Fake Oval Office

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Love and Evil

I'm not a sticky sweet romantic type. I don't have much patience for that sort of thing. That said, I'm still a realist. I pay attention. I think about things. And I care, a lot, about pretty much everything. So, what follows won't likely be coming around again soon, just because its not within my usual repertoire, but I need to say it. It's been on my mind.

Question: What is evil if not that which is contrary to life and love?

Without getting too mystical about it, life is a state and expression of love. Love is the most natural thing in the world to us. Children love naturally and profoundly. Friends love one another. We love our families, our parents, our children and even people we don't know very well. We may not know them at all. When we become aware of the suffering of others, even total strangers, it's a natural response to want to help. That is love.

The intangible necessities of life come from love. Love of parents, children, family and friends is a mainstream source of our happiness and okayness in the world. We love our pets and they love us back, and it's no secret how good it is for people to have and love pets, it's actually a means to stay healthy. We love music, dance, art and work. We love animals, we love nature, we love looking up at the stars at night. We love the weather and the seasons, the oceans and the skies, the plants, flowers and trees, the birds and the bees and the butterflies. The love, respect, admiration, awe and appreciation we feel for all of these things gives us tremendous and profound feelings of joy and connection to life and the world. It's within us to love everything. We're just natural born love machines.

We ourselves are products of love, at least that's the ideal situation. Whether or not that is the case no child can get very far in life if they are not loved. They will fail to thrive without love, and without enough love people don't turn out okay. They end up with all kinds of complex and complicated mental and emotional malfunctions and deviations that can cause them, as well as others, all kinds of pain and suffering. That's just reality. We need love to be whole and to function properly. That's a fact that no amount of rabid capitalism can bury, although it never stops trying.

Love is not just some frilly nonsensical notion, it's an absolute necessity and the fact is that everything we do that's done in love is a good thing. You can't really mess up when unselfish love motivates your actions and you certainly can't go wrong when decisions are made in a caring or loving way. It's pretty simple when you stop to notice it. Living and acting in and from a loving place is healthy and logical as well as necessary. We can't and don't do well otherwise. Living and acting in and from love leads to strong and successful human development and in turn to humane and mutually prosperous, healthy human activity on this earth. We're at our happiest when we're in a state of love, loving our lives and everything and everyone in them.

It is the absence of that state of love that brings us the worst of mankind's pains, sorrows and injustice.

It's easy to see how and where we've gone wrong in this world, and why. When you stop and analyze all of the areas of present day life that are in crisis or some stage of evolving crisis, where ever such is man made, it has come about as a direct result of the actions of people who act out of motivations other than love. Indeed, their motivations are the antithesis, the opposite, the exclusion of love.

The worst of the worst situations usually boil down to one of the most destructive motivations there is, the motivation to accumulate great wealth. Those motivated to achieve great wealth for themselves do so with the full knowledge that their wealth derives from causing harm, destruction and death to others. Yet their desire for enormous and ever increasing wealth precludes and negates all other considerations. What they do amounts to a direct assault on life itself.

Those who elevate the illusion called wealth above all else do not act out of love. We know they embody hypocrisy and double standards. They believe they possess the natural entitlement to be obscenely wealthy and to act as criminally as they please, although there is no such entitlement. These are people incapable of feeling love or respect for humanity. They are not connected to the natural, normal state of being human; and nothing legitimate or good can come from that.

What most people don't realize is that great wealth in and of itself is not the true and final goal. To outside observers who have little or no wealth it would seem to be enough. Wealth certainly has its benefits. However, the true and ultimate goal is control. Control over others. Complete and total control.

There is no reasonable motivation to want complete and total control over other people. Control is unnatural. It is also unnecessary. People resent and reject attempts to control them. Yet it is so strongly desired by these very wealthy few, that nothing else matters more to them than attaining control. In order to do so they must be willing to severely violate others, and to kill them in great numbers. While there is no such thing as people willing to be controlled for purposes determined by others, the lack of willingness has never prevented these people from forcing their will on as many others as possible, and at any price to those others.

In a world that has been systematically commodified, everything now has a price. Life itself is being manufactured in unnatural, unjustifiable, disgusting ways that reveal a total disdain and disrespect for nature, for life and for meaning. Life is bought and sold in ways never before imagined, regardless of the widespread strong disagreement with the practice. It is those who possess great wealth who are able to ignore and dismiss the will of the planet and do with it what they will.

These same few have the will to enslave the world, and they have rapidly and very successfully achieved near completion of that goal. It was a simple matter of removing all wealth from the people and taking it for themselves. People all over the world today are being forced to work in ever worsening conditions, even slave conditions, for ever less remuneration and often for no remuneration at all, with ever decreasing rights, human and otherwise.

Well devised efforts are underway across many nations to remove rights of free speech, free press, personal property ownership, and even one's own right to determine their own health care and the health care, education and rearing of their own children. With every passing year the vast majority of mankind is being more and more separated from access to what is required to sustain their lives and health. The tool is money. People everywhere have less and less of it, while this very small few have more than we can even comprehend. It is rapidly approaching the point where these few immensely wealthy people will have all of the wealth, and own all of the property, and they will at that time literally own, and totally control this entire world.

These wealthy people populate certain groups which have become politically insulated from criticism and questioning, leaving them and only them free to perpetrate as much violence and crime against others as they desire. And they desire a great deal of violence and crime to be done to others.

Where will this end?

Is it possible that there is a certain class of human being that is against life and is in fact dedicated to ending life? To eradicating and destroying life, nature, and love?

Anyone who's been paying attention to the world for a fair amount of time has witnessed people acting in precisely this way. It is at the very least illogical, destructive behavior. If you're not interested in being quite so reserved in judgment it would be easy to say that everything they do, regardless of how well they disguise their true intent with lies, games, masks, distractions and detours, has an end result of death, destruction, impoverishment, injustice and pain, everything that comes about in the absence of basic human love and consideration for the well being of others. They loudly proclaim their morality and superiority but what they do will kill people, animals and ecosystems and will destroy whatever they touch. They seem to be anti-humans which exist in direct contradiction to truth, to common sense, to justice, to love, and to all that comprises our most deeply held values and notions of basic human decency.

What I've been considering is the idea that such anti-life people really and truly exist. These are the people I would call evil. They do what they do without any regard whatsoever for others. Their value system, if you could call it that, is unrelated to my own. They do not respect others, they do not value the lives of anyone else but themselves and their own chosen others. They lie, cheat, steal, trick, extort and murder, and knowingly seek to undermine and destroy the health, happiness and prosperity of others in order to "enrich" themselves. They think nothing at all of depriving the whole world of personal choice, freedom, rights, health, property, privacy, dignity, sanity, safety or free will.

Everything about these people is destructive and offensive to anyone outside of their group, and they are not liked, trusted or appreciated, and they know it, they just don't care. What they do is resented and unwanted by the vast majority of the world's population. In fact by and large, many people wholly reject these anti-humans and find it very hard to understand not only why they are the way they are, but that they even can be the way they are. They are insulting, dangerous, spiritually deficient people, given to delusions of grandeur and special entitlement to harm others for personal gain. They separate themselves from the rest of the world and demand all manner of special privileges, special rules, and special treatment. They are obsessed with blood lines, status and titles, and most definitely with wealth, power and control over others.

When you stop to notice it, the penchant for separating people into groups of some who claim to be better and others who are proclaimed to be lessors has brought profound misery and ugliness into the world. There is no need or logical reason for all the separation on earth today. Perhaps they encourage this separation for their own safety knowing that if they set us against each other, we will be too distracted to confront them and end their destructive control over our lives. Without separations of race, creed, education levels, economic class, even age and gender, there are many degrees of false separation between us, the people of the world would be easily united and the anti-life hoarders would be out of business.

