The Personal is Political: I am a Boston Red Sox fan to the end. I needed to clarify that lest anyone think anything else not that anyone would care. Having said that I will give you the rationale as to why I am even bothering to watch the Series this year in view of my beloved Red Sox -- well what shall I call it? -- EVAPORATION. It almost sent me to the psych ward! I jest and digress.

I am watching the series now because it is actually fun not to have too big a dog in the fight. It is simply enjoyable to concentrate on the fine points. Having said that there is a method to my madness for the team for whom I actually am rooting this time and that would be St. Louis!

I have three reasons why I am rooting for them. First, Texas means George Bush and I will not go into my angry, negative and Vesuvian eruptive thoughts I have about him. Second, Make that a ditto for Rick Perry except double the intensity. Third, the news opinionator Keith Olbermann picked St. Louis. If he says it I believe it. Since I love, adore, hang on every word he utters, think he is the best thing since the invention of the wheel and sliced bread I am HOPING he is correct.

Funny, the personal is political. I judge everyone and everything as to how much it leans politically left of center (not entirely but a lot). I cannot help it. I am a child of the late 1960's and marched to many a protest beat. I LOVED that era as it shaped all that I am. I even had to counteract my rock ribbed Republican father. However, even HE if he saw the rancid Republican field would vote Democratic and root for St. Louis too.

Nader is Correct!: I am no fan of Ralph Nader because I believe he ensured a Bush 2000 win even though the Shrub did NOT really win. Republicans of course steal things...if it's money or power they will steal it. They steal power to get YOUR money.

Digressing again. Read Raph Nader's message below for this year 2011 and if you think as I you will see he is right on point!

The question confronting the Occupy Wall Street encampments and their offshoots

in scores of cities and towns around the country is quo vadis? Where is it
going?

This decentralized, leaderless civic initiative has attracted the persistent

attention of the mass media in the past five weeks. Television cameras from all

over the world are parked down at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, two blocks

from Wall Street.



But the mass media is a hungry beast. It needs to be fed regularly. Apart from

the daily pressures of making sure the encampments are clean, that food and

shelter are available, that relations with the police are quiet, that

provocateurs are identified; the campers must anticipate possible police

crackdowns, such as that which has just occurred in Oakland, and find ways to

rebound.



There are enough national polls showing broader support for the Occupy people

than for the Tea Party people. Additional communities are installing their own

Occupy sites right down to small towns like Niles, Michigan (pop. 12,000) and

Bethel, Alaska where Diane McEachern is occupying the tundra. But, there is

trouble ahead.



First, police departments in other cities will be observing the nature and

reaction of mass arrests in places like Denver, Chicago and Atlanta. The

plutocrats’ first response is always to push police power against the people.

The recidivist violations of the ruling class are rarely pursued, yet the

rumbles of the lower class are often stifled. With the onset of colder weather

and looming police pressure, the protestors need new venues for their

demonstrations



Activists need to vary their tactics. I suggest citizens surround the local

offices of their Senators and Representatives. The number of Americans fed up

with a gridlocked Congress, beset by craven or cowardly, both marinated in

corporate campaign cash, can motivate an endless pool of activists who want

their voices to be heard.



We know that the Occupy people want to keep their opposition on a general level

of informed outrage and not get to the specific policy level. Fine. The 535

people in Congress, who put their shoes on every day like we do, are quite

susceptible to a fast rising rumble from the people. They don’t need specifics.

They know all about the savagely avaricious corporate paymasters and their

swarming lobbyists on Capitol Hill wanting ever more varieties of goodies and

less corporate law enforcement. What they need to know is that you’ve got their

number and that people are fed up and on the move.



More members of Congress than one might expect, with their finger to the wind,

start readjusting their antennas when they sense voter agitation. It is just

that for years, there has been nary a breeze from that crucial source, while the

corporatists have had their party year after year with their governmental

toadies on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.



Make no mistake; support for the power shift espoused by the 99 percent movement

is now only a breeze but a windstorm is coming. The protesters are feeling their

way – demonstrating before big banks and closing out their accounts in favor of

smaller community banks. Protests in front of the Manhattan mansions of the

superrich from the big media and the big hedge funds also make sense.



Each new protest gives the protesters new insights. The protestors are learning

how to challenge controlling processes. They are assembling and using their

little libraries on site. They are learning the techniques of open, non-violent

civil disobedience and building personal stamina. They are learning not to be

provoked and thereby win the moral authority struggle which encourages more and

more people to join their ranks.



In the Arab Spring of Cairo, Egypt earlier this year, it was said that a million

people in Tahrir Square lost their fear of the dictatorship. It can be said that

in this “American Autumn,” some 150,000 people have discovered their power and

rejected apathy. They have come far in so little time because the soil for their

pushback is so fertile, nourished by the revulsion of millions of their

countrypersons moving toward standing up and showing up themselves.



This vanguard of larger protests to come is building on the personal stories of

desperate but failed attempts to find work; stories of heart-breaking inability

to pay for healthcare for themselves or their families’; stories of being

defrauded of their pensions, their tax dollars, their savings and their rights.

They demand accountability for the culprits who lied, stole and got away with it

destroying the economy. And they want Congress to never bailout the Wall Street

crooks, swindlers and speculators with taxpayer dollars.



Shining the light of the 99 percenters on the operations base of the corporate

supremacists and their Congressional minions in one location after another both

empowers and further informs those Americans who are seeing that showing up is

half of democracy.





---------------------------------------------------------------------

Tell your friends to visit http://www.nader.org/ and sign up for Ralph Nader's

weekly column.



Just click on the link that says: Sign up for Ralph Nader's Column

or click on the following link:



http://nader.org/index.php?/categories/9-Sign-up-for-Ralph-Naders-Column

The Disease, the Antibiotic, and the Cure—Occupy Wall Street’s Manifesto as I see it: Occupy Wall Street wants to know WHEN WILL the unconscionable dupes of the Tea Bag movement understand that the Republican Party is NOT about them? The Republican Party is about the top 1%. Most of us do not fall into that category. When will they realize that it was the massive DEREGULATION and insertions of too-big-to-count tax loopholes for the corporations (not the regulation of Wall Street) over decades that led to the too-big-to fail banks poisoning the body politic? When will the ignorant understand that it was the overturning of the Depression era Glass Steagall legislation and the insertion of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, also known as the Financial Services “Modernization” Act of 1999 (look them up if you do not know what they are) merging the investment banks and savings banks that is an integral part of our too-big-to fail problem?

FINALLY, the occupation of Wall Street movements all around the nation and the world have begun and will NOT stop.

Basic things are needed: The true, real and not planted part of the Tea Bag movement must know that the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Dick Army, entities such as "Freedom" Works and those like them, decades before, created this mess. Today they want to sustain this system which works ONLY for the extraordinarily rich. We, the middle and working classes, must join forces to get those Republicans and Conservadems alike, who are perpetuating the problem, OUT. They will NOT solve our financial quagmire but will ADD to it as their kind has created it over time.

We must work within the existing structure of our political system. It is a GOOD system but it has been hijacked by big money, big banks and big corporate behemoths helped by a quid pro quo Congress who conspired to take the people's money. They dismembered we the people who bailed them out, they ate their bonuses for lunch while the rest of us now cannot walk and are starved.

We must use our existing structure within the functioning parts of the Democratic Party and MAKE THE CHANGE THAT WAS PROMISED. Nothing else will work and time is of the proverbial essence. This HUMONGOUS problem was honed over decades and therefore it can be rectified only by the institutions we have in place. Replace the Know Nothings with those who DO know something.

In the biological sciences one trusts what works. The antibiotic developed to cure certain infections works but believing in the power of magic does not. Trust EXPERTS such as Paul Krugman, Robert Reich and people of their ilk who understand well the disease and know the cure. They should become part of the non-violent Occupy Wall Street leadership. Read Matt Taibii's "Griftopia." Read Elizabeth Warren and other intellects who understand the plethora of problems and know what to do. Within the existing structure of a Democratic Party we must elect politicos who AGREE with them. We must show our president, who I believe is with us but has had intractable Republican opposition, that catering to Wall Street CANNOT and MUST NOT STAND!

