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Obama: Speak Loudly and Carry a Toothpick January 23, 2013

Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama.
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President Obama, standard-bearer of the Republican agenda,*  takes on the Tea Party in inaugural address.
*war mongering (drone missiles, Afghanistan escalation, Pakistan, Libya, Sudan, and heeeeeere comes Iran)
*support of Israel Gaza massacres
*support of Latin America coups (Honduras, Paraguay) and right-wing governments (Colombia, Panama, Mexico)
*bank/Wall Street bailouts
*insurance industry health care plan
*protecting torturers (past:Bush/Cheney; present: Bagram)
*destroying public education (standardized testing)
*state secrets
*pursuing whistle blowers
*Patriot Act
*presidential kill list
*indefinite detention
*your favorite Obama cop-out here _____________________________

Homeland Security Prepares for Civil War August 28, 2012

Posted by rogerhollander in Economic Crisis, Revolution.
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Roger’s note: I have no idea how reliable is the author of this article.  If the facts are correct, then we have good reason to fear massive repression of civil unrest.  The article suggests that it is more likely to come from the right (tea party) than the left.  In either case the notion of economic disaster leading to civilian rioting being confronted by agencies armed with lethal weapons is truly frightening.

(about the author)

opednews.com

Its Clear Our Military Is No Longer The Nation’s Only Standing Army When It Comes To Killing Power
 
Over the past 2 weeks, everyone from the mainstream media to bloggers and conspiracy theorists have questioned the government’s mass purchasing of ammunition for federal agencies like the National Weather Service and even the Social Security Administration. Combined, both agencies ordered over 210,000 rounds. This ammunition is mostly made up of “hollow point” bullets, which are designed strictly for maximum damage to the human body and have been outlawed for use in warfare since 1969.
 
On the surface, these purchases alone are scary enough and raise questions as to why these unlikely agencies need any amounts of ammo, especially bullets that have been outlawed. The National Weather Service claims they have 63 officers who “enforce the nation’s ocean and fishing laws to ensure a level playing field for fishermen and to protect marine species like whales, dolphins and turtles.” If you divide 46,000 rounds by the 63 agents they employ, that’s 730 bullets per agent, or, in other words, 63 crack shots and a lot of dead fisherman.
 
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has given no specific response to questions regarding their purchase of 174,00 rounds. They said their “agents’ need them. But, keep this in mind: the SSA only deals with US Citizens in America. The SSA has never been involved with anything outside of this country for any reason. And what do they need with armed agents? All SSA offices employ private contracted security for their offices.
 
One Billion + Hollow Point Bullets
 
Digging deeper into the government’s recent procurements for ammo, you learn just how aggressively they are buying up ridiculous amounts of ammo and riot related equipment. The feds have actually ordered over 1 billion rounds of ammo in 2012 alone. They received 750,000,000 in March and are awaiting another 450,000,000 arriving soon. All in conjunction with large-scale orders for riot gear, bulletproof checkpoint outposts with red and green stoplights, human shaped paper practice targets, and other crowd control and containment equipment.
 
There is no conspiracy theory here. The federal government is expecting either a catastrophic financial collapse that could provoke nationwide food riots and all out civil unrest, another civil war, or even Armageddon. All in the very near future. Some theorize that the mass purchase of ammunition is an attempt to hoard as much as possible from the American public whom the feds believe may be in preparation for civil war right now.
 
The Warnings Are There
 
Activist, radio talk show and journalist, Madison Ruppert, recently detailed on his “End The Lie Radio Show” how our Department of Homeland Security has an apparent obsession with buying up all the ammunition on earth. He noted that even if this ammo were purchased strictly for training purposes, as the Feds claim, we simply do not have the money in the federal budget to buy hundreds of millions of rounds of high dollar ammunition for domestic agents’ target practice.
 
Another recent story by Ruppert entitled, “We Are Preparing For Massive Civil War…Says DHS Informant” outlines investigator Doug Haggman’s interview with reportedly, high-level, reliable sources inside Homeland Security, who claim the agency is preparing for a massive civil war in America. The DHS source states that the federal government foresees and prepares for a massive civil revolt. “Every time you hear about troop movements, military equipment, the militarization of the police, and the buying of the ammunition in the US, all of this is orchestrated by the DHS who are reportedly preparing for a massive uprising.”
 
Hagmann goes on to say that his sources tell him the concerns of the DHS stem from their belief in an impending collapse of the U.S. dollar as the the world’s primary reserve currency, and their fear that a significant portion of the population is already armed and will rise up over the crash of our monetary system. Hagmann’s sources confirmed the ongoing fear of a U.S. dollar collapse at the hands of the Chinese and possibly the Russians in retaliation for aggressive U.S. foreign policy initiatives against Chinese and Russian strategic allies like Iran and Syria.
 
“The one source that we have, I’ve known since 1979,” says Hagmann. “He started out as a patrol officer and currently he is now working for a federal agency under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. He’s in a position to know what policies are being initiated and what policies are being planned at this point.” And, “he’s telling us right now that what you’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“We are preparing, we, meaning the government, we are preparing for a massive civil war in this country.”
 
Then there is Trends Research Institutes’ Founder Gerald Celente’s forecast of last year where he believes and expects a collapse of the U.S. dollar and riots in America some time this year. Since Celente’s “Civil War’ prediction of last year, President Obama signed executive orders known as the National Defense Resources Preparedness, which are politically damaging actions taken by a sitting president. Of course, he also signed the National Defense Authorization Act, abolishing habeas corpus and the Bill or Rights, and permitting indefinite detention without charge or trial of American citizens at home and abroad. He further claims the power to murder American citizens without indictment, trial or conviction upon his finding that they support or substantially assist an enemy of the United States or one of its allies. Let the firing squads begin.
 
