Monday, November 24, 2014

Immigration problem solved:  Israelis got dual citizenship so why not Mexicans?

     Currently Republicans have their knickers all in a twist with regard to illegal immigration from Mexico, right?  Well, I have the answer to that one.  Let's just grant dual citizenship to Mexicans.  Then Mexicans in this country will no longer be illegal!  Problem solved.

     "But, Jane," you might say, "if we do that, America will become overwhelmed and we will lose control of our country."  Yeah.  That indeed could happen.  Just look what happened when we granted dual citizenship to Israelis.  They took over America quick as a wink.  You might have a point there.

     In 1967, Israeli leaders unilaterally gave the order to attack and destroy the USS Liberty -- and our American leaders went along with that http://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/12/behind-the-uss-liberty-cover-up/.  At least Mexico has never attacked a US warship.  There's that in Mexico's favor, right?

     Almost no member of Congress and President of the United States has ever been elected in the last several decades without the backing of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  Imagine if Mexicans had their own AMPAC!  Yikes.  http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/us-media-erase-israeli-state-and-settler-violence

     Israel put pressure on America to make the decision to go to war with Iraq -- and we Americans are still paying for that mistake.  And let's also take a look at the Project for a New American Century, America's current guidebook on how to screw up the Middle East.  At least half the people who wrote that damning document possessed dual citizenship with Israel.  And who benefited from all its resulting endless and bloody wars?  It wasn't us Americans, no no no.  http://socialistworker.org/2014/11/19/israel-tightens-the-noose

     "But Jane, undocumented Mexicans are taking our jobs!"  Yeah well.  But dual-citizen Israelis are also taking our jobs too.  And our tax money.  And our weapons industry.  And our government positions.  And our real estate agents too.  Re-Max is now advertizing the sale of condos in the Occupied West Bank.  But if we gave dual-citizenship to Mexico too, then Re-Max could be selling condos in Occupied Juarez as well!  I'd buy one.  Would you?  http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/republicans-accuse-obama-of-treating-immigrants-like-humans?intcid=mod-most-popular

     "But what about terrorists?" you might ask next.  You're right again.  That too could be a problem.  But it is also coming to light already that dual-citizen Israelis have been supporting the ISIS terrorist organization behind our backs all along.  And they still support ISIS.  http://news.antiwar.com/2014/11/17/mossad-backed-jundallah-pledges-support-for-isil/   So if Mexicans also had dual citizenship, then their ISIS-like drug lords might come with that package-deal too, which would not be a good thing.  But surely an occasional drug-lord beheading south of the border can't be as bad as the daily beheadings by ISIS, which are sponsored by the dual citizens of Mossad. http://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-military-support-to-syria-al-qaeda-terrorists-operating-out-of-the-golan-hights/5369619
 
    And then there are all those mass graves that have been recently discovered in Mexico.  According to an article in "The Nation" with the hilarious title of "This Mass Grave isn't the Mass Grave you have been looking for," journalist Greg Grandin states, "There were at least 26,000 disappearances and 83,000 homicides" in Mexico.  http://www.thenation.com/blog/190721/mass-grave-isnt-mass-grave-you-have-been-looking

    109,000 dead in Mexico?  That's a mere drop in the bucket in relation to population percentages when compared to the number of Palestinians that have been butchered and/or "ethnically cleansed" by Israelis in the past 60-odd years -- almost 80% of all Palestinians.  http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/19/palestinians_always_live_in_fear_jerusalem.  

     Mexican drug lords are almost puny when compared with Israeli warlords -- who really think big. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-nakba.html

     2,133 Palestinians were murdered in Gaza just this past summer alone.  750,000 Palestinians were either murdered or driven off their land back in 1948.  At least 33 known mass grave sites of dead Palestinians have been found and there many more mass grave sites that are as yet unknown.  Along with the American Indian holocaust, the German/Polish/French Jewish holocaust, various African holocausts over the centuries and the Holocaust in Tibet, this Palestinian holocaust is one of the largest and most tragic in history (so far).

     What has happened and is still happening in Palestine is very much like that nightmarish WW II ethnic cleansing of Germany, France and Poland.   And, like that earlier tragic time also, we hardly ever hear anything about this ethnic cleansing in the media either except from a few alarmists like me.  All we ever hear about here in America is when a few Palestinians struggle to fight back to protect their families and land -- and then they are instantly labeled "terrorists".  How come Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and Tibetans in Lhasa weren't labeled "terrorists" too.

     And how come no one in America ever hears about the Israeli Caliphate or the Israeli State in the Levant (ISIL) -- like we constantly do about its nightmarish ISIS blowback.


    All in all, I think that giving dual citizenship to Mexicans is a great idea.  Just look how well it turned out when we gave dual citizenship to Israelis!


    

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

HMS Queen Mary: Reliving history & election fraud 

   I just got back from attending BoucherCon, an important annual convention for murder-mystery writers and readers.  This year it was held in Long Beach, CA and I got to stay on the HMS Queen Mary.  And it was awesome.  And I came back with about 50 free books and met so many fabulous authors that it was like a dream.  Time well spent.  You shoulda been there.

