My Year End Summary

A happy new year to you and to all of you commenters and blogwatchers. We have been here weekly for many moons now, and little has changed in the streets of Washington, DC. Instead, we see viper radicals wanting to become president lining the GOP podium. What will solidify an Obama victory would be Da'Trumpster running as a Independent, as he has recently inferred.

The world is operating on a shell game mentality. The commoner is angry but really has nowhere to go. The Occupy movement has offered a place to stand with a loud voice, a wagging finger, a carrying of signs that might read "American IS NOT A Plutocracy!!", or, "And Justice For All--So, When Does That Happen?".

The fatcat elite keep spinning the Wheel of Fortune each and everyday hoarding massive amounts of capital gains, dividends and profits from market manipulations, stashing cash at the Fed, or destroying foreign sovereign economies.

Our elected representatives, wealthy as they are, continue to gum up the system with attached bills to the major bills hoping to bring about a massively long XL Pipeline down the bowels of the nation to the anus port of Koch Bro refineries in Texas. All the while, the Canadians don't want to build the damn thing themselves.

The Golums in Congress want to strangle working people and make them even more as indentured servants by keeping the country from creating a new vision, such as localized/neighborhood/community based energy generation systems, support for an expansion of localized food sources/farms, effective mass transit systems, an economy where "job growth" is not just a talking point for the nation's bullshitters, and the political psychopathetics walking the halls of government, more affordable healthcare, a halting of all war profiteering, along with an end to wars and occupations, and a conclusion to the war stimulus packages that are an unsustainable transference of wealth from the taxpayer right into the hands of the corporate campaign donor elite, and finally, reinstating Glass-Steagall, and ending the Commodity Futures Modernization Act both of which were brought about by Mr. Humpty Dumpty Ging-grinch himself when pretending to be the Speaker of the House under the Clinton administration, and an end to the corporation as a citizen followed by an end to private funding for elections. The list is endless!

The merry-go-round of world economies are more like a cork screw slowly burying any real chance of national economic recoveries without smothering the commoners in the process.

Our only real hope is that the Occupy Movement actually holds a national general assembly meeting on July 4, 2012 in Philadelphia to make a stand against the political predators that hold offices today. The 99% need to place the flag in the ground and declare a public announcement that we are not going to take this crap any longer, and if you are not on the side of the 99%, then step aside and get out of the way.

Happy New Year from us at:

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

Ron Paul and the Killing Machine

Mike Whitney asks this very interesting question in regards to Ron Paul: Is doing away with the social entitlements worth it if Ron Paul, if elected president, would do away with the U.S. killing machine around the world?

My question to Mike is, how would you feel if we saw our own people dying more rapidly through the euthanasia of the elderly, sick and disabled as a result of this choice you have hypothetically proposed? 

What would be the interesting question if Paul were to become president is: would he actually stick to his ideals or would he be read the "riot act" by the nation's most powerful corporate elite, as was Obama? Would he dismantle foreign bases, and end occupations, wars, and secret covet missions; or, would be suddenly believe in "national security" and continue to engage in the business-as-usual at the Pentagon, CIA, and the rest in order to continue the economic gravy train that many of these powerful corporate elite have benefitted from as war machine contractors?

Would he have stayed away from offering support to citizen protesters working to topple dictators? Would Paul decide to stop selling our own oil, natural gas, and coal to foreign countries in order to be less dependent on foreign producing countries which he feels hate us? Or, would he continue the selling of our own natural gas resource?

Ron Paul does not strike me as an FDR or Truman-type who would stand up against the massive push-back by the powerful corporate elite.

Mike, do actually believe that Ron Paul has the strength to actually walk the walk, or is it just talking the talk.

Of War and Social Security

by MIKE WHITNEY  12-29-11 from counterpunch.org

Ron Paul is the only antiwar candidate who has a (microscopic) chance of winning in 2012. He’s also the only candidate who will make an effort to restore the Bill of Rights and reverse Congress’s decision to allow the president to “indefinitely” imprison American citizens without due process. For these reasons alone, Paul should garner the support of leftists, liberals, and progressives. But he won’t, because liberals are convinced that Paul will try to dismantle the social programs upon which the elderly, the infirm, and the vulnerable depend.

These concerns are not without foundation. Paul opposes government meddling in the market and sees Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as steps towards socialism. That means, there’s a good chance that these programs will come under fire if Paul is elected. The question is: How should we balance our concerns about Social Security with our opposition to the war(s)?

To answer that question, we need to create a “hypothetical”.

Let’s say, Paul surprises his critics and wins the presidency in a landslide victory in November
2012. Then–in his first public appearance as president–he issues an executive order to stop all Social Security payments immediately, thus cutting off the meager revenue-stream that millions of the nation’s elderly need to scrape-by.

Isn’t this the worst-case scenario? Isn’t this what liberals are really worried about?

Okay, so let’s say it all goes-down just as we said. Let’s say Paul tries to strangle Social Security from Day 1. Isn’t that still infinitely better than another Falluja, another Haditha, another Abu Ghraib, another bombed-out wedding party?

Yes, it’s wrong to deprive the sick and elderly of some pittance so they can eek by, but is it as wrong as blowing women and children to bits in their own country, in their own cities, in their own homes?

It’s a question of priorities, right? So, what’s more important; ending the bloodletting or some potential threat to Social Security?

Paul will stop the killing. We should use our vote to do the same.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com