On Liberty: More Relevant Than Ever

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

John Stuart Mill's classic essay "On Liberty" deals with the issue of "civil liberties" not the metaphysical issue of "free will". In context, it would appear that most attacks on civil liberties originate from within the right wing and, more specifically, tyrannical police states and/or aristocratic rule. Mill addresses threats against liberty from within the institutions of democracy. The issue is especially relevant when widespread domestic wiretapping and Government ordered surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Early 'libertarians' sought to limit the power 'rulers' over those governed. While many believed that rule by a popularly elected government addressed the issue, Mill, however, identified a need to limit the power of elected governments and officials as well. In 'On Liberty', Mill raises basic issues: "who should rule?" What are the limits of government power"? How may the people establish limits on the power that government may exercise over minorities and individuals? His work is more relevant now than ever.

Mill argues that, as an ideal, "government of the people" is often not the case in fact. Those asserting the power of the government -elected officials, bureaucrats, the judiciary -often develop their own interests, influenced as they often are by 'constituencies' at odds with the general interests of 'the people' and, in particular, the legitimate interests of individuals.

Mill makes no distinction between a tyranny of one and a tyranny of many. A tyrannical majority running roughshod over the rights of individuals and minorities is no less a tyrant simply because it is a majority or because it is elected, or because it is elected by a majority.

Mill believed that while society may not tolerate criminal behavior, for example, society may not legitimately interfere with or suppress non-conforming behaviors indiscriminately or simply because a majority may not approve. What then are the powers that society may legitimately exercise over the individual? Mill answers:

"The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

-J.S. Mill, On Liberty

James Madison -called the "Father of the Constitution" -may have anticipated Mill's ideas in his draft of the Bill of Rights --the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Implicit in the Bill of Rights is the recognition that the power of the state must be limited! A majority --unchecked --is frequently a blunt instrument capable of oppressing and repressing the rights of individuals and minority groups alike. The Bill of Rights addresses this issue by guaranteeing "due process of law", limiting state power over individuals and groups, guaranteeing that groups and individuals may speak freely, worship freely.

The Fourth Amendment specifically is a promise that our government made to us in its very founding:

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

---Fourth Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution

Let's make something abundantly clear: there are no "inherent powers", "implicit authorizations" that would, in any way, overturn, limit, or repeal the Fourth Amendment. Some politicians, perhaps many, are wrong about that; some may have deliberately lied. Moreover, Congress may not overrule the Fourth Amendment with statutory law. Constitutional Law is supreme and provisions in the Bill of Right are valid until amended as stated in the Constitution itself. Widespread domestic surveillance is illegal whatever may be done by Congress ex post facto. Until the Constitution is amended, such warrantless surveillance will remain illegal. At last, ex post facto laws, themselves, are expressly forbidden by the Constitution.

Mill is all the more remarkable for his insight into issues that remain contemporary. In every literate criticism of "special interest groups", PAC's, the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the Military/Industrial Complex, one sees the lasting influence of John Mill.

On Liberty is essential reading for anyone interested in law, the principles of government, political science, political philosophy, indeed, freedom itself. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in learning about the intellectual underpinnings of Anglo-American civil liberties.

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Post Cards from the GOP Wasteland

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

During the catastrophic regimes of Bill Clements, George Bush Jr and Rick Perry --Texas came to be called the gulag state. What the GOP has in mind for the rest of the nation, was very nearly accomplished in Texas. Under criminal and incompetent GOP management, Texas was very nearly reduced to third-world status --an outcome resulting from Bush/Perry neglect and disdain for public education, the only education that those not born to wealth have a chance of acquiring. The 'elites' would deny you even that!

As a result, justice in Texas is applied inequitably. Minorities --primarily black and hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system and under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system where 'justice' is often dispensed inequitably.

For example, blacks represent just 12% of the Texas population but comprise 44% of the total incarcerated population. Whites make up about 58% of Texas' total population, but only 30% of the prison and jail population.
Clearly --the GOP does not care about minorities. Neglect of this type is never 'benign'. At some point, when a vast majority of minorities are determined --statistically --to have been 'targeted' the word 'genocide' may be accurate and appropriate.

A recent Pew study fingers a trend that had been embraced by Bush's Texas --the rapid outsourcing of prison construction and management throughout the US. Over this period, CRIME RATES HAVE RISEN.

It was under the incompetent rule of then Governor George W. Bush that Texas became known as the gulag state of Texas for having turned a social problem into another GOP 'profit center', scam, get rich quick scheme. It became just another way in which GOP blood-suckers would continue to feed at the public trough. As a result, convicts are no longer people but a source of cheap, slave labor. Guilt or innocence is of no concern to robber barons of corporate Texas, corporate AmeriKa. It is an Orwellian nightmare of waste, graft, and fascism in which no one is held to account.

To be expected, the GOP blames its many victims. That is typical, symptomatic of the U.S. right wing. It was predicted by both Carl Jung, psychologist, and Hanah Arendt who founded the New School in New York. Jung said that some 30 percent of every population is certifiably psychotic and utterly without empathy. Hanah Arendt, who covered the war crimes trial of Herr Adoph Eichmann, arrived at some conclusion with respect to 'evil'. She described 'evil' as 'banal'. In both Jung and Dr. Gustav Gilbert 'evil' is always caused and/or accompanied by an 'utter lack of empathy' [see Carl Jung and Gustav Gilbert].

It is interesting that those studied seemed invariably to seek out an external validation, perhaps to assuage their increasing anxieties. For example, Republicans adored Ronald Reagan as Nazis adored Hitler. A Republican attending the GOP National Convention in Houston in the early 90s, swooned of Reagan: "...he made us feel good about ourselves"! During the Third Reich, Hitler had done precisely that for psychopaths and bigots!

The various governments of the United States are exempt or above similar criticisms. The most obvious example is the U.S. genocide against the many native populations that had settled the North American continent several thousands of years before the continent was known by Europeans to exist.

Many of these people had created advanced civilizations. The Mandans, for example, had built large cities from stable populations! The same is true of several western tribes who built permanent CITIES in the American west. Many ruins of these impressive cities still exist. I visited one and explored it. People still live in it though its construction most certainly pre-dates the arrival of the Spanish. It's called ACOMA. Literally a city in the sky, it looks like something from an Edgar Rice Burroghs story. The residents have a school, 'high-rise' adobe homes, an impressive church dating to the Spanish occupation.

And all of this was accomplished with no help whatsoever from 'Europeans'.
Another example of great intellect among the Native Americans is CHIEF JOSEPH BRANT of the Mohawks. He attended Moor's Charity School for Indians in Lebanon, Connecticut, mastered English and translated English works for distribution throughout his community. He read western history and literature and became an interpreter for an Anglican Missionary.

Another famous Native American Chief went to London. On 13 June 1892, the American Sioux Indian Chief, Long Wolf, was buried at Brompton Cemetery. On one of my many soujourns to London, I made it a point to find the cemetery on Brompton road where I paid my respects to the great Native American chief who is buried there.

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The GOP Record in Texas May Predict the Future

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

If Texas is the GOP 'lab' experiment as some have said then one may be justified in drawing several conclusions:

• In TX, the GOP deliberately neglected education; high school graduations dropped to dead last (nationwide) under Bush/Perry;

• As a result, crime rates rose; Dallas became the nation's murder capital;
• Only the CORPORATE OWNED prison system benefited from the resulting rise in crime which the GOP had the NERVE to demagogue!

