WHO IS THIS MAN?

Be prepared, storms a comin'.

from freeacre

Almost daily, articles are pushed into my face on sites like Jeff Rense or Steve Quale’s that announce that President Obama is a Christian, a Muslim, and just recently, a Jew – sometimes all on the same page!
“ … I suspect his mother’s father Stanley Dunham was Jewish,” Henry Makow writes from Save the Males. Obama’s mother Stanley Anne Dunham, certainly looked and acted like a communist Jew…” he opines.

And, on another site a writer decries the “fact” that the little girl who asked President Obama “why do people hate you?” was a “plant.” Like the six year old was supposed to have independently hopped on a bus and gotten herself to the town hall and into the room full of political wonks to ask a question. Since she arrived with her mother, an active Democrat, he refers to her as “the moonbat mommy with Julia and Comrade Obama.”

Obama is also (depending on which hysterical and polarized site one reads) a Kenyan or an Indonesian. I don’t know why they are making such a big deal about this. There is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law, after all. The constitution rightly attempted to halt the disturbing habit of British Kings ruling by bloodline despite what country they were from. They were sick of their kings being Germans or French or Austrian or whatever. They wanted to insure that the President of our country hailed from this country. Obama’s mother was an American, and he was raised by his American grandparents, and has lived and worked for Americans all his life and his loyalties are here. I don’t give a rat’s ass where he was born. I’d like to have the president who was duly elected be allowed to serve, for once. Those “birthers” don’t seem to give a shit that McCain was born in Panama – and well they shouldn’t. It doesn’t fucking matter. If the Constitution is so important, start looking at the Patriot Act, not the stupid birth issue, for God’s sake. So, what else is going on here?

Some people say he is siding with the fascist takeover by the oligarchs (and, to tell the truth, I find that argument compelling), others think he’s a socialist as he attempts to provide universal health care. Others write that he is part of the global cabal of Illuminati overlords. It is said that he is nationalizing the banks. Conversely, he is accused of siding with the banks taking over the government. Others scream that he is a Godless communist, and ultimately - the Anti-Christ. Oh, yeah, and he’s bi-sexual to boot.

So, I have to ask: Does this seem really strange to you? Unless he is some sort of shape shifter from some cheesy science fiction movie, I am beginning to think that none of these sightings have anything to do with President Barack Obama. And, I have to admit, I am disturbed. Let me explain why:

Let’s go back to the bad old days. Sometimes you can sort of pinpoint a time in history when things began to go seriously awry. Like when Edward Bernaise began to apply his cousin, Sigmund Freud’s, ideas of the structure of the personality to sell products. He used his insights on what motivates people, their desires and their insecurities, and constructed a form of powerful manipulation that has morphed into what we now know as “Marketing.” Or, when a little known resentment-filled house painter got tossed into jail and used the time to write a creepy little book called “Mein Kompf,” - thereby mobilizing a bunch of his compatriots to rise up and feel good about themselves after they lost WWI by telling them that they, as Aryans, were the superior race and their destiny was to rule the world. Or, later, when an economics professor at the University of Chicago named Leo Strauss taught a group of overachievers including Dick Chaney and Donald Rumsfeld that the future of America was to advance the cause of global domination by a fiendish, but tidy, philosophy called “neo-conservativism.” Make up a story, he said, that the sheeple will follow. Never tell them the truth. Make them fearful and ignorant, and never lose site of the goal of power and control of global resources and military might to build a stable empire.

Which leads me to the slimy, but clever little maggot – Karl Rove. As a Young Republican, Karl Rove took up the neo-con standard and merged the money and power of the Republican military/Chamber of Commerce coalition with the energy and paranoia of the Fundamental Armageddonists. Beginning in the Nixon days and running through the first Bush administration, he really got going during the Clinton years. By that time he and his foam-at-the-mouth Christian Coalition minions waged an unrelenting character assassination campaign against Clinton over the heinous “crime” of getting a blow job, of all things. This is when the rest of the world began to suspect that the American people were going nuts. Meanwhile the neo-con agenda really was being advanced with the complicity of Clinton. It was during these years, after all, that NAFTA, CAFTA, and the World Bank began to export the manufacturing base of our land and the regulations on the banking industry were shit-canned with very little fanfare.

But, the Liberal contingent (including me) we so outraged by the outrageous demonizing of Bill Clinton that we began to absolutely hate all things Republican and were distracted from the financial agenda. So, when Bush II got elected, and then really DID do heinous things like bomb countries that had done nothing to us and torture and kill civilians and systematically dismantle the Bill of Rights, we criticized the asshat President with as much or more vitriol as the right-wing minions had used against Bill Clinton. For eight years we despised and insulted and struggled against each other in a no-holds-barred brawl of the “right” versus the “left.”

