How The American Empire Died

Pretty much the same way the rest of the other Empires fell.

Study history and you will see that the fall of virtually every Empire the world has seen died away because they could no longer afford it. They, like America, spent their wealth on overseas domination, instead of protecting the homeland (which was the only purpose the Founding Fathers had in a militia).

Washington’s Blog breaks down the Empire downfalls and shows how it is finances that break them. Quoting Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek article:

Call the United States what you like—superpower, hegemon, or empire—but its ability to manage its finances is closely tied to its ability to remain the predominant global military power…

This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy, and Air Force…

If the United States doesn’t come up soon with a credible plan to restore the federal budget to balance over the next five to 10 years, the danger is very real that a debt crisis could lead to a major weakening of American power.

The precedents are certainly there. Habsburg Spain defaulted on all or part of its debt 14 times between 1557 and 1696 and also succumbed to inflation due to a surfeit of New World silver. Prerevolutionary France was spending 62 percent of royal revenue on debt service by 1788. The Ottoman Empire went the same way: interest payments and amortization rose from 15 percent of the budget in 1860 to 50 percent in 1875. And don’t forget the last great English-speaking empire. By the interwar years, interest payments were consuming 44 percent of the British budget, making it intensely difficult to rearm in the face of a new German threat.

Call it the fatal arithmetic of imperial decline. Without radical fiscal reform, it could apply to America next.

My, how history repeats itself, but the money and power hounds don’t give a damn. Why? Because win or lose, they end up wealthy and we end up their debt slaves. Yes, even the Great United States of America was hijacked, just like all the great Empires of old. And we are ending up exactly the same way.

Thing is that even some of the people that I normally would respect (or more precisely, folks that I respect have folks they respect and I generally will listen to their opinion if asked to by my associates). This brings me to my point.

I was asked to participate in RawDawg’s Radio Show last Thursday (Kelso pointed this out here). There is a companion blog called “The Education of Folk“. The link to the radio show is found there or you can click here to reference the show to understand my concern.

OK, I will be forthright. I was livid as I listened in the next morning (I was up at 4AM that morning and the show doesn’t start until 11PM EST). I didn’t get to be a part of the show or call in, so my anger was after the fact. But my Bro, Torrance and Sista GP carried forward with out the redneck’s view (or Kelso’s… he had Internet connection issues). As I listened in, I found that another person joined the show (a guy named Markos, I believe). He comes with some recommendations to knowledge of finance, so, I listened and assumed that the folks running the show had vetted him.

But Markos shows that he either has no idea what he is talking about or he is intentionally misleading people.

Why would I say this? (I also wrote and expressed this sentiment to both Dawg and Kelso)

Markos made several very strange comments, but the one that really stuck in my craw was when he asked why people thought that manufacturing was necessary in the US. A call-in (Rippa) asked him about this, but suddenly, Markos changed his tune and started praising the truck drivers of America as the ones he would prefer to see running the show (paraphrasing).

I agreed 100% with Rippa and for the life of me, I struggled to understand how and why someone who supposedly understands these issues could even ask such a ludicrous question. I’ll let the owners of the show figure that out (but I did offer them my opinion).

If I have to explain this to finance people, then there is something very wrong with the picture.

Our country’s GDP is huge. Supposedly the largest in the world. But what most don’t understand about this is that this also includes derivatives trading and all sorts of underhanded, monetarily untraceable numbers. When it comes to making shit, tho, we are one of the worst (close to last place) when it comes to the percentage of GDP that comes from manufacturing (of the industrialized countries). Hence the rub.

If we don’t make shit and we rely on other countries to make the shit we want and we focus ONLY on money, finance, and service industries, we WILL go the way of the old Empires. We are repeating the very same mistakes that those Empires committed over and over and over again.

To follow up with Washington’s post, he posts a few paragraphs that continues the Hapsburg Empire fall:

Spain was the first global Superpower…With Spain as its political base, and gold and silver flowing in from its American colonies, the Hapsburg dynasty became the dominant power in Europe. It controlled rich parts of Italy through Naples and Milan, and Central Europe from the Netherlands through the Holy Roman Empire to Austria. In the 16th century it added the far distant Philippine islands to its empire. The Hapsburgs held off the Ottoman Turks, whose resurgent wave of Islamic conquest in the 16th century swept across the Balkans and nearly captured Vienna.

The Hapsburgs went into decline in the 17th century, and while any such momentous event has many causes, for our purposes the focus will be on the economic collapse of Spain, which not only sapped the empire of strength but served to build up the power of its rivals.

The demands of empire required a strong and growing economy, but Spain did not keep up with the economic expansion that was taking place in other parts of Europe. Madrid’s financial base fell out from under its empire. Spain could continue to consume in the short term because of the flow of precious metals from American mines, but it could not produce the goods it needed at home, which in the long-run proved fatal to its standing as a Great Power and as an advanced society.

Spanish imports were double exports and the precious metals became scarce within weeks of the arrival of the American treasure fleets as the money flowed to Spain’s many creditors. What industry there was, along with banking and shipping, was in the hands of foreign owners. As a modern historian, Jaime Vicens Vives, has concluded, “This was one of the fundamental causes of the Spanish economy’s profound decline in the seventeenth century, maritime trade had fallen into the hands of foreigners.” This, plus the “opening of the internal market to foreign goods,” produced a “fatal result.” Spain’s exports were at the same time under heavy pressure by competitors in third country markets. A nation that cannot control its domestic market will seldom be able to sustain itself in foreign markets, which are inherently less accessible and more unstable.

