Why Lie? Fascism is the Goal!

There were several articles in today's papers that pointed to the right's unbelievable propensity to lie about public issues.

One piece dealth with the latest "debate" and focused on foreign policy. Several flat out lies were exposed. Other mere exaggerations for effect were disclosed.

The funny thing is most of lies were so blatant that anyone with a cursory information source would see right through them.

And that is the rub. The truth is most conservatives have walled themselves off from objective media. Fox News, Lindbaugh and AM Radio dominate their reality.

Now I am not talking about conservatives reading "The Nation" or other progressive magazines. They don't even read "Newsweek" or "Time". They don't tune in "ITunes U" to listen to discussions. They avoid conflicting opinion like the plague.

I read, and read and read. I read conservative columns, like George Will, and tune in Fox News as long as I can stand it.

And what do I see...lies.

It really is a mirror universe of reality.

And this scares me. I have read extensively about political philosophy. Fascism is a political philosophy that so greatly damaged the world in the 20th Century that society itself crumbled in many areas; eg., the holocaust.

Propaganda is an essential ingredient of any fascist state. Moreover, mythology, exaggerating past glories and nostalgia for the past are center pieces of how a fascist state develops.

You see this everyday in the conservative lie factory. There appears to be a real belief that liberalism is so bad that lying and cheating are justified to attain political goals.

So Michelle Bachman lies about foreign policy. Mitt Romney runs an ad, quoting the President out of context, with devastating effect. The President's birthplace is still questioned.

It just goes on forever.

The danger? The danger is the development of fascist momentum to destroy our democratic institutions.

This danger is apparent and is increasing. It is manifesting itself in the radicalization of the Republican Party. There is simply no room in the Republican Party for moderation. Orville Norquest, who is quite simply a fascist, has pushed Republicans to sign a "no tax increase " pledge to the point that the very legitimacy of government has been irrevocably damaged.

This is readily apparent in California. Tax cutting is used to so hamstring government, that its very legitimacy is questioned. For example, local school boards are under attack all over the state, and are blamed by the public for the incessant cuts that are occurring.

And what comes of this? A mythology is created, that democratic decision making processes are too cumbersome, that government does not work. In America, when you mention the government, you are talking about the Constitution that begins "We the People". So, dysfunctional government really means dysfunctional democracy.

So how, you might ask, does this jive with "The Tea Party" movement, who uses the Constitution as their Bible?

If you listen to them, their "Constitution" is their interpretation of the Constititution. Liberal judges must be eliminated to make the "Constitution" pure. They yearn for a return to "a literal interpretation" of the Constitution; which of course is according to radical right wing dogma.

Repealing the 14th Amendment is an immediate target. This is ostensibly to counter federal power. But the heart of the 14th Amendment is "equal protection under the law', which protects individuals from states who discriminated after the Civil War. Without the 14th Amendment, Civil Rights essential end.

And that is exactly what the fascists want; to rid the country of civil rights.

And that means the end of our freedom. That means a single party state, and ultimately a dictator.

The stage is being set. I will bet you that in meetings with the rich and powerful, who are bankrolling the whole thing, they have openly hoped for the overthrow of the "liberal state" and the establishment of corporate backed dictatorship.

Sound far fetched? Just stay tuned.

This nation is not locked in a struggle between conservative and liberal, the conflict has gone way past that. This nation is locked in a struggle between liberal democracy and fascism.

The Coming of Fascism in America

California used to be a nice place to live. During the Great Depression, millions of Americans fled the Dust Bowl to come here. Hollywood was established with the movie industry, that still anchors the perception that California is place of beaches, clean rivers and majestic beauty.

All of these myth are at least partly true. Silicon Valley is a reality, spawning the development of a technological revolution that has literally changed the world.

Economic growth at a frentic pace, including the Dot Com Bubble, has resulted from this scientific, engineering marvel.

Silicon Valley has been fueled by the Universities that ring it. Stanford has led the way, followed by U.C. Berkeley, Santa Clara, CSU San Francisco, etc., etc. Brainpower has proven a substitute for the manufacturing muscle that powered the United States in the 20th Century.

And then there is Howard Jarvis, and Orville Norquist. In the 1970s the relatively high tax rates on income caused by the need to pay for WWII, and the inflationary surge that drove up property taxes, were used slyly by Howard Jarvis to lead a tax revolt.

