly, a 'fair trial', however desirable, is not an ideal but, like 'justice' itself, a means by which the taking of an innocent life by the state is made less likely. The state murder of a provable innocent because all the 't's' are crossed and all the 'i's' dotted is not just Kafakaesque, it typifies the endemic evil of the state itself.

A paper will be written about the many lies that the GOP has told about Social Security. Unless they are stopped, the GOP will one day raid Social Security not because it's broke but because it's not! If SS were broke, the GOP would have nothing to covet, no booty to be divided up among their base of Wall St insiders! When they have seized SS, the GOP will argue that they had to kill it to save it! Social Security 'reform' will consist of transferring more wealth to the wealthy, putting those monies into the hands of the Wall St geniuses who brought you every recession/depression since the Great Depression of 1929 and its more recent reprise under Bushco.

Against Kerry, Bush and the GOP resorted to almost every lie and every GOP fallacy. Millions apparently believed Bush when he told them that because HE failed in Iraq, we should NOT elect Kerry! Perhaps the GOP believed that because the GOP left us record budget shortfalls, deficits, and the world's largest NEGATIVE current account balance, we should never elect Democrats who left instead the more nearly balanced budgets and, often, surpluses! Big Brother must be pleased to learn that all of his 'big lies' have been put to work by the US GOP.

Are we safe yet?

Millions believed Bush when he said that we were certain to get hit by terrorists again and, seemingly in the same paragraph, we were safer! It never occurred to the media to ask: which is it? Are we safer or not?

Obviously --the GOP strategists never figured this one out: did the GOP get more votes by saying we were safer or were more votes gained by saying we were less safe? The GOP consultants and focus group gurus let them down. They never resolved the issue! With any luck, the GOP's central processor will overheat and melt down before the party destroys the US as we knew it!

Elizabeth!

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Doug Drenkow: Remembering Ted Kennedy

by Guest Author, Doug Drenkow

Love him or loathe him, Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy was an undeniably great public figure. But his greatness did not spring from who he was -- the surviving one of four, larger-than-life brothers of a powerful American family -- but from what he did -- champion the rights of all Americans, including those not born to such wealth and privilege.

Ted Kennedy was not African American, Hispanic American, Native American, or Asian American. But he championed the Voting Rights and Fair Housing laws, immigration laws, and other legislation advancing civil rights, what he called "the still unfinished business of America."

Ted Kennedy was never a person of color in South Africa. But he championed the fight against Apartheid.

Ted Kennedy was not gay or lesbian. But he championed legislation protecting the rights of homosexual Americans and funding AIDS research.

Ted Kennedy was not a girl or a woman. But he championed women's reproductive rights, health and nutrition programs for pregnant women and infants, and Title IX.

Ted Kennedy was not born into nor did he die in poverty. But he championed the minimum wage, Meals on Wheels, and countless other programs helping those far less advantaged than he.

Ted Kennedy was never a working class laborer or even a middle class wage earner. But he championed the Family Leave Act, OSHA, and the rights of labor unions.

Ted Kennedy was never denied a good education. But he championed No Child Left Behind (which President Bush failed to fund as promised) and higher education for all.

Ted Kennedy was never a serviceman in harm's way. But he came to champion the fight against the Vietnam Conflict, which he called "a monstrous outrage"; he pushed to abolish the draft and give 18-year-olds the right to vote; and he voted against the 2002 authorization for Bush to take us to war in Iraq, which he called "the best vote I've made in my 44 years in the United States Senate."

Ted Kennedy was never a victim of gun violence, like his brothers John and Bobby. But he championed gun control legislation.

Ted Kennedy was never mentally disabled, like his sister Rosemary, or until the end afflicted with cancer, like his son Edward Jr., who lost a leg. But he championed the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And as we saw towards the end, Ted Kennedy was never denied any medical care he needed. But for four decades, he championed community health care centers, cancer research, health insurance portability, the Mental Health Parity Act, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and other legislation that might lead to universal health care for all Americans, which he called "the cause of my life."

Let health care reform and all the other "progressive" -- intelligent, compassionate, and just -- causes that Sen. Kennedy devoted his legislative life to be our causes as well. What Sen. Kennedy said in his famous 1980 concession speech about the conclusion of his presidential aspirations can be said now, about the close of his life: "For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

--Doug Drenkow

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Addendum: The death of Ted Kennedy seems doubly tragic in itself and for the losses it reminds, needless, tragic losses made so by the evidence that has 'trickled down' through the years that the jihad waged against the Kennedy family on behalf of the increasingly rabid and irrational right wing was perpetrated by the CIA for a panoply of stupid, ruthless and often irrational motives. Most recently the BBC reported the CIAs involvement in the murder of Robert Kennedy.

The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.

Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House when he was shot in a kitchen pantry.

A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him.

However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time.

Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy but the autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind.

--CIA role in Kennedy killing

It is not surprising that the CIA would be implicated in the murder of RFK. It is tragic that the same scrutiny was not forthcoming sooner --when it might have done some good. It is tragic that the murder of JFK was not likewise scrutinized. It is tragic that the investigation of RFK's murder was left in the hands of an incompetent Los Angeles Police Department about which there is no adjective to describe the utter incompetence given this case. Earlier there was no adjective to describe the criminal neglect given the murder of JFK in Dallas!

