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    AMERICAN HYPOCRISY AND THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF OUR DEMOCRACY

    Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

     
     
    AMERICAN HYPOCRISY AND THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL OF OUR DEMOCRACY
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     This will be an unwelcome comment but I believe we should shut off this thread at least overnight and have a space while we think about the officers killed today in Baton Rouge and the black former marine who shot them. And the families of all of them.
    by Flavius on Sun, 07/17/2016 - 11:28pm

     
    Flavius,
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    Your comment is not unwelcome at all, because it clearly points out a very serious area of hypocrisy that we have in this country. We'd have to shut down the site indefinitely if we decided to honor all of the innocent Black people and their families who are being brutally murdered by rogue cops - and this comes from the father of a federal agent, so I'm definitely not a cop hater. In fact, I love one.
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    So the tension that led to the brutal murder of both these officers, and the scores of innocent Black people who have been killed is exactly what this thread is SUPPOSE to be about - unequal justice under the law, and its inevitable consequences.
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    But what makes your comment particularly enlightening is out of all the threads on this site, why should we shutdown THIS particular thread? While your comment may have been completely innocent and well meaning, it speaks volumes regarding our social conditioning in this country. In fact, you couldn't have said more if I had written it for you myself.  It begs the question, what makes one person's life more valuable than another? That's what all the hoopla is about. It seems that no matter how "liberal" some White people profess to be, Black lives just don't seem to matter as much - either by rogue cops, White juries, or even many Black accommodationists.
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    But this is a question that White people need to be very concerned about - especially if they are a part of the working class - because we are now knee-deep in a class struggle, and race is meaningless to the corporate oligarchs and their political cronies. They'll send your child to his or her death in a heartbeat if it means they can make a dollar, as they've already demonstrated.  
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    So White working-class people should be very concerned about the growing devaluation of human life, and start putting the value of life in perspective.  Because this hierarchy of injustice starts at the top with the political elites, and then it trickles it's way down. The elitists can do no wrong and we can do no right, unless we're in complete lockstep with their desires. Then the legal impunity of the elitists filters its way down to their surrogates, the rogue cop on the street, and then finally ends in the mass brutalization of the average citizen who is not in complete lockstep with their plutocratic agenda.
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    And we can witness no better example of how that system works than the sham that took place in the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton. Just imagine what would happen to you if you worked for the State Department and put classified files on your home computer. Do you think they would worry about your "intent?" I don't think so. What Hillary did is called "Gross (criminal) Negligence," and "Endangering National Security," both, very serious crimes. She should have, at the very least, lost her security clearance, but that would have prevented her from running for president. So in Hillary's case it was just fluffed off, while in another case, Sandra Bland was dragged from her vehicle, brutalized, and died under "suspicious circumstances" while in custody, for smoking a cigarette in her own car.
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    So anyone who supports the double standard at work with respect to Hillary Clinton and Sandra Bland is guilty of supporting classism, plutocracy, and the perpetuation of the White supremacist system, and that includes President Obama. I hate to admit that, because I've always been a big supporter of Obama, but one cannot edit truth. We must follow it wherever it leads.

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    And what's completely unbelievable about how blatant the class system has become is the fact that President Obama scheduled campaign appearances with Hillary even before the investigation was complete! Does that send any kind of signal to the investigators or what!!!?
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    That said a lot to me. The most benevolent spin that one can put on Obama's actions is that it was politically clumsy. But Obama is not known for being a clumsy politician.  He is known, however, for acknowledging the political lay of the land - that's why Bush and Cheney aren't in prison. So while I have always been a strong Obama supporter, I support truth, justice, and a fully functional democracy much more. I don't see President Obama, or any other politician, as my leader. I see them as my employees, and as one of his employers, I don't like what he did, at all.  For that reason, I will always criticize him for failing to take action against Bush and Cheney, and now, I will always criticize him for this Clinton decision.

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    I mean, this was a woman who tried to dog-whistled his assassination! So something MUST be going on behind the scenes in this country that the American people aren't privy to. Obama's actions tell me that this situation has become much more ingrained in our system than most of us ever realized, and therefore, much more dangerous to our democracy.

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    JEEVES, GO FETCH ME A SENATOR . . .
    ANY ONE OF 'EM WILL DO.

