Taken at the Flood
By David Glenn Cox

It is a sad thing how many perceive democracy as a stream, flowing gracefully through a green meadow. It was Albert Einstein who said, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe” man however does. Every inch of riverbank, every drop of water contrived and placed there and sometimes, its reflection blinds us to it.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.” ~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The death of democracy is no small thing; its mock replacement is but small comfort. Its death comes not by a swords gushing wound, but by paper cuts. The democracy of the locked door and the midnight gavel, but when rights earned by the blood of man, are stripped away, it prophecies that men shall die once again in regaining them.

In 1963, President Kennedy died violently by assassin’s bullets, Kennedy had told his brother Robert, the Attorney General that the CIA had tried to trick him into a war with Cuba. Later, during the Cuban missile crisis Kennedy’s administration successfully brokered a deal avoiding a third World War, a nuclear third World War. To some however, a nuclear war was preferable to a Communist State only ninety miles from our shores.

Three weeks before the President’s assassination in Dallas, Vietnamese generals with the blessing of the CIA assassinated the President of South Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm in a coup d’état. Diệm had been our guy, before his excesses and his incompetence made him not our guy, similar to the way Saddam Hussein was our guy before he wasn’t our guy.

“I can scarcely believe the Americans would be so stupid.” ~ Ho Chi Minh

The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fraud; a mere vehicle to justify a war. A horrendous lie perpetrated to deceive the American public into supporting an unnecessary war.

For more than a decade Martin Luther King had worked for civil rights on behalf of African Americans. Many times he had faced death threats and yet, he still lived.

“Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.” ~ Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

In one year to the day, Martin Luther King would be shot dead.

“This misconception rests on a second illusion—the illusion that we can win a war which the South Vietnamese cannot win for themselves. You cannot expect people to risk their lives and endure hardship unless they have a stake in their own society. They must have a clear sense of identification with their own government, a belief they are participating in a cause worth fighting for.

People will not fight to line the pockets of generals or swell the bank accounts of the wealthy. They are far more likely to close their eyes and shut their doors in the face of their government—even as they did last week.

More than any election, more than any proud boast, that single fact reveals the truth. We have an ally in name only. We support a government without supporters. Without the efforts of American arms that government would not last a day.” ~ Robert F. Kennedy, February 8, 1968

In less than four months, Robert F. Kennedy would be shot dead after winning the California Democratic primary.

“In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future.

But with the disappearance of that base, I now believe that the constitutional purpose has been served, and there is no longer a need for the process to be prolonged.” ~ Richard Nixon, August 4, 1974

Richard Nixon was a war criminal; if he had faced a Nuremberg docket he would have been hung. Nixon had ordered the bombings of dams and power stations inside of North Vietnam. He had violated American law by secretly bombing and invading Laos and Cambodia and we are then to believe he was removed from power over a bungled burglary?

Beginning in 1970, Nixon began ordering American troops pulled back from border areas of Vietnam. He began to replace land power with air power, but clearly, the program was a failure. In February of 1971, the South Vietnamese began a military operation attempting to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail. It ended disastrously, with South Vietnamese soldiers abandoned their vehicles and hung desperately to the skids of helicopters evacuating the wounded.

By 1971, US troop levels in Vietnam had fallen from 536,000 to less than 200,000 with a deadline to remove 45,000 more before February. A 1972, attack by North Vietnamese forces quickly overran southern provinces illustrating to all the complete ineptitude of South Vietnamese forces.Nixon had placed his bet and he had lost; Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency without popular vote or Electoral College. Richard Nixon had once famously remarked, “If the President does it, it’s not illegal.” Gerald Ford, in pardoning Richard Nixon, made that statement a truism.

Jimmy Carter had warned America of the dangers of over reliance on fossil fuels, he advocated for peace, while building America’s first alternative energy power plants. Carter was fighting a colossus with a wooden sword. During the 1980 Presidential Campaign Carter’s debate notes were stolen, eventually ending up in the hands of the Reagan Campaign. The primary suspect in this theft was an Air Force lieutenant named Robert Gates.

The election of Ronald Reagan accelerated America’s decline, a massive military build up, accompanied by aggressive military bravado which almost caused a nuclear exchange. While Reagan promised morning in America, he cut taxes for the wealthy and services for the middle class. The Reagan administration even went so far as to reclassify ketchup as a vegetable, in order to cut money spent on the school lunches of poor children.

While cutting funding for education and services to the middle class the money was misspent on billion dollar plastic airplanes and even airplanes, which could barely fly and the refitting WW2 battleships. Incursions into Grenada illustrated America’s new belligerence, along with covert wars in Central America. Are you beginning to see where this current will carry us?

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” – Smedley Butler

The Reagan administration also began dismantling the bulwarks which had held the financial Pandora in her box for fifty years. In the process, the administration of Ronald Reagan left behind the largest deficit in history of that time. A deficit financed by American banks, while the standard of living for the Average American began to decline.

