Get FREE BuzzFlash News Alerts

Email:  
Home

Supremes -- Only In Our Dreams -- US Democracy in 3D

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 12/12/2008 - 10:44am.

MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON

BuzzFlash,

The last 30 years of US history should be a candidate for a chapter or several chapters to be added to the Grimm's Grimmest of tales that came out in 1997. We Americans have been told for years that it's up to ourselves, and many of us feel guilt and shame for being reminded outright or obscurely, that we are responsible for our own worth and if our dollar worth is not much, we are not worthy.   

Home owners were blamed in big guy media for the loans they were given by greedy banks and mortgage companies. American workers are left holding the empty bag when companies leave the US for foreign grounds and cheaper wages to pay employees, or close without reason or notice. We have no idea how many jobs have left these United States in the last 15 years. NAFTA should have been under suspicion by us Americans because it had the word "Free" in it. How many cons have been committed on consumers with the use of the word, "Free." How American is that? Taking jobs out of the US. Do they wear their flag pins when doing this? (snide remark) How about those members in Congress who supported such moves, did they have their pins on, too?

No one wants to take responsibility for the horrible shape this country is in today. Those same people want to keep their jobs. Only in US government could we find such insanity.  

Then there is the "Clean Air Act." The "No Child Left Behind Act." Both are insulting to all Americans, and US government depends on most Americans' belief that US government has their best interest in mind because that is what we have been told for most of our life, and if our life isn't what we Americans think it should be ... it's our own fault. What they don't tell us is that there is not "ONE" person serving US government in the last 30 years, or at any other time, who has done anything and everything on their own. Not one! It's an impossibility from the day anyone is born.  

Americans have been beat down, brow beaten, starved, and disease ridden without any expectation of a good education, a good salary, or a good job, regardless of their willingness for hard work ... why did so many people take the opportunities opened to them by the greedy financial institutions of this county ... because Americans have been told for years that owning a home is something everyone who is anyone should strive for. Not six or seven mansions like several members of our government. One home. Americans were sold the American dream over and over. And, we Americans wanted to believe in that dream, even after it had become clear that it was just another nightmare, wearing a US government disguise.  

The US government is suffering from "brain drain," a slang that was coined in the 1960s and still explains US government today. Only those Americans with enough money can afford an education from the "right schools," health care, or even fair play in our courts. Justice today only comes to those who can pay to play. 

When did accountability become a liability in politics? Today, after years and years of a lack of accountability in US government, these United States are the home to millions of our citizens who are without jobs, millions going hungry and on government welfare, something else the Bush GOP, from as long ago as 30 years ago, has been responsible for, the lack of jobs in this country, because they are not interested in actually doing the work of the people, and yet they blame the American people with the arrogant and offensive cliche the Bush GOP loves to use ... "pulling ourselves up by our own boot straps."  

Just eight years ago, as if things couldn't get any worse in this country, the Supreme Court took it upon themselves to break US law and put Bush number two into the White House without fear of any accountability ... just when we thought we were about to celebrate a few "golden years," a well earned reprieve from the last Bush regime of reckless government spending and war, and begin to rebuild our hopes, our dreams, and our economy . . .

In Vincent Bugliosi's book "The Betrayal of America," 2001:  

The high court today denied a request to listen to arguments in a case, Donofrio v. Wells, from New Jersey that addressed the issues. But literally within minutes, the court's website confirmed that another conference is scheduled for Friday on another case raising the same worries.

Eligibility dispute, Part 2, scheduled by Supremes  

At that time, Afghanistan had no opium crops. Saddam was still friends with Bush and Cheney, and Bush had not been warned of an impending attack, yet ... something that did happen before 9/11. And, still no accountability for failing to warn the airlines and the American people, but took the CIA seriously enough to warn Ashcroft and a few others, telling them not to fly commercially.

The Taleban banned poppy cultivation in 2000 and the UN and US drug agencies say that this meant an almost total halt to opium growing in the 2001 season.  

It was the US-led war that ousted the Taleban last year, that prompted Afghan farmers to plant the opium poppy again over tens of thousands of hectares.  

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Poppy production soars in Afghanistan  

The Spoils of War: Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade,  by Michel Chossudovsky

Table 1

Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan

Year                         Cultivation in hectares               Production (tons)

1994                                 71,470                                    3,400

1995                                 53,759                                    2,300

1996                                 56,824                                    2,200

1997                                 58,416                                    2,800

1998                                 63,674                                    2,700

1999                                 90,983                                    4,600

2000                                 82,172                                    3,300

2001                                   7,606                                       185

2002                                 74 000                                    3400

2003                                 80 000                                    3600

Source: UNDCP, Afghanistan, Opium Poppy Survey, 2001, UNOCD, Opium Poppy Survey, 2002.

http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afg_opium_survey_2002.pdf

The Bush GOP administration and most members of Congress went along with Bush's plan of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. A plan that today has the death and destruction numbers of innocent human beings up into the millions, including thousands of deaths of the American military who were used to do the dirty work for these politicians, along with the hired guns of private militaries, such as Blackwater, who made a name for themselves in overseas papers years ago because of their indiscriminate killings of unarmed citizens in Iraq.  

Early on, it was revealed how little human life meant to this Bush GOP government. They did not count bodies in Iraq or Afghanistan, and manipulated the body count of US military dead and wounded, not to mention the crimes of rape and murder in our own military. If we Americans wanted the real news, we had to get it from overseas. And, remember how many journalists were killed in Iraq by the US. What did they say about it? "OOPS." That's all.   

