SAME OLD STORY, SAME OLD SONG

True Progressives – CLICK IMAGE for the other side of the story.

True Story:

I shared this story before, but people couldn’t hear it. It seems preposterous. Things as they are, let’s try again.

In 1991, a senior assistant from President Bush Sr.’s office met National Association of Counties (NACo) President Michael Stewart (R – Salt Lake Co.) at a cocktail party at the Annual Conference in Salt Lake City. I overheard them discussing the “best” form of government, ever. They agreed that it was Medieval England around the time of King John. Its benefits?

• The king is the sole authority, secures obedience, neutralizes all possible challengers; gains the monopoly of force; and, maintains law and order.
• Patriotism is focused on the nation, not on the localities that comprise it, transferring identity from local to national level, at the disposal of the king.
• The state dominates or controls the religious life of society with a single authoritarian religion to manage the mob for advantage.
• The state controls economic life to facilitate circulation and exchange of goods, and grasps as much as possible of the national wealth for the king and his allies.

In the medieval model stability is created through divine hierarchy. The king rules all, the church facilitates obedience of the mass, the military protects the property of king and “state”, and the peasants work to feed everybody. It’s a simple model, which allowed it to last for several hundred incredibly stultifying and repressive years in which most of humanity subsisted on the level of cattle, or swine, and wars were fought at personal whim of a vainglorious, and occasionally religiously demented elite. Does this ring bells?

The important men at the 1991 cocktail party didn’t intend to install a king or a single church in America (at least right now), but in variation, updated and recycled form, favored state identification and alliance with a majority religion and a CEO working with a board of directors (perhaps preserving a hint of representative government – old habits, even bad ones such as participative management, die hard). Call king and court president and cabinet, or rose and garden, they envisioned a tyrant working with an oligarchy of the privileged elite that they believe is, of course, best suited to govern, operating above government and for the privileged elite. They think they’re nobility.

They were deadly serious and not amused when I asked if they had heard of Robin Hood or the Magna Carta. They looked at me as if I’d shit their shoes, then ignored me.

“Americans deserve the government they elect,” my father used to say, but we didn’t elect G.W. Bush, or the Koch brothers. Kings, as I recall, are divinely chosen – in our case, by fat cats and a corrupted Supreme Court. Kings and aristocracy represent the elite status quo, which presently resides in Wall Street. Wall Street wants to govern everything by itself, without any interference from the rest of us. Father knows best. Or, would that be “brothers?”

Koch Brothers Buy Their Way Into, Then Breezily Skew, Civic Discourse

Anti-American Terrorists

Following a strategy of ignoring the facts and killing the messenger, the billionaire Koch Brothers have responded to the Center for Public Integrity’s report on Koch lobbying activities by mounting a smear campaign against the Center – complete with the real “Koch facts” – while refusing requests to speak with them. In the last elections, though, the Kochs did tell 50,000 employees who to vote for and what disasters would befall them if they didn’t. Citizens United rendered such corporate politicking marginally legal, though still, of course, supremely sleazy. -Abby Zimet More… 4-20-11 TruthDig.com

KINGS KOCH [The ultra rightwing Koch Brothers are – PUBLIC ENEMIES 1 and 2]

Poor Beleaguered Billionaires

The rich have created and retain dominance in an amoral, or consciously immoral world of corruption, thievery, and violence, instead of trying to eliminate or improve conditions that would remedy or heal it. They would leave us with a permanently dysfunctional, and therefore, easier to manage wingnut government. The dog-eat-dog social consequences are devastating to consider. The cynicism is appalling.

The rich don’t expect any retribution or punishment, for it is the culture. They are so highly placed that they expect to tiptoe through the tulips while the rest of us fry in the ozone hole. See also:  ORGANIZED IRRESPONSIBILITY .

Corporate Coup d’état Coming Soon to a City Near You. Rania Khalek Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein demonstrates how wealthy elites often use crisis and chaos to impose unpopular policies that restructure economies and political systems to advance their interests. She calls these orchestrated raids, “disaster capitalism.” Disaster capitalism is on display around the country, as legislators use the debt crisis afflicting their states as an opportunity to hollow out the public sector.

