Protesters Disrupt Shoppers in Chicago

It's hard in this era of endlessly recycled news to come up with anything really new but I'll give it the old college try.  Washington's Blog has an excellent history of ISIS and I recommend you people read that.  It's extensive but best of all it's free.  It's like the material was originally part of a book or something.  I find Washington's blog's views on the whole ISIS question intriguing.  Washington's blog blames Turkey entirely for the downing of that Russian bomber jet in the process of making a run over ISIS.  We also had reinforced that there ARE no such things as "Moderate Rebels" that John Mc Cain talked so much about so glowingly two years ago.  Shawn Hannity makes the repeated mistake (accidentally - on purpose) of referring to that "red line in the sand" that President Obama drew in late summer 2013 as somehow being related to ISIS.  It was the Republicans themselves who refused to back the president up in any action he wanted to take against Assad of Syria.  The red line pertained to President Assad and not ISIS at all, who was not even known by name yet.  All John Mc Cain told us that there were "moderate rebels" who somehow we should support.  He had himself photographed with some Rebels that later turned out to be members of ISIS.

That stand-in guy who really is from Chicago was on instead of Norman Goldman but at least he was live.  There were disruptive protestors in Chicago keeping patrons from shopping on Black Friday, and for that matter, all weekend.  They would form a human chain in front of the stores blocking people from coming in but some stores let customers in a back enterence to get around that problem.  I don’t understand all this stuff about unplugging PA equipment when various ministers began to speak.  All the host could say is “The young people don’t put up with that sort of nonsense”.  One caller had a good point.  These are radically different times from the 1960’s and ‘70’s when political protests actually worked and needed legislation got passed.  Today they don’t care.  The media won’t cover it.  And all that’s likely to happen from these store protestors is that the businesses will hire on extra police protection so that shopping proceeds unencumbered.  The host wasn’t buying that argument.  I seem to have heartburn today or something in my throat.  It’s a burning sensation that’s lingering.  My smoking luck improved a bit when Richard gave me a long short and then Glenda also gave me a long short of the same brand of menthol cigarette.  I was the last to go in.  We had meatloaf tonight in a more generous portion.  We had cut up potato chunks and mixed vegetables.  We had yogurt for dessert.  Then Dora came by with seconds on meatloaf.  No cigarettes afterward.

I had Bill Carol on over the noon hour.  He kept alluding to some new kind of contact lenses that work just as good as surgery.  There was this one Hollywood celebrity who has a reputation of “hating cops”.   In terms of Days of our Lives, Abigail has been gone for weeks now and neither Jennifer nor Jack Junior has expressed one word of concern about her, only Chad.  Belle and Claire are too close in age to be mother and daughter.  They look more like sisters.  They’ve located the town that Abigail has been taken to and know about the midwife who has been seen.  Now Benjamin wants to take wife and son far away but at least has enough sense not to leave in the middle of a snowstorm at night.

Paul and Judy were already here at 10:25 or sooner when she called.  I went down and we headed to Moms.  There was virtually no talk about politics this entire trip.  They said Mom would be waiting out front.  Well we did park the car and walked in the building and Paul pointed out all the extensive remodeling they’d done.  They have a whole new sitting room with a blazing fireplace and everything.  Mom was worried by kissing her I was giving her my cold.  I said I’d been feeling “under the weather” and out of sorts and my appetite is down.  There was smoke billowing from the direction of Marie Calendar pies but the smoke was abaiting.  We got there about five after eleven.  [name] and Wendy were already there.  Wendy sure looked skinny and extra tall.  I learned very little about what’s going on in her life.  I was assigned to hold Mom’s hand as we entered and exited.  We were escorted to a table in the back and they had to put two square tables together.  I decided on the Ortega chicken sandwich with avocado and a bit chili pepper.  Mom got a bacon and turkey sandwich that kept falling apart, and she kept saying she didn’t like the soup because the broth was too thin and too spicy.  We had the sweet corn bread and I had at least two pieces.  I didn’t know the bread was complementary.  I had two and a half cups of coffee and [name]’s coffee count was just a hair under that.   I was surprised how quickly we departed there.  It was only five or so minutes after twelve.  We decided to go to Mom’s because Wendy hadn’t seen her place.  Wendy thought it was roomier when actually it’s smaller than her other one.  We talked a lot about family memories including   We talked a lot about Grandpa and Grandma, and that electric cart Grandpa used to transport the eggs in.  The Flinn Springs turn-off is hard to miss because Flinn Springs is kind of just a dot of a town on the map anyhow, as Mom states.   Mom had her memory lapse problems and recited all of her woes to Wendy, who calmly refuted them.  I weighed myself and it was just below 160 but the scale was dancing around because I was shakey.  They lent me one of the two books on Autism.  Judy wasn’t feeling well so about ten to two we left, a move I had mixed feelings about.  But I wanted to give Judy back her Star Wars novel because I’ve been promising it to her for months because I admitted I never got through it.

