Americans Involved In Illegal Israeli Settlements

I don’t know about you but I find the following material absolutely scandalous.  It seems that America is more connected than you think with activities in Israel, as follows:

Native journalist Zebula Hebert told me that, in the Israeli colonization of Palestine, he sees “the United States’ genocide against American Indians. Gaza and the West Bank are two big reservations…”  A new study out of Oxford University further reveals that this statement is more literal than symbolic, finding that 15% of Israeli settlers illegally living in Palestine are US citizens; see IB Times.  (Of Israelis overall, only 2% are US citizens.)  Though law on the issue is unambiguous and every authoritative body agrees Israeli settlements are war crimes, the Israeli government entices the settlers, many of whom are religious extremists needing no enticement, through subsidies, and the US subsidizes Israel with nearly $4 billion per year, in addition to lethal weapons transfers and other forms of support, such as blocking (virtually alone in the world) all UN resolutions condemning the settlements.  Israel is the largest foreign recipient of US aid, and Obama has raised the level of aid after each of Israel’s three major massacres against Gaza since he took office, even though Israel is a super-rich nuclear state already armed to the teeth.  Robert Fantina points out that while “the average cost of tuition to earn a bachelor’s degree [in Israel] is $2,537.00 in U.S. dollars … [i]n the U.S., the average tuition for a bachelor’s degree is $29,408.00.”  Apparently, the US prioritizes even the war crime of colonization over the education of its own citizenry.  But, considering analyst Finian Cunningham’s point that the “weaponization of ignorance” is one of the deadliest arrows in the US quiver, and that the US itself is the largest remaining settler-colonial society, still repressing the native populations and selling off their land for resource extraction, this shouldn’t confuse.  

The Rude Pundit regards all of the "education miracle" in New Orleans as just "smoke and mirrors".  I've heard education is better but people still hate the Governor for making the state a basket case.  This is cognitive dissinence.  Real Estate prices in New Orleans are higher, but race relations are worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before.  When President Obama wanted to visit New Orleans, Governor Bobby Jindell told him not to mention things like climate change or disasterous Ecology.  So he attacks the president's politics, and then tells him not to say anything "political".  It's like the governor was looking for theater and not real substance here.  Others have spoken more eloquently about the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina far better than I have here.

My solution to the inheritance and gift tax situation differs from that of Washington’s blog.  I think all taxes in this area should be related to income the person already has.  For instance if I get $29,000 from playing on Jeopardy I think we should look at the income tax bracket I am and decided whether a person earning $29,000 should pay any federal income tax.  If not then I get to keep it all.  I think the rate for my getting ten thousand from a lucky poker night at Las Vegas should be radically different from if Donald Trump earned the same amount.  I don’t put death and inheritance taxes on the same moral plane as “unearned income” such as stock dividends and bond interest.  This is because these are capital related- - and I might agree that these should be taxed at the highest rates- - possibly over and above earned income.  The figure of 45% comes to mind as a figure used in Europe.  There is an old adage that the government taxes activities it wants to discourage and gives monetary incentives for activities they want to encourage, such as charity giving.  The ninety percent figure suggested in the blog is a nightmare out of Hell for sure.  I think there are more civilized ways to increase revenue by eliminating deductions for the rich, and encouraging the many poor among us to take full advantage of deductions we used to have prior to 1986.  Clearly we want to encourage borrowing in this climate and encouraging lending and investment and discourage hoarding.  I discussed other changes in the tax code in one of my recent postings.

On “rewind” they said that on this August 29, 2015 it’s the anniversary of “War” by Edmond Starr going number one in 1970.  I thought the song was popular earlier in the summer.  But as to the date with the Beatles, August 29^th  1959 is the date the “Beatles as we know them” began playing at the Casbah Club run by Mona Best, who had this son (Pete) who played drums.  The Beatles consisted of John, Paul, George, and Ken Brown, but no drummer.  John Lennon said that the Beatles didn’t need a drummer because they were just so naturally rhythmical.  It was also this weekend in 1970 that Ruben Salazar was hit with a tear gas canister by the LAPD and died.  And they televised the coroner’s inquest and ruled it “Death at the hands of another”.

