The GOP 'Scorched Earth' Policy

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The American Democratic party, the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, was a force to be reckoned with. Most often allied with labor, Democrats --not Republicans --presided over the hard-won triumph over the Great Depression. It was Democrats, not Republicans, who later presided over a thriving economy, an egalitarian economy in the late 40s and much of the 50s. It was the Democratic regimes of FDR and Harry Truman that were the most egalitarian in U.S. History.

This prosperity continued through the JFK years. Not even Nixon could undo the good that had been done. That job was left to Ronald Reagan whose infamous, inequitable tax cut of 1982 breached the wall. Only the upper quintile benefited from Reaganomics of which the infamous tax cut of 1982 was the centerpiece. Only the upper 1 percent have benefited from subsequent GOP largesse.

Over the same period of time, American manufacturing --steel, automotive, appliances et al --declined. Labor was denied a base upon which to build a movement or even an effective opposition. Out of work and out of money, labor was neutered. As a result, steel is produced in Japan and imported. Appliances are increasingly made in China and imported, denying jobs to US workers. Once a center of world automobile production, downtown Detroit is but a shadow of its former glory. Various suburbs like Flint have deteriorated.

The antipathy shown labor by the American right wing has a long history. In 1911, L.A.Times owner/publisher Gen. Harrison Grey Otis exploited the bombing of the L.A. Times building to win a landmark propaganda war against labor. Two brothers, labor leaders, were accused of this act of 'domestic terrorism' around which Otis rallied opposition to labor despite the fact that the trial ended with a plea bargain. Arguably, the more lasting fallout was the subsequent trial of Clarence Darrow who was accused of bribing prospective jurors.

The GOP has not won the debate with its 'scorched earth' methods and politics. It has merely hollowed out the soul of a nation for the benefit of just 20 percent in the 80s and only 1 percent recently. The GOP did not defeat labor or its ideals. Rather, it exported their jobs and shut them up. It's the GOP way.

Not just labor, the nation as a whole has paid dearly for this cynical strategy. Confirmation and results can be found at the CIA's own World Fact Book where you will find the U.S. at the bottom of the list with the world's largest NEGATIVE CURRENT ACCT BALANCE; China, with whom GOP Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush cut sweetheart deals, is on top. China prospers. America is near collapse and will eventually be reduced to third world status if it is not there already.

It was all by design. The GOP willingly amputated a nation's leg and arm to save the increasingly stupid head, a ruling one percent which has done little or nothing to deserve is role as the nation's ruling plutocracy! In the meantime, the Democratic party is robbed of its traditional, base --labor. Thus, was forced upon Bill Clinton the odious 'triangulation' of the increasingly moribund 'center', a strategy for which he was roundly criticized and rightly on principle. In fact, however, it was all that was left him in the wake of the GOP's scorched earth policy.

The U.S. is now a limping, one-legged man where everyone fancies himself an aristocrat but, in fact, everyone but the top one percent are getting poorer. It's a slow boil but coming to a head very quickly now. Interestingly, those benefiting from Reagan's policies were but about 20 percent of the total population. More recently, those benefiting are reduced to just one percent of the population. At what point will the fabulously wealthy one percent become one-half of one percent, eventually, one half or just one quarter of that amount? This curve can be plotted on a graph. A rate of decline can be pinpointed. All it takes is a bit of first semester calculus to plot the very rate at which the GOP impoverishes all of us.

The transfer of wealth upward is deliberate. It's how the the 'pay-offs' are laundered. Clinton reversed the trend but briefly. That he dared get a blow job was much more important than saving a nation from a disastrous fate. In fact, it was all the GOP could pin on him, though he was under a sweeping investigation seemingly from the get go. An investigation in search of real crimes and, finding none, invented the 'felony blow job'.

