Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Kabuki Theater on the Potomac.



I find it amusing if not tragically hilarious  to watch the dancing fools in Washington argue over their competing non-solution solutions the the pending fiscal cliff.  That latest load of scat is that we should raise taxes now and cut spending later and all "new" revenue will be directed to paying down the debt and or reducing the deficit.  Gee where have we heard this before?  Oh that's right, only every single time we have one of these budgetary kabuki dances.

Unfortunately there are a majority of Americans who either don't care, have absolutely no idea of the vastness of the numbers involved or are so ideologically hidebound (left or right), that all they care about is political power positioning and not economic reality, that they can't see never mind conceive that there is no solution.  At least not within the constructs that created the mess in the first place, namely Keynesian economics and fiat currency central banking.

So the dance will continue right up to the so-called deadline and then we will get an announcement of some "grand bargain" wherein both sides will claim victory over the other in the more taxes/less spending argument and that real progress has been made in resolving the country's economic woes.  Everything will be declared as "fixed," markets will soar, the FED will print even more monopoly money and the sound of the can rattling down the road to inevitable disaster will be drowned out in all the applause from the know nothing pundits and back slapping self-congratulation of the politicians.

Except of course nothing will have been fixed in the least no matter which "side" prevails in these all for show negotiations.  Creating more new debt to pay off old debt and then adding new-new debt on top of the pile has never worked on any economic scale, be it micro or macro or anywhere in between.  This is nothing more than the same foolishness we see playing out in Europe where each new month we see yet another "summit meeting" followed by another solution and another declaration that the problem is fixed.  It's all the "Little Boy Who Cried Wolf" writ large.  I'm reminded of the Governor's board meeting meeting from "Blazing Saddles."  "Hey I dind't get a loud enough harumph out of that guy!"

Tragically it's not like there aren't more than a few politicians in Washington that understand the truth of what I've said here it just that they are either more concerned with re-election than reality or they are scared to death of the financial elites who pull their strings and fund their campaigns.  So the likes of Ron Paul and others are left to preach in the wilderness.

So before we go any further lets look at the simple math of the situation.  Our present debt is some $16.3 Trillion (it grows by tens of billions every month).  Now let's imagine so so-called "best case" scenario of a "grand bargain" wherein the Democrats get to raise taxes by some $100 billion over ten years, (They use ten years to try and make people think there are actually looking ahead but any fool knows that with each new year the last years deal is the first thing thing goes out the window) and the Republicans get to cut spending by another $200 billion over ten years.  (It won't be a real cut but a decrease in the rate of growth but that's just another inside the beltway absurdity.)  But for the sake of this argument lets call it an actual cut.

So then we take these ten year numbers and reduce them to an annualized figure.  We now have $10 Billion in "new" revenue and $20 Billion in cuts.  Now we simply divide the total debt of $16.3 Trillion by the combined new revenues and cuts of $30 Billion.  (After dropping off all the over lapping zeros this comes to 16,300 divided by 30 = 5,433.33, the number of years it would take to pay off JUST THE EXISTING DEBT.  If that number begins to open your eyes just a little to the absurdity of it all now consider that none of these numbers include the interest due on this debt or the fact that Congress will keep adding another $1.1 Trillion, at least, to the existing debt each year.

The US of course is not operating in some vacuum here.  The European situation is on par in terms of over all numbers as ours, they're just closer to the end of the road than we are.  Japan is a basket case with the highest debt to GDP ratio in the world.  Their only saving grace right now is that the largest part of their debts are held internally and not just to their central bank.

What is unsustainable is unsustainable but our politicians and their banking masters are determined to sustain this mess right to the bitter end, determined that whatever final reckoning comes will be as disastrous as possible so we can then be told that this is a failure of capitalism not the central planning methods that brought it about.  More power and more control to the center and less freedom and less liberty for the individual.  Digested down to a single word TYRANNY.

These politicians aren't in the least bit afraid of any popular rebellion or any secession movement. They are scared to death of the bankers.  Unless and until that changes (part and parcel to the false left vs. right pardigm) the future looks grim and 2013 will not be a "good" year.


Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Pagans Dance In The Blood Of The Innocent.

What we have had on display for the last few days has been nothing less than the wide assortment of vile fascist control freaks dancing in the blood of the innocent victims of the atrocity in Newtown Connecticut.  The bodies of the dead had not even been identified before the leftist twitterverse exploded in calls for blood vengeance against the NRA and anyone associated with it or the defense of the 2nd amendment.  Closely following if not in tandem came the calls for disarming the American public.   

Nowhere of course was there any discussion from the left that connected any legally possessed firearm with this tragedy.  Nor was there any discussion of how disarming legal owners, and most certainly uninvolved citizens, will prevent criminals from committing crimes. 
 
None of this of course has anything top do with mourning thee dead or sympathy for the grief of their families.  It was all about furthering the fascist agenda of destroying the 2nd amendment to the Constitution. 

Anyone and everyone who dared speak out in any public forum in defense of their 2nd amendment rights has been immediately vilified as heartless and uncaring for the loss of the victims and their families, as if the two were by definition mutually exclusive.   

How quickly these great “humanists,” who shed crocodile tears over the dead children in Connecticut are to dismiss the existence of any humanity in those they perceive as the enemies of their political agenda.  No moral person can be anything but shock and appalled by these events.  That most of the victims were children so young makes it all the more shocking. We all mourn, as individuals and as a nation, for the families of the dead.  So I can only ask these great “humanists” where are their tears for the thousands of innocent children slaughtered in the womb every single day.  Are they anything if not even more innocent than the children of Newtown?  Are they any less dead?  How exactly are they any less deserving of our grief? 

Lets look at the facts here.  This heinous act was committed by a criminal (I won't dignify him by repeating his name) bent on slaughter.  Connecticut has some of the strongest gun control laws in the nation.  Among them being that no person under 21 years of age can legally possess a firearm.  He couldn’t have purchased a weapon even if he tried. 

Before even the first shot was fired at the school a string of felonies was committed.

He stole his mother’s weapons.

He murdered her.

He stole her car.

He took  loaded firearms onto school grounds. 

So since when have criminals cared about any laws?  No law no mater how strict or rigidly enforced would have stopped this sick mind for a single second.  Where is the responsibility of those who have turned our schools and public places into "free fire zones" for criminals by declaring them "gun free zones"?
 
Of course none of these facts or questions will stem the calls for even more blood from the left.  Nor will it stop their dancing in the blood of those already slaughtered to further a dangerous and misguided political agenda.  Nor will it lead them to any remorse or even second thoughts for the blood of the thousands of aborted dead that is already on their hands by their silent acquiescence.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

To All My Readers Across The Globe.

Firstly I want to thank you all for you repeated visits, and especially those of you who take the time to leave a comment. (I wish there were more and I'd love to start conversations, especially with those in some of the more far flung corners of the world).  A special thanks to some of my fellow bloggers who have been so kind as to link and/or repost some of my humble tomes.

All that said as we get ready here in the States to sit down with family and friends for a sumptuous Thanksgiving meal, you are all in my thought and prayers.  I hope you all have a happy Christmas season and that you will join me in hope and prayer for a better new year.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Liberty and Democracy

"Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. A democratic state may profess to venerate the name, and even pass laws making it officially sacred, but it simply cannot tolerate the thing. In order to keep any coherence in the governmental process, to prevent the wildest anarchy in thought and act, the government must put limits upon the free play of opinion. In part, it can reach that end by mere propaganda, by the bald force of its authority — that is, by making certain doctrines officially infamous. But in part it must resort to force, i.e., to law. One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty. Always they condition it with the doctrine that the state, i.e., the majority, has a sort of right of eminent domain in acts, and even in ideas — that it is perfectly free, whenever it is so disposed, to forbid a man to say what he honestly believes. Whenever his notions show signs of becoming "dangerous," ie, of being heard and attended to, it exercises that prerogative. And the overwhelming majority of citizens believe in supporting it in the outrage. Including especially the Liberals, who pretend — and often quite honestly believe — that they are hot for liberty. They never really are. Deep down in their hearts they know, as good democrats, that liberty would be fatal to democracy — that a government based upon shifting and irrational opinion must keep it within bounds or run a constant risk of disaster. They themselves, as a practical matter, advocate only certain narrow kinds of liberty — liberty, that is, for the persons they happen to favor. The rights of other persons do not seem to interest them. If a law were passed tomorrow taking away the property of a large group of presumably well-to-do persons — say, bondholders of the railroads — without compensation and without even colorable reason, they would not oppose it; they would be in favor of it. The liberty to have and hold property is not one they recognize. They believe only in the liberty to envy, hate and loot the man who has it.
-- "Liberty and Democracy" in the Baltimore Evening Sun (13 April 1925), also in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy : New Selections from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (1994) edited by Terry Teachout, p. 35

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

JFK Rolls Over In His Grave

"Ask not what you country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" has metastasized into Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. The status quo won last night.  Nothing will be fixed.  Nothing will change except for the worse.  A new debt ceiling vote will still come up in December.  The fiscal cliff is still there. Sequestration and massive layoff still loom.