This morning there was a University of Indiana (?) debate where liberals dominated on the topic of Citizen’s United.  Both sides argued well.   The whole thrust of our side of course is "Corporations are NOT people and so do NOT have all those rights.  And to preserve the democracy rights we humans DO have, it's necessary to point out that corporations are Not People.  Capish?  We had tomato soup again for lunch, and turkey sandwiches and a pasta salad.  We had honeydew for dessert.  I had Shawn Hannity on.  In terms of Days of our Lives it’s getting too crazy.  They showed the scene of someone lying in an alley perhaps dead, and perhaps it was Bo.  Caroline had a bad dream she told Victor of.  And we meet Kayla’s son Joey for the first time now that he’s in boarding school.  Then Patch makes an appearance a minute later.  (This is a guy who used to be a regular till the summer of 1990)  It’s like a guessing game.  Is any of this stuff connected?  For instance - - at the same time Aden is giving Hope an engagement ring.  And there is a hint that perhaps Clyde Weston had Serena murdered to make Benjamin look better and get Chad permanently out of the way.  So does Clyde murder innocent people in cold blood "Just to make a point"? (Benjamin and Chad are rivals for Abigail's affections) Meanwhile Stephano is still maintaining anger against Chad.  Then I checked the courtyard- - and nobody was out there and I put two and two together.

We had a resident’s council meeting today in a dining room getting hotter by the minute.  There was talk about not opening up the windows because the kitchen has been complaining about flies in the food.  That new cook is in trouble with Sarah because the food is supposedly too spicy and perhaps greasy, for people’s delicate digestive system.  But I would just say that diaria with me is NOT related to food content but rather who is infected when they prepare it.  It’s viruses and not spicing.  I was particularly in praise of the soups now.  Sarah had a lot to say about the need for a daily shower around here.  They are taking away Daniel’s radio because he plays it loud all hours of the day and night and David Shaner can’t sleep.  They seemed to intone that it’s a whole different staff who are caregivers as opposed to housekeepers.  I guess Sandy hasn’t worked here in several months.  Yadera left here because she got a better job offer somewhere else.  Good for her- - but it’s our loss.  Attendance was definitely up today.  They reviewed a lot of “old business” from the previous month- evidently a busy meeting I missed.  The luau has been postponed till late September.  And any beach trips are postponed till then too because as Sarah explains “This hot weather isn’t good and people have sun sensitivity with their medications” – and I guess heat stroke too.  I might prefer cooler weather myself since I don’t think we’re going in the water.  They wheeled the cart in for a single glass of iced tea.   I was going to remark- but didn’t that if we’re so concerned about heat, how come we don’t have ice cream nearly as often as we used to a couple of months ago.  I didn’t know there were regulations about just plain ordinary ice.  “Senior” places like ours aren’t supposed to have it because old people will choke on it.  But there are a lot of “not old” people living here.

Dissimalarities between the Crash of 2008 and 2015

It seems as if economic Freedom is never voluntarily shared by the oppressor.  It must be demanded by the ones who are oppressed.  Many call that socialism but it's the system we had from 1935 to about 1981, and it worked.  My motto is, "If it works, don't fix it".  People saw the Wall Street demonstrations in the fall of 2011 not as a demand for ethical accountability, but it played in the media as a bunch of later day socialists just greedy to "tear the rich down".   Judy called it "The poor coveting what the rich have".  If it were such an important Christian doctrine it's funny how Jesus never taught it.  Clearly these people "trust in their riches" and that clearly is taught against all through the Bible.  But these people don't know what they want.  If you'd have asked the Romney campaign they'd have said no inflation and a forty dollar an oil price, and a stable gold price and a continually rising stock market and employment rate- - were just what the doctor ordered.  We were promised that under Romney.  And if he were President now he'd be taking credit for the economic progress we have had.  But what we have now is clearly strange.  There was another blog lamenting the strong US dollar now.  Yes, my friends, this is now a bad thing.  "As strong as a dollar" is no longer a complement but a curse.  The world is coming to an end because inflation is down and oil prices are at multi year lows, and gold is reasonable.  What is wrong with this picture?  One blog yesterday pointed out all the dissimilarities between this crash of 2015 and the market crash of 2008.  For one thing the “bag of tricks” the government used the last time, won’t work this time around.  So in a way things are worse now since the obvious things we won't do.  If we mandated overtime, employers would go out and hire on more people because it would be cheaper.  If the unearned income tax rate weren't so low, then companies would invest in new plant and equipment because that would be better for then AND the people they'd hire.  If we didn't reward the shipping of our jobs off to China and Vietnam, there would be more jobs here and fewer people on food stamps and welfare.  If the ECO's didn't have such a low tax rate now with their stock options and all- - the price of common stocks wouldn't be artificially inflated giving a totally deceptive picture of the strength, or lack of it, in this economy.  A strong dollar could be made even stronger if somehow interest rates were raised to make the US dollar an even better investment.  But today they are calling a strong US dollar and low petroleum prices as bad things and "destabelizing the world economy.  It's almost as if they are prepared to blame the next war on low oil prices.  Carley Feurina in a generally BAD speech did say ONE good thing.  She said "If you reward bad behavior than you'll only get MORE bad behavior.  And with Obama and the Republicans, we are seeing highly entrenched bad behavior.  But the solution is not that hard to implement.  But like Martin Luther King said "But the people have to demand it".   Sol Allinsky may or may not have been a socialist, but what he did was instruct the common people in the art of productive Protesting.  We need a whole lot more of that today.