George H. W. Bush was the first US President ever to be a career long CIA operative. When the Cuban revolution nationalized oil wells, they belonged to George H. W. Bush. E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame was the CIA Miami station chief during the Bay of Pigs. It was strange indeed, that after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, on March 30, 1981 just 69 days into the Reagan Presidency, the relationship between the Bush’s and the Reagan’s strangely cooled.

“He reads much;
He is a great observer and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mock’d himself and scorn’d his spirit
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.” ~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The first Gulf War to remove Saddam Hussein was ala Diệm, the invasion of Panama and the removal of Manuel Noriega who was also our guy before he wasn’t. Noriega had nationalized Panamanian banks where the CIA had considerable assets. Manuel Noriega had worked for the CIA for thirty years and had worked closely with George H. W. Bush. Noriega insists to this day that it was his refusal to meet Oliver North’s demands to assist the Nicaraguan Contras as the actual basis for the U.S. campaign to oust him. Personally, I think it had more to do with the CIA’s involvement with a white powder which flooded American streets during the 1980’s and made very wealthy people, even wealthier.

William Jefferson Clinton was a “New Democrat” Aka moderate Republican. He was elected on a poor economy and a weak Bush presidency, out of step with the public. Bush’s was an error of style rather than of substance. Future administrations learned it was better to offer meaningless platitudes and empty programs than to just say “We’re working on it.” It was the Bush administration which began negotiating the North American Free Trade Act and the Clinton administration which promoted it and signed it into law and thus made international corporations co- equals with elected governments. It was also during this administration that the Glass – Steagall Act was repealed, opening the financial floodgates and letting Pandora out of her box. In the words of William Jefferson Clinton “the Glass–Steagall law is no longer appropriate.”

“Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. Since 1996, dividends and capital gains have grown faster than wages or any other category of after-tax income.” ~ CIA World Fact Book

US Taxes and other revenues – 15.5 % of GDP or lower tax rates than 191 other nations. Lower than Norway, Denmark, Finland, France, Sweden, Greenland, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Austria, Ecuador, Italy, Croatia, Netherlands, Bolivia, Oman, Portugal, Germany, Iceland, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and Japan, need I go on?

Yes, but we’re told lower taxes bring us jobs, right?

US Investment (gross fixed) 12.1% of GDP which is 144th in the world behind, China (46.2%) Morocco (30.6%) Iran (27.6%) and even Bangladesh (25.0%)

US budget deficit 8.7 % of GDP (2011 est.) in comparison to the rest of the world 192nd.

US Exports – $1.497 trillion (2011 est.)
US Imports – $2.236 trillion (2011 est.) in comparison to the rest of the world, we’re number one in the world in importing goods.

George W. Bush never won a presidential election in his life. He took office once through court manipulation and once through, out and out subversion of the electoral process. Bush was a drunken buffoon, a dancing monkey designed to keep us amused, while evil little men continued their policy of scorched Earth against American families and workers. Senseless wars and reckless economic policy with plunder as their ends. Stupendous weapons systems bringing only more war and more poverty. If ever a man needed to be loaded into a rocket ship and fired into the sun it is this one, to cleanse the face of the earth of his stain.

Barack Obama is a corporate mouthpiece, a marionette, vapid, vacant and verbose. He is a man on the clock, doing precisely what he is told to do, an overseer, doing his corporate master’s bidding.

Free Trade deals, Citizen’s United, NAFTA, the USA Patriot Act, the TSA, all small bends in the river flowing onward towards industrial barbarism, economic serfdom and ecological disaster. It is in this light we should inspect the wreckage of democracy in Michigan, where the state works for the few and ignores the many, where billionaires buy their way into the State house as black uniformed goons escort the people out. This current carries us down stream and empties us into a black sea of a new dark age.

There is a point, a fundamental understanding; to know from where we’ve come harkens to where we shall go.

“For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;” ~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” ~ Aristotle

Dickensian

Dickensian!
By David Glenn Cox

Somewhere between the lies and the rage lives sanity. It lives oppressed and abused in a land which has quite literally, lost its soul. It lives in a cold dingy room; it lives on hope and food stamps. It lives on memories of the past which grow smaller in the rear view mirror as time whizzes by.

Without any further introduction, the November Bureau of labor Statistics jobs report filled with wishful fantasies resplendent with excuses, a turd polished to a fine, high gloss luster. From the commissioner’s statement;

“Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 146,000 in November,
and the unemployment rate edged down to 7.7 percent. In 2012,
job gains have averaged 151,000 per month, essentially the same
as in 2011. In November, employment rose in retail trade,
professional and business services, and health care.