I would submit that one of the unintended consequences of this on-going national dog fight is what we have now: nobody believes anything that anyone says, nobody knows what is really going on, and the country is polarized beyond anyone’s imagination, leaving it totally dysfunctional. We have driven each other mad.

Enter Barack Obama. I suspect that he is a true centrist. I suspect that, due to his rich heritage of cultures, he is compelled to attempt to heal the divide - much like a child caught in the middle of two parents who are constantly at odds. I fear that he truly desires to be inclusive, to bring out the best in people of all sorts, and probably in denial of their flaws. I fear that he may actually be trusting people around him (even if they are corporate and financial psychopathic scum), and expecting that he can resolve our differences, much like his hero, Abraham Lincoln. And, let us not dwell upon what happened to Mr. Lincoln. It is too scary to me.
And, for his effort, I am afraid that everyone on every side is turning against Barack Obama, except those darn Norwegians. Maybe we’ll find a way to attack them next. Perhaps the next Republican administration will bomb their seed bank in retaliation for the Nobel Peace Prize. Karl Rove is probably working on the plans already.

It’s an old story and one that has been repeated in our lifetimes. Christ was nailed to the cross because he pissed off the Pharisees when he threw the money changers out of the temple. But he also angered his dispossessed followers when he refused to be their militant King. So, when the time came to be judged, nobody stood up for him.

Martin Luther King was assassinated after he over-stepped his role as a racial activist and attempted to enlarge his message to that of peace and freedom for all working people and spoke against the war.

Robert Kennedy, another cerebral, eloquent speaker who wanted to stop the war and work for social justice was shot and silenced.

Are you familiar with the term “racket feeling”? It’s a transactional analysis term that refers to a main bad feeling that people find themselves experiencing over and over due to decisions that they made when they were children. It is usually due to some sort of abuse or discount of themselves. It may be hurt or anger or humiliation, helplessness, rage, inadequacy, betrayal or a plethora of painful feelings. But, whatever one’s racket feelings are, a person often sets him or herself up to feel them one way or another. And, the kicker is that it is done out of their awareness. As Palooka’s Revenge would say, they are in “denial.” They don’t own the feeling. Instead, they project the bad parent or situation onto somebody or something else and then struggle against it and end up re-experiencing the racket feelings over and over.

Barack Obama, it seems to me, is the perfect foil for people’s projections. He is calm rather than emotional, thoughtful rather than reactionary. I don’t think any of us knows what the real deal is with him because we can not see beyond our own projected perceptions, and we have learned not to trust what any of our leaders say. That’s why he can be judged to be everything from the Messiah to the Anti-Christ, a Christian, Muslim, Jew, commie, fascist, corporate tool or bankster overlord. People can comfortably dwell in their favorite emotion of hate, outrage, fear, disappointment, confusion, or even devotion. Will the real Barack Obama please stand up?

Maybe he already has. And, maybe we are so blind and crazy that we can’t see him. Maybe he’s just a guy who is in an impossible situation and he’s trying to do the best he can against enormous odds. Maybe not. I am afraid that we will never know. I think that if I were in his position I’d tell us all to take the job and shove it far into where the sun don’t shine. But because he is part of a larger dynamic, I am afraid that he will be used as a reluctant player in our national game of Doom as we all declare war against each other. Because, we are doing the same thing on other issues as we are doing on Obama. It’s getting to be like the Tower of Babel – nobody understands anybody else on anything.

So, I ask myself, “How do I stop at least the part that I am playing in this insanity?”

I think that I need to identify what my racket feelings are. Personally, I know that mine involve helplessness and betrayal with a good dose of anger. I need to know what I come to the table with, for openers. And then, I need to learn to just stop and put them aside. Look with new eyes. Admit that I don’t know what is going on. Get sane.

Maybe it is time for forgiveness for all our shortcomings. Maybe it’s time to just try to make things better where I can, and attempt to cultivate a peaceful place inside of me. .. some natural place that was mine when I was born, but got lost somehow. And as far as the President goes, I wish him well – whomever or whatever he is. Maybe someday we will get to really know him. Let’s leave the mental door open to the possibility that maybe we and he can do better this time. After all, as John Conner says, “The future is not yet written.”

Birds in back yard, chicks have grown!

DEMOCRACY, CONSTITUTIONS, AND PLUTOCRACY

First, some photos from other regulars on the site.