How and why these people got this way is not something I can claim to know, I have no idea how they got this way. I also have no idea why they would choose to remain being anti-human when it's clear that's exactly what they are. You'd think they'd feel ashamed of themselves and guilty for what they've done to this world but the astonishing reality is that they don't feel ashamed. They don't feel at all guilty. What they feel is that they are heroic, sublime, enlightened, special beings who possess the rare innate qualities of mind and being that entitle them to do anything they want with this world for their own pleasure. Like I said, they're delusional and this is one of the main delusions. Specialness.

Above all else, the whole of what these other type of people are about, amounts to zero. They are self-destructive when you follow their game out to its logical conclusion. They literally don't make sense. It's obvious that they have the goal of annihilating the entire population of the world, everyone except themselves. I suppose their sick fantasy is to have a private world, all for themselves. They literally feel nothing at the thought of murdering eight billion people.

To this end they've toxified the planet. They cannot propagate selective destruction though; whatever they destroy or kill in fact affects them too. The water is toxic, as is the air. The food is poisonous, filled with chemicals that are dangerous to human health. Healthy natural food is becoming impossible to locate and if it is located it is often too expensive to afford. They've also destroyed all the farmers to ensure the end of local food production. In having total control of our food, they can cut it off anytime they like.

To make certain that the population at large dies out, they're pushing genetically manipulated food on the public, fully aware of the resulting harm. They've hidden and deny the research they've done that shows animals fed this genetic horror for food rapidly sicken and die, and this of course will be what happens to many people in the world. Vaccines are creating a whole generation of functionally retarded children who will not be likely to reproduce; this will drastically and quickly reduce the population of this country alone. They've just forced the first state in this country to vaccinate every tiny school child with no legal rights for the parents to object on any grounds. They're becoming a bit anxious to ensure the failure of every proceeding generation it seems. They want this over now. We are becoming ever less able to reproduce because of toxic chemical saturation anyway, sperm counts have dropped so profoundly that more and more couples are infertile. All human health is under threat today, and every living being on this planet now has uranium radiation inside their body, along with the most toxic and deadly chemicals in the world, some of which never disintegrate.

But they also polluted the oceans to the point of 90% loss of sea life. They don't seem to comprehend that if the oceans die, or the bees, they will die too.

The more successful they are in killing the world, the more successful they'll be in killing themselves. They are on a suicide mission. They either don't know it or they don't care, being totally committed to destroying the world and all life in it including themselves.

Could it be that these people, so devoid of love, literally hate themselves so much that they want to die, only they want to take everyone and every living thing with them when they go?

Isn't it interesting that these loveless people, so destructive and selfish and toxic, these purveyors of mass death, illness, unhappiness, inequality, poverty, all of the things that result from the absence of simple healthy, normal human love, are in total control of this world?

Isn't it strange that even though they are working so hard to cause so much damage and death, and that by and large the population of the world knows it, they are not stopped?

Is this a planet of abject apathy? Does humanity no longer care if our species exists or perishes? Perhaps the violation of this world's irreplaceable perfect purity, the violation of our truth has been so complete and so extensive that we understand, subconsciously perhaps, that we are already doomed. Or are we two sides of the same suicidal coin? The active murderers and the passive acceptors of mass death and total destruction?

It kind of looks that way to me.

I wish I understood what it all means. I wish I understood why they are defended and protected as they continue to murder the world, and why hundreds of millions stand by and allow it to continue, every single day, day after day, year after year, until the inevitable end is reached. No one dares even speak of it to the powers that be, it must all be denied. They who wish to destroy life must not be interrupted or interfered with. To do so would bring on nothing but vile, seething criticism, and maybe even murder. They are definitely protected. No matter how vile they become, no matter how many millions have died, they keep on killing in more and ever more ways.

When it's so simple, so easy, so infinitely more pleasant to live on this earth in a caring and loving way; when doing so would make the world such a nice place to live, then why would anyone choose to do exactly the opposite? It takes tremendous effort to go against nature and to cause so much pointless destruction. But the choice has been made.

I just wish I understood why.

Sorry for the bummer post, but you know, this is real. Will we ever start talking about it? Are we so enslaved, so cowed, so neutered, so mind controlled that we can't bear the discomfort of the confrontation it would take to call these anti-humans out and force them to stop? Or would we rather just die? I don't know, what do you think? It's scary to me, but it seems we'd rather just die. I just don't understand that.

Okay, it's not fair to leave this on such a heavy note. So here's a joke.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get away from the genetically modified chicken feed, obviously.
Too bad he got hit by a truck on the way.

No worries. I hear they're growing abnormally large sized "chicken" breasts in tanks these days, without the rest of the chicken that is. And sheets of "meat". Coming soon to a gross-ery store near you! Betcha can't wait.

SHAME AND THE 2008 ELECTION

The presidential election is only a matter of days away now. I wish I could say there is reason to be optimistic that it will bring an end to the reign of greed and destruction of the bush regime. The reality is that there is little to be optimistic about.

A new president will not herald the changes we want and so desperately need. There will be no more than a changing of faces that will still tell us lies. We will still have a king instead of a leader. He will still act as though the constitution is somewhere between optional and flat out objectionable.

We will still have a government that is separated from us, that asserts a right to be above us and to rule over us with two separate sets of laws. The laws for themselves forgive every felony and lie, and excuse every wrongful death, theft and trespass. The laws for us forgive nothing, excuse nothing, and mete out brutal punishments and imprisonment even before crimes have been committed.

We will still be held hostage by, and held accountable for the mental midgetry of our disconnected elites. We will still have multimillionaire legislators and multimillionaire White House denizens whose services are already pre-purchased by people whose interests are in direct conflict with our own.

Too many of our elected pseudo-deities literally have no idea what it means to work for a dollar, or to struggle to get by, or to slowly drown in insurmountable debt and burden until the point is finally reached where there are no further options and everything is lost. They have no idea what it's like to feel yourself going down for the last count while nobody seems to care. I guarantee you, they don't know, and they don't care. They're too busy handing free hundreds of billions of our hard earned dollars to billionaire bankers who blow more cash on a few days at the spa than ten of us earn in a year. They call that a "bail out". What it needs to be called is a bald faced rip off the likes of which has never been seen, the biggest most despicable financial heist in living history.

No discussion whatsoever has been raised to change the system of the ultra rich sucking the life blood out of the struggling working class, and nothing will be done to change it. Therefore no matter who wins the prestigious career prize of the presidency, we the people will still not be served. We will continue to be used, marginalized and lied to while they rip us off and treat us with ever more disrespect. Who's going to stop them? They're supposed to be stopping themselves.

Where are the checks and balances? That's a dang good question. They're gone. And I'm sorry but whoever the next president is, do you really expect him to bring them back?

It's always been the case that every right and freedom we've ever won for ourselves has only come about through tremendous struggle, and with our government fighting us every step of the way; and now that process will be harder than ever. The very idea of the people having anything resembling a fair share of prosperity or having any true freedom has become officially undesirable. Such things would threaten the imperial rule of this globalist oligarchy. All that matters to them is themselves. The only other thing that matters is that we comply. And should we fail to comply the punishments are ever more swift in coming.

I wish I could say that democracy and freedom have not been imprisoned, tortured and murdered along with the still uncounted civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are every bit as dead as the innocent citizens of those foreign lands, and every bit as dead and wounded and permanently disabled as our own soldiers who went to those foreign lands with the desire to serve and do something good for those people and yet so often ended up betrayed, disillusioned, abandoned and treated like chattel.

In spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans have made it perfectly clear that we want our troops pulled out of the Middle East now, both of the leading candidates have already pledged to keep all battlefronts going, and to fund them and even to send more troops abroad. The 2008 election won't bring an end to the militarism we abhor, it will extend it.

The depth and breadth of the damage done in the small space of eight years truly exceeds comprehension. Please don't believe it was all a string of accidents made by inept and clumsy clowns and morons. This much destruction took a tremendous amount of planning and concerted effort to achieve. It is no accident that it all plays right into the hands of those who want to shove their one world government and Agenda 21 treachery down our throats.