 OK I have Norman Goldman on now.  There is a severe refugee problem in Germany and a few other countries such as Hungary.  People are emigrating from the old Yugoslavian region due to famine and oppression and lack of drinking water.  Norman says “It takes a lot of desperation for these people to pull up stakes and leave their homeland”.   Germany has a population of 82 million according to Norm, or just over a quarter of the population of the United States.  And yet Germany has just this year absorbed 800 thousand refugees.  And there is a lot of blow-back from the native population.  The US isn’t the only place where this is the case, and our problem is not nearly as severe as Germany per capita.  This is the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s assault on the city of New Orleans where “Brownie” was commended by President Bush as having done a good job.  This fall is the turning point politically with me, when all of the torture in Iraq and also the illegal spying and all of that first came to light, which turned me once and for all against the Bush Administration.  It was also slowly dawning on me that the whole Iraq War might turn out to be a total waste.  As to New Orleans- - nobody handled that problem very well.  There was a lot of sheer whining on a Federal, State, and local levels where nobody seemed to want to take responsibility.  “Refuging” is the new word of the day.  (Drum roll)  I would remind you that the crisis of summer 2014 was from Central American nations with refugees only traveling through Mexico to get to the United States.  Mexico wouldn’t have them.

Now there are over a hundred “maternity motels” where these Chi Com women come to have babies.  It’s not a crime to do it, but if you instruct them to lie about their intensions or to be deceitful, then you are criminally liable.  According to the conservatives, the author of the fourteenth amendment says that “He never means the birthright amendment was ever meant to apply to foreigners.  I haven’t come up with a successful retort to that yet.  I hear stories about people being raised to be spies by emersing them in the culture of the United States and getting ordinary jobs to “infiltrate” but they are really loyal to the USSI or the Chi Coms or whoever.

Back when we were young, in the sixties there were PSA’s on television.  Public Service Announcements.  There were slogans “Only you can prevent forest fires” and there were other ads not to be a litter bug, and there were others telling us to “Drive defensively”.   But since TV stations are no longer required to serve in the public interest, we don’t have those any more.  But it would seem that playing regular anti firearms messages might make the point solidly.

It's been a long time since I've heard from the Federation or any of those dead rock stars I used to mention all the time.  If I knew what the deal was I'd tell you.  Maybe I'm not smoking cigarettes enough.  We know how I've cut back smoking with the worst personal financial drought- - perhaps ever in my life.

The Loss Of Our Freedoms

An earlier blog headline was "Worse than Orwell".  We are in a period even darker and more intrusive then even George Orwell imagined, so you have an idea how bad it is.  Most of this article is about the loss of our fourth and fifth amendment freedoms.  But we have three short paragraphs for you first.

This guy from the congressional budget office says the deficit will be 429 billion dollars and 59 billion less than last year’s and will be a small percentage of the GDP than last year.  But there seems to be an underlying theme of increased debt despite increased tax revenues because government outlays are high- - despite the definite decline in “discretionary spending”.

You know about that early morning shooting in a Virginia TV studio of a 24 year old female reporter and a 27 year old camera man.  It was a disgrunteled Black guy that did it- - so you see - sometimes black guys can go off their rocker too.  It's that deadly mix of mental illness and availability of firearms that seems unique to this country.

I was out smoking but then decided to tune in “Rhapsody in Black”.  I’d heard the show announced when Joe’s radio had KPFK on.  This day is was August 1954, which is the earliest date I’ve ever heard for that show.  (That I’m aware of)  There were five songs that I recognized.  There were “Honey Love”, “Sha-boom”, “Good Night, Sweet Heart, Good Night” and “Hearts of Stone”, and also “Cherry Cherry Pie”.   I agree that the black group version of “Hearts” wasn’t as well known as the one by the Charms.  One surprise was the original version of “Love Me”, which Elvis sang- - done very differently.  They played a tribute to Willy Mayes.  They had a woman “Looking for her daddy, with that big sliding thing” and also a song about “I’m not Drunk; I’m just drinking”.   The last few minutes of the show they played some slightly more recent songs from the early sixties.  This guy was a HS Freshmen in 1954. 

By John Whitehead, constitutional and civil rights attorney, the Rutherford Institute.

REPRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION - YUK - YUK
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr.
There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.

Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Despite the recent outrage and protests, nothing has changed to restore us to our rightful role as having dominion over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases—these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. Thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights, let alone what shreds of bodily integrity remain to us.