There are two key ingredients to this revolt: 1. Taxes were characterized as too high. 2. Government spending at all levels is wasteful. The key ingredient to selling this to the voter was simply, the Republican Party saw a huge opportunity to finally turn the progress of the New Deal and regain politial parity with the Democrats.

So the formula was developed to cut taxes and raise spending. Ronald Reagan, a former Democrat, saw the opportunity to use the tax revolt to launch his political career, and ran on increasing defense spending to counter what the right wing of the Republican party had depicted as Democrats softness on national defense. This of course is the classic cut taxes, raise spending formula: Sold to stimulate the economy, really bad relative to creating huge deficits, which as we are learning, actually depresses the economy. In short, it doesn't work to stimulate the economy ast all!

Of course this all was a lie. The State Department and the Defense Department knew for decades that the Soviet Union was not near the threat that the public was fed, but it got people elected. And the Reagan tax cuts were immediately overshawdowed by an exploding federal deficit and immediate return to recession. Even Reagan saw the damage to the economy of tax cut led deficits, and disingenously quietly raised taxes to partly make up the difference, while still professing to be a "tax cutter" He then recruited Orville Nolrquist to sell the falsehood that he was a born again tax cutter, while spending like crazy, and backfilling the deficit with "tax reform" (he raised taxes eight times!). In other words, he lied to us for political reasons.

Expediency counts in politics. Lying wins!

Orville Norquist was recruited by Reagan to spread the myth that government is too "fat" (except in defense) so taxes could be cut and cut. In fact, an economist named "Laffer" even crafted a deception that cutting taxes would actually raise government revenue because the economy would grow faster. This of course never occurred, but Republicans still are chanting this lie. Norquist, a rich fascist (in the classical definition), took Reagan's charge and developed an anti-tax national movement that now forces Republicans to sign a no tax increase pledge, that directly is responsible for the huge federal deficit we see today. Norquist also is leading the secret plan to turn the United States into a fascist state (see below).

The "Super Committee" that was supposed to address the federal deficit, has predictably failed to reach any agreement, once again proving the government is deadlocked and quite literally cannot fund itself. A dysfunctional government is all part of the fascist plan to discredit the democratically elected government, and lure citizens into a plan to "fix it" by first discrediting then jailing those who disagree with them.

And then we have Bush and Gingrich. Recently Newt Gingrich, defending himself for the lobbying he most certainly did, but says he didn't, declared that he warned Freddie and Fannie (partly government sponsored mortagage organizations) not to give subprime loans to home buyers because he saw the "housing bubble". He did no such thing.....he is lying.

Conservatives try to explain away the housing bubble, that literally destroyed the middle class, as caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not by the wholesale reduction of government regulations of banking led by George W. Bush.

This is nonsense, just like the tax cutting myth is nonsense. I am surprised Democrats don't use the video of President Bush's infamous "Ownership Society" speech, when he tried to sell privatization of Social Security AND deregulation of the mortgatge loan industry.

He failed miserably in "reforming " (read destroying) Social Security. He succeeded in deregulating housing loans, that in turn ruined the economy.

A ruined economy is fertile ground for fascism!

American business used the boatload of money from the tax cuts and capital gains cuts for the rich, to bankroll housing starts all over the country. The "sunbelt" particularly benefitted from this huge influx of money, and millions of homes were built in Nevada, Arizona, Texas; etc.

Of course, nobody paid much attention to the increasing heat of the summers and the dwindling water supplies. And, nobody really noticed that the housing starts were way out of proportion to the state and local economies; that there were not enough potential jobs to support all the new arrivals.

So, America was again duped, more is better they were told again and again; except when it comes to taxes. Liars loans were the standard, and millions entered the housing market, other millions began to play the housing market like a slot machine, buying houses, taking out seconds on them, and then selling them for a profit as the values went up and up.

California, thanks to good ole Prop 13, had low property taxes guaranteed by law, and greately inflated home value rates, that greatly encouraged the bubble. And, since the property taxes were now insufficient to fuel the infrastructure to support the millions of new homes, developer fees had to be used, further straining local governments. This resulted in massive cuts to local government, reducing police forces and encouraging will ultimatley encourage massive civil disobedience.