Europe is still a disaster tettering on the edge of a collapse that can push the whole world into a depression where the only survivors will be the politicians and the bankers and those few who prepared for the inevitable. The Middle East is still a powder keg awaiting a Franz Ferdinand moment that will drive oil prices through the roof and crush the none existent recovery into dust.  Even absent some dramatic event what is already a bad situation will continue to deteriorate.  There is no plan to address the massive unfunded liabilities of endless entitlements and interest on the debt.  There is no plan to deal with state and local governments going bankrupt left and right.  There is no plan to deal with an entire world drowning in debt.  The only solutions are so-called leaders propose is piles of new debt and austerity to pretend we are paying off the old piles of debt. These non-solutions will only crush the human spirit and the rob from generations unborn so that politicians and bankers can survive to propose more useless solutions.

The winter of the fourth turning is upon us. No thanks to government mis-education the vast majority both left and right can't see it. The 80 year cycle is about to reach its nadir and there is no guarantee that what will arise from it will be good.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Time To Go Long On The Oil Of Champhor

Well the Benghazigate scandal iterations were weekly, then they went to every fourth day and then every other day and now they are going almost every half day.  Earlier today came the revelation of emails from Ambassador Stevens stating that the Consulate could not withstand a sustained attack.  The newest story is that two large media outlets have the documented evidence of just who it was that issued the "stand down" orders that ultimately resulted in four dead Americans and they are sitting on the information for the political purpose of running cover for the administration.

There is a leak somewhere. Whether it's coming from CIA or the State Department or the Pentagon doesn't much matter.  I would suspect that Obama's statement that he had ordered everything possible be done to protect the personnel in Benghazi cheesed somebody off who had the evidence to the contrary.

Seems someone around here warned that the media's shameless bias on this scandal was going to result in the stench rubbing off on them.  Do these fools honestly think that they are the only ones that have it or that there aren't others who will deliberately use it to make sure that the stink get soaked into their credibility as well as the administration's if they don't release it?  The only question that remains is will the media throw Obama under the bus to try and save themselves? Jackals have been know to eat their own in the midst of a feeding frenzy.  This will only get more interesting from here.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Really Mr. Secretary?

Well that sure didn’t take long.  Seems I recall predicting to someone just Friday that we would get a “new” Benghazigate story by today.  Right on cue, and early in fact, we get one Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta projectile vomiting the latest batch of lies and misdirection in a crude attempt to cover up for the previous batch of lies and misdirection.

Misdirection #1. “There is a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on by people who don’t know what’s going on.”  Really Mr. Secretary?  Are you implying that the DoD does know what’s going on or are you saying that if the DoD doesn’t know what’s going on nobody else possible could either?

Lie #2. When asked why fighter aircraft had not been sent to the scene to at least do “low and loud” passes over the consulate or to lay down suppressing fire the Secretary said that they “were concerned about creating civilian casualties that might further inflame the situation.”  Really Mr. Secretary? The Consulate was already in flames, how much more inflamed could it get?  Anybody who has ever been in combat will tell you that once a firefight breaks out that civilians flee the area as quickly as possible or crawl into the deepest hole they can find to keep from getting their heads blown off.  What did the Secretary think these “civilians” he’s so concerned about were doing?  Sitting out in their lawn chairs watching the show and roasting shish-ka-bobs of the flames of burning vehicles?

Lie #3. “We weren’t going to deploy assets into a situation we hadn’t fully assessed.”  Really Mr. Secretary?  Just how much more information did you need?  You had both Flash Traffic and emails coming from inside the Consulate as the attack was taking place.  You had CIA assets at the annex requesting permission to led assistance to the Consulate that could have both provided support and on a further on the ground situation report.  You had Predator drones circling overhead providing you live video feeds in both visible and infrared light.  What else were you waiting for Mr. Secretary?  Did you think al Qaida was going to post their Order of Battle to help you make a decision? 

This was followed by the most monstrous, shameful and shameless lie of all.

Lie #4.  With a shrug of his shoulders Mr. Panetta concluded, “This was all over before we could do anything about it.”  Really Mr. Secretary?  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the designator for US Army Delta Force units is QRT (Quick Response Team).  Do you need “quick” defined for you?  Why did they remain on the ground in Sicily two hours away?  Why were they not embarked on their KC-130 aircraft to at the very least circle off shore where they could then either go into action or return to base as the situation developed?  Do not such QRTs also have AC-130 gunships attached?  Aren’t these aircraft designed for and known for being able to lay down pinpoint accurate suppressing fire?  Is there not a US Navy CVN and LHA stationed full time in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea?  Just what are those QRT teams, aircraft and that full Battalion of Marines there for if not for just such situations?

I’m sorry Mr. Secretary no one but the gullible, naïve or stupid is buying any of this retched street pizza your laying out.  The real shame is not that hack politicians lie to us; we’ve come to expect it.  No the real shame is that no one in the so-called mainstream media is asking anything close to these kinds of follow up questions when presented with such blatant and obvious lies.

Friday, October 26, 2012

A Scathing Indictment. Another Piece from Matt Bracken.

OBAMA WENT TO BED
Matt Bracken 10-25-2012


The biggest stench from the Benghazi fiasco is that it is beginning to smell like Obama went “nighty-night” to rest up for Las Vegas, instead of manning up in the Situation Room and seeing the crisis through and (had he only been awake) ordering a rescue mission.

In Benghazi, after 6-8 hours enduring a few “Fort Apaches,” with running street battles in …
between, (like a mini Blackhawk Down), the living Americans must have been thinking, “Any minute now, here come the helicopters! Just hang on!”

But they didn’t. So even though Delta had forward staged to Sigonella Sicily (rumint) from base in Germany, nobody was willing or able to pull the trigger and send a rescue force. Or even a few F-18 supersonic flybys, to bust windows and warn, “Here comes American airpower, and you camel jockeys know what that means.” Just as a morale booster it would have helped the besieged staffers.

But it was never sent, not even a lousy supersonic low-level flyby. One hour from bases in Italy, max.

Here is the deal. The military automatically does a lot on its own, under standing orders and SOPs. The minute they see that the consulate is under attack, and the ambassador and others are in a “safe room” hiding, it becomes TOP priority. Every other mission aborts or slaves over to support any possible rescue.

At that moment when the critical incident alarm messages start ringing, military steps happen on autopilot in real time. Everybody in the Navy and USAF chain of command swings into a crisis contingency plan mode. What ships are closest? Helicopters? Marines? Delta is in Germany? Get them moving right now. Where is closest? Sigonella, for now. It’s NATO, no permission needed, just fly.

En route in C-17s, the D-boys would even be prepping for an immediate action rescue mission, that is, the C-17s will fly directly to some desert road outside of Benghazi, and here comes “The Raid On Entebbe,” done in crisis mode, canned actions, but they would do it. They practice for these exact scenarios, and leave gear staged for them.

They would coordinate with fighters out of Italy, mid-air-refueling platforms start shifting, it’s a huge show that swings into action for thousands of miles around Behghazi. The ongoing consulate attack is JOB ONE, the only job. VIPs will be tossed off of planes at remote runways if they need that platform.

Or Marines on amphibious ships in the central Med, (if any were available), would also be put on the real-time options board. We used to have a “Amphibious Ready Group” of about 3-5 USN gator freighters, including a helo carrier like a Tarawa class. They carry an entire battalion of USMC, plus SEALs etc, with helos and Ospreys to carry them all. (But not at once.) Where was our ARG? Does our Navy have enough ships for that mission any more?

But while all of that military staging would have happened/did happen during the 6-8 hour battle at the consulate and annex, what the military cannot do on their own say-so is cross an international border without an order from the NCA, the National Command Authority, and that means POTUS, Obama.

