The Good Tax

Once upon a time in the land of Yor were a very peaceful and wealthy people who were mostly not very quarrelsome but for one controversy. The king had placed a tax on the sale of Cows. Anyone who sold a cow had to give the king 90% of the proceeds of the sale. As a result while there was a lot of demand for meat, as hardly anyone sold their cow, and many who were tired of caring and feeding their cow very much resented the tax on selling it.

Now anyone who had a cow could sell the milk, and many who did not actually own a cow usually got paid a percentage that milk, or occasionally they would get a calf. The tax on a calf was high but calves were cheap and abundant so the king's percentage was not a lot in total money, and when cows got old and stopped producing milk, there was nothing for it but to sell it to the butcher and pay the kings price, though the percentage was reduced for very old cattle.

In the end all the cattle ended up with the butcher, just not until they were very old, so meat had a price that allowed the butcher a living, but he felt that if he got all the proceeds, he could live like a king. Now the king had an evil twin that had been banished, and headed up a Gang Of Pirates beyond the Pale, but he made a deal with the butchers, that if they overthrew the old king the twin would eliminate the hated Cow Tax.

So the butchers, with the help of those folk who were tired of caring for their cattle, or resented the percentage of the milk taken by those who did, got together and overthrew the old king. The new king, being evil after all, turned to his Gang Of Pirates to buy the cattle as they had the gold, and the butchers could get their cattle at well under the market price and on credit to the pirates, that was paid off as the meat sold.

At first things looked very good, meat became very abundant and cheap, the butchers were making killings at a tremendous clip, and becoming almost as wealthy as the Pirates, though with the falling price of meat and the Pirates percentages not as well as expected. Those who sold the cattle felt suddenly wealthy and loaned the pirates their money on the promise it would make more than they made from the milk. Only those who had made their living actually caring for the cattle felt left out as the numbers of cattle to care for became far fewer, while their own numbers and needs did not.

As the number of cattle became less there were fewer calvs as well and their price went up dramatically. The Pirates offered an easily solution by loaning the money to buy the calves, and noted that the price would be very much higher if there was still a Cow Tax, but the loans would be very short so the cattle would have to be sold for meat at a very young age when the note came due, and of course the pirates had it written that they got the cow as payment.

Over a bit ot time the excess meat was consumed, and the price went to an all time high, as there were far less cattle about. Milk that was once plentiful and cheap also became much more expensive. Those who cared for the cattle had to do so for far less of a percentage of the milk as there were far more caretakers than cattle now. Between the fewer cattle and the percentages paid to the Pirates who were now the primary cattle owners, the butchers were also not much better if at all than before.

Those formerly caring for cattle began to steal and rob out of desperation, so the evil king blamed them for all the troubles, even as he hired some of their numbers as guards, that were mostly used to come down very harshly on anyone who commented on how much better things were under the old king, holding fake show trials calling these folk the leaders of the criminals.

Eventually the people rose up and threw out the evil king, but the now very wealthy Pirates had moved on to ply their trade to Hither and to Yon, the palace already looted, and the people were left hating the Cow Tax as the cause of their misery, and the land of Yor never again became a place anyone wanted to be like.

Outing Criminals is saving their Country,not attacking,

Once again the "liberal" media runs like frightened children, when the Gang of Pirates accuse a film that outs the GOP crimes as being anti-American instead of confronting either them or the facts, or even attempting to discuss the real issues involved.

I find it amazing that when a Gang Of Pirates commit war crimes (to say nothing of the whole list of other crimes) that anyone would accuse the person noting the war crimes, of hating the folks who were the first victims of those Pirates. Talking about the monsters, is not an attack on the nation or populace they are controlling.

The GOP is not America, just as Saddam was never Iraq, or Hitler Germany. For the criminals (or their apologists) to wrap themselves in the Flag, like a bully who hides behind his mother’s skirts, as a means of deflecting justified outrage, is itself not only another outrage, but so cravenly cowardly as is beyond pathetic.

Americans do NOT torture, but some criminals, be they Mafia, rogue cops, or other sorts of monsters who happen to be Americans do. We cannot always bring such criminals to justice, but the vast majority of Americans wold want it to be so, if they knew about it and were able to do so. As long as such Americans are alive and the criminals also, it is not over.

For anyone to equate outing criminals with attacking America, they hoist themselves on their own petard as they are declaring themselves with the criminals and against anything actually American.

Watch out for other anti Bush types that seem "not right"

As one who very early was involved in the Perot movement when there were equal numbers of folk from across the political spectrum, I got to know well many folk who I would never get to know otherwise and was lead into an "Alice through the looking glass" world of John Birchers, anti-tax, Illuminati conspiracy types and a cottage industry of books, schemes, and scams of a sort and level not seen on the left at all.

I met many who would have been Tim McVeigh, had the circumstances fallen their way, and the loose change folks are a natural there. There are two things that distinguish them in any crowd, both aspects of that looking glass.

One is the Right Wing Authoritarian Pathology with its special Illogic that is well described even if there is some dispute as to its qualities and origins. Even when, like loose change, they support ostensively leftist goals, they carry the RWA nature, that still gives real leftists the hives.

The other is the classic Strong Father view of government laid out so clearly by George Lakoff. Often taken in rebellion against the abusive father in the classic Libertarian fashion, they see themselves like the runaway child, in a brutal world where theft or prostitution are the only paths of survival and raw rage fuels the drive to power by any means, never with good results.

Unable to escape the Abusive Father frame, they see Liberals as the mirror side of their own horror, and cannot imagine the Nurturing Parent model that Lakoff gives as the model of actual Liberal Philosophy.

Rather than accept any point of view it is best to really look at what is said and not accept it just because you would like to agree with the speaker that folk you don't like are the enemy

Opposing the Gang Of Pirates

As noted in the comments on my last post it has been a while since I have added to that last post. It has not been do to inactivity, but rather a quest to keep it relevant and important. If I filled the blog with the chaff about Senator Craig's stalling, or each additional needle of GOP corruption in what has become a planetary body of such needles, the better points I could make would be lost among the lesser ones. And besides, I usually make those comments at the site of the news;-)

But Tom Cat was wondering what happened and perhaps others are too, so what started out as a personal response became enough to make it relevant to anyone who might be wondering, and a good place to plea for help in the Good Fight. So this was the letter:

Hi Tom,
I am driven far more by the need to post information I have discovered etc, than the need to discover something to post, That tends to make my blog a bit more pithy but probably less regular than is ideal. I have added a couple of links to my "Basic reading/listening for literacy" list since I wrote about the Gapminder project, but no great revelations that would not be a rehash of previously covered info.

If you Google "Freedem", or occasionally "Freedemm" you will see quite a splash across the web with most of it me, with quite a bit of rehashing, particularly about the Gapminder project of late, in an effort to make actual reality most folks default reality. While I recognize that anyone can have a POV spin, or emphasis based on personal ego or agenda, I really do think that actual reality that is beyond such ego is the only sane basis for discussion, and the only glue that keeps a civilization from disaster.

On the ego, POV, agenda, front a Googling of "Gang Of Pirates" might produce nearly the same list as "freedem", though I would have hoped that would have become more general by now. Much that has been written has focused on Bush, even when it is not him personally at issue, and will be a major issue if he is there or not. By focusing on the GOP and even separating them as not exactly synonymous with Republicans, a whole group of good things happen.

The first is that there is an accurate and descriptive name of a group of folks and ideology that gets great power from not having a name, as only by naming them can they be opposed. By calling themselves Conservatives they cloak themselves in legitimacy they do not deserve, and as pointed out by Orwell, further destroy the language that can define opposition.

The second point is to steal the Initials. The grand ole party meme was based on the delegitimized Democrats as the party of Southern Bigotry and Treason. As all those folk are now Republicans, it is they who have lost legitimacy. If Gang Of Pirates is used enough (with the "Of" capitalized) and with GOP used after referring to the original "Gang Of Pirates" used earlier, then that can become the default thought for all those cases where only the Initials are used, do it enough and even Faux Noise will find that translation in their head every time they use it.

Thirdly it provides a common focus and target for the entire coalition, even though many members would claim to be different, and indeed in fine detail there are some competing agendas. An Atheist Libertarian may well seem to be opposed to a Dominionist Theocrat, and even claim to be a polar opposite, but when the votes are counted for destroying the Commons and disabling the government from helping actual people, while supporting Corporate Welfare, they are both on the same side of treason and kleptocracy, and thus GOP. (though the Gang has many more members beyond those two: Neocon, Plutocrat, Fascist, Skinhead, etc)

Fourth, it fully describes the common ideology and authoritarian mindset. As noted in Generation of Monsters the RWA pathology grants the father figure authority without accountability (often stemming from child abuse when that was the apparent fact) and the Pirate description, like the drunken child abuser description, removes the childhood feeling that their inadequacy was somehow responsible for the abuse, and places the blame and anger (and hopefully eventually justice) where it truly belongs.

