Isms As Schisms

Divided we fail, repeatedly

I have long ago been wary to the point of weary, when I hear divisive rhetoric. The cuts in funding to education, which began in earnest in the mid-80's are paying off big time for those who want to keep us ignorant, and fearful. It has made it even easier to keep us divided by abstract concepts and assumptions, than at any time previous.

Racism is a learned thing that is taught to us to make us mistrust the person inside by the color of their skin outside. As overt racism is becoming passe, other 'isms' are gathering prestige of a political nature, in order to keep us more divided than united.

Noam Chomsky used the term: "Industrial Feudalism" to define our society, nationally and globally in this day and age.

Too bad that history, as it is taught in schools today, teaches nothing of feudalism and how it worked. For those who understand it, the parallels between then and now are starkly revealed: Serfs and Lords.

In order for feudalism to survive, an endless supply of serfs was required. The cheapest of labor. The Lords became their 'Protectors.' However, only the converse was true: it was the serfs who defended the castle walls of the Lords. Protecting the Protector gave rise to the illusion of being protected when in fact, we were and are, being misused against one another.

The other necessary factor, was preventing the serfs from uniting: either with the serfs of other feudal lords; or in the cases of the most powerful Lords, to keep them divided against one another.

This was accomplished through a system of honors and awards given to a select few who, although they never rose to the heights of "lord" were no longer at the bottom of the echelons and had some authority over those under them.

They could, at any point, however, be dismissed from that lofty step up, and had to work even harder in some ways, to keep their masters happy. They became estranged from their former peers who failed to see their predicament and had no sympathy for the travails of being 'upper class'.

Those mid-management types were annoyed and felt disrespected by their former peers. Jealousies, mistrusts and resentments grew. One way to rise to a higher level was to earn favor by having information to pass on to those above. This made yet another tier both above and below Middle Class. Mistrust grew. Spies, gossip, all were used to keep the people divided and not trusting of one another.

All the while, those at mid-level and below, had to work even harder just to stay one step ahead of starvation or eviction. The most important aspect of keeping underlings in line was in limiting their education. Forms of communication other than directly speaking to one another, were crude signals and symbols left in places to be found and interpreted.

The lords prospered. But, having so much wealth was never enough. They wanted more. Always more. They consolidated their turf and holdings through Marriages and by taking over the lands and properties of other lords, through battles.

They were allowed to battle others only when the king deemed it permissible. The kings wanted more also. The lords, essentially, did their bidding, like it or not. The kings were rarely seen and few knew anything about them except that they were behind the biggest walls, had the biggest military and made all the laws.

Serfs were forced to fight in battles, wherein if they won, the Lords over them had even more power, and they themselves had even less. Or, if they lost the battle, they lost everything and could end up as slaves in even more dire situations as the property of the lord that defeated their lord. The other was always worse.

Had they but known and understood then, that none of these lords or even kings had any real power, and that the authority they had and which they abused constantly, was only that which was given to them by the collective unwashed who had somehow, in some way, agreed to not trust themselves, not stand together, but to fear one another. That without these 'underlings' those over them had nothing.

Had we understood that I would like to think we would have learned to come together and to work together for the common good, rather than to slave for the Authorized powers to increase only their wealth at the cost of our own.

Fast Forward:

We are living in a world divided up by those heavy with authority. We believe the worst about people of whom we know nothing and whose culture is misrepresented to us, daily in a "Them and Us" scenario.

Greater and greater wealth is amassed by fewer and fewer who create a system that serves only themselves and which is paid for by those who derive little from it other than the misconception that we are being protected and saved by those whose power and wealth we protect from others who may or may not be trying to take it from them.

I am not surprised that we were lied into the Iraq war. I am not surprised that we were left unprotected and not warned about 9/11. That single event served to consolidate our collective fears and misunderstanding, in one massive push to invade a country that is rich in resources and unable to defend itself. Our blind trust in government as protector was used against us.

Equal and greater threats to our safety and security as a nation, abound. Greater despots, greater cruelty and mass murderers are easy to see if one but looks. North Korea has capabilities and was brandishing threats more real than any of the fictional Yellow Cake contrived by the war mongering mongols of the Bush Administration.

But we ignored North Korea. Not because we could not win, but because we can only lose. If we win, we will have conquered a nation of 23.5 Million starving people. We then must feed all of them. That alone, would bankrupt us and take a major share of our own, dwindling resources.

Factor in that we would have spent billions in military expenses, weaponry and who knows how much Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, XE et al, would have profiteered from it. Our dead would be in the thousands or 10's of thousands. We would be overwhelmed with burying, feeding and paying for... a country with no resources that can be extracted.

The Mega Corporations, the Global International Lords of our day, pick and choose which wars to be fought based on what they can gain from it. Ignorantly, blindly, the modern day serfs fly into battle after being fed a stream of propaganda, appealing to and misguiding our patriotism, with lies, pandering to fears of annihilation, while destroying what we claim to value most: The Truth.

It is them or it is us. We know nothing about them. We have walled ourselves off from them. We fear them. It is easier to kill them.

Now, the chants begin anew: Socialism! Communism! Islamism! We fear those things. We are taught that 'socialism leads to communism'. It does not, but the fiction holds sway in the uneducated populace.

We are taught that Communism failed! What we don't realize is that Communism never existed. The peasants, serfs of their day, bought into the rantings of a cult leader of their day, who promised them unity and equality, but who delivered corruption instead. It was corruption that failed that State, not "Communism".

We Are Not "Immuned"

Politicians who disgraced our own history by pandering to the fears and inflaming the ignorant with rhetoric of "isms", and thems vs us, did so to keep us from looking at what was happening to our own government.

Yes, 'communism' failed. But Russia still stands. They call it communism, again, but it is still the same corruption that it was back in the days of Stalin, Lenin and Kruschev. And it will fail again.

Corruption kills every ism. Corruption is what is killing Capitalism. But we are not educated enough to see it. Those who do the bidding of the masters above them, so that they can keep their positions as lesser masters, again fan the flames of xenophobia and of fears to rile the masses and keep us from coming together, united in this nation, and perhaps truly seeking peace with other nations.

Corruption left unchallenged, and kept in dark secret places, will bring down our nation, our Democracy, the same as it brought down the Mighty Russian Empire and the Fall of Rome before them, and every fallen empire since.

Blind Fear: Ignorance is Bliss

Corruption prevails as we battle amongst ourselves to reveal it or to protect it. We battle those who believe it is protecting them and who believe they are protecting us by protecting the corruption that is killing our Democracy.

We are led to distractions of every sort: Media feeds us vapid celebrity antics as if they were news, and ignores the wars, such as the genocides in Sudan that will make the leader of that country very wealthy as he allows the Oil Companies to extract what they want, and pay only him.

Removing the people by starving them, mass murders, rapes, and tortures, all part of the plan of clearing the path for the masters of Oil. As these people were literally, by military, being driven out of their homes, chased down and killed, it was for the sole purpose of removing them as an impediment to the coming Oil Regime.

