Well it looks like the Republicans have latched
onto yet another scandal to hold over the Democrats' heads.  Digging up one scandal after another, seems to be the only way that the GOP can engage its base.  That technique has a long history and usually is very effective in turning the Democratic party into a bunch of babbling apologists.  Remember the Lewinsky scandal?  The Democrats have used a few GOP scandals like Watergate to their advantage too.  They could have played hardball with the GOP on many recent occasions, but for various reasons,  chose not to.  

I have a few scandals that make the Benghazi, IRS and AP scandals look small by comparison. Don't hold your breath for either party to use any of the following scandals against each other, because both parties are guilty of all of them.

Both parties are guilty of:

• Allowing jobs and our manufacturing infrastructure to leave the country by lowering trade tariffs, signing “free” trade agreements and passing laws favorable to job offshoring!
• Pretending to not understand that one of the main causes of the fiscal deficit is the fact that we have become a country without a product that relies upon Wall St. gambling to “create” wealth for the top one percent at the expense of the rest of us.  Translation, No jobs = low tax revenue, PERIOD.
• Attempting to rob the average American's last vestige of financial security, Social Security and Medicare by using fixing the deficit as a bogus excuse, even though Social Security is funded by a separate self-sustained fund.  Fix the previous item to really fix the deficit!
• Systematically engaging in the elimination of unions through either anti-union laws or by intentional neglect due to failure to pass pro-union laws!
• Allowing the Bush administration to flout the U.S. Constitution with laws like The “Patriot” Act in the name of national security!
• Engaging in numerous global wars to keep the defense industry profitable.  Eisenhower warned us about the Military-Industrial Complex.
• Keeping the “Patriot” Act, a law that should have been at best, a temporary expediency for so called security, in place to  this day!  Adding or constantly attempting to add numerous laws that only serve special interests, but violate our Constitutional rights!  How much of your “freedom” are you willing to give up to be “secure?"  How much of your freedom are you willing to give up to cater to overreaching corporate claims of intellectual property?
• Always seeming to take the corporate/Wall Street side of almost any issue, either actively or by “benign” neglect.  Both parties never seem to understand our side of things even though we voted them into office!
• “Allowing” lobbyists who represent corporate entities, Wall Street and the super rich to govern our country from the back seat!

At this point, I think that you realize that there are real scandals going on that have nothing to do with the mainstream media's scandal du jour.  The real scandals can only be undone by voting most of the electeds from BOTH parties out of office.  We need to supplant both parties with organizations that field candidates that truly represent us, not corporate and super wealthy contributors.

Grover Norquist intimidated most of the GOP electeds, forcing them to take a pledge to not raise taxes under any
circumstances.  That's an example of government being hijacked by a few people.  We can make the pledge concept work for us by taking a pledge of our own.  Let's
call the pledge, the 99% voter's pledge. Here is the way it can be worded:

Since virtually all of the candidates of both
parties have passed legislation and supported policies that are not in my best interests and contrary to their lofty and apparently exaggerated campaign promises, I  -YOUR NAME HERE-  hereby pledge to withhold my vote from both major parties in the next election.  My vote will be cast for a truly worthy candidate from a yet unnamed third party that is more responsive to the needs of the average American.  The candidate that I, not the corporations and the wealthy, who apparently back both major parties select will support issues that I care
about like keeping jobs here in America, putting worker's rights before the rights of Wall Street gamblers and not cutting Social Security and Medicare.  My chosen candidate will not raise false flag issues like fixing the deficit with austerity, when the real cause of the deficit was the lack of tax revenue due to the unemployment and underemployment created by the off shoring of jobs due to
lowered trade tariffs and “free” trade agreements that the candidates of both
major parties supported!  I want a candidate who will listen to what I have to say 365 days per year, not just on election day and not spend all of his or her time catering to the demands of corporate lobbyists.  That isn't possible under the current “two” party system, because meaningful campaign finance reform can't be passed when the electeds of both parties have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.  To sum it all up, I'm on to the scam perpetrated by the politicians of both parties and I'm going to do something about it because this time around, the lesser of two evils is unacceptable!

So there you have it. Please take a close look at the pledge and let me know what you think.  Let me know if you have any additions that you want me to incorporate into the pledge.  By all means, please let me know if you have any ideas of how we can get this document widely distributed.  Let's make it a living document that can be a catalyst for real change in our country.  Our future is in your hands.

There are some self-serving blowhards out there who are now second guessing Boston's powers that be asking residents to "shelter in place" during the Marathon bombers' murderous rampage. They have chosen to compare the handling of the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing with the days following 9/11.  I have a few choice words for anyone who thinks that the way Bush handled post 9/11 was the gold standard and you can hear them by visiting my Listen Here! page.

What makes even less sense than the standard GOP "lets do it for the children" sales pitch for Social Security cuts?  How about some Democrats who insist on coming up with rationalizations for every single wrong move that Obama makes.  I thought that I've heard everything from those hopeless sycophants until I heard some defending his proposed chained CPI Social Security cuts with "let's do it for the children."  To hear what I have to say about that nonsense, visit my Listen Here! page.

