How to End the Wars - It really is easy and it's been done before

Americans are somewhat aware that our current crop of wars not only never seem to end but they actually are expanding into other countries.  It's as if the US Military is a global militarized dictatorship that resembles a giant octopus that is enveloping and devouring everything in its deadly path.  The war in Afghanistan has expanded into Pakistan, courtesy of Obama.  Obama launched the war in Libya, engineered the takeover of Egypt by dangerous Sunni Salafist Wahhabist psychopaths and he's arming Sunni rebels in Syria as part of his regime change schemes to topple Assad, a man who has done absolutely nothing to America or threatened us in any way.  We've got the  "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" Republicans and Democrats who are lusting to bomb, nuke, invade and occupy a nation of 75 million folks.  America's foreign policy insanity is on steroids and  continues to multiply exponentially.

Will we ever have peace?  Only if we kill the military industrial complex that lords over us and is devouring our liberty and prosperity as well as reigning terror and death upon numerous foreign nations and innocent people.  American's won't admit it but America is really a military dictatorship.  Our local police forces have been transformed into para-military, federally funded militarized gestapos.

Here's the bitter truth that Americans cannot face:  We murder for defense contractor and Wall Street profits.  If that's not the epitome of a thoroughly debauched and degenerate nation, I don't know what is.

But here's another truth:  Americans have the power to end the wars and the military dictatorship that lords over us with a terrorizing iron fist.

The military industrial complex (MIC) and its enormous powers expanded greatly with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the US entry into WW I in 1914.  By WW II, the MIC had grown significantly more powerful and by the time the Vietnam War rolled around, America was in its infancy of a full fledged military dictatorship.  Today, we are bearing witness to the scourges of military power and its oppressive tyranny.

So how precisely do We the People end MIC power?  It's really quite simple because it's happened before.  As the Vietnam War raged in the 1960's and expanded into Laos and Cambodia, anti-war sentiments were building strongly in America.  The slaughter of millions of southeast Asians and a rising US military death toll was angering the people.    LBJ's war was such a disaster that his re-election was in jeopardy.  As the situation grew progressively worse for LBJ, he feared the humiliation of a general election or primary defeat so he decided NOT to run for re-election in 1968.  Nixon, a foreign policy hawk,  won the 1968 election.  The Vietnam War resulted in over 58,000 dead Americans but the hawks were determined to wage the Vietnam War for all eternity.

However, Nixon was soon smothered with anti-war Congress Critters who ferociously fought to end the Vietnam War. By 1973, Congress simply refused to fund it.  The American Prospect did an excellent analysis of the Vietnam War and how it ended.

How Congress Got Us Out of Vietnam

...in January 1973, the president knew that he only had a limited amount of time before Congress finally used the power of the purse to bring the war to an end -- regardless of what the administration wanted. Indeed, to make certain that the president could not reverse course, in June 1973 Congress passed legislation that included an amendment sponsored by Church and Case to prohibit the use of more funds in Southeast Asia after August 15. Sixty-four senators voted in favor. When the House assented, its vote marked the first time that chamber had agreed to cut off funds, too.

And that's precisely how the Vietnam War finally ended - it was defunded by Congress when Congress refused to appropriate anymore money for it.  

While presidential war making powers have expanded considerably since the Vietnam War era, what hasn't change is that the president can't wage wars or do much of anything unless Congress appropriates money to fund the wars.  It's Congress that controls the purse strings, not the president.

We the People elect Congress Critters and We the People have the power to fire the warmongers who vote to fund the wars.  With 100 Senators and 435 members of the House of Representatives, finding information is very easy in the Internet age because voting records and roll call votes are available online.  Moreover, organizations like opensecrets.org have huge databases of political campaign contributions and it's easy to identify the Congress Critters who are wholly owned subsidiaries of defense contractors.

If We the People want peace, it's within our power to achieve peace by not electing anymore warmongers to Congress.

It really is that simple.  It's been done before and we can do it again.  Slaying the military industrial complex is not only critical to world peace and peaceful co-existence, it's absolutely critical to our economy and fiscal stability.  Wars have consumed American prosperity, vastly contributed to our $16.8 trillion in unsustainable debt and are directly responsible for the miserable decline of the American middle class.

It's long over due to end the blood money that flows to Wall Street and defense contractors.  Americans who vote for warmongers definitely have blood on their hands and they are no different nor any less vile than the evil banksters and defense contractors.

Let's do it. No Excuses!

Has Rush Limbaugh Finally Lost His Mojo?

Love him or hate him, Rush Limbaugh has been an icon in Republican talk radio for decades.  As the cheer leader in chief for all things Republican, there is no bigger pimp for big government, endless wars, fascist corporate welfare and military worship than Limbaugh.  Is his incredible star power finally on the descent?

Rush Limbaugh may leave Cumulus

The Rush Limbaugh Program is considering ending its affiliation agreement with Cumulus Media at the end of this year, a move that would bring about one of the biggest shakeups in talk radio history, a source close to the show tells POLITICO.

Should the move take place, 40 Cumulus-owned radio stations would lose the rights to the most popular talk radio program in the country. In addition, the show might be picked up by competing regional radio stations in Washington, New York, Chicago, Dallas and other major markets.

