March 30, 2008

’Things fall apart/The centre cannot hold…’ this is W.B. Yeats’ comments in his poem, ‘The Second Coming,’ and it is completely applicable to the present situation in American today.

By their ineptness and gross incompetence, the far-right Republicans have managed to thoroughly ruin the American economy and while they did not cause the current growing banking collapse, they did nothing whatsoever to prevent it, even though the bubble was well-known and understood in official governmental circles. Bush himself would do nothing to prevent any regulation of either the merchant banks or their involvement in the thoroughly crooked subprime mortgage frauds.

Now that a collapse is upon us, Bush merely shuffles titles and numbers and gets Paulson to make vague promises to an increasingly frightened general public. At this point in the growing credit and banking collapse, Bush can do nothing and to add injury to insult, his foreign policy and military adventures are also caving in. In short, there is a catastrophic collapse of the banking world, the military and diplomatic world and the Republican party.

In Illinois recently, there was a special election to replace Dennis Hastert , a Republican congressman and Bush stalwart, who was retiring. Hastert came from a very strongly conservative Republican district, the same sort of area known in England as a pocket borough. It was considered a ‘cinch domino’ with the leadership. Amazingly, their candidate, a millionaire dairy owner who had ample name recognition and was an inoffensive individual, lost to a relatively unknown Democrat, 70-30%!

This should be a bellwether for the Republicans for if their “safe” support areas can erode so dramatically, they had best give some thought to all retiring and moving to Patagonia to live near Bush when he leaves the office he has so terribly disgraced.

March 27, 2008

Any number of interesting subjects today. First, we have incoming gen that the top Clinton people have been holding “substantive talks” with the McCain people, trying to stop Obama’s lead. Much speculation on how they plan to do this, in stupid defiance of Obama’s unquestioned popular support. If they pull off a typical back door coup, they could risk a serious public explosion from millions of people who are sick to death of their lies and thieving manipulations.

But even of more interest is the subject of a trip the nutty Cheney made to Saudi Arabia recently. While there, he told the Saudis that there was an “excellent chance” that the U.S. would “launch aerial strikes against Tehran and that nuclear weaponry could not be ruled out.” The Saudis at once sent out warnings to their various diplomatic missions, warnings intercepted by the Army’s special unit. This is the same unit that has broken Israeli diplomatic codes and reads their incoming and outgoing mail.

The Pentagon is furious over this because Cheney or Bush never bothered to mention this putative attack to them. Cheney is a flaming nut and the sooner his pump gives out, the better the world will be. Bush is only a hand puppet for Cheney and the neocons but he is very stupid and very stubborn, hence very dangerous. The Army and the Marines have too much on their plate to get involved in any kind of a military adventure but the Air Force is unscathed. Cheney told an aide yesterday that if we did nuke Tehran , he hoped the large staff at the Russian embassy there “got fried” for daring to oppose American policies.

None of this means that the United States is going to attack Iran but shows the mindsets of the nuts running the country. The Monkey Palace rumor is that McCain was told about this and just loved it.

Aren’t these wonderful people? Hillary is a nasty, spoiling bitch, McCane is a stone nut (pre-Alzheimer’s), Bush a small-minded and vicious asshole and Cheney a monster. And these are our leaders? I think the American people deserve far better than these losers and I am sure the, at least, 4,000 dead soldiers ought to have a better memorial than to be known as Cheney’s executioners.

March 24, 2008

Take a long, realistic, look at your financial situation. If you have huge credit card debts, can’t reup your mortgages any more, and have no additional income, think about your choices. You can stand pat, hoping desperately that ‘things will improve,’ or consider the alternatives.

In the past, most Americans were terrified of getting bad credit so they struggled to pay their bills. Now, with millions of Americans in heavy debt, due to easy credit and their own greed, just walking away from their debt, being it credit card or mortgage, is the best and only solution for you.

If everyone has bad credit, the only way the banks and other institutions can stay in business is to lift their bars to loans because if they do not, they will all go out of business.

If two people refuse to pay their taxes, they are arrested and put in jail or fined. This information is duly given to the media to discourage others. But if ten million people, or more, refuse to pay their taxes (and they can’t thanks to the payroll deduction program) then prosecution becomes impossible.

If millions walk away from their credit card debts, the companies will go after the ones who are still paying and jack up their bills because if they don’t, they will go out of business. Then the “responsible ones” will also pack up and leave and the credit card giants will go belly-up faster than flies land on shit.

The trick is to get out in time before your payment of bills overwhelms what little savings or cash you might have. Don’t wait until you are broke before walking away.

Most people are frightened of having bad credit but if everyone but the very rich have deserted their bills, you are in the catbird seat. All American business has to extend credit to the public or they will die right on the vine so bad credit, or no credit, will become so common that new rules will be invented, rules with high sounding names like ‘probationary credit advances’ and so on, so it can still be business as usual. Just pack up and walk away, folks, walk away and fuck the greedy bastards.