Do you detect a plan here?

In effect, thanks to Orville Norquist, government truly is being slowly drowned, starved for revenue at every level. The weaker the government, the better the chances for fascist "solutions" to grow.

There are templates for this kind of fascist revolution: read the Weimar Republic in Germany, 1917 to 1932.

The housing bubble of course burst, millions lost everything, the real estate and builder industry was destroyed, and the economy in California, Nevada and Arizona was destroyed.

And the culprit, according to Gingrich and Norquist, is "exessive government spending" . And the remedy is? You guessed it, more tax cuts; leading to more ineffective government, and the increasing call for fascist "reform".

Just today, on the news, a Republican said that we must cut, cut, cut and increasing revenue for government is "off the table".

And the economy? Well it is dead. People don't remember Bush's "The Ownership Society" speech. People in California, according to recent polls, still cling to the myth that taxes are actually too high, and government is wasteful. This myth continues while roads and bridges fall apart, schools are closed, college tuitions are raised to private school levels, police and fire are cut; etc.

On the federal level, since the "Super Committee" failed to compromise, Defense Department cuts, where the real money is, are supposed to automatically take place in 2013. Almost immediately, Republicans vowed to introduce legislation to stop these cuts; sounds just like Reagan doesn't it. Cut taxes and spend!

Ok, listen closely. IT DOES NOT WORK. IT IS BULLSHIT. THEY ARE LYING TO YOU. AND THEY HAVE A PLAN. THIS IS NOT HAPPENING BY ACCIDENT!

For months I have written countless articles on this blog, showing this truth over and over. And the fascist right in the country, with their billions of dollars, have continued lying to the American People about practically everything.

And you buy their story.

So, don't come crying when the gauntlet finally falls, and your democratic freedoms are taken away.

By the way, write this prediction down someplace:

The fascist takeover of the United States will be initiated to counter the endless demonstrations and violence by the dispossesed victims of a lopsided economy (in fact we are seeing the beginning of this with the 99 percent sit ins).

Fascists will finish the job Ricard Nixon almost accomplished, calling on "law abiding citizens" to quell the endless acts of civil disobedience. This will be coupled with the hard sell foreign terrorist threats, and will target a supposedly nuclear Iran. The Constitiution will effrectlively be suspended by a conservative Supreme Court, who will take away civil liberties. A fascist conservative President will complete the coup, being very careful to only jail "the protestors", but then will branch out as he declares martial law, to counter the millions who will be demonstrating.

The more protests go on, the more civil liberties are cut, the more repression will be justified. They are planning this right now!

So, don't complain as your standard of living continues to slide into Third World levels. Don't complain, when your son or daughter is jailed in "relocation camps" because they demonstrated against the increasing repression all around them. Don't complain when they finally come for you!

And when will this occur? It will begin in 2013 if a Republican is elected President and will take only eight years to accompliish. Oh, and I will probably be jailed as part of it, for this and other essays, along with thousands of my fellow progressives.

It is coming! You were warned!

The 99% Left Holding the Bag

The latest and greatest in the disingenuous legacy of the cons: Pat Toomey, a Tea Party Republican, has come up with a "compromise" that supposedly gets around the "pledge" to not raise taxes.

What amounts to the greatest sham in tax history, is being hatched by Toomey, an arch conservative, government hating fascist. That's right, fascist. Read the book, The "Anatomy of Fascism" before you call me a "namecaller".

At first, some progressive reporters even fawned over Toomey, because it appeared he was trying to break the Norquist pledge to never, and I mean never, raise taxes. Cutting taxes insanely forever is alright, but never raise a tax, no tax, ever....ever...ever...

So here comes Toomey's plan. What it appears to do is close lots of loopholes, resulting in an increase in taxes for the poor and middle class, and cuts the tax rates for the richest of the rich by about 10%!

That is right, he cuts the rich tax rate below the Bush tax cut rate. I will say that again, he gives a tax cut to the super rich, raises taxes on the middle class and poor to make up the difference.

What gall! With the 99% movement almost reaching the revolutionary stage, this aristocratic fascist has the temerity to actually slyly develop a plan that takes deductions for mortgages away, messes with the standard deduction, and slashes taxes for the richest of the rich.