The world's number one terrorist organization, the CIA has committed heinous acts of terrorism abroad, murdering critics of US foreign and domestic policies and has done it on behalf of an increasingly tiny, privileged American elite. This tiny elite of some one percent owns more than the combined wealth of 95% of the entire population. [See: the L-Curve] On behalf of this tiny, privileged base, the CIA has placed itself above law and supervision. The CIA's war on the world has claimed an estimated 12 million to 20 million victims, far more than the best estimates attributed to Adolph Hitler's 'Holocaust' of World War II. --The Existentialist Cowboy

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Shakespeare, Marlowe and the Elizabethan 911

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When Mary of Guise garrisoned an additional four thousand troops in Edinburgh, England decided that it was time to launch a pre-emptive strike based upon the "intelligence" that was available. Norfolk's position was basically this: you are either for us or against us. He proposed a pre-emptive strike to smoke out 'heretics' [terrorists?] and bring them to justice, that is to say --the rack or the noose or both!

Sir William Cecil --later Lord Burghley --admonished spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham who urged caution. Cecil's position was: 'you're either for us for you are for the heretics!'

I do not like wars. They have uncertain outcomes.

--Elizabeth I of England

Scotland, however, was never capable of launching a full scale invasion of England --either under Mary of Guise as regent or later under the rule of Mary Queen of Scots. Mary, a Catholic, was "dispatched" to Scotland because Francis II had died and Mary's mother-in-law, Catherine de Medici didn't like her. Mary, Queen of Scots was Catholic, of course, but while she was welcomed in Scotland she soon fell from grace, called a 'mermaid', slang for 'whore'. She sought asylum in England but that turned out not to have been a good idea. Hers is a sad life.

She represents one of several significant links to the Italian Renaissance. She was the daughter-in-law of Catherine de Medici. Catherine was the daughter not of Lorenzo de Medici called Il Magnifico but of Lorenzo de Medici II. It was this "second" Lorenzo to whom the exiled Machiavelli had kissed up in hopes of regaining his position of influence in Florence. He was not successful and lived out his life whoring, writing and tending his fields.

The religious "cultural" wars were worse in France, officially Catholic, where Protestants --called Huguenots --insisted upon the freedom to worship as they chose.

A brutal massacre of Huguenots in 1572 --called the Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve --was the 911 of its day, a bloody act of terrorism that divided Europe. Some six thousand or more men, women, and children, were butchered on the streets of Paris. As was the case during the Christian slaughter of Muslims in Jerusalem during the First Crusade, blood ran ankle deep through the streets of Paris. These horrific events would inspire the famous play by Christopher Marlowe, The Massacre of Paris, a work of protestant propaganda, designed to rally righteous indignation and, perhaps, justify similar atrocities against Catholics.

Shock waves reverberated throughout Europe at this act of 'terrorism'. Queen Elizabeth cancelled negotiations for the hand of King Charles's brother, Francis, Duke of Alencon. He was sent packing by the protestant Queen.

Shakespeare wrote convincingly about life in a police state; his productive life was spent in one. Shakespeare probably witnessed cousins drawn and quartered for being Catholic. The 'downfall' of his father, prominent in Stratford, may be because the elder Shakespeare still professed the "Old Faith" --Catholicism. 'Shakespeare' may have lived out his entire life "underground" only to revert to the "Old Faith" on this death bed.

'Shakespeare' railed against tyrants and got away with it because he made his points in historical context. From within a cover that James Bond might have envied, 'Shakespeare' could always plead innocence of sedition. It was only show biz!

A production of Richard II infuriated Elizabeth I who saw herself in it and suspected that it had been performed to incite public opinion against her. Performed on the very eve of Essex's planned coup d'etat, Shakespeare's 'players' had been paid to perform Richard II. It was alleged that the performance was timed to inflame the crowd, to set the stage for the Essex 'coup d'etat'.

Essex was late for his own coup d'etat --unable to decide upon a proper shirt! History may have turned upon a cuff or ruffle!

"Do ye not see that I am Richard II?" Elizabeth had said. We may suppose, then, that Shakespeare had come close to being hanged, disemboweled, drawn and/or quartered.

Later, Shakespeare and his fellow actors would perform his MacBeth --the tale of the murder of a Scottish King --for a Scottish King who had only recently become King of England. Following the Gunpowder plot, it was nervy, courageous, perhaps, foolhardy! King James himself had cried havoc and let loose the dogs of oppression --if not war. Guy Fawkes was accused of planning to blow up Parliament, an act of treason!

Suspiciously, the gunpowder was traced to the government's own store, just as Don Rumsfeld's 'missile that struck this building' may have been a US Global Hawk, not Fl 77. Then as now, the country had a "war on terrorism" to fight, a divided Kingdom to consolidate! James exhorted a near hysterical public: "We dinna need the papists now!!" He might have added: we will smoke them out or you are either with us or with the terrorists!

If the 'official conspiracy theories' are correct, Christopher Marlowe did not write Shakespeare. Marlowe, it is said, died of a knife wound in 1593 and was long dead by the time Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, Richard II, Richard III, MacBeth, The Merchant of Venice (inspired by Marlowe's "Jew of Malta"?).