And try not to get into the same bind again. Yes, I know, all your friends, family and neighbors were gorging at the table but one day, the food will run out and you have nothing in the kitchen to eat but dog food and a jar of pile ointment to spread on moldy bread.

Pretty soon, they will throw you out of your house and you will live in the park and finally eat the dog and maybe one of the smaller children. Like the rising ocean levels (six inches in the last year) debt will bury you. If the ocean is lapping at your front door, you will have to move somewhere but why wait until all the high ground in the neighborhood is taken by others? Be the first to save yourself.

Hey, throw the women and children out of the lifeboats and let the strong men get in. Chivalry has been dead for a long time and survival has no etiquette.

Walk away, friends, before you have to run away. While you can still walk, that is.

March 20, 2008

There is a prevailing perception in America , even in conservative circles, that Jewish interests are American interests, and that unwavering support for Israel is a requirement for all Americans to avoid being labeled as the worst of racists.

Americans underestimate the power of Jewish interests in publishing and entertainment as well as the influence of political advisers throughout the political spectrum. Remember the power of Benjamin Disraeli in the UK . Because they have a unified ethnic and religious doctrine, other points of view simply cannot challenge their presumed moral superiority, even when their documents are patently false and hyperbolic.

In the American print and television media, the daily attention to Israel and its "courageous" battle against Palestinians in American media does not reflect the true importance of that region in world news. We under-report African issues (anybody keeping up with Mugabe for example), Sri Lanka , Indonesia , the Chinese build-up, on and on. Because of the NYT bully pulpit as much as 20% of the world news in American media is devoted daily to Israel , when it is a tiny nation of no significance to the United States economically.

The reality is that Americans cannot discern the difference between secular Zionists and Jewish people in general. Thus, any sustained revelations will be vulnerable to accusations of anti-semitism, a difficult charge to rebut. When we read about the at least 3,000 year history of anti-semitism, it is difficult to discern group identities, but all cultures have responded with hostility toward the Jew, even though Jewish contributions to culture can be demonstrated. The tendency of Jewish elites to seek control of social mechanisms (government, publishing, entertainment, commerce) is reflected in the famous quote of Michael Douglas in the movie "Wall Street," when he said, "I produce nothing-I own."

So the question is whether any sustained publication of material that might be termed anti-semitic will progress against fierce attacks and, even though large numbers of readers might follow the blog enthusiastically, it would be undermined by assaults from many directions. In this case, truth is no defense, since the law and the mass media dares not challenge the dominance of power elite, many of whom are indeed of "dual citizenship." There are some who understand the history of how this came to be, but the average American does not understand the diaspora with its mix of blessings and curses, nor do they recall how and why the nation of Israel came to be or why the United States is bound to defend and support that nation unreservedly.

March 16, 2008

’Things fall apart/ the center cannot hold…' this is from Yeats’ poem, the Second Coming but it can certainly apply now. The enormous fake mortgage racket is bringing down some of the most important banks, lending houses and corporations in America . The crooked brokers have long since banked their loot out of the country and fled jurisdictions, leaving their knowing crime partners, the big banking houses, behind to take the growing heat. What is coming? The collapse of the national credit system, to include credit cards. Many Americans have been living on their credit cards, running up huge bills that they would deal with when they reupped their mortgages. That stopped and now their houses are maxed out and if they were able to find a buyer who could even get a loan, the house is now worth less than the mortgage so if they sold, they would still owe the banks. That’s why people are walking away from their over-extended homes, their bloated mortgages and their credit cards. Now, we have building scandals in the government areas. Some nice party has a trove of incriminating documents, spirited out of the CIA by an old-time agent and about to be put up on the Internet. I have read some of this material and it makes the hair stand up on the back of the neck. The net result of all this destroys the confidence of the public to such a degree that it will take many years to rebuild the lost trust.