Last night I had a nightmare that I was in a house with roommates- - Christian, I guess.  And they were spouting scripture at me and I was spouting scripture right back at then by way of counter argument.  I had this big chest thing with a wooden lid where I kept all these VHS video tapes of videos of Heavy Metal Bands such as ACDC, Motley Crue, and Metallica.  And this one roommate lifts up the lid and uses this huge vacuum thing hose with some rotor rooter equipment he’d brought in and there were these horrible grinding noises- - - and a bunch of water and debris was flushed into the sewer system.  I lifted up the lid all the way and all of the VHS tapes were gone and I was screaming at the guy how he was going to get sued by me and I’d see him in court.  Even when I woke from this nightmare the thing still seemed real to me like it had actually happened.  In the dream I wanted to report him to somebody but suddenly I couldn’t remember his name even though I knew it well.  I began asking others questions about his character.  When I woke up it was twelve thirty or something and I went back to sleep and next thing I knew it was 5:43 by the digital clock and about time to get up.  But there were no cigarettes to be had.  I got my medication from Tom and turned on the TV and watched whatever - - .

Get Ready for Black Friday

I had been planning on doing a little homily on Thanksgiving because of what Thom Hartman was saying the other day about gratitude.  If you smile your seretonin level goes up and if you exercise gratitude in your life you will live longer.  Living in gratitude is good for your mental health.  I guess if he says it it's true.  But I haven't had the mental energy to type an exposee like this.  I've felt just a little under the weather the past couple of days like I was coming down with something, perhaps because of the cold weather we've had around here lately.  It was still a lot warmer here than in Green Bay last night when it was windy and rainy with temperatures in the thirties for that little number retirement celebration they held.  Chicago won the game and I'm happy about that.  I guess President Obama is happy today.  I have said myself that even with my own rather distant view of God, that it's a good idea to live in gratitude tword God.   Some people say that if you narrowly excape death like sit in a different place in a restaurant than usual and escape the worst effects of some bombing explosion- - then this is "Divine intervention".  I would use the world "providence" myself for these events by with seeming flookish luck a person narrowly escapes death.

On Wednesday Dr Levy returned to the place here for a class meeting.  A chief topic on the agenda is organizing the Christmas party Dr Levy has held every year since I've been in his class since 2009.  He buys all the food and it's high class merchandise too.  We didn't have any planned study topic for the day.  The previous time our class met was about a month ago when we were going to start a comparitive religion class.  We got our Christmas tree in the lobby here the day before Thanksgiving.  It's not the one in the photo which was a shot from two years ago.  But with the cold weather the spirit of the Holidays is here.  Black Friday is today.  Naturally I think you should boycott these places like Target that open at six in the evening on Thanksgiving.  The earliest a Black Friday sale should begin is at six or seven in the morning.  There is no reason in God's green earth to open a department store any earlier than that.  People need the whole day of Thanksgiving off.  And I hope people will lend their patronage to these stores that honor the Thanksgiving holiday.  Remember that the four letter word we should have on our minds is not "Sale" but "Love".  It's family values that count.  Well, that's my little sermon for today.

