Salesmanship

 

The Republicans might learn something from this.

 

 

Salesmanship - Little Johnny does it again!
  
The kids filed back into class Monday morning. They were very excited.  Their weekend assignment was to sell something, then give a talk  on productive salesmanship.

 Little Sally led off: "I sold girl scout cookies and I made $30," she said proudly, "My sales  approach was to appeal to the customer's civil spirit and I credit that approach for my obvious success." "Very good," said the teacher.
 
 Little Mary was next: "I sold magazines," she said, "I made $45 and I explained to everyone that magazines would keep them up on current events." "Very good, Mary," said the teacher.
 
 Eventually, it was Little Johnny's turn. The teacher held her breath ... Little Johnny walked to the front of the classroom and dumped a box full of cash on the teacher's desk. "$2,467," he said. "$2,467!" cried the teacher, "What in the world were you selling?" "Mouthwash," said Little Johnny. "Mouthwash!" echoed the teacher, "How could  you possibly sell enough Mouthwash to make that much money?" "I  found the busiest corner in town," said Little Johnny. "I set up a Dip & Chip stand and gave everybody who walked by a free  sample." They all said the same thing, "Hey, this tastes like dog shit!" Then I would say, "It is dog shit. Wanna' buy some mouthwash?" "I used the Obama approach of giving them something Shitty for free, and then making them pay to get the taste out of  their mouths."          

 

 

 

 

 

--

 

__._,_.__

 

.

__,_._,___

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

[grendelreport] The Tenacity of the Nihilists

------

 

http://tinyurl.com/83rz387

 

The Tenacity of the Nihilists

Monday, 26 March 2012 05:54 Tibor Machan

In the book Reading Obama (Princeton, 2010), James T. Kloppenberg makes a case for how the kind of approach President Obama takes to public policy is now widely preferred, to put it paradoxically, on principle at the most prestigious universities. Obama's rejection of general principles, the kind of we find stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, is in sync with what has come to be mainstream philosophy in America.

Mind you, this is no novel insight about American intellectual life. Pragmatism is, after all, America's homegrown school of philosophy, one that on principle rejects the value of principled thinking! Now, pragmatism has several versions but the one that has become fashionable is what such people as Paul Krugman ridicule by calling principled thinkers "fundamentalists" as if they were dogmatic, mindless, and doctrinaire.

Principled thinkers, such as the American founders, are nothing like this. The principles they found valid for governing a free society were learned from extensive studies of history, by philosophical education and reflection and by reading a lot of others who embarked on inquiries about human affairs.

In a way those alleged fundamentalists whom at least the more vulgar type of pragmatists try to marginalize are like medical scientists. They learn about the criteria of good health and physical condition from their study of human life, a study that comes up with certain reasonably stable notions about what can be done to achieve and maintain good health. These notions are not Platonic forms, fixed in heaven forever and incapable of being modified and updated. But they aren't the infinitely flexible ones that are preferred by those who scoff at principled thinking. Engineers, farmers, gardeners, pharmacists and others who take the findings of the various sciences and translate and apply them to problem solving aren't doctrinaire or dogmatic for being guided by generalizations, principles that come out of those sciences and the experimentation that is part and parcel of them.

Indeed, all disciplines are comprised of more or less fundamental notions that come out of the studies being done in them and the practical implementation of the results of those studies. It is like a pyramid, with some very basic propositions that, to use a phrase the Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein made prominent, "stand fast for us," as well as ones that are less and less well established and more subject to revisions.

Instead of denying that there are fundamentals in fields like political economy and political science, embracing a vast Heraclitian flux that leaves everything indeterminate, ambiguous and open to infinite interpretation, depending upon the personal preferences of those concerned with a discipline, a better, contextual approach is warranted. Even pragmatists tip their hats to this when they, for example, refuse to be flexible about the viciousness of rape or murder. They know that some things do stand fast for us, including the value of human life, maybe even of human liberty!

However, those spending reams of paper apologizing for Barack Obama's wobbly political economic decisions and policies act as if this abyss of pragmatically invented ideas could really guide public policy reasonably, productively. (Check out Sam Tanenhaus's "Will the Tea Get Cold?" in the March 8, 2012 issue of The New York Review of Booksas a good example!) They ought to check with those who study and practice such fields as medicine, engineering, farming, or auto mechanics and see if anything could be dealt with successfully without general principles, with well founded theories in them. They would find that none of these vital areas of concern can bear fruit without principled thought. And thus they could also realize that neither can the discipline of political economy.

To put the matter bluntly, so called market fundamentalists − as Krugman likes to call people who hold that the best economic arrangements in societies should rely on the free choices of economic agents − are on solid footing; it is sheer laziness not to seek out firm economic principles and theories and proceed by mere intuition, by, literally, nothing at all. Such nihilism hasn't advanced any of the fields of study, research and reflection that human beings have relied upon to steer them toward a more and more successful way of living, including of organizing their communities.

And let us not kid ourselves: One reason the nihilist's stance is attractive is that it supports the policy of arbitrary governing, governing that need not give any account of itself, governing that is, ultimately, autocratic and a matter of pure will. Yes, there are some authentic pragmatists and even nihilists but mostly these positions give aid and comfort to corrupt leaders and their cheerleaders in the academy.

SOURCE: The Daily Bell

Tibor Machan, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Auburn University and holds the R. C. Hoiles Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics at Chapman University. Dr. Machan is also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Machan has earned B.A. (Claremont McKenna College), M.A. (New York University) and Ph.D. (University of California at Santa Barbara) degrees in philosophy. Read more...

© Copyright 2008 - 2012 All Rights Reserved. The Daily Bell is an informative compendium of independent economic views and analysis, which is published by The Foundation for the Advancement of Free-Market Thinking (FAFMT).

 

__._,_.___
Reply to sender | Reply to group | Start a New Topic
Recent Activity:

New Members 1

Visit Your Group
<http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/yg/logo/us.gif>
Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use
.
<http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97359714/grpId=20194806/grpspId=1705323667/msgId=0/stime=1332770610/nc1=5028928/nc2=5741392/nc3=3848614>
__,_._,___

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

The Main Idea of the Founding Fathers . . .

The Main Idea of the Founding Fathers . . .
Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo on March 26, 2012 12:58 PM

. . . was that after a long an bloody revolution fought in the name of freedom and against tyranny, they would place everyone' s freedom, and life itself, in the hands of five government lawyers with lifetime tenure.  Or in some cases just one government lawyer with lifetime tenure if the nine-person Supreme Court happens to have a 4-4 ideological split on most issues.

That's what I've learned from the nonstop gabfest in the media over the past week about the impending decision by the black-robed deities of the Supreme Court on whether or not the Obammunists' Soviet-style healthcare nationalization scheme is "constitutional."

Joke of the day !

 

A bakery owner hires a young female shop assistant, who likes to wear very short skirts and thong panties.

