FAST AND FURIOUS-THE TRUTH

Have you ever wondered why we are seriously losing the war on illegal drug trafficking after 40 years in which the United States has spent $1 trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, and for what? Today, drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal, pervasive and organized than ever before.

It is estimated that Twenty Million people in the U.S. use illegal drugs, spurring street crime and wrecking families. Narcotics cost the U.S. economy $215 billion a year. So it is with not much surprise, but I do find it obscene, to be watching a scandal unfolding for many months, that is finally being reported by the mainstream media.

  

ATF OFFICIALS IMPLICATED IN OPERATION FAST AND FURIOUS is an example of the "geniuses' in charge of the war on drugs. This incredibly stupid and incompetently implemented drug war gun smuggling program named  "Operation Fast and Furious" was carried out by the The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

 

The ATF told gun-store owners to sell thousands of semi-automatic firearms to straw purchasers (those who buy guns for someone who can’t do so legally) and then just watched as the guns went (were allowed to walk) across the border, into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. 

The idea was supposedly to trace and identify Mexican drug cartel members and the network of associates used by them to distribute weapons into the hands of the criminals responsible for over 40,000 murders in Mexico since 2006.

Behind the carnage in Mexico and in the United States is an industry that supplies hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine to Americans. The cartels have built a network of dealers in 231 U.S. cities from coast to coast, taking in about $39 billion in sales annually, according to the Justice Department.

The ATF began all of this under the Bush Administration in what became known as Operation Wide Receiver in 2006, after receiving information about a suspicious purchase of firearms. The investigation involved letting the guns “walk,” and the investigation concluded in 2007 without any charges being filed.

Under the Fast and Furious Program implemented by the ATF under the Obama Administration weapons were allowed to be illegally purchased so that they could also be tracked to gun traffickers and drug cartel leaders. But the ATF somehow managed in their ineptness to lose track of these firearms, and the weapons were allowed to cross into Mexico undetected.

Just how high up the chain of command that the knowledge and approval of this now defunct program goes, we don’t yet know, but we do know that Fast and Furious, an arm of the ATF’s five-year-old Gunrunner program,was started during the Obama administration in 2009, and came to light in December 2010. 

That was when drug gang members killed U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in a firefight in a remote canyon near Nogales, Ariz. Three of the assault rifles used in the gun battle had been “allowed” to be purchased through Fast and Furious.

In addition to Terry, U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata on February 15, 2011 was killed in a separate incident by a weapon allowed to "walk" into Mexico from the U.S.

The U.S. House of Representatives is currently working on an investigation toward holding the U.S. Department of Justice in contempt related to "Operation Fast and Furious".

None of this would have been revealed to the public except for certain Federal agents so fed up with the cover up of these cases that they alerted the media.

An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent John Dodson assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010 was one of the first "whistle blowers", Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.

Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Now, he's risking his job to go public."I'm boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we've been doing it every day since I've been here," he said. Here I am. Tell me I didn't do the things I did. Now you have a name on it. You have a face to put with it. Someone now, tell me it didn't happen".

Agent Dodson has said that he personally feels guilt for the deaths of the Agents. He and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles; So it turns out ATF not only allowed it, they video taped it.

Documents show the inevitable result: The guns that ATF let go began showing up at crime scenes in Mexico. And as ATF stood by watching thousands of weapons hit the streets, the Fast and Furious group supervisor noted the escalating Mexican violence. One e-mail noted, "958 killed in March 2010 ... most violent month since 2005." The same e-mail notes: "Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone," including "numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles."

               SMUGGLERS BLUES

In congressional testimony, "William Newell, a former ATF Special Agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division", report journalists Robert Farago and Ralph Dixon of the Washington Times, that with its designated cover of tracking where guns went, so drug lords who purchased them could later be arrested downstream, was actually a deliberate effort to prevent the Los Zetas drug cartel from staging a successful coup d’etat against the government of Felipe Calderon by arming rival gang Sinaloa, according to the Times writers, a relationship that extended to “(allowing) the Sinaloas to fly a 747 cargo plane packed with cocaine into American airspace unmolested. The CIA made sure the trade wasn’t one way. It persuaded the ATF to create Operation Fast and Furious a “no strings attached” variation of the agency’s previous firearms sting. By design, the ATF operation armed the Mexican government’s preferred cartel on the street level near the American border, where the Zetas are most active,” states the report.

Farago  and  Dixon also cite a "CIA insider" to make the claim that Operation fast and Furious was a CIA orchestrated program.

A huge part of the answer for the failure of the war on Drugs is that it it's all about the enormous money to be made.The $320 billion annual global illegal drug cartel industry now accounts for more than 1 percent of all commerce on the planet.


Drug cartels are multinational businesses, after all and they cannot work without a bank. With so much illegal cash, the only way to move this money is through the banks.To make their criminal enterprises work, the drug cartels need to move billions of dollars across borders. That’s how they finance the purchase of drugs, planes, weapons safe houses, politicians, bankers, law enforcement officials, and buy anyone they want.

