Must be the Padre Kino

Fred Reed is an old curmudgeon. Like me. Only older. Naturally, I love the stuff he writes.

Fred was a reporter in some of the most dangerous places on Earth; Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East, Ward 8 in the District of Columbia. Fred has seen it all. So when Fred has a take that's 180 degrees tilted on its head from my take, I notice. And I listen.

Yesterday I went on ad nauseum about Fascism 2.0 Amerika. Fred sees it ever so differently. To him, this isn't textbook Fascism, Socialism, or any other "ism". No, this is something new and unique.

OK, a brief excursion into cosmic truth. First, socialism. Hard-line conservatives with little grasp of economics refer to anything they don’t like—Hillary, national health care, regulation of anything if it might cost them money—as “socialist.” It’s a utility pejorative, devoid of meaning, as “racist” and “elitist” are for political south-paws. Socialism is of course a system in which the government owns the means of production. Check your dictionary.

Ah! But in America, the means of production own the government. Inverted socialism it is. Here is a far better thing. If you are a means of production, anyway.

Okay, let me see if I get this. This isn't business in bed with government cooperating as a means of saving their skin. This is business DRIVING government. This is business as boss, not government.

Heavy stuff, man. Heavy.

Now, I'm not entirely sure I'm 100% with Fred, because I don't believe for a second that ANYONE tells Der Staat what to do. What I think is afoot is a situation where Big Business THINKS it has government by the tail and under its control. Only one day in the not-so-distant future, they'll awake to the reality that they've sold out their country and their very lives to the Almighty State for a few measly depreciating dollars, as Uncle rears his ugly head and lays waste to those who think to tell him what to do.

But then, my mother always told me I'm so full of crap my eyes are brown, so what do I know?

Fascism for Dummies

I've grown tired of having to provide a parenthetical or footnoted explanation every time I describe the current direction of our country as Fascism. I wouldn't have to, except that, as a result of the dumbing-down of 4 generations of public school graduates, people have no clue what the word really means. To most, the word is synonymous with repression. While repression was a major component of nearly all Fascist regimes, that isn't the sum of what Fascism was and is.

This post is my attempt to enlighten the dumbed-down as to what Fascism really is so that they don't resort to the kind of knee-jerk emotional response most commonly associated with calling someone a Fascist.

Fascism, or Corporatism, as it is sometimes called, can be described thusly.

[A] system of economic, political, and social organization where corporate groups or interest groups, such as business, ethnic, farmer, labour, military, or patronage groups, are joined together under a common governing jurisdiction to try to achieve societal harmony and promote coordinated development.

I would condense that wordy definition even further: Fascism is the marriage of government and corporations whereby the means of production are owned jointly in a private/public partnership. Think of it as oligarchy-friendly Socialism.

Socialism? But Vulture, isn't Fascism an ideology of the Right? That would be 100% wrong. 60+ years of disinformation have resulted in most people associating Fascism with the Right, when, in fact, it is most commonly identified by its adherents as the "third way" alternative to Communism or Capitalism. The third way....hmmm, wasn't that Clinton's pet identifier for his policies? But I digress...

Fascism is, by point of fact, a Leftist ideology, falling somewhere on the political spectrum between Democratic Socialism and Communism.

Fascism has been attempted - always with predictably bad results - in Italy (1920's-1940's), Germany (1930's-1940's), Spain (1930's-1970's), and Argentina (1950's). Spain? Argentina? Nobody told us about THAT in public school. No shit! That's because, for whatever reason, our "betters" want us to associate Fascism with brutal totalitarianism and attempted world domination as demonstrated by the Third Reich and the Italian Fascists. While it is true that both the Argentine and Spanish Fascists were authoritarian and repressive, neither attempted world domination and both were extremely popular with the so-called "workers".

So the next time I speak of Fascism, I won't be using parenthetical explanations nor footnotes. I'll simply link back to this post. I want it understood when I say that King George the Dim and Il Duce led this nation into Fascism I'm referring to things like the government take-over of the banks and auto industry and (coming soon to a Fascist nation near you) health care.

That and nothing more.

Wiener of the Week

Some might wonder why I seem to have little respect for science. Perhaps if Big Science didn't make grandiose pronouncements regarding how we little people should live, only to reverse course and say "never mind" later, I might respect them a little more. Case in point:

You worry a lot about the environment and do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint -- the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change.

So you always prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, faithful to the belief that this inflicts less harm to the planet.

Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study.

Its authors point out an array of factors that are often unknown to the public.

