Sorry, it is http://www.cluborlov.com , (not orlove), sorry again for the error.

Nightguant,

FYI, link does not work. 

Things look bleak, Arrow Trucking I had seen their trucks on the road, but the jobs lost are what happens when the population has no money to buy goods.  Small merchants in my area seem to have closed many shops. What is strange thing are changing, but not in the way we had hoped.

In the end things may become worse or just different, but I can always hope, though I feel like the optimist looking at looming head light of an express train, musing to ones self, “maybe things will become better”? 

Having ones health and a means to provide for existence, what else is there? Though both can be taken from one in an instant, the Arrow Trucking story is a case in point.

Of course during the last Great Depression (we are in one now) they didn’t sellout our jobs overseas either. We are poised to go into a Greater Depression when the triage fails. Nothing has been done to fix anything. Now why is that I wonder? Just mindless greed or something more? I have come to the conclusion of something more. Now if I am wrong we could easily collapse to the 5th level of dissolution for a civilization. http://www.cluborlove.com Either that or a theocratic corporate totalitarian one. That is if nothing continues to be done to change how things are now. War with Iran would trigger the final fall of the Republic easily. What is next is an empire. It is our choice.

One thing though Ruth, next time don’t mar such a truthfully pessimistic Christmas masterpiece with a great big turd statement like “But the president is thoughtful and pragmatic. He may have too many priorities, but they are the right ones. His first year in office has demonstrated a useful combination of steadiness and flexibility—steadiness in pursuit of a goal and flexibility in the means to achieve it.” That’s just gross and uncalled for. As for the rest: brilliantly cautionary.

Great article. Don’t worry about having waxed our turkeys, Ruth, slowly but surely we Americans are becoming grateful for the truth. It’s been such a long and delirious fast, truth-wise. It was a great gift for us. Keep on giving. If we make it through the next decade even slightly intact, it will have been for the alarm bells that the few and courageous had been ringing furiously in defiance of the moral malaise the mince-munching majority.

Revision minus the typos:

SCHIZOID CHRISTMAS 2009
Impossible to account logically or reasonably for the psychic disconnect between listening on PBS Christmas programming at a marine base where soldiers are celebrating the holiday before they take off for Afghanistan—some of them having had multiple tours of duty.  They are gathered at the base with wives, mothers and children, having a final turkey/ham dinner together.
  They seem gay, not at all reflective, and determined not to show what an observer could only regard under such circumstances as their “real” emotions.  There is a sad surrealism lurking behind this program, as though the same idividuals were living in the same moment two different lives—their “true” life, and the false-face life of war in a country thousands of miles away.
  On full display is a schizophrenic chasm between will and desire, between sense and madness, between familiar and strange, warm affection and the chill of kill-or-be-killed.
  This double life,  being demanded over periods of years from tens of thousands of young men and women—to say nothing of their children and other family members—-this tortuous split of will and intention, of duty and choice is asking much for nothing, and will be revenged.
  Against this smiling agony I hear the traditional songs, over and over, and the sepulchral voice of Dylan Thomas with his “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” ... “snowballing the cats ...and I knocked my brother down, and he knocked me down, ... and then we had tea ... and the bright tin soldiers ... always won.”

SCHIZOID CHRISTMAS 2009
Impossible to account logically or reasonably for the psychic disconnect between listening on PBS to the Christmas programming at a marine base where soldiers are celebrating the holiday before they take off for Afghanistan—some of them having had multiple tours of duty.  They are gathered at the base with wives, mothers and children, having a final turkey/ham dinner together.
  They seem gay, not at all reflective, and determined not to show what an observer could only regard under such circumstances as their “real” emotions.  There is a sad surrealism lurking behind this program, as though the same idividuals were living in the same moment two different lives—their “true” life, and the false-face life of war in a country thousands of miles away.
  On full display is a schizophrenic chasm between will and desire, between sense and madness, between familiar and strange, warm affection and the chill of kill-or-be-killed.
  This double life,  being demanded over periods of years from tens of thousands of young men and women—to say nothing of their children and other family embers—this tortuous split of will and intention, of duty and choice is asking much for nothing and will be revenged.
  Against this smiling agony I hear the traditional songs, over and over, and the sepulchral voice of Dylan Thomas with his “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” ... “snowbathen lling the cats ...and I knocked my brother down, and he knocked me down, ... and then we had tea ... and the bright tin soldiers ... always won.”

