Endgame: What the Corporatists Really Want To Do

In every town, you see these now. Once a thriving epicenter for commerce and labor to co-exist and thrive. America the manufacturing powerhouse that took the ingenuity of the Industrial Revolution and turned it into an economic bonanza. From the 1930s to the 1970s, the sweat, blood and muscle of the American worker represented the kind of society other countries dreamed of. Balanced with high taxes on the rich and corporations paying their fair share, society was a place of relatively low unemployment. It was a place with a middle class that could more than keep up with the cost of living and inflation. It was where the much ballyhooed 'American Dream' was born. Born of the ability to find a job, go to work, get a good education for your children, own a home and a car. Sure there were incredibly inequities towards racial minorities and women but in general terms, the way the middle class was build and sustained itself, off of in house labor, laws to protect the Unions and workers and taxes that made the top tier pay their fair share, society worked pretty darn well.

Since that point though, something happened. A loud cry from the nation's wealthiest of them all came about as their new poster boy, Actor Ronald Reagan, was ushered into office. Using his tremendous acting skills he tricked many of the same baby boomers that had been out protesting Vietnam and speaking of peace and love while smoking weed at Woodstock, to put down their signs and joints and start caring about themselves. Their strategy was to divide America into different groups. The haves, who knew better than you and owned the companies you needed in order to be employed at all... and the have-nots, those poor people who went on welfare and stole your hard earned tax money with no actual will to go to work for themselves. They attacked Unions as threats to companies' ability to hire. Made them villains for demanding such incredible things as health care benefits or higher pay. Used the potential for strikes as a way to prove that they didn't care whether you had a job or not. Used Union dues as a way to pretend you were being taxed for their political agenda.

When Reagan went after the Air Traffic Controllers he did so to make a point. Unions had no place in this new Right Wing America. Corporate donors didn't want it and their political appointees would work on their behalf.

From that point forward the American experience has worsened dramatically. The American Dream became more a dream than a reality, so distant a dream in fact that it was like the one where you're sleeping with a supermodel who in real life doesn't know your name and would likely send security guards to rough you up if you got too close.

The Wal-Marts and powerhouse corporations took advantage. Wal-Mart stopped buying USA only products and started to push their suppliers to have costs for their products so low that in order to be featured in the store it was a pre-requisite to move manufacturing overseas. Pennies for the worker makes for cheaper product.

They continued to lower corporate tax rates, taking them all the way down from the one time 90% rate to a much lower 34% under George W. Bush. It was pretty amazing that when Democrats discussed returning the rates to the 39% they were prior to Bush that the Republican party, bought wholesale by their corporate masters and the media which was owned almost entirely by corporate entities whined like this was the beginning of socialism. Of course there were a lot of Americans with zero grasp of History to know what the hell socialism was or the prosperity we as a nation have had with strong unions and with higher corporate tax rates.

All of this made no sense anyway since Republicans (and many corporate Democrats who might have been Republicans in the past but thanks to Reagan shifting the entire political spectrum, real moderates no longer existed) used their powers to give tax break and loopholes galore to companies. To the point where GE and many other corporations don't even have to pay a dime to the IRS on their billions of dollars in earnings.

The tax burden has been consistently shifted in a way where the poor and middle class are expected to shoulder a heavier burden than the top 1% than own practically everything in the country. It's been said far and wide with complete merit this year that 400 people own more wealth than the bottom 150,000,000 combined. That's a staggering statistic.

You'd think, hey they convinced Americans and even Democrats like Clinton and Obama to fall for the trickle down economic nonsense, they used work training tapes and propaganda in the media to make union membership practically non-existent. They stalled forever on raising minimum wages while inflation priced people out of society and were gleefully overjoyed when those people, out of money no matter how hard they worked had to turn to credit debt to make ends meet. But that was never enough. Nothing is never enough. Greed is a disease. It needs to be cut out like cancer. Forcibly and physically. It exists to devour all in its path and continues to grow no matter what may temporarily hinder it.

Even with all of that they wanted more. They pushed for free trade agreements and then got Government officials to approve of and give tax breaks for outsourcing, sending your jobs overseas to pay workers pennies... not just for Wal-Mart but for every industry. Now you were expendable. The Manufacturing industry is on very weak if not last legs in this country. The places where you would normally see textile plants, automotive plants, paper mills, etc... they're filled with unemployed workers and abandoned empty building space that the cities can't fill with new owners or new hope.

Free Trade Agreements were just the start. They spent the 1990s lobbying to get media consolidation so they could snap up every TV and Radio Station as well as every newspaper in every town. They now controlled the message. They owned what you heard and what perspectives you were going to be informed from. Everything you would learn from here on out was told with spin. Your kids also would fall prey to this as they bought up the textbook manufacturers and pushed their corporate backed candidates in races for school boards where textbooks were approved. They now could rewrite American History in classes. Whitewash any negativity associated with our past. A deluded American public is defiant and much more apt to defend the dysfunctional societal setup here than ever demand change. So The Revolutionary War was a war based on high taxes from the Government (corporations pet cause) and not because people were mighty upset about the tax breaks being given to the East India Tea Company nor actual representation in Congress. The Civil War was about States Rights, not slavery. Hell slavery wasn't so bad, cheap labor never is, according to our new history professors.

They got Congress to enact laws protecting loan schemes and hedgefund managers who made money off of you losing yours and set you up to fail. Then when they drove everyone into an abyss where the lack of jobs added to the impossible payment conditions of the loans meant everyone had to lose their homes to foreclosure, they went to the Government and put their hands out to take your taxpayer dollars again with little to no oversight on how to spend it... took those billions and turned them into hefty corporate bonuses. A reward for ripping you off.

They even made sure they were well compensated in other situations as well.

Want to start some wars? Great! Our corporations will be there to provide minimal services with zero accountability, just use money laundering, er, war appropriation bills to transfer those trillions of dollars into our bank accounts.

Oil spills? Sure we'll clean it up but expect us to bill you for our mess. Oh and we want further tax cuts and more drilling permits, since you know, we've shown such massive responsibility with the ones we're operating currently.

Health Care Crisis? Sure we drove rates on insurance premiums through the roof so badly that you needed a massive "reform" but give us 40 million mandated new customers and no controls on future premium prices. Sounds like a win to us.. oh but we're still going to demand its repeal because we still aren't cool with paying out any actual claims let alone for those sick pre-existing people.

It would be laughable if it wasn't so horrific.

Americans are unemployed at incredibly high rates. If you look up any job site you'll notice most the jobs pay very low wages and have little to no benefits. The corporate elite have already won, haven't they? What's possibly left for them to pillage?

If this were a war, our city would be destroyed from firebombing raids, the last remaining structures still ablaze, a few survivors covered in soot roam the area listlessly unaware of what to do next. There is a class war in America but it's been waged by the ultra rich and it represents the conflict in Israel. The Israelis have missiles and planes and nukes and the Palestinians have rocks, sticks and the occasional suicide bomber. Not a fair fight and we've been annihilated in similar fashion.

What else could they want? They have everything already.

My ex-boss once said this about one of my accounts: "I never want you to be happy. If you make $1 million tomorrow in sales on that account, work for $1.5 million the next day and $2 million the day after that. Being happy means you're complacent and have given up trying in my opinion." Now he said this when at that point the account had never broke $55k in a single day. It let me know how vast his greed was and greed is an animal that never stops eating because it's never not hungry.

To me when is enough, enough? If I own at a company that isn't #1 in the world but is in the top ten, makes really good money to support me and my family and my workers. It shows some growth but doesn't always light the world on fire. Isn't it good enough to be comfortable? Do I have to keep that company growing bigger and bigger, taking on debt and risk to my own personal finances as well as the job security of my workforce? For whom am I doing this for? I imagine if you get into the stock market game you've already declared: "I am never going to be happy! I want to own it all and be a billionaire!" Giving away that sort of autonomy with your company means you don't mind having the influx of cash nor the masters whom you now must answer to. Myself, I see things differently.

