A new era? Meet the new boss...

So Obama's president-elect. Whoopee.

A lot of people are saying that either Obama will be way, way better than Bush or that Obama will be significantly worse.

I think it will be neither.

I simply can't imagine anybody being worse than Bush II. I mean, the guy didn't do a single thing in 8 years that I 100% agreed with. And committing treason, launching an illegal war on false premises and doing everything he could to destroy the environment and the middle class will be tough to top.

On the other hand, will Obama be that much better? Well, he will be hard-pressed to even get us back to where we were in 2000, before W took over. Simply put: there is no way Obama will be as good as we hope. For one, he's a moderate when we are in need of a radical. He's good at compromise and bringing people together, but I don't want to be brought together with the neocons who destroyed our country; I want to see them rot in jail for their crimes.

Secondly, he's surrounded by advisors and colleagues who got us into this trouble in the first place. There were economic advisors on both sides of the election (Phil Gramm for McCain and Robert Rubin for Obama) who helped create the current crisis and who continually denied that there even was a crisis. This is extremely bad news for those of us hoping for a quick turnaround (and for "change" in general) and it puts Obama's judgment and independence into question.

Let's say, as a wonderful thought experiment, that Obama does intend to bring big change to Washington, and is largely successful based on his penchant for bipartisanship and his crew of old-hands who know how the game works. Then what? Then he gets shot! Simple as that; the system will not allow massive, systemic change without a fight.

For instance, the only way to solve the current financial crisis is to rid ourselves of the pestilence known as the Federal Reserve. This private bank has impoverished America and robbed her of her economic liberty. But the last president who attempted to get rid of it was shot in broad daylight in Dallas by multiple gunmen and there was never so much as a trial.

Until we get back on the gold standard our economic problems will persist. If you have the time, watch a movie called Zeitgeist: Addendum, which lays out all the problems with our current (fiat and fractional reserve) monetary system in great detail, and how it's basically a pyramid-scheme and a scam to enslave us via money.

Will Obama make the painful changes necessary to rescue our nation from the inhuman greed of the international bankers and their cabal of cronies? Only time will tell, but it certainly doesn't look good. Add to this the fact that he's reinforcing Bush's laughable al-Qaeda myth and encouraging attacks on both Afghanistan and Pakistan and you've got a continuance of the U.S.'s crypto-imperialist policies and the War on Terror scam, which is actually a war on civil liberties. These are the tools the Bush admin used to manipulate people, spread fear and crush dissent. If Obama uses them as the neocons did, we will know that he is a threat to liberty too.

I'm willing to give him some time and a short honeymoon, but we must continue to be critical and relentless in our pursuit of justice, liberty and freedom. I don't care which party he's in, what he professes to believe, what color his skin is, or what he says he's going to do -- it's what he actually does that counts. And that's what I will judge him by.

We're all gonna die: Why we need a soft landing

Things look grim. I'm sure we're not out of the woods yet -- there's a long way to go before we hit rock bottom.

You can probably guess my reaction to the bailout: SCAM!!

So, our plan is to give the people who fucked the economy billions of dollars with no real plan to get it back? Brilliant! How could that not work?

The assholes basically just got us to pay them for ripping us off. Quite the smooth move on their part. 

But you know, it's basically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic at this point. I don't think $700 billion (actually, with all the pork it's closer to $850 billion) will make a lick of difference. The problem is much deeper than that; it has to do with the way we create and regulate money, at the fundamental level. Basically, we need to return to the gold standard, eliminate fractional reserve lending and dissolve the Federal Reserve.

This will make for some bumpy transitions, as a nation used to 5% growth every year realizes that maybe 0.2% is more appropriate. Of course, the 5% growth stat is illusionary. You have to grow by 5% every year just to stay ahead of inflation. If you want to actually make money you need an even higher rate -- which leads to risky investments. Wall Street wants ever-better numbers and the strain of achieving them has led many an executive to make risky, negligent or downright stupid investments. We need fiscal sanity! It may be boring, and less people will be able to make a living moving electronic numbers around, but it will bring stable beneficence to the majority of the world.

Problem: How to get there from here. 

Step one: Reach rock bottom.

We're well on our way there. I'm afraid nothing will change without suffering because there's no motivation otherwise. It's a sad truth. The problem is that we're speeding too fast towards rock bottom. We may hit it with the impact of a dinosaur falling off a thousand-foot cliff. That would basically end our civilization as we know it.


We need a soft landing. But how to get it? The fat-ass rich people stole the golden parachutes, but in a world where money is worthless paper what help will those parachutes be?

There's no way out of this one, folks. We're all gonna die unless somebody has been planning ahead with an altruistic and audacious plan to save us from our high-velocity trajectory straight into the ground.