The stench of Banks and financial cesspools foul the air we breathe with their noxious, toxic, evil. The financial whores, bastards, and weasels of the Financial Institutions here in America, World Wide, and on Wall Street pop up once again as the purveyors of addicted, insatiable greed at any cost. Easy money made here by all, they become a mechanism to 'launder' the drug money.

Wall Street Banks have been the main instruments ensuring the profits of the drug cartels. Major U.S. Banks have been deeply involved in laundering drug profits, for the better part of the past decade. 

         
The biggest U.S. banks receive, launder and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the drug lords’ accounts, who then buy modern weapons, pay private armies of assassins, corrupt untold numbers of political and law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.


Drug profits, in the most basic economic sense, are secured through the ability of the cartels to launder and transfer billions of dollars through the U.S. banking system.The scale and scope of the US banking-drug cartel alliance surpasses any other economic activity of the American private banking system. 

According to U.S. Justice Dept. records, one bank alone, Wachovia Bank (now owned by Wells Fargo) laundered 378.3 billion dollars between May 1, 2004 and May 31, 2007. Major Banks in the U.S. have and continue to serve as an active financial partner of the murderous drug cartels, including Bank of America, HSBC, JP Morgan, CITIBANK, as well as overseas banks operating out of New York, Miami, Los Angeles, London.

Despite the deep and pervasive involvement of the major banks in laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit funds, the “court settlements” pursued by U.S. prosecutors have led to no jail time for the bankers. One court’s settlement amounted to a fine of $50 million dollars, less than 0.5% of one of the banks (the Wachovia/Wells Fargo bank) $12.3 billion profits for 2009. A disgustingly limp "wink" that says all one needs to knowregarding the Government being "serious" about providing real justice in wiping out crime "that PAYS".


Laundering drug money is one of the most lucrative sources of profit for Wall Street; the banks charge hefty commissions on the transfer of drug profits, which they then lend to borrowing institutions at interest rates far above what if any  they pay to drug trafficker depositors.

Did you ever notice how the federal government never faces any consequences of legal Justice when it breaks the law, and that corporations are wrist slapped, if at all, for things that you or I would be put in jail for a very long time? 

It doesn't matter which political party is in power. Justice, punishment for wrong doing, crimes, innocent murders are not applicable to the arrogant mob of Government untouchable politicians and their cronies. It's not a uniquely Republican, Democrat, Tea Party, Conservative sickness that any particular political segment dominates.

If you or I sold guns to Mexican drug criminals, we'd be facing decades in prison. If one of those guns were used to kill a U.S. law enforcement agent, we would put in prison for life, or placed on death row all in the name of honor, patriotism, and the American flag.

Not so when it involves the malignant alliance of arrogance linking power, greed, and lots of money. Then it's lights out, no American flag, no justice, no one knows anything, files disappear, people go missing, lawyers are hired, lawyers are lawyered up, amnesia sets in, the 5th amendment of self incrimination is memorized, and lots of slimy shit happens, money does that to people, it's almost magical.

As we've all seen from numerous examples, in the final analysis, the government is essentially a lawless, corrupt, criminal gang that breaks its own laws with impunity. It always has been and it always will be. Any other excuse for its behavior is bull shit, and that is the truth. Money does the talking, ALWAYS.

REASONS

I hate telemarketers and solicitors, including the ones that come to my door. To me they are worse than email spam because there is an uninvited voice that has intruded upon my personal space.

(Click Here To Register For The National Do Not Call List for land line phones), so that everyone can ignore this Law.

Cell Phone Numbers Go Public this month. All cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls. YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS. To attempt in preventing this, call the following NATIONAL CELL PHONE DO NOT CALL list number: 888-382-1222 from your cell phone. You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked. You cannot call from a different phone number.

My inspiration for this post is the woman who just called me from some unknown Company and instead of my usual automatic hangup, I first said that she needed to never call me again and remove me from her list. I really am overjoyed when they can't even pronounce my first name correctly, then get aggressive as to their objective of taking money out of my pocket because they "want to help me", and especially when they use a fake American sounding name, but can't talk understandable English.

When I told this latest calle that I was hanging up on her, she demanded from me "tell me the reasons why you should hang up on me".

        How To Respond To A Telemarketer

                                           

I get them coming to my door also, like they think they own my home. Verizon Fios comes weekly to try to sell me their TV service and practically mails me an ad in the postal mail every day to sign up.

Those of you who have seen me in action with these trespassers know that I am not the most courteous person or very polite to these invaders. Yet they still come in droves as if I have money to waste on them.

In fact, when someone is ringing the doorbell 500 times and banging on my door like I’m deaf, I do become difficult with them.

There is a different man claiming to be from the American Legion who shows up every year and the recent "visit" went something like this through my closed screen door.

ding dong! ding dong! ding dong ding dong ding donggggg!!! KNOCK; KNOCK; KNOCK; KNOCK.

Me (opening the door): WHAT.

Annoying Man: I"m from the American Legion and we just painted your house address numbers on the street curb.

Me: Did I ask you to paint the curb with my house numbers. Blank stare.

