Mend A City

Regular readers will remember that Dredd Blog recently discussed that it is a matter of law now that we live in a culture of falsehood: mendacity is our capitol city, the bubble district is where the money is, where the bailed-out banks are, and that the language of our government is mendacious, which generates a lot of illness and death.

Some tip-of-the-iceberg news reports touch upon the subject:

One of Barack Obama's first acts as president was to say that Guantanamo must go. It did not go. Soon after, he said that the Israeli settlements must go. They expanded. Obama made his peace in the end with Guantanamo and the Israeli settlements. He restarted the military tribunals at Guantanamo -- a feature of the Bush-Cheney constitution which he once had explicitly deplored -- and recently went out of his way to defend the Guantanamo-like abuse (compulsory nakedness and sleep deprivation) inflicted on an American prisoner, Bradley Manning, in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico. One had come to think of "X must go" assertions by Obama as speculative prefaces to a non-existent work. His words, in his mind, are actions. When he speaks them once or twice, he has done what he was put here to do. If the existing powers defy his wishes, he embraces the powers and continues on his way.

(David Bromwich). The religionists pray on a word, the comics play on a word, but MOMCOM just preys with words.

The fundamental sacred sacrament of The Virgin MOMCOM is the act of war, yet the sermon is about Mend A City, Mend A State, and Mend A Deficit, while doing none of the above.

Meanwhile, the cities, counties, and states are increasingly in danger because the "home land" is losing its homes, and is morphing into the "homeless land":

The mortgage crisis in this country doesn't get much attention in Washington these days, but it's huge. It's so huge, in fact, that it dwarfs most of the economic issues that have Washington in their grip. It's so huge that it's dragging down our entire economy. It's so huge that the numbers can be difficult to picture ...

The scale of the crisis is, in a word, staggering ...

How big is the mortgage crisis? Pick an adjective: astronomic, colossal, enormous, gigantic, ginormous, humongous, jumbo, mammoth, massive, monstrous, mastadonic, monumental, prodigious, tremendous, vast, very big, very large, whopping. Here's how big it is. Let's assume that you're reading these words one day after I wrote them. That means that:

By the time you read this, there will have been approximately 8,500 foreclosure actions in this country -- more than one thousand every hour during the working day.

By the time you read this, homes in the United States will have lost more than $13 million dollars in value. During a 24-hour day, this figure comes out to more than $500,000 an hour.

By the time you read this, homeowners will have paid $750 million in mortgage payments for non-existent housing value -- that is, the amount on their mortgages that disappeared when the bubble burst -- according to our estimate.

By the time you read this, the nation's bankers will have earned nearly $400 million, of which $56 million will be bonus money. Bankers like to say they work 24/7. (They don't, but let's say they did.) That means they will have collectively earned more than $16 million in salary and more than $2 million in bonuses during each and every one of the 24 hours hours before you read these words -- morning, noon, and night.

And all of these figures for the last 24 hours will be reached again during the next 24 ...

Here's a fact for you: The amount of wealth American homeowners have lost over the least three years is much larger than this year's entire Federal budget.

(RJ Escow). In the series The Graphs of Wrath - 2 we looked at the issue from a higher altitude, but noted that it does not look good up there either.

While there is a way out of here, the powers that be are in too much denial to take that path.

So they start another oil war as if to say "yeah, that's the ticket".

UPDATE: They started a war with a nation The Federal Reserve ("The Fed") loaned billions and billions to, and at cheaper rates than Americans can get from The Fed (if they could borrow any at all):

“It is incomprehensible to me that while creditworthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya,” Sanders said.

(Washington's Blog). They choose mendacity over Mend A City every time.

The Curse of The Child Prodigy

Why do I say that child prodigy cases are a curse to our current civilization?

Because the MOMCOM mantra "be all you can be in the Army" is a perversion of those cosmic gifts, the gift of the gifted child.

But at the same time, the curse of child prodigy is also the "reality", because of the vast recruitment realms and power of MOMCOM to pull the child prodigy in.

That MOMCOM mantra on steroids would more accurately reflect the current state of affairs if it was "be all you can be within the MOMCOM illusion of what this planet is".