‎Someone said that Satan's biggest 'trick' was convincing the world that he did not exist. The GOP's biggest trick is convincing the American people that they are a political party. They are, in fact, a crime syndicate with characteristics of a kooky cult. Stanford University studies have proven that GOP-types have more night terrors and horrible nightmares than do normal people. This is understandable. Certainly, the GOP rank and file are insecure, in fact, frightened if not terrified. Nightmares are but dream manifestations of fears and anxieties. Likewise, GOP policy. In short, we, the people have paid and continue to pay for GOP fears and neurotic hang ups. I would think that like me, you are fed up with doing so!

Edward R. Murrow: Wires and Lights in a Box

Note: The Existentialist Cowboy is currently bombarded by spam from lunatic name callers of the right wing ilk! Therefore, comments are moderated; threats are deleted and, when possible prosecuted! Ads are outta here! And I am not interested in whatever stupid name idiots apply to smarter people these days. Intelligent comments are, as always, very welcome! Ad hominem attacks, spam, advertising and psychotic drivel is not! Psychos should get help but not here! Eventually, the offending party will be committed to an asylum and we adults can once again engage in intelligent, articulate dialogue. Thanks for understanding.

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'V' is for Vendetta or How the Banksters Heisted America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The movie of 2006, based upon the original 'graphic novel' stars Hugo Weaving as 'V', John Hurt as Adam Sutler -- the Big Brother-like dictator/tyrant seen on giant telescreens. It also stars Natalie Portman. It is a future Britain following a nuclear holocaust but, in fact, it is any nation seized by fear, embracing upon the pre-text of terrorism an all-powerful government in response. This movie exposes 'terrorism' as a racket!

The 'fascist' party called "Norsefire" resembles the Nazi party by its extermination of opponents in concentration camps and the American GOP for its embrace of torture, violations of human rights, blatant demagoguery and lies.

Sutler rules the country as a police state just as Bush aspired to rule America. Naturally, he is opposed. The opposition are called 'terrorists', though it clear that the tyrant's misrule is both the initial cause and the aggravation. It is hard to imagine any guerrilla movement, any opposition, any 'terrorist' having any success at all against a just and/or competent government or ruler. A dictator by his/her tyranny inspires and justifies his opposition and every effort to unseat or overthrow him.

In "V", the police state is opposed by an 'anarchist revolutionary' who dresses up like Guy Fawkes. History buffs will recall Guy Fawkes for his opposition to the English government of James I whose reign followed that of Elizabeth I, who was, despite her good press, a tyrant.

A reference to a prison closely resembling Guantanamo for its flagrant abuses is but one of many analogies and lessons that must be drawn, that must be applied to the the real world created by George W. Bush and the NEOCON junta which seized power in the United States at the end of a contested election and a violent, seditious assault upon vote re-counters who most certainly would have awarded the election to Al Gore had they not been violently attacked by partisans transported to Florida and paid by the Bush campaign.

Other references to a world now fixated by the specter of 'terrorism' are easy to recognize throughout the film. For this reason, 'V' remains controversial.

"In the not too distant future, Britain is filled with torture cells, unfair punishments, prejudice against minorities."

That excerpt from a review reads like a description of America under Bush and in his wake. Bush ordered that suspected 'terrorists' be denied the protections of 'Habeas Corpus' if one is but 'deemed' to be a 'terrorist'. It was, of course, the very purpose of Habeas Corpus to prevent such arbitrary 'deeming'. To prevent those who might wrongly 'deem' others is precisely the point!

It is, therefore, clear that the Bush administration was less interested in effective, real and reasonable measures against real and/or demonstrable terrorists than it was interested in subverting Constitutional guarantees for partisan, political, venal motives or reasons.