We are too distracted to know, too uneducated to understand. One woman, hopeful to the point of exuberant, told me:

"Those people don't have to starve now! Look!" she points to a report, "they found OIL in that country!" Her eyes were wide, and tears of joy streamed down her face. She thought that finding oil would be what would save those people? In fact, it was the discovery of those oil fields that set the genocide in motion!

But we will never war against Sudan. Sudan's 'leaders' are those who allow our Big Oil Masters to take what they want. War is reserved for those unwilling to be walked over by the Masters.

Remember: "All wars must be authorized by the Kings behind the walls."

"ExSchism" Me

Every "ism" is promoted and demonized by fiction. Fiction created by lesser masters to please those who give them access to the funds that give them comfort outside of their failed and sickened consciences. All the higher masters seek in return, is all of the resources be theirs.

This land is my land, this land is your land... but they want it to be no man's land. They want it to be theirs. This is where they create their wealth and we give it to them, free of charge, and spill our blood against our brothers and sisters to keep them in place.

Someday, the modern day serfs will learn how to educate themselves. They will lose their fears and mistrusts and realize they can and already have, survive any betrayals that come along. That the cost of not trusting one another is disunity. In that failure to unite, we continue to divide and conquor ourselves and diminish the future of our children and the children yet to come.

Education is the only cure. We must learn how to learn. We cannot be driven by media that seeks above all, to sell to us. We must look into the faces of people we don't know, and get to know them.

The internet is becoming the point of connection, of learning, sharing and understanding one another. Social media is opening up doors and windows to enlightenment and understanding. There are those who fear the expanding of our global consciousness and they attempt, with failed tactics of fear, rumors, lies and false "patriotism" to misuse the medium and to create more fear and mistrust.

I see them who market their fears and lies, as failing in the light of more and more, better, accurate and more truthful information and dialogue. I am seeing that we can overcome our fears and our ignorance and find our common ground, and realize, it was always there, it was always ours.

We have a lot of work to do. A lot of great things can be accomplished once we shine the light into our dark places and clean out the dirt that has sickened us all these many generations. We can heal, together, without fear.

First we must look into the mirror, and get to know ourselves. You look more like me, on the inside and I look more like you. We can unite in Peace.

Look Into The Future, It's Obvious

Because History is Already Repeating Itself

History, like any teacher, has to repeat itself, over and over again. Some learn, but most don't. Reason being that most have never looked at the mechanics of history and HOW things went wrong or why.

Schools don't teach us how to learn, they teach us WHAT to learn. The fine art of regurgitation has created in us, a nation of confused, apathetic, fearful reactionary types that are too often, easily misled by inflammatory rhetoric.

As key as education is in the survival of any species, so is controlling the thought processes of the masses by dumbing them down, key to controlling the masses. The US is now one of the least educated countries in the world.

Worse, the processes of learning are not only ignored, but systematically snuffed out by the very system that is supposed to be there to teach us how to save ourselves. Curiosity is discouraged. Thinking outside the box or pondering deeper into a subject is discouraged by teachers who are ground out by the same mill that creates textbooks rife with factual errors and missing component information, from Math to History and Economics is not taught in most schools now.

The Arts: Music, Dancing, Painting, Writing, Drama wherein the mind finds constructive outlets for expression and inspiration, are being dropped as 'wasteful'.

Ideas are not discussed, they are ridiculed. Debate is not engaged, it is discouraged in lieu of recitation of accepted patterns of thinking. History is boring. Economics, dry. Communications all about spin, where I understand, there are bright futures and big bucks waiting for the adept.

The very best teachers, the creative, the passionate, the inspiring, have been systematically weeded out to make it more conformist on the front lines, less 'educational'.

We have become a nation more uneducated and helpless than at any other time in our history. We substitute rage for constructive action, and get nowhere. We are easier to control and to mislead because we don't know how to think for ourselves or see what is really being said and done to us. We become 'dependent' on our elected officials, who in turn, can easily betray us.

Radical, wingnut extremists can recruit the fearful and the uneducated and use them for their own amusement, profit and political agenda. Perpetuating the cycle of futility, rage and mistrust.

Getting Lost for Lack of a Moral Compass

Now, we are literally, as a nation, wandering lost int he deserts of the Middle East. We have learned nothing of what the underlying mechanics of war are, and thus are surprised when we find ourselves again, spilling blood and treasure in lands where we don't even speak the language.

We were led there by those who exploited the ignorant fears in enough of the population, that those who had keener vision were shouted down and trampled over, as the nation listened to lies and thought they were the truth.

We feel our 'trust' was betrayed. I have a real problem with that. If more people had learned how to learn, they never would have allowed a fraudulent election to render a dunce whose only goal was to demolish the Constitution, raid the oil fields of Iraq. We would have, more of us, seen through the rhetoric and the lies and laughed him and his band of mutant trolls out of town.

We could have stopped it. There were opportunities, not lost, but sacrificed on the altar of politics, putting us all at risk. Petitions by Members of the House of Representatives to overthrow the bad Florida Count and force a recount were brought before Congress more than 10 times by more than 10 Representatives.

All they needed was ONE signature from ONE SENATOR in order to be enforced. Representative after representative pleaded before the house. Each one was slammed down by the gavel when the leader asked if they had obtained the ONE necessary signature. Each had asked all 100 Senators and not one had signed it. Not one.

In that "Not One" unanimity, Sens. Kerry and Edwards. Ostensibly, they promoted themselves as the guardians of our Democracy, upright and 'not politically' driven. (Oxymorons, anyone?). They knew that this procedural hearing would get little if any press.

Indeed, it received none. Why, if they were A: Democrats, and B: So concerned for our nation, would they allow what they knew and often said, was a fraudulent election to stand?

I think they wanted Gore to fail so that they could run in 4 years, instead of 8. Politics above Country. The Dems, just as guilty as the frothing-at-the mouth GOP with their wingnut fringe leading the fray.

Moral Compasses neatly tucked away. No need to see what danger lie ahead, just bide your time and wait your turn. The monster they let feed on the fears of our nation, later overtook their campaigns with smears, lies and underhanded tricks.

Their egos suffered massive defeats, and our nation was flung into the abyss by the childish antics of a drunken, ignorant, spoiled brat from a wealthy, powerful family.

They could have stood up. They could have pulled the E-Brake. But they decided to let the train wreck, thinking it would make easier, their stepping into the shoes of the Presidency on down the road. Just point to the smoldering pile of national chaos, and smile paternally, and the prize would be theirs.

We all paid the price. But have we learned anything? Or do we only know how to get mad?

The Ends of War

I can tell you how the war will end. I have been to the past and the future is running down that very same track, so I am pretty sure it will end exactly as I tell you. First, let me qualify the statement of any war 'ending'. Once started, no war ever ends. There are only quiet interludes between the bombings. We call those, the 'ends' of war, but the cycle is not broken and nothing is ever won.

Wandering Lost In The Deserts

The war will end with all the oil companies and other multi-national mega corporations taking over all the resources in that area. They will engage their own security. In this case, it will probably be Blackwater, which has changed its name to "XE".

