“Because politicians are ALWAYS ‘out to get our goat.’”
Raise the age for Social Security, the right screams for John Kerry so they can get another teabagger in and we get thrown under the bus again? Remind me, who did we vote for this year?
-A-Non-E-Moose
While our government still happily continues to peel big bucks off its wad and shower it down on Wall Street, big business and the “war” machine like it was Christmas for banksters and war-mongers all year long whether they need it or not, all too many hard-working tax-paying victims of Hurricane Sandy out in Staten Island and Rockaway are still getting no help at all. Zero. Ziltch. Nada.
Nothing is currently being peeled off our government’s endless roll of big bucks for them.
Last week I was riding in a Muni bus over in San Francisco (on my way back from an audition to play a bored office worker in a student film) and on the bus was a very delightful older couple who seemed to have absolutely no cares.
“Where are you from?” I asked them.
“Rockaway,” they replied hesitantly. Rockaway? OMG! Not THAT Rockaway? “Yeah, that’s the one. And, yes, we did live through Hurricane Sandy and, yes, our home was badly damaged and almost destroyed.” http://www.phillipvan.com/filter/PHOTO/BREEZY-POINT
“So what the freak are you doing out here?”
“Having fun! After having survived a personal visit from Sandy, we realized that life is just too short not to enjoy it. So we came out here to have fun.”
“But did you at least get any help from FEMA?” I asked, figuring that after our government has spent trillions on bailing out Wall Street (where no one hardly ever pays taxes and pretty much lives on Welfare for the Wealthy), then the least that our government could do is send a measly few billion bucks off to bail out afflicted taxpayers in Rockaway. http://www.phillipvan.com/filter/PHOTO/ROCKAWAY-BEACH
“Have we received any help from FEMA? In a word? No.”
“Not even anything?” No.
“It’s been a whole month after Sandy and parts of Rockaway still don’t even have electricity now. Or places for people to go.”
“But did FEMA give you any money to help you out?” No.
“We got nothing but an avalanche of paperwork.” They didn’t even get bottled water. “A relative in Wisconsin finally ended up bringing us some.” And they can’t go back to their home because the wife has asthma and their house is a hell-hole of black mold right now. Ah, black mold, the bane of asthma sufferers’ existence.
“We just took out a 60-day insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London on our stuff and left.”
I tried to grill the happy couple for more information on what is happening in Rockaway right now — and right in the middle of the Christmas and Hanukkah season too — but they weren’t interested in being reminded. All they wanted to do was forget their worst nightmare and celebrate that they, unlike some of their neighbors, were still alive and had survived one of the fiercest mega-storms ever.
And as our bus drove on past Chinatown, the happy couple soon had all us passengers singing “Merry Christmas” — in Chinese. Brave souls. I almost cried.
PS: And in the spirit of Christmas, what would Jesus have done after Sandy? He woulda given government money to the happy couple instead of lavishing it all on Wall Street and war. And I bet He would have also levied a transaction tax on every stock and bond that was bought and sold at the N.Y.S.E and used that money to keep seniors, hurricane victims and the middle class from falling off our RepubliDem-created “fiscal cliff” — and would have kicked the moneychangers out of the temple too.
And them Jesus would have removed that tax-exempt status from every single church in America that supported bigotry, the NRA, corporate welfare and war. “Go Jesus!” Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Merry Christmas.
(Photos are by Leah Meyerhoff and Phillip Van, two of many New Yorkers who have volunteered their time to help out victims of this horrible mega-death storm)
EXTRA: I just figured out why the Mayans were right about December 21, 2012! It’s the exact day that climate change becomes irreversible. Duh.
We now only have a few shopping days left to do something about this.
Perhaps if we camped out all night in front of Best Buy or Target or WalMart the night before?
It’s the exact day that climate change becomes irreversible. Duh.
We now only have five shopping days left to do something about this.
Perhaps if we camped out all night in front of Best Buy or Target or WalMart the night before?
Author’s note:
I’m with you on that thought, Jane. Here’s more…
Full text:
In the wake of the horrible tragedy at an elementary school in Connecticut, with 20 small children and seven adults shot and killed weighing heavily on the conscience of America, many will look for quick and easy measures that can prevent something like that from happening again. Stricter gun control laws seem like the easy answer, but that is not the solution.
More gun control legislation, while sensible on many levels, is akin to plugging a small hole in a dam that is already cracked and gushing. That simply will not solve the problem of gun violence in this country.
The latest in a series of mass murders involving firearms will undoubtedly reignite the debate about gun control laws. Many will validly argue that laws should be stricter and the emotions of most Americans will be with them. Unfortunately, stricter gun control laws are only a small part of the solution to preventing firearm violence, because it is too late for them to have much of an effect. Political, social and economic changes, while more difficult to pinpoint and achieve, are the only hope for ending the culture of violence that the U.S. has become known for.
Even if the U.S. banned the sale of every firearm to everyone, which is unrealistic, that would still leave millions of guns already in the hands of Americans. A 2012 report by the Congressional Research Service estimated that as of 2009, there were about 310 million nonmilitary firearms in the U.S. and firearm sales have skyrocketed since then. Banning the sale of guns, like illegal drugs, would only make matters worse by creating a truly unregulated black market for them.
Keep in mind that the weapons used in the recent Connecticut murders and the Portland mall murders were not purchased or owned by the shooters. Stricter laws regulating the purchase of firearms, therefore, would not have prevented the Connecticut school shooting because the weapons used were already out there. Potential shooters will still have relatively easy access to firearms unless every firearm is confiscated, which is even more unrealistic than banning sales of guns. Furthermore, any attempts at confiscating guns from legal owners would probably result in more gun violence than it would be intended to prevent. It may even ignite a civil war.
Many will correctly argue that the 2nd amendment right to bear arms applies to a well-armed militia to guard against tyranny, not to ordinary citizens armed to the teeth in schools, movie theatres, churches and malls. Many will argue that more guns lead to more murders, which is statistically true. Many will argue that legislation such as the Tiahrt amendments and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 tie the hands of researchers and law enforcement while protecting firearm manufacturers from legal repercussions – also true. While all these arguments are valid and stricter gun regulation is becoming more popular, it misses the point.
The point is that America must embark on more deep and fundamental changes in order to end the culture of violence that has permeated American society throughout its existence. And that can only begin with a real examination of the social, political and economic circumstances that feed into the collective consciousness of American society and create the minds that pull the triggers. That will be difficult, if not impossible, but there are a few starting points.
Political Changes
Michael Moore, director of several documentaries including “Bowling for Columbine,” which examined the 1999 Columbine school shooting and its aftermath, was one of the first to take to Twitter after the Connecticut school shooting and demand stricter gun control laws. He makes a lot more sense in the video at the left than he does with his tweets.