There needs to be the following: a return to Glass Steagall, the SEC needs to monitor the banks to within an inch of their life, prosecution for those economic crimes against the republic, hopefully convictions and finally jail for those banksters and others behemoths who committed crimes against not only us but global humanity as well. Congressional legislation accompanied by presidential signature is the only thing that can cure our disease.

Moreover, and importantly, the corruption of money MUST be driven OUT of the political sector. The president needs one more Supreme Court justice to overturn the sickening malady of the Citizen's United decision handed down by the five conservatives on the Roberts Supreme Court. That decision introduced BUCKETS of corporate money into the political system lethally infecting all who drink the poison.

ALL these things and more -- as stated by the Krugmanesq experts -- must be done with all deliberate speed if our body politic is to survive!

A Letter to Glenn Greewnald – a writer of profound excellence: The progressive scholar and civil libertarian lawyer, Glenn Greenwald, writes a daily column for Salon.com unless his demanding schedule dictates otherwise. Glenn wrote an October 22, 2011 article for Salon entitled “A Remaining Realm of American Excellence.” I think I have never read a more precise, insightful and well-written article explaining the present-day character of this nation. He has an ability to convey, in the written word, that which few possess and his critical analysis of contemporary events is, in my opinion, unparalleled. I post the following link to the article and urge you to read it if you are the least bit interested in the direction of our nation and the fate of the generations which will come after us. If you cannot click on the link simply Google Salon and click on Greenwald. It appears at: http://www.salon.com/2011/10/22/a_remaining_realm_of_american_excellence/singleton/

I also wrote a letter to him conveying my complimentary thoughts:

Glenn, if there is a more significant and well written article than "A Remaining Realm of American Excellence" I have for quite some time not read it. This was a brilliant piece and an exemplar of quality political insight. I, too, have some thoughts explaining American belligerence about which you write so eloquently.

I think in part our national character has been carved into the sinew of the American DNA for nearly four centuries. Our wild-west mentality of the American 19th century with the violence of our westward expansion is not far from its door. It crushed an indigenous Indian population and removed anyone else who got in its way.

A rationale for our collective violent reaction now is, as I see it, an emptiness of the American character obsessed with the latest reality or dumbed down morning television, radio and no news news shows. Many times in the discussion of things political especially of economics, the source of our torturous predicament, our national eyes glaze over and turn the channel to the next mindless American Idol show or to an unfair and completely biased news channel. Few understand much if anything historical let alone the etiology of our recent economic plunge, what is responsible for that plunge and how the catastrophes of war fit into the explanation of its landscape. I would be willing to bet most do not know that the economic collapse occurred in 2007 on George Bush's watch. Bush who? I think most think President Obama to be the single creator of our economic meltdown when, in fact, it took decades to create by philosophical charlatans who wanted everything for just a few while leaving little for the many while the many slept.

Moreover, and more pertinent to your article, the US has not been in the right where its foreign violent entanglements are concerned since WWII. WWII was such a magnanimous victory, so pure in its accomplishment and America so beloved for fighting a foe who knew no negotiation and who, if not destroyed, would have certainly destroyed whatever vestiges of humanity that existed in that time. America, yes, along with some allies literally saved the world. That is a hard act to follow but we certainly try.

The intoxication of the WWII victory led this nation to make permanent its ebullience by conducting never-ending permanent war. It is the only product this nation sells. Korea, Vietnam, certainly Iraq, and even most probably Afghanistan have been abysmal failures incurring much death to so many innocents and our own while it infuriated an explosive regional Middle East tinderbox. I believe somewhere in the American psyche there is guilt for a stain on the American conscience which, like Lady Macbeth’s damn spot, cannot be washed out. It has become now our fatal flaw. Add to this the utter humiliation of 9/11, the viewing of the falling Twin Towers, huge edifices of American money and power, and the loss of 3000 innocent lives America again feels like it has been kicked in her collective teeth while still looking for the moral victory and accolades of WWII that elude us. It tries to find that adulation for the post World War II incompetence of American foreign policy and it will now do so by any means necessary collateral damage be damned.

We have gone from a colossal winner to a huge loser on the international and national stage. The only act to follow in this our American tragedy is the successful killing for sport of dreamed-up adversarial replacements for Adolph Hitler. The nation as of late does not conquer the cancer of war but spreads its violence with its American footprint. Its footprint is, of course, nearly everywhere. It is sad commentary for the evil of empire building. I have never in my 6 decades of life seen the country with the most rapaciously rancid ethos that not only allows but, indeed, loves to get its insatiable pound of flesh in the Coliseum of endless war.

I spend my life wondering how we got this way. I am getting tired and truly want to hand the baton of regeneration over to you, our next progressive generation. Voices like yours are the only ones that give me hope. You are, truly, as one man said of you when I heard you speak at Harvard, a national treasure!

Over There? President Obama announced today the extrication of all forces from Iraq by December. The one position I regret that I took after 9/11 and after observing the American political scene for decades is naively and with astounding stupidity I believed George Bush and his Iraq WMD phony claim convincing most (including me) that Sadam Hussein was an imminent threat. Some may even say today Sadam Hussein who? Tom Ricks, according to Foreign Policy Magazine is a Senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank, contributing editor to Foreign Policy Magazine, special military correspondent to the Washington Post and author quite correctly named his book about Iraq during the height of its fury "Fiasco." We can see now how apropos that title was. We can observe how destructive, how murderous, how deceitful, sending troops to wage a war based on lies against a country which did NOTHING to us was.

The US, under the dreadful leadership of George W. Bush, paid for this mistake in much lost blood and treasure conveniently ignored by Republicans today when assessing their perceived horror of the deficit. Clearly, George W. Bush was woefully unprepared for the presidency. At his order the US nearly singlehandedly destabilized an entire region, handed Iran the keys to the kingdom of power and broke a nation. Now we allegedly are leaving Iraq and see how difficult it is to do that. Colin Powell, Secretary of State under Bush, was quite correct when he said “if you break it you own it.” We shattered it without knowing what to do to fix it.

When American troops leave Iraq -- as the president today says they will by December -- and it does not explode into civil war it will be miraculous. How Iraq maintains a continuity of power with so many factions at each other’s throats I do not know. Can it meet the needs of its people or will it fracture into a million pieces destabilizing the region further with a nuclear Pakistan? I will breathe a sigh of relief if Iraq works with a semblance of normalcy and non violence. Until then, I need a tranquilizer to calm my fear! Never again will I believe a leader simply because he says it is so. As Ronald Reagan, a man I seldom quote, said: "Trust but verify." Next time I surely will and so should everyone else.

Money can’t buy you love so the Beatles song said--the flaw of Steve Jobs: I am reading various pieces about Steve Jobs. A tell-all book about him, being released soon, makes visible his warts and all. Understatedly, his ego was IMMENSE. He was a self absorbed, often angry, caustic man many times cruel to those with whom he worked and certainly to those he competed against. Yes, genius can make that of men but that is no excuse to me. I can appreciate what is created by great minds but if one does not have compassion -- even to one’s competitor­s -- then to me the genius means nothing. I am SURELY glad I never worked for him nor competed AGAINST him. He was an explosion waiting to happen perhaps a creative psychopath. Umpteen BILLION was not enough money for him. He had to devote much of his energy fighting Google because Jobs alleged it copied his product. When someone copies me I consider that flattery but Jobs considered it war. If he had to he was going to devote his entire company fighting Google perhaps even decimating the jobs of his own employees (and Google's) to do so. He sounds like a brutish man.

As Tevya would say IF I were a rich man I would … give all my family five million, all my friends five million and then distribute the rest to humans crying out for help, for food, for shelter for a JOB both here and around the globe as Bill and Melinda Gates are doing. Jobs cannot walk in Gates's shadow. Steve Jobs turned from humane liberal to stone cold conservative wanting to give corporations a break with the elimination of regulations; he wanted to gut unions, teachers, and other public servants’ positions who make EVERYONE’S life livable even his own short one.

