War is Theft

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953

The Elitist in Washington Need to Be Ousted

Venting about the bullshit that passes for leadership in our government and the smokescreen these out-of-touch elitists in Washington have created to cover their ineptness and greed is what many of us ‘commoners’ have been writing about for years. Finally it seems the collective psyche that is the everyday American is beginning to show some signs of life.

The Twittersphere has recently come alive with the buzz of citizens' grievances against their government. Announcing with an expletive-filled hashtag, with insight and a lot of common sense, what must surely be the clarion call for citizens to let their electronic voices be heard and tell these self-delusional elitist that we are mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore.

Jeff Jarvis (of Buzzmachine.com) promoted the flood of Twitter messages with the hashtag #F---YouWashington. A sample is presented below, spelling and punctuation uncorrected.

• @anolamous: ... for over a million gallons of corexit dumped on coastal Louisiana.
•  
• amthewalrus: ... for forcing me to be a criminal by using #cannabis as the #medicine it is!
•  
• amyalkon: ... for violating my 4th Amend rights & having a govt lackey sexually assault me as a condition of normal biz travel this am.
•  
• hyperlocavore: ... for crying Socialism anytime a policy may interfere with a rich twats GOD given right to make heaping gobs of cash.
•  
• i_magpie: ... for preaching "freedom & democracy" while ignoring, nay supporting crimes against humanity. #Syria
•  
• jmb2612: ... for putting party before country
•  
• mjdub: ... for letting corporations steal our natural resources and sell them back to the people for profit.
•  
• skymama65: ... Because "made in America" was once what Walmart stood for & is now cheap plastic crap
•  
• Wriseup: ... for setting up a fail so epic it's gonna make the Great Depression look like a damn Sunday School picnic.
•  
• YourAnonNews: ... for thinking activists are the same as terrorists.

The current crisis over the debt ceiling is just the latest indication of our ‘leaderships’ true colors. Of those who swore an oath to protect and SERVE this nations people. The actions of both parties serve to show how that oath has been reinterpreted by these over-paid and self-congratulating thieves that they read it as saying ‘what is good for them is good for the country’.

We Americans reject the interpretation of this oath by our self-delusional ‘leadership’ and demand that they return the American people to their rightful position as the reason for this government’s existence. Neither corporate interests nor political well-being was given any importance when drafting our Constitution over 200 years ago. It was the freedoms and rights of the American people. We foot the bills. We should be the focus and the primary beneficiaries of the rewards of our labor. Not our representatives, and certainly not a corporate beneficiary of those political representatives.

A free American citizen, unencumbered by elitist rule is the reason this government was formed.

To the elitist in Washington: you have lost sight of that fact.

To the hard-working, tax-paying American citizen: it is our duty to remind them.

Getting rid of career politicians, especially those who have entrenched themselves in corporate America’s pockets, should now be our number one priority. But is the dark cloud of apathy going to once again thwart our efforts? Dear God I hope not.

Let’s Get This Revolution Started

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.

- - George Orwell

Corporate Tax Cheats Are Bankrupting America

Diamonds

Thank You Jesus

Adams on Political Parties

We Are Paying Terrorists to Lecture Us?

File this under wasteful tax payer funding. In a budget crisis this is the kind of out-of-control spending that we need to cut out. Just like with our home budget, a watchful eye needs to review this type of waste in order to remain solvent.

Walid Shoebat travels around the US giving speeches to police departments, churches, and universities about terrorism. His qualifications? He says he was a terrorist for the PLO who helped firebomb a bank in Israel and spent time in an Israeli jail. This supposedly makes him an expert on terrorism.

First of all, the spending for this is coming out of the federally funded stimulus package that is supposed to go towards protecting us. Once you see where the flow of this money is going you too should be outraged.

Should we allow our tax dollars to fund future terrorist activities? Should we reward an admitted terrorist for his past activities against us? The fact that the American public can give money to this person through his speeches, books, and videos which have earned him more than half a million dollars in 2009 alone, some of it coming from state Homeland Security departments and other government sources, is beyond comprehension. This is indicative of how totally naïve we have become. Just as with the drug war, our tax dollars go towards efforts to keep drugs out of our country while we create the market that makes it profitable for the drug cartels to bring it in. Even at the stupendous losses to the cartels we read about when law enforcement captures drugs it remains profitable for the cartels to continue their operations.

