Tuesday, April 29, 2008

One Article. . .

A Single Article That Covers Its Subject Better Than Any other. . .
by By Christian Parenti, The Nation, April 24, 2008


What Nuclear Renaissance?


“If you listen to the rhetoric, nuclear power is back. Smashing atoms will replace burning carbon-based coal, gas and oil.  In the face of a disaster movie-like future of runaway climate change--bringing drought, floods, famine and social breakdown--carbon-free nukes are cast as the deus ex machina to save us at the last minute.”


[ Click the link above to read the full article. ]

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A “Below The Fold” Bonus - A bit of political humor by Mark Fiore. . .


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Monday, April 28, 2008

You Say You Can, But. . .

I Honestly Doubt That You Can Handle The Proof...
by The Old Hippie Because You Still Aren’t Stopping Them, Still “Allowing.”
Patriot 

The following links are articles of proof.  Proof that the successful transfer of the control-of-the-control of the wealth of this nation into the hands of the very few has destroyed this nation’s economic security, and ripped the Constitution and Bill of Rights to almost insignificance.  While at the same time making sure that their stolen wealth is protected from being taken back by the masses, and that their very-very few will be physically protected, by the stolen wealth, from the coming horrors of the multiple resource wars.  i.e. energy, water, and food, and from the coming environmental destructions of billions of lives.

[The links are in no particular order, as they are of equal significance.]

The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke
- - -
The Myths and Harsh Effects of Bush's Economic Class War
- - -
A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash
- - -
We Must Imagine a Life Without Oil
- - -
Global Famine? Blame the Fed
- - -
Die-offs: The Biggest News That Isn't News
- - -
Hunger in America - Help US
- - -
Global Famine: The Lords of Capital Decree Mass Death by Starvation
- - -
Food Riots Erupt Worldwide
- - -
Is This the Beginning of Water Wars?
- - -
Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly and the Politics of Thirst
- - -
The Reality-Based Realities of Global Warming
- - -
“Zeitgeist - The Movie”
- - -
False Pretenses - The War Card: Orchestrated Deception
- - -
The Real Elitists Work in Mainstream Media

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[ Also - for a further perspective...  Not only did you “allow” him to say it...
you then “allowed” him to get away with saying it. . .  and you then...
(to add even further injury to his insult...)  “allowed” him to prove it. ]

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,
It's just a goddamned piece of paper!”


George W. Bush

[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

Not to mention your “allowing” of, (and the getting away with of,) his/their help in the destruction of the Separation of Church and State, the creation of “Free-Speech Zones,” the illegal invasion of another nation that was of no threat to us or their neighbors, had not attacked us, and had nothing to do with those that had actually attacked us, the doing away with Habeas Corpus protections, the “legalization” of torture, and the unconscionable protection of corporate profits over all other concerns, including life itself. . .


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Sunday, April 27, 2008

Reality Observed. . .

Some Have The Ability To See The Actual Reality - Here Are But A Few...
by The Old Hippie Because You Still “Allow,” Even With All The Proven Lies And Destructions.

  -  “Get it Straight!”
      Hugo Chavez is a Dictator, Alvaro Uribe a Beacon of Democracy. 
      “You won't read anything like it in your local paper.”

  -  “The Seven Myths of Energy Independence”
      Why forging a sustainable energy future is dependent on foreign oil.
      “Myth #7:  Once Bush Is Gone, Change Will Come.”

  -  “PBS Asks The Question” ...
      “Why is there a mainstream media blackout on Pentagon's use of
      domestic propaganda?”  (The MSM ‘unavailable’ for comment.)
 Your Right

Bush Actually Said...  (And You Pretty Much “Allowed” ‘The-Very-Few’ To Prove It.)

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.

It's just a goddamn piece of paper!”


George W. Bush


[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

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A“Below The Fold” bonus Video from Boston Legal - Concerning “Our Supreme Court” ...

“You’ve transformed this court from being a governmental branch devoted to civil rights and liberties into a protector of discrimination, a guardian of government, a slave to monied interests and big business and today...”

- Enjoy the video - I know, it’s a television show, but this clip, is excellent - (10 min) -




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Saturday, April 26, 2008

Reality Check. . .

Just So You Can Keep “Things” In A Reality-Based Perspective...
by The Old Hippie Because You Keep “Allowing” Your Own Destruction, and Their Sneers.

Read   -  Ten Commandments Weekend & Ten Commandments Commission
      Past 2 years congress has designated... “Ten Commandments Weekend” ?!?
      “Most of us pay little attention to congressional resolutions.”

  -  “Loser Take All”
      How republicans quietly hijacked the Justice Department to swing elections,
      by aggressively regulating most aspects of the voting process. . .

  -  “The World Food Crisis”
      After years of pushing globalization and genetically modified seeds... instead
      of feeding the world we've created a system that leaves more people hungry.

Bush Actually Did Say It...  (And You have “Allowed” ‘The-Very-Few’ To Prove It.)

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.

It's just a goddamn piece of paper!”


George W. Bush


[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

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A“Below The Fold” bonus - Just 2 Video Reminders of Your Constructed Reality...
[- Both videos from  →Freepress.net ←  Well worth your time to visit -]






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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Don't Know Why I Bother. . .

You’ve Amply Proven Your Allowed “Allowing” Will Continue. . .
by The Old Hippie Because Your Continued “Allowing” Is Killing My Nation.

“The more war - The more money we can take for ourselves.
The less war - The less money we can take for ourselves.”

The very few are winning - They are not stupid, nor are they incompetent.
The very few only care for the power of the control-of-the-control of... wealth.

The very few are educated, intelligent, efficient, and successful.
The very few have intelligently, efficiently, successfully transferred the wealth to themselves.

America is not the very few.  We, the other 99.x%, are America.
The wealth they stole, was our wealth.  It is now their wealth.  Their power.

We gave up securities, liberties, freedoms, so the very few could complete the theft.
We still are. . .  Without protest, without revolt. . .  With our children.


Hacker
{-The Way Many Picture Me-}
 

The very few are openly, in-your-face, sneering, intelligent, efficient, successful war-profiteering corporatists criminals.  The very few are sociopathic “Ann Rand Machiavellians,” whose only concern is the successful continuation of the profits from, and the power of, the transfer of the control-of-the-control of wealth to their very few.

