Tea Partiers Are Stupid; The Problem Is They Don’t Know It

Okay, let’s not mince words. Right wingers are just dumb. They live in a fact-less world, where made-up stuff flies everywhere. They get their information from FOX, Limbaugh, Beck and other dolts. We on the left know this, but we can’t convince the right of it because the right will not be persuaded by facts, statistics, logic, or science. In other words, the Republican base is adamantly ignorant, proudly so, and proudly unaware of it. This phenomenon has a name—the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Acknowledgment of this phenomenon comes from an article posted by M.E. Miller on Daily Kos. He writes, “The Dunning-Kruger effect comes out of research conducted by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University since 1999. Over the years, Dunning and Kruger have conducted studies over a wide range of cognitive tasks. Following the skill assessment, subjects are shown their results, and then asked to rate their performance on a percentile basis. What they have found is that those performing well — say, 65th %ile and higher — exhibit a quite accurate assessment of where they placed, while those who do more poorly are unaware of their own poor performance. In fact, those who do quite badly, say at the 15th %ile, tend to overestimate their relative skill by 50% or more.

"A way to summarize these results is to say that those who are truly stupid are too stupid to realize that they are stupid. As Dunning has put it, slightly less colorfully:
If you're incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent.… [T]he skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.

"This explains quite a lot about our world, especially about the limitations on our ability to propagate a reality-based worldview. It explains nearly the whole phenomenon of Fox News and its viewers.”

As Forrest Gump once said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Senate Republicans Vote To Arm ISIL, Ravage The Middle Class, Make The Rich Richer, And Deprive Millions Of Access To Health Care

The U.S. Senate, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch brothers and the National Rifle Association, made a stand for violence, poverty and sickness in America the other day. That’s right, in the wake of another gun-violence bloodbath, Republicans searched their souls, hearts, and collective conscience…and, realizing, they had none of those things, voted to make all Americans (except the very wealthy) more susceptible to death and financial ruin.

The timing of the Senate vote is, well, cruel to say the least. At a moment when the blood of San Bernardino victims is not yet dry, Republicans refused to restrict gun access for those on the national terror watch list. Think about this for a moment. Right-wing politicians are okay with arming known radical Muslims, even though these same politicians regularly complain that Obama is doing nothing to stop known radical Muslims. Does it not occur to right-wingers that disarming terrorists might be a good first step to stopping home-grown terrorist attacks? As Hillary Clinton so eloquently stated, “If suspected terrorists are too dangerous to allow on planes, they should not be able to own guns.”

But when did Republicans ever let logic, sensibility, and compassion creep into their world view? Their brand is stupidity. Their priority is ignorance. Their values are warped. They are more concerned with pleasing their NRA overlords than they are with keeping guns out of the hands of ISIL.

San Bernardino will bring new howls about mental illness being the source of violence, but this claim has no basis. According to Joshua Holland, a writer for The Nation magazine, “We don’t yet know what set off this latest bloodbath, but we know a lot about gun violence in America. We know that our mental-health care system is indeed broken. But the gun lobby’s ubiquitous claims that fixing it will address the scourge of gun violence are merely a distraction from the real issue. Epidemiological studies show that the vast majority of the mentally ill aren’t violent. They tend to kill themselves at a disproportionate rate. Duke University psychiatrist Jeffrey Swanson told Health Day that people suffering from those kinds of mental-health problems are responsible for only 4 percent of the gun violence in America. Ultimately, talking about mental illness obscures the real problem: We’re awash in firearms and refuse to take the steps needed to keep them out of the wrong hands. Perhaps the most frightening thing we know about gun violence comes from a study conducted by researchers at Duke, Harvard, and Columbia that was published earlier this year in the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law. It found that almost one in 10 Americans who have access to guns are also prone to impulsive outbursts of rage. Among this group are almost 4 million people who carry their guns around in public and say they ‘have tantrums or angry outbursts,’ ‘get so angry [that they] break or smash things’ and lose their temper and ‘get into physical fights.’ The researchers also found that those who own many firearms are significantly more likely to exhibit signs of uncontrollable anger than people who own just one. The authors of the study noted that very few among that group had been diagnosed with the kinds of mental illness that would be unearthed in a standard background check. They say that we need to start restricting gun ownership based on whether people have a history of violence, not on diagnosed mental illness.”

God save us from angry, impulsive, gun-toting Americans…because the Republicans never will.

That Lying Witch Fiorina Now Has Blood On Her Hands

Domestic terrorist Robert Dear revealed his true motives for shooting up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado last week when he uttered, “no more baby parts.” Where could he have gotten the absurd notion that this clinic was involved in selling baby parts? Only one place I know of…the black hole of lies called Carly Fiorina.

Fiorina, if you don’t know (and I’m sorry I do), is a right-wing witch’s brew of hateful disinformation, who sputters the most outrageous things from her filthy hole in a desperate attempt to raise her poll numbers from the non-existent to the barely visible. In this abhorrent season of sociopathic Republican debates, where one idiot tries to outlie the other, Fiorina is the token female prevaricator, and she wants her whoppers to stand out. In one debate she shrilly screamed about a Planned Parenthood videotape showed babies being harvested for their body parts. No such video exists; Carly the Witch made it up.

A harmless lie, some may say. But not when dangerous right-wing psychopaths, like Dear, hear it and believe it. Murdered citizens is what you get. Republicans have claimed Dear was not politically motivated, but his ex-wife divulged the truth. Dear, she said, “…has targeted the reproductive health organization before.” In an interview with NBC News, Barbara Mescher Michaux said Robert Dear put glue in the locks of another Planned Parenthood clinic when they were married more than 20 years ago. She characterized him in an affidavit she filed to divorce him in 1993 and in her Tuesday interview as a violent, isolated man. “For him to plan this and go there, he meant to go there," she said. "There is no doubt in my mind. He is very right wing."

No word on whether Robert watched the Republican debates. But it’s a good bet that he got his information from Carly. She has staked out the “anti-PP baby parts” platform, and now she has to own it. Republicans must realize that when they spout hatred and lies that they are fueling the lunatic fringe to act out. Nuts with guns are their most rabid constituents. Domestic terrorists are aching for a reason, even a false one, to compensate for inadequacies by shooting someone. Their white-hot anger needs only someone to light the match.

Unfortunately, Fiorina is devoid of any conscience or compassion. She has distanced herself from the shootings and any blame for the bloodshed. Now I wish she would distance herself from us. Please mount your broomstick and fly away, Carly. Or perhaps someone can just throw a bucket of water on her?

More Proof That Federal Agents Confiscated, Altered, and Destroyed Photographic Evidence Which Could Have Proven There Was a Second Gunman in Dealey Plaza

Readers of this blog may recall that on November 14, 2013, I posted an article concerning the mysterious disappearances and alterations of the photographic evidence in the JFK assassination. The search for at least some of the missing films and pictures is ongoing. The following article appeared on Yahoo News today:

“In a new lawsuit, Gayle Nix Jackson, the granddaughter of Orville Nix, who captured the assassination on film, is suing the U.S. government for the return of her grandfather’s footage.

“The suit, filed against the United States of America and the National Archives and Records Administration, claims that Nix’s footage was handed over to the FBI in December 1963 and used by the Warren Commission in its investigation of the assassination, but has not yet been returned.

“‘Without the Defendants taking any accountability let alone identifying the whereabouts of the original Nix film by negligence or otherwise, the granddaughter of Orville Nix initiates this action,’ reads the suit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia on Saturday. ‘This action seeks the return of the original Nix film that would provide an opportunity for researchers and others to examine the JFK assassination and grassy knoll area…’”

The Nix film is just one of many images recorded by bystanders in Dealey Plaza when Kennedy was murdered. Most of those images have gone missing or have been altered to remove indication of a conspiracy. There were many mysterious men, most unidentified to this day, who confiscated films immediately after the shooting occurred. It is apparent, then, that part of the plotters’ plan was to wipe out photographic evidence of shooters and shots other than from behind (Oswald’s supposed position in the Texas School Book Depository).