The GOP is not a political party; it's a crime syndicate with characteristics of a kooky whacked-out cult! Now they want to apologize to the ruling 1 percent that their stupid, incompetent economic policies created by

1. exporting U.S. jobs and industry to China;
2. creating a vast gulf between rich and poor;
3. attacking Detroit, a city that had been the center of a VIABLE U.S. auto industry.

The GOP would make quick work of that! Now we import cars from Japan. And how about Pittsburgh? It was at one time the center of world steel production. Alas ---the GOP POX struck there as well. You will find Japan making and exporting their steel and employing their work force in the process. If you wish to see the result of GOP policy, specifically, the effect of GOP incompetence upon America's stand in the world, you need only visit the CIA's World Fact Book. China is at the very top of the list with the World's Largest Positive Current Account Balance. That ranking is the result of the fact that China manufactures products and, notably, sells them to the U.S. by way of Wal-Mart.

Now --scroll down to the bottom of the list. That's where you will find the United States, dead last with the World's largest NEGATIVE Current Account Balance, formerly called the Balance of Trade Deficit.

The GOP deserves NO respect and gets none from me. The GOP should run for office in either China or Japan as both nations have benefited greatly from the policies of the GOP! Certainly --the U.S. of A has not benefited but suffered at the hands of a 'party' that is either crooked or incompetent or both!

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Magic Bullet, My Ass!

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

I once spent several hours with a famous witness to the murder of JFK ---Rosemary Willis, often called the little girl in the red dress. She is easy to spot in the Zapruder films, running along the south side of Elm street just ahead of her father, Phil Willis. Phil Willis was taking 35mm slide films of the motorcade. Rosemary is seen running ahead and, suddenly, stopping! Rosemary showed me her father's slides and a double-page center-spread from one of the Willis photos depicting the Grassy Knoll.

Her father's photos had appeared in Look Magazine. One of the photos became a double-page spread. Rosemary and I placed the spread on a light table beside the original photo which had only recently been released by the FBI. Interestingly, those photos were seized AFTER Look had published.

"Do you notice anything unusual', she asked me.

I looked again! It hit me like a brick! In the original slide there was NO train visible between the columns of the pergola.

But the train was CLEARLY visible in the Look magazine spread. Why? Rosemary explained that AFTER Look had published its piece the FBI came calling. They SEIZED all of Willis' original photos. When she showed those photos to me, they had only recently been released, having been in FBI possession for years. The FBI --playing the role of 'Big Bro' --did not want people to verify that there had, indeed, been a train on the tracks at the very time that the fatal bullets were being fired.

But why?

Then I recalled the 'tramps' who had been rousted earlier while hanging out in box cars behind the Grassy Knoll. Those tramps, as you recall, included Frank Sturgis and, the man whom I believe lead a team of assassins --E. Howard Hunt. As a result of my time spent discussing this with Rosemary, I became increasingly convinced that a team of shooters had targeted JFK; the box cars, the area behind the picket fence became a secured staging area.

I had always believed that the fatal shot, the horrible head shot seen in the Zapruder film, had come from the front, the grassy knoll, the significance of which The The FBI seemed eager to cover up. I held evidence of this in my hand!

Incidentally, just prior to the shooting George H.W. Bush was photographed with his hands in his pocket 'hanging around' the front entrance of the TSBD. I am convinced that I have met at least one of the perpetrators of murder and high treason.

Method! Motive! Opportunity!

This case, this evidence should have gone to a federal grand jury! Instead, the evidence was destroyed and tampered with to PROTECT the guilty and murderous traitors who pulled it off.

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If Only ONE Fact Can Shoot Down G.W. Bush's Conspiracy Theory of 911 This is the One!

By Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

A 757 is said to have struck the Pentagon on 911! If that is true, then a miracle occurred on 911: an airliner vanished completely at the Pentagon!  It was a miracle that competes with the Old Testament, a miracle that defied the law of the Conservation of Matter and Energy.

The most obvious miracle involves aircraft engines. A 757 has two large turbo-fans made of hardened industrial steel capable of withstanding very high temperatures inside the engine. They would have survived any fire short of a nuke! They may be capable of suviving a nuke. But kerosene (jet fuel) --no sweat!

Only ONE survived and was found

The only turbo-fan found and photographed is about 1/3 the size of a 757 turbo-fan. It is, however, the right size to have been left behind by a U.S. GLOBAL HAWK, a payload carrying missile that had earlier been flown from the American west coast to Australia (where it landed) completely by remote control. It was the Global Hawk --not an airliner --that crashed into the Pentagon. Even Rumsfeld referred to '...the missile that struck this building."

Rumsfeld was right!

Bush lied! But both men should be indicted for at least two crimes: 1) high treason 2) mass murder!

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NRA Lies Exposed

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The NRA wants you to believe that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives them an unqualified, blank check right to 'keep and bear' arms as they choose. That's not so! The Second Amendment --from which the right to 'own and bear' arms is derived --is a single sentence':

 A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

U. S. v Miller is the only U.S. Supreme Court decision that directly "interprets" the Second Amendment. U.S. v Miller clearly states that the right to keep and bear arms occurs ONLY within the context of a "...well-regulated militia."
All other Federal decisions and state decisions having anything to do with the Second Amendment reference U.S. v Miller to the extent that they address that issue specifically. It is, at last, the only opinion regarding an interpretation of the Second Amendment that is, in fact, law.

The GPO report is an exhaustive source of original, official sources having to do with the Second Amendment. ONE of the original sources is U.S. v Miller (1939), the decision that is considered by scholars to be the most important. U. S. v Miller is the only U.S. Supreme Court decision that directly "interprets" the Second Amendment.

U.S. v Miller states clearly states that the right to keep and bear arms occurs only within the context of a "...well-regulated militia." All other Federal decisions and state decisions having anything to do with the Second Amendment reference U.S. v Miller to the extent that they address that issue specifically.

Before getting to the sources themselves, consider the following quote from R. William Ide III, former President of the American Bar Association, who stated bluntly in 1994:

"There is NO Second Amendment guarantee. There is NO confusion on this issue."

R. W. Ide [emphases mine, LH].

Further --the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association on firearms Violence stated that the Second Amendment "...relates to a well-regulated militia and that there are NO federal constitutional decisions which preclude the regulation of firearms in private hands." To sum it up, Erwin Griswold, the late Solicitor General put it this way:

Never in history has a federal court invalidated a law regulating the private ownership of firearms on Second Amendment grounds. That the Second Amendment poses no barrier to strong gun laws is perhaps the most well-settled proposition in American Constitutional law.

– Erwin Griswold, Solicitor General

In 1934, Congress reacted to gangster related violence by enacting the National Firearms Act which prohibited the interstate transportation of silencers, automatic weapons, and sawed-off shotguns. Jack Miller appealed his conviction under that law. He claimed that Congress had violated his Second Amendment rights. The court gave consideration to "...the dependent clause" of the Second Amendment --the first part which establishes the context of the Amendment as a whole: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state..." The following is an excerpt from the court's opinion:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that the possession or use of a "shot gun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such instrument Certainly it is not within Judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.

–United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) (USSC+)

The Supreme Court decisions continued, saying that the obvious purpose of the Second Amendment was "...to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of the state militia". The court concluded that the Second Amendment must be interpreted and applied with that end in view." The views are to be found in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) (USSC+)

Our most recent treatment of the Second Amendment occurred in United States v. Miller, in which we reversed the District Court's invalidation of the National Firearms Act, enacted in 1934. In Miller, we determined that the Second Amendment did not guarantee a citizen's right to possess a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had not been shown to be "ordinary military equipment" that could "contribute to the common defense."