By the way, the mortgage interest deduction does need to be reduced or eliminated, but another source of revenue must take its place! Toomey, as usual, has a tax cut for the rich take its place. There is no way the revenue can be replaced.

If you read about his Tax "idea"?, you will think for a moment that he has developed a plan to close loopholes, eliminating the need to stop the Bush tax cuts, and actually reduces the deficit.

Not so. Even if you entertain this madness, and I can't believe I am even doing so while writing this blog, the horrible fact is that the middle class has been dramatically reduced in size and wealth. Toomey's plan for example imagines a large revenue increase from the mortgage deduction elimination. What he misses is the middle class has lost homes at a record rate and now are renting. Young people, who have never entered the housing market, may never own a home, since renting foreclosed houses is now endemic all over the United States.

So, no mortgage interest deduction windfall if the tax deduction is removed. And, the amount of money in mortgages is about 1/2 of what is was, since millions of homeowners new have homes that are worth way less than they once were. When a family buys a home, that once was worth $400,000, it is now worth $200,000; you do the math on the mortgage interest loss.

Of course, Toomey and his fascist collaberators (sounds pretty harsh huh?), are so out of touch with mainstream America they haven't even considered this. Conservatives frequent only the rich and super rich (who are of course actually the sponsors and owners of the teaparty), and don't have a clue about the rest of us.

I am reminded of George P. Bush's famous grocery store incident, when he got in line to buy something, to mingle with the "common folk", and didn't know how to get by the cash register. It had been so long since he had to do a "commoner" task like buying a stick of gum, that he did not know how! Things like this cost the aristocrat the election.

Same thing with Toomey and his con fascists. They are so out of touch they don't or won't relate to ordinary Americans; even upper middle class Americans.

Ok, here is a primer about why the marginal tax rates where "high" in the post war world and why a cut could be done around 1980 by President Reagan.

World War II was the most destructive and expensive war EVER. In 1945 the federal deficit was almost 100% of GDP. That's right, we owed to ourselves almost as much as we totally produced.

This is even more impressive, considering America's industrial capacity was at full throttle in 1945.

I know, I know, the war bonds; they paid for the war. No they did not, they couldn't. In 2011 dollars the deficit was almost twice what it is today or more.

So, at the end of the war we had to start paying ourselves back.

Why ourselves? Well, in 1945 the rest of the world was destroyed. The United States did not, in fact could not, borrow from anyone to pay for the war. Europe was destroyed, most of Asia likewise. We basically put the war on the future generation (the baby boomers) to pay for over decades.

So, to start doing that effectively, taxes were raised, especially on the super rich. Democrats had long before, during the Great Depression, realized that the American economy has a propensity to concentrate wealth, much more than other economies. The middle class was growing fast to be sure, but to insure a core of payment for the war, marginal tax rates on the rich went up to almost 90%.

Dwight Eisenhower, no raging liberal to be sure, continued these tax rates, in fact increased them.

Meanwhile the middle class was booming, having a boatload of children, and paying more and more in taxes.

Around 1960, America was in a small recession, and the bill was being paid faster than anyone could have imagined. The economy was growing at a rate no one could have predicted, because the imbalance in income was flattening out, and the masses had way more to spend.

It did not hurt that Europe, Russia, and Asia were still recovering from the war. The United States quite simply was not only militarily the strongest nation on the planet; economically, even with the recession of 1959, America was supreme.

And, the middle class, the upper middle class, and the rich were prospering.

And then Europe and Asia (and the USSR) began to catch up.

Kennedy knew all this, and made his famous tax cut of 1960, modest by Bush standards, BECAUSE THE BILL FOR WWII WAS BEING PAID AT A FASTER RATE THAN PREDICTED.

Okey, now for the clincher. Most American did not realize that is what was going on, because almost all Americans wanted desperately to forget WWII.

If a politician had argued that we were paying for WWII with the relative high tax rates, they would have lost. Nobody talked about it. Nobody wanted to. Veterans, especially combat veterans even hid their citations (my wife's father did) from their families. They just wanted to live a nice middle class life, with a nice home, a white picket fence and no more war.

Vietnam changed all that. But that is another story.