He could have given to the little kids who pan for gold in Africa; kids who die doing it because the work is so brutal. They wade into a mud containing immense amount of mercury and ultimately get poisoned by it. He could have set up humane conditions so people can work like human beings for which unions advocate instead of humanity working like barbaric animals. I care nothing about all his creative gadgets when the ethics of his leadership and the policy for which he ultimately advocated hurts people but helps people like he create billions more to buy not jobs but yachts. He neglected his own children because his massive ego was more concerned about a NON human company to make what more billions?

Steve (I know you cannot hear me) but you should have given most all your money away before your death to those who are so desperate. NO ONE needs billions of bucks to live the good life. I would create MORE jobs and do for our county what the president cannot because of an obstructio­nist Congress. I think the LSD the formerly liberal Steve Jobs claimed helped create his insight destroyed the compassion center of his brain! John Kennedy said: “We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.” Steve Jobs was, indeed, mortal. Alas, death, the great equalizer of man, got him too. It knows no money, no social class, no massive egos but comes to all of us in the end even to Steve Jobs. Too bad he was not known as simply a nice man but money cannot buy quality of character.

Instead of advocating for the non-human corporation turning himself into an uncompassionate conservative he should have dedicated his life to installing a Congress which really DOES care about humanity instead of being bought for the all mighty buck. He rudely kept the president waiting days for a meeting insisting the president call HIM disrespecting the high office of the presidency and our country.

How come this genius did not realize that DECADES of Republican rule favoring the deregulated banks conservatives love so much decimated this economy? How come he did not realize what corporations and Wall Street did to hijack the pensions of its workers? How come Steve Jobs did not know what the financial, real estate sector and rating companies did to ruin our middle class, the poor and the American Dream? Who cares about Steve Jobs’s genius? In my opinion, he was a lousy human being.

A Taboo Mix -- Religion and State: If there is a better editoralist than James Carroll I have not read one yet. Carroll is brilliant and his editorial this week in the Boston Globe: "Monotheism doesn't mean 'we're No. 1" (link below) is exactly correct. More, I believe, have been killed over the centuries (including the 2000 year etiology of the Holocaust) in the name of relgion than have been saved by it and the killing continues unabated.

I truly believe that organized religion is the source of divisive evil on earth from Jerusalem, to Europe, even, dare I say, to the stage of the Republican debate. The assault of its Republican verbal inanity does damage to one's ears.

The pièce de résistance last evening was Herman Cain's postulation that Jesus was killed by liberals. That in and of itself reflects the bone chilling absurdity of tying religion to the state. Many of our Founders knew that truth.

God help us, as nothing else, it seems, can!

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2011/10/17/monotheism_doesnt_mean_were_no_1/

[I wrote too quickly when I found out Shalit was freed. I was simply thrilled he was after so many years in captivity. I realize how lopsided the trade was and in NO way want to bless anyone who would want the demise of the Israeli state so I amend my sentiment]


Can Jeff Jacoby support anything that is good and has the word peace attached to it? The release of the Israeli Soldier Gilad Shalit is a GOOD day.This is a GOOD day but Jacoby will say Israel gave up too much. I say RUBBISH! Israel has been giving up too much after sixty unrelenting years of constant violence and threat of violence with no peace in sight. Israel has had to turn inside out to guard its security.

Let's not make this day into anything but a GOOD day when an Israeli soldier five years in captivity is finally free. How I YEARN for and want so much for there to be peace and in some way for both sides to agree. I am a Jew and Israel is my ardent love BUT I want the killing to stop!

We have ONE small little life that fades in an INSTANT. Where is the genius that man can show and just give a little bit, bend a little and accept one human being for another? The tree boughs are many and the limbs can withstand much and still not break. The larger tree withstands even more so that the tree lives. Let us be like that. I wish and yes pray for that each see the other as human beings worthy to live another day!

It was a lopsided trade, indeed, as Israelis got one prisoner for hundreds of Palestinians. STILL I am tired of the endless going nowhere arguments on both sides and I am simply jubilant to see Gilad Shalit freed after such a LONG time in captivity. We have much to learn from each other. We could give so much one to the other. We need to TRY just TRY.

Shalom and thank you to all who made this GOOD day possible!

A Utopian Dream: My relative posted another blog which I think has about as much chance of succeeding as I do finding my keys I dropped in the Provincetown ocean 30 years ago.

Yet, I keep going back to this blog to re-read it. I believe there is not one thing written there to which I would disagree. I think ALL of it is true. It's just that translating those truths into a nation based on its just content has about as much chance of succeeding as I do finding my keys dropped so many years ago. Man has simply not evolved into a Utopian dream at least not yet. Our nation has had a hard enough time fulfilling the American Dream!

When I was a child my neighbor's parents purchased him a bike. I wanted one too but I also wanted one better than his. It is human nature I think. We always want the most, the best, the costliest, and then we go on to the next item. We always want more than the other guy. It is called coveting and most of us do plenty of it. If that is a fundamental truth of human nature and has been for the 140,000 or so years someone resembling a human being evolved on this planet then what makes my relative think that everyone will do as he stipulates in his blog now? Have we advanced THAT far? I can fantasize about it though and think how wonderful it could be IF what he said came true. But it is not true and will not be true at least not in our lifetime.

Still for your reading enjoyment and thoughtful pondering I present my cousin's thoughts.

America's Multi-Headed Monster - by Stephen Lendman

It combines and represents:

* money power in private hands to make more of it at the public's expense;

* super-wealth and privilege;

* one-party rule - corrupted money party duopoly power; and

* major media managed news, not real information and analysis.

Angry street protesters nationwide must understand and focus on these above other issues. Achieving social justice depends on it.

Basic information on how America's been run from inception is also essential.

It was established as a government of men, not laws. Then and now, democracy was illusory, not real. Constitutional language about "We the people of the United States" was manipulative deception.

In fact, only white property owners mattered, a small minority. They alone were enfranchised. Others were entirely shut out. Women were considered appendages of their husbands and child bearers, nothing else. Blacks were commodities, not people.

In 1865 they were freed, in 1870 enfranchised. It hardly mattered until passage of the mid-1960s Civil and Voting Rights Acts. Even then and now they haven't worked as believed.

Religious prerequisites existed until 1810. Property owner enfranchisement lasted until 1850. Voters couldn't elect senators until 1913. Women couldn't vote until 1920.

Native Americans couldn't until enfranchised by the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. Poll tax requirements existed until 1966. It hardly matters now with corporate-manipulated electronic machines voting, not citizens.

It's worse because voters have no choice. Duopoly power prevents it. The electoral process is kabuki theater. Major media and PR scoundrels manipulate the public mind.

Everything is pre-scripted and pre-packaged. Secrecy and back room deals substitute for a free, fair and open process. Candidates are pre-selected. Big money owns them.

Key outcomes are predetermined. Duopoly power serves the privileged. Voters get the best democracy money can buy. Horse race journalism and trivia substitute for addressing real issues fairly, fully, and accurately.

Voter disenfranchisement is rife. Peremptorily removing many from voter rolls is commonplace. Intimidation, illegal practices, and obstacles deter others.

Millions can't vote because of past criminal records, no matter how minor the offense. Millions more in America's gulag can't, including many wrongfully there.

In his book "Democracy for the Few," Michael Parenti said American-style democracy was created to "resist the pressure of popular tides (and protect) a rising bourgeoisie's (freedom to) invest, speculate, trade, and accumulate wealth."

John Jay, America's first Chief Supreme Court Justice said America should be run by and for "the people who own it." John Adams wanted it run by "the rich, the well born, and the able." It's been that way from inception. Privilege alone mattered, not popular interests.

Democracy for the few was established. Populism was nowhere in sight. Nothing changed from then to now. In spite of commonly believed myths, people don't govern directly or indirectly through representatives. People are governed by wealth and power, serving privileged interests only.

