Shooting Ourselves In The Foot

Shooting Oursleves In The Foot Headerby Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

“If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.” _Joseph Goebbels.

 

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot - Shoot Foot How many times have you heard the phrase, “liberal media?” “Mainstream media?” Or as some like to call themselves, “progressive media?” Let me give you a little clue. No such thing exists! It’s a myth and I’ll prove it by citing relatively recent history.

Remember when Al Gore ran against George Bush for President? This was the first time Bush ran. George Bush was never actually elected. I remember watching the election returns that night and everything came down to that mess we call “Florida.” By the way this is when I lost my virginity with the media. It wasn’t pleasant. They didn’t even kiss me first.

Liberal Media? Yeah Right!

ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN were watching the returns come in and they called the election for Al Gore. Then something peculiar happened. FOX News suddenly called the election for George Bush. They were the only news organization to do so. Now a reasonable person might expect there to be some disagreement. If everyone else is seeing it the same way and suddenly *ONE* person sees it differently, logic says you give more weight to the consensus not the outlier.

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot - John Prescott Ellis

John Prescott Ellis cousin of George Bush.

It gets better! It later came out that only one person at the FOX news agency was responsible for calling the election for George Bush. Turns out he was a cousin of George Bush. So, based on a relative of George Bush making a proclamation backed by neither evidence nor fact, all the other News Agencies, halted and fell in line with FOX News.

I submit, this never would have happened had these news agencies been truly independent. Imagine everyone looking up at the sky and saying, “it’s blue,” then one person exclaims, “no, it’s red!” Normally everyone would look at this person and conclude that he had the problem. If everyone around you said, “well I guess we were wrong, it must be red,” you would be convinced you were in the middle of either a very strange dream or a nightmare. Yet this is pretty much what happened that fateful election night.

George W. Bush – Our First Appointed President

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot - Hanging ChadsRemember, the governor of Florida at that time was George Bush’s brother Jeb Bush. Due to voting chicanery – the blueprint for what we now see with every election in a “red State” – hanging chads, machines casting votes for persons other than people attempted to vote for, many votes were not counted. Many votes were simply thrown out. You knew there was a problem when Pat Buchanan received a majority of the vote in Florida’s Jewish communities.

Bottom line? The whole thing wound up before the U.S. Supreme Court. This was when I lost my virginity regarding our legal system and it was even worse than the first time. George Bush’s father had previously stacked the Supreme Court with his appointments. Not surprisingly, they handed the election to George Bush. Thus, they nullified all those uncounted votes in Florida and technically, our democracy ended. We now had a President for, of and by the plutocrats. I refer to the reign of George W. Bush as America’s Dark Ages.

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night…” _Dylan Thomas

America Strikes Back

Rather than simply fasten our shackles about our necks and walk into their prison camps, Americans fought back. In 2008 we did something nobody saw coming. We elected our first African-American President. Personally? I think one of the things that made it possible was the GOP’s right wing machine was all geared up to take on Hillary Clinton. They had ads sitting on the shelves ready to go. They were caught completely flat footed, and a step behind by the candidacy of Barack Obama.

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot - Dr. Jeremiah Wright

Dr. Jeremiah Wright

All they could do was to try to paint him as “other.” Remember? First he was a secret Muslim, because his father whom he never really had any interaction with was supposedly Muslim. They rode that horse right up until they discovered Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Then, no he wasn’t a Muslim, he was a Baptist who believed in “Liberation Theology.” Sure would have been nice to have that so called “Liberal Media” to come to his defense. Hardly a peep!

Where Exactly Was The Liberal Media?

Shooting Ourselves In The Foot - Kenyan Birth Certificate

Date of Birth? Correct. However, Kenya didn’t exist until 1964

Next they slandered the entire State of Hawaii, by claiming his official birth certificate was fraudulent. Their claim? He was actually born in Kenya. Never mind that Kenya didn’t exist when President Obama was born. British East Africa didn’t become Kenya until several years after our President’s birth. I got a good laugh at those photoshopped birth certificates they claimed to have discovered. They all had the date of his birth correct… which of course proved they were frauds because they had Kenya on the masthead. If they’d simply Googled Kenya they would have seen they’d of needed to change the date, making him 3 years younger. Of course, never missing the opportunity of shooting ourselves in the foot, our so called, “Liberal Media” must have been on vacation somewhere. Perhaps they were hanging out with Donald Trumps Private Investigators whom, by the way, we still haven’t heard from.

