If you know me you know that I have a love/hate relationship with conspiracy theories. On the one hand, they’re really entertaining! They make for great “X-Files” plotlines, and extra bonus points if they can work in The Illuminati! (And keep a straight face.) fnord

But on the other hand, they’re almost always complete bunk. Not to say there haven’t been grand conspiracies in the past: Military radiation testing on civilians, CIA selling crack, Watergate. But here’s the thing about conspiracies: they never stay secret. I think it’s supposed to be an old Sicilian saying, something like: “Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”

Someone talks. Someone always talks. Documents are kept. Conspiracies become known, the bigger they are the more certain they’ll be exposed. And, unlike most fringe and popular but unfounded conspiracies, it won’t be some outside group of amateur conspiracy hunters who have all the answers but are frustratingly ignored by so-called scientists and experts, who expose the cover-ups. And the more impossible and absurd the scope of the conspiracy, the more likely the conspiracy is BS. Like 9/11, “Loose Change” khrap. For 9/11 to have been a government planned event, it would have required the cooperation of literally thousands of people.

Occam’s Razor here: What’s more probable? That thousands of military, police, firefighters, and civilians were involved in setting up and carrying out an event so huge and devastating that it would have required unimaginable about of planning, organization, timing, cooperation, and yet no one involved has come forward to say they were a part of it and become the most famous person in the world for exposing the greatest and worst conspiracy ever in the history of human civilization…. or, that several fundamental religious zealots took advantage of holes in air transportation security to fly some planes into buildings?

Like I said, conspiracies are entertaining; reality is often banal in its horrific simplicity.

Anyway,to the point: Here’s a recent news item that goshdarnit, sounds a lot to me like it could be a valid conspiracy-murder:

• Man who set up alternate email for White House dies in plane crash

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell’s life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR’s attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell’s not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

Now, here’s where critical thinking has to come in. For example, these tips…can they be independantly verified? More importantly, can they be proven to have come before the event? It’s simply amazing how much people just knew something, or state they predicted something, or had a clue to something…in hindsight after an event has happened. Cognitive bias is rife with this kind of post hoc misthinking.

And of course, there’s the reader’s own subjective bias. I, for example, would believe Rove, Cheney, many others in the Bush administration, would kill and eat babies if it meant massive quasi-fascist control of the free world. I don’t think much better of most politicians in general–the neo-cons just happen to be Hitlers in an ocean of SS. Am I more prone to confirmation bias and self-selecting evidence to fit my personal bias? Yep. Guilty as charged. We all are. It takes a lot of work to be fair and unbiased, and argueably, we never can be.

(Which, by the way, to go off on a tangent, the scientific method is vital to get at objective truths. Proper scientific methodology demands blind and double-blind testing to correct for bias, as well as repeated retesting and verification of results by other people. Science: it works, bitches.)

So, I’m going to watch this case of the killed Bush admin. I.T. guy and see what, if anything comes from it. But then, the co-called liberal media, the “4th Estate,” has been horrifically bad the last eight years at following up on and putting to task recent conspiracies, such as Valarie Plame and Scooter Libby/Cheney. And Congress has no interest in investigating Bush or Cheney for impeachable offenses nor is the media interested in investigating the possibility. Nor for the possible war crimes charges againast Rumsfield and Bush that were recently released. Nor for the countless open-for-all-to-see conspiracies of war profiteering (highly illegal by the way) committed by Cheney and Rumsfield and Bush with the help of Haliburton, KBR, BlackWater, and several other contractors in Iraq.

So, while it’s still true that conspiracies are exposed and are rarely huge and complicated, it doesn’t mean there’s always anyone paying attention.

This is going to have to be short…so tired….

Something that’s got me irked late in the Presidential campaign is the constant bandying about “socialist” this and “Marxist” that. One person I follow on Twitter remarked of Obama after the election, “…too bad he’s a socialist,” and he was rooting for him. Now this:

• Paul Broun calls Obama a “Marxist”

Georgian Representative Broun took Obama’s comment to encourage and build up a civil service agenda (civil workers and Peace Corps, etc.) as tatamount to Marxism, like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. I am so sick of people throwing “Marxist” around to mean anything non-American–and being utterly wrong.