According to the source, Limbaugh is considering the move because Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey has blamed the company's advertising losses on Limbaugh's controversial remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student. In Feb. 2012, Limbaugh referred to Fluke as "a slut" because she had called on congress to mandate insurance coverage of birth control. The subsequent controversy over those remarks resulted in a significant advertising boycott.

The true extent of Limbaugh's effect on Cumulus's advertising revenue is not known. In an August 2012 earnings call, Dickey said Cumulus's top three stations had lost $5.5 million, in part because of the boycott. In a March 2013 earnings call, Dickey said the company's talk radio side had "been challenged... due to some of the issues that happened a year ago." Nevertheless, Limbaugh remains the most highly rated talk radio host in the country.

At the end of the day, Limbaugh is nothing more than a corporate commodity and when a commodity or product fails to deliver profit expectations, the product becomes weak and expendable.  While the left has exclusively attributed Limbaugh's decline in listeners and advertisers to the Sandra Fluke fiasco wherein he called her a slut, there's a whole lot more to the story than Fluke-gate.  Insulting liberals and Democrats is what Limbaugh is paid to do because it's red meat for the Republican base.  It deliberately fires up their hatred and raw emotions to guarantee that they won't focus on real issues.  Limbaugh exists to keep Republicans dumbed down and angry, and he's a critical component of the Republican Get Out the Vote machine.

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Limbaugh has a net worth of $350 million and earns $40 million a year.   While such lucrative star power is extremely rare in radio, Limbaugh can't escape demographics and shifts in political preferences that absolutely translate to the free market of political ideology.  The Republican Party is bleeding voters precisely because the young have no use for what is increasingly dubbed the War Party.  Republicans have fought hard to crush civil liberties, expand the national security surveillance state, ratchet up corporate welfare and shower defense contractors and banksters with taxpayer cash and bailouts.

The Democrats do the same thing but what the Dems do outright by invoking party ideology the Republicans do by stealth.  Republicans have quietly funded the implementation of Obamacare.  Republicans created the multi-trillion dollar entitlement known as Medicare Part D or the prescription drug program, a piece of vote buying legislation that was hatched by Karl Rove after the 2000 Bush-Gore election fiasco.

While Limbaugh is far from washed up, his star power is declining simply because the formula of 'insult your political opponents' with a vile and mean spirited invective is no longer working.  America has big problems that need solving and these problems include addressing the agony of the ailing economy, political corruption on steroids and the patronage system of governance.

As the young liberty activists in America reject Limbaugh styled antics as intellectually demeaning to the point of bordering on outright fraud, America is spawning a new generation of political activists who are starved for the truth and solutions.  Of course, the enemies of Limbaugh have taken notice and don't hesitate to let loose with very interesting Limbaugh headlines.

Citing A $100 Million Dollar Loss In 2012, Radio Industry Says Rush Limbaugh Bad For Business.

Is "Deceased" the Average Age of a Typical White Male Rush Limbaugh Listener?

While the Limbaugh formula that once worked is now being challenged on multiple left and right fronts, the driving forces behind the liberty activists are Ron Paul, limited government and the constitution.  However, Rush has consistently bashed Ron Paul and the young liberty activists.  Big mistake.

Slut talk no longer cuts it.  From Rush Limbaugh to Hush Bimbo, the dude is definitely disconnected from reality as he transitions from king to commodity.

Understand DMS-5 & How the Mental Health Industry Seeks to Classify Millions Upon Millions as Mentally Ill

CHR.org, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, has been at the forefront in opposing Big Pharm and its dangerous psychoactive drugs. A CCHR e-mail update:

CCHR used to be one of the only groups protesting psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for its bogus science and penchant for pathologizing all human behaviors and emotions into "disease"—a profitibale enterprise, but one completely lacking medical or scientific validity. But we are no longer alone. More and more press are catching on to the fact that there is no science to psychiatry—and even some kingpin psychiatrists are jumping on the bandwagon. 

A story entitled, "Psychiatry Profession Has Lost Its Mind," states, "The new 'psychiatry bible' has been criticized by many as a testament to the insanity of the industry itself. Virtually every emotion experienced by a human being—sadness, grief, anxiety, frustration, impatience, excitement—is now being classified as a 'mental disorder' demanding chemical treatment with—you guessed it—pharmaceutical drugs." 

The mental health profession uses the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, dubbed DSM, to diagnose mental disorders and the mental health industry is out with a blockbuster edict to diagnose millions upon millions more as mentally ill. It's only a matter of time before these folks are forced to take dangerous drugs or be permanently institutionalized. CCHR has linked to a report disclosing the evils of the DSM, Big Pharm, the mental health industry and its rush to classsify many, many millions of folks as mentally ill by significantly expanding the criteria for what constitutes mental illness.

American Free Press — Psychiatric Profession Has Lost Its Mind

Nearly every expression of normal emotion can now be classified as a syndrome in need of medication

In May 2013, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is scheduled to release its fifth Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) superseding the DSM-IV published in 1994 and revised in 2000. The new “psychiatry bible” has been criticized by many as a testament to the insanity of the industry itself. Virtually every emotion experienced by a human being—sadness, grief, anxiety, frustration, impatience, excitement—is now being classified as a “mental disorder” demanding chemical treatment with—you guessed it—pharmaceutical drugs.

Ironically, one of its harshest critics is AllenFrances M.D., professor emeritus from the Department of Psychiatry at Duke University who was chair of the DSM-IV Task Force.