Of course, changing his date of birth would have created another can of worms since his birth announcement was carried in two Hawaiian newspapers and those newspapers are on microfiche in the Library of Congress. President Obama’s parents would have to of been the greatest psychics the world has ever known, to foresee their son becoming President of these United States and orchestrate such a fraud, when their interracial marriage wasn’t even recognized in many of the Southern States at that time. But I digress.

The fact is, if we truly had a liberal media, many of you my readers, wouldn’t be hearing some of these things for the first time. A truly “liberal media” would have been all over this and stamping out the outright lies. They were strangely silent weren’t they?

Predator Drones Make Me Moan

This latest fiasco deals with the use of Predator Drones. Who needs the Republican party when we are so insistent on shooting ourselves in the foot? From February 2002 up through the end of he Bush Presidency in 2008, Predator Drones were used to good effect. Yes, President Obama increased their use, however the protocols and methodology remained the same. If a Predator Drone gets shot down, malfunctions or crashes, we don’t lose American military personnel. No rescue missions to retrieve an American airman stranded in hostile territory. It is just an expensive piece of military equipment. No piece of equipment is more precious than the life of a son, daughter or father serving in a theater of war.

And Now For Their Objections

If you pay careful attention to what the real objections are, they are as follows:

1.) Use of Predator Drones is unsportsmanlike. The enemy has no chance against them.

That seems to be a problem for some. War is not a sporting contest. It is not like a football game to be watched for entertainment. War is a bloody business. You want to be able to strike down your enemy from a place of safety.

2.) Predator Drones have killed civilians.

Yes, I’m sure they have. However, let us not be naive. What do you expect *them* to say? “Damn you got us?” We’re fighting an asymmetrical war. Our enemies don’t wear uniforms and march in formation. That group of civilians they show you may have just finished planting a road side bomb. Would it be somehow better if instead of a Predator Drone, an F-117 stealth fighter did the deed?

3.) Predator Drones have been used to kill American Citizens.

Depends upon what you call a citizen. If a person goes to a foreign land… one we happen to be at war against, dons the attire of our enemies, takes up arms against us and or incites, encourages or recruits others to murder our soldiers, I’m comfortable with the notion that he has given up his citizenship.

A Really Inconvenient Truth

Where is our so called “liberal media?” Why am I having to make these arguments? Why? Because they’re taking their marching orders and agendas from the right wing news sources. The question you ought to be asking is what even makes these right wing nincompoops relevant?

What’s changed? Could it be that our President is Black? I would hate to think so, nevertheless, given our propensity for repeatedly shooting ourselves in the foot, I’m inclined to believe this has a lot to do with it.

Destroying America In 3 Easy Steps

Destroying America Headerby Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

EVERYTHING THE TEA PARTY AND THE GOP ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT… Were in full swing for 8 years under George Bush. Odd we heard not a peep from them then isn’t it? Wonder what’s changed???

How do you bring down the United States? It is easy!

Destroying America In 3 Easy Steps

STEP ONE: Get rid of the Glass-Steagall act.

This was a firewall between retail banking and investment banking. Investors want a certain amount of risk. Taking risks can lead to windfall profits. Yes, you can lose your shirt, but heretofore, people who played in the investment markets, were the wealthy and only played with money that they could afford to lose.

With Glass-Steagall out of the way, suddenly people’s mortgages became investment instruments. Retirements became pension funds tied to the success or failure of your corporation. The middle class was built on home ownership. The majority of people’s wealth was in their homes. These homes were then passed down to their children giving them a leg up into the middle class.

Destroying America - Fred Thompson AAG

For God’s sake! Don’t pass that wealth on to your children!!!

I can remember when ARMs – Adjustable Rate Mortgages – became all the rage. People were encouraged to re-finance their homes, take their equity out and spend it. Now they’re pushing “Reverse Mortgages,” Can’t have the “middle class” passing their wealth to the next generation. They might actually become really wealthy! You surely don’t think the collapse of the housing market was accidental do you?

STEP TWO: Cut the tax revenue coming into the United States

Destroying America - Debt Chart

Click for full size.

The Bush era tax cuts, which the Republicans made permanent, are what has caused our national debt to sky rocket. Under Bill Clinton, we balanced our budget and had begun paying down our debt such that had we followed through, our entire national debt would have been paid off by the year 2010. Our nation would have been debt free! Once debt free, we could kiss the Federal Reserve goodbye! However, as I recall, the GOP simply hated Bill Clinton. Matter of fact, they impeached him! If the future of their grandchildren were truly as important as they’d like to pretend… They would have embraced Bill Clinton’s policies and remained on track to America becoming debt free. Bill Clinton left George Bush a $1.9 trillion dollar budget surplus.