--Printz v. United States, 117 S.Ct. 2365, 2385-86 (1997) (Thomas, J., concurring)

The conclusions drawn by the court address the possession and use of guns within the context of a "militia". By the definition given in any dictionary, the U.S. Army is a militia. However the courts define "militia", the Second Amendment clearly addresses "well-regulated militias". Common-sense, law, English common law, and tradition would dictate that only a sovereign government of duly elected and ordained elected representatives of the people may regulate militias. If not, then who? Unregulated bands operating outside the law is unacceptable in any civilized society. The self-appointed "militia" groups clearly do NOT meet the requirement established in the Second Amendment and in U.S. v Miller which recounts the legitimate purposes that a "well-regulated militia" may pursue under law.

To sum up: U. S. v Miller is the only U.S. Supreme Court decision that directly "interprets" the Second Amendment. U.S. v Miller clearly states that the right to keep and bear arms occurs only within the context of a "...well-regulated militia."

All other Federal decisions and state decisions having anything to do with the Second Amendment reference U.S. v Miller to the extent that they address that issue specifically. It is, at last, the only opinion regarding an interpretation of the Second Amendment that is in fact, law --your experts and mine notwithstanding.

A thousand experts are either right or wrong on merit; the number of experts on either side is irrelevant. There are such things as "honest" disagreements. However, the official positions of the NRA re: the Second Amendment are NOT of this class. They are, rather, a pack of malicious lies, propaganda, distortions, and half truths.

Almost ten years ago, my article with the same title was published on 'The Opinion', a pioneering 'opinion' site presaging the onset of 'blogs'. To be expected, I was attacked by a legion of brainwashed NRA ditto-heads who called me names, called me 'stupid', and presumed to 'instruct me' with respect to the opinions of the 'founders'. Naturally, I refuted every NRA attacker not with my own logic or perspectives but with the writings of the 'founders' themselves, U.S. v Miller and every other decision that SCOTUS and Federal courts have handed down, as well as the writings of founders that gun nuts had said would have opposed me. They didn't! In fact, my argument is that of the founders themselves.

As a result of that experience, I concluded that the NRA is an organization of liars, dumbshits, ignoramouses, intolerant ideologues, obnoxious would-be thugs and a legion of Wayne LaPierre wannabes. In other words: fucking liars! Their lies and propaganda are not welcome on this site. The NRA has enough money to buy time on the corporate media! The NRA can fuck off!

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How Keynes Got it Right and the 'Right' Got it Wrong!

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

Many have proposed a 'flat' tax. It sounds good but isn't! Flat taxes are not really 'flat'. Ten percent of the income of a poor or middle person is a much, much greater burden than is the same percentage against the income of a millionaire. The difference is that merely keeping a roof over the family's head and food on the table is a MUCH bigger percentage of income/wealth for a poor or middle class family.

The very, very wealthy, in fact, find it difficult to spend all their wealth. What is left over after the cost of maintaining a villa in Spain or a swanky lodge in the Alps is invested in enterprises that earn even more wealth. Moreover, even Libertarians --if pressed --may admit that 10%, 20%, 30% percent, indeed, any percentage of a poor person's income is a much greater burden than almost any rate on the income of a millionaire! Among the many reasons this is so is that mere necessities --food, water and to varying degrees, shelter --are not only fixed, they will always amount to a much higher PERCENTAGE of a poor or middle class budget than that of the budget of a multi-millionaire or richer.

Libertarians, however, will maintain that income tax is immoral because tax policy may have the effect of re-distributing wealth and income. My reply is that when just one percent of a nation's population owns more than the rest of the population combined, it is time to raise taxes on the very rich.

The whole system is pure criminal as from the installation of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 by Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Not only the American people suffers, the whole world has been sandwiched by the private banks behind the central banking system.

--G. Edward Griffin, Legalized Plunder of the American People

The best argument against a flat tax, ironically, has come from a so-called 'libertarian' who wrote:

That 10 percent is a greater burden on the poor than is 10 percent on the very rich is the very reason that income tax is immoral --as it is currently imposed upon us.

Alas! The Libertarian does not go far enough. A flat tax of any sort will penalize the poor while enriching the rich.

During the 'Great Depression', the American comedian Bob Hope was asked to comment on it. He quipped (and I paraphrase)

"..I looked up the word depression. A 'depression' is a hole. I looked up 'hole'. A hole is 'nothing'. So --if you think I am going to waste my time talking about nothing, you have another think coming!"

There is nothing mysterious about depressions. They are defined by 'negative GDP growth' from which follows negative job creation rates --not to be confused with mere slowdowns or periods of slow growth. Thus depressions are disastrous for the poor. The very, very rich can actually benefit from them by buying bargains that are beyond the reach of the poorer or middle classes. The 'ruling elites' are capable of rigging markets with cleverly timed 'sell-offs'. They have the luxury of buying back in at bargain prices.

A 'depression' is a period of 'contraction'. In the U.S. every recession/depression at least since World War II has occurred during a Republican administration. That is but one reason I am not now nor have I ever been a Republican.

If FDR had been either a Republican or what is commonly called a 'libertarian' (in the Ron Paul sense of the word) the U.S. would have eventually collapsed. Even so, it may have required the U.S. entry into WWII following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to get the U.S. into the war. As a stimulus, 'war' created millions of new jobs and put women to work where --earlier --their presence had been unknown. The image of 'Rosie the Riveter' is still symbolic of the period. The good effect is that women would never again consent willingly to 'second class' citizen status.

As for Keynes, he would not have been surprised by the American experience. He was, after all, famous for his proposal that in times of increased joblessness, the government may do well to bury 'pound notes' in a landfill and let 'private enterprise' dig them up.

If it's all about jobs, why wait for a war to create jobs? A 'liberal' administration has a responsibility to society overall --not just to the 'ruling elites' who finance his campaigns. Rather, a liberal and/or progressive regime will support a more egalitarian society, in fact, a more efficient society as a result.

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Why We Are Not Free

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

While it may be true that all societies indulge a process called 'criminalization', it seems that in the U.S. the process has been to an even greater extent institutionalized. Both crime rates and the profits of the so-called "Prison Industrial Complex" (P.I.C.) depend upon the criminalization of various behaviors, most notably, the cultivation and/or use of marijuana, a so-called 'drug' which many believe and support is not only hamless and non-addictive, its many uses could be of tremendous benefit to society.

'Criminalization' is often 'race-based', perhaps intended to justify endemic prejudice or bigotry. There is no reasonable doubt that persons of color are more often targeted by law enforcement. A study conducted in 1996 focused on Interstate 95 in Maryland; it found that almost 75 percent of motorists stopped for alleged traffic violations were 'black' though 'black' motorists constituted less than 18 percent of all motorists on Interstate 95.

Minorities are, likewise, more often to be surveilled! Such surveillance includes 'electronic monitoring' --video, audio, mail, etc. These tactics are often employed as devices of intimidation. That is most often the case with 'political dissidents'.

The answer to the question --'who gets watched' --defines the sweep and depth of surveillance as a means by which the 'state' may monitor and restrain citizens of any color or political persuasion. As a result, the mere present of police becomes an omnipresent means by which 'social control' is maintained. The presence of 'police' is a constant reminder that 'big brother' is watching. The message is clear: the police may routinely resort to violence to maintain a status quo beneficial to but a mere segment of the total population.

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The Short List of Bush's Lies About 911

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

It was Conan Doyle who said:

When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however implausible must be the truth!"

Let's put Doyle's dictum to a real world test. Let's see if the Bush conspiracy theory of 911 passes muster. It doesn't! In fact, Bush's every lie shoots down his so-called 'official conspiracy theory' of 911, i.e, a conspiracy of some 19 Arab Hijackers. In the case of 911, there are but two possibilities and one of them --the 'official' conspiracy theory is, simply, a bald-faced lie.