Yet, Spanish leaders were deluded by a sense of false prosperity. This is testified by the statement of a prominent official, Alfonso Nunez de Castro in 1675: “Let London manufacture those fine fabrics of hers to her heart’s content; let Holland her chambrays; Florence her cloth; the Indies their beaver and vicuna; Milan her brocade, Italy and Flanders their linens…so long as our capital can enjoy them; the only thing it proves is that all nations train their journeymen for Madrid, and that Madrid is the queen of Parliaments, for all the world serves her and she serves nobody.” A few years later, the Madrid government was bankrupt. The Spanish nobleman had foolishly elevated consumption, a use for wealth, above production, the creation of wealth.

Historians have traced the flow of Spanish gold and silver across the markets of Europe. Those who “served” Spain by establishing industries to manufacture goods for the Spanish market gained the money. Spain’s rivals, France, Holland (which started a successful revolt in 1568) and England, prospered by their trade surpluses, and reinvested the money to expand their own capabilities. Another modern expert on Hapsburg history, Henry Kamen, has cited contemporary sources who referred to 17th century Spain as “the Indies for the foreigner.” The military empire of the Hapsburgs became the economic colony of other powers, or, to use a current phrase, Spain was the “engine of growth” for the rest of the continent.

Where there were jobs and prosperity, there was also rapid population growth, and rising tax revenue. Rival powers were able to field and finance military forces that could defeat the once superior Spanish forces both on land and at sea. The irony of this is that Spain was ruled by a warrior aristocracy tempered by centuries of constant warfare against Islamic hordes and Christian heretics. These nobles looked down on merchants and manufacturers and disparaged their mundane professions only to find that without a strong domestic business class they could not afford the fleets and armies that guarded the empire they had built.

Today, the American “empire” is also trying to consume more than it produces. The U.S. trade deficit is nearing Spain’s nadir of imports being double exports. Both government spending and private consumption are financed heavily by debt. Washington is printing money, the modern equivalent of digging gold out of the ground, rather than earning the means to pay its bills. And the political and military elites are apparently indifferent to the fate of domestic business and industry. Americans must learn … from the Spanish experience … and take corrective action while they still can.

History is repeating and we stand by and watch as we fall from the status we once held. We are allowing fools and thieves to run our country into the ground and I have friends who are, intentionally or not, allowing people to propagate such an idiotic stance as Markos’. I don’t get it.

It is as clear as day what is causing our problems.

It is NOT our social spending. It is NOT our elderly care. It is NOT Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. It is the Empire and all the blind-assed fools who are STILL backing the maniacs that brainwashed you into believing their lies. It is the allowance of Corporate control of our elected officials who simply carry forward the Empire’s goals and wishes.

You MUST understand this and wake up.

Stop giving the mouthpieces of Big Money air time if they are wrong… or, at the very least, hold them accountable for their idiocy. Call them on it.

“…Look, their making hell-in-a-handbag…”

News Alert: Iran begins controversial new nuclear process06:57 AM EST Tuesday, February 9, 2010——————– Iran’s state TV says the country started enriching its uranium to a higher level of 20 percent, over the objections of the international community. The Tuesday report said enrichment began after Iranian scientists injected 25 kilograms of 3.5 percent enriched uranium gas into a cascade of centrifuges in a laboratory in Natanz, south of Tehran. It says inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were present during the process.

My fav line is the last one… so they watched and someone else protested… I don’t get it.

OF MOMS AND A BIG LAST SATURDAY ON FACEBOOK

II wrote this comment on a BLACK AGENDA REPORT thread regarding their taking corporate advertising. The main one being McDonald´s.  Ironically, my mother had expressed an unusual opinion that was quite a good populist defense of the ads on BAR-

http://tns1.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-state-union-guns-pentagon-butter-wall-street-spending-freeze-you#comment-15143

BAR´s Glen Ford posted a few days ago a presentation he gave on OBAMA´S WAR, supporting the views of any number of the peace activists we like. It became viral on that little corner of Facebook and energized the new conversation bloggers like Buelahman have been seeking.

The pure citizen activism of a couple of aware American citizens, Terri DiMatteo and Dr Margaret Flowers, have done the same. I wrote a wrap up of all that in a Facebook note.

Congratulations are in order all around. To Glen Ford, of Black Agenda Report, and Black Is Back, for a presentation on U.S. foreign policy that got a ton of serious and funny people into analyzing evidence and facts again. 10,000,000 views needed on this one.

http://blackagendavideo.blip.tv/file/3135437/

Congratulations for citizen activist Terri DiMatteo for first getting pissed off at the “Progressive” Democrats being so weak and starting a SKYPE forum “Dump The Democrats.” She had no idea how prophetic she´d be as even Kucinich wobbled a tiny bit and Jim McGovern tanked it. But in a nice pleasant Sheldon Whitehouse way. Poor Sen Whitehouse. His instincts are better than any Senator and it´s matched by Obama´s desire to shove him around when he suggests full investigation into War Criminality, when all he wants is someone accountable for the war crimes. He, like Leahy, and Feingold, have sure mastered the art of eunuchary.

