The Presidential Press Conference You Will Never See

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Friday September 06, 2013 · 4:54 PM PDT

2013/09/06 · 16:54

Obama bears witness to Deep State control of the country.

In a stunning press conference Friday at noon on the White House steps, President Obama revealed that his administration has been under the secret control of powerful economic interests within the clandestine National Security Agency. The President asserted that the move towards armed conflict with Syria is a ploy by these secretive powers to move closer to open conflict with Iran, and the wealth of public contracts the defense industry would consequently garner. He further briefed the American people that he was made aware of the “government” within the US government just prior to taking office in 2008, when he was advised to keep a single payer health care system “off the table” in the negotiations with Congress leading up to the Affordable Care Act, lest he suffer public embarrassment for some indiscretions he had committed as a younger man. He revealed that he had been advised at that time, that if he “cooperated” with these interests, he would be rewarded financially upon leaving office.

miguelitoh2o

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Tuesday August 27, 2013 · 5:52 PM PDT

2013/08/27 · 17:52

The problem with having lost my faith in the institutions of Democracy, is that I find myself in disbelief of anyone advancing an agenda such as is being done for US war against Syria. How do we separate the information from the disinformation? But they used chemical weapons against their people didn’t they? Well, if you take the unknown evidence presented by Israeli Intelligence at face value, maybe. Then again I don’t think the Israelis are above supplying tweaked data to the US, or for that matter, chemical weapons to the insurgents in Syria to help precipitate an international war against one of their nearest enemies.

miguelitoh2o

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Friday June 28, 2013 · 6:44 PM PDT

2013/06/28 · 18:44

I watched Edward Snowden's interview by Glen Greenwald in Hong Kong again tonight and was struck by his closing words: "There will be a time when policies change. Because the only thing that restricts the activities of the surveillance state is policy, [NOT] law. a new leader will be elected , they'll flip the switch, and say that because of the crisis, the new dangers in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority... more power... and there will be nothing the people will be able to do at that point to oppose it, and it will be turnkey tyranny."

http://www.youtube.com/...

It's in the last minute and a half of this video.

Now for your examination, a small item you probably have not heard anything about from the talking heads on the major TV news shows.

miguelitoh2o

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Friday June 21, 2013 · 8:08 PM PDT

2013/06/21 · 20:08

Edward Snowden is the American surveillance state version of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire to protest a foreign invasion and devastation of one's country. The Mohamed Bouazizi of the United States. It's not easy to accept what is likely going to happen to him as a result of the service he has done for us all. While the message he exemplifies is still being manipulated in the MSM, he will remain a potent symbol for all those who would stand up to power regardless of how his image is portrayed. If he survives to be captured and returned to the US, he may come to think longingly of how quickly and relatively painlessly he might have gone out. It is my belief that the Security-Police State in which we increasingly find ourselves living, and which is being built and controlled by the self interest of powerful economic interests, cannot survive. The defenders of the status quo will now be focused on techniques to cow the people into submission, self-regulation, and self censorship.

Working Stiffs and Executive Compensation, (or somebody's pissing on me and telling me it's raining)

miguelitoh2o

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Tuesday February 19, 2013 · 1:34 PM PST

2013/02/19 · 13:34

There has been a lot of talk about how the minimum wage has not kept pace with the expanding economy of the United States. Currently at $7.25/hour, the minimum wage would be at $16.50 had it kept pace with the growth of the economy. Dean Baker makes a good explanation of how that has been by design, (It's a feature not a bug!), here.

It's not just minimum wage workers who have not kept pace with the economy. While inflation-adjusted ("real") household income had been increasing almost every year from 1945 to 1999, it has since been flat and even decreased recently. U.S. median household income fell from $51,144 in 2010 to $50,502 in 2011. Extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, doubled from 1996 to 1.5 million households in 2011, including 2.8 million children.

miguelitoh2o

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Thursday November 29, 2012 · 9:01 AM PST

2012/11/29 · 09:01

Bluff:
1
a : to deter or frighten by pretense or a mere show of strength
b : deceive
c : feign 2
: to deceive (an opponent) in cards by a bold bet on an inferior hand
intransitive verb
: to bluff someone : act deceptively

Dear Mr. President/Senator/Congressman,

There has been much media buzz broadcasting panic to pressure Congress to get a budget deal, done by December 31. The President is trying to rally middle class support to petition Congress to implement austerity, when the experiments with such in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Latvia all have clearly shown that austerity during recession makes the debt to GDP ratio worse and increases unemployment while shredding the social safety net. Americans are being asked to make sacrifices that will only exacerbate our fiscal problems. Much ado is being made about "shared sacrifice", and how Americans must accept cuts to social programs for the good of the country, while Congress preserves tax advantages for the super-wealthy. Those tax breaks for the rich began with the Bush tax breaks, and have greatly contributed to the fiscal issues we are faced with today.

miguelitoh2o

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Saturday October 08, 2011 · 1:06 PM PDT