You have to understand where these people are coming from. Their intense need for power and control allows them to take risks and have their companies obtain cash for the purpose of expansion and growth. They're cool with having to meet huge goals for their financial benefactors because they too want that growth. It increases their own pocketbook size. Step by step they use this as their ladder to power. They become more and more rich and they use that financial status to gain access to the politicians whom might have never given them a listen before. You realize really quickly that these people aren't there for their constituents, they're there for you. You can offer them a nice above the board $5k donation for their primary and general campaigns and another $25k, $50k, hell even $100k for some outside group that will advertise on their behalf.

Now the world is your oyster. Having zoning issues? Not anymore! Worried about getting a tax break for something? Have no fear! Want to gut the rights of labor so that you can make America a place of low cost slave labor like China or India and line your pockets with the profits reaped from not paying regular wages? Well now, we can do that...

And that my friends, is endgame.

That's what they want.

They want it all. The only way to get it all is to decimate the American workforce and their rights to the point of making us like China. They need no environmental regulations, no safety regulations, elimination of paying social security taxes or paying into Medical Benefits... and then they need to gut minimum wage.. to say, "stay competitive in the marketplace with other major industrialized countries"... since China and India are definitely industrialized at this point.

They go after Public Service Unions partially to break the last bastion of Democratic Party Support after their bought and paid for US Supreme Court gave them the Citizen United Ruling and allowed them to advertise with unlimited dollars to buy any election they wanted, this just whittles down their opposition quite a bit. Also though they did it because with those unions out of the way their Republican friends can bring in corporate low paid workers from private firms to do these jobs. The CEOs will negotiate a hefty fee for this out of your tax dollar but don't expect that to be reflected in these workers' pay or benefits.

Also by taking out teachers, they can work to force kids into corporately funded private schools which will double as a propaganda factory, telling children only what they want them to know and making them feel it's okay to be trained to work at their slave labor camp like jobs.

Going after schools and teachers is the last real hurdle to the total revising of the American Education System in a way that will lead kids to accept and understand the importance of corporate overlords and why critical thinking is dangerous.

They want it all and they have a few well outlined goals to take it.

Once they achieve endgame, that is the systematic destruction of the middle class and the regulations which protect them in the workforce, they can begin to institute their dream scenario. Jobs might return to America but it won't resemble previous American Industrialism.

For some companies overseas, they already see America the way we see China and India. Honda and Toyota and many of the German Auto Manufacturers have invested huge in building auto plants in Mississippi and Tennessee and Ohio. Why here? Non-union states run by Republicans that gave them sweetheart tax breaks. They can pay their workers rather low wages compared to the going rate of their profession and not have to deal with any of the usual "headaches" that having a strong financially balanced society might have. Being a good corporate citizen with a conscience costs money after all.

Look at what IKEA has done. In Sweden their workers would make $19 an hour and get 5 weeks paid vacation. Sweden's economy thrives, unemployment levels are reasonable and they have a government run health care system. Things are good for the Swedes. You'd think IKEA would say, "we've done very well here, let's continue to have great jobs in these conditions". But greed doesn't allow them to think that way. They want to make more money than they know what to do with.

So they come to a downtrodden town like Danville, VA. This town has been run ragged by other manufacturers bolting from their city for similar outsourcing reasoning. Greed killed them. Yet it seems by some sheer magic, they would be spared from the same fate as many dead towns now face, when IKEA came to open a plant. And then they did. Low wages near the minimum wage, only 12 days of vacation, most of which were dates picked by the company not by you, a horrible morale and just not a good environment.

They are but another symptom of what America is becoming. The endgame is near. Corporate lackeys like Scott Walker and the like, they are willing to fight this war (even stealing elections to make sure of it) this time whereas their predecessors may have balked in the face of overwhelming anger. The John Kasich's, Rick Scott's, Rick Snyder's, Mitch Daniels... they all feel emboldened to finally drive the final nails in the coffin of union existence on state levels. The Paul Ryans and Eric Cantors feel emboldened to make the attempts to go after Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid in Washington. This is it, they've wanted it all for years and now they're finally going after it.

We wander down a completely uncharted path. They've never been this close before. Not even in 1927 or during the Great Depression. It's up to us to fight them off.

Court battles, mass protests, civil disobedience, general strikes, the greatest get out the vote effort ever... The term "keep your powder dry" has never been so appropriate.

Are you ready to fight for the soul of America?

I am.

What happened to us once we grew up?

As I look around on a regular basis I generally find contempt for much of the world around me. It's not because I choose to be a particularly unhappy person or that I just want to be angry but rather it's because I look at a lot of things through the basic moral lenses I was issued as a child and wonder, where did we go wrong?

I honestly have had so many things just since the start of the Obama Administration bother me that I could be on here every day and it would definitely feel that this blog could become a regular soliloquy where I just rant to myself for the need to get it off my chest. Many of the topics would probably be incredibly justifiable as well.

Between the bank bailouts and the basic middle finger to LGBT groups (aside from this token Don't Ask, Don't Tell thing which is honestly the least that Obama could do) to the Arizona Legalized Racism Law to this total fucking mess known as the BP disaster, I could be here all day, every day complaining forever.

Usually, I use my Facebook to post links these days and complain about what punches into my soul. It's a much shorter version of this blog and to be honest, to write here I feel I want well thought out observations with source references on most days to make sure I am reaching the right notes. On FB, I can use all emotion (although I almost always source my work with links there as well) which is so much easier to do. Hell it's what conservatives live on. Facts require a lot of work and effort sometimes. Not to mention facts contradict their every single myopic belief.

But with all of these problems there is an overarching theme I believe. What were we taught as children about right and wrong?

We were taught to share. We were taught to be nice to others and to accept them if they were different. We were taught to not lie or cheat or steal. We were taught hurting people or threatening them was wrong. We were taught that everything good comes from hard work and perseverance. You were taught to respect your elders.

What the hell happened to us?

Could you imagine if we applied those principles to society today? You know what you would have? Socialism. Or at least a peaceful society that cares for those around us.

I think of this often when a new Robin Hood movie comes out or A Christmas Carol comes out. Teabaggers should rail against both of them.

"Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor. That's WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION! The Poor are too LAZY to work!"

"Scrooge worked hard for his money. Being forced to give it away is SOCIALISM. If poor people want a handout they should go to work for it!"

What in the hell?

The reason those two stories are so beloved is because they are two of the greatest stories in which the plight of the poor is championed and where giving them a leg up is shown in a positive light. It's pure fantasy but we teach children with these stories and Oliver Twist and the sort that caring for those less fortunate is not shameful but rather a rewarding virtue and something that shapes your character here and in the afterlife, should there exist one.

Jesus Christ himself championed such beliefs. I suppose he too would be a pariah with this gang of unruly Capitalists that make up a large majority of our population.

Going back to what we taught our kids. Imagine how the issues of today relates to the lessons of our youth...


We were taught to share.
To put this in context a little bit, imagine that you had four Kindergarten classrooms of 25 kids each and 1 kid took 90% of the toys from ALL of the classes for themselves and basically told the rest of you to make due with what was left over. That you weren't good enough to play with these toys and that kid rigged the system so that every day when they got into class they had access to get to the toys and any more toys that they wanted out of that box before you even got into the classroom. Pretty unfair right?

Well congratulations because in America, that's what we see on an everyday basis. The top 1% control our entire economic wealth and the rest of the World's right along with it and they use every cheating advantage they can to make sure that the American Dream stays just that. A never ending dream from which you will never awake.


We were taught to be nice to others and to accept them if they were different.

This one was a big deal. First, your parents didn't want you getting into fights at school because many times your mouth would try to cash checks your ass couldn't cash. But also they wanted you to make as many friends as possible. You see making friends makes school and life way less stressful and a lot more fun. You don't have to be best friends with everyone in your class but if you at least try to get along with them and understand their differences, it makes the time when you have to stand in line by each other on the playground for any length of time far less awkward. Have to sit on the school bus for a long field trip ride? Well guess what, we can talk and get along!