One day a young man enters the store, glances at the shop assistant and the loaves of bread on the top shelf behind the counter. Noticing her short skirt and the location of the raisin bread, he has a brilliant idea. "I'd like some raisin bread please," the man says.

The shop assistant nods and climbs up a ladder.

To reach the raisin bread located on the very top shelf. The man standing almost directly beneath her is provided with an excellent view, just as he thought. When she descends, he decides he'd better get two loaves, as he's having company.

As the shop assistant retrieves the second loaf of bread, one of the other male customers notice what's going on and requests his own loaf of raisin bread too.

After many trips she is tired and irritated & begins to wonder, "why the unusual interest in the raisin bread?" Atop the ladder one more time, she looks down and glares at the men standing below.

Then, she notices an elderly man standing amongst the crowd. Thinking that she can save herself a trip, she yells at the elderly man, "Is it raisin for you, too?"

"No," stammers the old man, "but it's twitching a little."

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

Veterans About To Get Shafted By The Illegitimate President

New post on ACGR's "News with Attitude" Veterans About To Get Shafted By The Illegitimate President by Harold Devvy Kidd 3/26/2012 The man who isn't our legitimate president once again is targeting those who served in uniform either at home or for the lucrative and insane non-declared wars over the past 50 years. For the sake of full disclosure, my husband is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who served honorably for 27 years. [...] Read more of this post Harold | March 26, 2012 at 7:27 am | Categories: Corruption, Criminal Activity, Debt, Executive, Financial, Health Care, Health Insurance, Military, NeoConservatives, Pentagon, Progressives, Propaganda, Retirement, Sovereignty, States Rights, Taxation, U.S. Constitution, Veterans | URL: http://wp.me/pmtmV-7HF Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://a4cgr.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/03-923/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

funny

http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2012/03/26/12/29/S1TKy.SlMa.91.jpg

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum

* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

So, when DOJ claims the mandate penalty is a tax tomorrow...

Will you blind supporters call Obambi a LIAR, or a flip flopper?

 

Actually, my money is on, "legal semantics".

 

So you deny its a tax?

 

Absolutely deny

 

POTUS to George Stephanopolous, THRICE!

 

We might be seeing reruns of that interview, a LOT!

 

My dear (I think she is top notch), Cokie Roberts, said yesterday that RomneyCare has been a resounding success.

 

I don't know how you got your name my dear, but NO, It isn't.  Its a fucking DISASTER. 

 

Lets see, how can we make an ongoing disaster worse?

 

Ah ha!  Make it Fed.  Thats the goddamned ticket!

 

Never, as in EVER, fails.

 

 

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

Rick Santorum Projects Tired Old Karl Rove-Dick Cheney GOP Fear Mongering

Rick Santorum Projects Tired Old Karl Rove-Dick Cheney GOP Fear Mongering

WATCH: Santorum's Doomsday Video
By Michelle Garcia

Rick Santorum's campaign has released a new video which describes an
America after the re-election of Barack Obama.

John Bradbender, the Santorum campaign strategist who produced the
video, told the New York Timesthat "Obamaville" is a teaser for an
eight-part series of short clips, depicting Santorum's view on how
America could be destroyed if Obama remains president. The trailer
depicts the end of religious freedom, suicide-inducing gas prices, and
warns that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will wreak havoc on
the country.

"If this scares a few people and even if they say it's over the top,
maybe they want to learn more," Bradbender said. "It would be a
mistake on our part if we weren't sounding an alarm in a sensational
way."

Watch the video below:

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/03/25/WATCH_Santorums_Doomsday_Video/

--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy

--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum

* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil

"He has been more effective in Evil-Doing than Bush in terms of protecting the citadels of corporate power, and advancing the imperial agenda. He has put both Wall Street and U.S. imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks -- just as he hired himself out to do."

Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil
March 25, 2012

Dear Readers: This is the best speech I have come across in many years. PCR

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Barack-Obama-is-the-Mo-by-Glen-Ford-120324-930.html

No matter how much evil Barack Obama actually accomplishes during his presidency, people that call themselves leftists insist on dubbing him the Lesser Evil. Not only is Obama not given proper credit for out-evil-ing George Bush, domestically and internationally, but the First Black President is awarded positive grades for his intentions versus the presumed intentions of Republicans. As the author says, this "is psycho-babble, not analysis. No real Left would engage in it."


Glen Ford at the Left Forum

BAR executive editor Glen Ford made the following presentation at the Left Forum, Pace University, New York City, March 17. On the panel were Gloria Mattera, Margaret Kimberley (BAR), Suren Moodliar, John Nichols, and Victor Wallis. The discussion was titled, The 2012 Elections: Lesser Evil or Left Alternative?

"He has put both Wall Street and U.S. imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks -- just as he hired himself out to do."


Power to the people!

Let me say from the very beginning that we at Black Agenda Report do not think that Barack Obama is the Lesser Evil. He is the more Effective Evil.

He has been more effective in Evil-Doing than Bush in terms of protecting the citadels of corporate power, and advancing the imperial agenda. He has put both Wall Street and U.S. imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks -- just as he hired himself out to do.

That was always Wall Street's expectation of Obama, and his promise to them. That's why they gave him far more money in 2008 than they gave John McCain. They were buying Obama futures on the electoral political market -- and they made out like bandits.

They invested in Obama to protect them from harm, as a hedge against the risk of systemic disaster caused by their own predations. And, it was a good bet, a good deal. It paid out in the tens of trillions of dollars.

If you believe that what Wall Street does is Evil, then Obama's service to Wall Street is Evil, and there is nothing lesser about it.

They had vetted Obama, thoroughly, before he even set foot in the U.S. Senate in 2004.

He protected their interests, there, helping shield corporations from class action suits, and voting against caps on credit card interest. He was their guy back then -- and some of us were saying so, back then.

He was the bankers' guy in the Democratic presidential primary race. Among the last three standing in 2008, it was Obama who opposed any moratorium on home foreclosures. John Edwards supported a mandatory moratorium and Hillary Clinton said she wanted a voluntary halt to foreclosures. But Barack Obama opposed any moratorium. Let it run its course, said candidate Obama. And, true to his word, he has let the foreclosures run their catastrophic course.

Only a few months later, when the crunch came and Finance Capital was in meltdown, who rescued Wall Street? Not George Bush. Bush tried, but he was spent, discredited, ineffective. Not John McCain. He was in a coma, coming unglued, totally ineffective.

Bush's bailout failed on a Monday. By Friday, Obama had convinced enough Democrats in opposition to roll over -- and the bailout passed, setting the stage for a new dispensation between the American State and Wall Street, in which a permanent pipeline of tens of trillions of dollars would flow directly into Wall Street accounts, via the Federal Reserve.

And Obama had not even been elected yet.

"True to his word, he has let the foreclosures run their catastrophic course."