DSM-5 opens up the possibility that millions and millions of people currently considered normal will be diagnosed as having a mental disorder and will receive medication and stigma that they don’t need,” said Frances. “This is the saddest moment in my 45-year career of studying, practicing, and teaching psychiatry. [The] approval makes it likely that DSM-5 will start a . . . dozen or more new fads which will be detrimental to the misdiagnosed individuals and costly to our society.”

The DSM is now larger than ever, and it includes Orwellian disorders such as “obedience defiance disorder” (ODD), defined as refusing to follow authority. Rapists who feel sexual arousal during their raping activities are given the excuse that they have “paraphilic coercive disorder” (PCD) and therefore are not responsible for their actions. You can also get diagnosed with “hoarding disorder” if you happen to stockpile food, water and ammunition, among other things. Being prepared for possible natural disasters now makes you a mental patient in the eyes of modern psychiatry.

The entire industry of psychiatry has become such a laughing stock that even many supporters of the industry are turning their backs in disgust. To many scientists today, psychiatry is no more “scientific” than astrology or palm reading, yet its practitioners call themselves “doctors” of psychiatry in order to sound credible.

The authenticity of already established “disorders” such as attention deficit hyper-active disorder (ADHD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) have been called into question.

Frances admits that even the 1994 DSM-IV was a huge mistake that has resulted in the mass over-diagnosis of people who are actually normal.

The major victor in this is the pharmaceutical industry, which is having a field day with sales of billions of dollars of psychotropic drugs such as Prozac, Ritalin, Zoloft, Paxil and others.

Since the introduction of Prozac in 1987 there has been an explosion in the number of people using psychiatric drugs. One in five Americans, or 65M people, is now taking at least one psychiatric drug such as anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety medications, according to an analysis of pharmacy claims data released on November 2011. In 2010, Americans spent $16.1B on anti-psychotics to treat depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, $11.6B on anti-depressants and $7.2B on treatment for ADHD, according to IMS Health, which tracks prescription drug sales. The report showed that, between 2010 and 2011, the use of psychiatric drugs had increased a staggering 21%.

The rush to medicate an entire nation is indeed horrifying and getting children hooked on dangerous drugs at an early age by diagnosing them as mentally ill or having a mental disorder is a high priority of the government, the educrats, Big Pharm and the healthcare industry.

The last group of folks who utilized mental health disorders as a pretext to drug and and ultimately exterminate human beings on a massive scale was the Nazis and that didn't end too well for humanity.  Nazism resulted in the deaths of 50-60 million folks.  Much of what was implemented by Nazi German is attributable to the psychiatry and the mental health professions.

HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP RELEASESDOCUMENTARY EXPOSING THE TRUTH BEHIND THE KILLING CAMPAIGNS OF THE NAZI ERA

A new documentary just released by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), The Age of Fear: Psychiatry’s Reign of Terror, reveals shocking new facts surrounding the hidden psychiatric influence behind the horrors Hitler and his henchmen unleashed on those they deemed “unworthy of life” during the Third Reich in Nazi Germany. The documentary is a lesson from history: the untold story of the mass murder programs before the Holocaust, and the psychiatrists who conceived, organized and ran them – down to passing judgment on who would live and who would die. Some 300,000 mentally and physically disabled people were murdered, another 6,000 died from enforced sterilization operations. And most alarmingly, these psychiatric atrocities did not stop with the end of World War II.

While it isn't clear if modern day governments will resort top Nazi style extermination camps, what is clear is that governments demand compliant, docile and obedient citizens and the surefire method to achieve a mass of inert citizens is to simply drug them into compliance.   The strategy of neuter and neutralize with drugs will become accepted as standard medical practices.

If the government fears anything, it fears thinking and functioning citizens who have the capacity and will to challenge their oppressors.  Big Pharm has solved that problem unless we stop it and reject the tyranny of America as 'One Nation Under Big Pharm'.

The Rich Get Richer and the Government Cost of Living, GDP and Unemployment Lies

The government plays fast and loose with statistics, most of which are outright lies manipulated for propaganda purposes, especially on economic, unemployment and cost of living data.  Recently, the government decided to change how it calculates GDP and will do it in a manner that will produce significant GDP increases.

Changes in GDP measurement create growth out of thin air

The art of measuring the size of the economy just got a new box of crayons.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced last week it would be changing the guidelines with which it calculates Gross Domestic Product, more familiarly known as the GDP, the standard by which the size and growth of the economy is measured....

The change comes after more than five years of economic stagnation that, despite frequent claims of a strengthening recovery, have seen high unemployment and extremely slight growth in the size of the economy....

Peter Schiff describes the change as “propaganda”....

“That’s what the government does. Whenever they don’t like the results, they change the methodology for calculating those results,” Schiff says in a new SchiffRadio report.

“Now it doesn’t mean that the economy is actually any bigger, but it means they can pretend it’s bigger,” he added.

The cost of everything is rising but the government never reports in its phony baloney cost of living statistics increases in food, fuel, energy and other necessities that are driving our cost of living out of the stratosphere. As the government continues to publish low cost of living increases, we are scratching our heads in bewilderment. We intuitively understand that the government is lying.

So what gives with the governments lies about the cost of living? Well, the government has a vested interest in lying because preservation of raw and unaccountable power trumps “We the People” and their interests. However, we need to understand how and when the government started distorting its cost of living statistics.