America's founders were that time's equivalent of a Wall Street crowd. They were property owners, bankers, merchants, lawyers and politicians. Bill of Rights freedoms were established for them alone.

Moreover, constitutional America isn't constrained by checks and balances. Then and now, sitting governments act without popular approval. In fact, they're entirely detached in a realm of their own.

Constitutional restraints are pure fantasy. Presidents and Congress do what they please. Washington is corporate occupied territory. Bankers sit stop the pecking order.

America's national resources are squandered. Labor is exploited, underpaid, and abused. Monopoly capitalism and democratic freedoms can't coexist. Americans can have whatever they want if they can pay for it.

Money power, privilege, corruption, greed and imperial arrogance substitute for equal rights and social justice.

Exorcising that cancer is job one. Returning money power to public hands is key to having a chance. The 1913 Federal Reserve Act let powerful bankers usurp America's money system in violation of the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, giving only Congress the power to "coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof...."

Thereafter, they victimized working Americans by using money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment by bankrolling and colluding with Congress and administrations to implement laws favoring them.

As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic financialization, and casino capitalism followed. Purchasing power eroded. Asset bubbles were created. So were record budget and national debt levels, as well as depression-sized unemployment manipulated lower to conceal the state of working America.

Dire conditions also include high levels of personal and business bankruptcies, millions of lost homes, record impoverishment affecting society's most vulnerable hung out to dry on their own, and America's greatest ever wealth gap.

Today's America is too broken and corrupted to fix. Nothing short of dismantling it and starting over can work, including a new Constitution put to a national referendum to vote up or down section by section.

That's direct participatory democracy, the real kind with referendum voting on major issues too important to leave solely to elected officials.

Most important is making banking a highly regulated public utility, nationalizing or abolishing the Fed. Wall Street's franchise must end. Giant banks must be broken up and nationalized, insolvent ones liquidated.

No more money power in private hands! No more government paying interest on its own money!

No more bailouts and other corporate handouts! No more privatizing profits and socializing losses! No more business as usual!

No more democracy for the few! No more duopoly power! No more government of, by and for super-wealth! No more imperial wars!

No more a nation not fit to live for everyone not privileged! No more police state laws!

No more cops serving as enforcers for crime bosses! No more tolerating their beating up on peaceful protesters!

No more media and PR scoundrels manipulating the public mind! No more managed news, infotainment and junk food news!

No more manufacturing consent! No more suppressing truths too ugly to reveal! No more state and corporate propaganda substituting for real news, information and analysis!

No more the way it's always been since inception! No more faking it! No more money in politics! No more corporate bosses and political Washington having it all their way!

No more popular interests entirely shut out! Social justice change demands clean-sweeping out everything and starting over!

It bears repeating. Money power must return to public hands. Political duopoly power must end, and media giants must be broken up and prohibited so fake news, information and analysis no longer is tolerated.

Americans deserve direct democratic government of, by and for everyone equally. So do others living everywhere.

Wishing won't make it so. Nor will it happen if dark forces succeed in infiltrating, manipulating, and subverting the way they always try to prevent social, economic and political change. Exposing, deterring, and expunging them when found is crucial.

Only unrestrained popular resistance for change works, doing whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get it.

There's no other way! There's no turning back! Go for it!

Quitting is not an option! There can't be to have any chance for success!

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

A story in McClatchy today reported that Hispanics may be losing faith in Obama. (Linked below). I do NOT think so and said the following:

Hispanic Heresy? -- I think not: In the final analysis Hispanics as well as all minorities of color will observe the political landscape and reality. The Republican Party is not the LEAST about them. They are anti them as they are anti immigrant. The Republican party is honed from the Nativist party of the 19th century. Its goals are similar -- crush immigration and keep the US dominant white.

The issue of so called illegal immigration is a ruse they use like most of their advocacy to PRETEND that all they care about is keeping immigration legal. They don't. They want to STOP immigration most especially by people of color.

Hispanics and people of color, do NOT be fooled like so many members of the Tea Party were. The Republican Party is NOT about anyone EXCEPT the top 1%. Since Citizen's United, one of the worst SCOTUS decisions since Dred Scott and Plessy became law, the Republican Party has been signed, sealed and delivered by Koch Brothers and other billionaire/millionaire corporate money. Whether through subversion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, vile attempts at the voting booth to stop minorities from voting Democratic or through their draconian anti immigration laws they do not give a rat's petuti about the middle class and those who are struggling. They are trying to keep this country as it has been hewed for nearly three decades. DO NOT let them. Obama is our ONLY choice!

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/17/127407/many-hispanic-voters-on-fence.html

A Senator Supreme: Elizabeth Warren is, without a doubt, one of the most exciting candidates running for the US Senate from Massachusetts. She is a citizen's dream candidate -- honest, sincere, academically credentialed and astute. She is a person who, I believe, will work for the middle class instead of Wall Street’s top 1%. I hope a majority of Massachusetts citizens think as I do and that she will go on to easily win the general.

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor, and the president’s appointment who began the Consumer Protection Bureau, is a once in a lifetime candidate. I never thought I would say that I think she can take the place of a Teddy Kennedy but I do say that and then some. She academically, intellectually and professionally dwarfs Scott Brown, the darling of Wall Street. She is above-all honest and will be the people's voice uncorrupted by Wall Street greed, lobbyist lackeys and Washington on the take . She has, from the beginning, been an advocate for the consumer and will vote to hold Wall Street and Washington accountable for their plethora of fraud, misdeeds and abundance of unethical behavior which resulted in our nation (and the world) being stuck deeply in an economic quicksand of the banksters, real estate fraudsters and rating companies’ creation.

I will happily vote for Elizabeth Warren in November, 2012 and know beyond a shadow of a doubt she will make not a good senator but a GREAT one. Good luck, Elizabeth, you sold me when I saw you on Bill Moyers. I was smitten!

Occupy Wall Street Will NOT Falter: These bastard banksters need to be taken down. The law must take them down. I do not care how long it takes but these swine, these bloated greedy Wall Street gluttons need to have the scales of justice smash them and take them down! I HATE what they have done to the country and the president gets the VERY pigs into his administration as his Treasury secretary and his merry men who created this mess over years doing the "fixing."

This country is a place I do not recognize anymore. The hope and the dream are gone and the Wall Street swill have taken what is ours right from under our noses because we THOUGHT that dream was meant for us and the generations which come after us. They have taken this economy to the brink of destruction, swallowed 401Ks, pension plans, selling worthless crap bundling it into phony mortgage securities junk, selling it all over the world and insuring themselves in credit default swaps buying S&P to rate that crap triple AAA deceiving ALL who bought it. The reason for so many state government employees being laid off is laid at the Wall Street titans filthy feet. Wall Street is a gambling casino where the house NEVER loses. It is meant for only the top 1% to rape us in a con game with our hard earned money.

Moreover, they have sent wily nily our youngest and most able to fight in wars that meant nothing to us based on lies spending TRILLIONS. Those overlords who have ruled over us are a sham and about ONLY the top 1%. Their corporatist hands are dripping with the blood of so many innocents. But they will tell you they have no money for fire departments, no money for teachers, no money for building roads, bridges, infrastructure repair and all those things that make government work for the people and secure the people. What is going to happen to these sickos when the very ones they fire will not be there to protect THEM? They make me sick as they have made the American economy sick! We have a government bought, signed, sealed and delivered by the corporation; an oligarchy which is choking its own people. We have a body that is turning on itself and eating itself alive BUT the body is fighting back!

Occupy Wall Street is catching on like a fire and we can thank other people's uprisings and revolutions all over the world which pointed the way to exude unremitting pressure. Either they FIX this gd economy or face the public wrath. The demonstrators of Occupy Wall Street will never give up, will never falter and will NOT fail.

Lest I be Considered Humorless: Yes, most of my opinions are serious and rather gloomy BUT have no fear I DO have a sense of humor!