We will pull out most of our troops and engage our Diplomatic Corp in keeping whatever puppet government that install, viable. We will not allow anyone to take the Presidency of that nation that would not look favorably upon the US. We have overthrown democratic regimes in the past, not because they were a threat to us, but because they wanted to keep their resources for their country and were not friendly to allowing major corporations to come in, create poverty by taking the resource rich lands for themselves, and then exploit that poverty in the following ways:

• Keeping the population too broken and scattered to unite against the raiding of resources and unable to hold elections to throw out the corrupt.
  
  
• To keep the overall impression of that region as scattered, unstable and in need of 'guidance'.
  
  
• To make it easier to bribe or coerce any elected official into allowing the resources to be drawn out without concern for the people, the land or the future. A corrupt government is easy to deal with. An Honest one more troublesome.
  

The issues surrounding that process will be shrouded in boring, monotone delivery. Information will not be available.

Little risk of our Nation, being raised on instant gratification and distractions, mired in our own grinding economic woes, even rising to question what goes on in a nation we know nothing about, and whose language and culture we do not understand. It will remain a place where they don't look like us. That underlying racist inclination will allow not allow us to view them as anything other than "other".

The people in that broken country will, from time to time, attempt to rise up and retake the levers and the wheel of their own destiny, their own nation. Those will be shot down by the security forces of the conglomerates: XE or roses by any other name.

It will, if it even pings the radar in the West, be portrayed as "uprisings by renegades" and we might catch our breath for a moment. Then we will hear that it was all 'put down' and we can feel safe again.

The people will eventually sense futility in doing things democratically. They will tire of being treated like trash in their own country. They will become more and more angry at the accumulation of wealth by those in power, corrupt puppets who are supported by the Multi-Nationals.

They will become easy converts to the more violent, more radical forms of zealots. They will believe what they are told on religious and ethnic topics because they were raised in poverty, treated like trash and lack the education it would take to know that they are being misled and misused.

Violence will break out. Our country will then feel called upon to use the might of our military to put down the uprising. Bombings, assassinations, and our CIA covert, Black Ops will deploy to 'restore order'.

People in the region will shake their fists at us. Our leaders will make a sad face, declare that we were not appreciated. Our Nation will think of them as ingrates.

We will be ripe, once again, for attacks. If we have a president that ignores the warnings, he or she can then use them as a battle cry to once again wage war. We will be told that despite all that we have done for those people, they hate us because of our freedoms.

We, lacking the ability to learn, remember, or to think through how stupid that sounds, will again send our men and women, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers into a foreign land to spill their blood and the blood of innocents, at a cost to both nations, that is breaking the heart of God.

The cycle is already beginning, even as this war is supposed to be winding down. It has worked in every nation, including our own.

If we were to have learned anything by the scandal at the Department of the Interior, it is this one thing: Our nation is run for the sake of Resource Extraction by Mega Corporations who take from us, that which belongs to us, and then sells it back to us at exorbitant prices.

Those who live with the injustices of puppet governments, Federally supported intimidation and bullying, and who are thought of as 'ungrateful' and 'other' are right here, in our own backyards. Just look at Indian Country and you will see how this cycle of Nation Taking has worked for over 400 years.

Now, look at the Middle East. Look closer. Tell me what you see.

The Cult of Kool Aid Charisma

Cults are hollow places where only one voice is heard. It may come through many mouths, but only one voice is allowed to be heard.

I'm trying to find a way to explain, and maybe I can't, why it is I get flashbacks to a horrible event when I see Rush Limbaugh bouncing up and down, waving his arms, gleefully wallowing in adoration, his eyes glazed over with a 'high'.

A man who clearly bullies his party by publicly humiliating anyone that disagrees with him, until they grovel, publicly, to apologize.

Like a king, he keeps his foot on their necks and then, magnanimously, he allows them to crawl away, thanking him for his kindness as they genuflect out the door.

Anyone that tries to claim leadership of that party, is pounced on by his rotundness and publicly thrashed.

The party is in ruins and he flogs them, with his supposed 24 Million listeners, which is, apparently, more like 1.4 million at any given time (plenty enough, but why lie or exaggerate the stats unless he thinks it is not enough?) ...and they cheer him on as their messiah.

All his radical ideas failed and he has no other ideas, won't allow other ideas and they are cheering him on? "Lemmings! To the Rescue! Follow me!" and over the cliffs, into the seas of oblivion, they go. Rush, yelling into his microphone, exact orders of how they are supposed to do it.

People who should be able to speak their mind in that party, only speak off the record and anonymously for fear that he will take offense. They cheer him because they fear him. If they don't fervently demonstrate their their loyalty to him, their place in the party will be in jeopardy.

He's a drug addict! He lies! His ideas failed and failed BIG TIME. But no one dares even so much as hint that they disagree that he is the defacto leader of the GOP???

The Other Cult Leader

It reminds me, unfortunately, of Jonestown. The last episode. Where all the followers had been for months, pounded by the voice of their once beloved leader, 24/7 with his diatribes, his preaching and his rantings. He too, was loudly applauded and adored when he took the stage. They were afraid not to. They competed to demonstrate their adoration of him as he bounced on the stage, waving his arms, eyes glazed over with the rush of power.

He had no love for those people, his people. He had nothing but contempt for them and they were afraid of him. So afraid that as he told them to drink the Kool Aid and to force it down the throats of their children and babies, they did it.

He kept ranting over the PA system that he was the only one who could save them. That they had to do what he was telling them to do because without him they were nothing and belonged nowhere. He told them as he was murdering them, that he was saving them.

Those who survived, escaped by running through the jungles, hiding. They did not know who was coming to rescue them and who was coming to murder them. Some died from that fear. When they emerged, traumatized and confused, the horror stories came out.

The images flash over each other: Limbaugh/Jones. I am thinking that what was once a bright shining party, a healthy opposition has devolved into a cult of personality and they are doomed to extinguish their own lights by listening to the one voice that has the microphone, and is telling them what to think and what to say and what to do. He allows no dissent. He publicly humiliates those who dare not worship him.

The Party drank the Kool Aid. They drank it a long time ago when they abdicated their right to think for themselves and became part of a system that relies more and more, now solely on, the illusion that must be cast and recast daily as it falls apart in the light of day.

Newt Gingrich, possibly the most adept politician ever to be in the Republican party denounced Rush Limbaugh and despite the fat man's rantings, and scathing diatribes that have followed, Newt has not apologized.

I don't like Newt. His a fraud in my book. A hypocrite of the lowest order. But he knows the game and he knows the Emperor has no clothes. And he knows that if he stands up to him, the fat man will tumble. When he does, those who are desperate for another leader to follow, will likely follow him.

Newt knows one when he sees one.

The power is failing. The fat man is wetting himself, unable to prove his omnipotence he is becoming more and more visible as impotent.

It is my guess that party members will quietly drift away now. Some will stay and drink the Kool Aid, but the magic of being in line with the bully has lost its potency.

