Ivy League Study Says U.S. Is No Longer A Democracy

We've known this was coming. The America that Republicans have always wanted is finally here. It took years of intentional erosion of economic safeguards and institutional oversight. But this should not have surprised anyone. The signs were everywhere. It began with Reagan and his trickle-down economics, the policy whereby the rich feasted and the middle class fought for the leftover bread crumbs. In the '90s Newt Gingrich delivered a right cross to equality with his "contract with America" manifesto that shredded liberal policies. Rush Limbaugh landed a vicious upper cut by demonizing the poor which made it okay to protect the very rich.

In the 2000s Bush and the Tea Party congress staggered democracy by rewarding the rich with unworthy tax breaks. The Supreme Court scored the knockout punch by dismantling campaign finance rules. Now the 1% can limitlessly buy elections, corrupt politicians and strip away corporate and financial regulations. And now it's official, we are at the mercy of the ruling class. Or so says a new study from Princeton University, which declares that democracy no longer exists. In an OpEd News article published today, researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page state:

"...over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power." Compiling data from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2008, Gilens and Page conclude that rich, well-connected individuals now control the direction of the country, regardless of the will of the majority of voters. "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy...while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Left unchecked, the new American plutocracy will soon end Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security; deregulate financial markets to pre-collapse state; make it more difficult than ever for middle-class students to get a college education; restrict access to health care; and continue to enact policies which will enrich themselves at the expense of all others. In other words, in the coming years it will be harder and harder for average Americans to not only dig themselves out of the subjugated class, but merely survive. By the middle of the 21st century there will be no recourse for the 99% but to shut up, obey, bend over, and cry, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, "We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have all wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we can't have both."


http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4

Republicans Would Be Shocked And Petrified If They Met Real Jesus

Republican politicians, especially those running for President, like to pander to their hard-core religious base by blathering about Jesus. But what do they really know about Jesus? Would they recognize him if he enrolled in ACA, snuck across the border with the Hispanic poor, or collected a meager welfare check like other poor people? Because that's how Jesus lived his first life over 2000 years ago--among the poor, the disenfranchised, and the victims of tyrannical right-wing authority. I can't see modern-day Jesus as a rich capitalist intent on ending aid to the poor, the old, the sick, and the helpless. I don't imagine Him as a fanatical, open-carry gun nut giving rousing sermons misinterpreting the Second Amendment and singing the praises of the NRA. I can't picture him as a FOX News contributor supporting white racist cops who gun down unarmed black people. I doubt that he would extol the benefits of corporate greed and the need to eliminate the estate tax so that the wealthy can be wealthier. I seem to remember real Jesus saying something about how difficult it would be for a rich man to enter His Father's Kingdom.

So how and why can so many people be fooled by the GOP's phony sanctimony and its religious hypocrisy? Don't they read their Bible? I have, and nowhere in there does Jesus passionately defend trickle-down economics and AK-47s. Perhaps we do need The Second Coming to wake up GOP voters. Political comedian John Fugelsang proposed this very idea. He mused aloud about the consequences should the real Jesus return to earth to run for President. Here's what he said:

"I've come to view Jesus the same way I view Elvis...I love the guy, [but] the fan clubs scare me...like GOP candidates. We hear them all talking about Jesus all the time. They invoke his name incessantly. Wouldn't it be great if we could get the actual Jesus of Nazareth to come back and run for President on the GOP ticket? They can't pick a frontrunner anyway, so wouldn't the GOP love to get behind a peaceful, radical, nonviolent revolutionary who hung around with lepers, criminals and hookers? Who never spoke English? Who was not an American citizen? A man who was anti-capitalism, anti-wealth, anti-public prayer (yes, He was...see Matthew 6:5), anti-death penalty, but never once remotely said anything anti-gay, didn't mention abortion, didn't mention premarital sex? A man who never justified torture? A man who never called the poor lazy? Who never asked a leper for a co-pay? A man who never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes? And who was a long-haired, brown-skinned (that's in Revelations), homeless middle Eastern Jew? Of course, that's only if you believe what's actually in the Bible."