And most recently, additional requests made by the DHS for another procurement of 750 million rounds of hollow-point ammunition only fuels speculation of an upcoming tragic event expected on American soil. These major events, as shocking to the American people as they are, will be taking place during an election year.
 
Governments Strategy To Crush Any Tea Party Insurgency (Warfare)
 
How seriously does the government consider a Tea Party rebellion? Kevin Benson, a retired U.S. Army colonel, who now teaches modern warfare to soldiers at the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has co-written an article with Civil War expert, Jennifer Weber, detailing how to crush a Tea Party insurgency. That report, by itself, has ignited a firestorm among those increasingly concerned about what they feel is a distinct anti-civilian tone that has infected much of the military and Homeland Security personnel since 2009.
Benson and Weber co-wrote the article for Small Wars Journal on a 2010 Army report entitled, “U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, The Army Operating Concept 2016 – 2028.”
 
The report describes the Army’s response to threats “at home and abroad” in the coming two decades, and, in doing so, made clear that a monumental cultural shift recently occurred in the thinking of those at the top levels of military command. This shift has some governmental watchdogs worried, particularly given that Benson is using the platform provided at Fort Leavenworth to indoctrinate soldiers in his vision of the nature of modern warfare in America.
 
Benson and Webber actually created a fictitious training scenario, including a military response, as a teaching tool for the future insurrection of tea party activists. As the scenario goes, the tea party stages a takeover of the town of Darlington, S.C.. They profess that the Declaration of Independence has been re-imposed, and the local government declared null and void. According to the vision articulated by Benson, the enemy will be average citizens whose values resonate with those articulated by the tea party.
 
The scenario admits to the public that the government fears that the Tea Party can alter or abolish an existing government and replace it with another. In the words of Benson’s report, a takeover by the Tea Party will have an effect on the general population insomuch as it “shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
 
Also, there is a 2008 report produced by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute that warns the United States might experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises, which it termed “strategic shock.” It goes on to say, “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reprioritize itself to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The report, authored by Retired Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, adds that the military may be needed to squash “purposeful domestic resistance.”
 
Even though Freir’s warning does not directly cite the Tea Party as the cause of the mass civil unrest, the inference is there. With the publication of the reports by Frier, Benson and Weber, it is clear that DHS and the U.S. Army considers it a valid proposition to assume that a future civil war will be sparked not by extremist Islamists with dirty bombs or left wing insurrectionists, but by the tea party and the conservatives who participate in it.
 
Just three years ago the Department of Homeland Security generated the notorious Home Grown Terrorist Assessment Memorandum detailing the the vision the DHS held of the primary threats to U.S. domestic security in the near future. The memo was distributed to local law enforcement across the nation with details about the Tea Party being the object of the government’s fears. The fears included combat hardened returning veterans to a nation without jobs for them, weapons and ammunition shortages that could be blamed upon the federal government, citizens who believe there is an effort to build an international government, extremist internet chatters who perceive a loss of U.S. manufacturing and construction jobs to overseas markets and blame governmental policies for that exodus and resultant home foreclosures, libertarians, Ron Paul supporters, people who talk a lot about their constitutional rights, people with copies of the constitution or Bill or Rights, etc., are all suspected domestic terrorists according to the memo.
 
Why Hollow Point Bullets?
 
After being bombarded with questions wanting to know why the feds are procuring stockpiles of ammo, their half-hearted excuses came down to needing this ammo for training and qualification purposes. That answer only raises more questions. Like, why does anyone need to practice or qualify with expensive “hollow point’ rounds. Manufacturers make “practice’ rounds that are considerably cheaper.
 
According to an article published by war decorated Army Major General Jerry Curry (Ret), the feds explanation about the bullets fails to pass the smell test. “Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war.” Hollow point bullets don’t just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body’s organs. Death often follows. “Notice that all of these purchases are for the deadly hollow nose bullets. These bullets are not being purchased and stored for squirrel or coyote hunting.
 
“This is serious ammunition manufactured to be used for serious purposes.”
 
He goes on to write that” “In the war in Iraq, our military forces expended approximately 70 million rounds per year. In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls.”
 
His final claim is food for thought “This is enough ammunition to empty five rounds into the body of every living American citizen.”
 
General Curry raises 3 additional good points.
 
1. We have enough military forces to maintain law and order in the U.S. even during times of civil unrest. We have local police, backed up by each state’s National Guard, backed up by the Department of Defense.
 
2. In addition to all these forces, why does DHS need its own private army?
 
3. Why do the SSA, NOAA and other government agencies need to create their own civilian security forces armed with hollow nose bullets?
 
In Closing
 
This is not a “conspiracy theory” or guessing that our government is actively stockpiling enormous amounts of lethal ammunition, riot equipment and other related control devices designed solely for civil unrest. This purchase is a fact, and there is plenty of documentation from the feds themselves on how they are procuring these items. It is readily available on the Internet. It is also evident that within the last few years, several military strategists have produced in depth reports outlining the probability for a massive Civil War in America in the near future.
 
The DHS and other federal agencies are aggressively acting on those reports and recommendations by launching their own preparedness plans in order to both conduct a pre-emptive strike first and or combat any uprising by civilians that may occur first.
 
These ammo purchases by the feds do not include any mention of “non-lethal” tactics such as rubber bullets, water hoses, bean bags (fired from a shotgun to knock a person down) or tear gas, etc., which are used instead of deadly force to control civil unrest. It appears on the surface that they are gearing up for all out warfare on the American public. It also appears that the entity behind this plan is the Department of Homeland Security, not the military or local city, county, state or federal law enforcement.
 
The below analogy will likely anger some of the people reading it. It is only being used to point out how agencies akin to Homeland Security can get out of hand and allow self-appointed power and authority to become grossly abused, thus losing sight of their intent and objective.
 
