Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Active Measures and the Right Wing

Even more fascinating, Bizaare, weird, than how the Russians got to Trump, who after all is a classic Kompromat target, is how they've seduced the Republican Party and Right Wing Cristo-fascist movements.

The day before yesterday I found myself reading a fascinating article by Christopher Stroop, who is the author of

"Bad Ecumenicism"

...and other authoritative (not authoritarian!) articles on the Christian Far Right. The narcissism and bullying of their leaders is well documented by Mr. Stroop.

Then last night I found myself reading a series of linked articles/Blog by Grant Stern called:

How One Man Influenced The Republican Party’s Transformation Into The Grand Old Putin Party.

Saturday, May 27, 2017

Sanity In Healthcare

Versus Raming a 100 million ton square peg into a 100 foot diameter hole

Actually Restoring Sanity to Health Care

In an Article in Linkedin:

Ten Free Market Commandments Restoring Financial Sanity in HealthCare, by Dr. Robert Nelson

Dr. Nelson tries to make the case for using "free market principles" to reform health care. In so doing he makes points that a little rational thought will demonstrate make no sense. But they do make the case for a single payer system and socialized medicine. This is because the Healthcare System is:

"a proper social function, which should be controlled and managed by and for the whole people concerned, through their proper governmental, local, state or national, as may be."Constitution

Friday, May 26, 2017

Targeting Clinton Voters, Project Alamo and Russian Hackers

Last year I posted on Project Alamo:

Project Alamo -- Trump Builds an Explicitly Fascist Movement

My Post reviewed an article in Bloomberg about a Trump Data operation in a Bunker in San Antonio. The Boomberg Argument had Bannon, Jason Kushner & his team, fairly boasting that they were targeting voters for vote suppression:

"trying to shrink it." They admit “We have three major voter suppression operations under way” [bloomberg]

Then this year, Last month, the FBI arrested a hacker named Pyotr Levashov, and the news was that somehow that arrest was connected to Project Alamo.

Levashov and Project Alamo: Spamming Democracy

It turns out they were targeting women voters, youthful voters and black voters with direct marketing ads. They were using facebook ads to send propaganda directly to potential voters who matched profiles they felt would be susceptible to those ads -- with the explicit goal of suppressing the vote.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

20% of Americans to be priced out of healthcare

The CBO has confirmed most of what educated people already knew. The talk of high risk pools is BS.

We need to Get Out On the Street!

Kompromat Penetration and Treason

Treason

Frequently, individuals on a treasonous path do not even realize they're on that path until it gets to be too late

Retired CIA Director John Brennan

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Establishing the Second Bill of Rights

The Democratic agenda is unfinished. One reason is that the GOP is explicitly against the Second Bill of Rights.

Democrats Believe:To the GOP:
  • No right to a Job,
  • No right to an Adequate wage.
  • No right to Shelter, home, even a place to sleep!
  • Health Care is a "privilege";
  • No right to help during sickness, injury, old age or unemployment
  • No right to acquire a decent education at a reasonable cost.

To your average right winger, we don't have any rights to any of those things. Even if we earned them or pay for them. Buried in their fearful amygdala is a compulsion to hierarchy, a fear that one person's gain threatens the privilege of another. To the "conservative" mind -- only those with hierarchy have such rights. The rest of us need to know our place.

We have to disabuse them of those notions!

Based on the past 80 years of disappointments it is clear that we still need that "Second Bill of Rights" that FDR Talked about. We've fought to implement it, but have been stymied at every turn, to a degree that some claimed our own leaders seemed to have abandoned the project. And as a result the deplorable right wing has decided to attack the very notions the Second Bill of Rights sought to establish. The effort to repeal ACA, disestablish minimum wages, de-regulate employers and cut access to health care are all based on a very explicit assertion that we the people have no rights to:

Monday, May 22, 2017

Kompromat, Hybrid Warfare & Active Measures .

War is Hell. General Smedley Butler said it was "a racket." Clausewitz said:

"War is the continuation of politics by other means" [Brainy Quotes]

Mao Tse Dong said:

"Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed." [brainyquotes also]

So it is only natural that some international tyrants see politics as a continuation of war by other means. The term "hybrid warfare" is a reformulation of an old truism to adapt to our modern information age. It's not that Vladimir Putin is pursuing a brilliant new strategy. It's that he's systematically pursuing principles of human manipulation, psi-ops and information warfare that are battle tested ones. 'Hybrid warfare' is international politics pursued with the ruthlessness of warfare. It is an effort to return the world to the Pre-World War I "great game" where coalitions were always temporary, often secret, and regularly betrayed for private, separate interest. It recognizes that we live in a world of fragile balances and asymmetrical power. It's not feasible to use atom bombs on our enemies or it would have already been done more than twice. We live downwind of each other.