Obama put Social Security and Medicaid and all Entitlements on the table , in mid-January. The Republicans had suffered resounding defeat. Nobody was pressuring Obama from the Right.

When the Right was on its ass, Obama stood up and spoke in their stead. There was no Evil Devil forcing him to put Entitlements on the chopping block. It was HIM. He was the Evil One -- and it was not a Lesser Evil. It was a very Effective Evil, because the current Age of Austerity began on that day, in January, 2009.

And Obama had not even been sworn in as president, yet.

Who is the Effective Evil? I haven't even gotten into his actual term as president, much less his expansion of the theaters of war, his unique assaults on International Law, and his massacre of Due Process of Law in the United States. But I want to pause right here, because piling up facts on Obama's Most Effective Evils doesn't seem to do any good if the prevailing conversation isn't really about facts ­ but about intentions .

The prevailing assumption on the Left is that Obama has good intentions. He intends to the Right Thing -- or, at least, he intends to do better than the Republicans intend to do. It's all supposed to be about intentions. Let's be clear: There is absolutely no factual basis to believe he intends to do anything other than the same thing he has already done, whether Democrats control Congress or not, which is to serve Wall Street's most fundamental interests.

But, the whole idea of debating Obama's intentions is ridiculous. It's psycho-babble, not analysis. No real Left would engage in it.

I have no doubt that Newt Gingrich and Republicans in general have worse intentions for the future of my people -- of Black people -- than Michelle Obama's husband does. But, that doesn't matter. Black people are not going to roll over for whatever nightmarish Apocalypse the sick mind of Newt Gingrich would like to bring about. But, they have already rolled over for Obama's economic Apocalypse in Black America. There was been very little resistance. Which is just another way of saying that Obama has successfully blunted any retribution by organized African America against the corporate powers that have devastated and destabilized Black America in ways that have little precedence in modern times.

"When the Right was on its ass, Obama stood up and spoke in their stead."

Obama has protected these Wall Streeters from what should be the most righteous wrath of Black folks. To take a riff from Shakespeare's Othello, "Obama has done Wall Street a great service, and they know it." He has proven to be fantastically effective at serving the Supremely Evil. Don't you dare call him the Lesser.

He is the More Effective Evil because Black Folks -- historically, the most progressive cohort in the United States -- and Liberals, and even lots of folks that call themselves Marxists, let him get away murder! Yet, people still insist on calling him a Lesser Evil, while he drives a stake through Due Process of Law.

I have not spoken much about the second half of Obama's first term in office. That is the period when the Left generally becomes disgusted with what they call his excessive "compromises" and "cave-ins" to Republicans. But that is a profoundly wrong reading of reality. Obama was simply continuing down his own Road to Austerity -- the one he, himself, had initiated before even taking office. The only person caving in and compromising to the Republicans, was the Obama that many of YOU made up in your heads.

The real Obama was the initiator of this Austerity nightmare -- a nightmare scripted on Wall Street, which provided the core of Obama's policy team from the very beginning. That's why Obama's so-called Financial Reform was so diligent in making sure that Derivatives were virtually untouched.

The real Obama retained Bush's Secretary of War, because he was determined to re-package the imperial enterprise and expand the scope and theaters of war.
He would dress up the war machine head-to-foot in a Chador of Humanitarianism, and march deep and deeper into Africa.

He would make merciless and totally unprovoked war against Libya -- and then tell Congress there had been no war at all, and it was none of their business, anyway.
And he got away with it.

Now, that is the Most Effective Evil war mongering imaginable. Don't you dare call him a Lesser Evil. Obama is Awesomely Evil.

"The real Obama was the initiator of this Austerity nightmare."

Obama has advanced the corporatization of the public schools beyond Bush's wildest dreams, methodically constructing a national, parallel system of charter schools that, in practice, undermine and subvert the traditional public schools. In some places, they have replaced, or soon will replace, the public schools. The hedge funds and billionaires are ecstatic! The teachers unions then endorse their undertaker, foolishly believing he is the Lesser Evil.

So, what does the Left do in this election? The Left should do what it is supposed to do here in the Belly of the Beast at all times : disarm the Beast. This is their singular duty -- not to advise the Beast, but to disarm it. At this time on the world historical clock, that means ripping the farcical "humanitarian" veil from the face of U.S. wars -- and that face is Obama's face.

No genuine anti-war activist can endorse the war-maker, Obama. If you want to resist actual imperial wars, you must fight Obama. Period. Anything else is to endorse or acquiesce in his wars.

You can attend the United National Anti-War Coalition conference in Stamford, Connecticut, next weekend, where you can meet with an array of organizations to begin a calendar of activities that will stretch past Election Day. You can join with UNAC in working to stop Obama from doing a repeat of Libya in Syria and Iran. If you can't bring yourself to do that, then I have no advice for you, because the alternative is acquiescence to Obama's cynical duplicities.

If the Green Party or any other party firmly opposes Obama's humanitarian, Orwellian farce, then support them. If they don't, then don't lift a finger for them.
If you are going to fight for anything, you've got to fight for the right to fight. That means fighting for the rule of law. So, if you don't plan to go underground or into exile anytime soon, you must fight the president who claims the right to imprison or kill any person, of any nationality, any place on Earth, for reasons known only to him. The man who excelled George Bush by shepherding preventive detention through Congress -- Barack Obama, the More Effective Evil.

Fight him this election year. Fight him every year that he's here.

Power to the People!

Submitters Website: www.BlackAgendaReport.com

Submitters Bio:

Glen Ford is a 37-year veteran of Black radio, television, print and Internet news and commentary. He is executive editor of BlackAgendaReport.com and was co-founder of BlackCommentator.com

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/03/25/why-barack-obama-is-the-more-effective-evil/

Who Was the Real Thomas Jefferson?

Who Was the Real Thomas Jefferson?
by Thomas E. Woods Jr., Posted March 26, 2012

Liberty, State, & Union: The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson by Luigi Marco Bassani
(Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2010); 277 pages.

No one doubts that our understanding of historical figures may need to be revisited from time to time. But academic specialists have been known to overreach. To portray a historical figure in a light exactly opposed to the popular impression and to how all other scholars have viewed him is far more exciting than repeating the boring conventional wisdom. And if you can contrive a case that an admired statesman from history actually supported your own views after all, all the better.

Poor Thomas Jefferson has suffered this kind of treatment at the hands of countless historians, and Marco Bassani, a scholar of the history of political thought, will have none of it. Bassani, an American-born professor teaching at the University of Milan, takes ruthless aim at what has been called the "scholars' Jefferson," who bears scant resemblance to the classical liberal figure of the popular mind. Jefferson is one of those cases in which ­ in terms of his views on property, states' rights, the Union, political majorities, and the Constitution ­ the earlier, conventional view was in fact the correct one. Bassani's wide-ranging knowledge of Jefferson scholarship serves him well in Liberty, State, & Union, as he carefully describes and then refutes the competing schools of thought.

