LUV Newsletter on Occupy News

MORE CRUSHING OF DEMOCRACY IN THE NIGHT, LAST NIGHT

William Robinson begins a piece everyone who wants to get beyond the corporate viewpoint propaganda of mass media should read this morning, “As the crisis of global capitalism spirals out of control, the powers that be in the global system appear to be adrift and unable to propose viable solutions. From the slaughter of dozens of young protesters by the army in Egypt to the brutal repression of the Occupy movement in the United States, and the water cannons brandished by the militarized police in Chile against students and workers, states and ruling classes are unable are to hold back the tide of worldwide popular rebellion and must resort to ever more generalized repression.

“Simply put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy can no longer be contained through consensual mechanisms of social control. The ruling classes have lost legitimacy; we are witnessing a breakdown of ruling-class hegemony on a world scale.”

Indeed there were crackdowns in the middle of the night again, last night, against the Democracy Movement in what appears to be another coordinated effort by the Obama regime (we have no smoking gun, and Obama is not responding to requests under the Freedom of Information Act to let the public know what their government is doing in secret to crush peaceful protests, so citizens are left to assume it is just a coincidence that the crackdown occurred on the same night in cities 3,000 miles apart). Occupy Los Angeles and Occupy Philadelphia, two of the larger remaining protests in the country, were beset by a massive army of police in riot gear, as though the people are the enemy, with hundreds being arrested at the camps and in street marches following.

We believe at LUV News despite the propaganda that these night time raids are intended to make it difficult for alternative and international media, the only ones to objectively cover the crackdown on democracy. Journalists who may be present during the day are absent in the middle of the night, and anyone trying to film in the dark knows the limitations. The Gestapo would have been proud of these undemocratic actions.

NPR began their report on last night’s crackdowns this morning saying some of the protesters appeared to try to provoke a confrontation, without pointing out that the police were obviously provoking the confrontation. All of the mass media reported the crackdowns last night from the viewpoint of the police and authorities, willing as they are to maintain the corrupt system that provides them with jobs as long as they spew the propaganda on cue, kneeling and kissing butt without so much as an eyebrow raised in defiance of the ruling Forces of Greed.

The Borowitz Report

As Cain Drops Out, Pro-adultery Voters Shift to Gingrich

Biggest GOP Voting Bloc, Experts Say

CONCORD, NH (The Borowitz Report) – Herman Cain withdrew from the Republican presidential race today, a move that resulted in millions of pro-adultery voters shifting their support to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The shift in support is significant because pro-adultery voters represent the single largest voting bloc in the Republican Party, experts say.

Tracy Klugian, a prominent adulterer from Concord, New Hampshire, said he was sorry to see Mr. Cain leave the race “because he was very committed to the one issue I care about: namely, adultery.”

But he added that he had been in touch with many other adulterers in the state and that they were all switching to Mr. Gingrich.

“Even when we were supporting Cain, a lot of us were supporting Gingrich behind his back,” the adulterer said.  “I guess that’s how we do.”

Mario Piperni on Hermie’s Follies

Herman Cain – The Wannabe ‘American-Tea-Party Berlusconi’

November 30, 2011 By mario piperni

It’s all over for Herman Cain.  Unless the man is a glutton for pain and punishment, he’ll be out of the primary before the end of the week. With the latest revelation of an alleged 13 year affair, Cain has now lost the support of many who once supported and defended him.

Mike Huckabee:

“The allegation is one that could upend his presidential campaign. Unlike the harassment charges, which he denied, he said this was a private answer. In essence, he may have given an answer that will be very difficult for him to work himself out of.”

Dennis Miller:

“Herman — who I still like — seems like a goofball now.”

But nothing I’ve read comes close to the epic rant delivered by conservative filmmaker, Ladd Ehlinger Jr., in a beaut of a post he brilliantly titled ‘When Book Tours Go Bad‘.

Mr. Cain: you do NOT run for President in these times unless you are serious about it. It’s flat-out apparent now that you aren’t, weren’t, and never will be. A serious candidate would have released all the dirt on himself before any of it dripped-dripped-dripped out.

But hey, you never thought that your con to sell your books would actually spark, did you? You never thought that good, decent, hard-working American people would actually believe what you said. Now here you are, trapped like a lying fly in amber, hoping to get the big brass ring without any other dirt coming out on you.

All you are doing is playing your friends, your supporters, and some of my very good friends for your own fame and glory. And drinking parties. Yes – you drink like a fish, you flirt all over the place, and everyone who’s attended CPAC knows it. Nothing wrong with partying. Unless you lie about it. And try to deceive the public about it. If you want to be the American-Tea-Party Berlusconi, then be up front about it, don’t be a damned coward.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

The “lying fly in amber” and “Amercian-Tea-Party Berlusconi” are two lines which need to be engraved in stone.  They’re that good.