Palooka's mother lode of chanterellas, don't they look tasty.

Baz's bounty, brown sugar and local honey glazed eels. Looks good eating to me.

DEMOCRACY, CONSTITUTIONS, AND PLUTOCRACY
from Murph

In my last post, I started by saying that I was feeling overloaded with information, saturated with the stuff. So let’s start off with a list of stuff I have been perusing lately.

A 500+ page book that is well documented
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20262742/The-Rich-and-the-Super-Rich

New guest post on Charles Smith site from Oct 5 titled Inalienable Rights and the Constitution; http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

All of the posts at this site are examinations of how things are currently and their relationship to the constitution; http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwinA.htm

This will get you started on what I am writing about in this post.

I am seeing more and more articles lately that are examining the pact from the 1700’s with the government and the citizens of this country called the U.S. Constitution.

One thing that I find interesting that there is more discussion about this phrase from the constitution;
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

In other words, the people have the right to revolt and change the government when it no longer serves their interests. I’m sure all of you are now familiar with the quote from Jefferson concerning a revolt every 20 years is necessary;

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

For more writings by Jefferson on the subject see;
http://www.revolt.net/

Now let’s see, revolts against the government in one form or another in the last 20 years or so.
Gorden Kahl in Arkansas in the 80’s. I was living there at the time and the shootout took place a few miles from where I was living.

The CSA revolt in the 80’s in Arkansas. Here is a short quote about it from; http://www.rickross.com/reference/israel/israel6.html This article has a few facts wrong but gives the essence of this group. Good read.
“The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, as Ellison's group eventually called itself, would be responsible for a church arson in Springfield and for bombing a Jewish Community Center in Indiana. As early as 1983, it talked of blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City. Ellison and other members of the group even went to Oklahoma City at one point in the early 1980s to case the federal building, which Timothy McVeigh destroyed on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. That raid began April 19, 1985 - 10 years to the day before McVeigh's attack.
An accident at the Covenant compound, and then a raid by local, state and federal officers, broke up the group before it carried out any more violent plans, according to Noble, who served more than two years behind bars for possession of unregistered weapons.”
Actually, I was living there then and not far from their compound and had a friend that took part in the raid by local police. What actually happened is a couple of the members of the group got out of control of the leaders and decided to knock off a Brinks truck and killed a couple of guards. They were survivalists and led the feds on a chase through the mountains for over a month before finally walking out and giving themselves up. I had met a few of the members of the group and got along just fine with them. They offered courses in urban and rural warfare but I never had the money to take them up on it. At the time, they sure seemed legit to me.
The Okalahoma city bombing.
Waco Texas
Ruby Ridge
And then there is 9-11. Was this a random terrorist attack, or an external rebellion against American economic dominance and policies, or a manufactured incidence by our government, or some combination?

Well, we sure do know how those actions turned out. Lots of people killed and nothing changed. In fact, the aftermath of all of this was a rabid increase in power of the executive branch of the government that continues today. It is readably apparent that our government is in the hands of bankers and CEO’s with the president as sham head of state.

In any event, one of our most current severe problems in this country is a lack of citizen insistence that the government operate according to the constitution. If we don’t like the constitution, then put together some other form of agreement on how we are to be governed. It seems obvious to me that the government has no intention of adhering to the constitution and its tenants and that we are rapidly sliding into some form of absolute plutocratic control. Our elections are, and have been, shams of the most severe kind. This is not to say that we haven’t been under control of a plutocracy in the past, (just read the economic history from 1870 through the 1920’s) but I can say that the amount of control has gone up exponentially. I can say that our supposedly constitutional guarantees of freedom and rights have been radically diminished and governmental controls at every level of living have increased dramatically, except of course for the plutocracy. When the robber baron in the early 1900’s got so excessive that it could be no longer tolerated, people in government put some brakes on to their excesses. But then they got the Federal Reserve act passed in 1913. The plutocracy consolidated power and it’s been down hill every since for all of us. Our dollars in purchasing power is now 4 cents when compared to 1944. Our supposed inalienable rights and freedoms are being softly taken away without a meaningful peep out of the population. The harsh debasement of the only people in our society that actually produce anything of value, what we call the blue collar worker, is proceeding apace. I’ve gotten arguments about that kind of statement. Oh come on I retort, what does a supervisor produce, or a CEO, or a banker? Unless you want to talk about endless paperwork, they produce nothing. Even the financiers, the investors produce nothing except more hopeful profits for themselves.