Following is a short list of holes in the Bush conspiracy theory. Any one of them exposes the Bush administration to be --at the very least --complicit liars after the fact. Worse --Bush's overt lies have obstructed justice and facilitated the felony destruction of evidence relative to 911. Only those guilty of a crime are motivated to lie about it! Bush, indeed his administration, lied about 911!

Bush lied!

If Bush lied about 911, his sole motivation for lying is called GUILT! Let's consider in turn a short list of Bush's lies about 911!

1. None of the alleged terrorists can be proven to have boarded any flight let alone those that were said to have been hijacked. CHECK the official BTS records ---NONE of the flights can be verified. I found official and admissible records from AA to the effect that Flight 77 (for one) did not fly on 911. So ---if it did not fly, then how did it manage to crash into the Pentagon?
2. No Pentagon wreckage was ever traced to any airliner, let alone Flt 77. At the Pentagon, NO airliner wreckage of any kind was ever recovered or traced to any airliner of any sort! How was it able to crash into the Pentagon without leaving behind a SCRAP of wreckage? The ONLY traceable scrap was a SINGLE engine rotor (airliners have 2 engines, thus, 2 rotors)!
3. The only obvious wreckage was a single engine rotor but it is about 1/3 the size of TWO much larger rotors that would have been left behind had Flt 77 struck the Pentagon. This wreckage was NOT found at the Pentagon simply because 77 never struck the Pentagon.
4. The ONLY engine rotor that was found at the Pentagon would most certainly have been traced to a U.S. GLOBAL HAWK, a payload carrying missile that can be flown completely by remote control. Google it!
5. The official autopsy of Pentagon victims was released via an FOIA request to Dr. Olmstead. There were no Arab names on the list.
6. Hani Hanjour is said by Bushco to have piloted Fl 77! But, according to the Washington Post, Hani Hanjour did not have a ticket! How did he get on board? He didn't! And that is consistent with the fact that there are NO Arab names on the official autopsy report released via an FOIA request.
7. Flight 77 Cockpit Door Never Opened During 9/11 “Hijack”. Was Hanjour so skinny that he was able to slide under the door and into the cockpit? Had he hoped to take David Copperfield's place?
8. Pilots for 911 Truth filed an FOIA request and received data that the NTSB claimed was that of Flight 77! The data indicated that Flt 77 was some 200 feet ABOVE the Pentagon at the time it is said to have crashed into the Pentagon. Certainly, even Flight 77 cannot be in two places at the same time.
9. American Airlines is the source for information that AA Flights 11 (North Tower) and 77 (Pentagon) did not fly on 911.
10. No wreckage traceable to any airliner was ever recovered in New York.
11. 
    With respect to New York --airliner fuselages are made of aluminum; both the dense inner core and the outer cladding of the towers was hard steel. As a result, NONE of the alleged airliners could have penetrated either the dense outer cladding or the equally dense inner core.
12. Neither the core nor the cladding would have melted or weakened by a puny kerosene fire. (Jet fuel is just kerosene) I daresay you would be hard pressed to melt a tin can with a kerosene fire. Try it!
13. A smoking gun is the confirmed presence of thermite without which the tower would not have collapsed. And --no --the source of the thermite was not the airliners which were 'said' to have crashed into the towers. The towers were, in fact, prepped in advance as is evidenced by the verifiable 'free fall' perfectly matching that of known controlled demolitions.
14. The fall of the towers look like controlled demolitions because that is what they were in fact!
15. WTC 7 is one of several smoking guns! It fell at 'free fall'; speed though it had never been struck by any airliner. It must have been prepped in advance. There is simply no other credible explanation.

In law --those who assert MUST PROVE! Bush asserted but PROVED NOTHING! Having no arguments or evidence in his support, Bush THREATENED US. He 'warned' us not to subscribe to outrageous 'conspiracy theories' with one breath and with the very next breath he proposed his own conspiracy theory. It was, in fact, the most outrageous, the stupidest conspiracy theory of them all.

On the topic of 911, Americans will persist in indulging a blind spot, a blind spot that defies intelligence, logic and sanity. Clue: the dictum in both law and debate is this: THOSE WHO ASSERT MUST PROVE! Bush asserted, put forward a 'conspiracy theory' while denouncing conspiracy theories. Bush threatened but offered neither proof nor evidence to support his pack of treasonous lies! And even worse, he literally blackmailed the nation into believing his load of treasonous lies, bunkum and bullshit.

THOSE WHO ASSERT MUST PROVE!

Bush exploited the failure of American education. For example, some 'message boards" have comments like this: "...uh...dude, then who flew the planes into the towars?" The quick response: where's the proof that airliners were flown into skyscrapers? Explaining that is Bush's problem --not mine! It's his cover story, it's his lie, it's his bullshit.

FACT: NO AIRLINER is capable of penetrating the hard steel outer cladding of towers 1 and 2.

Ergo --BUSH HAS TO COME UP WITH A BETTER COVER STORY ---not me! I am merely pointing out HOLES in his THEORY that are so large, you can run a locomotive through them.

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When Native Americans Created Utopia

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

St. Thomas More's 'Utopia' was, interestingly, set in the New World. What More may not have known, however, is that many Native American tribes may have created a real utopia.

The Arawaks, for example. The Arawaks --wiped out entirely in an act of genocide perpetrated by Christopher Columbus --were notable for their crime free society, the equality accorded women, the utter lack of 'private property'. 'Private property' was a concept unknown to them.

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.

--Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, Chapter 1: Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress

Other tribes, likewise, approached utopia, notably the Iroquois Confederation which heavily influenced the writing of the U.S. Constitution.

The Council of the Mohawk shall be divided into three parties as follows: Tekarihoken, Ayonhwhathah and Shadekariwade are the first party; Sharenhowaneh, Deyoenhegwenh and Oghrenghrehgowah are the second party, and Dehennakrineh, Aghstawenserenthah and Shoskoharowaneh are the third party. The third party is to listen only to the discussion of the first and second parties and if an error is made or the proceeding is irregular they are to call attention to it, and when the case is right and properly decided by the two parties they shall confirm the decision of the two parties and refer the case to the Seneca Lords for their decision. When the Seneca Lords have decided in accord with the Mohawk Lords, the case or question shall be referred to the Cayuga and Oneida Lords on the opposite side of the house.

6. I, Dekanawidah, appoint the Mohawk Lords the heads and the leaders of the Five Nations Confederacy. The Mohawk Lords are the foundation of the Great Peace and it shall, therefore, be against the Great Binding Law to pass measures in the Confederate Council after the Mohawk Lords have protested against them.

No council of the Confederate Lords shall be legal unless all the Mohawk Lords are present.

--Iroquois Constitution, Rights of the People of the Five Nations

Other tribes were equally advanced --the Choctaw, Cherokee, and farther north --the Mandan. Tragically, all the tribes were the victims of acts of genocide. I am of Choctaw/Cherokee descent but know very little of my ancestry but what had been handed down to my mother. In the case of the Mandan, less than 100 pure blood Mandan survive.

But --they had proven: Utopia IS possible.

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Why GOP Administrations are Economic Failures that Prove Marx Correct

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When Bush Sr fought against, perhaps vanquished 'supply-side economics', it was hoped that the horrible Reagan years could be, would be consigned to the 'dust bin of history'! But no! It was left to 'Shrub', George W. Bush, to unleash unholy forces in order to breathe life into "trickle down theory" otherwise called 'supply side economics!