Part of the Bush legacy is that a GOP dominated Supreme Court has 'created' corporations 'people'. And the government need only 'deem' you a terrorist to justify torturing you without benefit of Habeas Corpus. It is a recipe for tyranny and corruption. Prisons in Texas, for example, are owned and operated by huge corporations. As a result, crime has increased as the incompetent and/or criminal regimes of Bush Jr and, later, Rick Perry subverted public education in Texas. They succeeded; Texas now ranks dead last in high school graduations. The GOP, therefore, is not only the cause of increased crime by its neglect of education, its corporate sponsors benefit from it. It's a corporate/GOP circle jerk.

The 'future' is now.

INSIDE JOB: How the Banksters HEISTED America's Wealth!

Note: The Existentialist Cowboy is currently bombarded by spam from a lunatic name caller of the right wing ilk! Therefore, comments are moderated. Intelligent comments are, as always, welcome! Ad hominem attacks, spam and psychotic drivel is not! Eventually, the offending party will be committed to an asylum and we adults can once again engage in intelligent, articulate dialogue. Thanks for understanding.

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

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How the War Racket Means the Beginning of the End for 'America'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Used to be --there was good news and there was bad news. Of late, the bad news is that there is no good news and there may not be any good news in the foreseeable future. Unless things change, there may not be any good news ever!

I know whose fault this is! This is the result and work of American robber barons and right wing militarists who have sold America out to China as they plot more wars of naked aggression for the purpose of seizing the oil fields of the Middle East.

Much of the plan, the legacies of Reagan, Sr. and Shrub, the three henchman of the apocalypse, is already in place

Reagan's Two Year Long Depression

It was left to Ronald Reagan to usher in a depression of some two years, the longest and worst since Hoover's Great Depression of the 1930s. This depression followed quickly on the heels of a the GOP tax cut which benefited only the upper quintile. Obviously, the 'tax cut' was not an economic stimulus as we were told it would be. The results were, in fact, the depression of two years, a contraction of the economy as a result of the transfer of wealth upward to the upper quintile. A windfall of this nature is no stimulus to invest but, rather, to transfer the gains offshore. There were no net gains in jobs. There was no Reagan-recovery. There were, rather, net losses, declines in employment. The government's own stats prove it. They are available the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and the U.S. Commerce Department -B.E.A.

Our Major Exports: Death and Destruction

Check the CIA's 'World Fact Book'. With the world's largest NEGATIVE Current Account Balance, the U.S. is on the bottom of the list. China is on top with the world's largest POSITIVE Current Account Balance. The downside for China is this: it must prop up the worthless U.S. dollar if it wishes to survive. Clearly, then, the war racket has done absolutely nothing for the US bottom line. The US, the right wing in particular, for all it bluster and bullshit has less than nothing to show for the many lives that were sacrificed at the alter of greed and capitalist/imperialistic ambition. I am fed up with the lies and crap! How about you?

The US now follows the Roman model of 'empire'. Admittedly, it is difficult to say which comes first --the collapse of the real economy or the commencement of empire! In the case of Rome, it seems clear that the local economy was already in trouble when Rome began its conquest of Dacia for its gold! As is the case with the U.S. today, the currency of Rome, sesterces, was worthless but as a means by which a head count could be made of those attending the gladiatorial contests in the Coliseum. Today, the U.S. dollar is propped up by China --not because China just wants to help us out; it wants to dump its crap on us. If it does not, its own over-population will enter into utter poverty, millions will starve. Chinese poohbahs will, of course, blame US. Facing starvation, China will threaten the world, if it does not already.

The New National Capital/Capitol: K-street

K-street is where the people get fucked! K-street is the best little whorehouse in Washington, the nation's 'read light district' in which the apparatus of government is pimped! K-street --not Congress --is where the bills, the laws, the policies are written, decided upon. K-street is where the 'Johns' buy the bureaucracy and decide foreign and domestic policies. K-street is where money talks, souls are sold, bullshit peddled.

