mojowork_n
mojowork_n's JournalStanding up to them doesn't mean you deny their humanity.
It's just a fact. Human beings are limited. We don't know what we don't know... about the other person.
I don't go out of my way to "socialize" with R's, and I boycott and actively work to stop "Movement Conservatives"
and their agenda. But I don't want to cut off all normal associations with people I meet, just because they
happen to have bought in to the lies of the CONservative PR blitzkrieg.
That "threat" can not be construed as ever having originated from people I run in to in my daily life.
That's the important distinction I'm trying to make. The "organized money" folks who are the real originators
of the R agenda are terrified that they won't be able to keep us all divided, forever.
Edit add:
The other thing is, I hope DU never devolves into a Bizarro World mirror of Freeperville. Where all dissent,
thought, exchange of ideas, and "silent whistle" call to arms ringing a Pavlovian bell replaces authentic dialogue.
(In case you haven't guessed, I'm not yet sold on DU3. The independent voices that used to grace the right
side of the home page have been whited out. Why?)
Hey, News Flash, he's an old white man from Texas.
Somebody dug up some slimy "investment" newsletters/mailers/whatever from
over twenty years ago....
Did I mention R. Paul's an elderly, caucasian gentleman from the Deep South?
That's not what makes him interesting.
What makes R.P. interesting is that he is THE anti-war candidate. That's what
Cenk Uygar said on the Young Turks, anyway, last week. He said it in the
context of the question, "which of the Republican candidates .... if you had to
vote for one of them... a gun at your head...." something like that. Cenk said,
"Ron Paul," and didn't blink or blush. The rest of the Klown car cavalcade of R.
pretenders are total frauds. R.P., at least on that one subject, is consistent,
accurate and pretty honest.
The banks, the 1 percent? The bloated military is the other half of that. (Tanks,
airplanes, submarines? Those are the only things we're still the undisputed best
at manufacturing, compared to the rest of the planet. Which we out-spend in
total military budget, every year.)
...But for the writer of this NY Mag piece to claim, "nobody is attacking him,"
is bogus and disingenuous.
R. Paul's been thoroughly, professionally slimed ever since he became -- however flawed
he might be, in so many other ways -- the "Peace" candidate.
The really arrogant, really greasy and hideous big money guys sponsoring the R's
are just terrified that R. Paul is going to become this election cycle's
uncontrollable loose cannon. What that other, skinny, old, wrinkled guy from
Texas was, back in '92 and '96, when Bill Clinton won both elections.
This what the NYMAG piece is all about:
"You don't need to see his identification." (Doesn't ID as anti-war candidate.)
"These aren't the droids you're looking for." (No, R. Paul's *not* a 'social liberal.')
*Everybody* in Eastern Europe smoked
It's one of the social differences between those folks and what most Americans understand as "normal."
Along with being much more "we" - identified than "me" - identified. (When one person does something, it's
much more likely for it to become a group thing, over there. Shared by everybody all at once.) Also,
the polution levels were really, really bad, in a lot of places. From cars, from smokestack industries -- it
was so noxious, puffing a cigarette gave your lungs a break from the acid mists washing through the air.
Not exactly.
It's not because "they're Republicans," it's because they're shameless, posturing, two-faced political whores.
Their ability as "administrators" and to "get things done" conveniently overlooks that their success or
failure as candidates and politicians rests on their ability to satisfy the demands of their uber-wealthy
sponsors, while maintaining the charade (a total fiction), that they're 'really looking out for the middle
class,' and represent traditional 'middle class values' and 'common sense.'
You only have to look at the economic history of the last 3 decades. The interests of the middle class
have been sold out and sacrificed at every turn, and the real patrons, backers and behind-the-scenes
string-pullers have been rewarded beyond the wildest dreams of avarice.
In fact, the Republican Party is splitting. There is at present a Civil War. It's being played out in the
media between Fox News, the pro-Newt faction, which no longer sees any need to maintain the fiction
that anything but Raw, Pure, Right-Wing ideological Outrage is needed to run a campaign, and the National
Review crew, which lacks the sheer bile, vitriol and spleen Tea Party activists thrive on, but would be
quite happy with a Romney candidacy. Based on his "ability as an administrator."
That Romney made his money by buying companies and firing workers and slashing costs -- regardless
of the effect on the actual, long-term financial health of the company that was purchased (or the best
interests of the local economy, and the 'middle class') -- is NEVER discussed.
