545 vs. 300,000,000 People

"People are frustrated. As far as they can tell, nothing seems to get done up there. But that's our fault. We elected them. There's a certain defect in democracy. When you have an uninformed electorate, that's what you get." "545 vs. 300,000,000 People By Charlie Reese Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits? Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank. I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes. Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist. If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Army & Marines are in a foreign country it's because they want them in a foreign country ... If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way. There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do. Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees... We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!"

I like guns, they're fun to fire... at people I don't like, people who say dumb things, I don't need a gun to protect myself because I, like most Americans, live in a relatively nice neighborhood with nice people around, except when they say or do or act stupid... then well I want to shoot them... I don't like knives because it forces me to stand face to face with the person I want to... you know what... I want to stand far enough away so they don't have a chance to retaliate... doesn't matter who that person is; man, woman or child, mother, father, brother, sister, best friend, love or hate them... say, do, act stupid... BANG!!! everybody's doing it... why shouldn't I?

From Evernote:

The Rats Are Leaving the Ship Because All the Sailors Have Gone Mad!!!

I like guns, they're fun to fire... at people I don't like, people who say dumb things, I don't need a gun to protect myself because I, like most Americans, live in a relatively nice neighborhood with nice people around, except when they say or do or act stupid... then well I want to shoot them... I don't like knives because it forces me to stand face to face with the person I want to... you know what... I want to stand far enough away so they don't have a chance to retaliate... doesn't matter who that person is; man, woman or child, mother, father, brother, sister, best friend, love or hate them... say, do, act stupid... BANG!!! everybody's doing it... why shouldn't I?

A Flight Through the Universe, by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Presidential Prediction

"Quote from Natural News Columnist, Mike Adams" I'm going to make a bold prediction about the outcome of the upcoming U.S. election: The winner will be the guy who supports GMOs and bankster bailouts. Which candidate is this? Well BOTH of them, of course. In fact, I'm also 100% sure the winner will be the candidate who is in favor of going to war with Iran. The winner will also be the guy in favor of increasing the size of government, either through entitlements or military spending. Here are some other things I predict the winner will support: • Continued erosion of civil liberties and the bill of rights • The growth of federal power over states rights • The continued currency monopoly of the private Federal Reserve • The drugs-and-surgery health care system • Continued criminalization of industrial hemp farming • Continuation of electronic voting that allows corrupt political parties to steal elections • Continuation of the Big Pharma medical monopoly over the U.S. healthcare system • Continuation of the criminally-operated FDA, the corrupt USDA, the gang mafia DEA, and of course the gun-running ATF • Continuation of the fluoride poisoning of the American people • Continuation of nationwide vaccination programs that inject babies with mercury, MSG, aluminum and formaldehyde • Continuation of the corrupt two-party political system and ongoing corporate lobbying that allows members of Congress to function as total sellouts • Continued support of pesticide producers and the toxic contamination of the food supply with pesticide and herbicide residues • Continued exploitation of children for medical experiments in America. • Continued U.S. military presence in over 130 countries nationwide, making America the world's most imperialistic, war-mongering nation in world history • Continued multi-trillion-dollar debt spending, putting the United States into a position of never-ending debt leading to a total economic collapse See, no matter who wins the White House, the People always lose. The corporations win big! As does the Federal Reserve, the military industrial complex and the criminally-run pharmaceutical industry. The lobbyists win, the pesticide companies win, the Wall Street banksters win, and the oil companies win. That's what this election is really all about: No matter how you vote on November 6th, the corporations win big and the People lose big. The government gets bigger, the corporations gain more power, and the police state enslavement of America accelerates. How do the People WIN?America is already too far down the road to tyranny to turn back now. Ultimately, the only way this is going to be halted is through collapse, then revolution. That scenario is coming soon, by the way. And it may even accelerate depending on who occupies the White House for the next four years. The current system of corruption, criminality and exploitation simply cannot be sustained. Therefore, it must end, and it's going to end catastrophically because the bureaucrats in charge have no courage to make the difficult decisions needed to head this off. When this current failed system does come to an end, it's going to thrust the nation into a period of short-term chaos, and what's important from that point is that intelligent, informed people like you (Natural News readers), are ready to jump in and shape the future society so that it is based on liberty and freedom rather than tyranny and enslavement. That's the game plan from here forward: Stay informed, stay healthy and be ready to step in after the collapse to help create a more fair, just and free society. The current system is crumbling, no matter who wins the election. What we need as the human species is to evolve to a more free, abundant society that does not suffer under the oppression and tyranny of Big Government, Big Pharma, Monsanto and the evil corporate cabals. Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/037821_Presidential_elections_Obama_Romney.html#ixzz2BGLvVuGC

