This is not the America that anyone over the age of 30 grew up with. The Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us about in 1961 http://civilianism.com/forum/index.php?page=19 is already running this country. The democratic rule of the people that has been the lynchpin of our nation is controlled no longer by the people, but by business interests that control our elective officials through campaign funding and lobbyist connections. The American voter has been disenfranchised by a media that has usurped the discourse of normal campaigning by ignoring certain candidates and not allowing them on debates. The system is rigged people. The question is what are we going to do about it?

So want to hear a rumor? The Army is giving all its families living on and off base “commodities” like rice and beans because in their words, “The Army takes care of its own”. They were also told not to tell the civilians. Why? Is the Army just helping their underpaid soldiers, or is something else happening, like a run on commodities here in Amerika like in other nations? Is the world-wide food shortage going to be felt here too? I don’t know about you folk, but I’m stocking up on Rice and beans and flour, before the prices of them hit the roof and they are rationed. If that isn’t enough to make you go hummm…Dig this.

I am one American that is ashamed of what this nation has become. I am sick to death of watching my country invade other nations for their oil. I am ashamed of the people we wantonly attack in the “name of democracy”. I cringe when I see police officers kill citizens with impunity and beat people as if they the police were nothing but state sponsored gangs. I am disgusted with this so-called Presidential race where you can’t tell one candidate but for their gender or race and the citizens of this country fall for the same old tired rhetoric that there will be “change”.

There will be no change, no matter who is elected. We can’t even count on the election process, Votes are not counted and voting machines are rigged. It’s laughable that any of these candidates will bring this nation back to where it once was a pillar of light in a dark world. We have become what we hate. We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us. We are not even contemplating stopping a war that we started, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of Iraqis and Afghanistan’s while the American voter does and says nothing to stop it.

The lead story in April was the raid on the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints compound in Texas. The story was that a woman (in this case a sixteen year old girl), called the authorities and claimed that she was being held against her will and was being forced to have sex with older men. The details from that point on are a little bit confusing. The truth is that this entire saga is, and continues to be, so confusing that the mainstream media has seemingly dropped it.

At the time of the first news reports, I received a call from a colleague in Texas. He stated at the time that he believed that the entire story was a hoax. He went on to say that he believed that there was no phone call from this “mystery woman” because she didn’t exist. That wasn’t all, he went on to say that the warrant wasn’t legal, and that the government had broken the law by allowing members of another religion to take custody of the church members (remember the buses with “First Baptist Church” on the sides?) and illegally searching the FLDS compound.

I spent a career in the United States Army. I’m not bragging or trying to influence anyone by bringing this fact up, I simply want to make a point, and this it seems, is an easy way to do it. In the Army, especially in field I was in, we formed very tight bonds with each other. We ate together, slept together and played together. I was in Air Defense, which meant that our jobs were actually “real time, all the time”, as one of our commanders was fond of saying. We could, at a moments notice, go from an exercise drill status, to the real time tracking of a target that violated American or Allied airspace. We worked twenty four hours on and twenty four hours off, 365 days a year.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Jimmy Carter. This is a man that has consistently tried to do what others in the political arena seem unable to do, and that is to live up to their own expectations, regardless of the political costs. His recent trip to the Middle-East was Carter at his finest. While he understood all to well that the compromised, immoral regimes of both Israel and Washington did not support his mission and were unlikely to approve anything that came out of his meetings with Hamas, he chose to go in order to illustrate to the world what these two governments are really about. I believe Carter was successful in illustrating that neither America nor Israel want to pursue a realistic solution for peace. If anything, his visit proved once again, that Israel seeks not peace, but capitulation.

Not a day goes by without mention of the phrase “tipping point”, and with good reason. Different variations of this phrase include “critical mass”, “precipice” and the ever popular “day of reckoning”. The truth is alarming when one considers how many times these phrases are used, and used correctly. Our nation and the World are facing challenges that need to be addressed, and addressed as swiftly as possible. The human race can no longer pass off the responsibility of meeting challenges by doing nothing while we put the onus of problem solving onto our children and grandchildren. The time of band-aids and temporary short term fixes in regard to our most pressing problems is just about over. This planet is poised to reap the rewards that have come about from choosing half measures and politically acceptable “solutions” that are not solutions at all, but rather compromises expressly designed to placate the people, while protecting political, economic or religious interests.

