The Land of the Free

Written By: - Date published: 10:13 am, October 16th, 2013 - 15 comments
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The Republican majority in the US House of Representatives changed their standing orders to remove the right of any Representative to move that a Senate resolution be adopted. Watch Rep Chris van Hollen explain it here. If his motion was allowed to come to the floor, there would be enough moderate Republicans in the House who would support the Democrats, and the gridlock that threatens the world economy would be removed. No wonder the Republicans are tanking in the polls.

15 comments on “The Land of the Free ”

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  1. johnm 1
    16 October 2013 at 10:40 am

    “Washington Brinksmanship
    Masks Class War”

    http://www.rense.com/general96/mashbrink.html

    Basically the once proud United States of America is going down the plug hole of Milton Friedman neoliberal madness replicating Pinochet’s Chile. Bye Bye U$$$$$$$$

    “What began in the late 1970s continues out-of-control. America’s top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 95%.
    Social inequality defines today’s America. It’s unprecedented or close to it. Poverty, unemployment, homelessness and hunger reflect Depression era levels.
    Tens of millions of working age Americans are unemployed. Most others are underemployed. Families struggle to get by.
    Income inequality is greater than in all other developed countries. Over three-fourths of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck.
    Neoliberal harshness explains why. It bears repeating. Bipartisan complicity demands it. It’s institutionalized. Wall Street wants more. ”

    Now the Land of the (Free) Greedy and the endless Needy. 🙁

    And, http://www.rense.com/general96/debtc.html

    • johnm 1.1
      16 October 2013 at 11:09 am

      “The final days of empire give ample employment and power to the feckless, the insane and the idiotic. These politicians and court propagandists, hired to be the public faces on the sinking ship, mask the real work of the crew, which is systematically robbing the passengers as the vessel goes down. The mandarins of power stand in the wheelhouse barking ridiculous orders and seeing how fast they can gun the engines. They fight like children over the ship’s wheel as the vessel heads full speed into a giant ice field. They wander the decks giving pompous speeches. They shout that the SS America is the greatest ship ever built. They insist that it has the most advanced technology and embodies the highest virtues. And then, with abrupt and unexpected fury, down we will go into the frigid waters. ”

      http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/10/15/329496/the-folly-of-empire/

      “The last days of empire are carnivals of folly. We are in the midst of our own, plunging forward as our leaders court willful economic and environmental self-destruction. Sumer and Rome went down like this. So did the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Men and women of stunning mediocrity and depravity led the monarchies of Europe and Russia on the eve of World War I. And America has, in its own decline, offered up its share of weaklings, dolts and morons to steer it to destruction. A nation that was still rooted in reality would never glorify charlatans such as Sen. Ted Cruz, House Speaker John Boehner and former Speaker Newt Gingrich as they pollute the airwaves. If we had any idea what was really happening to us we would have turned in fury against Barack Obama, whose signature legacy will be utter capitulation to the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex and the security and surveillance state. We would have rallied behind those few, such as Ralph Nader, who denounced a monetary system based on gambling and the endless printing of money and condemned the willful wrecking of the ecosystem. We would have mutinied. We would have turned the ship back. “

      • johnm 1.1.1
        16 October 2013 at 1:04 pm

        “Allied to the old abuses is a newer kind of superversion: the attempts by billionaires and their lieutenants to destroy the functions of the state. Note the current shutdown – and the debt ceiling confrontation scheduled for Thursday – in the United States. The Republicans, propelled by a Tea Party movement created by the Koch brothers and financed by a gruesome collection of multi-millionaires(2,3), have engineered what in other circumstances would be called a general strike. The difference is that the withdrawal of their labour has been imposed on the workers.”
        “The narrow purpose of the strike is to prevent the distribution of wealth to poorer people, through the Affordable Care Act. The wider purpose (aside from a refusal to accept the legitimacy of a black president) is to topple the state as an effective instrument of taxation, regulation and social protection. The Koch shock troops in the Republican party seem prepared to inflict almost any damage in pursuit of this insurgency, including – if they hold out on Thursday – a US government default, which could trigger a new global financial crisis(4).”

        http://www.monbiot.com/2013/10/14/elite-insurgency/

        “They do so on behalf of a class which has, in effect, seceded(5). It floats free of tax and the usual bonds of citizenship, jetting from one jurisdiction to another as it seeks the most favourable havens for its wealth. It removes itself so thoroughly from the life of the nation that it scarcely uses even the roads. Yet, through privatisation and outsourcing, it is capturing the public services on which the rest of us depend.”

    • johnm 1.2
      16 October 2013 at 2:01 pm

      “My dream is to be a middle school math teacher. My college degree is in computer science, and I used to be a substitute teacher. I know this probably won’t happen. For now, I do what I have to. I just wish people wouldn’t make assumptions about me, especially that I am crazy or a criminal.”

