This pegs it. - Patriotic Resistance
The Dinner Roll ..
Once upon a time I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the
President.
I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips
for
computers and portable electronics.
There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the
administration, but I paid it no mind. I live in a FREE country.
There's nothing that the government can do to me if I've broken no
laws.
My wealth was EARNED honestly, and an invitation to dinner with an
American President is an honor.
I checked my coat, was greeted by the Chief of Staff, and joined the
President
in a yellow dining room.
We sat across from each other at a table draped in white linen. The
Great
Seal was embossed on the china. Uniformed staff served our dinner.
The meal was served, and I was startled when my waiter suddenly reached
out,
plucked a dinner roll off my plate and began nibbling it as he walked
back to
the kitchen..
"Sorry 'bout that," said the President. "Andrew is very
hungry."
"I don't appreciate..." I began, but as I looked into the calm brown
eyes across from me, I felt immediately guilty and petty. It was just a
dinner roll. "Of course," I concluded, and reached for my
glass.
Before I could, however, another waiter reached forward, took the glass
away
and swallowed the wine in a single gulp. "And his brother, Eric, is
very thirsty," said the President.
I didn't say anything. The President is testing my compassion, I
thought.
I withheld my comments and decided to play along. I don't want to
seem unkind..
My plate was whisked away before I had tasted a bite.
"Eric's children are also quite hungry."
With a lurch, I crashed to the floor. My chair had been pulled out from
under me.
I stood, brushing myself off angrily, and watched as it was carried from
the
room.
And their grandmother can't stand for long."
I excused myself, smiling outwardly, but inside feeling like a fool.
Obviously I had been invited to the White House to be sport for some
game. I reached for my coat, to find that it had been taken.
I turned back to the President.
"Their grandfather doesn't like the cold."
I wanted to shout, "that was my coat!" But again, I looked at
the placid smiling face of my host and decided I was being a poor sport.
I spread my hands helplessly and chuckled.
Then I felt my hip pocket and realized my wallet was gone. I excused
myself and walked to a phone on an elegant side table.
I learned shortly that my credit cards had been maxed out, my bank
accounts
emptied, my retirement and equity portfolios had vanished, and my wife
had been
thrown out of our home.
Apparently, the waiters and their families were moving in. The
President
hadn't moved or spoken as I learned all this, but finally I lowered the
phone
into its cradle and turned to face him.
"Andrew's whole family has made bad financial decisions. They
haven't planned for retirement and they need a house. They recently
defaulted on a subprime mortgage. I told them they could have your
home.
They need it more than you do."
My hands were shaking. I felt faint I stumbled back to the table and
knelt on the floor.
The President cheerfully cut his meat, ate his steak, and drank his
wine.
I lowered my eyes and stared at the small grey circles on the
tablecloth
that were water drops.
"By the way," he added, "I have just signed an Executive Order
nationalizing your factories.
I'm firing you as head of your business. I'll be operating the firm now
for the benefit of all mankind.
There's a whole bunch of Erics and
Andrews out there and they can't come to you for jobs groveling like
beggars...we need to spread YOUR wealth around..."
I looked up. The President dropped his spoon into the empty ramekin
which
had been his crème
Brule.
He drained the last drops of his wine. As the table was cleared, he lit
a
cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
He stared at me. I clung to the edge of the table as if it were a ledge
and I were a man hanging over an abyss.
I thought of the years behind me, of the life I had lived. The life I
had
earned with a lifetime of work, risk and struggle.
Why was I punished? How had I allowed it to be taken? What game had
I played and lost? I looked across the table and noticed with some
surprise that there was no game board between us.
What had I done wrong?
As if answering the unspoken thought, President Obama suddenly cocked
his head,
locked his empty eyes to mine, and bared a million teeth, chuckling
wryly as he
folded his hands.
"You should have stopped me at the
dinner
roll," he said.
WAKE UP AMERICA !!!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Just DIE, Already
when the government makes more money if you die - Patriotic Resistance
when the government makes more money if you diePosted by rich sabatini on March 30, 2010 at 7:46pm
Send Message View rich sabatini's blog
.Have your done your laundry yet?
What if you were to go down the cellar, open the hatch to your Maytag top-loader, and fill 'er up? It would work fine - it was designed for just that.
Now let's say after you start the machine, you decide to give it a test: you re-open the lid, and slowly, you add a pair of socks to the wash cycle; then a pair of underwear; then a T-shirt; now a towel.
Suddenly, the agitator begins to churn more slowly.
But you go on: you add another pair of socks; another T-shirt; and then, after a wash cloth, the poor machine is now heaving noticeably - making ominous groaning noises.
But you decide to go for broke: in goes another T-shirt; another wash cloth, and then, after adding a pair of jeans - zzzzzzssst! - the washer suddenly stops, with bluish smoke emerging from underneath - the HD electric motor has died.
Then on the door hatch, you notice the warning at the bottom: "DO NOT OVERLOAD!"
But is this not the perfect analogy for our fine-running, WORLD-LEADING already-existing US healthcare system? - and what's about to happen to it?
What if you woke up with a severe earache? Would you not be able to get in to see your doctor, probably within a few hours? - if not sooner?
And even if one had no regular family doctor, could you not just as easily peruse the "otolaryngologists" section of the yellow pages, and make an appointment for that SAME DAY?
And even if it were a Sunday/holiday, could you not expect treatment at some local emergency room, before you went insane with the pain? Ear aches are nothing to fool with!
But on March 21, 2010, 219 democrats callously decided to fool with 300 million Americans' lives - taking away their freedom to choose not only one's doctor, but what kind of treatment one shall receive, and WHEN one can obtain it - the essence of government-run healthcare.
Indeed, starting in 2014, God have mercy on ANYONE who wakes up with a severe pain, and expects treatment that day.
By then, hundreds of thousands of US doctors will have retired - unwilling to cede their judgment, their liberty, and well-deserved incomes. Emergency rooms will experience such crowding that average waiting times may exceed 18-24 hours - even longer!
And who cares? After all, it's the government in charge, with no incentive to do anything right, or within its proper time span.
Indeed, if you thought calling the Social Security office and/or Bureau of Motor Vehicles was fun, you'll have a blast once the federal government runs the colossus of 17% of the economy- the US medical establishment.
Think about it: an uncaring, unfeeling, slovenly bureaucrat, in charge of every US hospital... overseeing every doctor, and lording over every health insurer!
How's that for starters? Now add 47 million "disadvantaged' coming out the wood work, getting in line (in front of YOU) for FREE healthcare.
Currently, the uninsured simply refrain from doctors save for a major emergency. But with Obamacare, you'll have all of these people going on a regular basis. It’s like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only a few buses, in need of repair.
Inner city patients - where aids, VD, diabetes and drug addiction are rampant - will totally overwelm the current system; within months it will mean declining services for everyone. It will totally shock those who thought they had still had alternatives: you will NOT!
Remember, now that Obamacare is the law of the land, there are NO exits. One must accept what the feds offer you. They are in total control of YOUR life. No one is permitted to go “outside” the system and pay for services not covered by the government!
Costa Rica anyone?
Now let's revisit our washing machine analogy:
The very word "rationing" is a political poison pill. No politician will EVER mention it. But they need not. It's in the law.
With tens of millions of illegals and "disadvataged" - now flashing their new healthcare cards - along with the inevitable DECREASE in the supply of US physicians (and nurses), what then?
The health care system (washing machine) begins groaning. And after a few years of overloading- it STOPS! Ergo, rationing will automatically come to the fore, leaving you, or your elderly parents, or your handicapped child OUT!
Rationing healthcare - which is intentionally withholding at least some useful treatment from at least some people who would benefit - is absolutely unavoidable in ANY publicly funded healthcare program.
Sure. Everyone will be covered under Obamacare. But what good is "being covered" if one can't receive proper treatment, or within a reasonable time-span?
You will suffer. You will die.
That's right fellow Americans - if you wake up and discover some strange lump, or blood in your urine, or have an overwhelming cluster headache (ominous signs of a brain tumor), what then?
You may NOT be able to see the urologist or oncologist on time. There no longer may even be one in your area. You will be denied diagnostic procedures (CAT- scan, X-ray, MRI, radio-assay) because some faraway Washington bureaucrat deemed it "too costly."
The one unavoidable outcome of rationing is that it soon begins to feed on itself:
In a physician survey (conducted December 2009 by The Medicus Firm) 24.7% of physicians stated that they would "retire early" if Obamacare is implemented. An additional 21.0% of respondents stated that they would quit practicing medicine, even though they are nowhere near retirement.
With more physicians retiring because of lower incomes, who will want to become doctors? While at the same time, a burgeoning US population - bolstered by proliferating minority births- will place huge new demands on the system for health services.
What then?
Does anyone recall when demand outstrips supply? Either costs go up or services decline - or both! With any government-run system, one gets the WORST of both worlds.
Imagine: tens of millions of new patients, and 1/3 of the doctors leave? Does that not portend pandemonium in everyone's healthcare future?
And even if every doctor stayed, consider the long lines: all the new "customers" entering the system, with no concomitant increase in care providers nor hospitals.
Once again, we're talking about 47 million "disadvantaged" - paid for by people who work- yet everyone will receive the same level of disservice.
The tragedy of all this is that millions of Americans - who've paid into Medicare (all of their lives) - have officially been swindled by the democrats. They'll now have their benefits reduced; and those who've never paid a dime into the system will have "healthcare for all."
Now examine the code phrase "benefits reduced." Is that not another meaning for rationing? Does it not imply pulling the plug on grandma? Or denying treatment to grandpa altogether for his prostate cancer, because some chart indicates he's beyond his "useful years?"
Can't we see the utter totalitarianism that is about to descend upon us?
What will happen to America in another decade under socialized medicine? What will become of our families? Is this not why 70% of us are experiencing disquiet in our outlook, now that Obamacare has been forced upon us?
And with 2700 pages of legal jargon, can anyone predict the future disruption, or answer the plethora of questions that will certainly emerge within the next few years?
What about dentists? What about veternarians? What about your chiropractor, the only one who knows how to keep the pain of your bad back in check?
What shall become of them?
And what about osteopaths? Or those who practice naturopathic (herbal-vitamin) medicine? How many will fall by the wayside because of the totaltarian collar placed over them under Obamacare?
And what about physical therapists? Or home health care aids? Or nursing home employees? Or hospice workers?
With the stark inevitability of rationing, how many hundreds of thousands of "unnecessary" medical jobs will be eliminated, as the government is forced to save money - brought on by the exponential increase in demand for services, with only incremental means of increasing revenue (taxation) into the system.
Obamacare's numbers make no sense. What were these democrats thinking? Who amongst us can believe that that the government can cover 47 million more people with better quality care at lower cost?
Democrats have yet to explain how - even with the current number of physicians and nurses - they can cover so many more people while lowering costs at the same time.
And by 2015, when all the pandemonium and misery ensue, what will have become of these same democrats who have legislated this horror upon us? - yet they've conviently exempted themselves, their families, and their overloaded staffs.
Indeed, there are a lot of things they refuse to explain, with NONE of them having read the bill - uncaring of its totalitarian consequences.
Is this not the ultimate hypocrisy?
But why would anyone be willing to unravel the world's non-pareil medical establishment, and impose an imcompetent, blood-sucking, deficit-building, non-functioning anti-healthcare system upon the great unwashed masses?
That's right America. That's exactly how these radical leftist ideologues see every one of us. They are socialists. They view us with contempt. They believe that by imposing government -run healthcare, we are getting what we deserve: totalitarian control over every aspect of our lives.
But how they got this way is anyone's guess. But nonetheless, they have put in place a system that will slowly eat away at the American dream - rendering us all miserable serfs, at the mercy of some easy-living government vassal.
Recall the old saying...(quote) "When you have your health, you have everything."
But in a few short years - with the government in charge - if one gets sick, can we trust that we will ever regain our health? Will some uncaring bureaucrat condemn us to a life of misery- denying care for a badly arthritic hip? - or a severely-disfunctional knee?