Congratuliations again to Terri for reinvigorating the Conyers/Kucinich HR 676 “Medicare For All” Bill that Obama, Baucus, Pharma, the Insurance Lobby, McCaskill, Specter, Snowe, and yes even Bernie Sanders and neo-lib Robert Reich who did those fucking mawkish videos for this crap “Public Option,” did away with. Kucinch and Weiner wracked their brains to make ObummerCare a little more pro-people and less for-profit nexus of Government, Law Enforcement, HMO, PHARMA, AND BIG INSURANCE reverse Robin Hood scam. But if Obama can add pain in with corruption he always will. And he says Panama is evil?

Congratulations also to Dr Margaret Flowers for standing up to Obama for a real DESAFÍO (challenge) and getting, of course it´s O-Bummer, ARRESTED for her citizen actrivism.

Too many links to share. Go to Terri´s page. It´s amazing.

Silent clap for Bill Moyers who during the show tried to find ways to credit Obama for Dr Flowers´ activism, when she had been pinched for bothering THE REGENT.

Credit to Dennis Kucinch for getting serious with AG Eric “Chiquitica Banana” Holder on this shit of probably an Obama order of American thick neck BlackwaterXe assholes being allowed to kill other Americans with no criminal record in any country they choose. Steve Martin´s joke about solving the crime problem by a policy of death penatly for parking violations is now law.

Can 13 year old children qualify? I guess only when Cass Sunnstein´s replaced Stevens on the court.

Here´s a good starter link on Dr Flowers.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=15912&uid=63811549237

False Flags

I had a long conversation with my Mom yesterday about politics. She started in on Obama is a Socialist and how Fox News was right on the money and how some wars are just…

Egad.

I explained how there is always the coincedental and miraculous happenstances that JUST make it possible to carry forward in our pillaging of other people’s shit (namely oil). My mother was born and raised in Germany as WWII was ending. She lived a nightmare of no food and horrible conditions, never knowing if they would live another day. At 13 (she was the oldest of several kids), she also had to go to work, which is where she met my dad (a grunt that was stationed in Germany).

This grunt went on to serve two tours in battle at Vietnam and that experience ruined him for life. He turned his back on his own kids at ages 6 and 8 and we didn’t hear from him again, until I reached out to his mother when I was 26.

I was trying to explain to my mother that her husband was made a mental case and drunk for no good reason and it was a false flag event (a lie) that took us into war. I explained to her that this is very common and that Hitler, himself, used the strategy with the Reichstag fire (as is commonly thought today). I explained that I believe that the Gulf of Tonkin “attack” was fake and that the attack by the Israelis on an American ship was an attempt at a FF event. I quickly worked my way into 9/11 and how we got into Afghanistan and Iraq (and now threaten Iran while bombing Pakistani’s, even tho we are not at war with them… not to mention Yemen).

I didn’t have time to share the following with her and she isn’t on line, but you should watch it if you question any of these events.

My dad was made into a nutcase over bullshit reasons. Today’s young men and women returning are being made into nutcases for bullshit reasons. And few seem to care that it is all a set up to begin with.

Watch this:

h/t Kenny’s Sideshow

Ready To Boycott The SuperBowl?

UPDATE: Ready to “Girl”cott The Superbowl?

(I am sensitive to the female persuasion, at least when they make me)

I really don’t care much about pro football (or college football, really). Everything is way over-valued and it occupies too much of the publics attention… keeping us diverted from the awful shit the thieving murderers are doing. On any given year of the last two decades, the superbowl may have been the ONLY game I watch and as karma would have it, my life-long favorite team, the Saints, have FINALLY made it. But I still could care less about watching the game, to be honest. I have not watched them or any other team play this year. I just don’t care about that shit with the events that are unfolding right now.

When I write about how worried I am about the economy, I ain’t just writing shit to scare people. I have no ulterior agenda (don’t ask for money and wouldn’t accept it, if you offered). I do this because I care, I am sincere in my beliefs, and I want to help people understand how they are complicit in this by their non-caring, or worse, participation in the lunacy that has taken over us. I want people to be ready for the worse. I want people to wake up to the reality of what confronts us (which you are NOT getting from the MSM).

But I also understand that people must have some sort of enjoyment, especially something as significant as the superbowl is in American life. So, take the following with a grain of salt and know that I don’t give a damn if you (or I) watch that game. If you do, enjoy the hell out of it. If not, do as he says, read a book. But, if you do watch the steroid laden show, make sure that on Monday, you FINALLY do something to stop the criminals who are ravaging our country. At the very least, begin to seek some alternative news source than that TV or the Rush fool’s radio show.

Superbowl Boycotted by Book Readers

Think what you may of Mark, but he has massive balls, doesn’t he? Look at the faces, especially of the lead lady at the end. Very Pissed Off.

h/t PrisonPlanet

Alex Jones followed up on Mark’s video and I gotta say, I agree almost 100%. The Superbowl is nothing more than a bunch of rich, steroid laden meat heads playing a game with a ball. Yet, Americans get all riled up, painting their faces, becoming the “armchair” gladiators, all-the-while you wouldn’t dare become an armchair or actual particpating warrior to defend our country against the scurge that has taken over. You think football is manly and the American way, but that just proves how ignorant to history you are. Before, in times like these, Patriots stood up and fought back. George Washington didn’t become an ‘Aint’s clown when he crossed the Delaware.

Break the Matrix: Cancel the Super Bowl or America Dies

Something tells me that the idiot with the gold/black painted face cares NOTHING about liberty and just assumes all is well.

Ignorant, gullible sheople that will be the cause of my problems, because you are too brainwashed to stand up and fight.

