Click anywhere below for the entire piece.

"But the unemployment rate has been low only because government programs, especially Social Security disability, have effectively been buying people off the unemployment rolls and reclassifying them as ''not in the labor force.

In other words, the government has cooked the books."

Naaahhh, the government would never under any set of circumstances do something like that ....... would they?

I knew this one was inevitable.

Among the opinions that I freely share with anyone willing to listen is the notion that there is next to nothing that separates the two candidates presesently running for the office of President of the United States.  Furthermore, if you look at the practices of their respective administrations there is next to nothing that distinguishes the administration of Barack Obama from that of George W. Bush and indeed very little that distinguishes either Bush administration from Bill Clinton's discounting the spectacular opportunities for policy adventures afforded the latter Bush by virtue of the wildly more succesful attack on the World Trade Center that occurred on his watch.

This notion frustrates Republican/conservative types to no end as they consider themselves to be the only grownups in the room and as such the only possible responsible viewpoint on any issue you might care to name, while at the same time infuriating Democrat/liberal/progressive types to near apoplexy as they view themselves to be the best possible people imaginable by virtue of their tender hearts and pure intentions all the while loathing with the deepest passion imaginable anyone who has the temerity to oppose them on any issue.

So anyway, I was at the soccer game the other day watching the youngest Roanboy command the midfield, when I chanced upon one of my Republican/conservative type friends who visits us here from time to time and is exasperated with me for refusing to support Mitt Romney.

Finally completely frustrated, he said to me, "Youre so f&#$%@^ smart, what would you do?"

"I'm Emperor?"  I ask, delighted at the prospect.

Look of disgust.

"Ok, Ok"

Then I rattle it off in about 18 seconds.

1. Break up the media near monopolies.  Allow for ownership/investment of only one media outlet, be it newspaper, televison station or radio station per state.

2. Break up the banks.  Bring back Glass Steagall word for word at minimum.  Better yet, legally segregate retail banking from investment banking from propriatery trading from brokerage from insurance from fee based research.

3. Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank.

4. Disengage from all foreign entanglements including NATO and bring all of our troops home.  

5. Establish term limits of 3 terms for Congress and two for the Senate.

6. Establish term limits of 25 years for all public employees.  Some time in the private sector would do most of them a world of good.

7. End the "War on Drugs".  Legalize it, tax it, use the money you save for treatment.

8. Close the Department of Homeland Security. Hold parties at airports all over the country and beat the shit out of their equipment with sledge hammers.  Make transportation companies responsible for their customer's security.

9-a. Establish a flat tax of 10% on every dime of income over twenty thousand dollars, regardless of source, regardless of the form (benefits are income) from every entity, while removing deductions for mortgage interest, state and local taxes, charitable contributions ..... everything.  End FICA

9-b. Remove depreciation and depletion allowances from corporate tax returns along with interest deductions, allow business entities to expense capital purchases along with business expenses in the year they occur on a cash in cash out basis.  Treat debt for purposes of acquiring capital purchases as income.  Get it?  You can expense capital improvements in the year they are acquired to the extent they are unleveraged.

10. Hire the nastiest prick I can find with some prosecutorial experience to hold a public investigation of the attack on the World Trade Center of September 11, 2001.  Give him every dime he asks for.  Hell, offer up a bonus for every conviction that results in a hanging ..... make it a big one.

"How's that just for starters?"  I asked, just as innocently as I am able.

He won't be back bothering me anytime soon.

No, that's not me in the picture although I used to look a lot like that ..... before the operation.

From Yahoo.com.

Democrats reinstate ‘God-given’ and Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to party platform

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--Facing unhappy pro-Israel groups amid a Republican-led outcry, Democrats gathered Wednesday at their presidential nominating convention made 11th-hour changes to the party platform to reinstate a reference to God and a declaration that "undivided" Jerusalem is Israel's capital.

There was widespread booing on the floor of the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa led delegates in three voice votes that sounded, at best, equally divided on whether to restore language from the party's 2008 document. Observers said the boos were directed at Villaraigosa's decision to skip a formal ballot and declare the platform amended.

"Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths," the amended document read.

The good news here is that at least White House Press Secretary Jay Carney now knows their position.

From Reason.com

The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win

The past several weeks have made one thing crystal-clear: Our country faces unmitigated disaster if the Other Side wins.

A. Barton Hinkle | August 20, 2012

The past several weeks have made one thing crystal-clear: Our country faces unmitigated disaster if the Other Side wins.

