Obama’s Justice Dept. still protecting Bush-era “War on Terror” policies. This article says Atty. Gen. Holder is opposing a San Francisco lawsuit over federal warrantless wiretapping:
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j9n5u8khGqNQT6DTlcKGV6ouKqfQD9BLULIG2
also, http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13155
Are you effing kidding me? Show’s you what getting power does to people.
I…….I guess all I’m left with is the same thought, which I have rehearsed in my mind with incredulity over and over since spring:
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“How’s that hope and change working for ya?!”
Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story has gotten a lot of Americans thinking about our monetary and banking system. What’s it all about and why is it screwing us? What is its history? As it turns out, we’ve been grappling with the problem since the founding.
Here are a few among many largely unknown statements by prominent early Americans regarding the monetary system and banks:
1.
President Andrew Jackson (1829 – 1837) (best known, ironically, for his visage… on the paper $20 bill!), is quoted, regarding the central banks’ utilization of paper money:
The paper-money system and its natural associations—monopoly and exclusive privileges—have already struck their roots too deep in the soil, and it will require all your efforts to check its further growth and to eradicate the evil.
The bankers roused Jackson’s anger to such lengths that he forced their representatives, physically, from the White House:
…You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, I will rout you out.
(And he did.)
But imagine one of our über-scripted, contemporary U.S. Presidents doing that! Yes indeed, Americans did things differently back then! They ran on principle, principles that they weren’t afraid to put into action for the Republic, instead of letting them float hypothetically or as sound-bites like a Clinton or an Obama. Leaders actually…lead…back then? Apparently they did.
This, in contrast to our electric-shock collared, jump-when-we-tell-you, puppet government hat passes for American democracy these days.
Of course the bankers evidently came back in due course…
President Jackson and other American statesmen were assiduously aware of the risks of a centralized banking and monetary system. They sought to balance laissez-faire capitalism with the uniquely American agrarian↔
manufacturing give-and-take that made the early Republic so special; what separated it from the economically restricted and import-dependent (from the African/Asian colonies) Europeans.
2.
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter from Monticello, 28 May 1816 (see full-text at http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/jefferson/jefftaylor.html):
“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies…”
There you are.
From Jefferson in 1816 to Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story in 2009, not much has changed; the central bankers are dug-in; entrenched, and they have clawed along on the underbelly with us for 200-plus years.
How much longer?
- ^.^
The above article is inspired in part by Ron Ewart’s The Fed: Forcing Americans into Indentured Servitude, published at http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com
LIBERTY BELLE / Seattle Action Network:
An Email Reply
Dear Liberty Belle,
I’m writing to commend your and Seattle Action Network’s tireless work on helping to expose and assist in opposing the Health-Care Reform legislation in the U.S. Congress. Major props!
Your weekly emails always provide the necessary info, links, times, dates, phone #s and fax #s, for people like me who’d not otherwise have much of an in on what’s going on in the development and debate of the legislation. Timing is everything – when these Congressional bills are being decided upon, etc. – and you realize this. The information you pass on is vital and you are a true patriot for notifying all of us on your email list.
[Below: Excerpt from Liberty Belle/Seattle Action Network weekly newsletter, 10/30/09]
The Seattle Sons & Daughters of Liberty:
A Seattle Action NetworkAre you ready? Pelosi has just released the House version of the health care DEform bill and it is 1,990 pages long. The Senate and House bills both include a public option and an individual mandate to force Americans to buy their pre-approved health plans. The cost? Trillions of dollars we don’t have.The following events and campaigns are ways that you can get involved and make a difference. We have to fight this thing and we have to fight it now. Please look through all of the events and click on the links provided for more information. Some are events you can attend in person and others are things you can do from home. Events are listed by date.
Every Day – A daily action plan
What: Calling and faxing specific, targeted members of Congress every day. Representative Michele Bachmann has said that if we all called congress every day we could make the difference. And you only need to call three per day.
Time: Whenever you can!
Where: Anywhere!
More info: You must click on these links to find the daily actions plans. http://teapartywa.org/ and
http://www.freedomworks.org/online-war-room.
I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate it very much!
I was one of the guys holding up signs with folks outside the Senators’ office building downtown a couple months ago. I met you and we chatted with some other folks for a few minutes. So I’m privileged to say I can count Liberty Belle as an acquaintance!!!
I wanted to share some thoughts; observations:
After reading another of your well-researched and timely bulletins, I’m wondering if any of this emailing/calling/faxing of congressmen really will make a difference. Perhaps it does but it’s a drop-in-the-bucket when you’re an outsider; an average American who is not a “special interest” and can’t make more than a peep on the radar screen.