The very few are not concerned with our availablity to oil, water, food, nor our quality of, or access to, healthcare, nor our income, securities, liberties, freedoms, children’s lives, environment, America’s (or any other nation’s) sovereignty... Except for - Where those concerns, our concerns, may interfere with their ability to continue, and control, the flow of the wealth of our many... to their very-very few.


Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Hancock, Madison, Paine, Eisenhower, Kennedy, plus so many other’s “warnings” throughout history were correct... about the possibility of the ease with which the very few would be “allowed” to destroy “America’s Democracy” from within - These past seven and half years have proven their fears justified.

Bush Actually Did Say It...  (And You Did “Allow” The Very Few To Prove It.)

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.

It's just a goddamn piece of paper!”


George W. Bush


[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

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Seriously - Get pissed off - At least - Enough - To do something...  Anything...
That will help you, to help America, stop its purposely manipulated self-destruction.

If you haven’t done it so far, go watch...  → “Zeitgeist - The Movie”  ←  now.

If you doubt anything in the movie’s presentation - Research it, look it up.  Obviously, since you are reading this on the internet, you have access to any search engine you choose to do the research necessary to disprove, or to verify, anything yourself.  Please - Do it.  Now.
(you aren’t stupid, but at this late stage that is becoming questionable.)

And if you still aren’t convinced → Go Here. ←

Otherwise - Please don’t bother me, as I simply don’t respond to trolls, and I do openly censor any sycophantic diatribe, and those that feed it by responding to it.


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Monday, April 21, 2008

I Was Wrong. . .

About How Many Americans Use The Internet. . .
by The Old Hippie Because I Do Make Mistakes, And Try To Correct Them.

A Few days ago I made statements concerning what percentage of Americans use the internet that were based on old data, and therefore very inaccurate as to current percentages.  The following is the most up to date stats from “Pew Internet & American Life Project,” which is updated constantly.  I apologize for my earlier mistake.

Pew Internet & American Life Project chart

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Here is the link the Pew Internet & American Life Project site, where
you can find many excellent and detailed breakdowns of the above stats...

http://www.pewinternet.org/trends.asp


I do apologize for my earlier mistake of reporting out-dated data, and
drawing erroneous conclusions from that mistake, and its old data.


I have no excuse - I simply made a stupid and lazy brain-fart mistake.

Read


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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Personal rant about Net Neutrality.

Thoughts on Net Neutrality.
by Doyle Watson, a contributor to this blog.


I just read an article concerning net neutrality which is in the news again, this issue has ramifications which will have serious consequences for freedom in today’s world if something isn’t done to ensure corporations and governments cannot impose restrictions to it.  Since regular news outlets do not report the news honestly many out there would not have the means to discern the difference and be allowed to research any particular subject if it wasn’t for the internet and the freedom to present all sides to any situation or activity.  There are many countries out there who control the media to the point that there is no way the information provided resembles honest reporting, then there are those countries which the news media supports the government and wouldn’t do anything which would place that government in a “bad light”.  No matter the reasoning, there are many, the final outcome is the government stifles the free flow of information to the point that many are unable to make informed decisions, thus the internet allows those of us who care enough to do the research for those informed decisions be allowed to do so without restrictions.

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The issue which has brought net neutrality back into the light is concerning Comcast’s restriction of people’s ability to upload information in the form of “torrents,” which many do not have a clue as to what a “torrent” is, the reality is that Comcast is not restricting “torrents.”  In simplified terms a torrent is only information which allows a particular file or media to be downloaded over multiple computers, and since Comcast and many other organizations control the backbones, and they wish to maximize their profits, they do not support any measure which allows consumers to move information more efficiently, with the advent of “peer-2-peer” networking.

Many have found the means to share files of many types to everyone in a more efficient manner, and since Comcast is finding such a thought difficult to profit from, they have begun to throttle back, and some cases block the ability to upload information to the internet, using the excuse that there are those of you out there who have their speeds slowed down because of these uploads.  The problem to such a statement is when utilizing cable as the means to access the internet, the more people accessing within a particular area, rather it is uploading or downloading, will slow down the connection speed.  It really doesn’t matter what the actual access is, the more people on cable at a given time the slower the connection.

So why the reasoning for throttling back and blocking some uploads?  Some say to curb rampant “piracy” of software or media, though there are many “legal” reasons for “P2P” networks, the actual reason is that Comcast does not want to improve their networks, nor increase the ‘bandwidth” to allow for truly unlimited access to the internet, as this would increase their costs and cut deeply in to their profits.  But this is an area many could side with Comcast on as everyone is out to earn a profit.  But the more far reaching ramifications is that with the throttling back and blocking of this particular type of traffic, what is going to stop them from restricting other transfers of information which they find objectionable in the future?

Internet access should be regulated as any other form of communications should be, since such communications is controlled by so few corporations due to the costs involved with setting up such networks.  Competition is all but non-existent so those corporations have the means to restrict and otherwise funnel the flow of information as they see fit, preventing certain forms from being transmitted.  Which in some cases is at the expense of consumer privacy, and others restricted at the behest of the highest bidder, which could be the Government, which doesn’t take to kindly to criticism in any country.

Though I am not a big supporter of the government regulating anything, when it comes to corporations there needs to be some regulation to protect the consumers from harmful measures taken in the name of profits, and the restriction of information can be harmful for the citizens, and the country as a whole if it isn’t presented honestly, timely and forthright.  For many this is a right which should never be curtailed.  If there is any question as to how harmful the restriction of information can be, just open your eyes and see that the current war with Iraq was the result of false and misleading “Intelligence” information provided in such a way as to steer us towards such a conflict.  Though there were a few persons out there that voiced their objections, many supported the invasion of a country based on false “Intelligence” information, and now many of our fine and brave soldiers are paying the price, as are the citizens of the sovereign nation of Iraq.

If it wasn’t for the internet a lot of what we know today wouldn’t have seen the light of day.  If it wasn’t for those few voices who started posting on blogs, and other locations which allows for the free flow of information.  Do not get me wrong this does not mean that everything posted on the internet is the truth, but there is many different sides presented which allows everyone, who is so inclined, to research and discover the truth on their own.