Since I was having Marvin L. Zimmerman, the author of The Ovum Factor, on my radio show (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/liberalpro you can hear the podcast of the interview there), it meant that I was obliged to peruse the novel that was sent to me by his publicist. The Ovum Factor arrived at my home, and before I got a chance to look through it, my wife picked it up first and wouldn’t let go of it for three days. During that time my dinner was late, I had to do the vacuuming (the dogs are shedding), and I had no real conversation with her as her head was behind the novel. When she finished it, she just looked at me and said “Wow”. That meant only one thing… I had to read it.

It’s amazing how ideas that were rejected just a year ago are flying through cyberspace as well as real-space, at the speed of light. I’m talking about two things here. The first I’ll mention is the idea that both the Democrats and the Republicans’ are pawns of the corporate power structure in this country. It will probably seem hard to believe now, but just a short time ago I was called all sorts of things for bringing that up. Since 2004, I have been writing about campaign financing and the need for reform. This one issue is the basis of corporate control along with the “good folks” on K-Street that staff 70 lobbyist’s for every legislator we have on Capitol Hill. Gee, what a great system we have up there (for the legislators and the lobbyists). I can’t wait to run for office myself so I can get in on those goodies they’re passing out (only kidding), this can’t last forever…or can it?

The amazing part of this scenario is that the Right, not the Neo-Cons that claim to represent the right, but actual conservative, independents that abhor governmental control of their lives are expressing the very same sentiments as we on the left are expressing. I am completely flabbergasted when I listen to Blog Talk Radio and tune into some of the “conservative” sites and hear the same fears echoed by radio hosts and listeners that were just echoed by me and my “liberal” listeners. Could it be that right and left have gone full circle and are finally meeting in the middle?

I don’t believe that is the case. I believe that free thinkers from the right and from the left are both coming to an agreement that we no longer trust or support those entities that are controlling our government. The right and left have always had a healthy distrust of the Military Industrial Complex and the burgeoning control of everyday life by the corporate dominated Federal Government. We have, on both sides, expressed a desire for maintaining our individuality and our freedom of thought and movement. These freedoms are being usurped on almost a daily basis by the American Federal Government.

This has been coming for a long time. I’ve been watching the politicians in Washington very closely to see exactly how they intended to manage an administration that is so extremely neo-conservative that they are dangerous to this country and the world. I’ve seen heroic stances by some like Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold and even Ron Paul. However, this is not enough. We’ve seen Cynthia McKinney disenfranchised as well as others that have stood up to tyranny and war. Meanwhile, while all of this has taken place, the Democratic Party has been split down the middle and has offered no protection or support to any that oppose the horrendous regime in Washington.

This from The Council of Foreign Relations:

Food shortages and skyrocketing prices are putting pressure on many of the world’s poorest nations. The Wall Street Journal reports that at spring meetings of policymakers from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, some assigned partial blame to U.S. biofuels policies. The meetings produced “few concrete results” on the way forward. World Bank President Robert Zoellick is calling for a “New Deal on Global Food Policy.” and said the bank plans to double agricultural lending to sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, street riots have broken out across Latin America (Miami Herald), and in Haiti, where the prime minister was ousted from office on Saturday after protests against rising food prices ground the country to a halt (NYT). East Asia is also feeling pinched, with many countries limiting exports—particularly of rice—to meet domestic demand (ISN Security Watch). The Philippines has called for an emergency regional meeting to discuss the region’s food crisis (Bloomberg).

The current political battles between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are much ado about nothing. The remark that Obama made about the American Middle class was nothing to be trivialized by Clinton and McCain. What these two politicians have done is to silence a voice that speaks volumes to the middle class and the way that they truly feel. Of course Clinton and McCain would know nothing about how we really feel, because the only time that they get to talk with us is between speech stumps in various States that they haven’t a clue what really drives people there. The information that they go on is from political fact-checkers and input from party lackeys on the ground there. The last time Hillary Clinton actually faced average middle-class Americans was the last time she was speaking at them, not to them.