Shootings, Psychos, And Pre Packaged Hate

A Russian fighter jet was shot down by a NATO plane over Turkey yesterday.  And when the Russians sent out a hilocopter to search for the two pilots who may have safely ejected, that hilocopter was shot down by “friendly”, US backed rebels.  Some are saying that talk of World War III is getting heavy play in twitter now.  I don’t know about that but there are trying to “talk the tension down” by both sides telling the other side not to do anything rash.  It’s also said that Putin is a lot more bellicose before a domestic audience in Russia than the official face he is showing the rest of the world.

I believe one should not approach things with bias.  I've stopped listening to Shawn Hannity because he lies about everything.  He plays little "tapes" in his own mind and reinterperits every event in terms of his pre-wired political agenda.  I don't like bias on the left or the right.  For instance, Norman Goldman was a jerk to that caller from Louisiana who praised the Democrat who was just elected governor of LA.  Norman was trying to manufacture differences between his own oppinion of that Democratic victor of the election, and the caller's oppinion.   It didn’t dawn on me till just then that Bobby Jindel won’t be governor any more so that guy is through with running for high office and through as a failed governor.  But Goldman states that Brownback’s numbers are worse, down in the low twenties.  Jindel’s numbers are in the thirties in popularity. 

This caller on Thom Hartman this morning is someone whom I’d like to contrast with yesterday’s N G caller.   Thom Hartman let the guy talk and speak his peace and didn’t interrupt.  The caller says that liberals “give Black people a justification to fail” as though they are actually encouraging them to “fail” to somehow get in the “in crowd” of progressives or something.  Of course Hartman points out more white people are on welfare than Blacks.  The guy then said that our side is – instructing Blacks to hate all white cops, as though if you lived in Ferguson you had to be TOLD to hate white cops.  He then said Officer Wilson was doing his job when he gunned down a black man who was turning around and putting his hands up and surrendering.  I’m tempted to say “It’s the forensics, stupid”.   There was none of Brown’s DNA or fingerprints on the gun.  The car door was never open as all the early reports implied.  And it wasn’t a case of Wilson being like Faye Ray in the hands of King Kong since Wilson was 6 ft 3 and not some helpless pawn cowering before a suspect.  We won’t even mention the demonic look in the eyes or this allegation that Brown gave a black power salute and was “tugging at his waist band”.   People who listen to FOX news aren’t merely misinformed but are actively disinformed.  They should call FOX the Joseph Gobles Network.  It was Gobles who said that you tell a few simple lies and repeat them endlessly.  After a while- - some psychologists claim you get into an almost hypnotic trance because these people are feeding your intrinsic hates and fears almost like an addict being serviced.

Contraversial bullets:  Thom often tells this story about Black Panthers like Hewey Newton and others carrying cuns and patrolling the streets of the State Capitol, and Reagan saw this and within a week (he says) the state legislation rushed strong anti gun legislation to Reagan’s desk to sign.  The latest Donald Trump statement is that “Eighty percent of white people who are murdered were shot by Black people” when the actual figure is fourteen percent.   And we all know that virtually all of these mass shooter psychopaths are white and not Black.   “Racism has been used to divide the races for centuries- - - for White Capitalist exploits”.   White men  fear Black men because as members of the “small penis club” they know if their girlfriend fools around with a Black man he will know it immediately when a black baby pops out - - whereas if she gave birth to his friend’s white back, there’d be some face saving.   House of Representative staffers by law have no “Whistle Blower protection”.

There is a police shooting where one guy on drugs was shot sixteen times in eighteen seconds.  I’m not saying “Hate white officers” but I think certain shooting incidents demand a value judgement.  The officer couldn’t find a taser, so - - .  The fellow officers didn’t come forward after that shooting.  There were eight officers at the scene but as you know the worst officer on the force defines the standards of the entire police force.  Rather than identify with the best, exemplary officers, they identify with the worst.  One caller on WCPT suggest that the video of the event shouldn’t be aired because “The officer could lose his job over it”.  Well duh - - he’s accosed of murder already.  The Judge ruled that it’s public and therefore will be released.  Ben on Days of our Lives is a psycho killer.  He killed Serena, he strangled Page and both murders were “to make Chad look bad” to pin the murders on Chad all to win the love of Abigail because Benjamin was obsessed that she was in love with Chad.  But Ben doesn’t stop there but makes an attempt on Merlena’s life.  He killed William Horton because Will had evidence he was guilty.  On today’s episode he takes the midwife who just delivered his son- - he takes her out and shoots her like you’d shoot a rabid dog.  Benjamin is the rabid dog.  