In light of Gayle Nix Jackson’s allegations, I think it would be valuable to reprint my 11/14/13 blog. Here it is in full:

“When people ask me why a clear photo of another shooter in Dealey Plaza has never been found, I tell them it’s because all photos and films were confiscated by ‘authorities’ shortly after the shooting. Some of these photos and films were never returned to the rightful owners. Other images were edited or cropped to delete conspiratorial content. Some were misinterpreted. Some pictures were just reported lost; some cameras were even stolen.

“Gordon Arnold took a home movie of the assassination while standing almost directly in the line of fire by the picket fence on the grassy knoll. He hit the deck and covered up when the shots whizzed right over his head. Quickly two ‘cops’ emerged from behind the fence and demanded, at gunpoint, that Arnold turn over his camera. One of the cops was carrying a rifle and the other was sobbing uncontrollably.

“Phil Willis, standing on the south side of Elm Street with his family, swears he took a picture of Jack Ruby walking in front of the Texas Book Depository right after the shooting. Ruby said he was not in the plaza at the time of the shooting, and proof of his presence there would have sent conspiratorial shockwaves through the investigation. When Willis got his photo back, he saw that it had been cropped right through the image he claimed was Jack Ruby.

“Canadian journalist Norman Similas was in Dealey Plaza at the time of the shooting, and he took photographs of the open sixth-floor window of the Book Depository, the exact location of Oswald’s sniper’s nest. When his film was later developed it showed two men in the window, which would indicate Oswald had conspirators. When he submitted the photo to his newspaper in Toronto, the negative went missing. He has never seen it again.

“Orville Nix took an amateur film of the assassination with a good view of the grassy knoll in the background, and what appears to be a gunman behind the fence. According to Crossfire, by Jim Marrs, ‘…Itek Corporation, which handles government contracts and is closely tied to the CIA, studied the film…and concluded that the gunman figure was actually shadows…[however] when Nix panned back over the area the ‘shadow figure’ is no longer visible.’ Nix gave his film to the FBI in 1963; supposedly the original was returned to him, but it has since disappeared. Nix died in 1972, and now his granddaughter is actively searching for the original.

“Beverly Oliver, another amateur filming from the south side of Elm, said that she was approached by government agents—either FBI or Secret Service—just days after the assassination. They said they were aware of her film and wanted to develop it for evidence. The agents confiscated the film, and Oliver never saw it again.

“Mary Moorman took one of the most famous photos of the assassination. It was a picture of JFK just as the bullet which killed him struck his head. Moorman’s photo has obviously been cropped. How do I know? Look closely sometime. There is no one driving the car. Limo driver William Greer, who some say pulled a gun and pointed it at JFK, has been cut out of the picture.”

These weren’t the only JFK assassination pictures to be destroyed or altered. The Zapruder film was doctored to fit the lone gunman scenario; several rolls of autopsy photos were destroyed; a photo of Jack Ruby in Dealey Plaza at the time of the shooting was cropped; photos of LBJ’s swearing in aboard Air Force One were “lost”; and it has been rumored that Dave Powers’ film of the motorcade was destroyed.

For more on the photographic cover-up in the assassination of JFK, read The President’s Mortician, available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming/dp/098882907X

Scientists Finally Fact Check The Republicans; They All Flunk

This Republican presidential campaign cycle has sunk to new lows. Stupidity is a virtue. Ignorance is a blessing. Believing in myths raises one’s poll numbers. Hatred is rewarded. Intolerance is applauded. Violent threats are encouraged. Warmongering is all the rage.

The attributes which make one suitable to win the Republican nomination are ones that a troglodyte would be proud of. They would make a circus clown blush. Even elephants have more sense. Sociopaths have more compassion. Imprisoned felons are more qualified for high office. Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne are smarter.

What does this say about Republican voters? Well, if the candidates reflect their followers’ values, GOP voters are viciously angry, criminally uninformed, heartless, soulless, hate-filled white Christian extremists. Lacking the conscience necessary to qualify as human beings, the candidates pander to this base and say the most outrageous things.

Recently, a panel of scientific experts was convened to fact check what Republicans have to say about climate change. What a great idea. Finally, smart people calling out stupid people and the stupid things they say. The Republicans graded out as imbeciles. The harshest comments were reserved for Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

"This individual [Cruz] understands less about science (and climate change) than the average kindergartner," Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor, wrote of Cruz's statements. "That sort of ignorance would be dangerous in a doorman, let alone a president."

Harvard scientist Jim McCarthy, a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, called Trump's comments "nonsense," while Emmanuel Vincent, a climate scientist at the University of California, Merced, said, "the candidate does not appear to have any commitment to accuracy."

I suggest we convene panels of experts in all areas to fact check each moronic utterance that emits from Republican mouths. At each Republican debate [when will they ever end?] let’s gather religious historians, constitutional scholars, law professors, crime statisticians, economic wizards, and foreign policy experts to call “bullshit” on every Republican whopper. The fate of America, and the globe, should not be left to a bunch of ruthless jackals and inveterate liars.

www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming/dp/098882907X

JFK—Gone 52 Years But Not Forgotten

The last real President we had (read: not beholden to the corrupting influence of the Pentagon, wealthy defense contractors and corporate overlords) was brutally murdered 52 years ago today, and those responsible for the crime will never be brought to justice. But on this day, I’d rather remember JFK for his courageous stand against the shadow government which has ruled America ever since, rather than be bitter about the treasonous culprits who got away with the coup d’etat on November 22, 1963.

In the first months of his presidency, Jack Kennedy was trapped into foolishly permitting an ill-fated CIA-planned invasion of Cuba. The Bay of Pigs fiasco taught him two important lessons: the CIA under Eisenhower had become a secret government unto its own, accountable to no one, and responsible for overthrowing democratic governments across the globe; and the Joints Chiefs’ military advice could not be trusted. Subsequently, Kennedy, acting on his own, refused to succumb to the nuclear-holocaust dreams of his psychopathic generals. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he bravely and shrewdly kept us out of World War III with the Soviet Union. He cut the CIA’s budget. He vowed to remove all American military presence from Vietnam in his second term. He was determined to make peace with the Russians rather than enter into a deadly exchange of atomic weapons which would have annihilated all life on Earth. He signed a nuclear test ban treaty. He suggested that peace, rather than war, become America’s way of life.

Since his death, we have constantly been at war, or under the threat of war, and, thus, have been a people under siege for the last half century. Concomitantly, we have seen the rise of the military-industrial complex to the point where we have become, truly, JFK’s worst nightmare: a war-based economy. It is estimated that 65% of our national budget is devoted to military spending, and not one candidate currently running for high office dares to suggest that we cut military spending. Terrorism and the threat of terrorism is the new ploy to empty our pockets. We remain the world’s policemen, cleaning up incidents that happen thousands of miles from our shores. All so that Lockheed, the Carlyle Group, and Halliburton can profit mightily. It is not an overstatement to say that these war profiteers secretly control America. For with their billions they are able finance the campaigns of candidates who hold the purse strings on military spending. These candidates’ nationalistic and jingoistic rhetoric inflame the population and create enemies across the globe. It is good for business. The policies of the war state are most profitable when the nation lives in a perpetual state of fear. And the merchants of military build-up--in our Congress, in the Pentagon, and in our Executive branch—make sure we are always in a state of fear.

The novel idea of peaceful co-existence with sovereign states, whose cultures, religions, and political systems, are different from ours, died with JFK in Dallas 52 years ago today. Consider what might have been had he not been killed. These are his words from a speech delivered on June 10, 1963, when he urged Americans to consider peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union:

“What kind of a peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace – the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living – the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”

www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming/dp/098882907X

The Truth Of The JFK Assassination Is Coming Dangerously Close To Being Revealed

With the release of yet another devastatingly truthful book about Allen Dulles, one of the masterminds of JFK’s assassination, it is getting harder for the mainstream media and its talking heads to keep their wall of lies from crumbling. David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government is an irrefutable indictment of the plotters and their motives; so convincing that even writers, publications, and media outlets on the periphery of the establishment are taking pick axes to the half-century of illusions that officialdom has used to keep us blinded.