No reasonably intelligent person can deny this. All you have to do is look at the way the Other Side has been running its campaign. Instead of focusing on the big issues that are important to the American People, it has fired a relentlessly negative barrage of distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies.

Just look at the Other Side’s latest commercial, which take a perfectly reasonable statement by the candidate for My Side completely out of context to make it seem as if he is saying something nefarious. This just shows you how desperate the Other Side is and how willing it is to mislead the American People.

The Other Side also has been hammering away at My Side to release certain documents that have nothing to do with anything, and making all sorts of outrageous accusations about what might be in them. Meanwhile, the Other Side has stonewalled perfectly reasonable requests to release its own documents that would expose some very embarrassing details if anybody ever found out what was in them. This just shows you what a bunch of hypocrites they are.

Naturally, the media won’t report any of this. Major newspapers and cable networks jump all over anything they think will make My Side look bad. Yet they completely ignore critically important and incredibly relevant information that would be devastating to the Other Side if it could ever be verified.

I will admit the candidates for My Side do make occasional blunders. These usually happen at the end of exhausting 19-hour days and are perfectly understandable. Our leaders are only human, after all. Nevertheless, the Other Side inevitably makes a big fat deal out of these trivial gaffes, while completely ignoring its own candidates’ incredibly thoughtless and stupid remarks – remarks that reveal the Other Side’s true nature, which is genuinely frightening.

My Side has produced a visionary program that will get the economy moving, put the American People back to work, strengthen national security, return fiscal integrity to Washington, and restore our standing in the international community. What does the Other Side have to offer? Nothing but the same old disproven, discredited policies that got us into our current mess in the first place.

Don’t take my word for it, though. I recently read about an analysis by an independent, nonpartisan organization that supports My Side. It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that everything I have been saying about the Other Side was true all along. Of course, the Other Side refuses to acknowledge any of this. It is too busy cranking out so-called studies by so-called experts who are actually  nothing but partisan hacks. This just shows you that the Other Side lives in its own little echo chamber and refuses to listen to anyone who has not already drunk its Kool-Aid.

Let’s face it: The Other Side is held hostage by a radical, failed ideology. I have been doing some research on the Internet, and I have learned this ideology was developed by a very obscure but nonetheless profoundly influential writer with a strange-sounding name who enjoyed brief celebrity several decades ago. If you look carefully, you can trace nearly all the Other Side’s policies for the past half-century back to the writings of this one person.

To be sure, the Other Side also has been influenced by its powerful supporters. These include a reclusive billionaire who has funded a number of organizations far outside the political mainstream; several politicians who have said outrageous things over the years; and an alarmingly large number of completely clueless ordinary Americans who are being used as tools and don’t even know it.

These people are really pathetic, too. The other day I saw a YouTube video in which My Side sent an investigator and a cameraman to a rally being held by the Other Side, where the investigator proceeded to ask some real zingers. It was hilarious! First off, the people at the rally wore T-shirts with all kinds of lame messages that they actually thought were really clever. Plus, many of the people who were interviewed were overweight, sweaty, flushed, and generally not very attractive. But what was really funny was how stupid they were. There is no way anyone could watch that video and not come away convinced the people on My Side are smarter, and that My Side is therefore right about everything.

Besides, it’s clear that the people on the Other Side are driven by mindless anger – unlike My Side, which is filled with passionate idealism and righteous indignation. That indignation, I hasten to add, is entirely justified. I have read several articles in publications that support My Side that expose what a truly dangerous group the Other Side is, and how thoroughly committed it is to imposing its radical, failed agenda on the rest of us.

That is why I believe 2012 is, without a doubt, the defining election of our lifetime. The difference between My Side and the Other Side could not be greater. That is why it absolutely must win on November 6.

From DemonOcracy.info ... way super double highly recommrnded ... who have prepared a half dozen or so extremely well done infographics on the issues of the day.

To begin with, the idea for this post right down to the logos came from a post at White Out Press.com titled  Voters Guide to Political Parties in America.

While their post is very much like this one, it is different in that they provide their summary of what they think each party is about, whereas we take excerpts from each party's home page or platform in an effort to allow each party to explain itself.  

While fooling around over at White Out Press, you might participate in their poll regarding which of these parties most closely reflect your values/political philosophy/whatever.

We can't decide ..... yet.

It's at the bottom of this page right here.

We encourage you to click each of the following logos to see for yourself what each party is all about as we edited in the sense that we selected content that in our opinion revealed each party's core values/approach.