March 14, 2008

Interesting piece of news of the duplicity of everyone inside the Beltway. The McCain people are terrified lest Crazy John’s religious nut preachers’ jabberings make serious trouble for him. In a typical alliance, the Clinton people have given the McCain people some tapes of a very emotional Chicago black minister, attacking the white establishment for years of harassment of the black community. The McCain people, in turn, using Karl Rove’s hate networks, are planning a Swift Boat type of attack on Obama to deflect public attention from McCain’s vicious friends in the religious right. This is really interesting, if repulsive, because the black- stocking Republicans hate blacks, Asians, Jews, Communists, homosexuals, and liberals, equally. You ought to listen to some of their jovial chats sometime. It sounds like something heard in Nazi party circles in pre-war Germany . While wishing to appear supporters of blacks, the Clintons, both of them, are livid with rage that a black man is kicking Hillary’s huge ass. She thought she would be a walk-in for the Democratic nomination but now that she sees her long sought-after prize slipping from her grip, she and her people have become so frantic that they have no problem dealing with McCain, or even the vile Bush toadies.. Ergo, the Hillary people turned over inflammatory tapes by a black minister, Obama’s pastor, to the enemy in order to destroy her enemy. This is the old Mafia slogan that says the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Hillary is known to be a sell-out to the business establishment while Obama is less certain in his allegiances so the corporate structure will support her and McCain jointly and do everything they can to trash him. Bismarck once said that many enemies meant much honor and that is certainly true now. As Hillary perceives that she might not become President, she morphs from patronizing the nice black people to screaming silent curses at the uppity nigger that is more successful in public than she is. The real loser in all of this filth- flinging is the American public and it goes almost without saying that we deserve better than both Republican and Democratic chronic and escalating vileness. Why not address the issues? Why? The Clinton people are in bed with the people who are the power elite and Obama is not.

March 8, 2008

I knew, and wrote, some time ago that the hedge funds were mostly Ponzi-type frauds. Wealthy people looking for a safe place for their investments, put enormous sums of money into these organizations, enriching their founders beyond belief. One of my contacts is in the FBI’s White Collar Crime section and about a year ago told me, in confidence, that the entire hedge fund complex was nothing but a fraud; that there was almost no money left in any of them. He said those who were running this had been making huge deposits in Israeli banks from whence it could never be recovered and then when the investors discovered that they had been defrauded and they could not get their money back, the perps, like the army of owners of fake mortgage companies, would quickly join their funds. Let me say this, friends, if you or your relatives put money into a hedge fund, just try to get it out. You can’t, of course, because it isn’t there any more. And what can you do about it? Nothing. And many hedge fund operators have wisely donated huge sums of money to Republican and presidential entities, ensuring that investigations would be thwarted long enough to allow the perps to cash out their American-based assets (like billion dollar homes, yachts, summer estates and office buildings) and flee to a warmer climate where they only have to worry about Hezbollah rockets and not the FBI.

March 6, 2008

Has anyone considered that the CIA and its stooges in Colombia KNEW perfectly well that negotiations on the release of the French and American hostages were close to success, and that this raid was INTENDED to destroy those negotiations?

If the hostages die in captivity, the propaganda benefits to the USA and France and to Uribe in Colombia will be immense. The Greek chorus of the media will be instructed to play up their lives and show pictures of bereaved wives and orphaned children of the hostages.

The corrupt US government of the corporatocracy cares less than a flea turd for the lives of the hostages. They WANT them to remain hostages and die in captivity. Then more arms can be sent to their proxy stooge Colombia , which will send assassins to kill Chavez and Correa, so that the US oil companies can move in again and seize the oil from the Venezuelan and Ecuadorean people, while the American public cheers mightily. How much do the lives of a few hostages count against tens of billions of dollars?

Keeping gasoline cheap for Republican voters in their SUV's. That, dear friends, was the whole purpose of this raid.

Chavez, who hates the United States, partially because the clumsy CIA tried three times to overthrow him, has been fishing in troubled waters but also note that the CIA has been very active in Columbia where they engineered a takeover by a right wing leader and have used the country as a base for their instigated ‘guerrilla raids’ into Venezuela.

While it is true that Israel instigated our involvement in Iraq and has been strongly pushing Bush to bomb Tehran flat, the potential serious mess in South America is solely the responsibility of the CIA and Bush himself.

March 2, 2008

The British may have their Gitta Sereny but we have our beloved Matthew Nathan Drudge, coy and retiring creator of the ‘Sludge Report.’ Drudge, a chubby nerd, is a male Hedda Hopper and his Report is a mass of coy remarks and bombast. He loves to tell all of us that 20,000,000 people a day look at his column. I have news for you Matty, they don’t. According to our Presidential observers in the basement here, you are lucky to get 20,000 a day. The larger figure is a dream. You would have to have a monstrous server for the number you crow about and our people are accurate. After all, the Republicans want to see whom to court and whom to ignore. Besides, there aren’t 20,000,000 trailer park residents in the United States. Now Matthew has outed poor Prince Harry. This young gentleman is a soldier and really wants to go with his men into battle. Kept out of Iraq by the officials, he kept pestering his Grandmother the Queen until he was sent to Afghanistan instead. The really vile and rapacious British media agreed to keep quiet about this our of respect for him but our own Chubby Matt had to coyly print this. In old Salem, we used ducking stools for the likes of Drudge but they banned these along with burning witches some time ago. Couldn’t we bring back at least one of them? If we brought both of them back, it would be bye-bye Hillary.