Reviews of Chessboard are unanimous—we can no longer deny the evil Dulles and his cronies perpetrated on the country, including the murder of our 35th President.
Writing in “Foreign Policy Journal,” David Swanson admits that “…there’s not nearly as much disagreement regarding what happened to John and Robert Kennedy as major communications corporations would have you believe…your darkest suspicions about how the world operates are likely an underestimate. Yes, there is an amorphous group of unelected corporate lawyers, bankers, and intelligence and military officials who form an American ‘deep state,’ setting real limits on the rare politicians who ever try to get out of line…For those of us who were already convinced of that up to our eyeballs, Talbot’s book is still one of the best I’ve seen on the Dulles brothers and one of the best I’ve seen on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”

As Talbot so clearly lays it out, JFK had many enemies, the most deadly of whom were the masters of America’s secret government—the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, America’s oil cartel, and Wall Street moneychangers. Dulles was the ringleader of these traitors. After he had trapped Kennedy into the Bay of Pigs mess, Kennedy fired him and other sacred intelligence cows. Dulles swore revenge, and marshalled all the malevolent forces who wanted the President dead. The result was Dallas, 11/22/63.

Swanson, summarizing the work of Talbot and others, explains, “[JFK] wouldn’t fight Cuba or the Soviet Union or Vietnam or East Germany or independence movements in Africa. He wanted disarmament and peace. He was talking cooperatively with Khrushchev, as Eisenhower had tried prior to the U2-shootdown sabotage. The CIA was overthrowing governments in Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Vietnam, and around the world. Kennedy was getting in the way…Kennedy had made enemies of bankers and industrialists. He was working to shrink oil profits by closing tax loopholes, including the oil depletion allowance. He aggressively went after steel corporations and prevented their price hikes. Kennedy wanted to eliminate or drastically weaken and rename the CIA. Yes he threw Dulles and some of his gang out the door. Yes he refused to launch World War III over Cuba or Berlin or anything else. This was the sort of behavior that could get you overthrown.”

With his courageous work, Talbot has blasted the wall of secrecy surrounding Allen Dulles and his evil cult. Will CBS, NBC, ABC, the New York Times, et al, pay attention? Or will the bastards be the last to report the truth of THE crime of the 20th century?

Jeb is dead wrong; W was responsible for 9/11 Attacks. His advisors ignored warnings.

Recently Donald Trump has taken much criticism for blaming the 9/11 attacks on George W. Bush. Bush’s brother Jeb has been particularly incensed. Jeb’s outrage has gone unchallenged by the major media, of course, because they have a hard time remembering what happened yesterday much less 14 years ago. Since no real fact-checking of Trump’s claim is taking place, I have done a little research myself, and it turns out Trump is absolutely correct. Trump has shoveled a lot of political manure the last few months, but putting the blame for 9/11 on the George W. Bush administration is absolutely justified.

According to a New York Times article written by Kurt Eichenwald and published on Sept. 10, 2012, W and his cabinet had ample warning of the impending terrorist attacks. Eichenwald wrote, “On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s presidential daily brief — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.’ A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.”

And this was not the only briefing on Al Qaeda ignored by W’s administration. Eichenwald reported that “…the daily briefs preceding Aug. 6, the ones the Bush administration would not release [are even worse]. While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it. The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that ‘a group presently in the United States’ was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be imminent.”

So, yes, it is irrefutable that W and his bungling advisors stood by and did nothing as Al Qaeda planned its attack. No administration has ever been so negligent or culpable in failing to protect U.S. soil. But it doesn’t stop there. Bush’s incompetence wrought catastrophic devastation in the days and years after 9/11:

1) He squandered the surplus left him by Bill Clinton when wasted trillions on an unnecessary war and enriched his crony defense contractors (Halliburton, Carlyle, Blackwater, etc.) for shoddy work.
2) Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives slaughtered.
3) Destabilization of the Middle East, which led to the formation of ISIS.
4) U.S. went into debt to the tune of $3 trillion.
5) Officially sanctioned torture as American foreign policy.
6) Invaded the wrong country.
7) Let the real terrorists get away.
8) Gave safe sanctuary to the Bin Ladens.
9) Alienated the rest of the world; created hatred for Americans that lasts to this day.
10) Destroyed Iran’s number one enemy.

So go ahead and flame away, Donald. You finally got one right.

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming/dp/098882907X

Even The CIA Now Admits It Covered Up The Truth Of JFK’s Murder

As Earl Warren once let slip to a dogged reporter (there used to be such people in America), “You’ll not know the truth of the JFK assassination in your lifetime.” To the dismay of all democracy-loving people everywhere, Warren was right. Only dedicated researchers and writers, like David Lifton, Mark Lane, and James Douglas, largely ignored by the mainstream media, have dared to seriously investigate the murder of the century. Thanks to them we know much more now than we did 50 years ago. However, the truth of the conspiracy, which involved LBJ, the Joint Chiefs, Texas oil billionaires, and disaffected CIA rogues, has never been acknowledged by the establishment press or any government agency.

The best we can get from investigative “journalists” these days is admission of CIA lies, half-truths, and talk of indirect involvement. Such is this case with the latest revelation by a “name” journalist. Former New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, in an article for Politico Magazine, writes, “Even the CIA is now willing to raise these questions [about CIA involvement in JFK’s death]. Half a century after JFK’s death, in a once-secret report written in 2013 by the CIA’s top in-house historian and quietly declassified last fall, the spy agency acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that [John] McCone [CIA chief under JFK] and other senior CIA officials were ‘complicit’ in keeping ‘incendiary’ information from the Warren Commission.

“According to the report by CIA historian David Robarge, McCone, who died in 1991, was at the heart of a ‘benign cover-up’ at the spy agency, intended to keep the commission focused on ‘what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.’ The most important information that McCone withheld from the commission in its 1964 investigation, the report found, was the existence, for years, of CIA plots to assassinate Castro, some of which put the CIA in cahoots with the Mafia. Without this information, the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.

“The report offers no conclusion about McCone’s motivations, including the question of why he would go to lengths to cover up CIA activities that mostly predated his time at the agency. But it suggests that the Johnson White House might have directed McCone to hide the information. McCone 'shared the administration’s interest in avoiding disclosures about covert actions that would circumstantially implicate [the] CIA in conspiracy theories and possibly lead to calls for a tough US response against the perpetrators of the assassination.'"

Shenon, knowingly or unknowingly, is the latest conduit of the CIA’s limited hang-out position, to wit: “Yes, we covered up the truth, but we did not set up Oswald to be the patsy, hire the real hitmen, use assets to alter the Zapruder film, issue a false autopsy, alter the President’s wounds, kill and intimidate witnesses, or collude with the new President, the Joint Chiefs, or Texas oil billionaires to remove the 35th President from office…even though we hated him and were secretly at war with him throughout the thousand days of his administration.”

In truth, Shenon and his like bore me. At best, they should be pitied for being duped by CIA disinformation; at worst, they should be scorned for helping covering up the truth under the guise of “uncovering bombshell information” which does nothing more than exonerate the CIA. If you want the real truth, read Jim Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable…or my book, The President’s Mortician. And don’t be fooled by pseudo-journalists.

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming/dp/098882907X

Right-Wing Benghazi Witch Hunt Exposed for What It Is: An Attempt to Lower Hillary’s Poll Numbers

The longest investigation is U.S. Congressional history has officially and publically been declared a devious, cynical, taxpayer-funded political ploy. We on the left have always known this, but now even a GOP leader has conceded this. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made this stunning admission on FOX News:

“What you’re going to see is a conservative Speaker, that takes a conservative Congress, that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.”

Notice how McCarthy made no mention of the Americans who died in the attack on our Libyan embassy, which was ostensibly the whole point of the investigation in the first place. Those deaths, it turns out, are superfluous.