    "But why do you like murder mysteries so much," you might ask.  "Don't you ever find all that blood and death to be depressing?"  No, not really.  In fact, murder-mysteries actually give me hope and inspiration.

     When writing about political stuff like I do, it is always so very discouraging to stand by and watch helplessly as greedy, corrupt and/or sadistic politicians always seem to win every time.  Take that last election for instance.  The Repubs won bigtime in the Red States -- but only because they committed shameless election fraud  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27009-voter-purges-alter-us-political-map.  And now our Senate is going to be ruled by a bunch of greedy blood-thirsty morons -- and the Blue States are gonna once again be frog-marched down the garden path to Hooverville as an illegally-elected minority once again forces us to pay for unnecessary wars and to give our natural resources away tax-free to right-wing billionaires.  Yuck.

     For the next two grim years, it's gonna be Jim Crow, Dixiecrats and the Confederate secession all over again in America -- except that apparently no one is going to stand up and fight for American democracy this time.  You can just bet that no court in the land is going to be brave enough throw that fraudulent election out.  Bye-bye to the Republic for which we stand.  "Move along please.  No Washingtons or Lincolns left to see here."

     Yes, the 2014 election was good for the wingnuts in the Red States -- but bad for America.  Virtue had failed to triumph once again.  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2014/11/heres-special-guest-blog-about-rigged.html

     And this is exactly why I love murder mysteries so much.  At the end of every single crime-fiction book that I read, justice always triumphs.  Justice always triumphs.  Never the bad guys.  Not like in politics. 

     However, what I really want to write about here isn't the grubbiness of today's politics but rather about the grand and stately HMS Queen Mary, where I was lucky enough to stay at while I was in Long Beach last week.  The City of Long Beach has totally restored this amazing ship and turned it into a hotel.  

     Little-known fact:  The Queen Mary is actually bigger than the Titanic.

     Sleeping aboard the Queen Mary was like reliving history.  It was awesome.  I expected the ghost of Winston Churchill to show up right there in my stateroom at any moment.  And I think that he actually did.  Late one night, the cabin lights flickered spookily, my stateroom suddenly turned all chillingly cold and I could even smell a strange whiff of cigar smoke.  Plus (and this actually happened) the fire alarm suddenly went off and everyone on my floor had to leave the ship at 2:00 am.  Thanks a lot, Winston.

     I loved being completely enveloped in history like that.  And I would do it again in a heartbeat.  There is so much that we can learn from the past and even sometimes actually experience it ourselves.

     Maybe I should try to go sleep in the Lincoln bedroom next!

     But there is also a whole bunch of history now being repeated these days that is actually stupid and dumb and dumber.  As mentioned above for instance, the American Red States are currently trying their best to drag America down to their own selfish, racist and greedy level -- in a complete replay of 1860. 

     But despite all this current propaganda crap about the good old days of the antebellum South being pushed on us now, there really was nothing sweet or glamorous about the Ole South back in the first half of the 19th century.  It was a culture based on human misery.  And now the Southern good ol' boys in Washington are trying to palm their love of human misery off onto the rest of us once again.  History repeats itself.

    History is also repeating itself in other ways too.  For instance, the HMS Queen Mary was built between World War I and World War II http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/27/1918-when-war-ended-though-others-would-follow  It was then used to be a troop ship back in World War II.  And now our so-called grand leaders in Washington appear to be trying everything within their power to get us into World War III as well http://robinwestenra.blogspot.com/2014/11/more-on-mh17.html.  And to also reenact their beloved Cold War too.  What a waste of time and money -- bringing out the worst in whatever America has ever done, the very worst in all of our past.  Uggghhh.

      However.  Nobody here in America seems to be willing to recreate the awesome 1776 era of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitutional Convention of 1787 -- or even our most creative times either.  The sweet little Hudson River school of painting comes immediately to mind.  Make art, not war!

     And speaking of art, Her Majesty's Ship the Queen Mary is also a work of art too -- with miles of wood paneling and a tea room and powerful engines and a Queen's Salon that made my heart sing.  But Americans just spent eleven trillion dollars on war.  War never makes anyone's heart sing.  

PS:  HMS Queen Mary also had cable TV -- and I got to watch Fox News for the first time in years.  And was amazed.  Talk about your history!  All the commercials on Fox News were geared toward people over sixty.  Hemorrhoid creams, joint pains, reverse mortgages, constipation preventives, well-preserved older couples playing on beaches with their grandchildren, sex enhancers, wheelchairs.  Fox News is definitely living in the past too. 

PPS:  I'm about to go in for surgery on my left wrist because the bone didn't set properly the first time I broke it back in July of 2013 and it still hurts a lot.  Let us please hope that this "pretty big procedure" is not going to be a repeat of the great bone-break of 2013!  Ouch. 

Monday, November 17, 2014

Here's a special guest blog about rigged elections.