Annoying Man: (oblivious to the anger in my voice and eyes): We are conducting our annual fund raiser so this is how we help you by identifying your house better for people to find.

Me: A blank stare. Then I said, Why don't you go wipe the paint off my curb since I have my house numbers mounted above my front door and don't need it on the cracked, crumbling curb.

Annoying Man: Oh, hahahaha! You’re so funny! So anyway, I words words words words words words words…

Me: My God, I want to choke him out. I swear I’m gonna to rip his hair out. What if I just kicked him in the face? No, I would get arrested.

Me:"Go fuck yourself and your paint". SLAM Door! Right  in his face.

Studies have shown that the average solicitors keeps at least 65-70 percent of the money they raised for their own personal use, plus more to pay their "overhead expenses", and that if they actually give any of the money raised to the Organizations they claim to represent, it is a mere 30 cents on the dollar or much less. 

I even got another call just this second where they spent 20 seconds trying to pronounce my first name. Click.

Now another additional call, must be desperate times if they are calling me so much.

In my HALL OF SHAME of My Most Pain in the ass repeat callers who never give up, even though all they get is my clicking the phone down to immediately disconnect them go: Rachel from Your Credit Card Services, Diane from Car Warranty, Doris from your Rug Company to clean/shampoo my carpets, Louis from the NRA, Frank with the phony Fraternal Police Organization scam, the nameless survey people, hordes of others "concerned" about physical disorders that I don't have, but want to sell me something for it, and of course the soon to be launched, can't wait for them, presidential campaign turd of endless calls.

Of course since I have already disconnected my television service as there is nothing worthwhile to watch, maybe I will just go the next step and disconnect my phone, nothing much to miss there either. Will that officially make me a Luddite?

THE 99 PERCENT-OCCUPY WALL STREET-MY HOMETOWN

CLICK HERE-WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT, this adjoining site is a poignant place for you to visit, on which people share their personal stories of financial pain, hand-written and held up to a camera for the world to see.


The site already features more than 600 personal stories, some of them written by and featuring the sad faces of children. Page after page is tagged with the protests, whether it be pictures of protesters' signs, quotes from speeches or personal observations of the young and old.


At the above site you will find real people, sharing hopes, goals, injustice, feelings, and loss. Summed up best by the paragraph "We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 per cent is getting everything. We are the 99 per cent."


THE OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT is a people powered protest for democracy, that began on September 17, 2011 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City. While it does not constitute anything close to an awakening of the American public, it  has potential and does appear to be gaining some traction, but has a long way to go before I would consider it "a movement".


Now that the media which had been totally ignoring it, has finally started reporting on this, it means that there is fear in Corporate land and some media see potential mainstream "news worthiness" about these events.


Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation sent out sparks across America, the World within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called Occupy Chicago, Occupy Florida, Occupy Denver, or Occupy LA. and many other places, including other Countries?

 
The Protests Of Occupy Wall Street are growing every day as they are now listed by State and Country. Click here for the location of Protests in your State or Country.


There are obvious reasons. We are watching the possible beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new and old generation of Americans, generations who are looking forward to finishing, or finished their education with no jobs, no future, but many still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt, or family financial obligations. Most are of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, people who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, or skipped College and got jobs immediately, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated, faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral rejects of society.


Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates and criminals who stole their future?


Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure here in America. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone.


Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down. The danger is their being co-opted by some political movement with a hidden agenda, or to miss the sometimes common goals these protesters can share with the minority segment of sane Tea Party members, and Independent voters.


What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.


Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid, in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it.


It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all, that the current forms of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we're all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart.


What we've learned now is that the economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was faked by cheap credit at home and massive plunder here and abroad.


As a result, the debt crisis has come home to America and Europe, with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of "austerity, too big to fail".


While at the same time those in power, those who created this economic meltdown escaped unscathed, they created a myth to blame these problems on Government spending, and the solution to be fixed on the already broken backs of the regular citizens in each country. In America there would be over 12 trillion dollars spent on Corporate welfare bailouts using taxpayers money, but at the same time, no money would be available to also help regular folks, victims of this economic catastrophe as the Government claimed they didn't have the funds.



While at the same time reinforcing these lies by creating deliberate fear on the part of everyone else to scare them into protecting themselves against losing what "crumbs" they still had. 

Even the programs that would help make our lives better became politicized into a single lying, brainwashed message, that these were somehow the economic reasons that caused the financial mess in our Country. Selective amnesia, creating hate, division, and fear so that the real perpetrator's, the puppet politicians and their masters would escape responsibility, accountability for their corrupt, insatiable greed.


The form of resistance that has emerged in these Occupy Wall Street protests  looks remarkably similar to the old global justice movement, too: we see the rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below.


Thirty years of relentless political, class warfare, bullying propaganda over substance, and snuffing out anything that might look like a political basis for opposition, make these protesters chances of success look bleak; and it's clear that the rich are determined to seize as large a share of the spoils as remain, tossing a whole generation of people to the wolves in order to do so.