But today and obviously as we used to do in the past we have not always followed the same guidance we shared with our children. As adults we have tended to move to locations to shelter ourselves from different people. Despite the racial desegregation that helps to alter the demographics of the classroom and provides diversity, as adults we re-segregate ourselves into communities where we shelter ourselves from the every day realities of those different than us. In cities you will find African-American neighborhoods, Asian neighborhoods, Latino neighborhoods and in many suburbs or rural areas that's where you find most white people living. It's this distance from one another that tends to make us not understand each other fully.

Inside the urban areas where most minorities live though there is a far greater understanding of each others' daily struggles and needs. They tend to see the same economic struggle because they share the same job market. They see the difficulty in their schools because they share the same school districts. White people in surburbia and rural areas don't see the same things. They forget that their grandparents and maybe even parents populated those places in the city a generation before and they too may have had an impact on the deterioration of the community. We all do our share at some point or another.

Yet from their safe distance many people tend to point fingers at one another. To hate another race of people. After the Civil War most had hoped that things would be settled once and for all on this issue. Another 100 years later and we were still working to pass a Civil Rights Act. Now we've decided to use an economic downturn and massive job losses as a reason to pass xenophobic laws that legalize racial profiling against Hispanics in Arizona and have tried to roadblock Homosexuals in every attempt to have the same legal rights as their heterosexual brethren.

In the annals of history the side that has discriminated has always come off looking as the most evil assholes of all time. Aside from White Supremicists, nobody has a very fond memory of the Strom Thurmonds or George Wallaces of the world. And the right wingers that constantly work against the equal rights and basic fairness of others, 20-30-50 years from now... will be in the same conversation as those well noted racists or hate mongers.

I'll come back to the main solution for the Arizona problem in a second.


We were taught to not lie or cheat or steal.

Basic rules to follow right? Except that our President got busted 7 years ago lying to our faces on national television to twist our arms into letting him play war for fun and there was no consequences. This after he and his brother and their henchwoman Katherine Harris cheated and stole the election down in Florida in 2000 and then were able to repeat the feat in 2004 with Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio.

I suppose the basic rules of conduct go out the window when the leader of your country broke every one of them while in power. However we know this isn't the case for low level thieves. Police investigate the small guys and they go into jail.

The problem is that it's not proportionate in how these crimes are addressed. There are probably a million political operatives and elected officials breaking the law every day in terms of how they fatten their wallets while in power and what laws they can break to continue to seize the levers of power from the American people in favor of their corporate benefactors. However we know damn well they are not ever going to see a criminal charge for a single one of those offenses.

Instead they get off Scot free while the guy that robs a liquor store gets 15 years in prison.

"Well the liquor store guy used a gun! His was putting lives in danger and there was force involved!"

Sure. Except that when you're raiding the treasury for your rich pals to get government bailouts or contracts at the expense of the social safety net (Unemployment Insurance, etc) then you really are putting lives in danger. People losing their homes and living on the streets because a company was told by our government that outsourcing is a good thing and so they laid you off, all the while you had been duped by a junk mortgage with an ever raising interest rate that you now all of a sudden couldn't afford and the only net you had was unemployment while you struggle to find work during a supposed economic recovery that is not creating many real jobs... well you just put these people in serious danger. Sure they could hope to find a place to live in a shelter.. if the shelters in their areas have room for them.. many do not.

I'd argue that in most cases the guy robbing the liquor store is at the end of his rope and doing it out of necessity. While Congress and CEOs are doing this with already overloaded and incredibly fat wallets. That to me, makes their act even more callous.

We were taught hurting people or threatening them was wrong.

Or so I thought. My son's elementary schools constantly teach about the negative effect of bullying. As adults we seem to forget that the bullying in real life has a different name. These are the people that abuse - emotionally and physically - people around them. Have you ever seen an abused spouse? Many times they allow themselves to be trapped into the routine. They have legitimate fear of leaving the situation because it could get worse if they try to go. They hold on to whatever few good times they had even when there are almost none currently nor have there been in a very long time because holding onto hope is less scary than running away and starting over... or trying to get away and being abused further if they can't leave.

I think of this pattern and see America. We remember our country's heartwarming tales. The absolute courage of the Colonists that risked their lives against a military empire just to fight for the very concept of freedom. The stories of the Underground Railroad. The Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights marches. So many of the moments we canonize as this concept of America revolve around the indelible mark the founding fathers had on us when it came to what the term 'freedom' means as a nation.

And then 9/11 comes along and we toss all of that aside for safety and protection from an enemy that does not have the ability to strike at will and planned the 9/11 major attack for years and years before finally getting lucky enough to pull it off. And this isn't even counting the fact that if Bush had cared at all to read his August 6th, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing and act upon it, we likely wouldn't have had an attack at all.

A big event happens and we, the emotionally abused victims, lied to and cheated on over other military issues in the past (Vietnam specifically), clung to our abuser even though we should have known that he was completely untrustworthy. The abuser took more liberty to take our liberties. Illegally wiretapping ALL of us (not some of us or even just suspected victims). Eliminating Habeas Corpus. Detaining American Citizens as well as regular muslim men with no association with al-Qaeda together in a place where they had no right to have a fair trial, make a really proper defense in their case or worse yet, they can be held indefinitely without even being charged with anything. It's a crime to humanity and it would make our forefathers vomit violently in their graves.

This was, of course, proceeded by the Patriot Act which helped strip our rights as Americans away.

But this is just the freedom and civil liberty thing. If you really want to see how we act like abused spouses, take a look at how moronically we cling to capitalism even when we have proof that the concept of profit over all (the very basis of capitalistic thought) means purposely destroying moral boundaries and wrecking the lives of millions. Congress plays along. They deregulate everything to help grease the skids. They pass laws making it easier for these companies to create junk products to sell people and eventually collapse the system under. They do this neatly while basically being on the payroll for these people come election time.

They have Americans so brainwashed into believing that despite the meltdowns that cost you your car, house, job and possibly family... that any other economic system, namely socialism, is Nazi Germany or Communist Russia.

Even though they totally distort the values of another economic system because they want to confuse you with examples of evil violent authoritarian governments, they do it because they know you're still confused into buying into the "American Dream".


We were taught that everything good comes from hard work and perseverance.

Ahh and here's where that American Dream comes in. It's the core basis of Reaganomics isn't it? Work incredibly hard and great things will happen to you! You may never be rich but if you go to work every day you might own a house and a car and make a decent wage and live comfortably for the rest of your life.

Of course that sort of has been the mirage the rich have been using since the beginning of time right? Spruced up just enough to keep modern and relevant to your current belief system.

Reaganomics believed that if you target everything for the rich, most notably major tax cuts, that they will take that money, reinvest some of it into their business and the crumbs that fall off their lavish dinner table might just reach you in terms of potential new jobs...

Except that the top-down economic philosophy is just a consistent failure. What we've learned is those rich guys up top they pocket that tax cut. If they hire anyone at all it's overseas for pennies on the dollar thanks to outsourcing. And in fact this new found money might allow them to expand operations in China or India or whatever and that tends to mean more factory closings state-side. The companies then report record financial numbers. The assholes that could afford large amounts of stock love this. It's an economic upturn for them. For the average guy who was working hard and living for the American Dream, they just had the dream turn into a Freddy Krueger style nightmare and they're sort of hoping they lose in the dream just so they don't have to wake up to the hell that awaits them financially.

Corporations have unprecedented access these days to Congress. It's so blatant that even the Democrats, once considered the party of the people while Republicans held the banner of the Corporate Elite above their heads proudly, turned into the same greedy, CEO-beholden group of politicians as their opposition. Corporatists like the DLC got one of their biggest players in Rahm Emanuel helping to control Obama's agenda and from there it's been a windfall for them.