     I usually don't publish anyone else's writing on my blog, but this analysis of election fraud by Richard Tamm  is so outstanding that I just couldn't resist.  He needed a URL and I needed to get this information out ASAP.  So everyone wins -- except of course for America.  But then after the 2000 stolen election and the 2004 stolen election and the 2014 stolen election, Americans should be used to losing by now.  Or else, like me, they should be totally outraged!

What happened in the 2014 U.S. election?
     By Richard Tamm

      I've been trying to understand what happened myself.  So, I've been reading many articles, etc. and have come up with the following.  These are my own thoughts on this subject, and are subject to revision based on both my own further reading and investigation as well as on your feedback.

     Let's divide it by party:

1. The Republicans:

     As Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis say in their 11/10 article entitled "How the GOP bought, rigged, stole and lynched the 2014 election" (http://freepress.org/article/how-gop-bought-rigged-stole-and-lynched-2014-election ), "Since the Bush-Cheney-Rove theft of the 2000 election in Florida, the right of millions of American citizens to vote and have that vote counted has been under constant assault."  Dennis Brault, focusing more on Wisconsin, also uses this quote in his equally good article entitled "Walker's 'Dark Way' Re Election - The Fix Was In.  What it Means For The Future" (http://www.thedailycall.org/?p=65930 ) and adds: "This assault has been brutal."  They both go on to describe in some detail the immoral and unethical but "legal" methods this minority party used to not just win elections but guarantee they will continue to win them for many, many years into the future.


     First, the more visible methods used:

     A.  Gerrymandering: The GOP purposely set out to "win" (by any means, not necessarily legal) control of as many states as possible in the 2010 elections.  Having done so, they were in position in 2011 to use the new census of 2010 to redraw congressional districts in an extremely partisan and gerrymandered way. 

     As Jonathan Simon said on the weekly KPFA show, "Guns & Butter" entitled: "Voting Machines:  Computerized Election Theft" (http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/108384 ) "Republicans won control of Pennsylvania in 2010.  They then redistricted brilliantly, so that in 2012 the Democrats actually won a majority of votes statewide for the U.S. House of Representatives in Pennsylvania, and they wound up winning 5 of the 18 seats with a majority of the vote!"  (This hour-long audio is a real MUST to hear - packed with information.)  Here are pictures of two of these gerrymandered districts: 
Inline image 1
     These gerrymandered districts will stay in effect till at least 2021.  And chances are, with redistricting within the state, it will be extremely hard to remove the Republicans from power within the state for the next redistricting.  So, this may continue for decades.

     B. Jim Crow voter suppression:  As the Economist reported in "Stumbling blocks" (http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/11/voter-laws ), "Tuesday was the first federal election under laws that actually make it tougher to vote in 15 states. Eleven states rolled out new requirements for photo identification at the polls; nine states made it trickier to register to vote; eight states cut back early voting days; and three made it harder to restore voting rights to former criminals.
   
     These changes are part of larger trend. Since 2010 lawmakers have introduced around 180 bills to restrict voting in 41 states. Many of these have been overturned or weakened by courts, but quite a few have become law and are in effect in 21 states."

          1.  Removing valid registered voters from registration lists:  As Greg Palast reports in "Jim Crow returns - Millions of minority voters threatened by electoral purge" (http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/double-voters/ ), "Election officials in 27 states, most of them Republicans, have launched a program that threatens a massive purge of voters from the rolls....  At the heart of this voter-roll scrub is the Interstate Crosscheck program which has generated a master list of nearly 7 million names....  Based on the Crosscheck lists, officials have begun the process of removing names from the rolls - beginning with 41,637 in Virginia alone.  Yet the criteria used for matching these double voters are disturbingly inadequate..." 
  
     Supposedly the match is on first, middle and last name, date of birth and the last 4 digits of the Social Security number.  But in practice it is being done on only first and last name, with allowable differences in all other fields.

          2.  Increasing felon disenfranchisement: Sean McElwee reports in "Voter Suppression in 2014" (http://www.demos.org/blog/11/6/14/voter-suppression-2014 ), "Research finds that felon disenfranchisement laws have influenced the outcomes of both presidential and Senate elections.  Such laws disenfranchised almost 6 millions voters this year—most of them poor and people of color."

     From an article entitled "States Deny Millions of Ex-Felons Voting Rights" (http://www.advancementproject.org/news/entry/states-deny-millions-of-ex-felons-voting-rights ):  "In three Southern states the numbers are more stark:  In Florida, 23 percent of the voting-age black population can't vote because of a felony record; in Kentucky it's 22 percent; and in Virginia it's 20 percent. Taken together, one in five blacks living in those three states is disenfranchised.  Florida, with 1.5 million disenfranchised ex-felons, leads the nation."

          3.  Passage of Voter ID laws:  In this same article, McElwee reports, "For this year’s midterm, comparing McDonald’s turnout estimates with states with photo ID, non-photo ID and no ID law at all shows that on average, states with a photo ID law had 4.4 percentage points lower turnout than those that did not. States with a non-photo ID law also had lower voter turnout, about 1.52 points lower than states without voter ID."