As far as I am concerned, the banning of the following commercial is reason enough for me to ban the Superbowl from my TV (if I gave a shit).

Michael Phelps on Marijuana (Banned Superbowl Ad- Legalize it)

If this is really Michael Phelps, then I owe him a huge apology for this.

Freaky Sex Friday: Just Use A Condom

WARNING!!!!! Graphic Content

Sort of. (The Youtube page has a warning that says the video might be “inappropriate for some users”.)

Ever been in a remote truckstop men’s room and notice the graphics drawn in on the walls (they may be on the Woman’s Bathroom walls, as well, for all I know). The video is Russian and an advertisement or public service announcement  for protecting against AIDS with a condom (I really don’t know cause I don’t read Russian).

If you are offended by drawn genitalia, don’t watch. If you get off on it, then you are a weirdo. (And everyone knows I am a weirdo)

THE EDUCATION OF FOLK: SOME ADMIN

buelah mIan and I will be contributing also to a companion blog to the RAW DAWG BUFFALO RADIO SHOW on BLOGTALKRADIO, which is hosted by myself and Dr Torrance Stephens. Thursday nights at 11pm Eastern.  It will be called THE EDUCATION OF FOLK. Url: theeducationoffolk.wordpress.com

Expect me, Torrance, Buelahman, Jay Midnyte, and some unfamiliar names (SistaGP, RIPpa,Dalllas Black, and Marko) to also contribute regularly.  There will always be at least one post on the week´s topic so everyone who feels like it will have enough information about it to enjoy the show.  BUELAHMAN, I hope, will be a REGULAR voice on it.

China: The New America

These little people have done it. They out smarted us. They have taken decades to do it, but they have finally taken the mantle (and all Clinton can do is flex her puny little muscles and hope we hold on to the fake security that we are “America”… the strongest, smartest, most productive, most moral, most compassionate, most helpful, most endearing country in the world). The exceptional-ism that we have is immense. So much so that it dwarfs reality. We are really broke ass, plastic duck junkies:

See a person’s means…

Observe his motives.

Examine that in which he rests.

How can a person conceal his true character?

— Confucius

The Creditor and the Plastic Duck Junkie

Yes, boys and girls, it is true. They have been allowed to make you into a broke assed plastic duck junkie. And you (and I) gobbled that shit up. We supported the Wal-mart takeover (distribution arm of China) of our small towns. We allowed our “leaders” to bullshit us into believing the NAFTA’s, CAFTA’s, and every other Ass Shafta they could implement. We, all of us super-exceptional Americans, sat idly by as they dismanteled our manufacturing base, simply to give China the room to use virtual slave labor to make these worthless trinkets and other garbage so we can spend, spend, spend.

I would ask if you are even embarrassed, but you are not. You don’t even know it is happening, so how could it embarrass you?

What if, as the video above suggests, that China has intentionally been playing with us using profits from bogus shit to grow their economy and manufacturing (can anyone contend that they have NOT been doing so)? What if the situation is so dark and brooding that they have implemented the next step, which is to suggest to the Chinese citizens to buy gold and silver (you won’t hear that from any US government official, ‘cept, maybe Ron Paul)? What if the end run is on right now? What if they, the Chinese, decided that their own citizens owning gold and silver would help them back their currency, with plans to implement a new standard of currency in the world? What if they have orchestrated this take-over from the beginning and are now on the cusp of success?

I have been warning about the consequences of the status quo and have said time and time again, we are on the precipice of disaster. I have gone so far to inquire of my economic friends, ways to purchase silver and/or gold coinage (just as a safety net when the SHTF). But until today, I have not been able to close the circle of logic to “how” the demise will take place, but the following video should shed much more light on the subject. Sure, thee are many variables, such as how will our military react or what false flag event can they muster to take us into war with China (and Russia, Iran and Venezuela, cause they will ban together to fight us… mark my words). But, from a financial standpoint, they have us by the short curlies.

Maybe the video can explain it better than I:

Chinese Government Advises Gold Buying… Why?

(h/t BrassCheckTV here and here)

I Agree With Sarah Palin

Rahm Emmanuel needs to go, but not because he called someone “fucking retarded” (it is evident that Sarah Palin is fucking retarded).

No, that asshole needs to go because he is a dual citizen with more allegience to Zionism than America, AND, because he is a scumbag neoliberal war mongering, bank protecting scourge of the highest level.

I agree with Sarah, but let’s take it a few steps farther and get rid of the entire cabal. Then, let’s hire Sarah for some pole dancing and lap dances (her most fitting next job).

Is There No One Left To Catch?

I debate (internally) why I continue to write here. There is no huge readership, but several dedicated-to-the-abuse (apparently) friends who keep coming around for more. I get a lot of dick enlargement stuff and there are apparently many women interested in getting to know me intimately (and are willing to share their Viagra). And then there is the occasional visit by no_slappz (whut up, dude, you don’t love me no more?)

But, basically, this place is where I rant. It is where I take my hair down (heh) and let go with flurries of cursing and ass-chewing. I never really think (anymore, that is) that I am going to reach many, if anyone (altho I did start this blog for that very reason). I keep dreading to admit, out loud, my conclusion that it really is too late. That America is too far gone down the divide (hence, we will never be able to stand together to fight the internal menace that has stolen our way of life and the honor it once was to be called an American). I do describe all the issues with every post, so no need in continuing beating that dead horse in this one. But suffice it to say that the brainwashing has worked and I cannot, within my faculties, figure out a sound way to fix it (heal it, is more precise).