Indeed, on a daily basis, Americans are being forced to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States.

In other words, we are all guilty until proven innocent.

Worst of all, it seems as if nothing will change as long as the American people remain distracted by politics, divided by their own prejudices, and brainwashed into believing that the Constitution still reigns supreme as the law of the land, when in fact, we have almost completed the shift into fascism.

In other words, despite our occasional bursts of outrage over abusive police practices, sporadic calls for government reform, and periodic bouts of awareness that all is not what it seems, the police state continues to march steadily onward.

Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by police under the slightest pretext, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.

Consider, for example, what happened to Charnesia Corley after allegedly being pulled over by Texas police for “rolling” through a stop sign. Claiming they smelled marijuana, police handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of the police cruiser, and then searched her car for almost an hour. They found nothing in the car.

As the Houston Chronicle reported:

Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy again said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. When the female deputy arrived, she told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her. Then…Corley stood up and protested, so the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called in to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley’s legs apart to conduct the probe.

As shocking and disturbing as it seems, Corley’s roadside cavity search is becoming par for the course in an age in which police are taught to have no respect for the citizenry’s bodily integrity.

For instance, 38-year-old Angel Dobbs and her 24-year-old niece, Ashley, were pulled over by a Texas state trooper on July 13, 2012, allegedly for flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Insisting that he smelled marijuana, he proceeded to interrogate them and search the car. Despite the fact that both women denied smoking or possessing any marijuana, the police officer then called in a female trooper, who carried out a roadside cavity search, sticking her fingers into the older woman’s anus and vagina, then performing the same procedure on the younger woman, wearing the same pair of gloves. No marijuana was found.

David Eckert was forced to undergo an anal cavity search, three enemas, and a colonoscopy after allegedly failing to yield to a stop sign at a Wal-Mart parking lot. Cops justified the searches on the grounds that they suspected Eckert was carrying drugs because his “posture [was] erect” and “he kept his legs together.” No drugs were found.

Leila Tarantino was subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic during a routine traffic stop, while her two children—ages 1 and 4—waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. Nothing illegal was found. Nevertheless, such searches have been sanctioned by the courts, especially if accompanied by a search warrant (which is easily procured), as justified in the government’s pursuit of drugs and weapons.

Meanwhile, four Milwaukee police officers were charged with carrying out rectal searches of suspects on the street and in police district stations over the course of several years. One of the officers was accused of conducting searches of men’s anal and scrotal areas, often inserting his fingers into their rectums and leaving some of his victims with bleeding rectums. Halfway across the country, the city of Oakland, California, agreed to pay $4.6 million to 39 men who had their pants pulled down by police on city streets between 2002 and 2009.

It’s gotten so bad that you don’t even have to be suspected of possessing drugs to be subjected to a strip search.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Florence v. Burlison, any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials without reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is carrying a weapon or contraband.

Examples of minor infractions which have resulted in strip searches include: individuals arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, driving with an inoperable headlight, failing to use a turn signal, riding a bicycle without an audible bell, making an improper left turn, engaging in an antiwar demonstration (the individual searched was a nun, a Sister of Divine Providence for 50 years). Police have also carried out strip searches for passing a bad check, dog leash violations, filing a false police report, failing to produce a driver’s license after making an illegal left turn, having outstanding parking tickets, and public intoxication. A failure to pay child support can also result in a strip search.

It must be remembered that the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to prevent government agents from searching an individual’s person or property without a warrant and probable cause (evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot). While the literal purpose of the amendment is to protect our property and our bodies from unwarranted government intrusion, the moral intention behind it is to protect our human dignity.

Unfortunately, the indignities being heaped upon us by the architects and agents of the American police state—whether or not we’ve done anything wrong—don’t end with roadside strip searches. They’re just a foretaste of what is to come.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government doesn’t need to strip you naked by the side of the road in order to render you helpless. It has other methods, less subtle perhaps but equally humiliating, devastating and mind-altering, of stripping you of your independence, robbing you of your dignity, and undermining your rights.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives. As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.

In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.

Government surveillance, police abuse, SWAT team raids, economic instability, asset forfeiture schemes, pork barrel legislation, militarized police, drones, endless wars, private prisons, involuntary detentions, biometrics databases, free speech zones, etc.: these are mile markers on the road to a fascist state where citizens are treated like cattle, to be branded and eventually led to the slaughterhouse.

If there is any hope to be found it will be found in local, grassroots activism. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s time for “militant nonviolent resistance.”

First, however, Americans must break free of the apathy-inducing turpor of politics, entertainment spectacles and manufactured news. Only once we are free of the chains that bind us—or to be more exact, the chains that “blind” us—can we become actively aware of the injustices taking place around us and demand freedom of our oppressors.