     And Richard Parker reported in "Election 2014: Surge or Theft?" (http://prospect.org/article/election-2014-surge-or-theft ), "Meanwhile in Virginia, nearly 200,000 otherwise-qualified citizens were denied their voting rights because of improper or inadequate IDs; in Texas, the number was more than 600,000. All part of a 33-state effort to guarantee against voter fraud—a danger certifiably documented in 31 instances out of more than one billion votes cast since 2000, according to the Washington Post."

     Ari Berman also reported in "Did Voting Restrictions Determine the Outcomes of Key Midterm Races?" (http://www.thenation.com/blog/188697/how-new-voting-restrictions-impacted-2014-election?_ga=1.225498714.1711161610.1382336045# ), "Six hundred thousand registered voters don’t have the required voter ID in Texas but the state issued only 407 new voter IDs as of Election Day. “There are more licensed auctioneers (2,454) in Texas than there are people with election identification certificates,” reported the Texas Observer."

          4.  Removal of Same-day registration: McElwee further reports, "Research suggests that same-day registration reduces the class bias of the electorate. Previous Demos research finds that when same-day registration is available, hundreds of thousands of voters use it....  States with SDR had turnout 7.92 points higher than states without SDR. This is likely a combination of factors, including the fact that states committed to turnout generally pass many reforms which work together to boost turnout."

          5.  Removal of Early Voting Days: As Richard Parker reported in the same article, above, one example is the state of North Carolina: "In the North Carolina race for U.S. Senate—at $107 million, the most expensive statewide race in American history—state House Speaker Thom Tillis beat Senator Kay Hagan by a margin of 1.7 percent, or about 48,000 votes, under one of the harshest new election laws in the country. It’s a law that Tillis himself helped craft, that eliminated seven early voting days and same-day registration, and prohibited voting outside a voter’s home precinct — all disproportionately likely to affect student and African-American voters.

     In North Carolina’s 2010 election, 200,000 voted in the early voting days, while in 2012 nearly 700,000—including one-quarter of all African Americans voting in the election—did, as well; this year that was illegal."

     And Mark Gollom reported in "Will new voter ID laws swing the U.S. election? (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/will-new-voter-id-laws-swing-the-u-s-election-1.1252564 ) "It's true that Republican-dominated state legislatures in some states have passed laws that could make voting more difficult. In Florida, laws were passed to limit the number of early-voting days, prohibit voting on the Sunday before the election and impose a 48-hour time limit on third-party voter groups to register new voters. "

          6.  Making it more difficult to register to vote: As Richard Parker further reported in the same above article: " According to the Brennan Center:  Kansans faced two new voting restrictions this year—a strict photo ID law that was put into effect right before the 2012 election, and a new documentary proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration …  We know from the Kansas secretary of state that more than 24,000 Kansans tried to register this year but their registrations were held in "suspense" because they failed to present the documentary proof of citizenship now required by state law."

        7.   Destruction of Democratic voter registration forms:  Googling "destruction of voter registration forms" will bring up a number of stories of GOP operatives destroying Democratic voter registration forms, for ex, as reported by David Ferguson in "3rd GOP Operative caught trashing Dem Voter Reg. Forms, Local Authorities NOT investigating" (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/third-instance-of-voter-registration-dumping-found-in-virginia/ )

     "A third instance of fraudulent voter registration has been uncovered in the important swing state of Virginia, where a Republican consultant has been arrested and thousands of discarded voter registration forms were recovered from a dumpster earlier this week."  

     C.  Dark Money:  With Citizens United the floodgates were opened.  As Richard Parker, above, reported, "Final figures aren’t in yet but it’s likely that donors spent nearly $4 billion on this off-year race for 435 House and 33 Senate seats. It’s not all about the Koch brothers—but a lot of it is, especially since, under Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for dark money from an unlimited number of undisclosed donors in the name of free speech."

     Then the less visible method: 

     D.  The "Red Shift":  Since the introduction and widespread use of electronic voting machines in 2002, there has been a consistency in pre-election and exit polls showing Democratic candidates with a percentage that is 5 - 10% higher than the percentage of the final vote count as reported by these machines and voting systems.
  
     Exit polls which are used worldwide to determine if elections are honest or fraudulent used to be incredibly accurate in the U.S. before these new voting machine systems were introduced.  But they are now considered to be "not working" or have become "inaccurate" (not that they are still accurate but are reporting that the vote counting is fraudulent) since they indicate that the Democratic candidates should get 5 - 10% more votes than is being reported by these machines, i.e., the numbers shift from blue (Democratic) to red (Republican).
   
     Jonathan Simon covers this topic in great detail in the "Guns & Butter" interview mentioned above as does Richard Charnin in his book "CODE RED: Computerized Election Theft and The New American Century ".