One northern white rhino died at the zoo the other day, a 41 year old female.  Now there are only three white rhinos left in the world and those other three are in Kenya protected by armed guards.  Washington’s blog is concerned about shipping rates- - cargo and such- - are drastically down this year like they’ve never seen it.  I can’t even speculate as to what that means.  After five I headed to the store and noticed the almost full moon due east in the sky.  I entered the store around 5:20.  I got a banana nut muffin and a pack of John Blacks and my card was approved.  I had been entertaining doubts it might not go through.  At first Ben Carson backed up Trump’s statement, but now Carson is retracting his support of Trump.  But Trump saw “thousands and thousands”.  No major news organization or Christie or anybody can support this wild statement.

A Murky Sea of Hateful Rhetoric

Here is a small bit of good news to brighten our day.  Louisiana had a dead on tie for Governor and the democrat won the election because they drew straws and the Republican drew the short straw.  That’s scientific.  The republican was the guy who faced the ads saying the candidate was hanging out with whores while he was supposed to be attending a vote on veteran’s benefits.  We’ll take the victory anyway we can get it.  Donald Trump had a “Black Lives Matter” protestor physically thrown out of the building and apparently the guy was beaten up in the process.  Trump is on a roll with his bigoted and Islamaphobic views of society and is the top of the pops on the Republican side.  At this point it looks like Trump will be the Republican nominee.  There is no “candidate of the month” scenario like we had back in the summer and fall of 2011.  Trump has basically been at the top of the polls since he declared for President in June.  In the news there is turmoil all over the world.  You know about that Islamic terrorism we had in Mali in an expensive hotel or something.  They canceled a boxing match in this country because of terrorism.  And in Belgim they closed down the whole country because they said there was a strong indication of terrorism.   This week they found the Rude Pundit’s theme song.  I have Stephanie on audio from WCPT right now.   Jersey City has a large Islamic population who allegedly cheered when the buildings of 9 – 11 came down.  Trump clains “I know because I saw it happening on TV but the media covered it up”.  Oh, and welcome to the return of water boarding in a President Trump administration.  “It was nothing compared to what they’d done to us”.  So vote the water boarding ticket.  If that’s not weird enough for you John Kasec wants the latest government department called the Dept of Judeo Christian values, to keep America moral.

The United State was letting in Cuban refugees while Castro was deliberately exporting criminals to the US.  It was pointed out that if there were a demagogue of the left equivelant to Donald Trump, the press would bury him within a week with bad publicity - - not to mention five months.  This is after breakfast and physically I feel better.   I still have no idea how I’m going to get through the next thirty hours without cigarettes to smoke.  I was headed out the front door to perhaps do an overdraft (when the phone company made their withdraw) when Glenda called me back and gave me two Phillies, which are like pencil shaving to smoke anyhow.  One cigarette was broken.  I smoked the unbroken one and gave long butts to Glen who was out there.  We had Raison Bran for breakfast followed by generous scrambled eggs and toast and butter and jelly.  I had black coffee, and the reason of course if you have a choice of black- - or drowning in cream and sugar.  That’s the way they have it.   I’d be happy if they’d go back to letting you put yur own sugar and cream in like five months ago.  