On a parallel path I have been fighting to put Secular back where it belongs, and take it back from those who would destroy it meaning to further their agenda. As you can see noted in several posts around the web Secular is not Atheist, but rather having no connection to any idea of religion.

Rather Secular Government is like a Chess game, everyone gets the same set of pieces with the same rules. Religion may inform your decisions. You might even sacrifice a chicken to victory, if you believe it will help, just not in a time or location to disrupt those without your beliefs. And just because you are arrogant enough to believe you have found absolute truth, and even if they are called Bishops, you cannot give them any extra powers like teleportation, or invincibility, you have to play by the same rules as everyone else. That is sandbox 101.

The SiCKO truth

Click on image for full scale

The hype is on to counteract Michael Moore's devastating new movie. However,in my surfing about I ran across a new Google gadget that graphs UN data sets. It doesn't have every sort of data you can imagine, but it does have an amazing amount of data, and while one would always want more flexibility, it does have a lot of flexibility.

In this graph I was able to arrange measured Life expectancy, and number of doctors on the x and y axis as a measure of the quality and cost of care and the income per capita for the size of the bubble. I also was able to show the trend as to getting better or worse. (you can click on the image to see full size)

The US is standing still and things are not looking good in Estonia, Jamaica, and Uzbekistan. China and Brazil may be reporting issues to show such great change at that moment but all the excommunist countries seem to be showing a drop in the number of doctors as health care becomes less available.

It is worthy of note that almost all the countries to the right and above the US have Government run health care. A few like the UK, Canada, and Japan, have a bit fewer doctors per person, but all those orange dots above and to the right are pretty much the rest of Western Europe, and all doing better than the US in both health and doctors and continuing to improve.

Thanks to the Gang Of Pirates much recent US data is missing, one supposes that it is not good news. If you do not believe you can pick on the title and go play with the data yourself.

On edit, Playing with the program more I was able to create this graph that is even more telling


As you can see I put child mortality and life expectancy in and managed to label almost every dot to a country. In this graph Cuba ends up very close to the US but the number of doctors per person is so high it was off the chart in the one above. The US (and others) has not published the most recent data but I would not be surprised if Cuba is actually ahead now.

Everyone who can, should print a copy and frame it and put it on the wall of their Congressman and Senator. Emailing a copy to your local pundit wouldn't hurt either.
Update 2
A bit more study of the history shows how the us was ahead of much more of the world in the past, and that Government health care provides benefit even in those cases where it started from a much lower point.
I highlighted China so it would be easy to distinguish from Portugal where progress has been double that in the US, starting way behind and passing us by. Of interest also is what happened in China in 1987 and Costa Rica in 1990 when steady progress suddenly went bad. It would be interesting to look up the history of those times. Russia's experiences with privatization are well known but document well here.

A Cult of Freedom

I am constantly struck by how Christian most Western Atheism is. To quote myself "It is not that Atheists have no god that I have a problem with, many religions have no god, but that they have no religion".

Most religions grew up with "belief" in what was "common knowledge" in their time and culture. The God, or gods resided in the most impressive local landmark, and "religion" was seamless with the rest of existence.

As non western societies grew, their religions grew in place, and great thought was spent in the nature of society and the best way to operate within it.

As Rome was a hodgepodge of such groups, and there was a political class that wished to use Religion as a method of creating power for themselves, religion became something separate from location and culture, and took on the need for enforced "belief" in what could be observationally disproved, or illogical, as well as much that seemed unlikely, and self promoting by those in charge.

Some like "Secular Humanists" have attempted to accomplish an Atheistic Religion, but managed the worst of all cases. The most grievous crime perhaps, of attaching the word "Secular" to a religion, and thus giving Fundies cause to demand equal time with such Secular pursuits as Chess, or Cricket. But also in its antitheist dogmatism, becomes a jihad against other religions and invites the same, but still glosses over those ethics concepts that the Fundies have dodged to keep from accusing themselves.

Confucian thinking is intensely Chinese, and based on an anti Democratic, anti freedom, Imperial mode. It does however offer a glimpse of what a religion can be, that demands no fantasy but an ideal that all humans can aspire to, and methods to make life better for all.

Unfortunately like a Cult that combines celebrating free thought and many opinions, with individual freedom, it is a great challenge to accomplish.

"Fair" tax is very UnFair

Recently there has been a rash of "Fair" tax proposals (as if the label "Fair" would make them so), mostly around the idea of an across the board flat tax on sales, and the elimination of the Income tax, and the abandonment of Corporate taxes. This is a position favored by many on the Right, but also Senator Mike Gravel who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

How far we have come when it was proposed that a Corporate taxes could be raised to the point that income and sales taxes could be eliminated! If the resulting wealth caused demand to rise to pay for the extra tax so be it, if not then the Paris Hiltons of the world could afford the difference.

In any case the point needs to be made-ALL Sales taxes are regressive! You can game the system to make them a bit less so by eliminating them on Food, Rent and perhaps a few other things, but a Poor person paying 5% tax on a $100 car is paying exactly the same PERCENT tax as a rich person paying 5% tax on a $100,000 car. What they are not paying is the same PERCENT of their total income, as the $100,000 car is likely to be a very much smaller percent of income than the $100 car, and there will have to be many more $100 cars as they will not last well or hold value as the very expensive case.

Encourage the Poor or even Middle Class to save? They cannot, rising prices and stagnant wages leaves most struggling on the edge of disaster, while debt of all sorts chews away at the bit of edge they have. Any preference to save or invest will go vastly to those who already have no financial problems.

Collecting a sales tax also involves hugely more paperwork, and/or will be hugely more scammed, as it already is where there is a state sales tax, and mostly by the rich who can get winks as the do so.

How to do you do a fair tax? it is very easy! Everybody gets zero tax on the first $10,000, no matter your total, add 1% on each of the next $10,000 so 20k pays $100 ( 0 + 100), 30k pays $300 (0 + 100 + 200), 100k pays $4,500 ( 0 + 100 + 200 ...+900) still a total rate of only 4.5%. Only those people with incomes larger than most countries would pay huge taxes as the taxes on the smaller amounts would be taxed exactly the same for everyone who made it to that place.

Corporations might have slightly different numbers but would also be similarly taxed according to the size of the total corporation, that way the smaller corporation would have a competitive advantage in taxes to offset the disadvantage of the power that scale confers. (if you think that scale is efficiency and not power, think of efficiency of scale as a ten acre hamburger stand, and power of scale as McDonalds)

There is no magic market, Money provides power and power provides money, it is a one way ticket to a feudal system. Only by Government intervention to act as friction where needed at the top and oil where needed at the bottom can a balance of real civilization be found. Money at the top is power and needs only to be restrained, it will still prosper in spite of restraint. At the bottom is pent up energy that can explode in creativity if only it is enabled, it is the only place that really good ideas come from, they will never come from the self satisfied.

The Generation of Monsters

I have suspected for sometime that Dr Bob's RWA's were more than a statistical anomaly, and perhaps also a pathology not a lot different from depression or schizophrenia, containing a wide range of severity and a somewhat nebulous array of symptoms that, taken together, still have clinical meaning.

Missing from this Idea was specific causes and what mechanics might be involved. I suspected trauma as a place to start, as I had seen Religious cults, and groups that behave as cults zero in on PTSD like sharks smelling blood. What I had missed was the possibility that the biggest pool of recruits was abused, and neglected children. Not just those from obviously dysfunctional families, where the parents have issues with drugs or mental disorders of their own, but also and most commonly from families without such excuses, that deliberately abuse and neglect their children (though they would not call it that) for reasons of religion or ideology, often passing on pathology they themselves were poisoned by.

Alice Miller puts a fine point on the problem

.... However brutally these people were brought up, they showed no immediate signs of the harm done to them. On the contrary. Many of them grew up into seemingly well--adjusted young people. But sooner or later, usually one generation later, when the tormented children had themselves become parents, the former victims did the same with their children as had been done to them, with no feelings of guilt. It was the only thing they knew, after they had repressed and denied their own pain.