This Stock Market Crash is for Real

They are telling us that this loss in value of stock prices was the biggest three day loss in history or something like 1.400 points.  And was the biggest one day swing in prices ever for the DJI, and also it’s the sharpest increase in volatility in history.  To the prudent this means the market means business; this is not some kind of a “correction” flook.  It spells major trouble ahead.  I would put all these signs together and conclude along with Shawn Hannity and Norman Goldman that the stock market is no place for amitures.  Of course Judy agreed with that two years ago but the last time I suggested they get out of the market and sell everything they said, “Oh, we have a stock expert and we trust him”.  So does this stock expert have a magic wand that you can wave it and make the 1,400 point drop go away?   Countless times in my postings since mid January I’ve been almost taunting my readers to get out of the stock market with expressions like “What are you waiting for.  Now is the perfect time”.    Of course now that we’re a couple thousand points lower “Now” doesn’t have quite the appealing ring to it that it did a few weeks ago. 

Joe Biden is moving closer to deciding to run for President.  He’s met with Elizabeth Warren and met with the President.  According to Mark Stein and others, Barock Obama secretly favors Biden and says “Picking him for VP was the smartest political decision I ever made.  I’ve always regarded Biden’s running as only a minor possibility.  We hear he is ‘More likely to run now” but he still hasn’t declared.  “I’ll believe it when I see it” is my motto.  I think the Iranian treaty will fail, as I predicted it would months ago.  I predict Hillary Clinton will not be adversely impacted by all this E mail hysteria.  It would have happened by now if it were going to occur.  Mark Stein says that the Obama administration is “leaking material on Hillary to make her look bad to get her out of the race”.  This is poppycock.  One blog I read last Friday said that the stock market would strongly rebound today.  That didn’t happen either.  I think Joe Biden is just “tired’ and lacks the drive and the energy to run.  Despite what we hear about his family urging him on - - I don’t believe it.  I don’t believe they really want him to run.

This one black mother (I won’t say “muthah”) is good and pissed off about the amount of gang violence there is in Ferguson.  There was one black guy with a guy who got shot and killed by the police, meanwhile an innocent nine year old girl was killed by a stray bullet.  This mother couldn’t understand why the protestors were sympathizing with the thug and not the innocent victim.  No question about it.  ALL Black lives matter!  (Selah) But she tipped her hand a little talking about her own son that was in jail and she wasn’t going to have a thing to do with him in jail.  There would be no letters, no phone calls, no magazines, no nothing.  As such the woman seemed to be on a “crusade”.  But for the Republicans if they can find that agrees with them, they’ll shower her with all sorts of fame and accolades, with endorsements galore.  Some would compare people trying to get out of the ghetto to crabs pulling and tugging at each other trying to get out of the boiling pot but in the end only pulling each other back in.  But they're animals and don't know any better.  They know nothing of altruism not to mention logical thought.  What's our excuse?

There were twenty-one dollars in drug co pay expenses this month, which is sure a lot more than the seven it was last year.  In fact in total I've had $81.00 dollars in "expenses" which detracted from the free money I'd get to spend with this month.  For various reasons next month isn't "expected" to be as bad, but the overall trend is just plain - - Bad!  It’s almost two thirty and this is the twelfth day of no cigarettes of my own, with eight more to go.  This is Monday August 24, 2015 and we were limited to one cup of iced tea in the courtyard because of Lynn’s senior topics class.  I’ve had two whole cigarettes today.  The first was from Bill when I got up in the morning.  The second was a rollie from Ron just after lunch, and that one will cost me a quarter.

Here is more commentary on the stock market from yesterday:   As we’ve detailed repeatedly, our “markets” no longer resemble markets.  They are so distorted, both by central bank policy and technologically-driven cheating, that they no longer really qualify as legitimate markets.  Therefore we’ve taken to putting double quote marks around the word “”market”” often when we use it.  That’s how bad they’ve become.   Where normal markets are a place for legitimate price discovery, todays “”markets”” are a place where computers battle each other over scraps in the blink of an eye, ‘investors’ hinge their decisions based on what the Fed might or might not do next, and rationalizations are trotted out by the media for why inexplicable market price movements make sense.  Instead, we view the “”markets”” as increasingly the playgrounds of, by and for the gigantic market-controlling firms whose technology and market information have created one of the most lopsided playing fields in our lifetimes.  Signs of these distortions abound. One completely odd chart is this one, showing that the average trading range of the Dow (ytd) was the lowest in history as of last week (before this week’s market turmoil hit).  And that was despite Greece, China, QE, Japan, oil’s slump, Ukraine, Syria, Iran and all of the other ample market-disturbing news.      