Before providing the details of this month’s data, I would
like to comment on the impact of Hurricane Sandy on our November
estimates. On October 29, the storm made landfall on the
Northeast coast, causing severe damage in some states.
Nevertheless, response rates in the affected states were within
normal ranges in November. Our analysis leads us to conclude
that Hurricane Sandy did not substantively impact the national
employment and unemployment estimates for November. We will
release the November regional and state estimates on December
21st.

For weather conditions to reduce the estimate of payroll
employment, employees have to be off work for an entire pay
period and not be paid for the time missed. In our household
survey, persons with a job who miss work for weather-related
events are counted as employed whether or not they are paid for
the time off.”

Wonderful, the largest utility in New Jersey estimates damages of over 300 million dollars calling it, the largest power outage in the state’s history. The Bureau of Labor Statistics crosses its fingers declaring that storm related unemployment doesn’t count. They will of course, count all of the workers hired to repair this damage as proof positive that our economic recovery polices are working.

Civilian non institutional population – up by 191,000 new workers
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By David Glenn Cox

Does the Third Reich live on in American foreign policy?

As Russian artillery shells were raining down on Berlin, even after the German Fuehrer had committed suicide, the security state continued on. Through the ruins of the Berlin streets, roving bands of S.S. officers roamed, hunting down and executing on the spot anyone suspected of desertion or cowardess. The third Reich had less than forty eight hours to live; yet, the security state was alive and well and lives on with us today.

Many people fail to understand that though the third Reich was pounded into dust long ago, many of its tenets of government live on. As the Red army rolled into Poland, the Polish underground began to rise up against the German invaders in Warsaw. It was at that moment that Joseph Stalin called a halt to the Russian push towards Warsaw. It was in Stalin we see the afterbirth of modern politics and of the security state. Flash forward to Libya and Syria; American policy has a light touch. Let the combatants bloody and eliminate the strongest and most popular and who do you suppose will be waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces?

It is much safer to be feared than loved when, of the two, one must be dispensed with. Because … love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails. – Niccolo Machiavelli

No man of prestige is without ambition. It is quaint to think of George Washington as a backwoodsman surveyor, but Washington was a blindly ambitious man. He married one of the wealthiest widows in Virginia and through those marriage vows became a wealthy man himself. Yes, it is entertaining to think of the founding fathers by their popular historical images. The French and Indian War cleared Colonial America’s borders of potential adversaries. Ambitious men asked, “What do we need a British crown for, when we might have our own?”

Read more on the Leftist Review.

By David Glenn Cox

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

Today is Thanksgiving, a day to celebrate and to be thankful for all that we have been given; but it is not a memory wipe. It is a year which finds me living in my fourth state in a year but I am in a good place, I now have a home.

We are a good people, badly led and badly misled. We live in a beautiful and bounteous land in which millions upon millions of our own citizens can no longer earn enough to survive in it and yet, that is not considered a national crisis.

It has been 365 days which have seen no improvement in employment or in wages only a continued manipulation of the numbers. A year which has seen Barack Obama re-selected for a second term of office, but only because the alternative was so heinous as to be unthinkable. This is America’s twelfth thanksgiving at war, tens of thousands of our service people will spend this holiday overseas protecting Europe from a Soviet Union which no longer exists. Protecting corporate interests in Colombia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates and dozens of other countries, protecting America from the blow back we ourselves cause.

The United States of America has decided to build 183 F- 22 Raptor fighter planes at a projected cost of $66.7 billion. Originally, the plan was to build 750 of these state of the art aircraft which was scaled back to 381 copies in 2006 and now down to 183 aircraft. The Air Force warned that cutting back the number of aircraft produced increased the per unit cost. I suppose that is so, only, there aren’t any potential adversaries which would demand its capabilities, nor can the plane be exported like the B-2 bomber, it is a 21st century dreadnaught.

Meanwhile, funding continues of the F35 Joint Strike fighter which is expected to be the workhorse of the fighter command. Despite a down economy, despite twenty millions of Americans out of work Congress continued to allocate nearly half a billion dollars until 2010 for a second source engine program for this aircraft. How many times have you been down at the old used car lot and asked the salesman, “She’s a nice Ford pick up truck alright, but what if I need a new engine and Ford can’t supply one? Is there another engine available, from another manufacturer, off the shelf?”

Initial cost estimates of the F-35 Joint Strike fighter began at $89 million per copy in 2006 escalating to $207.6 million per copy in 2011. When the R&D is included the cost rise to $304.15 million for the 32 aircraft delivered. The Air Force estimates over the programs lifetime to cost the American tax payer to be over one trillion dollars. The old expression goes, “a camel is a horse designed by a committee” and the F-35 is an aircraft designed by a Pentagon committee. It does everything, for everybody and costs be damned, this is Buck Rogers stuff:

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Precariousness
By David Glenn Cox

Call it salvation or redemption, call it what you will. I have reemerged from a dark tunnel, from the streets of a faraway place once called home, once called the United States of America. I am alive, relatively sane, sure and uncertain. I’m no longer who I once was and so, I wonder, what about you? Who are you now in this world turned upside down? Who are we all, in this burgeoning Fascist state?