Can you imagine how the return of real Jesus would shake up conservatives? The point is, Republican candidates for the Presidency have no idea who Jesus really was. Or maybe they do, and like smarmy, snake-oil salesmen they are simply pandering to their Evangelical base. Either way, the real Jesus has already chastised them in unequivocal words:

"Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven."
--Matthew 6:1 ESV

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen."
--1 John 4:20 ESV

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4

Obscenely Wealthy Republican Congressman Kicks The Poor While They’re Down

California’s Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, worth an estimated $500 million in personal wealth, says that poor people in America really have it good. In an interview with CNN, Issa actually said, “Our poor people are the envy of the world.” Issa is apparently more heartless, cruel and tone-deaf than the average Tea Party idiot. Or maybe he’s just stupid. Even if a public official believes that the poor are a privileged class in America, it is politically unwise to express it aloud. Much better to shut up, luxuriate in your millions, represent an all-white constituency, and quietly do everything you can to pass legislation which extends government handouts and tax breaks to the obscenely wealthy like yourself. But Issa is not content to be rich, smug and imperious; he has to rub the noses of the poor in it.

Issa is also the moron who has wasted taxpayers’ money for years trying to hang the blame for Benghazi on Hillary Clinton. Spurred on by the liars at FOX News, Issa’s committee tried desperately to find any evidence of Obama/Clinton incompetence or corruption in the deaths of U.S. embassy employees. The investigation has turned up absolutely nothing. But Issa did get the satisfaction of publicly grilling Hillary in his congressional hearings. In so doing, he proved himself to be a misogynist lout, treating our Secretary of State with disrespect, disdain, and derision. In the end, though, Issa’s work was eviscerated by a bi-partisan Senate Intelligence committee which found that the State Department was not to blame for the attacks on our foreign embassy and the deaths of American diplomatic employees. There was no stand-down order at the time of the attacks, and no cover-up of the facts ensued. To wit: "There was no singular 'Tactical Warning' in the intelligence reporting leading up to the events on September 11, 2012, predicting an attack on U.S embassies. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence review found that no specific warnings predicted the attack in Benghazi…[and]there were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities to 'cover-up' facts or make alterations for political purposes…[and] there were no U.S. military resources in position to intervene in short order in Benghazi to help defend The Temporary Mission Facility."

Issa should resign in disgrace for wasting millions of dollars, money which could have been used to assist the poor. Oops, I forgot. American poor people don’t need our help because they already have it so good.

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4

Last Nazi Fugitive From Justice Dies; CIA Still Not Held Accountable For Protecting Him And His Cronies

Operation Paperclip was the innocuous-sounding name given to the CIA operation which allowed Nazi rats to infiltrate America after World War II. Well, the last rat, Oscar Holderer, died yesterday, and now it’s time to expose the true history of the disgraceful operation.

The below article, publicizing the death of the last Nazi rocket scientist smuggled into the USA by the CIA, appeared on a site called AL.com, an Alabama news site. Typical of the shoddy, misleading “journalism” practiced in the Deep South, the writer, some lazy, misinformed idiot named Lee Roop, nowhere in the article mentions the word “Nazi.” Yet that’s exactly who Holderer was—a murderous, Hitler-loving, America-hating Nazi. He brought not only his rocket technology to America, but also his fascist ideology. When he was smuggled into this country by the CIA, the Agency put him and his Nazi cronies in the perfect place—Alabama, where bigotry, hatred, narrow-mindedness and superior-race supremacy ruled. They must have felt right at home in the land where blacks (like European Jews) were subjugated to vicious, tyrannical attacks by white men. It galls me that these fascists were not hanged at Nuremberg for their war crimes. Instead they lived upper-middle-class lives and were accorded the deference of protected scientists and privileged whites in the segregated South. Now that the last one of these barbarous, ruthless bastards has died, it is time for the full truth to be known. The CIA must declassify the files of Operation Paperclip so that the American people can see the full extent of their atrocities, not only in Germany, but here in America where they were aided and abetted by Allen Dulles and the CIA.