There has been so much vocal opposition to the Obama/Democrat agenda through the summer and now heading toward 2010 that – and maybe I’m mistaken – it seems that the opposition is not really getting anywhere. I haven’t seen our tactics change significantly, while the Democrats’ and the Left’s have – they’ve been VERY conniving as to the timing and their subtle use of the media and beyond to edge their despicable designs closer and closer to law.
So here’s a logical question:
When do we stop earnestly emailing, calling, faxing, blogging; and do something more “active”? We’ve had a number of wonderful demonstrations – the 9/12 rally comes to mind – and yet here we are, Pelosi’s still up to the same, as is the Obama administration. They’ve only throttled it up a few gears, while we, the American people, for the most part sit idly by, hoping our representatives in Washington might do something.
Frankly, I’m sick of waiting and I’m sick of emailing and all of this. Again, in my opinion it’s a drop-in-the-bucket. IF that.
You’ve let us in on some of the rallies to attend, and that’s great.
But after all your and others’ efforts over the summer, the votes are not there in Congress to oppose the Health DEform bill (I like that play on the word) and the other abominations coming out of the Dem-Congress.
@#%@#!!!
What’s left to do?
I’m just left pondering what has become of our political system and of course, I, like millions of Americans – all of us are pondering with trepidation what might become of our country if they succeed.
So what kind of organizing, what kind of action, will be necessary?
What is it going to take to really make a difference; to really force the state-controlled media or even local media to pay attention this insane orgy of $trillions in spending that we don’t have? So this is what I wanted to run by you. Food for thought.
An oft-quoted passage from the Constitution states that America, Americans, are obligated to defend the Republic from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
What does the truth of this statement mean for the citizenry? When do we take this to heart?
Yours Truly
Historian Thomas Woods discusses the War of 1812 and the largely unheard of history of the New England secessionist movement, based upon 10th Amendment States’ Rights and the New England states’ (namely Massachusetts’ Daniel Webster’s) opposition to the federal conscription of state militias.
The word bandied about is “interposition”. The Constitutional notion of the States interposing between the people and the federal government when the latter is seen to trample on the rights of the people…
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/10/23/states-rights-the-unknown-history/
Glenn Beck’s article ”What If Americans Didn’t Pay Their Taxes?” is genius. Well no, not genius, just common sense! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? Obviously people have but I’ve rarely seen it explicated so simply yet potently and slipped past the media filter.
I’d like to tell a story about taxes here in Seattle.
In Seattle I am participating through my “citizen buying power” (what limited I have) in what you are describing. I smoke cigarettes; have since I was 15. It’s a nasty habit and I’m gradually quitting but it’s a tough addiction. You know, it’s funny, if the government really wanted people to quit, tobacco tax revenues would go not only to smoking prevention but to smoking cessation. Why are the two stop-smoking staples – nicotine gum and nicotine patches – so expensive? Why? They should be given away for free if the government were truly serious about stopping people smoking. This is part of what I find so disgustingly hypocritical. So I guess they’ve got us just where they want us, huh? Yup. It’s sick.
I got laid off from my job in February 2009 and have been unemployed since. How can I afford to spend $7 a pack? Well, I can’t afford to spend $7 or $8 a pack, and neither can thousands of other Washingtonians who are saddled with outrageous, oppressive tobacco taxes.
Limited-income folks who smoke tobacco used to be able to get by with just buying rolling tobacco – Class J tobacco – but after the ‘08 elections the taxes suddenly hiked around 200%. I could not effing believe it, but there it was. No more cigarettes for you! bad doggie!
So you are aware of Seattle’s Chinatown – well there is now a (relatively) booming market there – at under 50% the normal U.S. price – for imported Marlboros, just southeast of downtown and Pioneer Square. I’ve been waiting for the authorities to crack down on this squandering of their revenue source (and a precious federal and local revenues source it is) but so far so good.
Maybe Chinese smugglers are making a profit here but then again so is Philip Morris, an American co. with lots of American shareholders and employees so there is good and bad.
Point is, taxes are becoming an ever-more oppressive, intrusive act of economic violence against the American people and I will do everything I can to push back.
Noam Chomsky 6 Oct 2009
In Washington D.C. back in 2004 (seems like a whole other era!) I saw Noam Chomsky speak for around 45 minutes. Whatever his supposed political “bent” (and people describe him as a leftist/socialist), his talk was one-hundred percent sincere and full of lucid and penetrating insight. He understands, more deeply than probably anyone, the meaning of, and the meaning behind, society and its constructs.
What is chilling about these brief remarks from San Francisco just last week is Chomsky’s demeanor – he’s not concerned, he is truly troubled. Five years ago I did not hear this tone. And that was at the height of the Iraq War and the Bush administration’s “War on Terror”.