Bernie Sanders vs Larry Summers

I state here why I have come to support Bernie Sanders for President: Whereas Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — the modern Democratic Establishment — have been so conservative they might as well have called themselves “conservative” (and they didn’t say it because they needed to be able to win Democratic Party primaries), Sanders’s record shows that he isn’t like that at all; he’s an authentic democrat, and always has been, even when he didn’t call himself one (but only a “Progressive,” and a “socialist — like in Scandinavia”). I don’t care what a politician calls himself or herself, only what the person actually is, as the person has proven to be by the actual record as a public official.

The entire careers of Bernie Sanders, versus Barack Obama and both Bill and Hillary Clinton, display a stark difference. Whereas Obama and the Clintons were trying to win the votes of Democrats while secretly supporting Republican policies to redistribute even more wealth upward from the public to the aristocracy (and they did so) (and how!), Sanders has consistently been trying — and helping — to do the exact opposite: to redistribute wealth downward, from the aristocracy to the public. Taxes, and all of government policies, are inevitably wealth-distributional (who pays how much, and who gets how much of the benefits; and what benefits pay needs, versus what benefits pay mere wants). Any politician who says that government isn’t largely about the distribution of wealth, knows that what he is saying is false — he or she is lying about government. (Only their suckers can believe it.) The question isn’t whether government should redistribute wealth; it’s how. That’s reality, and every public official knows it.

If Sanders is a modern revolutionary, then politicians such as Obama and the Clintons (and all Republicans) are today’s version of the Redcoats — America’s enemies, the aristocracy that our Founders tried to outlaw but couldn’t. That’s the real difference between Bernie Sanders versus Obama & the Clintons — and all Republicans (since conservatism is the declared, and not only the real, ideology of that Party).

Bernie Sanders is aiming to return the Democratic Party to its FDR roots, which was when the Party had the most reason to be proud of what it stood for. Here is how Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it:

This is FDR talking:  We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.  I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

It’s a heritage that Bernie Sanders can proudly, and honestly, claim to be his own. Today’s Democratic Party Establishment, such as Robert Rubin’s Hamilton Project, and Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council or New Democrats, cannot. (In fact, to the exact contrary: both Rubin and Clinton ended FDR’s Glass-Steagall Act, and thus prepared the way for George W. Bush to crash the U.S. economy.)

There’s a problem in this country that goes deeper than ethnic bigotry, and it’s economic bigotry — the belief that a person’s net worth reflects his or her moral worth. When President Obama said to Wall Street’s CEOs, on 27 March 2009, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” he was telling them that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were today’s version of the old KKK who had lynched Blacks — and that those CEOs who kept the fortunes they had made from bilking MBS investors were today’s version of the Blacks who had been lynched. FDR wouldn’t agree with any of that. Nor would Bernie Sanders. That’s what we need again, inside the White House.

World Markets In Free-Fall Because of China

One gets a sense from the cooler weather of yesterday and today that summer is ending soon.  The evenings will start getting darker.   At the beginning of the summer if not late spring, I predicted that the stock markets would be in free fall much of the summer.  Up until the past few days- - not even the whole week- - it looked as if this prediction would be a failure.  But now we have fallen into the sixteen thousands on the DJI and for the first time since I gave my “sell” signal on January 14^th you would have actually made, or rather preserved money if you took my advice.  The cause of “world markets collapsing” is fear that the nation of China is headed into a major depression, and also oil prices dipping briefly below forty dollars a barrel.  They say that gasoline prices may go down to two dollars a gallan but I bet not in California.  For some reason we pay a dollar more for gasoline out here than anywhere in the rest of the country.  People have been saying the economy is headed for a crash, and as the saying goes ‘Money knows’.  The fact that we at long last have broken out of a six plus month long trading range will itself generate more pessimism and induce others to sell their stocks as well- - and the thing will turn into a vicious circle after a while.   Nobody knows who will be elected President next November.  But there are an awful lot of really bad Republican candidates to pick from including Scott Walker and Donald Trump.   They think the key to - - someone’s - - happiness – is to screw the poor, hate Muslims and illegal aliens and kill as many Blacks on the street you can see- - and take down pension funds and labor unions.  I still haven’t figured out who this “They” is that’s going to be benefited by all of these measures, but we know they’re out there- - because all of the right wing propaganda is aimed at them.