A Hanging Cloud of Darkness Over the West

I have the Chris Matthews show on and Chris was saying “Why can’t we arrest someone who hasn’t committed a crime yet when we have ample evidence to suggest that they will?  Why wait till the damage is done?”   Donald Trump has talked about closing down mosques and also having a national Islamic registry data base, just like they registered Jews in Nazi Germany.  Matthews had a guest who reminded us of that boat with nine hundred Jews that was rejected first in Havana and then by Miami because the US thought Jewish people were inherently dangerous.  55% of the people then did not want Jewish refugees coming to this country and now about that number or higher are against Syrian refugees coming to this country.   Chris points out that nothing we do is unexpected by ISIS.  I think rather than do what ISIS wants as far as fulfilling their darkest portraits of us- - we do something they DON’T want.  They don’t want us to accept refugees because in their narrative- - this would be Syrians escaping Islamic control and finding a new way of liberated life in the United States.  So why “escape” a Syrian ISIS paradise?   Mayor Bloomberg had police surveillance of Islamic masques in New York City and De Blazio took them out.  And yet “Frontline” shows these videos of young school aged boys being taught and propagandized how to use weapons of war in Afghanistan by ISIS outlets there.  So “little kids grow up to be big kids” so therefore you have to watch out for that three year old refugee.  I don’t know how we can live in this constant and ever elevating state of sheer fear and national paranoia.   But there is one thing the NRA isn’t paranoid about and that’s selling weapons to suspected terrorists or people on the no fly list.  The NRA states that if they haven’t been arrested for any crimes (yet) then there is no bar to letting these people acquire firearms. 

Donald Trump had pulled back ahead of Ben Carson who had fallen off in recent polls and some polls show Marco Rubio ahead of Carson.  If Trump can stay around 23% he should have no problem getting the nomination with this many in the race.  All Trump had to do to get back on top was increase his verbal bluster.   All he has to do is saying “Let’s bomb the crap out of ISIS” and that will do it.  My fear about increased bombing, which so many are for- - is the ammound of colleratical damage will be astronomical.   If you thought Barock Obama was the Drone King before, it’ll be even worse now.  But from out point of view the liberal use of drones will save American lives.  There is one word I used about ISIS that won’t work now.  I said “We need to contain ISIS because we can’t destroy them”.   Hillary Clinton and her council on foreign relations speech said we need to “defeat and destroy ISIS”.   But how do we pull the plug on their powers.  Cosmically where do they get their power?  Is it “Al Qaeda” or “the base” star in the constellation of Scorpio?  Whatever happened to the Federation’s assertion that “We have the power to pull the plug on ISIS anytime we want”, huh?  On a humorous side note, there are Syrian Christians in Allentown, PA, who say that they support President Assad. 

I had a raucus dream last night.  There was this movie I was watching on March of 1965 where they played all these radio songs that were popular then but the only one I recognize (as a real song) was Cillauette by Harmon’s Hermits.   It seems there was a breakthrough in technology and there were all of these super highway things suspended in the air with no support except some kind of strange magnetic energy we haven’t yet discovered.  And people could move on these ramp things at blurring speed.  But then they discovered that business wise it didn’t pan out as profitable.  Don’t ask me why not.  So after a few months (a year at most) they gave it all up and we went back to the old system.  I interjected myself into this movie and became part of it.  I remember I was in some amusement park and I was just getting ready to ride their dinky roller coaster.  There was this bully guy was a couple years older than me and constantly threatening to pound me into the dust.  Every time I saw him I was afraid.  I would try and tell people how dangerous he was.  Even Augustine when he saw me and him together was egging me on and telling me to fight him.  But after a while it turned out that the only reason why he wanted to fight me is that I had told someone I could take him in a fight.  I was relieved he really wasn’t out to kill me.

This week Rhapsody in Black did November 1961.  There were only two hits by indisputably Black artists that I did not hear.  They played “Ya Ya” while I was still out listening to Joe’s radio.  They played an early James Brown song- - and what I think was a BB King song.  There were an impressive number of songs I didn’t recognize at all.  There were two “follow up” hits, one by Earnie Kado “A Certain Girl”, which is that Yardbirds song, and by the Marquets we had “The Morning After”.   Three of the songs I did recognize weren’t from November 1961.  “If You Got to Make a Fool of Somebody” was from sometime in 1963.   “Hit the Road, Jack” and “The Bristol Stomp” by the Dovels were from late summer of 1961.  Oh, and “Blue Moon” was from late spring of 1961.  Then there was Gypsy Woman, which I’m not counting because the first version of that song I heard was from mid 1970 by Tony Orlando or somebody.  The other songs I recognized were “Mr Postman”, “Look At My Heart” not by the Cherrels but by the Shantells, “Young Boy Blues” and “Why Do I Love You Like I Do”, that classic foot stomping song.  I turned it off before they got to their “Top Turkey Songs”.