As it was taken off life support, it was surely Dick 'cyborg' Cheney who may well have yelled: It's ALIVE!

Cheney, of course, professed the Reagan doctrine: "Deficits don't matter". This is a bona fide case of terminal denial and accounts for supply-sider control of the Republican party. But what about Obama? He inherited a run-away train in search of its wreck. As Obama prepared to occupy the White House, the debt grew. Meanwhile, the caped villain (Cheney) and his budding monster(Bush) were still at work licking their chops and dreaming of fight night!

It's ALIVE! It's ALIVE!

Debt had accelerated during Bush's last two budget years. Although Obama had not been directly responsible for that acceleration, the train wreck had been left to him.

As the GOP are wont to do, Bush set records, in fact, the all-time record by increasing the debt by $1.1 trillion in a mere 100 days between July 30 and Nov 9, 2008.

Then there was the not-so-small matter of recession. To be expected, recessions cut tax revenues significantly and this fact may account for the GOP's sorry record of running up the highest debts and deficits! This has been the case since prior to the Great Depression. It is the pattern that is repeated in every GOP administration since H. Hoover's "Great Depression".

In this case, however, GOP mismanagement accounts for almost half of the deficit. We can be sure that the GOP were prepared to blame Obama for the deficit though his only crime was that timing. Machiavelli might have advised him to sit it out, let the GOP take the rap! Let the GOP face the music and dance quickly out to the door to oblivion. Blaming Obama for the full deficit was said to have been akin to "blaming him for not raising the tax rate to keep tax revenues up".

In times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift or joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history.

If, by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat. The "dangerous class", the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped.

The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

-- Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party

In the U.S. it is the GOP which consistently advocates, perhaps fronts, the interests of its primary sponsor: the ruling elite of just 1 percent of the total population. In effect, every real person but those among the top 1 percent are without representation in what is said to be the world's largest "Democracy". Is it really a 'democracy'? It is ironic that while Marx is most demonized by this unholy alliance, it is the existence of the unholy alliance itself which proves Marx to have been correct about almost everything.

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Why The GOP Occupied Texas

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It only takes one crook/moron to ruin the reputation of an entire state. Yes --I am referring to George W. Bush though he is but one crook among many GOP crooks who 'stole' Texas back in the early 80s. The GOP plans ahead.

I tire of the 'fashionable' but baseless attacks on an entire state when for some 100 years, Texas had been liberal, often progressive. Now --there are some 'conservatives' among Democrats even today. But Texas Democrats were often liberal, progressive, activist and out-spoken.  A Texas liberal/progressive --J. Frank Dobie --was invited to lecture at Cambridge where he was a big hit.

Some facts: Over a period of more than 100 years (1846 to 1979) EVERY Texas governor had been Democratic. Most were liberal and/or progressive. The term 'progressive' is especially applicable to the Furgusons --'Pa' Furguson and later 'Ma' (Miriam) Furguson who served two terms. 'Ma' Furguson was fondly recalled by the older persons I met and talked with while growing up. She was among the state's best governors.

It was not until January 16, 1979 that Bill Clements --a Republican --occupied the Governor's office. His tenure is recalled for a GOP revolution primarily TOM DELAY'S GERRYMANDER of the state. The GOP were motivated to gerrymander Texas. Its growing population had earned the state some 38 electoral votes (the map pre-dates that, showing only 34)

I won't write any more than this as this topic is worthy of a book advocating the abolition of the electoral college. Under the Constitution, the office of President represents all of the people! Then ---why is the President NOT elected by the people? Why are their votes watered-down? What right have the states to insert themselves in the election of the People's President (not the states' president)?

It is tragic that the GOP has succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that Texas is a conservative backwater. Great schools with great academic credentials (Rice Univ, U of T, Univ of Houston, et al, et al ) suffer when the state is unfairly maligned as a result of misdeeds by George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Tom DeLay (who gerrymandered the state) Bill Clements and other right wing extremists whose ruthless ambition has victimized Texas in particular and the nation overall.

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Romney Shirked

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It was a dark and stormy night. Having strapped the dog atop the car, the Romney family embarked upon the long road to oblivion and mormons. The trip itself was uneventful, disturbed only by the flapping of dog ears in the lonely wind! It was, of course, fate. Fate! Fate to which Mitt would never submit or acknowledge. Mitt had to make this trip by car. As a matter of principle, he would never allow his dog or family aboard a craft that did not have roll down windows!

Ms Mitt sat by the window, her head thrown back defiantly in defeat. One of her two legs stretched across floorboard. If she expected Mitt to be aroused, she was sorely disappointed.

The window frame trembled with the speed of motion despite the fact that the speed limit was posted --20 MPH. The window pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while, not often, and even then not worth mentioning. She was disappointed to learn that they were only fireflies.

Mitt --for just about one second and a half --considered surrender, completely, utterly! That did not last long. Even as he tried to forget everything, he suddenly remembered it all. 'Darn it', he said aloud! 'Frap! Why can't I just permit myself to feel? Let go—drop the controls—this is it.'

Then --as if awakening from hypnosis --he remembered the dog! The dog! But just as suddenly, he forgot the dog. He remembered the suffocating airplane trip, nearly choking, banging on the un-openable, the window, the CLOSED window, the window he could never open.

Then he remembered being humiliated in public debates. He remembered being laughed at when his pants fell down. In his nightmares, he fled the scene in 'official' Mormon Doodiepants and photographed by vermin: photographers and reporters! Reporters! Reporters! Then he broke out in a sweat! He was never certain that the empty chair did not talk back to Clint.

Somewhere on the edge of his mind, under the sounds of Lawrence Welch and his All Mormon Orchestra, he heard the sound of train wheels. They knocked in an even rhythm, like a good mormon orchestra --boring! Bored --he could relax now. He heard the wheels and was, therefore, reasonably sure that the car was still moving forward. But 'why?', he wondered. Why? Surely, he thought, the warranty had run out on the tires.

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Expatriates Quest: Recovering a Lost America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Europe is a life changing experience for many Americans, an important part of the 'American Experience'. The most obvious examples are famous writers from Thomas Wolfe to Ernest Hemingway'. They enriched American literature with their often personal experiences of Europe. Artists like James Whistler and John Singer Sargent were at once fresh eyes in Europe and glimpses of rich European culture for Americans. America's greatest cultural achievements may have been born of or inspired by the need to escape America.

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermuda, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

--Thomas Wolfe, The Story of a Novel quoted in The Creative Process

I recall reading the 'Story of a Novel' by Thomas Wolfe at about age 15. I was deeply impressed by the 'homesickness' for America that Wolfe felt as he sat near the Champs-Elysees. Something about it --I think it was smell of mowed grass --reminded him of watermelons on the Fourth of July. An iron railing flashed him back to the board walk in Atlantic City. At the end of this journey of self-discovery in Europe, Wolfe had written 'Of Time and the River'.

It is an American tradition to leave America. In the 1995 remake of Sabrina with Harrison Ford and with Julia Ormand as Sabrina, there is a scene in which Sabrina's letter to home is heard in an off screen voice. Of Paris, she said: "...I found myself in Paris." Appropriately, La Vie en Rose was playing in the background. Fiction, perhaps! Nevertheless many Americans have found and continue to find "themselves" abroad. This is a Jungian journey of self-discovery as is life itself.

The only way to truly know your own country is to travel to some other country. The only way to understand or find yourself is to abandon your "self" and realize that the "self" is an invention and an illusion.