Arrow Trucking out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, shut its doors abruptly, without warning, three days before Christmas, leaving 1400 truck drivers stranded around the country. A middle-aged couple, both truck drivers working for Arrow, was featured in a local Tulsa newspaper, Tulsa World, as having lost everything. From the article by Shannon Muchmore:

“Harbaugh (one of the drivers) said she was still in shock over the situation.

” ‘We have no home. We have no car. We have no job. We have no benefits,’ she said. ‘We have nothing.’ “

The truckers’ story exemplifies the current economic situation in America. Despite the media mantra, “Everything is going to be okay,” which the talking-heads chant as though everything will soon be put to rights and affluence will bless us once again, the engine of our economy is dead in the water. America is adrift in the sea of commerce. The Clipper China Wind is passing us with most of our treasure in her hold, full of gold that we willingly gave for the stuff (cheap Chinese crap) that America used to manufacture onshore.

This is not a joyful season for many, many Americans. I am afraid that the jobs will either be very slow coming back or they could be gone forever. I am afraid that what we are seeing is the establishment of a permanent underclass, an American version of the Indian caste system in which the lower castes have no hope of ever escaping abject poverty. The one- and two-percenter’s own everything. Oligarchs rule the rest of us. They run Congress, and they influence the president. Our senators and representatives cannot pass a Public Option health care bill because of the corrupt influence by insurance companies and PhaRMA. The system is utterly corrupt and broken for the common man, the working class and middle class, for those of us who make it from month to month, trying to keep our heads above water while our houses slip beneath it.

Over the past thirty years, and especially during the past 8 under George W. Bush, something fundamentally changed in our country. Democracy died when people stopped caring what happened to politics, when people stopped caring that wars were being waged overseas in our name, when Americans stopped being, well, American. As long as Americans had their piece of the pie, as small as that piece was, they were happy, as long as they had their lattes, Blackberries and corporate jobs. Now the economic pie is smashed; we have nothing left. Trucking companies abandon their employees on the Interstate. People are forced out of their homes. Tens of millions sit idle in unemployment. Retirement savings evaporate for many in a bad market. And all the while, the media broadcasts a sideshow of trivia and banality to distract us from noticing the quicksand we’re sinking into.

When social injustice affects the French, the French people take to the streets. Even the French-version of police, gendarmes, protest for better working conditions, improved benefits, etc. The French recently protested a change in the way corporations manufactured bread flour because it was adversely affecting their beloved baguettes. French protests changed the law such that wheat millers reverted to the stone-milling of the past to make superior flour. France, I needn’t remind anyone, has universal health care along with every Western country (and just about everyone else in the world). It’s only America (and Mexico) that doesn’t have universal health care.

What do Americans do when Congress drags its feet on health care reform? They sit on their proverbial asses, watch “American Idol” or football, and sip from the cups of denial and delusion. Either stand up for your rights, America, or accept a lower standard of living, no health care insurance, no jobs, no nothing, just like that couple who used to work for Arrow Trucking. Either take to the streets, America, or sit on your proverbial ass. Do you remember 1776? Remember 1789? Well, the French do.

People just “accept this pragmatism” because US Capitalism has been good for them and they dont care about anyone else.

Nothing important in history has ever been achieved by pragmatism

Thoughtful and Pragmatic are some nice adjectives for a President that just sent
30,000 troops to war!  But let’s forget about that.  He won the Nobel Peace Prize
so this must be a war for the greater good or something?  Excuse me but we don’t
need a leader that’s thoughtful and pragmatic.

I’ve never believed that Obama’s election ushered in a magical era of national harmony. But the president is thoughtful and pragmatic. He may have too many priorities, but they are the right ones. His first year in office has demonstrated a useful combination of steadiness and flexibility—steadiness in pursuit of a goal and flexibility in the means to achieve it.

Ho hum.  More of this bilge.  Steadiness.  Flexibility.  Truthdig seems dedicated to never giving up on Obama no matter how many times he gives this nation the purple shaft.