We had enchiladas for dinner but the recipe was very different from last time.  They experiment.  We had Spanish rice with that and refried beans.  We had cake that was dry and doughy at the same time – something I didn’t think was possible.  I’m generally not in a good mood these days.  “The Week” says “Heart of Darkness” to describe ISIS.  I feel like there’s a dark cloud hanging over me- - perhaps because I’m not sure I can trust the laundry service any more, partly because Bill isn’t here and Glenda will soon be gone, and partially because of money concerns, which are less now but they haven’t gone away entirely.   I’m going to be an old man before the progressives are ever in control of politics.  Even the optimists among us have as a best scenario hanging on to the Presidency and getting the Senate so we’re back to where we were four years ago, which is nowhere because the Republicans still call the shots and are controlling the media.  The important stories to progressives still aren’t being aired like the TPP because the corporate structure exacts a price for their ownership of the media and the public must pay in the form of ignorance on issues they need to make a decision about.

A LIttle Wordy But Coldly Factual

On July 28, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheondecision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:

It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell."

He was then cut off by the program, though that statement by Carter should have been the start of the program, not its end. (And the program didn't end with an invitation for him to return to discuss this crucial matter in depth -- something for which he's qualified.)

So, was this former president's provocative allegation merely his opinion? Or was it actually lots more than that? It was lots more than that.

Only a single empirical study has actually been done in the social sciences regarding whether the historical record shows that the United States has been, during the survey's period, which in that case was between 1981 and 2002, a democracy (a nation whose leaders represent the public-at-large), or instead an aristocracy (or 'oligarchy') -- a nation in which only the desires of the richest citizens end up being reflected in governmental actions. This study was titled "Testing Theories of American Politics," and it was published by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page in the journalPerspectives on Politics, issued by the American Political Science Association in September 2014. I had summarized it earlier, on April 14, 2014, while the article was still awaiting its publication.

The headline of my summary-article was "U.S. Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy Says Scientific Study." I reported:

The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's 'news' media).

I then quoted the authors' own summary: "The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

The scientific study closed by saying: "In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule -- at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes." A few other tolerably clear sentences managed to make their ways into this well-researched, but, sadly, atrociously written, paper, such as: "The preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of 'affluent' citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do." In other words, they found: The rich rule the U.S.

Their study investigated specifically "1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002 in which a national survey of the general public asked a favor/oppose question about a proposed policy change," and then the policy-follow-ups, of whether or not the polled public preferences had been turned into polices, or, alternatively, whether the relevant corporate-lobbied positions had instead become public policy on the given matter, irrespective of what the public had wanted concerning it.

The study period, 1981-2002, covered the wake of the landmark 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo, which had started the aristocratic assault on American democracy, and which seminal (and bipartisan) pro-aristocratic court decision is described as follows by wikipedia:

[It] struck down on First Amendment grounds several provisions in the 1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. The most prominent portions of the case struck down limits on spending in campaigns, but upheld the provision limiting the size of individual contributions to campaigns. The Court also narrowed, and then upheld, the Act's disclosure provisions, and struck down (on separation of powers grounds) the make-up of the Federal Election Commission, which as written allowed Congress to directly appoint members of the Commission, an executive agency.

Basically, the Buckley decision, and subsequent (increasingly partisan Republican) Supreme Court decisions, have allowed aristocrats to buy and control politicians.

Already, the major 'news' media were owned and controlled by the aristocracy, and 'freedom of the press' was really just freedom of aristocrats to control the 'news' -- to frame public issues in the ways the owners want. The media managers who are appointed by those owners select, in turn, the editors who, in their turn, hire only reporters who produce the propaganda that's within the acceptable range for the owners, to be 'the news' as the public comes to know it.