Or if a mother should raise an autistic-plagued child, or bear a Down's syndrome baby, what shall become of them when their lives are regarded as useless: i.e. that they could never grow up and become a productive (i.e. tax-paying) worker - another cog in the socialist gears of society.
But this is what Socialism and government-run healthcare are about - redistributing the wealth: reducing America into a mere shadow of Her once-mighty self.
The democrats have outdone themselves. They've accomplished the near-impossible: they have enslaved a free nation by convincing them that indeed - they CAN get something for nothing: the "right" to government-run healthcare.
But as an old conservative once said: "If you think healthcare is expensive, just wait until it's free..."
-You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by taxing the wealthy.
-The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from someone else.
-You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
(QUOTE)..."We cannot expect the Americans to jump from Capitalism to Communism,
but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of Socialism - until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism."
- Soviet -Russian Leader ~ Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
Thaks a lot Mr. Obama: here's to your health.
when the government makes more money if you diePosted by rich sabatini on March 30, 2010 at 7:46pm
Send Message View rich sabatini's blog
.Have your done your laundry yet?
What if you were to go down the cellar, open the hatch to your Maytag top-loader, and fill 'er up? It would work fine - it was designed for just that.
Now let's say after you start the machine, you decide to give it a test: you re-open the lid, and slowly, you add a pair of socks to the wash cycle; then a pair of underwear; then a T-shirt; now a towel.
Suddenly, the agitator begins to churn more slowly.
But you go on: you add another pair of socks; another T-shirt; and then, after a wash cloth, the poor machine is now heaving noticeably - making ominous groaning noises.
But you decide to go for broke: in goes another T-shirt; another wash cloth, and then, after adding a pair of jeans - zzzzzzssst! - the washer suddenly stops, with bluish smoke emerging from underneath - the HD electric motor has died.
Then on the door hatch, you notice the warning at the bottom: "DO NOT OVERLOAD!"
But is this not the perfect analogy for our fine-running, WORLD-LEADING already-existing US healthcare system? - and what's about to happen to it?
What if you woke up with a severe earache? Would you not be able to get in to see your doctor, probably within a few hours? - if not sooner?
And even if one had no regular family doctor, could you not just as easily peruse the "otolaryngologists" section of the yellow pages, and make an appointment for that SAME DAY?
And even if it were a Sunday/holiday, could you not expect treatment at some local emergency room, before you went insane with the pain? Ear aches are nothing to fool with!
But on March 21, 2010, 219 democrats callously decided to fool with 300 million Americans' lives - taking away their freedom to choose not only one's doctor, but what kind of treatment one shall receive, and WHEN one can obtain it - the essence of government-run healthcare.
Indeed, starting in 2014, God have mercy on ANYONE who wakes up with a severe pain, and expects treatment that day.
By then, hundreds of thousands of US doctors will have retired - unwilling to cede their judgment, their liberty, and well-deserved incomes. Emergency rooms will experience such crowding that average waiting times may exceed 18-24 hours - even longer!
And who cares? After all, it's the government in charge, with no incentive to do anything right, or within its proper time span.
Indeed, if you thought calling the Social Security office and/or Bureau of Motor Vehicles was fun, you'll have a blast once the federal government runs the colossus of 17% of the economy- the US medical establishment.
Think about it: an uncaring, unfeeling, slovenly bureaucrat, in charge of every US hospital... overseeing every doctor, and lording over every health insurer!
How's that for starters? Now add 47 million "disadvantaged' coming out the wood work, getting in line (in front of YOU) for FREE healthcare.
Currently, the uninsured simply refrain from doctors save for a major emergency. But with Obamacare, you'll have all of these people going on a regular basis. It’s like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only a few buses, in need of repair.
Inner city patients - where aids, VD, diabetes and drug addiction are rampant - will totally overwelm the current system; within months it will mean declining services for everyone. It will totally shock those who thought they had still had alternatives: you will NOT!
Remember, now that Obamacare is the law of the land, there are NO exits. One must accept what the feds offer you. They are in total control of YOUR life. No one is permitted to go “outside” the system and pay for services not covered by the government!
Costa Rica anyone?
Now let's revisit our washing machine analogy:
The very word "rationing" is a political poison pill. No politician will EVER mention it. But they need not. It's in the law.
With tens of millions of illegals and "disadvataged" - now flashing their new healthcare cards - along with the inevitable DECREASE in the supply of US physicians (and nurses), what then?
The health care system (washing machine) begins groaning. And after a few years of overloading- it STOPS! Ergo, rationing will automatically come to the fore, leaving you, or your elderly parents, or your handicapped child OUT!
Rationing healthcare - which is intentionally withholding at least some useful treatment from at least some people who would benefit - is absolutely unavoidable in ANY publicly funded healthcare program.
Sure. Everyone will be covered under Obamacare. But what good is "being covered" if one can't receive proper treatment, or within a reasonable time-span?
You will suffer. You will die.
That's right fellow Americans - if you wake up and discover some strange lump, or blood in your urine, or have an overwhelming cluster headache (ominous signs of a brain tumor), what then?
You may NOT be able to see the urologist or oncologist on time. There no longer may even be one in your area. You will be denied diagnostic procedures (CAT- scan, X-ray, MRI, radio-assay) because some faraway Washington bureaucrat deemed it "too costly."
The one unavoidable outcome of rationing is that it soon begins to feed on itself:
In a physician survey (conducted December 2009 by The Medicus Firm) 24.7% of physicians stated that they would "retire early" if Obamacare is implemented. An additional 21.0% of respondents stated that they would quit practicing medicine, even though they are nowhere near retirement.
With more physicians retiring because of lower incomes, who will want to become doctors? While at the same time, a burgeoning US population - bolstered by proliferating minority births- will place huge new demands on the system for health services.
What then?
Does anyone recall when demand outstrips supply? Either costs go up or services decline - or both! With any government-run system, one gets the WORST of both worlds.
Imagine: tens of millions of new patients, and 1/3 of the doctors leave? Does that not portend pandemonium in everyone's healthcare future?
And even if every doctor stayed, consider the long lines: all the new "customers" entering the system, with no concomitant increase in care providers nor hospitals.
Once again, we're talking about 47 million "disadvantaged" - paid for by people who work- yet everyone will receive the same level of disservice.
The tragedy of all this is that millions of Americans - who've paid into Medicare (all of their lives) - have officially been swindled by the democrats. They'll now have their benefits reduced; and those who've never paid a dime into the system will have "healthcare for all."
Now examine the code phrase "benefits reduced." Is that not another meaning for rationing? Does it not imply pulling the plug on grandma? Or denying treatment to grandpa altogether for his prostate cancer, because some chart indicates he's beyond his "useful years?"
Can't we see the utter totalitarianism that is about to descend upon us?
What will happen to America in another decade under socialized medicine? What will become of our families? Is this not why 70% of us are experiencing disquiet in our outlook, now that Obamacare has been forced upon us?
And with 2700 pages of legal jargon, can anyone predict the future disruption, or answer the plethora of questions that will certainly emerge within the next few years?
What about dentists? What about veternarians? What about your chiropractor, the only one who knows how to keep the pain of your bad back in check?
What shall become of them?
And what about osteopaths? Or those who practice naturopathic (herbal-vitamin) medicine? How many will fall by the wayside because of the totaltarian collar placed over them under Obamacare?
And what about physical therapists? Or home health care aids? Or nursing home employees? Or hospice workers?
With the stark inevitability of rationing, how many hundreds of thousands of "unnecessary" medical jobs will be eliminated, as the government is forced to save money - brought on by the exponential increase in demand for services, with only incremental means of increasing revenue (taxation) into the system.
Obamacare's numbers make no sense. What were these democrats thinking? Who amongst us can believe that that the government can cover 47 million more people with better quality care at lower cost?
Democrats have yet to explain how - even with the current number of physicians and nurses - they can cover so many more people while lowering costs at the same time.
And by 2015, when all the pandemonium and misery ensue, what will have become of these same democrats who have legislated this horror upon us? - yet they've conviently exempted themselves, their families, and their overloaded staffs.
Indeed, there are a lot of things they refuse to explain, with NONE of them having read the bill - uncaring of its totalitarian consequences.
Is this not the ultimate hypocrisy?
But why would anyone be willing to unravel the world's non-pareil medical establishment, and impose an imcompetent, blood-sucking, deficit-building, non-functioning anti-healthcare system upon the great unwashed masses?
That's right America. That's exactly how these radical leftist ideologues see every one of us. They are socialists. They view us with contempt. They believe that by imposing government -run healthcare, we are getting what we deserve: totalitarian control over every aspect of our lives.
But how they got this way is anyone's guess. But nonetheless, they have put in place a system that will slowly eat away at the American dream - rendering us all miserable serfs, at the mercy of some easy-living government vassal.
Recall the old saying...(quote) "When you have your health, you have everything."
But in a few short years - with the government in charge - if one gets sick, can we trust that we will ever regain our health? Will some uncaring bureaucrat condemn us to a life of misery- denying care for a badly arthritic hip? - or a severely-disfunctional knee?
Or if a mother should raise an autistic-plagued child, or bear a Down's syndrome baby, what shall become of them when their lives are regarded as useless: i.e. that they could never grow up and become a productive (i.e. tax-paying) worker - another cog in the socialist gears of society.
But this is what Socialism and government-run healthcare are about - redistributing the wealth: reducing America into a mere shadow of Her once-mighty self.
The democrats have outdone themselves. They've accomplished the near-impossible: they have enslaved a free nation by convincing them that indeed - they CAN get something for nothing: the "right" to government-run healthcare.
But as an old conservative once said: "If you think healthcare is expensive, just wait until it's free..."
-You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by taxing the wealthy.
-The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from someone else.
-You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
(QUOTE)..."We cannot expect the Americans to jump from Capitalism to Communism,
but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of Socialism - until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism."
- Soviet -Russian Leader ~ Nikita Khrushchev, 1959
Thaks a lot Mr. Obama: here's to your health.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Bill Clinton REALLY Misses the White House, assaults an Obama supporter
UNHINGED: Bill Clinton SLAPS Obama Supporter ... POLICE INVESTIGATING ... - MediaTakeOut.com™ 2010
(Editor's note: This is fairly old news, but still... entertaining)
February 18, 2008. One of MediaTakeOut.com's readers claims that she witnesses former president Bill Clinton slap a Barack Obama supporter at a Clinton Rally at Timken High School in Ohio. Here's what she saw exactly:
[Bill] Clinton was arguing with a man from the audience. The man was saying that he wanted Hillary to drop out and endorse Obama.
Bill Clinton got really mad, he was pointing in the man's face and then he slapped him. It was so quick that you could barely see it, but I saw it.
Can you believe that, a former President slapping a man in the face. I hope he gets arrested. I called the police and told them what happened. They took down my name and said they're investigating.
I'll let you know what happens. But please put this out there so that the media knows what kind f man he's become..
BTW, there were cameras there so expect to see it on YouTube.
And just in case you think our reader is exaggerating, here's what MSNBC is reporting:
As soon as Clinton finished speaking, the Canton native made a beeline to the ropeline to give Clinton a piece of his mind.
“I asked the president to please stop the bickering between the campaigns,” Holeman said in an interview afterwards. “All this name calling is like the bully in the yard. He can’t get his way, he can’t get nothing done.” Holeman said he thought Clinton was “gasping for air.”
“This is the last hurrah. After March 4, Hillary Clinton will be out of the race for good, and Obama will take the commanding lead,” he said. “She should back him with her delegates immediately. That’s what I’m asking them to do.”
Holeman said that Clinton responded by saying Obama came after him first. Holeman also described Clinton’s reaction to him as “irate.”
“I think he even hit me in the face with his hand,” he said. “He did give me a little pop. It was okay, because I understand his tenacity for his wife.” Clinton did engage Holeman for a few minutes, at times pointing directly at him. It was unclear whether he did make physical contact, however.