We can't look to the people in charge to save us -- they're the ones who got us into this mess. So I guess we don't have many options. Who has a plan? Who has the resources to make it work? Who among us is bold enough to listen?

We are fast approaching the Rubicon.

Look out for falling banks

Holy cow -- lookout! There's banks falling like boulders all around us!

Luckily for them, when big, important institutions such as investment banks fail, they fall right into the loving arms of the Bush administration.

AIG, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch this week alone. Am I forgetting one? Probably. Now regulators are calling other banks looking for buyers in case Washington Mutual fails too.

Wall Street couldn't be in worse shape if it was literally on fire.

But, the GOP is there to bail these irresponsible banks out of trouble with -- you guessed it -- taxpayer money.

That's what the Establishment truly believes in: Socializing losses and privatizing profits.

God bless America, Comrade.

"A Banker's Coup"

There's an article you need to read. Here's a bite-sized piece:

Congress is being muscled out of financial market supervision by a troop of venal banksters and corporate picaroons who are threatening to finish-off the already-defanged SEC. That will put the Fed in the driver's seat for good. Paulson wants to police the world's most complex markets on the “honor system”. It's crazy. His blueprint is an obvious attempt to consolidate market-related functions under a central authority that is accountable to private industry alone. That way, the Fed can bailout whomever it chooses without congressional approval. Paulson's press conference was just a polite way of informing the American people that the seat of power has shifted from Washington to Wall Street. It's a banker's coup.

Want another hit? Read the whole thing.

My own take: He's right. And it's absolutely insane to give these people more power since they've already fucked up so royally.

...But maybe that was the plan from the start. We have to remember who we're dealing with. These fascist oligarchs would love nothing more than to be finally rid of the meddlesome middle class. This deliberately-stoked financial crisis will wipe out the American middle class while the global elite will escape with just a few financial bruises... even though they caused the damn collapse to happen.

There's justice for you.

Hell freezes over: The MSM talks about the Global Elite

The mainstream media is covering the global elite: The Superclass.

What is the world coming to? Are we actually going to have an honest discussion on the nature of the Super-rich and their incredibly disproportionate influence upon the world?

I doubt it, but it's still nice to see Newsweek talking about it... of course, the author positively lusts after the power in front of him:

Recalling an earlier crisis in global securities markets that he helped to manage, Geithner said the Fed brought together the leaders of the world's 14 major financial firms, from five countries, representing 95 percent of all the activity in global markets. The Swiss were there, the Germans were there, the British were there. Interestingly, no Asians were there, not even the Japanese. Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein "jokingly called them 'the 14 families,' like in 'The Godfather'," says Geithner. "And we said to them, "You guys have got to fix this problem. Tell us how you are going to fix it and we will work out some basic regime to make sure there are no free riders to give you comfort; you know that if you move individually everybody else will move with you."

There was nothing in writing, no rules, no formal process, and while no one asked the Fed to act, the Fed let everyone in the markets know it was acting. The beauty of the process was its absolute efficiency, seeing what a tight circle of large firms with "some global reach" could get done, fast—with an executive committee of only four running the weekly conference call until the crisis was past.

There was nothing in writing because it's not a democratic process. It's an oligarchical one. These super-rich folks have a common interest -- maintaining their power -- and they'll do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal.

The people on the recent calls like those described by Geithner, plus a few thousand more like them, not only in business and finance, but also politics, the arts, the nonprofit world and other realms, are part of a new global elite that has emerged over the past several decades. I call it the "superclass." They have vastly more power than any other group on the planet. Each of the members is set apart by his ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide. Each actively exercises this power, and often amplifies it through the development of relationships with other superclass members.

It's just like high school. The super-rich have formed their own clique and none of the rest of us are invited "in". Nope, we're outsiders.... which seems odd because there's approximately 6,000 of them and 6,000,000,000 of us.

So how does one become a member? As ever, being rich certainly helps. Many superclass members are wealthy, wealthier in relative terms than any elite ever has been. The top 10 percent of all people, for example, now control 85 percent of all wealth on the planet.

It's very stable. It's orderly, and it works.

But it's not democracy.

In fact, when I said "it works" I meant that the system works. I didn't mention anything about whether or not it works for everybody. Clearly, with most of the world's population in either mild or abject poverty, the system does not work fairly or equitably.

So here's a question: Why do we need these guys?

What benefit do they bring me? Or you? Right now they only bring the status quo, but with the economy faltering (and these guys being in a position to see it coming) it seems to me that they're bringing us a world of pain. The superclass will have time to jump ship. They've probably already moved much of their wealth to Euros or gold. The rest of us? We're just trying to get by.