In an article by Martin Weiss for Moneyandmarkets.com titled “The Greatest Scam of All Time”, Weiss references the work of economist John Williams who does nothing but study and expose government financial lies. Williams runs a highly technical economic website and newsletter (www.shadowstats.com) but many savvy analysts, like Weiss, shift through the stuff and reduce it to plain English. Weiss states:

The first major push for inflation-distorting reform began with the Clinton Administration. Until then, the inflation measure was based on an essentiallyfixed basket of goods.

Example: The basket included an 8-ounce steak. And no matter what, they tracked the same steak through time.

The Clinton Administration, however, argued for a variable basket of goods. If the 8-ounce steak got to too expensive, they argued, the typical consumer would simply substitute hamburger. So the government should do the same.

That wouldn’t be a measure of the cost of living. It would be a measure of the cost of survival. Yet, according to Williams, a series of complex mathematical changes in how the Consumer Price Index is calculated — giving less weight to higher priced items — essentially achieves the same goal as the variable basket of goods.

Add that to a series of other distortions in the Consumer Price Index ... and you’ve got a measure that’s so far removed from reality, it’s a joke. Instead of the 3.8% announced last week, the true inflation rate could be well over 7%.

The biggest victims of this hoax: Anyone collecting Social Security benefits. According to Williams, if the Consumer Price Index were calculated today the same way it was during the Carter Administration, the payments would be 70% larger!

Source: http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/the-greatest-scam-of-all-time-8527

The Bush Administration continued with Clinton’s policies to deceive Americans by supporting a Consumer Price Index (CPI) based on absolutely nothing except what the government wanted it to be.

Jarret Wollstein in an article titled “Towards Liberty” further clarifies the point:

According to official government statistics, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – the mostly widely used measure of inflation – is running a very low 2.2% a year. But if inflation is so low, why is the price of everything you buy going up so fast? How do you reconcile 2% inflation with 10% to 20% annual increases in housing prices . . . 25% to 40% increases in heating bills during the past winter . . . and double-digit increases in the price of nearly everything you consume, from gasoline, to food, to movie tickets? The simple answer is that the official inflation rate is virtually pure fiction, and has been for decades. 

What we have is a situation of government induced monetary inflation that is buried under a mountain of government lies. Americans surely feel the severe impact of inflation because they understand that the cost of necessities that they buy, like food, fuel and healthcare keep rising and have been rising for a longtime. Americans are also paying a lot more for health care, another item not covered in the government lies or its consumer prices index. According to the Huffington Post, insurance costs have doubled for workers since 2002.

Health Care Costs For Workers Almost Doubled Since 2002, New Survey Finds

Health insurance costs workers almost twice what it did in 2002....
The average total cost of a family health insurance plan reached $15,745 this year....
In 2002, job-based family coverage cost $8,003.

The real culprit of rising prices is monetary inflation and government protectionist regulations that benefit corporate insiders. Simply stated, inflation is the highest tax inflicted upon us.  Inflation is the direct result of obscene government spending that essentially reduces the value of our currency to that of fiat status and a banana boat republic.

Government is the driving force behind inflation, which is precisely why the government lies about it.   The government consciously and deliberately debases our currency with deficit spending and the non-stop running of government printing presses that churns out more and more worthless greenbacks.

John Williams of Shadow Stats reports that the real unemployment rate is is 23-24%.

Inflation and rising prices aren't the only problems eating the struggling poor and middle class.  Americans are losing far more than purchasing power.  They are losing income and wealth as the US economy morphs into "The Rich Get Richer Economy" while everybody else get stiffed.

Clinton economist Robert Richter wrote:

"The richest 1 percent of Americans last year took home 23 percent of total national income. Back in 1980, the richest 1 percent took home 8 percent of total income. The last time the top 1 percent took home more than 20 percent of total income was in 1928, just before the Great Crash."

On 3/7/12 MarketWatch reported:

Hourly pay for American workers rose 2.6% in the fourth quarter, but adjusted for inflation, earnings only increased 0.4%. What’s worse, inflation-adjusted hourly wages fell 0.6% for the full year, following a revised 0.6% decline in 2011. Only the three-year period of 1993-1995 was worse for American workers.

But somebody is getting rich - the rich in America are getting richer!

Investors.com reported Obamanomics: Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Poorer 

Using Census data on net worth, the Pew report found that from 2009 to 2011, the richest 7% of Americans saw their net worth climb an average $697,651 — equal to a 28% gain.

The rest of the country saw their net worth drop an average $6,079 — equal to a 4% loss.

The American middle class is stuck in the pinchers of rising inflation and declining wages and this has been going on since the 1970’s when the U.S. government started engineering the impoverishment of the American middle class by de-tethering the dollar from gold that shifted the wealth advantage to the rich and powerful at the expense of everybody else. More horrifying, we are also being taxed into acute impoverishment as our tax burden keep rising while our real wages are heading south and the cost of everything is going up.

Want proof? Just digest this Zero Hedge chart - Production Worker's Hourly Wages in Gold.

Middle class prosperity peaked in 1971 and has been nosediving on and off ever since.

Twinkie is Reborn. America Celebrates. The Truth?