(Editor's note: This is fairly old news, but still... entertaining)
February 18, 2008. One of MediaTakeOut.com's readers claims that she witnesses former president Bill Clinton slap a Barack Obama supporter at a Clinton Rally at Timken High School in Ohio. Here's what she saw exactly:
[Bill] Clinton was arguing with a man from the audience. The man was saying that he wanted Hillary to drop out and endorse Obama.
Bill Clinton got really mad, he was pointing in the man's face and then he slapped him. It was so quick that you could barely see it, but I saw it.
Can you believe that, a former President slapping a man in the face. I hope he gets arrested. I called the police and told them what happened. They took down my name and said they're investigating.
I'll let you know what happens. But please put this out there so that the media knows what kind f man he's become..
BTW, there were cameras there so expect to see it on YouTube.
And just in case you think our reader is exaggerating, here's what MSNBC is reporting:
As soon as Clinton finished speaking, the Canton native made a beeline to the ropeline to give Clinton a piece of his mind.
“I asked the president to please stop the bickering between the campaigns,” Holeman said in an interview afterwards. “All this name calling is like the bully in the yard. He can’t get his way, he can’t get nothing done.” Holeman said he thought Clinton was “gasping for air.”
“This is the last hurrah. After March 4, Hillary Clinton will be out of the race for good, and Obama will take the commanding lead,” he said. “She should back him with her delegates immediately. That’s what I’m asking them to do.”
Holeman said that Clinton responded by saying Obama came after him first. Holeman also described Clinton’s reaction to him as “irate.”
“I think he even hit me in the face with his hand,” he said. “He did give me a little pop. It was okay, because I understand his tenacity for his wife.” Clinton did engage Holeman for a few minutes, at times pointing directly at him. It was unclear whether he did make physical contact, however.
WOOHOO!!! You're FIRED
Fire the 219
LET THE FIRINGS BEGIN!!!! And every cent that they received as pay while in office payable back to the Treasury.
LET THE FIRINGS BEGIN!!!! And every cent that they received as pay while in office payable back to the Treasury.
WW II Battleship sailor tells Obama to shape up or ship out ! - Patriotic Resistance
WW II Battleship sailor tells Obama to shape up or ship out ! - Patriotic Resistance
> WW II Battleship sailor tells Obama to shape up or ship out !
>
> This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii
> for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes
> all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body,
> he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now.
> He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the
> president.
>
> Dear President Obama,
>
> My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year.
> People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain
> wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.
>
> I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and
> after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate. Now I live in a "rest
> home" located on the western end of Pearl Harbor , allowing me to keep alive
> the memories of 23 years of service to my country.
>
> One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind,
> blunt and direct even to the head man.
>
> So here goes.
>
> I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but
> you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.
>
> I can't figure out what country you are the president of.
> You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies
> like:
> " We're no longer a Christian nation"
> " America is arrogant" - (Your wife even
> announced to the world," America is mean-
> spirited. " Please tell her to try preaching
> that nonsense to 23 generations of our
> war dead buried all over the globe who
> died for no other reason than to free a
> whole lot of strangers from tyranny and
> hopelessness.)
> I'd say shame on the both of you, but I don't think you like America, nor do
> I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts
> this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a
> dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.
>
> After 9/11 you said," America hasn't lived up to her ideals."
>
> Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000
> farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or
> maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000
> men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn't mean the ideal 470,000
> fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for
> in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us
> around, because we stand for freedom.
>
> I don't think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than
> discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people
> understood when they helped to get you elected.
>
> Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.
>
> Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don't, I'll do what I
> can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue .
> You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of
> murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.
>
> And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to
> conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow
> soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don't want us to do what you
> did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in
> Massachusetts , who was putting up a fight? You don't mind offending the
> police calling them stupid but you don't want us to offend Muslim fanatics
> by calling them what they are, terrorists.
>
> One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to
> defend your country with your life, but you're the Commander-in-Chief now,
> son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for
> 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you're
> not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is
> not worth the best political strategy you're thinking of.
>
> You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge
> ever presented to any president.
> You're not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated
> economy. That's not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who
> we are as Americans is our big fight now.
> And I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this
> final battle.
>
> Sincerely,
> Harold B. Estes
>
> When a 95 year old hero of the "the Greatest Generation"
> stands up and speaks out like this, I think we owe it
> to him to send his words to as many Americans as
> we can.
> WW II Battleship sailor tells Obama to shape up or ship out !
>
> This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii
> for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes
> all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body,
> he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now.
> He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the
> president.
>
> Dear President Obama,
>
> My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year.
> People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain
> wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.
>
> I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and
> after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate. Now I live in a "rest
> home" located on the western end of Pearl Harbor , allowing me to keep alive
> the memories of 23 years of service to my country.
>
> One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind,
> blunt and direct even to the head man.
>
> So here goes.
>
> I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but
> you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.
>
> I can't figure out what country you are the president of.
> You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies
> like:
> " We're no longer a Christian nation"
> " America is arrogant" - (Your wife even
> announced to the world," America is mean-
> spirited. " Please tell her to try preaching
> that nonsense to 23 generations of our
> war dead buried all over the globe who
> died for no other reason than to free a
> whole lot of strangers from tyranny and
> hopelessness.)
> I'd say shame on the both of you, but I don't think you like America, nor do
> I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts
> this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a
> dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.
>
> After 9/11 you said," America hasn't lived up to her ideals."
>
> Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000
> farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or
> maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000
> men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn't mean the ideal 470,000
> fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for
> in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us
> around, because we stand for freedom.
>
> I don't think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than
> discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people
> understood when they helped to get you elected.
>
> Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.
>
> Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don't, I'll do what I
> can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue .
> You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of
> murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.
>
> And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to
> conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow
> soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don't want us to do what you
> did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in
> Massachusetts , who was putting up a fight? You don't mind offending the
> police calling them stupid but you don't want us to offend Muslim fanatics
> by calling them what they are, terrorists.
>
> One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to
> defend your country with your life, but you're the Commander-in-Chief now,
> son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for
> 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you're
> not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is
> not worth the best political strategy you're thinking of.
>
> You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge
> ever presented to any president.
> You're not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated
> economy. That's not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who
> we are as Americans is our big fight now.
> And I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this
> final battle.
>
> Sincerely,
> Harold B. Estes
>
> When a 95 year old hero of the "the Greatest Generation"
> stands up and speaks out like this, I think we owe it
> to him to send his words to as many Americans as
> we can.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
It Has Begun
Christian militia target of FBI raids? - Crime & courts- msnbc.com
updated 2 hours, 38 minutes ago
ADRIAN, Mich. - The FBI said Sunday that agents conducted weekend raids in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio and arrested at least three people, and a militia leader in Michigan said the target of at least one of the raids was a Christian militia group.
Federal warrants were sealed, but FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said there had been activity in two southwest Michigan counties near the Ohio state line. She wouldn't say whether they were tied to the raids in the other states.
FBI spokesman Scott Wilson in Cleveland said agents arrested two people Saturday after raids in two towns in Ohio. A third arrest was made in northeast Illinois on Sunday, a day after a raid took place just over the border in northwest Indiana.
Michael Lackomar, a spokesman for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, said one of his team leaders got a frantic phone call Saturday evening from members of Hutaree, a Christian militia group, who said their property in southwest Michigan was being raided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
"They said they were under attack by the ATF and wanted a place to hide," Lackomar said. "My team leader said, 'no thanks.'"
The team leader was cooperating with the FBI on Sunday, Lackomar said. He said SMVM wasn't affiliated with Hutaree, which states on its Web site to be "prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren't."
"We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. All Christians must know this and prepare, just as Christ commanded," the group's Web site said. "Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment.
An e-mail sent to the group by The Associated Press wasn't returned Sunday, and phone numbers for the group's leadership were not immediately available.
Berchtold, the FBI spokeswoman in Michigan, said she could neither confirm nor deny whether the raids were connected to Hutaree.
Lackomar said none of the raids focused on his group, which is affiliated with the Michigan Militia, a larger militia umbrella group. Lackomar said about eight to 10 members of Hutaree trained with SMVM twice in the past three years. SMVM holds monthly training sessions focusing on survival training and shooting practice, Lackomar said.
FBI agents in Ohio made arrests in Huron and Sandusky on Saturday night, Wilson said. No further information would be released until after they appeared in court Monday, he said.
One of the raids occurred at Bayshore Estates, a trailer park in Sandusky, a small city on Lake Erie between Toledo and Cleveland, park manager Terry Mills said. Authorities blocked off the street for about an hour Saturday night, he said.
"Needless to say, this has everyone talking," said Mills, 62. "We have a lot of retirees here who don't want all this commotion."
Mills said he didn't know the identity of the person arrested.
(Editor's Note: I'm not in support of militancy, mind you, but was there even an arrest warrant or probable cause involved with this raid? Funny that IT DOESN'T SAY.)
updated 2 hours, 38 minutes ago
ADRIAN, Mich. - The FBI said Sunday that agents conducted weekend raids in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio and arrested at least three people, and a militia leader in Michigan said the target of at least one of the raids was a Christian militia group.
Federal warrants were sealed, but FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said there had been activity in two southwest Michigan counties near the Ohio state line. She wouldn't say whether they were tied to the raids in the other states.
FBI spokesman Scott Wilson in Cleveland said agents arrested two people Saturday after raids in two towns in Ohio. A third arrest was made in northeast Illinois on Sunday, a day after a raid took place just over the border in northwest Indiana.
Michael Lackomar, a spokesman for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, said one of his team leaders got a frantic phone call Saturday evening from members of Hutaree, a Christian militia group, who said their property in southwest Michigan was being raided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
"They said they were under attack by the ATF and wanted a place to hide," Lackomar said. "My team leader said, 'no thanks.'"
The team leader was cooperating with the FBI on Sunday, Lackomar said. He said SMVM wasn't affiliated with Hutaree, which states on its Web site to be "prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren't."
"We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. All Christians must know this and prepare, just as Christ commanded," the group's Web site said. "Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment.
An e-mail sent to the group by The Associated Press wasn't returned Sunday, and phone numbers for the group's leadership were not immediately available.
Berchtold, the FBI spokeswoman in Michigan, said she could neither confirm nor deny whether the raids were connected to Hutaree.
Lackomar said none of the raids focused on his group, which is affiliated with the Michigan Militia, a larger militia umbrella group. Lackomar said about eight to 10 members of Hutaree trained with SMVM twice in the past three years. SMVM holds monthly training sessions focusing on survival training and shooting practice, Lackomar said.
FBI agents in Ohio made arrests in Huron and Sandusky on Saturday night, Wilson said. No further information would be released until after they appeared in court Monday, he said.
One of the raids occurred at Bayshore Estates, a trailer park in Sandusky, a small city on Lake Erie between Toledo and Cleveland, park manager Terry Mills said. Authorities blocked off the street for about an hour Saturday night, he said.
"Needless to say, this has everyone talking," said Mills, 62. "We have a lot of retirees here who don't want all this commotion."
Mills said he didn't know the identity of the person arrested.
(Editor's Note: I'm not in support of militancy, mind you, but was there even an arrest warrant or probable cause involved with this raid? Funny that IT DOESN'T SAY.)
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Obama waits for Christmas and Easter. Oops, we meant Eid.
Obama announces 15 recess appointments, scolds GOP - Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON – Fed up with waiting, President Barack Obama announced Saturday he would bypass a vacationing Senate and name 15 people to key administration jobs, wielding for the first time the blunt political tool known as the recess appointment.
The move immediately deepened the divide between the Democratic president and Republicans in the Senate following a long, bruising fight over health care. Obama revealed his decision by blistering Republicans, accusing them of holding up nominees for months solely to try to score a political advantage on him.
"I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government," Obama said in a statement. (Another bare-faced power grab. If this guy ends up being the Antichrist I would not be one bit surprised.)
The 15 appointees to boards and agencies include the contentious choice of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Republicans had blocked his nomination on grounds he would bring a radical pro-union agenda to the job, and they called on Obama not to appoint Becker over the recess.
Obama went ahead anyway, while also choosing a second member for the labor board so that four of its five slots will be filled. The board, which referees labor-management disputes, has had a majority of its seats vacant for more than two years, slowing its work and raising questions about the legality of its rulings.