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    But this hierarchy of "justice" is nothing new; it's simply becoming more blatant, and much more pronounced.  It started with the pardon of Richard Nixon, and then Reagan committed outright treason in the Iran-Contra affair, and then flooded the Black community with crack cocaine (with Bill Clinton's help) with complete impunity. Thereafter, George Bush Sr. sent our troops to die in Iraq, for the first time, in order to take his son, Neil Bush's, name out of the news after an investigation found him guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest."   The story regarding the investigation was reported by UPI on June 29, 1990, and we invaded Iraq one month later. Then, of course, we had George W. Bush and Dick Cheney sending our troops back into Iraq where 4500 of our troops were killed, and countless others maimed for life (this time with Hillary Clinton's help) in order to enrich war profiteers.
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    This kind of thing has been going on every since the corporate and political elitists found out just how gullible the American people have become when we bought into the supply-side economics scam. It's been open-house on the American people every since, and the American middle class has been in a downward spiral every since.
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    Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. When the plan was first floated, even George Bush, Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics."
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    Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. That's also what Bill Clinton did when he ripped the guts out of Glass-Steagall, and with the very same result.
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    Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression.
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    And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut -- for the rich.
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    HERE ARE BUT A FEW OF THE GAMES RUN ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY THE ELITISTS WITH IMPUNITY

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    Due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
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    Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement.
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    Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that is currently playing out on Wall Street. He was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name.
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    In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars.
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    After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five--Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain--attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
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    Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed the American people blind, whose fumbling ignited the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, and whose greed came very close to sending the nation into yet another depression, so people of every race need to open their eyes, because we're being treated like pawns.
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    So it hasn't been lost on me that no matter how much evidence is brought to the table about how unjust the Clintons have been to Black people - Bill’s role in flooding the Black community with crack cocaine, followed by the mass incarceration of Black people, and then creating the prison industrial complex - it's been like spittin' in the wind. It’s simply been either brushed off or outright denied and other issues are brought up in their place. The reason for that is regardless to what people say, or what their political persuasion, they've been conditioned to believe that Black lives don't matter.  But now, just one or two White cops are killed and you want an evening of silence to commemorate their deaths. Are you completely blind to the gross hypocrisy in that!!!?

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    It clearly demonstrates that regardless to how well-meaning many White people are, they just can't see life, death, or gross injustice from the perspective of a Black person. That's exactly why I'm often misunderstood as being militant, but it's also why I don't give a damn. Not all, but most White folks are completely blind to reality, along with many of their accommodationist Black stooges - though I suspect that many of the stooges choose to be blind, because it helps to promote their accommodationist agenda. But it can really be a frustrating thing to watch, because most people want to think that their fellow citizens have, at the very least, simple common sense. When they cease feeling that way this can be a very scary and lonely place. So I must admit, after what I've seen in this past primary year, and watching many of my fellow citizens just sitting on their hands and letting it happen, the chill is beginning to roll in on me.
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    So the bottom line is this - while demonstrations do have their place, we'll never be able to resolve this problem by simply shaking our fists in the street and then going home to be misinformed and distracted by the five corporations that control everything that we see, hear, or read in the media.  We've got to come together as a people, and clean house in Washington.  We've got to get rid of all the plutocrats at the top (like Trump and the Clintons), two-thirds or more of both houses of congress, and then take back our democracy.  If we don't, it'll be you and your family's turn soon, because the plutocrats don't care any more about the White working class than they do Black people. When they send your children to war, send your jobs out of the country, or rob you of your lifesavings (and the Clintons have done all of those things), they're clearly demonstrating that your lives don't matter either. It's just not as politically acceptable to shoot you down in the street . . . yet.
     
     
    Eric L. Wattree
    http://wattree.blogspot.com/
    [email protected]
    Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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    Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

    Comments

    The country is divided. The country is not coming together politically. Whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians are supporting Hillary. Trump support is mostly white. Either Hillary will be President or Trump will be President. I trust the selections Hillary will make to the Supreme Court more than I trust Trump's selections to the Supreme Court. Trump is the favorite of David Duke. Hillary is the favorite of John Lewis.


    In reply to your question , I suggested shutting down your site because  just then it was the one  dealing most intensely here  with the deaths of the police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

    For a decent interval after a death , "nil nisi bonum".  

     

     


    I don't think that anyone was speaking ill of those police officers. Both shootings appear to involve men with mental issues rather than an organized plot. Blacks Lives Matter was labeled a terrorist group charged with encouraging both men.Silence would let that charge go unchallenged.


    I hadn't meant to suggest a long delay, just one long enough for the funerals to take place in as calm as possible

    an environment.


    The murders of the police officers was a separate issue from murders committed by police officers. Black activists issued statements that they mourned the fallen officers. Black activists delayed protests. Police departments and especially police unions rarely mourn the loss of people murdered by police. In fact, police unions routinely demonize black citizens murdered by police. Police unions do not care if black activists mourn slain police officers. Anyone who criticizes police are considered enemies. Blacks are always categorized as anti-police when black activists question homicides committed by release. There is zero reason to do more than activists already do when police officers are murdered. When police officers and union openly campaign for change of police practices and go after bad apples in the police department is there a reason to have a moratorium on protests.