US

One of our biggest problems is us, not them, but us...
What do i mean by us?
We, us, all too often if not all the time, speak and think of our place within the human group as us against them, as if "them" is really much different than "us". We are terrified of losing what we have, whether its our blanket to survive homeless on the streets, our jobs, our business what little money or great wealth we have. No one wants to lose all they've worked or scrounged for... Hoarders by nature, possessive we fight for what we have. And in any economic system the instrument, the means by which we trade for goods and services is the possession we hoard most, because it can get you anything. In a true socialist system there could only be us because our shares would be equal, there would not be an elite, no matter your position within the system, all are equal. But humans by nature are not socialist. We desire, we want more than others with whom we have equal desires and hoard what we desire to keep others who have equal desires from having as much or any at all of what we want as much. We are capitalist by nature and let the markets created by demand guide supply, demand & cost.

None of this is a political issue but a social issue. Politics itself is a market through which we accrue power, a desire; demand from strong (leaders), supplied by the weak (followers).

Poverty and wealth and the dilemma therein is a social issue, the poor wish for some or all of equal wealth, the rich want to keep it and we each define ourselves as us and them when in fact remove the fear from either and we are the same; we are each others enemy out of fear, justifiable because we do steal from each other; the rich live in denial of such crimes because they live within a system that supports stealing given names like tax loopholes, deductions so that the wealthy can keep more of the wealth they've gained while the poor have no such legal opportunity to keep the small amounts they receive and often resort to crime to gain more of what they have lost to the system that allows the rich to avoid contributing to society at all and still benefit from the infrastructure built from the sweat and upon the worn shoulders of the poor.

Is it me?

Or has life become more Felliniesque?

From Evernote:

Fate is my God...

Fate is my God...

From Evernote:

The Chase

Why are you running?
What?
Why are you running?
I'm not running!
Well you aren't now cause you've stopped to talk to me... but you were, you're sweating, you're out of breath, you don't seem to ever rest...
I sleep...
Not much that I can tell but that's not what I said, I said you don't rest...
If you mean sit in front of the television without really knowing what it is you're really watching...
No I don't... and you know I don't, you very well know what I mean... You used to do it all the time...
A long time ago, when I felt like I had time...
And you don't?
It certainly feels that way.
The Seventh Seal...
Bergman, yes... death and a knight play a game of chess...
You diminish such an important film....
With an important but simple message
One can never change destiny
But one can change fate, and you have many times, so you believe, that your fate was such and through your efforts you changed it, but perhaps making those changes, your actions was your fate.
Perhaps. Look what's your point...
You know your point or you wouldn't be writing this down... You used to have the most amazing patience, the will to slow down and see the world around you...
Don't feel like I have time for that anymore.
Rushing towards it won't delay deaths arrival, it will happen...

I remember sitting for hours alone at the beach just watching the surf, thinking, alone cause I chose to be, these were my moments to figure the world, figure out existence itself, to know being, without drug or  enhancement but the high of being in the moment, now...

Lost in the clutter of sentient existence

Meaning in life isn't about finding purpose in living through life to an end but living in life for its own sake

From Evernote:

I have her

The notices were posted throughout the subway system by morning when he traveled to work... "missing!" Describing her in detail and the date and time she was last seen, the grocery store near his apartment... All he could think to say to himself was, "I have her"

I came home to her, she was asleep, gagged and bound as I'd left her this morning

Haven't had sex with her yet

I woke her with a kiss and tap to her cheek... She realized it was dark out, surprised

They'll be looking for me
They are, signs all over the subway
They'll find me
No they won't, they'll give up, that's why I took you... Patience...

People fall in love for the what seems like the strangest reasons

She wants to run but then she doesn't

From Evernote:

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy | Naomi Wolf | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk Clipped from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

Occupy Wall Street protester Brandon Watts lies injured on the ground after clashes with police over the eviction of OWS from Zuccotti Park. Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.