I’ve been doing much thinking about the different things that are occurring on our planet and in this country. I’m not a former military tactician although I did spend 21 years in the Army. I’m not an economist and I really don’t know the difference between a deficit and spending money you don’t have (which I think may be the same thing), all I know is that what’s going on in the world doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ignorant. I believe that I read about everything that happens in the world from every source I can access. I rarely listen to the Mainstream Media because anyone that has half a brain realizes that they are owned by the same entities that wish to keep the American people fat, dumb and happy. These comprise the military defense contractors, GE and Westinghouse, as well as the banking interests that wish to keep things exactly as they are until the time is right to pull the rug out from everyone save them so as to buy up everything on Wall Street for pennies on the dollar.

The practice of carrying two passports from two different nations is something that I really can’t wrap my mind around. While I’m sure that it could be convenient to have two different passports in the event you may want to visit a nation that has bad relations with the US, or in case one of your passports is seized or lost, having two different citizenships in two different nations could be a problem. This would be a problem especially if you happened to work for one of the governments of which you hold dual citizenship.

Let’s presume that you work for the United States government, and let’s go a step further and presume that you hold a top-secret security clearance. This could pose a significant risk if you held citizenship in a country that had a significant interest in something that the US was doing or someone or something that the US was investigating. Where would your loyalties lie? If we take this a step even further and imagine that the US was going to deliberately withhold information from your “other” country or even worse, somehow double-cross that country, what would you do? Where would your loyalty to the United States end and the loyalty to that other country begin?

The American people are waking up, slowly but surely; seem as if we manage to take two steps forward and one step back. The media has been called out on so many distortions and misinformation; you would think that the editors would think twice about “planting” government propaganda and putting right-wing “spin” on misstatements made by John McCain. Apparently, the New York Times believes that because of its reputation as an honest news broker, it can continue to sway public opinion. Why it continues to do so is beyond my scope of understanding. I can imagine that because of its “liberal image” that it is a perfect vehicle to advance the policies of the right, or that they have honestly been duped into believing what they are printing. I would like to take a small bit of your time to analyze this article that was printed by the “Grey Lady”.

I know that there has always been a segment of the American public that can’t seem to back the two main political parties but the amount of dissatisfaction with both the Republican Party and the Democrats has been particularly pronounced this time around. I have been predicting large scale defections from both parties in this presidential contest, but even I am surprised at the number of people that have been voicing their displeasure at the choices that have been presented to them. Even more than the number of people that are dissatisfied, the thing that I find most surprising is how early on they are voicing these opinions. I had expected that it would be closer to November before we would see this, after the people had time to get a closer look at the candidates, and after the constant media attention devoted to the them became too much to bear. This seems to be happening already, and its only April 1st.

This election is killing me. I have never felt quite the same way about any presidential election. There have been times when I was lukewarm toward many of the Democratic hopefuls, but that doesn’t begin to describe how I feel today. Lukewarm would be a definite improvement over the way I feel, in fact I would welcome lukewarm. It would be akin to the way a hunter would welcome a roaring fire after he came in from the artic, after falling through the ice and trudging miles through a blizzard in wet, icy garb. That picture describes the way I feel about the prospects of voting for the choices that have been offered.

I am very excited to see Mike Gravel “jump ship” and align himself with the Libertarian Party. I’m sure that anyone who that has read any of my articles knows that I too have come to the conclusion that there is basically very little difference between the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the central core issues. We have of course, Republicans that espouse “progressive” stances as well as a good number of Democrats that could be considered liberal/progressives. The premise that the two parties have radically different ideologies when we look at their centrist bases however, belies the fact that the two parties have any real substantive differences.

