Wall Street's "Dow" getting a new name

New York City--Down.

$700 Billion bailout plan online!

Washington D.C.--Now quick kids, go get your Dick Tracy decoder-ring, some 3-D glasses, and some very strong hallucinogens, or the plan won't make any sense.

Listen to what the critics are saying about this exciting new motion picture:

"This is the same politics of fear we're hearing from the financial fat cats on Wall Street."
--Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tx.)

"The $700 billion bailout is driven by fear, not fact."
--Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh.)

"We've made great progress."
--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.)

"These criminals have so much political power they can shut down the normal legislative process."
--Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Oh.)

"I think we're there."
--Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson

"This morning we should be very much alarmed."
--Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.)

"I think the devil is in the details."
--Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.)

That's right, there is no fucking deal on the Wall Street bailout. In just moments, the Asian markets will open with no solid deal in either house of Congress because you have both parties throwing the hot-potato back at each other, back-and-forth. This makes sense when you understand that both parties are to blame for the mess. Meanwhile, the effect on global markets will continue unabated. Belgium's financial giant Fortis is soon to go the way of WaMu, Merrill-Lynch, Wachovia, Ameribank, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and all the others coming soon to a theater near you.

But you have to hand it to the GOP, they pushed for all of this deregulation so that we could all be Socialists sooner, though the wealthy in America were the first on the block with one. And boy, aren't the McProgressive ™ sites becoming shriller and shriller as they sink? Hey, would-be power brokers who wanted to be Henry Kissinger or Ari Emanuel aren't going to have their day.

Sad, I know, but perhaps some of them will finally understand that the internet, the blogs, e-mail are replacing them--it's all a push towards a democratization of information that they all despise and loathe. And why would academics be quiet on this front either?

Now, the public can easily find-out and access most of the same information they had almost exclusively at their fingertips not so long ago. Yes, it's sad to come to the realization that it's not about ourselves--dummy--but the entire human family. Not the career, not the moronically narrow lifestyles, not the greed, not the "stuff," or even how many people you had sex with. No, not even that, tricks are for kids of every age.

But what is all of this...really?

That's right: it's that proverbial "invisible-hand of the marketplace" shoving itself up your conceited asses, free marketers, right where it belongs. It's come home to roost. All hail the Great God Pan.

The High Cost of Deregulation:

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

The bailout negotiations, sex-for-contracts, and getting laid in D.C.

Washington D.C.--Why would anyone expect the people who created this mess in the first place to act otherwise? One of the things to appreciate in all of this is that apathetic Americans are finally all affected by the corruption in Congress, the White House, and in the judiciary. There's nowhere left to run and hide, responsibility is coming. Lies won't do it. Threats won't work. Everyone sees-through the manipulations now. For all these reasons, the Spitzer scandal deserves a radical reappraisal in the context of our current economic crisis.

As New York's state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer went a very long way indeed in apprehending white collar criminals on Wall Street. In fact, he was so good that these same individuals and institutions pulled-strings in Washington D.C. to see if someone was already surveilling the attorney general, then known as "the Sheriff of Wall Street." Ah, but they almost always are, as Senator David Vitter discovered in the summer of 2007. Yet, Vitter escaped Spitzer's fate. Why is that? Besides the fact that he's an obvious egomaniac with delusions of adequacy, someone had his back. That doesn't speak well of New York Democratic Party leadership and their own relationship with Wall Street, not at all. What you have here is a bipartisan form of political corruption with numerous compromised players, just everywhere.

Yet it's worse than that for those hoping for some real solution to the problem of corruption on Wall Street. The perpetrators want to blame those who discovered the bad investments in the first place:

"It's easy to blame accounting because it doesn't fight back," said Jack Ciesielski, author of the Analyst's Accounting Observer, a financial newsletter. "Now that there's somebody out there putting some light on the financials, it's shoot the messenger."

Lynn E. Turner, a former SEC chief accountant, said he remembered fielding questions about the accounting provision six months ago from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

"What the banks are telling everyone is that the accounting has caused the problem," Turner said. "The only thing fair-value accounting did is force you to tell investors you made a bunch of very bad loans."("Wall St. Points to Disclosure As Issue," The Wall Street Journal, 09.23.2008)

But these same elements--again, we'll say that they're "bipartisan" in their corruption--couldn't get Spitzer on anything until his own sexual indiscretions got caught on the FBI's radar. One could even imagine the taps were done as part of the war on terror, a catch-all excuse to spy on one's political enemies, and practiced by both major political parties. When you're doing these things when you're in power, oversight is not desirable, hence we get none with the FBI and other police agencies.