Dysfunctional Congress has a nice ring to it. But for reality it really seems Congress is run by opportunists of a higher order. How does it work? Are the lobbyists the ones who become members of Congress or is it the other way around? Even a well meaning individual with self righteous intent to help the people must change once the good old boy bonding has begun. 

Imagine a stranger or maybe not so much a stranger but someone how has helped you buy something or achieved something, comes by your house or place of work and offers to dine you, help you out in fatherly or motherly ways but with a twist. When the offer is an evening of delight with their beautiful lady friend What about a first class trip to Never Never land?  How about some money for your personal war chest, you will need it later for important survival things? What would one do, take the high road and say no thanks I need to worry about feeding my neighbors or those ass holes in Texas (pick a place not your own!).

No not dysfunctional, Congress has evolved to be what it has become and is functioning just like it should. Let’s see maybe like prostitutes, I mean opportunists of the highest bidder.

FRTothus,,,

Your post should make the front page

of Truthdig…..  It’s more better than anything

I’ve read in a long time…..  And the quote from

Orwell’s “1984” was the cherry on top of the

whipped cream….  “If you want to picture the

future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face,

Forever.”

Bush3 won’t need a second term.
Consider my ode to fascism:

AN ODE TO FASCISM

How many ways can we enslave thee,

let us count the ways,

first there’s old reliable, the web of debt.

Then we outsourced your jobs because

‘Arbeit Macht Frei’:“Work Sets You Free”

Arbeit verhindert Sklaverei: work prevents slavery.

Our toxic drugs and Monsantoized food supply will
make you sick

MIPIC,MEDICAL INSURANCE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIAL

CONSPIRACY will do the rest.

P.S.

The contract to steal the sign has the boys from Yale
stench all over it.

ed_tru_lib: 

Thanks. But my comments are not entirely factual.  I ranted about food stamps.  Ms. Marcus doesn’t mention them, only the entitlement for prescription drugs. My mistake.

But I stand by my argument.  Ms.  Marcus is parroting the language of politicians who strive for perpetual war at the expense of the people. 

Any expenditure benefiting the people is labeled with what has now become a pejorative: entitlement. 

Yet Ms. Marcus fails to analyze what is truly bankrupting our nation:  an economy financing a perpetual war machine and the debilitating costs that war passes down generation after generation. 

She doesn’t want to talk about it because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to talk about it.

No one in Washington (Kucinich and Ron Paul excluded) wants to stand up and say: no government in a perpetual state of war can long endure.

So maybe the real Good News is that “the coming decade” will only be three years long….though with all the amplifiers built-into their “global” death-dealing CONtraption the tormentors figure to pack ten-times the usual annual quota of manufactured misery into each of even these truncated latter days.  Ms. Marcus may expect some relief for herownself, though, for shilling so slap-happily here for the wannabe “masters-(and their mistresses)-of-the-(virtual)-universe even now collapsing upon them all.

Good luck with that.

Hokahey!

And by the way—what are these ads of “Americans for Prosperity” on this page for?  Sign a petition to “keep government out of health care?  Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?  Is Truthdig so hard-up they have to do this double-speak?  Or are they testing us to find out whether we can put 2 and 1 together and get 3?

Capitalism corrupts.  Absolute capitalism corrupts absolutely, or words to that effect.And by the way, war is peace, in case you forgot.

Fine, factually consistant comments by DZinger, FRtothus, and Inherit, a disappointment from Ruth, who seems to get a good deal of her information from Senator Johannes Liebermann’s info flack, and the usual camel’s ass-sucking insanity from this wildhack thing.

I have to agree with some of the comments.  There is a distinct scent of bullshit wafting from this article. 

Notice how Ms. Marcus separates entitlements from war and makes clear the entitlements troubling her are food stamps.  An extended and prominently displayed yo-yo finger and its accompanying expletive is in order here because that is a complete and utter deception from a person who knows she’s doing it. 

A huge part of the entitlement program is for military veterans. 

Before I go on, let me say I have several family members who were in the military and two of them fought in wars.  They receive entitlements and damn well deserve them. 

The deception lies with politicians who in the 1980s chose to limit the popular meaning of entitlements to welfare mothers and people on food stamps. It was a thinly veiled appeal to racism and class bigotry that the television news and newspapers happily propagated.  The fact that Ms. Marcus is still peddling such misinformation demands ridicule and insult.