The United States has become, without a doubt, the most presumptive nation on the face of the Earth. We are in the business of presuming that this country has a legitimate right to interfere with the governments of any country that does not live up to our expectations. We presume that we have a right to actively seek “regime change” toward nations that oppose our foreign or economic policies. We presume that we, above all other nations, have a right to build and control the largest nuclear arsenal on the face of the planet, while we actively seek sanctions against those that may hint about nuclear ambitions. The U.S. presumes that our concerns are justified, and under the microscope of public opinion, accepted by the majority of people that believe in “moral integrity”.

Excuse me if I offend anyone in this article, but I would like to know what happened to the Democratic Party? I always thought of Democrats as those that supported Unions, workers, the middle-class, civil liberties and silly things like that. One thing I was also taught to do was to follow the money when it comes to whom really is supporting who in things such as criminal enterprises and of course, politics. I have been around for a while now, and I believe that I’m just as aware of what’s happening in my own country as anyone else. In fact, I believe that I’m really more aware of what’s happening than most. I am a voracious reader and I have a lot of time on my hands and I actually try to dig behind the rhetoric I hear. What I have found amazes me.

It just goes to show that some people will never “get it”. The Progressive Press has whipped up a cauldron of molten ire against George W. Bush’s statement that the war in Iraq was “worth it”. My God, how could he say such a thing? The Progressive Press remarks; “Doesn’t he know that almost 4,000 Americans and untold Iraqi’s have died in a quagmire? Doesn’t he realize that the cost of this war is in the trillions? Doesn’t he realize that we are no closer to victory than we were five long years ago?”

Sure he does. He just doesn’t really care. He feels that as long as the defense contractors are making windfall profits along with Halliburton and their subsidiary KBR, and are getting gigantic no-bid contracts, and the Federal Reserve pours trillions of dollars at interest into the economy, making the bankers rich, and as long as the oil companies can get their hands on that Iraqi oil, the world is a great place. If you believe that he sees anything as wrong or right, you have a problem with your perception.

I have been at this a long time. Lately I have no desire to write about what I see happening in the world because I’ve already talked about it. I saw the Zeitgeist movie this evening and there was nothing in the movie that I have not already written about. Yes we have been taken for a ride by the people that control this country and that are the International Bankers. Yes the Federal Reserve is robbing us blind and we have known that since Woodrow Wilson told us so. Yes, our education system in this country is producing sub-par graduates without the capacity for critical thing; you know that by just talking to them. We know that the media is controlled by the corporations that are controlled by the bankers who control our government. I know all that.

Baghdad: City of Walls
I watched “Baghdad, City of Walls” on the Real News Network today. I was impressed by the journalist that made the documentary and I wished that the MSM would carry the video. No sooner had I sat down and watched CNN for Barak Obama’s speech, than they broadcast what I had so recently seen on The Real News. http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid=1171&thisview=item
And http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid=1170&thisview=item

It’s time that Americans were told the truth about what’s happening in Iraq. Somehow, I had already known about the walls that separate the ethnic neighborhoods in Baghdad, I had read about them on the internet. Nothing surprised me about the video except that CNN had chosen to air it. The story told about the sectarian violence that makes Iraqi’s virtual prisoners inside their enclaves. Sunni and Shiite no longer live together there. To walk outside your “zone” is to invite a bullet to the head or to be taken prisoner and ransomed or killed. In Baghdad there is no “surge”.

The Winter Soldier is underway in Washington DC. There, brave Iraq Vets are testifying to criminal acts committed while on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. These orders came from the top down and the rules of engagement changed from day to day, all outside the scope of International Law. These soldiers and sailors have been vetted and they are speaking “Truth to Power”, something that also happened during 1971 at the First Winter Soldier.

The Seminar is getting huge mainstream media attention, however this is mostly International attention, the US media doesn’t seem at all interested in reporting on this, which is par for the course. The facts are that the Iraq War has only 1% of the coverage of the MSM. This is different than the pre-surge level of 15%. It seems as if the perception in this country is that the US has “turned the corner” in Iraq. This is the farthest thing from the truth. This week alone was one of the most violent weeks since before the surge. 12 US soldiers were killed last week alone.