Democrats Pay How Much For War? - 4

A few posts back one Dredd Blog piece entitled "The Legislative Graveyard Holds" pointed out that pundits have many interpretations for the mid-term election results.

That post went on to say that Dredd Blog believes the democrats lost because they did not stop the wars nor the plunder of the Treasury by MOMCOM.

The Dredd Blog hypothesis had been posted over a year before the election in a series of posts entitled "Democrats Pay How Much For War?", as well as several other posts under different titles linked to in the series.

We can test the hypothesis to some degree by noting that the top four heavy weights in seniority on the Armed Services Committee in the House were voted out of office.

Those four were: Ike Skelton, Chairman (D-MO), who had been in office some 32 years, and was a favorite of the Pentagon, John Spratt (D-SC), Solomon Ortiz (D-TX), and Gene Taylor (D-MS), who had all enjoyed a long tenure in the House.

Skelton, as an example, had been re-elected 16 times, usually by well over 60 percent of the vote, until this election.

While there may be no way to prove the Dredd Blog hypothesis conclusively, this is evidence of sorts in that direction.

Obama does not seem to believe the hypothesis, if his op-ed in the NY Times this morning is any indication.

He advocates increasing U.S. exports, but does not mention the wars or the fact that we spend more on WMD, weapons, troops, military bases, wars, which we call "defense", than all the rest of the nations combined.

The fact that the current wars are our longest, have no purpose, are the most costly, are concurrent with our greatest economic disaster in 80 years, and the people want them stopped, does not seem to phase his ruminations about foreign policy impacts on economy.

You decide.

UPDATE (11/7/10): Daily Kos reports:

Democrats suffered serious losses on Tuesday, but no one was hit harder than the corporatist Blue Dogs. Over half their members are gone. Apparently, being the GOP's best friends on issue after issue wasn't the political winner they claimed it was.

(11/5/10 email from Chris Bowers @ Daily Kos).

Mystery of Compromise vs. Capitulation

The news media have constantly been guilty of gumming up the works of public discourse, the worst of the bunch being Fox "News".

Their favorite trick is to frame an issue with two aspects that are part of a distortion of that issue in place of a frame of two logically opposing aspects of that issue.

Then they talk about "compromise" in terms of the two distortions, leaving out the substance of an enlightened debate of that issue.

What they are really urging is "capitulation", thus, we never enter the realm of "compromise", which is a form of fair dealing.

The problem can be addressed by allowing unbiased academics or unbiased watchdog groups to frame the issue, thereby losing the media pundits and politicians who tend not to be able to see the real aspects of an issue.

For example, environmental issues are typically framed as jobs vs. a clean environment.

In other words, if you want a job you have to pollute the environment.

If that issue was framed as doom of civilzation vs. clean environment, which is more accurate by orders of magnitude, the issue would play out differently.

No sane folk want civilization to go down because it has damaged the environment to that degree, instead the sense of the people is to have a clean environment which produces a lasting civilization.

The job of the media portion of MOMCOM is to deceive the public into supporting the oil baron ground zero of pollution portion of MOMCOM, as well as the imperialistic robber baron military portion of MOMCOM.

That is why the media use (what people who understand logic call) "a false frame with a straw man" to deliver a false front, a distorted presentation of the issue being discussed or debated.

A debate about jobs vs. environment cannot set up a scenario to intelligently discuss the catastrophic implications of global climate change induced by global warming.

Nor can it deliver a "compromise", because the real word is "capitulation".

When people are scared with the fear of losing their job as the only option to a clean environment, that is not compromise, it is capitulation.

Thus, the mystery is solved by realizing this congress will be THE BRIGHT vs. THE RIGHT.

Watch out for what MOMCOM habitually calls "compromise" over the next two years, it will actually be "capitulation".

GOP vs. Global Warming "Hoax" & Health

A recent Dredd Blog post pointed out that military scholars & strategists reveal their thinking which includes the notion that Health Care Reform is the greatest enemy of MOMCOM.

This GOP logic sees domestic programs that help Americans as a threat to the military that spends more on WMD, armies, navies, air forces, and military bases than all the rest of the industrial nations combined, who have ten times a greater population than we do.

It would follow then, considering an article by Marc Ambinder, that the "greatest hoax of all time" is their second worst enemy:

Rep. Joe Barton [R-TX], the chairman of the [House] energy committee ... plans to hold high profile hearings examining the alleged "scientific fraud" behind global warming ...