Reagan and the Prop 13 tax cutting crusade were born out of the realization that the present tax rates (state and federal) were beginning to develop surpluses. Johnson's "War on Poverty" came about because revenues were sufficient to actually address the damage 250 years of slavery had done to African-Americans. This greatly overdue effort lasted exactly four years, and began to end with the election of Nixon in 1968.

So, next came the Reagan revolution, blaming liberals and the New Deal for the relative high tax rates, especially on his rich Hollywood friends, and establishing the cut tax religion.

Big government was the enemy, tax and spend liberals were holding back economic growth.

Of course the truth was Europe and Asia were finally able to globally compete for a share of manufacturing, cheap Japanese and European goods began to out compete more expensive American made ones. The manufacturing hegemony of America began a slow, steady decline, as foreign made goods flooded the hungry American consumer market.

And American went nuts. Rather than develop sensible trade policies, and a national economic policy to compete in what was fast becoming a global economy, we descended into an endless economic debate over lower taxes, free enterprise, state competition; et al. Meanwhile we also totally ignored the energy crisis, assuming the con by petroleum aristocrats that oil was going to last forever with no climate change results. Again, this is another story.

The result was, as we are seeing today, the lack of a competitive advantage in the global economy.

So, WWII and paying for it was the culprit for high taxes, not the New Deal. We paid down the debt faster than predicted, and then cut taxes way more than we needed to, which has created (ironically) a competitive disadvantage in the global economy.

Now, in over-reacting to the recession, the foolish tax cut caused Great Recession, we stand to make things much worse.

It is the revenue. We need to pay for the Bush tax cuts and the Bush terrorist wars with more revenue. Luckily, even though the middle class has been decimated, the rich are awash in revenue, and higher marginal tax rates, plus reducing tax cuts to what is left of the middle class (they were not enough to make much difference anyway to individual families) will reduce the deficit and put us in a more competitive position in the global economy.

And what are Toomey and the cons doing? Why, they are cutting taxes even more, creating a even greater inequality between the rich and rest of us, and dooming our competitiveness in the world economy. Without a middle class to consume world economy goods and services, middle classes are growing rapidly in the "third world". In a sense, or tax cut mania is producing a third world country here, and the middle class consumer engine, that drove our prosperity, is moving overseas. The market is moving away from the United States. For example, when was the last time you though about the consumers in Brazil and how many American products they buy? You haven't of course, because we are all trained that we are the ONES, the only global market that counts. Talk to a current global economy CEO, and they will tell you the American market is no longer the only one, it is fast fading.

Leaving the 99 percent of us holding the bag.

It's the Head Stupid

It happened yet again. Chris Owusu, of Stanford, was hit in the head by a defensive back in the Oregon State game Saturday. This time he didn't get up. He laid there, seemingly unconscious. The crowd, who cheered the "big time hit" and fumble that led to a possible game changing touchdown, booed as a yellow flag flutterred down; negating the fumble and touchdown

The Oregon State crowd was much more enraged by what they perceived as a bad call, of a head shot hit, than by the safety and mortality of Owusu.

As time passed, and Owusu did not get up, some stopped booing and started praying.

It has always disgusted me when a player is hurt severely in football, the fans and teams start praying, and then, when the player gets up, or is carted off, immediately go back to "kill him" chants.

Does God just look the other way to this Roman Gladiator type behavior?

And then the T.V. "experts" weighed in. Typically, they ranted about how the players could not "play the game", or "act aggressively" if head shots were called. One of the announcers, who interestingly played quarterback, went on and on about how head shots were part of the game.

Bullshit! I played four years in what was the Pac-8, and coached high school football. I was coached by some of the greatest coaches in history. Head shots are NOT a part of football, they are a product of helmets that weight way too much, and a gangster mentality that has no place in the game!

This is what a head shot really is: It is a chickenshit tackle. When a receiver is running at you, and ball is coming at you, and you are essentially stationary, it is a visual nightmare. Most DBs are smaller than the receivers they must cover. A post or stant, positions the receiver at the defender. The defender must break up the pass, or tackle the receiver. This all takes place in an instant. The EASY play is to aim your shoulder pad at the side of the receiver's head. DBs are coached to push the receiver's head, disrupt his eyes, so he can't catch the ball. If you hit the receiver's head, ESPECIALLY WHEN IS IS LOOKING BACK FOR THE BALL, more than likely he will drop the ball. The danger to the DB is minimal, unless you lead with your head, then you could break your neck and die. So, you shut your eyes (all tacklers do) and hit his head with your shoulder.