Hitler was a national socialist at best–fascist in reality. Stalin was a fascist dictator. Neither of which in the least bit Marxist. Stalin started as a Marxist, back in the days of the Revolution with Trotsky and Lenin, then quickly abandoned the spirit and the letter of Marxism in order to become a religiously worship dictator, counter to Marxist concepts.

Marxism is indeed a criticism of capitalism–a very pointed criticism, indeed. But what Marx and Engles recommended or believed in was NOT socialism controlled by a dictator or even a ruling “party.” They believed in society owned by the proletariat, the workers, the people–not fascist rulers giving lip service to such ideals but in fact ruled the people with iron fist and continued to control the means of production and distribution. Marx would have been appalled by what Stalin did and disgusted by Hitler.

Obama is a liberal, but very much a liberal capitalist. And when it comes to actual (or nearest thing to) socialism: when you look at the high average level of lifestyle, lack of poverty, lack of health care induced bankruptcy, high level of social health, low infant mortality rates, high education rates of socialist countries like Canada, Sweden, Netherlands…. I have to wonder, what’s wrong with that?

I can’t believe I missed this. In researching information on my last post regarding the addition of peaceful opponents to capital punishment being added by police to terrorist watch lists, I found this news item from last year about the FBI and CIA’s programs to recruit and pay for citizen informants (thus spreading fear and mistrust as well as creating gi-hugic ineffectual mountains of hay to look for needles in–resulting in more false accusations and arrests and less actual safety and security)

• FBI Proposes Building Network of U.S. Informants

Excellent, emotional and enlightening movie, by the way, of a story set within the end of the East German informant society: The Lives of Others.

It’s easy to find countless articles on the appearant rise of police brutality and fascist, militarized mindset, and are gleefully proud of their testasterone overdosed abuses, and stories in which the police are used as political weapons.

Well, here’s one more story of overreaching abuse of power and damage to civil liberties:

• Top Maryland cops ordered nonviolent peace activists’ names added to anti-terror, drug trafficking databases

And a good editorial on the subject:

• Opposing death penalty gets people listed as terrorists.

In the midst of the ever-increasing shift from police watching over the public to the police watching the public, one will try to mitigate the fear and disappointment by rationalizing: “Well, these are just the bad ones in the news. Most cops are good ones!” So, where are those “good cops” when the bad ones are breaking the law, violating the Constitution, and generally harassing and beating the public? Why aren’t the so-called good cops standing up against the few bad ones and eliminating them from their ranks?

Because: (a) police forces generally draw the power-hungry bullies of society which tend to create a pervasive culture of abusiveness from the inside;

(b) police forces are being funded by the Department of Justice and given neato-cool paramilitary toys to play with based on their devotion to and performance in the War on Drugs (and increasingly the War on Terrah) which is inherently a civil liberty trampling campaign that routinely treats harmless citizens as wanton and deadly criminals, fostering a culture of abuse and power from the outside;

(c) police forces are fiercely fraternal and loyal to each other–a useful and vital trait for military units in war, a destructive and criminal trait in a group that is supposed to serve the interests of the public over and beyond any sense of brotherly camaraderie.

These influences from the inside, outside, and the pathological in-group loyalty police forces encourage, generally lead to an environment which will quickly reject or break the few people who go into police work with a true desire to serve the public and put citizen above fellow cop.

However, there are very rarely exceptions to the rule. A story out today tells of a Chicago sheriff who is (at least in this case…who knows what he’s like otherwise) thinking and feeling like a real person and not RoboCop (pre-self aware RoboCop, of course) :

• Illinois sheriff scolds banks for evictions of ‘innocent’ renters

Banks on foreclosed houses aren’t doing basic checking on who’s actually in the houses, and are literally forcing renters out onto the street even if they’re good, rent paying renters, despite what defaulting the actual owners of the home are doing on their mortgage.