These are hidden or displaced emissions that ramp up the simple "tailpipe" tally, which is based on how much carbon is spewed out by the fossil fuels used to make a trip.

Environmental engineers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath at the University of California at Davis say that when these costs are included, a more complex and challenging picture emerges.

In some circumstances, for instance, it could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city -- even in an SUV, the bete noire of green groups -- rather than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport.

Uh-huh. And just like that, 40 years of undeniable "fact" is washed away.

Congratulations, Big Science! You're the Wiener of the Week.

Checks and balances, anyone?

Contrary to what morons like King George the Dim say, the US is NOT a democracy. Our founders were smart enough to realize that the inborn flaws of democracy are insurmountable. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for lunch. Sucks to be the sheep...

No, our founders established a republic. And not just any republic! They specifically shackled the federal government with a set of rules under which it could operate (the Constitution) and established a series of checks and balances to ensure that one branch of government wouldn't run roughshod over the other two.

It worked REALLY well for about a decade. Then the Supreme Court ruled that it was the sole arbitrator of constitutionality....and suddenly one of the balances was heavily skewed in their direction. It's no wonder that the courts are the authoritarian's first choice for ramming through all manor of unconstitutional BS. After all, this oligarchy of seven pretty much gets to decide the legality of everything, unchecked.

To be fair, the courts have served as a check to presidential aspirations on occasion. Think about how messed up we'd be if the Supreme Court of the 1930's hadn't shot down so much of Roosevelt's overreaching!

But with Il Duce, it's different. Just as the press gives him a free ride - nay, even CHEERLEAD for him! - so too the Court has given him a pass.

In spite of the fact that Delaware law is being violated by Il Duce's handling of the Chrysler fire sale to Fiat, the Court refused to hear a plea to reject it.

Two things. First, the Court has handed a blank check to a megalomaniac. Il Duce has control over major banks and 2 of the Big 3 auto makers. Add the Supreme Court to that list.

Second, the Court has abrogated its responsibility to protect US Citizens within the rule of law by allowing this sale. A provision of Delaware law which guaranteed in the neighborhood of 90% of invested dollars for certain classes of investors like pension funds in the event of Chapter 11 bankruptcy was turned on its ear by the Obama "The American people UAW comes first!" plan.

There's an additional ripple effect beyond the hit the pension funds have taken. Do you think for one minute that foreign money is coming to American markets now that the rules have suddenly become moot? If Delaware laws protecting investors can be steamrolled by the current Fascist* administration, what other laws protecting investors will be ignored? I know if I were a European investor, I certainly would avoid investing in US markets now!

Small investors, pension funds, and 401(k) funds, their portfolios already in the toilet (my 401(k) was down 40% the last time I looked), will be even further slammed as a result of this non-ruling.

It's no wonder the conspiracy theorists are having a field day with this administration. The only people who would perpetrate the abortions of common decency and common sense that this administration has committed are the truly stupid, the oblivious, the brain dead.......or those who wish to see this nation and its economic vitality destroyed.

Personally, I think the Obama administration is a mixture of all of those elements.

* I hate to have to run this disclaimer every time I use the word "fascist" or "fascism", but we live in an age where the word has become synonymous with repression. When I speak of fascism, I speak of a governmental/economic system that includes the public/private ownership of the means of production. That and nothing more.

American Jews in Israel

...for the fail. Nice use of logic, reason, and the powers of persuasion. (Warning: EXTREME profanity).









Funny...didn't ya'll vote OVERWHELMINGLY for him? I sense a disconnect...

When reality collides with dogma

Yeah, about all of that man-made global warming...please explain this, if you would.

One of the reasons for this could be colder-than-normal weather across the northern tier of the country that has suppressed the number of thunderstorms and has significantly reduced the number of tornadoes this year. The number of reported tornadoes so far this year is 685, just over half of the average annual amount, which is 1,297.

According to Long Range Expert Joe Bastardi, areas from the northern Plains into the Northeast will have a "year without a summer." The jet stream, which is suppressed abnormally south this spring, is also suppressing the number of thunderstorms that can form. The ones that do form in areas of the Ohio Valley and West are forming in places with very cold temperatures, which can lead to more electrified thunderstorms than normal this year. (emphasis mine)

I see. So I'm to believe that warming is causing extreme storms in the Atlantic to the point of downing aircraft (see yesterday's post). But...the reality is that a very large swath of the US could end up with abnormally COLD weather. I'm so confused...NOT AT ALL.

Kinda hard to keep your storyline of eminent doom from warming alive when people are freezing their butts off...