The nation is celebrating the rebirth of Twinkie.  The defunct and bankrupt company has been resurrected from the deathbed of bankruptcy.  United Liberty, a free market website, is ecstatic.

Twinkie is Making a Comeback Without Big Labor

It seemed like the Twinkie was done for at the end of the last year. Due to high-labor costs and a union unwilling to make concessions to end a strike, Hostess was forced to liquidate its assets, including the spongy, creme-filled snack. But the Wall Street Journal notes that the Twinkie and other sweet snacks will be make a comeback July — and labor unions won’t have any influence:

The company that bought the Twinkie, HoHo and Ding Dong brands out of bankruptcy is gearing up to reopen plants and hire workers, but it won’t be using union labor.

Those evil labor unions are gone.  Labor unions must be evil because Hush Bimbo himself talked about those greedy labor unions.

Ding Dong! 18,500 Hostess Jobs Dead The Rush Limbaugh Show

RUSH: Look, here I'm already being asked, "Are you gonna talk about Hostess?" Yeah, I'm gonna talk about Hostess. You know what, 18,500 people gone, Hostess Twinkies, Ding Dongs, shut down. Some people might think it's a buy opportunity if you want to get in the Ding Dong business. But folks, if you need an indication that the Democrats will never compromise on anything, look at this. Hostess is going out of business because of unions. Now, that's 18,500 jobs. You would think in this economy that somebody might want to show the ability to compromise if only to fool people. They won't even compromise on this.

I think it's good to talk about those evil and greedy labor unions, especially since Rush Limbaugh is worth $350 million and earns $40 million a year according to a website named Celebrity Networth, here.

How greedy were those evil Hostess labor unions?  According to Philly.com, senior longtime employees earned $18 an hour (40 hours a week X 52 weeks equals $37,440 a year) but that the newer workers earned about $10 a hour or $20,800 a year, here. Moreover, those greedy labor unions were forced to take an 8% pay cut which was very painful.  If Hush Bimbo took an 8% pay cut, he'd still be earning $36.8 million a year.

OMG, those greedy labor unions are trying to keep their $10-$18 an hour jobs.  Who in their right mind could possibly imagine such gargantuan greed?

Of course, this isn't the end (Twinkie's bankruptcy) or the beginning of Twinkie's rebirth without labor unions.  There's a whole lot more to the story than labor hating pundits gleefully ignore.  I even blogged about it.

A Twinkie Autopsy

Twinkie-gate is getting a ton of media and blogger attention because of its bankruptcy and the loss of over 18,000 jobs. However, there is a whole lot more to the story besides the emotional aspect, and like everything else it's a whole lot more complicated than soundbites and rants from the left and right.

The right wing Twinkie meme: A fine capitalist company like Hostess was forced out of business by the evil labor unions.

The left wing Twinkie meme: The evil and greedy capitalists treat their labor like expendable garbage and only care about profits.

The Libertarian free market meme: Let the markets sort it out....

Jonathan Turley's liberal leaning website reported on the Hostess bankruptcy, here:

"The company is in its second bankruptcy in a decade. Hostess sold about $2.5 billion worth of snack products last year with Twinkies leading the pack. However, the company has nearly $1 billion in debt and has $2 billion in unfunded pension obligations.. While Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn was planning to ask his employees for wage and benefit concessions, he was awarded a 300 percent raise (from approximately $750,000 to $2,550,000). Nine other top executives of the company received massive pay raises.

Over the eight years since the first bankruptcy, Hostess employees have watched as:

money from previous concessions that was supposed to go towards capital investment, product development, plant improvement and new equipment, was squandered in executive bonuses, payouts to Wall Street investors and payments to high-priced attorneys and consultants."

Is the Hostess bankruptcy an engineered bankruptcy, a chapter straight out of the famous Wall Street movie staring Michael Douglas, a legal maneuver to avoid pension liability, a scheme to wiggle out of paying its debts, a strategy to kill the unions or is it something even more sinister?

Synergy is defined as the belief that the whole is greater than the individual parts. In Wall Street speak, the individual parts are worth vastly more than the whole. All those Hostess Registered Trademarks have value, probably considerable value, and there is no doubt that they will be sold for the highest possible price.

Creatures like Hostess, who are wallowing in mountains of debt, are all products of the leveraged buyout (LBO) fever that was born in the 1980's after the dollar was de-tethered from gold and easy fiat money became as prevalent as grains of sand in the Sahara Desert.

Understanding the LBO game requires understanding the concept of leverage. Simply put, leverage is very little equity (no skin in the game) and a big pile of debt to play the takeover game and frequently the hostile takeover game. The LBO players are typically Wall Streeters, Hedge fund operators, private equity firms and just about any financial high roller seeking to make a big play with borrowed money. Many of these takeovers absolutely included plans to bust up companies and sell them off piece by piece.

The Twinkie autopsy isn't about labor union greed but it's definitely a well documented story about bankster greed, CEO greed, LBO high roller greed, Wall Street greed, executive greed and a ton of other non labor union greed.

The Twinkie story is so nasty that AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka said: What’s happening with Hostess Brands is a microcosm of what’s wrong with America, as Bain-style Wall Street vultures make themselves rich by making America poor. Crony capitalism and consistently poor management drove Hostess into the ground, but its workers are paying the price. These workers, who consistently make great products Americans love and have offered multiple concessions, want their company to succeed. They have bravely taken a stand against the corporate race-to-the-bottom. And now they and their communities are suffering the tragedy of a needless layoff. This is wrong. It has to stop. It’s wrecking America.