(The Atlantic). Yes, that is the Joe Barton who apologized to BP after the White House leaned on BP to help Deepwater Horizon victims, then he and his cronies later on in the day critized the Obama Administration for not being hard enough on BP.

The dems have been very slow to declare war on these two heinous crimes being perpetrated against "the people", so the neoCons want to get right after these two great enemies (global warming hoax & health care reform).

I guess that makes social security the third worst enemy, which leaves one wondering why they are spending most of the fisc on wars (going on longer than WW II by now) against lesser enemies.

I am sure they will have a rap for that.

The Legislative Graveyard Holds

The pundit class will now figure fifty reasons the election went the way it did, while playing the Paul Simon song "There Must Be 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" in the background.

Dredd Blog tries to figure these things out ahead of time, so if you want to know this blog's take on it, read this post which links to earlier posts dealing with the subject: Democrats Pay How Much For War?

But the smarter focus now is probably to ask what the results of the election portend, that is, what will change and what will not?

Hundreds of bills passed by the U.S. House of Representatives (House) have been stalled in the U.S. Senate (Senate) for some time now:

Exasperated House Democratic leaders have compiled a list showing that they have passed 290 bills that have stalled in the Senate.

The list is the latest sign that Democrats in the lower chamber are frustrated with their Senate counterparts.

(The Hill, Feb. 2010). That is not likely to change now that the Republicans have taken over the majority in the House, because the Democrats kept the majority in the Senate.

Nothing of consequence in terms of environmental, economic, or war ending legislation is likely to go anywhere.

That does not bode well for a future where more Americans may be losing their minds than may be losing houses, jobs, and health care.

Will Elections Cure The Disease?

As time goes on in the USA, fewer and fewer people think that election time is a time to bring some cure to the governing process. It is more often than not a time to express anger. A time to throw some bums out in anger, not really contemplating the consequences of simply venting anger so much that worse candidates replace the current losers. Is this a symptom of something? If I were to say that maybe now, but for sure in the future as our economy crawls back to 3, 4, 5 or 6 percent unemployment, more U.S. citizens will begin to lose their minds than will lose homes, jobs, or health care, would you believe it? The statistics can be said to fairly lead an analyst slowly but surely toward such a conclusion:

Starting on Jan. 1, our 79-million-strong baby boom generation will be turning 65 at the rate of one every eight seconds. That means more than 10,000 people per day, or more than four million per year, for the next 19 years facing an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. Although the symptoms of this disease and other forms of dementia seldom appear before middle age, the likelihood of their appearance doubles every five years after age 65. Among people over 85 (the fastest-growing segment of the American population), dementia afflicts one in two. It is estimated that 13.5 million Americans will be stricken with Alzheimer’s by 2050 — up from five million today.

(The Age of Alzheimer's, emphasis added). That is statistical, but the greater factor is mystical:

Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, a general term for memory loss and other intellectual abilities serious enough to interfere with daily life. Alzheimer's disease accounts for 50 to 70 percent of dementia cases. ... Alzheimer's has no current cure ... ... The most common early symptom of Alzheimer's is difficulty remembering newly learned information because Alzheimer changes typically begin in the part of the brain that affects learning. As Alzheimer's advances through the brain it leads to increasingly severe symptoms, including disorientation, mood and behavior changes; deepening confusion about events, time and place; unfounded suspicions about family, friends and professional caregivers; more serious memory loss and behavior changes; and difficulty speaking, swallowing and walking.

(Alzheimer Association, emphasis added). There is no current cure because there is no current knowledge of its cause sufficient for successful treatment, meaning of course that Alzheimer's is for the most part a mystery. In our Etiology of Social Dementia series we offer the hypothesis that the systemic policy of propaganda that has infected our entire economic, military, and political process for close to a century now, is a prime suspect. That is, since propaganda is deceit, which intentionally removes a person's contact with some reality, it is designed to remove, in some degree, a person's touch with what is actually going on. In short, we have a systematic policy of propaganda / deceit which infects the citizenry with the beginning stages of Alzheimer's, in that, "spin" and "creating one's own reality" is actually a distortion of reality in various degrees, with a specific purpose attached to that intentional distortion. Decades of that practice have produced a governmental / corporate system that is not in touch with the realities of the cosmos, the ecosystem of this planet, and a proper understanding of proper direction. The nation has a mild form of Alzheimer's that is growing, and is going to increase into a serious case, if the propaganda / deceit system is not stopped.

 The next post in this series is here.

Your Health Is Their Number 1 Enemy?!