Overall, Obama's appointments will take place throughout the week, allowing people to make the transition to their new jobs, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. The news of Becker's appointment drew the bulk of the ire from Republicans.
"Once again the administration showed that it had little respect for the time honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress," said Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's foe in the 2008 presidential election. "This is clear payback by the administration to organized labor."
Both Republican and Democratic presidents have made recess appointments, which circumvents the Senate's authority to confirm nominees, when they could not overcome delays. President George W. Bush made more than 170 such appointments in his two-term presidency. President Bill Clinton made nearly 140.
Obama had been on record as warning of recess appointments if the Senate didn't act. He followed through at the end of a week in which his political standing was significantly bolstered by the party-line passage of a historic health care bill, a student loan overhaul and a hard-fought nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
The White House dropped the news in a press release on a quiet Saturday, with Obama at Camp David and lawmakers home in their districts.
The recess appointments mean the 15 people could serve in their jobs through the end of 2011, when the next Senate finishes its term. A recess appointment ends at the completion of the next Senate session or when a person is nominated and confirmed to the job, whichever comes first.
Obama filled two posts at the Treasury Department: Jeffrey Goldstein as under secretary for domestic finance and Michael Mundaca as assistant secretary for tax policy. He singled them out: "At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months."
On Becker, Republicans have held up his confirmation for months, saying they fear he would circumvent Congress to make labor laws more union-friendly.
Democrats had failed to overcome Republican delaying tactics on Becker's nomination, and all 41 GOP senators wrote to Obama on Thursday urging him not to appoint Becker over the break — to no avail. Becker is a top lawyer at the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO.
Labor unions were especially keen on getting Becker installed on the board that is responsible for certifying union elections and addressing unfair labor practices. Under a Democratic majority, the labor board could decide cases or make new rules that would make it easier for unions to organize workers. The board could allow speeded-up union elections that give employers less time to counter organizing drives.
The other pro-union lawyer Obama named to the board, Mark Pearce, has not faced opposition from Republicans.
The White House says its appointees have been awaiting a vote for an average of seven months.
Obama named three people to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, which has also been operating without a quorum.
The Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid, welcomed Obama's move. "Regrettably, Senate Republicans have dedicated themselves to a failed strategy to cripple President Obama's economic initiatives by stalling key administration nominees at every turn," said Reid, the majority leader from Nevada.
Obama and Democratic leaders say he faces more obstruction, in terms of the number of pending nominees and the length of their delay in getting a vote, than Bush did. The hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington began long before Obama's presidency but remains as entrenched as ever, if not worse, during his term.
Already in a struggle with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over a financial overhaul, Obama now has another one over Becker. "The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America's job creators to compete," the chamber said in a statement.
In February, Democrats fell far short of the 60 votes they needed to push through Becker's nomination. Two Democrats joined Republicans to halt Becker.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday that Obama's move is "another episode of choosing a partisan path despite bipartisan opposition."
WASHINGTON – Fed up with waiting, President Barack Obama announced Saturday he would bypass a vacationing Senate and name 15 people to key administration jobs, wielding for the first time the blunt political tool known as the recess appointment.
The move immediately deepened the divide between the Democratic president and Republicans in the Senate following a long, bruising fight over health care. Obama revealed his decision by blistering Republicans, accusing them of holding up nominees for months solely to try to score a political advantage on him.
"I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government," Obama said in a statement. (Another bare-faced power grab. If this guy ends up being the Antichrist I would not be one bit surprised.)
The 15 appointees to boards and agencies include the contentious choice of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Republicans had blocked his nomination on grounds he would bring a radical pro-union agenda to the job, and they called on Obama not to appoint Becker over the recess.
Obama went ahead anyway, while also choosing a second member for the labor board so that four of its five slots will be filled. The board, which referees labor-management disputes, has had a majority of its seats vacant for more than two years, slowing its work and raising questions about the legality of its rulings.
Overall, Obama's appointments will take place throughout the week, allowing people to make the transition to their new jobs, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. The news of Becker's appointment drew the bulk of the ire from Republicans.
"Once again the administration showed that it had little respect for the time honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress," said Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's foe in the 2008 presidential election. "This is clear payback by the administration to organized labor."
Both Republican and Democratic presidents have made recess appointments, which circumvents the Senate's authority to confirm nominees, when they could not overcome delays. President George W. Bush made more than 170 such appointments in his two-term presidency. President Bill Clinton made nearly 140.
Obama had been on record as warning of recess appointments if the Senate didn't act. He followed through at the end of a week in which his political standing was significantly bolstered by the party-line passage of a historic health care bill, a student loan overhaul and a hard-fought nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
The White House dropped the news in a press release on a quiet Saturday, with Obama at Camp David and lawmakers home in their districts.
The recess appointments mean the 15 people could serve in their jobs through the end of 2011, when the next Senate finishes its term. A recess appointment ends at the completion of the next Senate session or when a person is nominated and confirmed to the job, whichever comes first.
Obama filled two posts at the Treasury Department: Jeffrey Goldstein as under secretary for domestic finance and Michael Mundaca as assistant secretary for tax policy. He singled them out: "At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months."
On Becker, Republicans have held up his confirmation for months, saying they fear he would circumvent Congress to make labor laws more union-friendly.
Democrats had failed to overcome Republican delaying tactics on Becker's nomination, and all 41 GOP senators wrote to Obama on Thursday urging him not to appoint Becker over the break — to no avail. Becker is a top lawyer at the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO.
Labor unions were especially keen on getting Becker installed on the board that is responsible for certifying union elections and addressing unfair labor practices. Under a Democratic majority, the labor board could decide cases or make new rules that would make it easier for unions to organize workers. The board could allow speeded-up union elections that give employers less time to counter organizing drives.
The other pro-union lawyer Obama named to the board, Mark Pearce, has not faced opposition from Republicans.
The White House says its appointees have been awaiting a vote for an average of seven months.
Obama named three people to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, which has also been operating without a quorum.
The Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid, welcomed Obama's move. "Regrettably, Senate Republicans have dedicated themselves to a failed strategy to cripple President Obama's economic initiatives by stalling key administration nominees at every turn," said Reid, the majority leader from Nevada.
Obama and Democratic leaders say he faces more obstruction, in terms of the number of pending nominees and the length of their delay in getting a vote, than Bush did. The hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington began long before Obama's presidency but remains as entrenched as ever, if not worse, during his term.
Already in a struggle with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over a financial overhaul, Obama now has another one over Becker. "The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America's job creators to compete," the chamber said in a statement.
In February, Democrats fell far short of the 60 votes they needed to push through Becker's nomination. Two Democrats joined Republicans to halt Becker.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday that Obama's move is "another episode of choosing a partisan path despite bipartisan opposition."
OK....
All right, fine. Where's the message reaching out to Christians, Jews, and those who worship the Flying Spaghetti monster.
Congress shall make no laws establishing a state religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Week In Stupid
Bad Parent Of the Year Award
Baby Hitler: Artist Dresses Up Daughter as Nazi Leader
Saturday March 20, 2010
Forget frilly bonnets and teddy bear costumes . . . artist Nina Maria Kleivan likes to dress up her kid as Adolf Hitler.
Just take a look at the kid, all decked out in her pencil mustache and tiny swastika.
The artist says she's trying to make a point about evil -- and not necessarily win "Mother of the Year."
"Even my daughter could end up ruling Denmark with an iron fist," she was quoted as saying. "The possibility is still there."
I hate diarrhea wallpaper
http://www.morningsun.net/news/weird_news/x1499087912/Think-your-job-stinks-Clerk-says-customer-defaced-store-bathroom-with-feces
A Ravenswood convenience store clerk could honestly tell her bosses she had a "crappy" evening after a difficult customer allegedly decided to deface the store’s bathroom using his own feces.
According to the complaint filed by Ravenswood Police Patrolman B.A. Fox, on March 17, Randy Holcomb, 42, entered Gary’s Beverage & Video appearing very intoxicated.
The complaint states the Holcomb repeatedly called the clerk “Honey” and kept asking her if he could use the store’s bathroom. The clerk refused to allow Holcomb to use the restroom, as it was marked for employees only. However Holcomb allegedly ignored the denial and went into the bathroom anyway. After using the restroom, Holcomb left the store.
After Holcomb left, the clerk said she began to smell a “terrible odor” coming from the bathroom. When she went to check the bathroom, she discovered feces smeared all over the walls, floor, doorknob, light switch and toilet itself. The clerk reported that there was toilet paper available in the restroom. She did not report whether or not Holcomb had flushed prior to leaving.
The clerk then called the police to inform them of the situation, and they responded to the scene. After the police began a search for Holcomb, the clerk reportedly had to spend a considerable time cleaning and sanitizing the entire bathroom.
Based on the condition of the scene and the information provided, Fox obtained a warrant for Holcomb’s arrest on one misdemeanor count of destruction of property. Holcomb was arrested on the warrant and arraigned.
According to Reynolds, Holcomb had recently received a 90-day suspended jail sentence for an unrelated matter.
High Crime Against Society: Resurrecting Road Kill
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/89289687.html?cmpid=15585797
Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to save their pets. Tales of pet owners giving CPR to their cats and dogs are fairly common. But how many folks would try to resuscitate a wild animal?
Possums are prone to play dead, especially when threatened. Their eyes glaze over, their teeth are bared, and they secrete a rank stench from their glands.
But the possum lying along the Colonel Drake Highway on Thursday was doing none of that, troopers said. It was long-dead certified roadkill.
And Donald Wolfe was intent on bringing it back to life, troopers said.
Trooper Jamie Levier of the Punxsutawney barracks said witnesses saw Wolfe, 55, locking lips with the lifeless marsupial about 3 p.m. in a remote area about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
After receiving several calls, troopers arrested Wolfe along an isolated stretch of the highway and charged him with public drunkenness.
Levier says the Brookville man was "extremely intoxicated" and "did have his mouth in the area of the animal's mouth, I guess."
Another person saw Wolfe kneeling before the deceased animal and gesturing as though he were conducting a séance, Levier said.
In a release, state police listed the victim of the incident as "society." Wolfe will face the charges before a district judge in Jefferson County at an unscheduled date. (Editor's Note: As a member of the society that Wolfe allegedly victimized, I can honestly say I don't feel victimized, nor should stupidity necessarily be a crime. If it were, 99.9% of humanity would be incarcerated. But still... EWW)
Honest, Abe...Should Have Stuck to Paint Chips
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/did-mercury-pills-cause-abe-lincolns-fits-of-rage/19411283
LONDON (March 24) -- Abraham Lincoln was one cool leader. Allies and opponents alike praised his steady, even temper. His personal physician commented that even during the bloodiest years of the Civil War, the president "was so mentally balanced that he could calmly share the triumph or endure defeat."
But Honest Abe wasn't always so serene. During his failed campaign for Illinois' Senate seat in the late 1850s, friends reported that he suffered explosive and unexplained fits of rage. On one occasion, the soon-to-be president is alleged to have grabbed a fellow politician and shaken him "until his teeth chattered." Now, British scientists say they have identified the cause of this un-Lincolnesque behavior: exceptionally high levels of mercury in tablets he took for constipation.
Alexander Gardner, Getty Images
British scientists says pills that Abraham Lincoln took for constipation contained such high levels of mercury that they may have caused the 16th president to have fits of rage.
Researchers at the Royal Society of Chemistry recently uncovered several of these little blue pills -- popularly called "Blue Mass" -- in a museum in Devon County, England. Lincoln's law partner and biographer, William H. Herndon, was among the contemporaries who said that Lincoln took the pills, which were widely used in the mid-19th century to treat everything from toothache and bowel troubles to depression.
The chemists' analysis of the tablets revealed that if Lincoln followed common practice and took two or three pills a day, he would have ingested 80 to 120 times the World Health Organization's acceptable daily intake of mercury.
This highly toxic dosage could explain Lincoln's uncharacteristic outbursts, as symptoms of mercury poisoning include sudden violent mood changes as well as nausea, insomnia and depression.
