One of the matters that bothers me most is when I hear historical ignorance, especially when this ignorance is used to further the justification of lies and stupidity. Or as the late Patrick Moynihan (the Senator from New York who's seat Mrs. Clinton now holds) has said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." (source)

Another quote by Moynihan:"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself. "

So yeah,when I hear "the war on terror" and "iraq" compared to World War Two, I go completely stark raving mad -- and not just because I am psychologically unbalanced. That's another matter.

No. Where are the tanks, planes, and armies of terrorists that are taking over the world? Hitler invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia,Poland,Denmark,Norway,Belgium,the Netherlands,France,all of East Europe, and then Russia. Where are the tanks threatening our civilization? Where are the planes dropping bombs on our cities like it was London in 1940 - 1941?

Don't try to tell me we are invading nations and toppling governments because there might be another criminal syndicate that could cause a "terrorist" activity. Don't do it. Because in the last 3 years, virtually nothing has been spent defending ourselves from just such attacks whatsoever. No vulnerable nuclear reactors and chemical plants. No upgrade of the Coast Guard and National Guard units here at home -- they went to Iraq. Most of the money the "department" of homeland security spends is spent on advertising (recall the Tom Ridge commercials, and the kids asking "mommy" what to do) and suspicious contracts to defense contracting firms, a lot of whom involve lobbyists and well-connected contractors.

And when America was attacked by Japan's bombing, there never was a recruitment issue. Sending a fleet of ships that were created by a national governement is 100,000 percent different than a saudi-Mafia operation that stole 4 planes and flew into buildings. Especially considering the degree of apathy and incompetitence which enabled the saudi-mafia operation to occur. And then, why was Cheney looking at oil maps of Iraq in Spring 2001 with energy and oil conglomerates when they were putatively discussing Energy Policy? Why did the August 6th memo of 11 pages get ignored by our President? Was Crawford, Texas more important, or did Mr. Bush really get that memo?

To even relate this invasion of Iraq to the war against fascism is facile at best, and sinister at the worst. We didn't have to "make-up" a threat of "WMD" or use forged documents to justify the war against Japanese and German aggression. We didn't have to justify the D-Day Invasion by saying that German industry (in lieu of Iraqi oil) will pay for the invasion. And we had a Harry Truman commission which ferreted out procurement corruption in the military contractors that put people in jail, cancelled contracts, and impounded bank accounts.

Saddam Hussein was abetted and carried to power by the Reagan administration and petroleum interests infested defense industry. United States chemical companies sold Saddam his chemicals and the sales were permitted by the Reagan administration to destabalize the region into competing nations. Democracy and freedom were always secondary, if they were ever a consideration.

"Freedom is on the march" according to George Bush.

Hmmm....

"By the most brutal methods of terrorism, a regime sought to maintain an existence that was condemned by the overwhelming majority of its people...I have tried to persuade the responsible authorities that it is impossible for a great nation ... to stand by and watch millions belonging to a great, an ancient civilized people be denied rights by their government... I have endeavoured to find some way to alleviate a tragic fate. One agreement was signed only to be broken. I then tried a second time to bring about an understanding. A few weeks later, we were forced to the conclusion that the government [of Austria] had no intention of carrying out this agreement in the spirit that had inspired it, but in order to create an excuse. I have determined, therefore, to place the help of our country at the service of these millions. Since this morning, our soldiers are on the march across all of Austria's frontiers."

This announcer gets paid way too much to scream, holler, and get excited about absolutely nothing.
Oh my God, I have no life and must buy this product so I can be somebody and start smiling intensely like a schizophrenic on speed.
You pay what we pay, just listen to all of the air-brushed sales representatives of every ethnicity tell you so, and then run out and buy a piece of shit car for less money then all of the exorbitant maintanence costs and repairs over the next five years.
How many stories of corruption does it take to topple a Presidency? None. All you need is one blow-job from a willing press secretary flusie.
Lets create a television mini-series, label it "shocking","profound","provocative", and "informative" -- rather than "propaganda".
When you need unbiased information, make sure you listen to convicted felons like Gordon Liddy. His expertise at breaking into the offices of political opponents and setting wire taps make his opinions about the political opposition absolutely reliable and sacrosanct. Indeed, the news organizations that allow him to speak publically should be applauded for their integrity.
How many hatchet men and women called "news analysts" or "news personalities" are there in the news media? If you did an autopsy of every one of their brains, inside their craniums you would find a huge stash of money.
"I'd like to teach the world to ...chill"??? That verb used to be sing, if you have a memory that goes back to the early 80's when Coca-cola taught the world to sing. Chill is like a voiceless grinning lump of thoughtlessness, whereas sing indicates active mental and spiritual participation. How do you "teach" someone to "chill" anyway? Are their classes you can take? And how does a bunch of generation x-ers on a roof-top equate to the whole world holding hands singing about a big ideal?
The more I hear the expression "for real real" celebrated in hollywood and advertizing, the more I recall George Orwell and "double plus plus." So, it is now groovy-coolistic to be unable to articulate or express one-self beyond a three-word idiom.
Boy scouts or not, the Midas touch will still pick your pocket and prey on your automotive ignorance. That's why the corporation franchise's itself.
Some brewers look outside their windows and see smoke-stacks, some travel far away from factories to stand in front of snow-capped mountains and act like they don't have factories with smoke-stacks. It's called the Coors silver bullet, because all of the arsenic dumped in the Colorado water by Colorado mining companies.