The points he made in the aforementioned film also go deeper than gun control legislation. Other themes in the film are the fearful heart and soul of America and the militaristic culture our leaders have sown. Ironically, Moore points out, Colorado is the home of several defense contractors, including Lockheed-Martin in Littleton that manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
President Obama’s speech in the wake of the Connecticut massacre was warm and heartfelt by a nation in mourning. Americans should be thankful for a leader that can empathize with the victims and express that side of him. But left out of the minds of many are the amounts of children that have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and several other nations over the past 11 years as a result of U.S. foreign policy.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London reported that from June 2004 to mid-September 2012, drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen killed between 3,017 and 4,517 people, of which 544 to 1,119 were civilians, including at least 247 children. And that does not include civilian deaths in the countries that the U.S. invaded.
Assault rifles were shipped to drug cartels in Mexico by the U.S. Justice Department in the “Fast and Furious” operation, and the cartel wars in Mexico have claimed up to 60,000 lives with another 10,000 missing.
Americans have been taught to ignore or become desensitized to news like that – until something like it happens here. Then most wonder why. The same media outlets that are cheerleaders for the wars and virtually ignore the deaths of children in other countries, or describe it as collateral damage, are still engaged in nonstop coverage of the tragedy in Connecticut.
The same President who alluded yesterday to taking a closer look at gun legislation when the time is right presided over the proliferation of firearms to a neighboring country involved in a shooting drug war. The same leader who wiped tears from his eyes over the deaths of American children yesterday is the same one who said, “I have two words for you: Predator drones. You’ll never see them coming.”
While there is no excuse for 20-year-old Adam Lanza’s horrific actions yesterday in Connecticut, Americans should consider the sort of subliminal message that U.S. foreign policy and behavior towards people in other nations implant in the consciousness of American society.
Violence begets violence. Peace begets peace.
Social Changes
Political changes overlap with social changes. There is one glaring commonality with at least 14 of the school shooters since 1999. All of them were undergoing treatment for psychological disorders and were taking psychotropic medication.
Adam Lanza was said to have had a “personality disorder” and was undergoing treatment, which usually involves medication. The Columbine shooters were known to be on anti-depressants. Cho Seung Hui, the Virginia Tech murderer, was taking anti-depressants. James Holmes, The Aurora, CO movie theatre shooter was also undergoing treatment and taking prescribed medication, in addition to being affiliated with mind control research that his father pioneered with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).
Virtually all massacre perpetrators are known to have been taking a psychiatric medication, usually an anti-depressant, including:
• Jared Lee Loughner, the Arizona shooter
• Kip Kinkel
• Ted Kaczinski the “Unabomber”
• Michael McDermott
• John Hinckley, Jr.
• Byran Uyesugi
• Mark David Chapman
• Charles Carl Roberts IV, the Amish school killer
Perhaps some societal changes regarding health care and treatment for mentally ill patients before they get their hands on a gun and pull the trigger are another possible solution.
Many psychiatrists and psychologists in America are too quick to hustle patients in and out of their offices with a prescription in hand because health care is a profit-driven industry. The pharmaceutical companies want it that way and therapists make more money on quantity, not quality of treatment. Real behavioral modification or the time-consuming process of working with a patient through psychotherapy or group therapy has given way to handing out pills to patients like they are Skittles.
Some social changes in terms of the health care system may be in order. Perhaps Medicaid should be expanded to cover everyone with psychological issues. Of course, that entails more government spending, but most would agree that would have been worth preventing the deaths of those 20 children.
A single payer system that cuts out the profit-driven middlemen and gives therapists an incentive to spend more time with their patients, as well as a way of controlling the profits that drug companies reap, may be a part of the solution to keeping the fingers of potential homicidal maniacs off of triggers.
Economic Changes
The correlation between a bad economy and an increase in crime is debatable, with many studies showing that crime does not necessarily increase during tough economic times. The caveat in many studies, however, is that while violence and crime does not increase in the short term, there is little data available to examine that in the case of a prolonged recession.
Mark A.R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, told the Las Vegas Sun that while “there’s simply no correlation between crime rates and economic indicators such as unemployment…there is a correlation between crime and sustained poverty.”
Most of the perpetrators in the wave of mass shootings this year were young and several, including Holmes and Lanza, were described as being highly intelligent. While these are not economically motivated crimes like burglary or robbery, it is quite possible that Americans are starting to see the effects of an economy that gives many young people little hope to improve their lives or attain the same socioeconomic status of their parents despite having the attributes to do so.
The way to move up the economic ladder for young people used to be to earn a college degree. With tuition skyrocketing, student loan debts reaching crisis levels and 53 percent of recent college graduates jobless or underemployed, that is no longer the case. It does not make sense for young people to accrue tens of thousands of dollars of debt and then be forced to work for a wage they could have attained without going to college.
Another long term economic factor to consider is that many cities such as Detroit, Newark, and several in California have been forced to cut law enforcement budgets. If the economy does not improve, many more will follow.
We live in a culture where individual worth is defined by wealth and material possessions. One look at the mobs fighting it out for cheap Chinese-made goods on Black Friday is enough evidence of that. The link is to a video posted on You Tube, coincidentally, by a user named “funwithgunsinns.” However, one might ask, is that really a coincidence?
When some young people lose hope of attaining the sense of self-worth that is defined by our culture, they can develop a mind set that there is nothing to lose by putting a bullet in their head – or in someone else.
Even if the waves of mass shootings this year are not taken into consideration, there is no doubt that America needs economic changes. Economic changes also overlap with political and social changes.
The best steps to improving our economy are cutting spending, increasing revenue and bringing back or creating well-paying jobs. The easiest cuts can come through ending the wars and cutting defense spending. The best way to generate more revenue is to increase the amount of well-paying jobs and provide a better tax base. Tax incentives that stop outsourcing and make it more profitable for corporations to hire American workers than overseas workers, using some of the billions that are spent on wars and defense to invest in infrastructure and sustainable, clean energy may be a good start.
While none of the above provides a shred of excuse or even a good explanation for the senseless, horrible acts of mass murderers like Adam Lanza, they can contribute to a healthier social environment that reduces the propensity for gun violence. Of course, it is impossible to conclude that these measures would stop gun violence, but they would contribute to a culture that gives more young people more hope for the future.
Reasonable gun control laws are in order, but the real solution is to pursue deep, fundamental changes in American society. America needs to change more than just gun laws. It needs to change the culture of violence that leads to people using guns on their fellow citizens.
The other alternative is to pass a few more gun control laws, call it a day, waste away as a nation and witness more wasted lives, both overseas and at home.
Get links, video and a slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – Despite tragedy in CT, stricter gun control laws are not the solution
President Obama has just promised to take action against those who kill children in cold blood. One thing that he could do immediately to carry out this promise is to stop killing innocent children with his guns, missiles and drones — for no other reason than because they were born in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Palestine instead of in Connecticut.