The neo-con machine has consciously worked to undo and destroy everything we believe in and stand for. Bush has recklessly spent more money than all presidents before him combined. He has broken every rule of democratic government in the name of his self-proclaimed imperial right to be "the decider". He's broken every law he didn't like in spite of being well counseled that it's still criminal when the president does it. This president proclaimed his own lawbreaking to be his presidential prerogative, as if his own personal desires are of more value than the laws we need to protect us specifically from the likes of him. That won't change with the 2008 elections. What president is going to give up having imperial power?

The bush regime has consistently treated the working class and the poor with disrespect and contempt. Every assault on our freedoms and rights has been carried out with characteristic smugness and arrogance. His anti-democracy team purposely sought to undermine and redefine freedom, rights and justice not to improve upon these concepts but to negate them.

Little if anything that belongs to us has been left unmolested. We've had sweeping attacks on all of our rights and now none of them remain intact enough to afford us the protection that was all we had to defend ourselves with. A million names on the no-fly list, "free speech zones", gag orders, kidnapping and torture, and trashing the Geneva Conventions are barely the beginning.

Property rights, health rights, parenting rights are all in some stage of being totally usurped by the government. Rights to privacy, to be safe and secure in our own homes and with our own property, these are mere memories. Reasonable expectations of common sense business and industrial regulations to protect us from all manner of corporate greed, predation, malfeasance and unconscionable usury, these literally no longer exist. No more legal protection from intrusive, warrantless wiretaps and unregulated collection of all of our most intimate, personal data, permanently stored and on sale cheap. In all good sense, in every legal sense and in common decency these things should never have happened.

Warrantless searches, seizures and destruction of our personal property by brutal thugs called police; the infiltration and tracking of our private lives, personal associations and activities; being squeezed to the marrow for tax dollars that are shamelessly wasted on the extravagances of the wealthy and well protected; a CIA owned and manipulated press with a multimillion dollar budget used to lie to us; the overturn of posse comitatus; these have all been made reality with subterfuge or with devious tactical legislation specifically devised to negate our rights. This short list doesn't even begin to cover the long list of abuses that this government is now legally entitled to perpetrate against us. If you think the next president is going to turn any of that around, don't hold your breath. You'll be long dead and none of this will have changed, at least not for the better.

Protecting and defending our rights, our freedom, the constitution, or ensuring there is a bona fide democratic process was not a part of this government's game plan. On the contrary. They set out to destroy all of these things for us, while retaining frighteningly exalted versions of them only for themselves. Our lives, our values and our laws mean nothing to these people. So, today, in accordance with their extremist belief system, Americans will only get as much freedom and justice as they can afford to buy, and trust me, you and I can't afford them.

The same goes for our health and food and all basic human necessities. Henceforth, it is official that if you can't afford these things because of the despicable fiscal policies of this government then you'll just have to die, apparently. You'll also have to bear the insult of being blamed for being victimized by zealous ideologues and their system of rampant corruption and raging anti-American values.

Are there still any Christians out there who believe these people are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? Good God, I hope not. They are the obscene and defiant antithesis of Christ.

Did you hear what the president's press secretary had to tell us about our crisis of unemployment? Bush will veto legislation that would extend the number of weeks of unemployment benefits for American workers who cannot find work. The unavailability of work due to tens of millions of jobs being sent off to other countries does not warrant any extension of unemployment benefits for working people. After handing the breath taking instant, no-strings attached free gift of $850 Billion dollars to billionaire bankers to bail them out of their gambling debts at our expense, our need for food to eat and a roof over our heads does not warrant the puny amount of dollars required to save our very lives.

Hundreds of billions of dollars, no, trillions of dollars have flowed like cheap wine through the office of this president as though there was no end to it, as though it was free for the taking in limitless amounts. With borrowed billions he has greased the greedy palms of favored cronies, war profiteers, loyalist campaign contributors, billionaire bankers and fellow multimillionaire capitalists, and he's even paying off the selfsame terrorist insurgents that he initially sent us overseas to kill. Now they're on the payroll too. It seems everyone is being lavishly rewarded with our money, except us.

In all history never have the rich been so rich. Glutting themselves on the people's money, their wealth has expanded so profoundly that it's literally obscene. And yet our national infrastructure is crumbling away. Bankrupt cities and counties are in dire need of major updates and maintenance of public roads, buildings and public utilities. Bridges and highway overpasses are collapsing, levies are breaking, hurricanes and floods are demolishing cities, fires rage across thousands of acres, drought scorches vast areas of numerous states, and people are dying from all of these things; a million families are losing their homes, losing their dreams, losing their prosperity and hope.

Did the people who suffered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's burst levies receive any of that luxurious and speedy multibillion dollar generosity? No, afraid not. Still not. Sorry. That sort of thing just doesn't appeal to the interests of the wealthiest people in the world.

The small percentage of citizens that own outright the vast majority of all our nation's wealth don't care about anyone but themselves. They exist to gratify their own greed and they do it by raping this nation and its citizens. They're not about to feel bad about it. They're much too morally bankrupt and proud of it to give a damn how much harm they cause, or how much suffering they leave in their wake. They prefer to focus on their own luxuries and comforts, to enjoy their prestige and overwhelming advantages. They fully expect us to be fine with that, and even to support it. They've shown us this repeatedly and without exception with their own actions and have told us so in their own words over and again.

There is nothing there to be proud of.

Nothing so shameful as this should ever have reached into imagination much less have been achieved. What manner of despicable beings are these? How can these people bear to be inside their own skins? They are revolting in the truest sense of the word. They are utter and abject failures as human beings.

There is nothing to feel but shame from predating other people or from bludgeoning other people into submission or to death. There is no conceivable reason to feel pride after lying, deceiving, stealing and in every other way cheating to gain the desired ends. Cheating is not winning, it is stealing and it is lying, it's something to be ashamed of. Winning is something that can only be done fairly, ethically and morally and none of these people are burdened by any obligations to moral considerations. They truly are, at least in my deeply sincere opinion, amongst the literal scum of the earth. Few could aspire to become any lower life form than these people. They thoroughly disgust me.

I am ashamed of what this country has been turned into. I am ashamed of the immorality and disdain for ethics those in authority have so widely sown and made normal. I am ashamed of the arrogance and the shocking cruelty of our leadership and their sickening inability to tell the truth or take responsibility, or to show respect to anyone outside of their own private clan. This is a rapacious clique of billionaire thieves flying death flags of the Free Market instead of championing a free world. These are delusional ideologues desperate to justify their unjustifiable behavior by repeating romanticized odes to dead capitalist theorists and with dialogues of phony religiosity used as cover for their raging greed, racism, sexism, and classism. They are bullies and cowards always leaving the hard work to others, always taking the cream for themselves and leaving the clean up behind for their victims to cope with. These are not decent people.

I can't count how many times my stomach has been turned listening to the arrogant insincerity of these men and women who say they are there to serve us but who only serve themselves. We have been besieged by tragedy and destruction from within and without; and we should never have to endure vicious attacks from within. True to form, in the wake of every disaster they've stepped up and served themselves, helped themselves to more of what they want, grabbing ever more for themselves at our expense, leaving us to flounder and beg and fend for ourselves. After robbing us of our wealth it is not possible for us to fend for ourselves, you bastards.

They've spun countless lies to cover their criminal acts and more lies designed to inspire fear and weakness, tearing us apart. They've created enemies and threats we never had before they arrived. They've used their monopoly of media and their wealth to fabricate the illusion that everyone agrees with them and supports them when nothing could be further from the truth. They do not even have the courage to show us who they really are or to let us see the condition this country is really in, burying international reports, gagging scientists and medical experts and demanding censorship and even outright fraud. They have truly earned the deep contempt that is felt for them all over the world.

Shame on them for their icy hearts of stone. Shame on them for their ravenous greed, their incivility, and their dishonesty. Shame on them for their world record breaking selfishness. Mountains of shame on them.