--Robert Dente - 10:14pm Jun 15, 2002 EDT (#15047 of 38607)

It is often described as a feeling of having recovered something lost. But that is what Americans have always done in Europe. The French relate to America in that respect. This 'American' story or archetype is an existentialist journey and thus the very core of French philosophy. It has been so since Descartes wrote: "I think, therefore, I am". From this 'cogito', Sartre would extrapolate: "A man is nothing more than what he makes of himself". British philosophy, by contrast, is objective.

I had been to Europe five times now; each time I had come with delight, with maddening eagerness to return, and each time how, where, and in what way I did not know, I had felt the bitter ache of homelessness, a desperate longing for America, an overwhelming desire to return.

During this summer in Paris, I think I felt this great homesickness more than ever before, and I really believe that from this emotion, this constant and almost intolerable effort of memory and desire, the material and the structure of the books I now began to write were derived.

--Thomas Wolfe, The Story of a Novel quoted in The Creative Process

I am not alone but among many influenced by 'The Creative Process' , an anthology of original thinkers of many nationalities.

I'm very touched to find this book again as I browsed through the net, 25 years after I first bought it in a flee market in New York. The essay by Henry Miller, literally blew my young artist mind back then. It inspired me to follow on his crazy steps. I quit my civil service job(without official leave) and went to Paris ,where I lived for ten years. I read and re-read that essay on creativity and it just kept giving me the courage to step further into the unknown, thus changing my life completely.

--Reader Review, The Creative Process, Amazon.com

The great American exodus may have begun with the "expulsion" of Tories during the Revolutionary war. Most went to the Canadian provinces, but between seven thousand and eight thousand went to England --notably Thomas Danforth who had practiced law in the colonies.

Later, Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of War and Secretary of State, fled to England and became a successful lawyer. Other "confederates" fled to Canada, Japan, Australia, Egypt, Mexico, and Central and South America.

The most famous expatriates were the "lost generation": Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Julian Green, William Seabrook, E. E. Cummings, Harry Crosby, Sidney Howard, Louis Bromfield, Robert Hillyer, and Dashiell Hammett. They shared with the Dadaists and the Surrealists an almost universal disillusionment following the "Great War".

Most of the expatriates congregated in Paris, France where they lived for several weeks, months, years, or even for the rest of their lives. During the 1920s, Paris was a bustling cosmopolitan hub where a rich history converged with a blossoming artistic community.

It was considered to be the cultural capital of the early twentieth century. Attracted by this atmosphere, the expatriates settled in Paris hoping to establish their literary identities and find a market for their work. Nevertheless, each author found a varying degree of success while living and writing in Paris. F. Scott Fitzgerald, as compared to his friend and fellow author Ernest Hemingway, was much less productive in the mid-1920s

--American Expatriates in Europe: The Lost Generation

John Singer Sargent was of another type, born of American parents in Florence. He grew up speaking several languages, most certainly English, French and Italian.

His 1884 portrait of New Orleans born Virginie Avegno Gautreau --better known as Madame X --became his most famous portrait. It's hard to imagine how one succeeds in scandalizing a society in which men were expected to have mistresses. Nevertheless, a single strap off the bare shoulder was too much for polite society. The hubbub persuaded the artist to quit Paris for London. He would not see America until 1887.

Many expatriates returned to US but --in the early 1920s --many returned to Europe. Their complaints about postwar American culture --standardized and vulgar --reverberate today in contemporary criticisms of FOX, football, and Limbaugh. For them --as well as contemporary American critics --Europe represented ancient wisdom, a sense of history lost amid post-modern Americana and suburban sprawl, mass media, Walmarts, and super-sized fries.

Though not an expatriate, William Wordsworth wrote of London:

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

--Composed upon Westminster Bridge, William Wordsworth

My first such impressions of London were not from Westminster Bridge looking east but Blackfriars looking west in the damp gray cold --London weather at its worst. That the Thames looked like gray slate did not deter the intrepid racers rowing quickly upstream.

Later, of course, I would find Wordsworth's "London" from Westminster, just below the statue of Boudicca, a symbol of every people's revolt against tyranny and empire.

Indeed, what American, longing to find what had been lost in him/herself, could pass the piazzas of Florence, the cafés of Paris, the coffeehouses of Vienna, the cabarets of Berlin, the pubs of London and not be inspired to rediscover those parts not nurtured back home in Indiana or perhaps deliberately scorned in Texas? The tradition is not passive flight; it is the active embrace of life itself.

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How the GOP Became Victims of the GOP!

by Jay Diamond, Guest Author

Whatever happens in this election, it is finally the end of the psychotic and vicious American rightist movement as a political force.

This is the real reason the sulfurous "movement conservatives" have been going nuts.

Think about it....they would easily have controlled the senate after 2010 if their criminally insane movement....The low-brow, brownshirt talk radio party....had not insisted on lunatics like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell as their senate candidates in lieu of a little less fanatically rightist snakes.

And they would have padded that senate majority much further this year had not once again low-brow, brownshirt talk radio insisted on displacing one of the most respected men in the senate, Richard Lugar, with an out and out psycho Christianist Kook like Richard Mourdock, and a similarly preserved in amber asshole such as Todd Akin!

There are 3 or 4 other Dominionist brownshirt psychotics also especially selected by the low brow, brownshirt talk radio rulers of the GOP, thereby insuring a robust democratic senate majority for years to come, as the total talk radio control of all GOP primaries will guarantee.

The also know that if Obama wins in a week or so, that Hilary is a lock on the presidency for 2016 AND 2020 which means the Democratic Party will control the Oval Office till at least 2024!

Believe me, our brownshirt enemies are well aware of the truth of what I have written above.

And EVEN if Obama is defeated and provided that Rmoney’s John Bolton and Dan Senor do not kill us all before 2016, they also know that should Rmoney cause a complete collapse of the USA, including 40% effective unemployment as he gleefully repeals even the anemic post financial collapse re-regulation of Wall Street, that the American right wing movement will be dead as nails for at least the next 60 years! Like the Great Depression of 1930’s, the memory of what the economic royalists will have wrought will last for 3 generations of Americans. As in 1990, the very last people alive in the 1990’s who were adults in 1929, will finally be gone, leaving the right-wing propaganda machine once again able to bulldoze American Morons into killing themselves yet again.

They know this!

But they dare not, and can not even fathom how they might remove low brow rightwing Dominionist brownshirt talk radio as the owner of all GOP primaries!

They are a terminally ill and wretchedly pathological movement on the edge of extinction, which will make them temporarily more dangerous than ever.

But they will all go away, unless they dread the prospect of their imminent political destruction so much that they would rather we all die in a nuclear armageddon than relinquish control for all time.

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The GOP's 'Blame Game' Exposed

"There is a collective responsibility in an authoritarian regime."

--Albert Speer, testinony at Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

I am fed up with the right wing blame game! And you should be as well. The U.S. right wing has more scapegoats than A. Hitler's wet dreams! Jean-Paul Sartre said:

"A man is nothing else but what he makes of himself!"

And it was Bertolt Brecht who summed up right wing crookery:

"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!"

The GOP has made of themselves CROOKS and MORONS and MORON CROOKS. Conan Doyle provided some bullet-proof logic:

"When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however implausible, MUST be the truth!"

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Doyle has never been more relevant. The GOP is defined by the utter BS that they espouse. That would be bad enough but, in fact, they expect you to buy into their ideology, propaganda, nonsense. The GOP is often threatening but that's typical of their psychopathic ilk. Don't buy it.