In a catalog of strange memories, my file folder is bulging. I’m walking the trendy streets of uptown Minneapolis in December. It’s dark and cold, but without a single flake of snow. Young couples pass by me arm in arm, segregated by love and a million miles away from me. Too distracted by their youth and affection to see either me or you; a sidewalk ad board offers a roast beef sandwich for just $12.95. I calculate my finances and estimate that I have almost enough cash in my pocket to buy one third of a sandwich.

The cafés are full this night; these people seem to have plenty of money and they are so young. It is not so much class envy, as class curiousness. Are the times really so good, to drop a hundred bucks on a date for dinner and drinks? Are they affluent or reckless? Are they careless or care free?

For nearly four years, I have been wandering the streets of America and I can fully inventory all of the possessions which I have lost. Yet now, I must now inventory the missing pieces of who I once was, leaving me uncertain about who I am now. I am unsure if these losses are permanent or if these skills can ever be reacquired. Asked, which spaghetti sauce I preferred, I answered, “I don’t know…anything.” Tacos, hamburgers, crinkle cut, home fries, pancakes or waffles I have no preference. Sometimes, it may seem my attitude is just easy to get along with, but it isn’t. My mind simply reads the problem as food, yes or no?

I have developed a near phobia about spending money. The majority of my purchases are from dollar stores or from second hand stores. There is a rationalizing of all purchases, no matter how small, armed with the implicit number of every coin in my pocket. The idea of a thirteen dollar roast beef sandwich with beverage and sides makes me laugh, openly. I was on a bus on the Pennsylvania turnpike and we’d just had our rest stop. The guy sitting on the diagonal from me didn’t get anything to eat, so I gave him my bag of potato chips. He wolfed them down hungrily and I wished I’d had more to give.

http://www.leftistreview.com/2012/11/07/precariousness/davidcox/

True Definitions
By David Glenn Cox

I’ve been reading Conservative websites for the last day or so, curious as to how the Republicans viewed the outcome of the Presidential election. Probably the funniest or the most curious statements were made by Donald Trump. “This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!” quickly followed by “More votes equals a loss…revolution!” To me at least, it is a clear sign that America needs to be more careful about to whom it gives a reality television series.

Many of Trump’s minions quickly aped their leader bringing up the whole birther scenario and even Obama’s college transcript gate. Of course, the usual racist remarks were woven into the subtext along with claims of Obama being a Socialist. I guess, that is what I find most appalling in this maelstrom, the inability of millions of otherwise sane and normal individuals to discern one political philosophy from another.

Cap•i•tal•ism, from Dictionary.com
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

So•cial•ism, from Dictionary.com
1. A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

2. Procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

These are general descriptions, but good enough for our purposes. Under these guidelines, is Barack Obama a Socialist? Obama care is called Socialist, but Obama care mandates were backed up by the Supreme Court of the United States. The decided legitimacy of a mandate on the general public declaring they must purchase a product from a private corporation under penalty of law. It doesn’t sound very Socialist to me, millions of government tax dollars being filtered from public coffers to private hands?

What’s more, Obama care places insurance corporations in full control. Provided the insurance companies stay inside the law, there is no appeal. Under Medicare, the US government is charge and private insurance companies must conform to Medicare in order to participate. So Obama care then becomes the antithesis of Socialism; maybe it was Obama’s bailout of GM and Chrysler which convinced the multitudes of Republican voters that this President was a Socialist.

During the GM bankruptcy, General Motors was allowed to pick and choose which assets to keep and which to discard. Among the discarded assets was an aluminum casting plant along the banks of the Hudson River. The State of New York and the Environmental Protection Agency had listed the plant as a superfund clean up site and estimated the minimum cost of cleaning the site was between $900 million to a billion dollars.

When the auto executives came to Capital hill hat in hand, they were excoriated by our representatives for flying to Washington on board a private jet. They received a very severe tongue lashing, then they given everything which they had asked for. Not one word was uttered during the process, about General Motors being the second largest auto manufacturer in China. Nor were GM’s profits in China exceeding $3 billion annually considered. Over ten thousand white collar employees were let go at Chrysler and GM, their pensions and benefits vanished like a mirage at the hands of these… Socialists?

Thousands of pensioners woke to find their pensions had disappeared as well, GM’s pension obligations were largely eliminated, pushing seniors over to the public trough of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation = (You & I). There were no strings attached to this agreement, GM was free to take the money and if they so chose, to lock the door on every domestic manufacturing plant and laugh about it all the way home. Clearly, if this is Socialism, Obama is not very good at it, but likewise, this isn’t really Capitalism either.