Yes, they had it coming for handing over their power to a madman, drug addict, who used his forum to scare the common man, inflame race hate, and worse. More and more, they relied on smears. In doing so, they got it all over them and they stink of it.

Yes, they have it coming.

But I don't like it. With the Republicans imploding and the party in tatters, it may never come back again. If it does, it will take a very long time. During the time that it takes for them to let go of the poison, rebuild and reclaim their spot, if they can; or for a third party to emerge powerful enough to balance our houses, we run the very risk of having one party too powerful.

We may or may not trust those who are in charge now, but what about the next one we elect? Will all that power go to their head? Will the lack of a healthy opposition lead us to where there is no dissent?

At some point down the road, will we be drinking the Kool Aid or running through the jungles, not knowing what is right, or wrong; who is friend and who is foe?

We need a healthy two party system. We need a healthy opposition. We need to be challenged and for flaws to be revealed and courses corrected through that process.

There are some who say "Do away with all the parties". I can see how they would think that. But it won't change anything. In fact, it might even make it worse.

I would be interested to know how you see this one. Drop me a line.

Meanwhile, I keep checking my own cupboards, to make sure there is no Kool Aid in there.

When the Borg Breaks...

I love how Star Trek used symbolism to convey political and even spiritual or religious messages. Some of my favorite episodes involved The Borg.

It was compassionless, power seeking, and had an interesting relationship with the "Hive" which consisted of all the beings whose planets had been overtaken by The Borg and whose will and independent thoughts had been removed from them. It appeared that most did not struggle and those that did lost. They were either "assimilated" or they were obliterated.

The Borg gave all orders and brooked no discussion, much less dissent. Members of the hive merely obeyed The Borg. It cruised deep space, "randomly targeting" planetary systems or wandering vessles to garner more and more members for the Hive.

Everything was a collective in the Hive. Worn out components, ejected. The appearance of the Collective was only in support of The Borg, as there was no 'communal voting' or any other input from The Hive.

Their individuality had been so erased and replaced by the Hive mentality that they could not even save themselves or spot intruders if the intruders did not directly engage them in combat, on a level they could respond to successfully, by overwhelming the intruders with their sheer might of numbers. It allowed intruders to get a look at their inner workings and systems that proved their undoing. Unable to see, or ignoring what was happening right in front of them, they had no way to know how much of their weaknesses were being revealed.

But The Borg had a flaw. The all powerful, listen to no one, Borg was completely dependent on the Hive for its survival. The Borg could do nothing without its Zombie Bots there to perform the actual tasks and perform regular maintenance.

One of the ways to attack or defeat this monolithic computerized, souless monstrosity, was to give it a question or statement that contradicted itself as it agreed with itself. It would consume its own resources trying to find the 'logical' outcome in its own mobius trap. Lacking creativity, intolerant of dissent, it was unable to resolve issues in a creative way.

The only way it new to survive, was to assimilate others into its structure, without assimilating any of the characteristics of those whom it had conquered. It could not adapt. It could not evolve.

In nature, that which cannot adapt, does not evolve, does not survive. The Borg defied the Laws of Nature, up to a point.

The origin of The Borg is somewhat vague. It could have been created, originally, as something used for Good. To protect and to defend; to provide and to support. But somewhere, it went awry, and no one stopped it. After awhile, no one could stop it. Ultimately, The Borg had to self destruct.

In episodes where The Borg was damaged, members of the Hive were lost, confused, often repeating mindless tasks, unable to generate a creative thought on their own. Wandering through the Hive, we could see them performing the last task given to them, over and over again, regardless of effect or outcome. They knew nothing else and could do nothing else. The one instinct they had left, 'survival', only revolved around The Borg being able to survive in order to again, tell them what to do.

A viscious cycle of repetitive, meaningless, mindless actions, which is what The Borg demanded, began to weaken The Borg, disabling it incrementally, as the Hive wore itself out.

What was once a powerful force to be reckoned with, was reduced to a floating piece of space junk, pathetic in its weakness. It's only threat to anything was to perhaps crash into functioning systems and damage them like a drunken driver, risking and taking on further damage itself with each encounter.

An Army of Straw Men

Watching the posts on Twitter from people who call themselves "TCOTS" (Top Conservatives On Twitter) I am seeing a pattern of desperation take form. What I at first thought was ignorance or even mindless stupidity, by one or two, turns out to be a fairly consistent systematic and deliberate effort on their part, to distort and twist anything that is being said or done by anyone that is NOT a Republican, into a faux 'attack' either on God, Country, Constitution, Rights, or anything else we, as Americans, hold dear.

This is done in a way that can only appeal to and inflame those who cannot think for themselves, and cannot understand what they are hearing, either from the source or from the radical Conservative groups that are twisting the message, and who will, in the most reactionary ways, rant and holler.

I find that when this group, individually, or collectively, targets someone, it is because they feel threatened that the person can get out a message of reason that is somehow a threat to their collective.

The Republicans, at one time, were the party of the intellectuals, the successful and the ones with the Moral Compass regarding compassion and the common sense that if we work together, and deal with the issues, we can better protect ourselves, and increase our overall health and prosperity by raising up the standards of living for us all.

I used to joke, when I was a kid and just starting out in my independence, that I was a Democrat, working to open new doors of possiblities for our nation in my lifetime, but that when I was older and retired, I wanted to be a Republican.

But somewhere along the way, the GOP went awry. It was hijacked by a mindset that was impatient with the process of all of us growing together and of fixing and repairing along the way. It became the party of Money and Power.

The once shining intellect became a radical, bullying tactic of ignoring/twisting facts and information, and spewing more and more inflammatory rhetoric. They became more and more devisive in order to stand out in a nation where we all pretty much regarded one another as equals.

They used coded terminology to promote racism and to undo, where they could, much of the progress we as a nation, had made in overcoming stereo-types. Under the banner of "Freedom of Speech" they gave shelter to White Supremisists and other racist organizations. Government became less vigilant and diligent in pursuing hate crimes. Tacit approval, indirect support.

Dividing the races, the religions and even pitting women against men, they began the weakening and the undoing of our society. Chasing after issues, such as abortion, with such zeal and force, that other issues which were real (what was going on in the economy, and the rules that governed it, for instance) were silently gliding behind the scenes.

Demanding the ridiculous in giving the unborn more rights and protections than the living, is a self-defeating cycle no matter how you look at it. They demand less government, and even try to scare us away from National Healthcare under the terms "Socialism" which is code for "communism", and by saying they don't want government in the Doctor's offices telling us what we can and cannot do. (*Head spinning in that they want cops to arrest women in their doctor's offices if they attempt to get an abortion, even if it is to save their own life).

What they don't discuss is that we pay 15x more than any other country for Healthcare and we rank 33rd in quality of that healthcare. They don't want to fix it. Insurance companies, paharmaceutical companies, the biggest money out there, set that agenda for them. Keep you distracted so you don't look at what is really happening, failing, and what it will take to fix it. Fear mongering to mislead the masses.