I wonder if Greg Palast felt something similar when he wrote this about J.D. Salinger’s death and his most noted book, “A Catcher In The Rye” (h/t Dandelion Salad) For contained within this article is a phrase that describes what I have been trying to do (and I wish I had thought of this)

“wipe the fuck off this smeared planet”:

Kvetcher in the Rye

Monday, February 1, 2010

by Greg Palast

In the sixth grade, the Boys’ Vice-Principal threatened to suspend me from school unless I stopped carrying around A Catcher in the Rye I think because it had the word “fuck” in it. Since the Boys’ Vice-Principal hadn’t read the book – and I don’t think he’d ever read any book – he couldn’t tell me why.

But Mrs. Gordon was cool. She let me keep the book at my desk and read it at recess as long as I kept a brown wrapper over the cover.

I think J.D. Salinger would have liked Mrs. Gordon. She wanted to save me from the world’s vice-principals, the guys who wanted to train you in obedience to idiots and introduce you the adult world of fear and punishment. Mrs. Gordon wanted to protect the need of a child to run free.

That’s, of course, how the word fuck got into Salinger’s book. For the 5% of you who haven’t read it, the main character of the book, Holden Caulfield, tries to erase the f-word off the wall of a New York City school. He doesn’t want little kids like his sister Phoebe to see it, that somehow it would trigger an irreversible loss of her childhood innocence:

I thought Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them—all cockeyed, naturally—what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days.

Which is where the title came from. Salinger’s Caulfield, pushed to the edge of his own youth and directed to prepare himself for the job market, could see for himself only one career: as a catcher in the rye. He imagined a bunch of kids playing away happily in a rye field, but a field on a cliff’s-edge. Every time a child, lost in their game, would drift toward the edge, Caulfield’s job would be to catch them before they fell.

Any other job would just turn you into a “phony,” that is, an adult. All adults were phonies, even the nice ones, who took jobs they hated, taught textbooks and catechisms they didn’t believe and lived lives of self-inflicted disappointments, while pretending it was all OK. Then with phony grins, they’d demand that you join their painful parade of delusion and decay.

Nearly half a century after I covered up Salinger’s book in a carefully folded brown wrapper, I thought I’d read it to my twins. They were now eleven, in the 6th grade.

But I couldn’t. In his 1956 book, Salinger had railed against a post-war world of boys in school blazers trying to get to “first base” with their steady dates. America itself was an adolescent, and despite the police beatings of marchers in Alabama, despite the “drop, tuck and don’t look at the flash!” drills we did weekly in Mrs. Gordon’s class to prepare for the Russian nuclear attack, America was still weirdly, optimistically child-like.

We knew then that the world could only get better: we would go the moon and eventually, vacation there. JFK announced the Alliance for Progress and poverty would end in Appalachia; and Paul McCartney wanted to hold our hand. Every nasty meanie, like police in Selma, was met by a legion of victorious innocents led by Martin Luther King. So we all held hands in a circle while Pete Seeger strummed “We shall overcome.” Everyone would get a scholarship; and we really, truly believed we would overcome.

Even the social critics – Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac – were just big, mischievous kids.

Yes, there were a bunch of old phonies like Joe McCarthy and the Boys’ Vice-Principal, but their days were numbered.

Then we fell over the cliff.

A bullet through the skull replaced Kennedy with Nixon. We shall overcome was replaced with the vicious “Southern Strategy;” the Cold War exploded in hot jungles; then came the idiot wasteland of the regimes of Ford and Carter and Reagan and Clinton and Bushes, a degenerative march as the machine of America rusted and died.

And here we are today, begging for spare parts from China and my daughter glued to YouTube videos of Lady Ga-Ga’s crotch, and my son slicing off a cop’s head in Grand Theft Auto and a President, telegenic and painfully hollow, playing the lost and ineffectual shepherd over an electorate divided between the terrified and the greedy. In place of prophets, we are offered a caravan of kvetching clowns piling out of the Volkswagen on MSNBC.

There’s no way to wipe the fuck off this smeared planet. I’m supposed to try. I’m an investigative reporter, meaning I have a professional commitment to the childish belief that if I shout loud enough, I can warn people away from the cliff’s edge.

Well, it’s better than a real job, but no less “phony,” no less of a petty illusion.

I’m holding this book, the brown wrapper lost who the hell knows when, and I know it would just be laughable, inscrutably ancient to those wisened, worldly children of mine.

I’ve put it back on my shelf.

You stand on the cliff edge and there’s no one left to catch.

Jerome David Salinger 1919-2010.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, is a Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting.   www.gregpalast.com.

Whew! Another Economic Close Call Avoided

Its over. Man, we got close that time. Our leader told us the worst is over and the recession is lifting AND we avoided a major depression.

Whew! Thank God we had him to ram rod all these wonderful, economy-saving techiques in place, eh?

One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt.  Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression.  So we acted -– immediately and aggressively.  And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed.

I want to say a couple of things here. First, the man voted FOR the freaking bailouts and has taken huge amounts of money from the very thieving assholes who did this to us. I will NOT allow you to say, “you inherited” shit, when you were complicit in its implementation. You have done nothing to stop those two wars and contrarily, have opened up even more avenues of death and carnage. The government debt is taken care of, isn’t it? By me and all my fellow Americans. Don’t take credit for shit that you and your corrupt bunch of thieving minions created and WE, the real Americans in this country, are paying for. We are not given hope by your false economic indicators, for we are living the truth, Mr Obama.