In our own fears from 911, our government created Homeland Security, an agency that has become so powerful and relentless in believing they are protecting America that they have evolved into nothing more than what the German Waffen -”SS’ officers became over time. Out of control. The “SS’ were first formed in 1934 only as a supplementary army alongside the main German army. But, in just a few years, they were able to appoint themselves into the core of Germany’s terror apparatus and by about 1936 assumed control of the entire terror machine.
 
End Of Story
 
Jack Swint-Publisher
West Virginia News
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Only Ron Paul Warns Of Emerging Fascist State February 27, 2012

Posted by rogerhollander in Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, Right Wing, War.
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Roger’s note: Please don’t get me wrong, I am no fan or supporter of Ron Paul with his Social Darwinian Ayn Rand Libertarian philosophy that makes a fetish of the sacred concept of individual liberty (as if it were possible to separate the individual from the community).  Nevertheless, Paul’s positions on war and empire coincide with that of the left in general and the Occupy Movement in specific.  It is also easy to see why his persona, which reeks of sincerity and honest indignation, appeals to youthful idealism.  His association with the extreme right and some alleged policy statements that sound like white supremacism, are disturbing.  But his position of militarism and fascism, as outlined in the article below, begs the question of why he is a part of the Republican Party in the first place; and why, if he sees the connection between authoritarian government and mega corporations, his domestic policy coincides with the interests of those same corporations.

(about the author), Feb. 26, 2012, www.opednews.com

Republican Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate of either party to tell the truth that America is “slipping into a fascist system.”

That is unquestionably the critical issue of the hour for the United States of America and one that Paul’s Republican fellow candidates and their Democratic opponent President Obama choose to ignore.

Hand in hand with this existential crisis is that a nation that goes fascist at home invariably becomes a tyrant abroad. Thus, the Congressman from Galveston is right on the mark when he calls for the predatory U.S. to pull its troops out of the Middle East and Africa and close down its foreign bases. The U.S., indisputably, with its 1,000 military bases at home and a thousand more abroad, is now   the   most awesome military power ever.

“We’ve slipped away from a true Republic,” Paul told a cheering crowd of followers at a Feb. 18th rally in Kansas City, Mo.   “Now we’re slipping into a fascist system where it’s a combination of government and big business and authoritarian rule and the suppression of the individual rights of each and every American citizen.”

According to the   Associated Press   reporter who covered his speech, “Paul repeatedly denounced President Barack Obama’s recent enactment of a law requiring military custody of anyone suspected to be associated with al-Qaida and involved in planning an attack on the U.S.” (Note: Paul is a consistent defender of individual rights. He also opposed that previous horrific piece of totalitarian legislation mislabeled as the Patriot Act.)

Ralph Munyan, a Republican committeeman who attended the Paul rally, told   AP   he agreed with Paul’s warnings of a “fascist system” and Paul’s pledges to end the War on Drugs as well as U.S. involvement in wars overseas. By contrast, candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich are all hawks spoiling for a fight with Iran and who leave peace-minded Republican voters no one to turn to save Paul.

An article on Paul published in the Feb. 27th issue of   “The New Yorker”   quotes him as saying, “We thought Obama might help us and get us out of some of these messes. But now we’re in more countries than ever—we can’t even keep track of how many places our troops are!”

In the evaluation of   “New Yorker”   reporter Kelefa Sanneh, “So far, the Paul campaign is neither a groundswell nor a failure. He is slowly collecting delegates…” which could impact the final selection of the nominee even if they do not have the strength to nominate Paul.

Overall, Paul’s message appears to be “doing better, state by state, than he did in 2008,” Sanneh writes, but “he has conspicuously failed to establish himself as this year’s Tea Party candidate.”

“People don’t think of Paul as a top-tier Republican candidate partly because they think of him as a libertarian: anti-tax and anti-bailout, but also antiwar, anti-empire, and, sometimes, anti-Republican,” Sanneh continues.

To date, Paul’s shining contribution to the 2012 campaign is educational—even if the major networks and cable powerhouse Fox News downplay his candidacy in their primary night election coverage. Some of what he says gets through to the public, particularly youthful voters. On the grave issues of totalitarianism at home and tyranny abroad, Paul is the last truth-teller. As such, Paul is a dove fighting for survival among a flock of hawks, and his chances are not bright.

(Sherwood Ross heads a public relations firm for political candidates who favor peace and prosperity.)

Sherwood Ross worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and contributed a regular “Workplace” column for Reuters. He has contributed to national magazines and hosted a talk show on WOL, Washington, D.C. In the Sixties he was active as public (more…)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Tennessee Tea Party to Children: What Slaves? January 24, 2012

Posted by rogerhollander in Education, History, Racism, Right Wing.
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by Abby Zimet, www.commondreams.org, 24 January 2012

 

Showing a marked aversity for anything remotely resembling the truth, Tennessee Tea Party leaders have issued “demands” to state legislators that schools stop teaching - through “neglect and outright ill-will” – all that bad stuff about our fine Founding Fathers like the “made-up criticism” that maybe they owned slaves or killed Indians or did other icky things, and that, “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens.” This, after Texas approved 100 revisions to textbooks for its almost five million kids that would rename slave trade “Atlantic triangular trade,” explore the “unintended consequences” of affirmative action,” emphasize the role of the Christian Chuch in the nation’s founding, call for studying iconic conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and The Moral Majority, and otherwise twist “history” to their liking.

“We seek to compel the teaching (of) the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”

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Posted by ctrl-z
Jan 24 2012 – 1:52pm

They weren’t slaves, it’s just that, back then, the penalty for illegal immigration was a lifetime at hard labor. Obviously, to be like the founding fathers, we need to reimpose the original sentence.