Our tax dollars are being used to pay for our protection. And we are killing ourselves in spite of it.

Our police departments are funded by our tax dollars which pays this virulently anti-Islamic person. At a recent speech to police and sheriff’s deputies he tells them “All Islamic organizations in America should be the No. 1 enemy. All of them.” He encourages ethnic and racial profiling, which is illegal. He tells people to be leery of Muslim doctors, engineers, students, and mosques. Speakers like Shoebat have raised concerns from the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Home Security Committee about “vitriolic diatribes” being delivered by “self-appointed counterterrorism experts” like Shoebat at these seminars.

But the worst part is that Shoebat appears to be a complete fraud. There is no record of the firebombing he claims to have taken part in. The Israeli jail has no record of his incarceration. He refers to counter-terrorism reports that don’t exist. He makes stupid claims, like saying there were 17 terrorists on 9/11 when there were 19, and talks about the TSA preventing 9/11 even though the TSA wasn’t created until after the attacks.

And what do the American people do? Shrug their shoulders, run off to watch empty-headed, lame-assed television shows, celebrate how 'beautiful' some celebrity is and be good little consumers by buying one-time-use goods made in foreign countries and then throw it all away so we can run out and by more.

We are raising children who are wasteful, disrespectful, under-educated and uncaring about what our future holds or the plight of their fellow man. What kind of a future does this paint for us?

Our country is so totally screwed up that we will not get out of it with any kind of self-respect or dignity. Can we offer any hope that this will change? I'm looking for it but I don't see it.

This country is still worth fighting for but I don't see anyone alive today willing to leave their television sets, turn away from idolatry and materialism and get their hands dirty to try to change it.

If somebody has the answer, please stand up and help get this much needed and long overdue revolution started.

Writing On The Wall

How much more of this can we take before America falls completely into chaos and completely destroys itself just so the Republicans can say ‘I told you so’?

“Michele Bachmann says that if she’s elected, she’ll ban pornography. We have multiple wars, skyrocketing debts, a recession, unemployment … Yeah, let’s ban pornography.” – David Letterman

“Michele Bachmann signed pledge in Iowa recently about protecting marriage, but it also said stuff about black children having it better when they were raised during slavery. Now her campaign is saying that while, yes, she did sign the pledge, she didn’t read it first. And had she read it, she never would have signed it in the first place. Well, thank God presidents don’t have to sign anything so important they have to read it first.” – Jay Leno

How can this woman make a statement like ‘I didn’t read it before I signed it’ and expect anyone to take her seriously? How? How? HOW?

How can anyone think this dumb bell would make a good president? Oh, I see, this shows how easily she can be manipulated. I get it now.

This Crap Needs to Stop

The Republican take on this whole debt crisis which by the way is the result of mismanagement by both sides of the aisle long before Obama became president, is to sit back and do nothing, allowing the country to get flushed down the toilet. That way the Obama administration looks bad. This way of ‘handling’ the hottest political issues of the day has got to stop. It has to stop now. One-up-manship is destroying this country.

Political parties have taken the position that it is acceptable to pat each other on the backs if they make the other political party ‘look bad’. Hey, if the taxpayer who fund their little political games suffer, well, no one notices except the tax payers anyway so who cares. Right?

This crap needs to stop.

Career politicians have lost sight of what is truly important in this nation of ours. And in case you can’t figure it out either I’ll tell you. What is important in this nation is the American tax payer.

I do not appreciate having my money forcibly taken from me so I can sit on the side lines and watch it get wasted, mismanaged, thrown away, and fund political games to see which political party can out-last the other, out-spend the other, out-do the other, and basically who can out-bullshit the other.

This crap needs to stop.

Playing the role of representatives of the American people, politicians are supposed to, you know, represent us. They are paid to make decisions that benefit us. They are paid to look after our best interest. They seem to have lost sight of their reason for being where they are. We the People need to remind them.

Everyone please take note of how our ‘representatives’ are treating this crisis as they do every crisis as ‘us against them’. Please remember on election day that this is yet another bit of proof of how politicians have turned the political process into ‘us versus them’ and that this time the ‘us’ are the politicians and the ‘them’ are the American people.

The American public needs to get off your asses and vote these game-playing, self-important, self-dealing, fools who lack any sense of honor or patriotism to their fellow citizen out of office. They DO NOT serve us. They are whining, bitching, complaining, simple-minded, self-righteous, short-sighted, idiots who see themselves as the victims instead of the American tax payer who in case you all have forgotten pay their salaries.