Now I suppose it can be argued that an economy can be built on something other than production of useful goods, like the information economy, or the get your degree economy, or the service economy. None of which is really needed unless you are producing something people really do need, in other words, some kind of production of truly useful goods. The essentials are still food, water, clothing and getting out of hostile weather. It appears obvious to me that pre western civilization, pre industrial societies were able to be self sufficient or very nearly so. But the larger the society, the more it depends on a division of labor and disconnect from the social group as a whole to survive. Much smaller societies tend to have a pretty much of a consensus concerning how they will live and the rules to live by within the group. In larger societies, at least over time, consensus becomes impossible, allowing a ruling elite to take charge. As the ruling elite’s power base expands on the promises to the society at large, they become more rapacious and more authoritative (controlling.)

1) All that is just abstraction. Just the creation of Marketing, Business, and Financial Business School creations that have led us to the sorry state that the nation is in.

2) With the constraints of financial and marketing systems that have metastasized and are ready to blow up and kill the host, I’d say hopefully, all this will go the way of the homing pigeon. What we will need more of is trades people who can fix things and manufacture usable items. Cottage industries that produce items vital to the lives of the people close by.

3) It would appear that fighting the government with the weaponry envisioned by our Founding Fathers is, in the end, futile. It may hold them off for awhile, but in the end, armed resistance is futile. They have the clear advantage in terms of firepower, and are just looking for an excuse to demonstrate it. At least that is what the plutocracy is banking on. I will leave the arguments over this for others to expand on.

4) It could be that better tactic would be to assess where their vulnerabilities lie and take advantage of those. A globalist consumer economy requires consumers. Pretty simple. Resist by not consuming anything that isn’t produced here. Of course the problem revolves around what is not produced in country that is truly needed. My observation is that most of what is produced outside of the country is fluff.

5) They manipulate and bombard us with commercials – disconnect from the satellite and cable and stop purchasing objectionable newspapers.

6) Turn the tables on them. Has your boss taken out a “dead peasant’s” insurance policy on you or your co-workers? Then, take out a “dead boss” policy on him and see if that makes him squirm.

7) Observe what other things they are using to damage or destroy us – and turn it back on them. Obviously, one cannot go into detail.

8) Avoid joining groups that can be infiltrated and manipulated, including political parties and protest groups. Random acts of creative resistance are much harder to identify and punish.

9) Become as self-sufficient and sustainable as possible as a community. Reach out to as many neighbors as you can. Nobody can do it alone (unless you are Baz, living in the New Zealand outback or some such thing and even Baz is dependent on the greater society for his life style).

10) Cultivate happiness. Figure out what your passion is and do it. Their whole evil system is based on unhappy people manipulated into buying or doing things to relieve their mental anguish. Freedom and happiness are the anti-dote. Take those seriously and make them a priority. They are our birthright.

What I find immensely interesting is how an elite cast is created in complex societies, and why the population will tolerate them. It seems to have a relationship to ownership and control of resources and the control of the medium of exchange (money in the case of most societies). Take away the elite ownership of resources (in whatever form) and put it into the hands of the general population and the elite caste systems breaks down. It sure enough appears to me that not allowing it to happen in the first place is a bunch easier than to wrest control away from them later. When this control by the elites is allowed to continue, we end up with a plutocracy, where the primary benefit of the arrangement always awards disproportionately the elites in the form of money and privilege. In other words, egalitarianism is never the outcome of this arrangement. Keep this in mind during the next voting cycle.

Our elder, Caroline's spectacular planers filled with flowers and raspberries, strawberries, potatoes, grapes, tomatoes, cauliflowers, chard and beets. WOW!

WEIRD DREAMS

Comfort food, rabbit, spaghetti, garlic bread

garlic bread from scratch.

Todays eggs

Weird Dreams
By freeacre

This has been a rather odd week. Everything seems distant to me both in place and in time. Lots of suffering and challenges with the earthquakes and tsunamis in Samoa, Indonesia, and the Philippians. The whole Pacific Plate seems to be moving and raising hell all over. It could be just doing what it does, or it could be the beginning of something even bigger, like part of the process of a magnetic pole shift. At any rate, it seems far away and there’s not much I can do about it, except sympathize with the people involved.

Same goes for politics. The drama over the health care proposals seems almost tedious to me despite the importance of the issues involved. Blah, blah, blah… blah, blah, blah…. Insurance companies, Big Pharma, maternity care, abortion craziness, a bunch of old men arguing that pregnancy should not be covered, while their Medicare pays for Viagra enhanced hard-ons. I grow tired of their crap.

