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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Resetting the center for a prosperous middle class

We've allowed the national agenda, and the political center as well, to be pushed so far to the right that an adjustment is overdue. Pursuing pragmatical Progressivism is our only chance to build a middle class sustainably. The lessons of Conservatism are clear for anyone to see and parse and they're lessons of failure. The very nature of Conservatism deals a self-inflicted deathblow, and that's Nature's way of telling us that it's wrongheaded: You can't stop the Arrow of Time from progressing at the rate of 1 second per second. Conserve all you wish, time marches on.

Frankly, we need to ignore the Conservatives as the failures they are. We need a laser-like focus on the future and on a sound path to it. We need to present ideas for debt and deficit reduction that won't crush the weakest among us, but which simultaneously won't hinder the entrepreneurs. President Clinton would make a wonderful budget ally if he could be persuaded to assist since he was able to journey us along that fine line once before. 

If our President and his administration can continue the momentum we have, we will break free from this recession, but it also requires Congress to act in concert with him, something Conservatives there have shown a puerile contempt to do. 

Four more years, then Hillary. We can do this.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Religions are so cute!

Religions are so cute! They're like unicorns and Hitler, all rolled into one.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Karl Rove and class warfare

Ever since Karl Rove's involvement with the GOP began, there's a trend in campaigns he touches where the candidates deny or denigrate a negative issue within their own policies or ranks by projecting it onto their opponents. 

So when Romney/Ryan/Republicans talk about class warfare, they're merely attempting to move that failure from their brand and rebrand it Democratic. Sadly, it works when you also own a media outlet watched by the vast majority of your party's supporters. But to those not so close to the trees that they can still see the forest, it's a puerile tactic.

The same goes for wealth redistribution. While it's a conservative ideal to move wealth upward, they fear any downward redistribution, even when that redistribution is simply paying the middle and working classes living wages.

Their belief is that by being proactive rather than reactive, they control the ball and hence the game. But telling a lie before the fact doesn't exonerate the liar, it merely doubles down the offense by virtue of premeditation. 

Exactly who IS the 47%?

Mr President, please remember that there are other candidates running for the Senate and the House and you could give them a boost by pointing out that the 47% myth is one held by most Republican politicians. It's true, which is why they're always  harping on ending entitlements. They forget that a large part, possibly the LARGER percentage of the 47% belongs to THEIR party. But I'm pretty sure that they're going to be reminded of that fact come November.

How Romney views most Americans

What Romney has demonstrated is that the people of his socioeconomic group want to keep the middle and working classes poor and owing so that the wealthy will have sufficient labor to do their housework, grow their crops, fetch their drinks and food, and fill their factories and call centers with cheap labor. Failing that, they at least want to teach the rank and file their place in society with Romney and his cronies on top, and everyone else underneath them. Bain Capital was just the prelude. In a sense, it was Romney's graduate school where he learned exactly how to send American jobs overseas without remorse, chop up American companies into bits too small to handle the debt that he and his cronies saddled them with, and then leave the plebes in the lurch while his investors made millions. 

Know your place, peons! You're here for this reason only: To vote Mitt Romney President, then go home, shut your mouth, do your minimum wage job, and repeat the process in 4 years. Minus the job, of course.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Eulogy and Remembrance for the Victims of 9/11

This morning, this sad reminder of that tragic day 11 years ago, our thoughts are with the survivors and families of victims of September 11, 2001.

No words can express the sorrow we experience for the fallen. Our feeble expressions of sympathy cannot convey the depth of our emotions and surely do little to comfort those affected, but we tender our goodwill and support for as much as it may assuage their grief.

May the future hold the promise of the joy of remembrance and of celebration of the ones we love. Our republic will keep faith with the peacekeepers in the knowledge that they guard our safety with the shield of their lives and with the sword of their vigilance, and let us never forget that the sanctity of righteousness will always overcome the abominations of evil.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Who benefits, who dies?

When you watch the debacle that is the world in decline happening around us, you have to wonder if there really is a zero-sum game going on. We've been told that no one gained from the Great Recession, but that seems too simplistic an answer, to me. Hedge funds and derivatives exist solely so that investors can profit from others' loss. Private equity firms exist often to extract the maximum profit from a company in trouble and then to abandon it and leave it reeling under the debt load. Bain Capital under Mitt Romney is one example of this, but there are a great many more that haven't come under public scrutiny. If you were to conduct a survey - and somehow manage to get truthful answers - you'll find the people who invest in these vehicles to be the third tier of power. So, who's above them?

Directly above these people are the world's "leaders". I use quotation marks here to emphasize that when we think of these people, usually elected officials like our President, we think that they represent the pinnacle of power. They don't. Yes, they can control some things, but they can't control the real economy. But there is someone who can.

At the very top are the world's wealthiest families. You're probably familiar with some of the names since they've been in the upper tier for decades, or even centuries. Conspiracy theorists can rattle off these names in their sleep, but the fact that these families actually do control the real economy is valid. Families like the Duponts, the Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Vanderbilts, the Rothschilds, and families whose names have been successfully kept out of the revealing light of day. This list likely includes some new blood as well, almost certainly some of them Russian oligarchs. Considering their millenium-long existence, the Rothschilds are probably at the acme of this consortium, unless  others who remain completely hidden wield the highest power.

Americans, and others, were engrossed by the 'Godfather' books and movies, secretly wishing that they too belonged to the select group that actually runs and owns everything. But what they didn't follow was that the people portrayed in these films were what amounts to the Dark Side of the Force. They control some minor affairs, but those things are more likely to be associated with crime and vice than with necessities, so they're allowed to function solely to take the burden of running these concerns off those at the top of the pyramid.