Do not mistaken the voiced concerns of a particular corporation when they make statements to the effect that they have the consumers position and well being foremost in their thoughts and actions, which could not be further from the truth if it interferes with their profits, alienating a smaller group allows them to gauge the perimeters of just how far they can go and get away with the restriction of information for everyone...  And once they restrict and block the first smaller group they will begin to disassemble the rest of the information superhighway.  Net Neutrality is a very important and vital part for the free flow of information in today’s world which needs to be protected.


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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Reality Observed. . .

Some Have The Ability To See The Actual Reality - Here Are But A Few...
by The Old Hippie Because You Still “Allow,” Even With All The Exposed Lies And Destructions.

  -  “The Man Who Would Be Bush”
      Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put 
      in the water? ? ! ?

  -  Official says Fraud Loophole was a ‘Mistake’
      “What you’re saying is this wasn’t a conspiracy, it was a mistake.”
      “I don’t trust the Bush administration on this,” Welch said...

  -  “US Won’t Get a Gold Medal for Human Rights”
      Man, this country really cracks me up.  Yeah, let’s just preach to
      other countries about human rights -- Want a really good laugh?
 Your Right

Bush Actually Did Say It...  (And You Pretty Much “Allowed” Him To Prove It.)

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.

It's just a goddamn piece of paper!”


George W. Bush


[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

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A“Below The Fold” bonus Article - Concerning how...
“High Unemployment and High Inflation Make This Recession Different”
- Enjoy the read -

“The Cavalry Isn’t Coming”

“Why is this recession different from almost all other recessions?” asked Herbert Barchoff.  The economist, a former president of the Council of Economic Advisers, answered his own question: “This is not only the usual cyclical recession, but also a structural recession.”

But wait.  There’s even more bad news.

Two-thirds of economic activity is generated by consumer spending.  Most people are broke ... “In 2000,” reports David Leonhardt in The Times, “at the end of the last economic expansion, the median family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers.  In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less--about $60,500.”




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Personal Rant About An Email

Thoughts on a received e-mail.
by Doyle Watson, a contributor to this blog.


Everywhere you look you see where a person’s integrity and honesty is questioned, and the education system is not properly educating, businesses care more about how to turn a fast buck instead of producing a quality product which would last over a longer period of time, and would produce income over that period of time providing more job security and better pay for the more productive employees.  Today our government is run just like any other corporation where the CEO wants only to profit, and to heck with everyone else, and treating their employees as a disposable commodity to be thrown away when their apparent usefulness is no more.

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I don’t usually forward that many e-mails sent with the exception of the occasional good joke, but one I just received is one which I found provides a valid and important message one must always consider, and that is the path of destruction our Government has placed us on.

“There is no easy solution as the Government as a whole appears to be corrupted throughout, but all should not be discouraged.  During the next election one must instill fear of the people into the politicians, by doing a little research, asking the candidates hard questions, and then vote based on a more informed choice.  If you are unable to accomplish the given research, then as a safe bet vote against the incumbent.  As most citizens appear to be unhappy right now with the direction the Government is taking, so why keep the same idiots in Office?

One must always question the politician in an attempt to discover dishonesty?  One may ask, how?  The main way is by listening to the answer given, and pay attention to their actions and the way they answer everyone else's questions.  One must also look to the politicians past, though people can change, it is my opinion that politicians do not.

All must remember that the Government is not there to take care of them or support them.  They are there to protect United States citizens from all enemies, foreign or domestic, which should include businesses and corporations.  Look at the answers the petroleum executives provided to Congress when asked about the fuel prices continuing to rise even though they were experiencing record profits.  They stated it was because they needed to collect as much money as possible so they could have a buffer during the bad times, this I expect is a cover for another agenda.  They made mention that they were unable to drill in 85% of US coast-lines.  They appear to be trying to extort the Government by continually raising fuel prices, which in turns angers the citizenry, so they can drill and destroy those natural habitats in the interest of profits.  This is even more interesting as a lot of oil drilled in the US is exported to other nations.

Instead of providing all these tax breaks and allowing these petroleum companies to continue to destroy our environment, why don’t they remove all the tax breaks and begin to increase tax breaks for those who further alternative energy ideas and concepts, and start truly and intelligently protecting our environment.  Again the short term profits are outweighing the long term ramifications to people’s health, and the health of our planet, and would continue to allow our existence.

I am surprise that with the power wielded by large corporations that the government didn’t just openly give them the ok to drill in those areas on the spot so they could gain more money to their re-election coffers.  I am sure money is passing hands as you read this.”


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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Another Single Read. . .

The Evidence Piles Up - Wonder If Anyone Cares?
by Sidney Blumenthal, An Updated Introduction excerpted from “The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power,” published by Union Square Press


Dick Cheney Was Never a “Grown Up”

A hard look at how one man changed the face of neoconservatism.

Patriot 

After Dick Cheney shot a friend in the face on a Texas hunting trip in February 2006, the national press corps began to speculate about him as one of the great mysteries of Washington, the Sphinx of the Naval Observatory, his official residence.  Cheney had been known in the capital for decades through a career that carried him from congressional intern to the most powerful vice president in American history, but now his supposedly changed character became a subject of intense speculation.  Brent Scowcroft, who had been ...”


[The rest of the excepted text from the book is Below The Fold...]

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... George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser, and had counseled against the invasion of Iraq, told The New Yorker magazine in 2005, “I consider Cheney a good friend — I’ve known him for thirty years.  But Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore.  Scowcroft’s judgment was less about Cheney’s temperament than his policy positions.  The press, however, sought to disclose the sources of his “darkening persona,” as a cover story in Newsweek described it.  “Has Cheney changed?  Has he been transformed, warped, perhaps corrupted — by stress, wealth, aging, illness, the real terrors of the world or possibly some inner goblins?”  A cover story entitled “Heart of Darkness,” published in The New Republic, suggested that Cheney’s heart disease had produced vascular dementia.  “So, the next time you see Cheney behaving oddly, don’t automatically assume that he’s a bad man.”

In 2000, when Cheney, as head of George W. Bush’s search committee for a running mate, selected himself, opinion makers in Washington greeted the choice as proof positive of the younger Bush’s deference to wisdom and therefore personifying prudence.  Cheney’s “manner gives him immunity from the extremist label,” assured David Broder, the longtime leading political columnist of the Washington Post.  “Voters who saw his televised briefings during the Persian Gulf War remember the calm voice and thoughtful expression that are his natural style … By choosing a grown-up, Bush gave evidence of his own sense of responsibility.”