“These mortgage companies … don’t care who’s in the building,” [Sheriff] Dart said Wednesday. “They simply want their money and don’t care who gets hurt along the way.

“On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We’re not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We’re just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today.”

So, good for him!

Hilarious story for you; be sure to hold onto your side for this rib-tickler:

As the nearly 160 year old bank, Lehman Brother’s, failed, funneling toward bankruptcy, it was handing millions of dollars in compensation over to its CEO.

• Lehman Bros. chief executive faces lawmakers

“Your company is now bankrupt, our economy is now in a state of crisis, but you get to keep $480 million,” [Rep. Henry] Waxman [(D-Bev. Hills)] said, displaying yearly compensation figures on large TV screens in the hearing room. “I have a very basic question for you. Is this fair?”

. . .

Waxman then ticked off some of Fuld’s other personal assets — a $14-million oceanfront home in Florida, a vacation home in Sun Valley, Idaho, and an art collection “filled with million-dollar paintings.”

.
“It seems that the system worked for you, but it didn’t seem to work for the rest of the country and the taxpayers who now have to pay up to $700 billion to bail out our economy,” Waxman said. “We can’t continue to have a system where Wall Street executives privatize all the gains and then socialize all the losses.”

Ah, that self-correcting free market works so well, making sure those who work get paid fairly. Well, nothing more really needs to be said. Except maybe to ask if people have stocked up on their torches and pitch forks yet.

The House just passed the bail-out bill the Senate passed earlier this week, which not only bails out Wall Street but also has billions for pork attached to, such as subsidies for rum makers in Puerto Rico and a couple million for makers of kids’ wooden arrows.

So, the bankers and speculators who f–ed up the economy and screwed millions of people get their golden parachutes and are not held accountable for their actions–and the millions of harmed Americans who have their lives ruined by the actions of predetory lending and quasi-criminal securities reselling, are producing stories like these:

• Woman, 90, shoots self inside foreclosed home

Nearly 90% of Americans did not want this bail out. At the very least, some wanted assistance for citizens such as frozen foreclosures until they can be reevaluated or adjusted interest or principles–but nothing is in the bill which helps anyone but the bankers and the companies that got the attached earmarks.

That said, I’d like to present something:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — 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.

Just some silly words from the Founding Fathers in a little paper called the Declaration of Independence. Probably outdated and worthless sentiments nowadays. I guess take whatever meaning from that what you will.
How’s that “consent from the governed” working out, ya think?

In reference to the blog title: The exact same thing happened in 1931 when a very similar over-credited housing bubble burst and friend of big business President Hoover ramrodded Congress to pass a bill to give (in today’s money) about $500 billion to bail out the banks. A move that worked so well that countless people were forced out of their homes and off their farms and we had a Great Depression that required Roosevelt to allow the banking system to finally fail and rebuild itself with appropriate regulations. (The very regulations that Reagan and Bush got rid of in their terms. Funny, that.)

Of course, we don’t have a drought of Biblical proportions we have to deal with today which does change things significantly. But maybe that just means that people in all these tent cities that are starting to spring up will get to eat government veggies instead of government cheese.

A Twitter twit that I follow posted this article earlier today on his feed:

• The Economy Will Be Fine. No, I’m Being Serious.

. . . Despite the doomsayers, America will shake this event off like a bad case of fleas. The people shouting “Doom!” the loudest are the very ones who stand to benefit the most.

Hank Paulson is trying to bail out his former firm and his friends. Congress sees a blank check it can amend to death once passed, and pile on more pork to their friends. The presidential candidates use it as a talking point. . . .

You know, there’s a very good chance the economy is going to be just fine–and it seems most Americans also think so or at least are willing to accept whatever fallout from letting some (insured) banks fail or get bought out. Despite the slim majority of the House that voted against the bill, estimates put the number of constituents who have written or called their legislator at 50 to 1 100 to 1 against the bail out.

We could be wrong; we could be headed to a disaster that leaves us all tanning hide for warmth on crumbling asphalt streets. But the funny thing is, an overwhelming number of economists, economics professors, thinktanks, agree that a bank bail out will be the worst thing to happen to the economy.