"To think that the president was meant to be taking two of them a day is appalling," said Dr. Bin Chen, who carried out the test.
Reports by Herndon and others suggest that Lincoln first started popping "Blue Mass" around 1858 and quit at the beginning of 1860, shortly before the Republican Party nominated him for the presidency. But James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill., says that because the president didn't keep a diary, it's almost impossible to tell how long he took them for, or how many he popped a day.
Cornelius adds that the late 1850s were a tense time for Lincoln, so it's possible his foul mood was caused by any number of stresses. He points out that "arguably the biggest event of his life" -- a series of seven debates with Stephen A. Douglas, his rival in the Illinois Senate race -- took place in 1858, the year when Lincoln allegedly suffered most of his bad tempers.
"It was a grueling, long, hot, dusty summer," Cornelius says. "So while it's possible that he was taking these pills on the road, these supposed outbursts of anger might just as well have been triggered by the heat of the debates, the exhausting schedule and the importance of the political issues. They were essentially fighting about whether slavery should continue to expand in the U.S."
However, Cornelius suspects that the little blue pills did play a significant role in his rages. "What's remarkable about Lincoln -- and people said this all up and down the line -- is that he never took personal offense at his enemies," he says. "So if there's even a single example of him getting angry with somebody and getting into a shouting match, then it looks like [these pills] would be among the likelier explanations. Because he just didn't lose his temper."
After quitting the pills, that cool demeanor quickly returned. Cornelius says Lincoln likely dumped the pills around January 1860, a month before he was due to give a speech to a group of Republican high-ups at New York's Cooper Union. That oration was intended to show that an almost unknown Westerner with no formal education could head the country as well as any Easterner.
"He suspected that this would be the biggest speech of his career," says Cornelius. "He would have been focused like never before on making a good appearance. And if he had a sense that these medications were not doing him good, he would have stopped taking them before heading off on that trip."
The pill-free Lincoln wowed his audience, proving himself to be composed, intelligent and dignified, and a better prospective leader than New York's own Sen. William Henry Seward. Lincoln was picked as the Republicans' presidential candidate three months later. And in November 1860, the American people chose that coolheaded lawyer as their new president.
Judiciary To Dr. Phil: You Suck
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/judge-calls-dr-phil-a-terrible-terrible-man/19413004
LOS ANGELES (March 24) -- A shoplifting case that began with a televised confession on the "Dr. Phil" show led a San Diego judge Monday to condemn TV personality Phil McGraw as "a terrible, terrible man" and "a charlatan."
District Court Judge Irma Gonzalez unloaded on Dr. Phil as she sentenced a couple to prison for running a $100,000 shoplifting ring in which they used their three young children as decoys, and sold the stolen merchandise through Web sites. The couple discussed their exploits on a "Dr. Phil" episode, "Shoplifting Confessions," in November 2008. Five months later, their home was raided by federal officials, who found more than 500 boxes of toys and other items.
Frederick M. Brown, Getty Images
A judge presiding over the case of a shoplifting couple who confessed their crimes on the "Dr. Phil" show called the host, Phil McGraw, "a terrible, terrible man."
Gonzalez sentenced Matthew Eaton, 34, to 27 months in prison, a year more than prosecutors had sought, and his wife, Laura Eaton, 27, to one year and a day.
The Eatons went on the TV show to get help ending their compulsion to shoplift, but show officials pressed them to exaggerate their exploits, their lawyer told the court, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. The couple brought along a home video of one of their trips, using the children to distract store clerks, and seemed more interested in bragging than in getting help giving up their livelihood, according to earlier reports.
The Eatons continued to shoplift after the show aired, the judge noted. She described Matthew Eaton as "despicable" for his role running the racket, but she reserved her harshest word for McGraw.
"What a charlatan this man is," the judge was quoted as saying during the sentencing. "What a terrible, terrible man." (Editor's Note: Don't shoot the messenger...)
Cat Needs Lifelong Therapy To Deal With the Scars
Back to this health care thing for a minute
Pelosi-backed ObamaCare Health Bill: The final nail in America’s coffin
by Anne Wilder Chamberlain
On October 29, 2009 Rep John Dingall (D-MI) unveiled the latest ObamaCare Health bill. With a price tag of $1.2 trillion, HR3962, the "Affordable Health Care for America Act," which passed in the House on Nov. 7, 2009 with a vote of 220 to 215, has nothing to do with providing affordable health care.
HR3962 has been dubbed "the Pelosi Bill," because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) worked behind closed doors with supporters to write this bill, and then held meetings in her office after its release to coerce fence-sitting Democrats to support it.
Only 39 Democrats* voted against the bill, and one Republican voted for it - Rep. Anh (Joseph) Cao (LA), the only Louisianan to support the legislation.
Penalties for non-compliance a violation of the 8th Amendment
Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, released a letter written Nov 5 by the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) confirming that failure to comply with the individual mandate to buy health insurance contained in the bill could land people in jail. The letter makes clear that Americans who do not maintain "acceptable health insurance coverage" and who choose not to pay the resultant tax (generally 2.5% of income), are subject to numerous civil and criminal penalties, including criminal fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years.
In response to the letter, Camp said: "This is the ultimate example of the Democrats’ command-and-control style of governing – buy what we tell you or go to jail. It is outrageous and it should be stopped immediately."
An article entitled "Warden Pelosi" (Investor's Business Daily 11/10/09) observed that evading the income tax is punishable by jail time, but the income tax required a constitutional amendment. "How can violating a law that's unconstitutional be a felony?" asked the editor.
Quotes from the JCT report include the following:
http://republicans.waysandmeans.house.gov/UploadedFiles/JCTletter110509.pdf
"HR3962 provides that an individual (or husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain health insurance coverage for himself or herself and [their] qualifying children will be subject to an additional tax…equal to (a) the lesser of the national average premium for single or family coverage as applicable as determined by the Secretary of the Treasury in co-ordination with Health Choices Commissioner or (b) 2.5 percent of the excess of the taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross income….This tax is in addition to the regular income tax and the alternative minimum tax and is prorated for periods in which the failure exists….the tax applies only to US citizens and resident aliens. The additional tax does not apply to those with religious conscience exemptions. The additional tax does not apply if the maintenance of acceptable coverage would result in a hardship to the individual or if the person’s income is below the threshold for filing a Federal income tax return.
"[If] the taxpayer has chosen not to comply with individual mandate and not to pay the additional tax, [t]he code provides for both civil and criminal penalties to ensure complete and accurate reporting of tax liability and discourage fraudulent attempts to defeat or evade tax….a taxpayer convicted of a criminal tax offense may be subject to both civil and criminal penalties…"
Civil and criminal penalties
Civil penalties include: a penalty of 20 percent of the underpayment of the health care tax, a fraud payment of 75 percent of the underpayment if the government can prove intent to avoid taxes, a $5,000 penalty for taking a "frivolous" position on a tax return, and a delinquency payment of .5 percent due each month.
Criminal penalties include, "depending on the level of noncompliance: Sec 7203 misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year; Sec 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years."
Although Sec 7201 provides for a maximum fine of $100,000, 18 U.S.C. Sec 3571 raises the maximum penalty to $250,000.
In addition to forcibly mandating insurance purchase, the legislation includes a surtax of 5.4 percent on incomes over $500,000, almost four times the current limit. Meanwhile, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is considering higher payroll taxes on the upper-income earners to finance his version of the legislation as well, with an option of raising the Medicare tax on incomes above $250,000 a year.
What the bribe was
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann from www.dickmorris.com reported in their commentary, The Hill (11-6-09), that Democratic congressmen rubber-stamped the Obama healthcare reform despite a Rasmussen Reports poll the first week of November affirming that more Americans oppose (52%) health care legislation than favor (45%) it, a flip from earlier this year of nearly 15 percentage points.
Obama trotted out endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support, they said. But these and the other endorsements his package has received were all purchased.
Here are the deals:
* The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians' reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring 5-6 percent annual reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors.
* The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company. It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President "W" Bush passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. More than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues. Obama solved the problem by eliminating subsidies for Medicare Advantage in the Pelosi bill. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP, which supposedly represents them, will make more money. If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative to AARP at www.americanseniors.org.
* The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected costs to consumers over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S.
* Insurance companies got access to 40 million potential new customers. However, when the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don't buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and now oppose the bill.
The hold out
The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle, so the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stints, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements.
Other aspects of the Pelosi bill
As independent researchers read the entire 1990 pages of this bill, overviews are becoming available. Scanning the table of contents, the first 9/10 of the bill appears to pertain to insurance and how it will be managed and enforced. However, towards the end, under 2301: Prevention and Wellness, sec. 3111 provides $2.4 billion for FY 2011 for prevention and wellness: $30 million for carrying out subtitle C (Prevention Task Forces); $155 million for subtitle D (Prevention and Wellness Research); $1.065 billion for subtitle E (Delivery of Community Preventive and Wellness Services); and $800 million for sec. 3161 (Core Public Health Infrastructure for State, Local, and Tribal Health Departments). These figures increase substantially over the next five years to $3.6 billion annually.
How these funds will be spent is defined under Sec. 3132: Task Force on Community Preventive Services, which reads that the Secretary and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), shall establish this Task Force to review community preventive services and "the scientific evidence" related to "benefits, effectiveness, appropriateness, and costs of community preventive services" for the purpose of "disseminating evidence-based recommendations," identifying gaps in "community preventive services research," and recommending "priority areas for such research" with another Task Force, one on Clinical Preventive Services established under section 3131. Sec. 3131 states that the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality would establish that Task Force to review and recommend more services for application at the community level.
Wellness?
The Task Force on Community Preventive Services would also enforce Sec. 3121: The National Prevention and Wellness Strategy. The Strategy includes:
"(1) Identification of specific national goals and objectives in prevention and wellness…
(2) Establishment of national priorities for prevention and wellness…
(3) Establishment of national priorities for research on prevention and wellness…
(4) Identification of health disparities in prevention and wellness;
(5) Review of prevention payment incentives [for] the prevention workforce and prevention delivery system capacity;" and a plan for addressing and implementing (1) through (5) by consulting myriad heads of federal health agencies.
Nowhere in this section is "prevention and wellness" defined. But the designation of from $2.4 billion to $3.6 billion annually suggests that the focus will not be on education or healthy food, air and water, but rather on a continuation of the same federal "prevention" policies that have made our nation so sick.
Repercussions and consequences
Investors Business Daily gave these insights to repercussions of the passage of this bill, should it be approved by the Senate: "This monstrosity would raise insurance premiums and taxes to prohibitive levels and add unconscionably to the national debt…force physicians to leave the medical profession in droves, exacerbating an already perilous doctor shortage… lead[ing] to rationing."
IBD added that the mechanisms for deciding who gets what, if any, care are already in place, as they were slipped into the failed stimulus bill.
The New York Times said, "It has become clear to consumers that everyone's interest but theirs are being leveraged through the federal legislature. No wonder Congress's own healthcare is exempt from the bill."
Former NY Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey cried, "While the bill will slash Medicare funding, it will also direct billions of dollars to numerous inner-city social work groups with vague standards of accountability…
"Section 223 of HR 3962 requires an individual making $44,000 before taxes to pay 17% of his pre-tax income for mandated insurance. Higher earners will be required to pay 20%. How these mandates differ from taxes escapes us, and they are big mandates hitting the middle class."
If a person has a business with employees, section 412 states he must pay 72.5% of the cost for his staff or incur an 8% payroll tax, reported the American Association of Health Freedom (www.healthfreedom.net), adding, "Section 202 takes away your freedom to choose. One is required to enroll in a ‘qualified plan.’ The government defines what qualified means and will have lots of help on this from special interests. Natural health and integrative medicine do not have much clout in Congress. Section 222 provides Medicare recipients the ‘right’ to language translation services at all times without co-pay. What about the rights of those who pay taxes to pay for all this?
"Section 1302 moves Medicare away from fee for service to a strict managed care model… Other sections require doctors to share your private records with numerous other parties."