Never underestimate the power and lengths of the corrupt tentacles that the rich, corporations, and their political puppets possess. They are ruthless, have unlimited funds, no ethics, will do anything necessary to protect their elite status, using their finely honed shrewd, powerful, evil, self serving, slimy tactics by successfully keeping us deliberately divided, apathetic,and fighting each other based on manipulating truths into lies.They only care about their own cruel, selfish, self serving needs and do not care about destroying us, our Country, and our Home Towns,
     
      MY HOME TOWN-Bruce Springsteen

                                 
Perhaps the most ironic element of the Occupy Wall Street protests, organized almost entirely via the Internet, is the very basic way that immediate information is disseminated on the ground. Rather than using an agreed upon Twitter process, bullhorn, or sound system (the latter two require permits from the city) the group is using a "human microphone" technique: simply shouting back the words of the speaker so the rest of the group can hear.

Here are some links below for you to click on and follow the events of these protests as it goes forward and see for yourself the riveting truth.

CLICK here to watch the NYC Occupy Wall Street streaming live video events, as well as rebroadcasts of recent video events-it is fascinating.

Click Here to go On Facebook,the Occupy Wall Street Page is a gathering place for comments,news. 

The movement's official Twitter name, @OccupyWallSt, had nearly 39,000 followers.


Click Here to go on a different active FB Site that acts also as a place to announce events, share views.

Click On here for more updated information.

The thieves in Brooks Brothers suits use your money that they stole from you, to gamble and speculate and gorge themselves, while one in four children outside those barricades depend on food stamps to eat. 

Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets. They disseminate the lies that pollute our airwaves. They know, even better than you, how pervasive the corruption and theft have become, how gamed the system is against you, how corporations have cemented into place a ruling class and an obedient cadre of politicians from all political parties, judges and journalists who live in their gated fiefdoms, while 6 million Americans are thrown out of their homes, a number soon to rise to 10 million, where a million people a year go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills, and at least 45,000 human beings die from lack of proper health care.

Where real joblessness is spiraling to over 20 percent, where the citizens spend lives toiling in debt peonage, working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, a world devoid of hope, a world of masters and serfs. 

The only word these corporations, the rich know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education, Social Security, to Medicare, because they want that money for themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs.  

Let the middle class what is left of it, teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.

Who the hell cares? If the stocks of Exxon Mobil, the Coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good for them. Profit. Profit. Profit, that is their credo. 

They have their hooks deep into our necks. If you do not shake them off , they will kill you. And they will kill the ecosystem, dooming your children and your children's children. They are too out of touch with reality, too blind to see that they will perish with the rest of us. 

So either we dismantle the corporate state, for a world of sanity, a world where we no longer kneel before the absurd idea that the demands of financial markets should govern human behavior, or we march as sheep toward self-annihilation.

Keep your head up your ass of denial or take it out and help add to the voice of these protestors in whatever way you are comfortable with, but don't blame someone else if we the 99 per cent lose, blame yourself. 

WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE

As part of my continuing quest for knowledge into the mixed signals of just who is God backing in the upcoming U.S. Presidential election (see my August 16th, 2011 blog post) WHAT IF GOD WAS ONE OF US.

I decided to dig deeper into trying to decipher a clearer answer.

"In God We Trust" was adopted as the official motto of the United States in 1956. The phrase has appeared on U.S. coins since 1864 and on paper currency since 1957.  

Naturally, not to be out done, one of our distinguished State's of permanent confusion, hanging chads and tolerance for all, in 2006 also adopted "In God We Trust" as the official motto of Florida, God Bless them all in confirming that our Country worships greed and money. 
                 
          WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE

                                     

This fire of self righteousness, proclaimed by those always somehow in private communication with a higher, hidden Power, aimed at destroying those least able to fight back, has been going on for Centuries.


Anyway, I was wondering what everyone is usually referring to when they mention God Given Rights. I don't really have the references, or a list to back it up. Anyone? Chapter, verse, and version of Bible? Nothing there. Is God speaking to these politicians again and ignoring the rest of us who can't seem to hear any God talking?

All of this leads me to a brief sampling of the endless current declarations by politicians, supporters of just about anything, using the expression "our God given rights". It is used almost as regularly as "God bless you" when somebody sneezes. 

But in truth it also reflects the current attitude in the Western world, more specifically in the U.S., to the false legitimacy of that which are self proclaimed proofs of certain personal, ideological agendas, as deemed somehow given to us, approved by God. 

Take Sarah Palin, the fountain of knowledge and universal incoherent poster child. Palin, this past year lashed out at Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" program to help curb childhood obesity by helping kids eat well and stay active.

Palin said,"Take her anti-obesity thing that she is on. Instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician's wife's priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track."

Erich Pratt, the director of communications for Gun Owners of America, said “Why should the government be in the business of telling us how we can defend ourselves?”

Mr. Pratt added: “These politicians need to remember that these rights aren’t given to us by them. They come from God. They are God given rights."

When leaders in a Government, or candidates for political office, their supporters, advocates invoke the phrase "God-given right", I get real pissed off. 


What the hell is a "God given right", have you ever seen one?