It took this latest scandal for some conservatives to understand Cain’s game.  Namely, that Cain never imagined in his wildest dreams that he’d be leading the pack one month before the Iowa caucus. He lucked into a situation where none of the candidates had broad appeal which left him as the anti-Romney candidate after both Bachmann and Perry failed to deliver.  Cain’s play from the start was to brand his name, sell more books and create enough buzz about Herman Cain to allow him to increase his motivational speaking fees. He might also have been looking for a Fox News gig after the primary similar to the deal that Huckabee and Palin received after the 2008 election.

Now with his dirty past exposed, all might be lost for Cain and, ironically, his downfall will have been his success. If he had been able to maintain a 5% showing in the polls, he would have been able to remain under the radar and hung in until after the Iowa caucus in early January. Not seen as a threat, no one would have cared much about Cain’s total lack of preparedness for the job of president nor would his sexual dalliances have been used against him.

Instead, what would have been remembered were his magnetic personality, lovely sense of humor and great baritone voice. He would have solidified the Hermanator brand, sold a ton of books and given Roger Ailes an opportunity to offer a black man with solid conservative creds his own time slot on Fox. A win-win for all.

But the gods had a different plan in mind for the lying and conniving pizza man.  By mid-December, Herman Cain’s books should be available in the $1 book bins at your local Barnes & Noble.

HD Radio

Thinking of buying an HD radio for that special someone? Think again. The overlords of radio have been desperately trying to make some return on their big investments in the junk science, but the latest development, noted here in our sister blog on public radio, is just more of the same shit — spectrum grab that would like to muscle out the little guys in radio.

LUV Newsletter and the NY Times

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S PRINTED TO FIT

Glenn Greenwald goes into the latest propaganda of the New York Times, which is always at the forefront of spreading National Security State propaganda.  This one is about the recent slaughter of Pakistani soldiers by NATO, and the horror omitted.

Nobody spread the lies to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq more than did the NY Times, both in their page one “news” stories and their opinion pieces, where both the so-called “liberals” and “conservatives” agreed that the people of Iraq had to suffer like no others on the planet. These scumbags should be held to be as responsible as the Bush regime they supported.

As we’ve often pointed out, we gave the facts, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even as the NY Times ran the Bush regime lies on page one. Journalism is not complicated, it’s just relaying what actually happened, rather than a fabricated version. Our multibillion-dollar mass media empire could get it right with very little effort if it wanted to challenge its owners, board members and advertisers.

Of course, everyone involved in reporting the truth around the National Security State propaganda would lose their job, like reporter Ray Bonner of the New York Times, who lost his for reporting the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador after the Reagan regime asked Times editors to kill the story. The story was killed and Bonner was canned.

We could out NY Times propaganda every day, so blatant is their misinformation.

* * *

Most of the rhetoric one hears over the mass media concerning the economy supports the 1% at the expense of us peasants. Most economic theory allowed into the mass media of the Land of the Free is to influence public opinion in the propaganda direction that, if more is given to the wealthy, something will trickle down to workers, so these policies are good for everyone. Mass media people get to keep their jobs in return for spreading this line that gets to every American, thousands of times, as they grow up in what has become a kind of zombie land.

Less and less has trickled down as the wealthy negotiated free trade pacts that would get them around environmental and labor laws, privatized government, and globalized finances. They now produce products cheaper, using slave labor, child labor and prison labor—things that were outlawed in the past. More profit goes to the wealthy than ever before, and less goes to the worker.

Average wages for Americans peaked in 1973 and have declined since, when inflation is considered. The minimum wage peaked in 1968 and has declined so much it has lost about a third of its buying power. But at the top there are people bringing in more wealth than ever existed before—wealth that would have previously gone to the working class.

Those who inherit wealth have always had advantages over those who work for a living, but now the difference between those who invest and those who work are greater than ever.

In [this] piece [on Common Dreams], Dean Baker shows that our mass media talking heads don’t really want “free trade,” it’s just a con job. What they really want is for their masters to have everything, as people die in the richest nation on earth every day for a lack of health care that is guaranteed in other industrialized nations. —Jack

Mario Piperni on Repug in Name Only

A Conservative Willing To Call Himself a RINO

November 29, 2011 By mario piperni

Add the name of professor and blogger (foreignpolicy.com) Daniel W. Drezner to the list of prominent conservatives who have had enough with Republican’s destructive and self-serving brand of politics.

