The U.S, for the last few decades, has been seriously hurt by the leadership Americans chose. Obama will very likely be defeated in 2012 by a landslide victory of the G.O.P. The new ultra rightist government will renew its attacks upon the U.S. Constitution, and whatever still exists of the Constitutional protections once afforded Americans will be further diminished. Social programs, including the big one, Social Security, will be dissolved and whatever is left of the trust fund will be handed over to private investors. Old folks should be making plans for other health and living arrangements. The U.S. will descend into true Third World status, and its influence in the world will diminish further. Unless that is, the rightist government begins a new era of imperialist aggression beginning with any nation unable to defend itself.
The question will be how much the world will allow U.S. imperialism to advance before a collective effort, probably led by Russia and China, is launched to contain the U.S. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been too profitable for U.S. Corporations to ignore future adventures in foreign lands. Evildoers are remarkably easy to find, particularly when one looks for them. Bush prepared the ground when he informed the nation that endless war was necessary. “It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.” … James Madison
What was once the world’s strongest economy is now drowning in debt, and the corporations with their magical free market wizards are being rewarded with vast amounts of taxpayer dollars for sinking the economy. It’s provident for them that American taxpayers didn’t get the same tax breaks they did. Otherwise there would be little money to give them. The big banks, investment firms and insurers are busy, with full political support, finishing off what little is left of the U.S. economy. Obama knows what is necessary to fix the nation’s headlong plunge into economic oblivion, but he hasn’t the courage or the political support to fix a flat tire, never mind the economy.
The American people have been the victims of their own self righteous morality. They have been lazy and guilty of unbelievable ignorance. The warnings were everywhere, but they were far too comfortable with their baseless opinions to see them. The “We Report, you Decide” crew did a fine number on them, and they’re still being jerked around like a marionettes on a string. “Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.” … David Korten
Americans, for some time, have been ready to believe any politician who told them how rotten their government, and by extension, their nation is. They eagerly believed the lies told them by immoral and manipulative politicos who destroyed the careers of decent men who had held the nation’s interests dear. The republicans had once made an art of accusing the democrats of being soft on crime. Today they accuse them of being soft on terrorism. They have cultivated fear in the populace until Americans are ready to believe anything as long as it might protect them from the boogey man.
When Gore was pushed aside so Bush could step up and begin the wholesale destruction of the U.S. economy, millions of Americans cheered him on. Today those same millions of Americans have already forgotten that it was Bush and his minions that wrecked the nation’s economy, along with its reputation abroad. The U.S. Constitution also faired badly under Bush. Many millions of Americans slept through it all and are still quite unaware their First, Second, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were diminished. In 2012, when Obama is tossed out on his ear, the destruction of democracy to make way for corporate fascism will be complete. One of the visionary signators of the Constitution and Bill of Rights wrote, "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." … Thomas Jefferson
On the home front civil unrest and crowd control are anticipated by anticipated by the corporative government. Measures to contain American protests are already in place. Kellogg Brown & Root, in January of 2006, was awarded a $385 million contract to begin building detention facilities in the U.S. John Ashcroft, Bush’s Attorney General announced, in 2002, his desire to see detention camps built where U.S. citizens, judged as enemy combatants, could be incarcerated. Rumsfeld heartily agreed saying “news informers” were bringing harm to the country’s security. “News informers” being anyone from bloggers to so called liberal newscasters. As typical of the Bush Administration, the criteria for incarcerating U.S. citizens is based on a “national emergency,” that could be anything from a hurricane, another 9-11 event, or the color of a suspects socks. An ultra rightist government would have no qualms in declaring hundreds of thousands of Americans enemies of the state for nothing more than speaking their minds.
Glen Greenwald is a regular contributor to Salon Magazine. He has written about the detention camps as well as the establishment of heavily armed army regulars being based on U.S. soil “to help with civil unrest and crowd control.” The First Brigade Combat Team is a battle hardened outfit that has spent four years in Iraq before being based in the U.S. to handle domestic functions. Thomas Jefferson warned, as did other Founders, of the danger inherent in using military forces for domestic police duties. “Even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
Mr. Greenwald received many comments regarding his article. Here are a few typical comments. Glenn Greenwald has got his panties twisted up" -- "STFU, you ridiculous ninnies and stop manufacturing plotlines from the late 1960s" -- "paranoid" -- "panic" -- "handwringing terror" -- "fevered fear of the military" -- "Glenn 'Chicken Little' Greenwald" -- "Your anti-military paranoia is a wee bit misplaced" -- "Oh Noes! The Army is Coming to Take our Democracy!!!!
These are the typically vacuous responses from those morons who get their opinions from Limbaugh and Fox News. They are conforming to precisely the expectations of those who will one day, in the not so distant future, strip them of every right the pathetic dummies thought were theirs. It’s truly extraordinary how thoroughly duped so many Americans are. “When a well - packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses for generations the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.” …. Dresden James.
The United States could become, once again, the truly great nation it was. But as long as Congress represents corporate lobbyists over the American people the nation will continue its descent to tyranny. Congress, if it so pleased, could end corporate lobbying tomorrow, but that’s only if they wanted to which they most certainly do not. The quid pro quo works fine for them and their exclusive club. The Congress, has no tolerance for any member who would seriously propose turning Congressional interests back to the public. “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter an lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” … Abraham Lincoln
The beginning of the end of the U.S. as a free democratically principled nation can be easily traced. In 1886 the Supreme Court decided in “Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad” that corporations were entitled to 14th Amendment rights just as people are. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite read the courts finding. "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
What is abundantly clear about the court’s decision is the unparalleled betrayal the nation’s highest court visited upon Americans. Corporations had already made significant inroads as they gathered more than the government itself. If anyone would doubt this they are not paying attention to the government’s acquiescence to corporate demands that trillions of taxpayer dollars be given them - no strings attached - after their wholesale theft of private and public assets the likes of which the world has never seen, and may not ever see again. “Corporations cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.” … Edward Coke
Congress pretends outrage and does nothing but bundle more money. Obama knows perfectly well that his solution is completely ineffective. When he appointed Timothy Geither as Treasury Secretary, and Lawrence Summers as his chief financial advisor, it was apparent he never had any intention of reigning in the banks, the insurers or the investment houses. His supporters understood, when he appointed the pair of Wall Street lifers, they had been scammed, hoodwinked and slapped upside their heads. Any other descriptive adjective synonymous with getting screwed works fine. “The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.” … Rose and Milton Friedman “Free to Choose”
The recent so called “tea parties” were a ridiculous spectacle put on by the usual bunch of right wing goonies. Phil Gramm, who was instrumental in repealing Glass - Steagall, thus paving the way for the collapse of the economy, was speechifying about fiscal conservatism. Newt Gingrich put in an appearance, and speculation was rampant that he would be the republican’s standard bearer for the presidency in 2012. If Bush can get himself put into office, why not Newt? The audiences, from all over the country, loved the spectacle. Obama was blamed while Bush must have been roaring with laughter that he’d escaped accountability. “Lucky me!” he may have said to Laura. “I hit the trifecta again! I got away with the loot, I transferred most of the nation’s wealth to my buddy’s offshore bank accounts, and now the damn fools are blaming someone else for the mess I made!
The Founders warned the colonists and all Americans after them of the fragility of freedom. They described, very simply, how Americans could keep their freedoms. They described in detail the things to look for that would warn them of impending tyranny. Their advice was echoed for the next 200 years by many, many other Americans. The common thread that holds all the wisdom handed down through two centuries is simple to understand. Being aware of every move the power brokers are contemplating has always been necessary, in any freedom loving nation, to keep the populace free.
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