Another yo-yo finger and accompanying expletive here. 

You want to cut back on entitlements, Ms. Marcus?  Demand an end to the war economy.  It’s not just Iraq, it’s not just Afghanistan, it’s a lifestyle, an economic system and a foreign policy that demands we constantly plunder the world’s resources. 

And when we can’t plunder, we invade.  And people who get blown to pieces and survive, and others who watch their buddies get blown to pieces and die need expensive treatments for the rest of their lives. 

You want to cut entitlement spending?  Stop the senseless wars. Stop the war economy. But don’t just blather about food stamps. That is a despicable lie of omission and you damn well know it. 

The platitude about another serious attack being averted deserves a sincere B.F.D. We are not any safer for our wars and our barefoot escapades in airports. 

We will only be safe when we acknowledge that the Cold War lasted 30 years longer than necessary because politicians banked their careers on it and our oil driven economy thrived on it. We overthrew nations and destroyed lives for ambition and profit, not democracy, not national security. We have continued this even after the Cold War ended and now people are attacking us with guns, bombs and training that our war economy has provided. 

We will be safe and our budget will be in order when we change the nature of our economy and our foreign policy; when our presidents stop discussing tactics and strategies with generals and start discussing with American citizens methods for converting to a green economy; when we start discussing with our allies methods for stopping the global arms trade. 

We will we be better off financially and our country more secure when we start pulling money out of the defense budget and start putting it in the domestic budget. And, yes, that will entail increasing entitlements for injured veterans, educating people who need it and possibly providing food while they learn. 

Your vague and feigned premonitions of an ominous decade are little more than a charade. You know it will be bad if we follow the mis-directions you issue and the destructive policies of yesteryear.

You have reason to be gloomy because you work in an industry that is a huge part of the problem.  With the objective lies, Tiger distractions, Balloon Boy hijackings of the news—and frankly the dissembling narrative you just wrote—the truth can’t come out. Fixes can’t be found. 

I’m not gloomy. I’m pissed off because this country doesn’t have to be in this state. It can turn itself around. We need people looking at concrete steps to take instead of vaguely and inaccurately muttering gloom and doom.

Why is it that no matter what opinion is offered by the shills in the MSM, we find the same agreement on official mythology?

In this case, a quiver of warped arrows:

Arrow # 1- The fictitious Budget Surplus, which, even if the numbers touted were correct (which they weren’t), was only about the INTEREST, not the principle, on the massive debt, owed, not to “foreign bankers” exclusively, but private, for-profit, international bankers, including those chosen by the CFR to run the American Fed.  There is no mechanism by which to “chisel away” the National Debt.  All the money issued by the bankers of the Fed to pay off that debt is BORROWED, AT INTEREST, from these self-same bankers.  Under this scam, the US is always going to be in debt.

Arrow # 2- Congress is not dysfunctional when it is understood that its beneficiaries are the corporations, not the citizens or their welfare.  Government works very well indeed for them, socializing all their costs, and ensuring that profits are privatized. 

Arrow # 3- The 9/11 attacks show every evidence of American orchestration and complicity.  To presume that it was the result of perfidious action taken by irrational foreigners may be dogmatically functional, serving as it does to replace the “evil empire” boogie-man, and providing the self-serving justification for the continuance of Cold War spending, it has no basis in fact. Repeating offical claims, no matter how often it is done, does not make it any truer.  Any argument which does not question official pronouncements begin from a flawed premise, and any conclusions based upon a false premise are not valid.  The only reason a second “attack” has not occurred, is because this Reichstag Fire accomplished its goal of providing a plausible enough (though false) reason to go to war, and freightening the American people enough to get them to go along with the dismantling of the Bill of Rights, democracy, and the consolidation of political power.  The world is a dangerous place, yes, but the US oligarchy profits from, and has a pivotal role in ensuring it remains so.

Arrow # 4- America WILL continue to be “mired” in costly wars.  It is war that supports our debt-based economy, the wasteful spending ensures that the flow of cash continues to move upward, enriching the already rich, impoverishing the already poor, and forestalling, de facto, any debate about social spending.  The US economy is based on war, and where enemies do not exist, the oligarchy will manufacture them.  An empire cannot exist without enemies.

