The Truth About Lies

Lies are all around us. We live our entire lives among them.

They percolate among us until they takeover our thoughts and emotions,
our finances and finally our freedoms.

• Lies which lead us into phony wars.
• Lies about the true cost of those wars and their results.
• Lies, which lead us into phony mortgages. These were even called liar’s loans.
• Lies that scare us into forfeiting our privacy.
• Lies that promise us security and cost us our freedoms in the bargain.
• Lies about global warming.
• Lies about national health care.
• Lies from our congressmen and senators, and even our presidents.
• Lies from our news media.
• Lies from our parents, siblings, children and friends.
• Lies from our lovers.

The above list is by no means a complete liars list. Lies are as common as cornflakes.
But how about we add in the misconceptions, half-truths, exaggerations and distortions,
and hundreds more cracks the truth can fall into or slip completely through.

Is it any wonder nobody listens to anybody anymore? Why bother, what’s the point?
I have known people who would rather tell a lie when the truth was 10 times easier.

Some of our most prestigious federal agencies are based on deception. One of the most
secretive professions to spring up recently is called “perception management”. This profession
involves creating a “truth” and then selling the “truth” to a gullible public wholesale. PM
people are to spin doctors as neurosurgeons are to witch doctors.

So does the truth, which is as often as not a matter of individual perception, matter?
After all, we seem to be able to function without very much of the real deal.

Carlin at the Copenhagen Earth Conference

Can you use a good laugh?

Here is a little George Carlin on the environment, and The Answer
to man's existence.

Please be advised, you will be exposed to adult language, adult concepts, and some very advanced thinking.

http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/12/video-in-honor-of-copenhagen-carlin-on-t/

Does this resemble you?

I am sure it doesn't, but...

It seems we have become so lazy or self-absorbed in trivia, some fed to us by the drama queens in our own lives and much more via the news media, that a majority of US citizens have literally tuned out and are leaving their important thinking for others do. The most important decisions we seem to be able to make on our own are things like what to watch on TV. Taking the time to become informed about the political, social, or environmental issues of the day is to be studiously avoided.

The final outcome of a country's people foregoing the heavy lifting required for informed decision-making is that the country becomes vulnerable to the master manipulators among us. For example, people completely ignorant of the facts behind the Nobel Prize winning scientific discovery of global warming and its consequences are easily persuaded to continue the ruinous behavior that is detrimental to all life on the planet.

Because we failed to act quickly in our own best interests, the people in this country responsible for relieving the citizens of trillions of dollars in savings and equity are in a position to do the very same thing again.

The very same people can do the very same thing… again.

Because we have been so focused nationally on sorting out the truth to the health care debate and its hundred billion dollar annual cost, we have allowed ourselves to be distracted from our wars. Phony wars based on lies and waged for the benefit of companies like Halliburton and Blackwater are where we waste hundreds of billions of dollars a year, gaining nothing except the opportunity to waste more money.

(You may disagree if you think spending billions of taxpayer dollars blowing up mountains and deserts while losing thousands of American lives in the process is good for America.)

We spend billions chasing long dead media darlings like Osama bin Laden(the only bite he has left is a sound bite). We pour billions more into a protection racket dedicated to making travel impossibly difficult and whose policies have literally rendered personal privacy in America a thing of the past, but haven't made us any safer from fanatics.

Fear mongers have convinced us we will be much safer as soon as big brother has a window opened into every corner of our lives. By dedicating ourselves to perpetual ignorance and prejudice we have opened the door to all master manipulators. We seem quick to forget that those who stick their heads in the sand are leaving their butts in the air for opportunists to take advantage of.

Misery Loves Company!

If you have or soon could have:

No coin, no cash, no credit and no credibility left.

And if you are literally:

Down to the last roll of the dice,
or the last spin of the wheel,
or the last flip of the coin.

Guess what?
Things can only get worse.
Have I cheered you up yet?
Misery does love company.

Have you lost your job, your house, and your family?
Do you have at least one tooth trying to fall out of your
head now and do the rest seem destined to follow soon?
Is there no insurance of any kind protecting anything of
yours although you paid in for what seems like forever?
And are you still years away from being eligible for
Medicaid or Social Security?

Is your wall papered with late notices? Has your license
been suspended for back child support or court fines? Is
there nothing left in your house to turn off but the water
and that's just because the water department is busy? Is
your camper in good shape?

You'd better hope so.

Or maybe your significant other of many years (some bitter,
some sweet) has decided to stick it out ( I mean, what choice
does she really have?) and is busy purchasing dinner at the
day old Exxon deli while you are filling up the home away
from home camper; soon to become home. You are eating
at the Exxon deli because the Exxon card is the only plastic
still honored in your wallet... for one more payment cycle.

As I mentioned, misery really does love company.

And yet our government is pouring trillions into the deserts
and mountains abroad. We can’t afford healthcare, we can't
help our own homeless, we can't afford good educators or
legislators or honest "Captains of Industry" no matter how
much we are willing to pay them. Enough, clearly and simply,
isn’t enough.

The final dump on our democracy.

With the last load of rip rap dumped on” we the people”
the ship of state is now on it’s way to sinking. I am referring
to the recent coup de grace granted corporations recently.
With this seriously flawed ruling the Supremes have joined
the other branches of government in overstepping by a
country mile their mandate.

With the stroke of a pen our own Supreme Court has
kicked the supports out from under democracy’s
“equal rights under the law” provisions by allowing multi-
billion-dollar corporations to use their unlimited funds
as a weapon, either for or against, candidates in free
elections, It sounds like a strong defense of free speech
until you realize how easy it will be for the large corporations
to swamp the airwaves in support of their candidates.