I want my money back. The money that has been wasted on these public employees needs to be recalled. If any of us were to behave as these people do on our job sites we would be fired. We need to fire them.

This Crap Has to Stop for our well-being. This Crap Has to Stop for our dignity. This Crap Has to Stop for our sanity. This Crap Has to Stop for our future.

This Crap Has to Stop NOW.

Most of Us

Americans are getting sloppy and careless with who we allow to govern us. Where does this apathy come from? It comes from being beaten down by politicians who choose to cozy up to big money over what is ‘right’ for this country.

The very idea that this country is anywhere close to the ideal nation that our forefathers struggled to set up for us is fantasy. There are many of us who believe that the ideal America is still worth fighting for. There are far many more who believe it is fine the way it is, even as it crumbles around us. A small percentage of those people, the ones who take the time to actually notice we are on the road to ruin, think they are powerless to do anything about it. In the end they be correct in believing this.

We are forced to place our future in the hands of career politicians who have learned how to manipulate the political system to their benefit. They’ve turned their backs on the American people by setting themselves up in comfort while their fellow citizens struggle to make ends meet.

The American people are being forced to live a more frugal and lean life while these spoiled and fatted politicians mismanage our tax dollars all in the name of ‘looking after our best interest’. They only have their own best interest at heart. They have proven it to us many times and yet we, the American People, continue to elect them thinking they are the ones that keep this nation afloat.

This country would be far better off without full time representatives, without career politicians, without millionaires who clearly protect their own fortunes without concern for those of us who pay their salaries.

Two Navy ships that cost $300 million are headed for thescrap heap – and they have never sailed. Does this sound to you like our elected officials, duly sworn to look after the tax payers best interest, is doing their job?

Our leaders are stuck on a treadmill of insanity.

They repeat the same behavior over and over expecting different results. The few American people who vote keep electing these same career politicians and expect that this time they will get it right. This country is in a debt crisis. Obviously, our elected officials have come up short in their duty to manage this nations financial interests. This country, due to the amount of taxes it collects from its citizens - almost to the point of extinction, has so much money that we pay politicians to come up with new laws that are nothing more than a re-write of existing laws. We build naval ships that are never used; we spend nearly a million dollars for poetry readings at zoos, $1.5 million for a museum in North Carolina honoring banjo picker Earl Suggs, and $442,340 to study male prostitutes in Vietnam. Check out this list of outrageous and indefensible spending.

Most of us just shake our heads click on the next website hoping to find the next viral video. Most of us turn on some lame ‘reality’ TV show and hide away from reality. Most of us don’t vote because its too much trouble and nothing changes anyway.

‘Most of us’ is what is killing all of us.

Where Have All the Real Men Gone?

American Justice

White collar criminal gets just over 3 years for ripping off countless Americans of over $3B. But if your poor and you steal a few bucks to feed yourself you get 15 years.

What a country we live in.

Good Without God

Republican Family

Advice to Young Men from an Old Man

Found this while rummaging through my archives today. It was dated 2007 but I thought it to be pretty timely advice.so I present it here. I apologize to the original owner for not acknowledging who you are but I don’t know who said it.

1. Don’t pick on the weak. It’s immoral. Don’t antagonize the strong without cause, its stupid.

2. Don’t hate women. It’s a waste of time

3. Invest in yourself. Material things come to those that have self actualized.

4. Get in a fistfight, even if you are going to lose.

5. As a former Marine, take it from me, don’t join the military, unless you want to risk getting your balls blown off to secure other people’s economic or political interests.

6. If something has a direct benefit to an individual or a class of people, and a theoretical, abstract, or amorphous benefit to everybody else, realize that the proponent’s intentions are to benefit the former, not the latter, no matter what bullshit they try to feed you.

7. Don’t be a Republican. They are self-dealing crooks with no sense of honor or patriotism to their fellow citizens. If you must be a Republican, don’t be a “conservative.” They are whining, bitching, complaining, simple-minded self- righteous idiots who think they’re perpetual victims. Listen to talk radio for a while, you’ll see what I mean.

8. Don’t take proffered advice without a critical analysis. 90% of all advice is intended to benefit the proponent, not the recipient. Actually, the number is probably closer to 97%, but I don’t want to come off as cynical.