Arrow # 5- Trading in one corporate shill for another is not “trading up”.  Obama’s “priorities” are “the right ones”?  Not if you are the average citizen, they aren’t.  Not if you seek more social justice, the restoration of the Bill of Rights, the end of corporate monopoly and government collusion, official accountability, the end of welfare for the rich.  This isn’t trading up.  It’s selling out.  Olbermann was correct when he pointed out that there’s a very slim margin between “compromise” and “compromised”.

“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in ... practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions ... and the deportation of whole populations - not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”
(George Orwell, 1984)

The problem to the deficit: taxes.

The answer to broken Congress: public funding of elections

The answer to endless war: less money on military (when you have a hammer—and thats about all you have—everything looks like a nail)

Which seem so conclude that US-style Capitalism is the problem….and Obama as “anti-Bush”?? Only in someone’s dreams, or Chris Matthews wet dreams..on which issues is he a “bright spot”??pragmatic, blah, blah, blah, articulate, blah, blah, intelligent, blah, blah…too bad he cant lead. But keep the Bush legacy frsh in peoples’ minds..its the only way to make the Dems look good if only by comparison..dont like Obama? Oh, then you must want Palin! What bs…

gerard—why not come here and live awhile? I thought not..lol Dont blame you.

Jeez Looeez!  Most of you guys are in the dumps up to your eyeballs, and another year coming up with the sun rising every morning, speaking to you from 90 million miles away just like always and it looks as if we will have another year here pretty soon—the most privileged people on the planet with enough knowledge, energy, guts to reach out and help somebody do something gracious, something honest, something wise or beautiful.  Blankety-blank New Year, y’all!  (Insert the word of your choice—but remember.  You said it. Not me.)

The most disturbing and dangerous development is that America has become an
unstable rogue state. Preemptive war,torture,data mining,detention without
trial,inaction on climate change. America and its capitalist masters threaten the very existence of the world.

Decades From Hell: One Down, One to Go  
Posted on Dec 23, 2009
By Ruth Marcus

Somewhere between studying history at the home of the
SKULL & BONES / BROTHERHOOD OF DEATH CABAL, & getting
a law degree at a ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTION, Ruth
Marcus apparently sold her soul to the devil.
Her resume clearly shows that her cardinal rule,
etched into her brain after a saturated exposure in
the land of whores & lobbyists, is don’t defecate
where you eat,  followed by tell the people what
you’re paid to tell them & don’t worry about the
truth. The sophisticated few will know & the under
educated & uneducated don’t matter.

Protecting Bush3 at this late stage is such blatant &
appalling demagoguery, disingenuousness,deceit, &
deception,
as to have her burned at the stake or stoned in a
different culture. Here she’ll surely get a bonus & a
journalism prize.
Her fecal vomiting in the next few sentences are
exhibits A,B,C.:

” At some point, America will no longer be mired in
two costly and divisive wars. Troops will remain in
Iraq and Afghanistan, but in far fewer numbers. 
If the dominant figure of the last decade was Bush,
the dominant figure of this decade—and assuming he
wins re-election—will be Barack Obama. That is
trading up.
I’ve never believed that Obama’s election ushered in
a magical era of national harmony. But the president
is thoughtful and pragmatic. He may have too many
priorities, but they are the right ones. His first
year in office has demonstrated a useful combination
of steadiness and flexibility—steadiness in pursuit
of a goal and flexibility in the means to achieve
it.”

Have you ever found a wonderful new restaurant only to go back a year later and find the food at best mediocre and the service deplorable?  I’m having that reaction with Truthdig and there current crop of fluff with no taste or inspiration. This piece being a prime example.

This is true Washington Post dribble.
If things are in fact as dire as R. Marcus contends, then why the hell is she still making excuses for the president?

We have been lied to.  Sold a false bill of goods. Had our treasury robed by indentured servants of the Corporations, and what?  Obama gets a free pass as just another passenger on the train heading for hell? I think NOT!

