Chris Hedges is not bullish on America

I’m finished watching the first thirty minutes of this talk by Chris Hedges, and much of it is resonating with me. Here are a few of the early points made by Hedges: Those who have been hurt the most by corporate profiteering have been rendered invisible by the corporate media. The corporate media has imposed “a bland uniformity of opinion” upon us. Those who are the most powerful are not those who hold formal titles; It’s our job to make the powerful frightened of us. The question isn’t how to get “good people” into power. It’s how we can limit the damage done to us by people in power. Liberals have lost all credibility. We now have a bankrupt liberal class – one that is nihilist. They “refuse to confront the permanent war economy.” The up and coming fascist movements in America have tapped into the rage of ordinary American because liberals failed to seize the opportunity. We will now increasingly have to deal with politicians whose aim is totalitarianism. They will find scapegoats to blame for America’s woes, and they will not serve as legitimate rulers. Rather, they will, as George Orwell predicted, “cling to power by force and fraud.” We now have “inverted totalitarianism.” It has not been built around a demagogue; rather, it is "expressed in the anonymity of the corporate state." Citizens are utterly impotent within the current system.

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We the Banks

I caught this insanity at Democracy Now:

The next chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama has been quoted saying lawmakers and regulators should "serve" Wall Street. Speaking to the Birmingham News, Bauchus said, "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks." Shortly before the midterm elections that propelled him into the committee chairmanship, Bachus urged a gathering of financial industry lobbyists to donate heavily to Republicans in response to the Democrats’ overhaul of financial regulation.

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“Lying is Not Patriotic”

Ron Paul gave a brief speech in the House Thursday, December 9th about Wikileaks. You can watch the YouTube embedded in this post, or read Paul's remarks here. Paul ended his remarks with the following nine questions:

1. Do the American people deserve to know the truth regarding the ongoing war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

2. Could a larger question be: how can an Army Private gain access to so much secret material?

3. Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not our government’s failure to protect classified information?

4. Are we getting our money’s worth from the $80 billion per year we spend on our intelligence agencies?

5. Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths; lying us into war, or WikiLeaks’ revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

6. If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information, that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the internet?

7. Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

8. Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in the time of a declared war—which is treason—and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death, and corruption?

9. Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it’s wrong?

Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised: “Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.”

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Judges: No problem taking valuable gifts from litigants

Why should members of Congress get to receive lots of tainted largess, whereas judges are left behind? At least three federal judges don't see a problem with judges accepting expensive services from an organization financed by large corporations, corporations that often appear before the judges as litigants: "An organization called the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE) routinely hosts free junkets for federal judges where they can ride horses, bunk with industry attorneys, and learn how to decide environmental cases in ways that benefit FREE’s corporate funders. Those funders include corporations such as Texaco, Exxon, General Electric, Koch, Monsanto, and Shell. FREE’s board of trustees includes three sitting U.S. Court of Appeals Judges: Edith Clement of the Fifth Circuit and Alice Batchelder and Danny Boggs, both of the Sixth Circuit. Yet, despite the obvious ethical problems raised by Clement, Batchelder and Boggs’ service on the board of an organization that both provides free trips to judges and is funded by frequent litigants before those judges’ courts, these three judges continue to serve." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/bpa-found-on-receipts-and_n_794067.html

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…Like I’m Eight

In the movie Philadelphia, Denzel Washington plays a savvy courtroom litigator whose catch-phrase in front of a jury is "Explain it to me like I'm eight-years-old." It's a great line and maybe I'm looking for that kind of clarity now. I really don't know what to make of this. Obama---who won election with a very solid majority of the popular vote and a most impressive majority of the electoral---has managed to be reasonable to the point of impotence. He's on the verge of validating every cliche about spineless intellectuals. The man is smart, erudite, has charisma, and can't seem to say no to the Right. It is possible that this is another one of those situations where we the people simply don't know what's going on and cannot therefore grasp the tactics or strategy. Maybe this is cleverness at such a level that it looks clumsy and gutless. I don't believe that for a second, though. (The only thing that makes any kind of sense in that vein is the idea that he is handing the GOP more and more rope with which to hang themselves. The problem with that is any rope, in order to work in an execution, has to be tied to something substantial on one end.) [more . . .]

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