Healthcare should be considered a Right, not just a privilege of the wealthy. It would, also, reduce the number of abortions, drastically.

Ignoring science is a critical element in all their rhetoric. Be it 'when life begins', or 'global warming', the blind race towards destruction of our society and our planet, was the course set and it would not be altered by any who wanted to rise to the top of The Hive.

In order for the Republican Party to survive, they feel that they have to appeal to the extremist in their ranks. They feel they need that yelling to drown out reason. They construct nothing of their own, because either they don't know how, or they have forgotten how, or they don't care. They seek only to destroy what others are trying to build or to salvage.

I watched a report last night, where the very real threat of Mexico's drug cartels, who now have armies of their own that rival and surpass that of Mexico's government, has become a real threat to the USA.

The report showed the arms that this paramilitary has. Rocket launchers, grenades, and stuff you would expect to find in the elite forces of our own military. Turns out that 90% of these guns and ordnance comes from the US.

Mexico's Atty General made the statement: "I do not believe that the Second Ammendment was intended to Arm Drug Cartels."

Immediately, TCOTs on Twitter, one of whom is in my stream, declared: "Mexico attacks our Second Ammendment Rights!". Clearly, this was designed to again inflame a reactionary response, to 'hate' Mexico, and by default, "Mexicans", and by coincidence, "Illegal Immigrants" and on down the line, until the uneducated reader or listener is so angry and racially biased, that they cannot hear any voice of reason.

They offer no solutions. Rhetoric, the more inflammatory the better, is now the credo and sole mission, the last futile task, issued by the hijacked GOP. They offer to, in the next election, replace people of reason and good intentions with radical Xenophobic members of their Hive.

I commented back to the guy who wrote the errant piece and corrected him. He had nowhere to go. If he disagrees with what the man really said, he would have to agree then, that the Second Ammendment was created to arm Drug Cartels. He was called on his bs, and recognized instantly, that he was in a mobius trap that he could not escape. Further, it would require him to make statements that would only mire him deeper in his own muck.

He chose not to respond. Instantly he 'unfollowed' me. I know, because I figured he would do that and monitored my followers list until he vanished. I then unfollowed him. It was clear to me, that he was not in my stream, or any stream for that matter, to share ideas and to learn from one another. Rather, he was there, as a member of a souless, mindless collective, to create fear and noise, drown out the voices of reason, wherever possible.

That is what they do.

Sad that it has come to this. The GOP overtaken by a radical virus that pushed out and ejected anyone that had different ideas. By doing that, they were unable to come up with 'better' ideas. When they were able to take over the legislative, Executive and finally, install many of their like in the Judiciary branches of our government, they thought they were, at long last, impervious.

Those who used the most abusive, abrasive tactics and who appealed to the lowest mentality, and incited the most inflammatory reactionary responses, had won.

But they had also lost. Unlike the Hive, the rest of the Nation woke up, stood up and we overcame the deepest stereo types, and elected a man whose all three names would have made him unelectable in the extreme realities envisioned by the GOP.

They were unprepared for the challenge of reason. They ignored the intelligence that was telling them that what they were doing was failing, more and more. They only knew what the Borg was telling them and had no way to access their own individual selves. They failed. And they continue to scorch and burn as they retreat, to punish the nation that became disgusted with them and now must clean up the biggest mess in our history.

Now, they resort to the old tactics. Lie, create straw men, make a big show of how we are being 'attacked' and then pretend to be the ones who will save us.

They get a radical moron in the Stock Market section to yell about how only losers need bailouts. He ridicules any attempt to save homeowners from predatory lenders, while silent on the billions that go into Wall Street, where he proclaims himself a Voice of the People. Wall Street is a Machine, a system. It has no face.

TCOTs attempt to incite and inflame the uneducated, the ignorant and the racist. They invent attacks, demand apologies, ignore real responses or questions that show their failed methods are continuing to fail. Their flawed logic is obvious to everyone but them. They continue to mindlessly repeat the same task over and over again, ignoring or unable to see what is right in front of them, as they pursue undoing of a nation to save their party, succeeding ultimately in their own demise and growing disgrace.

They are doing this in every realm of every media. It is all they know how to do. Over and over again, performing the same failed tactics, as a task mission, awaiting further orders from a crippled Borg that is floating like some space junk, only able to inflict damage upon collision, unable to repair itself.

Unable to adapt, unable or unwilling to see what is really happening, right in front of them, they proceed to their own irrelevance, as if they are right, as if they are winning.

The rest of us just step out of the way, and let them.

How Low Can It Go?

Long time ago, a friend of mine was pregnant. She was a severe diabetic. The doctors feared for her life, but she was determined to have the baby. She was declared not just "High Risk" but the 'highest risk' patient any of them had ever encountered.

Her insulin roller coastered to extremes, and more than once, she lapsed into unconsciousness and 911 had to be called. Her husband would phone me after these events, and explain how low her sugars got, and how she barely survived. It seemed to me, odd that he was more concerned with how this affected him than by what it could do to her or the baby. But I attributed that to his general immaturity, and perhaps, genuine fear that he would be lost without the love of his life.

They came to visit me during her 8th month of this high risk pregnancy. In the middle of the night, her husband woke me up to tell me that she was 'crashing' (her sugars were diving) and she was about to lose consciousness.

Since he had been through this so many times before, I asked him what we should do. He said we should prick her finger and take a measure of how low her sugars are. I figured that was a first step. I wanted to call 911, but he told me that unless she is unconscious they won't come.

The thought of my friend going into a unconsciousness was terrifying to me. Frantically, we searched in her bag for the needle that is sterilized and used to take her blood tests.

Her eyes looked panicked. She could barely move, and she looked mad. I knew she hated needles, figured that was it.

"After we find out how low it is, what do we do?" I asked, still rummaging.

His response stunned me. "Oh, we just give her some sugar water and she comes out of it."

I was stunned. I stopped searching and looked at him as he looked, almost gleefully at his pregnant wife, drifting away. "That is all we have to do to save her life???" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, almost as a throw-away.
"If that is all we need to do to save her, WHY are we going to measuring her sugar levels?"

"Oh," he said. "I just want to see how low they are. Last time the paramedics said they had never seen anyone survive with such low numbers. I think she can beat that record."

Apparently, as his wife could pass from this world at any moment, and his unborn child along with her, he was going for some nondescript 'record' or 'personal best low'.

I had to choose from my instinct to clobber him or save her.

I went to the kitchen, found a chocolate bar (we were out of sugar) and placed it in her mouth. Her eyes were almost solid black now, and I knew she was mad. She sucked at it, and slowly was able to claw her way back to full consciousness. Orange juice followed.

He was upset with me. "Don't!" he pleaded as she started coming back. "We will never know how low it was this time! We will never know how low she can go!" I think he thought that her low sugar numbers would get him into the Guinness Book of Records, or some other small flake of fame hall.

She survived, the baby is now in college and long ago, she ditched that bum.