Steve Benen, reporting for MSNBC, put it this way: “Note, McCarthy sees the committee as a legitimate accomplishment of the Republican Congress, not because it’s uncovered relevant details about an act of terrorism, but because Hillary Clinton’s 'numbers are dropping.' This, in his mind, is evidence of the GOP majority using its power effectively – by using a supposedly non-partisan investigatory vehicle to embarrass a Democrat with dubious allegations.

"It’s almost as if the House Majority Leader assumed he was among friends, dropped his guard momentarily, and admitted out loud what Republicans are only supposed to say in private.

"There was no real reason to create this committee, and the panel itself no longer serves any legitimate purpose. McCarthy’s unexpected candor was welcome – it was, to be sure, surprising to see him make such a concession on national television – but it served as a timely reminder that the Benghazi investigation that no longer focuses on Benghazi is now little more than a taxpayer-financed farce.”

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming/dp/098882907X

I’m Boycotting The Evening News; I’m Sick Of Its Conservative Bias

The other night as Scott Pelley tried to lull me to sleep with yet another “kitten rescued from a tree story,” it suddenly occurred to me that watching the nightly news on the major networks is a huge waste of time. With all the destruction and deceit created by right-wing extremists in this country, it is obscene that CBS, NBC, and ABC focus such large blocks of time to celebrity gossip, cute puppy stories, heartwarming human interest (e.g., the blind person who succeeds in college), and other “news stories” meant to assuage my fears, curry my favor, or make me overlook systematic dismantling of democracy. I’ve come to the conclusion that nightly news broadcasts are nothing more than light entertainment, used by corporate sponsors and owners to sell me financial services, cars, and computer widgets. Real journalism is dead. The days of Walter Cronkite editorializing about the futility of the Vietnam War, Harry Reasoner denouncing segregation, and Howard K. Smith exposing Nixon as a criminal are long gone. And the insidiously deceptive part is that the things they will not tell you are the very things which are tearing democracy to shreds. Here are just a few of the things which go unreported by ABC, CBS and NBC.

1)The Proliferation of Guns and Gun Deaths in U.S.
In 2014, approximately 35,000 people died by gunfire in the United States. It is estimated that 2015 deaths will exceed that number. The Center For Disease Control reports that gun violence costs American Taxpayers over $500 million annually in direct hospital costs. Yet you will not hear these stats on the nightly news, because these cowardly “journalists” are fearful of NRA and right-wing backlash.

2)Scandal-Free Obama Admiunistration
Over 130 members of Ronald Reagan’s administration were either accused, indicted, or convicted of crimes. The two Bush administrations squandered our national treasure and countless lives with needless wars; billions of taxpayer dollars which funded those wars are still unaccounted for. War criminals like Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Don Rumsfeld have been given a free pass. On the contrary, the Obama administration has been absolutely scandal-free. Yet the contrast between his administration and others goes unnoticed in print and broadcast media.

3)Illegitimacy of Extremist Right-Wing Views
If Scott Pelley were broadcasting the nightly news in Berlin in 1933, he would hide behind the veneer of fairness and present the Nazi party viewpoint alongside the democratic stance. This analogy applies today, as right-wing extremism is presented as a legitimate opposing view on all issues. Even when right-wing politicians take ridiculously hateful positions, these positions are given equal time. A dumbed-down American public construes these positions as legitimate.

4)Right-Wing Presidential Candidates’ Lies and Scandals Go Unchallenged, but Hillary Clinton Gets Incessantly Hounded About Non-Issues Like Benghazi and E-Mails.
Carly Fiorina lied about seeing a video of an aborted fetus with a beating heart lying on a clinic table somewhere. No video exists. Planned Parenthood does not harvest human brains and limbs and organs for profit. Yet these lies, and a thousand others, are not exposed by the mainstream media. Viewers who believe everything they see on TV get a warped sense of reality.

5)Where the jobs went
Outsourcing (or offshoring) is a bigger contributor to unemployment in the U.S. than laziness. Since 2000, U.S. multinationals have cut 2.9 million jobs here while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg as multinational corporations account for only about 20% of the labor force.
When was the last time you saw a front-page headline about outsourcing?

6)Upward wealth redistribution and/or inequality
In 2014, 10% of the people held approximately 88% of the net worth in the U.S. The top 1% alone held 40% of all net worth. The ultra-rich are hoarding all the wealth. Soon nothing will be left but scraps for the poor. These statistics are nonpartisan and available to all reporters. Why aren't they discussed in the mainstream media?

7)How ALEC is destroying democracy
ALEC stands for American Legislative Exchange Council. Sounds innocuous enough, but don't be fooled. This organization, perhaps more than any other, is killing the democratic system. It is funded by the richest right-wing corporations and individuals in the country, who have bought and paid for most, if not all, right-wing politicians. ALEC drafts its own legislation and then demands that its whore-bought Republicans pass it. Need legislation drafted? No need to go through a lobbyist to reach state legislatures anymore. Just contact ALEC. Among other things, ALEC is responsible for:
• Stand Your Ground laws
• Voter ID laws
• Right to Work laws (union busting)
• Privatizing schools
• Health savings account bills which benefit health care companies

Many legislators don’t even change the proposals handed to them by ALEC. They simply take the corporate bills and bring them to the legislative floor. They're meeting in Chicago this weekend. Maybe the "liberal media" will send some reporters. But don’t hold your breath.

8) The number of bills blocked by Republicans in Congress
The filibuster has been used a record number of times since Obama was elected President. From 2008-2012, 375 bills weren’t even allowed to come to a vote in the Senate because Republicans threatened the filibuster. This is more obstruction than occurred in the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II administrations combined. In 2013, during the first 6 months, Congress has only passed 15 bills that were signed into law. The GOP has also succeeded in holding up 79 of President Obama’s picks to the U.S. Circuit Court and Courts of Appeal. They’re blocking these appointments regardless of qualification.
Where's the coverage? Where are the reporters asking why nothing is getting done?

Where does one go for hard news and good, old-fashioned muckraking journalism in America today? You got me. Adlai Stevenson once said, "The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty"; and Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure."

Without a watchdog media exposing corruption, hypocrisy and the dismantling of democracy, we will devolve into a totalitarian state, run by and for the powerful few. Maybe this is what it was like in 1933 Berlin; we’re closer than ever to fascism.

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming/dp/098882907X

End Of The World Near; FOX News Commentator Defends Pope

As a lapsed Catholic, I have mixed feelings about Pope Francis. When I listen to him speak, I think, “This is a great man. He reminds me of the Jesuits who taught me to revere the intellect, care for those who have less, and be wary of blind believers who deny reason and use the word of God for their own profit.”

Then I remember why I turned my back on the Church: my Sunday donations that were used to defend pedophiles; archbishops who raged against abortions, but did not speak out against war or the sickening culture of American gun violence; the hording of Vatican treasures while the world’s poor go hungry.

I was raised Catholic in the ‘50s and early ‘60s when mass was an obligation, and no one questioned the sanctity of the religion’s rituals. But as the ‘60s wore on, and the world as everyone knew it changed, the Church became irrelevant. The same tired, empty homilies of parish priests had no revelations or insights about war, bigotry, and inequality. I came to view the Church as meaningless at best, hopelessly outdated at worst.

The Jesuits, however, were a different matter. They did not flinch from the turmoil of the late ‘60s. They addressed the existential nature of life head-on. They were not afraid to discuss relevant matters like war, poverty, and inequality. In their classrooms I read atheist literature, discussed the lack of empirical evidence for the existence of God, and learned to respect science. They taught me how to think for myself. Faith that was unchallenged by the intellect was not a worthy faith. Thus, I lost my faith. Or I never had it in the first place.

After high school, I left Catholicism behind. I’ve never looked back until now; Francis has aroused some ancient sentiment in me. His Jesuitical message has pissed off the right wing; and anything that angers those jackals deserves my attention.