And so finally, someone did answer-back to these unknown business and finance criminals from their field outpost that they had Spitzer on some surveillance logs, cherry-picked with tenderness and care so that the GOP's own wouldn't be caught-up in the net and the inevitable press coverage. Hey, wouldn't you? Why sure you would, quit shitting yourself. So, they--some of whom must surely populate the ranks of the now-dead financial institutions these days, some still standing--got their man, namely Eliot Spitzer. Why? Spitzer wasn't going to stop the investigations into Wall Street, naturally, and he was now governor. Who needs rules? That's for the public. As we know, former Governor Spitzer had a problem over "getcha little somethin' that you can't get at home," like the aforementioned Sen. David Vitter, a Republican. We've had a lot of selective investigation and prosecution under the Bush II administration, but knowing this takes some deduction and investigation on-the-part of the public, never mind the press's coverage and their take on these stories, which was absurdly narrow. None of this is news to this writer.

My own experience with the Palfrey scandal has taught me the hard lesson that the press often don't want to know the details about corruption and that they're being leaned-on heavily not to look too closely into such stories by editors and ownership. In the context of all of this, it should be crystal-clear these days that the prosecution of Deborah Jeane Palfrey was damage control by an already embattled political and economic establishment. The Bush administration were merely the expediters for someone else, and it all could have happened under a Democratic presidential administration that controlled the Justice Department. That's how entrenched the corruption is, and has been for some time.

With the recent revelations of sex-for-contracts at offices of the Interior Department in Colorado and in Washington D.C., Palfrey's stories about Brent Wilkes, Randy Cunningham, and even Shirlington Limo don't seem so wild any more. While it's true that she didn't know exactly what was in her phone records, she did make what I believe was a valid claim to have spoken with Brent Wilkes on a few occasions over the telephone. He's hardly the only shady government contractor in her phone records, however, and there are many others waiting to be discovered.

Some researchers have probably already found all of the realtors that pepper the phone records of Pamela Martin & Associates, making for a charming snapshot of a totally corrupt boom period. The bailout, the bailout, I know. It's the coda to all of this. Had Palfrey waited long enough, she might have lived to see the system that had judged her collapse. What I find surprising is that some of the other members of the Palfrey defense team from the Sibley period are so silent about these possible connections to the financial scandal, and others. I question their sincerity in these areas. Perhaps they're biding-their-time for that big book with HarperCollins, Knopf, Time-Warner (TV rights! coffee table books, Amway product tie-ins!), or some other gargantuan conglomerate that threatens to topple in the current economic climate anyway. Who knows? Better spend that money while it's worth something, a certainty.

The need for a bailout came from this whole mess of corruption surrounding the political process and its intersections with the business and financial world.That's right, the world of lobbying.

Some Democrats still want a provision allowing bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Thune said that would be "a deal-breaker" for Republicans.

The compromise legislation that seemed to be emerging Saturday "is not the proposal that we got from Secretary Paulson," Reid said. But lawmakers said it would be much closer to Paulson's original plan than to the alternative offered by House Republicans several days ago. ("Senate leader: Significant progress on bailout," AP, 09.27.2008)

Why should the public get something for nothing when that's the traditional role of corrupt American business? It's all about the lobbying, and as Brent Wilkes showed, many of these government contractors do their own lobbying which often includes getting people laid.

We need to start asking the question: How widespread are these corrupt practices in the halls of Congress, in the bureaucracy itself in the form of crony appointees, and the White House? The intersections are everywhere in this, and yes, even in the sexual ones. A bailout isn't going to fix entrenched-corruption or a political culture rife with it. This opens-up terrifying implications that most of us suspected all-along about American civilization.