These people are the walking embodiments of shame. They are the living, breathing personification of all the worst qualities that men can possess. They have no honor, no compassion and no desire for either. They have abused the trust of tens of millions of people who would do anything asked of them because they believe in the rightness and honor of their leadership.

It is profoundly unwise to follow unproven strangers just because they are in positions of authority, and though many who did so have since come to bitterly regret it, they have still not learned the lesson and they will simply do it again. Next month.

To anyone sputtering on themselves because they're enraged at my failure to properly notice our wonderful American freedoms, or because they still, for some incomprehensible reason, believe and support the bush crime family, you are pounding your fists in defense of the very predators who have ripped you off which you can't see or admit to because of your brainwashing; a gift to you courtesy of those same conniving liars. But spare me your protestations for this simple reason: the powers that be have no moral ground to stand on. None. I can't think of even one single thing they've done to make this nation stronger, healthier or more prosperous. It is not more free, it is less free. It is not more just, it is less just. It is not more prosperous it is rife with unemployment and an economy teetering on the brink of total collapse. They've cleaned us out and left us bankrupt. There's not a single thing in their well documented history that this country can feel proud of. All that's been done has been done in deceit and disdain not only for us but for people all over the world. They have absolutely nothing to their credit.

Legitimate leaders take responsibility, they do not claim to have rights of control over the lives of others. Genuine leaders do not demand compliance to their arbitrary personal beliefs and selfish goals. Legitimate leaders empower and strengthen those they lead, they do not predate them or cheat them or deprive them of justice, nor do they force a nation to its knees in poverty and worry about the future. They do not bankrupt the nation and pocket the cash. They do not create enemies everywhere they go due to their stubborn, small minded ignorance, arrogance and hypocrisy. They do not call for wars based on lies and deceit in order to serve the goals of another country at the expense of our own goals, prosperity and progress. They do not militarize the police force and teach it to hate and violate the public at will without fear of accountability. They're leaving no legacy beyond their profound criminal greed and dishonesty. So what are you defending? Your right to be violated?

True leaders don't take, they give. These people have done nothing but take. All they've given us is a bottomless nightmare to contend with and right on cue, they will all be long gone, safe and snug and comfortable when the worst comes to kick the rest of us down and cause us more suffering than most of us can handle. This will not end with the bush administration, this is the new normal.

I'm sorry, but no matter who is elected, if they even are fairly elected, there will be very little difference between tomorrow and today. None of the critical problems and core issues that have taken us so far from where we were and who we are, have ever been mentioned. If they're not even mentioned, then there is no possibility that anything can change.

We are on our own.

If freedom actually means anything to anyone, it's time to ponder that fact well and decide where you stand on it. Then realize the 2008 presidential elections will not bring us out of this terrible tide, but with all intent and capability will push us further into it.

Vainglorious Pie

Hungry? How about a nice hefty serving of double standards slathered with great greasy gobs of hypocrisy sauce?

Here you go. Bush today at a press conference in Texas:

"A lotta people here in Texas and around the country are not pleased... with the government having to take the steps they took, their question is, I pay my bills, I pay my mortgage, why, wh-why why are you helpin' Wall Street?

And the answer is because...uh, had we not done anything...people like the folks behind me would be a lot worse off.

We...we'll make sure as time goes on this doesn't happen again in the meantime we gotta solve the problem."

Uh huh. So, the people behind you, namely the rich and powerful full time speculators who need more play money to keep the games rolling, they would be a lot worse off if they couldn't get a honkin' sh*t load of free money they didn't have to work for, and since somebody has to pay for it, it should be us. That way, the whole country will be much worse off for a very long time to come and the rich people won't have to suffer so much as a moment of anxiety. They won't feel a thing as the nation tanks and swirls the bowl and jobs disappear by the thousands each month, and people lose the homes they've been paying on for 15 years and stores close. THAT'S not a problem, that's all fine. The rich running out of billions to blow on rich gambling games and bets, THAT'S a problem.

Okay, just so we're all on the same page here. It's important to readjust your priority system just in case you thought different than dear mr. bush, who has his priorities down pat. Twisted weasel that he is.

On the very same day his highness let us know what really matters in life, the devoted true followers of 'fuck-em-all' exploitative one-way capitalism were hard at work, ready to chop away huge chunks of the slim budget allocations for social programs. Including the ones that are paid for in full by us already. Social programs are way too expensive. Where are we supposed to get 100 billion a year for old folks and disabled working people depending on their measly government checks to sustain their lives? That's just wasteful! You folks out there just don't need all this stuff. You don't need jobs or health care or affordable housing or food, no safety nets. By the way, over 2 TRILLION dollars of your private retirement savings money is gone. Whoops. Sorry about that. Shit happens. Now what's for lunch? Maybe we can get 9 holes in afterwards.

I actually heard McCain today launching a hypocritical attack at Obama over the fact that when this terrible crisis on wall street happened that he purposely held things up and quibbled and acted like a jerk for making those poor rich bankers wait a WHOLE WEEK before handing them 850 billion free dollars.

I can't help but remember the long drawn out, painful, and much belated massive Congressional hearings that were held after the levy burst right after Hurricane Katrina blew through, demolishing untold miles of homes, schools and businesses, leaving at least 1,300 dead and likely many more than that. Do recall that the dear president was off eating McCain's birthday cake in California, and neither of them thought it an emergency severe enough to drop their gold rimmed plates and whip up some talk about emergencies or problems. They were fine with it. What's the problem? Bush didn't even make an appearance for FIVE DAYS and McCain was nowhere to be seen.

After Katrina it took months of begging to finally get Congress to belly up and listen to facts and figures and reality that spoke to the suffering and critical need of an entire region of this country desperate and dying from lack of help. It took hours and hours of gut wrenching and angry testimony to get the Fed to feel enough like weasel puke to grudgingly acknowledge the PROBLEM these people were having in the soaked and stripped south. Dead bodies and total Armageddon was not an instant no brainer that help was needed immediately. They not only needed a telegram, they needed an entire educational program which sadly, was not able to penetrate their avarice soaked brains.

Tragically, painfully, and expectedly they decided to conjure up a few billion dollars to set aside for reconstruction; which was then all immediately snatched up in the ravenous fat engorged jowls of no-bid contractors out to get a juicy slab of free cash. The contractors then turned around and subcontracted out the work, and the sub contractors in turn sub contracted out the work, and so on, until all that was left was five guys from Mexico and a hammer to get the job done.

But boy oh boy, some rich bankers gamble our entire economy away and they honestly expect same day bail out service with no talk, no strings, no stalling and no oversight.

See? Free market capitalism really works. That is, if the objective is to let the fat cats get richer and the rest to do without what they need to survive. It's no place for conscience or responsibility. It's feast time for the bottomless few.

They can hear our criticism. They know perfectly well how we feel about all of this. They just don't righteously give a damn. They say, "You people just don't get it. You are all here for our benefit. You're here to be worked and milked for everything you've got. That way we can get our hands on every penny of wealth you make. If we did nice things for you that would ruin the system, and we just can't have that. THAT would be a catastrophe. So please go away and die. Thank you".

It warms your insides, doesn't it? It definitely affects my insides, that's for damn sure.

I'm not clear on this yet but it seems that in addition to the 700 billion they already stole which in fact ended up being 850 billion, an additional 900 billion is being set aside for the kings of the land sharks, and mr. paulson gets to divvy it up and out to his bestest friends in the whole wide world, any way he likes, any time he chooses, and nobody gets an opinion about it. I must say, I didn't notice any heavily armed deputized Blackwater thugs rushing into Congress to shoot those rich looters. I mean, if you really want to shoot looters you missed your chance big time boys.