The Banks and specifically Goldman Sachs got bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. HMOs and Pharmaceuticals got everything they could have wished for in a Health Care bill that forces every American to buy coverage from them and provides no price controls to prevent them from continuing to scalp consumers. And BP, when they, Transocean and Halliburton (of course) create possibly the largest environmental disaster ever does anyone force them out or do something to penalize them? Not a chance.

Oh and hey getting back to that Arizona thing like I promised... while crazed xenophobic people look at illegal immigrants as the reason they are losing jobs, I think it's time to point the finger at the people that are keeping Americans out of work. It's clearly corporations that are hiring illegal immigrants and specifically recruiting them to come here. The penalties they pay (if any regulatory agency even does anything at all about it) is usually less than the actual immigrant themselves faces. It all adds up to a cost effective solution to avoid paying the American worker even the minimum wage they deserve.

Let's not kid ourselves people. Most of these jobs are farming jobs or jobs that require the person to be on-site in the specific geographic region in which they are hired. If they could outsource this they would but they cannot due to the necessity of the job being done where the immigrants are hired.

They recruit these people for the same reason they outsource. Because they could care less about America, the community or people around them and because their CEOs want to make ungodly profits. And hey, you people can be angry and forcibly toss as many of these workers out of the country as you want, they're not getting penalized so they'll just find more. So much for your brilliant strategy now suckers...

Create a forceful regulatory agency that regularly goes through the books of these companies and double checks social security number duplication to sort out fraud and penalize these companies at $1,000,000 per offense, per worker.

Stop the recruitment and watch the immigration numbers fall sharply.

You were taught to respect your elders.

Sometimes as a kid I hated this. Parents... Grandparents... man they can be assholes. However you still had to respect them because, well, it was the rule.

I don't necessarily think you have to listen to them as if they're always right. I mean being generations older usually puts you on the wrong side of a lot of issues that have long been settled amongst younger people (racism, homophobia, etc). However it is good to at least respect our elders enough to take care of them when they get older. Such respect is hard to find when Congress aims specifically to make cuts to Medicare or wants to turn Social Security into a similar stock boondoggle that 401Ks have proven to be (biggest ponzi scheme ever?).

I think the belief in Washington is that, "well the elderly never really know what's going on anyway, let's buy off AARP and we can confuse them into whatever we want to do."

They certainly did this with the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug plan. Guys like Rep. Tom Petri who has over a $1 million in Walgreens stock were able to sponsor and pass a law that made most seniors pay even more for their prescription drug plans and prevented Medicare from doing what the VA does and group negotiate for lower drug prices. What a pile of shit.

Every time we turn around corporations are eliminating pensions leaving seniors with no retirement money and then you get Bush, the Republicans and now even Obama saying they want to "fix Social Security" which only means, "privatize it and make it a giveaway to Wall Street"... you know the guys that fuck everything up for a profit.

There is no respect for elders or for that matter other people anymore.

When I see America, I see a country that is at each others' throats. Blaming one another for the problems we see today. Victims in a misinformation campaign that has managed to create an illusion that there is no class war by the rich onto the poor and middle class but rather it's just the lazy, uninitiated poor that want to take the last of what the ever shrinking middle class has left.

That's just not true.

But you know, if we even remotely followed the rules and tenets of our childhood lessons, we might start to see the forest for the trees. We'd begin to understand that America as currently constructed is a failed state in which unless real change occurs, (not the false hope campaign sloganeering of a corporate protectionist) the concept in which our forefathers most notably Jefferson envisioned for us, will die a cruel humiliating death.

The End of My Support for the Democratic Party

I haven't written anything since election day but if you look back at my final posts they couldn't have been any more spot on. I warned people to look past the pretty image presented by the packaging of change and selling of hope. You could tell something was completely different about Obama as soon as he was nearing election day and in the days preceding in it was all about him ignoring the progressives and liberals that elected him and going after the right with the help of his DLC/Blue Dog corporate Republican as Democrats' recruiter, Rahm Emanuel. Most of what I wrote below was lifted (with a few alterations) from what I posted in a reply to a thread on Democratic Underground, but it explains my disappointment and abandonment of a party I spent 21 years strongly supporting and being very participatory in.

In all of this time off of writing I stayed away specifically because of my disgust with my party. I worried that this would be the direction they took us and they did so with glee. I have had a lot of personal things and work related stress to handle on the side so rattling off more angry diatribes about politics and specifically the selling out of my values by my party was just too much to handle. I think I will be posting again. Out of frustration for what is happening and because everyday is just an extended continuation of George W. Bush. Just as Bill Clinton was a continuation of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan before him.

I have no hope left for our country so long as it elects people who believe in corporatism over what's best for their constituents. We liberals never really had a choice. Obama, Hillary... even John Edwards. All were fake populists who really were corporatists. Edwards at least took an anti-corporatism plank in his election. However there were no real choices in 2008. It was sickening. I documented this before.

And now the rant I posted on DU.

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I have a very hard time supporting this President or this party anymore after their continuous blatant sell out to corporate interests.

At first I used to think this was Democrats just being weak and spineless. I mean come on, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi sure play the part of ineffectual cowards well enough. However I realized that all along we have been played for suckers. Democrats are not weak at all. They are not caving either. They don't support us at all. They're using us for votes. They really do believe in the pro-corporatist crap they put out there to enrich their well connected friends. Washington is a hustle for them. They get into office and make as much money as they can. OBSCENE amounts of money. And the only way to do this is to load up your buddies or companies you have a vested interest in and watch as your family, friends and even yourself once you retire from the role of bank robber, er, Congressperson get rich as hell.

Liberals and good hearted Democrats are probably just as easy to use as the people on the right. Think about it. The right is easy to use because they are intellectual lightweights who are incurious to facts and are pulled along on emotional social issues like Abortion and Gay Rights that conflict with years of bigoted teachings in their families and churches.

The Left while far more educated on all issues and topics can be used emotionally as well. Especially now. After 30 years of watching their jobs disappear, watching their loved ones die or suffer because of health care corruption, watching their friends and family be shipped to wars of choice meant to enrich corporate buddies in the military corporate industries, seeing the Constitution shredded and watching friends and loved ones discriminated against because of their sexual preference... we were ripe for change. And ripe to be used.

The cheerleaders will say, "Obama never said he was going to do ______". The problem is he never really had to. He said "Hope" and "Change" which IMPLIED far more than some of his conservative promises.

I remember many of those same cheerleaders who are saying these things now telling us after the primaries that Obama had to play to the right and move to the center to win the election and that once he was elected he wouldn't be so centrist because nobody ever stays completely at the center.

The problem was it wasn't an act. The entire time he was spouting "Hope" and "Change" he was moving to the center right for good. Positioning himself permanently. That's never really how these elections are supposed to work. Previously, moving to the center was always just a tactic to assuage fears from the undecided independents.

After 8 years of Bush, "Hope" and "Change" meant a LOT more than Obama's ardent supporters on this site care to admit or understand. Bush was CHANGE in the other direction. He took the Reagan era and put it on steroids. They declared war on the Constitution and Geneva Conventions and two countries all at once. They used their secret tactics and federal agencies to attempt political warfare, not just on elected politicians but also on political interest groups. They pushed Washington even further into the realm of corporate piggy bank than anyone had before (a tough task considering the three Presidents before him) and they almost ruined the nation economically doing it.

Change from that has to be drastic by the very nature of the amount of damage caused. Going to the left is the only direction politically and policy wise that we can possibly move to after Bush-Cheney.

Instead Obama and his corporate cronies decided that they would make the smallest changes possible and on the things that mattered most, continue the Bush Doctrine of Corporation over Citizen.

