Coming Home
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the foggy island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this Friday morning, a very early one at that here on the eastern seaboard of the United States, roughly 4:33 a.m., EDT, the eighth day of July, 2011, and you may be asking yourself, ‘Michael, why are you up so early’, or perhaps that thought never occurred to you, however, I will tell you, if you really want to know. I am just so darned worried about Rupert Murdoch and the big hacking scandal going on in Great Britain, my former home, as Captain Hook recently pulled the plug on “News of the World”, a piece of crap tabloid that had reached over 2 million plus subscribers around the world and was recently indicted by that same world in an apparent hacking scheme where phone lines of murder victims, terrorist victims and various celebrities and Members of Parliament had been hacked into, some with help of the POLICE, with intense investigations now ongoing in Scotland Yard, prompting a world wide outcry and casting a long shadow on old “Long Shanks”, the old pirate of the news barge. Say it for me Murdoch, “Argghhhhh, matie!! I’m awful upset about me family being split up like this, and even with the hackin’, we stick together as one, because there’s a reason why they call me the best puppeteer in London, and David Cameron knows ‘dat all to well, tanks for the memories Sun Valley, arrgghhh, arrggghh matie!” Thank you Rupert, I’m sure all of the knuckleheads over at the U.S. television equivalent of “News of the World”, FOX NEWS, will be happy to know that big corporate brainwashing will go on as planned, with 20 percent raises expected for the end of the year. I’m sure that none of that criminal, morally bankrupt hacking ever takes place in the United States of America, what, with the top secret NSA and, oh, I don’t know, all of the other top secret agencies that have sprung up since 9/11, on the job, providing us all with that “post, pre-9/11 thinking”, a euphemism that recently replaced, since the death of bin Laden, “9/11 thinking”. Secret, newly formed agencies the Bush administration gave a blank check to, all under the auspices of the newly formed “Homeland Security”, the catalyst effectively forming all of these top secret agencies to spy on not only our ‘enemies’, some real, most boogie men, but on our own citizens, and if you think for one minute that powerful news moguls like Murdoch are not privy to sensitive information, think again. David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, had a very cozy relationship with Andy Coulson, who was the editor of ‘News of the World’, and is expected to be arrested today in London. What does that say to you? Manipulation is one word that comes to mind. Ask yourself this, if you wish, ‘how is it that roughly 80 percent of Americans recently polled, a multitude of credible, independent polls, not affiliated with “The News of the World”, stated that they do not want Washington to cut any benefits to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, while that same number reflects the percentage of Americans who want to INCREASE taxes on the top 2 percent, those making over 250,000. dollars a year, yet, because of the likes of Murdoch’s FOX NEWS here in the good ‘ole US of A, most Americans, simultaneously, do not want to raise the debt ceiling–a ceiling that all responsible and sane ADULTS agree MUST be raised, a debt that came almost exclusively from the previous administration. Why do over 59 percent of Americans think this way? Because they are BRAINWASHED into thinking, via Murdoch’s FOX NEWS, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, that “raising the debt ceiling” is more of this “tax and spend, liberal, Hippy, horse hockey, hooey” (credit Homer Simpson’s neighbor Ted Flanders, a registered republican) and actually believe the likes of some slick congressman from whatever state claims him, Mr. Eric, “you go girl”, Cantor, one of the so called, according to a recent book the ‘gang’ published, “young guns”, who acts as the whip in the House under Speaker Boehner, when he refuses to even speak of tax increases for the wealthy, refuses to talk about the numerous, countless really, loopholes you and your tax attorney could drive a Mack truck through the center of, refuses to let up on attacking a solvent, highly popular government program such as Social Security, that has a 2 trillion dollar surplus and is solvent for the next 26 years, a program designed during the “New Deal” of then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who proposed this as a secure retirement plan for all Americans, especially the poor and middle class, you know, 98 percent of “The American People”, a program where people pay into, along with their employer, and when one reaches the age of 65, one can retire on the fixed income they, the republicans, want to play around with. This has, of course, outraged many progressives, not to mention main stream democrats, independents and some republicans, rich or poor, for they, as Warren Buffet put it so well, do not see the SHARED SACRIFICE of nickle and diming to death grandma who lives on a REAL fixed income, when millionaires and billionaires are getting all of the breaks, with more to come. The big shock came yesterday, however, when President Obama hinted that he was willing to make those small, to some, but large to others, cuts to social programs that are not