Five years later, in 2005, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, by then the former chief of staff to the former Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking publicly at a Washington think tank, the New America Foundation, was less concerned with the press corps’ obsession with Cheney’s shifting images than with exposing his unprecedented manipulations.  “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.”  Though he had had extensive experience in government, Wilkerson had never before encountered such “secrecy,” “aberration” and “bastardization” in decision-making.  “It is a dysfunctional process,” he said.  “And to myself I said, okay, put on your academic hat.  Who’s causing this?”

Previously fixed on the stereotype of the “grown-up,” pundits projected a new stereotype of dementia.  But had Cheney, in fact, been fundamentally transformed, becoming unrecognizable to those professional observers of the press who believed they knew him well?  Both Scowcroft and Wilkerson had encountered Cheney within councils of state.  Had even Scowcroft misjudged Cheney as a team player when he was Secretary of Defense during the Gulf War?  Was Cheney a regular, conservative minded Republican who had just gone mad?  Or, if he were a member of a “cabal,” did it involve more than Rumsfeld?

George W. Bush jettisoned the tenets of traditional Republicanism — fiscal responsibility, limited government, separation of church and state, and realism in foreign policy.  Instead the doctrines that had been nurtured in the hothouse of the Counter-Establishment since the Reagan period achieved their most radical expression.  At every point, Cheney exercised his power.

The supply-side theory of tax cuts — that slashing tax rates especially on the upper brackets would produce a flood of new government revenues — was applied with a vengeance even after the Reagan experiment had disproved the notion, having fostered extraordinary deficits.  On Nov. 15, 2002, after Bush’s tax cuts had passed, then Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill spoke at a White House meeting of the senior economic team about an impending “fiscal crisis” because of “what rising deficits will mean to our economic and fiscal soundness.”  Cheney quickly knocked down his argument.  “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said.  “We won the midterms.  This is our due.”  O’Neill was soon fired.  He concluded that Cheney and “a praetorian guard” governed Bush’s presidency.  “It’s not penetrable by facts,” he said.  “It’s absolutism.”

Conservative lawyers were installed throughout the administration and appointed to federal judgeships while radical legal doctrines were imposed.  As soon as he took office Bush ended the American Bar Association’s pre-screening of judicial nominees, a practice that had begun in 1948.  The ABA was considered a hopelessly “liberal” organization. In its place de facto vetting was now performed by the Federalist Society, a group that “has created a conservative intellectual network that extends to all levels of the legal community,” according to its website.  Founded in 1982 and infused with more than $15 million in grants from conservative foundations, the Federalist Society has become the principal network for lawyers on the right.  Nearly every Bush judicial nominee, every Justice Department official, every general counsel in every federal department and agency, and dozens of senior cabinet and sub-cabinet secretaries was a member.

The congressional investigation into the political purge of U.S. Attorneys uncovered evaluation forms with a column to be checked about whether or not the applicant was a Federalist Society member.  On every issue, from the gutting of the civil rights division of the Justice Department, where 60 percent of the professional staff was driven out and not a single discrimination case was filed, to the implementation of the so-called “war paradigm,” including abrogation of Article Three of the Geneva Convention against torture, (which then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales termed “quaint” in a memo to the president), Federalist Society cadres were at the center.  David Addington, Cheney’s counsel and later chief of staff, directed the tight-knit group of “torture lawyers” within the administration.

Foreign policy was dominated by the neoconservatives whose agenda was galvanized after the terrorist attacks of September 11.  The 2000 manifesto issued by the Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative group that advocated “regime change” in Iraq, contained a cautionary line that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”  September 11 became that “new Pearl Harbor,” providing long hoped for political momentum the neoconservatives channeled for an invasion of Iraq.

The influence of the neoconservatives over the national security apparatus was heavy-handed and pervasive.  More than 17 signatories of the Project for the New American Century statement held posts within the Bush administrations, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense), Richard Perle (chairman of the Defense Policy Board), and John Bolton (Undersecretary of State for Policy and later Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations).  But these eminences were the tip of the iceberg.  Neoconservatives also staffed the Office of the Vice President, comprising the largest national security team ever assembled by a vice president.  Neoconservatives were strategically placed throughout the National Security Council-for example, Elliott Abrams, NSC director of Middle East affairs, a convicted felon in the Iran-contra scandal.  And neoconservatives were packed into the Office of the Secretary of Defense and his Office of Special Plans, a new office created to “stovepipe” intelligence to the White House without having it vetted by the CIA or other intelligence agencies.

The Iraq war was largely a neoconservative production conducted under the guidance of Cheney and Rumsfeld.  Cheney took command of the intelligence process, even arranging for Bush to sign Executive Order 13292, written by Addington, giving the vice president the same power over intelligence as the president.  The disinformation campaign that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction was a joint enterprise of the Office of the Vice President and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, providing a steady stream of evidence that was later revealed to be false and fabricated.

The occupation of Iraq was undertaken as a grand experiment in conservative ideology.  The experienced hands in nation building at the State Department, who had prepared for the complexities of Iraqi reconstruction, as well as senior professionals from the departments of Treasury, Energy and Commerce, were blackballed by Cheney, Rumsfeld and their neoconservative aides.  The hiring for the Coalition Provisional Authority was run by Rumsfeld’s liaison to the White House (mainly OVP), who gathered resumes from the slush piles of conservative think tanks, and subjected prospective employees to rigorous tests of political loyalty, asking whether they had voted for George W. Bush and were opposed to abortion.

Cheney’s reliance on neoconservatives was essential in carrying out his long conceived project of creating an imperial presidency, an executive unfettered by Congress or the press, that under the banner of war could enact any policy and obey or ignore any law that it wished.  Cheney’s use of the neoconservatives to attain his aims — the core goals of the Bush presidency — was hardly happenstance or an alliance of sudden convenience.  “Has Cheney changed?”  asked Newsweek.  The answer to that question required delving deeply into the hidden history of neoconservatism.