So "setting aside" trillions of dollars for the richest people on the face of the planet to use at will, trillions we don't have and can't actually generate but are expected to pay for, this is called "solving the problem". Using my magical powers of discernment, it appears that the definition of "the problem" is that there are still people out here who have food to eat or a roof over their heads. But they're working on fixing that problem too and by the looks of it, they'll get it whipped into shape in no time.

Maybe there's something in the water. Or maybe there's some kind of noxious germ in the D.C. ventilating systems, I don't know, it's hard to say exactly what causes the brains of full grown adults to go flat as truck tires on a freeway, making that smacking sound as the shreds flop all over the pavement until the truck pulls over. I heard that sound on the day they voted to steal the people's prosperity and freedom, and I'm still hearing it with every passing day. Even as they cast their votes the market began to nose dive, down, down, down it went; and the response on the hill was total surprise.

Their unprecedented theft from the American people was not boosting investor "confidence" as they expected. Strangely my friends, it seemed that the entire planet was losing confidence faster than a flat tire exploding on a freeway near you.

Perhaps the sight on live television of globalist banker criminals in pin stripes robbing their own country blind in broad daylight and forcing the entire system to swallow the most outrageous terms ever dreamt up, was more than the average normal human beings of earth could handle. Perhaps it sent people everywhere the message loud and clear that we are all much more screwed than we even thought. Because the American government is without a doubt the scummiest crime syndicate in history. There they stand on world wide TV promoting and protecting their own filthy lawlessness in front of God and everyone; flaunting their corruption and celebrating the establishment of the all new casino economy for the rich; clamping a permanent choke-hold on the American working class and the poor which will only tighten as the whole country slowly chokes to death in chains of debt. The pin striped crime gang cheerfully looks on expecting applause and congratulations at a move well made. As though they've done a good thing.

For everyone observing this blatant decay of ethics and morality, smelling the overwhelming stench of corruption and vice wafting from their TV sets, it's akin to a massive dose of global smelling salts, served rectally. The whole darned world has woken up, including Wall Street investors.

If you really want to know how to solve the implosion of our own economy and economies all over the world, here's an idea. Arrest and punish the Wall Street and government crooks. Frog march them off to prison. Get them into their orange jumpsuits. Enlist fresh new brigades of honest prosecutors and investigators, empower them with powers beyond those of the global crime syndicates, and let the facts come spilling out for all to see and know. All of them. The whole dirty, filthy portfolio. All the names, all the numbers, all the filth, the dirt, the murders and the lies.

It would break all box office records, and the show would go on a very long time after unraveling the network of interwoven lies and crimes and filth perpetrated on America and on many other countries over the last 30 to 50 years or so. Even though it would be a hell of a show we wouldn't need to wait for the happy ending. As soon as the first set of hand cuffs were slapped on I can just about guarantee that confidence would return to Wall Street over night, and confidence would return to the American people, and confidence would once again sky rocket the world over.

A government predating and cannibalizing its own citizenry makes pretty much everyone lose their appetites. Restoring the rule of law, ethical action, sane thinking and moral character to our highest offices is all the economic stimulus we need.

Speak The Truth

The prevailing rules are unspoken, but they nonetheless dominate our lives in nearly every way.

See it for anything, except for what it really is.

Say anything you like about it but never, ever, speak the truth.

There are many ways to avoid getting to the truth. Doing battle is a very popular way. First, see it for anything except what it is, then pick a fight. Artificially create two sides in the argument then be incendiary and blame others for the non-truth. People can't resist jumping into any lame brained argument and so they do. You've then got an entire group of people at each other's throats, exchanging insults and blame, tossing out arguments and curse words, and for all of the tremendous energy that gets expended, there is literally no risk at any time that common sense will prevail allowing all involved to clue into the real issues.

We've become a very "take sides" population, much to our collective shame and failure. We hear some false notion floating by and immediately decide what side we're on. It's just too much fun to hunker down on your spot and defend it with all you've got. It's just too intoxicating to generate as much ill will and intolerance towards those who disagree with you as you possibly can, because hating others is fun. It makes you feel superior and self righteous and that must mean you're absolutely entitled to act like a total jerk to others.

Intolerance, ignorance, arrogance and violence are all hairs on the same ugly wart. Where on earth did we get the idea that this is something to boast about?

Maybe it's just me but here's what I know. If you stop listening, you stop learning anything. If you stop learning, you will never understand. If you think you know it all, you don't know the half of it.

It's much too easy for the engineers of public perception to rig and ignite mutual contempt bonfires, and heaven knows, we've got a whole lot of those blazing all over the place these days. The main anchoring bonfire is the right vs. the left. The right literally reviles the left, and the left truly loathes the right. Only there really is no such thing as left and right. These are terms without definition, they could mean anything, and so in truth they don't mean anything at all. There is no right and left, there's only right and wrong, and you don't need to be a card carrying member of anything to participate in discerning those things. The whole left/right paradigm is a great big fake out, a perfect and enduring distraction that is eternally stoked and fired up to keep the entire country from getting to the truth. We have to get past this big fat lie, else we'll stay pointlessly suspended in it for ever. We deserve better. We can do better.

We have to get to the truth to get at what's really the cause of our imperfect world. The fact is that the real cause of all our common woes are people who don't want the truth getting around. Because of that, truth is a very rare commodity out there.

The truth is the greatest enemy in the world to liars. Liars can't exist in an atmosphere of openness and truth. Truth immediately shuts them down, in a powerful, humiliating way. Truth is such a powerful weapon it really surprises me how many of us are perfectly happy with pretending it doesn't exist. We prefer to do battle over supplied false divisions of opinion, based on incomplete, imperfect knowledge and understanding of the subject, perfectly content to settle for only the surface level information catapulted out here by the media which we absolutely believe is the whole story. It's just pitiful.

We are a people so bored, so cabin fevered, so starved for meaning and substance that we'll grab for anything at all that comes down the pike, and mount it like a dime store mechanical pony ride. We all want our turn on the ride, we all have our dimes ready, we all want to feel like we're alive for a moment now and then. All we've been granted is the pointless exercise of taking sides, so that's what we do, and we do it with all our might. In fact, dragging the truth into the picture would deprive us of our little piece of the action, and so we have no real desire to know the truth. We've actually come to enjoy the lies and believe the games mean something.

Lies and games are the defining characteristics of how our government does business, and since it's all we've ever known, it's what feels normal to us. We've learned to hate and reject the truth as much as they do. We're conditioned to support everything but the truth, to see everything but the point, to hear anything but the whole story. We're not affecting the workings of the government. We're usually just chasing our own tails around and around in circles, like dogs, courteously distracting ourselves with pointless activity to let them continue to perpetrate their private agendas at our expense, unencumbered. No wonder they feel no compulsion to be accountable to the public. No wonder they disdain us and consider us irrelevant idiots. We kind of act like we are. Both irrelevant, and idiots. We're caged and controlled down to our opinions, and we're just sure we're free. Boy oh boy, have we had a job done on us.

The general public has very definitely been conditioned to be the guard dogs of the elite, and we are used as such, led by establishment ordained and owned lavishly paid mass media wind up toys. We're our own worst enemy. There is nothing wrong with asking questions of those who have all of the money and all of the power and are using it all but entirely out of our eyesight and earshot. But tell much of the deeply conditioned public that, and they'll be down your throat, telling you to leave if you don't like it here. They can't even see their own complicity in the crimes being perpetrated against them. They've taken their sides, and those sides are never what they obviously should be: their own.

This 850 billion dollar insulting criminal rip off of the people is just another example of seeing anything but the point and calling it anything but what it really is. It's as though Congress would rather die than just stand up and tell it like it is. In this scandal is all the proof there is that letting the rich be in control of everything that happens is utterly suicidal. They're too selfish, self-interested and depraved to be allowed to have free reign over anyone else's lives. The Federal Reserve is a private bank that is now bailing out the very same private banks that are in its own conglomeration of private banks. The selfsame bankers who have just ripped us off are coming back to pay themselves some more. Conflict of interest doesn't even begin to describe it.