400 innocent Palestinian children were shot in cold blood in Gaza during Cast Lead I. 48 innocent children and 12 innocent women were shot in cold blood in Gaza during Cast Lead II. Unarmed, these innocent women and children were slaughtered as they stood and had no weapons in the face of their killers — who were armed to the teeth. Tell me again how this is different (and more justified) than what happened in Connecticut?
PS: The shooter at Sandy Hook pretty much fits the national profile of a young person who had been prescribed anti-depressants and consequently the drugs made him nuts — a la Columbine. Also, here’s a link to Dr. Gary Kohl’s article on the sad effects of anti-depressants on adolescents. Scroll down to the bottom to see the impressively long list of young shooters who have gone postal while taking anti-depressants. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-colorado-batman-shooter-de-mystifying-mass-murder-in-america/32135
Author’s note:
A disclaimer – I am not bashing Obama. The only jobs a President can create are government jobs. Let’s hope congress can pass legislation that helps bringing decent jobs back to America or at least slows down outsourcing.
Full article:
According to a report released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were approximately 146,000 jobs added in the U.S. in November and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent, which would be the lowest since 2008. The report is based on a survey of households and employers, and does not accurately depict the reality of the jobless rate in the U.S. today.
The 7.7 percent rate is the government’s most widely publicized unemployment rate, known as the U-3, which takes into account only those who are collecting unemployment benefits and actively looking for work. It does not take into account those whose unemployment benefits have run out, those who have given up seeking work, those who are underemployed – desiring full time work but forced to work part time, or those who have dropped out of the labor force more than 12 months ago.
There is also a factor in the calculations known as “seasonal adjustments.” The BLS uses a software program known as X-12 ARIMA, a complex modeling algorithm, to factor in seasonal adjustments to the jobs reports. As with any software program, the results are only as good as what the data input is and the results are easily manipulated. Job growth reports from the BLS have a 100,000 jobs margin of error on a monthly basis, but outside of that margin they are 90 percent accurate.
In fact, the numbers in the reports are regularly (and quietly) revised each month. Last month’s jobs report suggested that the economy had added 148,000 jobs in September and 171,000 jobs in October. That has now been revised downward to 132,000 and 138,000, respectively.
According to the BLS report, 53,000 of the 146,000 jobs added in November were in the retail sector. That would obviously factor in as a seasonal adjustment, because most of those jobs will disappear after the holiday season. Combining that with the potential for a 100,000 job margin of error could mean job losses and a rise in the real unemployment rate last month. It is also difficult to factor in anomalies like the amount of people temporarily out of work due to Hurricane Sandy during the survey week, although the BLS reported that the effects of that were minimal.
Brad Plumer, writing for the Washington Post, explains the potential for discrepancy:
The discrepancy…has to do with what’s known as “seasonal adjustments.” The U.S. economy follows certain predictable patterns in hiring and layoffs every year. School districts always let workers go for the summer and hire in the fall. Retailers always staff up for the Christmas holidays and lay people off afterwards. Students always flood the labor market in June. And this is exactly what BLS does in its monthly jobs reports.
The BLS report releases the highly publicized U-3 unemployment rate along with a lesser known rate called the U-6. There are, in fact, six different scales of unemployment known as “alternative measures of labor underutilization,” that are numbered U-1 through U-6. The U-6 rate is the most inclusive gauge of the statistical unemployment rate in the U.S. because it takes into account “total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force.”
Another BLS report shows, for example, that the official U-6 unemployment rate for the state of Wisconsin is 13 percent. Nevada’s U-6 rate is 21.4 percent, up from just 7.6 percent in 2007. Washington State is at 17.1 percent. Economically troubled California has a 19.6 percent real rate, while Rhode Island is at 18.3 percent, more than double its 8.3 percent rate in 2007. Only four states, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Oklahoma have a U-6 rate that is under 10 percent.
Indeed, many have already pointed out that the lower unemployment rate has more to do with people dropping off the unemployment rolls and out of the labor force than with job creation, as evidenced by a reduction in the numbers reported in the labor force. See here and here.
Even the U-6 rate, however, does not accurately measure the true amount of eligible workers who are out of work.
The key words in that report are “marginally attached.” Persons marginally attached to the labor force are described as those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want to work, are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work.
Many Americans have given up on the job market and have not looked for work in the past 12 months. Many do not have a phone or mailing address through which to respond to a household survey. There is no way to count all of the unemployed in America who are no longer “marginally attached” to the labor force and according to some estimates that number is staggering.
These people have been called by CNN “The 86 million invisible unemployed” and that, taken together with some simple math, shows that the true jobless rate in the U.S. is far higher than 7.7 percent.
The total U.S. population is approximately 330 million. 24 percent of those, however, are young people not eligible to work and 13 percent are retired. So the total pool of available workers in the United States is 100% – (24% + 13%) = 63% of 330 million people, or about 208 million workers. The U.S. government officially admits that 7.7 percent of the labor force is “visibly” unemployed, which accounts for about 16 million people. Together with the “invisible” that means about 102 million Americans are available to work but do not have a full time job. And with 102 million out of 208 million available workers not working, the true jobless rate in the US right now is closer to 49 percent, not the 7.7 percent the U.S. government and corporate media is propagandizing about.
That calculation is consistent with a recent survey of income and program participation (SIPP) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau that shows that well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government. And that figure does not even include Social Security and Medicare.
The implications for the U.S. economy should be obvious. Government benefits for the unemployed merely provide enough for families to get by and cover basic living expenses. They leave no room for the type of discretionary spending that keeps businesses thriving in America. The amount of citizens out of work, not contributing revenue and receiving benefits, combined with billions in defense and war spending, bank bailouts, tax breaks for huge corporations that outsource jobs, etc., is simply unsustainable.
The only solution to the economic downturn in the U.S. is to bring back or create well-paying jobs in the U.S. Even though seasonal retail jobs that pay less than $10 per hour make good headlines in reports, they are not the solution.
Get links and a slideshow with graphs here: Madison Independent Examiner – 7.7% unemployment inaccurately depicts real jobless rate
At a local neighborhood meeting the other day, I made a comment that someone else didn’t like — and the next thing I knew this person was yelling at me BigTime. Perhaps she thought that the sheer volume of her voice would bully me into keeping the real 411 to myself. Not gonna happen.
I’ve been bullied all my life by all kinds of expert bullies. I’ve been threatened by terrorists in Iraq, chased by North Korean border guards, issued death threats by the IDF — and, even worse, raised in a Republican town! You can’t get much more bullied than that. So now I never back down for anyone — let alone someone who merely raises his or her voice.
And so, at the meeting, I used my “outside voice” on that bully — a voice that makes even dogs and bats hide under the bed. But did that make me feel any better? No, not even close. All I’d done was just to stoop to her level. Not good.