We might have selected out of order of their priorities.

The America First Party pledges its total allegiance to the Constitutional Republic of the United States of America. The America First Party believes that interpreting the Constitution must be based on the Framers' precise words and the meaning intended at that time. The America First Party totally rejects the concept that the Constitution is a "living document," in which the meaning can be interpreted and altered as society changes. This concept is not only seductive, but totally against the intentions of its Framers. If the citizens of this nation wish to revise or change a portion of the Constitution there is a provision provided by the Framers called the Constitutional Amendment. It is very interesting that the citizens of this nation have found it necessary to amend the Constitution only twenty-seven times since adoption of the Constitution in 1788.

Any alliance, treaty or agreement that commits this nation to participate in foreign conflicts subverts our Constitution and the independence of this nation, and is therefore illegal. The Constitution of the United States delegates the authority and responsibility for the common defense and the general welfare of the United States to the Congress - not the President. Only Congress-not the President, the UN, NATO or any other organization-can commit United States armed forces into any armed conflict or war with a declaration of war. All security alliances must be reviewed by the U.S. Congress to determine if they still serve the best interests of this nation and its people. The Constitution does not empower the Federal Government to police the world or protect other nations. The Constitution does not allow our nation's armed forces ever to be under foreign command, which has become common practice under present UN and NATO deployment. The Constitution requires that the President of the United States shall be the Commander in Chief of our nation's armed forces. It does not provide any means for the President to delegate this authority to any domestic or foreign person or organization, as has happened with NATO and the UN forces of late. Both the UN and the NATO treaty claim authority to direct our nation's armed forces into a war [armed conflict] without the Constitutional requirement of Congress declaring war. Since NATO no longer serves a defensive purpose for the United States, it is therefore time that we withdraw from NATO and permit Europe the task of defending itself.

The United States must withdraw from the United Nations immediately and require the UN headquarters to relocate out of the United States. Our participation as a member nation in this organization was never constitutional and now places our nation's sovereignty in extreme peril. The United States must promptly withdraw from all international monetary and financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, WTO, NAFTA, GATT, etc. These institutions violate the meaning and intent of our Constitution.

The American Independent Party is the party of ordered liberty in a nation under God. We believe in strict adherence to written law. We believe the Constitution is the contract America has with itself. Its willful distortion has led to the violation of our Tenth Amendment guaranteed right to limited government—which inevitably requires oppressive taxation. Its faithful application will lift that awful burden.

We believe in protecting all human life however weak, defenseless, or disheartened; we endorse the family as the essential bulwark of liberty, compassion, responsibility, and industry; and declare the family's right and responsibility to nurture, discipline, and educate its children. We maintain that all humans are persons from the beginning of their biological development and especially deserve our love and nurture when they are weakest and most dependent.

We insist that marriage is between a man and a woman and assert the role of the law in establishing and reinforcing the mutual rights and obligations of that God-ordained contract.

We assert the absolute, concurrent Second Amendment guaranteed individual right to self defense against impositions by other citizens or our government, coupled with a strong common defense, a common defense which requires a national sovereignty not damaged by imprudent or un-Constitutional treaties.

We oppose all illegal immigration. We support secure borders and immigration policies, inviting the best of the world to join us in freedom. We emphatically demand that our borders be protected against intrusions by that most straight-forward and practical means, a fence, reinforced by all the necessary manpower and electronic surveillance. We also insist that those who violate our immigration laws—be they illegal immigrants or their employers—be punished for their crime in a way that will deter them from future offenses.

The Republic established by our Constitution is the greatest of all pro-life institutions. In the first place, it protects our lives from the impositions of foreign nations and internal disorder. Our Constitution in its Fifth Amendment also forbids the government to take life—or liberty or property—unjustly. The Fourteenth amendment requires all States to apply all the protections they provide for life equally to all visitors or citizens, and to all born or unborn persons within the territories governed by their laws.

We believe that all those who govern are the servants of God for the good of citizens. Therefore all governments are under God whether they like it or not! This is why we call those who rule in our nation, Public Servants. We will resist by all political means at our disposal the increasing inclination of our Public employees and representatives to become, ever more, Public Masters.

Americans Elect is the first nonpartisan nomination. We're using the Internet to break the gridlock in Washington, open up the political process and give every single voter—Democrat, Republican or independent—the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012. Your voice matters. You decide the issues. You choose the candidates. And in a secure, online convention next June, you will make history by putting the Americans Elect ticket on the ballot in every state.