Posted by vaialdiavolo
Jan 24 2012 – 2:10pm

So this is what the descendants of the illegal “immigrants”- genocidal slavers look like and it looks like they may have found their messiah in the overtly racist  Professor of Revisionist History running for President.  This has echoes of what was done to the children of the First Nations through the same racist “educational” system of “killing the Indian”. A storm is coming…

Freedom Tea Party Style August 16, 2011

Posted by rogerhollander in Civil Liberties.
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What else do these freedom lovers want the government to prohibit?

Thereuptic abortion

Mariajuana

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and other authors

Atheism

Peace

Feel free to add to the list.

 

How Abortion Caused the Debt Crisis August 1, 2011

Posted by rogerhollander in Economic Crisis, Racism, Right Wing, Women.
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Roger’s note: we shouldn’t, of course, take the title of this article literally.  However, it does give us a fairly clear picture of how the manipulation of misogynist and racist hatred by the lunatic Right has advanced the objectives of the military-industrial complex (which the article does not mention  by name).  The only reservation I have about the article is that it sort of lets the Democratic Party’s complicity off the hook.
Published on Monday, August 1, 2011 by RH Reality Check

Last night, right before the fatal deadline, the U.S. Congress finally came to a deal that allows us to raise the debt ceiling, without which the federal government would basically shut down completely and start to default on its loans, creating a cascade of economic disasters.  Congress came to a deal before we had to learn those Depression-era money-saving skills (sadly, we don’t have flour sacks to make clothes from any longer).  Now it’s time to reflect on how our country has gone so far off track that we can’t even handle the basic responsibility of keeping the country from plunging into a manufactured crisis that nearly led to economic collapse.  There are multiple causes, but one that hasn’t been discussed much is abortion.

Tea Party

Yes, abortion. Or, more specifically, the sustained sex panic that has been going on in this country since the sixties and seventies, when the sexual revolution occurred and women secured their reproductive rights.  If it seems a little strange to argue that sex panic helped bring us to the verge of economic collapse, well, that’s the nature of the circuitous, ever-evolving world of politics.  But it’s sex panic that helped create the modern right-wing populist, and it’s the modern right-wing populist that created the current crisis.

Despite the recent coinage of the term “Tea Party,” what we call the Tea Party has been around under different names forever.  It’s basically right-wing populism, and has been the thorn in the side of democracies for at least the past century.  The modern form of it in the United States really formed in the sixties, in response to two major social changes: desegregation and the sexual revolution/feminism. (Yes, I realize feminism and the sexual revolution are separate things, but for the right-wing, they may as well be one thing, since it’s women’s sexual liberation that really gets them going.)  You had this huge group of socially conservative people who were wound up about these social changes, but not a lot of direction for their anger and hate.  Outside of glowering at Gloria Steinem and Martin Luther King Jr., what are you supposed to do to stop widespread social change? They needed direction.

The genius of conservative leadership was that they were able to take all this anger about sexual freedom and desegregation and put the blame on two enemies: Democrats and the federal government.  Democrats were blamed for society getting “out of control” and the federal government’s role in enforcing women’s rights and desegregation made them an easy target.  Once these villains were established, all this right-wing populist anger could be pointed towards generic goals of big business Republicans.  If you hate the federal government for enforcing the Civil Rights Act, it’s easy enough to start hating them for levying taxes, especially if you can be convinced those taxes are going to welfare to pay for what you believe is immoral behavior, such as single motherhood.  If you hate the Supreme Court for Roe v. Wade, it’s easy to get you to support putting more conservative justices up there who will routinely vote for business interests.

The theory is that the Republican Party basically exploited right-wing populist anger and used it towards their economic, corporatist ends.  This is a non-controversial statement, and is the thesis behind Thomas Frank’s famous book What’s the Matter with Kansas?, in which he wrote:

“Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically-correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.”

A lot of people, including myself, have been critical of Frank’s cynicism in this formulation, arguing that the leadership actually delivers more on right-wing populist demands than Frank gives them credit for doing.

But what we didn’t argue with was the basic premise that there’s two kinds of conservatives: right-wing populists and country club Republicans, and while liberals may not much like the latter, we at least had the reassurance that they’re not crazy.  Country club Republicans may want less regulation and lower taxes, but they don’t actually believe that federal power is illegitimate, or that liberals are motivated by Satanic forces and therefore can be treated as always wrong.  For the past few decades, the leadership of the Republican Party was able to work with Democrats on commonsense governance such as raising the debt ceiling, precisely because they didn’t believe the wild-eyed rantings from right wing talk radio about how Democrats and the federal government are pure evil.  (And the legality of abortion is example #1 in the right wing pantheon of reasons to believe the federal government is evil.)

What I think Frank and those of us who were mildly critical of him failed to grasp is the right-wing populist beast may not be within the control of the Republican Party forever, and that the populists may become a large enough group of people that they could take over the party and make their obsessions—the evils of sexual liberation, the end of the federal government as we know it—the actual priorities of the Republican Party. They very nearly brought a real end to our country as we know it, defying what what Wall Street wanted, and a major reason is that the populist caucus in the party is more interested in ideological purity than doing simply following the lead of Wall Street.

I suppose it should have been easy enough to see coming: for decades, a constant stream of propaganda about the evils of federal power, abortion rights, affirmative action, social spending, multi-culturalism, gay rights and other right wing bogeymen has energized the base to keep voting and giving money and running for office.  At a certain point, the populists would have enough power to change the rules of the game.  This crisis was averted, but we should not forget the important lesson learned here.  The constant feeding of the paranoid, sexually and racially panicked right wing extremist imagination does not come without consequences.  In the past, the mainstream media could downplay this because the major victims didn’t have a lot of privilege or power. But increasingly, it looks like the victims could be all of us.

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Amanda Marcotte

Amanda Marcotte blogs every day at Pandagon.net, and contributes a weekly podcast to RH Reality Check. She lives in Austin, TX with her two cats, boyfriend, and environmentally correct commuter bicycle.