The author is completely right.  And things will not get better.  I just finished reading an in-depth survey done by a professional business organization.  None of its members will be hiring in the foreseeable future.  The economy—unless you are a multinational bank—is in the toilet and staying there.  Jobs will not be coming back.  Millions more will lose their homes. Bankruptcies and credit card defaults remain high.  And our politicians just keep taking our money and giving it to themselves, their war-mongering friends, and whomever gives them the most campaign money.  The culture of corruption will not change because there aren’t enough honest people in Congress.  And the unwashed masses keep electing morons like Michele Bachmann and every one of those turds in the South.

“was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell No!”(Bluto, Animal House).

More to the point did our Grandparents give up during the Great Depression- Hell No.

And what came out of their struggles and sacrifics- an economic Superpower.

A middle Class admired throughout the world, emmulated and courted infact.

Millions had come before seeking Freedom, now millions came to seek prosperity as well.

I’m not afraid of the challenge, because history has proven that when the chips appear down, we do stand up. Unlike some other countries who lack the back bone (Af,Pak, Israel).

A backlash is brewing and it’s evidneced by the hyteria by the GOP and their Blue lap Dogs- a day of Reckoning is brewing. The anger from the Right, Left and Center is about to coalesce. It’s what we all have in common- Pissed off and looking for someone to hold responsible.

The Neo Cons, and their covert Blue lap dogs, are desperate to deflect blame away from Industry. But as Gov’t becomes more necessary to survive, esp for the Middle Class, the Eye of Justice will turn back towards those who inflicted the devastation. FYI increased credit card charges piss off a teabagger as much as a ‘socialist’

At this point it’s highly unlikely that President Obama will win re election, his sell outs on any number of issues have aleady made him little more than a lame duck.

He was voted into office, because people desperately needed their government to turn things around, after almost 10 years of being gutted by the corporate right. However his administration is continuing the disasterous policies of President W.

The next 10 years will most likely see an attempt to extend corporate power further into peoples lives, with corupt federal agencies that have become the tools of the corporate right. American’s will attempt to resist those efforts, by self reliance, and simplification, the end of consumerism, the beginning of self medical care, and community resistance.

The next 10 years, will either lead to bankrupcy for about half of the states in this country or a breakup, as states leave the Union. The people now realize the only way to preserve their health and welfare is to escape corporate control at the hands of a corupt Congress and Senate, both political failures.

Damn it, I had to Google Ruth Marcus and my

suspicions were confirmed…. 

Ms. Marcus, al Quida and the Taliban are not our

enemies…. Our only enemy in the Mid-East is your

beloved Israel…. And I believe the next attack

on the United States is just as likely to be

orchestrated by your beloved Mossad as it is by a

Muslim group….

I just knew reading her post that there was a pol-cat

in the hen house…....

Who the hell is Ruth Marcus????  Who cares….

This column was a complete waste of my time…

Why is it that I glean way more information and

insight from the unwashed masses that post on this

site than the supposed Pundits that write the

columns????  I must be stupid or something….

The “oughts” were the climax of the movement that began with Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964: to bring the ignorant and bigoted Southern racists and rednecks into the Republican Party to break the Solid South, using what are now called “value issues” and, of course, racism.  The late William Rehnquist used his great height, intimidating presence, and sharp legal mind to intimidate Black and Hispanic voters in Arizona not to vote by questioning the legality of their registrations.

While it failed in 1964, it worked in 1968 with Nixon, who today would be a centrist Democrat with his policies.  It worked again in 1972, but, with the failure of the quite civil Jerry Ford in 1976, redoubled its force with that great anti-American and anti-democratic (concept, not party) movement of ignorance and cynicism: Reaganism. 

Election after election the GOP got meaner and slimier, lying more and more boldly as it used “value issues” (primarily abortion and school prayer), phony financial issues (tax cuts for the wealthy and a “balanced budget”) and flat-out scare tactics—remember Willie Horton? (BTW, RR released a similar guy in Cali on Work Release who then killed someone, just like Horton).

But the BIG storm was the 1994 “Contract With America”, a great ad campaign but nothing but lies—the GOP broke every promise and used its control of the House and Senate through 2006 to load the judiciary with political animals to back them when sued.

The Rethuglicans have no decency, and the Dim-o-weenies have no spine or guts.  That’s what’s wrong with the system.