If the system isn't run on merit--something most of us likely knew a long time ago--what holds it all together? It doesn't appear to be business acumen, so what is it? These are the same kinds of issues that appeared in the collapse of the Soviet system. After this kind of connections-based crony-capitalism proliferates to a point, does it implode? How do you "fix" such a system if it's just going to keep perpetuating the same old mistakes over-and-over as part of how it's able to exist at all? At the end, then, it's all based on the belief of the public in that order, and that belief is eroding rapidly. There's every good reason for it to do this, namely from a lack-of-accountability in the halls of business and government. All they're trying to do in Washington is to bail themselves out, ultimately. Being mostly criminals, they will fail in this endeavor, the crisis will deepen, and objective-reality will correct things. The public is part of that reality.

Eventually, certain mechanisms of law and order are likely to kick-in. If this doesn't occur, then the chances of insurrection are substantial, and there is no military force on this earth that's capable of pacifying even half of the American public if they are up-in-arms over the way things are bound to be headed. The examples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and just about every popular uprising prove that it's an unwinnable situation. Welcome back history, we missed you.

"Wall St. Points to Disclosure As Issue," The Wall Street Journal, 09.23.2008: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202688.html

"Senate leader: Significant progress on bailout," AP, 09.27.2008:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080927/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown

The joy of watching the politicians (and pundits) frightened

Washington D.C.--Yes, the bailout is utter bullshit. Yes, we've all been had. No, it's not a "coup d'etat," but that's the message I'm getting from much of the reactionary left as well as the right.

A message to you all: you couldn't me more off-the-mark, but that's because of your ignorance of American history, a result of our wonderful consumer culture where we only fixate on one thing at a time, living in an eternal present without any past or future. How many times do I and others have to tell you that this economic system doesn't work? But on to other irrational notions held by those who should know better...

This absolutely idiotic, baseless notion that we're experiencing a "coup" (too late! that was 2000, you seem to have missed it) is more than a little belated. What it has to do with the fact that the GOP, the White House, and congressional Democrats have wrecked the economy because they could and now don't know how to fix it without giving the public something in-return, escapes me. When you see those in power losing control of things and you start shouting "coup," it obvious you get nothing about our history or the political situation anywhere. It suggests no viable framework of thinking, assuming there's one there.

One thing is certain--most of you out there just don't get it at all. This--I believe--comes from buying into various hollow values that come with having some kind of a stake or a perceived share in this irrational mess of an economy. Luckily, I don't share in this, and have never wanted a stake in what can only be described as a festering pile of bullshit and lies. Fine, continue lying to yourselves that "they're taking over" and that you don't own a share of this stinking-mess. You do. Panicking: It's not going to change anything or what happens next. It will only make matters worse. There are alternatives...

The first is to admit that the free market system doesn't work anymore and that a new day is dawning in America where "business as usual" won't cut it. This means a new work ethic where work is meaningful, not wasteful, and has some logical use for people. It means "ownership" of commodities, agricultural-tracts, mineral wealth, and all the others means of production in America, need to truly be owned by the "little guy," not corporations. It means an end to letting corporations exist legally as "private individuals."

Additionally, it's time that Americans were finally paid a living-wage, had a single-payer health care system, progressive taxation where the rich finally pay their share (or get out), and a nationalization of the major business, banking, and financial industries who cannot be trusted any longer in the same role in our economy. They have all been irresponsible for too long, and it's over. Reform is coming if you want it. If not, panic with the rest of the morons out there and accomplish nothing, be demoralized, give-up. You must be used to it, so why change now?

None of this is to suggest that we shouldn't be bailing-out home owners--we should be, and it should be the first and tallest of orders in Washington right now. As we know, the Republicans are damned if they do and damned if they don't on this, and will vigorously fight any social agenda or social dividend. If they bailout the banks and the financial institutions, they get stuck with the socialism label. If they bailout home owners, their ostensible backers, bitter boot-straps conservatives, and the rest of the wacko right-fringe will hit them over abandoning conservatism.

Actually, in both cases, the GOP's representatives are going to be accused of abandoning conservatism, which is more than appropriate. They literally don't know what to do except to hand the windfalls of a bailout to the private sector...except that the public isn't having it, not even their normally supplicant voting base.

What they're up against in Washington--and everywhere in America--is something they haven't seen in 100 years: a broad-based Populism that knows no ideological boundaries rather than the usual division Washington's political elites are used to manipulating. The game has changed radically, and overnight. Thanks George, thanks GOP. Those of us on the genuine progressive-tip couldn't have done it without you.

