What sort of person would deliberately ignore the obvious fundamental reality of any budget?

By Numerian

It’s hard to say if the Tea Party has an acknowledged leader, but someone who professes to be just that has chosen a very opportune moment to trash Speaker John Boehner’s attempts to craft legislation that would allow an increase in the debt ceiling. Judson Phillips, the CEO of Tea Party Nation, is the self-acknowledged head of the Tea Party, and in an editorial this morning in The Washington Post, he attacks Boehner’s legislation for providing “almost non-existent budget cuts.”

Full story »

By John Waters

In the last 90 days three women, who resembled the women in the following pictures, came onto me as if I was Brad Pitt.

The oldest woman in the picture is 35. I am a medium height almost medium build man, who is almost 68 years of age.

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. [1]

My standard pick-up line : “I am clearly older than you but I still think I am in my twenties.” The woman above on the right replied, “I am in my twenties, and you are adorable. When are you taking me to dinner?”

The first time this happened I was convinced, as were my friends, that this was a Sugar Daddy attraction (although there was no way when we met they could know my net worth).

I dated all three women in an attempt to find out if they wanted a Sugar Daddy. None of them asked for money. On one occasion I actually offered financial assistance before I thought she was going to ask. She looked puzzled and responded, “Why would I want you to pay for me?”

Confounded, I did some research and here is what I think is happening.

We live in a patriarchal social structure. The traditional gender roles "man hunts -- woman stays at home" was undermined by the Federal Reserve and the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century. [2]

Men now hunted for bargains while the women cooked “cheap” food made from monocultures. [4]

Until October 2008 the Federal Reserve created money out of thin air to take care of everyone in a vast and bloated welfare bureaucracy that made millions of us perpetual wards of a patriarchal state. [3]

The alpha Federal Reserve male (Father Fed) was now directly and indirectly taking care of every man, woman and child. The Federal Reserve(s) are (four) Dummies

Right after Father Fed got control of the money supply:

“They began to buy government securities at the rate of ten million dollars a week for 10 weeks, and created one hundred million dollars in new (checkbook) currency, which alleviated the critical famine of money and credit, and the factories started hiring people again” Eustice Mullins.

The factories started hiring Robert Young (Father Knows Best) so he could drive to work in his muscle car, build airplanes, ships, cars, RVs, SUVs, office buildings, freeways and shopping malls from the raw materials, commodities, iron ore, bauxite, petroleum and copper that Father Fed owned or controlled in 1910. [Appendix A]

Men continued to act and display the attitudes of the dominant male, but acting the dominant male isn’t the same as being one. Bringing home a big screen TV in a Monster Truck isn’t fooling anyone into thinking modern man has male power. [5]

The feminist movement era was the straw that broke the male ego’s back.

A man could no longer cling to the illusion that he was superior to a woman. An epidemic of divorce, domestic violence, infidelity, alcoholism and drug abuse followed the loss of his self-esteem and damage to his ego.

Full story »

by Stephen Lendman

Among them is waging war on truth, Western managed news calling lawless imperial wars liberating ones. No wonder John Pilger says journalism is the first casualty of war, adding:

"Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship (and deception) that goes unrecognised in the United States, Britain and other democracies; censorship by omission, whose power is such that, in war, it can mean the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries...."

In their book, "Guardians of Power," David Edwards and David Cromwell explained why today's media are in crisis and a free and open society at risk. It's because press prostitutes substitute fiction for fact. News is carefully filtered, dissent marginalized, and supporting wealth and power substitutes for full and accurate reporting.

Full story »

by Stephen Lendman

In this game, the house always wins. Bipartisan complicity stacked the deck against millions of working households, needing to know that political Washington is scamming them.

The end result is the banana republicanization of America. American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter: 1862 - 1910) coined the term (his fictional Republic of Anchuria) in his book, "Cabbages and Kings."

It refers to a country (often politically unstable and/or repressive) where a small percent of the population has a disproportionate share or wealth and power, where ordinary people are exploited, often persecuted, and where profits are privatized while working households bear the burden of debt.