Here’s some interesting points to ponder:

We already know Hank Paulsen was the former CEO of one of the largest banks he wants to bail out. Old news.

But yesterday’s (Monday’s) market crash–did you know that was caused not by a sell out, but just the opposite: no one was selling on Wall Street. If the economy was about to tank, if people were legitimately afraid of an economic disaster, people would have been selling fast and cheap and cause a crash–but by no one selling what happened was basically Wall Street was holding the economy hostage while they demanded their bail out.

Interesting that this morning before the market opened the president addressed the nation with gloom and doom messages–some economists say in order to destabilize the inherent trust that runs a healthy stock market in hopes on a real crash which would justify the bail out that would help his friends….

Instead, the market rallied with its 3rd highest point gain, evah! Much to Bush’s, Paulsen’s, and Bernake’s chagrin, I’m sure.

The bail out plan this weekend, even the one with all the “protections” Obama wanted, would have succeeded in only one thing and have failed on the most important thing: It would have given Wall Street and speculation bank executives Christmas morning, but would have done not a single thing to help average citizens (in fact the $1T credit debt the nation would have incurred would have devastated the middle and lower classes and forced a gutting of social programs), while also have done nothing to fix the problem in the first place. It did nothing to address the epidemic of foreclosures and property value plummet which is the underlying cause of the crisis. Nothing.

“The people shouting ‘Doom!’ the loudest are the very ones who stand to benefit the most” That sure isn’t me, my family, my friends, my neighborhood, and probably not you or anyone you know.

“Devilstower” has a fantastically complete and detailed explanation of how three of the largest events/scandals to undermine the U.S. economy in the last 25 years have had the involvement of persons like, oh, John McCain, his financial adviser Phil Gramm, and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan:

• Three Times is Enemy Action

Alan Greespan is often lauded, even by people skeptical of conservative administrations, as a champion who tried real hard, darn it. I’d known his policies helped accelerate the corporate owned government but I didn’t know to what extent–nor when it all began! I didn’t realize until I started to do some research that Greenspan was appointed by Reagan and was involved in the development of “trickle-down” Reaganomics which sought to tear down New Deal regulations and oversight and increase the flow of wealth toward the top of the social pyramid.

He was also the Fed Chairman under Clinton–but then, he had little to do with the Clinton admin’s balanced budgets and federal surplus. What he was involved with was the continued encouragement of government by the CEOs, (supported by Clinton as well, lest people forget that while he was a social progressive, Clinton was still a corporatist).

Here was the biggest kicker for me: Greenspan was a dyed-in-the-wool Objectivist and even a close friend of Objectivism’s matriarch, Ayn Rand, and a member of her “inner circle”. (Objectivists are anarcho-libertarians; I learned about them back when I was learning about libertarianism. They believe in no government (or at least no government involvement in economics) with a focus on selfishness and self-gratification (in an economic/business sense). They believe people are inherently self-serving and altruism is a “sin” which perverts the operations of a completely free market. This is in stark contrast to anarcho-socialists (like me) who believe in no government but with a focus on collectivism, altruism, trade and labor unions.)

To put someone like this in charge of the Fed is like putting a wolf in charge of the management of the hen house, or an atheist as a church’s preacher. Or a faith healer as Surgeon general.

Is it any wonder….

Too tired and sleepy to comment on…but it doesn’t need any additional commenting by me anyway:

Despicable arrogance of self-satisfied culture of police brutality on cs’s “Classically Liberal” blog:

• Gang brags about beating crowd.

First, we have McCain wanting to suspend his debate and take the V.P. debate off the schedule in order to “work on this economic crisis.”

Huh. This is from the guy who has said on more than one occasion that he doesn’t know anything about economics. Plus, he’s not on any of the Senate committees investigating the issue. So, what exactly will he be working on? Sitting at his desk, all alone, playing with a calculator? (For the 5th time that day he turns it up and down and gives his creepy chuckle and nudges his aid who rolls his eyes, “Heh heh, look, it spells ’80081E5′!”)