If they fuck us over, I say it's on. You ruin my standard of living, I might just ruin yours.

The iconic symbol of superclass unity is the Gulfstream private jet. In fact, one way to measure the clout of an event is to count the private jets at the nearest airport. According to Gulfstream, Davos traditionally attracts more of its planes than any other gathering, drawing up to 10 percent of the 1,500 planes in service to Zurich airport. But this year's Olympics in Beijing will give it a run for its money, as typically do events as diverse as the Monaco Grand Prix, China's Boao Forum, the Geneva Auto Show or Allen & Co.'s annual getaway for media magnates in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Globalization looks different when you can tell the pilot when to leave and where to go, and when there are no security lines to wait in when you are heading off for distant destinations. Those who are free to move about the planet this way come to have more in common with themselves than with their own countrymen. "What happened to us, that we walk through the Davos party and know more people than when we were walking across the village green in the town we live in?" wonders Mark Malloch-Brown, former Deputy Secretary General at the United Nations and now a senior official in the British Foreign Ministry.

The Gulfstream jet is a perfect metaphor for these people. They are in the fast lane while the rest of us take the bus. There's only one word for it: Class.

I thought America was supposed to be a classless (or at least upwardly mobile) society, but it seems like we've copied the British class system almost to the letter. Throw some more racism and capitalism in the mix and you've got Britain 2.0. Is that what our founding fathers wanted?

People tell me that I shouldn't wage class warfare, to which I say: "What the fuck are you talking about? The war is over. The rich won a long time ago."

Economic Advice for Peasants

So apparently I have a blog or something. Wouldn't it be nice if I updated it every now and then?

Sorry for the nearly-a-month gap between updates. I've been busy, depressed, sick, busy and exhausted. And busy.

A lot has changed, but much more hasn't. I get sick of the same old shit. It's just depressing to have to contend with the fact that we've got a crew of fascists in the White House and no one seems to care, especially not Congress.

Similar to Hitler and Nazis we may have to wait for them to cause their own undoing. That seems like the way things are going: The Fed and Bush admin have completely fucked our economy to the point where I'm wondering whether I should move somewhere the hell else.

They said an emergency cut by the US Federal Reserve to its discount rate and a weekend deal for JPMorgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns at a fire-sale price had added to a sense of crisis sweeping through global financial markets.

The volatility spilled over into commodities Monday as oil prices soared to fresh highs and gold prices jumped as investors looked to safe-havens.

The fact that the government is bailing out mega-rich corporations at the expense of regular-joe taxpayers almost doesn't even register in my mind. We've got bigger fish to fry: The stability of the economy as a whole is threatened.

It's important to realize that the US dollar is a fiat currency, backed by nothing but promises. There's no gold backing, no silver; nothing. It's paper. It's backed only by the promise of the government that its citizens will continue being productive and paying their taxes. But if the economy goes even lower into the pit of doom it's falling in, then the American taxpayer will have trouble paying for much of anything. Houses are foreclosing and jobs are dwindling. There's no end in sight so we don't know whether this will be just a minor correction (read: recession) or a major depression.

It's looking more and more like a depression.

There's a lot of baggage here. The dollar has been inflated in value for years and now the cows are coming home to roost ontop of the chickens who wanted to be elsewhere but couldn't afford transport because of high gas prices.

But's the subprime mortgage mess that's really triggering this downfall. Those same loans kept the economy afloat a few years ago, but now they're acting more like a millstone. So, in order to save us from economic ruin, the Bush admin is robbing us of our own money. This money will be sent to the enormous banks who fucked us in the first place:

This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

The Spitzer scandal proves once again that the most horrible thing any politician can ever do is have sex.

You can start illegal wars, violate every American's 4th amendment rights simultaneously, give away billions to rich cronies, display utter incompetence and total hypocrisy, but God help you if you have sex with somebody who's not your wife! (the solution is obvious)

Oh well. Spitzer was a hypocrite, too. He should've moved for legalized prostitution when he had the chance. But what really burns me is how we hold (or don't hold) politicians accountable. Spitzer's indiscretions are mostly a matter of concern for his wife; it's none of our fucking business (ha!). Bush's crimes are at a war-crime level or higher. Yet he is protected by the Democratic Congress as if he were one of their own.

Well, I guess he is.

The truth is that the ruling class looks after their own. Spitzer was standing in the way of economic progress so he had to go. Of course "economic progress" is just a euphemism for wealth redistribution; from the poor to the rich.

In the end, we're on our own. The rich will look after themselves/each other, but they will only think about us insofar as we are necessary to their survival. It's foolish naivety to believe otherwise, I'm afraid. They'll save their servents before us, simply because they want someone to serve them hot toddies in the underground bunkers.