Studying child abuse confronts us with the astonishing fact that parents will inflict the same punishment or neglect on their children as they experienced themselves in their early lives. But as adults they have no recollection of what they went through. In the case of sexual assault on children, it is quite usual for the perpetrators to have no conscious knowledge of their own early life--history or at the least to be cut off from the attendant feelings aroused by those experiences. It is not until they are in therapy‹always supposing they are given any‹that it transpires that they have been reenacting what they went through as children.

The sole explanation I can advance for this fact is that information on the cruelty suffered in childhood remains stored in the brain in the form of unconscious memories. For a child, conscious experience of such treatment is impossible. If children are not to break down completely under the pain and the fear, they must repress that knowledge. But the unconscious memories drive them to reproduce those repressed scenes over and over again in the attempt (and with the false hope) to liberate themselves of the fears that cruelty and abuse have left with them. The victims create situations in which they can assume the active role in order to master the feeling of helplessness and escape the unconscious anxieties.
...snip...
Why were there people brave enough to risk their lives to save Jews from Nazi Persecution? Much scientific inquiry has been expended on this question.
....snip...
Almost all rescuers interviewed reported that their parents had attempted to discipline them with arguments rather than punishment. They were only rarely subjected to corporal punishment, and if they were it was invariably in connection with some misdemeanor and never because their parents had felt the need to discharge some uncontrollable and inexplicable feeling of rage on them. One man recalled that he had once been spanked for taking smaller children out onto a frozen lake and endangering their lives. Another reported that his father had only ever hit him once and apologized afterwards. Many of the statements might be paraphrased thus: "My mother always tried to explain what was wrong about whatever it was I had done. My father also spent a lot of time talking to me. I was impressed by what he had to say."

What a different picture we get from the reports of the persecutors and hangers--on: "When my father was drunk he took the whip to me. I never knew what I was being beaten for. Often it was for something I had done months before. And when mother was in a temper she tore into anyone who got in her way, including me." ....

So child abuse and neglect produces high RWA's and child protection produces low RWA's, and not surprisingly they translate their ideas born of abuse (or lack of it)into their political philosophy and even religious doctrine.

George Lakoff deals more specifically with these differences and finds it the basis for progressive vs conservative framing.

On the whole, they are defining the conservative position for the current debate about childrearing, as well as for legislation incorporating their approach. Since the ideas in conservative Christian childrearing manuals are fully consistent with the Strict Father model of the family that lies behind conservative politics, it is not at all strange that such fundamentalist groups should be setting the national conservative agenda on family values.

I should say at the outset that virtually all of the mainstream experts on childrearing see the Strict Father model as being destructive to children. A nurturant approach is preferred. And most of the child development literature within the field of developmental psychology points in one direction: childrearing according to the Strict Father model harms children: a Nurturant Parent model is far superior.

In short, conservative family values, which are the basis for conservative morality and political thought, are not supported by either research in child development or the mainstream childrearing experts in the country. That is another reason why the conservative family agenda has been left to fundamentalist Christians.
...snip...
To see more clearly what is at stake in knowing about research on such matters, let us look closely at what some conservative Christian childrearing manuals have to say about how children should be raised. These manuals are clear on many points:

1. Children are inherently sinful and defiant.
2. Only punishment and reward will train children away from defiance and pursuing their sinful desires.
3. The only way a child can be raised properly is for a father to demand absolute obedience to his authority. Any questioning of authority requires swift and painful punishment.
4. Obedience can be taught only through painful corporal punishment-by whipping with belts or beating with switches or paddles.
5. Continued disobedience requires greater beating.
6. Punishment for disobedience is a form of love.
7. Parental authority is a proper model for all authority, and children must learn to obey authority so that they can wield it properly in later life.

Reading the whole link is worthwhile as he details many major Right wing leaders as calling severe damage as good and wholesome support as causing "dangerous dependence"

Many other sources have noted the power wielded even beyond the political boundaries of the far right in recommending these destructive child rearing ideas. Notably this articlewith millions of emails, thousands of newspapers carrying his daily column calling for actions that researchers have shown causes trauma and even brain damage Dobson is paving the way for a new generation of Monsters who will feel nothing as they destroy civilization and murder millions without a thought of concern.

Paul Krugman is late to the party but welcome

While a theocracy has long been a dream of the most extreme religious kooks, actually putting a long term plan into action has been gathering force since the 1970's. Like any real conspiracy, it has inner strife, braggarts, turncoats etc, and while subverting traditional conservative groups is being itself subverted by Moonies, but has still succeeded alarmingly, and is and is much more of a threat than Krugman lets on (or knows?).

Sara Posner has an excellent article on another of the real farm teams that provide the reserves for the Gang Of Pirates to draw from as well as doing great damage in their own right, as does another by her here

Others have spent the effort to see not just how these people are pursuing power, but what they would like to do with it. John Sugg has written in Mother Jones

Gary North, a top Reconstruction theorist, wrote in his 1989 book, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism. “Those who refuse to submit publicly…must be denied citizenship.”
..snip...
The Old Testament—with its 600 or so Mosaic laws—is the inflexible guide for the society DeMar and other Reconstructionists envision. Government posts would be reserved for the righteous, as long as they are male. There would be thousands of executions a year, with stoning a preferred method because it would turn the deaths into “community projects,” as movement theologian North has noted. Sinners in line for the death penalty would include women who commit adultery or lie about their virginity, blasphemers, witches, children who strike their parents, and gay men (lesbians, however, would be spared because no specific reference to them can be found in the Books of Moses). DeMar told me that among Reconstructionists he is considered something of a liberal, because he’d execute gays only if they were caught indulging in sodomy. “I’m happy to just drive them back into the closet,” he said.
...snip...
Besides facilitating evangelism, Reconstructionists believe, government should largely be limited to building and maintaining roads, enforcing land-use contracts, and ensuring just weights and measures. Unions would not exist, and neither would unemployment benefits, Social Security, and environmental protection laws. Public schools would disappear; one of the movement’s great successes has been promoting homeschooling programs and publishing texts used by tens of thousands of homeschooling families.
...snip...
The old left—the Communist Party and its many splinters—used organizing tactics called popular fronts, in which people were recruited through specific causes into a movement tacitly guided by the Party. Reconstruction has married those Leninist tactics to the causes of the right—abortion, evolution, gay marriage, school prayer. Gary North wrote in 1982, in an effort to reach Baptists,“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty…until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” Nowhere at the Restore America rally did anyone hoist a banner for Reconstruction; those attending came to develop a united front supporting such things as displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings. But they were also introduced—and recruited—to the broader program.
...snip...
“All governments are theocracies,” he (ex-judge Roy Moore) said. “We now live in a secular humanist theocracy. I want to change that to a government with God at its head.”

(as if things like roads, or hospitals, even sports, are atheist inspired if not specifically Christian)

Katherine Yurica also weighs in with a detailed report that includes this list:

1. God’s People Are to be Regents Over the Earth: “Almighty God wants us to recapture the dominion man held in the beginning… Remember, at the time of creation man exercised authority, under God’s sovereignty, over everything. He was God’s surrogate, His steward or regent.
   
   
2. Dominion over Others Originates in the Bible: “The genesis account uses two colorful words to describe this. One… we translate ‘dominion. The word means to ‘rule over’ or ‘tread down,’ as with grapes…
   
   
3. Man Was Told to Subdue or ‘Trample the Earth’: “The other word…is translated ‘subdue.’ Man was told to subdue the earth. The root means ‘to trample under foot,’ as one would do when washing dirty clothes. Therefore… we have in part the concept of separating good from evil by force.
   
   
4. God Gave Man the Power to Govern and the Right to Subdue: “With the first word …God gives man the authority to govern all that is willing to be governed. With the second…He grants man authority over the untamed and the rebellious. In both instances, God gave man a sweeping and total mandate of dominion over this planet and everything in it.
   
   
5. God Intended the World to be Governed and Subdued by the Godly: “….God’s intention was that His world be governed and subdued by those who themselves were governed by God.
   
   
6. God Demands His People to Invest Their Capital: “Despite our preconceived attitudes toward social justice, God’s Law of Use controls the ultimate distribution of wealth. We must be willing to take the world as He made it and live in it to the fullest…
   

Very Scary folk

Foresight

Discovered on the web

"You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bon-fire under her deck...
I have no time for such nonsense."
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

That is why the fewer Deciders there are in any system, the more backwards it becomes, compared to what it could be. It doesn't matter what the system is, Communist, Corportist, Feudal, or Theocratic, no leadership can take the time to understand a new concept, and even though it might save their bacon, will pay attention only to what they have predetermined to be important.