To this day, what stands out in my mind was how taking immediate action would not only relieve her symptoms and possibly save her life, but how, instead of helping her, he was looking to see how bad it could get and if she could go lower than before, and live.

Another New Low

What brings that episode to mind, for me, is when I hear on the news, people criticizing the Obama Administration for taking action to slow, then reverse the economic decline, which they walked into after it was already over the cliff.

I hear the comment, over and over again how he will fail because 'We still don't know where the bottom is.'

Okay, in the absence of a perfect forecast as to exactly at what point everything fails and we all die, they see no part for them to play other than to criticize?

Instead of anticipating the exact fatal point of no return and debating it, why not just all focus on getting us out of this.

I'm not sure if they are going for a 'personal best' in that Flake Hall of Fame I mentioned earlier, but I do know this: If we don't rid our system of those unhelpful types, we can be assured that we will, sooner rather than later, know what that point is---for absolute sure.

The baby in this case, is the future.

Patriotism v Money

Reaganomics: Robbing Those with not voice nor vote

Those of us who educated ourselves on the economy, decades ago when things started to 'not look right', are not too surprised to see the collapse. It has been inevitable, since the "less regulation and oversight" in the guise of "Less Government", took deep root in the 80's.

It was around that time that I asked myself: "Where is all this money coming from and going to, now that Reagan is in town?"

I asked that, because I had lived in California when he became the darling of Fiscal Conservatives there. I remembered the damage done on a State level and wondered if he would play out the same scenario on a Federal level. He did.

I saw how he shifted the wealth by giving huge tax breaks to his wealthy pals in his exclusive clubs: The Bohemian Club, which was race exclusive and to which he belonged his entire life, and a lesser known group, "Los Ranchitos" which was primarily into grabbing resources, land and political power for its members, by any means possible.

The people that paid the price for Reaganomics in California were those who could not fight back. The poor, the mentally ill, the severely handicapped, the elderly and the blind.

He cut back and closed several State hospitals under the guise of "mainstreaming" patients. These were people, most of whom could not cope outside of the structure nor survive without the constant care and supervision of those facilities.

The State run institutions had been the only place where those with extreme handicaps and inabilities could be safely housed, clothed and medically supervised.

To the world he cloaked himself as a hero for 'freeing' them. The Ken Kesey novel, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", book and later, the film, portrayed institutions as ugly & abusive to patients. The Zeitgeist of that time, played into the theme of 'getting rid' of institutions. Reagan appeared heroic for knocking them down.

The process was swift and brutal. To those of us who had family with extreme mental/physical handicaps, it was terrifying. Everyone had to be essentially "readmitted" and the burden was on the families to justify why their relative needed that care.

Since many of these families were gone, or indigent, their inability to engage meant their family member was 'freed'. Put out on the streets, essentially, with no safety net. (Robin Williams, as Mork, in Mork & Mindy, had a scene where he 'liberated' a dozen eggs to 'fly and be free!' each one crashing and breaking on the floor.)

My own brother, profoundly autistic, violent, unable to speak, bathe himself, bathroom or even feed himself, was scheduled to be 'mainstreamed'. He also had no use of his fingers, which were locked together, like flippers. He walked with a lurch, and was diagnosed with a mild degree of Cerebral Palsy. He was visually impaired in one eye blind in the other.

(Clearly, euphemisms replaced real language early in that process. "Mainstreaming" was a euphemism for 'abandoning' and 'neglecting')

We had to argue with letters, and in front of State Appointed judges who thought that we were 'taking advantage of the system' and that we did not know how well he would fare, because we had not yet 'tried the new way'.

My brother had put his head through every glass pane he ever came near. The theory was that he hallucinated on glass. In the institution he would, abruptly, go over to the doors with the reinforced glass and put his head through it, and then go sit down and laugh, covered in blood. He had, at the time, more than 1500 stitches in his scalp and had been treated, repeatedly, for concussions.

But Reagan deemed him 'able' and told us that there would be outpatient 'clinics' to pick up the slack and give him his medication. Our concerns were brushed aside. The hearings were a sham. He would simply have to learn how to read, use the bus system (which was sparse) and show up for appointments.

He was scheduled to be 'freed' in less than a week, when, as they were writing up the paperwork on him, in the office, he went through the glass door. He was, thereafter, bedridden for years. The State had already cut back on employees and services, so there were not the two medical techs there to supervise that visit. There were, in fact, none.

We then had to battle with the State, frequently, after they decided to allow him to stay on a 'probationary basis', to stop them from performing medical experiments on him. It was put to us, in short, as 'giving him the opportunity to earn his keep by participating in these pharmaceutical and surgical trials'.

These were not 'experiments' to help his condition, mind you. These were experiments for things like liver treatments, sexual alterations, etc. One even stated that by allowing him to be experimented on, we "would be allowing his life to have some purpose and meaning."!!!

Apparently, our State hospitals, what was left of them, were now up for grabs by the labs. Filled with 'throw-a-way' people, without a voice, who could never sue over malpractice.

The State had given its permission to experiment on anyone who did not have family to speak up for them. Anyone deemed a 'ward of the State' which was supoosed to 'protect' them. Dr. Mengele would have loved it.

The so-called 'safety net' of 'outpatient clinics' that were supposed to take up the slack, btw, were drastically cut back the first year, and eliminated by the third year. Now, they are only funded by private donations. Essentially, they no longer exist.

Our jails and prisons are overcrowded, in large part, due to the fact that the severely schizophrenic, mentally handicapped and those with severe emotional/physical disabilities are 'warehoused' there.

Some have whole sections that hold these patients as prisoners. They are given different color uniforms to designate them different from the main criminal population. In other, more crowded prisons, they are must mixed in. "Mainstreamed." So much for 'freeing' the mentally ill, eh?

The blind, the deaf, and the physically handicapped, lost services and assistance. Those who panhandled on the street, were constantly harassed. The elderly lost services, transportation and walk-in clinics that used to assist them in remaining independent.

As we were all running around, trying to get help and services for our family members, we were being portrayed as irresponsible family members seeking to take advantage of the State.

Also, while the Shock Troops were making us all scramble, and the public was reeling from the new wave of mentally ill on the streets, committing and being victims of crimes, wealth was quietly being transferred via the 'deregulation' process, which had begun in earnest, removing, incrementally over time, any ability of our government to stop illegal/unsound practices in the market place.

We were just too busy, swamped, and numbed by the changes in our society to notice that it was going on. We were being told, almost daily, what a great guy Reagan was and how he was 'balancing' the budget.

No one cared to look at whose backs were being broken so he could stand on them and proclaim victory. Saving money was a good thing, right? Apparently, it was the only good thing. Reagan played the Hero in every role, including governor and President.

Ignoring The Warnings

But real life does not neatly mesh with scripted movies and speeches. Things were set in motion that would not survive after the last curtain call. By the time the applause died down, we were already on our way to economic collapse as a result of the economic imbalance created by mindless deregulation and Tax Cuts to the wealthiest.