Only POTUS can authorize a cross-border hostile mission. That is, guns clear, no official permission from the Tripoli govt (if it really exists outside State Dept fantasies.)

Only one man can pull that trigger and say, “GO!” Obama.

(But for America to act “unilaterally” would have meant the bogus Libyan Arab Spring and so-called new Libyan Unity Govt. that we were propping up didn’t really exist. Libyan sovereignty must be held sacrosanct, even the false image of one, where in reality, Al Queda is top dog in Libya. Even when an Al Queda offshoot is your external “security,” namely, “The 17th of February Martyrs Brigade.” IOW, the White House thought they had a “deal” with AQ in Behghazi, since we were helping to run weaponry from Libya to their pals in Syria. So there was an “institutional bias” at State against crossing the border on a rescue operation sin permisso.)

Anyway, be that as it may, no General or Admiral will order the Marines ashore, or a Delta raid or even an F-18 or F-16 low-level supersonic flyby. They can not and will not cross a border without a clear-cut order from POTUS via the NCA. Not even Hillary can make that decision. Only Obama.

But no order came, as of midnight in DC. And then none would come. Because the POTUS retired for the night with a “do not disturb” sign on his door, punted, and went to bed, to be well rested for Las Vegas.

While his ambassador was off the U.S. radar, missing, at that moment possibly being dragged down a Benghazi street or even raped. But that is when Obama went to bed. Midnight in DC is 0600 in Beghazi.

That is the greatest scandal of Benghazi. The POTUS slept through it, while all around the world, military forces were poised for the Raid on Entebbe or any other damn thing the POTUS ordered them to do. (And the were raring to go, believe me.)

But the POTUS said, “We’ll discuss it further in the morning,” and then he went to bed around midnight in DC, 0600 in Benghazi, with a missing ambassador and a full-blown crisis in full mega flap.

He punted. He went to bed.

God help us.

I think that’s the big secret they are keeping. The President went to bed, with his lost Ambassador being dragged through streets.

Obama went to bed.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Digging A Hole In The Libyan Sands

President Obama has dug himself a deep hole in the Libyan sands of Benghazi and like any other clueless leftist thinks that the way out of the hole is to keep digging. Given what came out today with the release of diplomatic traffic between the ambassador, his staff and the state department the picture get uglier and uglier every day.  (Gee didn't predict that just last week?)  Clear and definitive warnings were being given the AQ was moving into the area in strength. AQ flags were reported over government buildings and training facilities.  What few other western consulates had pulled up stakes and left town.  The Red Cross had come under repeated attacks and had also left Benghazi.  The consulate had come under two previous attacks.  One in June had blown a large hole in the perimeter wall.  The ambassador himself had sent a cable just the day before his death that the situation was "out of control" and that Libyan government security forces were not up to the task and most likely could not be trusted.

So Mr. President, why were existing SST and MSD security teams withdrawn?  Why were repeated requests for added security denied given the deteriorating conditions?   Why was the State Dept. DC-3 aircraft withdrawn?  Why weren't the ambassador and his staff withdrawn and the consulate closed?  If the State Department had a drone over the consulate during the attack and they were watching the attack as it unfolded how do you justify saying for two weeks that it was a reaction to some stupid youtube video?  It doesn't take a genius to tell the difference between a spontaneous riot and a coordinated attack with heavy weapons.

Mr. President was all this the result of incompetence, indifference or something worse?  Good and loyal American citizens are dead and the public is demanding definitive answers to how and why it happened.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Fidel Goes to Hell

Mephistopheles greets Fidel Castro at the gates of hell, “Hello my friend, welcome to your new home!”  He escorts Fidel through the gate and firmly closes it behind him.  “Before we go any further I have to ask you a few questions.  I hope you understand.”

“Of course.” Castro replies, “Go right ahead.”

“Well first, do you smoke?”

“You know I do!  I love my Havanas!”

“That’s great because on Mondays around here all we do is smoke. Cigars, pipes, cigarettes, only the finest of tobaccos.  We smoke until we are sick and then we smoke some more.  What’s it gonna do kill you?  You’re already dead!”

“Ok I guess that make sense.” Castro replies with a pleased look on his face.

“Next then, do you drink?”

“Of course I do.  Good Cuban beer. And I have to confess, I like good American Bourbon, I never cared for that Russian Vodka.”  Castro was clearly getting excited; this place was beginning to sound like party central.

“Wonderful my friend because on Tuesdays all we do is drink, beer, bourbon, whatever you want!  We drink until we puke and then we drink some more! What’s it gonna do, kill you? You’re already dead!”

Castro’s grin widened, “I got to tell you I’m sure begining to like the sound of this place!”

“Perfect then.  Next question, do you take drugs?”

“Well Che and I did smoke some weed while we were hiding in the mountains from Batista and his troops.  And then when we helped the Columbians ship all that cocaine to those decadent Americans we always took a few samples! Castro said now openly laughing with his new friend.

“Ok then because on Wednesdays we do drugs, lots of drugs, we have unlimited supplies! Weed, cocaine, heroin, what ever we want. We smoke it, snort it inject it.  What’s it gonna do kill you?  You’re already dead!”

Fidel was now ecstatic at the thought.  Hell truly was going to be the just reward for the righteous socialist.  All the murders, all his hard work and four hour long speeches were going to find their reward!

Mephistopheles smiled a wide grin and said “Ok one more question, are you gay?”
“No!” Castro sharply replied. “That is nothing more than capitalist decadence!  I will have no part of it!”

Mephistopheles’s smile was gone, replaced with a serious frown.  “Well that then is just to bad, because it looks like every day is going to be Thursday for you!” 

 

Friday, October 5, 2012

Just What's Wrong With Your Typical "Republican."


Just recently one of my fellow posters on a comment page in my local newspaper attempted to take me to task for some, what he thought was hash criticism, of the resident leftists and encouraging me to “step back and take a deep breath" because after all it was just “entertainment.”  That this individual is normally of a pretty conservative bent I was thoroughly enraged by his admonition.   That far to many Americans and conservatives ones too boot consider the political process little more than “entertainment” is a large part of how we have gottten into such a mess.  Complacency has led to ignorance and it will lead to bondage.

I responded to him as follows:

With all due respect to your normally conservative perspective I must disagree and heartily so. These are not "normal" times where we would have the luxury of regarding the election process, the candidates and the proposals they make as mere "entertainment." That far to many people have done so for far to long is exactly why the Republic and indeed western civilization itself is in such peril. We have bought into the crap of "moral relativism" for far too long. That the decline of the Republic has paralleled the public eating this crap sandwich is NOT coincidental.

As a nation and a people we have "gone along to get along" for far too long and it has brought us to the brink of financial ruin. It has allowed us to tolerate a brutal, inhuman, totalitarian political philosophy to enter our midst just because it masquerades as a religion.

So do I consider any of these characters, these "useful idiots" as Lenin called them, my personal enemies? No, not unless I should have the distinct displeasure of actually meeting one of them. But I do consider them to be enemies "domestic" of the Republic. I seem to recall having sworn an oath to protect it from just such as them.

If all this leads some in here to judge me as strident or inflexible so be it. I hardly take into consideration the opinions of individuals who clearly have no grasp of history beyond their own limited recollections. None of them, not a single one dared answer my questions about fiscal and physical economy nor my question why the founders kept the works of Tacitus, Cicero and Plutarch close at hand. Those two facts alone tell us all we need to know about depth of their thought process and the so-called validity of their opinions.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Breaking a Personal Rule

I started this blog as a means of expressing my own opinions about economics, politics and current events.  I did not want it to be one of those blogs that largely just passed on links and reprints of other's work.  Those blogs have there place, many of them are very useful, informative and save a lot of search time, and I am grateful for those that link to and reprint my own work.  I just didn't want this to be one of them.

The following piece is an exception to that rule.  Although fictional it is terrifyingly real in it portrayal of the mindset of the current batch of leftist revolutionaries that we have in power.  Moral conscience plays no part in their calculations.  Ideological purity trumps logic, reason and any moral upbringing they may have had.  That this mindset produces the Hitlers, Stalins, Che Guevaras and Pol Pots of the world is meaningless to them. They arrogantly and ignorantly think they are the exception to the rules of history.

I would encourage my readers to follow the links below the story to read other works by the author.