Full story »

Eric Walberg

The massacre in peaceful Oslo was a replay of this earlier horror in reverse – no longer the Jews as victims but as the inspiration of terror against non-Jews – as Israel extends its wars not only to Greek ports and French airports but to Norwegian children’s camps, complete with rabbinical blessings for the murderers.

Norway is in a state of total shock after the 22 July car bombing in Oslo killing seven, followed by the shooting spree at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoya Island killing 69. This terrorist operation, the worst massacre in Norway’s recent history, represents a greater loss proportional to its five million people than 9/11 did to the US. Speaking of which, an initial report in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, et al attributed the attack to Islamists (resentful of Norway’s democracy, etc), “a terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad”.

Full story »

by Stephen Lendman

Co-founded (with Meir Marglit) and directed by Jeff Halper, the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) "is a non-violent, direct-action organization established in 1998 to resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories."

ICAHD also helps rebuild homes. In addition, it resists "land expropriation, settlement expansions, by-pass road construction, policies of 'closure' and 'separation,' " as well as destruction of agricultural land and crops. It also works for peace, equity, and ending Israel's illegal occupation.

Full story »

Eric Walberg

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s younger half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, was killed in Kandahar on 12 July during a gathering in his house, according to Kandahar’s Canadian Governor Tooryali Wesa. He was shot in the head and chest with a AK-47 fired by Sardar Mohammad, a former bodyguard to another Karzai brother Qayyoum.

The 50-year-old Ahmad, a restaurant worker in Chicago before catapulting to fame on Hamid’s shirt-tails, was appointed chairman of the Kandahar Provincial Council in 2005. A ruthless autocrat, he was widely despised, and escaped multiple assassination attempts in the past, but his death nonetheless comes as a major blow to President Karzai in the homeland of the Taliban, and will set off a vicious power struggle to fill Ahmad’s shoes.

US ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann, the CIA’s station chief and their British counterparts pleaded with the president in 2006 to exile his brother, accused of drug dealing. Hamid angrily rejected these accusations and Ahmad stayed in place, rigging the 2009 Afghan presidential elections for him, as he continued to amass wealth, extorting kickbacks on construction contracts, even shaking down bus- and truck-drivers at police posts.

Full story »

Stuart Littlewood

Having disposed of the Murdoch menace - for the moment anyway - it's time for the British public to turn the spotlight on the other villains our craven politicians pay homage to.

Public enemy Number One is the pro-Israel lobby. An organization called the Conservative Friends of Israel states it has “twin aims of supporting Israel and promoting Conservatism. With close to 2000 activists as members – alongside 80% of Conservative MPs – CFI is active at every level of the Party".

And the rot goes all the way to the top, with Conservative prime minister David Cameron endorsing it enthusiastically: “I am proud not just to be a Conservative, but a Conservative Friend of Israel; and I am proud of the key role CFI plays within our Party.”

Full story »

by Stephen Lendman

It's present, hardening, and threatening to subvert all constitutional and social rights. Among others, three previous articles discussed the danger, accessed through the following links:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/12/police-state-america-look-back-and.html

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/continuity-of-government-coup-detat.html

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/07/fix-is-in-washingtons-planned-social.html

The first article covered post-9/11 police state laws, Executive Orders, Military Orders, as well as National and Homeland Security Presidential Directives (NSPDs and HSPDs). It addressed George Bush granting himself "Unitary Executive" authority to govern extrajudicially (a virtual dictator) in the name of national security, though no constitutional provisions permit it.

The second article discussed "Continuity of Government (COG)" authority under declared national or catastrophic emergency conditions, defined as:

Full story »

by Edgar J. Steele

They say that something is too good to be true if it looks much better than one normally would expect in a given situation; if it is not what it appears to be.

Too Good

There are many things about my recent trial that simply were “too good,” albeit with different twists on the old adage “Too good to be true.”

Full story »