So my advice is: watch the markets. If there's a run on the banks you'll want to be first in line to get your cash. Remember, only the first 10% will get their money out. Everybody else is completely fucked if the FDIC doesn't have a couple trillion laying around.

Of course what do I know? I'm just a simple peasant giving advice to other peasants on how to deal with an economic system invented by the nobles for the benefit of the nobles. There's really not much we can do.

But you might be wise to avoid listening to the mouthpieces of the nobles. Their advice is usually self-serving at best. Perhaps even scarier is the idea that the high priests of the economy have no fucking idea what's happening or how to stop it.

Sounds like a good time for a deus ex machina. Somebody must've seen this debacle coming, right? We need a white knight but all I see are charlatans, jokers and sycophants. Hoping for a miracle doesn't seem like a very good strategy, but what other choice do we have?

Economic Collapse

The pyramid scheme that is our economy is teetering on the brink of collapse. The subprime loan disaster is looking more and more like the detanator that will nuke the dollar, the banking industry and our economy as a whole.

When US homeowners default on their mortgages en-mass, they destroy money faster than the Fed can replace it through normal channels. The result is a liquidity crisis which deflates asset prices and reduces monetized wealth, says economist Henry Liu.

The debt-securitization process is in a state of collapse. The market for structured investments, MBSs, CDOs, and Commercial Paper---has evaporated leaving the banks with astronomical losses. They are incapable of rolling over their their short-term debt or finding new revenue streams to buoy them through the hard times ahead. As the foreclosure-avalanche intensifies; bank collateral continues to be down-graded which is likely to trigger a wave of bank failures.

Henry Liu sums it up like this: Proposed government plans to bail out distressed home owners can slow down the destruction of money, but it would shift the destruction of money as expressed by falling home prices to the destruction of wealth through inflation masking falling home value. (The Road to Hyperinflation, Henry Liu, Asia Times) It's a vicious cycle. The Fed is caught between the dual millstones of hyperinflation and mass defaults. There's no way out.

We are so fucked.

Unless somebody has a new economic system waiting in the wings I'll have to start learning how to survive on rats, rabbits, squirrels ... and probably human flesh at this rate. And that is not my idea of a good time.

The worst part is the feeling of helplessness. I can only watch these "financial experts" make one stupid decision after another. They're only really experts at making themselves massive short-term profits. They don't care about the damage they've done to the economy, which affects all of us.

The whole affair is depressing and maddening, but if you want to learn more, visit the Market Oracle.

As for me, I'll be learning to hunt small suburban mammals.

The media finally covers Ron Paul

Oh wait, it's a total hatchet job:

Paul keeps white supremacist donation

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist, and the Texas congressman doesn't plan to return it, an aide said Wednesday.

Don Black, of West Palm Beach, recently made the donation, according to campaign filings. He runs a Web site called Stormfront with the motto, "White Pride World Wide." The site welcomes postings to the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community."

The mainstream media (MSM) has no intention of covering the presidential race fairly. They plan to turn it into a horserace and throw the issues out the window.

I've written extensively about this before. From their incredible (and intentional) stupidity to their orthodox adherence to inanity the mainstream press apparatus is nothing more than a treasonous corporate whore. Glenn Greenwald has been covering this issue superbly as well.

It's been fascinating to watch the media blackout on Ron Paul. I mean, Pravda couldn't have done a better job at squashing stories about him, but the internet has provided Paul supporters a platform to spread the word. It's interesting to watch the media desperately try to keep a lid on his campaign even while he's breaking fundraising records.

The media still has to cover him, of course. A total blackout would be rather bizarre and would draw more attention than it would divert. However, the "subtle" blackout we've been subject to is obvious and suspicious nonetheless.

I should point out that I'm not a fervent Paulite. I don't like a lot of his conservative positions, but his opposition to the Federal Reserve certainly caught my attention. Apparently it caught the Oligarchy's attention too, which is why Dr. Paul is not getting any mainstream play.

You'll notice that even the mainstream outfits that do cover Paul tend to do it in their "blog section", which is exactly where I found the link above. That same blog post displays the most common way reporters deal with Paul; draw attention to his supporters and make them seem a little unhinged:

His legions of alert supporters scour the Internet for slights to right, frequently crudely, and any opportunities to promote their strict constructionist candidate. They dismiss the polls as slanted and the money-raising as the real indicator of the 72-year-old ob-gyn's growing national support among disaffected Republicans, Democrats and previous non-voters. The Times' James Rainey examined one Southern California meet-up group for Paul here.