Richard Nixon was the first Republican president to cultivate the neoconservatives.  They were considered a potentially fresh source of ideas to deal with racial turmoil, student unrest over the Vietnam War, and the discontents of the working and middle classes.  Nixon’s first encounter took place on March 12, 1970, when Irving Kristol was invited to dinner with the president.  Kristol was a former Trotskyist who maintained a consistently cynical view of liberalism as he drifted to the right, acting as an editor at a succession of small journals.  The diary of H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, records: “Tonight P (President) stag dinner with key staff and Irving Kristol.  Got off to slow start and through dinner P talked with (George) Shultz (Secretary of Labor) about labor matters, Kristol just listened. Sort of a waste of time and talent.  In Oval Room [Office] after dinner the talk heated up, about whole subject of condition of the country, focused on radicalization of large number of college students, strength of nihilistic groups (in influence, not numbers), and how to deal with it all … Must say, Kristol didn’t add much.”

Nixon did not recall Kristol from that dinner.  Kristol, after all, had been uncharacteristically quiet.  Nonetheless, Nixon’s aides kept sending him articles Kristol wrote on such subjects as pornography and censorship.  After Kristol endorsed Nixon for reelection in 1972, causing a stir among the New York intellectuals, Nixon’s most conservative aides, Patrick Buchanan and Charles Colson, recommended that Nixon hire Kristol as a domestic policy expert to replace the departing Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  For whatever reason, whether Nixon’s or Kristol’s demurral, Kristol did not receive the appointment.

With Nixon’s resignation and Gerald Ford’s assumption of the presidency, a new aide arrived with the portfolio to gather ideas from conservative thinkers.  Robert Goldwin was himself little known among intellectuals.  He was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, the oldest conservative think tank in Washington; founded to combat the New Deal, it functioned as the brain trust for Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964.  Goldwin had published no notable articles or books of his own and believed generally that intellectuals did not “even have much to say to the ordinary citizen.”  His notion was less an idea than an impulse, a deeply seated resentment against liberalism that took the form of anti-intellectualism.

Goldwin’s gruff contempt expressed the common opinion of conservatives, even conservative thinkers, of the period.  AEI was less a hive of activism than a small, stagnant world apart.  Its scholars had not achieved distinction in peer-reviewed academia; nor were they known for interesting articles in major publications.  Kristol was an experienced provocateur and organizer, whose neoconservatism was a Leninist strategy for the right: intellectual cadres would act as a vanguard to guide the masses of Nixon’s “Silent Majority” against the class enemy.

Goldwin’s first service to President Ford was to arrange an hour long private meeting with Kristol, who soon began recommending neoconservatives to positions on the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress.

Goldwin also called Kristol’s work to the attention of Ford’s chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld, who in turn handed it over to his deputy Dick Cheney.  (Cheney had also been Rumsfeld’s assistant when Rumsfeld served as counselor to President Nixon.)  Cheney had earned a master’s degree in political science at the University of Wyoming and pursued doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin before dropping out to work as an intern for a Republican congressman from Wisconsin.  According to documents in the archives of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Cheney wrote Goldwin on Jan. 25, 1975.  “I greatly appreciate receiving the stuff you’ve been sending me… Anything like that that comes in from Kristol or others, I’d love to see.”

Five days later, Kristol wrote Goldwin a letter explaining the political necessity of fostering a conservative Counter-Establishment:

“I do think the White House ought to do something for a relatively small group of men who are, unbeknownst to it, being helpful to this Administration, to the Republican party, and to conservative and moderate enterprise in general.  I am referring to the men who head small and sometimes obscure foundations which support useful research and activities of a kind that the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations take a dim view of.  I have got to know an awful lot of them these past years, and they never have received the barest recognition which I think they are entitled to.  I am thinking of people like R. Randolph Richardson of the Smith Richardson Foundation, Donald Regan from the Merrill Trust, someone from the Earhart Foundation, the head of the Scaife Family Trust, and the head of the Lilly Endowment, etc.  I say ‘head’ because, in each case, one would have to determine whether it is the chairman of the board of the executive director who is the appropriate person to receive this recognition.  But it would be nice if, say, the White House were to invite these gentlemen and their wives to a State dinner occasionally.  If you think this can be done, I’d be happy to draw up a list for your guidance.”

On Feb. 14, 1975, Cheney wrote Goldwin, “Bob, why don’t you come see me on Irving Kristol.  We need to come up with a specific proposal as to how he might be utilized full time.”  Kristol was soon sending a flow of letters and articles containing his views on a wide range of subjects to Goldwin that were also shared with Cheney.  One Goldwin memo, dated Nov. 18, 1975, appended to a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Kristol on small business, “The New Forgotten Man”: “In case you missed it, this Kristol piece is excellent and addressed very directly to us in this Administration.”  At Kristol’s suggestion, Goldwin also launched a series of seminars for senior officials within the administration that included a number of neoconservative luminaries.  Cheney, who had become White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, who had been named Secretary of Defense, were regular attendees.

After Ford’s defeat in 1976, Kristol’s influence in directing the funding of right-wing foundations made him the widely acknowledged godfather of the neoconservative movement.  During the Reagan years, he moved from New York to Washington, settling as a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, which under his influence had shed its traditional Republican origins and become a neoconservative bastion.  (In 2002, George W. Bush awarded Kristol the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)  Kristol’s son, William, meanwhile, continued the family business, serving as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, an isolated outpost of neoconservatism during the elder Bush’s administration that its denizens called “Fort Reagan.”  William became editor of a neoconservative journal of opinion, The Weekly Standard, part of press lord Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that included Fox News, where the younger Kristol holds forth as a regular commentator.  Two years after establishing The Weekly Standard, Kristol co-founded and chaired the Project for a New American Century, whose office was housed at the American Enterprise Institute.

The abbreviated history of the Ford administration, reaping the whirlwind of Nixon’s failed presidency, besieged on all sides by the Congress, the press and an insurgent Republican right, scarred Cheney. His encouragement of Kristol and the neoconservatives reflected his efforts to move the Ford administration rightward.  Along with Rumsfeld he pushed for the creation of a parallel commission dubbed the Team B to second-guess the CIA on Soviet military capability.  The Team B’s report projecting a rapidly expanding Soviet threat turned out to contain faulty data.  Then CIA director George H.W. Bush, who had acceded to Team B’s creation, later condemned it as having set “in motion a process that lends itself to manipulation for purposes other than estimative accuracy.”  Nonetheless, Team B served as an important milestone in legitimating neoconservatism within the Republican Party.