Another similar take on my basic concepts

In wandering about the Net looking for something else I ran into Robert W. Fuller, Patient Revolution: Human Rights Past and Future which is an hour long video about his self named "Dignitarian" ideology. His elite background shows, and seems to me to be a major difference I have with him. But by talking from the position of the management, and his academic credentials he does provide a place and perspective that can allow managers to create a more humane and profitable system.

Of particular interest to me is the way he, as I have, actively differentiates what he is talking about from the Communist/Socialist unnecessary monopolies that are not different from the same thing that is "privately" held. He talks about managers treating others with dignity because it is ultimately in the manager's self interest, while my focus is to have a method to make sure that he does so, because few people can see their real self interest. He does make a point that social embarrassment is a mechanism of accountability, but history has often shown it weak and assuming the person can be embarrassed.

In memory of Jeanne Kirkpatrick

The one speech that I remember By Ms Kirkpatrick while she was still a Democrat, was a spirited defense of why our thugs were better than their thugs (she used that term.)

Her contention was that while thugs the world over murdered and tortured their people, all of America’s pet thugs (like Saddam) were basically simple kleptocrats, who just wanted to rape the financial well being of these countries, and as long as you didn’t get between them and power or money, you were pretty much ignored.

She claimed that the only alternative was the “other guy’s” thugs who did the same thing but also insisted in controlling people’s social actions and opinions, thus imposing them selves on peoples daily lives, beyond keeping them in abject poverty. This was why Totalitarians were worse than garden variety authoritarian dictators.

Now it is a standard thing to accuse your enemy of tactics you plan on using, but I wish I had a text of the speech because almost immediately she did just that, it was hypocrisy even then, but has only gotten worse.

I have thanked her for pointing out the difference early, and I have used her talking points ever since. I only wish John Dean would read them.

It is indeed bad enough that the Gang Of Predators have gone on a kleptomaniacal spree, it is worse that they have gutted the Constitution and the Magna Carta, but it is worse yet that they are going completely Totalitarian that opinions and thought crimes are threatened, and in some cases carried out.

Ms Kirkpatrick did indeed call an early warning of what we should really fear, and the spent the rest of her life in support of that very evil.

Focusing On The Reality

It would appear that regardless of any other principals laid out in any part of the law, if there is a democracy, the majority of voters would wish that the majority would prosper. As most of the arguments was not if they would prosper, but how, such would be the wish of nearly all the voters.

It would seem a reasonable guess that few would deliberately decide that they should do worse. Those who have achieved a level of prosperity, and were greedy enough to want to benefit from the impoverishment of the majority however might well work to reduce what the majority had to say about it, and work to convince them of concepts that would cause them to work against their own interests.

Whatever smoke and mirrors, the results are the ultimate judge of reality. That reality is that the power and prosperity of the majority of Americans has been in decline since the '50's with a gain at the top equal in total but divided among very few. Sometimes the pace is slower sometimes faster, but breakneck in the past 6 years. But the result can be seen here.

Thom Hartmann lays it out in great detail in his book and fairly well in his discussion here. As I point out in the basic concepts in the upper corner of this blog, that all group actions need to be seen as the reality it is and how benefits are assigned and how the folk in control are held accountable. It is this accountability that government needs to be the final force, with the elected democracy the final accountability on government.

This is a very different proposal than that the government actually be the unaccountable monopoly, but that there be no unaccountable monopoly of any type. All the Orwellian twisting of this point is no more than fraud and fakery.

A quick thought

Until we reframe how we think about group actions, the Sharpies will continue to rake in the gold and give everyone else with the shaft.

All group actions, Government, global trade, any corporation, etc., have the stakeholders who are affected and shakers who have the operational control of the enterprise. If the stakeholders cannot hold the shakers accountable, they will give themselves more of the benefits and the rest of the stakeholders more of the costs. If they can the shakers will weasel out of what accountability there is. As indeed they have done, till there is hardly any left.

The new Congress has its work cut out for them, I can only hope they will be able to focus on that prize.

The Origins of Tyranny

This is an important documentary shown on BBC in 2004. Needless to say I cannot imagine that any American Media would ever run it.

I would pick on a few points to disagree with, mainly that Liberal thought failed because crime went up. Their own detailing of the Straussian method, would indicate that much of that "failure" was due more to programs being cut off at the knees, and of rules inserted in them to create something to attack. This is exactly what is happening to a school system that has worked well for over 200 years, but is now, suddenly, failing.

They also fail to connect the thought of the Religious Right (Dominionists) as having more than similar interests to the Straussians, when they have such a similar thought process as both Strauss and the Islamists. As well as how the Straussian created fantasy has infected all aspects of Republican politics.

Their point, particularly in the first of the three movies, is that the founding thought of both Islamist, and Straussian,(and Dominionist)is that freedom is corrupting and ultimately lead to Nihilism and Hedonistic animal debasement (obviously understanding animals as badly as humans).

Their very detailed point that should be made stronger is that ALL these groups, Islamist, Neocon,(and Dominionist) truly Hate Freedom and Democracy, and are the real enemy of Humanity and Civilization. They also make well the point that Islamists as a group and AlQueda in particular, are mostly an annoyance at best, and would be rejected even in their strongholds without being pumped up by the Neocons, who need them as much as Bin Laden needs the Neocons.

Just .......WOW

Here indeed is what Ed Murrow would sound like if he were alive today.

Here is what a real honest press would sound like.

It is a pity that only those who have cable or the internet will see such things.

No wonder that there is such a reality divide in this country.

Where did all the money go

Starting with the Kennedy tax cuts money was bled from American business into the CEO class. That is not the investors, who were increasingly as screwed as the workers (as many were the workers, Pension plans etc. ). Small businesses have always struggled, but high taxes forced them to reinvest or pay the taxes. Most reinvested.

The high taxes were not high as long as the money removed was small so the differences in salary from top to bottom was as low as seven fold with the big boss making $35,000 and the janitor making $5,000, and most of the value went into increased production, better quality etc. I recall reading there was a new record breaking wage (after the Kennedy tax cut) of $800k and the race was on.

Since most giant businesses were managed by a tight ole boy network at the top salary was a matter of power, and CEO salaries leap ever skyward, with top management close behind. The stockholders were either in Mutual funds with infinitely diluted control, or if they were investing individually, had neither the clout or the ability to investigate adequately, and in nearly every business the rules were crafted to lessen the power of investors.

As smaller businesses tried to keep up there was a perception that their own leadership was slipping into second class status, and having the power to do so they also began to siphon off needed investment moneys. Never put in such stark terms (mostly), still there was an orgy of "consolidation" where good businesses were mined for their assets (worker pension funds among them) and the husk tossed away.

Many Billionaires were thus created, but it was the wealth of the thief not the hard worker. Many folk owned bonds with AAA rating one day and junk status the next, and as most of those moneys were hidden, so were the losses. Everywhere where folk did not have power, on the job, in a pension, or mutual fund, even many small businesses, they were robbed.

Even in the Government, when Reagan took office, the government was the largest landlord, mostly in public housing with trillions in assets. In one of the most under reported stories of the time, the man in charge had had a fire sale to all his friends at pennies on the dollar, in theft unmatched till the current administration. Then even that was defaulted (with much more theft) as these same friends cratered most American Banks.

With all that theft, how did Americans manage? Savings were eliminated, most American middle class had a lot of savings, today they don't. Real wages were cut in half, where there had been only the father working, now both father and mother had to work to keep the same lifestyle. Benefits like pensions and health care were "HMO'd" "down sized" or eliminated altogether (vacation times and rules included).

Many former or "would have been" workers spent their life savings to "buy themselves a job" and became "small businessmen" but that did not solve the problem and in many cases made it worse, providing intermittent services that used to be full time jobs, and competing on price, did the job ever cheaper, and even if they employed others and made money from them it only spread the pain.
Europe and Japan did not, at first, get this disease. Low top salaries and heavy reinvestment cratered American market share, and high taxes meant that wealth was shared as shorter work hours and longer vacations. I met with a German executive about some shared technical issues that we needed to work out, and he was aghast at what Americans put up with. The very idea that an 8 hour day did not include the lunch hour and a couple of breaks was the ultimate in management chiseling.

If today Europe is sickening from slow business it is not just that workers are well treated (and ever less so) but that in the global economy the kleptocrats at the top are ever less satisfied with salaries first at seven times average, then the next I heard 27 times, now hundreds of times the salaries of the folk on the shop floor. The investors aren't getting the money, stock prices and dividends have risen slowly if at all.