Chip you?
Reporting on thepatriotnewsnetwork.org, November 13, the Daily Paul pointed out that buried deep within the bill, Subtitle C-11 Sec. 2521, National Medical Device Registry the bill mandates:
"The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the ‘registry’) to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes data on each device that—(A) is or has been used in or on a patient; and (B) is a class III device; or (ii) a class II device that is implantable."
In "real world speak", according to this report, this new law, when fully implemented, provides the framework for making the United States the first nation in the world to require its citizens to have implanted in them a radio-frequency identification (RFID) microchip for the purpose of controlling who is, or isn’t, allowed medical care.
The point
Chrisfloyd.com in the article "Saturday Night Special: ‘Historic’ Vote Kills Health Care Reform for Another Generation (11-8-09)" quotes commentator Arthur Silber’s summary of this bill, which he called "The F--- You Act:"
"Why is a bad bill better than no bill? Why is a bill that funds absolutely useless parasites like health insurance companies at the expense of our grandchildren's unearned pay better than nothing? Why, when blocking a bill would almost guarantee a better debate in round 2, is it more important to pass the bill and close off the opportunity for valuable reform?
Because a bad bill is the intended result of the whole exercise…The fact that insurance companies will reap huge rewards on the backs of ‘ordinary’ taxpaying Americans is not a regrettable byproduct of an allegedly good but imperfect effort at reform, or a flaw that will be fixed at some unspecified future date… as already powerful and wealthy interests become more powerful and wealthy, the State will also increase its already massive power over all our lives still more. None of that is incidental: it's the point."
*Democrats who opposed the bill include all in Alabama, Mike Ross (AR), Betsy Markey (CO), Kosmas and Boyd (FL), Marshall and Barrow (GA), Minnick (ID), Chandler (KY), all Louisiana, Kratovil (MD), Peterson (MN), Childers and Taylor (MS), Skelton (MO), Adler (NJ), Teague (NM), McMahon, Murphy and Massa (NY), McIntire, Kissell, and Shuler (NC), Boccieri and Kucinich (OH), all of Oklahoma, Altmire and Holden (PA), Herseth (SD), Davis, Gordon and Tanner (TN), Edwards (TX), all of Utah, Nye and Baucher (VA), and Baird (WA).
Wheres Daddy ? a boy asks his mother ,holding a 2 month old Infant ! Hes in jail for 5 yrs for not buying a Health Care Policy .Come on kids ! ,we are going to put in for Welfare ,to get something to eat !
So the Question is ? Were you better off before this Wonderful Perk ??
Text of S.3081 as Introduced in Senate: Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010... OpenCongress
Text of S.3081 as Introduced in Senate: Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010... OpenCongress
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
March 4, 2010
Mr. MCCAIN (for himself, Mr. LIEBERMAN, Mr. INHOFE, Mr. BROWN of Massachusetts, Mr. WICKER, Mr. CHAMBLISS, Mr. LEMIEUX, Mr. SESSIONS, and Mr. VITTER) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
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To provide for the interrogation and detention of enemy belligerents who commit hostile acts against the United States, to establish certain limitations on the prosecution of such belligerents for such acts, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ‘Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010’.
SEC. 2. PLACEMENT OF SUSPECTED UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS IN MILITARY CUSTODY.
(a) Military Custody Requirement- Whenever within the United States, its territories, and possessions, or outside the territorial limits of the United States, an individual is captured or otherwise comes into the custody or under the effective control of the United States who is suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities, and who may be an unprivileged enemy belligerent, the individual shall be placed in military custody for purposes of initial interrogation and determination of status in accordance with the provisions of this Act.
(b) Reasonable Delay for Intelligence Activities- An individual who may be an unprivileged enemy belligerent and who is initially captured or otherwise comes into the custody or under the effective control of the United States by an intelligence agency of the United States may be held, interrogated, or transported by the intelligence agency and placed into military custody for purposes of this Act if retained by the United States within a reasonable time after the capture or coming into the custody or effective control by the intelligence agency, giving due consideration to operational needs and requirements to avoid compromise or disclosure of an intelligence mission or intelligence sources or methods.
SEC. 3. INTERROGATION AND DETERMINATION OF STATUS OF SUSPECTED UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS.
(a) Establishment of Interrogation Groups-
(1) ESTABLISHMENT AUTHORIZED- The President is authorized to establish an interagency team for purposes as follows:
(A) To interrogate under subsection (b) individuals placed in military custody under section 2.
(B) To make under subsection (c)(1) a preliminary determination of the status of individuals described in section 2.
(2) COMPOSITION- Each interagency team under this subsection shall be composed of such personnel of the Executive Branch having expertise in matters relating to national security, terrorism, intelligence, interrogation, or law enforcement as the President considers appropriate. The members of any particular interagency team may vary depending on the skills most relevant to a particular case.
(3) DESIGNATIONS-
(A) HIGH-VALUE DETAINEE- An individual placed in military custody under section 2 shall, while subject to interrogation and determination of status under this section, be referred to as a ‘high-value detainee’ if the individual meets the criteria for treatment as such established in the regulations required by subsection (d).
(B) HIGH-VALUE DETAINEE INTERROGATION GROUP- An interagency team established under this subsection shall be known as a ‘high-value detainee interrogation group’.
(b) Interrogations-
(1) INTERROGATIONS TO BE CONDUCTED BY HIGH-VALUE DETAINEE INTERROGATION GROUP- A high-value detainee interrogation group established under this section shall conduct the interrogations of each high-value detainee.
(2) UTILIZATION OF OTHER PERSONNEL- A high-value detainee interrogation group may utilize military and intelligence personnel, and Federal, State, and local law enforcement personnel, in conducting interrogations of a high-value detainee. The utilization of such personnel for the interrogation of a detainee shall not alter the responsibility of the interrogation group for the coordination within the Executive Branch of the interrogation of the detainee or the determination of status and disposition of the detainee under this Act.
(3) INAPPLICABILITY OF CERTAIN STATEMENT AND RIGHTS- A individual who is suspected of being an unprivileged enemy belligerent shall not, during interrogation under this subsection, be provided the statement required by Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436 (1966)) or otherwise be informed of any rights that the individual may or may not have to counsel or to remain silent consistent with Miranda v. Arizona.
(c) Determinations of Status-
(1) PRELIMINARY DETERMINATION BY HIGH-VALUE DETAINEE INTERROGATION GROUP- The high-value detainee interrogation group responsible for interrogating a high-value detainee under subsection (b) shall make a preliminary determination whether or not the detainee is an unprivileged enemy belligerent. The interrogation group shall make such determination based on the result of its interrogation of the individual and on all intelligence information available to the interrogation group. The interrogation group shall, after consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, submit such determination to the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General.
(2) FINAL DETERMINATION- As soon as possible after receipt of a preliminary determination of status with respect to a high-value detainee under paragraph (1), the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General shall jointly submit to the President and to the appropriate committees of Congress a final determination whether or not the detainee is an unprivileged enemy belligerent for purposes of this Act. In the event of a disagreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, the President shall make the final determination.
(3) DEADLINE FOR DETERMINATIONS- All actions required regarding a high-value detainee under this subsection shall, to the extent practicable, be completed not later than 48 hours after the detainee is placed in military custody under section 2.
(d) Regulations-
(1) IN GENERAL- The operations and activities of high-value detainee interrogation groups under this section shall be governed by such regulations and guidance as the President shall establish for purposes of implementing this section. The regulations shall specify the officer or officers of the Executive Branch responsible for determining whether an individual placed in military custody under section 2 meets the criteria for treatment as a high-value detainee for purposes of interrogation and determination of status by a high-value interrogation group under this section.
(2) CRITERIA FOR DESIGNATION OF INDIVIDUALS AS HIGH-VALUE DETAINEES- The regulations required by this subsection shall include criteria for designating an individual as a high-value detainee based on the following:
(A) The potential threat the individual poses for an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the United States or upon United States citizens or United States civilian facilities abroad at the time of capture or when coming under the custody or control of the United States.
(B) The potential threat the individual poses to United States military personnel or United States military facilities at the time of capture or when coming under the custody or control of the United States.
(C) The potential intelligence value of the individual.
(D) Membership in al Qaeda or in a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda.
4(E) Such other matters as the President considers appropriate. (Editor's note: Like bloggers, emailers, or dissidents? Little ol me, maybe? Hm?????)
(3) PARAMOUNT PURPOSE OF INTERROGATIONS- The regulations required by this subsection shall provide that the paramount purpose of the interrogation of high-value detainees under this Act shall be the protection of United States civilians and United States civilian facilities through thorough and professional interrogation for intelligence purposes.
(4) SUBMITTAL TO CONGRESS- The President shall submit the regulations and guidance required by this subsection to the appropriate committees of Congress not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.
SEC. 4. LIMITATION ON PROSECUTION OF ALIEN UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS.
(a) Limitation- No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Justice may be used to prosecute in an Article III court in the United States, or in any territory or possession of the United States, any alien who has been determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3(c)(2).
(b) Applicability Pending Final Determination of Status- While a final determination on the status of an alien high-value detainee is pending under section 3(c)(2), the alien shall be treated as an unprivileged enemy belligerent for purposes of subsection (a).
SEC. 5. DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL OF UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS.
5An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3(c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.
SEC. 6. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) ACT OF TERRORISM- The term ‘act of terrorism’ means an act of terrorism as that term is defined in section 101(16) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 101(16)).
(2) ALIEN- The term ‘alien’ means an individual who is not a citizen of the United States.
(3) APPROPRIATE COMMITTEES OF CONGRESS- The term ‘appropriate committees of Congress’ means--
(A) the Committee on Armed Services, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate; and
(B) the Committee on Armed Services, the Committee on Homeland Security, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives.
(4) ARTICLE III COURT- The term ‘Article III court’ means a court of the United States established under Article III of the Constitution of the United States.
(5) COALITION PARTNER- The term ‘coalition partner’, with respect to hostilities engaged in by the United States, means any State or armed force directly engaged along with the United States in such hostilities or providing direct operational support to the United States in connection with such hostilities.
(6) GENEVA CONVENTION RELATIVE TO THE TREATMENT OF PRISONERS OF WAR- The term ‘Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War’ means the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, done at Geneva August 12, 1949 (6 UST 3316).
(7) HOSTILITIES- The term ‘hostilities’ means any conflict subject to the laws of war, and includes a deliberate attack upon civilians and civilian targets protected by the laws of war.
(8) PRIVILEGED BELLIGERENT- The term ‘privileged belligerent’ means an individual belonging to one of the eight categories enumerated in Article 4 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
(9) UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENT- The term ‘unprivileged enemy belligerent’ means an individual (other than a privileged belligerent) who--
(A) has engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners;
(B) has purposely and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or
(C) was a part of al Qaeda at the time of capture.
SEC. 7. EFFECTIVE DATE.
This Act shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply with respect to individuals who are captured or otherwise come into the custody or under the effective control of the United States on or after that date.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Americans hoard food as industry seeks regs - Washington Times
Americans hoard food as industry seeks regs - Washington Times
If you choose to do this, do so wisely.... I'd be hiding the shit if I were you. And don't broadcast it to your neighbors...
If you choose to do this, do so wisely.... I'd be hiding the shit if I were you. And don't broadcast it to your neighbors...
Thursday, March 25, 2010
We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity's Most Dangerous Moments | Media and Culture | AlterNet
We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity's Most Dangerous Moments Media and Culture AlterNet (This Ain't No Shit. The Management)
Advertisement Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.
These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism.
We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.
My analysis comes close to the analysis of many anarchists. But there is a crucial difference. The anarchists do not understand the nature of violence. They grasp the extent of the rot in our cultural and political institutions, they know they must sever the tentacles of consumerism, but they naïvely believe that it can be countered with physical forms of resistance and acts of violence. There are debates within the anarchist movement – such as those on the destruction of property – but once you start using plastic explosives, innocent people get killed. And when anarchic violence begins to disrupt the mechanisms of governance, the power elite will use these acts, however minor, as an excuse to employ disproportionate and ruthless amounts of force against real and suspected agitators, only fueling the rage of the dispossessed.