We've written about these supporters here and examined hundreds of their comments here. No doubt there'll be some more to read down below here shortly.

Nice of them to examine the man's supports and their internet activities, but (and maybe I'm old fashioned here) what about his position on the issues?

Oh silly me. I forgot the Media has already decided that we'll be choosing between Hillary and Ghouliani.

But what if I want to live in a democracy?

Money as debt: The root of the new slavery

If you've ever felt like you're a slave to money, this video will explain quite simply how that is in fact true. It's the best video on money creation I've ever seen.



Be sure to check out all five sections. Here's part 2.

The Hypocrisy of DailyKos: How Partisanship Created The Best Enemies Bush Could Hope For

Proving once again that they value partisanship over America, freedom and informed debate, the sellout hacks at DailyKos have "warned" anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan that if she posts more about her independent candidacy she will be banned.

I can't post here anymore because my potential run for Congress is not on the Democratic ticket.

...

If Speaker Pelosi does her constitutionally mandated duty and I don't run, then I can come back and post.

DailyKos is shameful. The site is bathed in hypocrisy and founded on partisanship.

The two-party system has destroyed America and put us in the current mess, and DailyKos and other Yellow Dog Democrats are part of the problem. They care about Democrats first and America second (just as the Republicans look after themselves first and America... well, okay they don't care about America at all).

That said, there is still some hope that Pelosi is just being strategic, but where has trusting the Democrats to hold Republicans accountable got us so far? I can see Cindy's point; what's the purpose of having the Democrats in charge of Congress if they won't impeach? 50% of the nation is pro-impeachment (46% for Bush, 58% for Cheney) and the Democrats aren't even talking about it. Once the real investigations start and we find some dirt the numbers will go higher. But will the Democrats have the balls to do it?

Only if it doesn't harm their precious party, or the two-party system.

Ironically, many DailyKos regulars are the best enemies Bush could hope for: weak, timid, divided and fucking stupid. They proceed with undue caution and fret that attacking Bush could make them look like big meanies. They make excuses rather than try and build a consensus on impeachment, and they are far more concerned about their electoral chances in 2008 than in actually holding the illegal Bush/Cheney administration accountable. In short, they are Bush's enablers.

Sheehan gets points in my book for being against the Federal Reserve, which many Kossacks think is a Republican position (it's not), so, unthinkingly, they reject it like the fucking mindless borg shitheads that they are.

Opposition to the Fed is generally an independent position (Ron Paul is the exception here, but he's so hated by his own party that I think it only strengthens my point), and is generally the province of informed, independent-minded folks who don't follow marching orders of the Washington establishment oligarchy.

The sad truth is the there's nothing progressive about DailyKos; it's about as regressive and unimaginative as you can get. These people are too wrapped up in the sports team mentality ("Gooooo Dems!") to realize that their party is as much a part of the fascist oligarchy as the Republicans.

DailyKos is decidedly mainstream, and worships at the altar of pragmatism, not freedom, liberty, or truth. Their only goal is victory (and they admit as much), although they still like to pretend to be anti-establishment nothing could be further from the truth. When Kos casts himself as a revolutionary, he doesn't mean to change the system. He merely wants to sieze control it and use it for his own selfish aims... Just like everybody else in politics.

The Democrats, for their part, have accomplished exactly nothing in Congress. Not that Bush would sign their reform bills anyway, but isn't that all the more reason to impeach the stonewalling, lying, election-stealing fascist bastards? Apparently not.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: There's only one party -- The Business Party, and Democrats and Republicans are merely factions of that monolithic party. We don't live in a democracy, we live in a constitutional republic that is quickly shedding the "constitutional" part for fascism instead. And what are the Democrats doing to stop it? About as much as they're doing to stop the war: Nothing but a few bellicose speeches for the choir.

Still, the Kossacks will continue to support the Dems, no matter what. Blind loyalty is their modus operandi and they show no signs of changing it. So, how are they any different from the Republicans who support Bush no matter how many laws he breaks?

Partisans on both sides are the same. They all think it's okay to break a few rules in order to achieve their party's higher goals. What's best for America doesn't enter into it.

We sold the Tree of Liberty for beads, trinkets and individually-wrapped snacks

There's a great article in the NY Times about those Americans who did not support the American Revolution in 1776. The author's guess is that around 20% of the population did not support the revolution. It should not be surprising; people are rarely in harmonious, unanimous agreement about... anything. But it's worth bearing in mind.