It is kleptocracy that is ruining the world.

Swiftboating nearly everybody

I first noticed the dangerous strain when they "swiftboated" Frank Church. A reletively conservative Democrat who thought that mayhem and murder done in America's name and kept secret only from Americans was a bad thing. (those on the pointy end had the info first hand)

When I was in high school, the partisan conservative (Paleo) admin. had a complete class on propaganda, and subversive techniques, so we could recognize Communist influences. I wish I had better notes, as Techniques like Subversion, & Terrorism can be used in any ideology.

I watched in slow horror as these folk subverted groups from Baptists to Republicans, using the very methods I was taught, and made them all something they never were.

Another technique was to change the definitions of the arguments, that all who oppose you have this wild, straw dog agenda, making liberal a bad word, but also assigning the most extreme case of it in proportion to the awareness of the subversion rather than to any policy beliefs, marginalizing and suppressing embarrassing reality debate in one move.

Pre-accusing others of what you are doing, is another tool, like the pained winger cries of excess partisanship, even though arriving at the opposition 30 years late.

Well the Fascist straw left, like genuine Satanists, is at best only a few odd deluded folk, and if one feels the least extreme among extremists, it is only that these others have been "swiftboated" about their thinking as well.

Actual policy attitudes would be the same progressive libertarian range they always were, if we can ever get back to those happy days of being the major issues.

For now, as we fight for air, self actualization will have to wait.

Hat tip kuffsworld

Libertarian Dream, Human Nightmare

Well they have gone and done it, or rather started to do it and will finish it if not somehow stopped. If there were only one "liberal" thing that a Government aught to be doing, against which the least argument could be made, it would be the building and maintenance of streets roads and highways.

Without which you would not be able to step away from your house without being in a foreign country that could decide everything from taxes to whatever rights (if any) you might have, or even if you could be outside your house at all, or perhaps only on Tuesdays. And then there is the bit of road beyond that.....

And you would have NO say in the matter.

In short if a private person owned the roads YOU needed to travel, they would have more to say about your daily life than any other official government.

But our new world Republicans are busy doing just that! That bridge that was built usually with all or part your taxpayers dollars? Sold to the highest bidder. Not the highest bid in the price of the bridge paid to the formerly legitimate government.... but the highest creative bribe to the folk who vote on the sale. (can I point to the exposure of any particular secret bank account?, no, but like wildly divergent counts between an official election count and exit polls, or number of voters, the fact of a criminal outcome is evidence enough that a crime is committed)

Many of the first sales are apparently already toll roads, and in some cases there are "Commissions" that operate them in the states name, often enriching themselves with legalized (or not) embezzlement by any of the tried and true methods. But at extremus, every citizen has the right and capability to find the facts, and expose and punish such persons.

"Sold" to a private person or Corporation there is no such accountability, if 90 cents out of every dollar of your multidollar toll, goes directly into the CEO's pocket, you have no way of finding out, and no way to hold him accountable if you did. It is all secret and private. And without accountability, you can bet that your pocket needs will not be considered.

Of particular interest is..

Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls.

"They depoliticize the tolling decision," Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.

These are the guys that wail and cry over official government "Taxes", but jump with joy when they are "Profits". When it comes to that sucking sound from your pocket the only thing you might notice is the increase.

Oh, and that nice sounding "depoliticise" that is the sound of YOUR RIGHTS to hold them accountable going up in smoke and mirrors. Before they are finished all you will own is the Debt.

Crunch Time Coming Soon

I haven't published much recently. It has been like watching a car crash that has taken agonizing years, instead of seconds. Bush's first words after the Nov 2000 elections chilled me to the bone, as all that has happened since was painted in the body language, and unstated threat that he was the new king and would never be held accountable for any action.

The Internet was young then, and only those who had gone there to see what was really happening about the impeachment debacle had a clue to how badly we were screwed. Even two years later many senior Democratic leaders did not have a clue about information that was commonplace on the 'Net.

Even now most people don't seem to be able to get their minds around how drastically their world has changed, taking many freedoms for granted because they haven't tested them, or themselves been at the pointy end of the loss. Instead each outrage is not enough in itself to galvanize and organize the opposition, except in a few rare and mostly insufficient cases.

Most Americans are somewhat aware that their lives are not as open as they were, but still have hope that it can be fixed without themselves standing out too far from the crowd and turning a bad situation instantly, personally, horrid. This is the mindset that allowed so many Jews to find themselves in the gas chambers.

Robert Kennedy is one opposition figure that has at least brought open facts in some detail into a focus that is just such a terrifying fact that we are a long way down a road most wish to think that we haven't gotten to yet. In response many "Uncle Tom" Democrats are still trying to treat hemorrhaging Democracy as "barely a flesh wound", fearful that confronting the bullies will only get us all beat up more.

Mark Crispin Miller has deeply researched the problem and stood to defend Kennedy from liberal "Uncle Toms" (specifically Salon and Farhad Manjoo) and in doing so better defines more reality in fewer words than I have seen recently.

Specifically

We also hear that Democrats have been reluctant to speak out about election fraud because they fear that doing so might cut down voter turnout on Election Day. By such logic, we should henceforth utter not a peep about election fraud, so that the Democratic turnout will break records. Then, when the Republicans win yet again, because they've rigged the system, how will all those Democratic voters feel? Maybe those who haven't killed themselves, or fled the country, will recover just enough to vote again. Would it then be prudent for the Democrats to talk about election fraud? Or would it still seem sensible to keep the subject under wraps?

The argument is idiotic, yet the people who have seriously made it -- Bernie Sanders, Markos Moulitsas, Hillary Clinton's and Chuck Schumer's people, among others -- are extremely bright. The argument, as foolish as it is, does not bespeak a low I.Q., but, I would suggest, a subtler kind of incapacity: a refusal and/or inability to face a deeply terrifying truth. The Democrats refuse to talk about election fraud because they cannot, will not, wrap their minds around the implications of what happened in 2004, and what is happening right now, and what will keep on happening until we, as a people, face the issue. In short, whatever clever-sounding rationales they may invoke (no doubt in all sincerity), the Democrats won't talk about election fraud because they're in denial, which is itself based on a lethal combination of inertia, self-interest and, above all -- or below all -- fear.

Such fear is understandable. For the problem here is not simply mechanical or technological, legal or bureaucratic, requiring that we merely tweak the rules and/or build a better mousetrap. Any such expedient will naturally depend on a consensus of "both sides" -- and there's the rub, because in this great clash the "other side" detests American democracy itself. The movement now in power is not conservative but radical, intent on an apocalyptic program that is fundamentally opposed to the ideals of the Enlightenment, on which, lest we forget, this revolutionary secular republic was first founded. The movement frankly disbelieves in reason, and in all the other worldly goods that every rational American still takes for granted: pluralism, checks and balances, "the general welfare," freedom, progress, the pursuit of happiness. For this movement, condom use is worse than death by AIDS, however many millions the disease may kill; the ruination of the planet should be hastened, not prevented, as it means that He will be returning soon; the "war on terror" is a matter not of geopolitics but metaphysics, as our national enemy is "a guy named Satan"; homosexuals should not be citizens, the US having been conceived as a "Christian republic"; and -- most relevant to this debate -- the movement's adversaries, which means all the rest of us, are not human beings with divergent interests but literal "agents of Hell," demonic entities against which any tactic, however criminal or sinful, is permissible, because they are likely to use any tactic, regardless of its sinfulness or criminality, to force their evil program on the Righteous Ones.

Of course, that theocratic bloc does not comprise the whole Bush/Cheney movement, which, at the top, is heavily dominated too by frank neo-imperialists, corporate profiteers, careerist sociopaths and livid paranoids compelled by the intense self-hatred typical of such perennial types as Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover. Revolution tends to work by unifying the energies, or bile, of only roughly complementary interests. This revolution certainly is no pure upsurge of religious fervor, for its plutocratic animus is just as powerful, apparently, as its crusade to "Christianize" the world. However, while it would be very foolish to ignore the movement's secular agenda (i.e., the avarice and power lust of Cheney/Rumsfeld and their corporate cronies), it is just as foolish to imagine that the movement's theocratic program is mere smoke, calculated just to daze the pious masses so that Congress and Wall Street can rob them blind.