     And Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis speak for many of the leaders in the election protection movement when they say in the linked article above, "In evaluating the actual vote count, manipulation of untrackable electronic voting machines must also be accounted for.  Over the years, Bev Harris, Brad Friedman, Jon Simon, Richard Charnin and many others have added vital research leading to the inevitable conclusion that the 2014 election---like 2000 and 2004---was essentially bought, rigged, stolen and lynched."

2.  The Democrats:

     A.  The abandonment of populism and the failure of the "Republican lite" strategy: Bill Clinton presented himself as a centrist Democrat.  His and the Democratic Leadership Council's "distaste for what they refer to as "economic class warfare" has allowed the language of populism to be monopolized by the right-wing.

     Many argue that the Democrats' abandonment of populism to the right-wing, shifting the form of that populism from the economic realm to the "culture wars", has been critical for Republican dominance of Middle America. (See, for instance, Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?.)" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council)

     Along with Clinton's moves to the center-right with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the passage of NAFTA, there was a loosening of ties with labor and a seeking of more campaign funds and support from Wall Street.  This is still affecting the Democrats negatively in not being able to fire up their base and also not being able to get anything close to the amounts of unlimited Dark Money now being unleashed against them.

     Acting as "Republican lite" has not been working.

     If you take the city of Richmond as an example, the progressive Democrats and Greens succeeded in winning their races against over $3 million that Chevron spent to defeat them because they spoke economic populism and what Howard Dean called "lunch-bucket" issues and were able to really fire up their base to have a successful grass-roots campaign.  In contrast, the regular Democrats who took the Chevron money to oppose the progressive Dems and Greens all lost.

     Also, in abandoning their close ties with labor and their commitment to economic populism and "lunch-bucket" issues because of their more recent need for campaign contributions from the same Wall Street big banks, large corporations and plutocrats funding the Republicans, they have refused to consistently speak up for and defend the poor and middle class and champion economic justice for all.

     By default, they often simply appear to be accepting and allowing the terribly corrosive revolving-door corruption so visible to everyone, and the slide toward ever greater corporate, oligarchic and state power, growing militarism, endless war, and drift from the truth - not the issues that will fire up their base.

     B. The abandonment of Howard Dean's 50-state strategy:  As reported by  Louis Jacobson in "Looking Back at Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy" (http://www.governing.com/blogs/politics/gov-democrat-howard-deans-fifty-state-strategy.html ). "Dean said he continues to believe that every state, no matter how unfriendly to his party, deserves to have a basic level of institutional, financial, technological and personnel support, which can be 'relatively inexpensive.'

      'It would be a terrible mistake to leave even one state out of a basic package of training, IT and staffing,' he said.  'I don't advocate putting a zillion dollars into Alaska, but I do advocate having a competent, well-run Democratic Party in place, because you never know where lightning is going to strike.'"

     C. The refusal to even consider that the electronic voting machines could be shifting votes and allowing the Republicans to steal elections: 

         1.  Denial:  As Jonathan Simon said in his interview on Guns & Butter, above, at minute 11:  "...a conversation I had in a public forum that was actually a conference on media reform back in 2007 with a man who was at the time the DNC Democratic National Committee official pollster Cornell Belcher.  And, I asked him on this panel whether he placed any credence at all in fact that we had all these red shift patterns and whether the election returns could possibly be being manipulated.  And, of course, he said absolutely not, not a chance.  And then he said something curious.  He said but you know it's funny but I felt he was a little bit like on some truth serum.  He said, "You know when our internal polls show our guy ahead by 10 points, we've learned to treat it as if he's even, as if it's a toss-up, you know.  And we can't figure out why." 

     So, internal polls are designed to be very accurate because they allow the party to get the information necessary to know where they should put money into elections at the last minute, where the money is needed, where it's not needed, where it would be wasted.  So, those polls are designed to really tell them the truth.  They are not designed to market any candidate or build momentum or anything.  They're internal.  And when they're off, so they're doing their best, methodology-wise, to come up with an accurate picture.  And he was talking about them being off by 10%!  And so, then, I reframed my question: "Well, in light of that, do you think that there's a possibility that the vote counts could be manipulated?"  And he said "Of course not!" 
  
     And that's the kind of denial that we have been dealing with all along.  "This is America!  It's the beacon of democracy.  It could never happen here." 

      2.  Inexplicable SilenceJoan Brunwasser talked about this with Harvey Wasserman in "Harvey Wasserman:  How the GOP Bought, Rigged, Stole and Lynched the 2014 Election" (http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Harvey-Wasserman-on-How-t-by-Joan-Brunwasser-2014-Elections_Activist_Election-Fraud_Election-Integrity-141114-419.html ): 

   "JB: The $64,000 question is: Why do the Dems continue to act so spineless on this issue of election theft?  [Which is what all the "suppress all the voters who may not be voting for your candidate/s" strategy amounts to] 

     Even on the losing end of the stick, Democrats still represent tens of millions of voters.   Are they still so terrified of being tarred and feathered as conspiracy theorists?  All the less than savory yet very effective voter suppression tactics are hardly even covered by the Mainstream Media. 