9. You’ll spend your entire life listening to people tell you how much you owe them. You don’t owe the vast majority of people shit.

10. Don’t undermine your fellow young men. Mentor the young men that come after you. Society recognizes that you have the potential to be the most power force in society. It scares them. Society does not find young men sympathetic. They are afraid of you, both individually and collectively. Law enforcement’s primary purpose is to suppress you.

11. As a young man, you’re on your own. Society divides and conquers. Unlike women who have advocates looking out for them (NOW, Women’s Study Departments, government, non-profit organizations, political advocacy groups) almost no one is looking out for you.

12. Young men provide the genius and muscle by which our society thrives. Look at the Silicon Valley. By and large, it was not old men or women that created the revolution we live. Realize that society steals your contributions, secures it with our intellectual property laws, and then takes credit and the rewards where none is due.

13. Know that few people have your best interests at heart. Your mother does. Your father probably does (if he stuck around). Your siblings are on your side. Everybody else worries about themselves.

14. Don’t be afraid to tell people to “Fuck off” when need be. It is an important skill to acquire. As they say, speak your piece, even if your voice shakes.

15. Acquire empathy, good interpersonal skills, and confidence. Learn to read body language and non-verbal communication. Don’t just concentrate on your vocational or technical skills, or you’ll find your wife fucking somebody else.

16. Keep fit.

17. Don’t speak ill of your wife/girlfriend. Back her up against the world, even if she’s wrong. She should know that you have her back. When she needs your help, give it. She should know that you’ll take her part.

18. Don’t cheat on your wife/girlfriend. If you must cheat, don’t humiliate her. Don’t risk having your transgressions come back to her or her friends. Don’t do it where you live. Don’t do it with people in your social circle. Don’t shit in your own back yard.

Damned good advice. Take it from an 'old man' who knows.

We the People have Lost

We of the middle class have lost our Freedoms and our Liberties.

Sure we are free to move around the country but without money we are not truly free to live wherever we want.

Without money we are not free to educate ourselves to be any more than working class drones.

We are not free to speak our minds to the point that it makes any difference. If we step ‘out of bounds’ in what we say or how we say it we are shuttered away from the public eye by a security force designed to protect the ruling class and the main stream entertainment-media refuses to acknowledge our existence.

The political process is funded by the wealthy and re-structured by the wealthy to ensure only the wealthy holds the power.

The chant of ‘Power to the People’ died out long ago and no one is willing to take up the rallying cry. Apathy has finally won.

The United States of America is no longer a place for free people to live.

What is Genocide

I found this on ‘I Eat Poetry’. It moved me so much that I had to repeat it here. Check out the spoken word version (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMK-rHaYD50).

their high school principal

told me I couldn’t teach

poetry with profanity

so I asked my students,

“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.”

in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas

then straightened out like an SS infantry

“Okay. Please put your hands down.

Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.”

blank stares mixed with curious ignorance

a quivering hand out of the crowd

half-way raised, like a lone survivor

struggling to stand up in Kigali

“Luz, are you sure about that?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Carlos—what’s genocide?”

they won’t let you hear the truth at school

if that person says “fuck”

can’t even talk about “fuck”

even though a third of your senior class

is pregnant.

I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school

how to use a condom that will save her life

and that of the orphan she will be forced

to give to the foster care system—

“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”

“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with

six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”

while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess

I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries

a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home

and you want me to censor my language

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers

call themselves “World History” and don’t mention

King Leopold or diamond mines

call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”

and don’t mention Apartheid

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

you wonder why children hide in adult bodies

lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses

learn to fetishize the size of their asses

and simultaneously hate their lips

my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper

from East Harlem

still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley

how can literacy not include Phyllis Wheatley?

schools were built in the shadows of ghosts

filtered through incest and grinding teeth

molded under veils of extravagant ritual

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”

“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”

…what’s genocide?

they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women

injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,

now they just kill mothers with silent poison

stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them

…what’s genocide?

Ridwan’s father hung himself

in the box because he thought his son

was ashamed of him

…what’s genocide?

Maureen’s mother gave her

skin lightening cream

the day before she started the 6th grade

…what’s genocide?

she carves straight lines into her

beautiful brown thighs so she can remember

what it feels like to heal

…what’s genocide?
…what’s genocide?

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Luz, this…

this right here…

is genocide.”

- Carlos Andrés Gómez

Think Globally

We Need A Revolution