The DB will look like a hero, he will have made a "big time hit". The receiver will probably get a concussion, and you might "turn the game".

But secretly you just executed a chicken shit hit, a cowardly act where he really shyed (avoided contact).

What does that mean. Okey, I played at 183 pounds. The typical tight end in those days weighed 250. When the tight end came over the middle, I was giving up almost 50 pounds, to an object moving at me at 25 miles an hour. Think about it! A head shot is a coward hit.

Head shots have NO place in football, they never have, never will. Many times, if you try for a head shot, you "whiff" (miss), and the receiver trots into the endzone. If you do hit him, you can kill him. That is courage????

Fractured skulls killed so many football players at the turn of the 19th century that Teddy Roosevelt almost banned the game. Many colleges dropped football in the late 19th century, because young men were dying. The flying wedge was banned, and helmets required, and fractured skulls stopped. Concussions did not.

Getting your "bell rung" was so common when I played that we didn't even tell the trainer most of the time. My ears have rung constantly ever since, every day, along with an aching back, from my big time college football years. I can remember (?) sitting in front of my locker trying to remember my combination (many just left their locker unlocked) because of getting my bell rung almost every week.

And that was practice, game collisions are twice as strong.

The idea of football is to tackle the opponent. If his knee touches, he is down and the play stops. If you can break up the pass, by hitting the ball or intercepting it, that is your job as a defensive player.

Hitting with great force supposedly cowers the opponent, making them fearful, so your team can win and dominate.

Think about that for a minute. In NCAA D1, ALL the players are all state. All the players, even the bench sitters, are "football players", not pretenders like high school. There are very few physical cowards out there. Getting hit hard is part of being a football player. A huge hit is simply forgotten, the idea is to score more points. You can wear a team out with conditioning and physical play, the "big hit" just isn't consideded by the players. In fact, a chicken shit hit, only motivates a team to play harder.

It's the crowd that craves the big hit. It is the Roman Gladiator effect that does this.

Calling and fining head shots must continue, and must be inforced more strictly. There can be no exceptions. Those players who do it consistently need to be suspended or driven from the game.

Owusu was wearing a mouthpiece that registers the force of head shots. Data from that hit is transmitted to a receiver that records the violence of the hit. I will bet that the data from that hit will astound any scientist. The wonder is he ever got up. The intensity of head shots is MORE than we estimate, the damage to the brain is MORE than scientists care to admit.

Football is a great game. And it can remain a great game without the "crowd pleasing" head shot. There is simply no purpose in pulverizing athlete's brains, so they go prematurely senile, or have a whole host of other brain impairments.

So, the next time a head shot happens, and the crowd roars, tell them to shut up. If an idiotic announcer prattles on about how it is "part of the game", switch channels.

Mark my words, if we don't end head shots now, the game will end. The scientific data that is finally being considered, cannot be ignored.

We don't have to kill players to win!

Cut taxes raise spendng

George W. Bush had won in Florida by a combination of no re-count, subtrafuge, and the a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. He was the first President in the modern era elected by the electoral college with a minority of the popular vote. The fact that such an undemocratic thing could occur in the world's most advanced democracy was no lost on Americans.

Nevertheless, Bush blundered on. Immediately, due to the taxing nature of basically stealing an election, he took weeks of vacation; blithly ignoring warnings that terrorists were planning an attack on the United States.

Of course 9-11 changed all that. In a right world, Bush's temeridy and reluctance to act in the critical moments of the attack would have been further proof that he was an accidental President, not fit to govern.

But, 9-11 gave him an opportunity.

The opportunity was not only to start a war with a country that had nothing to do with the attack; the opportunity was to adopt the most basic political strategy used by the inept, and the incompetent politician.

Bush decided to cut taxes and raise spending.

The economy flagged after 9-11. A small recession started, primarily because the American People were frightened, and Bush provided zero leadership during the crisis.

To counter that Bush built up the military, started wars in two places, and CUT taxes.