This so-called financial emergency is really a democracy emergency. Local governments are NOT corporations. The true purpose of emergency financial management is to convert a democratically elected government into a hierarchal business entity through economic “shock therapy”, which would be impossible if workers, elected representatives, and residents had any say. If we allow what is taking place to continue, disaster capitalism will find its way to a city, town, or school district near you. READ MORE: Rania Khalek blog at http://raniakhalek.com.

All U.S. Prime

GOP Wave Reshapes Nation’s Agenda State by State. Ann Sanner and Calvin Woodward Monday, April 18, 2011 by Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio – State by state, Republicans are moving fast on a conservative agenda they had no hope of achieving before the big election gains of November. The dividends go beyond spending cuts. Republicans are restricting abortion, expanding gun rights, imposing polling-station photo ID laws and attacking public sector unions.

Democrats find themselves cowed or outmaneuvered, hoping that voters will see these actions as an overreach by the Republicans, an accidental revolution to be reversed.

It’s not all coming up tulips for rightwing extremists. New Mexico and Utah are among Republican-led states where governors are bypassing the GOP playbook; and the tea party movement is in tatters in Colorado and not much better off in Alaska. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/18-2

Final words: Keep on keepin’ on. We, the people, need each other. We can win this fight against the self-styled elite. We outnumber them. Vote Progressive as if your life depends upon it – it probably does, and cliché or not, every election is the most important election since our Constitution was ratified. Best regards and good luck to us all, j

ILLUMINATI APPLY IN REAR

Oops!

Did you ever notice that a lot of the religious conspiracy stuff clouds the water so that you can’t see the political conspiracy stuff as well?

Here’s my take on Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, the Illuminati, so forth: AW, C’MON!
Lincoln’s, et al Holy Blood, Holy Grail (predicating a pregnant Mary Magdalene) is based upon Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard’s Priory of Sion legend, by which he claimed from the 1960s onwards that he was a Merovingian dynast and the “Grand Monarch” prophesied by Nostradamus. Plantard played along with this story for a while, but in 1986 parted ways, dismissing Holy Blood, Holy Grail and his own documents as false and irrelevant. In October 1993, a judge had Pierre Plantard’s house searched. The search turned up a hoard of false documents, including some proclaiming Plantard the true king of France. Plantard admitted under oath he had fabricated everything. He was threatened with legal action and therefore disappeared to his house in southern France. He was 74 years old. Nothing more was heard of him until he died in Paris in February 2000.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors maintain that only through “speculative synthesis can one discern the underlying continuity, the unified and coherent fabric, which lies at the core of any historical problem.” To do so, one must realize that “it is not sufficient to confine oneself exclusively to facts.”
“Mike Hockney” [the pseudonym of a ghostwriter engaged purportedly by the Illuminati to reveal in coded fictional form, various esoteric mysteries with which they are concerned – giggle, snort, LOL] says he’s got the real skinny. “Mike Hockney” writes confusingly enough in The Armageddon Conspiracy: “There are intersection points between the three mysteries , certain key facts that all three have in common [it really doesn’t matter for our purposes which three mysteries]. Even if a seeker has become entrapped in one of the fake mysteries (both of which are as highly compelling as the real mystery), he will still have opportunities to switch to the real mystery if he makes the right choice at an intersection point. He will make the right choice only if he has the strength to abandon all of the work he has performed on either of the fake mysteries. This, in fact, is part of the test. Virtually no one makes the right choice because abandoning years of hard work is simply too difficult for most to contemplate, especially when they believe they have been making good progress. There is another trap: it is possible to move from one fake mystery to the other fake mystery, bypassing the true mystery. Several seekers have encountered this misfortune.” – oh, la. Mysteries for days.
My favorite founding father Thomas Paine [who was a deist, believing god gave everything a jumpstart but was thereafter hands off] writes in the Age of Reason:
“Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.”
“When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, and not only above, but repugnant to human comprehension, they were under the necessity of inventing or adopting a word that should serve as a bar to all questions, inquiries or speculation. The word mystery answered this purpose, and thus it has happened that religion, which is in itself without mystery, has been corrupted into a fog of mysteries.”
“As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.”
The Illuminati (“enlightened”) is a name given to several groups, both historical and modern, real and fictitious. Historically, it refers specifically to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded in 1776 that only lasted until 1784. In modern times it is used to refer to a purported conspiratorial organization which acts as a shadowy “power behind the throne”, allegedly controlling world affairs through present day governments and corporations, usually as a modern incarnation or continuation of the Bavarian Illuminati. In this context, the Illuminati are believed to be the masterminds behind events that will lead to the establishment of a New World Order.
However, as David DeGraw, Alternet, writes: “It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government and tax system are now blatantly rigged against us. Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for 99% of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep. . . and make no mistake, they have also launched a war to eliminate the US middle class.”
At the center of this group is the Business Roundtable, an organization representing Fortune 500 CEOs that is also interlocked with several lead elite organizations. Most Americans have never heard of the Business Roundtable. However, it is the most influential and powerful Economic Elite organization. READ MORE: http://www.alternet.org/economy/145996/the_business_roundtable%3A_the_most_powerful_corporate_business_club_most_americans_have_never_heard_of
To hell with bunk mysteries. It isn’t some jury-rigged Jesus-freak conspiracy group that has declared war on the rest of us, it is the corporatists. It is time to fight back against them, clear-minded and with full vigor from every side. Let Freedom Ring!