The Ivory Towers have no clue or you are a part of the devastation, so please, STFU about what you and your evil administration has done. You have done nothing but make the matter far worse, which makes me believe it is orchestrated and purposeful. You paid off the cronies from Wall Street and all those lobbyists that YOU said would never be a part of your administration.

Look, rednecks, evidence shows what an idiot or liar he is.

I can drive down any street in this town and see the devastation (businesses shut down, run down or at death’s door). I can read any article online, in print and, yes, even on the boob tube and see that this shit ain’t no where near over. It is just getting started.

The outcome of what appears to be the orchestrated game plan is to demolish the USA economy, take as much of the wealth from the mases as possible, depend upon the military to keep the debtors off our back and to make a huge run for all the resources in the world for us to TAKE and use and leave those people who own them destitute and/or dead (preferably). THIS IS THE APPEARANCE of things to me.

Now there may be some of you who still believe that the man is just doing the best he can with what he has to work with. To you, eat shit and grow up. Look at reality. Think back just a couple of years, listen to the words he said and then watch his actions. If you STILL think that motives are honorable, you are a fool and a real problem for America.

World Prout had the following article by The Economic Collapse that points out 11 signs that The Foundations of the US Economy have been Destroyed

#1) When even Wal-Mart is closing stores you know things are bad. Wal-Mart announced on Monday that it will close 10 money-losing Sam’s Club stores and will cut 1,500 jobs in order to reduce costs. So if even Wal-Mart has to shut down stores, what chance do other retailers have?

#2) Americans are going broke at a staggering pace. 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 – a 32 percent increase over 2008.

#3) American workers are working harder than ever and yet making less. After adjusting for inflation, pay for production and non-supervisory workers (80 percent of the private workforce) is 9% lower than it was in 1973. But those Americans who do still have jobs are the fortunate ones.

#4) Unemployment is absolutely exploding all over the United States. Minority groups have been hit particularly hard. For example, unemployment on many U.S. Indian reservations is over 80 percent.

#5) Unfortunately the employment situation is showing no signs of turning around. December was actually the worst month for U.S. unemployment since the so-called “Great Recession” began.

#6) So just how bad are things when compared to past recessions? During the 2001 recession, the U.S. economy lost 2% of its jobs and it took four years to get them back. This time the U.S. economy has lost more than 5% of its jobs and there is no sign that the bleeding of jobs will stop any time soon.

#7) Can you imagine trying to get your first job in this economic climate? Our young men and women either can’t get work or have given up on work altogether. The percentage of Americans 16 to 24 who have jobs is 13 percent lower than ten years ago.

#8) So where did all the jobs go? Over the past few decades we have allowed the corporate giants to ship mountains of American jobs overseas, and there are signs that this trend is only going to get worse. In fact, Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder estimates that 22% to 29% of all current U.S. jobs will be offshorable within two decades. So get ready for even more of our jobs to be shipped off to Mexico, China and India.

#9) All of these job losses are leading to defaults on mortgages. Over the past couple of years we have seen the American Dream in reverse. According to a report that was just released, delinquent home loans at government-controlled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac surged 20 percent from July through September.

#10) But that is nothing compared to what is coming. A massive “second wave” of mortgage defaults is getting ready to hit the U.S. economy starting in 2010. In fact, this “second wave” is so frightening that even 60 Minutes is reporting on it.

#11) Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has announced that it made a record profit of $46.1 billion in 2009. Apparently during this economic crisis it is a very good time to be a bankster.

I don’t know about you, but I have witnessed and acknowledged every one of these indicators. Massive job losses still on the way. And, don’t be a putz: just because the manipulated stock market or those huge bonueses are being paid out to the Elite bankers, this helps you in ZERO ways. Neither of those indicators indicate jack shit, except that they are getting richer while us poor-assed rednecks are dying on the vine. It indicates that they are stealing our treasury, enriching themselves and putting us into a debt that can NEVER be paid for. DO YOU UNDERTSAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS?

How many times can you  borrow money knowing you can never pay it back?

(Yeah, that is real life, and what our leadership experiences is not real life)

There are but two options I can think of when this occurs. Either I go bankrupt (which I did last summer) or I load the weapons and tell the creditors, come and get it, for I ain’t giving it willingly.

What did America do?

Dennis Kucinich: Time To Put a Stop to The Health Insurance Give-away

I don’t know why I put myself thru it, but I noticed that Dennis Kucinich was going to be on the Ed Show and wanted to hear what he had to say in regards to the POTUS’s speech and his plan for health care (not INSURANCE) reform.

View the clip here.

One thing that you won’t see in that clip (or in any clip I can find) was the very next guest that Ed brought on to totally discount Mr Kucinich. Ed gave Jonathan Alter much more and uninterrupted air time so he could offer the contrary view that just happens to go along with the POTUS. Just ram the bill thru and work from there. But as Dennis points out, the entire bill is a non-starter and a sham. It is nothing more than forcing people to buy insurance when they can’t afford it, anyway.

Jonathan Alter is nothing more than a media clown who knows where his bread gets its butter. The main point, tho, is how a Congressman, elected multiple times and ran for the presidency, is simply shrugged off by this foolish little man. Who, in their right mind, would give Alter more credence than Kucinich?