This theocratic program is no secret, as the conquest of the GOP has been the top priority of US Christianist extremists since the early Nineties. It was their aim to put George W. Bush in office, and then to keep him there, despite the will of the electorate; and having done so, they have rapidly transformed our government into an instrument of their crusade. "George W. Bush is our agenda!" as the Rev. Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition, boasted candidly to Salon's Michelle Goldberg a few years ago. He had every right to crow. The executive departments and top federal agencies are now in theocratic hands, and this government pursues no policy, foreign or domestic, that has not been devised or vetted by the party's theocratic apparat. The government now generously subsidizes many theocratic groups that proselytize explicitly, pushing both their own creed and the interests of the Bush Republicans. And now that Congress too is full of theocratic militants (who seem to have no strong opponents), the Supreme Court is just one seat away from an entrenched majority as frankly hostile to the church/state separation as it is to voting rights for all Americans.

The power and fury of the US theocratic movement have been amply documented by a range of keen observers, including Esther Kaplan, Paul Craig Roberts, Kevin Phillips, Stephenie Hendricks, Max Blumenthal, Frederick Carlson, Katherine Yurica, Michael Lerner and Salon's Michelle Goldberg, among others, as well as in my own books Cruel and Unusual and Fooled Again. The threat has also sounded strong alarms on solid Christian grounds, in writings by Jim Wallis, John Danforth, Jimmy Carter, Davidson Loehr, Rich Lang and Bruce Prescott. (Of course, the theocratic program is explicit also in the oratory and writings of the theocrats themselves.) It now remains for us to face the crucial fact that this regime's miraculous "re-election" in 2004 depended heavily on the countless block-the-vote activities of theocratic true believers, who did whatever they could do, from coast to coast, to cut the Kerry vote and pad the Bush vote. That effort was essential to the regime's inexplicable political success. Of all the interests collaborating in Bush/Cheney's drive against democracy, the theocrats alone have a grass-roots constituency -- not large enough, by any means, to sway elections honestly, but large enough, and fierce enough, and with sufficient funds and discipline, to help Bush/Cheney disenfranchise the majority. Although the corporations and the neo-cons wield awesome clout, they have no grass-roots muscle. The theocrats alone can claim that necessary asset, and it has given them enormous power.

The Republicans are indeed at a tipping point. If an honest government were to achieve power, sufficient to expose even what is common 'net knowledge, much less what is as yet still secret from everyone, a genuine house cleaning would land them all poor and in jail at best. They will not allow that to happen without violence.

If the propaganda cannot convince most people that what is sure to be surprising Republican victories are legitimately gotten, then the reaction could itself cause more reaction and bring on the worst "Uncle Tom Democrat" fears, and indeed would make some very unhappy times, and what has been a somewhat covert overthrow of the American Democracy overt.

With approval ratings in the 30% range, stealing an election is no less easy, but it would be harder to keep from being obvious to even the thickest dunderhead. And what happens then, be it whimper or boom, will not be at all pretty.

Update: I was wrong, while there was tremendous voter suppression and other dirty tricks, I think that the Democrat expectation of fraud actually reduced it in places like Ohio, and massive voter revulsion at late breaking sex scandals and similar incidents overshot Republican planning. Do the Republicans think that they can weather the next two years and let the massive Gerrymandering return things back? Only the next Congress will tell, it will be very dicey. With so much work and only two years, every action will have to be effective, rather than just feel good. (and there is so much more that would feel great, but might be less effective).

Totalitarians in Libertarian clothing, and how Conservatives became their "Fellow Travellers"

(This was published a year ago but still speaks well.)

It would appear to me that either Libertarians are deliberately framing issues to obscure reality or have not actually thought their obsession through.

Now my understanding of a Straussian is that they have thought it through and decided that it is good to be the King, as long as it is just them as king and a few cronies to keep them in power, and the rest of the World can just KMA. But they also realize the rest of the World considers such people to be pure evil, and even their fellow travelers would prefer each of them be king.

So in order to avoid sharing a cell with Saddam, they invent elaborate propaganda structures, while looking intently how to stab others in the back, and avoiding others doing the same to them. This is pretty much how Saddam operated, as well as the Bush Administration, and all the other more obedient Saddams in all the Tajikistans about the World.

That the Bush Administration has not yet demonstrated all the excesses that Saddam & Sons exercised on their private property they called Iraq, is limited only by their perception of being held accountable for their actions. And therein lies the rub that actual Libertarians have not thought through.

Now it is my understanding that a Libertarian believes in absolute freedom of personal action and property rights, and that the only legitimate activity of Government is to protect such happy folk from losing those things. Now such thoughts are fine if you happen to be Saddam, but the rest of the Iraqis did not find such free exercise of property rights so enjoyable. No matter how much less dramatic you make it, universal freedom and universal property rights cannot coexist. Just the definition owning anything means that someone else cannot mess with your stuff beyond the limits of your freely given permission.

The actual reality is that any action done in concert by two or more people, or the divvying up of the assets of the World are matters of power and those who exercise it. The only real issue is what controls those who are acted upon have on the actors. While it is an old saw that absolute power corrupts absolutely, the less pointed out corollary is that ALL power corrupts to the limits of its accountability to other powers.

Libertarians are quick to point this out of Government De Jure, but totally obsficate the fact that any exercise of power is Government De Facto and is even less immune to such corruption because of its stealth quality. This is how the Republicans hoodwinked the nation by saying they wanted "to get the Government off our backs" when what they really wanted was to fire all the cops. The prisons are full of people with the same complaint, but without the massive funding required to exercise their "Free" Speech.

Now actual Liberals, unlike Straussian straw liberals, believe in the maximum freedom for every individual to decide as much as possible about their own life. They even believe in "private" property and what personal power it gives to have your own stuff to help structure your life. The issue is one of accountability and who is going to stop any person from abusing the power to exploit, injure, or otherwise limit other people from exercising their own freedom.

Now there are many issues that honorable people can differ on, as to who guards the guards, and how much accountability and what kind is appropriate, but there should be agreement that stealing millions of dollars, or horribly killing thousands or millions, should get a lot more accountability than your average street criminal (though he should be stopped as well). That such power is excercised as the choice of serious injury / forking over your wallet, or paying the power bill / living without heat cannot be considered a free will choice, nor so if the facts are hidden/twisted to cause you to make a choice you would not make had you known them.

There was a time when people of Straussian attitude feigned being Liberals, and called themselves Communists, today they are almost all Conservatives, finding their power base in Bigotry, Theocracy, and Corporate Megalomania (often referred to as Fascism or Kleptocracy). All are Totalitarian at their black heart, and all need to be recognized as the pure evil that they are. In the United States all such folk with any power are Republican, and why the World is at greater danger than anytime in the past, with nine months to decide its fate.

Stupider than Screen Sided Submarines

What about this picture would make one immediately suspect that this trailer was not likely a Secret Biological Weapons lab?

Well duh, Biolabs need secure space, lest the pathogen escape and wipe out ones own side, much less the researchers themselves. They also require a controlled temperatures, and a clean environment, not only for safety but to keep the critters happy as well.

Lets see, 120 degree plus outside temperatures, check, dark brown canvas to keep the contents cool in the sun, not check, canvas sides as clean room siding, I don't think so, canvas tarps as level five pathogen security system, ROFL!

And still to this day these things are trotted out as proof Saddam had WMD or planned to use them for such. They even had drawings showing the canvas when Powell gave his speech.

If lies of this stupidity are believed what is the hope of seeing any actual fact.

Crazy Nakita was right

I watched The Frontline program about the depth of horror of the crushed Tianamein spring, including depths I had not known about. I was also struck by the discussion of the new Chinese economic situation, for the winners and losers in that situation, and how control of information is the knife edge they walk on.

In this there was much information I am aware of, and this contribution raised a thought far more chilling than the individual points you made, chilling though those were.

The first Image is of Crazy Nakita banging his shoe at the UN and saying that "your Grandchildren will grow up under Communism". Those who did not laugh rushed through Trillions in wasted money on massive military fantasies of Russians invading and going through the U.S. like the Nazis through France.

But the real invasion started at the University of Chicago. Because from there came the new Marxism, with Leo Strauss as the new prophet. Actual Communist governments were built on a populist base, however fascist the reality, the populist pro formas had to be observed.

But where the old Marxism had seen evil and spoken against it, if only in a shadow of the promise. The New Straussian Marxism saw evil and embraced it, turning many ideas 180 degrees, without changing the intent of domination and control by an elite.

Mao had created a fanatic Jihad, all belief and energy, but ultimately failed a changed belief or behavior. Tianamein showed the power of an idea, and the threat to the elite, and when the blood was washed off the street I believe they adopted the new University of Chicago Marxism. Already being in absolute power, they could implement the plan swiftly and completely, while in the U.S. and Europe the plan had to proceed slowly, lest their true nature be outed.