What about the double standards being exposed here? When the rich do evil, they don't pay. When they are successful, they don't give back. When they lose, we pay their bill.

Who bails us out when we do evil? No one. Who helps when through no fault of our own, we are at risk of losing everything we've worked for all our lives? No one. Who blocks and prevents our financial success? The rich who act like it all belongs to them. When we lose, who pays our bills? No one.

We aren't even granted the right to file bankruptcy anymore, in a system that is specifically designed to bankrupt us. But when the richest people on the face of the earth claim the need to file bankruptcy for one of their various enterprises, their bill is simply handed to us. On who's authority? Since when? Who came up with that stupid idea? Yet, they are not put in court before a judge like we would be. They are not required to divulge their every single possession and watch it all being carried away by judgment of some court. They aren't bothered at all. They aren't scowled at, or criticized or in any way harassed, denigrated, shamed, or marginalized for the rest of their lives by all business and government alike. They won't have any trouble finding a job or getting health insurance or buying or renting a home based on their financial history. They won't be hounded to pay up with endless phone calls to them at home, at dinner time, on weekends and holidays. No one will ever say a word to them. They can just hand us the bill and walk on by. Why does this bizarre, unjustifiable double standard exist?

The questions of September 11th have grown to the point that a great many people have finally succumbed to hearing the facts. The facts don't add up. They don't match what we've been told. We know there is something very wrong here. And yet the very people who we pay billions of dollars to, who's job it is to get to the bottom of this very thing, are all acting as if we are simply nuts for believing all of these questions deserve answers. Of course they deserve answers. If power and authority is not interested in answers, then obviously, it is not in their interest to get us answers. They don't want to get to the truth. It is only logical to see that they are complicit in the crime and/or its cover up.

It's all right there in our faces but nothing will ever be done about it because the people who make our laws will not speak the truth and the media that covers it all will not allow the truth to be spoken.
If we just spoke the truth it would make it very difficult for the liars to lie, and the cheaters to cheat, and the thieves to steal. But our whole system is created and run by liars, cheaters and thieves. The laws favor them and crush us. Nothing makes sense anymore. The government is corrupt. They cannot be trusted. The media is corrupted by censorship and propaganda, keeping the truth from the public. They are responsible for much of what's gone wrong in this country today. Still, for whatever reason, the truth must never be spoken. The corruption and destruction that is the will of the elite and the rich and the powerful shall be done.

What answers could be given to justify the slow mass robbery and destruction of the nation so that rich people can keep getting richer?
Why does human life come after profits, if at all?
Why is it considered repulsive in the extreme to live in a country where no one has to go hungry or homeless or uneducated?
Why is it considered reasonable to give trillions of dollars not to the people to create security and prosperity with, but to the rich to pocket and hoard, to reward them for their repeated crimes against us?
Why has the EPA just released yet another bee killing pesticide when other countries are banning these products?
Why does the FDA concern itself with our vitamins and whole foods and their health giving properties and want to eliminate not only these products, but the legal right to talk about them as health giving?
Why does the government aggressively block the testing of cows for Mad Cow disease?
Why is the media a worthless piece of crap?
Why does our education system turn out the most uneducated people on earth?
Why is our water poisoned?
Why is our air poisoned?
Why is our food poisoned?
Where are all of the alternative energy ideas?
Why are Americans working harder than anything that even makes sense?
Why are American wages at slave wage levels?
Why are prices so high and quality so poor?
Why aren't Americans entitled to health care and good health?
In the richest country in the world, why are we bankrupt?
Why does the government crush alternatives to the Federal Reserve note?
Why are we forced to pay so many taxes at gunpoint for nothing in return?
Why don't the rich and the corporations pay all of the taxes?

It is not allowed to ask these questions of our government. To answer any of these questions can result in very negative consequences, or it could result in a well rehearsed blast of divisive bull shit. These are all things that don't make sense and cannot be justified. Things that are easily parsed into right and wrong. It's all very simple. All of these things are the way they are because it makes rich people richer at our loss and expense. No one cares that it harms us, robs us, and denies us. The truth, were it ever allowed to prevail, would bring a speedy end to injustice and elitist government. It would vastly improve the lives of every American. It would generate production and prosperity, ensure our freedom, and give our lives meaning and diverse choices.

And the truth is, they just don't want that. Which is why we will never hear the truth in the places where it most needs to be spoken and shoved into the faces of those who are so greedily destroying this country for their own personal pleasures. In the absence of truth, the sociopaths take power and they will slowly but surely destroy it all for everyone, but themselves.

The truth would bring all of that to an end. Is it time yet, to speak simple truth? I think so. We can't help but do better and be better off for it. But I sometimes wonder if I'm in a sad minority. What I'm afraid of is that the truth is so resoundingly rejected, so totally unwelcomed, so completely censored, that it quite literally is ceasing to exist.

But as a simple truth, well spoken, can obliterate an entire illusion in a moment, then we have the only real power there is that cannot be taken from us. We can only forfeit it but it cannot be destroyed or taken from us. We must use it then and understand it and speak the truth every chance we get.

Will it help? I don't know, but it couldn't possibly hurt. And I do know that if we don't speak the truth it really could cease to exist and no one will ever know what truth is, ever again.

I've been coming to grips lately with the unpleasant fact that we've crossed over a midpoint, an exact moment when things could have gone either way, for better or for worse. I no longer hold any illusions along those lines. Crooks, thieves and brutal thugs stole truth and justice and decency and replaced them with drunken selfishness and power. Lies prevail over our lives. Lies prevail inside our heads. Lies prevail in government and law enforcement. With unprecedented callousness, deceit and obstruction of truth, lies are destroying this country and seek to destroy the world. Also under deceitful attack our own morality, values and humanity, and even life itself. There is nothing I can do but reject the lies every time I hear them spoken, and to counteract them by speaking the truth without apology. Change can only come from us, from all of us who have been lied to.

I am saddened and at times even depressed when I see the depravity and injustice that is now so rampant in this time and current evolution of society. It will bring exactly what comes of living a lie, of living so many lies. It will hurt a lot of innocent people. There will be a hell of a hole to dig ourselves out of, if and when such a time finally comes about. My fear is that it will come about only after the worst of all possibilities come to pass. After every stupid mistake is made, after believing every pervasive lie told to us by officialdom. We still just don't get it that authority figures are just people and this batch are the filthiest bags of scum on record.

As we hold on to our need to believe in the benevolence of those who take our money at gunpoint, those who send us off to die in their wars for private profit and dominion, those who poison us with drugs and toxic chemicals in our food and water and air, those who undermine our education, those who tax us when we earn it and again when we spend it, those who prevent us from having the freedom to create our own world and lives for ourselves, those who take it all for the rich and powerful and pay no mind to the fact that it belongs to someone else; as we somehow strangely believe these people would never hurt us when all they do is hurt us, as we stubbornly refuse to see the truth blatantly in front of our faces, we only continue to assist the most dangerous, criminal people in the world in their misguided quest to destroy us all in the name of some idiotic concept of ideological victory.

All any of us can do at this point is speak the truth about all of it and not worry about who gets their panties all in a wad over it. It's way past the point where anyone's misguided, misinformed sensitivities matter. We don't have time to hold anyone's hands and sit and listen to them spewing ignorant tripe. We need to tell them so. We need to tell them to get up off their butts and go get themselves informed so they can catch up and get a grip on reality. It's not our job to hand it to them on a silver platter. What's at stake is literally everything. Telling the truth is an absolute necessity and it may not seem like much but it will come to matter more than we can possibly guess right now.

I can't do anything by myself to stop the tidal wave of lies and oppression beginning to descend on us all, but I can choose not to assist its successful arrival and uprooting of what little is left of truth and humanity. That is the choice I've made. In spite of my flaws, in spite of my many weaknesses, in spite of not knowing everything in the world, I can still discern right from wrong, and I can try to live it the best I can. I just hope I'm not alone in reaching this conclusion. I hope that a whole lot of other people see what I see and decide to do the same. For no other reason than it has to be done, and for this truth: that if it is not done, it really can come to being all over.