Imagine that!  The president of the AFL-CIO is invoking crony capitalism as the reason for the Twinkie disaster.  Mr. Trumka is right.  Crony capitalism is definitely the root of the problem as the gurus of high finance rape and plunder America and the American workers.

Here's the truth about all those new Twinkie jobs that will be created because this scenario is playing out all across America every damn day - they will be minimum wage jobs and the workers will be so poor that they will be eligible for entitlements including taxpayer funded food stamps and government healthcare.  Then Hush Bimbo and ilk will be bitching and moaning that those poor bastard worker slobs are on welfare because, well, workers who don't earn enough to eat deserve to die of starvation.

At the end of the day, low paying minimum wage jobs that result in entitlement dependency are nothing more than corporate welfare where the social costs of employees are transferred to the taxpayers and all for the benefit of bankster/corporate profits.

Rush Limbaugh celebrates, as are all the banksters, lawyers, financiers, CEO's, executives etc. who engineered the demise of Twinkie from LBO thru bankruptcy, union busting and its rebirth as a non-union operation.

Those poor bastard workers don't deserve $10-$18 buck an hour according to many, including an arrogant and haughty radio talk show dude who probably thinks he's vastly underpaid at $40 million a year.

There is a lot that is wrong with America but any economic system that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer is morally repugnant.  America has morphed into a nation of oligarchs of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.  

The Bush Family, Oliver North and the Murder of CIA Drug Smuggler Barry Seal

I'm thrilled that Robert Wenzel, Economic Policy Journal, published Robert Morrow's investigative piece on the Bush Crime Family.  The Bush crime syndicate has a long history of nefarious criminality and it has been extensively documented that the Bush Gang was heavily involved in CIA drug smuggling as well as numerous murders.

Robert Wenzel: Investigative historian Robert Morrow has been conducting research on the murder of CIA drug smuggler Barry Seal. The circumstances surrounding the murder lead Morrow to ask a number of questions about one of the most powerful families in the United States and those surrounding that family.

The piece is extraordinary and meticulously documented, as well as a vital truth during an era where government controlled media routinely squashes the truth and protects America's arrogant royal families from scrutiny, disclosure and justice.

The Bush Family, Oliver North and the Murder of CIA Drug Smuggler Barry Seal

Boston Bombing, Chechnya and the Evil US/Saudi Jihad Connection

The Boston Bombing that was allegedly carried out by two Chechen immigrants from Chechnya has raised the issue of Islamic terrorism.  While most Americans don't know the difference between a Czech and a Chechen, as noted by Politico - Czech official: We're not Chechen, what is really missing from the story is the history, geopolitics of the region, US foreign policy and the insidious US/House of Saud connection.

Folks like to think that it's never about religion but it's always about religion because religion dominates law, culture and human civilizations.  The historical conflicts between Islam and Christianity are a profoundly critical component of current events, even if they are being twisted to comport with the government's deceitful version of realpolitik and its accompanying deceptions.

Chechnya is located in a region known as the Caucasus, a strip of land north of Iran, south of Russia, bordered by Turkey and nestled between the Caspian and Black Seas.   It's been a highly contentious patch of dirt throughout history for geopolitical as well as religious reasons while chronically embroiled in the Great Game of of the Austria-Hungary Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and even the British Empire.

In terms of landmass, Russia is still the largest nation on the planet despite losing a huge chunk of its real estate during the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.  With a long and intriguing history, Russia grew geographically as a result of its wars to keep the Mongols and Ottomans at bay.  In 1991, the Soviet Union lost its northern territories of Belarus (3), Estonia (4), Latvia (8), Lithuania (9), Moldova (10) and the Ukraine (14); it lost its southern territories of Armenia (1), Azerbaijan (2), Georgia (5), Kazakhstan (6), Kyrgyzstan (7), Tajikistan (12), Turkmenistan (13) and Uzbekistan (15). 

The reasons for the break-up of the Soviet Union are the subject of considerable scholarly dispute.  Some attribute the break-up to US agitation and US support for the Islamists during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  Others attribute it to economic collapse triggered by the Afghan War.  In any event, other nations in central Europe were breaking away from the Soviet Union and these nations were wrongly and immorally ceded to Stalin at the end of WW II by Churchill and Roosevelt - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania.

Russia never ceded its southern Chechnya province to the instigators for independence and for geopolitical reasons.  Thoughtout its long history, Russia's enemies struck hard at Russian trade by depriving it of a warm water port and this was devastating to the Russian economy where its northern ports were frozen tundras during the winter.  Consequently Russia has always been obsessed with having a secure warm water port.  Moreover, the Caspian Sea is loaded with oil.

Caspian Sea oil find could be 'biggest this year'

Iran Finds Its First Caspian Sea Oil for More Than a Century

Complicating the geopolitical issues and the endless quest for the black gold is the ongoing Muslim civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites who are concentrated in Iran and Iraq.  Oil creates commodity wealth and nations murder and wage wars for dominance of oil and oil markets.  Is the US determination to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" an oil war?  Of course it is and the US has always sided with Sunni Islam and especially the horrid House of Saud, all to the detriment Shiite Islam.  Incidentally, neither Iran nor Iraq nor Iranians nor Iraqis were ever involved in terrorism against the US or western interests.  911, the USS Cole bombings, the bombings of 2 US embassies in Africa, the London bombing, the Mumbai bombing, the Bali bombing, the Madrid bombings and all other acts of Islamist terror were all acts of Sunni Salifist Wahhabists, the rabid form of Islam born in Saudi Arabia in the 18th century.

