What is he doing?

A report of John McCain on the campaign trail:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain said the trio of Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) represent a "dangerous threesome."

"This election comes down to how you want your hard-earned money spent," Sen. McCain (Ariz.) said at a rally in Cleveland on Monday. "Do you want to keep it and invest it in your future or have it taken by the most liberal person to ever run for the presidency and the Democratic leaders, the most liberal who have been running Congress for [the] past two years — Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid?"

You are probably asking yourself why is it John McCain is making such a joke of this campaign. Why is he repeating the same things over and over? Why when he talks there is all the canned sounds of hisses and aahs. It's worse than an old radio program, this time it seems to be produced by trained monkeys.

The reality is that John McCain knows he will not win the election. In fact, the entire campaign has been a show for you, the American People, and to a lesser extent the world. The show's main message is "the Republicans" and "the Democrats" are extreme ends of the spectrum and there is nothing else. It's exactly the choice in the Matrix. Do you want the "blue pill" or the "red pill"?

The red pill will answer the question "what is the Matrix?" and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before. As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."

The problem is the rainbow has more than two colors!

The show will end with the necessary illusion of "change".

This show will continue until enough of us wake up.

Greenspan finds a flaw in Atlas Shrugged.

 

Greenspan, 82, acknowledged under questioning that he had made a "mistake" in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions. Greenspan called that "a flaw in the model ... that defines how the world works."

 

Amazing. This seems to be rather simple.  Self-interest without regard to the welfare of others, without regard to the welfare of nature is doomed.  It would be the equivalent of putting pampered spoiled brat babies and many normal babies in a ring with only one jar of pumpkin seeds.  Let's call the ring, "the economy"; the pampered spoiled brat babies, "wall street executives"; the normal babies; "the people"; the seeds, "the future".  Wait one day, and let's check on the health of "the economy", you would expect that the spoiled brat babies have eaten the "future".  But no, the normal babies who outnumber the spoiled brats by a lot shine light on the "seeds" and protect them and plant them.

 

The point is people have to wake up and realize that self-interest does not work!

 

Here's the reason:

 

From Chomsky: source: http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20081010112037474

 

 The financial market "underprices risk" and is "systematically inefficient", as economists John Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of the extreme dangers of financial liberalisation and reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and proposing solutions, which have been ignored. One factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who do not participate in transactions. These "externalities" can be huge. Ignoring systemic risk leads to more risk-taking than would take place in an efficient economy, even by the narrowest measures.

The task of financial institutions is to take risks and, if well-managed, to ensure that potential losses to themselves will be covered. The emphasis is on "to themselves". Under state capitalist rules, it is not their business to consider the cost to others - the "externalities" of decent survival - if their practices lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do.

Financial liberalisation has effects well beyond the economy. It has long been understood that it is a powerful weapon against democracy. Free capital movement creates what some have called a "virtual parliament" of investors and lenders, who closely monitor government programmes and "vote" against them if they are considered irrational: for the benefit of people, rather than concentrated private power.

Investors and lenders can "vote" by capital flight, attacks on currencies and other devices offered by financial liberalisation. That is one reason why the Bretton Woods system established by the United States and Britain after the second World War instituted capital controls and regulated currencies.*

The Great Depression and the war had aroused powerful radical democratic currents, ranging from the anti-fascist resistance to working class organisation. These pressures made it necessary to permit social democratic policies. The Bretton Woods system was designed in part to create a space for government action responding to public will - for some measure of democracy.

John Maynard Keynes, the British negotiator, considered the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be the establishment of the right of governments to restrict capital movement.

"I would not bet against the American Worker" - Hank Paulson

This fiscal stimulus will provide support to the economy as we weather the housing correction, capital markets turmoil and higher energy and food prices. Unemployment remains low and increased exports are partially offsetting other less positive factors. Overall, I believe we are on the right path to resolving market disruptions and building a stronger financial system. We are working through this period and our long term prospects remain strong. One thing is very clear to me � whatever our current difficulties, I wouldn't bet against the U.S. worker or the U.S. economy. - Hank Paulson (source: http://www.ustreas.gov/press/releases/hp981.htm)

Truer words were never spoken by our current "financial leader" Hank Paulson. It is apparent that a monkey making random choices would have done better "work" than our current "financial worker" Hank Paulson did. As Hank so praises the American worker, why not let the American worker suggest and design implement a solution to the current (2008) monstrous wall st. welfare and bailout. Given Paulson's leadership this is surely to be the beginning of a great depression.

It is not an accident that Hank refers to "American" and "worker". He trusts the "American" to be obedient "workers". But these same "workers" must not involve themselves in the domain the of the "responsible men". No, the "obedient workers" need to be smart enough to work the machines and do the paperwork (to paraphrase George Carlin) but never open their eyes to areas of the "responsible men".

Why is it a person's being is tied to their "job"? Why is insurance tied to a "job"?

I would rephrase our "financial monkey" Paulson's statement to: "I trust in the spirit of all people."

Have Americans gone mad?

All this recent discussion of "spreading the wealth around" seems maddening. The very people that it would help are some of its staunchest opponents. It's truly amazing that the propaganda industry can brainwash people into voting against their own interest.

to quote George Orwell's "1984":

"In the ramifications of party doctrine she had not the faintest interest. Whenever he began to talk of the principles of Ingsoc, doublethink, the mutability of the past, and the denial of objective reality, and to use Newspeak words, she became bored and confused and said that she never paid any attention to that kind of thing. One knew that it was all rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to cheer and when to boo, and that was all one needed. If he persisted in talking of such subjects, she had a disconcerting habit of falling asleep." ... "Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird."

The argument that a tax on business is a tax on workers is plausible. Let's take it to the extreme. Give everything to business and the top 1% and nothing to the workers. This, in essense, is the current Bush Neoliberal agenda. Tax heavily the bottom 99% and don't tax at all the top 1%. After all, the tax will be spread more evenly over the 99% and there are more of them. And, of course, the trickling down of the wealth from the 1% to the 99% will help everyone.

No one in his right mind would propose such a plan, yet that is in essense the Neoliberal agenda.

Look at the attached charts that shows distribution of wealth and population.

People of the world, Unite! Take back what is rightfully yours. You have been brainwashed into believing that this is the way it has to be; that you are powerless. Nothing can be further from the truth. Imagine a battle of 6 billion vs. a handful of rockefeller/rothschild types. I don't care how many nuclear weapons they think they have, if there is no wage slave to man them, they are powerless. How do they rule you? By stealth and secrecy. You don't know that they are there. They own all the banks. You are trapped in debt and wage slavery until you die. Do you ever wonder why the debt collector can spend a fortune collecting an original debt of $12.50. The answer is the debt collector is not making money, he is teaching you to live in fear, reminding you that you owe that $12.50 for the rest of your life, distracting you from the real issues.

Another Modest Proposal

With the US Presidential Election imminent, why is it so difficult to come up with a fair honest election system?

What is the problem? No one trusts the vote counter. A simple solution is to make everyone the vote counter and verifier. It will make everyone realize that it's everyone's responsibility to maintain freedom. It is clear that freedom is not free.

If Google can organize the World's data, then surely we can organize the election data.

How to prevent election fraud?

Use a simple technique, "Double check" and "Publish the data"

Here's the steps:

1. Publish the data on voters being removed from the voter rolls months before the election. This should be online.
   
2. Publish the voting data after the election. Allow everyone to verify the vote data.