      “What You Learn About Humanity From Living on the Streets
      Since I became homeless, people have stolen my belongings and assumed I’m a prostitute. A few have been incredibly kind
      By Mary, homeless in New York ”

      http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36533.htm

      So much for the land of the Greedy and the endlessly Needy. 🙁

      • Chooky 1.2.1
        16 October 2013 at 3:43 pm

        @ johnm…thanks very much!…very sober reading…I wonder if what is happening in USA presently is just reckless brinkmanship…. or the deliberate and sinister engineering of a situation of defaulting on debt repayments…. which will be far more devastating and far-reaching?

    • Draco T Bastard 1.3
      16 October 2013 at 2:14 pm

      Basically the once proud United States of America is going down the plug hole of Milton Friedman neoliberal madness replicating Pinochet’s Chile.

      And the 19th century through to the Great Depression. Just a couple of wars to go through next.

  2. Zorr 2
    16 October 2013 at 10:49 am

    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/rep-slaughter-grills-gop-official-over-rule-

    Things like this show that not all Democrats are just the 2nd head of the hydra

    Scary times in all honesty, scary times

    • Colonial Viper 2.1
      16 October 2013 at 11:11 pm

      The congressmen keep getting paid even as the rest of the government does not. It’s totally shit.

  3. vto 3
    16 October 2013 at 11:21 am

    everyone got their gold bars stashed and ready for pandemonium?

    personally I reckon this wont be the main failure point of the world’s biggest ever Ponzi scheme – that will come later soon, quickly and quietly via some other mechanism or cocked-up cog, and the floodgates will be open.

    • Draco T Bastard 3.1
      16 October 2013 at 2:27 pm

      personally I reckon this wont be the main failure point of the world’s biggest ever Ponzi scheme

      You’re probably right there but it is certainly one of the more notable steps along the way to the collapse of the US Empire.

    • Draco T Bastard 4.1
      16 October 2013 at 2:34 pm

      Workers or employees make up the bulk of any society, with a minority of employers constituting the top few per cent of earners. By mathematically modelling historical data, Turchin finds that as population grows, workers start to outnumber available jobs, driving down wages. The wealthy elite then end up with an even greater share of the economic pie, and inequality soars.

      And exactly what we’re seeing in NZ.

  5. greywarbler 5
    16 October 2013 at 12:16 pm

    I daren’t listen to the media bout the USA debacle. I fear it like I would a dangerous drug. Some of them can screw your head up on first use apparently. Then you’re nearly ruined for life.
    And is there a day when the USA isn’t in our top news, or dominating it? And this is before they officially and officiously take over our country, when our precious government that we paid so much for (send it back – it’s still within warranty and demand a replacement) decides in favour of signing TPPA because of TINA and other choice acronyms used by the in-group to avoid a waste of valuable energy expressing in full what they are actually doing and their thoughts on it, if any.

    Same with the USA news – the basis of all that we have been taught about good and right and justice and apple pie has been rent in tatters. And this has been happening as I have spent some study time on the subject. I had never got down to the fine points of the McCarthy communist subversion debacle soon after WW2. Reading about that was an eye-opener. Lies and smoke screens camouflaging reality and rhetoric and gullibility and lack of acuity and political advantage and staying in power and easy street was what it’s all about. and this stuff today seems just a gross exploded version.

  6. joe90 6
    16 October 2013 at 2:50 pm

    Seems it’s all about other peoples wombs.

    Conservative House members expressed a desire Tuesday to fund the government only until Dec. 15 in order to force a fight over ObamaCare’s birth control mandate.

    Members of the House GOP discussed a proposal that would reopen the government through mid-December, just weeks before a provision of the mandate takes effect on Jan. 1 for religiously affiliated groups.

    Republicans seemed adrift after canceling a vote on a debt-limit plan Tuesday night.

    But members of the party signaled concerns about letting the Jan. 1 date pass without waging a battle over contraception.

    “It boils down to conscience protections that basically become compromised on the first of January, and that’s bothersome to a lot of people,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/328715-conservatives-pushing-for-fight-over-birth-control-mandate

    http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/10/14/how-abortion-is-being-used-as-a-ruse-to-attack-health-care-writ-large/

  7. Martin 7
    16 October 2013 at 11:00 pm

    Boehner [pronounced burner not bainer or boner!*] cannot end the impasse. only congressman Cantor can due to a little trick played by the GOP that thought it was being clever.

    http://www.robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/the-gops-little-rule-they-hoped-you.html

    * Boehner is a German name, if I am right, and on spelling should be pronounced like “Goering”
    [example only]