God given rights are sometimes called Natural Rights, those possessed by Man under the Laws of Nature, meaning under the laws of God's creation and therefore by gift of God.

The laws of nature rules with an iron fist, we do not vote for nature, we cannot control nature, and natures word is final. Kind of like a dictatorship.

Was Hurricane Katrina, or the recent devastating earthquakes,Tsunami in Japan, New Zealand, an act of nature? Yes. Were they an act of God? No. 

Of course, unless you are an Insurance company, then it is considered an act of God, as only they can explain so as to avoid paying claims for covered damages.

The convenient use of God as the answer or as our forgiver is a problem we humans have, we need someone, something to sometimes thank, and other times occasionally blame and to forgive us our sins.

Is education a God given right? 

Food and water and shelter, are these also God given rights? 

Is a job a God given right?  


Assuming without the ability to earn money a person will die from lack of proper nutrition, medical care, proper shelter and clothing, are these God given rights? If so then why are they not shared and given to those in need?

If there is a God, would an almighty, all knowing spirit allow humans to treat one another in the cruel,  insensitively disgusting, merciless manner we do today? 

The religious right. What is right? who is right?

Does "might make right" or "right make might?"

  

There was a time when being President and being God's Instrument to heal a broken World were, if not mutually exclusive, well, the job requirements were slightly different.

Go ahead, reflect on these personal so called God given rights and the rights of others as well. Words scribbled on a piece of paper, our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

IS LIFE a God given right? If you believe as I do, you do not need to justify the right for humans to live by invoking the name of God.

Is God a creation or the creator? Is God merely a forgiver and a forgetter, or a healer and a savior? 

Are we each unto the likeness of God OR more importantly do we act god like?

My purpose is not to debate the existence or non-existence of God, but as any person that is or has been involved in a struggle for rights, justice, equality can tell you, these are hardly ever just given away to people and, even less so, by heavenly intervention.

What would have happened if people through history had laid back and said: "right now all I can expect from life is to live and die in utter misery while working for a rich lord of the land, and my children and grandchildren will probably fare no better. However, I know at some point God will do something about it, so I won't worry." The World would be a very different place, and not in a good way.

In fact, quite a few people, just in the history of the U.S., would respectfully disagree with the "God given right" notion. 

Starting with the founding fathers of this country, secular men who understood that Church and State should never mix, knowing that through history the Church has seldom taken the side of the poor and oppressed.

Would there have been a Declaration of Independence and a Revolutionary War if the colonists had felt that it was okay to continue submitting to the will of a distant king, because God would intervene when he saw fit? 

The Constitution reflects our founders views of a secular government, protecting the freedom of any belief or unbelief.

The historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, "the idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated declarations of Christian piety."

Maybe Rick Perry is the candidate we need. Could be it’s not that he’s actually dumb. Perhaps he only wants to look that way. 

We don't like people to be too smart. They might put something over on us. Based on our SAT scores, if we're not actually dumber than we used to be, we're certainly unsmarter.

Our average critical reading skills in America have declined, apparently causing many of us to mistake the Bible for a scientific text.

Rick Perry says, God “doesn't require perfect people to execute his perfect plan". Here we go again with God given rights.

So Rick Perry must keep his head as empty as possible to prevent sound distortion when God reveals to him, specific God given rights. The sense that Perry is a humble, flawed instrument, listening directly to words from the Most High is therefore a special gift given to him by his Lord.

Traditionally, these are all traits reserved for prophets and psychopaths or, these days, Republican presidential candidates such as Perry.

He may act dumb but not when it comes to his lavish personal needs.

With child poverty rising sharply in Texas, while Texas kids go hungry, Gov. Rick Perry is living a luxurious lifestyle on the taxpayers money.


Since 2000 (the year Perry became governor) the number of Texas children living in poverty has climbed 17 percent, even as the state has gutted spending on programs for kids. Currently, an astonishing 1 in 4 Texas children lives in poverty. The infant mortality rate is also up 10 percent since 2000.
 

Perry demands steep sacrifices from ordinary working people while living a luxurious taxpayer funded lifestyle.

Perry's rented mansion for example is 6,386-square-feet, sits on more than three acres, has five bedrooms, seven bath rooms, pecan-wood floors, a gourmet kitchen and three dining rooms.   

While Texas is facing an eye-popping $27 billion deficit, Perry is spending more than $9,000 per month in taxpayer's money to live in one of Austin's most upscale estates. That is one of his "God given rights", what a caring guy, a humble, simple public servant, doing the Lords work.

Michele Bachmann recently took note of the magnitude 5.8 quake that rocked the Washington area and whose effects were felt beyond New York City. She also cited Irene, which hit the United States as a Category 1 hurricane before traveling up the East Coast to Canada, leaving an estimated billions of dollars in damages and almost two dozen reported deaths.

“I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” Bachmann said to supporters. “We've had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here? Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending.' ” HMMMM ... "God given rights", that only Bachman is privy to because she is such a truly worthy person.


Did God end slavery? Or did the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died fighting have something to do with it? 


Did God bring about the end of the Holocaust but couldn't stop it from starting, or did over 60 million human beings have to die first before World War 2 was ended?