Nevertheless, the 'facts' and circumstances of Marlowe's death intrigue us. The 'official theory' is that Marlowe, a known homosexual and atheist, had gone too far in Flushing, boasting of his sexual preferences, denying the divinity of Christ, declaring that he had as much right as the Crown to mint coins. Marlowe, often called 'Marley' or 'Morley', was immediately targeted for investigation, suspected of heresy and high treason.

The most famous story is that a rake, a liar, a common grifter like Richard Poley might have helped Marlowe fake his own death in Deptford in 1593. A passage from MacBeth has fueled much speculation along those lines. It is, therefore, tempting to hear the bard's voice in the following lines describing a murder and a resurrection:

The time has been
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there, an end. But now they rise again
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools.

--MacBeth, III: 4

Recent writers have claimed that the lines "...the brains were out, the man would die" reference the "murder" of Christopher Marlowe. But --if a bard has license then likewise audiences and readers. It is tempting to read much into those lines beyond MacBeth's murderous coup and his eventual fall. Whatever happened in Deptford, there was most certainly something in it for Poley, Ingram Frizer, and Nicholas Skeres --all of whom were not only on the make but helped frame Mary Queen of Scots in a 'sting' and thus groom her for the block.

Shakespeare had good reason to be a "closet" Catholic. Sir Francis Walsingham, a master spy, employed a small army of accomplished agent provocateurs to enforce the "state" religion. Christopher Marlowe may have been one of them. Both Marlowe and Poley had been spies for Walsingham, a fanatic protestant. Once a spy, it is difficult to indulge a change of heart, an attack of conscience. It may be too late to come in out of the cold.

I am not addressing authorship issues in this article, rather the politics of the time, a 'politics' that might have motivated many another to live, literally, underground as did many 'Catholics' in the Midlands. In the end, 'Shakespeare' is that body of work that we call 'Shakespeare'. Presaging A.J. Ayer and the philosophers of philosophical analysis, the bard himself put it this way: 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet'.

MacBeth

---

Liars, Crooks and Idiots: Who Wants Obama to Fail and Why

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the wake of Bush's utter failures, lies, and crimes, the left-wing, by rights, should be tucking tail and seeking cover! Not so --Rush Limbaugh, to be expected of a crooked idiot, has said he hopes Obama fails. Others have picked up the mantra!

It has been my experience in life, journalism and politics that two things among all others makes one miserable: 1) just wanting to stay alive, and 2) wishing failure or hardship upon someone else upon one's on evil, vile motives. My response: the GOP does not deserve to survive as a party, and, secondly, the GOP rose upon the backs of all those people for whom the GOP wished and, in fact, inflicted hardships.

The GOP shares this much with Nazis and other parties totalitarian inclined: the GOP cannot tell the truth that it does not represent the electorate but a shrinking elite which amounts --last time I checked --to just 1 percent of the entire population and shrinking. They make up the rest by lying about their real intentions. Even then, they are a minority of about 30 to 40 percent hardcore who share two characteristics:

• They are unintelligent and/or uninformed of the fact that the GOP does not really represent them, lies to them and takes their support for granted!
• This group is most certainly the 30 percent of any population referred to by Carl Jung who identified another distinguishing characteristic of them: their utter psychopathy

This is a 'class' of wannabes obvious for their lack of empathy, their disregard for every other group --the poor, the black, the Hispanic, anyone not a member of a country club or dubious or occultist fraternity! This group cheered the Bush attack on Iraq though Iraq had nothing to do with 911 and informed intelligent folk knew this to be the case at the time. Another sub-set was just a part of the fraud. This sub-set knew it was a fraud and supported it anyway. Both groups stayed onboard the Bush bandwagon even when it was clear that there were no WMD to be found. This group's support of Bush persisted despite the fact that it had been proven that not only were the memos dodgy, Bushco committed high treason by outing an agent of the US in the performance of her duty: Valerie Plame. Both facts meant nothing to this group of 'hard core' traitors!

A Man Who Does Not Know the Truth is Just an Idiot!

Bertolt Brecht said: 'A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook! Moderates were and remain stupid --falling for Bush's transparent lies. They are just idiots! 'He meant well', they say! But Bush qualifies for 'crookhood'! He did not mean well. He knew he was lying and he did so upon the very worst motives: he wished to enrich what he called his 'base'. They would engineer the commission of atrocities, war crimes and aggressions to satisfy their appetites. Moderates will claim that 'Bush believed what he did was right'. Utter nonsense! Bush did not and does care what is right. Bush's motives were as evil as his actions.

In the past, there were an albeit dwindling number of Republicans who may have been wrong but wrong in 'good faith'. Since the rise of Ronald Reagan, this group has become as scarce as hen's teeth! A growing number of GOP today are wrong and, if proven wrong, don't care! Being right means nothing! Winning is everything! This group will lie --knowing that it is a lie --if it gets them votes.

'Corporate fat cats' are a sub-set of this group! Nothing said by a corporation can be believed; they are 'artificial people' to whom laws and morality do not apply. An individual held responsible for the disaster at Bhopal, for example, might have been found guilty and sentenced for mass murder. Dow et al got only a slap on the wrist. A corporation is a 'legal abstraction', a mere piece of paper with a seal on it! The principles of ethics and morality mean nothing to them.

Was Mencken Right When He Said Most Americans Were 'Idiots'?