But, now, in the post-Buckley-v.-Valeo world, from Reagan on (and the resulting study-period of 1981-2002), aristocrats became almost totally free to buy also the political candidates they wanted. The 'right' candidates, plus the 'right' 'news'-reporting about them, has thus bought the 'right' people to 'represent' the public, in the new American 'democracy,' which Jimmy Carter now aptly calls "subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors."

Carter -- who had entered office in 1977, at the very start of that entire era of transition into an aristocratically controlled United States (and he left office in 1981, just as the study-period was starting) -- expressed his opinion that, in the wake now of the two most extreme pro-aristocratic U.S. Supreme Court decisions ever (which are Citizens United in 2010, and McCutcheon in 2014), American democracy is really only past tense, not present tense at all -- no longer a reality.

He is saying, in effect, that, no matter how much the U.S. was a dictatorship by therich during 1981-2002 (the Gilens-Page study era), it's far worse now.

Apparently, Carter is correct: The New York Times front page on Sunday 2 August 2015 bannered, "Small Pool of Rich Donors Dominates Election Giving," and reported that:

A New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission reports and Internal Revenue Service records shows that the fund-raising arms race has made most of the presidential hopefuls deeply dependent on a small pool of the richest Americans. The concentration of donors is greatest on the Republican side, according to the Times analysis, where consultants and lawyers have pushed more aggressively to exploit the looser fund-raising rules that have fueled the rise of super PACs. Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs."

The Times study shows that the Republican Party is overwhelmingly advantaged by the recent unleashing of big-corporate money power. All of the evidence suggests that though different aristocrats compete against each other for the biggest chunks of whatever the given nation has to offer, they all compete on the same side against the public, in order to lower the wages of their workers, and to lower the standards for consumers' safety and welfare so as to increase their own profits (transfer their costs and investment-losses onto others); and, so, now, the U.S. is soaring again toward Gilded Age economic inequality, perhaps to surpass the earlier era of unrestrained robber barons. And, the Times study shows: even in the Democratic Party, the mega-donations are going to only the most conservative (pro-corporate, anti-public) Democrats. Grass-roots politics could be vestigial, or even dead, in the new America.

The question has become whether the unrestrained power of the aristocracy is locked in this time even more permanently than it was in that earlier era. Or will there be yet another FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) to restore a democracy that once was? Or is a president like that any longer even possible in America?

As for today's political incumbents: they now have their careers for as long as they want and are willing to do the biddings of their masters. And, then, they retire to become, themselves, new members of the aristocracy, such as the Clintons have done, and such as the Obamas will do. (Of course, the Bushes have been aristocrats since early in the last century.)

Furthermore, the new age of aristocratic control is not merely national but international in scope; so, the global aristocracy have probably found the formula that will keep them in control until they destroy the entire world. What's especially interesting is that, with all of the many tax-exempt, "non-profit" "charities," which aristocrats have established, none of them is warring to defeat the aristocracy itself -- to defeat the aristocrats' system of exploitation of the public. It's the one thing they won't create a 'charity' for; none of them will go to war against the expoitative interests of themselves and of their own exploitative peers. They're all in this together, even though they do compete amongst themselves for dominance, as to which ones of them will lead against the public. And the public seem to accept this modern form of debt-bondage, perhaps because of the 'news' they see, and because of the news they don't see (such as this).

Will France Make the Same Mistakes We Did After 9 - 11?

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ― Benjamin Franklin

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”—Hermann Goering, German military commander and Hitler’s designated successor

For those who remember when the first towers fell on 9/11, there is an unnerving feeling of déjà vu about the Paris attacks.   Once again, there is that same sense of shock. The same shocking images of carnage and grief dominating the news. The same disbelief that anyone could be so hateful, so monstrous, so evil as to do this to another human being. The same outpourings of support and unity from around the world. The same shared fear that this could easily have happened to us or our loved ones.

Now the drums of war are sounding. French fighter jets have carried out a series of “symbolic” air strikeson Syrian targets. France’s borders have been closed, Paris has been locked down and military personnel are patrolling its streets.