Nevertheless the "be all you can be in the Army" MOMCOM mantra is decidedly death bound (nuclear war), is decidedly anti-planet (green house gases, pollution), and ultimately wants to take you and your child prodigy's mind down with "herr" (propaganda).

Notice that MOMCOM (military, oil, media) grabs up these child prodigy gifts to humanity from the cosmos, then wafts them off to a place where MOMCOM manipulates those gifts to make "better and better" weapons of mass destruction (nuclear weapons and a vast array of pollutants).

Yep, you get there on the MOMCOM scholar ship, which is Titanic, because MOMCOM believes size matters, and that one size: big imperialism, big militancy, and big war budgets, fits all.

Meanwhile some of those in herr marching bands, which in numbers are greater than the diplomatic foreign corps of the entire State Department, sing songs of "peace".

Can you fathom what Dylan said:

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world

(Masters of War). If you roll the dice and have children, hide them from the wicked witch MOMCOM.

The development of the nuclear bomb illustrates how academia is bound to the ideology of MOMCOM, business is addicted to MOMCOM oil, and how the media plays the music along the way:

The military funding of science has had a powerful transformative effect on the practice and products of scientific research since the early 20th century. Particularly since World War I, advanced science-based technologies have been viewed as essential elements of a successful military ... World War I is often called "the chemists’ war" ... World War II marked a massive increase in the military funding of science, particularly physics ... The sheer scale of military funding for science since World War II has instigated a large body of historical literature analyzing the effects of that funding, especially for American science ... Forman and others have argued that military funding fundamentally redirected science — particularly physics — toward applied research, and that military technologies predominantly formed the basis for subsequent research even in areas of basic science; ultimately the very culture and ideals of science were colored by extensive collaboration between scientists and military planners.

(Wikipedia). The big oil segment of MOMCOM has vast amounts of money they use to sway education and hire students, protecting the oil barons while perpetuating the addiction to oil:

“Big Oil” has been doing some big recruiting on U.S. campuses this year — as have many smaller companies in the petroleum and natural gas business. The combination of high prices, an aging work force and a tight pipeline of trained workers has the industry desperate for talent. Phan accepted a $55,000-per-year offer in Houston at Schlumberger Ltd., an oilfield services firm.

(Big Oil At The Campus). The media portion of MOMCOM is no piker either, because movie stars get their scripts from MOMCOM all too often:

Now David Robb has filled the gap with his heavily documented Operation Hollywood (Prometheus, 2004). Many organizations, including the CIA, have offices in Hollywood which try to influence the content of films, but the biggest one and the one with by far the most clout is the Pentagon's, which exercises control over films in which the military are involved by providing soldiers and equipment or by refusing them. Robb is very critical of Hollywood for selling out to the military. The Pentagon has two aims. The first is to present the military in a good light: no foul language, no drugs or other unseemly behavior. It is for this reason that the revelations about Abu Graib prison were such a shock. The censorship is a two-step process: first the Pentagon's Hollywood office gives instructions and, as the filming progresses, cuts out anything it does not like. Robb views this as a violation of free speech, and quotes law professors on the point. Then there is a showing in the Pentagon, where final approval is given.

The second aim is to make a military career seem attractive to youngsters, and thus to boost enrollment. Even Lassie and Donald Duck have been used for this purpose. This is where the History Channel comes in. The program are often interrupted with advertisements telling your people to consider a career in the military, which is shown in a favorable light.

(Pentagon Hollywood). The Peak of the Oil Wars is in full swing based upon military science, oil addiction, and the full-on worldwide foreign policy of militant imperialism to control oil.

Unless mothers stop feeding kids MOMCOM twinkies then let their kids grow up to be cowboys, civilization as we know it is doomed.

The following video shows one such child prodigy who said she could sell her idea to the military so it could make weapons (at 1:48 into the video the 11 year old says: "I was like yeah, I could sell this to the military for money"):

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The Evolution of Song Truth - 2

I revealed in the first post of this series that I like to watch the Weather Channel.

I have watched the effect the far right corporation, Comcast, which purchased MSNBC recently, has had on the Weather Channel.

Fundamentally they are against saying much against their partner GE, even when deserved, and they are for using propaganda to continue to deceive people about the catastrophic effects global climate change / global warming will have on civilization.

They are not anti-religion, however.