During three days in November 1776, this petition sat in Scott’s Tavern, on Wall Street, to be signed by anyone who wished. A frank declaration of dependence, it completely lacks the revolutionary genius and rhetorical grace of our hallowed July 4 document. Yet in all, more than 700 people put their names to the parchment — 12 times the number who signed the Declaration of Independence. Among the signatories were pillars of New York society: wealthy merchants like Hugh Wallace, who commanded vast tracts of land and capital; members of some of New York’s most prominent families, the DeLanceys, the Livingstons and the Philipses; and the clergymen Charles Inglis and Samuel Seabury, who published articulate rebuttals to rebel pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”

I'm probably the only person on the planet who thinks the American Revolution was ultimately a failure.... because we were reconquered by the British a hundred years ago. Notice that the petition was situated on Wall Street. Well, some things haven't changed. Wall Street was then and is now, home to the "Royalists", if you will. The "moneyed interests" were defeated in 1776, but the wealth and power Britain wielded was immense. In time, Britain was able to get a toehold in her former colony using that most diabolic of weapons: Money. As a young nation we were starved for it and didn't really care where it came from.

A certain class formed, primarily on the east coast, right around New York (the "Empire State"), whose allegiance was to power; not America. I suppose it wasn't the British reconquering us so much as the old guard reasserting its power against a young upstart.

Still, the British connection is worth looking into. Why do we care about the Queen or Princess Diana? Wall Street is associated with the CIA, and the CIA is closely tied with MI6. Our intelligence apparatus is intrinsically bound with that of Britain and her other wayward colony, Australia. The UK/USA axis is currently the strongest in the world. It does seem a bit odd that our closest ally (in Iraq and other places) is our old colonial master, doesn't it? I suppose after WWII some old wounds were forgotten (or forgiven, anyway). But it is curious that we have such enmity in this country for France, the nation that gave us the Statue of Liberty and helped us fight against the British.

Here we are, in a nation that is clearly ruled for the rich, by the rich. Are we independent from the British? Perhaps, but what does it matter if we're not independent of tyranny? A new tyranny rules these lands, and it's called crypto-fascism. We wouldn't be much better off under the thumb of the British police state. Freedom seems to slip away over time, as cowards have their say and convenience trumps idealism time and time again. It's true what Jefferson said:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

But the hard part, as always, is figuring out who's a patriot and who's a tyrant. I can give you a few hints, though: In a hierarchical society whose class system is based on accumulated wealth the poor folks certainly do not have a chance to be tyrants, whereas those sitting at the top of the pyramid might behave like aristocrats without even realizing it.

Let's hope Thomas Jefferson doesn't rise from the dead anytime soon. We'll feel like the Native American tribes who sold vast tracts of land for nothing more than beads, trinkets and gunpowder. I doubt Jefferson will be nearly as impressed with our high-definition TVs as we might be.

"You exchanged your God-given Freedom for WHAT?!!" he'll say.

"Hey, c'mon -- these beads are really shiny!"

If you think voting for Hillary will solve the problems Bush made you're fuckin' dreaming

George W. Bush has been a disaster for this country, there can be no doubt. However, beware of those who want to be his successor -- many of them are just as bad, if not worse.

Case in point: Hillary Clinton has vowed to keep U.S. troops in Iraq if she's elected. Not only is she a war supporter, she is even more blatant about her willingness to spill American blood for Iraqi oil.

As for Iraq’s importance to US “national security,” Clinton could not have been clearer: “It is right in the heart of the oil region.”

Asked how many troops would be left behind under such a plan Clinton demurred, claiming that she would bow to “the advice of military officers.” Undoubtedly, however, these open-ended missions—securing Iraq’s borders, suppressing resistance, training its military and, above all, assuring control of its oil, not to mention protecting and supporting all those engaged in these activities—would require the permanent basing of tens of thousands of US soldiers and marines in an occupation that would last for decades.

Hillary Clinton is an imperial neocon traitor, just like Bush. Do not be fooled. If Hillary is elected we can look forward to more of the same. She's so ambitious she will sell out any principle, sacrifice any amount of American lives, do any amount of damage to our nation to achieve her selfish goals. The only thing that matters to her is getting elected president. Everything else is secondary, including our Constitution, our troops, our nation, our liberty and our standing in the world.

I repeat: Do not be fooled! Many of the Democrats are nothing more than neocons in sheep's clothing. Ironically, the Republican-in-name-only Ron Paul might be our best bet for 2008. He's basically a Liberatian in Republican guise. He was against the war in Iraq from the beginning and he wants to shut down the Federal Reserve -- that pretty much gets my vote right there.

It's worth noting that the Democrats have done little to get us out of Iraq so far -- if this is still the case in 2008 then we might need to re-examine our ideas of partisanship. All partisanship does is divide us. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. Maybe it's time to vote for the person and not the party.

Income Inequality in America: Where's my Check for Inflation?