Among the pieces of the puzzle missed by the Frontline story is how the Chinese Military became the biggest partner in the major Industries. It would be speculation on my part, but it is an obvious guess, that those who were among the murderers at Tianamein have been among the most blessed by the new economy, especially the leadership. Actual details of this would be most interesting.

In your outrage that "American" Multinationals, particularly Yahoo, Microsoft, and Sisco would be actively complicit in the suppression of freedom, you failed to notice that, for these companies specifically, their actual politics is not opposed to such suppression, and actively support the same in this country ( the role of Google appears much more complicated).

All of this leads up to the bone chilling realization that the program created. Look at this program and realize that THIS IS THE NEOCON PLAN FOR AMERICA.! Look at this Frontline view of the life of the Chinese worker, exploitable, and disposable, no rights, and hidden reality, covered over with a "free" enterprise fantasy. Of necessity there must be millions of used up workers, too injured, or physically broken, to take part in the "New China" anymore. Where are they? What has happened to them? Will their deaths bring about the population control that China has desperately sought?

Is this the way you want YOUR Grandchildren to grow up?

Its not Hypocrisy (its worse)

NeoCon's reason d'être requires deception. It lies at the heart of their philosophy, and is inseparable from it. The very core of philosophy is two faced, one for public view and one, so satanically nihilistic they dare not show it, reserved for co-conspirators, that instructs their actual behavior.

Outsiders call it hypocrisy, but that makes way too lite of the matter, far more Joe Stalin than anything remotely Churchillian. Churchill spoke as any true leader, doing what was right, and knowing that every word would follow him through history and beyond death, and would stand by those words even now were he still alive.

NeoCons, like the Communists many were in an earlier part of their life, have no respect for words. Statements, and even sentiments, made today are only "operable" in the current context, and could be, and often are , a complete flip-flop when a new context requires it. Not because they have discovered a new insight, but simply because the new situation requires it.

In the Y2K debacle they even managed both sides at the same time, taking one side in one courtroom and the opposite in another, depending on the results expected. Famously even the Bush-v-Gore decision denied "operability" beyond the moment, and even in a context where every word is written in stone for the ages, it could be expected that the Roberts Court would do a 180 on that decision if the need arose.

Like the Russians, Americans do have memories, if somewhat short and faulty, and some have access to information the State has not controlled as yet. A certain amount of deception can be tolerated, if it appears reasonable and debatable. When it becomes absurd on its face, and provably stupid at the moment, no amount of spin can stand for long.

At long last, the sheer volume/ridiculousness is beginning to be noticed by all but the most ideological and/or stupid. The big question is whether a big Republican win in Nov. in the face of contrary reason and exit polls will cause enough gagging from within or outrage from without to bring Democracy back. Perhaps the gagging will start before Nov. Hope is a good thought but an unreliable plan.

Down The Hatch

Yup Censure of the Emperor isn't just wrong, it is unconstitutional--- Hey Whaaat!

Orrin (nut) Hatch is often off the wall, even when on message and the message is getting wider off reality every day. As reported in Hatch friendly home town paper in a hometown School Ole Orrie really let his hair down on his legal expertise.

At times his language was humorous -- he talked of "Sith judges on the Dark Side wielding their gavels like sabers" -- but he was also stern, warning that an unchecked judiciary could usurp the powers of other branches of government and spell doom for liberty.

That some of those powers are actually spelled out in the constitution as being Judicial, is not a fact that he would let get in the way of the official spin.

"The Constitution governs the Supreme Court, not the other way around," Hatch said. "The Supreme Court does not have the last word. The people do.

"I would like to restore the Constitution to what it was."

Uhhh, The constitution says the Supremes have the last word, no matter how crazy (unfortunately) short a constitutional amendment to the contrary. If that were not true, we might still have both a Democracy and (likely) a Democrat as President.

"Judicial activism represents a radical departure from the way we govern ourselves in this country," Hatch said. "If it continues, it means the Constitution won't be worth the paper it's written on."

While Bush said "its just a piece of Paper" and in Bush vs Gore The Supremes wouldn't even stand behind their reasoning in "newspeak" activist judges mean those who actually respect, the constitution and law much less honor.

Of course for Hatch, as all Republicans, talking is mostly just making noises. Coherence, much less reason, much less actual principals, are not part of the agenda, but a means to an end that has nothing to do with what the founders of the country had in mind.

I wrote this and cross posted it at the links noted:

I recall when the meme was "us versus the Communists" there were many speeches about why the Communists were different than a usual party, and why even if we supported a lot of thugs in the world "our thugs were better than their thugs"

Top of their list was that the Communists were Totalitarian. It was not enough to do as you were told, but they expected you think as you were told as well.

High on the list was that "their" principals were for the current situation only and could rotate 180 degrees if the situation was different.

Another point was that there was a spin of the day and everyone was supposed to stay "on message", only one voice allowed no matter who was talking.

A fourth was an obsession with party loyalty, people who disagreed, or worse, changed their minds were dealt with harsher than even critics.

Those are all now typical Republican descriptions. I guess it is that part about making principals fit the situation. It is not hypocrisy- it is the totalitarian way of thinking.

The Great Libertarian Fallacy

A good place to start is the Libertarian Mantras. All the wingers recite them, even when they are flying directly in the face of even the agreed base of the thinking.

But the mantras actually promote Progressive values if you correct just one bit of raging illogic (probably deliberate). That is the Libertarian very narrow definition of what is government.

Try this
"Government is what government does"

"Someone Deciding about your life (what medicine your doctor can prescribe, how your electric is produced,etc)"? Yes? Then they are government!

"Do they charge you for the privilege (Insurance bill,power bill, etc")THAT is TAXES! And then the key Question.

"can't hold them accountable for their decisions?" THEN THAT IS TYRRANY!!!!!

If you doubt it, try changing your power company, or your health insurance. Worse, your health insurance is often changed for you, with a whole new set of rules (LAWS!)about what you can and cannot do. And every year the laws are more oppressive and the taxes more obscene (over 60% of my not fabulous income, last I looked) They usually hide those costs in the salary you are not paid, so people don't know what they are really paying.

Also Libertarians usually talk about Free Enterprise and Capitalism as though they were the same thing when they are actually opposing things. I thought I was the only one who saw this till I read the Halloween Documents that should be required reading in every high school as they are as important to the nature of the country as the writings of the founding fathers.

Essentially if your business is a commodity {Free Enterprise (say building computers in the '90's)}your prices (and profits) are limited by what your competition will accept. The only way to control (raise) profits is to own (control) the market {Capitalism (think Microsoft)}. No real capitalist would knowingly invest in a business market that had real free enterprise because they could not make a profit beyond what everyone else is making. This dosen't mean they might make the mistake, or buy into such a Market and "De-Commoditize" it.

In any case Capitalism is "government by other means" and DeJure Government the means by which those governments are held accountable.

I am all in favor that the government governs best that governs least, but any action that involves several (or millions) achieving a single goal involves a de'Facto government, no matter what the name is on the door.

There are many things that need no government.
1.Who I engage in sex with, or how, as long as they are willing, aware, and old enough.
2. What (or if) I think about the Metaphyisical and how I want it to affect my life. (this does not include my actions that include others who don't wish to be included)

The list is much longer but again Libertarians are very selective in how far they let their logic go, it is up to progressives to show that freedom cannot be so limited. As soon as your action affects someone else in space or time you become a Government limiting their freedom, and thus must be accountable to them, or become the hated tyrant.

Whoa! ... You Go Girls!

The Dixie Chicks were never my kind of music, you could find it here but never on a MSM station, so If my favorite musicians made those comments(and I suspect most would ) you would never have heard of it.

An I suspect that even the Chicks did not contemplate the depths of depravity so much of the country fan base had sunk to. But there is nothing like the dose of cold water a ton of depraved hate mail, and few hundred death threats can do to wake you up and make you pay attention. I guess if I had been a fan, the steel in their spine might not have been a suprise. But their new song aught to insipre even the "Boss" with these words.

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting

I’m through with doubt
There’s nothing left for me to figure out
I’ve paid a price
And I’ll keep paying

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I know you said
Can’t you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kind of like it

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting

The Democrats should make it their Anthem
or at the least invite the Dixie Chicks to do the National Convention.