K-street is where the so-called 'Jewish Lobby' (read: Israeli Lobby) dictates American foreign policy. Some have called it a marriage made in hell, in fact, a Faustian bargain, in which the soul of America is bartered or whored-out outright! What's in it for the U.S. to continue to support the increasingly fanatic, aggressive and extremist governments in Israel? The most obvious answer is this: Israel provides the convincing 'pre-text' for US oil wars in the Middle East. Big oil has said to Isreal or Israel to big oil: 'you scratch my back and I will scratch yours!'.

The Republican Party was once a moderately conservative, pro-business outfit, until it was hijacked by the oligarchy and turned into a full-on predatory machine, hiding behind the facade of hate mobilizing issues like bogus overseas threats abroad and uppity brown people and demanding women at home. Basically, any way that middle class white males could be distracted from their sinking economic status - through the diversion of a sense of superiority over others, or the supposed threat to that superior status - was employed to cover for a party whose true agenda was to quietly produce the greatest transfer of wealth in all of human history.

Having succeeded dramatically, they are back at it again. It is now transparent, for anyone who cares to look, that the ugly tea party movement in America is an invention of the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Dick Armey and their sick ilk, once again mobilizing a boatload of fools who are angry, but too stupid to know quite why. This explains their endless rhetoric about the evils of the federal government, and their simultaneous desire to keep their Social Security and Medicare benies. It also explains their unmatched idiocy in serving as tools for their own destruction. If they succeed, they fail. If they get their champions elected, they lose their government-provided (Shhhh!) goodies. Brilliant.

In any case, the takeover of the GOP by Serious Money is now well into its second stage. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it is. Seriously, what is the next step after this one fails to provide any long-term solutions to what ails America, as most assuredly will be the case? For a decade or three now, regressives in America have been showing that they are capable of anything. Which more or less answers that question, doesn't it?

If you're willing to savage military icons like John McCain, Max Cleland and John Kerry in order to win elections - and especially after you get away with it every time - you're willing to do anything. If you're willing to mock the 9/11 widows as scheming opportunists, you're willing to do anything. If you're willing to don a tuxedo and joke about missing WMD at a press banquet in Washington, just as you're telling the American military's adversaries in Iraq to "bring it on", you're willing to do anything.

--Our Long National Nightmare Isn't Over, It's Just Beginning, David Michael Green

War is a Racket

WAR is a racket.

It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

--War Is a Racket, General Smedly Butler, Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient, Major General Smedley D. Butler,
USMC, Retired

Conspiracies are how things get done. Some are legal; some are not. A 'corporation', for example, is a conspiracy made legal by 'charter'. Corporations were described by St. Thomas More in his 'Utopia':

I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.

They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth’s sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws.But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!

--Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Utopia

If you are still drinking the Kool-aid, go to Findlaw, where the search term 'conspiracy' of itself will get you 690 cases. Go to the Cornell University Law Library. Type in the single search term 'conspiracy'! Among the hundreds (possibly thousands of cases) you will find No. 03-3156,UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,APPELLEE v.ANTONIO N. TABRON, A/K/A FAT CAT,APPELLANT.

The transfer of wealth upward is deliberate. It's how the the 'pay-offs' are laundered. Initially, it was the top 20 percent who benefited as charts dating to the beginning of the Clinton administration indicate and prove. Clinton succeeded in reversing the trend. It would have been a lasting legacy, Clinton's finest hour, had not the regime of George W. Bush reversed the reverse and resumed the payoff as evinced in the inexorable trend upward.

‎I don't know who it was who said that Satan's biggest 'trick' was convincing the world that he did not exist. The traitors of the 'American' right wing have, in fact, sold out America: to the ruling one percent who alone have benefited from GOP 'tax cuts', tax cuts which are inexorably followed by job losses if not recessions/depressions. The government's own statistics prove the undeniable trend. As there is no defense rational defense, the meme that is drummed into you from the media liars and blow-hards like Limbaugh deride the very existence of 'conspiracies' and, thus, from an over generalized assumption for which there is not a shred of evidence is deduced a specific conclusion: 'conspiracies do not exist'.