RELATED LINKS:

HOLY GRAIL, BABOON HEART

WOW, CLOWNS!

 

 

Tea Party Target

 

 

THE THIRD STAGE: BEING THERE

THE THIRD STAGE: BEING THERE: Mussolini’s original definition of fascism is corporate merger with the state. In light of congressional house uglies – this is a digest of two strong articles on how to make positive citizen response in the current potentially dangerous situation. The author Sara Robinson is a respected researcher on the subject. May be some tips you can use. All the best, j

A deliberate, committed institutional partnership has formed between America’s conservative elites and its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde.

The “Teabag Movement” was created out of whole cloth by Koch Brothers financed astroturf groups like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips’ yAmericans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. The nonsense-issue Birther fracas is openly ratified by congressional Republicans. Armey professionally-produced a field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauds and promotes the disruptions.

This is the sign we were waiting for — the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America’s conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country’s legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America’s streets, sanctioning physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won’t do their political or economic bidding.

This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Mussolini fascism begins. It’s also our very last chance to stop it.

The Road Ahead

We’ve arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we’re slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

How do we pull back?

FASCIST AMERICA: ARE WE THERE YET? by Sara Robinson http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/09-5

7 Ways We Can Fight Back Against the Rising Fascist Threat. Sara Robinson, Campaign for America’s Future http://www.alternet.org/story/141929/

The most insidious part of fascism is that when it’s obvious to everyone that these people are dangerously out of control, it’s too late to do anything about it. We can still change our minds, and spend our future elsewhere, but we are now actively choosing. Things are happening now that set a course we may be unable to alter.

How do we turn back? A few basic principles:

First: Teabaggers must not win. When a bully learns that intimidation and threats work, he does more. The longer he goes without penalty, the worse he gets. Do nothing, and he takes over. With a colossal conservative investment in organizing and directing teabaggers, we’d be stupid to believe that this will go away. Having a taste of power and publicity, these newly empowered mobs will try to see what else they can muck up.

Our choice is stark: knock them back before the cost is higher.

Second: Think nationally, fight locally. Conservatives run this fight as a national campaign, but the terror that fuels fascism is always intensely, intimately local. Fascist goon squads recruit from the neighborhood, built on people we know. That’s where they have to be stopped. This is why the best tactics involve community-level action. Anybody who sits this out because they assume D.C. will handle it shouldn’t be surprised when they get “special treatment” from longtime neighbors, or find their car vandalized.

Winning means getting out and defending community standards and boundaries while they’re still there to be defended.