But by virtue of the incredibly large sums of money invested in the PR for these candidates, the notion
that they have "nuts and bolts" financial acumen of some sort, is still maintained. It's always assumed,
like the dogma of the religious belief that it's become....
It's a joke.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/8931-how-fox-news-is-helping-barack-obamas-re-election-bid
The only dollars and cents, or balance sheets that matter, are those invested by the very wealthiest
backers of each candidate.
Propaganda.... "on both sides." That's one of the key elements of the self-sustaining frame.
There are certainly hardened, hard-line, implacable types on both sides of the ideological divide.
But I think it's a mistake to characterize it as propaganda being "spewed" from both sides.
We 'vent' (often under conditions of explosively high pressure) in response to the deliberate,
manufactured distortions that dominate 'their' media.
But it's not really head-to-head, locked-horns, direct debate:
That would look like this:
--------------> <----------------
What's going on looks more like a perpetual motion machine, with the curves looping
around a circle.
It's hardly ever Problem > Solution vs. Alternate Problem > Solution. The debates
that exist are more childish than that, revolving around Identity Politics. "I'm
Rubber and You're Glue..."
But -- that there is a Right Wing Noise Machine / Echo Chamber goes without saying.
Faux News + Hate Radio AM + the 'official' news channels and PR outlets. Think
of an upside down pyramid, or a funnel. Gatekeepers at the top control the news
flow. With fewer and fewer (but always bigger and bigger) news companies running
the show, it's easier & easier to keep conservatives on all the Sunday AM chat shows.
It's easier to screen out comparably liberal spokespeople -- unless they're set up as straw
men.
Leading the parade is that whole cavalcade of clown car presidential candidates,
on the Republican side. Their debates are squarely aimed at the Freeperville /
Looney Tune right wing hard-line True Believers. That echo chamber resonates
with boos, hostility and rage, with the slightest provocation. It's not representative
of the American voting public, as a whole, but successes and failures are gauged by
their 'reactions,' in the Republican debates.
Goebbels and the Cold War Stalinist propagandists would be jealous with admiration.
if they could see the extent to which those folks have been programmed to respond,
to all the talking points, and Pavlovian bells and whistles.
But the reason for optimism is that it really is a weapon of Mass Deception.
"Psy. Ops." military grade psychological warfare. Plus a lot of persuasion through
straight brand marketing, fear and intimidation.
Miles wide but skin deep.
Under the surface, the physiological response mechanisms for pain and stimuli
are intact, even when they're being bombarded with fake stimuli.
Their nightmare is that we -- Americans, all of us -- will wake up to the extent to
which the mutual assured destruction, the demonization of both sides by the other,
is intentional. A tactic to divide and conquer and maintain rule.
So the few, at the top of the pyramid, can stay there.
On Thom Hartmann yesterday, I heard the 2 words, "claw back," w/ref to bank accounts.
It was in passing, I was at work. Googled it today and this is what I found:
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=198650
"...you could lose everything in your bank and investment accounts -- every single dime.
Recently Bank of America transferred a bunch of derivatives into their banking arm. "A bunch" means
somewhere around $80 trillion worth... ....part of the bankruptcy "reform" law in 2005 placed
derivative claims in front of depositors in a business failure - including a bank failure.
What JP Morgan is claiming in the MF Global case is that the derivative trade (which is exactly what
a "Repo to Maturity" trade is - it's a derivative) is entitled to preference in the case of MF Global over
those who had cash there for safekeeping either as a margin deposit or just as free cash as you would
hold free cash in a bank.
If a major bank blows up this very same claim, supported in existing Bankruptcy Law with the
changes signed by George Bush in 2005, will be used to steal the entirety of your bank account,
and if you detect the impending blowup shortly before it happens -- say, 90 days before -- you're
still exposed to the risk through clawback!
Don't run any crap about FDIC insurance in this sort of event either -- in the singular case of Bank of
America we're talking about $77 trillion in face value of derivatives. While "notional" values are wildly
beyond what anyone would have to pay (as that figure assumes the reference all goes to a literal value
of zero) the fact remains that with even a 5% loss the amount of money required would be roughly
equal to the entire US Federal Budget, which the FDIC clearly does not have -- nor could it acquire.
I mean, WTF, the chips in the casino -- there are so many of them, it's like trying to calculate mass, or
the number of particles in a quantum physics problem -- outweigh actual, folding cash money, all the
sweat-from-brow-earned, deposits in Joe Lunch Buckets checking account.
Digital, bogus "bucket shop" investment instruments are "more real" than what everyone thinks of as
our (analog?) monetary system?
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