“GM now has about a $2,000-per-car manufacturing advantage over its Japanese and European rivals, a swing from a similar-sized disadvantage before the restructuring,” said David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research. I guess that’s why GM has reduced prices to reflect their more competitive stance in the market place … not! An August 2012 report to Congress from the White House stated if the US government were to sell its remaining stake in GM, it would result in a loss to tax payers of $25.1 billion dollars. This was a government beat down of workers, young, old and retired.

In Obama’s $787 billion dollar stimulus, one third of that total went in the form of tax cuts to private corporations. With approximately 30,000 firms in the US that works out to an average benefit of 8,743,000 per firm. You and I, well, let’s see, we received an estimated benefit each from the stimulus of $1,668. No one is arguing over the need for a stimulus, what I’m saying is that this was neither Socialism nor Capitalism. The original idea was to stimulate the economy, but a disproportionate amount of the money went to the top of the economy instead of where people were hurting at the bottom, kind of like fighting a forest fire by hosing down the tops of trees.

This was the same path begun by Herbert Hoover when he initiated a program with $2 billion to refinance the debts of banks and railroads. Was Hoover also a Socialist or is Obama a Republican? Cash for Clunkers was a program designed to help the big three automakers facing 30,000 leased vehicles being returned per month. With a crumbling economy this spelled disaster for all automakers, foreign and domestic. Disproportionately, the domestic lots saw returning Denali’s and Escalades, Explorers and Ram Trucks with Hemi’s, yeah cool; Hemi’s with $4.00 a gallon gasoline. The same program had been tried by Henry Ford back in the last Great Depression.

Ford’s program, bought back Model T’s and crushed them when the customer bough a new Model A. Only, there were already so many Model T’s out there and only a few people who could afford a new Model that the program was a failure. This time around, the program worked by stabilizing the price of new cars by eliminating the supply of used cars. Arguably, government intervention in an industry could be considered a sort of left handed Socialism. Except that, in Socialism the government moves to create the greatest good for the greatest number, while with this program, it did the opposite, giving tax breaks to those able to afford a new car, while punishing those who could not afford a new car by raising the price of used cars, a sort of Socialism in reverse.

Was Obama acting as a Socialist? Was Henry Ford acting as a Socialist?

Many on the political left were also greatly disenchanted by the performance of Barack Obama in his first term. To me, I fall back on the takes one to know one rule. The attacks on Obama from the left were as loud as the attacks from the right; it was Rahm Emanuel who said “Fuck the UAW” he did not say, “Fuck the UAW, comrade.” Asked in anger by Obama’s press secretary if we, (the professional Left) wanted a Canadian style health care the left answered resoundingly “Yes!” the right answered, “Oh heavens, no!”

There is a disconnection here, a jumble of political philosophies and of political rhetoric. The political right seems obsessed with chasing non-issues or serving up tired political bromides of Socialist, Communist or foreign born alien. On Election Day, I even saw NRA ads claiming Barack Obama was going to take your guns away, despite the fact that Obama couldn’t be lured into a gun debate even in the wake of the Batman massacre. The political right has attempted to paint Barack Obama’s first term as a failure and speaking as a Socialist, I have to agree. It was a failure, so much so, that Michael Moore posted an election day plea to forgive and forget Obama’s Right wing transgressions or else the sky would fall.

The left was pleading to the faithful to forgive Obama’s Right wing policies, while the Right was pleading to elect Romney. To return America to the traditional Republican values of smaller government except, Obama cut the size of government more than any president in recent history. It doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? Obama isn’t a Socialist but he isn’t a Capitalist either, he is something else entirely. A Right wing Democrat, corporate plutocrat with a license to kill in his finger tips.

We’ve see a continuation of the Bush war policies and a continuation of Bush Tax policies. We see our rights extinguished as the Supreme Court becomes openly politicized and criminalized as well. Two major political parties which agree on most matters of war and of rescue, of free trade and of monetary policy, as an insane black curtain of world turned upside down madness descends upon us. It is now a one party state, where disputes are settled along the margins.

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power…. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.” – Henry A. Wallace

So, what does it all mean? It means Donald Trump is correct, but for all of the wrong reasons. This country does need a revolution; there is no other means of rectification. Your taxes will continue to increase; if you have wages, they won’t keep up with inflation. The public school systems will continue to deteriorate and your children will fight endless wars of aggrandizement until the eventual collapse comes, which by the way, will be blamed upon you.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

Playing Along?
By David Glenn Cox

Finally, today is the day, when billions upon billions of dollars culminate in drawing millions upon millions of American’s to stand in line and vote for the candidate of their choice. Only, they aren’t the candidates of our choice. We didn’t choose these candidates; they have no earthly connection to us.