Bullies are people who, when they can’t win their arguments by truth, reason or logic, then result to violence, intimidation, lies and extortion. School-yard bullies use that technique. And, on the national and international level, it is also used by the Mafia, Al Qaeda, Fox News, the IDF, the GOP, America’s new militarized police forces and our new massive highly-weaponized armies happily dreaming of world-wide “pre-emptive war” at the taxpayers’ expense. So how do we protect ourselves against bullies? Not sure. Non-violent resistance is good — but losing one’s life in order to non-violently preserve one’s own self-respect is bad.
Strength in numbers is good (just look at what WalMart workers are achieving through their demonstrations) http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-johnson/46774/demonstrations-at-1000-stores-crack-walmart-anti-worker-wall – but getting pepper-sprayed and shot with rubber bullets by our new militarized police forces in the process is bad.
Raising our children to believe in Truth and Justice is good. Bullying our children with spankings and other types of brutal actions of the strong against the weak is bad. ANYONE can beat up a two-year-old.
Social media freedom and WikiLeaks are good. Media distortion and censorship is bad.
And, according to Dave Lindorff, climate change is bad for most of us but might be hunky-dory for bullies. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-lindorff/46776/thinking-the-unthinkable-what-if-america-s-leaders-actually-want-catastrophic-climate-change
When we decent folk stand up against bullies, no matter what it costs us, this makes us feel good about ourselves — but it also makes us feel bad because we have stooped to their level. But as Jesus, Buddha, etc. once said, “There is more good in human beings than there is bad.” And now, more than ever, it is time for the good part of our human nature to come out — and to stop kowtowing to bullies. And to stop BEING bullies as well.
But I digress.
What I really want to talk about here is the very nature of “war” — where the strong intimidate the weak and the biggest bully takes all. Unfortunately, it’s not the smartest or most creative or the kindest or the best or most hard-working person who takes it all — it’s the ones with the most weapons and the least shame.
In the last 65 years, America has become the biggest bully in the world. I’m ashamed to say that — but it is true. And all our super-macho armies and all our vainglorious wars, even the ones involving squabbling with other bullies over the same turf, don’t make us any better than what we really have become: Bullies.
We try to teach our kids not to be bullies — and then we ourselves turn around and wave flags and cheer and support all kinds of brutal bullying done by America’s vast war machine, even though we have armed and equipped these bullies ourselves; at the expense of our own jobs, homes, infrastructure, schools, lifestyles, elders and kids.
A few million years ago, dinosaurs were the ultimate bullies and mammals were the ultimate victims — in a race between the strong and the meek. But just look how things have turned out. Seen any dinosaurs around lately? I think not.
And who knows what new life-form will start evolving once our current human bullying “Masters of War” are extinct.
At the rate we are going — between the massive weapons races, the invasions and Occupations, the terrorism (state-sponsored and otherwise), the nuclear arsenals, whatever — it looks like the meek truly are going to inherit the earth. Again.
Author’s note:
While Americans face a big debate in congress over which “entitlement” programs, the Obama administration gets everything it wants and then some for the wars and the military-industrial complex. Yet right-wingers will still call him a socialist. Unreal…
Excerpt:
According to the White House, congress, economists and media pundits, America’s economy will fall off a “fiscal cliff” if a budget agreement between Democrats and Republicans is not reached by the end of the year. A closer look at the so-called fiscal cliff and the $631 defense bill that unanimously passed in the Senate yesterday puts the priorities of lawmakers into perspective.
Many of the seemingly apocalyptic events that would occur if a deal is not reached by the end of the year are reversible within a time frame that would not affect the economy. For example, tax increases would not be felt until 2014 and could easily be reversed with targeted legislation in 2013. Any cuts in entitlement programs could be dealt with in a similar manner.
The compromise last year was a result of the inability of congressional lawmakers from both parties to agree on how to trim the national debt. As John Stewart put it, “There’s an asteroid headed towards the Earth. We made it and fired it at ourselves, because otherwise we would never have done the hard work required to protect ourselves from asteroids.” It took a self-proclaimed comedian like Stewart to aptly describe it, because in the U.S., talk of a fiscal cliff has no connection to the actual level of consciousness of most working people at this time.
The “asteroid” took years to make and lawmakers are finally getting around to dealing with it. Yet the solutions proposed thus far by either party do not address the problems that created the massive debt that this nation has to deal with.
Part of the proposal of Democrats to avert the fiscal cliff is to let the Bush tax cuts expire on the top 2 percent of income earners, which is a step in the right direction because loss of revenue accounts for a large portion of the debt that the federal government accumulated over the past 11 years. Lower and middle class Americans cannot afford any tax increases at this time, while tax rates for the wealthy are at their lowest in recent history even though the wealthiest Americans are making more money than ever.
Obama and the Democrats also propose $1.5 trillion in cuts in discretionary spending over the next ten years, which would also produce about $250 billion in savings on interest, for a total of $1.7 trillion. Two-fifths of the $1.5 trillion come from defense, while the other three-fifths come from reductions in domestic and international programs. These reductions will shrink non-defense discretionary spending to its lowest level on record as a share of GDP, with data going back to 1962, and 25 percent of that spending goes to helping low income people in America.
The Republican counter-proposal is to keep the Bush tax cuts in place for the top 2 percent income earners and force even deeper cuts in discretionary spending. The GOP plan mixes $800 billion in higher tax revenue with cuts to Medicare and a stingier cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits, including a rise in the eligibility age for Medicare and reducing the inflation adjustment for Social Security benefits.
While the GOP proposal for spending cuts get no more specific than that, Erica Eichelberger writing for Mother Jones points out that Rep. Paul “62-percent-of-my-proposed-budget-cuts-come-from-poor-people-programs” Ryan will likely be leading the charge on the other side of the aisle. “He won’t be able to chop up the safety net to his liking, but he and his fellow Republicans will do what they can.”
Here are some social programs and their cost, considered to be “bargaining chips,” that have not been taken off of the table by either party:
The total cost of these programs is roughly $511.5 billion. The beneficiaries are mostly low-income Americans, the elderly, children, students and the unemployed. Several economists, including Paul Krugman and Austin Frakt, have crunched the numbers and shown that raising the eligibility age for Medicare and reducing the inflation adjustment for Social Security benefits “would inflict some serious hardship [on many Americans] for very little money.”
Yet the Senate yesterday passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a $631 billion dollar defense bill that already included some cuts over previous years, with a unanimous vote of 98-0. This bill includes $88 billion for war-funding and is $17 billion more than the Obama administration requested. While the Senate bill still has to be reconciled with the House version that passed in May, the voting process was done speedily and with little debate in order to get the bill passed before the looming “fiscal cliff” negotiations.
In other words, while the Obama administration gets everything it wants and then some without a fight in congress regarding the military budget and war-spending, lawmakers are getting prepared to fight it out over the social programs that matter most to lower and middle class Americans in these trying economic times. That shows where the priorities of lawmakers in both parties lie.
The fiscal cliff is really not a cliff or an asteroid, it is more like a slippery slope to austerity for the lower and middle class that can be averted without reaching the big deal that will be hyped this month by politicians and the corporate media.