What I Saw At The Coup

By:  Matt Bracken

This is the first time in many years that I have put pen to paper for a lengthy letter, so please forgive my misspellings, poor handwriting or any other errors. I will probably do this in one go and be finished with it. I won’t need much of this new notebook. It’s a nice room, desk and chair, but really, no computer? I just wish they would stop the hammering outside. I need to focus in order to write well.

No one person could possibly expect to know the full truth about such a complex history, so near to its time. But I know what I know, saw what I saw, and heard what I heard. Now it’s time to set the record straight, at least about what transpired between some of the key players in the lead up to the recent events.

What I have heard called “the plan” began as idle office chat, nothing more. (Of course, not much chat is ever truly idle at the very highest levels of power, between senior presidential advisers.) The first time I heard it mentioned was over lunch with Dennis in the White House Mess, down in the basement next to the situation room. We were at a quiet corner table of the wood-paneled dining room, tossing ideas for the next talking points back and forth. Routine.
One of right-wing hate radio’s loudest and most poisonous voices was conducting an embarrassing public feud with our press secretary. The President had trapped himself in a seeming contradiction. The video and audio were both damning, and one must admit, very funny—if one’s goal was to make the President look and sound like a liar and a fool. The Youtube videos were getting millions of hits; the TV comics were not letting it go. We had been knocked completely off message, the optics were horrible, and our favorability ratings were collapsing at a crucial moment. (It seems like an ice-age ago when such trivialities actually mattered to me.)

I said something offhandedly to Dennis. “I just wish we could get rid of those bastards, once and for all.”
He stared at me for a long time, chewing on his second BLT sandwich until the Navy steward retreated from range, and then he said, “Actually, Jacinda, there is sort of a plan for that.”
“What do you mean, ‘a plan for that’?”

He explained that it was nothing formal, and there was nothing in writing. Nor would there ever be. It was just a concept he had come up with, along with a few other trusted colleagues and advisers. An idea. They had gamed out various scenarios. We could solve our problems with molding public opinion if we removed just a few dozen key right-wing opinion makers. That was the exact word he used, “removed.” That was last spring, and I put it off as a harmless thought experiment. I didn’t hear anything more about it for several months.

Then one day after another media talking points session in the mess, Dennis said, “Remember the plan we were talking about? You know, we really could do it.”
“Are you serious?”
“The timing would have to be just right. Mainly, it would depend on external events.”
Remembering the numbers from our earlier conversation, I told him that removing a few dozen of the worst reactionaries wouldn’t change anything. Other fast-talking right wingers would just take their places. Except they would be angrier than ever.
“Not dozens.” He paused. “Around two thousand, actually.”
The new number shocked me. “That’s not possible.”
“No, it’s very possible. We’ve studied it from every angle.”

Clearly, he knew more about a plan than he was letting on. Nobody was closer to the President than the two of us and his wife, and I had heard nothing from the boss, not even a hint. “You’re making this up. You’re not serious. Is it a joke, or a test? I wasn’t born yesterday.” I had to be careful. This was dangerous territory, when any spoken word could be recorded almost anywhere. Trust in a man like Dennis was a very slender reed upon which to cling.

“No, I’m very serious,” he said. “Here’s how we came up with two thousand. I was given a copy of a new law enforcement software program, one that Justice had for testing and evaluation. A refinement of the social networking analysis stuff. Data-mining, all of that. We put it on a clean computer, adjusted it for our own parameters, and made the list. We tried it at different levels from ten up to ten thousand. The optimal number for the greatest effect with the least initial disruption came in at about two thousand.”

I shook my head and said, “Dennis, it’s crazy to even talk about it.”


I sidestepped. “You know as well as I do that boldness isn’t the President’s forte.”
“Well, you could help stiffen his backbone.”
“We could both be facing prison time just for talking like this.”
“Not as long as we’re in power. You know how I know? Operation Fast and Furious. At least four hundred dead and there was no blowback that we couldn’t handle. Our media stuck right with us all the way through. For me, that was the final test. We can do almost anything if we get the timing right, and most of the media stays with us.”
I replied, “But those were Mexicans. And not two thousand.”
“It doesn’t matter. I have the majority leader on a leash. I could drag him around the White House on all-fours if I wanted to. We have nothing to fear coming out of the House. Without the majority leader, Congress can’t do anything but hold hearings that the media won’t cover.”
“But he hammers us every day in the press…”
“Of course he does, he has to maintain credibility with his base. But it’s pure bluster. Trust me—I own him when it counts.”

In the right company (particularly mine, since we go back so far), Dennis liked to brag about the political enemies he held under the control of blackmail. It was a measure of his power, and whom else could he tell? You could count the people he trusted on one hand, perhaps two. One way or the other, all the dirtiest secrets wound up in his hands. Some said it was a mafia thing. Or the unions. Or the red net that had helped us at critical junctures most of our lives. There were advantages to growing up in the second or third generation of the movement. Certain doors opened before us at critical junctures.

Dennis’s knack for finding the hidden scandals almost seemed occult-like. After the big national health care decision, he showed me compromising “men’s health club” photos of the younger chief justice and his pals. Dennis just couldn’t resist the irony and had to share it with me, but that was a rare case of candor about his methods.

So I wondered what he had on the majority leader, that holier-than-thou redneck prick. Was he kinky, greedy, or both? Had Dennis’s minions discovered ancient history long buried, or had they lured him into some new honey trap? It didn’t matter, and I didn’t really care. But it did explain why the Congress could never seem to move past first base on Fast and Furious, even with so many dead.

But I still wasn’t ready to believe he was serious. I said, “Four hundred dead Mexicans are not the same as two thousand dead Americans.”
“It depends on what’s going on at the time. We would need a thick smokescreen, that’s for sure. Lots of background noise. The right emergency.” He lowered his voice and said, “Anyway, they wouldn’t necessarily be ‘dead.’ Technically, they’d just be ‘missing’.”
We held long eye contact across the table. He needed to clean his eyeglasses, but didn’t seem to mind the smudges. I said, “The Iran thing could blow sky-high any day. And Egypt, and Syria…”
“Exactly. And that kind of an emergency might lead to all sorts of opportunities.” He smiled, and gazed at me.
After another long silence I asked, “Does this plan have a name?”
“There’s no name.”
I asked him, “How many people know about this … idea?”
“Just a few, but that doesn’t matter. It’s designed to be self-reinforcing, once it gets kicked off. A positive feedback loop. Unstoppable.”
“The President?”

The smile again. A cocked eyebrow. Dennis was as slippery as an eel. A charming eel, when he wanted to be. “He knows that bold action might be called for. We’ve spoken about it for years, in a hypothetical sense, using historical precedents. But I know from those discussions that he’ll back the plan, once the parts fall into place.”
I said, “The military wouldn’t stand for it, not two thousand.”
“The military won’t be in the loop—this will all be handled at the federal agency level. The AG is fully aboard, and so are his directors. They’re facing federal prison time if the majority leader is replaced. Once he’s gone, we’ll be totally exposed on that end. So it’ll happen soon, or never. Let’s just say that forces are in motion and leave it at that.”
“So … what do you want from me?”
“I just want you to influence the President and his wife favorably when the time comes. You know what to say to them. ‘Sometimes in the life of a revolution, hard decisions must be taken. Cross the Rubicon and cement the gains of history, or get washed out to sea and be forgotten.’ You know what to tell them. But what about you? Jacinda, when the time comes, can we count on you?”

My mind was in turmoil. I was being asked to engage in a conspiracy. Perhaps this was a setup, and my answers were being recorded for another piece of Dennis’s trademark blackmail. Yet to refuse Dennis could also be dangerous. I decided to sound favorable yet remain noncommittal. “I understand history as well as you do. Sometimes dreadful actions are called for during a revolution, I know that. But I won’t support a fool’s crusade that goes off half-cocked and damns us all as traitors.”
He nodded, and smiled again. “That’s good enough.”

The war broke out a few weeks later.
I am referring to the cruel and insane but necessary war with Iran.
As necessary for them, as for us. The Iranian missile strikes were followed by the Israeli bombing raids. Or perhaps it was the other way around, the timeline depending on which news network you believe. When is a pre-emptive strike self defense, and when is it aggression? I will leave it for future historians. The simple fact is that within a few days cities were burning from Cairo to Islamabad, while at home we were struggling against Iranian terror cells and cyber sabotage, and an anthrax attack that had crippled our mail and package services. The dirty bombs in Houston and Long Beach were overrated initially, but they stopped port operations around the country for weeks. It all added up to a lot of hurt on the home front.