In case you have not noticed the collection of Republicans vying for the presidency, arguably the most powerful position in the world, or just simply Republicans are nincompoops, idiots, morons and dumbed down Know Nothings. Let me give you some examples which represent that fact and are quite funny INDEED. Well, it had me laughing with incredulity anyway:

Rick Perry after the last debate was showering effervescent praise on our Founders who as he stated fought so hard for freedom in the 16th CENTURY. Okay so he was a mere 200 years off. What's a few years? After all our Founders WERE men of the Enlightenment preceded by the Renaissance weren't they? Considering the sands of time, I guess he was close.

Michele Bachmann TRIED to show how smart she was by using the word HEINOUS except it came out Hein-Y-ous. Heinyous, yes we get it, Michelle, I guess it’s not as bad as saying Concord, New Hampshire where she so assuredly thought the American Revolution began. This was BIG news for those of us living near Concord, MASSACHUSETTS. Eh, what's a few miles. Maybe geography AND history are not Michelle's strong suit. Who needs to know where the American Revolutionary War began when one was allegedly a tax attorney, small business woman and is a Congressional Rep?

The best screw up came when a Florida GOP Rep. Brad Drake said he wanted to bring back the electric chair and firing squads to execute criminals because lethal injection is just too darn humane. As Drake said “In the words of Humphrey Bogart, ‘Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.' I'm so tired of being humane ...".

You know Humphrey Bogart of "Gone with the Wind" fame; that famous quote a sixth grader might know was uttered by Clark Gable and after all he thought of that when someone at the "Waffle House" -- a restaurant like IHOP -- said that profundity.

So big deal, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart who cares? At least we have to be happy he didn't say Marilyn Monroe! GENIUSES all!

Occupy Wall Street STILL Occupying Wall Street: Mayor Bloomberg stopped the removal by police of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators shortly before it was supposed to begin today, Friday, October 14, averting a feared clash between the police and demonstrators who are protesting a fraudulent and corrupt Wall Street.

Smart move! Throwing police into an Occupy Wall Street crowd at 7:00 a.m. on a Friday morning when everyone is tuned into The Today Show is NOT a smart thing to do. It is a non violent crowd dedicated to peaceful civil disobedience. It is the ONLY kind of protest that we have seen historically to work ESPECIALLY in a 24/7 media, video cell phones and other recording devices which will capture the entire thing. It serves only to be an advocate for our cause.

FINALLY our sleeping giant has awoken will and is giving the Republican (and some Democrats too) obstructionist politically malevolent Congressional "representatives" a run for their money (forgive the pun).

This has shed light on the most rancid time I have ever experienced in my decades of watching the American political landscape. It is not a landscape it is a trash heap. Wall Street, the banks, Geithner, Summers and their ilk wielding the batons of power and ALL those who think they can get away with the fraudulent theft of millions of Main Street money while they live like kings with their bailout and bonuses of taxpayer money are having a RUDE awakening.

I think too our president who was put into the oval office by people like me sees now we CANNOT be taken for granted. I believe the sleeping giant is arising from his slumber -- I HOPE -- as Blankfein, Dimon, Goldman Sachs, City Bank, Merrill Lynch and the rest of those bloated gluttons infected with corporate gout feel a little chill running through their greedy bodies.

The Cretans of Wall Street MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE, investigated, regulated to within an inch of their life, indicted, tried by a jury -- HOPEFULLY -- convicted and sent to jail while their posterity pays BILLIONS. This must NEVER EVER happen again or our capitalist system which I support and the nation I love with it will end up in the trash bin of history!

KNOW THE TRUTH: Economist Robert Reich who was Clinton's Secretary of Labor destroys the GOP's seven biggest economic lies. Read and learn how the opposition tries to put one over on you by CONSTANTLY LYING!:


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/12/economist-destroys-the-gops-seven-biggest-economic-lies/?utm_source=Raw+Story+Daily+Update&utm_campaign=9c8c237dd0-10_12_1110_12_2011&utm_medium=email

How I'm stopping the Koch brothers' poisonous influence:

There's a town in Arkansas being poisoned to death by the Koch brothers factory. Residents of Crossett, Arkansas are collecting messages that they will hand deliver to the Koch brothers. Watch how the Koch brothers poison their community with pollution, then help fight back to save lives and write a message to the Koch brothers:

http://KochBrothersExposed.com

The Help--A Movie Review: I very much enjoyed this film. Was it absolutely perfect? Probably not BUT I must disagree with Melissa Harris Perry Professor of political science at Tulane University who, on Rachel Maddow, said how much she loathed it. She gave as her rationale that it was not about the dreary drudged-filled life of a black maid exposing the essence of the black experience in the south. She thought it was all about white women and the aspiring white writer who comes from the white background of privilege but decides she wants to write and publish a story from the perspective of the black maid -- The Help.

I disagree with Ms. Perry which surprised me as most often I agree with her well thought out expert analysis. The story was NOT, in my opinion, centrifugally about the white writer but the writer was used as a vehicle to tell the story of the black experience in the south through the black maids among them Viola Davis as Abiline, her friend Minnie and others who made up, I thought, the preponderance of the film. It was about the black/white cultural ethos in the south.

The maid performances were nothing short of STELLAR. I LOVED them. Their white taskmasters gave excellent performances too as they showed well the empty meaninglessness and immorality of their lives. Those southern whites who profess Christianity so strongly should reflect on Christ's words: "What profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?" I felt both sorry for these shallow white women and hated them at the same time.

In my opinion, Viola Davis should get best performance of an actress NOT in a supporting role but in a MAIN role. Her role, as I see it, was the central character. I thought the white writer Skeeter (Bryce Dallas Howard) was simply the narrator through which the story could be told and the expositor of the cultural reality of black people and their white supremacist masters in the south during the early 1960's. Their experience with each other was, I believe, one step above slavery since the cultural mandates -- violence and death -- at the hands of the white power brokers enforcing this vile system still survived.

The film was heart wrenching and gripping. The danger the black person experienced in the south most especially, perhaps, in one of the worst southern states for its treatment of black people, Mississippi, was bone chilling. Yes, I know, all states have some racism but this type of racism in the early sixties in the south takes that loathsome fact to Olympian heights. What a trapped, awful, difficult and sad life the maids experienced. Even with all the difficulty, though, there was room in their hearts for laughter and humanity about the cruel fate bestowed upon them. I LOVED them.

I hated the white women, felt sorry for them and their utter STUPIDITY. As a white woman I felt ashamed that in this country something so heinous, so cruel and so embedded in the culture existed and to some extent still does. There was NO escape. My heart goes out to a people who have known unspeakable suffering in this country. I want a collective apology to entire group of people who still suffer humiliations NO ONE in this country should EVER have to suffer again. Representative John Lewis an African American House member, a cultured and wonderful gentleman, was spat upon on the steps of the Capitol by utter racists whose temperature rose when a black man entered the oval office. The half white part of Barack Obama to them matters not as just one drop of blackness in a person determines the threat of systemic violence heaped upon them.

It makes me see how brave the MLK's of the world were, how brave the Ralph Abernathy's were, how brave Representative John Lewis was and so many more heroes too numerous to mention here. Confederate flags, the rancid symbol of this de jure racist segregation, should be taken down from the top of every State House in the south as we live now, hopefully, to erase any vestiges of that ugly system and make a fairer world!

I highly recommend this film.

The Right to Our Life, Civil Liberties Abridgment and the Ordered Killing of US Citizen Al-Alwaki: This is the kind of action that drives many liberals, civil libertarians and people that compose the president's base crazy. It would be as if the Republican candidate admitted he were an atheist. It is that important to those who care about what Constitutional due process is. They are the people who put candidate Obama into the presidency.

But there are some others like I, for example, who considers herself a member of Obama's base, decries some of his leadership abilities, truly cares about unlawful search and seizures, cruel and unusual punishment, and power operating without due process BUT in certain circumstances who sees particular instances where those civil libertarian guarantees must be breached.