     HW:  It's actually a $64 trillion question and I have no answer.  It's totally contrary to my own nature to let such things go by, so I have no idea beyond a bunch of politico/psycho-babble.  But we do know they absolutely refuse to discuss it.  Daily Kos has banned a number of us who blog about it.  Gore and Kerry simply walked away and have never discussed it since.  If you have an answer, please let me know."

     D.  The refusal to really fight Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression.  The Democrats are failing to see the incredible importance of voting rights and election protection as the keystone issues.

     For more information on all the above, go to "Occupy Rigged Elections" on Facebook.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Murder mystery: Who really runs the American government?

     This week I am going down to Long Beach, CA, in order to attend the world-renowned BoucherCon, a fabulous annual convention for mystery book writers and readers   You just gotta love BoucherCon. 
http://www.bouchercon2014.com/
 
     At last year's convention in Albany, NY, I scored 50 free books -- but still haven't finished reading them yet.  However, it's always reassuring to know that I'll probably never run out of murder-mystery books to read ever again -- especially since I'm about to score yet another 50 free books at this Long Beach convention.  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2013/09/albany-ny-solving-mystery-of-public.html

     But the biggest mystery of all these days seems to be "Who, exactly, is actually running the American government?"  Well, here's a big clue:  "It ain't you or me."  The fact that we ourselves definitely do not run America was clearly demonstrated once again in this last election cycle -- when a huge majority of Americans either voted against their own best self-interests or didn't even vote at all.  http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/country-wrong-track-say-people-vote

     Apparently we Americans can just barely manage to keep the kids dressed, the dog washed, the bathroom stocked with toilet paper, the mortgage paid, the 401K alive and our own lives up and running -- let alone keep a democracy alive and well.  It's definitely not like 1776 around here right now.

     But not to worry.  I myself have already solved the mystery of who actually does run America while most Americans are all busy doing something else.

     According to political analyst Peter Dale Scott, America is actually run by a select group of people that he calls the "American Deep State".  And these guys are really bad-ass.  They even have their own internet system -- and probably even their own FaceBook apps too.  And of course they also have their own bunkers, billionaire supporters, lobbyists and election fixers as well -- and Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House all take orders from them.  That's totally scary!  Makes those "October Surprise" Ebola and ISIS scares look like a walk in the park.  http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/10/05/the-hidden-government-group-linking-jfk-watergate-iran-contra-and-911/

    So.  Why do I think that Peter Dale Scott is right?  There just has to be a shadow government here in America -- because what else could possibly explain why America continuously and consistently acts so strongly against its own best interests?  http://3chicspolitico.com/2014/11/09/canadians-on-midterm-elections-you-americans-have-no-idea-just-how-good-you-have-it-with-obama/

     "But Jane," you might ask, "just exactly who are these underworld shadowy cartoonish characters that you've just described -- and exactly what are they up to?"  Well, from all my recent sleuthing around, I've discovered that this uber-shadow government, whoever it is composed of, obviously has a soft spot in its heart for starting wars, ruining economies, and disrupting countries, regions and even whole continents whenever they possibly can.  No American in his or her right mind would ever want to do that.

     "But, Jane," you might ask next, "how can you actually prove all this?  Sounds rather paranoid and conspiracy-theory-ish to me."  Hey, I'm on this like Sherlock Holmes! 

     But even though I can't exactly sneak into these guys' bunkers or onto their yachts or secretly listen in on their phone conversations, I can still easily see all the footprints these hoodlums have left behind in the snow.  "Means, motive and opportunity," as Holmes would say.  Just get out your magnifying glass and look at these clues:

Footprint # 1:  China and Korea.  Before we even knew what hit us after WWII, suddenly China had been torn up in rebellion against our corrupt man in Peking, Chaing Kai Shek.  And then the whole Korean peninsula blew up.  Was the loss of China and the destruction of Korea in the average American's best interests?  Totally not.  So who had the motive, means and opportunity here?  You tell me.

Footprint # 2:  Vietnam.  The whole result of that "war" was to destabilize all of Southeast Asia.  Okay.  You got China, Korea and Southeast Asia destabilized now.  And did it benefit the average American to have Asia so broken and hateful against us?  It did not.  But who did it benefit?

Footprint # 3:  Mexico, Central America and South America.  Do Americans really benefit from having death squads and drug lords on the rampage down there?  What do you think?  I think not.  All we got out of this deal was a whole bunch of undocumented refugees coming up here in search of their lost treasures.  But then who does benefit?  Those shadowy guys behind the curtain who sell arms and own banks?  Yeah.

Footprint # 4:  Yugoslavia.  The American Deep State picked at Yugoslavia and picked at Yugoslavia until it too finally fell apart.  Balkanization.  How could that have possibly been good for America?  It wasn't.  But who did benefit from its fall?  Wall Street and War Street.  Of course.