And the Russians are [still] heavily involved in subverting our system.

Friday, May 19, 2017

Free Competition

Henry George, in his 1891 Populist plank, included a well crafted plank that included a definition of where the distinction between a public set of goods and services can be managed by the "market," Left up to individual initiative, and where it shouldn't. The distinction rests on the question of "where free competition becomes impossible," and his examples; "telegraph, railroads, water and gas supplies", today would include all telecomms, internet, electrical power, etc... are as valid today as in his time (1890s). And they hing on the term "free competition."

Thursday, May 18, 2017

How the Right Hacked our election - war on Voters

The primary mover in "The GOP's Stealth war on Voters" in the Rolling Stone, was a man named Kris Kobach. Back when it was first reported the original article was about voter purge software and how he was problematically purging valid voters from the voter rolls. This software played a major role in the 2016 election. Trump is rewarding Kris by naming him to head a Commission to make voter caging nationwide!

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/trump-executive-order-voter-fraud-mike-pence-kris-kobach

Sunday, May 14, 2017

To Mom and all our loves

Like Snowflakes

They are with US
In our souls
Even when their bodies
Have melted away

Like Snowflakes
Each unique
In their reality
In their own special way

Like Snowflakes
Born where cold air meets
Wet and warm
We fall from the sky
One day to return.

Chris

How we miss them when they leave us
And the leaving is always too soon.
It leaves an empty chasm
In the caverns of our hearts

But the echoes of their presence
The drumbeat of who they were
Is heard in our own hearts beating
Strong and steady, warm and sure.

Their voices shout within us
"Here I am, by your side!"
A friendly voice in the morning
A smile reflecting in our edges
As we awake.

And we go on as companions
Bringing them alive
In reflections
As we talk among ourselves
And remember their lives.

No more need forgiving
No more anger or silly feuds
For our loved ones
We loved them
Each in a special way.

And they pass on
Knowing that is true
Peaceful images floating
Smiling on the winds.

Chris

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Authority

There is a lot of "Business Stuff" [BS] in our public discourse at the present moment. Too many of our present day authorities are Grifters, Oligarchs, demagogues, charlatans and Pirates. If we listen to them uncritically we'll get steered over a cliff and eaten for dinner. This is true whether one is talking about religion, politics or economics. There is just too much money to be made by conning people [See Grifters], and at the same time, there are many folks who either believe the grifters or are so spun and gaslighted they pass on the nonsense. Yet we ourselves are not usually authorities. And if we set ourselves up as authorities, we set ourselves up to join the ranks of con artists and grifters. Worse our lies may be amplified by unreliable disciples and turned into myths and legends and join the corpus of fractional and misleading ideas that constitute our present messes in philosophy, religion and politics. How does one thread the needle of actual correctness, wisdom and find real authorities?

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Oligarchs!

Oligarchy is from the greek ολίγοι ("Oligoi") + (άρχς) archy = rule/ruler --> Oligarchy; rule by the few.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Grifters!

A Grifter is someone who swindles people through deception or fraud. The term is a contraction of "Graft" and "drift" and refers to the need of classic con artists to leave town before they got caught. Graft meaning "to secure illicit gains in business or government through fraud and/or deception; by corruption."

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Grifters Oligarchs and Pirates

Our problem is the Grifters Oligarchs and Pirates, the GOP.

We can overcome our country's problems, once we understand what they are. Our problem is not the Republican Party. It is fascism. It's not only fascism it is the predatory attitude of some of our wannabe oligarchs. It is not only this predatory attitude of predatory Oligarchs, but the frauds and dishonesty with which they attack their goals.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

We can Afford to cover healthcare for everyone in the country

We can afford health care. We just need to make our wealthy pay their share. The cost per capita of health care is approximately $10,490.00 per capita. Which is a lot. Our gross income per capita is approximately $49,550.00. That doesn't include income from capital gains. If our system were fair to 90% of us we could easily afford healthcare in this country. Unfortunately the bottom 90% of us earn an average of $33,000 and most of the income in our country goes to the top 1% and the top .01%. And since the wealthy make their money from rents, interest and "capital gains" that under-reports their income. The bottom 90% of us cannot afford healthcare without income transfers from the wealthy. Which is why the GOP is stiffing us. Our real issue is our GINI coefficient and oligarchy.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

The Ghosts In The Paintings

My friend's paintings haunt me
The Ghosts of the past alive on canvas
Haunted hands painted them
Guided by restless spirits
Burning memories