If you could successfully identify everyone who owns the corporations that produce our food and our arms - because people must eat and human nature seems to favor war - you could also successfully identify the real top tier of power.


So, who would benefit from a Great Recession? The same ones who benefited from the Great Depression! There's likely a false-flag operation being run in order to distract attention from the real recipients of the wealth gain, using names like Morgan, who may no longer be a power. Notice that I said "may". But at its core, it's the same families.

You've heard many say that the Great Recession was NOT a zero-sum game.  That's not entirely true. Here's why: Let's say that you and I are the two players in the Wealth Game. I have $1000 and you have $100. Now, let's assume that we each spend 50% of our wealth on necessities, and the rest we can save, use for more conspicuous consumption (meaning that I'll end up with it), or just go to the casino and blow it (ditto). But, I manage to engineer a severe recession that strips each of us of 50% of our wealth. Now, you have $50, but I have $500. It still costs us the same amount to live because prices didn't go down. Now, you have $0 and I still have $450. I've caused you to go broke, but I still have enough money to live, to save, and to squander on expensive toys. And since I own everything anyway, I now control 100% of your wealth also because I own the grocery store, the gas station, the company that made your car, the company you work for, and I own the bank.

Now, who benefits from a Great Recession? Exactly.


When you're insulated from the world around you as the ultrawealthy, old-money folk are, you read and watch TV and see how the world is crumbling and start to believe that those dirty poor people enjoy misery and are responsible for their own agony. You lose sight of the fact - or just don't give a damn - that the reason that wars keep cropping up despite the fact that the vast majority of people detest war is that you own the armaments companies that supply both sides in the conflict. You don't care who wins the war because, either way, YOU win. So let those dirty, often dark-skinned, people fight and kill themselves. The sooner they do, the sooner you can reach that magic number that you're - literally - shooting for: 1-1.5B. That's one to one-and-a-half BILLION people on the planet. Why is that the magic number? Because it's the "carrying capacity" of Earth. "Carrying capacity" is the maximum number of people that the Earth can sustain in perpetuity.

Since you control the food, money, war, other necessities, and much of everything else, you also control the world's militaries. At the very minimum, you would have a sizeable force equipped with the best of your own weapons to call up when needed to protect you. You would have impregnable facilities where you could withstand the sieges that would occur when you decide that it's time to get rid of the cruft - the riff raff, the poor, the dirty dark-skinned folk - who use up so many of "your" precious, life-sustaining resources.

How would you go about this great population reduction? There are tons of ways. You could engineer an unstoppable biological epidemic that only you have the vaccine for. You could engineer a global climate disaster which would flood the lowlands forcing everyone upward and inward causing overcrowding and the inevitable wars that would follow. And that includes the genocide(s) brought about when the huddled masses begin to overwhelm strategic national defenses and nuclear and chemical weapons would be used to stop them.

Great nations - the US, China, Russia - would fracture, each new territory guarding itself against all the others as well as from abroad.

And then the debacle of climate change would fully set in. Between desertification, massive low-lying-land flooding, and super-storms, the ability to grow food and supply the masses would disappear.

Now attrition by disease, famine, and natural disaster take their toll and finally decimate everyone not inside the super-fortresses. Once that's done, environmental repair measures planned before the holocaust are implemented in order to slowly re-establish a liveable climate. Following climate repair, people allowed inside the gigantic compounds would emerge and start the long process of rebuilding civilization in the manner prescribed by the ultra-wealthy.


Does this sound like a shaggy-dog story to you? It shouldn't, because it's happening right now, and every day we aid and abet its success.

How do we stop it? We carefully ferret out the people at the top of the pyramid. But we need to do that ever so carefully because it's a certainty that they have layers upon layers of security and the ability to shift attention, camouflage, and decoy unlike anything we've ever seen.


How did we get here? If you want to make something seem to disappear, how do you do it? Distraction. If I get you to focus on my left hand, I can do all sorts of things with my right hand. If I get you to focus on brain-dead movies, music, clothes, politics, and every other little thing I'm doing with my left hand, I can steal your wallet and slap the shit out of you with my right hand. Then I simply hand your empty wallet back to you, help you up, make you think you were an important, secret part of the act, then slap you on the butt and send you on your way. You'll leave and think that you are in on a secret that very few others know, and you'll help me keep robbing you blind, and keep slapping you silly so that you don't notice that I'm also giving you a lethal dose of heroin, meth, war, chemicals in your water, air and food, and you'll thank me for letting you in on the secret. You'll even pay me to do these things to you.

If I control your food and your money, I control you. When will we get there?


Welcome to Paradise, my friend!

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Response to A.C. Grayling - What's Next For Atheism?

The Atheist Alliance International video featuring A.C. Grayling is found here.


I don't understand why there has to be a 'next' thing for Atheism. Are we proselytizing? 

One of the things I find comforting about my Atheism is its constancy, its adamant, unyielding strength. I see no need for a 'next'. Let the religious find a 'next', since they have to constantly change their message to appeal to new believers. If they had constancy, which they don't, they wouldn't need to proselytize. 

I wish more thought about atheism as I do. But I want people to get there on their own, just as I did. 

After a childhood as a Jehovah's Witness, I spent my later teen years searching for Jesus. I found him. He was a man, I'm certain of that. But so was Jim Jones, David Koresh, Buddha, Muhammad, the Bagwan Shree Rajneesh, and Warren Jeffs. 

My unwavering belief in atheism is grounded in my search, my journey of self, that requires you to look long and hard inside yourself to discover whether you really believe what you claim to believe, or whether you believe what someone you admire believes simply because they believe it and you admire them. 

I came to this juncture in my life by many hard, lonely roads. That's how I want others to come to it, too. Once found this way, it's a faith immovable.