Of course you won’t hear the entire argument, for they would not allow Dennis to rebut the idiocy Jonathon (then the ass-kissing Ed Shultz) spread out for you rednecks.

Jesus Christ, I know better than to watch that shit.

Notice that you can’t find the clip of Jonathon coming in and discounting Kucinich and saying “He’s wrong.” But all those gullible assholes who gobble this shit up every night saw it.

There is no doubt in my mind that these corrupt sycophants know exactly what they are doing and who’s direction they follow. It has nothing, whatsoever, to do with what is best for this country.

For, as Mr Obama said in that clip, “show me”. How can you show someone something when they won’t open their eyes due to the money stacks that disallow it?

I’ve been screaming the answer for well over a year now. The bastard just says shit, but cares nothing for the real answers. Empty suit and a lying asshole.

How I Avoided The Brainwashing

I just don’t swallow.

more about “The Matrix Pill“, posted with vodpod

Or maybe I just think, critically:

more about “Critical Thinking“, posted with vodpod

Come join me… the water’s fine.

America’s Amazing Coincidences

Have you ever wondered about all the amazing coincidences that occur that always seem to get quickly swept down the memory hole? To me, it is amazing how certain events occur simultaneously or at the precise correct time to implement a preconceived goal.

One of my favorites is the video below from Sept 10, 2001. This video is of Sec of Def Rumsfeld as he discusses his newly declared war against the Pentagon Bureaucracy. You see, just one day before that horrible false flag event, Mr Rumsfeld came out and started to explain that so much money is wasted and unaccounted for that it could “be a matter of life and death”. They couldn’t track $2.3TRILLION.

h/t AllVoices

WHAT? $2.3T and we are having a financial crisis right? What a coincidence.

Anyway, we know they are thieves of the highest order. The thing that gets me is that since 9/11, this has basically fallen off the map.

How about the strange coincidence that VP Cheney was heading NORAD on that fateful day. A practice “coincidentally” started just a couple of months before and NEVER before done in the entire history of the USA. In other words, this devilish man took the reigns of the most sophisticated air defense system in the world and just “coincidentally” the attackers got thru and did Mr Cheney’s bidding (or whichever personification of Beelzebub he was taking at the time). Or that on that very day, 9/11, we were actually conducting war games that mimic the occurrences of that day… the hijacking of airplanes.

Or that on 7/7 when London was bombed in their subways, there was “coincidentally” the very same war game occurring. Security details were doing a live war game regarding terrorists blowing up buses and subways. ON THAT VERY DAY.

What a coincidence, huh?

Well, this brings me to the most recent coincidence to occur and it revolves around Haiti and the earthquake. A couple of days ago, I wrote about it and mentioned HAARP. My bud, Tengrain, also added some commentary and we both seem to agree that it “sounds” far fetched that humans have the technology to control weather, or much less, an earthquake. Since that day, I have slowly investigated the issue and found that Sec of Def Cohen (during the Clinton Admin) said that the technology was available already back then. This ain’t some old dumbass redneck like me. This is a man that should know what he is talking about.

As much as I find it difficult to comprehend and/or believe, I keep coming back to HAARP and the reports I have read. Then today I read Stephen Lendman’s piece, “Haiti’s Eathquake: Natural or Engineered” and I found the amazing “coincidence” that preceded this event.

ViVe said the US Navy may have had “full knowledge” of the test’s damage potential, and speculated it was why Deputy Southern Command General PK Keen was in Haiti when the quake struck, preparing to act in case of a disaster, perhaps an engineered one. In his January 21 Global Research article, Michel Chossudovsky said:

“A Haiti disaster relief scenario had been envisaged at the headquarters of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in Miami one day prior to the earthquake (since) pre-disaster simulations pertain(ing) to the impacts of a hurricane in Haiti” were conducted.

A “communication-information tool” called the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) “links non-government organizations with the United States (government and military) and other nations for tracking, coordinating and organizing relief efforts.”

When the quake struck, TISC was in “an advanced stage of readiness.” The next day, SOUTHCOM implemented the system. “The (DOD’s) Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)” set up a relief effort among “a range of Defense units and various” NGOs and aid groups operating “as part of a carefully planned military operation.” Did DOD have advance knowledge of the quake so could act immediately when it struck? Was the drill’s timing a coincidence or something more sinister?

One day prior to the event, there were plans implemented in case there was a disaster in Haiti. Not only that, but the dude in charge of our forces there was available the day the earthquake hit… supposedly IN Haiti.

Amazing, huh?

It appears to me that either America has been hit with a hurricane of coincidences or something is being engineered.

Let me know what you think.

BTW: this may be a good time to watch Jesse Ventura’s new program that focused on the HAARP phenomena. I have added a page for all his shows. Click here to view the Main Conspiracy Theory page and here for the HAARP episode.

Cut Social Services for Americans, but INCREASE Military Spending for Foreigners (at least to murder them)

Sounds about par for the course in America’s LaLa Land of blissfull ignorance.

And of course there will be thousands of poor, right-wing sycophantic fools that will gobble up the insane rhetoric as if there is truth to it (just because some southern scumbag Pol who gets his damned money from the ones he protects says that he thinks it is best to cut spending). And, of course, with the empowered Democratic party base, they will change their anti-war focus and do anything the Messiah (POTUS Obama) tells them to do.