Ostensibly the cut in taxes was to "stimulate" the economy. Actually what it did was shift trillions of dollars to the rich 1%, who had bankrolled Bush's theft of the election. The spending accelerated, as Bush and the neo-cons attempted to run "nationbuilding" exercises in two countries, by privatizing the efforts.

To keep public opinion quiet, to avoid large causalty numbers, Bush's administration attempted to fight two wars with small combat arms units, and large support contigents. These support contingents included Halebuton Inc, and others, private companies who moved in, getting trillions of dollars for essentially doing nothing.

The corruption is just now being uncovered, with billions of dollars given away, books cooked; etc. Iraq and Afghanistan have basically been raped, trillions of dollars have been squandered on water systems that don't work, barracks that don't exist, and on an opium trade that is better than ever.

And the effect of basically eight years of cut taxes and raise spending, was a huge recession/depression that destroyed America's middle class.

This also added enrormous power to the wealthy conservative elites, who already were profiting hugely from the increase in oil prices that naturally occurs from the oil peak (we are slowly running out of gas so it costs way more).

The result was the election of a Democrat in 2008.

Unfortunately, the conservative elite will not tolerate that. A Democrat, and a smart one at that, understood the con that has taken place, and began working to reverse what is an avalanch of inequality in the country.

So, we go into 2012 with President Obama incredibly being blamed for the economic catatrophe that Bush so artfully fashioned. And, the conservative elite is throwing billions at the political process in an attempt to continually fool an American population that stupidly buys the idea of lowering taxes, but doesn't want to give up the government programs (and defense spending) that keeps some of them at least working. Essentially they want their cake and eat it too.

If Bush would have demanded sacrifice to pay for the wars, raised rather than lower taxes, the defict we all "worry about" would never had happened.

But the truth never works against a cut taxes/raise spending politician, with a population who still holds to buying snakeoil rather than truth.

So we continue our spin down into fascism.

Sportsmanship

The recent Stanford/USC game was a classic. Both teams struggled for almost four hours and the game was finally decided (?) in the third overtime.

As a former Stanford player, I was impressed by the effort by both teams. It was, I thought, and example of the best in college football.

Then the demon in USC football stepped up. USC in on probation for the Bush transgressions of five years ago. The school had to forfeit all games, give up a BCS Championship, and Bush had to turn in his Heisman Trophy. There was talk of the dealth penalty by the NCAA, the violations were that egregious.

This year's team was adversely affected, no post-season play, no league championship, and several scholarships were taken away. Moreover, while on probation, any player can transfer to another school with no penalty.

This is pretty serious stuff by any measure.

So, what does the head coach do after the game, he whines about the officiating! Meanwhile, during the game, some of the USC players, not all, are flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct, taunting, and a head shot that incapacitated a Stanford standout player. In short, some (not all) of the USC players acted like street thugs.

And what did the head coach do, he whined about the officiating. He whined, in fact, so much, that he was fined by the PAC-12, $10,000, and a player was suspended for a half in the next game.

Any of the good feelings anyone had about USC's effort in the game were quickly lost in the post-game controversy. USC has an image problem to be sure, but their coach surely doesn't act like it.

The old arrogance of "we are SC" was in evidence; which means USC hasn't apparently learned a thing.

Football is a game. When I was at Stanford, in my three years on the Varsity, we lost my Sophomore year fairly close, were blown out my Junior year, and lost on a last minute field goal my senior year to USC. Those were the days of O.J. Simpson, who apparently, according to locker room rumors, was collecting money from alumni while he was playing. The USC teams then were dominant, competing for the mythical national championship every year.

When we played them we were competing against players who rarely attended class, were basically semi-professionals, with future doctors, teachers and lawyers. USC a couple years after I graduated were cited by the NCAA for sending players during the summer to make up units to Junior Colleges that were miles apart, for morning classes! This was technically impossible; they cheated and got caught.

We competed to be sure, gave them all we had, but usually lost.

But hardly any of them graduated. Most, especially minority players, wound up back in their poor neighborhoods, nowhere.

Stanford ex-players did something. After over forty years I can attest to that. Many of the USC players did nothing.

Oh sure, O.J. did something; he was all NFL and in the Hall of Fame. But then...?

My point is USC still has the same old problem. The arrogance is still there. The expediency is still there. And they are losing. The NCAA by the way is still there as well.

They just do not get it.