Anyone here think that?

Or that keeping people in prison forever, without evidence of wrongdoing, isn't torture? Or that ramming food down the throats of these people when they protest their situation, isn't torture?

I keep reading that America doesn't torture. I wish it was true.

Armed rebellion against their country, all for some notion of "Liberty".

Betrayal!

Too bad the King didn't hang 'em high.

Regards,

Snowden-Sux! Manny

(Yes, who's not running and has sworn allegiance to Hillary, yes, we know)

Ordered mine today, am looking forward to reading the thing when it comes out in a week. Also looking forward to the alternative interpretations of her prose, on DU and elsewhere, LOL.

Rich people and their politicians love to lend people money that they can't really pay back, and the greatest mischief to be had is in lending money to countries with abjectly-corrupt governments. I call it the austerity con, and here's how it works:

1. Banker-governments lend money to corrupt government
2. Corrupt government puts much of it in their personal bank accounts
3. Borrowing country's debt load eventually builds to risky levels.
4. Because of the increased risk, interest on loans to corrupt government shoots up, so now the country can't pay its debts... Unless...
5. Borrowing country agrees to austerity and all sorts of other awful stuff in exchange for the privilege of paying back all of its loans to the banker-governments at non-usurious interest rates.
6. The corrupt government flees with billions, invests it with bankers.
7. The austeritized nation sells their services and possessions to banker-governments really cheaply because they desperately need the cash.
8. The bankers effectively resell what they've purchased cheaply, at a huge profit.

The bankers and politicians do well. Very well. The 99%? Utterly #%^*ed.

Cool stuff, huh? Very, very clever. Shrewd businessmen.

This is what took place in our own country a few years ago, as in much of the world. Iceland did the right thing when it hit step 5, flipped the bankers off and put their corrupt politicians in jail. And today, Iceland is doing just fine. But most other times this doesn't work because the banker-governments put close confidantes into key positions in the victim-countries, rich people who tell their countrymen "It's painful, but the alternative is worse." So the banker-governments get their way.

Now it's happening in Ukraine. Ukraine, as far as I can tell, is basically a pull toy between two banker-country dogs, the US and Russia. Both banker-countries fought for the honor of delivering the coup de gras of step 5. They're still going at it, the Ukrainian people getting badly stretched and abraded as the dogs go at it. We get to watch the spectacle of all sorts of bad crap happening that may yet turn savage. The US and Russia are both sponsoring bad behavior, the locals are likely fed up with getting screwed and want to blame someone (almost certainly the wrong people), and it may turn quite bad. Hopefully not.

I'm not sure of much can be done at this moment, but here's what I ask: when we read about Ukraine in the papers, it's totally appropriate to hate on Putin and company - they are scoundrels. But remember, too, that our own banker-government - which Jimmy Carter, I, and perhaps you feel is no longer of, by, and for the people - is doing much the same as the Russians.

If we want good things to happen around the globe - and in our own country - it all starts with tearing down our government of, by and for the Bankers, and replacing it with a government of our own. We still have the vote, for the most part - we need to use it well, or we'll surely lose it entirely.

It's time to act.

(Crossposted in General Discussion - please post comments in that one.)

A message from my senior senator. She wrote the book, not me.

Ah, hell, she's everyone's senior senator.

Well here's the message:

A message from my senior senator. She wrote the book, not me.

Ah, hell, she's everyone's senior senator.

Well here's the message:

But, dammit, I can't recall ever seeing a spectacle quite as bizarre as the bankers über alles insanity in Washington.

It's a sickness. The virtual end of criminal prosecutions for financial crimes against the 99%, and Holder brazenly saying "Yeah, sorry, they're a protected class of people, not prosecutable". The fake fines imposed on banks that are so fake that Jamie got a 75% raise for his. And the full terms of these "settlements" are kept secret from the public - Elizabeth Warren's fighting to get them disclosed.

Now that SEC prosecutor telling us what we all suspected - that SEC jobs are really just an entrance exam for huge-bucks jobs on Wall Street. Hillary's "don't worry, I'm still on your side" $200k-per-appearance victory lap of that same street.

Remember when banker bonuses were in trouble, and Team Obama swooped in like a SEAL team on meth to save every last bonus dollar? In days, Wall Street's bonuses were safe again. Can you imagine if that kind of effort had been exerted on behalf of us little people? How come Jamie gets Presidential cufflinks, and I don't?

It's not as bad as phony wars, I guess, but people die from awful fiscal policies, too. Even with ObamaCare, a higher percentage of Americans are uninsured today then when Obama was elected. The 99% is in tough shape and the vultures are drooling.

I'm sick of this, sick of being peed on by everyone with power. And I'm sure that you're sick of me, so I'll STFU now, sorry.

Do you?

SEC Prosecutor Says SEC Top Brass Are Corrupt

(No, I don't mean my post - I mean the one at the link above.)

Clearly, these people are qualified to be members of the Florida House of Representatives.

"They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

The American people know from a four-year record that today there is only one entrance to the White House--by the front door. Since March 4, 1933, there has been only one pass-key to the White House. I have carried that key in my pocket. It is there tonight. So long as I am President, it will remain in my pocket.

Those who used to have pass-keys are not happy. Some of them are desperate. Only desperate men with their backs to the wall would descend so far below the level of decent citizenship as to foster the current pay-envelope campaign against America's working people. Only reckless men, heedless of consequences, would risk the disruption of the hope for a new peace between worker and employer by returning to the tactics of the labor spy.

Here is an amazing paradox! The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them."

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt