Original text and editing by:
A G Kaiser
email to
agkaiser1@gmail,com
Morality, ethics and the emotional engagement of populations are in a constant state of change. Only the greed, corruption and treachery of the powerful and rich elite remains the same.
"A good slave works for food alone."
Q of the week:
Q: Do I want to run the world?
A: I don't want to run the world. I want to recreate it in such a way that the kind of selfish and greedy idiot who is stupid enough to want to run it, couldn't screw it up. [Any worse that is!]
Volume III Issue 7:
Here we are almost 2 1/2 years after. The middle class sheep have been sheared and the DOW has climbed back past 9000. I wonder if our shepards will wait until it reaches 12000 before they call for another harvest of their live stock? The first tax cut sold on the notion that surpluses left by Clinton would continue to grow along with increased economic security. Instead of the promised surpluses, they've borrowed 160 billion from the social security trust fund. The baby boomers retirement and much more has been mortgaged to pay corporate welfare (our tax money and whatever else Bush can find) to the economic elite. Most of US face rising debt and further slide towards poverty. What other illusions, lies and distractions have been propagated for the further enrichment of the masters (the eternal purpose of all that they do) in this interval? Much conservative propaganda will sound familiar to you. Some of it has been around since before the corrupt Grant administration. They do like the tried and true! I intend to word it in a novel way but the content will remain essentially true to their intent. My intent will be apparent.
(1)The careful wording of the untruth in the State of the Union address indicates a deliberate attempt to mislead. The entire justification for the war has been built of dissemblings. The fragmentation of the truth in order to deceive is a lie. But whether or not Bush himself is the malicious liar or he was taken in like the rest of us is irrelevant. Criminal, incompetent or both by turns, we can't afford to have one like him in the White House.
Religion:
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Illusions, Lies and Distractions:
I quote myself from Volume I Issue 3, 2/10/2001.
Q: How soon will the Wall Street Sheep be sheared?
A: Harvests took place in 1929, 1987 and during other mishaps of abstract economy. When can the middle class expect to be despoiled for the first time in the new millennium?
Volume I Issue 3:
Support for the Bush Tax Cut is growing as reports of industry lay offs and NASDAQ decline permeate the news. But, as noted, the money from tax cuts (or loans from the FED) will not get to the people who need to spend it in order to turn the economy up. Feigned strength of will, or willfulness, or even token tax concessions cannot change reality.
Wake up George, the conservative lines are played out. You've already got all the money. You must give some back to the people from whom you took it.
You must George! If you want to continue to trick the fish into biting, you'll need to feed them until they are strong enough to take your hook. This time it won`t work to just throw around a little chum to attract them.
And you know, it doesn't really matter whose statistics are "honest". What`s eternally true is: the wealth of the rich is produced by the rest of us. A tax cut for capitalists might stimulate supply? Theoretically the jobs they create could get money to workers. The jobs won't be created unless capitalists foresee a demand for the goods produced. Tax cuts to the middle class aren't enough. The lower class doesn't make enough money to pay enough taxes for a tax cut to be meaningful. (It doesn`t matter what the fraction of the percentage is.) Higher wages for low and middle classes and stable prices are the only real solution.
Bush's plan simply won't work.
The current problem is that growth is slowing due to low demand. The money must go first to "consumers" (and those who won't need to use it to service debt) not "producers". Bush's plan will exacerbate the problem. The middle class should come to their own conclusions about what more credit card and home equity debt will do to their futures. Bush's words will not feed, clothe or house anyone. They won`t pay for anyone`s retirement.
The terrorist threat to democracy must be met by dismantling democracy, in the name of security and freedom. In order to preserve our liberty we must allow it to be destroyed. We must surrender our freedom if we are to be free. This can be understood in the context: liberty is the freedom of our masters to live on the fruits of our labor while doing no real work themselves. Our liberty is the freedom to exist in poverty in the midst of plenty that we've created with our sweat.
If the Saudi people react to the theft of the oil money by the Saudi Royal puppets we must be prepared to invade Arabia in order to secure the oil for the satisfaction of American and British corporate greed. If we allow any population to free themselves of poverty who knows where it will lead. In order to rid the world of slavery we must make the world our slaves. Any who react negatively to the "new world order" must be labeled outlaws and terrorists.
An economy that has slowed because the rich have all the money and because the rest of US can borrow no more in order to consume, must be healed by giving the rich more money.
Forest fires that contribute a very small percentage of the greenhouse gases must be stopped by clear cutting the forests. Thus at one stroke the forests and the environment will be dealt with forever.
Extrapolating from many points of conservative ratiocination I feel assured, if it ever comes to saving the fishing industry, it will be accomplished by fishing out the oceans. Likewise, if it's discovered the Planet is shrinking and so threatening the real estate market, we will be encouraged to place a planetary class nuke at Terra's center to create a broad belt of meteors in the Earth's orbit for the brokers to exploit.
Freedom of thought consists of remembering everything you've ever been taught about the futility of socialism, whenever the economic tyranny of the rich is mentioned. Always remember, actually questioning anything without using the thought filters with which you've been provided, could endanger your freedom to think. That is especially true if your thought carries you beyond the bounds of your instruction. [Or is that construction?] You know what's real because your leaders have told you everything you need to know to perform your function.
Who do you know who thinks like this? Who has pitilessly trained US to think this way since the rise of the manufacturers and capitalists... in order to preserve the ill-gotten wealth of their class?
Reality:
The Bush budget proposal, like his tax cut and every influence he has asserted during his term to date, threatens the jobs and security of millions of Americans in order to further enrich his elite masters. The words, the ideas employed by this and all demagogues are designed to cover their true intentions: to enthrall constituencies of loyal, unthinking true believers. For instance, the privatization scam, popularized by Margaret Thatcher and imitated by Ronald Reagan, is supposed, in theory, to lower the cost of government by outsourcing public responsibilities to more efficient private contractors. The government must still expend money for the contracting process and oversight, so we start with additional expense. But more importantly, the contractor must operate at a profit. Putting this other and much larger mouth at the trough, can only cost more money, all other things being the same. If they actually do save money it can only be by cutting employee benefits or pay. If the health care, rent or food of the employees must be subsidized by welfare do we really see any savings from privatization? If they do the job with less employees, we must pay for retraining and/or unemployment insurance. With corporations treacherously moving jobs, money and themselves out of the country, displaced employees can end up homeless after the "reformed" welfare runs out. Any way you look at it, doing our public works with private companies costs the taxpayers more. That extra is the tax money the contractor sticks in his pocket.
While there has been much study done to demonstrate government waste, the additional costs associated with privatization are not well published. We're supposed to take it on faith that the Bush government, like that of his father and Ronald Reagan before, knows what's best for US... They would never steal our money to give it to their lazy, useless, rich masters. And that's exactly what rank and file conservatives believe. The pilferers of our public funds hide their larceny behind words and count on the faith of their followers.
But up jumps the devil to test our faith. Edward Kennedy introduced an amendment that would have the administration demonstrate the cost savings in proposed privatization scams. If public employees can do the work for less, they can keep their jobs. This, the Senator pointed out, would be a great relief to many of the National Guard in Iraq (and their families at home). There are a significant number of public employees who have been deployed. The jobs they left to go to war and lay down their lives for America are being threatened by Bush's fraudulent and treasonous economic schemes. How's that for whipping the dog that not only provides your sustenance but guards your house while you consume it? Apparently even some of Bush's personal guard are starting to choke at the enormity of his economic crimes. The Republican Senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, rose in support of the Kennedy amendment. He said its about time we find out what really costs less.
If the American people ever wake up to the foul deeds hidden by the fair words of our leaders, there will be no expenditure considered too great to appease them. The empowerment of the labor unions in the 1930s attests to the fear of the masters when the slaves threaten revolt. And don't forget, a hundred years of peaceful negotiations brought blacks some little sympathy and lot of lynchings, shootings, bombings, burnings, unjust prosecutions and police dogs. Two summers of burning the cities got the Civil Rights Law of 1964 and affirmative action. Now that you know how it works, how are you going to act? Are you rich or are you poor? Or are you in the middle like the lukewarm that Jesus did eschew?
By the way, it was speeches like that to which I just referred, and driving the bankers from the temple, for which Christ was killed. The Pharisees and Sadducees [Pat Robertson] were people who put on a show and pretense of goodness in order to enslave the minds of the public, to make sure the people, the source of their own wealth, remained securely enthralled. It was a security issue for the Romans too; they were merely quelling a local uprising before it spread. Before Christianity became a force, the Romans had time to infiltrate and subvert it. See the story of Saul the Centurion. [Centurion: leader of a hundred men, a division of a legion of ten thousand men; analogous to a Captain in our army.]
Politics:
Clinton was impeached for lying about consensual sex with a young adult. His lies caused no suffering, pain, misery or death. Bush lied about the effect of a tax cut in order to give more money to the already bloated rich. His lies contribute to the further slide toward poverty of many Americans and of people around the world. In our country two people must work full time for average wages to have 80% of the buying power of one person 33 years ago. The service economy is a fraudulent crime. It is economic treason to the American people. Where are the moralizers who insisted that the principles violated by Clinton demanded impeachment? What does their silence in our current situation say of their values?
Self righteous conservative moralists are also silent about the lies(1) Bush told in order to whip up emotion in support of his war of acquisition in Iraq. American corporations are rebuilding the infrastructure that we destroyed with our tax money. Who do you think will hold the mortgage when the bill is presented to the war impoverished Iraqi people? Who will get the greatest part of the oil money? Not the Iraqis. Not the American people who footed the bill. Most of the money will go to pay interest on the debt. If our government ever actually holds the paper, they'll sell it to their corporate buddies at a discount real quick. Another example of the marvelous workings of privatization.
These frauds and deceptions have already cost the lives of hundreds of American soldiers. Most enlisted personnel are refugees from the evil service economy empire. They join the military because it's the best, often the only job they can find. The economic scams of American corporations, supported by Bush, are looting America and impoverishing most of US. Bush's lies, unlike Clinton's, are causing suffering and death here and around the world every day. What sort of twisted values and principles allow "right thinking" Americans to ignore them? Come on Christians! Let's really do something to rid the world of evil. Impeach George W. Bush, then try him and the rest of the peers for treason.
It's not about ideals, values or principles. It's not about goodness. It's about truth. It's not found within you. It's all around you all of the time. Truth is everything that is and almost nothing that's said about it. Philosophers and Theologians seldom know the truth or care to. When they do they're usually ridiculed or degradingly labeled. They will be placed in the margins in any case. The truth has no great market value; it's a threat to a world recreated by the con artists who own it. The Truth can't be heard. You must open your eyes and see the Truth for yourself.
Though we can't compel truthful vision, we can sometimes identify the distractions and expose truth that's occluded by deceptions. The true believers will resist our efforts, which will seem iconoclastic to them. They’re comforted by the security blankets rapped about their heads. Though it may be hopeless to attempt to relieve them of there highly valued afflictions, it's amusing to try. And it may be the only hope we have for survival as a species.
Medicine:
A TV morning show host interviewed a Florida cab driver. "Jimmy" was wounded by bullets eight times in the chest, arms and legs. Some of the shots passed through one part of the body and caused more wounds in another.
Jimmy, a black man, managed to escape from his cab and reach a house where the residents called 911. He was examined at the hospital and minimally treated. The doctor told him that several of the bullets had passed through and two or three were still inside. Jimmy was told he could stay or go. Jimmy had no insurance and little money. The TV interviewer said, "that sounds like a classic case for a second opinion."
It sounds to me like a classic case of triage by the ability to pay. The choice he was given was no choice at all. After a collision last year, I was suffering from a concussion severe enough to cause dizziness and disorientation such that I couldn't fill out the hospital forms. I pleaded with the doctors and administrators to call my daughter, and Air Force Officer, who lived near by, so that she could assist me. They ignored my pleas and offered me instead the "choice" to leave. They wouldn't comment on my condition. They persisted in their efforts to persuade me to choose to leave.
When I realized there would be no further treatment (I had been x-rayed and no broken bones were discovered) though I complained of visceral pains, I succumbed to their urging and left. My daughter was outraged when I reached her by phone and she heard my abnormal speech. She wanted me to return to the hospital to war with the staff. I asked, "what's the use?"
I'm sure Jimmy felt more frustration and anger than I did. His injuries were much more serious, yet he had to return to work the next day, if he wanted to continue to eat. My daughter looked after me until I could walk and see straight again. But the television interviewer had made a blunder in the talk with Jimmy.
After the commercial break, the interviewer covered his naive and possibly liability creating comment about second opinions by saying, "I'm sure you got the best medical treatment possible". Jimmy sadly. somewhat bewilderedly and very slowly shook his head.
Greg Kaiser