The most significant factors that increased the federal deficit over the past ten years are increased defense spending, war-spending, loss of revenue from the Bush tax cuts and the economic downturn (see slideshow). Part of the revenue loss from the economic downturn that is largely ignored by politicians and the corporate media is the loss of well-paying jobs that provide a more robust tax base. Other than letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the top two percent and some marginal cuts in defense spending, few of the real issues that caused the massive debt are being addressed in the fiscal cliff debate.
Instead of bickering over which entitlement programs to cut, perhaps lawmakers should consider thinking outside of the beltway box and consider what is truly important for Americans right now. On the short list are jobs, infrastructure, foreclosures, cost of living, health care and a secure retirement plan.
The way to pay for improvements in those areas without creating more debt are to end the wars now, adjust security (i.e. the DHS) and defense spending to current needs, cut the $3+ billion in foreign aid to Israel until it complies with UN resolutions and the IAEA, tax corporations that ship jobs overseas, provide tax incentives to corporations that keep jobs in this country, and allow the tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest two percent of Americans.
Lower and middle class Americans cannot afford more austerity. The wealthiest Americans and the military-industrial complex can afford it.
Read the full article, get links and a slideshow with graphs here: Madison Independent Examiner – “Fiscal cliff” debates and defense bill reveal government priorities
Courtesy doityourself.com
This holiday season Ye Olde wishes for you to pause and think about the down and out, the momentary homeless because they have to leave for employment elsewhere. Think about the displaced families, and more important the displaced mistresses and mister-es-seses who get replaced by new, power seeking, mistress and mister-es-esses.
It’s so sad. Scribe speaks, well types, about our poor, unfortunate Congressmen and Congresswomen who go on break: often, and come back, occasionally. Head off to Washington to serve the people MOSTLY THEMSELVES.
The “pittance” they earn, and the pittance they continue to receive for the rest of their lives, is only augmented by the single payer health care that is so bad they don’t want anyone else to have it, except them. Once again: for the rest of their lives.
Holy crap, I am now 70 years old — and do you know what that means? “That you’re over the hill?” Well, maybe that too. But it also means I’m probably going to be one of the last living members of the “Greatest Generation”.
My parents, after surviving the Great Depression by living on walnuts and working three jobs apiece to get themselves through UCLA, were finally able to relax financially by 1941. They’d purchased a home. My pop had a job with the Los Angeles post office helping to set up Social Security accounts. My older sister was out of diapers. “It’s all good,” said my mother. “So let’s have another kid.” And thus I was happily conceived — two months before Pearl Harbor. Oops.
And that’s the true story about how I became a WWII child.
But a few years from now, I’m most likely going to become one of the last people alive on earth today who was also alive during World War II. And thus all of those words and phrases that every single American used to say every day will soon be totally forgotten. “Loose lips sink ships” and “Yes we can!” and “victory garden” and “scrap metal drive” and… Gone the same way as sayings and phrases used in the Civil War, the Napoleonic War, the Crusades.
Well, not to worry. Many of those World War II words and phrases are not only being still preserved today but are actually becoming living breathing facts-on-the-ground — in America and Israel of all places. Even as we speak, American and Israeli neo-cons are adding word after word from WW II to their modern-day dictionary.
Some of the favorite words among America’s 1% and Israel’s ruling 16 families right now come straight out of any half-way decent WWII lexicon. Coming alive right here, right now are words like “Blitzkrieg” and “Homeland” and “Stormtroopers”. Perhaps the words themselves have been changed in some cases — but both Israeli and American neo-cons are definitely hanging on to their meaning!
Of course “Blitzkrieg” has been retired in favor of the more hip “Shock and Awe” and “Cast Lead,” but the idea is exactly the same.
“Master Race” and “Aryans” have also become disappeared WWII words but, again, not to worry. They’ve still around — just morphed into phrases like “The Chosen People” and actions like the new Jim Crow voting laws in Florida.
“National Socialism” may also be an out-of-date phrase now– but it’s been easily replaced with words like “Neo-Con” and “Corporate Welfare” and “Endless War”.
“Non-consensual medical experiments”? In the 1950s, the U.S. fed unsuspecting citizens LSD just to see how they would react — and they reacted badly. That happened to a friend of mine, a young woman. It screwed up her life for many years.
And American and Israeli neo-cons performed that famous “ringworm” radiation experiment on approximately 100,000 Sephardi Jewish school children, killing many of them and giving many others horrible cancers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMp1tef4lg4.
Then there’s the more recent “U.S apologizes to Guatemala for infecting prisioners with syphilis” bit. Yuck! http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/10/01/us-usa-guatemala-experiment-idUSTRE6903RZ20101001
And don’t forget all the ongoing Israeli organ trafficking scandals either. “To fill this need [for organs] former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, then health minister of Israel, organized a big donor campaign in the summer of 1992. …While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.” http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/08/28/israeli-organ-harvesting/
Dr. Mengele would have been so proud.
And American and Israeli neo-cons no longer use that WW II term “Propaganda” any more. Why not? Because “Public Relations” sounds so much better. But no matter what you call it, a lie is still a lie.
World War II terms like “Sleeper Agents” and “Mole” are also popular words in America and Israel these days. Think Paul Wolfowitz, duel-citizenship, AIPAC, the CIA-Mossad connection and that truly weird “stand down” order from the Pentagon while Israeli fighter jets repeatedly bombed and strafed the USS Liberty http://www.usslibertyveterans.org/lvablog/#sthash.I2BA71mB.dpbs.
“Stalag”? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hExHLM2raJA Got that word covered too. Now we’ve got “Guantanamo” and “Gaza”.
Then there’s the phrase “Gestapho,” which clearly fits the description of Israel’s Shin Beth, apparently responsible for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin — among other things http://www.roitov.com/articles/rabin.htm. And in America, we used to have Conintelpro. But now we’ve got “Homeland Security”.
And since the creation of Cast Lead II against Gaza, even more World War II words and/or ideas have been preserved by Netanyahu and his Wolf Pack, including “Concentrations Camps” and “Lebensraum” and “Final Solution” http://www.palestinemonitor.org/?p=8579.
PS: In Palestine right now, another word is being used more and more frequently: “Nonviolence”. And nonviolent protests have become especially effective in the West Bank as Israeli neo-con forces become more and more sadistic and repulsive as “Greater Israel” reaches out for more and more “Lebensraum”. http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/11/23/roy/sctFniw6Wn2n9nTdxZ91RJ/story.html
But how can Palestine’s new and weak nonviolent forces possibly stand up to Netanyahu’s American-armed-and dangerous multi-billion-dollar Shock and Awe? There is a way. It’s called “hacking.” Or to use another WWII word, “Decoding”. A modern army such as the IDF runs not on manpower or F16s or white phosphorus or nuclear reactors or torture and other forms of breaking Geneva conventions. A modern army runs on computers. Hack them and the Big Guns are screwed.