There remains a rapidly vanishing 'left wing' including what is derisively called the 'ideologically pure left'! The opposition of this ideological left vs the 'leave no crime uncommitted' right wing creates someone right of center in a yawning gulf of the near non-political 'un-washed' who failed to grasp the legal significance of Bush v Gore, has but a hazy notion of 'habeas corpus', and whose political views are an unholy amalgam of CNN and FOX! H.L. Mencken believed the people --the vast majority of Americans --to be 'idiots'!

It is fashionable to say that Bush did not fail. This position is not without merit. Certainly --like Reagan before him --he succeeded admirably in transferring vast amounts of wealth upward to the near infinitesimal 'base' which alone benefited. Among members of this group, Bush is a hero!

I consider Bush to have been a traitor to the US Constitution and the people. That he is celebrated by this ever shrinking group tells me that they have no allegiance to the Constitution, the principles of Democracy, the rule of law! The group becomes a power apart, a new oligopoly for whom you slave! If you believe otherwise, you have been lied to. Believe it, and remain deluded! If you are but a mere millionaire, you are NOT of this group and probably never will be! The Bush family's rise to prominence among this group, you can be sure, was an on-going Faustian bargain.

Bush Jr told us that terrorists 'attacked us' because 'they jest hate freedom'', but Bush should have added: 'I hate you because you are free but you will not be for long.' Moderates look at Bush's torture policy, and try to justify it ex post facto. They desperately seek an end to justify the torture means! The end, rather, is nothing less than the roll back of the Bill of Rights, the establishment of a right wing dictatorship. The means by which this is achieved are endless wars based on lies; the means are getting rid of the Clinton surpluses, getting rid of the economy, getting rid of the American standard of living. The 'end' is the more Authoritarian, perhaps totalitarian society!

The Result of Fascism/Nazism: A Nation of Slaves and Elites

This brings us to the ideological underpinnings of the GOP. A clue be found among what Bush himself called his 'base', specifically the richest one percent of the nation. How do they rationalize their positions of privilege and entitlement? A careful study --if it were possible --might reveal a panoply of claptrap from half-baked Hegel/Nietzche where the 'superman' meets the 'absolute state'. If one believes the state absolute, it is but a quantum leap to eugenics, concentration camps, genocide! It is but a quantum leap to dictatorship and aggressive wars!

The American industrialists who supported and who joined I.G. Farben, Fritz Thysen in bankrolling Hitler did so because they agreed with Hitler's agenda for Germany and the world. Many of these companies endorsed George W. Bush for same or similar reasons. Hitler would 'out-source' the murder of jews and might have seized the oil fields of the Middle East had he directed Rommel to forget about North Africa and attack east of the Suez.

Like Nixon, George Bush was deeply involved with supporting the Nazis in the Republican's closet. In fact, support for the Nazis was a Bush family tradition which goes back more than six decades and, once again, to Allen Dulles.

Loftus and Aarons write: "The real story of George Bush starts well before he launched his own career. It goes back to the 1920s, when the Dulles brothers and the other pirates of Wall Street were making their deals with the Nazis.

. . .

THE BUSH-DULLES-NAZI CONNECTION

"George Bush's problems were inherited from his namesake and maternal grandfather, George Herbert 'Bert' Walker, a native of St. Louis, who founded the banking and investment firm of G. H. Walker and Company in 1900. Later the company shifted from St. Louis to the prestigious address of 1 Wall Street.

"Walker was one of Hitler's most powerful financial supporters in the United States. The relationship went all the way back to 1924, when Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist, was financing Hitler's infant Nazi party.

...

Randy Davis, Nazis in the attic

The "America First" movement in the US prominently included Charles Lindbergh but was, in fact, the very face of American 'fascism'. Lindbergh was a Nazi sympathizer. It must not be forgotten that Henry Ford's portrait occupied a place of 'honor' in Hitler's new Chancellery. Bush's grandfather led a failed coup attempt to unseat FDR. It was an act of treason!

A large and wealthy segment of the US did not wish a war with Hitler. Those who supported Hitler included William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Mellon and Irenee du Pont, a Hitler devotee who advocated a race of supermen. Major US companies had ties to Hitler. They aided and abetted the rise of the Third Reich. They included Alcoa, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Du Pont, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and many, many more.

WASHINGTON - After 60 years of inattention and even denial by the U.S. media, newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking perative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his 'enemy national' partners.

"The documents also show that Bush and his colleagues, according to reports from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and FBI, tried to conceal their financial alliance with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, a steel and coal baron who, beginning in the mid-1920s, personally funded Adolf Hitler's rise to power by the subversion of democratic principle and German law.

"Furthermore, the declassified records demonstrate that Bush and his associates, who included E. Roland Harriman, younger brother of American icon W. Averell Harriman, and George Herbert Walker, President Bush's maternal great-grandfather, continued their dealings with the German industrial baron for nearly eight months after the U.S. entered the war.

--Nazi-Link Confirmed, John Buchanan, New Hampshire Gazette, Oct. 10, 2003

I have not been able to find on the net the famous picture of American Nazis at a funeral of German Hindenburg disaster victims. In procession by the caskets, they are all giving the departed the famous Nazi salute.

"Fascism is on the march today in America. Millionaires are marching to the tune. It will come in this country unless a strong defense is set up by all liberal and progressive forces... A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government, and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. Aboard ship a prominent executive of one of America's largest financial corporations told me point blank that if the progressive trend of the Roosevelt administration continued, he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism to America.