I’m not a Democrat, and I don’t think I’ve become more liberal over time.  That said, three things have affected my political loyalties over the past few years.  First, I’ve become more uncertain about various dimensions of GOP ideology over time.  It’s simply impossible for me to look at the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis and not ponder the myriad ways in which my party has made some categorical errors in judgment.   So I’m a bigger fan of the politics of doubt during an era when doubt has been banished in political discourse.

Second, the GOP has undeniably shifted further to the right over the past few years, and while I’m sympathetic to some of these shifts, most of it looks like a mutated version of “cargo cult science” directed at either Ludwig Von Mises or the U.S. Constitution (which, of course, is sacred and inviolate, unless conservatives want to amend it).  Sorry, I’m not embracing outdated concepts like the gold standard or repealing the 16th Amendment.  Not happening.

…

Also, things that weren’t said are now being said.  Or, to be more precise, things that use to be said but ignored are now being taken seroiusly by the GOP’s leading lights.  Newt Gingrich endorses the notion that Obama has a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview.  Mitt Romney claims Obama has been apologizing around the world and no longer believes in American exceptionalism.  …  There’s good, solid partisanship — a vital necessity in this country – and then there’s unadulterated horses**t.  Too much of the GOP’s rhetoric on Obama reads like the latter to me. 

So for those reasons, I really am a Republican in Name Only at this point.

Refreshing and certainly better late than never.  I’ve often wondered how thinking conservatives (yes, those in possession of a real brain with the ability to reason and discern truth from fiction) could remain loyal to a party that gave them George W. Bush and Sarah Palin.  I’m not referring to your run-of-the-mill teabagger or Fox News devotee.  Those people would vote for a barnyard pig if it had an ‘R’ tattooed to its butt and O’Reilly or Limbaugh praised the pig’s wonderful record of achievement.

I’m referring to the Frum/Sullivan type of staunch conservative who have not abdicated their right to think objectively.  How did they carry on through those eight painful years of neoconservative abuse and neglect?  I imagine it takes a certain amount of time and soul searching for one to come to grips with the realization that a loved one has gone mad.  I would think that for most intelligent and rational people, justifying political insanity becomes more difficult over time.

Again…better late than never.

I much enjoyed Andrew Sullivan’s response when asked by Howard Kurtz as to how he reconciles his current harsh criticism of Republicans with his own conservatism.  “Because I’m still a conservative and they are not.”  Nice.

As I’ve noted before, if the Republican party is to ever survive its current crippling onslaught of madness on conservatism, it will be because of the efforts of strong minded conservatives like Drezner, Frum and Sullivan who are willing to call out the empty-headed emperor when caught wearing no clothes.  And these days, the emperor has made the conscious decision to burn his entire wardrobe.

The Borowitz Report

Poll: 28% Think Cain Had Affair; 28% Don’t Think Cain Had Affair; 44% Having Affair with Cain Right Now

Millions of Exes Could Spell Trouble for Candidate

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) – In a new poll of likely GOP voters, 28% think Herman Cain had an extramarital affair, 28% do not think he had an affair, and 44% are having an affair with Herman Cain right now.

Of the voters currently having sex with Mr. Cain, 52% called the relationship “special,” 38% called it “inappropriate,” and 10% agreed with the statement “I know I am Herman’s soul mate and someday we’ll be together.”

According to Davis Logsdon, who conducted the poll for the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, the numbers could spell trouble for the former pizza executive: “There is no precedent for a successful White House run by a man with over ten million exes.”

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer today, Mr. Cain seemed to brush off the latest development, saying, “Now you know why I got your name wrong, Blitz – I have a lot of names to keep straight in my head.”

Mr. Cain added, “My message to the American people remains the same, and that message is, ‘I told you not to call me here.’”

But later in the day Mr. Cain got a got a harsh scolding from Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich: “If Herman is in fact having sex with millions of Americans, he needs to do the right thing and marry them.”

BuzzFlash on Repug Xmas Swag

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, sent me an email enticing to me to buy Republican swag as a gift for the holidays. Frankly, I thought it was a parody when I looked at the individual items.

One of the bumper stickers I am still wrapping my brain around for some sense of sanity says, “Vote Democrat: It’s Easier Than Working.” Then, there’s a button that evokes a GOP rapture of sorts: “Visualize No Liberals.”

Of course, for sale is the inevitable Republican freeloader slogan: “If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Taxes.” Ah yes, “the everything for nothing party.”

Priebus’ offering of holiday gifts manages to be hypocritical and unimaginative at the same time – sort of like second grade insults.

But what makes it all the more perplexing is how the Republican Party in DC – short of the libertarian wing such as Ron Paul – vigorously affirms subsidizing corporations and Wall Street with tax dollars. That’s socialism for the moneyed class that the GOP supports.