Basic electrical service, phone service, the internet, and our entire digitally managed infrastructure went haywire while the stuxnet-like viruses were continuously fed into our own digital bloodstream. Trains derailed and all of the planes had to be grounded; everybody knows what happened. Many thought the Russians and Chinese were using the opportunity to add to our misery. In any event, Dennis was right: there was plenty of smoke and noise available to conceal the arrests of two thousand reactionary opinion makers. Men, most of them, who spent nearly every waking moment busily stamping out every little spark of popular democracy, social justice, or true human progress.

The internet was shut down for a week, and was erratic and unreliable after that. Most of the arrests happened during that early period of maximum confusion and fear. Those on the secret arrest list were isolated from communication by the total sabotage of their digital lives. They could not make cell phone calls or send texts, or use the internet in any fashion. They could not find one effective portal to untangle their wrecked virtual lives. Pay phones and land lines were all they had left, when they were working. In the total confusion and disorder of that week, it was understandable that many people might have suffered complete digital blackouts. We were all on uncharted ground, so almost anything was possible. Like the genuine beginning of the Iran war, it could never exactly be sorted out until long after it mattered. Dennis was a genius about that part of the plan.

Down in the secret federal law enforcement fusion centers, our thousands of social network warriors swung into action as the internet was brought back on line—but this time on our own timing, and on our own terms. Questions about missing right-wingers were deflected by our internet impostors with rumors about embezzled funds, foreign girlfriends, car accidents, distant vacations, non-existent medical emergencies and other stalling tactics. It would take a long while for a true count of the missing to be made, and by then it wouldn’t matter.

Like I said, Dennis was a genius. At first he gave me a daily update, in private. Later, more of us met in the situation room. If Dennis wasn’t the leader, I wouldn’t know who was. I never met a new member of the circle unless Dennis was there to make the connection. What I mean is that I already knew them; I just didn’t know that they were in on the plan, until Dennis brought us together. And I never spoke to any of them about it when Dennis wasn’t there with us. Naturally, not a word about the plan was ever written down.

Most of the original two thousand on the arrest list were picked up in the first week. In fact, in their desperation to reconnect, they sent out their precise locations with every attempted cell phone call, text, tweet, email or credit card use, making them easy to find. The FBI and other federal agencies were already on a war-footing tracking down the Iranian and other foreign terror cells, and they didn’t question the odd Americans arrested among the rest.

Anyway, ninety-five percent of the people on the list were basically nobodies, and they were rarely missed. It’s funny how social network analysis works—it’s not the famous people, it’s the important people. People behind the famous names. The critical nodes. Bloggers in the basement that nobody had heard of. SNA found them all, and plucked them from obscurity.

Only proven-loyal teams of agents were used to arrest the handful of well-known people on the list. The warrants were prepared by tried and true federal attorneys, and signed off by trusted judges. Dennis did not only make a secret list of enemies to arrest—he also prepared a list of key personnel we could depend on to run the dodgy paperwork through the federal law enforcement system with no hassles. Mostly they used “National Security Letters” instead of regular warrants, because then no questions were asked. Dennis and his little circle had mastered the architecture. It was seamless, and for the most part it went like clockwork, especially at the beginning.

Once each of the arrested was “tagged and bagged,” the normal federal prison bureaucracy handled them like so many UPS or Fed-Ex packages. After the domestic terrorism label was slapped onto their files, special prisoner handling rules applied, mandating their seclusion. Gagged and hooded, if need be. Unlawful enemy combatants, foreign or domestic, could be held incommunicado. It was already in the law. The legal machinery existed; it just needed to be switched on. I give Dennis all the credit for grasping the enormous potential.

In the confusion during the Middle East war and the domestic terror attacks, including the cyber attacks, it took several weeks for reports about the missing Americans to grow into rumors of a possible purge of political enemies. Our own thousands of internet cyber warriors tamped down the rumors with continuing obfuscations. Many of them had been burrowing into the virtual world for years under multiple false screen names, building trust and credibility to expend during just such an emergency.

The most effective of the right-wing muckrakers chatting about purges and political arrests were digitally sabotaged and lined up for the next wave of arrests. Once they were isolated they could get in a car and drive, but only as far as the cash in their wallets would carry them. None of their cards, phones or other wireless devices worked. This kept them close to home, and made them easy to arrest.

For the first few weeks, the internal war conducted by our security services was going as well for us as the external war was going badly for our armed forces. The President had to struggle to keep his facial expressions under control in his rare on-camera appearances: I knew that secretly, he was as pleased as any of us that so many American warships, fighter planes and bombers would no longer be available to menace the globe. So in truth, at about one month into it, we were actually winning on both fronts, from our special point of view.

For the most part, our friendly media outlets continued to use our talking points, staying on board with all aspects of the gloriously jingoistic war effort—including the war against all forms of domestic terrorism. Even the right-wing talk radio hosts were cautious about making wild accusations against the government while our heroic armed forces were busy being decimated thousands of miles away.

Crazy black-helicopter talk about a secret political purge was kept beyond the acceptable fringe of polite news network mention during the first month of patriotic fervor that surrounded the war. Our army of social network warriors did a masterful job of re-messaging any mention of a “purge” as delusional. No respectable news network or reputable website would touch such rumors. (Some of the most rabid of the bloggers promoting the purge rumors were, in fact, our own cyber commandos, working to discredit truthful reports through bizarre and outrageous exaggeration.)

After a month, though, the missiles and planes had seemingly run out on all sides, and a new stalemate was reached across the Middle East. The fog of war began to lift, and a clearer picture began to emerge that we could no longer keep completely hidden from sight. It was not plausible that so many right-wing opinion makers were suddenly unavailable for comment. They could not have all had heart attacks, or fled to Panama, or gone on vacation in New Zealand, or into hiding.

Some of the hate radio hosts began to fan the flames with crazy rumors that really weren’t so crazy, not to us. When they were taken off the air through a variety of means (but mainly for violating the “fomenting domestic terrorism” laws), the right wing nut jobs went absolutely mad with fury. The accusations about a secret purge continued. The plan was being laid out for all to see, even while it was being officially denied at every level, and was never reported on at all by our cooperating media networks and other friendly outlets.

And then the shooting started.

At a month and a half or so, it sometimes seemed that the plan was in danger of falling apart. I asked Dennis about it in private, but he appeared unworried. “It’s all part of the action-reaction calculus. It was all taken into account. We needed them to react. We’re in the second phase. We smoked them out into the open with phase one, and now we can go get them. Why do you think we bought billions of bullets for the DHS? Why do you think we paid for SWAT teams and armored cars in every Podunk town in America? We’ve been getting ready for this moment for years.”
“You knew this would happen? A civil war?”
He said, “It’s not a civil war—it’s a police action against criminals and domestic terrorists. But don’t worry: we’re ready. Now that they’re shooting at us, we can take the gloves off. The first two thousand arrests were just priming the pump. This phase will let us finish the job once and for all. Think about it: even now, nobody knows what happened to the first two thousand, or even that there were two thousand. In a month, nobody will remember if they were arrested before the shooting started, or after.”
“So, what did happen to the first two thousand? Can you at least tell me that?”
He shook his head, slowly. “Jacinda, you don’t need to know. But they won’t be coming back. They won’t be seen again. At least that much is for sure.”

So they were dead. That didn’t upset me. Hundreds of thousands had died since the missiles had flown, most of them in the Middle East. For some reason I was thinking of the Polish officers in the Katyn Forest. Twenty-thousand military officers and many other members of the Polish intelligentsia had been killed in 1940 after the Red Army invaded Eastern Poland. The Soviets had blamed the mass-killings on the Nazis for decades, until the fall of the USSR in 1990 when the truth was finally admitted. So, naturally, I had a question. “Will they ever be found?”
“No, this time it’s sealed airtight. They’ll never be found.”

I heard later, from Larry, that the two thousand were taken in unmarked vans to a brand-new “bureau of prisons transfer site” in Kansas or Oklahoma, or somewhere else out in flyover country. The site consisted of some fenced-in buildings near an old airstrip. Vans and small airplanes arrived one at a time. As each van or plane arrived, the prisoners were signed over by the US Marshals or other federal agents to a small waiting detachment that, on paper, was from the TSA.