---William Dodd, US Ambassador to Germany, 1938

All in the Fascist Family

Prescott Bush, Bush Jr's grandfather, was made rich by the business he did with Hitler --a trade that continued well after the US had entered the war. The death biz made the Bush family fortune!

After the war, the Nazis changed neither stripes nor swastikas. Many came to the US where they had careers in business or in the government --namely the CIA and the space program. Many of them were rocket scientists including Dr. Werner von Braun --the father of the US Space Program. He was a card carrying Nazi.

Despite being under constant surveillance and enduring relentless attacks on his character, von Braun had nothing but praise for his adopted country. When one person wrote him, suggesting that severe measures be taken with people who opposed national interests, he wrote back, “Years of direct exposure to the Hitler regime, and its excesses, taught me a few unforgettable lessons and made me solidly opposed to any form of government which would deprive man of human dignity.”

...

In private, however, von Braun was willing to talk. When an acquaintance wrote him about the accusations, von Braun replied, “... yes, I was a member of the Nazi party and the SS. I would appreciate it if you would treat this as confidential ... for the sake of NASA.”

A high official at NASA offered his view. “We lied when we brought von Braun over here, and then told him to keep his mouth shut. Can you imagine him holding a press conference to explain why he joined the Nazi Party? That would have been the end of him and the space program. The poor S.O.B., didn‘t have a chance! He just had to stand there and take it. People say von Braun used us, but the truth is ... we used him.“

--The FBI Files of Werner von Braun

Journalist Russ Bellant investigated how the GOP recruited and with help from convicted Nazi war collaborator, Lazlo Pasztor, created a 'network' of ex-Nazis cum Republicans. Pasztor, founding chairman of the Republican Heritage Groups Council was connected with the Hungarian Arrow Cross '... a group that helped liquidate Hungary's Jews'. He served as adviser to Paul Weyrich.

Two months before the November 1988 presidential election, a small newspaper, Washington Jewish Week, disclosed that a coalition for the Bush campaign included a number of outspoken Nazis and anti-Semites. The article prompted six leaders of Bush's coalition to resign.

According to Russ Bellant, Nazi collaborators involved in the Republican Party included:

(1) Radi Slavoff, GOP Heritage Council's executive director, and head of "Bulgarians for Bush." Slavoff was a member of a Bulgarian fascist group, and he put together an event in Washington honoring Holocaust denier, Austin App.

(2) Florian Galdau, director of GOP outreach efforts among Romanians, and head of "Romanians for Bush." Galdau was once an Iron Guard recruiter, and he defended convicted Nazi war criminal Valerian Trifa.

(3) Nicholas Nazarenko, leader of a Cossack GOP ethnic unit. Nazarenko was an ex-Waffen SS officer.

(4) Method Balco, GOP activist. Balco organized yearly memorials for a Nazi puppet regime.

(5) Walter Melianovich, head of the GOP's Byelorussian unit. Melianovich worked closely with many Nazi groups.

(6) Bohdan Fedorak, leader of "Ukranians for Bush." Fedorak headed a Nazi group involved in anti-Jewish wartime pogroms.

The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article on the Bush team's inclusion of Nazis (David Lee Preston, "Fired Bush backer one of several with possible Nazi links," September 10, 1988.) The newspaper also ran an investigative series on Nazi members of the Bush coalition. The articles confirmed that the Bush team included members listed by Russ Bellant.

Journalist Martin A. Lee, has written for The Nation, Rolling Stone, The San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. In "The Beast Reawakens," Lee confirms that during both the Reagan and Bush years, the Republican Party's ethnic outreach arm recruited members from the Nazi ©migr© network.

Lee says that the Republican Party's ethnic outreach division had an outspoken hatred of President Jimmy Carter's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), an organization dedicated to tracking down and prosecuting Nazi war collaborators who entered this country illegally. Former Republican Pat Buchanan attacked Carter's OSI after it deported a few suspected Nazi war criminals.

--Carla Binion, Government Investigated Bush Family's Financing Of Hitler

Over sixty years ago the US was plunged into World War II, a war remembered as one in which the US defended "freedom" against the horrors of fascism and Nazism. We must ask ourselves how this period in our history will be remembered in sixty years? Will the US have opposed the Nazi specter abroad only to embrace it at home? Every Bush/GOP victim says we did precisely that!

Near the end of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union was about to self-destruct, Boris Yeltsin made a very revealing comment to the US government. He said, "We are going to do something very terrible to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy."

What did he mean? The 50-year long Cold War had proved extremely useful for both the Soviet and US elites. The "Soviet threat" justified gigantic military budgets and a world system of US military bases. It legitimized US attacks on popular revolutionary movements in Central America and Indochina and other places too numerous to mention and the installation of US client regimes by the CIA in Iran and Guatemala and elsewhere. The "Soviet threat" gave much-needed cover to repression in the US against militant trade unionists and against the early civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement. The Soviets, of course, used the "capitalist threat" in similar ways, to justify anti-democratic repression in Hungary and Poland and throughout Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union itself. If the Cold War had not existed, Soviet and US ruling elites would have had to invent it.