Francis is not some ivory tower papist issuing staunch, anti-human edicts. He is a man of the people and a man of his times. Like Jesus, he walks among us, defends the poor, denounces hypocrisy, and condemns war for profit. It takes courage to do that; he does not seem to give a damn what American conservatives think of him. For that alone he deserves praise. Even the idiots at FOX News recognize this. Shepard Smith, of all people, had this to say about the right’s dissatisfaction with Francis:

“I think that we are in a weird place in the world when the following things are considered political. Five things, I'm going to tick them off. These are the five things that were on [the pope] and our president's agenda. Caring for the marginalized and the poor. That's now political. Advancing economic opportunity for all. Political? Serving as good stewards of the environment. Protecting religious minorities and promoting religious freedom globally. Welcoming [and] integrating immigrants and refugees globally. And that's political? I mean, I don't know what we expect to hear from an organization's leader like the pope of the Catholic Church other than protect those who need help, bring in refugees who have no place because of war and violence and terrorism. These seem like universal truths that we should be good to others who have less than we do, that we should give shelter to those who don't have it. I think these were the teachings in the Bible of Jesus. They're the words of the pope, they're the feelings of the president. And people who find themselves on the other side of that message should consult a mirror, it seems like. Because I think that's what we're supposed to do as a people, whatever your religion. I mean, it seems to me — and I think to probably, as Bill O'Reilly would put it, most clear-thinking Americans — that that's how we're supposed to roll.”

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming/dp/098882907X

Trump's Perverse Allure Is Explained By Renowned Psychologist

If you've been baffled by Donald Trump's poll numbers, you're not alone. Sane people dismiss him as a pompous jackass, short on substantive policy and long on name-calling. If you ever played in the schoolyard as a child, you will recognize his type. He tries to get his way by bullying others, especially the weakest and most vulnerable among us. When the bully gets challenged, he stomps and huffs and name-calls, and then sulks and pouts until his sycophants gather round him to assuage his ego. This drama is almost infantile and laughable for anyone over the age of eight, but, then again, no one has ever accused Republicans of being mature, rational, and beyond expressing juvenile behavior. Having said all this, I still did not understand how a thrice-divorced, pro-choice (until recently), non-religious New Yorker like Trump could hold any appeal for the southern, Evangelical right-wing. That is, until I read what Dr. Scott Keiller had to say in a recent edition of OpEd News.

According to Dr. Keiller, a professor of Psychological Sciences at Kent State University, Trump displays the classic traits of a narcissistic authoritarian. And those who were raised in authoritarian households, and who may have even been abused as children, are naturally drawn to someone like Trump. Even if Trump's political views do not comport with theirs, his sycophants are succumbing to what is familiar to them: an authority figure who is self-involved, abusive, and tyrannical. Here's how Rob Kall, Editor-in-Chief of OpEd News puts it:

"Dr. Keiller's research on narcissism, prejudice, and authoritarianism has been published in peer-reviewed journals published by the American Psychological Association and others, including the Journal of Personality Assessment, Psychology of Men & Masculinity, Psychological Assessment, and Sex Roles.

"Trump is a narcissistic, blustering, offensive, abusive bully and buffoon. He is, among all the billionaires in the world, the most desperate for attention, the fastest to attack critics. There is widespread agreement that he is a narcissist. That tells us a lot about his supporters.

"Trump is pulling between 25 and 32% in polling. That's about the same ballpark for the percentage of people who were victims of child abuse of one kind or another. It's also about the same percentage for right-wing authoritarian types.

"[Dr. Keiller] explained authoritarians as people obsessed with rules, who very much follow self-proclaimed experts on how life should be and moral. Someone who is authoritarian is seeking a leader to follow and blindly obedient. They are very conventional, very submissive to authorities, seeking people to dominate them.

"[Dr. Keiller] also talked about narcissists. People who are in abusive relationships are very often abused by parents who are narcissistic and sometimes also psychopathic. All psychopaths are narcissists. Victims of childhood abuse may become abusing narcissists or they may, and often do, enter into relationships with abusive narcissists. It's a vicious cycle. It makes sense that most authoritarians who seek out leaders to be submissive to, are recreating the life they grew up in. They were abused as children and they seek leaders who will abuse them."

This clarifies why those who support Trump do so with full knowledge that they are doing it at their own peril. They know full well that Trump is a tyrannical narcissist, but it is just this sort of personality to whom they are drawn, even if, in the end, they know and expect that they will be mistreated. Perhaps Republicans like being victims; they are both sadists and masochists. Often times I have heard them utter empty and angry aphorisms like, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way," as if there are only those who abuse and those who get abused. No in-betweens. No shades of gray.

And this would explain why it is next to impossible to reason with a Republican (psychopath). They are psychologically wounded and, thus, absolutely incapable of seeing truth. They are hopelessly mired in living their lives according to old paradigms, built on bigotry, violence, misuse of power. They are victims who care only about themselves and their own survival. Not the greater good.

Now I have some understanding of how we wound up with two Bushes, Nixon, and Reagan as presidents. This is why Sarah Palin is so popular with Tea Partiers. Sick and twisted as it seems, Republicans slogan should be, "Hurt me Daddy, because it feels so good."

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

The Permanent War State And The Debasement Of The American Political System, Or How I Learned To Endure Trump And The Other Imbeciles

Amid the childish squabbling and juvenile name calling of the recent Republican debates, there was little discussion of what ails us as a nation and how to fix it. God’s name was invoked repeatedly, illegal Mexicans were demonized as usual, and all the obligatory Obamacare denunciations were uttered. It was a predictable and boring charade. The same empty platitudes, constructed to draw huge applause from the red-faced, red-voting, white-haired haters, polluted the arena. Meanwhile, huge debt and massive wealth inequality plague us, and the bully Trump and his cowardly subjugates made no mention of possible solutions. Indeed, there was no mention that these things were problems.

These snake-oil peddlers know better than to open the vipers’ nest. While they rage against big government and indolent takers, they refuse to acknowledge that the biggest takers are the richest among us. And the richest among us buy and sell these same gutless politicians like they’re banal commodities (which they are). Fittingly, then, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee and the rest of the jackals propose to lower taxes on the wealthy and further burden the middle class with our national debt. This policy will exacerbate income inequality, and they know it. But they couldn’t care less, because to be a Republican today means to do what benefits oneself and not the greater good. Rapacious sociopaths like Scott Walker will say and do anything to advance their own ends.

The rest of us are schmucks for letting them get away with it, but the American media are culpable too. Now fully owned and operated by multinational corporations, CBS, NBC, and ABC (I don’t even include the trash dump called FOX) are consistently silent on the source of inequality and debt. To wit, they do not tell us who pays taxes in this country and where that tax money goes. In short, since Bush and his cronies stole the White House in 2000, large corporations and super-wealthy individuals have paid less and less tax, while middle class tax rates have remained relatively level. Concomitantly, six of every ten tax dollars paid by all Americans goes to defense spending—to the Pentagon, to defense contractors, to war profiteers of all stripes. This pack of hawks includes the corporations who own major broadcast media. They, in turn, with their bloody profits, buy politicians who fund massive military spending projects like Iraq War II(at last count Halliburton made $39 billion on that one) and the F-35 fighter jet ($1 trillion and counting)…both of which were colossal wastes of treasure.

To justify this corrupt system, our leaders must invent and re-invent enemies. For 45 years it was the Soviet Union and the spread of godless communism around the globe. Before the dust had settled from the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the USSR was no more, our leaders decided the new boogeymen were oil-rich Mideastern Muslims. George Sr. invaded Iraq in 1991; George Jr. twelve years after. (This despite the fact that the Bin Ladens have always been intimate business associates of the Bushes.) A decade on, radical Islam, to the great relief of the military-industrial complex, is still terrorizing the region.

We are in what writer Andrew Bacevich calls a permanent war state. In his book, Washington Rules, Bacevich writes of an “American credo” which he says calls upon the United States – and the United States alone – to “lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world…which requires America to: to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.”

Australian writer Greg Maybury argues that this American war-state monolith unleashed its hell-hounds in the run-up to Vietnam. In 1963 the American military-intelligence-security state (AMISS) came to a crossroads. Faced with a President who dared to propose a permanent peace state, which would turn the economic construct of the country on its head, AMISS decided it was best to remove its commander-in-chief.