A coup? They cannot agree on Capitol Hill exactly what the bailout is even going to look like. If it's anything, we're seeing the collapse of a political culture under it's own weight and paradoxes. At no point has anyone shown me anything of the remotest credibility to show that this current order is anything but on-the-ropes right now. Give me a break. Honestly, if you're that frightened, move to Sweden or Australian (somewhere soft), they've beaten you down with fear so much that you don't know any other reaction these days. There's only one word for this kind of thinking, and that's cowardice in the face of victory for the average person. You really do fear real liberty, and it's sad.

Yet, today, I'm watching the Republican minority leader surrounded by his posse, having their press conference on the Hill--and there's that same look of fear in their eyes. OK, the wackos are shitting themselves that "There's a coup, there's a coup!" and then we have these very frightened politicians who have that deer in the headlights countenance, saying that "The Democratic leaders ganged-up on us at the White House meeting [over the bailout agreement]," and you see that they're all part of the same cowardly American mindset.

This stance is reactionary, cowardly, irresponsible, and not constructive. At its core it's childish, as one would expect from the average pampered American asshole.

But I have to love it all too. Watching the congressional GOP's incumbents eying those used car lots that they're all going to be returning to is going to be worth 100,000 Hoovervilles. If you saw the potential of their return to permanent minority-status for another five decades as I and others do, you wouldn't be so "scared." I don't think it's going to end there, though.

Both major parties could take a major-hit over this, which offers an opening for third parties to come in. To waste that opportunity would be irresponsible, but it appears more of us are getting this point. Ralph Nader's popularity is constantly growing, and other third party candidates are going to benefit from the current political climate. This climate isn't going to end anytime soon. The real losers will be the Republicans.

What I'm saying is that the Republican Party is going to be destroyed by this economic crash. The best part is that they're going to take several notable Democratic Party incumbents who were involved with this extraordinary corruption down with them. We almost got this with "Hookergate" and the Palfrey scandal, but this time it's going to stick (and Palfrrey is going to continue to deliver from the grave). Why is that?

Because not one plan that they float out there is going to work. Why? Neither party wants the public to experience a real windfall from any of this, and that's what all of us are poised to do if they bailout the American homeowner. That would mean a very real "New Deal," which is the opposite of their and their wealthy backers' agenda.

There will be some minor-bailouts of homeowners and some judicial and exectuive revisions of mortgages statutes to buy them some more time. That's not going to be enough either. The only answer will be giving these homes to people and creating a new generation of American homeowners. That can only be good for the economy. Otherwise, there's no "disposable income," just a mass population of people who not only cannot fill their tanks to get to work, but tens of millions of them without any income at all. Sound sustainable?

The politicians know this. They know that no matter what they do, the public will benefit in some way from it. This is why the GOP won't commit to any version of the bailout legislation yet. Conversely, they have no real choice and have lost one of their most powerful rhetorical-weapons in the legislative process: that the Democrats are dragging the process out. We all know it's the GOP, they can't hide this fact anymore.

If you don't see the mess that the people with power and privilege are in right now, you cannot see the opportunities that are there, waiting to be exploited by a steady, committed, informed, and reasonable populace. My feeling is that this reactionary crowd who are crowing that "it's a coup" are in-the-minority. We had better hope so, because without cooperation, trust, and solidarity, we're lost. These folks will shoulder a lot of the blame of any failure. Democracy: it's not for cowards.