As a result of those times, the biggest S&L Failures. Those in charge of major institutions often either had no clue as to how to balance their own checkbook, much less run a bank, or they pretended to be ignorant of the rules.

The biggest bank failure of that entire fiasco, was Silverado Savings & Loan. A company run by then president George Bush, Sr's son, Neil Bush. Neil promptly transferred all his assets into his wife's name so that no one could reclaim them through legal means.

It was a signal ignored by our Congress. Especially ignored by a Senator, John McCain, who was so tightly wound in with one of the other major crooks of the time, Charles Keating, that he almost was expelled from the Senate, as one of the Keating Five. But, with so many politicians now in bed with the lobbyists, and the profiteers themselves, he was only slightly embarrassed and suffered not much more than his lame excuses being believed.

Their remedy to the problem was not to reinstate the rules, regulations that had been removed, but to cut the budgets and the power of the oversight agencies, and MORE TAX CUTS for the wealthy. The process of deregulating under the guise of 'getting big government out of our lives' continued.

Transfer of Wealth

Draining the funds from dependent, the weak and the disabled was one of the means that were used to 'increase' the money flow to other aspects of the 'fiscal' machinery.

By no longer having to support those who could not support themselves, and by increasing the impossible burdens on the poor and the disabled, many of whom did not have the means to either fight for themselves or to create public outcry, taxes could be cut for the very wealthy.

By loosening the regulations and restrictions on the marketplace, that had been there to keep the market fair, level and balanced allowed greater streams of personal wealth to be created.

However, it all relied solely on the honor system that no one would do anything illegal or destructive ever. And, of course, we had to trust the wealthy because they were, by default, smarter than the rest of us and would never, ever, do anything to destabilize the markets or undercut the economy. Never. Ever.

When Reaganomics went National, his handsome, movie star face beaming across the nation as its leader, we saw again, how the very people who could not cope on their own, nor fight for themselves, were targeted on a national level.

The prison industry has grown exponentially since that philosophy took hold. The disabled are left to fend for themselves. Minimum wage was stagnated at an unlivable wage creating for the first time: The working poor.

Members of congress, instead of fighting for the people, fought to keep the minimum wage low, or to cut it even further! All the while, giving themselves multiple raises and more benefits. Government was now surgically separating itself from the people it was supposed to represent, and becoming the guard dogs of the wealthy.

Creating Class Warfare

The cutbacks of the funding, training and enforcement of immigration officers and staff were key in creating a labor pool even more desperate and willing to work under extreme circumstances. The cutbacks were hailed as 'cost cutting measures' and applauded by 'fiscal conservatives' as the trimming of fat from the budget.

Removing from operation those that enforce the laws and protect the borders, and creating a decades deep backlog of immigration processing, was essentially creating a no-win situation for those who had tried to do things according to the rules. It was also giving a wink and a nod as the extremely poverty stricken streamed through our borders and found under-the-table wages and very often underhanded treatment, from employers.

These employers were, by and large, not the household looking for a nanny, or a single restaurant looking for a busboy, but mega farms, mega corporations, factories that hired illegals, en mass because they KNEW they could underpay them, mistreat them and the workers could not expose them without losing everything.

Often, payday was met with 'surprise immigration raids'. Workers, not paid, loaded onto buses and taken back across the border. The next shift, a new batch of illegal workers, and the cycle began again.

These were not complex jobs and they did not take more than a few minutes to train the new employees. They were hard, dirty labor, and safety standards were not in place to protect their health or safety. They worked in  substandard conditions, and paid most often, less than minimum wage.

Company profits swelled. Corporations on up the line also benefited from the ginormous loopholes lobbied into the immigration laws, which allowed corporations such as Microsoft to both hire high-skilled, highly educated people from third world countries as trainees, paying them a fraction of the worth of their work, replacing the higher paid local, US Citizens, and increasing their profits.

During this time of greed and grab; accumulated wealth, regardless of who was mistreated to get it, was all that was important. Success measured only by what you had, not by what laws of man or God you violated to get it.

It also set the stage for the "Citizens v the Aliens" as the middle class and the poor battle each other. Racism is fed into the mix to keep it lively. This serves the upper echelons as it keeps them removed from the fray and out of the light of examination of their construction.

Keeping the people fighting among themselves is key to keeping power at the top. When the people become educated, enlightened, they unite, and those who have held the power, lose the power. Nations move forward or implode, depending on whether they unite or fracture under the circumstances.

Keeping people divided from one another on issues of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, income, ability, disability, sexuality and any other extreme notion is key to allowing the power elite to continue without direct challenge.

Rules for Economy? Bad. Rules to Oppress Women? Good.

The same people that wanted "Big Government Out of Our Lives", also set in motion laws and rules that came between a doctor and a patient if that patient was a woman and was seeking either contraception or abortion. Big government in marketplace, bad. Big government in the doctor's office, necessary.

By keeping the population divided on issues that are personal only to a woman and relevant only to her doctor, the bigger issues of the health and security of our nation and our economy, have glided silently under the radar.

Divide & Conquer

Get people mad, about anything, and they don't think. They don't process and they are incapable of stopping anyone from crippling the nation. Keep them fighting amongst themselves and they will be too busy, too distracted and too warn out, too divided to even perceive what greater damage is being done to our entire nation.

Divide and conquer. It has never failed. We have divided and conquered ourselves, since the beginning.

Meanwhile, Back At the Ranch

During this time, and during every administration until now, bigger and bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest among these robber barons, were installed. Warren Buffet commented that his secretary, who made less than $100K a year, paid more in taxes than he does. Think about that. The wealthiest pay less in taxes than the middle class and the working poor.

Present Day: with the economy crashing just prior to the election, and still on a downward spiral, the extremely wealthy, like those who pay the Fat Man $25Million to spout off lies, ignorance in the most inflammatory rhetoric, are squealing like pigs because they don't want to pay more taxes!

Seriously. This country, which for decades, centuries in some cases, has allowed them to not only succeed, but to grab from the poor and take away from the disabled; are squealing that asking them to pay their fare share of taxes to the nation that has given them everything, is somehow, "Punishing them for their success."

Paying taxes is how we support our nation. Serving in the armed forces is how we show our love, loyalty and patriotism to our nation. We show our patriotism and our pride by supporting our nation, and we show our humanity by supporting those who cannot take care of themselves.

Merely grabbing all we can and hoarding the wealth we have stolen, is not considered "Love of Nation" and those who spout it cannot be considered "Patriotic" It is contrary to both principles.

The very wealthy have looked at 'those others', as inferior, not entitled and worse, as 'disposable', to our nation's well-being. If you cannot take their money, experiment on them, what good are they?

The health of our nation depends on us acting like a nation. When those who have and who control the greatest amount of our wealth are unwilling to share the load, we must reveal them for what they are: unpatriotic, gluttonous, ungrateful economic mutants. They give Capitalism a bad name.

They have what they have because it was taken away from others and handed to them. Not because it was earned, but because it was stolen. Stolen in a euphemistically called "Transfer of Wealth."

