The Burning Bush - In Search of a Leader

[As noted, name of major university has been omitted – Oui. It’s not so difficult to find through Internet search.]

In the podcast, the host and Jim Quinn discuss the free pass the bankers got during the eight years under Obama. Not fixing the financial system and underpinning of wealth transfer from the ordinary person to the 1% will lead to collapse, war and/or a totalitarian state.

I chose this title as it reminded me of the bibical tale of God’s people roaming 40 years through the desert following a new leader [Moses] in search of their “promised land”. It seems many of us are in a wasteland guided by the wealthy to their promised land of corporatism based on principles of pure capitalism. Not an equal playing field certainly not with a Supreme Court and U.S. Congress of followers. Where are today’s leaders in our constitutional democracy?

It’s a nice follow-up to TarheelDem’s recent diary …

○ Stunning!!! – James McGill Buchanan

MacLean says that Charles Koch poured millions into Buchanan’s work at George Mason University, whose law and economics departments look as much like corporate-funded thinktanks as they do academic faculties.

The papers Nancy MacLean discovered show that Buchanan saw stealth as crucial. He told his collaborators that “conspiratorial secrecy is at all times essential”. Instead of revealing their ultimate destination, they would proceed by incremental steps. For example, in seeking to destroy the social security system, they would claim to be saving it, arguing that it would fail without a series of radical “reforms”. (The same argument is used by those attacking the NHS). Gradually they would build a “counter-intelligentsia”, allied to a “vast network of political power” that would become the new establishment.

○ How a network led by the billionaire Koch brothers is riding the Trump wave | The Guardian |

Podcast: KunstlerCast 233 – June 13, 2013

JHK chats with Jim Quinn, author of The Burning Platform dot com. Jim Quinn spent most of his career as a financial executive in the corporate world and now works on the business side of a major university in Philadelphia (name of it omitted at JQ’s request). He’s a keen observer of the financial scene and the way it expresses itself in the decay of everyday life.

Continued below the fold …

The Horror, the Horror

I’m constantly amazed by the ability of those in power to create a narrative trusted by a gullible non-critical thinking populace. Appealing to emotions, when you have millions of functionally illiterate, normalcy bias ensnared, iGadget distracted, disciples of the status quo, has been the game plan of the Deep State for the last century. Americans don’t want to think, because thinking is hard. They would rather feel. For decades the government controlled public education system has performed a mass lobotomy on their hapless matriculates, removing their ability to think and replacing it with feelings, fabricated dogma, and social indoctrination. Their minds of mush have been molded to acquiesce to the narrative propagandized by their government keepers.

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” – Thomas Sowell

With a majority confused, distracted, malleable, willfully ignorant, and easily manipulated by false narratives, heart wrenching images, and fake news, the Deep State henchmen have been able to control the masses with relative ease. The unanticipated rise of Donald Trump to the most powerful role in the world gave many critical thinking, anti-big government, skeptical curmudgeons hope he could drain the swamp and begin to deconstruct the massive out of control Federal bureaucracy.

His rhetoric during the campaign about repealing the disastrous Obamacare abortion, cutting taxes, dismantling Federal regulatory red tape, making Mexico pay for the wall, dumping Yellen, favoring higher interest rates, and not interfering militarily in countries who are not threatening the United States, appealed to many libertarian minded people.

I’ve watched with disgust over the last month as the promises of non-interventionism by a presidential candidate have been broken by the third consecutive president. George W. promised a humble foreign policy with no nation building. He had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist:

“If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I’m going to prevent that.”

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With 9/11 as a convenient excuse, he invaded sovereign countries based on flawed data, passed the 4th Amendment destroying Patriot Act, allowed neo-cons to create a Orwellian surveillance state, and permitted the military industrial complex to regain its power and control over the political apparatus in Washington D.C. With no Cold War to fill their coffers, neo-cons in Congress, warmongering think tank co-conspirators, military brass and their arms dealer cronies needed to create a new war to keep the racket going.

The War on Terror is unwinnable because you can’t defeat a tactic, and that is just what the Deep State is counting on. An unwinnable war, like the War on Drugs and War on Poverty, results in never ending funding, no evaluation of success or failure, continuous propaganda designating new enemies whenever convenient, and a narrative questioning the patriotism of anyone who argues against foreign interventionism.

After Bush’s reign of error, the election of a liberal community activist as president surely would result in a dramatic reduction in military intervention around the world. It was so certain, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for just being elected for promising hope and change. He ran against neo-con tool McCain who never met a country he didn’t want to invade. Obama’s words as a candidate echoed those of Bush Jr. before he was placed on the throne by the powers that be.

“We continue to be in a war that should never have been authorized. I am proud of the fact that way back in 2002, I said that this war was a mistake.”

After being elected Obama immediately changed his tune about the business of war. He withdrew troops from Iraq as required by the agreement signed by Bush with the Iraq puppet government, but he ramped up the never ending Afghanistan war – now sixteen years old and still not won. The vacuum left by our epic failure in Iraq allowed the rise of ISIS. Obama essentially created ISIS by providing arms to “moderate” rebels fighting Assad in Syria.

By the end of his term, troops were back in Iraq and more are on the way. Obama and a Secretary of State named Clinton decided to overthrow Gaddafi even though he posed no threat to U.S. interests. They have left a lawless chaotic failed state, now home to ISIS, Al Qaeda, and various other terrorist factions.

Obama should have won the Nobel Drone Prize as he launched ten times as many attacks as Bush, killing thousands, blowing up wedding parties, and murdering hundreds of innocent civilians. He bombed seven countries even though we are not officially at war with anyone. He renewed all aspects of the unconstitutional Patriot Act. Edward Snowden revealed the mass surveillance on all Americans by Obama’s spy agencies.

○ In Defending Hillary Clinton’s Emails, Obama Shows His Double Standard on Classified Info

His continued support for the overthrow of Assad, so Saudi Arabia and Qatar could build a natural gas pipeline to Europe, was thwarted by Putin. Hysterically, after eight years of war mongering and expansion of the warfare/welfare surveillance state, Obama is now portrayed as a pacifist. The fact is Obama, like Bush, filled his role in the imperial empire, policing the world, enriching the military industrial complex, and doing the bidding of his Deep State sponsors.

[In article, some links added are mine – Oui]

After six years of failed intervention to overthrow Assad in compliance with the worst of neo-con plans: PNAC. President Trump hoists the flag of victory and orders CIA out of Syrian warfare in support of the jihadists.

○ ‘Trump ends CIA support for anti-Assad Syria rebels’ | Al Jazeera |

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Trump Pulls the Plug in Syria | by Graham E. Fuller is good https://t.co/UuHxBt8oOC

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) 22 juli 2017