With Americans Elect, you have the power to choose leadership that puts country before party, and America's interests before special interests. You have the power to change politics as usual. 

Americans Elect is a "2nd way" to nominate a President, not a traditional 3rd party. Our process is open to any qualified candidate and any registered voter—no matter their party. We have no ties to any political group—left, right, or center. We don't promote any issues, ideology or candidates. None of our funding comes from special interests or lobbyists. Our only goal is to put a directly-nominated ticket on the ballot in 2012.

We're building a 21st-century nominating system with state-of-the-art security at every step. Every voter's registration status will be verified. Every vote will be counted fairly and accurately, and will generate a printable confirmation. And an independent, publicly-identified panel of election experts will monitor the process and report publicly on its transparency and security.

 Americans Elect is not another advocacy group or online competition. We are well on the way to securing national ballot access. We are building a state-of-the-art, secure voting process. We will attract millions of registered voters. We will attract serious, qualified presidential candidates. And in 2012, American voters will change politics as usual and put their ticket on the ballot in every state.

The Boston Tea Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose.

Program of the Boston Tea Party Adopted in Convention, May 2, 2012

1. Monetary policy reform: Repeal legal tender law, allow for free competition of currency, and prohibit federal and state taxes on precious metal coins and bullion.

2. Real budgetary reform: Abolish all subsidies/entitlements, drastically cut military spending, cut salary of all federal employees (including elected and appointed officials) and liquidate all government assets other than necessary office buildings.

3. Pass the Downsize DC agenda of Congressional reforms: Read the Bills Act, One Subject at a Time Act, Write the Laws Act, and Enumerated Powers Act.

4. End the Wars Abroad: immediately cease all foreign intervention and bring home troops stationed abroad.

5. End the Wars at home: war on drugs, war on poverty, war on civil liberties.

The Constitution Party affirms the principles of inherent individual rights upon which these United States of America were founded:

That each individual is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness;

That the freedom to own, use, exchange, control, protect, and freely dispose of property is a natural, necessary and inseparable extension of the individual's unalienable rights;

That the legitimate function of government is to secure these rights through the preservation of domestic tranquility, the maintenance of a strong national defense, and the promotion of equal justice for all;

That history makes clear that left unchecked, it is the nature of government to usurp the liberty of its citizens and eventually become a major violator of the people's rights; and

That, therefore, it is essential to bind government with the chains of the Constitution and carefully divide and jealously limit government powers to those assigned by the consent of the governed.

 Never has our country faced as many challenges and crises as we do now.  Levels of federal revenue are the lowest they have been since 1950 because of tax cuts and breaks for the very rich and for corporations. Government agencies charged with safeguarding public health and safety are operating with slashed budgets that paralyze their efforts. Jobs are being permanently relocated outside the country, while social and educational programs are being gutted. Our food, water, air, and soil are increasingly found to bear toxins and debilitating pollution.

Every single level of government - local, county, state, and federal - is operating in the red, running up crushing amounts of debt. Many of our allies and former friends around the world are disgusted with our imperialist foreign policy, militarism, and arrogant corporate behavior. Realizing that our actions will be judged by future generations, we ask how we can draw on the best of our traditions, calling forth a spirit of ingenuity and citizen participation to achieve a free, democratic, just, and responsible society, one that actively responds to the crucial ecological challenges of our time, rather than denying them.

We propose a vision of our common good that is advanced through an independent politics free from the control of corporations and big money, and through a democratic structure and process that empowers and reaches across lines of division to bring together our combined strengths as a people.

We, the Green Party, see our political and economic progress, and our individual lives, within the context of an evolving, dynamic world.

As in nature, where adaptation and diversity provide key strategies through which life flourishes, a successful political strategy is one that is diverse, adaptable to changing needs, and strong and resilient in its core values:

Participatory Democracy, rooted in community practice at the grassroots level and informing every level, from the local to the international.

Social Justice and Equal Opportunity emphasizing personal and social responsibility, accountability, and an informing ethic of Nonviolence.

Ecological and Economic Sustainability, balancing the interests of a regulated market economy and community-based economics with effective care for the Great Economy in which we are embedded: the ecosystems of the Earth

The Independence Party of America will offer a ‘third way’ to professionally manage the federal government.  As America’s largest third party organization of political independents — with more than 350,000 members in our home state alone and growing daily — we intend to bring INDEPENDENCE to the national forefront.  We intend to change the DEBATE in Washington and offer a viable alternative to the two-party duopoly.  And we hope to recruit America’s increasingly apathetic electorate with a plan and a mission to offer a REAL alternative to the major party candidates.