This is also a lesson that the American and Israeli “Resistance” might need to learn too. If you truly want to defeat the neo-cons’ “Thousand-Year Reich,” don’t hoard ammunition, learn to fire assault weapons and survive in the woods. That’s too old skool. Get a degree in computer science instead. Then keep the GOP from hacking out voting machines. Join Wikileaks. Join Anonymous! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/17/anonymous-hacks-israel-all-your-base_n_2150881.html
PPS: Doesn’t anybody in Israel or America ever notice that “Occupation” never works? Apparently not. It didn’t work for the Vichy government in France or for the Japanese in Nanking or Bataan — or for the Americans in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan for that matter. And “Occupation” is not working out in Palestine either. 60 years of bloody occupation later, “The Resistance” there is still going strong.
Punishment always leads to resistance. This seems to be a basic rule of human nature. And with all these harsh Thousand-Year-Reich occupations, something always seems to go wrong! Kindness toward our fellow human beings always works better. Plus here’s an added extra benefit: Kind people don’t rot in Hell when they die. Or in Gehenna.
PPPS: For years now, American neo-cons have used the “Good War” idea to justify all kinds of Lebensraum brutality all over the world. And as for the Israeli neo-cons? They have become “Holocaust” ghouls — preying on the memory of the horrible suffering of European Jews during World War II in order to justify the infliction of this very same suffering onto the poor trapped “Warsaw Ghetto” Palestinians.
Author’s note:
Short answer, probably not. The U.N. recently voted to give Palestine observer status and Israel’s impetuous response is to approve about 3000 more “settlements” which is another way of saying they’re going to steal more of their land.
Excerpt:
As the conflict in Gaza approaches all-out war and civilian casualties increase daily, another cease fire agreement was announced On November 21 by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The agreement was brokered between Clinton, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, Hamas leaders, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The cease fire started at 9 p.m. Cairo time (1 p.m. CST).
Since late October, this is third cease fire and/or truce agreement between Hamas and Israel, two of which have not held.
While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when and by whom the initial escalation began, there were two periods of relative calm as truces were brokered between Israel and Hamas by Egypt’s President Morsi. In both instances, Israel was the first to break that truce.
The U.S. media sticks to the story line that Israel’s attacks on Gaza are a response to rocket fire from Hamas. But the rocket attacks on Israel that Hamas supposedly started were, in fact, a response to Israeli attacks, even after similar truce agreements.
After the October 28-29 flare-up of violence, in which the BBC reported that 26 rockets were fired into Israel “hours after an Israeli air strike in Gaza,” there was a period of relative calm. An Israel-based Twitter account, QassumCount @Qassumcount, that catalogues rockets that hit Israel recorded almost no rocket fire until one shot was recorded on November 5th, the day after an unarmed, mentally unfit man was shot dead by Israeli troops as he approached a border fence.
Then on November 8th, Israeli forces made an incursion into Gaza, leveling areas of Palestinian land amidst indiscriminate shooting by troops, artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships. During that round of violence, a 13-year-old boy, Hameed Abu Daqqa, was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli military helicopter while he was playing soccer.
It appears that a major escalation of violence took place from both sides after that incident.
Shooting a child who is playing soccer from a helicopter is a brutal and inhumane act. It was clearly intended to provoke a reaction by the Palestinians, who react to the murder of their children the same way anyone would, in this case by shooting at Israeli soldiers. Israel then retaliated by shooting two more children, and even opened fire on the funeral for one of them. Yet the first news about Israel and Gaza reported to the American audience was when militants in Gaza fired some rockets into Israel and Hamas was portrayed as the unreasonable aggressor who started it all.
Despite the situation at that time, yet another truce was brokered between November 11th and 13th, coinciding with a lull in rocket attacks. Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Gaza’s Hamas government, praised the main armed factions in the enclave for agreeing to a truce. “They showed a high sense of responsibility by saying they would respect calm should the Israeli occupation also abide by it,” he said.
The next day, November 14th, Israel broke the truce with the extrajudicial assassination of Hamas military chief Ahmad al-Jabari in an air strike. The Telegraph UK quoted other Hamas leaders saying that this act has “opened the gates of hell.”
The rest is history written in the blood of dead civilians, most which were innocent Palestinians, including women and children.
The U.S. government provides Israel with over $3 billion dollars of aid per year, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Yet Israel continually violates internationally brokered ceasefire agreements, U.N. resolutions and uses high tech weapons procured through the U.S. to shell, bomb and shoot at “militants” within a civilian population of 1.6 million, most of which are women and children, crammed into an occupied territory roughly twice the size of Washington D.C.
With homeless veterans in the streets of the U.S., many Americans struggling to make ends meet, and talk of falling off of the “fiscal cliff,” perhaps it is time for the American people to reconsider writing Israel blank checks. If in doubt, you can see your taxpayer dollars at work in the slideshow.
It will be interesting to see if this new cease fire holds, but if history repeats itself, it will not. And Americans will pay the bill.
Read more, get links, see a slideshow and video here: Madison Independent Examiner – Cease fire agreement in Gaza announced, but will it hold?
Did you know that, legally, you can tell or write down any damn lie that you please about anyone else on the planet — as long as you qualify it by saying or writing the magic word “allegedly” just before you start lying through your teeth? Apparently you can — because the use of “allegedly” changes a statement of fact into an opinion, and opinions do not have to be proven because, “pure opinions, by their very nature, cannot be proven true or false.” Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990) http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?id=27
And did you know that you can also say or write pretty much any damn lie that you please in any court document or in front of any judge in America as well — and not even have to use the word “allegedly” either? And especially if you are a lawyer? Apparently lawyers get to set their pants on fire in court even more freely than the rest of us schmucks. http://www.lawyeringlaw.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=pt.alert&url=/publications/detail.aspx?pub=547
I recently found this out the hard way when I filed a libel suit in small claims court because the defendants I was suing had (allegedly) lied their pants off about me in a probate matter where money was involved (and as we all know, where money is involved, anything can happen — and usually does).
The judge, however, then ruled against me — even though the defendants had clearly lied like rugs and I could easily prove it. So why the adverse ruling? Because apparently it is always okay to tell any kind of whopper one pleases about anybody — as long as said whopper is written or spoken in court documents or in front of a judge.
“You can say anything you want in a court document or in front of me,” said the judge, “due to what is called the ‘Litigation Privilege’.” Never heard of it. But obviously the defendants, one of whom was a lawyer, were (allegedly) VERY familiar with the term.
But then, of course, (allegedly) mendacious defendants then have to prove that what they say to a judge is actually true — in most courts. But (allegedly) you can say anything that you want in a Chicago probate or conservatorship court — and not even have to prove what you say is true. What’s with that?