This simple fact should be enough for any real anti-war or peace activist to call the sycophants on their ass kissing. But I won’t hold my breath because an ass kissing sycophant is indiscernible from party. Whatever their favorite object of worship dictates, they fall all over themselves to make themselves approved in the Messiah’s light. That is why Crooks and Liars, Daily Kos and the whole host of “liberal” blogs have turned into nothing more than yes men intent on keeping the masses brainwashed as they are. Clowns. Oh, and the “conservative” blogs are even more worthless.

Funny how the “cut spending” argument NEVER seems to take in to account our largest out lying costs by any stretch: our Empire. I have addressed the amount of spending at this blog many times (here, here and here and many more places). One of my favorite charts and earliest posts on the subject is found here (this chart compares the spending we do in America on energy sources across all the areas of society compared to military spending). It is excellent, because it scales the dollar value and it is unmistakable that we spend far more money than any enemy we have (or group of enemies). But worse, we spend more than the rest of the world combined.

One of my favorite blogs is Glen Greenwald’s and I focus on his work often. He has become a truly independent voice of reason, whereas one of my other past favorite legal blogs (Jonathon Turley) has become a mouthpiece for the MSM. Normally, his blog is prescient and on top of the issue, but lately, the man keeps spreading bogus propaganda against America’s latest enemy of the state, Venezuela and Hugo Chavez.

Yet, opposed to his normal fashion, he refuses to check to see what other information can be gathered and trusts CNN as a sole source.

I always find it amazing when a person I respect normally, finds some way to totally betray their normal behavior. No, I cannot say unequivocally that he is doing his master’s bidding, but I can say (and have on his blog) that he is incorrect and is now spreading the same type of lying rhetoric that Bush and those that Jonathon so vehemently dissected during their terms. I find that Mr Turley is basically another party clown, by many measures. He should turn off the TV, but that might mean he gets no more air time on MSNBC, GE’s darling Liberal channel).

Nevertheless, I find that Glenn, again, is superior in every way in his analysis (no matter what the subject matter) and that he does his best to stay even keeled and without prejudice. Just a cursory look at both blogs proves the vast difference in content. Turley was great as a Bush basher (and this is where he made is entry into the mainstream). But, he is terrible when it comes to being the mouthpiece for Military propaganda and it has cost him a regular visitor.

Oh well.

Glenn, however, penned this, “The sanctity of military spending” and he is NOT afraid to call a spade a spade (wherein, it seems that depending upon the subject matter, to Jonathon a spade is sometimes nothing more than a plastic spoon).

In the article, Glenn explains the intended social cuts, but then does what I do, focuses on the unheralded PROBLEM that is ravaging our men and women (and our treasury). This is a reason I believe Glenn is an American hero and Patriot.

The facts about America’s bloated, excessive, always-increasing military spending are now well-known.  The U.S. spends almost as much on military spending as the entire rest of the world combined, and spends roughly six times more than the second-largest spender, China.  Even as the U.S. sunk under increasingly crippling levels of debt over the last decade, defense spending rose steadily, sometimes precipitously.  That explosion occurred even as overall military spending in the rest of the world decreased, thus expanding the already-vast gap between our expenditures and the world’s.  As one “defense” spending watchdog group put it:  ”The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six ‘rogue’ states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion.”  To get a sense for how thoroughly military spending dominates our national budget, consider this chart showing where Americans’ tax revenue goes:

Since much of that overall spending is mandatory, military spending — all of which is discretionary — accounts for over 50% of discretionary government spending. Yet it’s absolutely forbidden to even contemplate reducing it as a means of reducing our debt or deficit…

He goes on to explain that Mr Obama actually ran on expanding the military. In fact, this spending is breaking us: financially, morally and in the number of needlessly killed and maimed soldiers of whom I love and respect greatly. We are spreading the tentacles across the world, spending money like the worst drunken sailor alive, yet we will not take care of our own.

My question to each and every redneck alive today: is this ok with you? Is it ok to spend all that money, killing all those people, taking all their shit and then take away the only real protection your little old mother has… Social Security?

Are you that stupid? Really?

Wake up, folks. It is almost too late. For even if we were spending far more on Social stuff, I think that is exactly what our taxes are for. I sure as hell don’t care about paying a tax that is used to lie me into believing another invasion excuse. I’d rather every bit of my money go to taking care of those who need the help. Iraq didn’t need our help. Yemen doesn’t. Afghanistan, Pakistan, ANY OF THEM. All liess. They do not need our military aid. Stop believing the bullshit.

As Glenn ends his article, we see that the goober gobbling media is joining in on the cary stroy, ensuring that all of us simply shit our pants and trust our government to take care of us:

Apparently, it’s breaking news — meriting screaming red-alert headlines — that Al Qaeda would like to (“aims to”) acquire WMDs and use them against the U.S.  But we should all try to remain a little calm, at least.  I’m sure if we just buy some more fighter jets, create some better underground bombs, invade a few more Muslim countries, keep more Muslims imprisoned forever with no charges, give the Pentagon, the CIA and their private contractors a lot more unaccounted-for cash and stay out of their way, expand our domestic spying networks even further through private sector telecom contracts, pour tens of billions of dollars more into the coffers of our Middle East client states, and kill a few more civilians with drones, this problem will be handled.  It’s just a matter of making sure we bulk up our military budget — and Look Forward, not Backward to what was done in the past — and we’ll be able to Stay Safe from this Terrorist-WMD menace.

As for the deficit, no need to worry about that.  We can just freeze programs for national parks and cut Social Security and Medicare.