The issue of the Boston Bombers isn't so much about radical Islam as it is about the evil US-Saudi alliance to spread radical Sunni Salafist Wahhabism as far and wide as possible.  In fact, Soviet Muslims were not radical at all but with the break-up of the Soviet Union and all the instability that ensured post break-up, the US and the Saudis wasted no time in funding, training and arming violent Sunni jihad warriors.  This is nothing new and the US and Saudis have a long history of jointly working together to create and spread radicalized Sunni Islam.  At least since the days of Jimmy Carter, the US, the CIA and the Saudis have worked together to breed Sunni jihadists and Carter intervened in Afghanistan to arm and fund the Afghan Mujuhadeen, now the Taliban.

There can be no doubt that during the break-up of the Soviet Union that the US, the CIA and the Saudis flooded former Russian territories with money, radical mosques and jihad clerics.

In light of the Boston Bombing, Global Research is providing incredible documentation and background on this issue.

BOSTON TRUTH: The “Chechen Connection”, Al Qaeda and the Boston Marathon Bombings

The Creation of A New Legend: “The Chechen Connection”

A new legend is unfolding: “The Chechen Connection” is threatening America. Islamism homegrown in the Russian Federation is now being “exported to America”.

Plastered on news tabloids across the United States, the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings on Patriots’ Day are relentlessly compared to September 11, 2001.

According to the Council of Foreign Relations:

Law enforcement agencies at all levels have made advances in surveillance and policing since the September 11, 2001 attacks, but security risks persist. Many counterterrorism experts call for a renewed focus on the ability of the United States to weather and recover from such incidents…

According to the powerful Council of Foreign Relations (which exerts a pervasive influence on both the White House and the State Department), the Boston bombings once again “raise the specter of terrorism on U.S. soil, highlighting the vulnerabilities of a free and open society”....

Counter terrorism and Martial Law –implying the suspension of civil liberties– rather than civilian law enforcement are the proposed solutions....

“The Chechen Connection” has become embedded in a new media consensus. The American Homeland is potentially threatened by Muslim terrorists from the Russian Federation, who have links to Al Qaeda.

In addition to discussing the draconian assaults on US civil liberties and invoking a revival of the War on Terror to terrorize Americans into relinquishing their civil liberties through a significantly strengthened totalitarian American militarized police state, there is far more than totalitarian political expediency at work here.  The Global Research issues documents the history of US involvement with the Saudis.

Al Qaeda and the CIA

The American public is misled. The media reports carefully overlook the historical origins of the Chechnya jihadist movement and its pervasive links to US intelligence.

The fact of the matter is that the jihadist movement is a creation of US intelligence, which has also led to the development of “political Islam”. While the role of the CIA in support of the Islamic jihad (including most Al Qaeda affiliated organizations) is amply documented, there is also evidence that the FBI has covertly equipped and incited would be terrorists within the US.....

The CIA’s agenda starting in the late 1970s was to recruit and train jihadist “freedom fighters” (Mujahideen) to wage “a war of liberation” directed against the pro-Soviet secular government of Afghanistan.

The CIA, frequently dubbed Cocaine Import Agency, here, has also been dubbed the private military of the New World Order that seeks global UN governance through the totalitarian marriage of big business and big government.  The CIA jumps into action whenever some corporation is lusting for a natural resource to exploit/steal or some psychopathic politico starts screaming 'regime change' which in America happens just about every day.

Ronald Reagan even entertained the Afghan Mujuhadeen at the White House.

The Global Research article goes on:

The “Islamic Jihad” (or holy war against the Soviets) became an integral part of the CIA’s intelligence ploy. It was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia, with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:

“In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166 … [which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies — a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987 … as well as a “ceaseless stream” of CIA and Pentagon specialists who travelled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan’s ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There, the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.”(Steve Coll, The Washington Post, July 19, 1992.)

Mujahideen from a large number of Muslim countries were recruited by the CIA. Jihadists from the Muslim republics (and autonomous regions) of the Soviet Union were also recruited.(For further analysis see Michael Chossudovsky, Al Qaeda and the “War on Terrorism”, Global Research, January 20, 2008)

Al Qaeda and the Chechnya Jihad

Chechnya is an autonomous region of the Russian Federation.

Among the recruits for specialized training in the early 1990s was the leader of the Chechnya rebellion Shamil Basayev who –in the immediate wake of the Cold War– led Chechnya’s first secessionist war against Russia.

During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander “Al Khattab” who had fought as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev’s return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early 1995) to set up an army base in Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC, Khattab’s posting to Chechnya had been “arranged through the Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief Organisation, a militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into Chechnya”.(BBC, 29 September 1999).

Make no mistake.  Radical Islam as practiced in Saudi Arabia (Sunni Salafist Wahhabism) is not only the most violent form of Islam ever to exist, its expansion into many other nations could not have been facilitated without the covert and overt cooperation between the House of Saud, the CIA and the US government.