On a more serious note, here’s some significant info no one is talking about:

First, banks have already failed, gone under, closed doors, got bought out–like Lehman Brothers and AIG. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson does nothing.

Then Goldman Sachs is about to go under, and suddenly Paulson wants nearly a trillion taxpayer dollars (which doesn’t exist, by the way–it would have to be created out of imaginary numbers on paper and eventually owed to probably China) to bail out the banks.

Here’s the interesting part: Henry Paulson worked for Goldman Sachs for decades, was even their CEO up until he became Treasury Secretary! In 2006 his stock ownership in Goldman Sachs was estimated at half a billion dollars. Convenient that when their debt gets wiped off their books and transferred to the tax payers, their stock will rise again. Hmmm.

Anyone see a problem with this? Or is it just me?

An amazing article by David Rushkoff that briefly explains exactly how the capitalist system we work under was a contrived system to serve the royals and proto-capitalists (and is not a “natural” development as the hegemony would have you, the proletariat and the petite bourgeois, believe), and how what we are witnessing may be the beginning of the end of it:

• Print Your Own Money

. . . Unlike local currencies, centralized currencies were biased towards retaining their value over time. Capitalism (in addition to being a lot of other things) is the way people get rich simply for being rich. Capital becomes the most important component in the capital/labor/resources equation. Since the purpose of the Renaissance innovations was to keep the currently wealthy wealthy, the currency was biased to favor those who had it – and could mete it out at high interest rates to those who needed it for their transactions.

What we witnessed over the past decades has been the necessary endgame of the scenario.

. . .

The collapse of centrally controlled commerce and currency simply creates an opportunity for local commerce and currency to revive. For people to learn to work and live together on a human, local scale – as the original free market advocate, Adam Smith, actually suggested. Admittedly, this would be a painful transition for many – but it’s better than maintaining dependence on a fiscal system designed from the start to turn people and communities into extractable corporate assets. (Think about that the next time you’re called up to “human resources.”) . . .

This reminds me of the post I wrote not too long ago in which I discuss, ad nauseum, the failures of conservativism and the corruption of capitalism, and the ideals of anarcho-socialism:

• The failure of conservatism.

And to a lesser although probably more readable degree:

• Viva la hypocrisy!

Warning: Extreme elitist misanthropic opinion follows.

I watched the latest “Real Time with Bill Maher” the other day, and he decried the intelligence of the American people as unable to do the right thing when voting, citing as one of his examples the fact that most people (according to USA Today) believe in angels, particularly interceding “guardian angels.” This news was immediately below the article on the economic collapse. He may also at one point mentioned the fact that Bush got 49 and 50% of the popular vote the last two elections as an example of the lack of intelligence in the U.S.

That stayed in the back of my mind for a while. Then the other day I had to sit in the emergency waiting room and had the privilege of sitting near an 18-year-old mother of what looked like a 1 year old, with her husband/boyfriend/whatever and his friend. She didn’t in general seem very bright, the boyfriend seemed a bit dim, and the friend was a dead ringer for “Larry the Cable Guy”. Including the god-awful voice. Next to them was another teen mom who was only slightly more with it. When we moved to the next waiting room, there was a, what I would peg as a 16-year-old, who wasn’t too shy about expressing her “embarrassment” (yeah) at being a “what’s it called, when someone has sex and, like, isn’t married or something? Oh, yeah, a for-ni-ca-tor. Now I bet they’re all thinking I’m a for-ni-ca-tor” she said as she patted her flat bare tummy. It was very surreal.