Elected to the House of Representatives from Wyoming in 1978, Cheney quickly rose within the Republican leadership, becoming the party’s senior figure on intelligence matters.  As the ranking Republican on the joint congressional committee investigating the Iran-contra scandal Cheney issued a report (written by his then counsel Addington) that attacked the Congress for encroaching on the president’s prerogatives in foreign policy, although the scandal involved secret offshore bank accounts, rogue sales of missiles to Iran and bribery of White House officials.  This parallel and illegal foreign policy was constructed to avoid adherence to the congressional Boland amendments that prohibited covert military aid to the Nicaraguan contras.  Cheney’s minority report was a brief for the imperial presidency.  It stated: “Congressional actions to limit the president in this area therefore should be reviewed with a considerable degree of skepticism.  If they interfere with the core presidential foreign policy functions, they should be struck down.”  In 2005, he told reporters that the report best captured his views of a “robust” presidency.

When I published this book in 1986 it appeared just months before the Iran-contra scandal was revealed.  I had set out to examine the ways that conservatives had created an infrastructure for institutionalizing and magnifying their influence in national politics and throughout the federal government.  Then on the national staff of the Washington Post, I knew Dick Cheney as the House Republican Whip.  But I didn’t imagine then that his crusade for unfettered presidential power and a unitary executive would culminate during a subsequent presidential administration.

As Secretary of Defense in the elder Bush’s administration, Cheney was always the most ideological member of the national security team.  Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Cheney’s Pentagon senior staff “a refuge for Reagan-era hardliners.”  After the Gulf War, in 1992, the neoconservatives engaged in a new Team B-like operation under Cheney’s aegis.  Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and his deputies, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby (later VP Cheney’s chief of staff) and Zalmay Khalilzad (later U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the U.N.), after consulting with leading neoconservatives, produced a draft document for a post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy, simply called Defense Policy Guidance.  The memo argued for unilateral use of U.S. force, preemptive strikes, preventing the emergence of powerful rivals including nations that were formally allied to the U.S., and pointedly did not refer to international order or multilateral organizations.  Once the document was leaked to the New York Times, however, Bush administration officials killed it as contrary to their foreign policy.  But Cheney was proud of the memo and issued a version of it under his name as a departing gesture in 1992 as the administration left office.  “He took ownership of it,” said Khalilzad.  The ideas contained within it resurfaced in the 2000 manifesto of the Project for a New American Century (Wolfowitz, Libby, Khalilzad, and Cheney were signatories) and in 2002 as the basis for President George W. Bush’s “National Security Strategy of the United States of America.”

After the first Bush administration, Cheney became the chief executive officer of Halliburton and a member of the board of trustees of the American Enterprise Institute.  His wife, Lynne, who as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993 had been a fierce cultural warrior on the right, became a senior fellow at AEI.  On January 23, 2003, two months before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush delivered a speech at the annual AEI dinner bestowing the Irving Kristol Award.  “You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds,” he declared.  The following year, Cheney did the honors.  “Being here brings to mind my own days affiliated with AEI, which stretch back some 30 years,” he recalled.

Cheney had not changed over the years; on the contrary, he could not have been more explicit and direct about his goals all along.  There never was a real mystery about him.  Early on, Cheney’s notions for an imperial presidency and his relationships with the neoconservatives merged on to a single track.  Since the beleaguered Ford White House, he sought out people to develop and implement such ideas, which became the governing policy of George W. Bush’s administration.  Only through Cheney was the rise of neoconservatism made possible.  Now its next phase will revolve around finding a new sponsor to return them to power despite the catastrophic consequences of their ideas.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is the author of “The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power.”

© 2008 Salon.com


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Monday, April 14, 2008

Reality Check. . .

From A Member-In-Good-Standing Within The CEO Class No Less...
by Lee Iacocca, (with Catherine Whitney,) excerpted from his book.

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes?  Here are a few excerpts from his book, “Where Have All the Leaders Gone?” released 4/17/07.

Read 

Lee Iacocca Says:

“Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening?  Where the hell is our outrage?  We should be screaming bloody murder.  We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.  But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”


[The rest of the excepted text from the book is Below The Fold...]

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“Stay the course?  You've got to be kidding.  This is America, not the damned “Titanic.”  I'll give you a sound bite: “Throw all the bums out!”

You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I Have.  But someone has to speak up.  I hardly recognize this country anymore.

The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs.  While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do.  And the press is waving ‘pom-poms’ instead of asking hard questions.  That’s not the promise of the “America” my parents and yours Traveled across the ocean for.  I’ve had enough.  How about you?

I’ll go a step further.  You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged.  This is a fight I’m ready and willing to have.

The Biggest “C” is Crisis!

Leaders are made, not born.  Leadership is forged in times of crisis.  It’s easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory.  Or send someone else’s kids off to war when you’ve never seen a battlefield yourself.  It’s another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history.  We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes.

A Hell of a Mess.

So here’s where we stand.  We’re immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving.  We’re running the biggest deficit in the history of the country.

We’re losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs.  Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy.  Our schools are in trouble.  Our borders are like sieves.  The middle class is being squeezed every which way.  These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: “Where have all the leaders gone?”  Where are the curious, creative communicators?  Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense?  I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?  We’ve spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.  Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm.

Everyone’s hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn’t happen again.  Now, that’s just crazy.  Storms happen.  Deal with it.  Make a plan.  Figure out what you’re going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing.  Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when “The Big Three” referred to Japanese car companies?  How did this happen, and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem.  The silence is deafening.  But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress.  We didn’t elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity.  What is everybody so afraid of?  That some bonehead on Fox News will call them a name?  Give me a break.  Why don’t you guys show some spine for a change?

Had Enough?

Hey, I’m not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here.  I’m trying to light a fire.  I’m speaking out because I have hope.  I believe in America.  In my lifetime I’ve had the privilege of living through some of America’s greatest moments.  I’ve also experienced some of our worst crises: the “Great Depression,” “World War II,” the “Korean War,” the “Kennedy Assassination,” the “Vietnam War,” the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11.  If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this: “You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action.  Whether it’s building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play.  That's the challenge I’m raising in this book.  It’s a call to “Action” for people who, like me, believe in America.  It’s not too late, but it’s getting pretty close.  So let’s shake off the crap and go to work.  Let’s tell ’em all we’ve had “enough.”


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Friday, April 11, 2008

Just One Article. . . (Again)

If You Haven’t Read It, Then You Don’t Know - Do You?
by By Scott Horton, Harper’s Magazine, April 8, 2008 issue.