The Nader/Gonzales campaign on the current economic downturn, September 21, 2008

September 21, 2008 www.votenader.org www.officialnaderstore.com

William Greider put it best yesterday when he called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's upcoming bailout of Wall Street: "All sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims." "As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice," Greider said. And investment analyst Christopher Whalen chimed in: "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist lovefest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks." Strip aside the rhetoric of the two major parties. And what is left is one party devoted to Wall Street. Who represents Main Street? Nader/Gonzalez. So, why is that when the Presidential debates open this Friday, only Wall Street will be in the ring? And the man who predicted the disaster of deregulation is out? Because the Commission on Presidential Debates is controlled by the two parties and funded by the corporations. That's why we're sponsoring a National Day of Action to Open the Debates. This Thursday, September 25, 2008, the day before the first debate. Once again the Commission intends to silence the majority of Americans by shutting out Nader/Gonzalez from the debates. We're asking all of our supporters to get ready. Because on Thursday, there are four ways you can take action to Open Up the Debates. 1. Write Letters to the editor, to your friends, family and anyone in your address book, companies and corporations who sponsor the presidential debates. 2. Phone The Commission on Presidential Debates, Obama and McCain Campaigns, Talk Shows, Newspapers, and National and Local Media Outlets. 3. Create Posters, fliers and literature to pass out and hang up at college campuses and other high traffic areas and banners to display to morning and evening rush hour traffic -- Check out our "Open the Debates" section on the website for downloadable materials. 4. Protest Outside the Democratic and Republican headquarters in your community, at corporations that sponsor the debates, at radio stations, newspapers and media outlets not covering Ralph Nader. (Phone numbers, e-mails and addresses will be available tomorrow at votenader.org/debates.) Many Americans believe they are getting the full story when they tune into the televised and highly publicized debates. What people don't see is that behind the scenes the debates are controlled by a corporate funded entity. Third party and independent candidates are arbitrarily required to be polling at 15% according to five national polls in order to participate in the debates, even though these third parties are forced to devote all resources to get on the ballot in all 50 states during the months leading up to the debates -- costing well over a million dollars! Who decides who gets into the debates? The so-called "non-partisan" Commission (as described by the New York Times today). Non-partisan? Headed by Paul Kirk and Frank Fahrenkopf, the former heads of the Democratic and Republican parties? Since the media blithely adopts the framing of the corporate parties, we must take it upon ourselves to expose the Commission on Presidential Debates as the real spoiler of the democratic system in this country. Just recently Green party candidate Elizabeth May was included into the debates in Canada. Why? Massive e-mailing, phone calls, and letters to the editor, including one from former Prime Minister Joe Clark, displaying public outrage prompted the debate commission to invite Elizabeth May to participate. We can do it too! So on Thursday, take action. And then send us your videos and photos and we'll post them on our Open the Debates page. And here is something you can do right now. Donate to Nader/Gonzalez. We're in the middle of our Three Way Race fundraising drive. And we need to hit $150,000 by the end of the month. And if you donate $100 now, we'll ship to you a copy of The Ralph Nader Reader, a 441-page collection of Ralph's writings on Wall Street vs. Main Street, the battle for democracy, the corporate state, and our hyper-commercialized culture. If you donate $100 now, we will send you this historic collection -- autographed by the man himself -- Ralph Nader. (This offer ends at 11:59 p.m. September 30, 2008.) Onward to November Emily Przekwas The Nader Team

The 1980s: "You're just jealous."

1980s A'murka--The only thing to miss about the 1980s is that the nightmare had only begun, that Reagan's policies wouldn't hit us until right before he left office in 1987, around the time of that other stock market crash.

Then, there was the lurid-spectacle of Iran-Contra going on in the backdrop of all of this, where Reagan and his group in the basement of the White House ran a secret government to pay for an illegal war in Nicaragua that involved gun-running and maybe even some drug trafficking. Who said any of it ever ended? Look at how much heroin is flowing out of Afghanistan since we got there. It was virtually extinct under the Taliban.

When we accuse Venezuela of "not cooperating in the [our] war on drugs," we're only underlining our own "extralegal" (illegal) activities. Why do you think there are so many banks in Panama capital city? That darned Chavez, I tell ya.'

Yet, Chavez is really just jealous, so we won't trouble our minds with him.

By the end, Reagan looked as empty, haggard, and intellectually vacant as the current system does today. That's because he was--as writer Paul Slansky put it--"An actor was playing the president." Little has changed since then, except for the observation that in-retrospect, Reagan faked it better as a former Hollywood actor. By the end, Reagan looked like he did when he first entered office: a washed-up, sad little man who also happened to be senile. Regardless of how much Reagan comforted us with his grandfatherly voice of authority, he wasn't FDR, and his time in office was a disaster. Like now, it was an embarrassing time to be an American.

When you criticized the way things were in the 1980s you were either called a communist, being "political" (whatever that meant), and the catch-all, "You're just jealous."

That's right. You're...just...jealous.

It has an incredible ring of intelligence, no? I didn't think so either. "I'm just jealous," I would say to myself as a mantra for yucks, walking home from high school hoping I wouldn't be mugged. There was an incredible logic to the phrase that still escapes me, but I think sometime in the 1990s I figured out what all those smart people were trying to tell me: "Matt, sell your soul for some poorly-made petrochemical consumer products that are going to be out of fashion in ten years like us, you're making us look bad." No thanks, I'm full.