    Black Lives Matter and other activist group had no hand in ambushes on police in New York City, Baton Rouge, and Dallas. The common thread in the attacks was anger and mental health issues. The shooter in Dallas shot a black woman. Before there should be a moratorium on protests against of police during police funerals, police unions should place a moratorium on their spokesman slandering the dead during periods before the funerals of those slain by police.


    I  admire the black activists who delayed protests. They  were behaving like compassionate human beings doing what they could  not to add to the distress of other suffering human beings.

     


    Why would protesting the deaths of people at the hands of police be an insult to those mourning the deaths of police officers in other cities. Why would continuing a discussion at dagblog be an affront to the families of slain police officers? 

    Despite the humane actions of the protesters, we have the shooting of another unarmed teen in Chicago.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/08/05/video_footage_of_paul_...

    The humanity of the protesters changed nothing. 

    Respectability politics is something that had been encouraged in the past. People wore church attire to protests and still got water hosed. A mental health worker took the most respectable posture possible by having his back on the ground and his arms raised. He was shot. Police don't respect respectability.

    Halting dialog about police abuse has zero impact.

    Edit to add:

    I think where we differ is that you want the protesters to be completely submissive. This works against the protesters because they are dealing with totally dishonorable police unions. The victims of police violence attacks on their character. Protesters will be labeled terrorists. Halting protests will not be viewed as an expression of support for grieving families, but an admission that the protests caused the stalking and murder of police. The best way to show that the protests are not connected to the shooting of police is to keep protesting. Continuing the protest may be difficult, but it is the only way to honor those killed by police. If the protests stop, then we connect the protests to murdering police and dishonor those slain by the police.

    Police departments and unions will always attack the protesters. 


    WASHINGTON ― "Americans have grown accustomed to the idea that some criminal laws target specific populations. Drug possession charges tend to hit low-income black communities harder than other neighborhoods. The sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine just happens to result in long prison terms for black people, while Wall Street snorters receive leniency.

    "But the legal system’s bias against the poor and people of color is not limited to laws that directly put these populations in the crosshairs. It’s also reflected in the privileged treatment received by the rich and powerful who violate laws targeting the rich and powerful.

    "This is why FBI Director James Comey’s decision to effectively exonerate Hillary Clinton for allegedly mishandling classified information is so troubling. In a Wednesday press conference and an epic Thursday hearing before Congress, Comey accurately described his choice as consistent with a century of legal precedent. But based on any fair-minded understanding of justice, this precedent is a moral outrage . . ."

     

    Donald Trump has ties to Russia and is OK with Putin entering further into the Ukraine. Donald Trump is Ok with using nuclear weapons on a rim. Donald Trump is a racist.

    Donald Trump will be President of the United States, or Hillary Clinton will be President of the United States. Jill Stein will not be President. Gary Johnson will not be President.


    THIS IS GOING TO BLOW UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ELECTION. SOMEONE IS GOING TO LEAK INFORMATION JUST BEFORE ELECTION DAY, AND WE'RE GONNA HAVE A PRESIDENT TRUMP.

     
    In an unusual move, FBI agents working the Hillary Clinton email case had to sign a special form reminding them not to blab about the probe to anyone unless called to…
    nypost.com
     

    Trump is imploding as we speak. His campaign is in panic mode. He is blabbing about viewing top secret video concerning Iran. Trump is unstable. There will not be a President Trump. Given your hatred of Hillary, you might consider Jill a Stein or Gary Johnson. 

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-iran-intelligence-brief...

    ​Jill Stein panders to the anti-vaxxers, just like Donald Trump, and Gary Johnson.

    http://www.salon.com/2016/08/03/jill_steins_anti_vax_game_how_and_why_th...

     


    The Bush administration used an RNC server for the illegal partisan witch hunt and firing of half a dozen DOJ regional prosecutors. Then they deleted all the emails totaling over 8 million. Josh Marshall won a Polk Award for uncovering the scandal. And nothing happened, no indictments, nada .

    Hillary had 2 email threads classified at the time she sent them, one to the president of Malawi, automatically classified as he was head of state but with no national security impact. Compared to the RNC Gonzalez/Bush email wipe Hillary's loss of a few thousand emails hardly registers as anything at all.


    But think of the Malawian children! The gorillas of the highlands! So many implications in this globally hyper-connected world!


     
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    The Primaries are over. Trump will be President or Hillary will be President. After review of their flaws and their records, people are choosing Hillary. Do you prefer Trump?

    We are not sheep in need of a shepherd. We make our own decisions and we support Hillary. Because you see us as sheep, you do not engage in discussions to sort out our differences. The argument is made that our job is to sheepishly agree with your truth. Thanks, but no thanks.

    I thought that you were writing for you. and you alone so that future generations could see your work. Why do you care if people reject your authoritarian view of the world?

    Edit to add:

    Life is good for the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time)


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