The Kabuki Play On Capitol Hill Comes Right Before The Deal July 31, 2011

Posted by rogerhollander in Uncategorized.
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Roger’s note: notice that this was written on July 30, the day before Obama and Boehner made their deal.  I believe writer this was prophetic.  Was there ever a chance that Obama and his fellow Democrats would use their muscle to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid or insist on reduction in the area that takes up nearly 60% or all federal discretionary spending, the bloated Pentagon war machine?  That they would use the 14th Amendment to impose a higher debt ceiling with no drastic cuts?  No way José.
Published on Saturday, July 30, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Oh, the gnashing of the teeth, Oh, the flamboyant tactics. Oh, all the breaking news excitement on cable news as the debt ceiling countdown saga went down to the wire with an intense political confrontation of a kind we haven’t seen before …

Or maybe we had—in the TARP debate and so-called Obamacare vote, to cite but two moments of high political drama. Once again, all the key players knew the outcome but wanted to keep us guessing because it served everyone’s interests.

For Boehner and the boys on the GOP side it was the great leadership test subplot. He would prove how tough he was, demonstrate his leadership mettle, get equal time with the president, and even look presidential. The orange tan was gone. His moment had in the sunlight had come as he roped the Tea party kids into the politically correct corral. The Congressman from Ohio was now a national force to be reckoned with,

Let’s not forget that he had become Wall Street’s butt boy, had been put on their financial slush fund, had many of the big money lobbyists on his side even as the financiers whined and complained about exaggerated threats to the world economy.

They made some noise but not too much. They well remember the wit and wisdom of ex-White House aide and now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel about a crisis being a terrible opportunity to waste.

The Wall Street powercrats are high stakes poker players and this was one game they knew they would win in a political arena dependent on their beneficence.

At the same time, as the media compared the charade to the uncertainty of who would be chosen as this week’s Bachelorette reality TV Show. The Tea Party even got Charles Schumer and Jon Stewart going by reaching into the home video collections for sound bite from Ben Affleck’s flick, The Town, a bank robbery shoot em’ up set in Charlestown MA.

Only the pols on the hill had their eyes set on slightly bigger banks as they served bigger banksters.

Some analysts put their tactics down to “lunacy.” Others to irrationality but this gambit was far more rational than most commentators realized. It reminded me of Richard Nixon’s well-concocted madman strategy to make the Vietnamese think he was crazy enough to blow up their dykes or even drop the big one. It was a well-calculated fear tactic, a shrewd maneuver in a game of psychological warfare.

Paul Krugman understood what was going on, seconding my own analysis of the kamikaze tactics the right was using. He wrote what most of the media obfuscated about:

“The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats – who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether – have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.”

And, oh yes, the President had some big skin in the game. It gave him the posturing moment he needed to show how “balanced” he was, and how centrist he could become.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) argued that Obama talked left to move right, as the Washington Post explained:

Forget about “winning the future”–Barack Obama wants to win the center. That’s what the Washington Post is telling readers (7/25/11):

Obama ‘Big Deal’ on Debt a Gamble to Win the Center


Advisers think securing his plan would ensure general-election victory

The Post’s Zachary A. Goldfarb (who can’t be held responsible for the headline) explained that Obama was making Republicans an offer they couldn’t refuse….

He added:

“Obama’s political advisers have long believed that securing such an agreement would provide an enormous boost to his 2012 campaign, according to people familiar with White House thinking. In particular, they want to preserve and improve the president’s standing among independents.”

FAIR dipped into their own archive to reminds of us of an article from September 2009 which showed the President was under pressure even then to drop a focus on jobs to concentrate on the deficit.

In other words, this whole strategy is not new but years in the making:

“Parroting the Republican Party, corporate media have recently devoted much energy to deploring the federal deficit and chastising President Barack Obama for not focusing enough on balancing the budget. Very soon, media warn, either spending must be cut or taxes will need to be raised across the board—an argument that rests on the assumption that deficit reduction is, indeed, the top economic priority”

And, so, White House priorities shifted subtly to please the plutocrats and try to neutralize the Tea Party fanatics by co-opting their program the way Bill Clinton did in 1996, It was called “triangulation” then. Obama’s own supporters call it “betrayal” now; Obama’s pro-Wall Street economic team assured they wouldn’t give the men on The Street too much to worry about.

And so what happens now? The Republicans get their bill, unify their ranks even though it’s just more show and tell. As Reuters explains, its all a prelude to coming back to the bargaining table at the 11th hour to make a deal that both sides can use to political advantage.

Read this and as you do, read between the lines;

“The House of Representatives approved a Republican deficit plan on Friday that has no chance of becoming law but could pave the way for a last-ditch bid for bipartisan compromise to avert a crippling national default.”

This was the scenario—more akin to a Kabuki play than a real political fight. It’s more like professional wrestling of the kind they perform at the Capitol Arena not far from Capitol Hill.

The audience is hyped. The wrestlers pretend to hate each other, and arouse the crowd with acts of physical aggression. The match looks fierce, but, as everyone knows, it is fixed and scripted.

They musclemen throw each other around the ring, sometimes even gushing blood. The big bruisers denounce each other until it’s over to the count of 1-2-3; the bad guy always goes down.

The match ends, imagine that, just in time for a commercial break. Here it will end at the debt ceiling deadline. Each side will claim victory.

There is no ceiling on these political shenanigans. It’s just part of fast-paced game designed to keep the public on the sidelines and on the edge of uncertainly while the media keeps the politicians in the spotlight and excites the base in both parties,

In the end, the media will salute both sides for putting country above party. The only deficit here is one of political morality and honesty.

You tell me: am I too cynical, or is this the way what some call politricks has become?