Thus, a wonderful story slipped through this morning which concerns the Mennonites, a religious organization that is in general anti-war, pro-peace:

We are constrained of Christ to take no part in warfare or military service as combatants or as noncombatants because both forms of service have as their ultimate military end the impairment and destruction of life or property of our fellow men ... We cannot with clear conscience apply our labor, money or material resources for the furtherances of military ends. For example, we cannot remain true to our peace witness if we purchase war bonds or work in defense industries ... We cannot serve under civilian organizations if their purposes are diverted to military objectives ... We declare it unchristian to share in wartime propaganda, hysteria, and mass hatred and revenge.

(Mennonite Encyclopedia). This post is not about their understanding of peace, but about what they have been doing for years in New Orleans, and even around the nation.

The Mennonites have been building and repairing houses for those who lost their homes during Katrina.

They have been doing so out of their own pockets because of what they understand to be the way of life of their religion.

For disclosure purposes, I am not a Mennonite, but without hesitation I say Good for them.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Entitlement: Entitled To Endless War? - 3

In this series we have been pondering the obvious fact that war is a favorite entitlement of MOMCOM.

The predominate class of warmongers, Class A Warmongers, suffer dementia induced by blood lust, but there is a growing population of Class B Warmongers, who we can call the domestic warmongers.

To clarify, Class A Warmongers are the type who are getting lots of publicity recently for their killing rampage that targeted innocent civilians, while class B are those who consider class A to be heroes.

Thus, Class B Warmongers are the enablers who are Class B Authoritarians who want to be ruled by Class A Authoritarians:

We know an awful lot about authoritarian followers [Class B]. In one way or another, hundreds of social scientists have studied them since World War II. We have a pretty good idea of who they are, where they come from, and what makes them tick. By comparison, we know little about authoritarian leaders [Class A] because we only recently started studying them. That may seem strange, but how hard is it to figure out why someone would like to have massive amounts of power? The psychological mystery has always been, why would someone prefer a dictatorship to freedom? So social scientists have focused on the followers [Class B], who are seen as the main, underlying problem.

(The Authoritarians, page 8, emphasis added). It is popular in the media to call publicly visible Class B Warmongers "chicken hawks", but the vast majority are simply enablers of the inactive sort, who do not want to know too many details about their class.

Yes, even if we are "in the majority", and are passive, we can still be an authoritarian, a warmonger, that is, a Class B Authoritarian, or a Class B Warmonger.

For example, the main stream media of MOMCOM is typically composed of Class B Warmongers, enablers of imperialistic militancy currently being played out in the oil wars, clothed with the propaganda that humane dynamics is the foreign policy underlying it all.

The current president, Barak Obama, pitched to all the Class B Warmongers, the Class B Authoritarians, in his typical onion speech last night.

He spoke before a controlled military audience, the Class A Warmongers, the Class A Authoritarians, urging the acceptance of his rhetoric that the invasion of Libya was a humanitarian effort, not another oil war.

Obviously he was targeting the public, in this speech, rather than the "captive audience" that has taken him captive.

His predecessor Bush II liked to speak in front of military audiences too, so Obama continues down the W trail of fail.

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Open Thread

Open
Thread

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I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

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dig it MOMCOM

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Getting Caught Is The Only No No - 2

The first episode in this series dealt with the Enron type of accounting conducted by the largest US corporation, General Electric (GE).

GE built at least one of the Japanese Nuclear Power Plants that is now in trouble.

GE made $14,200,000,000 dollars last year, about a third of that amount in the USA, so GE is two thirds foreign corporation.

With all the talk about high taxes by Republicans and the capitulation to that rhetoric by the Democrats, to then grant tax breaks to the richest 1%, one would think GE was paying hefty taxes:

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

(GE Pays No Tax). Not only did GE pay no taxes, in effect IRS gave them an additional $3,200,000,000, on top of GE's billions in profit, from the treasury of the people, those who do pay taxes.

GE keeps up its image by owning a vast propaganda network with which they deceive the public, such as claiming US taxes are too high so they could get the largest tax breaks for the 1% wealthy.

Until recently, that propaganda engine included MSNBC and Morning Joe, which we call Blind Willie McTell.

It is unclear what effect (other than firing Keith Olbermann) the sale of NBC to Comcast will have on the vast GE propaganda system.