Okay, I'm back from indolence and lethargy, but I'm also so depressed about the spiraling mendacity of the current Presidential administration and the noted gang of thugs. We are in deep deep doo-doo folks.

Air force and military personnel are being asked to plan for a full scale war with Iran, according to another recent expose by the indomitable Seymour Hersch. Bush installs Bolton as a recess appointment to the United Nations -- a man who is belligerent, pompous, and narcissistic ( and undiplomatic). The UN boo's him on his first day. Yes, it's true.

War with Iran is part of the plan folks. Something will happen when Bush returns from his 50th vacation this summer, you watch. It's all in the plan, and the hope is that the "incident" will carry over into the 2006 elections so that the Rabid gangsters can beat any opposition over the head with the stick of Patriotism.

Speaking of Patriot, the Patriot Act was renewed. The Blacklists are being drawn up and soon the "Night of Long Knives" will be implemented to take out the opposition.

No I'm not insane, I'm going crazy. Is my country really slowly becoming a fascist state? How else can you explain the corporate media disconnection with reality and the permissivity of lies in the "public forum" ? A student of History knows the wickedness of men. You fill a bureaucracy full of sychophants and put a lot of money in their pocket and you get the corporate media. Then you need to consider that 90 percent of all printed, heard, and visualized media is owned by 12 interconnected companies with similar big investors. These people are in the background that you never see who own 5 percent of this, 12 percent of that for 500 large corporations and holding companies. They fund political campaigns and political schemes. They hire scores of lawyers to interpret and change the law in their favor.

Come on, you didn't think the history of Aristocracy is only a thing of the past, did you? Power corrupts, and those who seek to gain power and become powerful are by nature corrupted with power.

I see these "Proud to Be American" stickers and "GW BUSH 2004" stickers on the backs of suvees and mini-vans and I just want to throw up -- or scream, but that would be a waste of energy. By now, you can't reach the brainwashed and slavish followers of the daily Republican lies.

Proud believers of lies in defense of absolute corruption, certain of their patriotic duty and so woefully ill-informed. I'm sure most of these folks are sincerely thinking they are correct about what they believe to be facts, but their are a minority who care little about facts. They just "believe differently" period, and no tabulation of facts or details will shake their belief system.

This comes from a posting a baseball fantasy league from someone in the league. I thought it was right on the mark, so I will post it here.

Ever since this whole Tom Cruise fiasco I became interested in what scientology was all about.

Apparently this fucked up "religon" is based on some story about an alien named Xenu who ruled a group of over-populated planets. In order to cut down the population of earth, or teegeean as it was once called, he gathered all the aliens around the base of a volcano and placed a nuclear bomb inside killing them all. Once the body was killed it released the soul which Xenu captured and forced into a theater to watch movies about God and Jesus, therefore creating belief in christianty. All of the aliens souls wandered the earth attaching themselves to humans.

Now what scientology supposedly does is rid your body of all these extra souls, or tethans as they are called and allow you to live a happier life. It is said to even get this information you have to pay thousands of dollars for ridiculous seminars. To complete the program you have to pay upwards of $400,000. L. Ron Hubbard, who created the program, was a science fiction writer and appearently a real piece of shit who truly considered himself the lord of darkness. Most who try to leave the church either wind up dead or in serious legal troubles.

This is one fucked up, wacky-ass cult with a bunch of ignorant retards following. I think they all need to drink the kool-aid and just get it over with.

The idea of laissez-faire, free-market driven economic democracy is founded upon two assumptions : that the workers and middle class majority will have and use surplus funds, and that the use of the surplus funds of the very wealthy will not exacerbate or diminish over time the surplus funds of the majority.