There were thousands of Nazis given safe passage to America under the cover of Operation Paperclip. During the war they worked for Wernher von Braun, who became the most famous rocket scientist in America. In Germany the Nazi rocket scientists worked either at the Peenemunde research and launching site on the Baltic Sea, or they oversaw the production of their rockets at Mittelwerk factories. Mittelwerk used slave laborers provided by the Dora concentration camp. Thousands of these laborers were worked to death, starved to death, or beaten to death by Paperclip Nazis. Even von Braun knew about it; he made several trips to Mittelwerk to oversee production of the rockets he designed.

One of von Braun’s collaborators, General Walter Dornberger, got a cozy job with Bell Aeronautics and Helicopter of Dallas/Fort Worth after the war. There he rose to the position of Vice-President where he worked alongside Michael Paine (descended from the Forbes and the Cabots of the Eastern aristocracy). You may not know that Michael Paine was married to Ruth Paine, landlady of Lee Harvey Oswald and family. Ruth Paine has deep CIA roots, and she helped implicate Oswald with her eyewitness account to the Dallas Police and her Warren Commission testimony. If you think this is one giant coincidence, think again. Ruth and Michael Paine had very personal ties to Allen Dulles, ex-CIA head fired by Kennedy after the CIA’s Bay of Pigs fiasco. Dulles was appointed to the Warren Commission, aka Operation Whitewash, by Lyndon Johnson. How much Dornberger knew of the plot to kill JFK is unknown, but there are those who suspect he is the source of the first call to Dallas Police falsely implicating Oswald as the assassin.

Here is the Alabama on-line article. Notice how it sanitizes and soft-sells Holderer.

“Oscar Holderer dies, last of Wernher von Braun's original 'Operation Paperclip' moon
rocket team”

“Oscar Carl Holderer, the last member of Dr. Wernher von Braun's original "Operation Paperclip" team that built the Saturn V moon rocket, died Tuesday in Huntsville, Ala. He was 95.
“Born in Preum, Germany, on Nov. 4, 1919, Holderer was an engineer who worked with von Braun on rockets in Germany before coming to the United States. He arrived in 1945 in the second group of German scientists and technicians brought to America after the war in the Army program called "Operation Paperclip." He was "proud" of becoming an American citizen in 1955, his obituary notes.
“Holderer would say that he was not one of Huntsville's famous rocket scientists, but he was one of the best engineers in a city famous for engineering accomplishments. The wind tunnel used by NASA to test the Saturn V – and still used today - was Holderer's design. He held 19 patents at the time of his death.
“Holderer made other significant contributions to Alabama after retiring from NASA including designing the multi-access trainer, low-gravity trainer and other equipment used by more than 600,000 campers at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center's Space Camp.
“When it was decided to place a Saturn 1B rocket at the Alabama welcome center on I-65 at the Tennessee state line, Holderer was the engineer who guided the installation.
“Holderer was unlike his famous colleagues, who moved to homes near each other on top of or near Huntsville Monte Sano mountain. He designed and built the home he lived in for 61 years in northwest Huntsville near the Huntsville country club. Visitors were sometimes offered tours of his large, spotless and meticulously arranged home machine shop.”

For those who argue that if we did not use these scientists the Russians would have, let me propose a more moral, sane, and appropriate disposition. These Nazis should have been tried at Nuremberg as war criminals. They should have been executed for their crimes against humanity; instead they were given new lives, jobs and homes in America by the CIA. Along with their rocket knowledge came their toxic, filthy ideologies...right at home in Alabama.

We lost our moral superiority when we permitted these Nazi vermin to emigrate to America. It leaves one asking, “Why did we fight the war in the first place?”

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4