There are so many things that happen these days that when I tell people about them they will say "I can't believe that".

The issue of health care reform is only one of many issues where I can make the case.

Let me make the case by telling you that military thinkers believe that the number one enemy the military should fear is health care!

Now, unless you have researched this, you will exclaim "I can't believe that".

Let's look at what military scholars say by revisiting a Dredd Blog post from last March that focused on this issue:

Pentagonia, capitol of Bullshitistan, well aware of the current political climate, has declared who its greatest enemy is, believing it is health care:

The U.S. military keeps searching the horizon for a peer competitor, the challenger that must be taken seriously. Is it China? What about an oil rich and resurgent Russia?

But the threat that is most likely to hobble U.S. military capabilities is not a peer competitor, rather it is health care.

(The Enemy the Pentagon Should Fear Most: Health Care, National Defense Magazine, emphasis added). We have been pointing out this very strange ideology for a while now, using "MOMCOM" symbolism to isolate the militant energy fighting against the middle class and poor in the United States.

(Deja Vu - Guns v. Butter Election Looms). I can't believe that either, but there it is, written in military white papers for all to see.

I am very concerned that elements in and around the military are nuts, insane, yes, even criminally insane.

That is really not a stretch in the USA, because insanity in the form of dementia is a top ten killer of Americans.

In our etiology of dementia series we posted:

One post that ties the dynamics together is The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises.

In that regard, I must say that a piece in The New York Times caught my attention:

OUR government is ignoring what is likely to become the single greatest threat to the health of Americans: Alzheimer’s disease, an illness that is 100 percent incurable and 100 percent fatal. It attacks rich and poor, white-collar and blue, and women and men, without regard to party. A degenerative disease, it steadily robs its victims of memory, judgment and dignity, leaves them unable to care for themselves and destroys their brain and their identity — often depleting their caregivers and families both emotionally and financially.

(The Age of Alzheimer’s, NY Times, emphasis added).

(Etiology of Social Dementia - 2). The military thinkers indicate that even though health care is sorely needed even for them, seeing as now they are committing suicide at record rates, health care is their greatest enemy.

Guess where the political pundits, your friends, your co-workers, get their ideas that health care is bad?

The next post in this series is here.

More Dope, Less Hope

Brazil has discovered a large oil field a hundred or so miles offshore.

In our post The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil we pointed out that an entire U.S. Naval Fleet (4th Fleet) had been taken out of mothball storage then sent to swarm around the oil fields down in South America, yes, even down around Brazil.

The order to take the fleet out of mothball storage was issued based on some previous discoveries there, before the current discovery, so the 4th Fleet will be there awhile no doubt.

This does not bode well for the well being of civilization in the long run, because dependence psychology will be strengthened, making it all the more difficult to shake the petroleum habit.

Recent discoveries indicate that in the short run there are new dangers to the offshore drilling mania, yes, these mysterious rogue waves are better understood now than they were at any time in the past.

There have been hundreds of cases where oil platforms as well as large ships sank at a time when the cause was considered to be a mystery, but are now understood to have been caused by rogue waves:

Until recently, however, marine scientists dismissed the idea of rogue waves as little more than a sailors' fantasy, with reason — there was little evidence to back it up. But in 1995, an oil rig in the North Sea recorded an 84-ft.-high (25.6 m) wave that appeared out of nowhere, and in 2000, a British oceanographic vessel recorded a 95-ft.-high (29 m) wave off the coast of Scotland. In 2004, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA), as part of the MaxWave project, used satellite data to show that freak waves higher than 10 stories were rare but did occur on the oceans.

(Time, see also The Wave). The new science is having an impact on engineering, or at least it should have:

The fact that rogue waves actually take place relatively frequently had major safety and economic implications, since current ships and offshore platforms are built to withstand maximum wave heights of only 15 metres.

(ESA Portal). The danger to oil platforms is well known now, because it is already a part of history that they are at risk:

Indeed, a 26-metre rogue wave was the principal cause of the capsize of the Ocean Ranger, a drilling rig that sank off the coast of Newfoundland in 1982. The Ocean Ranger catastrophe was the worst marine disaster in Canada since the Second World War. 84 lives were lost. A Soviet container ship, the Mekhanik Tarasov, also went down in the same storm, with a loss of 33 lives.

(Ross A. Laird). Our addiction to petroleum takes us deeper and deeper into danger, but as noted time and again, the governments are only preparing for triage, not being able to kick the dirty oil habit.