Radical Islam is very much the spawn of US foreign policy that is always in cahoots with the evil House of Saud.  The relationship between the US and the House of Saud is the progeny of Big Oil and its goal of maintaining its cartel and cozy business relationships with some world class thieves, murderers, human rights abusers and psychopaths.

In 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with foreign reporters and said:

“Why don't you meet Usama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace? You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?”

Putin was referring to the 2002 takeover of a Moscow theater that resulted in 850 hostages and the deaths of 130 hostages, and the slaughter of 330 hostages, mostly children, by radical Chechnya Islamists who seized a school in 2004 along with 1,100 hostages.

This is the true face of US foreign policy and its House of Saud/CIA alliance that has been actively going on since the days of Jimmy Carter.   Much has been written about the US/Saudi/Bush connection.

Sleeping With the Devil: How U.S. and Saudi Backing of Al Qaeda Led to 9/11 Washington's Blog

The Bush-Saudi Connection hermes-press.com

WikiLeaks: Saudi Millions Fund Radical Madrassas in Pakistan  Daily Kos

The Saudi's don't just fund radical madrassas in Pakistan, they fund them everywhere, even in the US where a lot of benign and harmless Muslims become radicalized.  Pakistan remains the most dangerous nation on the planet because it became a nuclear power with US/CIA blessings and it's teeming with radical Sunni Muslims trained in the art of fanatical jihad.

One thing is certain - Obama, like Clinton and Bush, will do everything and anything to protect the House of Saud and its evil interpretation of Islam.  When nations are poor and suffering, especially during a break-up as expansive and catastrophic as the Soviet Union, desperate folks will succumb to anything for food and necessities.  They will even turn their children over to Saudi madrassas for education and affiliate with radical mosques that offer food and medicine.

What happened in Chechnya was an absolute humanitarian horror that would not have occurred without US and Saudi funding.  Therefore, when we think of Chechens as the Boston Bombers what we really need to think about is:  Who is responsible for creating these monsters?

Boston Bombers Were On CIA Payroll: Debka

Were the Boston Marathon ‘bomb brothers’ on the CIA’s payroll? According to this breaking story from Debka.com, they absolutely were and in fact, were double agents. We recently heard from the aunt of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who shared with news outlets that the oldest brother had been watched by the FBI for YEARS and that the ‘boys’ had been set up. So, why didn’t the FBI do anything to stop this tragedy? Did the FBI WANT this to occur? If not the FBI, then WHO wanted the Boston Marathon bombing to take place? Did someone VERY HIGH up in the US government help to make sure that this ‘false flag’ attack upon America happened or was this just a case of two brothers breaking free from their CIA ‘overlords’? From Debka: “We now know this was a charade. The authorities knew exactly who they were. Suddenly, during the police pursuit of their getaway car from the MIT campus on Friday, they were fully identified.” More below from Debka.

The big questions buzzing over Boston Bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have a single answer: The conclusion reached by DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism and intelligence sources is that the brothers were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which, helped by Saudi financial institutions, had spread across the restive Russian Caucasian.

They were concerned to enough to send Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal to Washington Wednesday, April 17, in the middle of the Boston Marathon bombing crisis, for a private conversation with President Barack Obama and his national security adviser Tom Donilon on how to handle the Saudi angle of the bombing attack.

The Tsarnaevs’ recruitment by US intelligence as penetration agents against terrorist networks in southern Russia explains some otherwise baffling features of the event. (Read those baffling features at Debka.com)

Debka.com is an Israeli intelligence site. Debka also reported: "Boston Bombers had Saudi Wahhabi links, US-Saudi talks on how to handle the Saudi connection.".  The article is premium content and only available to subscribers.

Personally, I don't agree with Debka that the Tsarnaev brothers were hired by the CIA and the Saudis to infiltrate Wahhabi jihadist networks because the US and the Saudi's create jihad networks.

As the Boston Bombing continues to raise way more questions than answers, the government and media propaganda machines have kicked into high gear to spread lies.

It's more than hilarious that the boots of 9,000 cops and government agents on the ground couldn't even find one teenager supposedly on the loose with bombs and guns.  It took a homeowner going outside to smoke a cigarette after the lockdown was lifted who noticed that the tarp covering the boat in his driveway was in disarray and covered in blood.  All this occurred not far from the site of the shootout where an estimated 200-300 bullets were fired and apparently struck the teen who managed to limp away and find shelter in a nearby boat.  

Even weirder is that any sniffer dog could have sniffed the trail of blood to the boat.  The Boston Marathon event had bomb sniffing dogs that were apparently a big fail.

If the government has high tech infrared x-ray cameras and similarly equipped drones and helicopters, it raises the question of how these cameras missed the Boston Bombers carrying pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon and again missed an alleged shot and bleeding terrorist who managed to escape the gargantuan police net.

The US Police State is hugely expensive and spares no expense.  Yet, it was totally worthless in stopping the Boston Marathon bombing as well as worthless in capturing the alleged terrorist bomber.

If anything, the epic fail of Homeland Security, the FBI and Boston PD should greatly disturb Americans and Bostonians who suffered through terrifying and intrusive house to house swat team searches.

But at the end of the day, all the government and police departments want is for the American sheeple people to applaud the federalized Keystone Cops and wrap themselves in a flag as a display of gratitude.  For what?

The government celebrates:  Mission Accomplished.