Now, let me stop for a second and correct what I’m sure is an understandable misreading of where I’m going with this. My story isn’t done, but it would look like I’m about to equate teen pregnancy with lack of intelligence. I’m not. Anyone old enough to be capable of sex with an IQ of 50 to 150 can get pregnant as a teen. Teens have sex, it’s what our bodies evolved to do regardless of intelligence. We may not like it (I’d prefer if my own daughter abstained until, say, 32…) but it’s a fact of life. Where intelligence would have any role in this is in how the adults in society approach the subject: Either pretend it won’t happen and teach abstinence only despite the facts, or accept it may happen and teach the realistic dangers of sex and appropriate birth control. But, this isn’t what this post is about, although it’s slightly related. I just wanted to clear up that my thoughts on American intelligence only coincidentally was sparked by being around pregnant or child-n-tow teens who happened to be dim bulbs irrespective of their state of parenthood.

So, this later girl and her mother are talking to another waiting room patient who I pegged as what this girl would likely be like in 40 years: not a very sharp tack but experienced, yet without having learned from it. And somehow they get to talking about the girl’s boyfriend sleeping in the same bed…but they don’t have sex. Of course the other woman commented, “Riiiight!” with the girl responding “It’s true! But, it wasn’t an “It’s true!” with the subtext of “You must believe my claim of chastity!” but rather “…and it sucks!” My read of her subtext was confirmed by the mom saying, “Oh, it’s true, they don’t…and she’s very frustrated about it.”

Buhwah?! Yep, you read right and I heard right. The mom was sympathetic to the 15, 16-year-old daughter’s pain at not having sex because of her boyfriend’s “respect issues.” This is obviously a woman who has no idea what a parent is supposed to do and evidently believes the best way to parent is to be your child’s “best friend.” Well, my droogs, I’m certainly not the first person to express “bullshit” at that idea and present as Exhibit A the f–ed up state of American culture as proof that we have way too many parents out there who are doing a piss-poor job of parenting. Why is it we’re one of the most modern, richest, advanced countries, and we have a higher drug addiction rate, higher crime, teen pregnancy, belief in Creationism and literal Biblical interpretation, lowest math and science scores than any other modern Western nation? We have a culture of intellectually retarded people raised by idiots who are now raising their own idiots in a tradition of pride in idiocy.

At risk of sounding like a curmudgeony stand-up comic, the “perfect America” never existed and “Leave it to Beaver” never existed, but there WAS a time when a kid got in trouble at school they got in equal or more trouble at home. A premium was placed on getting education. On learning. Today if a kid gets in trouble at school, the parent will be “all up in da principal’s face” defending their kid’s right to be a slacker delinquent.

We have a media culture that panders to mindless entertainment and shies away from anything challenging. “News” that believes all sides must get equal time, even if that means giving flat-earthers as much validity as legitimate scientists. “News” programs that encourage belief that a frakkin’ bug on a camera lens is a ghost or angel without a whisper of skepticism or encouraging people to actually think.

We have a society in which any sign of intelligence is derided as “elitism” and we make fun of it like the school bully who deals with his latent insecurity about being dumb by beating on the smart kids. We have a bully culture that thrives on war and violence, responds only to fear, and mistrusts intellectuals or education.

Well I for one am sick of it. I’m tired of “who would you rather have a beer with/watch football with?” as a poll question when discussing who to vote for. No one asks “Who would you rather have defining the scientific agenda for the country?” or “Who do you think has the ability to use statesmanship in the complex and delicate balances of world relations?” We seem to be a country of “American Idol” addicted weeble-wobbles with a media culture that has no interest in doing anything other than feed the demand for more idiots playing to the idiots and an education system that has no teeth or ability to make any significant difference. We live in a country in a world that demands intelligent, thoughtful, reasoned leadership and representation. Our very existence as a country depends on it.

I think it’s time we suspend the idea of “everyone has the right to vote” in favor of “you must be this intelligent to vote” criteria. It’s a somewhat fascist idea, but if we don’t stop voting on “values” and “beer buddy” benchmarks and start voting into offices people who are capable and bright, we’re doomed. The school bully tends to grow up and become an insurance or car salesman or real estate agent; the picked-on nerd runs the internet and controls the systems we all depend on. Well, it’s graduation time and America is becoming a car salesman and the smarter countries will before long own and control us. I don’t know, maybe we derve it. We get the President we deserve, they say. Maybe we’re getting the status in the world we deserve as well.