Instead of blaming, speak the truth.
Instead of raging, speak the truth.
Instead of staying silent, speak the truth.
Instead of killing, speak the truth.
Instead of joining, speak the truth.
Instead of arguing, speak the truth.
Instead of demanding to prevail, speak the truth.
Instead of taking sides, speak the truth.
Instead of conforming, speak the truth.
In spite of who likes it and who doesn't, speak the truth.
In the face of oppression, speak the truth.
In the presence of ignorance, speak the truth.
In the grip of tyranny, speak the truth.
In the face of every wrong, speak the truth.
It is the absence of truth that allows every wrong thing to prevail.
If we need anything at all right now, we need to speak and to hear the truth.

---

As is so often the case, synchronicity appeared in my lap after I finished writing this post tonight. It's beyond interesting how this happens, but it does happen, and it happens a lot. What's on my mind and in my heart is exactly the same thing on the minds and in the hearts of a lot of people in other places doing other things, people I have no contact with at all.

Today, one of those people is the man who promotes himself publicly as Reverend Billy. He's in truth an actor, who happened to find himself a role that worked so well that he's become it. I think that's a hoot and I love it. I like his politics and his passion. I like the unique niche he's carved out for himself. I like his courage. Even though he is based in New York and I am in California, and even though I've never so much as met the man, I've been signed up on his mailing list for a while now. Usually what's in his newsletters regards local matters, and as such, don't hold much in the way of pertinence in my life. Today is the exception. I will leave you with the contents of that newsletter so you can see the synchronicity today, on the subject of speaking the truth.

Excerpt from a recent sermon by Reverend Billy, on tour in California-

"Where are the Leaders?
Check the person to your left.

Both candidates in the debate were trying to normalize what's happening. In fact, the financial partnership of Wall Street and Washington has now been revealed – it is absolutely breathtaking - and we have an opportunity we haven't had in generations.

Look Left

In USA Today there was a riveting graphic. The names of legislators next to dollars they received from the companies they are supposed to regulate. The head of the Senate Banking Committee has received tens of millions of dollars from banks. What? Common sense conclusion: The lawmakers are business partners with Wall Street, and there it is in the paper that everybody reads.

If we had leaders they would teach us now. They would be as smart as we are in our common sense conversations. Why don't the leaders ask the radical questions that we're all asking? "What the hell IS Wall Street anyway?" "What is the connection between the money markets and everyday life?... between markets and actual services, skills, work." Sitting in a diner on the lunch break, staring straight ahead, cradling our bad coffee in our hands, we're asking the most common sense questions. And then – these extreme statements come out of our mouths. It's not that we have an ideology or a hero or an apocalypse. We are saying radical things by looking at the world and having a common sense response, that's all. These are radical times, and common sense, if we acted on it, would be a revolution.

It is time to place value on our own unmediated talk. The necessary revolution is here in our everyday talk. It is talk without a career. Talk without ethicists, soft-ware, or art forms. This is talk with the power to save us all. Yes, this talk - we remember it from somewhere. It's the same thing we said when we knew we couldn't let the British god-monarchy have his way with us, when we knew we had to abolish slavery, when we knew we would defeat fascism... We've risen to great heights, and it started with listening to each others' plain talk.

So Obama is on that TV and he's a centrist. That's his gambit. He seems to be stifling his own instincts. Obama is playing it safe. I hope he gets elected – when he does we have a responsibility to give him radical American action, just the way that Dr. King forced the hand of the Kennedys. We know, and Barack Obama knows – the revolution won't be televised. Not only that – political experts won't be able to predict its arrival or where it will come from. It waits inside ordinary Americans, sitting here drinking bad coffee, talking..."

http://www.revbilly.com

...

That is what it all boils down to. Talking to each other. Deciding what's being done is wrong. Connecting with our fellow citizens on the basis of common sense, of knowing right from wrong, and demanding what's right. We can do that.

Speak the truth.

Socialize This

Every time I hear someone going on about how this or that necessary no-brainer, long over due legislation cannot be passed because it would be socialism! GASP!, I know I'm talking to someone who has either never thought things through or is a dufus.

What do you call an entire country getting soaked for something called taxes and that cumulative money is supposedly used for every single thing this government does?

What is the difference pray tell, between people being forced to fund our endless war machine, and people being forced to fund a free national health care system? I'll start the clock ticking down here and give you a minute to come up with the answer that's supposed to make it okay to use our aggregate funds to make rich war mongers richer and kill innocent civilians in other countries while it's hold-yer-nose horrible to use a percentage of that dollar amount to ensure all Americans have health care and dental care.

I'm waiting.

The difference seems to be two fold. First, all of the money goes to rich people. Second, a lot of people suffer and die. Now apparently, this socialized war machine is a good thing and is not socialism because the wealth is not spread around to benefit those who chip in. If the benefit was spread around so all would be better off, that would be socialism and a very bad thing.

I think it would do us all a lot of good to realize that the dark and ugly PR job done on our heads about spreading around the wealth is a product of the rich. People like Paulson (with a reported 700 million in personal wealth) and the richer Texan oil crowd, the spoiled mega wealthy types, these are the ones who are all for socialism as long as it works out that it's our money they get to use and spend and take home in caravan loads; AND when they don't get their 2000% returns on investments and corporate ventures and there are actual losses on the books, then socializing the losses, i.e. spreading those losses around to the entire public, that's okay. That's a good thing.

It absolutely is a good thing if you're a rich MF. But here's the fact that cannot be uttered lest the rich and useless shall faint dead away. It sucks for the whole rest of the country. That's the truth.

The thing that makes rich people's skin crawl is the idea of our money being used to benefit us. That's something they see as evil and they've tagged it with a word, socialism. The intent is to send chills up and down our spines and make us feel very afraid. We can't have socialism here, it's downright un-American.

Well that's all well and good but the bottom line is, we've already got socialism here. Rich people's socialism. Our money is taken from every last one of us, and is given to the rich. It's even taken from people who turn a couple hundred dollars profit in some teeny home or garage business enterprise where nothing but their own hard work earns them a thousand bucks or so in a year. Even they are forced, by law, at gunpoint, to cough up some of those earnings and give it over to dear Uncle Sam for the rich.

Uncle Sam is a bit of an idiot if nothing else because if Uncle Sam really was interested in getting his hands on some real money, he wouldn't be wasting his time on people who don't have any. At budget balancing time he wouldn't be slashing sorely needed social programs for the poorest people in America. He would be knocking on the doors of the 20% of people in this country who have 80% of ALL of this country's wealth.

Rich people's socialism is based on the principle that our money is taken from us and given to them. And by strict definition, that's not socialism because it's not spread around. It starts out as socialism as every pocket is picked, but then immediately transforms itself into oligarchy, elitism and greed at gunpoint, because we're legally required to cough up our hard earned dough and let them have it to do whatever they like with it.

What they like is welfare for the rich, bail outs for the richest Wall Street tycoons in the world, fat subsidies for themselves, no taxes for themselves, in fact, nothing for themselves but our money. All of our money. All of the wealth, all of the privilege, all of the free lunches, all of the prime real estate, all of the self-serving laws that force us to buy their stadiums and R&D and pave their golden roads for them; but none of the responsibility, none of the work it takes to earn a dime, and none of the realities of life the rest of us have no choice about. It's all about getting and never, ever about giving anything back. Calling it a trickle down theory is apt. It's the bread crumb theory. They feast on lavish lifestyles that we pay for, and when the waiter shakes out the table cloth afterwards, the rest of us may divide whatever crumbs are left behind on the dirty floor.

How very nice of them.