Millions of people across the nation have voiced their distrust of Washington’s extreme partisanship — and the growing incompetence that characterizes the federal bureaucracy.

Our great democratic system of governance has been corrupted by significant waste, fraud and mismanagement.  While the largest corporations in the nation reap billions in profits from an unprecedented surge in federal spending, average Americans struggle to pay for their basic medical expenses, housing and energy needs.

All government spending is a tax on each and every one of us, and WE, THE PEOPLE must demand appropriate accountability. We deserve a better quality lifestyle relative to our contributed tax dollars.  We deserve a better reputation on the world’s stage relative to the average American’s honest goodwill towards all people, and the sacrifices that many generations have endured to improve the lives of others around the globe.  We deserve competent, intelligent and forward-thinking leadership to lead the nation to new heights of prosperity.

As independents, we believe that America’s choice for an independent President will emerge from the grassroots with a platform to bring competent and revolutionary management principles to transforming the federal government.  The Independence Party of America will be the great big tent for all voters – left, right and center — to feel confident that we are on our way to changing course for the better.

We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual.

We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.

Governments throughout history have regularly operated on the opposite principle, that the State has the right to dispose of the lives of individuals and the fruits of their labor. Even within the United States, all political parties other than our own grant to government the right to regulate the lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.

We, on the contrary, deny the right of any government to do these things, and hold that where governments exist, they must not violate the rights of any individual: namely,

(1) the right to life -- accordingly we support the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others;

(2) the right to liberty of speech and action -- accordingly we oppose all attempts by government to abridge the freedom of speech and press, as well as government censorship in any form; 

(3) the right to property -- accordingly we oppose all government interference with private property, such as confiscation, nationalization, and eminent domain, and support the prohibition of robbery, trespass, fraud, and misrepresentation.

Since governments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals. People should not be forced to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others. They should be left free by government to deal with one another as free traders; and the resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of individual rights, is the free market.

The PFP from the very beginning has been a strong advocate for the protection of the environment from pollution and nuclear waste.

We honor all treaties with Native Americans.

We support the right of all people to self determination.

We recognize each person's right to determine her or his own sexual preferences.

We respect the right of all individuals to control their own bodies, including free abortion on demand.

We call for free access to a full education for every person at any point in life.

We fight for each person's right to be well clothed, well housed, and well fed.

We want free high equality health care as a right, not a privilege.

The PFP envisions a full employment economy based on peacetime production to provide for the needs of all people.

Since 1974 the Peace and Freedom Party platform has been feminist and socialist. We want a socialist economy, one where industries, financial institutions, and natural resources are owned by the people as a whole and democratically managed by the people who work in them and use them.

This would be a big change from the present corporate capitalist economy. The richest 1% of the population has half of all privately-owned stock in U.S. corporations and controls most of the institutional stock. They control the policies of business, government, and the media. The capitalist economy starts out with competition for personal profit and ends up with huge monopolies which waste resources. They don't care if they endanger the planet by making useless or even harmful products, so long as they make money. Under capitalism, millions of people are jobless, homeless, often hungry, and without proper medical care. Even those with decent jobs live with the fear of war, nuclear destruction, and environmental pollution of our food, air and water. 

REFORM PARTY CORE PRINCIPLES  (Amended by the 2008 National Convention, Dallas, TX)

 The program of the Socialist Equality Party starts not with what capitalism can “afford,” but with what the working class requires. Our program is not tailored to what small-minded opportunists and pragmatists may consider immediately “achievable.” What can or cannot be achieved, in any given situation, is determined in struggle. Those not prepared to fight will never win anything.

The SEP insists that everyone has basic social rights, necessary for life in a complex modern society.  These rights include:

The right to a job: The right to employment is the most basic of all. Without a steady, good-paying job, it is impossible to satisfy all other needs.

The right to a livable income: Wages are under relentless attack, and the current federal minimum wage condemns millions to poverty. It must be replaced by a guaranteed annual income that covers all needs.

The right to leisure: To improve conditions of life and provide jobs for the unemployed, the workweek must be shortened. Workers should earn a full-time income based on a 30-hour workweek.

The right to decent and affordable housing: The SEP demands an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. All mortgages should be restructured to affordable levels, indexed to income and employment status.

The right to utilities and transportation: There must be an immediate end to all utilities shutoffs, which affect hundreds of thousands of American families every year, and access to affordable quality transportation must be guaranteed to all.