Third: Use nonviolent resistance — leave heavy lifting and rough enforcement to police. The only way to stop a bully is to stand up to them, but that doesn’t involve eye-for-an-eye. The right wing is looking hard to make a case that they’re innocent victims of the “left”. The Nazis used victim-blaming to tremendous effect to build their party. We must not give our proto-brownshirts any basis to make the same kind of argument.

It’s about the moral high ground. Our choices must be consistent with our values: civil discourse, free speech and the rule of law. Bullying is illegal and intolerable.

Fourth: Make sure media gets the story right. Teabaggers run out of power if the media turns off their cameras, but this nefariously incited drama is a real ratings-booster. Left alone, the media (local news in particular) turn hate and fear mongers into cultural heroes. The best cure is good speech: documented, spread widely; a coordinated rapid-response letterwriting to local press; keeping reporters well-fed with news of concerned nonpartisan citizens working to keep control of democratic discourse in the face of organized thugs trying to suppress it. The media are watching, make sure they see it all.

Fifth: Support legislators who don’t show fear. The Democratic leadership knows that these noisy, scary people don’t represent the 73 percent of Americans who support health care reform. The GOP runs the risk of being marginalized as the Party of No and the Moonbat Crazy. If you’ve never attended a public meeting, start. Your congressperson’s Web site lists his or her schedule, or a number to call to inquire.

That’s a first step. Do more. Write. Call. Visit your local congressional office and tell staff how you feel about health care reform, teabaggers, your legislator’s courage. If they’re stressed, encourage them. A constituent in the office counts. One visit or call is good. More is better. Contact at least once a week supports their public service.

Sixth: Shut down the hate talkers. Teabaggers come straight out of right-wing talk-radio audiences, mainlining raw emotion and toxic misinformation: “death panels!” “kill your granny!” “Join the “resistance!” Cut off this endless torrent of lies and fear-mongering to power down the whole movement. Basic recipe:

• Record their shows.
• Note intimidation, threat, or incitement to violence against a named target.
• Note every advertiser.
• Write a polite letter to the CEOs of sponsors, toss in choice quotes and ask if they want their product identified with them. This works extremely well — and quickly — at local and national levels. Lost dollars talk.

Finally: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Conservatives invest a lot of money and effort to build a mass movement aimed at destroying democratic government — and they’re not going to let up as long as Democrats are in control. This is our new reality — and it comes straight out of Chapter 6 of Hitler’sMein Kampf. They intend to keep the outrage junkies high with never-ending, made-up reasons to act out. Which means that even if we win this round, we must push back against the bullies, over and over, for the next three to seven years.

[Note: The Koch Brothers’ father Fred financed Hitler’s Nazis!].

There are only two outcomes: get very good at spotting and stopping attempts at a brownshirt takeover the minute they crop up; or they get very good at public intimidation and keep ratcheting it up toward violence and goon rule.

That’s how it’s going to be for the rest of this administration. The sooner we resign ourselves to the zero-sum nature of this fight, the sooner we can get on with getting good at it.

Sara Robinson is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works in Seattle. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006, and is a founding member of Group News Blog.

Read the full story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141929/

The United Corporations of America.

LAST WORDS FOR NOW:

Terry Pratchett – The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, 1988 – We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don’t stand up to experimentation, Buddha’s own words must be rejected.

WE THOUGHT BP WAS BAD

Fish on Sale

Radioactivity in Sea up 7.5 Million Times: Marine life contamination well beyond Japan feared. Kanako Takahara April 5, 2011 by The Japan Times

Radioactive iodine-131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant’s No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit, Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Tuesday.

The sample that yielded the high reading was taken Saturday, before Tepco announced Monday it would start releasing radioactive water into the sea, and experts fear the contamination may spread well beyond Japan’s shores to affect seafood overseas.

The unstoppable radioactive discharge into the Pacific has prompted experts to sound the alarm, as cesium, which has a much longer half-life than iodine, is expected to concentrate in the upper food chain. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/05

Paul Ryan - The Monarchists Are Loose

Cutting Medicaid Means Cutting Care for the Poor, Sick and Elderly. Ezra Klein April 5, 2011 by The Washington Post

The part of Paul Ryan’s budget that’s going to get the most attention is his proposal to privatize and voucherize Medicare. But the part that worries me the most is his effort to slash Medicaid, with no real theory as to how to make up the cuts.

