COMFORTABLY NUMB

From The Burning Platform.


As I observe the zombie like reactions of Americans to our catastrophic economic highway to collapse, the continued plundering and pillaging of the national treasury by criminal Wall Street bankers, non-enforcement of existing laws against those who committed the largest crime in history, and reaction to young people across the country getting beaten, bludgeoned, shot with tear gas and pepper sprayed by police, I can’t help but wonder whether there is anyone home. Why are most Americans so passively accepting of these calamitous conditions? How did we become so comfortably numb? I’ve concluded Americans have chosen willful ignorance over thoughtful critical thinking due to their own intellectual laziness and overpowering mind manipulation by the elite through their propaganda emitting media machines. Some people are awaking from their trance, but the vast majority is still slumbering or fuming at erroneous perpetrators.

Both the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement are a reflection of the mood change in the country, which is a result of government overreach, political corruption, dysfunctional economic policies, and a financial system designed to enrich the few while defrauding the many. The common theme is anger, frustration and disillusionment with a system so badly broken it appears unfixable through the existing supposedly democratic methods. The system has been captured by an oligarchy of moneyed interests from the financial industry, mega-corporations, and military industrial complex, protected by their captured puppets in Washington DC and sustained by the propaganda peddling corporate media. The differences in political parties are meaningless as they each advocate big government solutions to all social, economic, foreign relations, and monetary issues...

Read more...

Keiser Report: As Gold As Gold (E140)

From MaxKeiser.com

Chris Hedges:" Major Accomplishment of The Obama Administration Is To Codify The Destruction Of Domestic And International Law" (1:09:40)

From Max Keiser

Obama's voting record was "one corporate giveaway after another." (1:19)

"The continuing support of the democratic party has only furthered corporate abuse and malfeasance." (1:20)

"Jobs Bill is six billion dollars in tax breaks for corporations." (1:21)

As Americans Argue Amongst Themselves, The Bankers Laugh

The defense contractor is complaining about teacher salaries. LOL. What about his salary bought and paid for by the government's out of control military spending to support wars for profit? In the end neither of them are talking about the giant bailouts and bonuses on Wall Street, declining american salaries, the wasteful military and security spending, the stagflation about to hit everyone, the debt, or the collapse of the dollar etc...

Ever see vultures fighting for that last little bit of road kill?

How dare those government workers have a union asks the Tea Partier? They should suffer like the rest of us...Oh the future of America will be bright indeed.

Patriot Act fails on House floor — but it will be back

What? Can it be? Some good news? Not really...see the last line...

From Prison Planet and Raw Story

A plan that would have seen the House of Representatives extend controversial provisions of the Patriot Act with little debate failed Tuesday night, as a group of Republicans joined a majority of Democrats in voting no.
The House voted 277 to 148 for the Patriot Act extension — 23 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass it under a procedure that allows bills that aren’t controversial to pass quickly.
But it appears the bill was controversial enough to convince some two dozen tea party-backed Republican freshmen to join a majority of Democrats in voting against it...

The measure is now expected to return to the House floor for a regular vote that would require a simple majority to pass. If House members vote then as they did Tuesday, the extension will pass easily.

A Recipe for Fascism

I don't agree with everything in this article, but the general idea of it is right on track.

From Truthout

Monday 08 November 2010
by: Chris Hedges | Truthdig | Op-Ed

...More than half of those identified in a poll by the Republican-leaning Rasmussen Reports as “mainstream Americans” now view the tea party favorably. The other half, still grounded in a reality-based world, is passive and apathetic. The liberal class wastes its energy imploring Barack Obama and the Democrats to promote sane measures including job creation programs, regulation as well as criminal proceedings against the financial industry, and an end to our permanent war economy. Those who view the tea party favorably want to tear the governmental edifice down, with the odd exception of the military and the security state, accelerating our plunge into a nation of masters and serfs. The corporate state, unchallenged, continues to turn everything, including human beings and the natural world, into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse.