The only option is that people must think for themselves and demand proof of the lies and mythology that makes up the GOP's 'alternate reality'. The best and most obvious examples are the many ways in which the party favors the ruling elite and helps to enrich them even further. The most egregious example is 'supply-side' economics, often called 'trickle down theory'. It's all ---or worse! Wealth has never, ever 'trickled down' (at any speed or manner) as a result of GOP tax cuts which are designed to enrich those already filthy rich, those already amogn the RULING ONE PERCENT. This tiny (and shrinking) segment of the population owns more than the rest of us combined. GOP 'economics' creates a very, very steep curve.

Think for yourself. GOP ideology with respect to the economy is most easilly debunked with OFFICIAL STATS from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U. S. Census Bureau, and the U.S. Commerce Dept -B.E.A. among many university and various 'think tank' studies. The GOP is dead wrong about almost EVERYTHING. Secondly, don't buy GOP platitudes that simply cannot be proven one way or the other. That's a Nazi tactic that was exposed by Hitler's confidant: Herr Albert Speer.

Food for though; wealth has never, ever trickled down nor has GOP policiy ever enriched or benefited any person who is NOT among the very wealthiest people in America if not the world. If you are not a billionaire, you are nuts to vote GOP.

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Orwell's '1984' Revisited

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Margaret Atwood called George W. Bush, the greatest threat to world peace to date! What Atwood did not mention was that Bushco derived its power from the deliberate and well-planned attack on truth by way of language. George Orwell predicted it; his works remain the textbook example of how governments may manipulate people by first manipulating the language.

If all else fails, a totalitarian regime may make the telling of truth a crime. Traditionally, the names given those truths are treason or sedition. A young United States experimented with the Alien and Sedition Acts giving near dictatorial powers to President John Adams, specifically, the power to imprison or deport aliens upon the mere suspicion that activities posed a threat to the new national government.

To his credit, Adams made no use of them but neither did he rebuke the Congress for passing them. George W. Bush proved a greater threat. Bush arrogated unto himself the power to 'define' the very word "terrorist"! Bush could create a 'terrorist' at will by merely re-defining a target. Indeed --Bush assumed and asserted the power and authority to make you a 'terrorist' by merely 'deeming' you to be one!

Orwell's classic cautionary tale, 1984, describes a fascist, totalitarian government spying on its own citizens, denying reality and creating an alternate state that exploits a fictional enemy in order to wage a perpetual war. Orwell's Big Brother tried to re-write history and succeeded.
In "It Can't Happen Here" Sinclair Lewis describes the dictatorship of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip who might have been inspired by George W. Bush had 'he' not preceded him. In both '1984' and in Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here", a fascist state justifies an omni-present dictatorship by maintaining states of perpetual war and perpetual terror.

The lesson of 1984 is less about the state itself than about the individual. When states are absolutely powerful, the individual ceases to exist. Philosophically, individuals robbed of free will are denied person-hood even as mere 'legal abstractions' (corporations) are made 'persons' by decree. In the U.S. 'corporations' are decreed to be persons by way of a bogus and dishonest decision by our Supreme Court, It remains the very worst decision since Dredd-Scott legitimized the keeping of slaves.

"In order to acknowledge the collapse of Soviet Communism and the failure of fascism to reemerge as a potent political force, I ditched Orwell's oppressive totalitarian state in favor of an entertainment-fueled nihilism in which dimwitted citizens frittered away their lives watching web TV and working at slightly overpaid jobs to buy worthless junk ... on web TV, natch. Where Orwell envisioned endless rows of soldiers marching in perfect unison to the strains of the Two-Minute Hate, I saw a world where nations had been replaced by trading blocs and the objects of hatred were the immigrants in our midst."

--Ted Rall, Addicted To Perpetual War

The images from 1984 are seared into our memories --big brother, the telescreen, the grotty bedroom, the cubicle, the memory hole, the drab gray existence, the rat cage. But 1984 is as much about language. It is more than mere sub-text. Language, in 1984, is the means by which Big Brother creates an alternate reality. It is only in the 'alternate reality' that Big Brother has power.
Big Brother is the Wizard of Oz, an illusion, an image on smoke if not mirrors. If millions suddenly deny the illusion, the lies, the bullshit, Big Bro is finished. The bad news is that, like the cowardly lion, we dare not challenge the great and powerful Oz

The most glaring use of Newspeak is the invention of what I have chosen to call "focus group phrases"; so called because they are invented, full cloth, by consultants who most certainly know their way around a focus group. "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is just such a phrase. "911 Denier" is another. "Al Qaeda iln Iraq" is designed to make a lazy populace forget that the war was begun upon blackhearted lies about WMD.

"911 Denier" is 'Orwell-speak' or 'Newspeak' designed to shift the burden of proof when it is, in fact,  Bush who must prove his theory of 911 --a theory for which there is not a shred of evidence --let alone proof. Anyone believing it is either a part of the plot or stupid! The Bush administration used up several ex post facto rationales for war. None of them were true! "Al Qaeda in Iraq", for example, implies the existence of a shadowy enemy that was never defined! That was by design! A real enemy is defined and can be targeted! Shadows may be summoned up whenever they are needed! 'Al Qaeda in Iraq', we can be sure, tested well.

A lazy news establishment liked it because it saved them the trouble of trouble of describing reality! Orwell understood as few have the power of language and in, 1984 the "tool of power" is language. Language empowers the all-powerful party which dictates the nature and use of language. The institutions of state maintain their power by exploiting the power of language to shape the nature of thought itself. That is, in fact, the job of the protagonist, Winston Smith. Examples may be found in any study of the recent Bush administration.

The George W. Bush regime very nearly gave the game away with the use of the phrase Total Information Awareness. In response to criticism, the regime stopped using the phrase to denote their program of widespread domestic and illegal surveillance.

Orwell is, of course, most famous for 1984 but his great essay on politics and language should also be required reading. See: Orwell: Politics and the English Language. Orwell explores how politicians exploit language to accrue absolute power. Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.

--George Orwell

All who have read Orwell's essay on how easily politicians debase the language for nefarious purposes have recognized in the Bush administration the very techniques that Orwell warned us about.

The White House saw September 11 as a golden opportunity. The first catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil sparked an unprecedented case of leadership projection: desperate for protection and answers (why do they hate us? can we kill them before they kill us?), Americans wishfully compared Bush to FDR and Churchill. Approval ratings hit 92 percent. But Bush's political advisors knew that peaking early wouldn't guarantee reelection in 2004. Bush's father had been turned out of office just 20 months after the Gulf War ratcheted his score up to 911.
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The Bushies have lifted their reelection strategy straight out of "1984," and not just by creating ominous-sounding agencies like the Office of Homeland Security, the supposedly-closed Office of Strategic Information, and a "Shadow Government". As in "1984," the Bush regime tolerates zero dissent --a two-party system in name only has been distilled to one in which only Republicans express acceptable opinions. And an absence of follow-up attacks has been met by endless alerts, advisors and empty hysterics in the name of security, most recently culminating with Tom Ridge's much-mocked color-code warning system. 

--Ted Rall, Why Bush Is Addicted To Perpetual War

To be fair, it is not only politicians but bullshit artists who make us vulnerable to tyranny. This has been done by dumbing down the language and, thus, our ability to think critically. Until Bush, even Republican "Presidents" paid lip service to the Constitution.

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

—Sinclair Lewis, author of "It Can't Happen here"!

In It Can't Happen Here Sinclair Lewis showed us how it might happen here and in ways not unlike those predicted by both Lewis and Orwell. The characteristics of the fascist state so vividly described by both authors were found in abundance in Bush's fascist regime. Millions are still in denial, evidence that truth is tragically denied. A quote from Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here":

"Senator Windrip has got an excellent chance to be elected President, next November, and if he is, probably his gang of buzzards will get us into some war, just to grease their insane vanity and show the world that we’re the huskiest nation going."