One man one vote sounds terrific until you realize that
giving a public voice in our politics to the richest corporations
on the planet, not just US corporations, and expecting a
fair result is ridiculous. This is similar to putting one man
on one side of a tug-of-war rope and putting one man
in a D8 cat on the other. Sure it is mono e mono until
the machinery is figured into the equation.

Over the previous decade laws were written or changed
which favored big businesses like drug manufacturers.
Take the law that was recently passed prohibiting the
government, the largest drug purchaser in the country,
from negotiating prices with suppliers. I find it simply
amazing that our lawmakers can get away with a law
so patently favorable to the industry while sticking it to
the rest of the nation.

Now our politicians will officially become the nation’s
highest-paid prostitutes. (Not that they weren’t already.)
No politician will survive if he isn’t beholden to a fat cat
funding his election campaigns.

Incredibly, most of the people in our once great nation
could probably care less about this incredible threat to our
individual liberties. The threat to our liberty is not from
another nation. It will now come from the feckless fortunes
of morally bankrupt rich corporations whose loyalty is only to
money.

Congress was originally charged with the responsibility to keep a sharp eye on the purse strings of the nation. The presidential power to wage war was supposed to be curtailed when Congress, following the will of the people, refused to pay for wars. Instead they just ordered up a bigger rubberstamp. Rather than safeguarding the country’s cash they are shoveling it out as fast as the presses can print it (almost literally).

So now all three branches of the government are vigorously exercising an unrestrained assault on the middle class. The President is wasting lives and resources at an unprecedented rate. Congress, while rubber stamping the largest military budgets in the world’s history (remember what peace used to feel like?), can’t get a single social program which may actually spell relief to the ailing middle class passed. And the Supremes, not to be outclassed by the other branches, have decided they no longer must wait for an issue to be raised before weighing in. They now feel free to advance any cause that takes their interest like the issue of campaign funding. There was no case before the court; they jumped on this issue before Obama has a chance to reseed the court with democratically minded judges.

So now what?

Barack Obama was the exception... Republicans Rule

We are falling off the rails.

Recent disruptions in the force spell doom for the Democrats.
In spite of the fact that the Democrats had a majority in both
houses of Congress, and a sitting President, they have
managed to fail to pass any legislation which would have
been beneficial to "we the people" in any meaningful way.

The Republicans on the other hand, while small in numbers,
manage to accomplish their objectives in spite of the odds.
Republicans, generally recognized as being the party of big
business, stand to gain politically now that the Supreme Court
has paved the way for unlimited funding from corporate America.

For example:

Giant financial institutions, which brought the world economy
to its knees, are still free to do whatever they want with their
depositors money. In spite of serious efforts by Barney Frank
financial reforms are both slow in coming and watered-down.

Timothy Geithner, as quarterback for Wall Street, had the stones
to recommend less than full disclosure to regulators with regard
to government bailouts being used for obscene bonuses. I
suppose selling out your constituents (these would be the good
citizens of the United States for whom he theoretically works)
would curry favor among those he supposedly regulates and
guarantee a grand entrance into the ex government
pro-corporation Hall of Flamers.

The Bush Supreme Court just sunk the last nail in the coffin of
a government envisioned by our forefathers which was
a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Control of the country will finally and firmly rest in the hands of
corporate giants whose monopoly cash can dominate the media
and can now be used to openly purchase politicians.

Healthcare is back to the drawing board. By failing to move quickly
the Dumbdems frittered away their biggest asset in decades,
a filibuster proof Senate. If you thought they couldn't get anything
done before... Just wait till you see how little they get done now!

Unfortunately, America no longer bears any resemblance to
the country originally formed by the framers of our Constitution.

Money rules. Individuals no longer count in a society where cash
is king.

A kingdom of thieves.

Country birthing is an expensive business.

Throughout our history, as we have grown into nationhood,
wealthy individuals have provided "loans" to the government.
The quid pro quo for these loans was usually a monopoly
granted by the government to these individuals for their
support in supplying the nation's treasury with liquidity.

The most recent chapter in our history started with the
robber barons acentury and a half ago. Carnegie, Mellon,
Vanderbilt, etc. all gained control of basic businesses
necessary for the survival and growth of the country.
These guys were no saints. They extracted a pound from
the treasury for every penny they loaned.

Here's what I think happened.

After the panic of '07 (last century and interestingly
enough this century also) an idea was hatched whereby
private individuals would help with a national liquidity
problem by establishing a bank called the Federal Reserve.
In 1913 the Federal Reserve was created.

There was nothing federal about it... it was a private bank
funded with private money.

The Federal Reserve System is the central banking system of
the United States. It was created in 1913, with the enactment
of the Federal Reserve Act , and
was largely a response to prior financial panics and bank
runs, the most severe of which being the Panic of 1907


A group of wealthy white boys saw a war looming on the
horizon and hatched a plan to finance the war. (Or maybe
they started a war with help from European bankers and then
hatched a plan???)

They needed security if they were to loan money to a
government under a war cloud so the government agreed to
establish an income tax as surety for the debt incurred
to these wealthy gentleman. Coincidently (the incidence
of coincidence decreases dramatically the older one gets)
the 16th amendment to the Constitution was ratified the
same year. The tax started at a maximum of 6% and before
the war was over that rate had risen to 77%.

Look out folks, I see this comming!

This 16th amendment would hearld the birth of the IRS.

This was the quid pro quo the government agreed with
in order to assure sufficient funds to wage the war.
It is similar thinking to the “carte blanche” the
government gave the railroad barons when they granted
a swath 100 miles wide from coast to coast to the railroad
on the off chance they could actually build a railroad
across the country. The risk was huge..The reward, well,
150 years later, still counting.

Amazing what a few "good old boys" could accomplish back then.

Suppose things are ever going to change?