They never really did have any connection to us, but now, in this new life; it is even more obviously so. In retrospect, the rise of Barack Obama looks trumped up and foisted upon us. The rise of an articulate political unknown young black man, versus a crotchety old white man after eight years of George W. Bush. It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled…

George W. Bush was never lawfully elected President of the United States. In 2000, the Supreme Court stopped the vote count, no differently than Manuel Noriega or Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. The Constitution sets the operation of elections as the prerogative of the states, which means the intervention of the Federal court in a state election laws was not just wrong or misguided, but criminal. These well educated individuals pretending not to know the difference between legality and criminality.

In 2004, the vote in Ohio was tainted, manipulated and down right stolen. A criminal conspiracy run from the office of Ohio Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell. In every case of over vote and under vote the Republican candidate George W. Bush was the beneficiary. Statistically, that is impossible. Statistically, exit polls had always been accurate. So then came 2008, the United States of America had suffered two tainted elections in series, and there was every reason to believe that the election process had become nothing more than a show.

The country needed a clear winner, we needed flag waving and large cheering crowds to make the public go to sleep and forget about a series of stolen elections. Barack Obama is elected to the cheers of the throng, promising hope and change only, there is no change. Barack Obama has ruled as a right wing Republican. He has passed more tax cuts than Ronald Reagan. He allowed GM to write their own bankruptcy. He has launched more drone missile attacks than George W. Bush ever did and at more places.

Four years of hope and change finds no improvement in the foreclosure crisis, little improvement in the economic crisis and finds the too big to fail banks operating just as they have always operated in the past. The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness meets in the White House and the members of the council are appointed by the President. There is no Congressional approval needed, so the President can choose those individuals he feels will most assist him in moving the economy forward. Barack Obama chose Jeffery Immelt the CEO of G.E. and G.E. Capital to head the council.

Ursula Burns – Chairman and CEO Xerox

Steve Case – Co-founder CEO America on Line

Kenneth I. Chenault – Chairman and CEO American Express Corporation

John Doer – Partner Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Investment and hedge fund.

Roger W. Ferguson – President and CEO of TIAA-CREF a Fortune 100 financial services Company

Mark Gallogy – Cofounder and managing principal, Centerbridge Partners, investment banking

Joseph T. Hansen – International President UFCW one of two labor representative on the council

Lewis Hay – Chairman CEO Next era Energy, He is also a director and past chairman of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, which encompasses all U.S. commercial nuclear operating organizations, and he is a director of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Gary Kelly – President & CEO of Southwest Airlines

Ellen Kullman – Chair & CEO of DuPont Corporation

Eric Lander – Director, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Dr. Eric Lander is the President and Founding Director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a new kind of biomedical research institution focused on genomic medicine. Dr. Lander is also Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Dr. Lander was a principal leader of the international Human Genome Project (HGP), which completed mapping the human blueprint in 2003. A geneticist, molecular biologist and mathematician, Dr. Lander’s biomedical research also has ranged over mammalian genomics; human population genetics; medical genetics – including cancer, diabetes, inflammatory diseases and many other genetic conditions; evolution; and computational biology.

Monica Lozano – CEO ImpreMedia the largest Hispanic newspaper in the country and Ms. Lozano is also serves on the boards of the Bank of America, the Walt Disney Company and the University of Southern California..

Jim McNerney – Chairman, President and CEO, The Boeing Corporation

Darlene Miller – President & CEO Permac Industries, from the Permac website, “A success story in an industry that has increasingly been affected by offshore manufacturing migration, Permac has achieved broad favor with customers by serving as a knowledgeable partner, by managing the entire parts lifecycle including inventory and shipping, and by helping set up offshore production for customers when it makes good business sense.”

Paul Otellini – President & CEO, Intel

Richard D. Parsons – Chairman, Citigroup, Inc. Prior to serving in that role, he was the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Time Warner, Inc., the world’s largest media entertainment company, from 2002 to 2008. In its January 2005 report on America’s Best CEOs, Institutional Investor magazine named Mr. Parsons the top CEO in the entertainment industry.

Penny Pritzker – President & CEO Pritzker Realty Group, she’s also Chairman of the board of TransUnion, Chairman/CEO of Pritzker Realty Group, and Chairman and co-founder of Vi (formerly Classic Residence by Hyatt), The Parking Spot and Artemis Real Estate Partners.

Brain Roberts – Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation

Matthew Rose – Chairman and CEO, BNSF Railroad, he is a member of the Board of Directors of AMR Corporation (American Airlines), AT&T Inc., the Association of American Railroads, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Sheryl Sandberg – Chief Operating Officer, Facebook

Richard L. Trumka – President AFL – CIO, “Trumka led the creation of the AFL-CIO Capital Stewardship Program in 1997 to promote the retirement security of America’s working families. AFL-CIO member unions sponsor pension and benefit plans with more than $400 billion in assets and are a major force in the global capital markets.”