He defended and expanded Bush's State Secrecy rules. He refused to go after anyone for torture or war crimes. Never closed down Gitmo and pushed out an Administration policymaker that was working on that on their behalf. He announced a draw down in Iraq but wants to keep tens of thousands of troops there and is increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, an unwinnable war with no real end goal other than to prop up a corrupt election stealing government.

He decided gay rights were better to talk about in speeches to pacify the base then to actually defend. He decided Health Care Reform should in fact be a corporate giveaway and worked with Max Baucus to make it so. All so he can declare victory over a major issue, even though that victory just made it completely worse. He employed corporate cronies all throughout his cabinet and Administration and made sure that two of the biggest from Goldman Sachs got to enrich all of their Wall Street friends while refusing to really make the necessary changes to end what got us in this situation in the first place.

Where is Teddy Roosevelt's big stick? There's got to be a stick lying around in Washington SOMEWHERE.

A few months back I wrote a post on Democratic Underground (a fairly liberal site that wasn't completely supportive of the party, so much as the principles for which it stood) asking whether you consider yourself a Democrat anymore or not. I was on the fence. I'm off of it. I don't anymore. I was slammed pretty heavily for even asking such a question.

From the time I was eleven I followed politics and supported this party. I always sold myself the idea that Republicans represented big business and Democrats represented the rest of us. That Democrats actually had morals and believed in the concept of right and wrong.

My eyes have finally opened. They started to during the Clinton years but I like most here, wrote that off and blamed the Republican Congressional Majority. There's just no excuse this time around. We have full control and they don't care. THEY don't represent us. And for the past few decades, I wonder if they ever did.

Rp

Hillary won't just go away....

Unfortunately for Democrats, Hillary is here to stay. Yes she has no shame about all the negative attacks her filthy dirty campaign has pulled. No shame over illegal contributions to her campaign, no shame over not releasing tax returns that would incriminate her even more. She certainly feels no shame for acting like she was some badass Rambo character who had to dodge sniper fire in Bosnia. Look, she's in Bosnia in this picture! See her RUNNING from the plane to dodge bullets? What a hero!

She'll stay in until she's destroyed the party and Barack Obama's chances of winning.

It's a sad state of affairs when you, who through political connections and your husband's past job title were assumed to be the presumptive nominee even before the primaries happened and then lied and trashed your way to being a pariah who should be lucky to even get a seat at the Convention let alone be considered a possible nominee.

The longer Hillary stays in the more Bush-like she becomes. And hey the Clintons admired Karl Rove anyway. With John Kerry and Al Gore in attendance at the dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library, Bill Clinton pulled this stunt:

The Clintons recognize the skill Rove has brought to politics and admire his craft, if not his ideology. Just days after the November 2004 election, Bill Clinton pulled Rove aside at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas. "Hey, you did a marvelous job, it was just marvelous what you did," Clinton told Rove, according to the book "The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008," by John F. Harris and Mark Halperin. "I want to get you down to the library. I want to talk politics with you. You just did an incredible job, and I'd like to really get together with you and I think we could have a great conversation."

Obviously they decided to get playbook tips from Rove and have employed all of his dirtiest tricks in this campaign.

What's worse is, also like Bush, it is apparent the Clintons have encapsulated themselves in a bubble of yes men and yes women who only tell them what they want to hear.

From Reuters:

But Clinton, a New York senator who has flirted with disaster before in the back-and-forth nominating battle with Obama, shrugs off growing predictions of doom and still sees at least a narrow path to victory.

"I hear it in the atmosphere," Clinton said of the increasingly loud chatter about whether she should drop out and let Democrats focus on the general election campaign. "But the most common thing that people say to me ... is 'Don't give up, keep going. We're with you.' And I feel really good about that because that's what I intend to do," she told reporters on Tuesday.

The sad part is if Hillary doesn't get it about the party, then her supporters are even worse.

According to a new Gallup poll, 28% of Hillary supporters have said they will not support Obama if he is the Democratic nominee and will support John McCain in the general election.

To me that means either Hillary supporters are not Democrats (not unlike their candidate) to begin with or worse, racists. And she carries a lot of old Democratic support. Old Democrats, when it comes to race, are not much different than their Republican counterparts.

That pretty much says it all. You take that 28% and add them to the Republicans who are voting for Hillary in open primaries to try to mess with our nomination and you have exactly why Hillary is not supported by Democrats and needs to be stopped.

Cowards and "Ass Kissing Chickenshits".

I know I haven't written in awhile, but let's start off with the biggest issue out there.

The Petraeus lie session is over.

I warned everyone for months exactly what was coming. It was Petraeus, doing his best acting work ever in playing Gen. William Westmoreland during Vietnam and reading exactly what the White House wrote for him.

Bravo! It takes a lot of balls to be a Yes Man in the military. Well I suppose it's all you are allowed to be thanks to the pesky rules against free speech they have.

Those of us who were wise to the con (apparently everybody minus the morons in Congress) knew what was coming, saw through it and wanted a rebuke of Bush for putting a uniformed man out there to make his pitch for him.

Obviously Bush knew that everybody at this point is aware that he is a compulsive liar. So he threw the pristine image of a good, honest soldier in front of Congress. Hiding like a coward behind Petraeus' medals.

The thing is Petraeus' military service was only good enough to talk up as a point of thwarting attacks on the credibility of a scam artist report.

Who really thinks Bush gives a fuck about the US Military or any of the soldiers anyway?

He had a respected General in Colin Powell debase himself in front of the United Nations (supposedly after he tried to talk the Neo-Cons out of war) and tell Bush's blatant lies about Iraq WMDs to get us into this war.

He had the gall to send our troops into battle in two different countries without any real plans and worse without the Humvee and body armor they deserved (or prohibiting them from wearing the best armor available thanks to alliances to certain corporations!).

He keeps them there on stop loss measures and doesn't allow them to leave the military when their time is up.

He uses them as political hostages when he throws a tantrum about time lines and says he will hang the troops out to dry and veto their funding if he doesn't get his wish for perpetual Iraq War.

He employs mercenaries through his right wing financial connections (Blackwater) and allows them to freely kill however many civilians they want. They operate under no laws, are paid ten times as much as the military soldiers and oh yeah their reckless actions are helping to get our soldiers shot and killed by angry Iraqis who can't tell one from another. So much for the goodwill our soldiers are trying to create. And here's the kicker... they've actually killed our own troops themselves!

He opposes military pay raises and veteran health care increases.

But hey, hey can fly out under the cloak of darkness and have a photo shoot with them!

What a great fucking guy!

Petraeus, in his role as the General in charge of the Iraq War is supposed to be fighting in the best interests of America and the citizens here that the military is suppose to serve. The President is Commander in Chief but the General's main responsibility is not to him but to us and his soldiers.

That's why many Americans who see this was for what it is, felt betrayed by him deciding to be Bush's puppet. Make no mistake about it, that's what he was. From the RW talk shows to the RW blogs, they sent him out on a propaganda campaign to speak to Bush's base.

So MoveOn.org ran an ad calling a spade a spade. "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?"

Wow did the Right blow up.

It was hilarious. Fox News was leading the charge and just like election night in 2000 when they pulled bullshit and called the election for Bush despite proof to the contrary, the rest of the Mainstream Media fell right in line. Hell even half of the Democrats in the Senate fell in line when they voted to condemn the ad.

Of course this vote came right after another one that got less press. See Senator Jim Webb, a former military man himself (and Reagan appointee) is no liberal. He even voted to condemn the MoveOn ad. But being a former military man with a son serving in Iraq he can see the forest through the trees so to speak.

He tried to push a bill in which he constantly gave the Republicans what they wanted to try to pass it, that would allow soldiers time home after their tour in Iraq, equal to the tour they just served. Figuring these soldiers who have been stretched thin already could use the mental, emotional and physical break as well as the time home they deserved.

Strangely though after the whole Petraeus farce, Bush gave a speech in which he tried to connect 30,000 troops coming home mid to late next year as a troop reduction based on the success of the surge.

