If you don't know what the Gulf of Tonkin is ... [Click here]

Here is what google shows when you do a google on "Iran":

Oh my. Sounds like it's time to spend trillions of dollars and millions of lives in order to ... defend freedom?

The owner of the Japanese tanker attacked on Thursday said US reports have provided “false” information about what happened in the Gulf of Oman.

The ship operator said “flying objects” that may have been bullets were the cause of damage to the vessel, rather than mines used by Iranian forces, as the US has suggested.

Yutaka Katada, chief executive of the Japanese company operating the ship called Kokuka Courageous, one of two vessels attacked near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, said the damage could not have been caused by mines or torpedos that are shot underwater, since the damage was reportedly above the ship’s waterline.

“It seems that something flew towards them. That created the hole, is the report I’ve received,” Mr Katada said at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, the Financial Times reported. Mr Katada also described reports of a mine attack as "false" according to several outlets in attendance at the press conference.

[SOURCE: Independent UK Newspaper | 14 June 2019]

Here is a depiction of Joseph Stalin's personality during the Great Purge, from a diary in 1935, one of the early Communist Revolutionaries Nikolai Bukharin wrote:

“He is unhappy about not being able to convince everyone, himself included, that he is greater than anyone. And this unhappiness of his may be his most human trait, perhaps the only human trait in him, but what is not human, and rather something devilish, is that because of this unhappiness, he cannot help but take revenge on people, on all people, but especially upon those whom he thinks is in a higher or better way than him.”

The Color Grey

They suck the soul right out of you
They squeeze you down into and against the concrete
press you hard onto the solid flat surface of unreasonable expectations
and then hang you out to dry in the sun
while your true colors evaporate
and you become assessed somewhere in between the extremes of black and white
where all the gradations of the grey adumbrated spectrum apply
but since no one discerns character by shadows or shaded regions
you are not given the benefit of doubt
you are not allowed to rise into your own phantom shell
like shellfish and crustaceans who protect themselves from the weight of the sea with their hard exoskeletons surviving on the refuse of the exterior environment
weighted on the scales at the market of vapid souls
and devoured without splendor by the cheerless bourgeoisie
because only the self-righteous think everyone else is a fool
needing scapegoats for their fragile occupation in the revenue stream
by which society allocates resources and income
and you think you are in the upper strata looking down
at the victims below
like paint which loses its color
squeezes itself into a dull darkened shade of grey
because we are all the same
just vulnerable creatures clinging to illusions
holding onto dreams or delusions
while still breathing

These folks hold the specter of anti-freedom as a bloody shirt. They call discussing national investment into infrastructure Government dictatorship, and praise something they call the free market as a glorious installation of democracy liberty.

So what is it when large firms of investment funds buy small businesses and properties all over the world and nation, then make decisions that are not in the best interests of the local communities and long-term economic policy of the nation? Using taxes to make national investments in the best interests of the nation is enshrined in the Constitution in the phrase "general Welfare of the United States."

GENERAL WELFARE CLAUSE. Article I, section 8 of the U. S. Constitution grants Congress the power to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States."

Seems to me that these purveyor's of nonsense ought to actually read the constitution they allege to defend and honor, instead of lambasting anything they don't like or can't make money off as the horrors of socialism because The New Deal did not fail, The GI Bill did not fail, The California Water and Agricultural Cooperatives did not fail, Social Security is not failing, Medicare is not failing. The internet did not fail either. Using taxes to provide for the General Welfare is not socialism. It is an American Constitutional solution to the reality that money and wealth tend to become authoritarian and aristocratic, rather than based upon fairness, justice, merit or actual need.

The sop to the corporate boondoggle actual makes our military worse. We spend more money on the military than the aggregate spending of the rest of the world, and at least 25% of the budget is unaccountable by standard accounting practices. On top of the throwing money at defense contractor sales pitches for projects that never work or constantly malfunction and/or are completely unreliable to the troops everyone worships to "respect".

Fuck these assholes. I love my country. We do not have to spent this much money to defend it. For what? A bottomless pit of corporate insider malfeasance?

Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas side stepped a question about the effect on farmer's by bringing up the sacrifices of United States military troops. He pivots to the patriotism issue immediately. He says we can win a war in Iran with two military strikes. Pathetic. What do they have on your soul Mr. Cotton to make you such an obvious tool?

Isn't it amazing how all these captured talking tools say one thing but the Mueller Report actually says something else. Read page one. The beginning of paragraph number 2 is ...

The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.

Click here because you need to read the report for yourself and not rely upon other people -- some of whom are stooges for the disreputable oligarchy. I will read it myself once school is over.

But ex-Marine Jesse Dollemore does an excellent job picking out the parts of the report that are damning.

Thank you Youtube.

I am the only Republican who will not cut Social Security or Medicare
-- Donald Trump

Translation: He wants to destroy Social Security and Medicare.

A compulsive liar always tells you want you want to hear in order to conceal their true intentions. Republicans are hired by their paymasters to lie to the lower classes and make them vote against their own interests based upon wedge issues that most of the aristocracy doesn't care about.

Case and point.

And after he lies he says "Who believes it?" -- as if he knows he just lied and enjoys getting over on the rubes who attend these narcissistic rallys.

Here is Randi Rhodes.

This man waxes vaingloriously about the morality of killing babies while he is lying. Your baby doesn't have a functional liver, or functional kidneys, or is going to have to live on life support for the rest of it's life -- is it immoral to have an abortion?

The backstop to the morality of all these positions is something called the soul. Is making a choice to terminate a pregnancy the same thing as extinguishing a soul? This view comes from people who see life as something that exists on a number line from zero to one: nothing before, nothing after. A tiny little segment in the midst of infinity that got extinguished by the villainous mother and heinous medical system. What a shallow view of spirituality.

Here is another view. Consciousness is another dimension that expresses itself in our domain, seizes or activates biological life as we know it, and then moves on, like a sine function. Forever. So rather than seeing abortion as denying a spiritual existence for all time, you made a difficult choice, but decided that forcing the evocation of spirit to endure such a menial existence was not the best decision for this current phase of that spiritual time line.

We are all just flares from the primordial spiritual dimension. There is nothing unique about this realm. It is just a compelling mirage. But there is great power over the vulnerable, and that is why our political masters have decided to milk this ticket and deluge their followers. They can hide behind a false morality and message the consciousness of the Pavlovian masses. They are standing up for what is good and true and right, after all; meanwhile ignoring the other 95% of the evil actually being done, because this is the magic shield that conceals the corruption.