He begins with the controversy over "republicanism" and "liberalism" that erupted among historians of early America in the latter half of the 20th century. The "republican" consensus that developed sought to downplay, and even to dismiss altogether, the role of classical liberalism in the tradition of John Locke from the formative influences of the revolutionary generation. In its place they substituted an ideology called "republicanism."

In colloquial usage, "republican" might be used to describe those who merely support a republican form of government, but that is not what the republican school had in mind. The republicanism those historians postulated was a full-fledged counter-philosophy that was said to describe the thinking of the revolutionary generation more faithfully than the limited-government classical liberalism everyone had thought to be at the center of early American thought. Republicanism, so formulated, placed the locus of true liberty and fulfillment not in the individual, private pursuit of one's ends, but in active participation in the res publica. The strict limitation of government power to the protection of person and property is not the central concern of the "republican" as it is of the classical liberal.

Bassani traces the path by which this interpretation of the revolutionary generation grew to the point that it came to dominate the profession, eclipsing rival versions of the revolutionary outlook and excluding Locke and natural law altogether.

The new consensus, in turn, tried to force the square peg of Thomas Jefferson into the round hole of "republicanism." Jefferson, it turned out, was no classical liberal after all; he, too, was a "republican." J.G.A. Pocock, the founder of the republican school, even tried to portray the Declaration of Independence as a document devoid of Lockean influences. Hannah Arendt, who anticipated many of the themes of the republican school, referred to the ward system that Jefferson spelled out in 1816 (in which most decisions would be made at the level of the ward, a part of a city) as evidence that he considered civic participation to be the highest source of human fulfillment. "The basic assumption of the ward system," she argued, "whether Jefferson knew it or not[!], was that no one could be called happy without his share in public happiness, that no one could be called free without his experience in public freedom, and that no one could be called either happy or free without participating, and having a share in, public power."

Forcing Jefferson of all people into this mold is no easy task, and all such efforts have been ludicrously strained. His political thought is certainly not centered on "republicanism," as understood by those historians. To the contrary, observes Bassani, Jefferson "spent his whole life on the reflection upon the best mechanism to curb and oppose the concentration of political power, both of government against individuals and of the union against the states." Little wonder that in recent years the historiographical pendulum has at last begun to swing the other way.

Private property

Some scholars have even called into question Jefferson's commitment to private property in the tradition of Locke. That effort seems doomed from the start. "Locke's little book on government [which includes a section on the natural right of property] is perfect as far as it goes," Jefferson said. He had in fact been accused of plagiarizing Locke's Second Treatise in the text of the Declaration of Independence: "There are certain principles in which all agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of life, liberty, property, and the safety of the citizen." Jefferson likewise wrote that "a right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings." He added in 1816, "To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, 'the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.'" Toward the end of his life, Jefferson remarked, "As to the general principles of liberty and the rights of man, in nature and in society, the doctrines of Locke, in his 'Essay concerning the true original extent and end of civil government' and of Sidney in his 'Discourses on government,' may be considered as those generally approved by our fellow citizens of [Virginia], and the United States."

Those who would question the view of Jefferson as a Lockean natural-rights theorist on property contend that he viewed property not as a natural right that may never be curtailed, but as a purely conventional right that individuals enjoy at the sufferance of the community. One way of advancing that claim is by making an argument from omission: in the Declaration of Independence, such critics point out, Jefferson substituted "pursuit of happiness" for "property" in the familiar triad of "life, liberty, and property." That is supposed to indicate that Jefferson wished to remove property from the list of rights man enjoys by nature. Bassani takes on that argument convincingly, providing an impressive body of evidence showing that the enjoyment of property was one of the indispensable ingredients of a truly happy human life.

In order to posit any other Jefferson, revisionist scholars would have to produce a comparable body of statements to the contrary, or show why every existing statement in which Jefferson appears to describe property as a natural right must be given the opposite meaning. That, needless to say, they have not done. "The burden of proof," writes Bassani, "lies with those who espouse the bizarre picture of a champion of Lockean natural rights ­ considered by his contemporaries as the most representative of the ideas of an entire generation steeped in natural law tradition ­ denying property as a natural right. And the clinching evidence is lacking."

The compact theory

On the Constitution, Bassani acknowledges that Jefferson did endorse the work of the Philadelphia Convention ­ with reservations ­ but finds that his enthusiasm has been exaggerated. Jefferson spoke favorably of the Articles of Confederation, telling a correspondent that "the Confederation is a wonderfully perfect instrument, considering the circumstances under which it was formed." In November 1787, two months after the Philadelphia Convention had completed its work, Jefferson confided to John Adams that "all the good of this new constitution might have been couched in three or four new articles to be added to the good, old and venerable fabrick, which should have been preserved even as a religious relique."

To assess Jefferson's endorsement of the Constitution we need to bear in mind the very limited consequences that its ratification entailed in his view. In an era in which "Tenther" (i.e., a supporter of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution) has, absurdly enough, become a term of derision, Jefferson's approach to the Union is a splash of cold water:

The true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest & best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, & united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very unexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants....

That, in turn, brings us to Bassani's discussion of states' rights, the topic on which Jefferson's thought seems to elicit the greatest consternation among purveyors of fashionable opinion today. ("States' rights," a phrase Jefferson himself used, is of course a shorthand term; Jefferson understood as well as anyone that states do not have rights in the sense that individuals do.) Jefferson was a principal architect of the compact theory of the Union, which conceives of the United States as a collection of self-governing, sovereign communities (the states). (More precisely, it is the peoples of the states who are sovereign; no government is sovereign in the American system.)

Those communities, according to the compact theory, have not forfeited their sovereignty by delegating a portion of their sovereign powers to a central government that is to act as their agent. The sovereign peoples of the states are exercising their sovereign powers when they apportion tasks among the state governments, the federal government, and themselves. They remain just as sovereign as before.

That it is the peoples of the states (often referred to in shorthand merely as "the states"), rather than an American people in the aggregate, who are sovereign is evident from history. The colonies-turned-states declared their independence from Britain as thirteen "Free and Independent States" that had "full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do." The British acknowledged the independence of those states by naming them individually. Article II of the Articles of Confederation declared, "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence"; the states must have had that sovereignty to begin with in order to retain it in 1781, when the Articles officially took effect. And when the Constitution was to be ratified, it was ratified by each state separately, not in a single national vote. This simple historical overview establishes a very strong prima facie case that the states remained sovereign and were never collapsed into a single whole.

What that meant for Jefferson and many of the thinkers who followed in his footsteps was that in the last resort the states, the constituent parts (and creators) of the Union, had to have the power of nullification, the refusal to allow the enforcement of unconstitutional federal laws within their borders. When a conflict arises as to whether a particular power was delegated to the federal government or reserved to the states, the states must be the ultimate judges; they are the proper disputants in such a case. It would be logically backward for the principals to ask their agent whether that agent was intended to have a particular power.