The use of war by ruling elites for social control is hardly new. In a recent article in Le Monde, Philip Golub says, "Indeed, every war has both a foreign and a domestic agenda; Aristotle [writing 2400 years ago] reminds us that a tyrant declares war 'to deny his subjects leisure and to impose on them the constant need for a leader.''

The US has needed a new Cold War to take the place of the Soviet threat for over ten years. Sure, the government tried to pump up Saddam Hussein as "worse than Hitler," but how seriously can you take an enemy which is defeated in a few weeks with fewer than 80 American battle deaths? The government tried to scare us with images of "rogue states" like North Korea, but North Korea is on life support. Not a very credible threat.

--A New Democracy Editorial: 'Is it Realy a War on Terrorms?'

It should surprise no one that the likes of Rush Limbaugh want Obama to fail. Clinton was not impeached because he was crooked or incompetent but because he clearly was not! Clinton was targeted not because he failed but because he succeeded as NO GOP President had succeeded since World War II. The Limbaugh dominated GOP wants Obama to fail not because he might turn out to be a lousy President but a great one! A great Democratic President should, by rights, portend the demise of GOP bait and switch Nazism, stealth fascism, Trojan Horse dictatorships!

---

GOP STILL Plans to Steal Your Social Security

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The ascension (apotheosis?) of every GOP 'President' is inevitably accompanied by much GOP salivating over the prospects of getting their greedy, crooked mitts on your Social Security. Thus it was just over eight years ago when George W. Bush assumed (and I do mean 'assumed') the highest office in the land. Rest assured, despite the financial implosions of late, the GOP still plots to rob you blind, screw you silly and leave you a worthless slug on the night stand!

The GOP licked its greedy chops as the stupidest man, the grossest idiot since Warren Harding raised his hand and dared to swear on a holy book! The same gang of mendacious robber barons who made fortunes short-selling stocks on 911, profited from mass murder, and, later, plunged this nation into a new 'Great Depression' saw in the rise of George W. Bush another opportunity to steal your Social Security and buy Baltic Avenue with it!

Unlike GOP's 'trickle down' theory --pie in the sky but only if you are already very, very wealthy --Social Security did precisely what it was intended to do! It lived up to its billing, perhaps exceeded it! It is endangered not because it failed but because it succeeded! It is targeted now because the upper one percent of the population which owns more that about 95 percent of the rest of us combined is eager to seize control of ALL of the nation's wealth. Keep in mind --these are the arrogant bankers and snot nosed whiz kids who short sold stocks on 911!

Social Security is the bright spot. It has maybe some mild financial problems, several decades out, and here we are—he [Bush] wants a crisis there, partly to distract from the very real crises in other places, and there you go.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Krugman, can you explain how Social Security works? Because it’s not just President Bush. If he was raising questions about it with a little megaphone on the steps of the White House, it would not have the kind of effect it was having without all of the media, it seems, amplifying the idea that Social Security is broken. It’s bankrupt.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Right. And of course, that’s really a question about the media, not about Social Security. Social Security is a program which has been traditionally run. It looks like a retirement fund, and it is not exactly. What it really is is a government program with a dedicated tax. We take the payroll tax and it’s used to pay benefits to retirees. And 20-plus years ago, the commission led by Alan Greenspan said, you know, we are going to have this problem as the baby boomers reach retirement age. We will have a higher ratio of retirees to workers, and we better get ready for it. Social Security, the payroll tax was increased. There were some other things, a small rise in the retirement age set in motion. So that Social Security would run a surplus, which would be used to accumulate a trust fund, and this would tithe us over, some ways into the aging of the population. And that on its own accounting is working just fine. I mean, one of the things that we need to know is that the estimates of the day at which the trust fund runs out, just keep on receding further into the future, because the program is doing so well at running surpluses.

--Paul Krugman, Economist, Published Comments on Democxracy Now

It was not sufficient that GOP policies had enriched only the very, very rich. As a result, just one percent of the nation now owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined! But the greedy bastards wanted to own all of it! They wanted your retirement! They wanted the monies you paid into Social Security over the course of your lifetime! Joe the Plumber recently called Social Security a joke --not because he understands why it is coveted by the GOP. He is merely the recipient of the 'memo'. Stealing your Social Security is still very high on the GOPs list of great things it wants to fuck up permanently! We should take Joe and Palin seriously. The world is endangered by its idiots.

Joe the Plumber may be the GOP 'plug in' du jour! They act in consort like the Borg. They are set up in 'cells' like the 'terrorists' they would have us believe they hate so much. The GOP is not loyal to the principles of our founding; GOP attack dogs attack 'liberals', progressives, and the just plain ornery folk--like ME! And for all the wrong reasons! Because of this 'backward thinking', these misplaced values and priorities we keep losing unwinnable wars of naked aggression, wars that should never have begun in the first place. Because of it, we are now financially and morally bankrupt! Now --the GOP wants a bailout: YOUR Social Security!

Now --what if the GOP had succeeded already? Simply --the Social Security trust fund would be collapsed and millions of seniors would be lucky to find a place to set up a tent!

Let's put the GOP's fraudulent scheme to steal Social Security into perspective.

Social Security routinely runs a surplus, call it a profit if you will! It is this 'surplus' that is coveted by Wall Street! They want to plunder your monies as Bush plunder the taxes you pay every year as a good citizen! The GOP and Wall Street barons want to 'speculate' with the only retirement that millions will ever have! They want to enrich themselves on the interest and/or returns! Do you really think these greedy, latter-day Gordan Gecko's have your interests at heart? Not a frickin' chance!