In signature fashion, the Linguistics Professor recognizes and grants the alacrity of the positions on both sides of the political/cultural divide – that people are suffering, that white Americans feel their country has been slipped out from under them, and that many would be willing to head down a desperate path to correct the perceived threat. Chomsky sees analogies with the current U.S. to the conditions of 1920s – 30s Weimar Germany, describing the Weimar Republic era as “the height of civilization”, before its dark “fall” and the rise of dictatorship. Perhaps Chomsky shouldn’t have singled out Germany – Russia became a Totalitarian state under Stalin before Germany did. Two sides of the same coin. For the record, to date Communist countries have killed far more of their own people than have Fascist countries.
Still, Chomsky’s conclusions should be a wake-up call, even if the comparison to Nazi Germany is overkill, and the crimes of the Soviets an oversight (by sheer numbers, , if only because for any who’ve followed Chomsky know that he’s arguably our country’s sharpest commentator on such matters.
You have to take him seriously, and by the tone in his voice, one can see that he is dead serious. History does indeed repeat itself – this is his point. And people should be cognizant; ever vigilant.
“Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”
- (Winston Churchill)
And it’s demonstrated time and again, though the shortness of people’s memories clouds the truism.
Here, as many other commentators right and left have done, Professor Chomsky (Linguistics, M.I.T.) singles out Rush Limbaugh as cause and symptom of the cultural divide inflamed during the past year.
But for the record It must be said that Limbaugh, probably the right’s de facto spokesman, was absolutely correct in saying that an Obama presidency would ratchet up a left-right divide like nothing else. He predicted during the ‘08 Presidential race, six months before Obama took office, that an Obama presidency would inflame racial tensions and increase partisanship – NOT “heal divisions” with “hope and change” and all the rest promised by Obama the candidate.He was right.
So it is a fact that unlike Limbaugh’s more measured prediction, Chomsky’s prognosis of a sick body politic descending into fascism has yet to show itself in any open way, has come to pass. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t (maybe we just need to give Chomsky a few more years…)
Both make a similar point, the disagreement being on the cause – but quite frankly, in his remarks Chomsky confirms Limbaugh’s 2008 prediction. Ask yourself – if Obama had lost the election would Professor Chomsky have said what he said, how he said it?
- dgw
Is this 2009 America or some Children of Men-style Hollywood movie?
Note: Pay particular attention to 1:50 to 2:20, the scariest? 30 seconds of filmed interaction between the U.S. govt. and a U.S. citizen that I’ve ever seen (probably an un-armed college student – many of the victims of police action at the Pittsburgh G-20 protests were U-Pitt students caught in the mix because of the location of Pitt dormitories). “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” was a bystander’s response (2:14 – 2:19) after witnessing it. In all likelihood there were comparable incidents not caught on film.
The summary question to ask about our government’s response to peaceful demonstrations/protests/assemblies of all stripes is likewise – what the fuck is wrong with you?!?
Is this America? ? ?
What really should be done is that the teacher here should be identified and brought up before the parents of these children, and the School Board.
Letter to Seattle Times columnist D. Westneat’s column from 9/6/09, “Government Actually Had a ‘Best Idea’ “.
(Danny Westneat. “Government Actually Had a ‘Best Idea’.” Seattle Times 6 Sept. 2009: B1, B4)
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Mr. Westneat,
I share your awe and wonder at a ‘hobbit glade’ in Mt. Rainier National Park. The natural beauty of our region is both a blessing and a burden we are tasked with preserving for future generations. However I found it distasteful to employ such places of natural beauty in your argument for something manmade like federal government health care legislation. The comparison is distasteful if not downright offensive. You’re comparing two entirely different things; apples and oranges; it’s a logical fallacy and I think you know it.
Mt. Rainier National Park is a creation of millions of years of natural evolution. That it may very well not exist today in such pristine condition were it not for federal government intrusions many decades ago is inarguable. But your analogy that the National Parks too were initially opposed by “howling” voices like the ones now opposing federal “health care” – is a false one. No one opposes natural beauty. These are god-given things that have existed long before before humans came to Washington state and will likely outlast us.
I follow your column in the Times and to drag your daughter into the argument (“I hope my daughter remembers our little hike”) is well and good but it is a cheap tactic. I hope you and your daughter remember your hike too, but don’t thank the federal government and some long dead legislator for your and her visit, thank nature and our god-given green earth. Honestly, why drag that in with federal “Health-Care” legislation?
Yours Truly,
D.
“What does it matter by which wisdom each of us arrives at the truth? It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.”
– A plea from one of the last pagan senators, Aurelius Symmacus, to the boy emperor Valentinian II in 383, asking for freedom of thought.