Much to my frustration and disgust, it looks like Barack Obama is continuing to use  Social Security cost of living adjustments as a bargaining chip to induce (read that grovel and beg) the GOP to return to the bargaining table.  The sad thing about the whole situation is that Obama is using inflation to effectively cut Social Security, hoping that no one will notice.  Well, I notice and I hope that you will notice and speak out about it before it is too late.  To protect your future retirements, I ask you to ignore the brainwashed and just look at the raw facts.  To be enlightened, visit my Listen Here! page.

Ever since the Reagan administration, American politics has gone through a transformation that was so gradual that many of us may not have noticed.  On the surface,  both parties seemed to be unchanged and to stand for their respective core values, but nothing could be further from the truth.  As I see it, in small increments, the officials of both parties have lost control of their respective parties to Washington's real power brokers, “K”
Street corporate lobbyists.  These lobbyists seem to be using both parties in a very subtle chess game that uses John and Jane Q. Public as the pawns.

Both parties have a definite role to play in this large scale game of corporate chess.  The Republican party, and it's voters have the dubious distinction of being used as useful idiots who, knowingly or unknowingly, have a specific function in corporate America’s game of governing our country from the back seat.  That function is to push America's politics further and further to the right.  They do so by making extreme and unreasonable demands like insisting that our electeds make draconian cuts to “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare and by refusing to raise taxes on the rich.   
 
Democratic electeds play a faux conciliatory role in this corporate chess game.  They prepare their constituency for grand sellouts that they call Grand Bargains by offering up the prospect of making
stealth cuts to Social Security and Medicare, like chained CPI, instead of blatant cuts like raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67.  The extreme positions taken by the GOP make the Democrats, in the form of the President sacrificing our seniors on the Altar of inflation by promoting stealth cuts to Social Security like chained CPI seem downright reasonable and acceptable.  That kind of “compromise” is “acceptable” to everyone but seniors who will be forced to live hand to mouth and to real Democrats of the past, like FDR, JFK and LBJ.

The bottom line is that we are the ones who are being played by corporations, the rich and both parties.

Now that the sequester has been in effect for a couple of weeks, and the mainstream media has been showing scenes of control towers about to close, please remember that it's just part of a dog and pony show designed to justify the cuts to Social Security and Medicare that the elites of both parties want us to think will fix the deficit.  The mass panic that our corporate owned electeds hope will ensue would be caused by the latest false dialog generated by the corporate owned mainstream media lie machine at the behest of, you guessed it, their corporate owners.  Those media moguls and their 1% pals hope that it will result in the opportunity to raid Medicare and Social Security to balance the deficit, give themselves a new source of profit and allow them to continue to pay little or no taxes.  They know that a good panic will allow our corporate owned electeds to take the first steps in undoing Medicare and Social Security much in the way media lies and selective reporting caused healthcare for all to be diluted into Obamacare.

You can read the full article in my Feature Articles section by clicking here.

In the next day or so, you are going to hear the mainstream media spew out tons of bilge about the casualties of the sequester.  Their dialog is designed by the elites to instill fear, uncertainly and doubt in the hearts and minds of us common folk.   Something that the big media hucksters have become very proficient in doing, as proven by their false dialog about the healthcare debate that made sure that our country will not get universal healthcare, but will protect the interests of corporations that profit from the status quo.


 
They are now telling us things like:  

• The  sequester's automatic budget cuts will cause airport control towers to go unmanned, which possibly, maybe, could be, perhaps cause an accident that would endanger the traveling public.
• The sequester's automatic budget cuts will debilitate our military, leaving them unable to defend our country which possibly, maybe, could be, perhaps cause our country to be invaded by a combination of World War II Nazis and Arab pro-wrestlers.
• The sequester's automatic budget cuts may debilitate our public health system which possibly, maybe, could be, perhaps cause the food in many establishments to harbor even more roaches, mouse droppings and old cigarette butts than they do now. YUM!
• The sequester's automatic budget cuts will cause an immediate cut in our system of healthcare for all which......Oops, sorry about that. Only countries that put their citizens' well being before corporate profits have that!
• The sequester's automatic budget cuts will have an immediate effect on our educational system which possibly, maybe, could be, perhaps cause our children to become the start of a nation of illiterates. Oops.... the GOP has tried to do that already with budget cuts that will create newer, more ignorant (if that's possible) Republican voters.

The bottom line is that there is a concerted effort by the elites who, by virtue of their massive campaign contributions form the unelected, but real government of our country to use the very temporary sequester to panic us little folk into giving up hard fought, established programs that they cynically refer to as “entitlements.”  Not big stuff, just little things like the Social Security and Medicare that the GOP wanted to kill for years!  Let's not allow a bogus hyped-up “crisis” to panic us into giving it to them and let's warn Democrats that want to go that route that they will be primaried and alternative parties will spring up that really represent us!

Funny how the same corporate-owned electeds who believe that corporations have the right to raise the price of their products at will also feel that the folks who work for those corps shouldn't get an increase in the minimum wage.  To hear why I say that it's hypocritical to deny a minimum wage increase to workers, since price increases are the way that corps give themselves a raise, visit my Listen Here! page.