Was all this a huge waste of millions of lives, because it was already in God's schedule to eventually grant all of the above as part of "God given rights"?

Watching the current, modern day disintegration of our world, lack of justice, and the erosion of human values from the comfort of our living rooms, it's hard for many to think that the regression of society into an inhuman, hateful, cruel, indifferent, toxic cesspool has anything to do with us.

Denial and illusions of contentment is the subtle enemy. The truth is that unless something happens that threatens our individual livelihood, we don't feel compelled to react. 


Our social conscience has become increasingly atrophied from lack of exercise and the brainwashing by those who prey on our weakness to seek answers from others, instead of from within our own self.

In politics, If "God giveth and God taketh away", are GOP/Tea Party legislators then working in God's name when they try to pass bill after bill that threatens the well being of U.S. citizens by using lying distortions of big government, budget deficits supposedly caused by disabled persons, the elderly, middle class, the poor, you, and me? 


When those who oppose their views are shot, hated, degraded,  demonized, vilified, is that  part of the"God given right" given to them?

Should Union workers in Wisconsin, elsewhere, and other non union employees stay home and not fight against legislation, edicts, rules that seriously hinders their right to be treated fairly? 

If a working class American can't even receive basic benefits, but billionaire corporations get away with dodging taxes, does that mean God is against unionized and non unionized workers, but is saying it is the "God given right" of CEOs to make 344 times what their employees make? Is the increasing social and economic inequity in the U.S. therefore by God's design?

A country should never cease to learn or grow, ours has stopped  doing both. Part of that growth requires us as citizens to speak out and defend the hard earned rights that we enjoy today from that invisible government, whether you believe these were provided by God, or by people who decided to not sit and wait for their rights to come down from the sky.   

Yet in reality we blindly follow the things we learn from history which is that we learned nothing, except to repeat making the same mistakes. Darwin's theory of evolution is correct, only the fittest survive and the ones that do, write our history. These are the survivors, the conquerors and the victors of war. 

Ever heard of a dead person writing history? Jesus Christ did not write about himself, neither did Moses, Abraham, Buddha, Mohammed, or Abraham Lincoln, Hitler, Marie Curie, Ghandi and many other figures of history.


Wall Street, which bristles and pouts that the president of the United States isn't sufficiently nice to it because he dares to point out that its mortgage securities schemes tanked the economy, will pay record salaries, bonuses again this year. All the while, those CEOs will whine, when they're not laying off more employees, or outsourcing to India to boost the value of the stock options from which they're compensated.

The small legitimate companies, creative entrepreneur's, and technical innovators, who actually create new jobs, can't get loans. Banks won't loan them money as its "too risky", these very same financial institutions that are propped up by a $700 billion dollar taxpayer bailout in taxpayers money, plus about $12.2 trillion in Govt. financial commitments, despite the fact that these very same Banks melted down financially by their own self induced fraudulent schemes never considered their actions as "risky". 

The big firms and hedge funds classified as "small business'' by politicians, politically labeled as phony "job creators", who instead, mostly create "shareholder value,'' are happily stashing the cash.

And they all feel entitled, not just to get praise from the president and raises from their shareholders, but also to unlimited, strictly anonymous, influence in our elections. 


Why should they be held accountable for the TV commercials they're buying? Our government is officially for sale to the highest bidders. The fat cats who've grown bored with simply buying politicians are vying to rule us  themselves.

As we enter the final year before elections, where we will be bombarded night and day with media ads, sound bites, debates, all the bull shit about who to vote for, remember one crucial fact before you choose or don't choose who to vote for: Why would God if seriously interested in the U.S., give us such a miserable choice of presidential candidates? 

Maybe it is part of Gods master plan where we get what we deserve. 


For, it is not how many times you attend your chosen House of Worship, how often you pray, not even what God tells you to do if you are on two way speaking terms. It's not about your knowledge of the bible, or even how many "god given rights" you can recite.

I believe the true answer is that it's all about the countless personal, moral, ethical, every day, righteous decisions, actions, we each make about how we live, or want to live, the way we treat others, especially those in need, that really will shape our fate as a society. 

Take it or leave it, you have to live it all in real life, no way to get around it. Do we have the courage and honesty to stop the fires and heal the evil? Not likely.


That is the message being sent to us, and it is just so much easier for most people to fake it by simply ignoring everything, or electing lying, hypocritical, corrupt politicians that they can blame everything on, or who will find others that can't fight back to dump it on, rather than get involved in the saving of our children's future.

It is very true that "We didn't start the fire

It was always burning since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire. But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on...".

If you think America is increasingly Third World -like now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

SHATTERED

Like a windowpane
Broken by a stone
Each tiny piece of me lies alone

And scattered
Far beyond repair
All my shiny dreams
Just lying there

I'm broken, but I'm laughing
It's the sound of falling glass
I hope that you won't mind if I should cry, In public, while I wait for this to pass

I'm shattered
Into fragments cold and gray
Sweep the pieces all away
 
Then no one will ever know how much it mattered, 

Something deep inside of me Shattered

    

The song lyrics above, all began with a DUI illegal alien, high on drugs, no drivers license ever owned, a mother, also an illegal alien, with no drivers license either, knowing her son was drugged, still giving him the keys to drive their car, and ending with the death of my older son Steven. 