Laura D’Andrea Tyson – S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, “Dr. Tyson serves as a member of the Boards of Directors of Eastman Kodak Company, Morgan Stanley, AT&T, Silver Spring Networks, CB Richard Ellis, the Peter G. Peterson Institute of International Economics, and New America Foundation.”

Robert Wolf – Founder & CEO 32 Advisors, “Robert Wolf is Founder and CEO of 32 Advisors, a boutique consulting and advisory firm serving public and private companies, hedge funds, private equity firms, money managers, governments and other institutions. Wolf previously served as Chairman for UBS Americas and President for UBS Investment Bank. While at UBS, Robert held several senior positions including Group Regional CEO, COO of UBS Investment Bank, Global Head of Fixed Income and Chair of the firm’s Diversity and Community Affairs Committee. He joined UBS in 1994 after spending approximately 10 years at Salomon Brothers.”

Christopher Che – President and CEO of Hooven – Dayton Corporation, “Che is the president/CEO of the Che International Group, LLC (CIG), a multinational holding company that he founded in 2005 with the objective of creating subsidiary companies in diverse industries through strategic acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances. Under his visionary leadership, in 2007 the Che International Group successfully acquired Hooven-Dayton Corporation (HDC) as its first wholly owned subsidiary, which he is also leading as President/CEO.” He is an investment banker just like Willard (Mitt) Romney.

These are the people whom Barack Obama has chosen to ally himself with. These are the people who make the recommendations on upcoming legislation crossing the President’s desk, what would this august group think of the public option in health care? What would this august group of intelligentsia educated in America’s finest universities think about off shoring jobs?

Do you notice anyone missing in this council? Do you notice anyone strangely missing? There are no workers opinions here, no just plain Joe’s or Josephine’s only the massively rich and it is quite intentional, your opinions don’t matter here.

When Barack Obama campaigned four years ago, he promised to close the concentration camp at Guatonomo. As a candidate, he might have actually wanted to close the camp, but as President of the United States he was told no. The Commander and Chief over all armed forces can’t close a concentration camp. Instead, there will be close to a hundred million dollars spent to expand and modernize the camp facilities.

What does that mean, when the commander in chief has so little control over what is going on? Why does the US military seem to march to the beat of its own drummer regardless of who sits in the oval office? If Barack Obama is actually in charge of the Pentagon, ask yourself this, in the light of the operations he has approved, what sort operations could he have possibly said no? We are the most aggressive war-like country on the planet, our economy is quite literally coming apart at the seams and yet there is no talk in the administration of bringing peace.

In January, no matter who is selected as President, the Congress and the administration face automatic budget cuts of $600 billion dollars the first year. Thirty years of tax cuts for the rich are off the table, but mortgage interest deduction is on the table, especially now, since we have so many fewer home owners these days.

Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” He should know, he quite literally wrote the book on Fascism, where he said, “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” These members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, are they lions or sheep? Whose interests do they serve? When the President orders a Navy Seal Team to go into another sovereign country and murder a suspect, is that really Americanism?

This is not the United States of America, this is a corporate Fascist regime which has been at war with the world for nearly twelve years. Your rights have been eviscerated and they aren’t coming back. Your jobs and your wealth have been shipped away as your standard of living has been stripped away. It is a nation which operates concentration camps and detains individuals for years at a time without ever bringing charges against them.

The candidates are merely corporate spokes models; they work for corporations and the wealthy elite, the proverbial two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for supper. Vote if you must, vote if you like, but come tomorrow, no matter who you vote for the same people will still be in charge. When you understand that and when you understand who these people are and what it is that they propose to do to you and your children, you can either play along or push back.

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” – Mario Savio

“If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and those who claim to be the bearers of objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, we Fascists conclude that we have the right to create our own ideology and to enforce it with all the energy of which we are capable.” – Benito Mussolini

The Song Remains the Same
By David Glenn Cox

Soon we shall hold the non-election, to decide between the two major non-candidates based on their positions on the non-issues. Lots and lots of amorphous talk, little about reality and none about sequestration. Hard talk is for after the election, looking at Greece and what austerity has done to her people; one can only hold our heads and weep for the future.

Another thirty days has passed and the BLS this morning released its monthly jobs report. It’s almost lost its thrill, settling into a monthly rehash of filtered numbers, take for instance, Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 171,000 this month, while the numbers of workers entering the workforce increased by 578,000 so from the get go, we’re down 400,000 jobs. In a calendar year the number of Americans employed, rose by just over three million while at the same time the number of Americans entering the workforce seeking a job increased by 3,714,000.

Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its jobs report and you can’t blame them, really, for trying to put the best face on it. Each month, the report lists the number of new jobs created without supplying context. The unemployment rate ticked up 0.1 this month which is referred to as;

“Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 171,000 in October, and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 7.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in professional and business services, health care, and retail trade.”