--It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis, page 20

Orwell and Lewis not only warned us, they predicted precisely how it would be done. As Shakespeare said: "All is true!" So --why didn't we listen? We did not listen because this nation has a fierce anti-intellectual streak which at its best makes us independent and at its worst makes us stupid!

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Texas

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

A movie about and set in Texas starred mega-stars Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. It was a huge box office draw in the early 1960s! The state itself may have dictated the wide screen and mega stars --Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor.

The movie was GIANT, inspired by The Edna Ferber novel of the same name! Giant, indeed!
The photo (left) is of the famous Monahans Sandhills west of Odessa, Texas, a city with an interesting history as a destination of gunslingers and seekers after the many treasures that were said to have been buried in West Texas by various outlaws, the Spanish, and Mexican Revolutionaries.

Texas is the second most populous, the second most extensive of the 50 states. It can boast (and often does) that it is the largest of the 48 contiguous United States with an area of over 268,000 square miles and a growing population of some 25.7 million residents.

The word 'Texas' is from the Caddo --Tejas which means 'friend' or 'ally'. It was the Spanish which appropriated the Caddo word and applied it to Texas.

Texas shares a long, winding international border with Mexico, specifically the states of Chihuhua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas as well as borders with the US states of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States. San Antonio --home of the famous Alamo --is the second largest city in the state, seventh largest in the U.S. Depicted in the montage are portions of downtown Houston and, below, an interior view of Houston's 'Galleria' --a famous mall just outside loop 610 at Westheimer Rd. The Galleria is famous for its ice skating rink and a 'collection' of designer shops that probably exceed the famous 'Rodeo Drive' in Los Angeles.
In the 70's, a New York columnist (as I recall) dubbed Houston the "Golden Buckle of the Sunbelt". The monicker may have stuck:

Houston, Texas is the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country, with a diverse population of nearly six million and thousands of dynamic, growing businesses. Much of that growth is powered by the energy sector: Houston's nearly 4,000 energy-related companies are responsible for almost half of the city's economic output.
New ideas in energy, however, aren't always received with a warm welcome. "Energy companies can be very risk-averse," says Sarah Groen, a business consultant and investor. "That makes the market very tough for new businesses to break into."
Groen and her business partner, Kirk Brand Coburn, are working to change the status quo with the launch of SURGE Accelerator, an incubation and mentorship program for startups in the energy software space. Companies accepted into the program can focus on anything from digital oil field data to consumer energy efficiency--"as long as it's focused around energy, we're interested," says Groen.

In the program, which launched a year and a half ago, SURGE provides each company with $30,000 in seed funding, free office space, and access to dozens of mentors in Houston's vibrant energy sector in exchange for a six percent common equity stake. Over the course of the three-month program, the entrepreneurs focus their business models and learn from their mentors and one another; the program culminates with the opportunity to pitch to investors on SURGE Day.

"Most entrepreneurs are coming not for the money," says Groen. "It's for mentorship and the program, and access to investors they'd have trouble meeting otherwise."

--SURGE Accelerator Sets Out to Revolutionize the Energy Industry in Houston

It's now official: with a population of six million, greater Houston is now the nation's fourth largest city! Only New York, Chicago, Los Angeles are larger. The metropolitan areas of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth are the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Other major cities include El Paso, the western most city in Texas and Austin --the state capital. Depicted (below, left) are downtown Houston (at sunset) and, below it, Houston's famous Galleria Mall. Inspired by the 'Galleria' in Milan, it was appropriately a pioneering work by developer Gerald Hines. Indoor malls with several levels of shopping integrated with both residence and office towers were groundbreaking at the time.

Because it was once an independent republic, Texas is sometimes called the Lone Star State. It is also a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico which most Americans associate with the siege at the Alamo. The "Lone Star" can be found on the Texas state flag and on the Texas state seal today. Another reminder of the Texas struggle for independence may be found just east of Houston where the 'Battle of San Jacinto' was fought and won by Gen Sam Houston for whom the present city is named. The following videos are a showcase of some of the most beautiful photography of Texas that can be found. Enjoy the tour.

Of late, Texas has acquired a bad name, a process begun, I believe, with the arrival of the Bush crime family, the assassination of JFK, the FBI atrocities against the Branch Davidians and, of course, the utterly failed and criminal regime of one George W. Bush!

By the way, George W. Bush is NOT a 'Native Texan'; he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. Sadly, thanks to GWB, it will require a small miracle to undo the harms done to education, the prison system and the 'state' of justice in the once and future great state of Texas!

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On Liberty: More Relevant Than Ever

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In his classic essay "On Liberty", John Stuart Mill deals with the issue of "civil liberties" --not the metaphysical issue of "free will". While most attacks on civil liberties have historically occurred from the right within the context of a tyrannical or an aristocratic rule, Mill deals with threats against liberty from within the institutions of democracy itself. The issue is especially relevant at a time when widespread domestic wiretapping and surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The aim of early libertarians was to limit the power of the ruler over those governed; Mill, however, identifies a need to limit the power of elected governments and officials as well. Mill is not merely addressing the issue of "who should rule?", he seeks to establish limits on the power that government may exercise over minorities and individuals. His work is more relevant now than ever.

While "government of the people" is an ideal to be sought, Mill argues that such an ideal is often not the case in fact. He argues that those exerting the power of the government --elected officials, bureaucrats, the judiciary --often develop their own interests. They may be influenced by those constituencies in ways that are at odds with the interests and liberties of individuals or other groups.

Mill makes no distinction between a tyranny of one and a tyranny of many. A tyrannical majority running roughshod over the rights of individuals and minorities is no less a tyrant because it is a majority, because it is elected, or because it is elected by a majority.

While society may not tolerate criminal behavior, for example, society may not legitimately interfere with or suppress all non-conforming behaviors indiscriminately or because a majority may not approve. What then are the powers that society may legitimately exercise over the individual? Mill answers:

"The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

-J.S. Mill, On Liberty

James Madison --called the "Father of the Constitution" --may have anticipated Mill's ideas in his draft of the Bill of Rights --the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Implicit in the Bill of Rights is the recognition that the power of the state is a blunt instrument. Abused, it can oppress and repress individuals and minority groups alike. The Bill of Rights addresses this issue by guaranteeing "due process of law", limiting state power over individuals and groups, guaranteeing that groups and individuals may speak freely, worship freely.

The Fourth Amendment specifically is a promise that our government made to us in its very founding:

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

-Fourth Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution

Let's make something abundantly clear: there are no "inherent powers", "implicit" authorizations" that would, in any way, overturn, limit, or repeal the Fourth Amendment. Many politicians are not only wrong about that, they may have deliberately lied about it. Moreover, Congress may not overrule the Fourth Amendment with statutory law. Constitutional Law is supreme and provisions in the Bill of Right are valid until amended as set out in the Constitution itself. Widespread domestic surveillance is illegal whatever is done by Congress ex post facto --and until the Constitution is amended, it will remain illegal. At last, ex post facto laws, themselves, are expressly forbidden by the Constitution.

Mill is all the more remarkable for his insight into issues that remain contemporary. In every literate criticism of "special interest groups", PAC's, the gun lobby, the tobacco lobby, the Military/Industrial Complex, one sees the lasting influence of John Mill.

On Liberty is essential reading for anyone interested in law, the principles of government, political science, political philosophy, indeed, freedom itself. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in learning about the intellectual underpinnings of Anglo-American civil liberties.

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