So many things, it is beyond comprehension how much has and will become permanently shattered by the disregard of our legal laws, those moral human values of the sanctity for a human life, and the responsibility each of us is supposed to respect as part of our actions, but most of all, Steven is gone forever. 

This is not a post about answers of the illegal immigration facing America that are front and center of the political climate in America today. This is about my personal feelings, emotions, and the way there are two different, completely alien worlds when it comes to my reality experienced and the intellectual arguments of others.

Just when I think that I have seen it all, something more outrageous comes along to educate me about these extreme differences.

I was reading today about one of the biggest moron politicians, Mr. Brown, who never worked a real job in his life, instead choosing to live off his daddy's fiefdom, always at the taxpayers expense.

Give him credit, he just managed to get himself elected to a second term as Governor of California, by the people of that great dysfunctional State, who obviously deserve an even more inept successor, to their former Arnold the "Love Child leader" .

Oh, and the same Mr. Brown guy who instead of marrying his amazing girlfriend Linda Ronstadt years ago, decided to continue his career in politics, as if one thing had anything to do with the other, which says all you need to know about the impaired judgement of Mr. Brown. 

California Governor "Moonbeam" Edmund Gerald Brown on July 25, 2011 signed one part of the California DREAM Act AB130 which will provide increased financial aid for illegal alien (AKA "undocumented ") students into law.

This bill become a law on January 1, 2012. It will allow the University of California, California State University, California Community Colleges to provide financial aid to Illegal Alien (AKA"undocumented") students.

The second part of the California DREAM Act AB 131 was subsequently passed during the last 2 weeks, after approval by the State Senate and Assembly, despite concerns that the legislation will increase state expenditures at a time of enormous budget cuts to essential services throughout California. Brown has until October 9th to sign it into law, which he says he will do. 

AB 131 would allow Illegal Alien (AKA "undocumented") students at California colleges and universities to be eligible for state financial aid such as Cal Grants. AB 131 would also give qualified illegal alien (AKA "undocumented") students full access to other state funded financial aid, as well as fee waivers from the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges for community college students.

The money would come from the state’s general fund. This bill differs from the federal DREAM Act in that it does not provide a path to citizenship.

Opponents of the bill have said that providing state aid to illegal aliens (AKA "undocumented") students would be fiscally irresponsible when the state is facing a nearly $10 billion deficit, a deficit getting larger by the day.

But supporters have argued there is still time for immigration reform and there are economic reasons to support the act, that it is crucial for students to be educated so they can contribute to the economy as tax-paying workers.

“The Dream Act is not only the right thing to do for the children of our state, to enable them to realize their potential, but it is also the right thing to do for California’s economic prosperity,” said bill co-author and state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, "Regardless of the debate surrounding immigration, it is time to stop punishing kids for the decisions of their parents.” (My Insert- MY WORDS- Mr.Yees's words are intellectual, hollow, empty political mumbling, shamelessly pandering to get him votes. What happened in real life to my son Steven's rights to realize his own self potential, and his life being stolen from him at the age of 30 by the illegal alien and the decision of the mother to both ignore the motor vehicle laws, other laws of our country, and Steven's human rights to life, all which "punished" Steven by killing him. How will the State of California help Steven who was a long time resident of their State and an American citizen, with the same concern, sensitivity, compassion they extend to illegal aliens? The answer is they won't, and have used and will continue to use, every possible legal, political, low life manipulations to avoid any responsibility for their own multiple acts of negligence as part of the events that caused Steven's death. 

This is the real truth, it is the truth of the acts by all of these involved evil people, State, local Governments, the legal system.  Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than arrogant lying and conscientious indifference that hides, lurks behind the facade of justice for all, but none for victims of injustice.)

This financial aid legislation in fact that doesn’t do anything to help provide these people with a legal path to citizenship, because after California tax payers help educate these students, it will be illegal for anyone to hire them once they enter the workforce.

This will cost (estimated at $38 million) the already bankrupt State of California, which among other things is 3 years behind in reimbursing American citizens who are crime victims, and their families, for costs personally incurred by these people as part of the State Laws protecting victims, administered by the California Victim Compensation Program, because the Program says it has no funds left. Screw the victims, screw their families, they are just Americans, ignoring their legal rights is fine with the State of California.

What happens to the tuition costs of American students, other legal students, whose families are struggling to pay for college education, by denying them places in higher education slots, and the loss of financial aid available, by placing illegal alien students to compete with them for these limited funds.

To put the sickening California State priorities in perspective, a brief example of just a few of the major, serious budget cuts already implemented by California at this time:

CALIFORNIA BUDGET CUTS FORCE POLICE & FIREMEN TO WATCH MAN DROWN

DON'T CALL THE POLICE IN OAKLAND FOR THESE 44 CRIME SITUATIONS.