It was an ad-hoc unit made up of men pre-selected for their special aptitudes and proclivities. One of the benefits of SNA is that it permits you to find and bring together any personality types that you need for special missions—even unquestioning executioners. According to Larry it was staffed entirely by violent street gang members with a promise of parole, pardons, and citizenship—but he has been known to embellish a story with his own lurid details.

After the Marshals departed, instead of being transferred elsewhere, the manacled arrestees were marched around a corner, stood against a wall, and shot. Their bodies were then burned in an on-site incinerator. According to Larry, one vanload at a time is how you get rid of two thousand die-hard reactionaries. The “transfer facility” was then bulldozed, and each person with knowledge of the site was himself transferred to distant and remote federal installations, where their single voices in the wilderness would never be heard, or believed. Then a rapid process of attrition would begin, with the individuals comprising the former group of executioners suffering a statistically improbable number of heart attacks, fast-acting cancer, accidents and other plausible reasons for their rapid demise.

I have heard other rumors about the final disposition of the two thousand, and I’m not sure which one is true, but that was the version told to me by Larry. I was never really a part of his circle with Dennis. I only sat in on a few meetings. If there is any truth to his story, it will probably come out eventually. But if I know Dennis, the bones of the two thousand will never be found.

Toward the end of the second month, against all odds, it seemed like the plan was working. Our federal agents were making record numbers of arrests for new acts of bona-fide domestic terrorism, and of course, for “fomenting domestic terrorism” in the media and on the internet. We still had most of the friendly media on our side lamenting the outbreak of right-wing terror against the government. As long as most of the media continued reporting our version of reality, we could keep pushing the right-wing extremists to exhaustion and eventual submission.

Ah, blessed silence, the hammering and sawing outside has stopped. I flex and shake my hands, limbering up my sore wrist and fingers. Flipping back through this spiral notebook, I count a dozen freshly-filled pages. I have not done so much handwriting in one go since blue-book exams at the university, and that was decades ago.

Back to my story. The first real jolt indicating a serious problem with the plan came when television reporter Cathy Carlsen was killed in Norfolk, shot dead while covering the commissioning of the Harvey Milk, the Navy’s newest destroyer. That she was killed was bad enough. That it happened on a “secure” naval base—a federal installation—made it much worse. Her blood splattered across the Admirals’ white uniforms made quite a picture. The videos…
We were two women born in the same year, with similar academic backgrounds. We had known each other for decades, and her untimely death hit me hard. Cathy Carlsen had been a reliable voice on the progressive side of a supposedly impartial television news network. That a respected member of the media would be assassinated was big surprise, at least to me. Up to that point, only a few federal officials and high-ranking agents had been targeted.

Then a new photo was released on the internet. I had always thought the NSA could trace those things back to their origins, but apparently not. The photo was taken through the Norfolk sniper’s rifle scope just a few moments before the murder. It showed thin black crosshairs and other reference marks across Cathy’s smiling face. And it showed some text added just above her head:
If the media lies, the media dies.
You take a side, you’re along for the ride.
A traitor in front of a camera is still just a traitor.


This single act of domestic terrorism immediately dampened the enthusiasm of most of our formerly reliable reporters to continue to carry our water. More such photographs of other media figures appeared on the internet with crosshairs over their faces. Most of the pictures were bogus, just photoshop pranks, but they had a similar effect: our dependably cooperative reporters suddenly lost their nerve. The comments following the photos on the remaining right-wing web forums were perhaps the most frightening aspect. It was obvious that plenty of Americans were willing to voice their support for the assassinations of their enemies in both the media and the government. It became a game for them to walk up to the “fomenting domestic terrorism” line with carefully parsed words, and this glutted our SNA fusion centers with background noise.

For another week or two it seemed that we were playing catch-up with new bloggers who appeared each morning like overnight mushrooms. In spite of all of the new restrictions and tracking tools, every day anonymously sourced articles concerning the purge were posted on what remained of the internet. It was obvious that some of the stories were coming from federal law enforcement whistle-blowers. Dennis said that if the internet rumor-mongers and the last of the hate radio hosts could be silenced, the plan could still be fought to a win. But the leaks were not plugged. Instead, they worsened.

The final outcome hinged on a simple equation based of the availability or non-availability of enough federal agents to make fresh rounds of arrests each day, crushing domestic terrorists and their internet supporters faster than they could proliferate. New arrests were being made, but still the assassinations of government officials and media figures continued to escalate. One a day. Five a day. Ten. Twenty. Some officials were killed by their very own bodyguards or aides, who then disappeared. The words “civil war” were being tossed around on both sides.

Even though the total number of murdered government officials was insignificant as a percentage of their total numbers, far too many of them reacted hysterically out of personal fear. Practically the entire Senior Executive Service demanded protection teams of federal agents to personally bodyguard them twenty-four hours a day. Soon there were no agents available to stamp out the internet insurrection with new arrests, much less somehow interdict a single domestic terrorist on a private sniper mission. Instead, all of the armed federal agents were kept occupied guarding terrified government leaders.

And that was the downfall of the plan: it just came down to numbers, manpower, and, perhaps, agent morale. I’ve seen reports that at least a third of the federal agents went on sick leave vacation, after word of the original two thousand political arrests began to spread within their ranks.

The ferocity of the counter-attack took us all by surprise.

Even Dennis. The original arrest list, derived from cutting-edge SNA, was a great success as far as it went, especially in spurring the rest of his “action-reaction calculations.” It sure provoked a reaction, anyway. But at a level that none of us ever anticipated or even dreamed possible.
Dennis had always assumed that the combined might of our armed federal agents and their SWAT Teams, reinforced with local police and, if necessary, the National Guard or even the Army, could crush any conceivable right-wing reaction to his plan. But social network analysis couldn’t find snipers who were not part of any network. That’s when we began to hear of “The Militia of One.” In the end there were too many rifles, and too many willing shooters. A number that was constantly heard was twenty million. That was the number of Americans who supposedly went deer hunting every year, against less than 200,000 armed federal agents.
Local police evaporated from the equation once the going got tough. The most common sentiment heard expressed was, “You feds made your bed, so now sleep on it.” The National Guard, those units not already deployed overseas, proved hopelessly slow and cumbersome. That is, the few who reported for duty when called up.

While top federal officials hid inside buildings, a new and unanticipated escalation of the sniper war emerged. When no one of high rank was available to shoot, their outermost rings of security were targeted, even down to lowly GS-5s standing perimeter duty. Suddenly, competent and trustworthy guards were very hard to find.

On the remaining internet the threats multiplied as pictures and videos were shared and commented upon by millions. “Remember your oath” was a common theme. That whole tired shtick about “defending the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic,” with a heavy emphasis on domestic. All of that reactionary claptrap. Who knew that so many of them took that oath so damned seriously? Who knew? Mere words on paper, and yet, so many Americans were willing to kill and to die for them. Who knew?

The snipers grew ever more brazen and their numbers multiplied daily. They were emboldened by accounts of the murders of federal officials that were splashed across what was left of the internet, no matter how we tried to control and contain it. They freely posted comments such as, “You can take away our rights, but we still get to vote under Rule 308,” (which I have since learned refers to a popular rifle caliber). The shooters understood the critical manpower equation as well as we did. We were out-gunned a hundred to one by snipers we could neither see nor find, and they knew it.

Right-wing media dutifully passed along all of the latest terrorist manifestos.

“Anonymous sources within the so-called ‘liberty movement’ are now demanding that highway checkpoints searching for weapons be disbanded immediately. These sources state that any federal agents, military or police stopping vehicles and searching them for firearms will be considered traitors and could be shot.”

Our jaws dropped in the situation room when we heard that demand relayed on FOX. There was talk in the room of arresting the entire management and all of the remaining on-air personalities and so-called reporters at that rogue network. Actually, it became a screaming match. The final decision was up to the President. He needed time to think it over, and went upstairs.

Thereafter, FOX News led each fresh report with a graphic announcing the discovery of a “Communist putsch against the Constitution.” Oh, how I hate that ugly German word! Not revolution, not even coup d’etat, but putsch! What an unfair description of a sincere attempt to solidify the forward march of history, right in the heart of capitalist imperialism! In time, “the putsch” became the name that stuck to Dennis’s original plan. Even on MSNBC, where they at least called it “the so-called Communist putsch.”