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Danny Schechter

Mediachannel’s News Dissector Danny Schechter investigates the origins of the economic crisis in his book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo Books via Amazon). Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

So This Is Despair July 26, 2011

Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Economic Crisis, Right Wing.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Roger’s note: it feels both surrealistic and nightmarish to think that in what is not much more than a single political moment, the Congress and the President are about to destroy Social Security and Medicare, two of the most fundamental parts of what is left of the social safety net.  Is this really happening?  Has the neo-fascist Christian Fundamentalist right wing lunacy taken full charge?
Tuesday 26 July 2011
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout         | Op-Ed

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.

- Flannery O’Connor

It is difficult to describe this emotion. I’m used to disappointment, fairly comfortable with heartbreak, and am well acquainted with rage. Over the course of my lifetime, my presidents have been Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama…and each, in his own way, has been worse than the last.

How can I say that? Easy. The problems of Nixon are still with us, and have grown worse by orders of magnitude through each successive administration. Certain presidents have exacerbated the situation beyond their expected purview, but generally speaking, each one has adopted the worst ideas of his predecessor, and in nearly every instance, has made those problems worse.

But this…this is too much.

The timeline as I understand it: the far-right GOP caucus in the House decided to use the debt limit as a hostage to fortune in their decades-long quest to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. The current Democratic president saw this, and in a pure anti-Lakoffian flail that explains everything you need to know about the man, accepted the deranged premise put before him and went to work on the annihilation of the social safety net…but with the proviso that we find some new tax revenues by closing some loopholes…maybe…please?

Not good enough. House Speaker Boehner walked away from the debt-limit talks, not once but twice, because he can’t control his caucus and because he had this Democratic president right where he wanted him. The president blew up – in as much as “No Drama” Obama ever blows up – and wondered what is needed for the GOP to say “Yes” to anything. Read between the lines of that presser, and you get this: “I tried to give them Social Security. I tried to give them Medicare and Medicaid. I gave those things willingly, despite cries of outrage from my ungrateful, foolish, obnoxious left flank, and asked only for a pittance in tax revenues in exchange. Shame on the GOP for not rampaging these social programs when I offered them the chance to do so.”

Web forums all across the Democratic Party spectrum celebrated the president’s resolve. He showed them, didn’t he?

Well…wait. I saw a president in a state of high piss-off because he tried to give away Social Security and Medicare, but couldn’t convince the far right to take the proffered opportunity. They’ve been trying to do this very thing for three generations, and here is Obama practically sweating bullets in his desire to give them the victory they have pined for since Goldwater was in short pants. Sure, it’s proof that Boehner is at the mercy of the Tea Party freshmen in his caucus, but in which universe is this called victory? This Democratic president was angry because he was being denied the opportunity to preside over an historic roll-back of the New Deal?

Poor baby.

Oh, but we weren’t done yet. The “Grand Bargain” was still in the offing, now splintered into two or three or twelve different iterations, but all ultimately coming down to the same thing: trillions in cuts for the most vulnerable Americans, no new tax revenues from the rich or anyone else, and the bonus prize sought most passionately by the Democrats was the chance to kick this whole fight down the road to 2013, so none of these failures would be forced to address the question before their next all-important election cycle.

Sell out Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for a chance at an easier ride at the ballot? Where do I sign?

The Bush-era tax cuts for rich people appear nowhere in the discussion, despite the fact that eliminating them would go most of the way towards resolving this “crisis.” We are still fighting three wars, and the “defense” budget remains largely untouchable. I have not heard an American politician talk about jobs in over a year, even though a robust jobs program would add revenue to the budget hand over fist.

At the time of this writing, matters stand thusly:

We don’t yet know what the final deal to raise the debt ceiling will be. But now that Harry Reid is developing a proposal with $2.7 trillion in cuts and nothing in revenues, it’s a safe bet that it won’t include any tax increases. Which means that whether Republicans realize it or not, they’ve won. The question now is whether they can stop.

John Boehner is proposing a deal with about $1 trillion in spending cuts and a short-term increase in the debt ceiling and a bipartisan congressional committee charged with developing a large deficit reduction package that would be immune to amendments and filibusters and would be the price of the next increase in the debt ceiling. Harry Reid is developing a package of spending cuts that Democrats could accept and would reach Boehner’s $2.4 trillion mark.

If you take the Republicans’ goals as avoiding a deal in which they have to vote for tax increases and denying Obama a political victory, it looks like they have succeeded. That success has come with costs – they’ve done themselves political damage, are risking a crisis that could do the economy tremendous harm, and have left the Bush tax cuts unresolved, which means they might end up watching taxes rise much higher than if they’d taken Obama’s offer – but it’s still been a success.

A great many people who should know better continue to look at this situation as if Mr. Obama has some fantastic rabbit he…is…just…waiting to pull out of a hat, thus foiling the GOP and securing our future forever. For a brief moment a couple of weeks ago, I shared that optimism, but the last several days have slapped me soundly out of that fugue state.

I see a president on his knees, hands outstretched, offering the best ideas and policies liberal governance has ever devised up to the voracious carnivore of GOP opportunism. I see the end of the New Deal, and a far crueler America emerging from the aftermath. I see a Democratic president voiding his bladder on all that he is supposed to uphold.

Mr. Obama got on those knees again Monday night, on national television no less, and once again begged the GOP to devour Social Security and Medicare. He gobbled up the flawed, flayed premise of the far-right’s deranged argument, again, and pleaded for the chance to give away the core of what he was elected to defend.

I thought I was done being ashamed of my president.

I was wrong.

William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist.  He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: “War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.” His newest book, “House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation,” is now available from PoliPointPress.

 TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT  

Obama Is No Victim of the Right Wing — He’s Pandered to Corporate Interests
for Years

The evidence is clear that Obama is an often-willing servant
of corporate interests — not serving their interests only because the GOP
forced him to.