There's a discussion over at Slashdot concerning the income disparity we face today. I expect it to be modded into oblivion by fascists, capitalists and morons, so I'm reposting it here:

So, who got a check from the government last year to make up for all the money you lost to inflation? Anyone?

Whenever topics like this come up all the libertarians, fascist/corporatists and foaming-at-the-mouth capitalists come out of the woodwork to say that "anybody can make it in America!" even though none of them have been poor, black, suffering from disease and fleeing from hurricanes while still succeeding in business. Hey, I like kool-aid, too, but this is total horseshit. Let me be absolutely clear:

THE RICH "CREATE" POVERTY. Clear enough? Without rich people actively trying to fuck over poor people we wouldn't have the income disparity that we presently have. To see it in action, all you have to do is look at the Republican party and their collaborators in big business. They try their best to cut taxes for the rich and slash spending on social programs, no matter what the human cost. The Democrats help by increasing federal spending to obscene levels thereby necessitating increased taxation. We get fucked from both ends, like a double-sided dildo.

As amusing as it is to read white-bread, middle-class slashdotters talking about how easy it is for anybody in America to become a captain of industry, I feel compelled to take a shit on your Capitalism Cake. Fascism is alive and well in this country, which should be no surprise to anyone who knows what Fascism is: Corporatism. Basically, it's the merger of the state and big business. Fascism is the governmental system that is most favorable to business, bar none. Big Business is fascist not because they believe in Hitler's aryan fantasies but because they stand to gain from a government hopelessly devoted to improving market conditions for greedy multinationals.

The income gap is not a new thing because greed is as old as humanity. There is no such thing as being "rich enough." There is only MORE. More money, more power, more disparity. And how do you really know that you're rich unless somebody else is poor? How can you really enjoy being wealthy unless you have servants? The rich mindset is dead set on creating inequity because the rich benefit from it, and like I said, there is no limit to their desires.

This is aided, abetted and made possible by the Federal Reserve System. Each year the Fed increases the money supply, and each year money becomes worth less and less. That's the problem with fiat currency. Since it's not backed by gold the dollar bill has no intrinsic worth. It is just paper. Since it's just paper/electrons it can be created with a flick of the wrist. And so it is. When that money is created, who gets it? You? Does the government/private industry send you a check each year to account for inflation? No, the money is simply stolen from you by those who create it: The bankers. Bankers are the Kings of Capitalism. They are the new aristocracy, the ruling class that maintains control with an iron fist. They control the corporations and our government.

But this system, which appears impossibly strong from the outside, is actually rotting from within. Things are falling apart. If there was a run on the banks our economy would collapse into a pit that would make the Great Depression look like a tea party. That's because of the deposits vs. cash-on-hand ratio. Banks are able to create money simply by making loans. How? Well, they don't really have your money in the vault, you know. For each dollar you put in your savings account the bank is able to lend 10 dollars out because bankers have figured out that they only need to keep 10% of their total deposits on hand at any given time. (I'd like to have a 9x or 10x multiplier on my wealth. Maybe I should start a bank and screw you people over! It's the American way!) The Fed backs them in case of a run, but they don't have the money either. The money doesn't exist. It's imaginary. It's not backed by anything like gold and it is only accessible during normal business climates. In the event of a nationwide run on all banks the first 10% might get their money out. The other 90% are totally and completely fucked.

Our economy is based on smoke and mirrors. The Federal Reserve is a privately owned corporation that loans our government money at interest, even though the money is completely fake. This is why we have a 9 trillion dollar federal debt (well, that and profligate spending by Congress). It's a total scam. And most importantly, it's a system of control, courtesy of the ultra-rich. They know that money is worthless; it's only a means to an end: Power.

So does income inequality matter? Of course it does. It matters to the rich, who count on poor people for cheap labor (thus, the love affair with illegal immigration -- would you rather pay $2.50 an hour for a Mexican gardener, or $10.50 for a citizen gardener?), and it matters to the poor, who can't afford to go back to school to get more skills and get a better job... working for a rich guy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, went to Harvard's kindergarten, etc.

So please, spare me the platitudes about how anybody can make it in America. If you do make it you'll have to spend the rest of your life looking after your money, investing it properly and being successful at it or inflation will turn your wealth into a big pile of nothing. This should be nothing new to anybody who's familiar with the ruling class. It's the same in this country as it was 2,000 years ago during the Roman Empire. One of my favorite scenes from Mel Brook's History of the World: Part 1 is the one in the Roman Senate:

Leader of Senate: All fellow members of the Roman senate hear me. Shall we continue to build palace after palace for the rich? Or shall we aspire to a more noble purpose and build decent housing for the poor? How does the senate vote?