SACRAMENTO POLICE SERVICES CHANGED

This is just more political theater from the bankrupt and corrupt California government to keep one or the other crooked political parties in power. They obviously aren’t truly helping the citizens of their state who are paying some of the highest taxes in the nation while having  their most important services severely reduced by State and local Governments.

Of course Brown being a former Governor of California and Mayor of Oakland had no part in creating the current financial messes. 

I long ago gave up trying to figure out what Mr. Moonbeam believes in, besides being an intellectual bull shitter who is very impressed with himself, and is the epitome of a slimy politician who will say and do anything to keep his power, he stands for his own survival, his ego. 

I don't pretend to have the solutions to any of this. 

Certainly there are too many people who are on both sides of this that don't give a shit about seeking honest answers, but are using it all to spread hate, personal political agendas, and further polarize, divert attention away from their own real toxic beliefs.

There are decent, hard working human beings who represent both sides. None of that matters to me any longer, nothing changes the brutal reality that American citizens, such as my son, Steven Nathaniel Wolkoff are being killed daily by illegal aliens. 

No-one can imagine the suffering that Steven felt, no-one has seen the horrific photos, the pain that Steven endured that I have seen. It is impossible for me to ever forget, stop the nightmares,or ignore that Steven did NOT have to die, as the only truth, that matters.

It is an indefensible abuse by  those who have calculatingly and consciously decided to ignore the laws of our Country, that the rest of us are expected to follow.

This started the initial part of the subsequent cascade of negligence by multiple Entities,others, all contributing to that which shattered my family permanently, beyond repair.

It is not open for an intellectual debate about politics, or empty words from those who never experienced the violent, painful, agonizing death of a loved one by the failure of those selfish animals, who deliberately by their indifference, cowardice, maim, kill other innocent human lives, because they can, and don't ever have any reason to fear appropriate American legal justice being served on them, because our Court system, our Government is broken.
  There is no such thing as justice, in or out of court.           Darrow, Clarence

34-STEVEN NATHANIEL WOLKOFF-TEARS IN HEAVEN

                                                     

 Dear Steven:                                                  

             Today, September 23, 2011 is your 34th birthday.

It has been 3 and a half years since you were killed.

I remember when you were born and the magical, feelings of being there, watching you, my first child, as you breathed life as part of the miraculous moments of birth. I remember the happy times we all had being together as a family, experiencing the precious baby, child, teenager, and man you became. I remember how you always asked me as a child to tell you a story before going to sleep, in particular you wanted to hear story's about my own childhood. No sooner did I finish the story, you would lovingly say to me "tell me the story again". I remember so much more, I will never forget you, and the unique love we shared as son and father.

I remember how proud you always made me feel that you were more than any father could ever want in a son.

I miss you more than anything I can say in words. I love you more than anything can describe that I feel. It was 30 years of love and happiness that you gave to all of your family. You taught me how to love and the meaning of what is important about life.

You will never be 34, never be all that you would have become in embracing a full life if you had been allowed to live. You didn't deserve to die, didn't deserve to endure so much insufferable pain, and today you should  be alive, here with all of us, but for the negligence, indifference, of uncaring, irresponsible others who killed you. This nightmare cannot be true, but it is not a bad dream that we ever wake up from, you are dead forever.  

The brutal reality is that every single day and night you are not here, and I am sorry for your life being stolen from you, that you cannot feel the sun, rain, snow, air, laughter, be with those you love, and enjoy the simple every day experiences of life.

I hope you feel no fear, no pain any more,  that you are not lost, or alone, and I often wonder if you are here, in some way your soul still living, perhaps the red Robin that often perches on the tree limb outside of my window, or in the wind as it touches my face. I want to comfort you, touch you, talk to you, there is so much catching up to do, but none of this is possible.

I think of you almost all the time. I see your face everywhere, I hear your voice all the time as young men come and go and it is as if you were just with me, my hugging you and kissing your cheeks. 

I think of you when I hear the song "Tears In Heaven", it makes me wonder, ask unanswered questions, and sometimes cry. I dedicate it to you, forever, my beloved first born, my Stevie. 

               TEARS IN HEAVEN

                           
There will never be closure, how can there be any way to explain your horrific tragedy?
 

The pain of your death gets worse every day that goes by. There is no Steven to touch anymore.  I know this was not how it was meant to be. In this part of life we were  all supposed to be smiling. Steven should be with his family, friends, loved ones, at the ballgame, not dead in a dark grave, 6 feet deep, rotting away. He should be across the table at holidays, eating, blowing out the candles on his birthday cake. He should be living, not  being written about being dead.

I miss you so very much as only a parent who has lost a child can describe of an emptiness, feelings  that never goes away, of the deepest, darkest, most painful hole inside our gut.

I said it often to you, that I LOVE YOU STEVEN, and you ALWAYS responded to me " I LOVE YOU TOO DAD".

I so miss the words, the feelings, the hello's and the goodbye's. I never knew that you would not return, that it was the last time we would see each other, talk on on the phone, and say the words of our love. It breaks my heart.

I LOVE YOU STEVEN but there is no response anymore. Love-Dad.