Mr King was never this scary

Stephen King always bored me because most of his scenarios were not good enough for even suspended disbelief. Maureen Farrell's article might be the same except for all the links backing up all her points, like several per paragraph.

Her story is no less surreal, but there has been a lot of surreal since Nov 2, 2000. It has been like somebody hijacked reality and stuck us in this bad novel. Well here is the punch line to that bad novel.

Legislation to Turn the US into a Theocracy is Introduced in the House

Remember when Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior James Watt said that we need not worry about depleting our natural resources because, thanks to End Times prophecies, future generations wonÂ’t be needing them anyway? Or when Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said he believed that "time is running out ..." as in Armageddon is approaching?

Back then, Frank Zappa appeared on Crossfire, shocking panelists when he said that the US was gearing up to become a fascist theocracy. More than two decades later, legislation to complete the transformation was introduced in the House.

"If enacted, the Constitution Restoration Act will effectively transform the United States into a theocracy, where the arbitrary dictates of a 'higher power' can override law," Chris Floyd wrote. Columnist James Heflin warned that "If the Act passes, Iraqis would have stronger protection from religious extremism than Americans."

Cosponsored by Sen. Brownback, whose rent is subsidized by the "secretive" religious organization, the Fellowship, the legislation is the work of Dominionists, or Christian Reconstructionists, who call for the "universal development of Biblical theocratic republics."

The crusade to Christianize America in order to prepare for Christ's Second Coming is not one that is going away any time soon. The Act, which was reintroduced in 2005, is currently being marketed by the media-savvy Concerned Women For America, which was founded and is headed by Rev. Timothy LaHaye's wife, Beverly.

and as a key part of their support forIsraell

In a starkly honest essay, Christian Reconstructist Gary North pointed to the elephant in the revival tent. "In order for most of today's Christians to escape physical death, two-thirds of the Jews in Israel must perish, soon. This is the grim prophetic trade-off that fundamentalists rarely discuss publicly, but which is the central motivation in the movement's support for Israel, he wrote, regarding fundamentalists' defense of "the doctrine of an inevitable holocaust."

Fun times ahead

The Unsinkable Molly Ivins....

Another cat bell, Another windmill. No one can say Democrats don't have ideas or that the Ideas are not practical. Only the problem is that without a way to hold congress critters accountable, they won't install any other way to hold them accountable.

I do like the idea of supporting democracy, however, and think we should try it—especially here in the U.S. of A. To this end, a couple of dandy ideas are now circulating, and I think they’re worth your support and excitement. For ages, all good reformers have wanted to get rid of the Electoral College and have direct popular election of presidents, instead. The disastrous election in 2000 finally culminated in Bush v. Gore, a Supreme Court decision so bad even the court disowned it at the time.

Every nightmare scenario about just how screwed up things could get with the Electoral College all came true. What a giant mess: a textbook case of why the Electoral College is toxic piffle. But the desire to Do Something about the mess in 2000 burned itself out. The Republicans who took over Congress are just not natural reformers.

Trouble is, the system has just about “ruint” presidential elections, which now turn on a handful of swing states, while everyone else is ignored. While millions of dollars, hours of political ads and hordes of politicians descend every four years on the swing states, you can barely tell there’s an election going on in the rest of the country. Should you live safely tucked into a solidly red or blue state, your vote is unsought, uncounted and unnecessary—we know how your state’s votes will be cast whether you vote or not.

...snip....

The Campaign for a National Popular Vote has a dandy new approach. Instead of trying to amend the Constitution through a long, difficult process that can and will be stalled by small states, the campaign proposes a simpler, elegant solution. According to the Constitution, each state legislature can instruct its own electors to cast their votes however the state decides, usually as winner-take-all for whichever candidate carries the state. But there is no reason a state legislature cannot instruct its electors to vote for whoever wins the popular vote.

Democracy! What a concept! The states can do this one by one, subscribing to an interstate compact that would take effect when enough states join to elect the actual winner—a majority of the 538 electoral votes.

....

The possibilities for unintended consequences here is boggling, to say nothing of evil intended consequences. A covert Republican campaign to get Dem States to pass such lege would guarantee a Republican switch but not necessarily one to the Dem side. Even a Maine type proportional voting scheme, could have similar consequences. The Florida lege even threatened to go the other way before the Supremes beat them to it, and there is nothing too keep them from doing it again for partisan gain.

In any case I wrote this to Molly's article....

What with computers and technology beyond the horse drawn wagon, why not try for a more direct democracy? While I might agree that having everyone vote on every issue might have some bad results (though an improvement on the present), a biannual bid that actually made EVERY vote count might actually work.

What if everyone voted for a favorite person to actually represent them? That person would usually come from where their supporters were, but not necessarily, but would have personal contact with nearly every voter who supported them.

So what if they get only say 10k votes, they could formally form a coalition of like minded fellows till they reached some magic number (say 1 million) and that coalition would put one of their number as the official representative in congress. The rest would essentially be the office staff, and thus still have a day to day impact. Those coalitions with the most votes would get the best chairmanships etc., evening out those with big excess votes with those barely over the line.

The result would be total representation all the time for each and every voter. Gerrymandering would be impossible, and no longer would nearly half of all actual voters, (much less the rest) go unrepresented.

Of course such a plan is as like my plan to staff the entire government bureaucracy with drafted conscripts, forced to do 4-6 years of patriotic service for their country, and then back to the real world, not setting up some lifetime program of empire building or cozy relationships, just go in, do your job for patriotism, and get out. Short a Wiser Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et. al. the chances of a real, thought out system are all but nil.

Even such reform as banning voting district pseudopodia, or width to length maximum ratios, is out of reach if there is no accountability.

And as the Majority of states get an extra edge of Three Electoral Votes when their population only justifies one, they would still over rule, unless the state voted against the actual vote count of that state. Say an Ohio that had a plurality of votes for the Democrat, putting all their votes for the Republican. Then two or three swing states could pull it off, but the partisan acrimony from which ever side got the short end would be deafening. Also a New York and California for instance could throw the vote Republican , but not Democrat as they would (presumably) have a Dem winner in any case.

Myself, I would be happy just to have an honest vote count. Without that, nothing good is possible.

Habeas Schmaebeas

Check out the long version, apparently Bushco was handing out your tax dollars like drunken sailors to anyone who had a captive. So criminals just grabbed people off the street and sold them as AlKaka.

As a result there wasn't any evidence secret or otherwise, except what was beaten out of them. Real AlKaka got shipped off to secret black sites to have done what even Gitmo folk couldn't stomach, so it would appear that a high percentage at Gitmo were at best low level and more likely just folk.

The REAL reason against abortion

Labored logic

Democrats have been buzzing about comments made by state Sen. Nancy Schaefer (R-Turnerville) at a recent eggs-and-issues breakfast in Hart County. We quote from the Hartwell Sun newspaper: "Commenting on illegal immigration, Schaefer said 50 million abortions have been performed in this country, causing a shortage of cheap American labor. 'We could have used those people,' she said."

It has always amazed me that these folk made such a thing about abortion. There are no graveyards for stillbirths or miscarriges. There is no history of counting one's age from earlier than birth. And all early literature I have seen is more concerned with the life of the mother for what was iffy medicine.

It is only when women get to the technical capability of controling reproduction that suddenly several religions decide that such is a bad idea, but show little concern for life after birth, much less the majority of "unborn" as yet unconcieved.

For this I cannot believe that there is any actual concern, at least at the leadership level. What then would make them so vociferous?

The only possible explanation is the desire to have as many desperate people as possible to exploit. That is why the Repiblicans are so conflicted about immigration. If they actually stop it, a prime group of exploitable folk is lost, but if they bacame legal they wouldn't be so exploitable. So they come up with halfway measures that keep them exploitable, and perhaps create another exploitable stash of folk neither legal or "Guests".


Have been keepin busy so posting less.
Had link to article but lost it.

Winger homophobes harass funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq

The Westboro Baptist Church first gained national notoriety when they picked the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998 for being gay.

They have since picketed the funerals of Frank Sinatra and
Bill Clinton's mother, celebrated the terrorist attacks of September 11 as an act of God's wrath, and have even targeted Santa Claus and the Ku Klux Klan.

But it was the callousness and cruelty of harassing the grieving families of soldiers at dozens of funerals across the country that has sparked a grassroots movement of bikers determined to drown out the jeers and taunts.

Like Ann Coulter they stand beyond the mainstream, even of Republicans, not because of what passes for their Ideas, but because they give open voice to them, and in Straussian Ideology that is as great a sin as opposing the likes of these idiots.