2011/10/08 · 13:06

The natives are restless. We used to get to come into the castle when the marauders and pillagers arrived at the city’s walls in exchange for our support and defense of the realm. Not any longer. This war is being fought in the realm of ideas and promulgated by the plutocracy through their public relation branches, aka the MSM. The people have taken to the streets with amorphous discontent and amorphous demands. The only given is that they’re not going to go away. They’ve spied the little man behind the green curtain, dispensing aphorisms, misinformation, and advice, and have decided to call him out. It’s become clear that no one in a position of power or wealth gives a fig for them. The best plan the owners of the world can come up with is to discredit them, or failing that co-opt them and their movement. With luck de-fuse the smoldering keg on the doorsteps of our moneyed class. With more luck, that moneyed class will recoup all or most of the debt owed them from the 99% who don’t enjoy the economic clout to cause the renegotiation of their debt. The most the 99% can count on is to have legislation introduced to forgive penalties on early withdrawals from their IRA accountsso they might pay back the bankers while risking their personal safety net.

miguelitoh2o

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Sunday August 07, 2011 · 7:33 PM PDT

2011/08/07 · 19:33

Having watched the alacrity with which our public servants, (legislators and chief executive), recently handed away resources ascribed to the commonwealth of the citizenry at large and the difficulty those same servants had with reigning in health care costs in 2009, I’ve further refined my ideas about how our democracy works in 2011, and who the constituents of those public servants truly are. It should not surprise most of my readers that their constituency excludes 99% of Americans. I recently read this excellent article from Steve Randy Waldman which has sparked some thoughts of my own. In it, Waldman quotes John Kenneth Galbraith:

“To the economist embezzlement is the most interesting of crimes. Alone among the various forms of larceny it has a time parameter. Weeks, months, or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in — or more precisely not in — the country’s businesses and banks. This inventory — it should perhaps be called the bezzle — amounts at any moment to many millions of dollars. It also varies in size with the business cycle. In good times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. But even though money is plentiful, there are always people who need more. Under the circumstances the rate of embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases rapidly. In depression, all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. The bezzle shrinks.”

miguelitoh2o

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Monday July 11, 2011 · 7:45 PM PDT

2011/07/11 · 19:45

This is my distillation of what the average American should know about the "debate" transpiring in Washington about the deficit.

I. Government spending over the past 20 years has increased at a lower rate than any of the other factors contributing to GDP.

II. The deficit crisis was created by a combination of events, but mostly by:

a. A global financial crisis precipitated by a combination of factors, not the least of which was a bubble in the real estate market which was used to feed the financial markets collateral to include in financial products which the banksters hawked to their customers, while they in turn placed bets that those products would fail. This is called "financialization". This process was facilitated by deregulation and lax enforcement of existing regulations governing financial markets from the mid/late 1990s onward.

III. The financial crisis reduced government tax collections at all levels.

IV. Individual income tax receipts account for 42% of US tax receipts. Social Security and social insurance taxes account for 40%. Corporate taxes account for 9% of US tax receipts.

miguelitoh2o

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Tuesday May 24, 2011 · 9:05 AM PDT

2011/05/24 · 09:05

Things really are falling apart. Our Captains of Industry know that profit maximization at all costs paves the way to a better future for us all. By putting Capital into the hands of the wealthy we will fuel economic prosperity across class lines by creating jobs. Removing the burden of regulation we can lead the way to a new economic paradigm in which the rising economic tide lifts all boats. To staunch the growing international debt/credit crisis social safety nets need to be pared. The many must belt tighten; even suffer a bit, if but for their own good. The rightness of these beliefs are self-evident, even filtered through third hand delivery systems tracing back to the great thinkers who lay prone in the bell towers of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, as they adjust their scopes on their oblivious targets, bustling about on the quad below.

miguelitoh2o

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Thursday December 30, 2010 · 2:19 PM PST

2010/12/30 · 14:19

We'll soon be hearing from President Obama on the State of the Union. This is my analysis and opinion of the actual state of affairs in our country as the new year is dawning.

The Economy

Oil is at 90 dollars a barrel. The governments of Europe, Japan, and the United States are saturated with debt. Housing prices in the US are falling again, and there’s no job growth in America. For some reason, many are still imagining that we’re in an economic recovery. Our economic system remains as fragile and dangerous as it ever was. Meanwhile the perpetrators of the financial crisis are enjoying record profits.

miguelitoh2o

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Wednesday February 04, 2009 · 2:39 AM PST

2009/02/04 · 02:39

Here I go... about to be pushed off a cliff, (or to fall through the cracks). I'm about to forgo the safety net of health care insurance due to a pre-existing medical condition that has made obtaining a affordable version impossible. More on that later.

First let's get some facts on the table.

Our multi-payer privatized health care insurance 'system' wasn't designed to provide coverage for all of us. In fact, it wasn't 'designed' at all.

The US is the only major wealthy developed country without a public health insurance program for all of its citizens.

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The Presidential Press Conference You Will Never See

Syria, Disinformation and the Dying Empire

Narcissism, Conspiracy Theory and the Edward Snowden Affair

Snowden is our version of a self-immolating Buddhist monk

Working Stiffs and Executive Compensation, (or somebody's pissing on me and telling me it's raining)

It's Not a Fiscal Cliff, it's a Fiscal Bluff

Breaking the Social Contract

Are Americans Just a Bunch of Suckers?

15 things Every American should know about deficit reduction

Things Fall Apart

The Real State of the Union, 2011

Our Healthcare Dystopia, or How I Fell Through the Cracks.