All sides of the political equation are lackeys for Wall Street. They sanction, through continued deregulation, massive corporate profits and the obscene compensation and bonuses for corporate managers. Most of that money—hundreds of billions of dollars—is funneled upward from the U.S. Treasury. The Sarah Palins and the Glenn Becks use hatred as a mobilizing passion to get the masses, fearful and angry, to call for their own enslavement...

Ratigan Slams Tea Party Borg Hive

From Infowars.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 21, 2010
Less than two weeks out from the dog and pony show called mid-term elections and Dylan Ratigan wants to know what happened to the Tea Party. He correctly observes that the hitherto grassroots movement was sold down the river and absorbed by the Republican Party. Karl Denninger of FedUpUSA tells Ratigan the movement has devolved into territory safe for the establishment — Guns, gays, God. The threat to the bankster system has been effectively neutralized...

American Psyche Fails To Understand Current Crisis

Editorial

We are living in a time of incredible corruption. That we all know. We have a generation of top down elitists who despite their ignorance are strongly arrogant in their feeling of their ability to control and manipulate the mass public. Perhaps with good reason. While many liberals in the Northeast are still confused to some degree that the Democrats and Brand Obama could give them that warm and cuddly feeling of "change" that will make everything good again, the southern anti-establishment movement is content to dig its heels in like a bull waiting to charge a red flag, only their supposed enemy goes by a name Fox News, Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex are only all too willing to hang in in front of them like a toreador. Socialism. With this the anti-establishment right continues the old Reagan era (and earlier) mythology of the "left," the "communists," "liberal cockroaches" or "socialists", as the ones behind all the trouble of today. Obama is the leader of this socialist revolution they contend. This is a complete, and disastrous falsehood which gives me ZERO hope for the future of this country.

I am in complete agreement that the corporations, big money, Wall Street etc. have bought out both parties. Obama is as much a Socialist as Rush Limbaugh. Yes, Obama serves the interests of the "state" but that is a state which has been completely bought off and controlled by the big banks, corporations and big money in general. The liberal surface is a charade.

I have lived in liberal countries with some significant socialist influences such as the UK, Austria, and Norway. In all three I felt that government generally worked as well if not better for the general population. I had no feeling that any of these countries weren't as free as ours, if not in some ways more so. No country is perfect, and I am sure these aren't either. Certainly the UK has some major problems as they are developing towards a police state in many ways faster then we are. When I hurt my leg however and could go to a hospital and have it looked at without paying, I can't say I thought this was "evil." Much more evil to me was when I returned to "free" America and went to a doctor for a 30 second examination which cost $300. No joke.

I don't however imagine that Obama truly intends to bring these prices down. In the corrupted system we have today, any reform is only a disguise to give more power and profit to the already powerful. The "mafia" of big business, international banks, military-industrial complex, neoconservatives, drug cartels etc... will not be satisfied until our country is completely drained of all its wealth and freedom. It is they, and not any supposed terrorists, or socialists which are the real threat to our freedoms and way of life.

The liberals of America are in many ways equally delusional. They to some degree have looked the other way as Obama continues the Bush-era wars. Some even like the idea of the big arm of the American military reaching out and "defeating" their enemies. Some think gun control, gay marriage, and abortion are still the important issues of our time. Some are fooled into thinking if a woman, or a minority is appointed to a post, it is automatically a good thing, regardless of their stand on the issues. Some don't understand or respect the importance of our constitutional right to bear arms or of free speech. All this is also wrong in my opinion.

However the anti-establishment right, is currently in opposition. The question is, what will they oppose? Just the false surface sheen of liberalism, or socialism? Or the deep rooted evil of a corporate power elite bent on manipulation, robbery, murder, and destruction?
The toreador is hanging the red flag of socialism in front of what he thinks to be an ignorant bull about to be speared once again. Don't charge the red flag. Do what the bull can't do, pick up the spear instead and watch the toreador run.