STEP THREE: Burn through the national savings account.

George Bush went on a spending spree along with the congressional Republicans that would make a drunken sailor blush. Yes, we were attacked on September 11, 2001. I won’t go into the plethora of facts that make the official story absolute nonsense, but let us examine our response.

First, “Terror” is not a person. It is not a nation State. It is not an organization such as Al’Qaeda. Terror is a TACTIC. You cannot wage war on a tactic. Of course, caught up in the fervor of blood lust with our thirst for revenge, very little critical thinking was going on back then. We went into Afghanistan – which made sense – but, when we had the chance to capture Osama Bin Laden and decapitate the head of Al’Qaeda, we let him escape in order to rush into Iraq which had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks on the United States. Al’Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq until they followed us there.

Remember how we effectively cut our income by giving tax cuts to the top 1%? By launching two wars simultaneously, we were burning through billions of dollars a day and there was no revenue stream incoming to replace our outgo. Thus we simply threw everything on the national credit card. In point of fact, George Bush didn’t even include the costs of these wars as a budget item. What could possibly go wrong???

Destroying America - Bush Painting

He is a better painter than he was a President… And his paintings suck!

The only thing that did go wrong was George Bush’s timing. I am firmly convinced that the plan was to mortally wound the United States and then let a Black President preside over its demise and of course take the blame. Things came to a pimple just a bit sooner than Bush had planned thus the TARP bailout was on his watch. Yes, that’s right. It was George Bush who signed the TARP bailout, Republicans rail against. If only things had taken a few more weeks to come together, George would have been back in Crawford Texas painting his water colors and acrylics, pretending no involvement.

The media propaganda has been working hammer and tong to rewrite history such that even now, most Republicans and TEA Party nit wits will argue vociferously that President Obama was responsible for the TARP, Of course, history – and spelling – were never really their strong suits.

We Are In Much Better Hands Than We Should Be

Destroying America - Mitt Romney

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt!

So, here we are. What they never counted on was President Obama being as competent as he is. Remember Mitt Romney’s article, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt?” Can you imagine having a President who would so cavalierly recommend the total destruction of an industry? Let us forget for a moment the human impacts of his advice. We all know that Mitt was born without a soul. Think for a moment what it would mean to the safety and security of these United States if we lost our manufacturing base.

If we have to have our weapons of war, manufactured and shipped to us, this creates a logistics problem and a critical supply line that could be cut by an enemy we were at war with. No need to bomb over here. Just bomb the factories that are producing our tanks, planes and other weapons of war in the various nations we’d be forced to buy them from. Think having a shotgun for home defense, but storing it at your neighbor’s house.

During WWI and WWII, it was our automotive manufacturing facilities that were tooled up and re-purposed to produce the Tanks, Jeeps, Half-Tracks, Heavy Trucks and fighter planes that helped us to win the war. The big foundries that were producing engine blocks began producing armor plating, hull sections for ships and submarines, and a host of other items we don’t even think about. Our automotive industries and their manufacturing capabilities are crucial to the safety and survival of this nation. Any person who doesn’t know this, shouldn’t be President.

Other than the Bush tax cuts, the next biggest drain on our budget is health care costs. I don’t want to live in a 3rd World Nation where people are left to die on the side of the roads. I want people around me to be healthy. My health and well being depend on it. So do yours. However, equally important is the fact that our population is greying, getting older. Older people require more and more medical attention. The question is not whether we’re going to pay for this, the question is how do we get the best service while keeping our costs down?

Let me share with you something from my own personal experience. A year or so ago, I had to have vein surgery to correct some varicose veins in both of my legs. Thus I had to have two surgeries. One on each leg. We spaced these about 4 weeks apart.

The bill for each leg was roughly $16,000 dollars or $32,000 for both. Mind you, this is routine outpatient surgery. I did not spend the night in the hospital either time. Of that total $32,000 my surgeon who actually performed the surgery, his two surgical nurses who assisted him and the Anaesthesiologist who put me to sleep and woke me back up, combined they got a total of a little over $5,000 dollars in total for both procedures. Where did the other $27,000 go? The Hospital received that for renting out it’s surgical suite for less than 4 hours.