The states need some kind of defense mechanism by which they can prevent the federal government from destroying the very system they themselves created. (James Madison insists on this point in his famous Report of 1800.) When the delegated powers are abused, recourse may be had to ordinary political remedies. But when the federal government exercises powers not delegated to it, a more direct and immediate response from the states is called for.

According to Bassani, the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, which vindicate the compact theory ­ and which countless historians have tried to run away from ­ contain "the whole of [Jefferson's] theory of the federal union." Jefferson's draft even contained the word "nullification," which was later removed by a skittish legislature; it would later appear in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799. It is exceedingly rare to encounter a historian or a political philosopher who approaches this document or its decentralist ideas with sympathy, so entrenched is nationalism in the popular mind. The usual response is to try to explain away Jefferson's position, downplay its significance, or portray it in an absurd light, often raising objections against it that Jefferson himself answered. Bassani, to the contrary, gives us one of the best short overviews of Jefferson's view of the states and the federal government readers are likely to encounter.

Although a popular audience can learn a great deal from Liberty, State, & Union, readers should understand that Bassani is looking to do much more than merely present the real Jefferson to interested laymen. He is seeking to overturn competing schools of thought on Jefferson that have emerged over the years, and he does so in careful and systematic fashion. In navigating the thickets of recent scholarship and uncovering the real Thomas Jefferson, Bassani is an outstanding guide.

Thomas E. Woods Jr. is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 books, most recently Rollback: Repealing Big Government before the Coming Fiscal Collapse and Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. See his website: www.TomWoods.com.

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1112f.asp

 

http://www.westernjournalism.com/forgerygate-media-threatened-with-federal-investigations-if-obama-birth-certificate-story-reported/

 

Forgerygate: Media Threatened With Federal Investigations If Obama Birth Certificate Story Reported

March 20, 2012 By Doug Book 91 Comments

inShare44

 

Individuals and member organizations of the American media were threatened with FTC and FCC investigation if information gathered by Sheriff Arpaio's Cold Case Posse concerning the forgery of Barack Obama's long form birth certificate were passed on to the American public.

It was Posse lead investigator Mike Zullo who made this stunning revelation, stating "During our investigation, we actually were told [that media] had been threatened with FTC investigations. Commentators [had been] threatened with their jobs."

And Jerome Corsi, author of "Where's the birth certificate," the book whose imminent publication was responsible for forcing Barack Obama to quickly create and place the fraudulent long form birth certificate on the White House web site, has said that "Testimony is being developed that the White House is intimidating, in a systematic way, the mainstream media and if any broadcasters dare go into this birther story, they're going to risk FCC investigations… people are going to have careers ruined… thrown off the air."

Zullo went on to say the threats actually caused some individuals to "…quit their positions over safety concerns for their families."

Those who tuned in to the web-cast of the Cold Case Posse report will recall that the scant few media members in attendance made it their business to represent the President rather than report on the information presented about the fraudulent birth certificate. Each "reporter" in his turn questioned the motives of Sheriff Arpaio and the political leanings of Mike Zullo, clearly far more interested in developing a tale of "right-wing conspiracy" than in the facts reported by Posse investigators.

And as only the internet would make the American people aware of what is arguably the most extraordinary crime committed against the American public in the past century, Zullo and Corsi teamed up to create an e-book which would make known all of the pertinent facts and findings of the investigation–facts which had of course been blacked out by the legacy media.

Naturally, the writing of the e-book has led to accusations of profiteering by Zullo and Corsi. In fact an AP article accuses the pair of using the Arpaio investigation "…as a promotional tool to sell [their] books and theories." And although nowhere in the short article does the author present any of the facts supporting the claims of the Arpaio-led group, the AP hack does offer an Obama spokesman ample opportunity to ridicule the Posse's work by comparing it to "the TV series 'The X-Files."

The entire episode of media and White House corruption has been summed up by on-line newsman Jeff Crouere as he writes, "Such a bombshell should have led the national news coverage throughout the country. Instead, it was completely ignored by a corrupt network of media elites who are decidedly liberal and wholeheartedly support Obama's re-election." "The vast majority of the American people have been denied the truth by a media who want to shield Obama."

And apparently those select few members of the media actually interested in reporting the truth were intimidated out of doing so by minions of the Manchurian Candidate.

 

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean

 

It was hypothesized at the time, the radiation might provide a defensive shield above the U.S. against Soviet nukes, but aside from the light show, it ended up frying many of our satellites. The radiation took 10 years to dissipate, which made study of our natural radiation belts, the Van Allen belts, problematic during that period.
 

Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. It was a weapons test, but one that created a man-made light show that has never been equaled — and hopefully never will:

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5-Rf3E9JP4&feature=player_embedded

--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
 
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.

Special Report: Intel shows Iran nuclear threat not imminent

Special Report: Intel shows Iran nuclear threat not imminent
By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON | Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:00pm EDT

(Reuters) - The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.

Those conclusions, drawn from extensive interviews with current and former U.S. and European officials with access to intelligence on Iran, contrast starkly with the heated debate surrounding a possible Israeli strike on Tehran's nuclear facilities.

"They're keeping the soup warm but they are not cooking it," a U.S. administration official said.

Reuters has learned that in late 2006 or early 2007, U.S. intelligence intercepted telephone and email communications in which Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading figure in Iran's nuclear program, and other scientists complained that the weaponization program had been stopped.

That led to a bombshell conclusion in a controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate: American spy agencies had "high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003.

Current and former U.S. officials say they are confident that Iran has no secret uranium-enrichment site outside the purview of U.N. nuclear inspections.

They also have confidence that any Iranian move toward building a functional nuclear weapon would be detected long before a bomb was made.

These intelligence findings are what underpin President Barack Obama's argument that there is still time to see whether economic sanctions will compel Iran's leaders to halt any program.

The Obama administration, relying on a top-priority intelligence collection program and after countless hours of debate, has concluded that Iranian leaders have not decided whether to actively construct a nuclear weapon, current and former officials said.

There is little argument, however, that Iran's leaders have taken steps that would give them the option of becoming a nuclear-armed power.

Iran has enriched uranium, although not yet of sufficient quantity or purity to fuel a bomb, and has built secret enrichment sites, which were acknowledged only when unmasked.

Iran has, in years past, worked on designing a nuclear warhead, the complicated package of electronics and explosives that would transform highly enriched uranium into a fission bomb.

And it is developing missiles that could in theory launch such a weapon at a target in enemy territory.

There are also blind spots in U.S. and allied agencies' knowledge. A crucial unknown is the intentions of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Another question is exactly how much progress Iran made in designing a warhead before mothballing its program. The allies disagree on how fast Iran is progressing toward bomb-building ability: the U.S. thinks progress is relatively slow; the Europeans and Israelis believe it's faster.

