December 29, 2013

The original administration explanation turns out to be true

So, apparently Susan Rice was telling the truth immediately after the tragedy.

As others have noted here, this will probably get little play in our news media. Fox, of course, will just ignore the whole thing.

Benghazi will no longer be discussed on the Sunday shows. And, now that the ACA seems to be having its predicted success (not surprising given the magnitude of the need) the MSM will move on to something, anything that can be used to attack the current Democratic administration.

Because, after all, freedom. And November 2014.

December 28, 2013

Bought cheaply

Am I the only one that reads this and is amazed at how cheaply our so called representatives are bought?

As one who used to have the money to invest let me say that the returns these companies are realizing from a few thousand dollars are beyond any imagining.

$5000? $7500? To insert language into law that places a burden on our postal service that is heavier than anything any private or public institution has borne before? This is all it costs?

These men and women are not only whores, but the cheapest whores in all of history...

A country without a functioning postal service can hardly claim to be a country.

December 11, 2013

Absolute Power

One of my father's favorite quotes was "...power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely..."--a line from a letter written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton.

These kinds of events are real world examples of the result of unchecked power. This particular officer, who apparently has had other use of force issues in the past, knows he has the power to kill and not have to bear any real consequences.

The problem is that often, we the people, explicitly grant them this kind of power. In this case, the community is up in arms. But in other cases, when incidents of police brutality go before grand juries charges are not filed because the perpetrator is a member of the police.

For example, a K9 officer who lifted his dog up so that the dog could bite a man who was being apprehended after a lengthy high speed chase. One of the articles on this can be found here: http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/national/police-officer-tosses-k9-onto-suspects-lap-video.

We need civilian review boards in every state that have complete state jurisdiction over all police operations. But, we the people need to start forwarding criminal charges when a crime has probably been committed.

The legal reasoning being used today gives police the right to kill, beat, and stomp almost without limit. In some areas, encounters with the police are more like running into the local chapter of the Hell's Angels than the police. Especially if you've already pissed them off somehow...

In San Antonio, this last weekend, a member of the campus police was apprehending a student for a traffic violation. Somehow things escalated and the cop emptied his gun into the student killing him instantly. The student did mouth off to the officer. He was struggling with the officer. What do you want to be that he'll: 1) evade any criminal penalties and 2) keep his job?

December 6, 2013

Seditious Conspiracy

Not a lawyer, but isn't some of this legally actionable? Isn't this, in essence, the taking over of state governments under the cover of being a charitable organization? There is corruption in here somewhere with money changing hands. Otherwise, these legislators wouldn't be such willing accomplices....

Someone out there talk me down or set me straight if I'm wrong...

December 6, 2013

The Criminal Class

K&R

Conservatives have always been on the wrong side of history. Just like the poor, they are always with us. Violently opposed to anything that remotely resembles progress and often willingly, enthusiastically violent.

They will kill for their wrong headed causes.

We are reaching one of those inflection points of history.

Mark my words...There will be blood. It is just a matter of whose.

December 6, 2013

Bread and Circus

I've never forgotten. What so many fail to see is that MSNBC adroitly straddles the fence, but if you distill it all down they always adhere to the corporate/security state narrative. One has to travel out of the country and just pick up a few publications to realize that everything we hear and read has a slant. At that time, the slant was that we were going into Iraq because, by God!, we were going into Iraq. Hans Blix couldn't be given time to show the world that those chemical weapons (which even if Sadam had had he couldn't have delivered to the U.S.) didn't exist because we were going to go in.Period. End of sentence. The U.S. had decided to wage unprovoked war. Again. We were going to go in with all guns blazing because we were going to go in, dammit! It was an elegant tautology.

The MSM, as we now call them, willingly and enthusiastically beat the drums of war. MSNBC was no exception. Chris Matthews, a supposed liberal Democrat, was the loudest and the most enthusiastic proponent of the Iraq war. At times, he made Fox seem measured and moderate.

These are the United States we live in. The press is no longer the 4th Estate, but is part of the apparatus of the national security state. They know very well what side their bread is buttered on.

What doesn't fit the narrative of the moment is disappeared. Anyone that has done any writing and taken a basic writing class knows that the narrative is crafted as much by what is left out as by what is left in.

Martin Bashir had to go because he said something true (albeit very offensive) about someone the power elite finds very useful--Sarah Palin. She distracts with a potent concoction of nativist, populist nonsense.

The whole show--whether Fox, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC...is to distract us from what is really going on. The U.S., at some point during the Cheney administration (I do not say that with tongue in cheek) became a rogue nation. The blatant, deliberate amorality of our national policy and the easily discerned continuity of our brutal realpolitik reveals that our votes ceased counting some time ago.

We, the masses, are to be entertained while we are being robbed of our rights, our wealth, and our souls. A few of us, impotent Cassandras, try to point out what seems to us so very, very obvious...to no avail.

The truth is that you and me and everyone that posts here and on any site has to continue to live and we cannot muck with the power any more than any mere laborer can afford to buck the master.

We should all go back and read the powerful writings of the late, and very lamented Joe Baegant who spoke eloquently about how we're all caught in the hologram and cannot escape. At the end of his days, I believe he had lost all hope because we are as a people glued to our electronic input devices like fetal marsupials riding in their mother's warm pouch with their mouths glued to her life giving teat.

The elite fear us because we so many, but as long they provide us with bread and circus and the illusion that there are two sides to every issue (when, in actuality, there is always only one consensus) then all remains the same. We are not privy to the workings of power. We are just to go to work and then go home and play with our phones, wield electronic weapons on electronic battlefields against electronic enemies, and watch whatever pap is spewing from our screens. As long as that continues we are safely inert.

Move along, move along...nothing to see here. As long as we are just subsisting we are their pawns and slaves. All the rest, on MSNBC or Fox, is just part of the show. Sit back and enjoy.