Judy sent me something “Why the welfare state always fails”.  Since my family tried so hard to get me on welfare- - I can only assume then that my family wanted me to fail.  But the deductions made are downright stupid.  They likened a poor person or family on welfare as like a person with an unlimited travel expense account.  Judy would never attack the rich.  Judy thinks the rich walk on water and have no faults the way that- - people like me do.  Judy says people on welfare have no regard for the value of a dollar because they didn’t earn it.  But I have a reputation over the decades of being thrifty with a dollar if not downright tight.  Judy has to be on something awfully mind numbing to forget this obvious fact.  Even people who don’t have a job now- - most likely worked at some earlier point in their lives- - perhaps quite recently.  So they know and appreciate the value of a dollar.  And the point is that LBJ’s great society succeeded in getting people out of poverty including many poor whites.  Two repeated lies told by the right wing are that nobody but welfare cheats ever get money from the state.  And the other lie is that somehow people find it harder to get a job if they have money coming in to keep their car and buy a suit and get a haircut and fix themselves up and such.  But people like Judy will latch on to anything that will tickle their Scrooge funny bone, regardless of the merit.  Now we have the “Eight levels of control” by Saul Allinsky, who apparently wants a socialist state with all education and indoctrination controlled by the state and the complete elimination of Religion.  According to a source Judy sent me- - Saul Allinsky wants to increase taxes as high as possible, increase the federal debt as high as possible, and increase Poverty as high as possible because “Poor people are easier to control”.   These right wing people live in their own world!

The subject of “anchor babies” has come up lately.  I don’t like that term and I think this is the first time I have used it in my writings.  Jeb Bush and Donald Trump had an argument yesterday on anchor babies, or children born in this country whose parents are not legal American citizens.   Both with the case of Marco Rubio and “Piushe” Jindell - - neither parent of either child was a US citizen at the time their babies were born on American soil.  Piushe Jindell was conceived in India and came to this country in-utero.  Donald Trump would have it that your parents have to be citizens in order for kids born on US soil to be a citizen.  But of course we have “Raphael Cruz” who was born in Canada and his father is Cuban.  Donald Trump thinks this whole campaign is a giant game show and he’s just playing for ratings and shock value.

How many times has the “Second in command in the Islamic community” been killed?  That’s an awful lot of seconds.  Well, here is another one.  The second-in-command of the Islamic State militant group was killed during a U.S. air strike in Iraq on Tuesday, the White House said on Friday, dealing a blow to the group that has sought to form a caliphate across the Muslim world.   "Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, also known as Hajji Mutazz ... was killed in a U.S. military air strike on August 18 while traveling in a vehicle near Mosul, Iraq, along with an ISIL media operative known as Abu Abdullah," White House spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.  "(His) death will adversely impact ISIL's operations given that his influence spanned ISIL's finance, media, operations, and logistics," Price said, referring to the group by an acronym.  The White House said the dead leader was a "primary coordinator" for moving weapons, explosives, vehicles, and people between Iraq and Syria. He was in charge of operations inIraq and helped plan the group's offensive in Mosul in June of last year.

Carley Feurina gave a speech at the Reagan library recently and it's billed as a FANTASTIC speech.  But I would say- - fantastically awful.  There is more power mad demogogary in this speech as to look Donald Trump look puny.  My only question is "When do I get to hear this speech in the original German", because it sure as hell had a Hitleresque ring to it all the way through.  There were a lot of "I" sentenses, as in "I am the Greatest" and "Basically I am the only person qualified to be President".  There was an attack on the sequester that she blames on "Washington" rather than Rep John Boehner, who crammed this measure down the President's throat.  So blame the shrinking military on John Boehner.  The rest of the world will be made aware that the United States has the biggest most powerful military in the world- - and this fact will be unquestioned by anybody.   She did say one line that could be applied to Trump however.  She said "Rewarding bad behavior only spawns more bad behavior"  (Selah)

I watched “Ring of Fire” for the entire segment of August 18^th.  They had Scott Walker as a tool of ALEC, which is of course the American Legislative Exchange Council.  This guy is dangerous and has been his whole life.  In reality Clyde Weston symbolizes this ‘dangerous” type of person who manages to skirt the law so that even the police are afraid of even investigating him.  Yet he gets more blatant with each passing day.  This is what the Koch Brothers and ALEC do.  If anyone twenty years ago had spoken of pre packaged legislation that’s passed out to maybe fifteen red states for all of them to fast track it through their legislatures and rubber stamp it- - and nobody would raise charges of graft and corruption, I’d have thought you were crazy.  “We don’t do things like that so blatant in America” with this pay to play thing.  Walker dropped out of college to become a crook.  He was personally groomed from that young age to be a mindless political lackey.  The rich wine and dine these nobodies giving them dreams of being “somebody” one day soon.  Then there was the drug “invocana”, which is a diabetes drug that’s always bothered me with their ads, and the mounds of side effects amd medical warnings and stipulations.  They had a segment on Gov Rick Scott of Florida, and spoke of spying by the NSA.   People forget that American citizens to hide- - everything or nothing at all.  But they still have the right to their privacy.