Destroying America - Operating SuiteWhat did I use in that suite that amounted to $27,000 dollars? Since I saw the inside of the suite twice, I can tell you that the lights were the same each time, the stainless steel table was the same, the monitors and equipment were the same. Nothing had to be replaced between operations. So what exactly cost $27,000 dollars? That’s $6,750 per hour. Just like a gas station attempting to explain why the price of gas jumped 60 cents in 24 hours, the Hospital will try and explain the cost they’re charging those of us who can pay. You know? The ones of us with insurance. Their explanation is, we’re paying for all those people who do not have insurance. The ones who are treated in the Emergency room and never pay their bills.

It is a vicious circle. Insurance Companies raise your premiums because hospital costs keep rising. Hospital cost keep rising because people who’s only option is to use the “Emergency Room,” often cannot pay their bills. So, ultimately who is paying for people not having health insurance? You are. Just because you don’t see it as an itemized figure on your bill, doesn’t mean it is not there.

We need to address this and we’ve known since the 40’s we’ve needed to address the rising cost of health care. When people don’t pay their hospital bills, the hospital corporations write those off as losses on their income tax statements. In essence, they are double dipping. They’re claiming a loss to the federal government, while raising their rates to cover that loss through each paying customer. It is a sweet system… if you’re a hospital.

Saving America

To save America we need to simply reverse what has been done to her. Regulate the banks. Get rid of the Bush tax cuts. The 1% were doing just fine under the Clinton era tax rates and we need to fix health care so that people can protect their income. It is just that simple.

No Laughing Matter

No Laughing Matter Headerby Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

It’s No Laughing Matter

Does anyone truly believe that John – “waterworks” – Boehner possess the testicular fortitude to even recognize a principled position… let alone hold on to one? The only thing that matters to John is what his father would think if only he could have seen his little Johnny grow up to become the Speaker of the House.

No Laughing Matter - Boehner's New Gavel

Boehner’s New Gavel

He is transparent as glass and that makes him easy to control. When Nancy Pelosi passed Johnny that over sized mallet – gavel – he started bawling and very nearly burst into a full blown crying and snotting fit. Yes, it means so much to him. It means so much that merely the threat of it being taken away causes him to panic and fall in line.

No Laughing Matter - Eric Cantor

Eric’s got plans…

The power and prestige have blinded him to the reality he’s already lost the speakership in all but name only. In just a short while, even that will be gone as well. Eric Cantor is grinning in his face and stabbing him in the back each and every chance he gets. Why you ask? Because Eric wants to be the first Jewish Speaker of the House.

You know? That whole being third in line of succession thing really goes to some people’s heads! What I find frightening is, anyone who will scheme, manipulate and commit what meets the very definition of treason, once they are third in line for succession… I believe they’d be capable of arranging the demise of the President and Vice President. Unbridled Ambition is a terrible thing.

Puppet Masters

No Laughing Matter - Lap Dogs

Attack Dogs? Lap Dogs?

We have been focusing our ire on the Republican front men who are doing little more than parroting talking points they’ve been given. Like well trained attack dogs, they will sit up, lay down, roll over and attack on their master’s command. There is no doubt that an attack dog bearing down on you will get your attention. Of course, that’s the point isn’t it? To get you to focus on and expend your energies fighting and trying to survive the dog instead of taking out its master.

No Laughing Matter - Attack DogIt is time we raised our sights. We need to target the men behind the curtain and stop watching the noise and light show. The Koch brothers and the other members of the billionaire’s boys club can purchase an endless supply of Republican zombies to keep us dazed and confused. They are quite alright with the possibility of America burning to the ground. Once the fire is fully engaged – it’s already been lit – they’ll simply hop on their private jets and head to one of their many villas in Europe and wait for the fire to burn down to ashes. At which point they’ll return offering themselves as saviors to rebuild America in their own image.

No Laughing Matter - Homeless FamilyAsk yourself, why should multi-billionaires give a damn about people making a living wage? Children receiving assistance that “Head Start” supplies? People being able to have affordable health care? Women having control over their own reproductive choices? The truth is, they don’t! These are merely incendiary devices they’re using to start their fire.

Instead of us putting that fire out, we’re busy dancing with their trained attack dogs. It is time we saw past the illusions of their smoke and mirrors. It is time we go after the masters of the dogs. The dogs are merely dumb brutes doing as their told. Other than the fact they were willing… no eager, to sell their souls for a morsel of porridge, it is not their fault. We can deal with them later. Perhaps force them to attend Sunday school all over again and learn the lessons they clearly missed out on. We need to shut off the water at the main. Once we do, the leaks will become easier to fix. When you look at the Koch brothers and others who seem to be laughing it up, remember, this really is no laughing matter!