The funniest part was everyone knew that was a red herring (I called the whole thing right here on this blog). We've mentioned it here that the surge could not be maintained. That troop rotations dictated that some troops had to come home regardless of the success of the surge next year. It was Bush pulling more lies out of his ass.

But where you find a lie, you find a gullible stupid Senator not far behind. Enter outgoing Virgina Coward, John Warner.

Warner, like Voinovich, like Dominieci are willing to talk the talk but walking the walk is a totally different beast on Iraq. He had said he would vote for the bill but once he heard the artificial "30,000" withdrawal number he fell for it hook, line and sinker, apparently believing Bush wanted to actually withdraw troops on his own or something. So as usual the cowardly Republicans voted against the bill and Bush wins again.

Republicans and Bush rule the day once more and punish our troops for not being rich enough or well connected enough to never have to serve in a military where they may be trapped forever in perpetual war.

So the MSM goes after MoveOn.org about an ad that rightfully questions the integrity of a man who uses his uniform to spread propaganda but doesn't attack the Right Wing Cowards who never send their sons and daughters, let alone hardly ever served in the military themselves off to their wars of choice?

The priorities of this country's media are wrongheaded and very Pravda like. Except the Russians knew Pravda was propaganda and Americans foolishly believe that we have a choice in media and that even though a mass majority of the talking heads on radio and TV are spouting the same White House-approved talking points, that somehow the media is liberally biased and they are getting a real selection of views.

The problem with this whole deal is this:

Attacking MoveOn.org's calling BULLSHIT on what was without question, bullshit, is saying they don't have a right to free speech.

The Right Wing smear machine, whom whined like babies over this, have been behind more attacks on military men than anyone.

They had no problem taking an honorable soldier like Max Cleland and trying to push him as friendly to Osama Bin Laden.

They had no problem taking an honorable soldier like John Kerry and swiftboating him with lies and trying to dishonor his service (all while their Commander was AWOL from Guard Duty).

The right wingers in CBS' news department (see the Dan Rather lawsuit for more on how that organization works now) fired General John Batiste when he spoke out in an ad against the Iraq War.

They go after the former General in charge of Iraq, Gen. Abizaid for saying America could deal with a nuclear Iran because we handled the Soviets when they had nukes and were a far greater threat.

They call the death of soldiers, "a small price to pay".

Not to mention Senator Chuck Hagel who happened to be the only Senator from the GOP with any integrity on this war, was labeled "SENATOR BETRAYUS" by Rush Limbaugh.

I guess only THEY can slam the military or use "Betrayus" right?

The sad part is that nothing is being done to stop the Iraq War. There is no end in sight unless you set January 2009 when a new President takes office as your timetable.

It's sickening that the pathetic lapdog media would go after MoveOn.org for telling the truth.

Why they have never picked up on this plan for American empire that they clearly outlined in the PNAC strategy, that Wolfowitz was in charge of and was leaked to the NY Times back in 1992 and that Wes Clark has warned he was informed of right after 9/11, is beyond me. It's blatantly obvious that they wanted war with Iraq and want war with Iran.

It's also becoming more evident that they don't want to stop there.

To call Petraeus out for lying for his boss to keep this war going is an honorable thing to do. Our troops deserve a commander who recognizes the harm his soldiers face by continuing these neo-con policies.

If they get their way, the soldiers will never come home.

Maybe the best voice on this is Admiral William Fallon, Petraeus' superior who attempted to develop plans for a draw down and said the following about Petraeus:

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus’s superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” and added, “I hate people like that”, the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

If only he were speaking to the gullible fools in Congress...

Thank you Admiral Fallon. You are a good and loyal American.

-Rp

Screw the Constitution!

The Fear of Fear Itself

The Democrats should read this op-ed from the NY Times today...

It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress — now led by Democrats — caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush’s powers, this time to spy on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights. Many of the 16 Democrats in the Senate and 41 in the House who voted for the bill said that they had acted in the name of national security, but the only security at play was their job security.

There was plenty of bad behavior. Republicans marched in mindless lockstep with the president. There was double-dealing by the White House. The director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, crossed the line from being a steward of this nation’s security to acting as a White House political operative.

But mostly, the spectacle left us wondering what the Democrats — especially their feckless Senate leaders — plan to do with their majority in Congress if they are too scared of Republican campaign ads to use it to protect the Constitution and restrain an out-of-control president.

-snip-

The House handled this mess somewhat better than the Senate, moving to the floor a far more sensible bill. Mr. McConnell certified that the House bill would address the problem raised by the court. That is, until the White House made clear that it wanted to use the court’s ruling to grab a lot more power. Mr. McConnell then reversed his position and demanded that Congress pass the far more expansive bill.

-snip-

But the problem with Congress last week was that Democrats were afraid to explain to Americans why the White House bill was so bad and so unnecessary — despite what the White House was claiming. There are good answers, if Democrats are willing to address voters as adults. To start, they should explain that — even if it were a good idea, and it’s not — the government does not have the capability to sort through billions of bits of electronic communication. And the larger question: why, six years after 9/11, is this sort of fishing expedition the supposed first line of defense in the war on terrorism?

While serving little purpose, the new law has real dangers. It would allow the government to intercept, without a warrant, every communication into or out of any country, including the United States. Instead of explaining all this to American voters — the minimal benefits and the enormous risks — the Democrats have allowed Mr. Bush and his fear-mongering to dominate all discussions on terrorism and national security.

Mr. Bush claims that he has kept America safe since 9/11. But that claim ignores the country’s very real and present vulnerabilities. Six years after the 9/11 attacks the administration has still failed to secure American ports, railroads and airports from terrorist attack, and has put the profits of the chemical and nuclear-power industries ahead of safeguarding their plants.

Hmmm... sounds pretty close to what I was saying last night. Hopefully being in the NY Times, the Democrats will get this and read it. It's one of the few papers the beltway crowd reads after all, because lord knows something has to burst this ridiculous bubble that these people live in insulating them from the outside world.

-Rp

Changing Our Thinking...

Just a really late night post with some links for interesting reading. There's a definite theme here. Follow me on this....



Maybe it's time to change our thinking on some things.

Like maybe we need to change our thinking that the Pentagon is a great place to spend our money and that doing so it is vital to our security.

Where else can we LOSE $2.5 trillion dollars and then get flack just for asking where it went?

Where else can we lose 190,000 weapons we sent to Iraq for the Iraqi National Security Forces and then watch helplessly after knowing we just armed the insurgents that are KILLING OUR TROOPS?

Where else could billions of your dollars be used for crazy ass ideas like "gay bombs"?

The Pentagon, that's where!

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Maybe we should change our thinking on our civil liberties. We seem to think we're this great Democracy that provides us with stronger civil liberties than the rest of the world. We scoff at Europeans that say otherwise. After the surveillance fiasco mentioned below, maybe we should be listening to them.

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Maybe we should change our thinking about why "they hate us". Anyone with a brain (note: this includes nobody in the Bush Administration) knows they don't "hate us for our freedoms". Maybe we should actually read up on how our own foreign policy over the years has helped foster a lot of the anger towards us in the Middle East.

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Maybe we should change our thinking on abstinence sex education.

For years repressed Republicans (who always end up in the most hypocritical of scandals) have tried to cut off funding for sex education, condom availability, planned parenthood, etc. Their failed line of thinking is no sex = no unwanted pregnancies and no diseases. Oh, such a simple world they live in. The problem with that is that since Bush got into office and they took this approach to sex education funding, teen sex rates have actually gone up. Worse their plans, besides being ineffectual, are also proving to be detrimental as they are not providing proper sex education. Or at least a major study by Oxford University says.

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Maybe we should change our thinking, collectively, that no President would want harm to come to us. And that, just maybe to some really evil ones, a few deaths are justifiable for a political power grab.