Just found the following at This Modern World...  (Read it, then. . .
click the “The rest” link at the bottom, for the full original article.)

Rule of Law
(Via Atrios):

Matthew Diaz served his country as a staff judge advocate at Guantánamo.  He watched a shameless assault on America’s Constitution and commitment to the rule of law carried out by the Bush Administration.  He watched the introduction of a system of cruel torture and abuse.  He watched the shaming of the nation’s uniformed services, with their proud traditions that formed the very basis of the standards of humanitarian law, now torn asunder through the lawless acts of the Executive.  Matthew Diaz found himself in a precarious position—as a uniformed officer, he was bound to follow his command.  As a licensed and qualified attorney, he was bound to uphold the law.  And these things were indubitably at odds.

* * *

One of the crimes the Administration committed was withholding from the Red Cross a list of the detainees at Guantánamo, effectively making them into secret detainees.  Before the arrival of the Bush Administration, the United States had taken the axiomatic position that holding persons in secret detention for prolonged periods outside the rule of law (a practice known as “disappearing”) was not merely unlawful, but in fact a rarified “crime against humanity.”  Now the United States was engaged in the active practice of this crime.

The decision to withhold the information had been taken, in defiance of law, by senior political figures in the Bush Administration.  Diaz was aware of it, and he knew it was unlawful.  He printed out a copy of the names and sent them to a civil rights lawyer who had requested them in federal court proceedings.

* * *

Diaz spent six months in prison and left it bankrupt and without a job.  In addition to his sentence, the Pentagon is working aggressively to have Diaz stripped of his law license so he will not be able to practice his profession.  The Bush Administration has sought to criminalize, humiliate and destroy Diaz.  Its motivation could not be clearer: Diaz struck a blow for the rule of law.  And nothing could be more threatening to the Bush Administration than this.

* * *

In the week in which Diaz received the Ridenhour Prize, another Pentagon “secret” was disclosed.  This “secret” was a memorandum made to order for William J. Haynes II, Rumsfeld’s General Counsel, and the man at the apex of the Pentagon’s military justice system that tried, convicted and sentenced Diaz.  The memo was authored by John Yoo.  This memorandum was designed to authorize the introduction of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation techniques to be used upon prisoners held at Guantánamo, and ultimately also used in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The memorandum authorized waterboarding, long-time standing, hypothermia, the administration of psychotropic drugs and sleep deprivation in excess of two days in addition to a number of other techniques.  Each of these techniques is long established as torture as a matter of American and international law.  The application and implementation of these techniques was and is a crime.

* * *

Following the implementation of these techniques, more than 108 detainees died in detention.  In a large number of these cases, the deaths have been ruled a homicide and connected to torture.  These homicides were a forseeable consequence of the advice that Haynes and Yoo gave.

The rest.  [Full, original article at Harper’s Magazine.]

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A “Below The Fold” Bonus Perspective Article - Enjoy. . .
from the independent investigative journalist Robert Perry, at The Consortium.

“Losing the War for Reality”

“When future historians look back at the sharp decline of the United States in the early 21st Century, they might identify the Achilles heel of this seemingly omnipotent nation as its lost ability to recognize reality and to fashion policies to face the real world.

Like the legendary Greek warrior – whose sea-nymph mother dipped him in protective waters except for his heel – the United States was blessed with institutional safeguards devised by wise Founders who translated lessons from the Age of Reason into a brilliant constitutional framework of checks and balances.

That is the crucial lesson for understanding the arc of U.S. history over the past three decades.”

[I'll not reproduce the article here.  Click the link above for the full article.  It is worth the read.]



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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Keep The Money Rolling In!

Just So You Can Keep “Things” In A Reality-Based Perspective...
by The Old Hippie Because You Still Aren’t Stopping Them, Still “Allowing.”

Patriot 

“Everything His President Wants to Hear”
“General Betray Us?  Of course he has.  MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time.  But it was right then—as it would be to repeat the charge now.”

-- By Robert Scheer —


You are going to “allow” them openly to lie to you - again.  You will - again - do nothing to stop the theft and transfer of our nation’s wealth into the hands of their very few.

Over 50% of the “troops” in Iraq are for-profit private corporate mercenaries, unregulated, and not under the control of our military commanders, nor its system of regulatory justice.  But they are only mentioned in less than 1/4 of 1% of the corporate MSM, that shares a majority of its board members with the corrupt war-profiteering corporations, et al.

Keep the money rolling in, for us - “Stay the course” - of course.  Oh yeah, and give us another $100 billion of your tax monies to make our own.  Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iran is “the” real threat! (Not the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that now is stronger there than it was 7 years ago, because we went after the money and oil in Iraq, instead of those that actually attacked you.  We can't allow them to be captured, that would stop “our” money train!)

If you’ve gotten this far, then read the following perspective article, then ask yourself...
Why did I not see this reported in the MSM?  Then ask yourself...
Why would the MSM not want you to understand it, much less know about it?

“Is David Petraeus Dirty?  Ted Westhusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself”


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[ Also - for a further perspective...  Not only did you “allow” him to say it...
you then “allowed” him to get away with saying it. . .  and you then...
(to add even further injury to his insult...)  “allowed” him to prove it. ]

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,
It's just a goddamned piece of paper!”


George W. Bush

[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

Not to mention your “allowing” of, (and the getting away with of,) his help in the destruction of the Separation of Church and State, the creation of “Free-Speech Zones,” the illegal invasion of another nation that was of no threat to us or their neighbors, had not attacked us, and had nothing to do with those that had actually attacked us, the doing away with Habeas Corpus protections, the “legalization” of torture, the unconscionable protection of corporate profits over all other concerns, including life itself. . .


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Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Don't Know Why I Bother. . .

You’ve Amply Proven Your Allowed “Allowing” Will Continue. . .
by The Old Hippie Because Your Continued “Allowing” Is Killing My Nation.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of our currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
-- Thomas Jefferson.

The Federal Reserve, which controls-the-control of all the monies used in the United States...
Is a private, for profit, not-connected-to-the-government corporation.