Therefore: "You're just jealous." Got it? Me either! OK, so the other part I figured out was that if you have a lot of money, people become jealous of you and want to be exactly like you. That's right, even that balding problem and your inability to achieve an erection. Or, you know, things like holding the opinion that "Top Gun" was the best movie of all time, ever. I mean ever. And they also say that Randy "Duke" Cunningham was "framed." These accusers were just jealous, especially when the Dukester man proclaimed that "I never smoked marijuana," so how bad could he be for taking bribes and demanding hookers as payment for defense contract earmarks? You're...just...jealous. Got it now? See how easy that works?

It's really simple--if you criticize the way things are in America, you're just jealous and we're going to keep stonewalling you with this yammering catch-phrase until you say 'uncle.' Yeah, that was the eighties, just a smothering conformism that choked-out all light. Somehow, there were still good movies and really original underground music then. I don't know how, but these cultural sparks did a good job of hiding themselves until I heard the Butthole Surfers one fateful night in the fall of 1986 (their cover of "American Woman").

Don't get me wrong, I'd already heard PiL, DEVO, Killing Joke, and the Talking Heads by that point. As you can imagine, all this countercultural stuff...well, it made me feel--jealous. I was as confused as one of those screw-ups in a Jack T. Chick comic book.

Jealous? Today? No-no-no, we're not jealous. Alright, maybe just a tad, but we'll get over it and pull-up our bootstraps...shit, no, that's not going to work any more. We must nationalize our banks and scrap our speech on the economy that had all that "free market" B.S. peppering it, and our conservative smokescreen just isn't cutting it these days, so it's spent. Welcome to the inevitability of Socialism.

Poor, you don't need to be jealous no more, we'll all be equal in the leveling. They're gonna be playing "St. James Infirmary" in the streets of America again, and we'll all be jealous together. America has gone too long without a spectacularly public tarring-and-feathering. That time has come because we're obviously just that jealous.

The Antisocial Personality in History

"It was wholly in keeping with this retreat from the game of politics that he increasingly lapsed, in terminology and in the tenor of his statements, back into the plane of irrationality. ...Strictly speaking, he never again returned to politics." --the late German Historian Joachim Fest, from his book "Hitler", pgs. 610-611. 1973. Translation, Harcourt, Inc., 1974.

[6] Let them now therefore be punished as their crime requires, and do not, while you condemn the aristocracy, absolve the people.
--Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, book 3, chapter 39, section 6.


Washington D.C.--In the first piece I did on Bush's core nature, I noted that the antisocial personality-type has a disregard for the lives and safety of others.

New developments in the war in Iraq bring-to-light another aspect: his absolute rejection of politics and compromise, abetted by the Republican and Democratic Party's incumbents serving in the legislature. This seems to be suddenly rearing-its-head to many observers, yet it has been at the core of his--and this political era's--personality and approach. There is an unfortunate parallel here: Hitler and Nazi Germany again, and the misconceptions surrounding the causes and actions during that period of European history. The reality is far different than the public perception of that era, often startlingly so.

After the Fall of 1938 it was clear that most of the German people didn't want a wider war. The Prussian officer class feared that a world war was coming, and made several desperate attempts to curtail Hitler's push (too late at that point without the resolve to assassinate him).

Remember: Hitler was not elected. This is a myth, and Kurt Vonnegut and many others have been mistaken on this point since the end of WWII. Hitler was beaten by Hindenburg in the 1932 Presidential elections, and the machinations surrounding his rise to power are complicated. The reality is that Hitler was essentially appointed Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenberg.

The Nazis demanded that Adolf Schickelgruber (sounds pretty Aryan) be installed as Chancellor of Germany with a number of Nazis entering the Cabinet. Hindenburg, Von Papen, and several other State conservatives allowed it for social peace in the streets and to keep the German Communist Party from making further advances politically. They did it to use Hitler and NSDAP as a bulwark against a healthy domestic Left. In a period of such social chaos, Hitler's pathologies weren't immediately apparent. But it is interesting to note that the antisocial personality type is easily diagnosed today in what are more domestically "peaceful" conditions:

The most effectively-diagnosed personality disorder is the antisocial personality. The outstanding traits of this disturbance are an inability to feel love, empathy, or loyalty towards other people and a lack of guilt or remorse for one's actions. Due to the lack of conscience that characterizes it, the condition that is currently known as antisocial personality disorder was labeled moral insanity in the nineteenth century. (Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 2001.)