July 25, 2011  |

//
In a campaign almost as frenzied as the effort to get Barack Obama into the
White House, liberal groups are now mobilizing against the White House and
reported deals that would cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.
They accuse President Obama of being weak and willing to “cave” to corporate and
conservative forces bent on cutting the social safety net while protecting the
wealthy. Those accusations are wrong.

The accusations imply that Obama is on our side. Or was on our side. And that
the right wing is pushing him around.

But the evidence is clear that Obama is an often-willing servant of corporate
interests — not someone reluctantly doing their bidding, or serving their
interests only because Republicans forced him to.

Since coming to Washington, Obama has allied himself with Wall Street
Democrats who put corporate deregulation and greed ahead of the needs of most
Americans.
In 2006, a relatively new Senator Obama was the only senator to
speak at the inaugural gathering of the Alexander Hamilton
Project
launched by Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin and Roger
Altman, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary and deputy secretary. Obama praised
them as “innovative, thoughtful policymakers.” (It was Rubin’s crusade to
deregulate Wall Street in the late ‘90s that led
directly
to the economic meltdown of 2008 and our current crisis.)

In early 2007, way before he was a presidential frontrunner, candidate Obama
was raising more money from Wall
Street interests
than all other candidates, including New York presidential
candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.

In June 2008, as soon as Hillary ended her campaign, Obama went on CNBC,
shunned the “populist” label and announced: “Look: I am a pro-growth,
free-market guy. I love the market.” He packed his economic team with Wall
Street friends
— choosing one of Bill Clinton’s Wall Street deregulators,
Larry Summers, as his top economic advisor.

A year into his presidency, in a bizarre but revealing
interview
with Business Week, Obama was asked about huge bonuses just
received by two CEOs of Wall Street firms bailed out by taxpayers. He responded
that he didn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus to J.P. Mogan’s CEO or the $9
million to Goldman Sachs’ CEO: “I know both those guys, they are very savvy
businessmen,” said Obama. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge
people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”

After any review of Obama’s corporatist ties and positions, the kneejerk
response is: “Yes, but Obama was a community organizer!”

He WAS a community organizer. . .decades before he became president. Back
when Nelson Mandela was in prison and the U.S. government declared him the
leader of a “terrorist organization” while our government funded and armed Bin
Laden and his allies to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. That’s a long time
ago.

It’s worth remembering that decades before Reagan became president, the great
communicator was a leftwing Democrat and advocate for the working class and big
federal social programs.

The sad truth, as shown by
Glenn Greenwald
,  is that Obama had arrived at the White House looking to
make cuts in benefits to the elderly. Two weeks before his inauguration, Obama
echoed conservative scares about Social Security and Medicare by talking of “red
ink as far as the eye can see.” He opened his doors to Social Security/Medicare
cutters — first trying to get Republican Senator Judd Gregg (“a leading voice
for reining in entitlement spending,” wrote Politico) into his cabinet, and
later appointing entitlement-foe Alan Simpson to co-chair his “Deficit
Commission.” Obama’s top economic advisor, Larry Summers, came to the White
House publicly telling Time magazine of needed Social Security cuts.

At this late date, informed activists and voters who care about economic
justice realize that President Obama is NOT “on our side.”

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — widely seen as “America’s
Senator” — is so disgusted by recent White House actions that he called Friday
for a challenge to Obama in Democratic primaries: “I think it would be a good
idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.”
Although Sanders has
said clearly that he’s running for reelection to the senate in 2012 — not for
president — his comment led instantly to a Draft Sanders for President
website.

Imagine if a credible candidate immediately threatened a primary challenge
unless Obama rejects any deal cutting the safety net while maintaining tax
breaks for the rich. Team Obama knows that a serious primary challenger would
cost the Obama campaign millions of dollars. And it may well be a powerful
movement-building opportunity for activists tired of feeling hopeless with
Obama.

It’s time for progressives to talk seriously about a challenge
to Obama’s corporatism. Polls show most Americans support economic justice
issues, and that goes double for Democratic primary voters.

If not Bernie, who? If not now, when?

 

US Supreme Court Deals Mortal Blow to Privacy June 5, 2011

Posted by rogerhollander in Civil Liberties, Criminal Justice.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Published on Sunday, June 5, 2011 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Last month, the United States Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision in the case of Kentucky v. King, told the police in our nation that they may break into a home without a warrant if they believe that the occupants might be in the act of destroying evidence.

Only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg realized that this might be the last nail in the coffin of one of the most important personal protections left for Americans. While the politicians in Washington are fiddling away our economic security, the Supreme Court has lit a match that will burn up what is left of the right of privacy and the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

While the tax-avoiding patriots were dumping taxable tea in the harbor at Boston, men like Patrick Henry and John Adams were more concerned, and rightly so, with the loss of personal liberties in the Colonies.

Perhaps none of the “protective” amendments to the U.S. Constitution has as much connection with the events leading up to the American Revolution against England and its king than does the Fourth Amendment.

This amendment, more than all of the other “Bill of Rights,” is directly associated with specific acts that led, ultimately, to the call for a complete break from England and for the establishment of a separate nation.

Perhaps the most succinct observation about the dichotomy between those who see a continuing erosion of the Fourth Amendment and those who see it as an impediment to law enforcement officers and prosecutors can be found in a more reasoned Supreme Court decision from 1948. In that opinion, the court stated:

“The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence … [it demands that] the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent.”

In February 1761 in Boston, there was a widely publicized debate over the issuance of general, limitless search warrants called Writs of Assistance. James Otis, a lawyer in Colonial Massachusetts, in a famous 1761 debate, condemned the use of these general search warrants, declaring them to be untenable in a land of free men.