During George W. Bush's first term I wrote and posted the following on NPR's infamous 'How's Bush Doing' board:

The crisis in 2015 -2018 won't be Social Security! It will be, rather, the utter bankruptcy of the United States and the profligate, incompetent policies of George Bush!

Now --if you are under 20 and still believe yourself immortal, my remarks will mean little to you. But here they are: knowing what we now now about the crookedness, the utter incompetence of an administration that I believe betrayed the people and their Constitution, aren't you glad we did NOT entrust those bastards with farming out the only retirement that millions might ever see to the greedy, shallow, mendacious liars that run Wall Street with their fascist buddies in DC?

You Give Me Real Money and I Will Give You a Worthless Piece of Paper!

It was said at the time that the Wall Street experts would actually turn a profit on YOUR money. Oh! I get it! I give you my money and you give me a worthless piece of paper! Uh Huh! I would have liked to write that time and events proved me correct but, in fact, the crash happened even sooner than I expected or predicted. Anyway --aren't you glad Bush did not steal your money?

It was said that the experts on Wall Street could 'invest' your monies. Sure! So can I Send me a check? I have lots of places I could put YOUR money! Fact is, you don't need no steenkin experts! Everyone can set up private accounts while you still have a job, that is before the GOP economy crashed and burned. My advice at the time was:

...you can still have Social Security to fall back on should GOP policies utterly destroy the stock market.

Keep in mind that I wrote that italicized sentence in 2003. I saw what the GOP had in mind and what has, in fact, come to pass. Given the global financial debacle, what logical rationale is there for incurring an additional debt of some 4.5 trillion dollars? Would it have anything to do with the fact that the truly elite (just one percent of the US population) are currently picking up the bargains and lickin' their greedy chops. They are as we write feasting upon the carcasses!

The Cure'll Kill Ya!

Right wing assaults on Social Security are of the 'stealth' kind, advertised as efforts to 'save' Social Security! As we would say in Texas: "Wah hale! The cure'll kill ya''! The assumption that the GOP wants to save Social Security or the retirement of this nation's elderly in ANY form is naive. As much was admitted by smarmy Dick Armey who admitted to Wall Street Week that he had been trying to abolish Social Security for the last thirty years.

There are several things wrong with "Privatization" in other words "corporatization":

• Why 'corporatize Social Security when it is, in fact, working just fine as it is'? If I should want a 'provate account' what is preventing me from doing so? When millions have recently lost every penny in 'private accounts', what --please tell me --is the attraction they hold? What raison d'etre exists but to further enrich the cronies on Wall Street?
• All government need do to fix Social Security is to rescind the profligate tax cuts since Ronald Reagan, tax cuts which failed to create a single new job, failed to increase tax revenues, failed to increase capital expenditures and expansions as promised by "supply side" bullshit!
• "Privatization", in fact, 'corporatization', is just GOPSPEAK for you give me real money which will enrich ONLY Wall Street insiders and I will give you a worthless piece of paper!
• Besides --Social Security may very well be the only government program that is currently turning a "profit"!

There is NO crisis!

Social Security was an easy target of conservative demagogues. (I know --that's redundant) Slimy ilk like Rush Limbaugh are not merely liars, they attack reason itself, the very processes by which fact and truth are determined. Latter day "conservatives" think differently and, therefore, arrive at false conclusions for the wrong reasons. Listening to Limbaugh, one is tempted to believe that "two" versions of the human brain have evolved. But take heart --when "God" passed out brains, "we" got the version that works. Limbaugh and his adoring ilk got the one that will be recalled, version 13.666!

Those who would make a bargain with Satan will have to live --and die --with a really, really bad deal!

During the so-called "Republican Revolution", when the GOP staged a budget stand-off with Clinton, it was clear that this new breed of so-called "conservatives", in truth, subversive radicals, viewed the long practiced art of compromise as synonymous with defeat. Their inflexibility backfired! Clinton won, leading to the eventual and much deserved disgrace and downfall of Newt Gringrich. Would that he had taken the GOP with him into hell!Someone forgot to place a convenient revolver on his nightstand! But Newt would not have done the right thing.

Rush and his ilk have popularized fallacy, celebrated anti-intellectualism, and sought to make it 'cool' to be stupid! Limbaugh wallows in sloppy thinking and appeals to our most ignoble motives. He personifies demagoguery, oozes duplicity! He is smarm itself. Hearing Limbaugh, one does one's best to suppress the urge to puke or walk on all-fours!

Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world.

--Werner Herzog

Herzog has not yet looked into the eyes of a gopper, more terrifying than chickens! It may sound oxymoronic to speak of 'intelligent conservatives', neither intelligent nor truly conservative. Real conservatives would never have tolerated the astronomical deficits run up by Mssrs Reagan and Bush Jr. There must surely be some conservatives still smart enough to understand that the demagogic demonization of 'liberals, liberals' leads inexorably to a one-party, fascist, totalitarian state. Therefore, we must conclude that that is, in fact, the hidden agenda. They only pretend to be stupid and, admittedly, they do a good job of it.