I knew it was finished when I was driving up I-95 from Virginia into the city at dawn. From a long way off I saw the two bodies hanging from the overpass. Northbound rush-hour traffic was crawling, so I had a long time to look. I was driving my mother’s Acura, wearing a blond wig and big sunglasses. There was no security in recognizable security anymore. A convoy of black full-size SUVs was liable to become a bullet magnet on any highway around DC. I was safer in the white Acura, but feeling very, very alone.

Their ropes were tied to the guard rail above their heads. They were clothed, thankfully, and hooded. Black military-style fatigue uniforms, and bare feet. Their swollen hands were bound behind their backs. The two bodies were slowly twisting without any visible movement to recover them. This told me the bridge might be under a sniper’s observation, holding the police at bay while keeping the corpses in view of thousands of Washington’s morning commuters, half of them federal employees. A chill feeling, being in range of a right-wing sniper. A white bed sheet hanging between the two bodies was marked with black spray-painted lettering.

Every fed must decide:
Liberty, or Tyranny?
Death to all traitors!


I got off at the Quantico exit, looped back and went home. Never returned to my office in the West Wing, never saw the White House again. I was picked up three weeks later by a team from the FBI, while I was staying at my mother’s place outside of Charlottesville. Since then I’ve been under house arrest, and lately held in a series of rooms and cells. The rules seem to change daily, but at least I have not been physically brutalized. Instead, my guards seem to revel in reactionary notions of chivalry, pointedly calling me “ma’am,” and asking about my comfort. Pen and paper and a better pillow they are happy to provide. I hate them all the more for their sexist bourgeois manners.

As would be expected following such calamitous events, the political world has turned quite upside-down. When it reconvened in emergency session, Congress was a very different animal, and in a mood for bloody revenge. Somehow, the greater war deaths and the deaths from the secret purge and the counter-revolution were blended together, and we were blamed for all of them.

The backlash to our efforts saw many of our progressive friends in the Congress retire immediately, and their replacements, mostly appointed by governors, were uniformly reactionaries. The opposition party majority leader that Dennis had formerly dangled on a string was one of the many who swiftly departed the scene. More than half of the Supreme Court disappeared for reasons of age or health. Two had died, some said of “Breitbart’s Syndrome.” Our old protections were swept away.

And now America has slid back into worshipping the dusty old parchment. In their reading of the Holy Constitution, the Senate and Supreme Court make the rules and conduct the trials, and swift trials they were. Guilty of high treason, conspiracy to commit genocide, and a dozen other charges. Guilty on all counts. What else could we expect? We took the bold action, grabbed for the brass ring of history, and we missed it. Where no mercy is given, none should be expected.
I’ve seen Dennis but have not been able to speak to him in private. Once we were left alone in a small conference room, but both of us were convinced the room was bugged and under video observation, so we just talked about the food and our involuntary accommodations and such.

While being escorted in the hallway I have heard Larry talking in his cell to somebody, a priest or a lawyer perhaps. He always seems to speak in a snivel. But he’s not the worst of them. Many of my former colleagues have clearly been eager to spill their pitiful guts and minimize their participation in the plan, hoping that Dennis will take the brunt of the lynch mob’s fury. But I knew that was a foolish hope: there was fury enough for all of us. So I kept my silence, until now, when it can no longer affect my own outcome.

Now I write for posterity alone.

I rise from the table and stretch. To see out through the high window in my room, I must climb up on the desk. If anybody is watching me on hidden cameras, they don’t seem to care that I am sneaking looks out through the narrow window. I am on the second floor of whatever building I am in, so I must look down a bit to get a view of the source of the hammering and sawing in the paved courtyard where they used to take me for exercise.

The gallows structure seems to be complete. There are four square holes under a single beam. Workers are screwing down some hardware for traps not yet installed. The grim work of execution will be done in two shifts, on consecutive mornings. I shall outlive Dennis by twenty-four hours. At times like this, I almost wish I believed in an afterlife, like those fools deluded by the opiate of religion. The only afterlife I shall achieve is what I am writing on the pages of this spiral notebook, and they will be cold comfort in the ground. To come so far, to get so close, and then to be consigned to oblivion—it just seems so damned unfair, after three generations of dedicated struggle.

(To be tried, convicted, hanged and buried as a traitor concerns me not at all, considering the illegitimate, even farcical nature of the kangaroo court that condemned us.)

I was scarcely involved in the plan, and then only passively. I gave no orders; I conducted no illegal arrests or executions. In truth, I did little or nothing to influence the President one way or the other before the fact. But I knew of the plan, and for that, I will be hanged in two days time as one of the secondary conspirators. There will be no clemency coming from the “Acting President,” or the new “Provisional Supreme Court.”

A few days ago Dennis smiled at me when we passed in a corridor in our matching gray jumpsuits. He was wearing leg and waist shackles, in addition to handcuffs like mine. He must have been giving them hell to merit the chains, and I felt a little ashamed of my meekness in captivity. Despite all that has happened, I am proud of him for that smile and his thrown-back shoulders, a warrior for the cause to the very last. He was, in the end, the single man who was bold enough to initiate decisive action. The failure was not his.

No, it was the President, the man in whom we invested our very lives, the ultimate standard-bearer of the global forces of progress; it was he alone who let us down at the crucial moment. He vetoed the last plan to arrest the remaining right-wing media voices and shut down their vile hate networks. He failed us when we needed him the most.

Air Force One landed in South America while I was being arrested. As the world has seen, the blue and white 747 now sits empty on a tarmac at a remote Argentinean air base near the Andes, disabled and unflyable. The President has gone with the wind, and he is still a relatively young man, nearly a decade younger than me.

I have no doubt that he will eventually turn up somewhere in the developing world, someplace tropical and near the ocean, a land where the call of the muezzin is heard at sunset. A place where he will be admired for striking many hard blows at the Great Satan.

Coming home, the almost-conquering hero, while we face the hangman. It’s just so unfair that the fascist reactionaries will inherit America, and undo the work of generations to advance the human condition.

Other than the final outcome, I would not change a single thing that we have done.

Hasta la victoria siempre!
Up the revolution, forever!
Jacinda Hamden
Former Presidential advisor
 
Author’s Note: This essay and last week’s “When The Music Stops—How Our Cities May Explode In Violence” were both written in response to the article published on July 25, 2012 in the semi-official Small Wars Journal titled “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A Vision of the Future.”
My twin essays represent starkly different “visions of the future” that would-be tyrants, their hopeful henchmen and other self-deluded nimrods may want to consider, before ordering the U.S. military or federal agencies to suppress Americans.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Thursday 9/13/2012 The Race To The Bottom Is On!

Helicopter Ben is running his mouth again, channeling "Super Mario" of the ECB.  "The FED will do what's needed to support the economy."  Read: More QE via "unlimited" purchases of MBS (mortgage backed securities) and continued zero interest rates through 2015.

More specifically keep growing the FED balance sheet by printing more and more money so the FED's constituent banks can buy more and more stocks, and pay their board members bigger and bigger year-end bonuses. (It is September after all.)  Wonderful! 

Another lesson not learned apparently.  Trying to extinguish old bad debt with new bad debt is a fools errand. It is precisely why Europe is on the brink of collapse.  The ECB just called this week for "unlimited" bond purchases so the FED can't be left behind in the race to the bottom.  Who has the fastest printing presses is now the new competition between the FED and the ECB. 

What was it Henry II of England said?  "Won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?" (banker)



An apendage thanks to my friend at Coyote Prime - "Running 'Cause  I Can't Fly"

"Where Is King Henry Now That We Need Him?"
 
"In this year, before Christmas, King Henry sent from Normandy to England, and commanded that all the moneyers that were in England should be deprived of their members; that was the right hand of each, and their testicles beneath. That was because the man that had a pound could not buy for a penny at a market. And the bishop Roger of Salisbury sent over all England, and commanded them all that they should come to Winchester at Christmas. When they came thither they were taken one by one, and each deprived of the right hand and the testicles beneath. All this was done within the twelve nights; and that was all with great justice, because they had fordone all the land with their great quantity of false money which they all bought."