Where there is a revenue stream, there is a potential for an entrepreneur to come up with a way to divert some of these funds into an attempt at profit. Simply put, if you have access to a large amount of people or businesses who will spend some of their surplus or operating funds, you will have a potential to profit off of these funds. This can be a service-based or a merchant-based operation. A hairstylist who sets up shop in an area with no other competition will probably do well. A supermarket chain with minimal competition will be able to do the same. This supermarket may have access to many or few wholesalers. The wholesalers are themselves in contact with the many different suppliers : farmers, canned-goods companies, and manufacturing. Each of these suppliers themselves make purchases, involving further other anonymous wholesalers, distributers, and manufacturers in a complex interaction of circles. Everyone is a consumer AND part of a larger network of market and societal forces at the same time.

Large aggregations of this process form the local economy of a region or nation. In a very large nation (such as the United States) there can be many local economies within the rubric of the national economy. Thus a very large nation will have a tendency to divergent local economies underneath the roof top of the nation that can simmer and possibly even erupt into large-scale civil strife, because sometimes the interests of one or groups of local economies will get a better representation in the halls of the government that is meant to discuss the interests of the nation.

However, the networks of economic linkage have become shrunken and concentrated by large corporate forms of monetary accumulation. They are not the profuse diffusion of numerous entrepreneurial enterprises that the theory insists. There are instances of non-corporate wealth and no dampening of entrepreneurial spirit in the land, however the shrinkage is extant nevertheless. Large corporate forms thus become the main agents of profit-accumulation on the economic revenue stream. In this way the creation of a supra-aristocracy is less visible, because the family trusts that own small percentages of the stock of hundreds of companies is not as obvious as the family that runs Walmart -- the family which is itself also accumulating portfolio's of stock ownership.

This division of society into 2 classes gets created because the uses of surplus funds by the upper versus lower classes are very different. A very wealthy individual or corporate form can accumulate more of the available funds at an accelerating rate, whereas for most of the middle to lower class, the rate is barely above constant because the scale of funds is not large enough to see the exponential growth in 30 or 40 years. This is just simple mathematics.

Here goes. A man saves 10,000 a year for 40 years and gets a 5% increase per year. Using the sum of a geometric sequence with a 1.05 growth factor 10,000 x (1.05^40 - 1)/.05 = 1,207,997.742, which 1.2 million dollars. Now that is very nice assuming the person spends 10,000 for the entire 40 years and also gets the 5% increase every year. More likely the increase of 3% is more reasonable, which would yield a smaller 452,407.55. This is only a 52,407.55 increase over the 10,000 x 40 ( The larger 1.2 million would be an 800,000 yield.)

Now an institution or individual that has 10,000,000 a year for 40 years would accrue @ 3% , 452,407,550 which is a difference of 52 million dollars.

A difference of 52 thousand versus 52 million dollars indicates the inherent imbalance in capital accumulation. If the pool of capital formation is a constant or barely increasing, this ratio of 52 million versus 52 thousand means 100 times more, or more accurately eventually 1% of the entire wealth of the country will be owned by the 90% of the country which has only 10,000 surplus funds per year with which to accumulate capital.

That ought to destroy the myth that the ideas alone of a laissez-faire, free- market create economic democracy. The voices which pronounce these ideas as the sole bearer of democratic individualism are thinking in a vacuum, rather than a historical continuum. Because after the new economic frontiers get swamped, the concentration into larger formations of wealth occurs. The only events that have inhibited or ceased this inevitable concentration were revolutions, formation of community social institutions(church, unions, non-profit hospitals,...) and wise government involvement.

These myths have gotten a voice because there are short-sighted extremely- wealthy individuals who permit and promote its dispersal. There are speakers who attend conferences that are funded by corporate institutions. There are lobbyist and legal organizations dedicated to the publishing of pamplets, press releases, and books.

Go here and read a well-organized, easy to understand, complete and utter refutation of all the lies that have come from those who think that Social Security is in trouble and that private accounts are better for workers than the Social Security system.

The study comes from the Directors of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (or CEPR). These are statisticians and economic researchers who analyze and crunch data to provide accurate financial assessments of government policy and economic trends. They are well-respected by everyone because they know what they are doing and can be relied upon for the straight facts.

You expect your sportscaster to give you the straight talk about the game or the seasonal stats. The same is true about economic data and cost-benefit analysis. This is the service the CEPR provides for entrepreneurs, government policy analysts, and businesses in general who need the hard facts without the political hyperbole.

What is news? Is it the front pages of the local newspaper? Is it the events that are discussed on the television during the anointed time that we decide to pay attention?