This most recently came to light, ironically, with a Bloomberg news report, “Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion.”

This occurred under the Bush administration, and it was a clear taxpayer subsidy in the billions of dollars to Wall Street that were not paid back. As Bloomberg Markets magazine reveals, “no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates.”

This means the working stiff that the GOP so blithely mocks in its holiday “gifts” underwrote Wall Street with taxpayer dollars to the tune of billions of dollars.

Bloomberg news also notes in its analysis of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, “While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.”

Ah, so much for the faux Republican holiday sloganeering. Did Priebus have Fox “News” design the GOP Store gifts?

In fact, Priebus’ shilling of misleading propaganda for the holidays comes on a day that a federal court ruled that Citigroup’s $285 million slap-on-the-hand settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is not acceptable. Why?

Because the federal judge in New York said that the SEC fine doesn’t reveal the truth about Citigroup’s financial misbehavior. According to The Associated Press report:

Judge Jed Rakoff rejected the settlement Monday. The deal would have imposed penalties on Citigroup even as it allowed the company to deny allegations that it misled investors on a complex mortgage investment. The SEC has accused the bank of betting against the investment in 2007 and making $160 million, while investors lost millions.

The judge wrote that there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth about the financial markets.

What would an Occupy Wall Street holiday button read?

Maybe, “Visualize the Republican Fraudsters Going to Jail.”

Or, “Vote Republican and Ensure Taxpayer Subsidies for Wall Street.”

That’s a store at which I would shop.

Mark Karlin,
Editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout

LUV Newsletter on Endless War

NEW WARS BEING PLANNED

Pepe Escobar gives a magnificent interview (video) in which he explains geopolitical issues involving a potential NATO attack on Syria, Iran, and the continued push toward Cold War with Russia. We believe Escobar’s analysis is far more believable than anything we’ve seen in the mass media, and should be viewed by those wishing to understand potential impending wars.

In response to the military buildup by the Empire on Russia’s borders, likely intended to push them into a new arms race on behalf of the Nuclear Mafia that is firmly in charge of Pentagon policy, Russia has responded. Russia has built a new radar system (operational tomorrow) that will detect missile launches from the West, including all of Europe.

Russia has good reason to fear a military buildup on their borders from the West. In Russia’s worst wars, the attack came from the West, including attacks by Napoleon and Hitler.

The significance of this cannot be overstated. With all of the other countermeasures Russia has implemented, and the continued escalation by the US (expansion of NATO on Russia’s borders without explanation, Star Wars spread around Russia in bordering countries and on US naval ships with outright lies to justify it) the old Cold War arms race has been renewed, to the delight of our ruling Forces of Greed, who stand to make hundreds of billions or even trillions of tax dollars from it, depending on how this scenario plays out.

There will be a massive amount of Nuclear Mafia campaign funding to the Obama reelection campaign for this, and for all the other new wars that enrich them at the expense of the 99%.

VIETNAMISTAN

One gets an entirely different point of view from the people of Pakistan than the sickening propaganda of the American mass media about the “war on terrorism” in what the Pentagon calls “AfPak.” Americans are not told about the sacrifices of the Pakistani people in assisting the Empire. Watching corporate media since the NATO killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers, we notice corporate media reporters broadcasting from Afghanistan rather than Pakistan, not even on the scene, so we assume they are merely relaying what information NATO military authorities give them (at LUV News we do not call this “journalism,” but propaganda).

“The time is ripe for Pakistan to part ways with the U.S in the war against terror because NATO and the U.S. don’t recognize our efforts and losses,” said Islam Gul, a student at the international relations department of the University of Peshawar.

“Pakistan has sacrificed 35,000 people including 5,000 soldiers in the U.S.-led war against terrorism. The U.S. has no respect for our sacrifices. The [Pakistani] soldiers who are fighting the American war on their own soil should be rewarded for their bravery rather than getting killed,” said Arbab Asmatullah Khan.

“Pakistan should not fear the U.S. and should stop all its cooperation. Once Pakistan withdraws its support from the U.S., suicide and bomb attacks would not occur,” said local resident Khushee Akhtar.

Apparently not understanding any of this, our Pentagon leaders are “Bracing for Reprisals,” ready to shoot it out with fabricated Pakistani Intelligence-supported Taliban (our sources, including high ranking Pakistani military officers, have told us this is ridiculous). The Pentagon solution to every problem is more firepower.

The strategy appears to be if the Empire kills enough people in AfPak, the region will be pacified. Unheeded is the lesson from Vietnam, that each person you kill has family and friends who may want revenge, expanding the number of rifles aimed at you exponentially, as is happening in AfPak.