What remains to be seen is whether France, standing where the United States did 14 years ago, will follow in America’s footsteps as she grapples with the best way to shore up her defenses, where to draw the delicate line in balancing security with liberty, and what it means to secure justice for those whose lives were taken. 

 I listened to Shawn Hannity rant and rave about the United States accepting Syrian refugees for the millionth time.  I guess that issue is a real winner for the Republican party these days.  It’s some other group they can hate and be afraid of.  But like I say it’s an endless treadmill of the same warped half truths and generalities.  Obama's point is well taken that we shouldn't be dominated by fear.  The Bible says "Perfect love casts out all fear" but there are fewer and fewer reasons for connecting the Republican party with anything Christian.  It's Christian to pay decent wages.  We learn this from a parable of Christ.  One would get the idea that generosity is not all out of order.  Compassion is a Christian trait.  The old testament explicitly says to welcome the stranger among you.  But instead all we get from Shawn Hannity are all these statistics saying how many people of Arab extraction are among the refugees we've let in.  Germany has accepted a hundred thousand.  They're not worried.  Neighboring Mideast countries have accepted a million refugees.  It's pointed out that it's a lot easier to get a tourist visa than it is to get refugee status.  But the Republicans think the terrorists are all stupid.

I had Norman Goldman on and he claims a lot of Republican Governors are forbidding the enterence of any refugees from Syria.  But constitutionally and by a 1980 congressional law, the President of the United States has the discretion to let in as many as fifty thousand refugees from countries that qualify- - and Syria meets these qualifications.  It’s just a case of more Republicans sticking their nose in other people’s business where it doesn’t belong.  I’m not worried about terrorists “slipping in” to the country.  We have opened the door to refugee Cubans and Vietnamese and others and there’s never been a problem.  There is something called the displaced persons act of 1948 letting in massive ammounts of people after World War II.  We have let in refugees from a whole host of communist nations.  It goes without saying that Republican governors don't have the power or authority to forbid refugees to enter their states.  There is that whole block of red states on a map and there are more states with governors barring refugees than accepting them, and in all but one case these are Republican governors, who I'd very much love to see voted out of office next time.

When Bill Clinton said at the 2012 convention "You may not feel the effects of this economic recovery, but you will" he was not speaking the truth.  When he was President there was a pronounced rise in median household income like we hadn't seen in a long time.  During the Bush administration household income at first sagged a little but then rebounded as it approached 2007 and 2008.  But since then household income has fallen apart and hasn't recovered.  If you look at incomes by how much each demographic scholastic achievement strata earns- - you clearly see a downward trend across all education categories.  Norman Goldman tells us "There is no excuse not to look anything up on the internet that you car to learn about".  You can find out whether these right wingers are telling the Truth.  All you have to do is Look It Up.  There was an explosion in the relative incomes of the top one percent and higher in 1986 after the second major "tax reform" bill, the one the right wingers today are most proud of.  If you get paid in stock options and you are a C E O the funny thing is you don't have to exercise that option now.  Normally you PAY for stock call options because they can be like instant money if the price of a stock jumps and you "Call" the stock away at the original low price.  The trick is to buy your own stocks in your corporation.  It's a capital influx so this drives the price of the stock up.  But the corporation is left holding the bag because the corporation went into debt to purchase that stock.  So you can jack your own stock price up- - at will - - and never fear prosecution for acting on "inside information".  Those laws only apply to people like Martha Stewart and not Chief Executive Officers.  It's not just acting on inside information but literally "creating" your own news!

The quality of my writing has taken a sharp drop since I last did entries in this blog.  I wanted to clarify a topic that was in the lead blog post for months.  I said that two ideas can appear to be from independent sources and yet really from the same source.  What did I mean?  I was making an astrological reference.  Ideas are born of planetary configurations and Ideas like people have "natal charts" alias horoscopes too.  So when an astrological configuration happens for the birth of an idea- - - it's the same source of "configuration" spawning the idea even if its localized source comes from different areas.