I believe after 9/11 that we live in a different nation. When Benjamin Franklin said “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” he NEVER knew what an atom was, never knew the atom could be split, never knew about nuclear weaponry, and never knew about a dirty bomb. I believe a nation state has a right -- no a duty -- to defend itself and its populous from ever having to endure such a dastardly attack even IF it means breaching some Constitutional rights to apprehend a perpetrator.

We live in a NUCLEAR age. We live in an age where mayhem can be delivered upon a country after which that country truly could perish. Think about it. We in this nation most love, we who NEVER worried about going to a restaurant, to the movies, to a classroom must court the possibility now that an innocent task could turn into utter destruction. THAT is the truth we must live with in our time.

I do NOT fear my government under Obama and I do not fear my government even under a Republican. Perhaps I am naive but I believe in the endurance of this nation even under the most difficult and trying times we experience today. I believe in defending our lives and our way of life by any means necessary.

A Play in Three Acts--Paul Krugman tells you what you need to know! For those of you who need to understand even more clearly and from an expert, NYT columnist Prof. Paul Krugman explains why Occupy Wall Street is happening, why it is good and in three easy acts what our financial crisis all about. He explains it as a "Play of Three Acts" in his October 6, New York Times Op Ed "Confronting the Malfactors" and states as follows:

So, in case you’ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.

Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking a stand?

Now, it’s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism.

Bear in mind, too, that experience has made it painfully clear that men in suits not only don’t have any monopoly on wisdom, they have very little wisdom to offer. When talking heads on, say, CNBC mock the protesters as unserious, remember how many serious people assured us that there was no housing bubble, that Alan Greenspan was an oracle and that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring.

A better critique of the protests is the absence of specific policy demands. It would probably be helpful if protesters could agree on at least a few main policy changes they would like to see enacted. But we shouldn’t make too much of the lack of specifics. It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details.

Rich Yeselson, a veteran organizer and historian of social movements, has suggested that debt relief for working Americans become a central plank of the protests. I’ll second that, because such relief, in addition to serving economic justice, could do a lot to help the economy recover. I’d suggest that protesters also demand infrastructure investment — not more tax cuts — to help create jobs. Neither proposal is going to become law in the current political climate, but the whole point of the protests is to change that political climate.

And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for today’s Republicans, who instinctively side with those Theodore Roosevelt-dubbed “malefactors of great wealth.” Mitt Romney, for example — who, by the way, probably pays less of his income in taxes than many middle-class Americans — was quick to condemn the protests as “class warfare.”

But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the president. Now, however, Mr. Obama’s party has a chance for a do-over. All it has to do is take these protests as seriously as they deserve to be taken.

And if the protests goad some politicians into doing what they should have been doing all along, Occupy Wall Street will have been a smashing success.

A Second Declaration of Independence In Our Time--BUT: Yesterday, in response to these ever-so-hopeful Occupy Wall Street demos all over the country I wrote something about it below. BUT I want to add while these protests on Wall Street are just what the doctor ordered I FEAR what happened in 1968 when the Democratic VP incumbent Hubert Humphrey lost the presidency to the nauseating Republican Nixon because of such strong protest against the Vietnam War and other causes of the left. I do NOT want this to happen again to a Democrat. I do NOT want a repeat performance. In the final analysis it will be OUR Democratic president Obama against most probably Mitt Romney. Whoever the Republican party nominee is we cannot, through our protest, sacrifice this election to the Republican.

Obama can be criticized but NO president has suffered the opposition he has and make no mistake race is embedded in this impossible oppositional Republican House in Congress. Let us protest that the president can hear our plea so he can act as he might have done without such impossible Republican hateful opposition. We MUST overturn this know nothing House of Representatives and let the president do what he stated in his campaign. Here is what I posted:

Occupy Wall Street in New York put forth an enumeration of its grievances against the multi-billion dollar corporate takeover of our government and the Citizen United permission slip for its plundering of our country obliterating the great middle class of our entire electorate.

This is an IMPORTANT movement and MUST continue. The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City is similar to the list of grievances the colonists brought against Charles III of England in 1776 presenting a justification for our revolution and its first Declaration of Independence. Our first Declaration of Independence had as its prime mover its anger against certain corporate strangleholds and the power they and the government in England had against the unrepresented individual in its colonies. In 2011 the Occupy Wall Street Declaration and its rationales have an eerie similarity to the first. It was riveting and brilliant then as is the Second one in our time.

Our Second Declaration grievances are as follows. I quote:

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited from the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

Boycott Bank of America and City Bank: These two gluttonous banks, City Bank and Bank of America have the utter gall after receiving some of the largest taxpayer bailout money and paying themselves bonuses to soon be charging a $5.00 monthly fee for simply using their ATM card IF you do not have $15,000 or more in your account. City Bank will charge a fee for checking accounts. These banks with chutzpah (nerve) say brazenly that they have a "right to make a profit" doncha know. Okay, sure great make your rancid profits. And the consumer has a right and even a duty to boycott them, pull money OUT of their banks and find a bank with no fees. I am counting on American competitive capitalism for some banks to compete with City Bank and Bank of America by offering NO fees for using either a checking account or an ATM for convenience.

I have heard other consumers say if it does not happen that there are any banks which do not have a fee then they will return to the good ole days of paying cash. It seems to me paying cash for something is a wonderful thing. Why? Because if you have the money in your pocket you may be less inclined to spend it so easily. So this way you get them several ways. You get them by NOT using their bank, by not using their cards, by not paying fees and saving money at the same time. Worth a shot I would say.

BOYCOTT BANK OF AMERICA AND CITY BANK TO SAY YOU ARE MAD AS HELL AND YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.

A Second Declaration of Independence In Our Time: Occupy Wall Street in New York put forth an enumeration of its grievances against the multi-billion dollar corporate takeover of our government and the Citizen United permission slip for its rape of our country obliterating the great middle class of our entire electorate.

This is an IMPORTANT movement. The "Declaration of the Occupation of New York City" is similar to the list of grievances the colonists brought against Charles III of England in 1776 presenting a justification for our revolution and its first Declaration of Independence. Our first Declaration of Independence had as its prime mover its anger against certain corporate strangleholds and the power they and the government in England had against the unrepresented individual in its colonies. In 2011 the Occupy Wall Street Declaration and its rationales have an eerie similarity to the first. It was riveting and brilliant then as is the Second one in our time.

Our Second Declaration grievances are as follows. I quote:

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited from the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

Occupy Wall Street Occupies my Mind: Yesterday I wrote: I am thinking about creating an opinion article on this very very important movement which is spreading across the country. Today, Occupy Wall Street in New York came out with an enumeration of its grievances against Wall Street and its multi billion dollar Citizen United ties to our government and its rape of our country which is effecting the great middle class of our entire electorate and most importantly the 99% of us who have gotten whacked by the onslaught of the 1%.

Make no mistake this is an IMPORTANT movement, it is national in scope and even has international implications. Obviously with what is happening in the Arab Spring and in Europe the US too has its own flavorful revolutionary spirit. Keith Olbermann tonight read from the list of grievances developed by Occupy Wall Street which sounded more like the list of grievances the colonists brought against Charles III of England in 1776 presenting a justification for our revolution and its Declaration of Independence.

This is real, it is strong, it is being joined by many more as the days progress and I HOPE it will last in view of the oncoming winter. I also hope it stays non violent although there have been some attempts to at night occupy Wall Street which has meant a few have faced arrest, clubbing and pepper spray by the NYPD. There is no doubt that there are some in the crowd who are furious enough to even want to throw a brick or two into the CEO's offices of those on Wall Street who have done such EGREGIOUS things to us. I am a totally non violent person and believe in passive resistance and civil disobedience like Martin Luther King and Gandhi did but I will admit to a sympathy with those young who are SO angry, whose lives, whose homes, whose livelihoods and whose youth have been stolen by the worst most disgusting alliance between government and Wall Street titans pay for play tyranny which I submit is and will be WORSE than the Great Depression of 1929. It has taken down our country. These frauds that have been perpetrated on the people by a Wall Street run wild MUST stop and there are many grievance to address. We must start somewhere.