According to my favorite abridged dictionary, American Heritage, news is "1. Recent events and happenings. 2. Written or broadcast information about recent events. 3. Newsworthy material." Newsworthy by the way means "Interesting or signifigant enough to be included in a news report."

In other words, if we want to tell it to you we will, but don't expect to be informed because we intend to tell it in a perspective we consider the most beneficial, using whatever standard we deem to be proper.

Don't listen to Donald Rumsfeld. [source]

Rumsfeld Obscures Facts About Gitmo

At yesterday’s press briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used selective memory to retell the story of how combatant status review tribunals in Gitmo came about and just how “appropriate” such hearings are.

Rumsfeld’s claim: After deciding that the enemy combatants were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, the administration “established procedures that would provide appropriate legal process” to enemy combatants. These included combatant status review tribunals.

The full story: Actually, after September 11th President Bush tried to hold combatants indefinitely, without giving them access to court systems where they could challenge their detention. In Rasul v Bush, the Supreme Court rebuffed the administration: “both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals seized as potential terrorists can challenge their treatment in U.S. courts.” The ruling forced the administration to create “procedures that would provide appropriate legal process” to enemy combatants. But, instead of using already established and internationally recognized legal procedures for detained persons – the Article 5 hearings of the Geneva Convention – the administration stubbornly created combatant status review tribunals.

Rumsfeld’s claim: The procedures, which include the combatant status review tribunals, “go beyond what is required even under the Geneva Conventions.”

The full story: The tribunals are an illegal and unconstitutional alternative to the process which the Supreme Court determined detainees are entitled. Earlier this year, federal Judge Joyce Hens Green echoed the Supreme Court ruling by declaring that “the Bush administration must allow [Guantanamo] prisoners…to contest their detention in U.S. courts.” Green was forced to return to the issue because the special tribunals established by the Pentagon as an alternative were “illegal” and unconstitutional. Far from going “beyond what is required even under the Geneva Conventions,” the hearings had denied detainees the “most basic fundamental rights.”

Well, I may be gullible sometimes Meister Bush, but I am not weak-minded. Your time will come.

THE HEADLINE:    Schiavo's Brain Was Severely Deteriorated, Autopsy Says
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS 3:04 PM ET

"The autopsy found that no treatment could have reversed the damage to her brain, which weighed half of what it should have."

"...During a televised news conference in Largo, Fla., the Piniellas-Pasco Medical Examiner, Jon Thogmartin, also said the autopsy showed that Ms. Schiavo's condition was 'consistent' with a person in a persistent vegetative state. That point had become a key issue in the debate over whether to prolong Ms. Schiavo's life and whether she had a chance to recover normal brain function.

Dr. Thogmartin said that recovery was not possible because of the massive brain damage that occurred after Ms. Schiavo collapsed in 1990. Her brain weighed 615 grams at the time of her death on March 31.

'This damage was irreversible,' said Dr. Thogmartin. 'No amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.' "

"...The autopsy ... showed that physical abuse or poison did not play a role in her collapse , he said. Ms. Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, had accused their daughter's husband, Michael Schiavo, of abusing her, which he has steadfastly denied. Dr. Thogmartin also said there was no evidence she had had an eating disorder before she collapsed, although a disorder was widely suspected because she had diminished levels of potassium in her blood. "

How many hours of prime-time television were spent by the ministers of lies debating this story? For more than how many weeks was this sad private affair treated as the number one news item?

Of all the vacations President Bush has spent at his fake ranch in Crawford -- remember he bought that ranch in 1999 so he could play the role he and Karl Rove had planned -- of the 60% of the time he has been on vacation or on money-raising events, the only time he interrupted a vacation was to come back to the White House to support the rumblings by the Re-thuglican Congress to get a bill passed to "save Terri Shiavo."

He didn't interrupt his vacation in August 2001 when apparently CIA director George Tenet had a conference video session with Mr. Bush about the "terrorist chatter" and the August PDB memo that was titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in the United States." John Ashcroft cancelled his public air travel in August 2001. Cheney had plenty of meetings with Texas Oil and energy conglomerates that spring and summer, but not one meeting was held to discuss the issue of "terrorism." Not one.

But a map from those Energy meetings with Cheney shows Iraq parcelled out into sections and estimates of what various different oil companies could own. Why was this map at those meetings?

To see these maps for yourself go here. Judicial Watch sued the government for these documents of the Cheney meetings.

What were Cheney and a bunch of oil-energy conglomerate exec's doing looking at these in Spring 2001? Was this why they refused to admit any environmentalist groups to what were supposed to be "public" meetings -- which is why Judicial Watch was successful in its lawsuit.