Footprint # 5:  The Middle East.  What a freaking mess!  And who made this mess?  It wasn't the American people.  We had no dog in this fight.  But the American Deep State both did then and does now.  Libya, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel?  Means, motive and opportunity to make a real mess.  And, yes, Israel is a hot mess too. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/so-why-is-there-such-an-explosion-of-violence-across-the-middle-east-9831970.html?printService=print

Footprint # 6:  Africa.  Africa has been fried, poached and eaten whole by the American Deep State too.  From apartheid South Africa and the bloody attacks on democratic Angola to the Ebola and HIV disasters, blood diamonds, IMF loans with never-ending interest payments and rape in the Congo, Africa is now a hot mess.  And who exactly benefited from this scramble for Africa?  Not you and me -- or our children or our dogs either.

Footprint # 7:  Ukraine:  You have no idea what a broken egg Ukraine has become recently as neo-Nazis kill innocent civilians right and left.  Their theme song seems to be, "Party like it's Serbia in 1995!"  Plus a German company, Telefunken Racoms, is actually selling these Ukrainian neo-Nazis their weapons.  "Party like it's Leningrad in 1942!"  http://cyber-berkut.net/traitors/0024.php

     But have any of us average Americans actually benefited from all this world-wide chaos?  No, no, no and no.  So who did?  The American Deep State.

Footprint # 8:  America.  That's us.  It should come as no surprise to anyone even semi-conscious right now that our economy has tanked, we're at each others' throats and Corporations are now People.  The propaganda machine that the Deep State now runs here would make Hitler proud!  Or happily match up with George Orwell's prescient observation that "War is Peace."  And this is all part of a plan to make Americans as dazed and confused as, say, Africans and the folks in the Middle East are now.  But who the freak benefits from all this?  Definitely not us.  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/26813-the-9-billion-witness 

  So then your next question should be, "How can we stop this, put an end to the American Deep State and return to being a democracy?"  How can you even try to stop a shadow?  It's hard.  But we could start by regulating Wall Street, limiting weapons manufacturers' profits, making sure that our election laws never let anyone anywhere for any reason contribute more than $200 to any election campaign, having fact-checkers sort out all those blatant lies in campaign broadcasts, and fiercely guarding against election violations.  Oh, and also get rid of all those Deep State bunkers, yachts and private internet rat-lines that we American taxpayers are paying for now. 

      Or perhaps we could just run a PowerBall lottery for every available position in Congress, on the Supreme Court and in the White House.  Surely any random lottery winner would do a better job of resisting the American Deep State than those sorry wimps that we now have kissing the DS's booties and being their gollums.

     But however we go about it, we have just got to stop the American Deep State from murdering our democracy -- before it's too late and the corpse of our American dream arrives DOA at the morgue.

PS:  See you at BoucherCon! 
It would be a mystery to me why anyone would not want to attend that.

    

Thursday, November 06, 2014

Climate change: War now brings us death in a whole new way

     Remember back in the day when Jesus walked the earth and said, "Thou shalt not kill"?  He said this because He was obviously aware of the bad juju set off by either killing your neighbors or in the hand-to-hand combat of war -- actions that would, sooner or later, drag each individual killer's soul down into the lower depths of Hell or PTSD, whichever came first.

     But Jesus was Old School about His approach to killing people, assuming that people would only kill other people with their spears, arrows or bare hands.  Jesus clearly hadn't anticipated the implications and potentialities of modern mass murder.  Gunpowder hadn't even been invented yet -- let alone drones and AK-47s and concentration camps and nuclear weapons.  But, rest assured, Jesus would have also hated all this modern-day mass murder in places like Hiroshima and Iraq and Auschwitz and Gaza and Sandy Hook.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-the-sand-pirates-the-islamic-states-paramilitary-americas-21st-century-terror-privateers/5411427

     But with the recent release of the latest United Nations report on climate change, there is now a whole new and different reason, aside from Jesus telling us not to, why we should not kill.

     Killing is bad for the air.

     Yes, war is the top polluter and primal cause of climate change that there is today. http://www.projectcensored.org/2-us-department-of-defense-is-the-worst-polluter-on-the-planet/

    "In the dialogue around stopping climate change, too much emphasis is being put on ethical consumerism [such as not driving our cars, refraining from flying whenever possible and spare-the-air days]," said Katherine Ball of Tools for Action.  "Does it really matter if we try to fly less if the US Air Force continues to burn one-fourth of the world's jet fuel?  We have to address the systemic causes of climate change: the most eco-friendly thing you can do is be anti-war." http://warisacrime.org/content/carbon-bomb-blows-near-west-point

     "But Jane," some of you Baby Boomers and members of the Greatest Generation might say, "we ourselves don't need to worry about climate change killing us off because, 50 or so years from now, we will already be dead anyway."  Hey that used to be true.  But according to the new UN report, the entire human race could be toast before you even get a chance to order your casket.  http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/largest-climate-change-march-history-unlikely-convince-idiots?src=mp

