The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
What If Government Were More Like an iPod?
Dilbert's Scott Adams on bringing democracy out of the age of wax candles and into the age of touch screens
Scott Adams
Wall Street Journal, 5 November 2011
If Congress had a 9% approval rating while George Washington was still alive, he would have shoved his wooden dentures in his mouth, assembled a militia and marched on the Capitol. The nation's founders weren't big fans of dysfunctional governments. I'll bet we could solve our energy problem by connecting a generator to John Adams's corpse, which I assume is spinning in its grave.
I've heard people say the United States no longer has the caliber of intellectual giants that authored the Declaration of Independence, defeated a superior British military, crafted the Constitution and built a robot butler that would eventually run away and change its name to Mitt Romney. But that's OK, because individuals are not the primary vehicles for genius. When it comes to the larger matters of civilization, group intelligence is more important than individual genius. To put it another way: Do you know who is smarter than the entire senior class at MIT? Answer: no one.
Today, thanks to the Internet, we can summon the collective intelligence of millions.
Tip of the Hat to Damien Morton via IndieGoGo.
Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Adams provides a very thoughtful overview of the possibilities, while avoiding any mention of the corruption that is pervasive in today's top-down elite control “rule by secrecy” environment. The Electoral Reform Act of 2012 is intended to eradicate corruption, assure transparency, restore the Republic, and make direct democracy such as Mr. Adams envisions a reality before 2016. The next President should be of, by, and for We the People, tested in the fires of the Occupy Wall Street kiln.
“We the People…”
WHAT IF voters got to VOTE on a revolution?
I'm Jeff Block, a 56 year old husband, father, and grandfather.
I've also created my own “American Dream” business, JustPaperRoses.com
Serving YOU as President of the United States of America is not high on my list of things I want to do!
Bottom Line Summary: 3 Presidents (Office of the Presidents); 9 Cabinet Secretaries (see Discussion tab); 9 Supreme Court Judges; 150 elected-Senators; 151 citizen-Senators; 50 Governors
Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known. The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes. Wall Street Journal.
Drones are changing the dynamics of warfare in very scary ways. They make oppression much easier (and cost-effective).
To recap: Drones are extremely cost effective vs. ground/air assets (particularly in that with drones, operators aren't put at risk). They also enable extremely centralized command and control (as in: operations can be micro-manged in Washington, down to the decision to kill). In sum, a small number of people in Washington DC can control/operate a vast 24×7 killing field for very few $$.
Here's how they are changing warfare:
What's Next?
It's a pretty slippery slope from here. The simple answer is that US practice we see at work in Pakistan will eventually become common place in Mexico, Central America, and Northern Africa. However, the more interesting answer is how it gets applied to US internal security when the US/global economy crumps into depression, the US government goes bankrupt, and the current system loses much of its remaining legitimacy. In that scenario:
Good summary of the American sickness.
William Pfaff – truthdig – 02/11/11
The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think. This concerns two matters at the core of the present American political crisis.
The first is that control over the government has passed all but completely into the hands of business corporations. The country has become a plutocracy. This has occurred because corporations are the principal supplier of funds essential to the election of federal officials—the president and the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and through them, the members of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, all of whom are nominated and confirmed by the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches of the government.
. . . . . . .
I spoke of a second source of American crisis to which there is a simple solution, an intellectual solution, which to impose would require conversion of the hard hearts and biased minds of a sizable part of the international economic community (at least that part of it educated at the University of Chicago since the Second World War), as well as a near-revolutionary change in how the American government presently functions (see above). The crisis is easily described as the 1 percent problem. One percent of the American population receives income equivalent to the other 99 percent put together.
This is caused by the consensus decision of the economists and business schools to define profit as the sole criterion of corporation efficiency and public (and civic) worth. The automatic consequence of this has been the de-industrialization of the United States, the export of its manufacturing capacity, unemployment in the U.S. comparable to that of the Great Depression, poverty levels with no modern American precedent, and the moral corruption of American politics.
Moyers is a sanctimonious preacher who sometimes speaks the truth.
Bill Moyers: “Our Politicians Are Money Launderers in the Trafficking of Power and Policy”
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Public Citizen 40th Gala
Washington, DC
October 20, 2011
I am honored to share this occasion with you. No one beyond your collegial inner circle appreciates more than I do what you have stood for over these 40 years, or is more aware of the battles you have fought, the victories you have won, and the passion for democracy that still courses through your veins. The great progressive of a century ago, Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin – a Republican, by the way – believed that “Democracy is a life; and involves constant struggle.” Democracy has been your life for four decades now, and would have been even more imperiled today if you had not stayed the course.
VIDEO (21:15): Bill Moyers keynote at Public Citizen's 40th Anniversary Gala
In the Public Interest
The Road to Twenty One Presidential Debates in 2012
11/2/11
What people would not want Presidential Debates in multiple cities all over America in September and October 2012? Why, the people at the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). CPD is a private corporation created in 1987. It is controlled by the Republican and Democratic Parties and acts as the iron gatekeeper regarding the number of debates, who is chosen to ask the questions and who is excluded from most important forums for reaching millions of people interested in the presidential elections.
Powered by the television networks that transmit the debates to the public, the CPD is set in concrete when it comes to entrenching the status quo for the two party dictatorship’s orchestrated bubble of exclusion and manipulation.