U.S. officials assert that intelligence reporting on Iran's nuclear program is better than it was on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which proved to be non-existent but which President George W. Bush and his aides used to make the case for the 2003 invasion.

That case and others, such as the U.S. failure to predict India's 1998 underground nuclear test, illustrate the perils of divining secrets about others' weapons programs.

"The quality of intelligence varies from case to case," a U.S. administration official said. Intelligence on North Korea and Iraq was more limited, but there was "extraordinarily good intelligence" on Iran, the official said.

Israel, which regards a nuclear Iran as an existential threat, has a different calculation. It studies the same intelligence and timetable, but sees a closing window of opportunity to take unilateral military action and set back Iran's ambitions. Israel worries that Iran will soon have moved enough of its nuclear program underground -- or spread it far enough around the country -- as to make it virtually impervious to a unilateral Israeli attack, creating what Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently referred to as a "zone of immunity."

While Israel would not be able to launch an effective offensive in this analysis, the U.S., with its deeper-penetrating bombs and in-air refueling capability, believes it could still get results from a military strike.

Israel has not publicly defined how or when Iran would enter this phase of a nuclear weapons program. Barak said last month that relying on an ability to detect an order by Khamenei to build a bomb "oversimplifies the issue dramatically."

CONFIDENCE IN INTELLIGENCE

U.S. confidence that Iran stopped its nuclear weaponization program in 2003 traces back to a stream of intelligence obtained in 2006 or early 2007, which dramatically shifted the view of spy agencies.

Sources familiar with the intelligence confirmed the intercept of Fakhrizadeh's communications. The United States had both telephone and email intercepts in which Iranian scientists complained about how the leadership ordered them to shut down the program in 2003, a senior European official said.

U.S. officials said they are very confident that the intercepts were authentic - and not disinformation planted by Iran.

"Iran has been a high-priority intelligence target for years. Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes we really are good," said Thomas Fingar, who was chairman of the National Intelligence Council when it compiled the 2007 intelligence estimate.

While declining to provide specific details, Fingar, now at Stanford University, said: "We got information that we had never been able to obtain before. We knew the provenance of the information, and we knew that we had been able to obtain it from multiple sources. Years of hard work had finally paid off."

The judgment that Iran had stopped work on the weapons program stunned the Bush White House and U.S. allies. Critics accused U.S. spy agencies of over-compensating for their flawed 2002 analysis that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had active nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs.

The 2007 report gummed up efforts by the Bush administration to persuade the U.N. Security Council and others to add pressure on Iran with more sanctions. It was greeted with disbelief by Israel and some European allies.

"It really pulled the rug out of our sanctions effort until we got it back on track in 2008," recalled Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to Bush.

Overlooked by many was that the report said Iran had been pursuing a nuclear weapon and was keeping its options open for developing one, he said. "The problem was that it was misinterpreted as an all-clear when it wasn't that at all," Hadley said.

A November 2011 report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said suspected nuclear weaponization efforts led by Fakhrizadeh were "stopped rather abruptly pursuant to a 'halt order' instruction issued in late 2003 by senior Iranian officials."

The reasons for this are not clear. Western experts say it was probably related to a fear of being next on the hit list after the United States toppled Saddam next door.

Iran emphasizes its nuclear program is for civilian purposes. Ayatollah Khamenei this week said Iran does not have nuclear weapons and will not build them.

DISMEMBERED AND BURIED

Some key U.S. allies were never entirely comfortable with the 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate. The Europeans conceded that a centrally directed weaponization program probably stopped, but believed pieces of the program were being pursued separately.

Many European experts believed the Iranians had dismembered their bomb program and scattered and buried its parts, some of them in military or scientific installations, some in obscure academic institutions.

Under pressure from both European allies and Israel's supporters, U.S. intelligence agencies late in the Bush administration and early in Obama's tenure began to take a second look at the 2007 estimate. Some consideration was given to bringing it more into line with European views. Intelligence received after publication of the 2007 estimate suggested that in 2006, Iran believed the United States was going to have to abandon its troubled venture in Iraq. Wisps of information were gathered that Iranian officials were talking about restarting elements of the bomb program, a U.S. intelligence official said on condition of anonymity. But analysts were divided about the significance of the new information. The revised estimate was delayed for months. Eventually, at the very end of 2010, an updated version was circulated within the government. Unlike the 2007 estimate, the White House made public no extracts of this document. A consensus emerged among U.S. experts that the new intelligence information wasn't as alarming as originally thought, according to officials familiar with the result. The 2010 update largely stuck to the same assessments as the 2007 report, these officials said. U.S. intelligence chiefs issued a vague public acknowledgement of the ambiguities of their latest assessment.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress in February 2011 that "Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so."

TIME FRAME

The United States and Israel are on the same page in judging how long it would take Iran to have a nuclear weapon that could strike a target: about a year to produce a bomb and then another one to two years to put it on a missile.

Both countries believe Iran has not made a decision to build a bomb, so even if Tehran decided to move forward, it would be unlikely to have a working nuclear device this year, let alone a missile to deliver it.

"I think they are years away from having a nuclear weapon," a U.S. administration official said.

Three main pieces are needed for a nuclear arsenal: highly enriched uranium to fuel a bomb, a nuclear warhead to detonate it, and a missile or other platform to deliver it. For Iran's program, the West has the most information about the first.

Iran has a declared nuclear program for medical research and producing energy, is a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and allows U.N. nuclear inspectors into its facilities.

The inspections are conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and its reports provide some of the best snapshots of where Iran's program stands.

Iran conducts uranium enrichment at the Natanz plant in central Iran and at a site at Fordow buried deep in a mountainous region near the holy city of Qom. Both sites were built secretly and made public by others.

Natanz was unveiled in 2002 by an Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq. Obama and other world leaders announced the existence of the Fordow site in 2009.

Natanz houses about 8,800 centrifuge machines spinning to increase the concentration of U-235, the type of uranium that yields fissile material. Fordow is built to contain about 3,000 centrifuge machines, but the most recent IAEA report says about 700 are operational.

Most of Iran's stockpile is 3.5 percent low enriched uranium. When Tehran declared in February 2010 that it would begin enriching uranium up to 20 percent purity, that sharply increased the anxiety of Israel and others.

Nuclear experts say that enriching uranium from the naturally occurring 0.7 percent concentration of U-235 to the low-level 3.5 percent accomplishes about 70 percent of the enrichment work toward weapons-grade uranium. At 20 percent concentration, about nine-tenths of the work has been completed. For Iran, getting to 90 percent would require changing some of the plumbing in the centrifuges, experts said.

"From 20 to 90 is exponentially easier," a U.S. intelligence official said.