But unemployment was changed, it went up 0.1 percent, if the number had gone down 0.1 percent the administration would jolly well be shouting it from the rooftops, as proof positive, their economic policies were working. Most of this months job gains came as follows,

Professional and business service – 51,000
Health Care – 31,000
Services to buildings and dwellings – 13,000 (what a strange category)
Computers systems design – 7000
Retail trade – 36,000
Construction – 17,000

From the BLS report – “Mining lost 9,000 jobs in October, with most of the decline occurring in support activities for mining. Since May of this year, employment in mining has decreased by 17,000.

Employment in other major industries, including wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, information, financial activities, and government, showed little change over the month.”

“Little change,” four years of little change, but there is some change.

Self employed workers, unincorporated – October 2011, 873,000 and this October, 758,000

Part time for economic reasons – October 2011, 8,258,000 and this October, 8,344,000.

Could only find Part time work – October 2011, 2,488,000 and this October, 2,614,000.

The U-6 unemployment rate dropped from 16% last October to 14.6% this October.

Officially, the shiny official polished number of unemployed stands at 12,258,000 this month, officially this month, a population larger than every man, women and child in Los Angeles, Miami and Dallas / Fort Worth combined, are seeking a job in the United States, but that is not all, it couldn’t be? You see there is another sub set (read that, untermunchin) another population not counted as unemployed.
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Socialism
By David Glenn Cox

It is an easy enough exercise to point and laugh at the deficiencies of capitalism, but still, always remembering that it is impolite to make fun of cripples and the lame. Socialism has gotten really terrible publicity; most likely from hanging around in some bad neighborhoods. The American idea of socialism is of some dogmatic commissar standing over us as we inventory our underwear, making sure we don’t have too many pairs of drawers. Or, that Socialism is some subversive foreign plot, hatched by enemy agents designed to break down the moral fiber of America, to weaken us, for conquest through either rock and roll or through comic books, video games or both.

If you would want to demonize something in the United States of America, simply tie it together with socialism and before long, you too could raise an angry torch-carrying mob or small army of ministers on phone-trees calling up the faithful to fight back the Red Menace.

Do you want to know what socialism is about? I mean, do you really want to know what socialism is about Charlie Brown? Socialism is a traffic light; it says the traffic stops for three minutes going this way and for three minutes going the other way. It doesn’t care what kind of car you drive or where you live. It divides the usage of the intersection fairly without standing or class. It is really a very simple solution to some very complex problems. Of course to conservatives, I suppose it does carve into that blessed freedom of theirs, which they are always so concerned about.

I imagine to a libertarian traffic lights must appear to be an abomination. Do they lay awake at night wondering, why can’t entrepreneurs and job creators like me, just run those pesky traffic lights? They have places to be and important work to do; while you, you’re just running to the grocery store for milk and Cheetos. Why can’t the rich purchase a sticker from the state which allows them to run traffic signals and stop signs? Think of the revenue a state might earn from a program like that! What, you don’t think that is a good idea? Or do you mean some things are more import than money? Like public safety. Are you coming around to our way of thinking, comrade?

By David Glenn Cox

Good news? Image: Doug Geisler / Flickr

Oh, heavens be praised! It’s a miracle right out of scripture! The gods of political rhetoric and book keeping have favored us to look upon its countenance. I’ve been reading the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report, every month, for over two and a half years and I’ve never seen anything even remotely similar to this one.

From the BLS –

The unemployment rate declined by 0.3 percentage point to 7.8 percent in September. For the first 8 months of the year, the rate held within a narrow range of 8.1 and 8.3 percent. The number of unemployed persons, at 12.1 million, decreased by
456,000 in September.

Why that’s the most amazing thing since, well… ever! Just five weeks before a Presidential election, the economy suddenly takes off like a Shelby Cobra, as the number of unemployed drops by almost a half a million workers in just 30 days! No telling how many jobs were created to make the unemployment rate drop 0.3 percent, it must have been in the hundreds of thousands of new jobs!

From the BLS:

The unemployment rate decreased to 7.8 percent in September, and total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 114,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in health care and in transportation and warehousing but changed little in most other major industries.

114,000??? But, but, but, the economic created 206,000 new jobs last month, at least, according to the revisions made in last months figures. It can only be explained as the hand of the deity, as the number employed miraculously explodes.

Number employed in July – 142,220,000
Number employed in August – 142,101,000
Number employed in Sept. – 142,974,000

Number unemployed in July – 12,794,000
Number unemployed in August – 12,544,000
Number unemployed in Sept. – 12,088,000

It must be the wondrous action of the deity, like that loaves and fishes thing, all over again. How else could 114,000 new jobs account for 456,000 less unemployed? Obama has employed the multitude, with his basket filled with a few new jobs and fishes.

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