Ryan’s op-ed introducing his budget lists Medicaid under “welfare reform,” reflecting the widespread belief that Medicaid is a program for the poor. That belief is wrong, or at least incomplete. A full two-thirds of Medicaid’s spending goes to seniors and people with disabilities — even though seniors and the disabled are only a quarter of Medicaid’s members. Sharply cutting Medicaid means sharply cutting their benefits, as that’s where the bulk of Medicaid’s money goes. This is not just about the free health care given to some hypothetical class of undeserving and unemployed Medicaid queens. READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/05-2

Medicaid Costs

LAST WORDS FOR NOW

Ideology-driven Republicans and Tea Party morons ARE screwing with us, regardless of any cooperation they offer in deciding how to slash our middle class to bits. Our Oregon Repugs are just a tad more civil about it, and a bit less impatient, but Bipartisanship is an easy slogan for avoidance of genuine policy initiative. If we had the public policy we would tax the rich and not make the social cuts. Bipartisanship in the corruption of civil and human rights is not a virtue. We must browbeat our elected representatives until they understand this simple truth.

Waterboarding 2A

GLENN BECK’S CROCODILE TEARS

Lest We Forget:

VIDEO: GLENN BECK’S SECRET FOR CRYING ON CUE: Vicks VapoRub Under the Eyes by Adele Stan, AlterNet

A leaked video of a Glenn Beck photo shoot shows the FOX News host having a substance applied under his eyes, which then begin to stream for the camera. It’s one of those great mysteries: How does Glenn Beck, propagandist and D-list actor, get himself to cry on cue? A rogue video making the rounds of the Internet offers an answer: an eye-watering substance applied under the eyes, which Ron Brynaert at The Raw Story suggests to be Vicks VapoRub.

VAPORUB UNDER THE EYES

OIL, GAS, COAL, and KOCH

[Click images for MORE info]

OIL, GAS, COAL, and KOCH:

The only way we are going to have any chance of getting out of our own extinction is to finally bite the bullet and STOP these big oil boys.

It’s time to end taxpayer handouts to Big Oil; it’s time to end dangerous new drilling handouts to Big Oil, and it’s time to invest in real solutions that end our oil addiction, including a 60 mpg standard for new vehicles and transportation choices such as public transportation and safe biking and walking; and massive investment in clean energy.

We are going to be at the bottom of our own LaBrea Tar Pit as the mastodons and saber-tooth fossils of our time if we do not act swiftly.

Hanging Out on Main Street

Dennis Kucinich: Creating Economic Democracy March 25, 2011 by Grit TV

“We have to change the balance here and the way you change the balance is a conceptual shift in what you see as the purpose of a nation. The purpose of a nation isn’t to make the rich richer or to make the poor poorer, it’s to make sure that you have a vibrant economy where there’s room for everyone,” says Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich. Laura sat down with Rep. Kucinich in Madison March 12 after his speech at a rally hosted by The Progressive magazine and discussed the attacks on public sector workers and what a real economic democracy would look like–full employment, universal health care and education, and a commitment to peace.

Public Enemies - Charles and David

GET THE KOCHS OFF OUR BACKS!

David and Charles are responsible for a vicious attack campaign aimed directly at obstructing and killing progressive reform. Their opposition is a long family tradition of trying to shift the country to the far right. Their father, Fred Koch, helped to found the John Birch Society in the late 1950s. Among the American Nazis, KKK hoods and militia toughs the John Birch Society ran Patrick Henry bookstores filled with scurrilous lying polemics attacking and undermining and diminishing government and advocating a treasonous program of subversion and sabotage. Fred’s sons continue to galvanize hundreds of thousands of middle class people into supporting the Kochs’ narrow agenda of cutting corporate taxes and avoiding consumer regulations to the ruin of our equality and democracy.

Their opposition is a long family tradition of trying to shift the country to the far right and intentionally intended to destroy our democratic republic.