only solvent, but, moreover, efficient, better than the “free market” by a long shot (check out private health care premium increases of 7.7 percent in 2010 vs. medicare increases of less than 5 percent, and that’s a government program!). So much for concept of the free market correcting all ERRORS, errors actually created by the free market, such as the insurance industry in this nation, a real pyramid scheme, as far as the employee/employer structure is concerned, not to mention claims issues, a model for the country don’t you think? The outrage is summed up in words that the President said in 2008, as well as the fact that this is not CHANGE, this is more of the same old corporate crap, excuse the tone Mr. President, and you, above all people, should be able to see that. This is the classic Stockholm Syndrome that it seems our own President has fallen victim to. Stockholm Syndrome is defined as the captives–i.e. the ‘American People’, captives I might add that live in fear, by design, and are trained to please their captors, for they feel if they are ‘nice’ to them (employees at Walmart, for example), they (management at Walmart), won’t abuse them any longer–being abused by various forms of shock therapy, via the dark secrets discovered by the CIA in the 1950’s at Mcgill University in Montreal, Quebec, learning from a true Frankenstein psychiatrist what shock, torture and sensory deprivation can do to a human being, expressed to the masses via the shock of war and manufactured economic crisis-es, etc., yes, all designed to manipulate the captives into feeling sorry for their captors (corporate plutocracy mindset/republican party or Republicorp, really all the same thing). However, they are sadly mistaken, for they are not playing the same game, and are taught, via the “Chicago School” and Milton Friedman, to not care, and thus, are on a totally different wave length. In this syndrome, victims become increasingly benevolent and sometimes even sympathetic to their captors, beginning to think that the whole thing is somehow THEIR fault, insane a thought as that IS, and thus, surrender and give in, as Obama did this past December when he caved and gave the 2 Bush tax cuts, unpaid for tax cuts, just like the two wars, the prescription big pharma give away, an extension, money that WE borrowed from China so that old Ted can put a new cover on his 50,000 dollar sail he just purchased because he, unlike you, just received a HUGE tax refund. When the captives, the ‘in the dark at all times American public’, by, again, design, or U.S. citizens, who are easily manipulated, coupled with a short attention span and few avenues to discover the TRUTH by way of journalism, give in, as ‘they’, or Republicorp, ‘resets’ the, cross your fingers, majority mind set, such as “9/11 thinking”, which has become the collective mindset of the American people, convincing them that, “taxes bad, spending bad, government bad, republican good”, the plutocrats smell blood and, eventually, “at the end of the day” are successful in breaking down the captives collective resistance to their insane and undemocratic demands–demands of true blue ideological terrorists. Tough pill to swallow, but wouldn’t you rather KNOW the TRUTH than live the rest of your life in the dark, feeling sorry for a radical grouping of “Milton Friedmanites” or whatever those crazy kids are calling themselves these days, who all believe in this sanctimonious horse$hit, coming down from “on high”, as if GOD himself is really “on their side”–are you for real? Over the course of the past thirty years, incomes for average wage earners has risen by less than one percent, while the top two percent has seen their income rise by over 278 percent! The top 400 wage earners in this nation, the billionaire elite, earn more than 50 percent of the American people COMBINED, or roughly 150 million people! “Where is all the money going?”, is the most common question asked these days and it can be answered by simply looking at the numbers–and numbers, as we all know, don’t LIE! It begs the question, who is really pulling the strings in Washington D.C., on this issue any way? For President Barack Obama to actually put a program that did NOTHING to raise the debt in this nation, on the chopping block, along with another extremely popular and effective, not to mention MORAL program, Medicare, and last, but certainly not least, Medicaid, a program designed to help the “least of us”, is a step backwards. You know, the ‘least of us’ or those who have the fewest physical, personal possessions, possessions, that, we all know, can possess you if you are not too careful. It’s funny, because for such a devoted group of people, a large group, to the words and deeds of a man who walked this earth over 2000 years ago, Jesus Christ, who spoke of the importance of LOVE, kindness, charity, forgiveness, compassion, empathy, and even sympathy and mercy, they really missed the boat when Christ uttered these “What you do to the least of me, you do unto me…” Seems like the republican party, when they all arrive at the Pearly Gates to speak with Saint Peter, might just …have some ’splainin’ to do, because Heaven does not take in hypocrites, and it sure as heck fire does not take American Express! Have a wonderful week end folks and please keep the refugees on the Somalia/Kenyan border in your prayers, they can use all the help WE can send. PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