Let me shatter their lovely little daydream with some ideas we must never have. It's time to have lots of those ideas. In fact it's time to out do ourselves thinking about this whole stupid, outrageous set up. It's time to change the way we do things in this country and the first change goes right to the top of the food chain. I think it's time for the fat cats to catch their own mice, the hard way, just like the rest of us alley cats.

Like it or not, we now have an ingrained system of permanent taxation. None of us can make a cent without Uncle Sam showing up with his hand out telling us how much of what we earn belongs to him. Nothing about that makes sense, at least not in terms of being a free country. Because face it, if someone else has the legal right to force us to spend our money according to their say so, we aren't free. We are no more free than we are free in what to do with our hard earned money.

If we really wanted to reclaim our freedom, we'd abolish federal taxation completely because we don't need all that federalness. We just don't. It is separated from our daily lives and more and more has become a voracious consuming brat and monster that runs our lives whether we like it or not. If we stop feeding the beast it will die. At the very least, it might learn how to behave itself and remember what a "servant" is supposed to act like.

But abolishing the entire tax mechanism is a bit advanced right now, and getting there would require some logical steps. Those are what we should start talking about today, and as much as possible.

First of all, it's high time we the people got our full share of what anybody should be able to get anytime they lay their dollars down. They should get what they pay for. There needs to be a specific thing purchased, and there needs to be a receipt. AND it needs to be something we want and have asked for. It's bizarre in the extreme that none of the above applies to our current system of socialism for the rich. We don't even expect to get anything in return for our money, we don't even think to ask what it's being taken for. We don't get a receipt. And generally speaking whatever we ask for is fought to the teeth by the rich because they don't want what we want. They just want our money and they want us to shut up and get back to work so they'll have more money coming in, for themselves.

I say, hog twaddle on that. Let's propose a new idea, one that they if anyone, can understand perfectly well. Instead of you and I being called taxpayers, I say let's take on a new title. Investors. Because indeed, we are turning our money over to be invested in this country. And as such, we expect something to come back to us not just in kind, but with a profit. This is the whole idea behind free markets, isn't it? To get out there and shake some hands and get things done and invest your dough, and get more back than what you put into it.

What we should be doing is exactly that. Demanding returns on our investments. And when the quarterlies come in, we need to see that our investments are earning dividends for America. Now, what's so odd about that? It's a virtual no brainer. Of course that's what we should be doing.

And we should be able to pull out of any investment that's not pulling its weight. Wouldn't that be a much better system than the one we have now, this socialism for the rich where we just hand it over and shut up and let them have their way with our money and our lives? I think it's a much better way of seeing our part in this equation. After all, we don't owe them their wealth. And we don't owe them our wealth either.

Many countries in Europe are socializing their banks, which we should do too. Understand something, we can choose to socialize certain things without this country going into full bore socialism. We can use a little of this and a little of that, we don't have to go 100% all the way into any kind of "ism", including capitalism. We can use anything we like to make America better and stronger. Why not? Who has a problem with better and stronger?

There is more to life than rich people hogging everything. Some things aren't supposed to turn massive profits and be commodified, like our health care. Doctors should not be out there to get rich, they should be out there to help people get well and stay well. They don't need to be multimillionaires, they just don't. In fact, who "needs" to be a multi-billionaire for that matter? There is no such need.

What do we need more? This fantasized ideation that this is a free country that lets 200 people use our system to become billionaires? Or might it not be better for all of us if instead of that, some things were not there to make a few people rich, but instead were there to provide services that vastly increase the quality of life for everyone in this country?

For me, I think the latter makes more sense. It's also more logical, more humane, and more necessary. We've all been sold a nasty bill of goods wherein we look upon those who cannot work or who cannot make it in this cut throat capitalist controlled greed based system of "all for me and screw you", as evil. I've actually heard a famous religious leader lecturing his brain dead congregation along the lines of "if somebody can't afford to eat, they should just go hungry!" He even said Christ would back this.

I would say that man is Satan's best friend. I would further say that Christ never said any such thing, nor would He back it. It's stupidity in the extreme. Be careful out there, ye who sit on church benches and believe every lie you're told. Get your brains functioning, and get your hearts back to snuff. It's not about winners and losers. It's about making this world a better place.

There is so much money sitting in private vaults that honestly it would sicken you to know just how much is taken from those who work and is removed from the system to be hoarded by people who have no need for it whatsoever. They don't keep it circulating, they don't put it back into the system to improve our country or this world. They just keep it. And they just keep coming back for more.

The rich alone should carry the burden of all taxation. They are after all rich because they have our money. The wealth they earn gives them the responsibility to ensure that everyone is taken care of because there's no excuse to not do that. They can more than afford it. In other countries and through history, the rich have been taxed at 75% to 90%, because that's how rich they are. They can be taxed at that rate and STILL be rich. You don't really understand how all this works if you've never looked into wealth and taxes. Shoving taxation off on people who's only source of income is providing labor with the sweat of their own bodies, is criminal. It flies in the face of reason. We aren't profiting from our labor, we are surviving with it. There's a big difference. The wealthy don't labor, they just profit. Profits are what need to be taxed. After a certain point, before profits reach the level of obscenity, they need to be disbursed back into the society to benefit the people who make that wealth for those people. That's our share.

The rich hate that, and they have deeply propagandized our own society to despise and loathe those who can't find a way to make enough to get by. There is no crime in not being able to get by. Our system causes this. It shouldn't. It's a bad system. The rich owe us everything, that's the bottom line. Every penny of their wealth comes from our pockets, not from working for it.

When we see homeless families, struggling single mothers, people dying for lack of being able to afford simple health care, we should be outraged. We have to know at some level deep inside that it's wrong to have people struggling amidst all of this wealth and capitalism. The system does not work if there is any poverty. Poverty would be a thing of the past if there was any respect for our fellow man and any realistic acknowledgment that not everyone is cut out to make it in a capitalist nightmare world. There are children, they don't work, and they shouldn't have to work. There are elderly, and sick, and injured people. There are artists who should be doing art, musicians who should be making music for us all, and there are people who are simple, who are disabled, who are sad, who are broken, who are veterans, who are not evil for their inability to perform labor for someone. There's a place for all of us in this society, and we need to get off our high horses and quit acting like people don't deserve to eat if they don't have a damned 9 to 5 job. Says who? You? And who are you?

Life is precious. People matter. We are not all the same. That's a good thing. It hurts nothing for us to ensure that all are fed and clothed, all have a place to call home. Even if we have to just give it to them. Is there something wrong with taking care of those who cannot survive otherwise? Do we judge people by the amount of cash they lay claim to? Good Lord I hope not.

But the wealthy do that. And I don't want or need to be wealthy. I'd much rather be human and real. I'd much rather not be a predator and instead be someone who cares about things that go beyond my own greed and desires.

We can easily socialize an excellent health care system, and we should. Otherwise we will stay on our knees to insurance companies who dictate health care to millionaire doctors who in turn, are not interested in health care. It is absolutely possible. If we can socialize horrendously expensive wars that don't even do anything for this country, then we can certainly use less than half of that money instead to guarantee that ALL of us, young and old, can go to a doctor or a dentist any day of the week and our health will be seen to. If anyone can find fault in that, I'd say the fault is in their own soul.

We can socialize our banks too, and we should. It's not quite socialization either when we own and operate and profit from our own banks. It's the same thing the rich do, only we retain the control and the profits. What's bad about that? It's only bad from their perspective because they don't want us having the same benefits they have. Well too bad for them. We deserve them and we should demand them.

Socializing things that are essential services in America does not make us a socialist nation. Not by any stretch. It makes us a stronger nation, a healthier nation, a more logical, reasonable, and humane nation. It's a good thing to have the flexibility to make creative use of money and available, proven systems that will increase the quality of life across the board for everyone who calls themselves an American. We can know that freedom belongs to the individual, tax burdens should go to profit making enterprises, and responsibility to our country and to each other means including joint public ventures where no one profits more than anyone else so that everyone can be better off. We can have it all. And it's high time we did.