An IAEA report last month said that Iran has produced nearly 110 kilograms (240 pounds) of uranium enriched to 20 percent. That is less than the roughly 250 kilograms (550 pounds) that nuclear experts say would be required, when purified further, for one nuclear weapon.

Iran's enrichment program was set back by the Stuxnet computer virus, which many security experts suspect was created by Israeli intelligence, possibly with U.S. assistance. It wormed its way into Iranian centrifuge machinery as early as 2009. The Institute for Science and International Security estimated that Stuxnet damaged about 1,000 centrifuges at Natanz and stalled its enrichment capability from growing for about a year.

But it isn't clear how lasting an impact Stuxnet has had. Reuters reported last month that U.S. and European officials and private experts believe Iranian engineers have neutralized and purged the virus.

EYES IN THE SKY

U.S. officials and experts are confident that Iran would be detected if it jumped to a higher level of enrichment.

The IAEA monitors Iran's enrichment facilities closely, watching with cameras and taking measurements during inspections. Seals would have to be broken if containers that collect the enriched material were moved or tampered with.

U.S. and European intelligence agencies are also keeping tabs through satellites, sensors and other methods. They watched for years as a hole was dug into a mountainside near Qom and determined - it is unclear precisely how - late in the Bush administration that Fordow was likely a secret uranium enrichment site.

Obama was briefed on Qom when he was president-elect and was the one to publicly announce it to the world in September 2009.

"They had a deep understanding of the facility, which allowed them to blow the whistle on Tehran with confidence," a U.S. official said.

Rumors periodically pop up of other secret enrichment sites, but so far they have not been substantiated. "Most of the people who make the argument that they might have a covert facility or a series of covert facilities are doing that to justify bombing them sooner rather than later," said Colin Kahl, a former defense official focused on the Middle East.

"We are very confident that there is no secret site now," a U.S. administration official said. But given Iran's history of secretly building facilities, the official predicted Tehran would eventually construct another covert plant.

THE UNKNOWN

One of the biggest question marks is how far Iran advanced in designing a nuclear device - a task considered to be less complicated than producing highly enriched uranium.

The more primitive the device, the more enriched uranium is required. Making it small enough to fit on the tip of a missile would be another challenge.

The IAEA has information that Iran built a large containment chamber to conduct high-explosives tests at the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran. Conventional weapons are tested at that base, and the U.S. government appears convinced that any nuclear-related tests occurred prior to the 2003 halt.

But Iran denied the IAEA access to the Parchin site in February, raising more suspicion, and the nuclear agency seems less confident that weapons work has halted altogether.

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said recently, "We have information that some activity is ongoing there."

In its November 2011 report, the IAEA said it had "serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program."

It cited Iran's efforts to procure nuclear-related and dual-use equipment, acquisition of nuclear-weapons development information and work on developing a nuclear weapon design in the program that was stopped in late 2003.

"There are also indications that some activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device continued after 2003, and that some may still be ongoing," the IAEA said.

While Iran does not yet have a nuclear warhead that can fit on a missile, it does have the missiles.

Iran has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East, and many of those projectiles could be repurposed to deliver a nuclear device, intelligence director Clapper said in congressional testimony.

Western experts also point to Iran's test firing of a rocket that can launch satellites into space as an example of a growing capability that could potentially be used for nuclear weapons.

"The nuclear threat is growing. They are getting relatively close to the place where they can make the decision to assemble all three parts of their program -- enrichment, missile, weaponization," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said in an interview. Khamenei "hasn't said 'put it together' yet," said Rogers, a Republican. "Have they decided to sprint to making the device that blows up? Probably not. But are they walking to a device that blows up? Yes."

The debate over air strikes, supercharged by Israel's anxiety and U.S. election-year politics, has raised the specter of the Iraq war. The White House justified that conflict on the grounds of weapons of mass destruction, as well as significant ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. Both proved to be mirages.

"There are lots of disturbing similarities. One has to note the differences, too," said Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst.

"The huge difference being we don't have an administration in office that is the one hankering for the war. This administration is not hankering for a war," said Pillar.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/23/us-iran-usa-nuclear-idUSBRE82M0G020120323

Mayhem in the Making: A Political Circus, an Out-of-Control Government Bureaucracy, and a Distracted Populace

"In other words, the more things change, the more they remain the same. On Wednesday, November 7, the day after the next president takes office, the government as we have come to know it – corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups – will be largely unchanged. And "we the people" – overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us – will continue to trudge along a path of misery."

Mayhem in the Making: A Political Circus, an Out-of-Control Government Bureaucracy, and a Distracted Populace
by John W. Whitehead

"Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?"
-- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

With less than eight months to go before the next presidential election, political chatter among the candidates is ramping up and serious political discourse is declining. All the while, the corrupt government machine is taking advantage of a populace distracted by the political theater to advance agendas that are completely at odds with the nation's fiscal, legislative and constitutional priorities. Indeed, the process of voting and electing a new president has become little more than an expensive, sophisticated ruse designed to deceive us into thinking we actually have a say in what happens in our government. However, the sad fact is that the United States government has ballooned into an overreaching, out-of-control bureaucracy accountable to no one in particular – not Congress or the president and least of all the taxpayers.

Thus, while the candidates mug for the cameras, American taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners – a different kind of mugging, altogether – by government officials eager to placate their corporate benefactors. While the surveillance state is slowly being erected around us, our civil liberties are systemically being dismantled. While our government wages war after endless war abroad, the war on the American people – fought with sound cannons, tasers and drones – is entering its early stages. And while the partisan rancor over who will occupy the White House becomes more toxic with each passing day, the elephant in the room – what no one is talking about – is the fact that it doesn't really matter who gets elected, because no matter how often we change out the resident of the Oval Office, the immense, intractable, implacable, bureaucratic colossus that is our federal government remains entrenched.

In other words, the more things change, the more they remain the same. On Wednesday, November 7, the day after the next president takes office, the government as we have come to know it – corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups – will be largely unchanged. And "we the people" – overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us – will continue to trudge along a path of misery.

Make no mistake, while Americans are busy quibbling over which political savior is best-suited to rescue us from certain destruction, the government's outrages – runaway spending, graft, pork barrel legislation, corporate collusion, and so on – are continuing to mount. Unmitigated waste, profligate spending and inexcusable mismanagement – the common denominators between all government agencies – perfectly illustrate the magnitude of the problem we face when it comes to an out-of-control, bureaucratic government that marches in lockstep with the corporate state.

For a start, consider national defense spending, which enriches the military-industrial complex to the tune of $740 billion and routinely falls prey to corruption and mismanagement. Who could forget the ten C-17 fighter jets purchased by Congress at the urging of the defense industry for a whopping $2.4 billion, despite the fact that the Pentagon insisted it didn't need them? Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world's population, America boasts almost 50% of the world's total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

Then there's the $4 trillion War on Terror, which has seen at least $31 billion (and as much as $60 billion or more) lost to waste and fraud by military contractors and other government officials. A classic example of this was the $300 million diesel power plant that was built in Afghanistan despite the fact that it wouldn't be used regularly "because its fuel cost more than the Afghan government could afford to run it regularly." Or the $4 million paid to Afghan contractors for paving a 17.5-mile road in Ghazni province, which only resulted in 2/3 of a mile of road being paved.