The Flu disinformation campaign is seemingly to be just another annoying thing. Are we going to be forced to take the shots? Can we choose to opt out? Is the flu a really big threat? Or, is the vaccine worse? I wish I could just trust the government to do the right thing. I wish we could take the damn shot and be happy that we did the right thing for the protection of the people as a whole. But, of course, we can’t. I mean, I remember when the polio vaccine came out, and what a blessing it was. Same thing for the measles. But, it is different now. I see the agony my neighbor goes through every day with Gulf War syndrome. I see my nephew tragically damaged with autism. Is it the vaccines or some other toxic poisons the FDA has allowed into the environment that is making them so sick? All you can count on is that somebody is making a shitload of money off it and probably writing the laws regarding it as well. But, until they stop my car in the street, or come to my door to administer the shot, it seems far away for now.

Then there is the debacle on Wall St. In the latest Rolling Stone, Matt Taibi s evisceration Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and the SEC as he did Goldman Sachs and the “Federal” Reserve in the previous issue. He analyzes the gargantuan fraud by the Boyz in charge of our financial system and lays them bare. This article coupled with the new Michael Moore movie on capitalism should completely destroy any vestige of legitimacy that the American banking system has. Anyone who continues to invest a dime in securities after this is simply a hopeless moron or a flat out criminal. But, then, we already know that, and Wall Street seems very far away. The savings and pensions of working people all over the world has been evaporated with the trumped up financial froth created from Frankenstein derivatives and collateralized debt obligations. Fractional banking ran amok with the complicity of the regulatory agencies and the bought off congress. One can only imagine the consequences in the international community once this congeals into common knowledge. We are so toast.

But, for now, the money still buys stuff and the electricity is still on. The football game is in the background, and I’ve got spaghetti going on the stove. Everything seems pretty normal (except that the chickens just laid six eggs in a towel on the porch and it’s been snowing for two days).

“Normal,” I say, except for this disturbing dream that I had yesterday:

I dreamed that Murph and I lived in a forest of huge trees next to a river. The trees were Sequoias or Redwoods – really huge. That element probably came from watching the new Ken Burns series on National Parks. (I started talking to myself with the voice of Peter Coyote since watching that as well, but that’s another story…) Anyway, we were planning to climb one of these very tall trees with some sort of parachute and pulley thing. But, when I looked up and saw just how tall this tree was, I told Murph that I figured it was more that I could do. So, the plan got put off, and then the wind came along and blew the gear into the river.

I jumped into a boat and went after it. The current carried it a long way downstream. Eventually, I ended up in an unfamiliar place on the river where a small community of people was gathered. I was hanging out with them and we noticed a cluster of small clouds roiling in the sky. As they approached, the clouds began to disappear revealing luminous space ships within each one. It was broad daylight. Bright sunny day with autumn leaves on the trees by the river. Then, a few fighter jets whizzed past the space ships. We, of course, were dumbfounded. Then, amazingly, additional planes began to appear. But, they were not fighter jets. They were planes that seemed to have been there all along. It’s as though they had just uncloaked and were stationary in the sky, facing off with the flying saucer space ships.

Additional planes began showing up with a sliding door on the side that you could see military guys standing in the doorway trying to reach out and grab some stringy things that the space ships seemed to be dropping. The planes were unusual, in that they could maneuver and hover, much like the flying saucer types. The sky began to fill up with these ships and also larger support ships from both sides. They appeared to be toe to toe and it seemed like an ominous battle was about to begin. This stranger came running up and sat down and called his wife on his cell phone. “Honey,” he said excitedly, “It’s actually happening! It’s an alien invasion – going on right now!”

Well, I was feeling pretty amazed and vulnerable because I realized that I was down the river and away from murph. So, I woke up, and was happy to have him at my side.

Now, what the hell? I do not, as a rule, have dreams like this. As much as I may like to, I do not see auras, have visions, or channel any messages from anywhere. So, I don’t think this is any vision of something that is actually going to happen.

But, I think that it is a manifestation of generalized anxiety about being threatened and vulnerable and basically a spectator of things that I have no control over…like the frigging flu, like the frigging economy, like the frigging earthquakes.

We are surrounded by very big forces (like a forest full of giant trees) that are beyond our pitiful ability to affect. What we can do is stick together and hope for the best.

Anybody else having weird dreams?

We hope Baz doesn't mind us sharing a picture he took of the a sick little Razorback piglet that he found abandoned and attempted to save it. Sadly despite his best efforts, the little guy (named Snorky) succumbed.