I am not a pacifist. I know there are times, and even concede that this may eventually be one of them, when human beings are forced to respond to mounting repression with violence. I was in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia. We knew precisely what the Serbian forces ringing the city would do to us if they broke through the defenses and trench system around the besieged city. We had the examples of the Drina Valley or the city of Vukovar, where about a third of the Muslim inhabitants had been killed and the rest herded into refugee or displacement camps. There are times when the only choice left is to pick up a weapon to defend your family, neighborhood and city. But those who proved most adept at defending Sarajevo invariably came from the criminal class. When they were not shooting at Serbian soldiers they were looting the apartments of ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo and often executing them, as well as terrorizing their fellow Muslims. When you ingest the poison of violence, even in a just cause, it corrupts, deforms and perverts you. Violence is a drug, indeed it is the most potent narcotic known to humankind. Those most addicted to violence are those who have access to weapons and a penchant for force. And these killers rise to the surface of any armed movement and contaminate it with the intoxicating and seductive power that comes with the ability to destroy. I have seen it in war after war. When you go down that road you end up pitting your monsters against their monsters. And the sensitive, the humane and the gentle, those who have a propensity to nurture and protect life, are marginalized and often killed. The romantic vision of war and violence is as prevalent among anarchists and the hard left as it is in the mainstream culture. Those who resist with force will not defeat the corporate state or sustain the cultural values that must be sustained if we are to have a future worth living. From my many years as a war correspondent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Gaza and Bosnia, I have seen that armed resistance movements are always mutations of the violence that spawned them. I am not naïve enough to think I could have avoided these armed movements had I been a landless Salvadoran or Guatemalan peasant, a Palestinian in Gaza or a Muslim in Sarajevo, but this violent response to repression is and always will be tragic. It must be avoided, although not at the expense of our own survival.
Democracy, a system ideally designed to challenge the status quo, has been corrupted and tamed to slavishly serve the status quo. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul writes, a coup d’état in slow motion. And the coup is over. They won. We lost. The abject failure of activists to push corporate, industrialized states toward serious environmental reform, to thwart imperial adventurism or to build a humane policy toward the masses of the world’s poor stems from an inability to recognize the new realities of power. The paradigm of power has irrevocably altered and so must the paradigm of resistance alter.
Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.
We live in a culture characterized by what Benjamin DeMott called “junk politics.” Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. It always personalizes issues rather than clarifying them. It eschews real debate for manufactured scandals, celebrity gossip and spectacles. It trumpets eternal optimism, endlessly praises our moral strength and character, and communicates in a feel-your-pain language. The result of junk politics is that nothing changes, “meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socioeconomic advantage.”
The cultural belief that we can make things happen by thinking, by visualizing, by wanting them, by tapping into our inner strength or by understanding that we are truly exceptional is magical thinking. We can always make more money, meet new quotas, consume more products and advance our career if we have enough faith. This magical thinking, preached to us across the political spectrum by Oprah, sports celebrities, Hollywood, self-help gurus and Christian demagogues, is largely responsible for our economic and environmental collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as “negative.” This belief, which allows men and women to behave and act like little children, discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties. It exacerbates despair and passivity. It fosters a state of self-delusion. The purpose, structure and goals of the corporate state are never seriously questioned. To question, to engage in criticism of the corporate collective, is to be obstructive and negative. And it has perverted the way we view ourselves, our nation and the natural world. The new paradigm of power, coupled with its bizarre ideology of limitless progress and impossible happiness, has turned whole nations, including the United States, into monsters.
We can march in Copenhagen. We can join Bill McKibben’s worldwide day of climate protests. We can compost in our backyards and hang our laundry out to dry. We can write letters to our elected officials and vote for Barack Obama, but the power elite is impervious to the charade of democratic participation. Power is in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls who are ruthlessly creating a system of neo-feudalism and killing the ecosystem that sustains the human species. And appealing to their better nature, or seeking to influence the internal levers of power, will no longer work.
We will not, especially in the United States, avoid our Götterdämmerung. Obama, like Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the other heads of the industrialized nations, has proven as craven a tool of the corporate state as George W. Bush. Our democratic system has been transformed into what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin labels inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, a free press, parliamentary systems and constitutions while manipulating and corrupting internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens but are ruled by armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington, Ottawa or other state capitals who author the legislation and get the legislators to pass it. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion. Mass culture, owned and disseminated by corporations, diverts us with trivia, spectacles and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics – and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”
Inverted totalitarianism wields total power without resorting to cruder forms of control such as gulags, concentration camps or mass terror. It harnesses science and technology for its dark ends. It enforces ideological uniformity by using mass communication systems to instill profligate consumption as an inner compulsion and to substitute our illusions of ourselves for reality. It does not forcibly suppress dissidents, as long as those dissidents remain ineffectual. And as it diverts us it dismantles manufacturing bases, devastates communities, unleashes waves of human misery and ships jobs to countries where fascists and communists know how to keep workers in line. It does all this while waving the flag and mouthing patriotic slogans. “The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed,” Wolin writes.
The practice and psychology of advertising, the rule of “market forces” in many arenas other than markets, the continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the saturation by mass media and propaganda of every household and the takeover of the universities have rendered most of us hostages. The rot of imperialism, which is always incompatible with democracy, has seen the military and arms manufacturers monopolize $1 trillion a year in defense-related spending in the United States even as the nation faces economic collapse. Imperialism always militarizes domestic politics. And this militarization, as Wolin notes, combines with the cultural fantasies of hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility to sever huge segments of the population from reality. Those who control the images control us. And while we have been entranced by the celluloid shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave, these corporate forces, extolling the benefits of privatization, have effectively dismantled the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services and public housing) and rolled back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. The proponents of globalization and unregulated capitalism do not waste time analyzing other ideologies. They have an ideology, or rather a plan of action that is defended by an ideology, and slavishly follow it. We on the left have dozens of analyses of competing ideologies without any coherent plan of our own. This has left us floundering while corporate forces ruthlessly dismantle civil society.
We are living through one of civilization’s great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all “inevitable” utopian visions, is being exposed as a fraud. The power elite, perplexed and confused, clings to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the looming political and economic vacuum. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs led industrial nations to sacrifice other areas of human importance – from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution – on the altar of free trade. It left the world’s poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits – which can never be repaid – in human history. The massive bailouts, stimulus packages, giveaways and short-term debt, along with imperial wars we can no longer afford, will leave the United States struggling to finance nearly $5 trillion in debt this year. This will require Washington to auction off about $96 billion in debt a week. Once China and the oil-rich states walk away from our debt, which one day has to happen, the Federal Reserve will become the buyer of last resort. The Fed has printed perhaps as much as two trillion new dollars in the last two years, and buying this much new debt will see it, in effect, print trillions more. This is when inflation, and most likely hyperinflation, will turn the dollar into junk. And at that point the entire system breaks down.
All traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic crisis. The moral order is turned upside down. The honest and industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers and speculators walk away with millions. The elite will retreat, as Naomi Klein has written in The Shock Doctrine, into gated communities where they will have access to services, food, amenities and security denied to the rest of us. We will begin a period in human history when there will be only masters and serfs. The corporate forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the radical Christian right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the rage at the ruling elites and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to ruthlessly extinguish opposition movements. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order and clutching the Christian cross. Totalitarianism, George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith but an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote. “That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Our elites have used fraud. Force is all they have left.
Our mediocre and bankrupt elite is desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved. More importantly, they are trying to save themselves. All attempts to work within this decayed system and this class of power brokers will prove useless. And resistance must respond to the harsh new reality of a global, capitalist order that will cling to power through ever-mounting forms of brutal and overt repression. Once credit dries up for the average citizen, once massive joblessness creates a permanent and enraged underclass and the cheap manufactured goods that are the opiates of our commodity culture vanish, we will probably evolve into a system that more closely resembles classical totalitarianism. Cruder, more violent forms of repression will have to be employed as the softer mechanisms of control favored by inverted totalitarianism break down.
It is not accidental that the economic crisis will converge with the environmental crisis. In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi laid out the devastating consequences – the depressions, wars and totalitarianism – that grow out of a so-called self-regulated free market. He grasped that “fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function.” He warned that a financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism – and a Mafia political system – which is a good description of our financial and political structure. A self-regulating market, Polanyi wrote, turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment. The free market’s assumption that nature and human beings are objects whose worth is determined by the market allows each to be exploited for profit until exhaustion or collapse. A society that no longer recognizes that nature and human life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, commits collective suicide. Such societies cannibalize themselves until they die. This is what we are undergoing.
If we build self-contained structures, ones that do as little harm as possible to the environment, we can weather the coming collapse. This task will be accomplished through the existence of small, physical enclaves that have access to sustainable agriculture, are able to sever themselves as much as possible from commercial culture and can be largely self-sufficient. These communities will have to build walls against electronic propaganda and fear that will be pumped out over the airwaves. Canada will probably be a more hospitable place to do this than the United States, given America’s strong undercurrent of violence. But in any country, those who survive will need isolated areas of land as well as distance from urban areas, which will see the food deserts in the inner cities, as well as savage violence, leach out across the urban landscape as produce and goods become prohibitively expensive and state repression becomes harsher and harsher.
The increasingly overt uses of force by the elites to maintain control should not end acts of resistance. Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience understand the moral imperative to challenge systems of abuse and despotism. They should be carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are always few in number and dismissed by those who hide their cowardice behind their cynicism. But resistance, however marginal, continues to affirm life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality and alone makes hope possible. Those who carried out great acts of resistance often sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, even under the darkest night of state repression, meant to defy injustice.
When the dissident Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi prison to the gallows, his last words were: “This is for me the end, but also the beginning.” Bonhoeffer knew that most of the citizens in his nation were complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death. But however hopeless it appeared in the moment, he affirmed what we all must affirm. He did not avoid death. He did not, as a distinct individual, survive. But he understood that his resistance and even his death were acts of love. He fought and died for the sanctity of life. He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative, and his defiance ultimately condemned his executioners.
We must continue to resist, but do so now with the discomforting realization that significant change will probably never occur in our lifetime. This makes resistance harder. It shifts resistance from the tangible and the immediate to the amorphous and the indeterminate. But to give up acts of resistance is spiritual and intellectual death. It is to surrender to the dehumanizing ideology of totalitarian capitalism. Acts of resistance keep alive another narrative, sustain our integrity and empower others, who we may never meet, to stand up and carry the flame we pass to them. No act of resistance is useless, whether it is refusing to pay taxes, fighting for a Tobin tax, working to shift the neoclassical economics paradigm, revoking a corporate charter, holding global internet votes or using Twitter to catalyze a chain reaction of refusal against the neoliberal order. But we will have to resist and then find the faith that resistance is worthwhile, for we will not immediately alter the awful configuration of power. And in this long, long war a community to sustain us, emotionally and materially, will be the key to a life of defiance.
The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote that the exclusive preoccupation with personal concerns and indifference to the suffering of others beyond the self-identified group is what ultimately made fascism and the Holocaust possible: “The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.”
The indifference to the plight of others and the supreme elevation of the self is what the corporate state seeks to instill in us. It uses fear, as well as hedonism, to thwart human compassion. We will have to continue to battle the mechanisms of the dominant culture, if for no other reason than to preserve through small, even tiny acts, our common humanity. We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door. Hope endures in these often imperceptible acts of defiance. This defiance, this capacity to say no, is what the psychopathic forces in control of our power systems seek to eradicate. As long as we are willing to defy these forces we have a chance, if not for ourselves, then at least for those who follow. As long as we defy these forces we remain alive. And for now this is the only victory possible.
Advertisement Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.
These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism.
We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.