Conservatives prefer a one party, fascist state in which the office of President is replaced with 'Der Fuhrer'! Will they be so enthusiastic 'when the last law [is] was down' and Der Fuhrer turns 'round on them? A fanatic GOP 'fuhrer' need only cite Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes who said "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" to justify the round up, encampment and wholesale disposal of people they don't like!

Save the children

Throughout the conservative movement and the ranks of Limbaugh's mis-informed minions there is an appalling ignorance of history that betrays this nation's utter failure to educate its young. Texas is the best example and most notable. Under Bush Jr and his successor, Rick Perry, Texas now beats out Mississippi for DEAD LAST in 'high school graduations'.

Find the Cockroach

Failing to graduate high school is a guarantee that you will lead a life of poverty or crime or both! It is not coincidental that Texas --thanks to the GOP --is called the 'gulag state of Texas for the growth of its corporate run prison system, in truth a fascist gulag that is paid handsomely from the public trough to warehouse the millions of children who were --in fact --left behind to starve, fail and be warehoused by the fascists in Texas. To save these children, I urge that Texas be invaded and occupied until a responsible and competent government can lock up the current fascist regime and restore the 'rule of law' there.

There is an outrageous lack of outrage about this corporate take-over and occupation of Texas. What can be said of a population so addled, misinformed, uniformed and soporific that it doesn't even notice when it has been screwed without so much as a tip on the table? Does anyone in Texas care that their state has been stolen and is now run by Nazis? Clue for Texans: the corporate fat cats in skyscrapers in New York and Houston do not give a shit about you nor Hank Williams nor Larry Gatlin! You've been had! Wake the fuck up!

The American psychologist tasked with preventing Nazi war criminals from offing themselves before they could be duly hanged, said that "evil" was the utter lack of empathy! You find precisely that throughout the GOP rank and file --Rush Limbaugh's adoring throng. These 'people' defended torture and and state-sponsored murder at Abu Ghraib! They are short-sighted. They will not understand that if anyone can be victimized by unrestrained state power, so too, can they! No one is safe as long as a fascist holds so much as the office of dog catcher!

Tomorrow Belongs to Me!

People have an unrealistic idea of "evil"! Apparently, evil is a cartoon caricature --gleaming eyes, horns, pitchfork, snarls, drooling, and incantations to Satan, Bush Jr, or the Skull and Bones. No! Evil is Reinhard Heydrich conducting a gourmet luncheon meeting of Reich bureaucrats about how best to make legal the mass murder of European jews! Evil is Dick Cheney having a meeting with this 'Energy Task Force' and carving up the oil fields of Iraq before Bush's 911 would give them the pretext to invade! On both occasions, I believe, a quite civilized lunch and coffee were served amid veddy, veddy witty conversation! As Hannah Arendt said, evil is banal!

Had Heydrich and his Nazis succeeded, they would have gloated, patted each other on the back! What jolly good fellows they all were! They would have shared a few brews and toasted the 'Final Solution'. Heil Mein Fuhrer! They might have sang: Deutschland Uber Alles, The Nazi National Anthem or Tomorrow Belongs to Me! They were, after all, just good ol' boys ridding the world of 'vermin'. Or --they were all just good ol' boys hoping to get the terrorists from between them and 'all that oil!"

The GOP celebration of shortsighted, pyrrhic victories will in the longer term destroy America if it has not does so already. Certainly --the America that I knew is already destroyed. The Bill of Rights means very little even now with Obama's victory. I have yet to hear a resounding denunciation from this administration with regard to Bush's assault upon the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. America without the Bill of Rights is nothing! Without the Bill of Rights, the US is just another huge, unfeeling, corporate dominated bureaucracy!

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it!

--Georges Santayana, American Philosopher

We are, thus, condemned! Humankind has been at war since our evolution beyond the "hunter/gatherer" stage. Since someone decided that the land upon which he grew a crop was his, war has been incessant. Because "winners" procreate, the "war" gene is reinforced over generations. That explains why history repeats itself and 'facts' mean very little or nothing at all! DNA will trump reason and facts every time. Those most enthralled by inherited and irrational war mongering are of the same demographic segment who would discount evolution on religious or superstitious grounds.

The 'conservative' hostility towards intellectuals is blind to obvious parallels with other fascist states past and present.

Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

--H. L. Mencken

And Voltaire said:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities!

--Voltaire

Voltaire's statement is not just a well-phrased aphorism chosen because it sounds 'literary'. It could be stated as a mathematical formula when 'atrocities' are actually counted and made a 'statistic', when popular myths and/or outright lies and falsehoods are identified and correlated demographically! Think of it! With such a formula, an enlightened state could identify those states and territories most likely to nurture a state-sponsored mass murder, a state sponsored torture, a state sponsored war of naked aggression as we have most recently witnessed by the United States of America. My country! May God help us all!

At last, I recommend one read Voltaire. When Voltaire learned of Catholic atrocities in Toulouse, he literally papered Europe with his polemics --so outraged was he! Voltaire was no effete 'scholoar'. Today, he would be a kick ass blogger, an activist, a gonzo, counter-culture journalist like Hunter Thompson, or, more likely, an acerbic latter-day H. L. Mencken pooh-poohing fundies down in Dayton! He would be a thorn in the GOP's sorry hide. He would skewer the liars on K-Street and Wall Street! He would laugh at the devil himself and wither him with a phrase!

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