This describes Hitler well from all of the accounts of his behavior behind-the-scenes, and is reflected in George W. Bush's public demeanor, policy decisions, and from his language in speeches (we don't know much about the private-sphere...yet).

Few want to admit it, but the majority in a society can become mad--but what of a significant minority that's capable of society-wide destruction? This is always possible in any developed nation, and at all times. We know this from accounts from the Middle Ages (the witch hunts), cults, satanic panics, psychiatric cults, abduction phenomena, and periods of political and cultural "demonism" like the Cold War's Red Scare.

In late-1938, the military-columns that paraded through Berlin headed towards Czechoslovakia were met with stunned silence and apathy by the populace. Hitler stood angrily at his balcony--nobody wanted what he wanted, there were no crowds, and the majority of Germans wanted nothing of his war-aims. If you thought everyone in Germany was behind Hitler, you were wrong. Scores-of-innocents died under the Allied aerial-bombing.

The German public had deep misgivings about the Nazi regime as early as 1935, after the "Night of Long Knives." This is rarely reported in the accepted history. After the autumn of 1938, Hitler gave fewer-and-fewer speeches and appearances before the public. Overall, the German people didn't adore him anymore and they feared his drive towards war. By 1944, he wasn't seen in public, and even rarely gave his famed radio addresses. Gauleiter Josef Goebbels did most of the public-speaking for the Nazi centre towards the end.

You can see a similarity here with the Bush administration--the more-reluctant the public has become, the deeper the President and his administration digs-in, illustrating no regard for the safety of the troops and the Iraqi people. They have deliberately cut-themselves-off from the American public physically, and whomever comes after them isn't likely to be very different.

This withdrawl is a general aspect of personality disorders: a stiffness and an unwillingness to change under changing circumstances, and n inflexibility and ossification of a personality. Granted, with the revelations of secret CIA prisons and illegal rendition (kidnapping, then torture), this should be no surprise, but expect future revelations that are considerably worse in their depravity. Where does this all come from? There is no consensus on the causes of antisocial personality disorder (APD), however:

The cause of this disorder is unknown, but biological or genetic factors may play a role. The incidence of antisocial personality is higher in people who have an antisocial biological parents. Although the diagnosis is limited to those over 18 years of age, there is usually a history of similar behaviors before age 15, such as repetitive lying, truancy, delinquency, and substance abuse. This disorder tends to occur more often in men and in people whose predominant role model had antisocial features. (http://www.psychnetuk.com/clinical_psychology/criteria_personality_antisocial.htm)

In Hitler's, Stalin's, and George W. Bush's case, their "predominant role model" was their abusive father. Ponder this relationship and how very publicly it has played-out. It's known that Stalin's father beat him and was emotionally-abusive, and there is evidence that Hitler's father was this way too.

Both Hitler and Stalin's mothers were the reverse of the fathers: loving and doting, while the father was distant and rejected them.

While we don't know the whole story regarding the Bush clan's culture, there are signs that George W. Bush has been repeatedly rejected by Sr. It's also not difficult to fathom that George H. W. Bush is a pathological-liar and a criminal with a tendency towards manipulation and deceit. Whether he has been physically-abusive to his children is unknown. Nonetheless, Bush Sr. ran the CIA, after all (often wearing-disguises at Langley so nobody knew what he was doing, even close associates and allies). He was also one of the masterminds behind Iran-Contra, and showed a deep-tendency towards sadism. The apple doesn't fall very far from the family tree here.

Bush Sr. has lied about his entire life, as well as the history of his family and their connections to the Nazi regime. Pathology is interconnected, and communicable, in the opinion of this author. A recent disclosure has revealed that he has had connections with the CIA beginning in 1953--an assertion he has denied for decades, and is still-denying with the release of key-documents this-week that prove otherwise. His recent breakdown at a speech might mean a fear of disclosure of the family-illness, and potential criminal penalties. Impeachment--it should be remembered--bars further-charges against an elected office-holder in our Constitution.