Tomorrow I will illuminate more.

As I see it -- The Economic Debacle made easier--Things you should TRY to know:I am a person who is thirsty for knowledge and in my own numbers-challenged way I try to read those who do understand to explain our economic debacle. I try to read those who can explain our Great Recession and how it happened it in a way so I can understand to fairly grasp the HUMONGOUSNESS of what has been done (and still is) by our government and Wall Street.

I am reading Matt Taibbi's book "Griftopia". He tells it easily, makes it fun and is riveting. I have read other things of course.This is how I see it made as simple as possible and written off the top based on ad infitum reading TRYING to get it:

The problem with the whole thing is that our government and economic system is broken in so many places and worse by both Democrats AND Republicans who basically were doing the same thing with OUR money. The only difference is that the Democrats spout a different philosophy BUT they did not really act on it that much; some did but not enough. Money involved in politics corrupts SO badly it is indescribable and the decision of the Sup. Ct of Citizen's United opened up the flood gates of money in politics.

I have divided the issues into seven categories (generally) which, I think, made the near economic collapse and our still Great Recession happen so that I and others can more easily understand.

The first problem: what the government did over thirty years since Reagan with the peoples' Social Security money the middle class person depends upon. They raised the Social Security tax BUT did not keep it away from everything else i.e. separate. They SPENT it on a bazillion OTHER things and gave it to BIG corporate everything which in turn greased the hand that fed them i.e. campaign money Congress persons need to get elected into office and/or stay there by being reelected. Our Social Security money was and is NOT safe BUT it should have been. Al Gore in 2000 talked about a LOCKED BOX for Social Security but Congress over decades did no such thing. Beginning with Reagan 30 years ago, continuing, through Reagan (with Alan Greenspan's Ayn Randian help), to Bush I, Clinton and WORSE under Bush II by giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires but still making the middle pay taxes on through to Obama who extended the Bush tax cuts under duress. Congress initially raided Social Security by raising the Social Security tax to us and kept it to spend on many things ESPECIALLY war and the military but other things too and SPENDING wildly.

When Perry said Soc. Sec. was a Ponzi scheme he was not so off the mark BUT he did not or COULD not OR WOULD NOT say HOW it was a Ponzi Scheme. It was because it took your money, stole it from what should have been a locked box for you for your retirement years and replaced it with government backed IOU’s at lower interest rates. They STOLE our money from under our nose and then spent it on the military, eternal wars and what IS an American empire all over the globe as well as spending it on earmarks for pet projects within a bill or say Medicare Part D which was a giveaway to big pharma.

It was a scheme because it depended on new members, new workers, new generations to keep the coffers afloat and ALAN GREENSPAN that swine figured out a way they could do that and have the people not understand it and raid that money. Then later administrations tell us Soc. Sec. is bankrupt. Greenspan became Federal Reserve Chairman even though he was a rotten predictor of economic trends. Congress voted him in and he fixed this racket so they took the money by raising the Social Sec. Tax, filled it instead with that money they took from the people giving the Soc. Sec. money IOU tickets instead by buying T-bills at low interest but interest nonetheless and then USED that money for their cronies. Reagan especially but all since used it WILDLY hence increasing the DEBT and deficit to Everest heights. I quote someone (I forget whom) explaining it away. He said: "There's just so much damn money!" Sure because the people paid in SO much money and they even raised the amount of money they put in but Congress TOOK it, left paper IOU’s with government backed T bills and spent it!

The second problem is the DEREGULATED Wall Street thievery creating rotten stocks sold by the banks, Goldman Sachs, City Bank, Merrill Lynch, Lehman, etc. and AIG (which insured the whole damn thing with credit default swaps). When the economy bubble in 2008 collapsed they needed to be bailed out with OUR money supposedly because they were "too big to fail." Even AIG had to be bailed out as they could not pay on their CDS (credit default swaps which is stock insurance the investment banks took out.) The Fed a quasi private institution (which people do not know) just prints money to bail them out at a bargain basement lower interest rate window than any of us ever get at banks. Great gig if you can get it!

Third problem--the rating agencies like S&P: The investment houses sold stocks that were rated triple AAA because they were employed by the banks themselves. These instruments were JUNK utter junk. They sold it off to people and entities who did not know such as those who managed pension funds and their own 401K's etc. It would be like someone buying my home on the advice of the agent I pay to rate my home. My agent would give it a 100% AAA rating of course or I would fire him and get another who would. When it went bust the whole house of cards collapsed.

The fourth problem was the housing market. This was one of the biggest CONS and kicked off the whole collapse giving sub-prime loans by the billions duping especially poor people who bought into the American Dream scam and simply did not understand what they were getting into. They could not pay their mortgages and worse lost their jobs when the market collapsed that they did not think they would lose AND as an aside lost their health insurance too. It was NOT only the poor.

Fifth Problem: The DEREGULATED banks chopped up these mortgages and bundled them and sold them as stocks ALL over the world as rotten worthless stock. So when your mortgage went bust you could NOT even FIND the bank that had it because you could not trace it and they sold BILLIONS of these impossible to figure out phony investments ALL over the world and many are still living in their cars, in motels or on the street because of it. It's A GLOBAL problem and why Europe is SO over leveraged and going bust. It's tied to us.

The Sixth problem is Trade Agreements like NAFTA: These put the US at a decided disadvantage to the middle class jobs but the big corporate titans LOVE it because it's CHEAP no health or ANY benefits to pay for dirt cheap overworked labor overseas who do not complain and labor they could not get here because who would put up with work days of seven days nearly round the clock and TERRIBLE working conditions. The trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT are NASTY and are stacked against this country because goods coming in are cheap and are taxed little as are the industries going in to countries like China or Sri Lanka or even Vietnam but few of our goods go out because they are heavily taxed. It is why there is NOTHING made in America any more. Since we do not have jobs and our health insurance runs out because of it, unemployment insurance runs out too we are in a BIGGER in my opinion mess than the Great Depression and it WILL be a Depression soon.

The seventh problem is the fusing of investment banks with Commercial savings and loan banks. It USED to be separate after the Great Depression. They repealed the 1933 Glass Steagall Act which KEPT them separate finally in 1999. Quoting Cyrus Sinanti of the NYT in 2009 “Commercial banks played a crucial role as buyers and sellers of mortgage-backed securities, credit-default swaps and other explosive financial derivatives,” Demos, a nonpartisan public policy and research organization, wrote in a report discussing the problems it said were caused by the repeal of Glass-Steagall.”

One final problem: Obama put the financial foxes in charge of the chicken coop i.e. Geithner, Summers etc. who helped create the mess and knew ALL the financial wizards who were involved in making it and probably some who should receive a nice room in a Federal penitentiary. They would not even act on the reforms he wanted. Ron Suskind in his book "Confidence Men" allegedly illuminates that! The lack of leadership is BONE CHILLING!

How on God's earth do you fix all of this during my lifetime or even people's children's lifetimes I have NOT a clue. The fact that it is so COMPLEX is GOOD for the banks and the investment houses and big business because FEW of the little guys the middle class like me i.e. the voters will take the time to UNDERSTAND something which has literally life and death consequences and vote wisely. I was in that category until I HAD to figure this out, am thirsty for knowledge anyway and our lives literally are at stake. I forced my tired brain into learning at least SOMETHING about it. I doubt myself a lot BUT I will give myself SOME credit as one who hates economics at least TRYING to read other economic experts who explain it to TRY to understand that which could in effect really kill us and I don't think I am being too histrionic saying that.

