How did we wind up with another Cheney/Bush clone in the White House? Since his election, still more billions have been given to the banksters, the Wall Street speculators who caused the current melt-down, and above all to the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and the Pentagon. Every piece of “Gone with the Wind” sized legislation is held up until every special interest, every bankster and insurance group is completely protected, at the expense of We the People.

The first act of the “new” administration was to widen the war in Afghanistan, and also to push it into the tribal regions of Pakistan. The buildups continue, with an even greater emphasis on robot, remote controlled killing machines to maximize casualties amongst the Afghans while minimizing danger to our own personnel.

We are now being told that Bush’s war was one of “choice” whereas Obama’s is a “war of necessity.” Look closely at this. He states that our personal survival in the United States consists in spending billions futilely chasing a handful of ex-CIA operatives (from an earlier war ) around the mountains, meanwhile firing Hellfire missiles into Afghan villages, killing innocent villagers, elderly, female, children, in hopes of killing some Pashtun carrying a rifle, which makes him an “insurgent.” In that part of the country, you are not properly clothed unless you have a weapon. When we blast a village and do manage to kill a man with a rifle, there are ten more to take his place; the friends and relatives of those killed and maimed by our attacks. For thousands of years, these people have been fighting off invaders and expelling occupiers of their land at tremendous personal cost. They don’t even care who or what the United States is, they simply want them, and any other invader, out of their country.

This would all seem to be insanity until you look at what is controlling this nation. Follow the money! If we keep escalating the wars, the MIC continues to make huge profits. It trades with both sides in weapons and intelligence, always at a profit. If we ever waged peace, the MIC would have to start making refrigerators and stoves. A guy buys a refrigerator, he keeps it for ten or fifteen years. Where is the profit in that? A guy buys a thousand pound bomb and BOOM! He has to buy another. Now there, my friends, is profit. And then, of course, there is the oil pipeline route.

We are looking at a government where the Fed Chairman tells Congress that to survive, we must promote austerity in the United States. Cut back on social services, education, Social Security, Medicare and other frills. At the same time, another three hundred billion is given to the Pentagon to promote their wars, and their research into still more draconian ways to control not only We the People, but the entire world.

A ten percent cut in the Pentagon’s budget would take care of most of our domestic problems,. We could feed the hungry, house the homeless, provide decent medical care and repair our crumbling infrastructure. That would still leave the bloated Pentagon giant spending several times more than all the rest of the world combined in “defense” spending. We are spending money on developing more robots, suborbital bombers, armed platforms in orbit that can rain death and destruction on anybody who refuses to obey us.

Over two centuries ago, a group of visionaries wrote a remarkable document to be the rule and guide of the new nation. Over the past couple of decades, but especially during the past nine years, that document, the Constitution of the United States, along with its first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, has been effectively shredded, replaced by the misnamed Patriot Act in its various incarnations, the Military Commissions Act, the various Surveillance Acts and Executive Orders. The Executive is shielding the perpetrators of these crimes, and then there is the dismissing of habeas corpus, the repeal of Posse Comitatus and other protective legislation to leave us open to martial law and a military takeover.

I have sent four letters to Mr. Obama, certified, return receipt requested. At least three have been delivered. The only response, so far, was a preprinted card with a stamped signature from some guy who is the chairman of correspondence, or some such title.

In these letters, I have queried him as to why the Constitution is not being restored to the Halls of government and reminding him of the duties specified in the document. No answer.

I have asked him why he is escalating our wars and further impoverishing our nation with giveaways to the rich. Why no help is given to those who are being foreclosed on. No answer.

I sent him a copy of the Nuremberg Principles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Constitution of the United States, including the Bill of Rights. I cited the fact that, under the Constitution, those are all part of the “Law of the Land,” as they are included in treaties that were ratified by the Senate. I asked him, “What part of the above documents have we not broken?” No answer.

I have sent off similar queries over the years to my alleged representatives in the House and Senate. No answer. Apparently, these subjects are now off limits as far as government officials are concerned. Perhaps they have truly shredded the Constitution and it is no more. I fear that the “Great Experiment” has come to an end, not with a bang, but with scarcely a whimper. Now, little seems to be left but for the somnolent American Sheeple to just follow the nice goat with the bell up the ramp, and though the doors into the abattoir. A sad end to a noble effort by our forefathers.

Featured Post for 05/01-05/07
CommonDreams reports:

62 Americans, dressed in the orange jumpsuits and black hoods that have become the symbol of Guantanamo detainees, were arrested in front of the White House in a nonviolent demonstration this afternoon.

The First Amendment to the Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.“

When we accept the government’s (Federal, State or Local) requirement as to time and place to protest or demonstrate; when we agree to demonstrate only far from where the demonstration needs to take place; when we agree to limit the scope of our grievances to avoid embarrassing the officials we are trying to wake up, then we are voluntarily giving up that First Amendment right.

What is not understood by most people is that the Bill of Rights does not give us permission to exercise the Rights of Man, it forbids the government from interfering! Read the Bill of Rights, read the Constitution. Then look at what the government has usurped with its misnamed PATRIOT ACT and the other acts of similar ilk that illegally cancel out the Constitution and its first ten amendments.

When We the People cannot stand in front of the White House and make our grievances known, we might as well be demonstrating in front of the Reichstag in 1930’s Germany. The results will ultimately be the same.

The “100 Days Campaign” has an excellent on-the-scene report. Watch it.

At the national level, when we are asked to “support our troops” in war, there is an unspoken benefit for those sectors of society that stand to profit from the state’s material “gains”. Unlike the case with a sports team, this benefit is all too often not recognized, or under-recognized, and for good reason. Great care is taken to conceal or underplay material benefit because it would not be regarded by the public as “fair share”.

It’s a simple premise. The more entrenched you are in the establishment, the more your individual fate is linked to the fate of the nation. What is good for the nation (the so-called “national interest”) is necessarily good for the ruling elite, but incidental for the working stiff.

The Department of Defense performs a greater service for America’s billionaires than it does for its paupers, who have nothing to lose and only their lives to defend. It figures that the sectors of society that have the most to lose will have the greatest interest in being “defended”. This may be a good time to recall that the War Department was the precursor (DOD’s own word) to the euphemistically named Department of Defense.

Going to war is an economic decision, unless in legitimate self-defense. It would be foolish (from the state’s point of view) to start a war without conceivable material gain, and states do not act foolishly. Neither do they act morally.

States are inherently amoral yet can only obtain needed, popular war support by appealing to their people with a moral argument for war. No contradiction here. It’s the smart play, the only one a government has when rousing its population to lay down in blood and fear. It certainly wouldn’t do to talk in the cold terms of oil and gas, raw materials, minerals, markets, and such. That’s not the poetry of death.

The awarded medal, as a form of “decoration”, is proof that the government knows how to play this game. Reward those that participate, punish those that oppose. A truckload of adornments cannot hide the taking of a single, innocent life. If the government truly “regretted” the unintended taking of innocent lives (as it claims), it would cease doing it.

Pretty, invented stories to a trusting public lead the way into war. Stories are interactions. A teller, a listener. And for the story to be effective, a believer. It is this extra belief (I call it extra) and extra trust (I call it extra) that the leadership relies on when making its case for war. So far, so good, again from the state’s point of view.

Left to question is whether a war-bound government can ever marshal support without resorting to exploitation of its people, and whether people will ever become sufficiently enlightened to protect themselves from such exploitation. A step toward the latter would be a mental emancipation from authority so people did not depend on it for proof of their own existence.