Why else would a President, when given a daily briefing paper on August 6, 2001 titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" ignore it? Why else did he ignore similar intelligence in July, would he ignore it? Why else, when another member of the CIA flew down to bring extra attention to that briefing did he say, "All right. You've covered your ass, now." and dismiss him completely?

Why else would they continually spread bogus reports about potential terrorist attacks or "dry runs" unless they were just using it for political gain?

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Maybe we should change our thinking about Iraq and that our idea of Democracy can work there. Our democracy didn't come from the British holding a rifle to our heads and forcing us to write a Constitution, agree on a Congress and pass laws that are clearly more complicated (and objectionable to many Iraqis) than our political timetables suggest.

When Sunnis are quitting the cabinet our of fear for their lives, the chances of our ideal gathering of different political forces in one Iraqi Congress is likely misguided. They need to fight it out, just as we did in ejecting our British occupying forces, and decide on their own what they want their future to be. It worked for us in the late 1700s, it can work for them. As long as we are there, nothing politically positive will happen because every group will believe that the other is only working to appease the Americans, not do what's best for Iraq. That dooms us and them to failure there as long as we stay.

Maybe we should also consider the sickness and death we have caused there. Both directly from Iraqis being in the line of fire and indirectly from the effect of chemicals in our weapons and do the right thing. Get out now.

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And finally, maybe we should stop thinking that pathetically weak Congressional motions to stop Bush will work.

Contempt of Congress is dependent on a now very corrupt Department of Justice, who have said they will not enforce the citation.

Likewise Special Counsels are appointed by the same DOJ and since they are loaded with Bush appointees, there is no chance they will pursue perjury charges against people like Alberto Gonzales.

Censure is another worthless option proposed by Russ Feingold (Sorry Russ, I love ya but this is not a good option). It's a slap on the wrist at best and the way Bushco has ignored every other legal process, this would do nothing to them and they'd probably raise a toast in laughter to such a weak proposal.

The only option that will stop these criminals is Impeachment. As mentioned below though, there's not enough Democrats with spines to do this.

Maybe we should start changing our thinking about impeachment. After the attempt to get Bill Clinton for oral sex, impeachment has been portrayed as political suicide and petty politics.

While that instance was, this is not. There are more than high crimes and misdemeanors involved. There is outright treason from the entire Executive Branch to try this case on.

But hey, if none of the above sways your thinking on any of those issues, maybe our state and federal government enforced Civics and History curriculum in our schools have paid off and we really are trained to think one way and one way alone....

Their way.

Think about it.

-Rp

Cowards.

As you can tell I haven't written anything this week. You'll notice a similar pattern back around the time when Democrats caved on the Iraq funding bill.

I come on here and talk about Democratic values. Values the mass majority of the party shares. The problem is that there are always some beltway Democrats that prefer to keep the status quo in place. Their constituents don't matter as much to them as the lobbyists that fill their coffers come election time and ultimately that money makes it impossible for real Democrats to pose a real primary challenge. When someone does, the other beltway Democrats get the all stars out and bring in the big donors and their clout clouds the media to believe this is the only Democrat running. The majority of voters, even in the Democratic party, rely on the media (foolishly I might add) to help them learn about the candidates.

Only the hardcore politicos get to know the candidates not on TV or in the news frequently and thus that lobbying money that buys ads and those other big name beltway Democrats (see: Sen. Chuck Schumer & Rep. Rahm Emanuel) buy clout with the media. The uninformed are told from the beginning that this candidate is the only one with a real chance to win because of that financial support and not wanting to lose the seat to a Republican, Dems go out and vote for the total loser who will just capitulate to the Washington way of life.

Case in point: Freshman Senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar. She wasn't the best candidate. Many would say Ford Bell won the debates and was certainly the most progressive. Remember that word, progressive. Because that scared the hell out of the beltway Dems. So Schumer and his DSCC backed her before the primary had even begun. Before they had really begun they forced Patty Wetterling, a strong children's advocate whose son had been abducted, out of the race and had her endorse Klobuchar. In return the beltway crowd would support her House run against nutcase Michele Bachmann.

Then when Bell showed promise in the debates and made Klobuchar look like the clueless talking point-memorized putz she was, Schumer called in the "rock star", Barack Obama to do a fundraiser for Klobuchar. How can you compete with the biggest star of the party?

So she went on to the Democratic nomination, the win in the Senate race and so it shouldn't have been surprising when she voted with many other Democrats to give Bush expanded wiretapping powers that he didn't even ask for.

This is what we get with the beltway crowd. They are so insulated from the American people they refuse to listen to them.

Now as stated above, Klobuchar was not the only Democrat that voted for this. Many beltway Democrats felt some sort of incredible urgency to give Bush exactly what he wanted on this electronic surveillance bill.

What they should have been doing is investigating and bringing charges in the illegal actions performed previously on this issue. Bushco knew they were breaking the law and a secret court ruling leaked illegally by Rep. John Boehner told them the FISA courts could not give them authority to do what they wanted to do.

This was after it was let out by Mike McConnell the director of national intelligence, that wiretaps and e-mails were not the full scope of Bush's directive to spy on Americans. That's a pretty huge admission and yet Democrats not only caved on this bill and gave Bush everything he wanted, they actually made the person solely in charge of making these judgment calls....



Alberto Gonzales.

Yes... the guy they want an Independent Counsel appointed to prosecute for perjury in his testimony to Capitol Hill, the guy whom House members are putting impeachment resolutions in for. The most distrustful member of the Cabinet.

That guy.

You could make a case for the Democrats over the cave on Iraq War funding. After all they were between a rock and a hard place there. They didn't have enough votes to override Bush's veto and the media, as slanted to the right as they are, tried to blame them for not funding the troops even if it was Bush who vetoed their funding and even if Democrats gave the troops more than Bush ever wanted them to have. There was not much politically the Democrats could do then.

This time, there is not question that they were cowards. Afraid to look weak on terror, they gave this President carte blanche to spy on any American he chose. In fact considering the expanded powers he has already claimed, all this basically did was legalized the actions of this criminal cabal.

As if that were not enough, many Democrats seem eager to cave to Bush on Iraq again based on Gen. Petraeus' September report. As mentioned on this blog before, Petraeus is a Bush propagandist for the war. He's been spouting Administration talking points for the war dating back to 2004. Of course the Democrats would blindly trust another Bush hack. Are we really surprised?

It's time to stand up and vote the beltway, centrist Democrats who clearly have no spine, out of office. Whether it's giving Bush everything he wants on spying, the Iraq War, torture, the bankruptcy law, the medicare prescription bill... check all those votes that were WRONG and look at the names.. they should repeatedly look the same.

They hurt our cause as much as any crazy right wing Republican does, in fact more so. Because every time we come out and speak the truth about this Administration and try to call them to justice, the media points to those beltway jackasses and calls us the "Extreme Left" as if we're some sort of Communist/Socialist propaganda group.

We are the mainstream. Those in power would lose it if the media reported it that way or the Congress voted that way. That needs to change... and fast.

September 15th there is a march in Washington D.C. Unfortunately I can't make it but all of you that want real change, I ask you to attend. March to Capitol Hill and chant "SHAME!" at all the Congress. When House Republicans did it as a publicity stunt on a vote they lost (they were upset about the confusion but more so because they actually did lose the vote), the media but mostly those beltway Democrats came out and tried to appease them.

If only 100 right wing racists could get that kind of reaction from those who lay in fear of losing re-election of their cushy beltway jobs, imagine the kind of fear millions of Americans, pissed off, would create if they stared down the Congress and gave them the hell they deserve for handing our civil liberties to a criminal.

Finally I leave with a quote from a REAL patriot and ask the Congress to do something it doesn't appear it has ever done. READ THE CONSTITUTION. Yes, that paper below!