Why is this still happening? Selling off guns that will one day be killing our own. This is not the sign of a working democracy. In fact, 800 bases around the world and known attacks on democracies such a Haiti, years and years of punishing the country of Cuba, those are not signs of a real democracy at work. After what happened to Russia in Afghanistan, and the US attacks on the innocent people in that country, using 9/11 as an excuse as well as the illegal and treasonous invasion/occupation of Iraq ... all of these stupid and disastrous mistakes continue to this day.  

It has to stop. How many Americans remember when it was safe to walk down most streets in this country, when every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mary were not packing a gun or concealed weapon? When a person could walk up to a house and ask directions instead of getting killed. Wake up America.  

WASHINGTON - The U.S. arms trade is booming - sales reached $32 billion (dollar figures U.S.) last year - and more than half of the purchasers in the developing world are either undemocratic governments or regimes that engaged in human rights abuses, a private think tank reported Wednesday.

Timed to the 60th anniversary of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the report by the New America Foundation, a non-partisan policy institute, named 13 of the top 25 arms purchasers in the developing world as either undemocratic or engaged in major human rights abuses.

Many of our own citizens have no idea of this past, and believe the paranoid message of fear sent out by these political thugs. We had eight years of big guy media in this country going after Clinton and eight years of them protecting Bush and now, today, in the news, they are chock full of the Democratic governor, who should have stepped down long ago, and who isn't a real Democrat, just because he says so. Why? Because he is following the pattern of the Bush GOP greed-filled administration ... but, do we get any investigative reporting about the crimes, the fraud, the lies, the secrets, the torture, etc., out of our MSM? Silence, mostly, and they fear no accountability. They, along with the Bush GOP are always accusing the Democrats of what the Bush GOP have done in the past or are doing in the present.  
Accountability in US government is not revenge. It is what keeps our government clean of corruption and waste. If we Americans treated our own citizens the same way we treat those offenders in US government, our prisons would be empty. Instead, today, we Americans have no idea of the depth of the fraud, or of the real depth of the debt, death, and destruction that has been caused by a government without any control or accountability since Nixon. Nixon walked away. That's not taking responsibility for treason. And, what brings this about is the fact that again, because they were not made to take responsibility for their breaking US law, a decision that helped to knock this country to its knees, our Supreme Court is considering messing around with our present President elect, because of what some crackpots are saying about Obama's birth certificate.  
For this country to really change, the American mind of the average citizen has to change. We Americans have to believe that every life on this planet is precious, and our responsibility, if possible, and that every life in these United States deserves the best education and the best health care, regardless of what the dollar value in their bank account is. We deserve the best life has to offer. This is not a freebie, it is protecting our nation from widespread disease and the brain drain that we constantly find in US government. When Americans are able to believe in their own value as human beings, just for being a good human being, they will not be so easily sold a bill of goods by greedy politicians in DC. 
US government couldn't wait to bail out Wall Street and US banks, and many of those greedy fat cats probably kept their unearned bonuses. Banks in US history were the backbone of communities. They served the communities so they could prosper and grow. So much for taking responsibility when Corporate America has become the monster in the closet for every American family today. Because, when it comes to the American citizens, homeowners were turned out on the street. The jobless were turned out on the street. Millions in soup lines. How many in US government ever miss a meal that's not paid for in full by US citizens. Huh?  
American citizens should not be made to suffer for what an irresponsible, treasonous, greedy, out-of-control, and corrupt US government does. That's the mind change that must happen. US government, when it works, it works for the citizens of this country. Until that happens, we American citizens will continue to be the leading characters in this democratic drama in 3D ... debt, death, and destruction ... provided and sponsored by all three branches of US government.  
Thanks BuzzFlash, 
Shirley Smith

MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON




»

not again...

Submitted by gmpierce on Sat, 12/13/2008 - 2:28am.
You were doing pretty good until you had to throw in the usual anti-gun BS:

"How many Americans remember when it was safe to walk down most streets in this country, when every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Mary were not packing a gun or concealed weapon?"

I remember. It was safe because the few people packing guns were the good guys. I was about 12 years old when I took my 22 rifle to show and tell at my Chicago grade school.

Today we live in a country where a large number of disgruntled citizens want to shoot someone. When it happens, no one looks to find out why. And actually no one cares why.

Now in England, they are having a problem with people sticking each other with knives and there is a group of people who want to ban pointy objects.

If they were living several thousand years ago they would be in a movement to ban the rock.
»

What City first had Gun Control?

Submitted by grolaw on Sun, 12/14/2008 - 11:03am.

Well over 130 years ago - Dodge City, KS. Cowpokes had to check their guns with the Sheriff when coming off the trail - a/k/a large cattle dives.

The idea that we all should go around packing "heat" denies the reality that it takes only a second to fire a round - and a flying bullet knows no friends.

I own, and shoot, a .380 automatic, and .357 and .44 Ruger revolvers. I'm far from anti-gun and know what they can do. I'd never fire the magnums in a populated area and the .380 with Glaser safety rounds is the only weapon I'd use in a city.

But, I pay for police - and I don't want to turn back the clock to 1850.

As far as knives - I see little reason to limit them. I've never read of a drive-by knifing...

"In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying."
- Bertrand Russell -

»

To Whom Do We Turn?

Submitted by neoconned on Fri, 12/12/2008 - 11:16am.

The major problem with this thesis is that both major parties have been corrupted by corporate campaign contributions to the point that We, the People matter nothing to them. It's been "Follow the money" since long before Watergate.

So what to We, the People do? Too many people cannot even conceive of not voting for one of these two criminal organizations, for they fear "throwing their vote away". They don't see how another option could be viable. The maxim of Bobby Kennedy's which contained the idea of seeing a new idea and asking "Why not?" is beyond their understanding.

I fear that this nation will have to crash and burn before these people get the slightest understanding of what they are losing, but at that point it will be too late to save anything.

»