Yet, truth is always stranger than fiction and the "conventional wisdom." It appears that at least ten GOP senators are going to vote against further-escalation of the war, possibly more. This is becoming precipitously-close to the 2/3's majority in both the House and the Senate it will take to override a veto from the President. [Ed., 09.13.2008-Yet they ended up supporting even more funds for the wars in the Middle East and the so-called "surge."] What if he still commits the troops? He's up-for-grabs. [Ed. Or not!] Like Hitler on the eve of WWII, he's pushing it to where we will have to go as far as to unseat him. This fits the antisocial personality type, because many of them crave excitement and fear boredom or banality.

Hitler played this poker game with the OKW (the Military Command of the Wehrmacht), and for a brief-moment, they plotted a coup against him as some of them had done years earlier. It was the only option Hitler had left them, and he did it consciously as a matter of brinksmanship. The same applies to the Bush II administration. His advisers did their homework on how to bum rush the Constitution. Our option is massive civil disobedience and nonviolent non-compliance by the military and political-class, as well as those in all of the Federal bureaus (the bureaucracy). We have had a Constitutional crisis since 2000, but Americans love putting things off.

The current condition of our nation, our liberties, and on the ground in Iraq, are the cost of this inaction and lack of resolve and principles. We are all to blame, but we need to look at all those who somehow still support George W. Bush--they could very-well be sick. We might want to have our politicians tested as part of their qualifications for office.

Our Constitution should be amended so that it would disqualify anyone who tested-positive for psychopathology from holding public office. 3% of all men, and 1% of all women in America are antisocial personality types. And now we know why there are rich people...

Radically Revised, 09.13.2008

The Constitution of the United States of America (I know, it's been since High School):http://www.senate.gov/civics/constitution_item/constitution.htm

DSM IV Info:http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0002/ai_2699000257

THE NEXT GREAT DEPRESSION IS COMING, AND IT'S OUR FAULT

The United States--This is an unbelievable story. The GAO's Comptroller General--David M. Walker-- is saying we are facing an inevitable economic disaster based on Washington's borrow-and-spend policies under the Bush administration and the GOP controlled Congress.

Who's he? Nobody important, just the nation's accountant.

One of the BIG problems is that our currency bonds are being bought-up by the People's Republic of China and other "economic allies" like Japan to pay for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. What? You didn't know this? Yes, because Americans are stupid enough to want it both ways: out-of-control defense spending, but with lower-taxes with social services only for themselves. Wouldn't you?

Americans are almost singularly insane on this point: they won't elect anyone who will tell them the truth. The truth? If you want government services of any kind you have to raise taxes. Of course, this unprecedented borrowing is fallout from Bush's ending of progressive taxation. Progressive taxation? What's that? Nothing much, it just made the American middle class possible at all. But their wacky economics have been common currency since before the 2000 elections, and Americans have demanded this of them. It took a lot of dumbing-down to achieve this mentality.

The one who dies with the most toys is uh...is dead.

The baby boomers are retiring in the face of all this debt, which will likely lead to a demographic-disaster that we've never seen. Well, yes, if we keep borrowing like this for another 30 years, which is unthinkable anyway. The political costs are already too high to maintain this reckless fiscal policy, so it's unlikely to continue for even ten more years. But we would deserve it by the end 30 years, but who wouldn't?

Walker is practically advocating a social revolution to avoid this mess, calling for a groundswell, but I think maybe it's too late. Our deficit is $8.5 trillion, which would make any REAL conservative nervous (and angry) as hell.

When the bulk of the Boomers start using their Medicade, Medicare and Social Security entitlements, without adequate progressive taxation there to fund it as it did for decades...wow, watch-out! The public won't have it, we don't want to pay higher taxes, especially the richer we get. Walker isn't very optimistic, and neither am I, Americans are pretty stupid. Just look at Iraq and the dozen permanent military bases we have there. How much did they cost? How many social programs did it take to do it?

Where are the billions of our tax-dollars that have gone-missing in Iraq? Prove me wrong America. You won't, you're too stupid and greedy. We're going to get what we deserve, so maybe there is justice on this rock called Earth. It's going to be entertaining watching people dressed down in this country, seeing the cocksure idiots blame themselves (an accurate assessment) because their hollow ideologies have failed them. I'll be laughing all the way to Canada or Sweden, but somewhere that's civilized.