- "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," p. 221 (year 1125).
Edited, with a Translation, by Benjamin Thorpe, Vol. II
(London: Longman, Green, Longman,and Roberts, 1861)

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Balancing Liberty and Democracy

The problem with most contemporary political partisans is that they never developed an ability to perform the heuristic analysis that would allow them to grasp that liberty and democracy are eternal enemies. Democratic states may profess to venerate liberty and even pass laws making it sacred, but in practice democracies simply cannot tolerate it. In order to preserve the perception of adhering to the governmental process, to prevent the anarchy of free thought and action, the democrat must try to suppress the free expression of opinion by derision and criticism and failing that by law. In part, it seeks that end by mere propaganda or by the naked force of authority. In essence by attempting to make contrary doctrines officially unacceptable, politically incorrect as it were. To this end it then resorts to force, i.e., to law. The main purposes of such laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon free thought and analysis to try and reduce it to impotence.

Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize, to define the contrary opinion as anti-social; actually their aim is to penalize what to the democrat regards as heretical opinions. Unfortunately most Americans believe that such a process is honest or even commendable. It has become practically impossible to convince them that there is anything corrupt or the antithesis of liberty in it. In other words, they simply cannot grasp what the concept of liberty really is.

All to often they condition it with the idea that the state, the transitory majority, has some sort of right over the ideas and acts of individuals, that the state, the democratic majority, is free, whenever it is so inclined, to forbid a man or group of men to say what they honestly believe. Whenever an individual’s notions start becoming "dangerous," i.e., being heard and considered by others, then the state should be free to exercise that prerogative. And then far to many citizens will support the state in it feigned outrage.

This is especially true of the liberal, who pretends and often honestly believes, that they are promoting liberty. Not really, because deep down they know, as doctrinal democrats, that liberty is anathema to, if not fatal to democracy, that a government based upon transitory majorities and shifting and often irrational opinion must be kept within bounds, bounds that only they are allowed to define. To do otherwise would be, to them at least anarchistic. They only believe in and advocate for certain narrow kinds of liberty, liberty for the persons they happen to be in favor of or who they agree with. The rights of others are of no consequence or interest to them. If a law were passed, as with the GM bailout, that takes away the property of a large group of presumably financially well off individuals (bondholders) without compensation and without even justifiable reasons, they would not, could not oppose it; they would promote it as fair and democratic. The liberty to have and hold property is not one they recognize. The only liberty they believe in is the liberty to envy, to covet and to hate and loot those who have it.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Stacking Fraud Like Cordwood.

The scandals and disasters within the financial sectors are starting to stack up like cordwood and the so-called regulators continue turn a blind eye to blatant criminal activity. One political side screams for more regulation while the other side screams for less. What difference does it make when nobody is enforcing the regulations already in place? Is anyone really surprised when the regulators come from the very banks and institutions that are committing the fraud in the first place? 


The bankers profited hugely from the housing bubble and then when it burst they dumped their huge losses onto the taxpayer at par while they continued to collect their massive yearend bonuses. 

Jon Corzine, former Goldman Sachs chairman, US Senator and Governor of New Jersey, quite literally oversees the theft of $1.6 Billion out of supposedly segregated customer accounts as his MF Global operation goes bankrupt. And yet he remains free and walking the streets for no other reason than because he is connected to the Obama campaign and the banks that own it. 

PFG Financial implodes in the wake of its President and sole owner failing on an attempted suicide.  Another $220 Million of supposedly segregated customer accounts goes poof.  What was the CFTC doing while PFG was filing forged paper reports while the law required that the reports to the CFTC were to be electronic copies of the original bank statements. This apparently went on for over two years while “former” Goldman Sachs employee and CHTC Chairman Gary Gensler apparently sat on his hands. 

The banksters commit fraud after fraud after fraud and when they get caught they do nothing but pay a fine of only a fraction of what they gained from the fraud. No individuals are prosecuted for the crimes, so they then just move on to the next fraud.  These criminals don’t consider the fines to be anything more than a cost of doing business. And why should they when as I said before the politicians and regulator in charge of enforcement are their “former” employees. 

And now we have a new scandal, LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) interest rate fixing.  They have for years been putting out a published rate lower than what they were actually charging.  By doing so they have lowered the cash margins they are required to put up for their trillions in derivatives and futures positions and cheated other investors who hold instruments who’s rates of return are based upon the published LIBOR number out of their fair return on investment. The class action lawyers are lining up in droves and the litigation costs alone may well expose these banks for the corrupt and insolvent institutions that they are for once and for all.  

Looming on the horizon is yet another scandal.  One that may be at the base of all the others, namely the manipulation and suppression of bullion spot prices and the theft of allocated customer bullion deposits as a means of doing it.  Just as futures traders like MFG and PFG are supposed to treat customer cash accounts as in viable, so are the bullion banks supposed to treat customer allocated bullion deposits.  In fact an allocated deposit certificate list not just the amount of the deposit, but the specific serial numbers of the bars on deposit as well.  For this the customers pay the banks a monthly fee for the secure storage of their property.  This is as opposed to an unallocated account which is merely a promise to deliver X amount of bullion on demand, not specific bars and carries no storage fees.  The problem that has come up is that holders of allocated accounts are asking for delivery and receiving bars who serial numbers don’t match their deposit certificates and in some cases are receiving bars that were not produced until after they had made their deposits. This logically raises the question of where did the original bars go? Did the banks lease them or sell them into the market to cover their naked short positions based on their alleged unallocated account deposits? Are the banks replacing allocated bars with paper gold certificates in order to maintain reported account balances? If they actually have adequate unallocated deposits to cover their shorts why are allocated bars disappearing? 

As word of this spreads among allocated deposit holders, and if they suspect any of this speculation is true they could start a run on the bullion banks. This could force the bankers into the physical market to try and replace bars they may have illegally sold or leased to try and cover their crimes. 

When, not if this happens, gold and silver prices will explode and it will be game over for the likes of JP Morgan and HSBC and any other banks caught up in their web of deception.  Their collapse will in turn pull down the rest of the banks and possibly the dollar itself.  The only question then will be one of who goes to jail and when and for how long.

Friday, July 6, 2012

It Ony Gets Better (Not).

The deterioration of the financial crisis in Europe continues not just unabated by the latest “deal” over bailouts for Spain and Italy but is about to get pushed into an accelerated mode by the growing LIBOR scandal. 

Capital flight from south to north has picked up as well as even tiny Denmark has not only seen its bond yields go negative but deposit rates have also gone negative at –0.2%. (Anyone with savings accounts now must pay the bank for the privilege of having them hold their money.)  As soon as this bizarre phenomenon spreads to the other northern Euro states all hell could break loose, as people will move savings out of accounts and into either safe deposit boxes and or commodities.  Knowing you are loosing money to inflation is one thing but having to pay for even trying to save is quite another. 

France, always willing to outdo its neighbors in terms of insane policy, is now going to raise its top tax rate to 75% and place salary caps on executive pay along with once again lowering the retirement age to 60.  Capital and businesses will soon start to leave France as well. 

Meanwhile in Germany the confirmation of the ESM (European Stabilization Mechanism), although passed buy both houses of the Bundestag, has been put on hold due to challenges in the Constitutional Court.  Its decision may prove moot, as both Finland and The Netherlands have said they will not participate.  The fantasy bubble that Germany can just pony up what ever the rest of Europe needs to continue funding debt that can’t ever be repaid has about reached its limits.  German debt to GDP has already breeched the 80% mark and they have raised their own retirement age to 67.  To think they will continue to work until 67 and strip out 30% (if France slips into the bailout pool over 50%) or more of their GDP so that the rest of Europe can retire at 60 is foolish at best, delusional at worst.  The Europeans ought to start worrying less about Greece leaving the EURO and more about Germany leaving. 

Underneath all the latest maneuverings is the ongoing and deepening LIBOR scandal.  If the investigations expose even a fraction of what is suspected to have been going on it could blow up not just Barclays Bank and the Bank of England, but the ECB (European Central Bank and the U.S. FED as well.  Eventually municipalities and states (and in Europe, provinces) that had heavily invested in LIBOR based interest rate swaps will be launching law suits to recover losses and/or minimized gains that resulted from the manipulation of LIBOR rates.  What were their losses were of course the banks gains. 

Whether or not the British Parliamentary investigation committees will be as sycophantic as the banking committees in the U.S. Congress is yet to be seen, but with growing numbers of municipalities going bankrupt because of not being able to meet pension requirements you can pretty much bet they will soon start to point finger at the banks that steered them into these investments.