But he did make a suggestion that later formed the basis for part of the Fourth Amendment. He suggested that any lawful searches be made only pursuant to warrants that contained explicit restrictions as to where the search was to take place and to the objects of the search, and that the warrants be issued only upon the making of specific oaths by the person seeking to carry out the search.

Patrick Henry followed the news reports of the debate over the use of these general search warrants (those authorizing searches at any time the holder of the search warrant deemed it necessary to search someone’s home or business) and he also argued against the abuses of such writs of assistance.

In 1778, during the constitutional debates before passage of the Bill of Rights, he argued for congressional consideration of a series of amendments to the constitution, one of which guaranteed the security of the citizenry against unreasonable government searches. This proposed amendment quite clearly presupposed that an “unreasonable” search could be avoided only by use of a warrant, and only if that warrant met certain standards.

After the adoption of the Fourth Amendment there appeared to be a general understanding of the nature and extent of the protections afforded citizens from searches without proper judicial warrants.

Up until the Supreme Court’s decision in Kentucky v. King, there was a general acknowledgment that the Fourth Amendment is a living creation with the ability to adapt its protections to new and ever-changing technology. Despite some erosion of the historical protections found in the Bill of Rights, there has been the hope that the Supreme Court would continue to regard the Fourth Amendment as necessary to protect citizens from the government.

Unfortunately, eight members of the present Supreme Court have decided that the Fourth Amendment is nothing more than a historical relic that has outlived its welcome in our “free” society.

© 2011 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Michael Mears
 Michael Mears, an associate professor of law at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, is the former director of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council

From Poll Taxes to Voter ID Laws: A Short History of Conservative Voter Suppression March 29, 2011

Posted by rogerhollander in Democracy, Socialism.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 comment so far

(Roger’s note: it is a simple phrase, but it says just about everything: “without economic democracy, political democracy is a sham.”  With a Supreme Court giving carte blanche to corporations to fund campaigns, with billionaire-funded “grass roots” organizations such as the Tea Party disenfranchising  masses of voters as discussed in the article below, with massive powerful lobbies such as Big Pharma and the private health insurance industry virtually writing legislation to protect their selfish interests – who can argue that political democracy in the United States, or anywhere in the world for that matter, is genuine democracy?  Democratic socialism is nothing more or less than economic democracy, and it can only come about through the destruction of the capitalist form of production, a mode of production that inherently exploits and alienates living human labour, a mode that is by its very nature undemocratic and which replicates itself in the world of social and political relations.)

Sunday 27 March 2011

by: Kevin Donohoe  |  Think Progress | Report

Thursday, ThinkProgress reported that the Ohio House had approved the most restrictive voter id law in the nation — a bill that would exclude 890,000 Ohioans from voting. Earlier this week Texas lawmakers passed a similar bill, and voter id legislation — which would make it significantly more difficult for seniors, students and minorities to vote — is now under consideration in more than 22 states across the country

Conservatives have said voter id laws are necessary to combat mass voter fraud. Yet according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Americans are more likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than commit voter fraud. And the Bush administration’s five-year national “war on voter fraud” resulted in only 86 convictions of illegal voting out of more than 196 million votes cast. Instead conservatives are employing an old tactic: using the specter of false voting to restrict the voting rights of minorities and the poor.

Below, ThinkProgress examines the history of conservatives anti-voter agenda:

Jim Crow South: In the Jim Crow South, historian Leon Litwack writes, “respectable” Southern whites justified their support for measures to disenfranchise African-Americans “as a way to reform and purify the electoral process, to root out fraud and bribery.” In North Carolina for example, conservatives insisted that literacy tests and poll taxes — which disenfranchised tens of thousands of African-Americans — were necessary to prevent “voter fraud.”

1981 RNC Voter Caging Scandal: According to Project Vote, in 1981 the Republican National Committee mailed non-forwardable postcards to majority Hispanic and African-American districts in New Jersey in an effort to accuse those voters of false voting. The 45,000 returned cards were rncthen used to create a list of voters whose residency the GOP could challenge at the polls. The Democratic National Committee sued, winning a consent decree in which the RNC agreed not to engage in practices “where the purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting.” Similar initiatives were undertaken by the Arizona GOP in 1958, the RNC in 1962 and again, despite the decree, in Louisiana in 1986.

Recent Voter Caging Efforts: During the 2004 election GOP state parties, along with dozens of unidentified groups, launched similar “voter caging” efforts designed to challenge the eligibility of thousands of minority voters by accusing them of voter fraud. And in 2008, the Obama campaign sued the Michigan Republican Committee for collecting a list of foreclosures in an effort to challenge the residency, and eligibility, of voters who had lost their home in the housing crisis.

US Attorney David Iglesias Firing Scandal: In an unprecedented politicization of the Justice Department, in 2006 the Bush White House fired US Attorney David Iglesias for refusing to prosecute voting fraud cases where little evidence existed. The New Mexico political establishment asked for Iglesias’ dismissal after he refused to cooperate with the party’s efforts to make voter id laws “the single greatest wedge issue ever.”

US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger Dismissal: In Minnesota, US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger lost his position when he ran afoul of GOP activists for “expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.”

Wisconsin, The Kochs and the 2010 Election: Last fall ThinkProgress reported that a coalition of Wisconsin Tea Party and Koch-funded groups, in an effort to stop “voter fraud” and prevent “stolen elections,” was planning a sophisticated voter caging effort that would use GOP lawyers and Tea Party volunteers to challenge the eligibility of voters at polls in the state. Earlier that year, the same groups were instrumental in defeating a voter protection law that would have criminalized any attempt to use force or coercion to “compel any person to refrain from voting.” One prominent Tea Party member behind the voter caging effort that “since the voter law did not get passed this year… we can still do this.”

As statehouses across the country move forward on voter identification bills, ThinkProgress will continue to track conservatives latest efforts to advance their century-old anti-voter agenda.

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