The wealthy who earned their success are, oddly enough, willing and able to do their share. They are supporting the realignment and returning to balance of the President's plan.

They know that if they don't defend this nation that gave them so much, there will be nothing for anyone to defend around the corner, as we will have weakened ourselves from the inside, with rot at the top, trickling down through the core, insanity.

They have earned what is theirs and they can earn more. They see no future in killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. They are being attacked from both their peers and from above.

The super wealthy, who remain staunch in their lust for power and their greed to dispossess the middle class, rail against the changes to come. They have their hands firmly around the neck of the goose, and they are throttling it with all their might.

Now, at a time of our greatest need, they are asked to give a little back, and they send in The Fat Man.

Growing Up In a Hurry

We have a president who thinks we can be treated as adults. He opened up the budget to show us what is costing what and showing us what has been concealed from us in the previous administration.

Adding in the real numbers, such as the cost of the war, which was NEVER budgeted for in the previous 8 years, substantially increases the size of the numbers. So does including the cost of the hurricane recovery, and several other items that were never budgeted for in the open. Rather, they were always "Emergency Funding Requests" and thus, not on the books. That gave a false sense of what the economic state of our nation really was. Big numbers coming out now are the ones that were concealed before.

Those numbers were always that big. They were just behind the curtain and we were not allowed to know or to see, until now. We were kept in the dark, the truth hidden. Big numbers scare small minds. What does lying do? Creates a false sense of security and of wealth or debt.

Now, in the stark light of day, we are stunned. The Fat Man seeks to create fear and confusion in this time, and move the stunned into mindless chanting minions he calls 'his'.

Blatantly, he calls for the President to fail. As if the President failing would not take the country into failure. And they cheer? What are they thinking?

What remains hidden and not yet discussed, is the wake of destruction of personal lives and families destroyed by Trickle Down Reaganomics; the mentally-ill being warehoused in jails and prisons at costs to the States, hidden from view. Their needs not being met, merely being warehoused, like cattle. The true cost of the war, the lives broken, has yet to be revealed.

More Of Past Practices Coming To Light

The costs of housing, schools, health that are hidden costs of waving immigrants in with one hand while pushing them out with the other.

Immigrants; those unknown numbers estimated to be anywhere for 12-30 million, who want to be citizens, contributing in the open, and they could if the Immigration Department was not slashed to bare bones and less; keeping them in the legal limbo, for decades.

Chaos and underfunding in the Dept. of Immigration serves to disempower them and create a workforce of desperation with no voice.

Whom do you think prospers from this? Try looking behind the curtain and see, clearly, who has, over all this time, become wealthy at their expense and at the expense of every legal citizen in our nation. Those same wealthy corporate entities love to pit "Us v Them". They laugh all the way to the bank.

Had the Federal Government NOT slashed the budgets of both Immigration and enforcement, we would not have the 20-years deep backlog of immigration paperwork waiting to be processed, and a steady stream of those who know it won't be processed, stealing home in desperation.

A visibly working system of Immigration works for everyone. Those who become citizens have to be paid decent wages, and are not allowed to be mistreated.

It is not the immigrants that are fighting immigration overhaul, rather it is those who prosper from the dysfunction of it and who have a voice in government through their lobbyists. They are the ones who create the immigration horrors that we have today. Loopholes are not 'accidental'. They are written in.

The only ones that prosper and thrive from our economic imbalance and xenophobic fears are the very, extremely wealthy, who do not want to be accountable for their actions, nor even named or known. Keeping racism alive protects the wealthiest, and the most powerful.

Those who engage in the combat do not serve themselves. Rather, they perpetuate the circumstances of their frustrations and anger.

False Patriots

If the Fat Man was in any way a Patriot, as he claims, he would champion the very wealthy coming out of their protected caves, and paying their share, for once.

When our country is attacked, it is mostly the poor who send in their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, to do battle, and keep us safe. They come home broken in mind, body and spirit, and they are thrown away, tortured in substandard facilities and inadequate treatment. Those who survive to live on the streets are denied any respect from the leaders of the country they gave all to protect. Praised in parades, ignored in needs.

Our economy is tumbling. Isn't this where the rich are supposed to step in and do their part? The reluctant wealthy, are still being dragged, kicking and screaming, to pay a fraction of their hoarded wealth to help. The very few who have stepped up, are shunned by their former peers.

Have we become a nation that worships the corrupt wealth over all else? Is it really 'punishing success' to ask that they give back a small fraction of what others have been paying for all this time?

Why has the the Republican Party devolved into the frantic, screaming, lying, gesticulating circus of mental mutants, led by a drug addict who has not gotten his facts straight for 20 years?

What party will now rise up in its place to become the healthy opposition that is supposed to keep our nation in balance?

Revelations

We are at a time of "revealation". The true cost of the war, revealed. The true colors of the greedy powerful elite, revealed. The true result of insanity and Reaganomics, revealed in crippling detail.

The cost of denial brought us to this decline. The ongoing denial and obstructionism will seal our fate. We, as a Nation, must stand up for ourselves now.

We must hold fast and not let go as the changes in how we do business and how we treat our people, emerges. We must protect this time of transition to our better nation self and not allow the yelping of the wealthy elite to intimidate us and stomp us into silence once again.

The Republicans who seek to take advantage of these times to cripple us even more, so that they can once again take power, and continue taking us down the darker road, begun so long ago, led by their hero: Ronald Reagan.

They don't care about the nation, nor the economy. They want only power.

The same power they abused leading to the same scary place we are now trying to dig our way out of. The contribution Republicans made to the stimulus pack was "MORE TAX BREAKS FOR THE WEALTHY." Why? Because those that owns them tells them to. We can all see how well that worked in the 30 year experiment that brought us to where we are today.

It should be obvious, but to those in denial, it is not. We may not be able to save the Republican Party, but we definitely have to work together, to save ourselves.

When the Twin Towers pancaked to the ground; men and women signed up in droves to protect and defend our country.

When the economy collapses, the wealthy, led by the Fat Man, greedily grab at every fragment, and take what was intended to be shared in the first, second & third bailouts, all for themselves, while growling at anyone who would dare to suggest they show some restraint in personal greed and actually use the money as it was intended.

They snarl and bare their teeth when anyone dares to suggest they not hoard for themselves at this one critical time.

Whom do you think the Fat Man is speaking for? The Patriots who sacrifice in a time of need? Or the Wealthy who seize all within their grasp, while families are thrown into the streets?

Our President thinks we can do it. The Fat Man wants him, therefor us, to fail. So, pick a side, or let it be decided for you. Are we together? Or are we going to remain selfishly divided and easily conquered?

We don't have a "Big Government" problem. Rather, we have a small powerful elite group that controls our government, regardless of whom we elect.

That is the problem. It is our job to become aware of whom these laws and policies affect and how, in order to protect ourselves, our Rights and our future. We can do this by making sure our representatives are working for us, and not creating disunity that only serves the powerfully wealthy.

We need to work together, now, more than ever before. It's not over. We don't have time nor resources to continue fighting against our own best interests.