P.s. David Koch presents himself as a champion of science. Nevertheless, Koch has done more to undermine the public’s understanding of climate change science than any other person in America. The Kochs financed the rowdies who disrupted the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Surely, the Kochs must be criminally liable for something in the midst of all their selfish corruption. Up the Rebels!

Citizens United - bought and paid for corporate shills.

Persecuted Kochs

DIGEST: Billionaire Self-Pity and the Koch Brothers. Glenn Greenwald 3-28-11 Salon.com

Since the financial crisis of 2008, one of the most revealing spectacles has been the parade of financial elites who petulantly insist that they are the victims of societal hostility: political officials heap too much blame on them, public policy burdens them so unfairly, the public resents them, and — most amazingly of all — President Obama is a radical egalitarian who is unprecedentedly hostile to business interests. One particularly illustrative example was the whiny little multi-millionaire hedge fund manager (and CNBC contributor), Anthony Scaramucci, who stood up at an October, 2010, town hall meeting and demanded to know: “when are we going to stop whacking at the Wall Street piñata?”

The Weekly Standard now has a very lengthy defense of — including rare interviews with — Charles and David Koch, the libertarian billionaires who fund everything from right-wing economic policy, union-busting, and anti-climate-change advocacy to civil liberties and liberalized social policies — though far more the former goals than the latter. In this article one finds the purest and most instructive expression of billionaire self-pity that I think I’ve ever seen — one that is as self-absorbed and detached from reality as it destructive. It’s really worth examining their revealed mindset to see how those who wield the greatest financial power (and thus the greatest political power) think of themselves and those who are outside of their class.

There’s no question in my mind that the unrestrained power over the political process and both political parties enjoyed by oligarchs is the single greatest political problem the country faces — the overarching problem — but in the scheme of corporate and oligarchical dominance, the Koch Brothers are a small part of that dynamic.  Nor do I believe that they’re motivated in their political activism by personal profit: for people with a net worth of $20 billion, there are vastly more efficient ways to convert one’s wealth into greater wealth than spending money to influence public policy; I think they’re True Believers.

Ask Charles Koch what he thinks about Obama and he looks like he’s just bit into a lemon. “He’s a dedicated egalitarian,” Charles said. “I’m not saying he’s a Marxist, but he’s internalized some Marxist models — that is, that business tends to be successful by exploiting its customers and workers.”

David agreed. “He’s the most radical president we’ve ever had as a nation,” he said, “and has done more damage to the free enterprise system and long-term prosperity than any president we’ve ever had.” David suggested the president’s radicalism was tied to his upbringing. “His father was a hard core economic socialist in Kenya,” he said. “Obama didn’t really interact with his father face-to-face very much, but was apparently from what I read a great admirer of his father’s points of view. So he had sort of antibusiness, anti-free enterprise influences affecting him almost all his life. It just shows you what a person with a silver tongue can achieve.”

So Barack Obama is a “dedicated egalitarian” who has “internalized Marxist” ideas in the Kenyan socialist tradition. Just compare that to actual facts. From The Huffington Post today:

Since Obama was inaugurated, the Dow Jones has increased more than 50% — from 8,000 to more than 12,000; the wealthiest recieved a massive tax cut; the top marginal tax rate was three times less than during the Eisenhower years and substantially lower than during the Reagan years; income and wealth inequality are so vast and rising that it is easily at Third World levels; meanwhile, “the share of U.S. taxes paid by corporations has fallen from 30 percent of federal revenue in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.” During this same time period, the unemployment rate has increased from 7.7% to 8.9%; millions of Americans have had their homes foreclosed; and the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by many millions, the largest number since the statistic has been recorded. Can you smell Obama’s radical egalitarianism and Marxist anti-business hatred yet?

Read the full article at Salon.com

more Glenn Greenwald

• 
• Last Supper Spread

O, GOD, I’M GETTING FAT!

Church-going Christians are twice as likely to become obese as godless barbarians, says a new study by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Even the apostles are eating more and more over the past thousand years. Though the body‘s supposed to be a temple and all, one academic suggests churches are “a feeding ground for gluttony and obesity.” Kinda harsh, but it may be time to cut back on those baked ham and mashed potato suppers.