(Allegedly) the Chicago probate and conservatorship system is set up so that if you might happen to see a rich old lady walking down the street, you can follow her home to get her 411, then go to court and tell the judge that said rich old lady is incompetent, ask to become her guardian, wait for her to die — and then spend her millions any way that you damn well please! Or, in many cases, you don’t even have to wait for her to die. You can just dump her in some sleazy flea-infested rest home and start living the Good Life right now.
So why is this information about (allegedly) sleazy probate courts in Chicago important to you and me too? Here’s why. We all are eventually going to die. Every one of us dies. That’s what all human being eventually do. We die. And when that eventually happens to us too, do we really want some (allegedly) corrupt probate or conservatorship court to be the one distributing our estate to whomever they please?
Hell no.
But it could happen. And it (allegedly) has already happened to some nice little old lady in Chicago named Mary Sykes http://marygsykes.com/. She was out bowling one day with her youngest daughter and while she was (allegedly) rolling strikes and splits, her elder daughter went off to court, got an illegal conservatorship order against Mary, drilled out her safety deposit box illegally, made off with a whole mail-sack full of Double Eagle gold coins and is now living the good life while her mom is being forced to choke down unneeded drugs to keep her sedated in some God-awful rest home because her elder daughter has also sold her house. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6FbJzwtHocwU2hVcXpRaWpoM0k/edit?pli=1
This could happen to you too.
Where money is involved, anything can happen.
And with all these millions of baby-boomers floating around bowling alleys these days, it is definitely time to tighten up America’s probate and conservatorship laws so that you and I don’t end up like Mary Sykes. Well, at least you. No worries for me — because while I do have several “unpredictable relatives,” I don’t own a house or have a safety deposit box.
PS: The Berkeley-Albany Bar Association just held their latest MCLE seminar — this time on the subject of America’s current marijuana laws. Did you know that pot is legal 19 states right now? The Feds, however, have completely ignored this current trend and have been brutally cracking down on medical marijuana users in the last two years — and spending tons of billions of dollars doing it too. Why the big crack-downs? Because (allegedly) there are big bucks to be made if you own a prison or work for the DEA.
“But,” you might say, “what does all that have to do with the elderly?” A lot.
Since senior citizens and retirees compose one of the largest groups of legal medical cannabis users in America today, and also compose one of the largest groups living in subsidized housing, then as the Feds enthusiastically pursue their current policy of throwing legal medical cannabis users living in subsidized housing out on the streets, there is going to a LOT more poor sweet homeless elders hopelessly shuffling around America’s freeway-on-ramps, selling oranges, begging for spare change and living in cardboard boxes in their old age. Yuck!
PPS: Getting old and creaky in the knees is already bad enough — but to also face the added burden of possibly being handed down a life sentence to some old-folks-home-from-Hell and robbed blind by our very own conservator and/or be thrown in jail by the local Feds merely for seeking pain relief? We might as well have lived fast and died young!
Author’s note:
This piece was inspired by reading the main page, so I am going to reprint it in its entirety. Thanks for the great ideas, bart! I credited your site on all of the slides and linked to it in the sources.
Article:
Yes, you heard that right. There are people in every state in the U.S. that have submitted and signed petitions to ask permission for their state to secede from the United States of America. The petitions specifically mention injustices suffered under the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
As of today, there are 830,618 signatures on these petitions. Petitions in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas have surpassed the 25,000 signature threshold required in order to elicit an official response from the White House.
The U.S. population in 2012 is roughly 312.8 million people. So the signatories amount to roughly 0.27 percent of the U.S. population, yet these people want entire states to secede from the United States.
So, here’s an OpEd for anyone that wants their state to secede from the union:
I have a few questions for secessionists. If you .27 percenters don’t like the way the rest of your fellow Americans voted, then why not just leave? Most of the petitions ask for permission to “peacefully grant to withdraw.” Why are you begging for permission like little kids? Why not get up and leave and show the world how you feel? Stick to your principles. Move away and take FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the Palin family with you. If you do, America’s average IQ will probably go up 40 points.
I’m sure you can find another country where less than one percent of the population can dictate policy to the other 99.7+ percent. There are countries that mix religion and politics, persecute homosexuals, do not give women equal rights, do not tax the ultra-rich, and do not hold free elections. They may make a good fit for you. Try Iran or Saudi Arabia first and if that doesn’t work for you, I’m sure there are several other third world dictatorships that’d be happy to have you.
Don’t even think about Australia, though, because they have single payer universal health care, strict gun laws, compulsory voting, no death penalty, pro choice when it comes to contraception, openly gay politicians and judges, an unmarried atheist as a Prime Minister, and evolution is taught in all schools.
And I wouldn’t recommend Canada either, because you probably already know how horrible their “socialist” health care system is from listening to Fox news. In fact, most of “socialized” Europe wouldn’t be recommended, because citizens and businesses in many European countries pay higher taxes than Americans so they can have things like universal health care, a public transportation system that makes America’s look like a third world country’s, dams and levee systems that actually do protect them from flooding and businesses that are regulated and required to allow 30-35 hour work weeks and up to 6 weeks of paid vacation for all employees. You’d hate all the “socialists” there.
Listen crybabies, half of the voters in this nation had to put up with stolen elections in 2000 and 2004 and a President that they didn’t like. You didn’t see any petitions to secede then, did you? You didn’t see the other half of the electorate crying to secede and signing online petitions when Bush created the TSA and rammed the PATRIOT Act down our throats. Where were your petitions while the Bush administration created these agencies, passed legislation like that, started unnecessary wars, let Wall Street run amok, and bankrupted our country?
Real Americans support the United States of America and work within its political system to change leadership. They work within its judicial system to change laws. For example, some of the “liberal elite” that you seem to despise, such as Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Wolf, Cornel West, and Daniel Ellsberg were the first to challenge the NDAA with a lawsuit.
Alaska’s petition asks for a “free election” to allow citizens of Alaska to decide if they “should be a free and independent nation.” That’s a stupid thing to write. Every state has a right to hold their own elections whenever they want to. The U.S. just had a free election and every American had a chance to vote in it, except for the Ron Paul delegates.
Texas has the most signatures? Fine, invade Mexico, move your border south 200 miles and rename your state Tejas – we’ll do OK without you. Just go away and don’t ask to come back when you lose the revenue from the 20 or so military bases there. Have fun patrolling your own borders when the border patrol is removed. And don’t cry for help when the next hurricane hits. Texas would be a third world country in no time without being part of the U.S. Besides, the blue states would get most of your electoral votes, thereby nearly ensuring that we’d never have to put up with one of your politicians running, excuse me, ruining the country again.
And as for you Floridians that signed this – fine, your state can go too. With all your retirees and welfare recipients off the rolls, it would help balance the Medicaid, Social Security and federal budgets. And same goes for you when the next hurricane hits. Good luck having your newly free and sovereign state pay for all of that!
I have seen dozens of posts in blogs from secessionists about taking “our” country back. Whose country is it if it isn’t ours? Yours? How is it logical or even sane to call it “our” country when you make up less than one half percent of the population? Take your country back from what? The black man in the white house?