Maybury writes in “Pox Amerikana,” “Although it may not have been widely recognised at the time, in June 1963, just a few months shy of the Big Event [JFK’s assassination], President Kennedy in his American University commencement address delivered what is arguably the most significant oration of his short-lived, ill-fated tenure as commander-in-chief.

“In fact, it may well have been the most pivotal in American foreign policy in that era. Forget the unforgettable ‘[the] torch has been passed to a new generation….ask not what your country can do for you’ schtick; disregard the indelible ‘we choose to go to the moon because it is hard’…spiel!

“In this address, it appeared Kennedy was attempting to re-define the accepted notion of Pax Americana, to articulate a more inclusive, collaborative version, one that would bring folk with them willingly rather than dragging them kicking and screaming to the position. In almost all respects this wasn’t just a redefinition; he was attempting to turn the notion on its head. ‘Peaceful co-existence’ was decidedly the sub-text of his message. It appeared the baptism of fire he experienced in his on-the-job training as president thus far had changed him significantly.

“But as James Douglass has observed, when Kennedy uttered these words, ‘the priests of our national security state saw him as a heretic.’…from the Brass Asses in the Pentagon bunkers to the winkle-pickered wolf-pack down on the Langley Farm to the righteous, pointy-headed foreign policy and national security wonks in the Beltway think-tanks and the hallowed halls of Ivy League academia and even a few within his own administration, [JFK’s peace state] came across as touchy-feely, appeasement-sounding – indeed naïve, unadulterated – nonsense. This was not in the brochure, and quite a few would’ve been spitting hollow points at the wall.

“Whereas Kennedy at least openly contemplated a path to presidential greatness via a Grand Peace, Bush like many presidents before him saw the only path to a glorious presidential legacy [was] through war, one he ‘knew’ the American people would support him in. As impaired as Bush’s vision may have been, one is tempted – at least with hindsight – to suggest that his was the more pragmatic and realistic, and the one most in sync with America’s true ‘manifest destiny’. Jack’s didn’t stand a ‘snowball’s’!”

Like many other American black plagues, the permanent war state can trace its origins to the streets of Dallas, November 22, 1963. Within three days of the brutal murder, LBJ reversed his predecessor’s National Security Action Memo 263 which laid out Kennedy’s bold plan to withdraw America completely from Vietnam in his second term. Even establishment-approved historians (read lying toadies), like Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Caro, and Robert Dallek, grudgingly admit that LBJ’s NSAM 273 wiped out JFK’s peace-state dream, opened the door to a decade of war in southeast Asia, and ushered in the permanent war state.

In the three-card monty game run by the American capitalist war state, we are the suckers. Despite what the traveling Republican clown show tells us, it is not social welfare programs that have busted the budget. It is not spending on education that needs to be cut. And it is not Planned Parenthood which is sucking the federal teat dry. It is the trillions we spend on needless, murderous war and its weaponry and its installations and its co-conspirators—the Pentagon and its blood-sucking contractors—that is holding us hostage at gunpoint. As Jeb Bush recently told a gathering of major defense contractors, "The Iraq War was a pretty good deal for you."

When right-wing blowhards try to convince us that welfare cheats and minority takers and do-gooders and public schools and infrastructure rebuilding are keeping us in debt, remember this: if we cut military spending and corporate welfare by just one-half, we could build all the new roads and bridges we need; provide free education to every student; feed the hungry; subsidize the jobless; fund Social Security and Medicare for good; and provide free health care for all citizens.

When someone in the Republican circus speaks to this truth, maybe I’ll sit up and listen.

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

Trump Is The Malignant Byproduct Of Republican Hate

Watching the orange-haired assassin, Donald Trump, is like eating pizza and ice cream. Great fun at the time, but I hate myself afterwards. It’s too indulgent, and it does me no good. But the temptation of seeing one Republican nutjob devour other Republican nutjobs, and then those nutjobs turn on the Donald, is sometimes irresistible. Right-wingers, who have for decades gotten away with taking reckless, unsubstantiated and mean-spirited potshots at everyone on the left, are now having to eat their own mudpies. And they have no one to blame but themselves.

Timothy Egan, contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times, succinctly explains why Trump’s toxic bombast is just an outgrowth of years of GOP hatred now turned inward:

“Trump is a byproduct of all the toxic elements Republicans have thrown into their brew over the last decade or so — from birtherism to race-based hatred of immigrants, from nihilists who shut down government to elected officials who shout ‘You lie!’ at their commander in chief.

“It was fine when all this crossing-of-the-line was directed at President Obama or other Democrats. But now that the ugliness is intramural, Trump has forced party leaders to decry something they have not only tolerated, but encouraged.

“Consider Trump’s swipe against McCain’s military service, and by extension all veterans who have been involved in the fog of combat. Republicans were apoplectic at Trump’s claim that McCain was no war hero.

“‘All of our veterans, particularly P.O.W.s, deserve our respect and admiration,’ said Jeb Bush. The Republican National Committee was quick to lay down a similar principle, saying, ‘There is no place in our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably.’

“No place except a presidential campaign, that being the 2004 attempt to destroy the honorable Vietnam service of candidate John Kerry. Where was Bush’s ‘respect and admiration’ when his brother was benefiting from a multimillion-dollar smear of a Navy veteran with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart?

“The wise men predicted Trump’s demise after he demeaned a former prisoner of war. But polls posted late this week showed Trump still in the lead. How can he get away with bashing combat veterans? Simple: The party he now wants to represent wrote the playbook on it.”

Someday, sooner rather than later, a real journalist will finally ask Trump a substantial question about foreign policy or corporate welfare or gun control or nuclear war with Iran, and he will be exposed for the bloviating charlatan that he is. The junk food binge will end, and I’ll have to return to a sensible diet of Hillary, Bernie and Elizabeth lambasting ruthless, greedy and corrupt extremists like Scott, Jeb and Marco. Until then, though, I can’t say I won’t snack on the empty calories of The Orange Orator taking down one of his fellow blowhards—maybe that fat guy from Jersey?

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

Another Conversation With Those Cognitive-Dissonant Southern GOP Hillbillies, Bubba and Gomer

Last we checked, Gomer and Bubba were openly carrying AK-47s in a Wal-Mart just to intimidate innocent citizens. Since open carry is the law of the South, there is nothing law enforcement can do to stop them. Bubba followed a black couple around the store in case one of them picked up a water gun; he was ready to blast away and claim self-defense. Gomer discouraged shoppers from browsing the book aisle where copies of Hillary Clinton’s autobiography were prominently displayed.

I sat down to interview the pea-brained pair to gather their thoughts about the current state of the union.

BUBBA: ‘Merika’s goin’ to hell.

ME: Why’s that, Bubba?

BUBBA: Gotch your blacks all riled up over this Rebel flag bidness. Now they’s taking it down in South Carolina. The last great symbol of southern heritage. What a shame.

ME: It represents slavery, oppression and hatred to our African-American citizens.

BUBBA: Taint got nothing to do with ‘em.

GOMER: Yep. Why cain’t they just collect their food stamps and welfare checks and shut the hell up?

ME: According to a TIME magazine analysis of county-by-county food stamp enrollment data nationwide, GOP politicians represent more districts that participate in SNAP than Democrats. In fact, the county with the highest national rate of SNAP beneficiaries is Owsley County, Kentucky, which is 99.22% white and 95% Republican. Yet it’s Republicans who are always screaming about cutting welfare benefits of those who really need it.

GOMER: Time magazine is a comnist rag.

BUBBA: That reminds me, Gom, we get that SNAP check this week?

GOMER: Hey (changing the subject), what about that Obama trying to take our guns away. Damn uppity, nigra.

ME: Under Obama, gun ownership has increased, not decreased. And overall, background checks have become less restrictive. There are more guns and gun deaths than ever before in America.

BUBBA: Damn good thing…the more killin’ there is, the more freedom we have.

ME: How do you figure?