Hacker
{-The Way Many Picture Me-}
 

It's The Money, Stupid!  All the rest, whether it be real, or manufactured, is nothing more than tools-of-fog “fogging” the theft.  The single largest theft and transfer of wealth in the written history of this planet.  Not just mere millions of dollars, or even billions of dollars, but trillions of dollars.  Profiteering... (mainly two kinds,) dangerously abnormal corporatist profiteering, and the well proven corrupt, and deadly, criminal war profiteering... Both of which are now running amuck.  Both of which have, incredibly, been “allowed” to reach the point of even destroying the in-the-way-of-profits Constitution, Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, the entirety of the federal regulatory structure at all levels of management, the middle-class manufacturing base, the middle-class’s economic, social and political voices... hell, the middle-class itself.  But yet, you still do nothing to stop them.


Bush Actually Did Say It...  (And You Pretty Much “Allowed” Him To Prove It.)

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.

It's just a goddamn piece of paper!”


George W. Bush


[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

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Seriously - Get pissed off - At least - Enough - To do something...  Anything...
That will help you, to help America, stop its purposely manipulated self-destruction.

If you haven’t done it so far, go watch...  → “Zeitgeist - The Movie”  ←  now.

If you doubt anything in the movie’s presentation - Research it, look it up.  Obviously, since you are reading this on the internet, you have access to any search engine you choose to do the research necessary to disprove, or to verify, anything yourself.  Please - Do it.  Now.
(you aren’t stupid, but at this late stage that is becoming questionable.)

And if you still aren’t convinced → Go Here. ←

Otherwise - Please don’t bother me, as I simply don’t respond to trolls, and I do openly censor any sycophantic diatribe, and those that feed it by responding to it.


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Monday, April 07, 2008

Reality Check. . .

Just So You Can Keep “Things” In A Reality-Based Perspective...
by The Old Hippie Because You Keep “Allowing” Your Own Destruction, and Their Sneers.

Read   -  “Stop Loss”: Patriotic Bluster Dressed up As a Protest Movie
      Hayseed accents can't hide the film's glamorization of war.
      Why do so many still buy into it as “protest?” and/or as “real?”

  -  “Rapid Withdrawal Is Only Solution”
      Oh...  Wait....  It’s just another retired general.  (yawn...)
      Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, to be exact.  They'll ignore him too.

  -  “The Biggest Threat to Freedom”
      “...he anonymously briefed congressional committees, whose follow-up queries
      were stonewalled.  In late February he decided to go public, horrified by...”

Bush Actually Did Say It...  (And You Pretty Much “Allowed” Him To Prove It.)

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.

It's just a goddamn piece of paper!”


George W. Bush


[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

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A“Below The Fold” bonus - Just Two Reminders of Your Reality...

Your Healthcare Reality

Your C-SPAN Reality


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Sunday, April 06, 2008

“Ancient Articles”

Articles From The Recent Past, That Resonate More Strongly Today...
by Mostly Our Allies and Indy Media, Since “Our” Corporatist-MSM did “IMMMorL” them.

[ “IMMMorL” = Ignored, Marginalized, Misrepresented, Manipulated, and/or out right Lied. ]
     Patriot 

I present the following “Ancient Articles,” not only in case you missed them, but because their content is as important today, in some cases more so, now that the proof-of-their-truths has been proven/exposed by various reliable sources since they were published.

Also, (because the accuracy of the originals has been verified,) so that you may do your own comparison and research of how “our” corporatist controlled MSM “IMMMorL” concerning the exposures.

The “Ancient Articles”:  In no particular order, as all are of equal importance.

Ancient Article 1  -  Ancient Article 2  -  Ancient Article 3

Ancient Article 4  -  Ancient Article 5  -  Ancient Article 6

Ancient Article 7  -  Ancient Article 8  -  Ancient Article 9


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A “Below The Fold” Bonus article link, to last year's censored “Board to Death” article.
From the research team at → Project Censored ← at Sonoma State University.


Ancient Article 10


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Thursday, April 03, 2008

Don't Know Why I Bother. . .

You’ve Amply Proven Your Allowed “Allowing” Will Continue. . .
by The Old Hippie Because Your Continued “Allowing” Killing My Nation.

You still some how think this all has to do with oil, or ideology, or Christianity vs Islam, or getting those that got us, or the morality vs immorality of same sex marriage, or global warming is a hoax, or FOX isn't a treasonist propaganda tool for the corporatists, or that America is number-1 only in pollution and locked-up citizens, or universal health care is a socialist plot, or that torture isn't torture because we changed the “legal definition” of torture, or that it isn't about sycophantically pundit driven“class warfare,” or that abortion is. . .  etc...  etc...  Pick your divisional-fog-tool used to cover the theft of, and transfer of the control-of-the-control of, the wealth of this nation into the hands of the very-very few.


Hacker
{-The Way Many Picture Me-}
 

It's The Money, Stupid!  All the rest, whether it be real, or manufactured, is nothing more than tools-of-fog “fogging” the theft.  The single largest theft and transfer of wealth in the written history of this planet.  Not just mere millions of dollars, or even billions of dollars, but trillions of dollars.  Profiteering... (mainly two kinds,) dangerously abnormal corporatist profiteering, and the well proven corrupt, and deadly, criminal war profiteering... Both of which are now running amuck.  Both of which have incredibly been “allowed” to reach the point of even destroying the in-the-way-of-profits Constitution, Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus, the entirety of the federal regulatory structure at all levels of management, the middle-class manufacturing base, the middle-class’s economic, social and political voices... hell, the middle-class itself.  But yet, you still do nothing to stop them.


Bush Actually Did Say It...  (And You Pretty Much “Allowed” Him To Prove It.)

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face.

It's just a goddamn piece of paper!”


George W. Bush


[For those who doubt he actually said it - Here is the quote’s verification link.]

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Seriously - Get pissed off - At least - Enough - To do something...  Anything...
That will help you, to help America, stop its purposely manipulated self-destruction.

If you haven’t done it so far, go watch...  → “Zeitgeist - The Movie”  ←  now.

If you doubt anything in the movie’s presentation - Research it, look it up.  Obviously, since you are reading this on the internet, you have access to any search engine you choose to do the research necessary to disprove, or to verify, anything yourself.  Please - Do it.  Now.
(you aren’t stupid, but at this late stage that is becoming questionable.)

And if you still aren’t convinced → Go Here. ←

Otherwise - Please don’t bother me, as I simply don’t respond to trolls, and I do openly censor any sycophantic diatribe, and those that feed it by responding to it.


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