My analysis comes close to the analysis of many anarchists. But there is a crucial difference. The anarchists do not understand the nature of violence. They grasp the extent of the rot in our cultural and political institutions, they know they must sever the tentacles of consumerism, but they naïvely believe that it can be countered with physical forms of resistance and acts of violence. There are debates within the anarchist movement – such as those on the destruction of property – but once you start using plastic explosives, innocent people get killed. And when anarchic violence begins to disrupt the mechanisms of governance, the power elite will use these acts, however minor, as an excuse to employ disproportionate and ruthless amounts of force against real and suspected agitators, only fueling the rage of the dispossessed.
I am not a pacifist. I know there are times, and even concede that this may eventually be one of them, when human beings are forced to respond to mounting repression with violence. I was in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia. We knew precisely what the Serbian forces ringing the city would do to us if they broke through the defenses and trench system around the besieged city. We had the examples of the Drina Valley or the city of Vukovar, where about a third of the Muslim inhabitants had been killed and the rest herded into refugee or displacement camps. There are times when the only choice left is to pick up a weapon to defend your family, neighborhood and city. But those who proved most adept at defending Sarajevo invariably came from the criminal class. When they were not shooting at Serbian soldiers they were looting the apartments of ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo and often executing them, as well as terrorizing their fellow Muslims. When you ingest the poison of violence, even in a just cause, it corrupts, deforms and perverts you. Violence is a drug, indeed it is the most potent narcotic known to humankind. Those most addicted to violence are those who have access to weapons and a penchant for force. And these killers rise to the surface of any armed movement and contaminate it with the intoxicating and seductive power that comes with the ability to destroy. I have seen it in war after war. When you go down that road you end up pitting your monsters against their monsters. And the sensitive, the humane and the gentle, those who have a propensity to nurture and protect life, are marginalized and often killed. The romantic vision of war and violence is as prevalent among anarchists and the hard left as it is in the mainstream culture. Those who resist with force will not defeat the corporate state or sustain the cultural values that must be sustained if we are to have a future worth living. From my many years as a war correspondent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Gaza and Bosnia, I have seen that armed resistance movements are always mutations of the violence that spawned them. I am not naïve enough to think I could have avoided these armed movements had I been a landless Salvadoran or Guatemalan peasant, a Palestinian in Gaza or a Muslim in Sarajevo, but this violent response to repression is and always will be tragic. It must be avoided, although not at the expense of our own survival.
Democracy, a system ideally designed to challenge the status quo, has been corrupted and tamed to slavishly serve the status quo. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul writes, a coup d’état in slow motion. And the coup is over. They won. We lost. The abject failure of activists to push corporate, industrialized states toward serious environmental reform, to thwart imperial adventurism or to build a humane policy toward the masses of the world’s poor stems from an inability to recognize the new realities of power. The paradigm of power has irrevocably altered and so must the paradigm of resistance alter.
Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.
We live in a culture characterized by what Benjamin DeMott called “junk politics.” Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. It always personalizes issues rather than clarifying them. It eschews real debate for manufactured scandals, celebrity gossip and spectacles. It trumpets eternal optimism, endlessly praises our moral strength and character, and communicates in a feel-your-pain language. The result of junk politics is that nothing changes, “meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socioeconomic advantage.”
The cultural belief that we can make things happen by thinking, by visualizing, by wanting them, by tapping into our inner strength or by understanding that we are truly exceptional is magical thinking. We can always make more money, meet new quotas, consume more products and advance our career if we have enough faith. This magical thinking, preached to us across the political spectrum by Oprah, sports celebrities, Hollywood, self-help gurus and Christian demagogues, is largely responsible for our economic and environmental collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as “negative.” This belief, which allows men and women to behave and act like little children, discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties. It exacerbates despair and passivity. It fosters a state of self-delusion. The purpose, structure and goals of the corporate state are never seriously questioned. To question, to engage in criticism of the corporate collective, is to be obstructive and negative. And it has perverted the way we view ourselves, our nation and the natural world. The new paradigm of power, coupled with its bizarre ideology of limitless progress and impossible happiness, has turned whole nations, including the United States, into monsters.
We can march in Copenhagen. We can join Bill McKibben’s worldwide day of climate protests. We can compost in our backyards and hang our laundry out to dry. We can write letters to our elected officials and vote for Barack Obama, but the power elite is impervious to the charade of democratic participation. Power is in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls who are ruthlessly creating a system of neo-feudalism and killing the ecosystem that sustains the human species. And appealing to their better nature, or seeking to influence the internal levers of power, will no longer work.
We will not, especially in the United States, avoid our Götterdämmerung. Obama, like Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the other heads of the industrialized nations, has proven as craven a tool of the corporate state as George W. Bush. Our democratic system has been transformed into what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin labels inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, a free press, parliamentary systems and constitutions while manipulating and corrupting internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens but are ruled by armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington, Ottawa or other state capitals who author the legislation and get the legislators to pass it. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion. Mass culture, owned and disseminated by corporations, diverts us with trivia, spectacles and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics – and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”
Inverted totalitarianism wields total power without resorting to cruder forms of control such as gulags, concentration camps or mass terror. It harnesses science and technology for its dark ends. It enforces ideological uniformity by using mass communication systems to instill profligate consumption as an inner compulsion and to substitute our illusions of ourselves for reality. It does not forcibly suppress dissidents, as long as those dissidents remain ineffectual. And as it diverts us it dismantles manufacturing bases, devastates communities, unleashes waves of human misery and ships jobs to countries where fascists and communists know how to keep workers in line. It does all this while waving the flag and mouthing patriotic slogans. “The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed,” Wolin writes.
The practice and psychology of advertising, the rule of “market forces” in many arenas other than markets, the continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the saturation by mass media and propaganda of every household and the takeover of the universities have rendered most of us hostages. The rot of imperialism, which is always incompatible with democracy, has seen the military and arms manufacturers monopolize $1 trillion a year in defense-related spending in the United States even as the nation faces economic collapse. Imperialism always militarizes domestic politics. And this militarization, as Wolin notes, combines with the cultural fantasies of hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility to sever huge segments of the population from reality. Those who control the images control us. And while we have been entranced by the celluloid shadows on the walls of Plato’s cave, these corporate forces, extolling the benefits of privatization, have effectively dismantled the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services and public housing) and rolled back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. The proponents of globalization and unregulated capitalism do not waste time analyzing other ideologies. They have an ideology, or rather a plan of action that is defended by an ideology, and slavishly follow it. We on the left have dozens of analyses of competing ideologies without any coherent plan of our own. This has left us floundering while corporate forces ruthlessly dismantle civil society.
We are living through one of civilization’s great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all “inevitable” utopian visions, is being exposed as a fraud. The power elite, perplexed and confused, clings to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the looming political and economic vacuum. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs led industrial nations to sacrifice other areas of human importance – from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution – on the altar of free trade. It left the world’s poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits – which can never be repaid – in human history. The massive bailouts, stimulus packages, giveaways and short-term debt, along with imperial wars we can no longer afford, will leave the United States struggling to finance nearly $5 trillion in debt this year. This will require Washington to auction off about $96 billion in debt a week. Once China and the oil-rich states walk away from our debt, which one day has to happen, the Federal Reserve will become the buyer of last resort. The Fed has printed perhaps as much as two trillion new dollars in the last two years, and buying this much new debt will see it, in effect, print trillions more. This is when inflation, and most likely hyperinflation, will turn the dollar into junk. And at that point the entire system breaks down.
All traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic crisis. The moral order is turned upside down. The honest and industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers and speculators walk away with millions. The elite will retreat, as Naomi Klein has written in The Shock Doctrine, into gated communities where they will have access to services, food, amenities and security denied to the rest of us. We will begin a period in human history when there will be only masters and serfs. The corporate forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the radical Christian right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the rage at the ruling elites and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to ruthlessly extinguish opposition movements. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order and clutching the Christian cross. Totalitarianism, George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith but an age of schizophrenia. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,” Orwell wrote. “That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” Our elites have used fraud. Force is all they have left.
Our mediocre and bankrupt elite is desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved. More importantly, they are trying to save themselves. All attempts to work within this decayed system and this class of power brokers will prove useless. And resistance must respond to the harsh new reality of a global, capitalist order that will cling to power through ever-mounting forms of brutal and overt repression. Once credit dries up for the average citizen, once massive joblessness creates a permanent and enraged underclass and the cheap manufactured goods that are the opiates of our commodity culture vanish, we will probably evolve into a system that more closely resembles classical totalitarianism. Cruder, more violent forms of repression will have to be employed as the softer mechanisms of control favored by inverted totalitarianism break down.
It is not accidental that the economic crisis will converge with the environmental crisis. In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi laid out the devastating consequences – the depressions, wars and totalitarianism – that grow out of a so-called self-regulated free market. He grasped that “fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function.” He warned that a financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism – and a Mafia political system – which is a good description of our financial and political structure. A self-regulating market, Polanyi wrote, turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment. The free market’s assumption that nature and human beings are objects whose worth is determined by the market allows each to be exploited for profit until exhaustion or collapse. A society that no longer recognizes that nature and human life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, commits collective suicide. Such societies cannibalize themselves until they die. This is what we are undergoing.
If we build self-contained structures, ones that do as little harm as possible to the environment, we can weather the coming collapse. This task will be accomplished through the existence of small, physical enclaves that have access to sustainable agriculture, are able to sever themselves as much as possible from commercial culture and can be largely self-sufficient. These communities will have to build walls against electronic propaganda and fear that will be pumped out over the airwaves. Canada will probably be a more hospitable place to do this than the United States, given America’s strong undercurrent of violence. But in any country, those who survive will need isolated areas of land as well as distance from urban areas, which will see the food deserts in the inner cities, as well as savage violence, leach out across the urban landscape as produce and goods become prohibitively expensive and state repression becomes harsher and harsher.
The increasingly overt uses of force by the elites to maintain control should not end acts of resistance. Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience understand the moral imperative to challenge systems of abuse and despotism. They should be carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are always few in number and dismissed by those who hide their cowardice behind their cynicism. But resistance, however marginal, continues to affirm life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality and alone makes hope possible. Those who carried out great acts of resistance often sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, even under the darkest night of state repression, meant to defy injustice.
When the dissident Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi prison to the gallows, his last words were: “This is for me the end, but also the beginning.” Bonhoeffer knew that most of the citizens in his nation were complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death. But however hopeless it appeared in the moment, he affirmed what we all must affirm. He did not avoid death. He did not, as a distinct individual, survive. But he understood that his resistance and even his death were acts of love. He fought and died for the sanctity of life. He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative, and his defiance ultimately condemned his executioners.
We must continue to resist, but do so now with the discomforting realization that significant change will probably never occur in our lifetime. This makes resistance harder. It shifts resistance from the tangible and the immediate to the amorphous and the indeterminate. But to give up acts of resistance is spiritual and intellectual death. It is to surrender to the dehumanizing ideology of totalitarian capitalism. Acts of resistance keep alive another narrative, sustain our integrity and empower others, who we may never meet, to stand up and carry the flame we pass to them. No act of resistance is useless, whether it is refusing to pay taxes, fighting for a Tobin tax, working to shift the neoclassical economics paradigm, revoking a corporate charter, holding global internet votes or using Twitter to catalyze a chain reaction of refusal against the neoliberal order. But we will have to resist and then find the faith that resistance is worthwhile, for we will not immediately alter the awful configuration of power. And in this long, long war a community to sustain us, emotionally and materially, will be the key to a life of defiance.
The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote that the exclusive preoccupation with personal concerns and indifference to the suffering of others beyond the self-identified group is what ultimately made fascism and the Holocaust possible: “The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.”
The indifference to the plight of others and the supreme elevation of the self is what the corporate state seeks to instill in us. It uses fear, as well as hedonism, to thwart human compassion. We will have to continue to battle the mechanisms of the dominant culture, if for no other reason than to preserve through small, even tiny acts, our common humanity. We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door. Hope endures in these often imperceptible acts of defiance. This defiance, this capacity to say no, is what the psychopathic forces in control of our power systems seek to eradicate. As long as we are willing to defy these forces we have a chance, if not for ourselves, then at least for those who follow. As long as we defy these forces we remain alive. And for now this is the only victory possible.
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