BUBBA: Y’all heard of ‘Stand Yer Ground’ ain’t ya? Well, that jes means that people ain’t puttin’ up with no shit from the coloreds. We’s got a right to fire back. Just read the Constitution.

ME: But doesn’t stand your ground conflict with open carry? If you intimidate innocent citizens with by openly carrying weapons in public places like parks, stores, restaurants and churches, don’t they have the right to stand their ground and shoot you because they feel threatened?

GOMER: (His small cerebellum twisted into knots.) That’s right…uh, er, I dunno. Iffin’ someone wants to fire at me…well, goddamn it, let ‘em. I got this here AK-47; let’s see if they’s gonna stand they ground then.

ME: So we should all carry guns to protect ourselves from people like you? Do you see how that might be a bit dangerous?

BUBBA: The hell you say. I’m beginning to think you’re one of them comnist agitators.

GOMER: (Pointing his gun at me.) Now whaddya have to say for yourself, pinko?

ME: Hooray for Mike Huckabee and the NRA? We’re officially living in the Old West again?

BUBBA: That’s more like it. Now let’s teach you sumpin about the Bible, commie.
[To be continued.]

We're Trapped in a Neo-Fascist State and There's No Way Out

Good-bye, America. It's been nice knowing you.

That's right; according to an Ivy League study which I cited in a previous post, we no longer live in a democracy. To refresh your memory, two researchers at Princeton University, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, have found that "...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."

Extrapolated to its logical conclusion, America is now controlled by a very small cabal of wealthy and powerful elites, mostly with extreme right-wing political views, who have literally purchased the judicial and legislative branches of the U.S. government and are spending billions to recapture the executive branch by 2016. In my previous post I described this type of system as an oligarchy, but it is even worse than that. It is fascism.

What is fascism? Benito Mussolini, an expert on the subject, defined fascism as the merger of the state and corporations to form a corrupt government which services only the needs of the elite few. In order for fascism to work, government officials need corporations to fund their political ambitions without restraint or judicial oversight. The recent Supreme Court ruling allowing unlimited political donations took care of that. But fascism needs much more to thrive. Shockingly, these elements are coming together in American society today.

1) A compliant, reticent, and wholly subservient media are necessary to look the other way. Investigative journalism in America is dead. Why? Because all major media outlets are controlled by large corporate conglomerates and are run for profit, not for truth-telling. We already know that FOX is not a real news network, but merely the manifestation of one sick man's (Rupert Murdoch's) pathological right-wing propaganda machine. But what is even sicker is that supposedly legitimate news organizations such as CBS (Westinghouse) and NBC (General Electric) are corporate subsidiaries unlikely to report on how America is becoming a neo-fascist state. [Note: GE contributes millions to right-wing candidates each election cycle.]

2) The greater good must be downplayed by a self-absorbed, distracted citizenry. Witness the rise of vacuous enterprises like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Take a good look at what passes for information on these sites and you will be appalled at the narcissistic trivia. Fascists want a society that is self-involved. Fascism cannot thrive under a system that is concerned with the greater good. Thus, those right wingers (neo-fascists) who attack Social Security, Medicare, and affordable health care are doing their masters' bidding.

3) War or the threat of war must be constant. Fascists control their citizens when the citizens are constantly cowering in fear of being overrun by hordes of foreigners. This fear more easily facilitates the next factor in the fascist formula--

4) The system must be rigged. Check. Sixty percent of our tax dollars go to defense contractors who, in turn, buy politicians who, in turn, continue to authorize military spending. It is a never-ending cycle; it is an out-of-control beast which cannot be killed. America runs on defense; it is a hugely profitable industry, and most American corporations feed at the pig trough. Naturally these corporations are going to buy politicians who will continue this system.

5) Truth must be trashed; pseudo-science must be elevated to fact. We see this in climate change denial and the elimination of evolution education in public classrooms. Under a fascist system the truth is malleable and for sale. Corrupt idiots like Republican Senator James Imhofe will regurgitate any sort of lie to keep their cushy jobs.

6) Minorities must be demonized and marginalized. The old fascist methods of mass murdering minorities (i.e., the Holocaust) are outdated; the new slaughter comes in the form of denigrating the worth and dignity of African-Americans and Latinos (largely liberal voters on the lower socioeconomic rungs). Right-wing pyschopaths who listen to the daily rants of Limbaugh and O'Reilly can easily justify in their deranged minds the voter suppression, welfare denial, even murder of minorities.

7) Dissent is forbidden. The media restrict real debate of issues, and left-wing advocacy is virtually non-existent on over-the-air TV, radio, and newspapers.

Had enough? I'll leave you with one more bit of warning. The following quote is from a member of Ronald Reagan's cabinet.

"Americans have given up the rule of law that protected their liberty. The silence of law schools and bar associations indicates that the age of liberty has passed. In short, the American people support tyranny. And that’s where they are headed."

--Paul Craig Roberts, inventor of trickle-down economics

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

The Deadline for Release of All JFK Assassination Files is Near; But Don’t Hold Your Breath

In 1992 the Assassinations Record Review Board, a government agency charged with gathering and assessing all documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy, issued a mandate that all classified documents still being hidden away by the CIA and FBI be released no later than October 2017. That day is about 30 months off, and already the struggle to pry the truth loose is underway.

According to an article in Politico magazine, the head of the National Archives Special Access branch, a woman named Martha Murphy, has sent letters to the CIA, the FBI, and other government agencies to alert them that the time is coming for the release of all remaining classified documents pertaining to JFK’s murder.

“Within our power,” said Murphy, “the National Archives is going to do everything we can to make these records open and available to the public. And that is my only goal. There are limits to my powers and the president of the United States has the right to say something needs to be held for longer.” What does that mean? It means the new President (meaning whomever gets elected in 2016) and the CIA could fight to suppress the last remaining 40,000 documents related to the assassination. Why would the new President do that? No reason to, unless, God forbid, the new President is Jeb Bush. (See previous posts for the Bush family involvement in the planning and cover-up of JFK’s murder.) Why would the CIA continue to suppress documents? For the same reason the agency has withheld the truth for the last 50 years—to cover up its own guilt in the murder of the century.

According to Politico, “The withheld CIA files include those on some of the most mysterious and controversial figures in the history of American espionage — particularly individuals who were known to be involved in CIA assassination plots around the world. There are at least 332 pages of material on E. Howard Hunt, an almost mythical spymaster who is most famous for running the ring that broke into Democratic Party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Hotel in 1972, setting in motion the events that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon."

In 1961 Hunt played a role in the CIA's botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. In the aftermath, anti-Castro Cubans and CIA operatives were deeply resentful of JFK's failure to provide air cover for the guerillas. Shortly before he died in 2007, Hunt claimed that Kennedy was killed in retaliation for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Hunt named names and referred to the assassination as "the Big Event."

Also under review by the special team of archivists are at least 606 pages about David Atlee Phillips, another CIA officer who won a medal for his role in overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954, went on to run operations in Latin America, and along with Hunt played a leading role in anti-Castro activities in Cuba. Phillips was accused — though never charged — of committing perjury when asked about agency ties to Oswald by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Phillips, too, late in life attributed the JFK assassination to "rogue" CIA officers. It is the type of information that many researchers believe the agency would still like to keep secret.

The Politico article names other CIA suspects. “‘I don’t see the CIA handing out 600 pages on David Atlee Phillips in two years,’ said Jefferson Morley, a leading Kennedy researcher and founder of JFKfacts.org, who has sued the CIA to reveal more information about several key figures known to be the focus of some of the withheld files.

“Another colleague of Phillips at the CIA was Anne Goodpasture. The career agency officer denied to congressional investigators in 1970 that she had any knowledge of recordings of Oswald’s phone calls in possession of the CIA’s Mexico City station, where she worked. But she later admitted in sworn testimony that she had, in fact, disseminated the tapes herself. A 286-page CIA file about her is among the documents that are supposed to be released in two years.”

There’s apparently a lot of dirt in those unreleased files that could, once and for all, definitively expose the CIA’s role in the execution of the 35th President. Don’t expect the agency to just turn over those documents without a fight.