     According to a recent article in Mother Jones, "Keeping global warming below the internationally agreed upon 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (above pre-industrial levels) is going to be hard.  To keep warming below this limit, our emissions need to be slashed dramatically.  But at current rates, we'll pump enough greenhouse gas into the atmosphere to sail past that critical level within the next 20 to 30 years, according to the [UN] report." http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/08/un-ipcc-climate-change-synthesis-report 


       The UN report also noted that greenhouse gas emissions have ramped up particularly quickly after 2000.  Of course they have.  That was the year that Bush and Cheney stole their first presidential election and took America to war.  "Full-Spectrum Dominance" became our battle-cry right around that time.  And now it's even worse than that -- as the American military-industrial complex has begun practically salivating over a new Cold War with Russia and China, one that it is hoping will become a Hot War very soon.  http://cluborlov.blogspot.ru/2014/10/putin-to-western-elites-play-time-is.html


      So even though some of us Baby Boomers should be serenely going off in a rest home within the next 20 years -- and even if none of us currently live or will ever live in a war zone -- America's senior citizens are all still gonna be toes-up long before our natural sell-by date arrives if all this over-the-top war-mongering keeps up.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/obamas-plan-for-a-no-fly-zone-over-northeastern-syria-isis-was-a-window-dressing-for-the-real-war-against-the-syrian-government/5406117

     All-too-many wonderful things here at home have been mercilessly sacrificed (jobs, schools, infrastructure, morals, whatever) so that over 60% of our national wealth could go to cover the cost of blowing people up on the other side of the world.  http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/09/26/fighting-isil-is-a-smokescreen-for-us-mobilization-against-syria-and-iran.html

     Fine.  Whatever.

     But we also need to be aware that the result of allowing the American military-industrial complex to happily play with their war toys for the last 14 years has been a sharp rise in greenhouse emissions too.  "War is not good for children and other living things."  And it's also not good for avoiding radical climate change either.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/10/kobani-turkey-and-the-perfect-storm/ 

     The war on Afghanistan, the war on Libya, the war on Iraq, the war on Syria, the war on Gaza, the war on Ukraine?  All these endless and needless military adventures may have cost millions of lives in far-away places that don't really matter to the powers that be -- but they probably have shortened our own lives here at home by ten or twenty years too.  http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-preparing-for-very-violent-war-against-hezbollah-tv-report-says/#ixzz3CddpWO00

     Every time a deadly missile hit Gaza last summer -- and thousands of them did -- our atmosphere also took a direct hit.  Every time the tanks and humvees rolled in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Iraq, we lost yet another chunk of our hope of living a long and happy life in a non-desert.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/mapping-the-spread-of-drought-across-the-us.html?abt=0002&abg=0&_r=0

    You gotta at least give those CIA-backed monsters in ISIS credit for one thing -- their use of swords to behead people was very energy-efficient!  Although, according to Information Clearinghouse, ISIS is just one more "rat-line" to get high-powered American weapons (and Toyotas) from Libya to Syria.  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39603.htm

     "But, Jane," you might say next, "climate change is mainly caused by industrial pollution."  All too true.  But where do you think that all these missiles, F-16s, RPGs and tanks come from in the first place?  That they are created out of thin air by fairies and elves?  No.  Producing war toys like F-35s and drones and night-vision goggles is very big business these days.  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/31/combat-terror-end-support-saudi-arabia-dictatorships-fundamentalism

PS:  In Oakland, California, recently, there was a symposium called "Urban Shield," which spoke to the topic of how to supply military weapons and vehicles to our own American law-enforcement agencies.  Oh crap.  That means that the gigantic military tanks and humvees driving down the streets of our own cities and towns are gonna escalate the production of greenhouse emissions even more.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/06/funny-or-die-cops-ferguson-militarized-police_n_5777074.html

     "Urban Shield" organizers put out claims that this convention was paid for by Homeland Security.  No, it was not.  It was paid for by you and me.  And it is you and me who, in the long run, will have to pay for it with our lives as well. 

     Every time police release tear gas in our neighborhoods or drive a tank down our streets, there goes the specter of climate change too.  http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/140827/how-foreign-forces-and-american-police-departmen

PPS:  OMG, Americans have just elected a whole new bunch of crazy war mongers to Congress!  Be afraid.  Be very afraid. 

     The far-right has just won all these new seats in Congress by use of their clever three-pronged strategy:  Buy the elections with money, scare voters with nightmares of ISIS and Ebola, and commit such outrageous election fraud of such gigantic proportions that even I am amazed that no one is going to jail for this as a result.  Not since Jim Crow days has election-rigging been this bad!  http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/fox-news-ends-ebola-coverage-work-done

     And now we have a Congress that plans to serve us Endless War and climate-change denial on a platter.  "I'm lovin' it!" they exclaim.  So say goodbye to any chance of saving our atmosphere, saving our hope of living to a ripe old age and saving our world from becoming a desert. 
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120134/climate-change-denier-james-inhofe-lead-environment-committee
 
     Jesus wept!