The right to high quality health care: The solution to the health care crisis lies in putting an end to the privately owned health care corporations and removing profit from the health care system.

The right to a secure retirement: All workers must be guaranteed pensions that allow for a secure retirement, with an income that covers all necessities of life.

The right to an education: With the growing complexity of society and work comes the need for all workers to have a quality education. Yet the state of education is abysmal and getting worse.

The right to a healthy and safe environment: Addressing environmental degradation is impossible in a society in which every decision is dictated by the pursuit of profit.

The right to culture: Access to art and culture is a basic component of a healthy society. Yet, like everything else, it is under relentless attack.

We call for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops from wherever they are stationed abroad, and an end to the drive by the ruling class to restructure the world in its interests. We call for the defense of democratic rights, and the abolition of the police-state infrastructure built up under both Bush and Obama.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY strives to establish a radical democracy that places people's lives under their own  control - a non-racist, classless, feminist socialist society... where working people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically controlled public agencies; where full employment is realized for everyone who wants to work; where workers have the right to form unions freely, and to strike and engage in other forms of job actions; and where the production of society is used for the benefit of all humanity, not for the private profit of a few. We believe socialism and democracy are one and indivisible.

The working class is in a key and central position to fight back against the ruling capitalist class and its power. The working class is the major force worldwide that can lead the way to a socialist future - to a real radical democracy from below.

The Socialist Party fights for progressive changes compatible with a socialist future. We support militant working class struggles and electoral action, independent of the capitalist controlled two-party system, to present socialist alternatives. We strive for democratic revolutions - radical and fundamental changes in the structure and quality of economic, political, and personal relations - to abolish the power now exercised by the few who control great wealth and the government.

In case your wondering what Glass Steagall is in the first place, this vid provides a simple and sufficient answer to that question.

In a nutshell Glass Steagall is the shorthand name for legislation passed in 1933 that was specifically designed to help prevent another stock market crash ala 1929 and subsequent depression ala "The Great Depression".

It worked like a charm too ...... right up until the moment it was repealed. 

Democrats are gonna hate this story as it totally blows up the notion that the powers that be within the Democrat party care one whit more about you than do those reprehensible fascists of the right.

If you take the time to watch this, you'll at least have an understanding of what hit you.

American Readers

“US Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a ‘battlefield’ and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial. The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world.

The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself. The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday.

The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing…Now is the time to stop this bad idea.

Please urge your senators to vote YES on the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.”

These provisions are being reviled across the political spectrum.

There are a number of petitions available at sites ranging from the ACLU to Ron Paul.

We selected the ACLU to link up to only because our Senator Levin is a well known card carrying member with an 84% lifetime score.

Take a minute and decide if you think it's a good idea for the United States Military to be arresting American citizens and holding them indefinately without charge or trial, for any reason.

It is our opinion that the potential for abuse is staggering and that it is a certainty that if enacted these provisions will be abused.

As always when Congress comes after the freedoms of the citizenry it is in the interest of protecting us from terrorists.

It is becoming increasingly clear to us that the interests of "Terror" and Congress are dovetailing quite nicely.

Click anywhere above to link up to the paper.

The above cartoon is part of a series we first saw posted at Don't Tread on Me who we have always thought of as being a lot like Just Thinking except maybe somewhat less random, more professional, polished, better edited and seemingly profitable.

Click on the photo for the original post of four cartoons, the last of which might be called provocative.

We've been having just the best time enjoying the haters on both the left and the right as they attempt to either dismiss or insert themselves into the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The trolls, media and politicians of the right religiously pursue the most cliche' ridden and ditziest possible occupiers for their film crews and interviews in an effort to portray the occupation as a gaggle of stupid, lazy, foul smelling, ner-do-well, hippy socialists.

The trolls, media and politicians of the left in a cynical attempt to ride it into electoral glory and in so doing provide themselves with yet another opportunity to plunder America for still one more election cycle, are now seeking to portray themselves as part of and ingratiate themselves into a movement that has correctly identified those very people to be a significant part of the problem.

Both will fail.

To quote anonymous,

"The abuse of corporations, banks and governments ends here."

Click on the above quote for the entire piece.

From Business Insider

Click on the photo of former Clinton Administration Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO Robert Rubin for the entire list.

THE REVOLVING DOOR:

29 People Who Went From Wall Street To Washington To Wall Street
 

Sort of makes you wonder, don't it.