It is the foundation of this country, it is what our forefathers and generations afterwards that faced REAL threats to our society and Democracy relied upon and protected as YOUR OATHS OF OFFICE requires you do. Read it and weep, for you have failed America and failed what our country's real patriots made real sacrifice of life, limb, wealth and reputation for. You are cowards with no shame and for that may you be chased from office and replaced by true keepers of the Constitution.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Franklin's Contributions to the Conference, Friday Feb 17, 1775

-Rp

Impeachment! Finally! Well... sort of.

And it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Well the Democrats in their efforts to set the record straight about what 'baby steps' actually are, have moved forward to begin impeachment investigations on one member of the Bush Administration. I thought the picture on the left was appropriate since it looks like a downward spiral in which metaphorically the entire Administration has been in since they stole re-election in 2004 (make no mistake about it they stole it and here's some new voter suppression details that have made their way out of the RNC from that election).

Anyway, MSNBC reported that House Democrats will introduce a bill tomorrow that requires the House Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment investigations against Gonzo.

From Crooks and Liars:



Windows Media Video: Play | Quicktime Video: Play

It's about time but still not enough. The only way to get these criminals out of office is full impeachment.

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Now some quick takes on other stuff from this past weekend...

At the CNN/Youtube debates the buzz afterwards surrounded on a riff Hillary Clinton gave towards Barack Obama based on his take on diplomacy. The question was whether the candidates would meet with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Kim Jong-Il of North Korea or Mahmoud Ahmenijhad of Iran in the first year of their Presidency. Obama said that he would and pointed to the Bush Administration's dismal record in meeting with countries that we have disagreements with and in essence using diplomacy as a reward only to those that agree with us.

Hillary countered that she didn't want a meeting in the first year without some sort of preconditions and essentially pawned the concept off to her subordinates to handle as she felt they would get too much PR out of a meeting with the President of the United States.

I see Hillary's point, but it's wrong. Now let me clarify. I am undecided for 2008. Unlike the 2004 race when I knew John Kerry was my guy by February 2003, nobody stands out to me as someone I can fully support. I have heard Obama be wrong on a variety of topics as well (see: aggression towards Iran) so this is not me picking a side in the overall race.

I believe that the President is someone who for the good of our nation, needs to meet with leaders even if they disagree with us or would publicize the meeting to the rest of the world. If we're concerned about going to meet with Kim Jong-Il in North Korea or Ahmenijhad in Iran, don't. Meet in a neutral location and have a summit with countries from the region.

One of the most spiteful things the Bush Administration has done is to shelf diplomacy and push it off on other countries in the region. With North Korea he put the pressure on Russia, China, Japan and South Korea to carry the water for American policies. Some of those countries are not in full agreement with our policies. But it's just like Bush to outsource work that Americans should be doing.

While they did that, idiot boy ran his mouth about an 'axis of evil' and scared North Korea and Iran into speeding up their nuclear programs.

Now I'm not saying Hillary would do that but it's clear that we need to meet with other leaders and hear them out. We may not agree with them on every issue but we don't have to.

When Russia was at the height of the cold war standoff with us we couldn't find much of anything to agree about with them and they were far more dangerous than Chavez, Jong-Il, Ahmenijhad and Castro combined. Yet we met with them in summits and when that didn't work we communicated with them. President John F. Kennedy had Tommy Thompson (no not the moronic former Governor of Wisconsin)as an ambassador there and he spoke with members of Nikita Khrushchev's regime frequently.

By staying in contact Kennedy had an idea of how to address him and empathize with what our enemy ultimately wanted. Did he want nuclear war? No. And I highly doubt North Korea or Iran do either. Khrushchev wanted to look good in the standoff with the U.S. to his own people and because we were smart enough to talk to him and see his side we were able to get them to stand down and a nuclear weapon was never launched in over 40 years of conflict.

Here meeting with our enemies may give them political clout at home but it also gives them piece of mind that we're not looking to attack them for their oil or to overthrow their governments. In turn we can offer Iran and North Korea light water reactors to help with their energy needs and then receive concessions in return in the human rights and diplomatic fields.

It's to everyone's benefit that Americans stand up and converse with everybody. It prevents conflict, gives the people of those countries less of a reason to hate us and ultimately attack us and it provides us with more respect and better standing in the world. Which at this point, is desparately needed. Point goes to Obama.

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-The Republican Presidential Candidates are refusing to do the Youtube debates. And with good reason. After all if you were an insensitive racist warmonger, wouldn't you be afraid to take questions from the public? Besides if these guys learned anything from Bush it's that Republicans only look good when they pre-screen audiences, have them sign loyalty oaths and then broadcast the ones where people fawn over them. Otherwise you could end up with another "Macaca" incident.

Funniest thing about it is the RNC asked their supporters to send in as many slanted questions as they could to play gotcha with Democrats. I suppose that's how they got this idiot's question in there. Of course Biden's response to it was hilarious.

-Rp

Democrats push bills that could split Republican votes...

You'd think in this world there would be some sensible Republicans out there. For the past 7 years though, it's been pretty hard to find any of them.

Luckily, Democrats are finally forcing the rational ones to make a stand. Live or die with this President and his policies and you'll pay a steep price with your constituency.

As this Washington Post article points out, the Democrats are pushing some solid bills with titles that will make it very hard for Republicans to explain to their constituents why they refused them.

Front and center is a Children's Health Insurance Program re-authorization bill. The SCHIP program has worked rather well by all accounts and expanding it seems like a good idea in the day and age where it is blatantly obvious health care in our country is unavailable to too many people.

Even Republicans know the program works and seem ready to step up and vote for it. Not President Bush though, he hates health care for children and has said he will veto the bill.

This will test the mettle of the Republicans who claim to be independent of their historically unpopular leader.

The House Democrats while not being successful on ending the war or attempting impeachment, certainly will have a lot to crow about.

A couple other bills they are working on include strengthening Homeland Security, which Bush has said he will veto and a Congressional Ethics bill which will dramatically cut the influence of lobbyists and the gifts they give to representatives.

Republicans don't like the lobbyist cutbacks because K-Street is their lifeblood. All the work they do is not for their constituents but rather for big corporations and they have always kept those Congressmen well fed at that corporate trough thanks to campaign contributions and lobbyist gifts. But they can't go back to their constituents, the ones who will be voting on them in 2008 and tell them they sided with lobbyists and special interests over the interests of the people the represent.

The Democrats though, have received high marks even from some House Republicans.

"They've had a pretty strong quarter," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who praised the insurance bill as "creative" and suggested the homeland security bill would pass overwhelmingly. "The first quarter was not so good, and that's why they're not looking so good in the polls, but this quarter is looking very good for them. They can send their members home crowing about their accomplishments, and they've done it in a bipartisan way, which is exactly what they promised to do," LaHood said.

Another bill that could pass and face a Bush veto is the Farm bill. For years corporate farmers have been able to use loopholes to reap financial windfalls at the expense of the American people and family farmers who struggle more and truly need the help to stay in business.

As someone who lived on a farm for 5 years, you cannot truly appreciate the amount of work, dedication and love family farmers put into their business and certainly they are the heart and soul of what America was, is and still can be.

The bill on the House floor is intended to close those loopholes and use tighter corporate tax rules including forcing Corporations to pay their taxes rather than being allowed to use off shore tax shelters to avoid paying their tax bills.

But hey, there is ONE bill the Administration will sign. ONE bill they want passed. What could this terrific idea be?

Nuclear warhead testing.

What did you expect from the most aggressive, neo-con, chicken hawk outfit in power today?

As usual Bush comes to the rescue of the corporations and threatens another veto.

So let's run down the Bush checklist.

Children's Health Insurance = Bad.

Homeland Security = Bad.

Family Farmers = Bad.

Making Corporations pay their fair share in taxes = Bad.

Stopping Lobbyists from buying votes = No word from Bush but Republicans hate it.

Nuclear Warhead testing = Good.

Corporate tax avoidance = Good.

Sick, dying children without healthcare = Good.

Perpetual war = Good. (okay that's unrelated to what I was talking about in this column, but it's a gimmie)

-Rp