The top 1% will get all of us jerk's money who are in the middle. The top 1% will and have run away with it. That is the essence of a Ponzi scheme or a CASINO where the house NEVER loses but the poor jerks like me who gamble in the market because we thought it was a good thing to do at the time DO lose and plenty. The market may go bust but the House keeps our money, gets government bailouts and says too bad. The banksters go off, get bonuses yet, buy yachts with our money and we are left with nothing. Madoff was not the only one who did what he did. Wall Street in its way did also. Madoff just got caught but the banksters go free. It shows you WHY I am crazy with worry as this is not only a US problem but a GLOBAL problem. It has tentacles. Not only do I have to worry about this country going bust but I have to worry about Europe going bust too. We are ALL tied together in this horrible rigged for the rich global marketplace.

If you have more to add or better explanation I would love to see it.

IF you think government regulations are not for you think again: I suggest you read the email below sent to progressives who understand the necessity of the benefit of a regulatory government. It can protect you, it can save you, it can help you when the greed of capitalism run wild thinks of nothing else but making all the big bucks it can at the expense of all of us even them. When you get in your car, fasten your children's seat belt,when you remember the danger of tobacco, when you are saved by the regulations of natural gas, nuclear power or drilling for oil you see how you, you and your children's lives -- millions of them -- are spared.

Send this to ALL the Republicans and others who are dedicated to the deregulation of a Wall Street gone mad, whose rancid behavior has taken your 401Ks, your homes and in so many cases your jobs. Read up on it by reading Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine, see the documentary Inside Job, read others who explain in detail what they did in language you can understand. See how these new robber barons have destroyed millions of lives and bought off Congress and then ACT. Get these miserable swine OUT of office, get them OUT of state houses, get them OUT of governors' mansions, and get them OUT of Congress and most especially OUT of the White House too or make the one who occupies the oval office know that your vote cannot be bought with lies! AND regulate Wall Street to within an inch of its life separating investment banks from savings banks and by reintroducing Glass Steagall. If you do not know what Glass Steagall is LOOK IT UP on Wikipedia.and by eliminating bonuses of bailed out banks!

Occupy Wall Street, now, tomorrow and forever and NEVER let what happened in 2008 the Greatest Recession/Depression EVER happen again!

Scroll down, read Ralph Nader's brilliant message and then pass this along to whomever you think needs to read it!

-----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Nader
To: alerts
Sent: Mon, Oct 3, 2011 3:13 pm
Subject: corrected column

Masters of the repeated lying sound byte, the craven Congressional Republicans
are feasting on the health and safety of the American people with gleeful greed
while making the corporate and trade association media swoon. “Job-killing
regulations,” exudes daily from the mouths of Speak John Boehner, his Wall
Street-licking side-kick Eric Cantor and Senate minority leader, Mitch
McConnell.

Then all the way down the line, the Republicans are on cue bellowing
“job-killing regulations” must be revoked or stopped aborning over at OSHA
(protecting workers), EPA (protecting clean air and water), FDA (safer drugs and
food), and NHTSA (making your vehicle safer). Imagine how much more civil
servants could do to accomplish the statutory missions of their respective
agencies if they could get the Republicans and their corporate pay masters off
their backs.

These same Republicans get in their cars with their children and put on their
seat belts. Out of sight are the air bags ready to deprive them of their freedom
to go through the windshield in a crash. Who makes those seat belts and air
bags? Workers in the USA.

The jobs these regulations may be “killing” are those that would have swelled
the funeral industry, or some jobs in the healthcare and disability-care
industry. On the other hand, by not being injured, workers stay on the job and
do not drain the workers’ compensation funds or hamper the operations of their
employer.

About twenty years ago, Professor Nicholas Ashford of MIT came to Washington and
testified before Congress in great detail about how and where safety regulations
create jobs and make the economy more efficient in avoiding the costs of
preventable injuries and disease. He received a respectful hearing from members
of the Committee. It is doubtful whether Messers Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and
Dr. Coburn (Senator from Oklahoma) are reading Professor Ashford these days, who
just co-authored a book with Ralph P. Hall called Technology, Globalization, and
Sustainable Development.

The corporatist Republicans’ minds are made up; don’t bother them with the
facts. But we must keep trying to dissolve the Big Lie.

In 2009 Professor David Hemenway published a stirring book titled While You Were
Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention which in clear
language described the success stories of people, often with the support of a
past, more enlightened Congress, made lives safer and healthier in the U.S. Yes,
life-saving, injury-preventing, disease-stopping regulations resulting in
life-sustaining technology produced by American industry and workers.

Wake up Democrats. Learn the political art of truthful repetition to counter the
cruelest Republicans who ever crawled up Capitol Hill. You’ve got massive,
documented materials to put the Lie to the Republicans.

President Obama should set an example. For instance, on September 2, 2011
President Obama fell for the regulation costs jobs lie. He said: “[I] have
continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and
regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover."
Pete Altman, from the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote:

"In reversing his Administration’s previously strong support for ozone
regulations to protect the health of American children, President Obama (in the
words of one observer): “drank the conservative Kool-Aid, and agreed that
tightening ozone emission rules would have cost billions and hurt the economy.
But clean air is very popular politically, and the EPA's own studies show that a
tighter standard could have created $17 billion in economic benefits.”

Earlier this month, Public Citizen issued a report about five regulations that
spurred innovation and a higher quality of economic growth. As one of the
authors Negah Mouzoon wrote, "when federal agencies implement rules for
efficiency, worker safety, or public health and welfare, companies need to
reformulate their products and services to comply. And so begins good ol’
American competition. To comply with federal standards, companies need to invest
in research and development, which often yields to new products and systems that
both solve public policy problems and, often, boost business. The result? A
brighter idea emerges."

It is important to note that such regulations give companies lengthy lead times
to comply and, under the daily sandpapering of corporate lobbyists, regulations
issued lose much of their early industry-controlling reach.

Here are the report’s five innovation-spurring products or processes that at
their outset encountered significant industry resistance and inflated estimates
of complying with the regulations. Before that is, the companies came to their
senses, responded and found that such changes were not just good for the people
but for their own bottom line.
1. Protecting workers from poisonous vinyl chloride.
2. Reducing sulfur dioxide emissions.
3. Preventing ozone-layer-destroying CFC emissions from aerosols.
4. Improving the energy efficiency of home appliances.
5. Utilizing energy-efficient light bulbs.

For the full report go to http://www.citizen.org/regulation-innovation.

Maybe some “kids”—between the ages of 10 and 12 – having learned from their
parents the importance of telling the truth, can start a Kiddy Corps for a
Truthful Congress drawn from the Internet-savvy children all over the U.S. What
a wonderful expression of grassroots truth-telling directed toward the Great
Prevaricators on Capitol Hill. Yes –job-producing, life-saving,
economy-stimulating, innovation-producing regulations for a more secure future
for our children.

Interested parents may contact us at info@csrl.org.


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weekly column.

Just click on the link that says: Sign up for Ralph Nader's Column
or click on the following link:

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Elizabeth Warren's Appeal: Ms. Venocchi is quite correct in her Sunday Boston Globe October 2, 2011 opinion "The preseason hype on Elizabeth Warren." (Link below) In the final analysis it is not the predictions before the election that count but the votes counted after it has happened where the proof of the pudding lies.

Elizabeth Warren is a liberal's candidate extraordinaire. I have been smitten since she was interviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS. I can safely say this liberal is wholly and hopelessly in love with Elizabeth Warren not because I like her glasses, her jacket or her Scott Brown look-alike truck if she had one. I adore her because she is articulate, inspiring and phenomenally BRILLIANT. I am in love with that woman's brain which after all is the most important part of a candidate or certainly should be.

If I were a betting person (which I am not) I would put my money on Elizabeth Warren. No matter where she goes she never disappoints me. She could ride a scooter or a truck to a campaign stop her knowledge would be the determining factor which will get my vote. My vote certainly would NOT be influenced by a nude picture in a sleazy magazine either. No matter how many six pack racks Scott Brown has from his continual workouts he NEVER could come close to Elizabeth Warren's cerebral embellishments.

I am glad she never posed for Playboy but I surely would love to see an MRI of her brain and wonder how I can make mine look the same!

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/10/02/the_preseason_hype_on_elizabeth_warren/