Entire Senate: FUCK THE POOR!

Economic Bondage in an Age of Freedom

Shitty day.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

What a shitty day. Nothing too horrible, just left me wondering: When's Timmy-time? When do I get time for me? It seems like I'm working my life away... and I am. Is this really what I want to do with my life? It's so short, and it's slipping away... Is this it?

Why does it seem like we get busier and busier every year? Why don't Americans use their supposed wealth to stretch out their leisure time? Isn't that the definition of freedom? But I bet most of you are stuck with whatever PTO time the company gives you... and the rest of you can only wish you had PTO time.

Is this freedom? Is this wealth? How come I feel so poor in the time department? I'd gladly trade some money for some more time... but I don't have enough money either.

They keep telling me that Americans are rich, richer than most of the rest of the world. Is that so? Then how come we have to work so much? After cost of living expenses and inflation are factored in it seems to me that we're just like everybody else. Just trying to get by, day by day. Working more than we should because we can't control our own hours. We can't get the job we really want, we can't spend as much time with friends and family as we'd like and if we complain too much we're out on the streets. You call this freedom? I call it economic bondage.

So this is what it feels like to be a wealthy slave.

The Shadow Government

It now sounds like the NSA approached AT&T about setting up a domestic spying ring well before 9/11. Bush previously claimed that 9/11 was the impetus behind the decision, but it sounds like he's just a fascist by nature:

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

"The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11," plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. "This undermines that assertion."

The lawsuit is related to an alleged NSA program to record and store data on calls placed by subscribers. More than 30 suits have been filed over claims that the carriers, the three biggest U.S. telephone companies, violated the privacy rights of their customers by cooperating with the NSA in an effort to track alleged terrorists.

Well, this probably comes as a surprise to anyone who thinks Bush is a real conservative. The neocons are called neo-conservatives because they're not really conservative. They're actually quite a radical bunch and they came into office with a very forward-looking plan to reshape the world and America's place in it. While you certainly can't call them liberals, the conservative label doesn't fit either. That's why I like to call them neo-fascists. It describes their intent and their methods so much better than the other, more conventional terms.

So let there be no doubt: Spying on us and taking away our liberties was the plan from day one. They didn't suddenly become radicalized by 9/11 -- they claim that continually and that's bullshit. They hope that we were changed by 9/11, but it didn't affect them in the same way. Shit, the neocons probably threw a party after 9/11 because suddenly everything they've ever wanted was within reach. They can continue building their American Empire without a lot of whiny opposition (or so they thought! Bloggers can whine better than anyone!) and they no longer had to pretend to care about the Constitution. When you look at who benefited most from 9/11 the neocons are on the top of the list. They certainly faired better than the mythical Al Qaeda (which is CIA anyway).
We live in dark times. Can't trust our own government. Our government has been stolen out from under our noses and most people have no idea why or how. I can answer that quite easily. Why? Power. How? The Federal Reserve System. That's a gross oversimplification, but the fact remains that the Fed enabled the private banking class to control our government from afar. Just think about it: A private institution, in the middle of our government (inaccurately named "Federal") that controls our money supply. The government depends on the Fed for it's power because in the capitalist system the bankers are king. Shit, you'd be king too if you could take a dollar and turn it into ten dollars just by loaning it out ten times. That's the way banks work; fractional reserve banking is a huge scam:

Banks make money by literally creating money out of thin air, nowadays exclusively deposits rather than bank notes. This sort of swindling or counterfeiting is dignified by the term "fractional-reserve banking," which means that bank deposits are backed by only a small fraction of the cash they promise to have at hand and redeem. (Right now, in the United States, this minimum fraction is fixed by the Federal Reserve System at 10 percent.)

Fractional Reserve Banking

Let's see how the fractional reserve process works, in the absence of a central bank. I set up a Rothbard Bank, and invest $1,000 of cash (whether gold or government paper does not matter here). Then I "lend out" $10,000 to someone, either for consumer spending or to invest in his business. How can I "lend out" far more than I have? Ahh, that's the magic of the "fraction" in the fractional reserve. I simply open up a checking account of $10,000 which I am happy to lend to Mr. Jones. Why does Jones borrow from me? Well, for one thing, I can charge a lower rate of interest than savers would. I don't have to save up the money myself, but simply can counterfeit it out of thin air. (In the nineteenth century, I would have been able to issue bank notes, but the Federal Reserve now monopolizes note issues.) Since demand deposits at the Rothbard Bank function as equivalent to cash, the nation's money supply has just, by magic, increased by $10,000. The inflationary, counterfeiting process is under way.

The nineteenth-century English economist Thomas Tooke correctly stated that "free trade in banking