Our expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour) – and that's just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe. A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

Pork barrel spending (the earmarking of outrageous sums of money in federal contracting in return for personal gain and campaign contributions) borders on the ludicrous. In 2010, for instance, the federal government gave the University of California at Santa Cruz $615,000 to digitize Grateful Dead memorabilia. Then there was the $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film. Most recently, an $11 million federal grant intended to help 400 low-income people in the Detroit area secure employment only ended up helping two people.

Government contracts for building privatized prison complexes have also become a lucrative business in recent years – what one journalist referred to as "caging humans for profit." Immigrant detention centers are especially viewed as future goldmines for savvy investors. For example, GEO Group Inc. was paid $32 million to build a detention center for low-risk inmates in Karnes City, Texas. The prison boasts a salad bar, a library with Internet access, cable TV, an indoor gym with basketball courts, and soccer fields. GEO Group will also rake in roughly $15 million a year for running the prison. The detainees being held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay just received a $750,000 soccer field to relieve their boredom, thanks to American taxpayers.

And then there's the generally indulgent and overall excessive spending that goes along with a government lacking in oversight or accountability. A case in point, at the end of the Bush administration, government officials were still getting official portraits painted for upwards of $30,000. Donald Rumsfeld even got two separate portraits for his two stints as Secretary of Defense. State dinners at the White House, as lavish as they come, are estimated to run as high as half a million dollars per event. The invitations for these dinners are engraved, gold-embossed and hand-addressed by calligraphers. Wine served at these dinners has been estimated to cost taxpayers between $115-$399 per bottle. Not surprisingly, the White House refuses to disclose the price tag for these extravagant affairs.

This brings me back to the topic at hand – namely, that nothing taking place on Election Day or in the days leading up to it will limit or restrain this out-of-control bureaucracy or alleviate the suffering of the American people. What we are being treated to right now is a stage show, full of sound and fury, but in the end it is nothing more than well-choreographed entertainment for a populace struggling to survive.


http://lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead41.1.html

Communism Comes to America

Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Communism Comes to America
Posted by bionic mosquito at 3:22 PM

Freedom Betrayed, by Herbert Hoover

As previously discussed, Hoover believes it best for the United States to stay out of the war. He believed it best for Hitler and Stalin to fight each other, while America stood as a shining example of freedom, freedom that would be harmed were the U.S. to enter the conflict.

In a nation-wide address on June 29, 1941, Hoover stated:

We know…Hitler's hideous record of brutality, of aggression, and as a destroyer of democracies….

…now we find ourselves promising aid to Stalin and his militant Communist conspiracy against the whole democratic ideals of the world…it makes the whole argument of our joining the war to bring the four freedoms to mankind a gargantuan jest….

Then as now, it seems the reasons used to justify entering a war are fluid. The only constant is the desire to enter war.

If we go further and join the war and we win, we have won for Stalin the grip of Communism on Russia and more opportunity for it to extend in the world….

To align American ideals alongside Stalin will be as great a violation of everything American as to align ourselves with Hitler.

While making comparisons between the two evils that were Hitler and Stalin is dangerous, it could be suggested that Hoover was, in fact, being magnanimous in this comparison of the two leaders. From Patrick Buchanan's book Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War:

As historian John Lewis Gaddis writes, "[T]he number of deaths resulting from Stalin's policies before World War II…was between 17 and 22 million," a thousand times the number of deaths attributed to Hitler as of 1939….

In addition to Hoover's concerns about joining one side or the other in the conflict between fascism and communism, he had concerns about the communist influence in America.

On October 10, 1933, eight months after taking office, Mr. Roosevelt dispatched a message to President Kalinin of the Soviet All-Union Central Executive Committee suggesting that Russia send a representative to Washington to negotiate recognition….The recognition of Russia touched off an era of uninhibited growth and activity for the Communists in the United States.

According to Congressman Dies, then Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities:

…I opened hearings…in August [1938] and I got a telephone call from the White House to come…."Well," the President said, "You know, all this business about investigating Communists is a serious mistake…." He stated, in effect, to me that he didn't want Communism investigated. He wanted me to confine my efforts to Nazism….

Then, in another conversation with Roosevelt in December, 1941, Dies told Roosevelt that "the Communists were using those 2,000 persons inside this Government and they were stealing everything in the world they wanted and had access to."

Hoover goes on to identify dozens of individuals in the government that he says are affiliated with the Communists. These individuals are in high positions in Labor, atomic energy, military research labs, the OSS, and many other departments in the Executive branch.

Finally he outlines dozens of Communist "front" organizations, involved in political activities and civil rights; dozens at work in colleges and universities; arts, sciences, letters and professions; religious organizations; and many others.

Hoover describes one Sidney Hillman, head of the Political Action Committee, the purpose of this group being to defeat Congressional and Presidential candidates. Mr. Hillman was born in Russia, and apparently participated in early revolutionary activities there. He came to the United States in 1907, and in 1922 was a member of the Communist Party.

Sidney Hillman became so politically powerful that at the 1944 Democratic National Convention, Mr. Roosevelt, when the question of the choice of Vice President arose, issues his famous order to "Clear it with Sidney."

Dies was accused by Roosevelt of seeing "a Red under your bed every night." Maybe so. Hoover seems quite convinced that Roosevelt too easily joined up with Staling, too easily opened the door for recognition of Russia, and had (if not allowed) too many "communist infiltrators" into the government.

Enough has been written elsewhere about this idea of communists in the Roosevelt administration. I can add nothing to this. I will only comment that I can find no satisfactory explanation as to why the U.S. sided with Stalin as opposed to Hitler -- to say nothing of why side with either. In 1938, writing of Roosevelt and the New Deal, Garet Garett wrote in The Revolution Was:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/garrett1.html

There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.

At the end of the first year, in his annual message to the Congress, January 4, 1934, President Roosevelt said: "It is to the eternal credit of the American people that this tremendous readjustment of our national life is being accomplished peacefully."

I cannot say why Roosevelt chose Stalin over Hitler. It seems clear why he had to pick a side: in war, the state grows only more powerful. And after almost ten years of government-caused depression, a distraction seemed necessary.

Hoover, even at the time that these events were transpiring, spoke out strongly against Roosevelt's choice -- desiring the United States to arm to the teeth for defense of the Western Hemisphere, but to stay out of the war in Europe and Asia. This would certainly have been to the benefit of the United States and to the world.


http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2012/03/communism-comes-to-america.html