This is how the right wing thinks. While sane and/or scientifically inclined people will observe first and conclude later, the right wing impaired will believe based upon prejudices and/or whatever makes them feel good. They will shoe-horn reality into the mold; they will work backward from foregone conclusions. They will literally reverse 'cause and effect' and mistake one for the other. They will shoot first and ask questions later! They will not tolerate any fact that proves them wrong. In fact, they are not only wrong, they are wrong-headed! And it will prove to be the end of America!

War is a Racket

If WTC 7 Was a Controlled Demolition, so were the Twins!

Note: The Existentialist Cowboy is currently bombarded by spam from a lunatic name caller of the right wing ilk! Therefore, comments are moderated. Intelligent comments are, as always, welcome! Ad hominem attacks, spam and psychotic drivel is not! Eventually, the offending party will be committed to an asylum and we adults can once again engage in intelligent, articulate dialogue. Thanks for understanding.

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Why You are Free and the Right Wing is Not!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The essence of Sartre is found in a slim volume of just under 100 pages: Existentialism and Human Emotions. In a single sentence, Sartre turned several centuries of conventional thinking on its head: "Existence precedes essence". Sartre himself, however, credits Rene Descartes whose cogito ergo sum or, en francais, Je pense donc je suis; in English: "I think, therefore I am".

Sartre writes:

"For we mean that man first exists, that is, that man first of all is the being who hurls himself toward a future and who is conscious of imagining himself as being in the future.

Man is at the start a plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch of moss, a piece of garbage, or a cauliflower; nothing exists prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be what he will have planned to be. Not what he will want to be. Because by the word "will" we generally mean a conscious decision, which is subsequent to what we have already made of ourselves.

I may want to belong to a political party, write a book, get married; but all that is only a manifestation of an earlier, more spontaneous choice that is called "will." But if existence really does precede essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. And when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men."

--Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions

"Existence precedes essence", therefore, strikes at the very heart of dogma, prejudice, pre-conceived notions of any sort, ideologies into which humankind is inclined to shoe-horn reality. Existentialism begins with a clean slate. The 'moving finger' may or may not write but most certainly does not dictate what we may or may not make of ourselves.

In existentialism, therefore, there is no place to run, no place hide. It is the price we pay for being free. For that reason, existentialism is liberating. Man is no longer limited by theological notions of his origin with God's breath in the Garden or at the tip of God's finger, as depicted by Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling. That 'man', alone, is responsible for what he is or becomes is the source of 'existential angst'. And also our freedom.

Existentialism is the enemy of dogma --religious, psuedo-scientific, political ideology. For that reason alone, existentialism is often, though fallaciously, identified with the political left-wing. The 'right wing' undermines itself from within, by what Sartre would call 'mauvaise foi', i.e., bad faith.

'Bad faith' was best illustrated by Bertolt Brecht who summed it up: "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 photographer Richard Avedon was even more succinct: "You cannot expect another man to carry your shit!"

Thus 'bad faith' defines the 'crook' and, thus, the many American politicians who blame a universe of strawmen for their own failures --minorities, liberals, the world-wide communist conspiracy, Islamic 'terrorists' and left-wing subversives throughout the U.S. labor, anti-war and civil rights movements.

Existentialism is the philosophy that says --grow up! Stop making excuses! Stop blaming others! Existentialism is the tough-minded philosophy of no lies, no excuses, no bullshit!

Jean-Paul Sartre: "I am my liberty!"

Cogito ergo sum

Note: The Existentialist Cowboy is currently bombarded by spam from a lunatic name caller of the right wing ilk! Therefore, comments are moderated. Intelligent comments are, as always, welcome! Ad hominem attacks, spam and psychotic drivel is not! Eventually, the offending party will be committed to an asylum and we adults can once again engage in intelligent, articulate dialogue. Thanks for understanding.

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