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

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

How The Plotters Disguised JFK's Wounds; The Key To Unraveling The Mystery Of The Assassination

The men who plotted and executed JFK's murder thought they could forever bury the truth of their treachery by altering the medical evidence. How they attempted this is laid out in my novel, The President's Mortician. Here's an excerpt from the book:


Chapter 1


November 23, 1963
12:54 a.m.
Bethesda Hospital, Washington, D.C.



John Liggett needed a stiff drink to calm his nerves. He reached into his back pocket and removed a small, silver flask. He took a quick jolt of bourbon without trying to hide it from the mysterious men surrounding him and watching his every move. They were
spooks, military brass and Secret-Service types, and they seemed dissatisfied with his
work even though he had been at it, off and on, for more than seven hours now. He was
tired, anxious and scared.

Normal jobs never made him this stressed, for Liggett was confident, almost smugly so,
in his abilities as a reconstruction artist. Reconstruction artist was just a fancy name for a skilled mortician, and Liggett was as skillful as anyone in his field. His fellow morticians at Restland Funeral Home in Dallas all agreed that John was the best they had ever seen.

He rebuilt eye sockets blasted away by gun shots. He rebuilt ears and noses demolished
in car accidents. He once reconstructed a wife’s skull which had been shattered by her
baseball bat-wielding husband. He even re-attached a head which had been severed by a
locomotive. The grieving families were always grateful and always raved about John’s talents. He never failed to please his clientele.

But this was no normal job. Lying on the slab not two feet away was the slain body of the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy. And Liggett was now on his third reconstruction attempt. The cabal of traitors assembled in this cramped, smoky room did not want him to make JFK “whole” again for a presentable casket viewing.
They wanted to distort and disguise the dead president’s real wounds in order to hide the true source of the shots which killed him. Liggett knew the conspirators were trying to frame a “lone nut” killer. The problem was they kept changing their minds about how the lone nut did it. Liggett was on his third version of the head wound. The genuine wounds—a gunshot entry in the right temple area, an entry wound in the throat, and a fist-sized exit wound in the right rear of the head—had been obliterated earlier in the evening at Walter Reed Army Hospital, but the “government-approved” wounds were
still a work-in-progress. Evidence of frontal entry meant more than one shooter and that meant a conspiracy. And the conspirators were determined there be no talk of a
conspiracy that would lead back to them.

Regardless of the deceptive nature of his work, Liggett had no delusions about the true
nature of the crime. The CIA and the Joint Chiefs, and god knows who else, had been
behind it, and his job was to cover it up. The bastards had gone all the way this time, he thought. Though Liggett was apolitical and had never expressed any strong feelings
about Kennedy, one way or the other, even he was stunned at the brazenness of such an
act. And it rattled his composure. This was history, and Liggett was busy erasing any
trace of it.

At the urging of his sponsor—Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay—Liggett got back
to work on JFK’s head. LeMay bit hard on his cigar and barked out an instruction, “You
have to fix the back of the head here so that it looks like there is no exit wound.”

Liggett knew he had to make it look good for the autopsy photographers who had already
taken hundreds of photos of his incomplete work. But he also knew that no forgery of
this nature would be perfect. The brain had already been carved up to remove the bullet
fragments which did not match the patsy’s gun. The macerated mess which was left
could hardly have been made by a bullet’s exit. The incompetent and/or corrupt autopsy
doctors even commented on it. Commander James J. Humes—who had no experience
performing autopsies of gunshot victims—blurted out that someone had performed
surgery on JFK’s head, namely in the top of the skull. Since no such surgery had been
performed by the Dallas Parkland doctors, Humes’ slip of the tongue became an
inadvertent admission that the president’s body had been highjacked and tinkered with by
parties unknown. Liggett, seated in the bleachers of the Bethesda autopsy room at the
time, stiffened when he heard Humes’ words. He was afraid the whole shell game would
unravel. But General LeMay immediately came to the rescue. He told Humes to get
back to work and stop making editorial comments about things he knew nothing of.

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

Republicans Make It Legal To Starve People To Death In Indiana

Here in St. Louis the word "hoosier" is a derogatory term, applied to one who is uneducated, backwards, intellectually inferior, bigoted, and misinformed. In other words, a hoosier is a racist hillbilly. It comes as no surprise, then, that the official nickname for Indianans is "hoosiers"; at least not after the bill that the Indiana legislature passed and Republican Governor Mike Dense...I mean, Pence, signed into law recently. It is disingenuously called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (a name that only the sneakiest and most hypocritical politicians could dream up), but it's really a license to discriminate. Indiana business owners can now deny service to anyone they choose, or, more specifically, gays, blacks, Latinos, liberals, socialists, Obama voters, or anyone else they hate. Taken to its logical (read illogical) conclusion, this law can be used to starve people to death in Indiana.

Let's say restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, donut shops, Walmarts, and all other places where one can purchase food in Indiana are owned and operated by right-wing nutjobs (we know this is already true in the case of Chick-Fil-A and Papa John's). Theoretically, these food merchants can deny sustenance to anyone whom they suspect of being gay or religiously objectionable. This judgement is made by the proprietor at his or her own discretion, without any objective criteria. (My neighbor, an Indiana native, says the state is really just Mississippi North; he can just hear Republican hoosiers screaming, "I don't want no damn guvmint tellin a me who I kin serve and who I caint.") On this basis, proprietors can refuse to serve blacks, Hispanics, females, old, young, Democrats, etc. Using the RFDA as their cover, merchants can literally starve someone to death. Or deny them clothing in the winter. Or deny them transportation. Or deny them drinking water. Or heat in the winter. Or a home. Or any life-sustaining product or service. It's an extreme scenario, I know, but hypothetically possible when the citizenry has no protection from state-sanctioned discrimination practiced by business owners.

Pence and other Republican bigots claim the law is not meant to discriminate. If that is so, what exactly, then, is the purpose of the law? Republicans are talking out of both sides of their mouths as they, in the face of immense public backlash, try to put lipstick on this pig. Pence says the law is meant to provide Christian business owners with the right to refuse service to anyone they find objectionable. And who would right-wing Christians find objectionable? Let's see...maybe gays, blacks, immigrants, Democrats, feminists, anti-NRA groups, atheists, agnostics, Obamacare recipients, college students with outstanding loans...and all the other usual objects of the right-wing hatred: basically anyone who is peaceful, tolerant, loving, compassionate, sensible, and mentally stable.

Hoosiers are running Indiana; remind me to avoid the state altogether.

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

Florida’s Republican Governor Is Mute As Climate Change And Rising Oceans Threaten Florida’s Drinking Water

Remember how Nero fiddled while Rome burned? That’s pretty much what Republican climate change denier Rick Scott, Florida’s feckless and stupid governor, is doing as Floridians face imminent danger. You see, just as scientists predicted, the oceans are rising, and coastal areas like Florida are paying the consequences. In Broward County salt water has moved six miles inland. The main drinking water source in south Florida, the Biscayne Aquifer, may soon be contaminated, and as everyone knows, except maybe the idiotic right-wingers, sea water cannot be consumed.

What can be done about this? Well, Gov. Scott should be figuring out a way to increase the fresh water supply to Floridians before a critical shortage precipitates (bad word choice) a crisis. But Scott is not doing anything, because you see that would mean admitting that he and all other Republican climate change deniers have been wrong all along.

Eventually, the Republicans will be exposed for what they really are: self-centered, greedy, near-sighted, corporate apologists. But it might be too late by then, because Scott, and all his sociopathic colleagues, would rather see Florida and all the rest of America sink into the ocean before they would admit being wrong or corrupt or just plain dumb.

As salt water contamination increases, water filter plants, sewer collection systems, and waste water treatment plants will be compromised. I shudder to think what might happen to Scott if his citizens can’t drink, can’t dispose of their waster, and can’t get their sewers drained. They might come after Scott with torches and lanterns. Oops, fire might not be the best thing to carry next to gaseous sewers. Maybe they should just throw Scott onto the beaches that are no longer there, and see if he can swim to shore.

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