War is Bad for the Economy

 The blog headline says “US Military leaders support Iran deal”.  Don’t let Shawn Hannity hear you say that.  A group of progressive Jewish rabbis support the Iran deal, as does the Israeli CIA.  Yesterday I was reading how “War is bad for the economy”.   As you know one of the Forengi “rules of acquisition” goes “War is good for the economy”.  It didn’t used to be but the way we are doing it now with all these secret contract deals, perhaps the general population isn’t sharing in the military wealth like they used to be.  Someone said it’s like breaking windows in a store front or restaurant.  Sure the people involved with fixing the window share in the business profits and GNP increase.  But it’s money to spend on a negative- - or money that could be spent for other things if you didn’t have the added expense.  As Thom Hartman points out- - it’s not a dam or aquaduct or bridge or road that lasts a long time that people can continue to use.  Everything is meant to get blown up, like fireworks.  Hence it’s not really “infrastructure” as we know it.

Quantitive Easing is welfare for the rich, pure and simple.  This is where the Federal Reserve prints up billions of dollars and gives them to the banks, but then turns around and PAYS these same banks NOT to loan out the money to ordinary businessmen, but instead- - pays interest on what is in essence their OWN money to begin with, and the rich people love it.  This arrangement also spurs higher stock prices in addition to what Ronald Reagan did with CEO compensation.  But it also means if someone pulls the plug, market prices will collapse.

Thom Hartman spoke of how often people are most given to outbursts of anger when they not only feel out of control but when they feel powerless in dealing, for instance with an agency of government, or an insurance claim, or some financial loan turn-down.  Hartman then expanded the argument to Iraq and Thom says that before the Iraq war in 2003 there were no suicide bombings caused by Iraqis.  But we came in and poisoned the water and would not allow the local officials even chlorinate the water because chlorine was a “weapon”. 

Many people that inflation is really lower than it is because they talk about the prices of various power tools and electronic items being lower.  Power tools are perhaps 15% cheaper than they were several decades ago.  But the quality of the product is drastically reduced.  Items made forty or fifty years ago may still work today, but items made ten years ago or even less have conked out.  Things that used to be made out of metal are now made out of plastic.  Even a 25 year old Mackentosh of a quarter century ago may still work fine now if reactivated, but people like Leo Le Port act as if the normal expected life of a computer bought today is four or five years.  It makes no sense.  Such price animallies, where people buy cheap stuff from China based on price rather than quality- - are distorting the inflation numbers.

  I got my medication from Christian at about five to seven and got my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  I watched the ABC network news and then the kids Jeopardy tournament, and then Wheel of Fortune where a lady won a trip to Maui, and a Ford Fiesta getting the two cards, and a BMW on the bonus round.   I left it on ABC and dozed a little but then about eight thirty watched some of Law and Order but I was tired and was in bed before nine.  This is Tuesday morning and as of now I’ve “saved” eighteen dollars by not going to the store.  This is day six of my not smoking and you’d think by now I’d be over my addiction.  We had a good breakfast this morning.  We had oatmeal and we had a thick banana pancake, and a fried egg and I got two pieces of bacon because Fernando gave me his bacon.  Someone gave me an extra cup of black coffee that I mixed with the creamer stuff.

Lunch was interesting.  We had good soup with curry in it or something of rice and spinach, a little salty.  We had two pie shaped beef quesedas and more beef outside and the usual tomato and peppers and sour cream.  I mixed that together outside the queseda.  It was our lucky day because they came around with a third queseda and more soup, which I had.  We had grapes for dessert.  I listened to Shawn Hannity on the radio and once again sleep got the better of me.  Then they announced they were going to have a fire drill.  Then they had a fire drill at about ten to one.  Marcia was walking slow.  It went a little more quickly than some recent ones, which almost have seemed like marathon affairs.  Dr Levy was here.  In the early morning James and Glen and I were musing about Dr Levy buying James a new computer.  I had almost talked myself into Dr Levy having cash with him to pass out.  We had a lengthly check-in today and Joe had a lot to say and so did Connie and so did Julie, or whatever her name is.  Cathy stood at the door.  Teresa was there.  Vince came and Marcia was there and so was Wally.  We spent much less time talking about creative aging.  Dr Levy fused psychological age with functional age, and in my mind the two should be separate.  One could be advanced and not the other.  When we were almost finished up they announced there was a flood or something where water was dripping through the floor and they had to get a bucket.   Actually Dr Levy did offer to take James’ computer in and James went to his room and got it.  Dr Levy made a not funny joke about selling my records for seven hundred dollars.  We broke up about ten to two.