So now, you sign petitions asking permission for your state and everyone else in it to secede because you don’t like the election results? Are you kidding me? Instead of asking permission for your state and the other 99.7+ percent of sane people who live there to secede, why not move to a better country? If I were President Obama I would be laughing at your petitions. I’d put all of you at the top of the waiting list for passports and personally stamp them.
Real Americans stick with their country no matter what happens and if they do not like something, they get involved to try to change things from within, not try to break up the country. Anyone with a functional brain, who understands politics knows that the chances of secession being granted to any state are about the same as you being abducted by aliens, dropped in a Bigfoot encampment, and being served gluten-free pizza there. So, your best bet is to pack it up and go if you hate America that much.
It’s funny that more than one petition was filed in several states – the people signing these probably can’t read and forgot someone else already filed it for them. It is also ironic that all of the states who garnered more than 25,000 signatures are states that are vulnerable to hurricanes and have recently received federal disaster aid. And if you secessionists are so worried about the NDAA and that “dictator” Obama, then it was real bright to sign your name for secession on a government web site. You probably saved the Department of Homeland Security a lot of time and the taxpayers some money by making it easier for them to add your names to their watch list.
A small percentage of the population are acting like petulant children that kick over the game board when they know they’ve lost. So, I put together a fun slideshow for you secessionists. It’s called “Deal with it or LEAVE!”
Have fun watching!
Get the other links, credits and slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – Petitions from 50 states to secede from the U.S.
You can view another version of this on OpEdNews: A few questions for secessionists.
Israel’s jingoistic prime minister Bibi Netanyahu, whose popularity as just sunk once again in the polls, is now trying to pull off another Hail-Mary play before the January elections — by once again unleashing massive “Cast Iron” death squads by land and by air onto the trapped and vulnerable people of Gaza.
Killing Iranians has its dangers.
Killing trapped and defenseless Palestinians, however, is like shooting fish in a barrel.
If Bibi’s poorly-thought-out actions should stir up a sudden guerrilla war in Israel/Palestine — as doomed and desperate Palestinians, following in the brave tradition of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto resistance fighters before them, try to fight back even though it is hopeless — then Netanyahu will deserve what he gets: To go down in history as a bully, a sadist, a tyrant, and a pariah to all righteous men.
I recently went to a showing of an excellent British mini-series called “The Promise” http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-promise/articles/video-the-promise-trail. Filmed in Israel, it depicts the struggles of one brave English soldier at the end of the British Mandate period — as he futilely tries to save the lives of his Palestinian friends and fellow-soldiers during the violent and pitiless 1948 takeover of the Holy Land by Zionist thugs.
During this movie, I cried a lot.
And after the film was over and refreshments were being served (“Never turn down free food,” is my motto!), I had an interesting conversation with some guy who currently works down in Silicon Valley.
“You know,” he said, “things are changing rapidly in Israel right now.”
“You mean that it’s no longer the same-old same-old there any more? With Israeli neo-cons trying to pass themselves off as pious Jews while happily committing mass murder and partying all night in Tel Aviv — and Christians and Muslims constantly getting beat up and shot at for the crime of making olive oil while Palestinian?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq2MpG4gQgk
By this time I had become rather cynical about Israeli neo-con mercenaries and land-grabbers — almost as cynical as I’ve become about the neo-con mercenaries and land-grabbers here in America too.
“Well, of course there’s still that,” the techie guy replied, “but something else is happening in Israel now as well. People have started to leave there en masse. And not just the usual ones either — not just the poor abused Palestinians still trying to sneak over the border into Jordan or Egypt. And not the discriminated-against Sephardi Jews either, at the very bottom of the Israeli social pecking order, last hired and first fired, who you wouldn’t want dating your daughter.” http://www.mayacafe.com/forum/topic1sp.php3?tkey=1237163771
“Then who?”
“The technological elite in general are now leaving in large numbers. And formerly-Russian tech experts in particular are leaving as fast as they can.” Interesting. Hmmm.
“Are you talking about the kind of people referred to in all those Israeli-sponsored subway ads,” I replied, “bragging that Israelis have invented thus-and-so hot new gadget or found a cure for this or that horrendous disease? Those are the ones that are leaving?”
“Like rats from a sinking ship.” I guess no one with any brains wants to keep living in a country where its leaders are always either declaring war, waging war or industriously hunting for a new war to declare.
“This new brain-drain is actually happening right now — and pretty soon all the people who will be left living in Israel will be the hotel maids, the IDF hard-liners, the land-grabbing neo-cons and racists, haters and religious nuts.” Good grief. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33005.htm
“You have to understand that much of the current Israeli scientific community had originally immigrated to Israel from Russia in order to get away from all the persecution, corruption, wars, lack of civil rights and poverty that existed there before, during and after the breakup of the old USSR.” And from the winters of course.
“Many of these Russian immigrants were not even Jews. They were gentiles who just wanted to get out. And, once in Israel, they discovered that it wasn’t the land of milk and honey that they had expected. And so now they are leaving Israel also, moving on.”
“Where to?”
“Here.”
PS: I’m currently in the middle of reading Jimmy Carter’s fascinating memoir, “White House Diary”. Good grief! If only we had elected Carter for another four years instead of that lying skunk Reagan, America would be in so much better shape right now. For instance, the whole world loved Jimmy for his heroic stands on civil rights, which gave the United States even more love, sympathy and cachet back then than we’ve ever had since, even on the day after 9-11 (before Bush bungled it).
And Carter didn’t “give away” the Panama Canal either. He traded it for the whole world’s good will and to make up for what Nixon, Kissinger and the CIA had done to Chile, Argentina, etc. Back then, Carter could go into almost any country on the planet and get a standing ovation — while Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes only got rotten tomatoes.
Plus if we had listened to Carter back in the day, perhaps global warming, 9-11, Hurricane Sandy and Karl Rove also might have been avoided!
And if only we had listened to Carter back when he warned us again and again about how Israeli neo-cons spoke with forked-tongues. And they still do. And now we’ve got a whole new crop of neo-con serpents all of our own here in America as well! Plus now various neo-con Red States are actually threatening to secede. Ah, if only they WOULD. Just think of all the money the rest of us would save.
Can’t you just picture Arkansas out spending billions of dollars on its 800-odd military bases around the world or dealing with the Benghazi crisis? Or Alabama supplying Israel with F16s, cluster bombs and white phosphorus? Or South Carolina scaring China into adjusting its trade deficit? Or oil-depleted Texas trying to intimidate OPEC, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, Venezuela and the Saudis? Or Tennessee happily trying to tell Putin or even North Korea to go to hell?
Now that I think about it, secession could actually be the final key to finally putting an end to America’s “endless wars”.
Maybe Lincoln should never have tried to save the Union after all — except for perhaps New Orleans and Nashville.
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