Tis The Political Season Of “THE AMERICAN PEOPLE”

May 9, 2012 & November 2 - 16, 2015 Draft Below - .......

  Long termed Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana loses a Republican primary as predicted by polls. North Carolina votes sixty-one to thirty-nine percent in favor of intolerance of homosexual equality. But the day after his loss if you go to Senator Lugar’s website, there was no mention of the election as if his loss never happened and our Gay population will not quit as you probably don’t need a web link to confirm.

  What’s evident is our political process is virtually infinite. No one can claim to have made a final decision for everyone else. Which is why politicians abuse the expression “the American people” to only associate themselves with winning.

  The phrase has a strong ironic appeal for our diverse disagreeing population though its questionable to assume anyone knows what Americans will think because we are independent. Which is why those in the political business know not to strongly identify with actual ideas that could be interpreted as wrong at one time or another, and avoided at all costs during an election campaign as documented in Michael Lewis’ book Trail Fever: Spin Doctors, Rented Strangers, Thumb Wrestlers, Toe Suckers, Grizzly Bears, and Other Creatures on the Road to the White House.

  Despite every politician’s possible claim to have read John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles In Courage, concerning politicians who took an historical stand contrary to the majority’s opinion. But in fact all our election cycles clarify our opinions are crafted to suit an interest as money talks is the only prevailing position worth taking. Hence negative advertising is the only kind worth financing, and arguing without listening our current political debates’ legacy. 

The Washington Post 12/04/2012 

Lugar trips were no junkets, Obama recalls By Al Kamen

The Lugar Center YouTube

Richard G. Lugar Center for Renewable Energy

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Then revolution will just be commercialized?

THE SOAPBOX VIEW NEWS ESSAYS

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  November 3, 2014 - This pseudo-essay didn't flesh out themes further. Hopefully that comes with practice.

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November 2 - 16, 2015

Tis The Political Season Of 

“THE AMERICAN PEOPLE” 

5/9/12 concluded

..., and arguing without listening our current political debates’ legacy.  

----

  Sounds apropos the publicity from last month's Boulder, Colorado, 10/28, Republican Presidential Debate? Where candidates' whining stage antics were sold, fait accompli, to THE AMERICAN PEOPLE as an issue of clarity, worth rectifying. Not persistently, redundant, harping and patronizing fiscal conservative purity. But staying on message for the Gipper. Don't nobody mess with the collection plate. Democrats are professional politicians who stay in office to collect corrupt skim. While Republicans divvy up before going in. Sure. Patriots don't even want, or care for, even the façade of a traditionally exuberant press intervening with, or tracking patronal political machinations. Using antagonistic questions patently disloyal to team politics when America's been bred for the glossiest entertainment? 

  "Gotcha journalism." Still. Guessing? As sins go. Way short of over-simplifying America's brand? A country too sensitive to believe the insensitive truth. Bamboozled's a standard. Adherence a trend.

  We should hold our breaths Michael Beschloss uncovers further label smudging of the presidential mirror in his next Sunday Business essay for The New York Times? This time rendering the polishing of Ike. 
  Or deeper yet? The rest of us question the belief Russia's not following Western Intellectual Economic advice thats led to more ruthlessly influenced spheres. When face it. Russians saw what worked, not make believe. Nothing could be done when chess game was over before it had, even, supposedly, begun. 

  Well then, anyway. Cat's out of the bag, huh? Political rhetoric is sold as pure game. Look at the ease with which, professed, non-political lifer Ben Carson was credited reiterating club-speak. Candidate Carson was quoted, basically, saying, "disseminating the affirmation of the candidates" is proper moderator conduct for specific parties' debates. Stalin grins in his grave? Turn off the music. Illusions have been put to rest. THE GREAT AMERICAN INFOMMERCIAL cut from the Jargon's News template. Not what's actually happening or worth investigation or clarification. But outright easiest method of influence? An appearance of the winning slant. Ta da!

Propaganda For Everyone!

  Read in Will Rogers' voice. Is the constant ethics conflict perpetual without change? Cause there're signs seeing numbers all day means it's all you see. Congress fundraising most nearly all year. Beyond me why politics isn't just a written off business expense all over the place, entire world? Wherever appropriate nowhere. Whether bribery, graft, collusion, conspiracy, or even conniving self-serving litigation, it's all money flowing through portals far from life's belittled scroungers. Safe and secure. Reality. That's actually more problems to face, that aren't. Because pompous platitudes can't solve this planet's ethics crisis because ethics are only followed in a pinch. When leverage doesn't work and down-home pled-for sympathy the last recourse. Religion a refuge for violence because sloganeering rules the world. No?

  It just follows when one ridiculousness becomes another.

George W. Bush Should Please Apologize

We All Face Escalating Antagonism's Results

Paris' Importance To Peace Cannot Be Understated

  Admit it's unlikely Allah/God would admit to telling any of us monsters anything people claim. Ba dump bump. Hatreds are condensed to cover billions of people prejudices don't apply to. Ironic? Holy Books condemn usurping God/Allah's judgement. While humans rationalize we're greatest, when its possible we're not even the Creator's most advanced scum. Since scientists are convinced there's more out there than even we can see? 

BUT BE CLEAR. 

  There aren't really alternatives here. Politics as much as cold hard economic fact is reality. As is conscience which, when everyone affords one, makes everything honky-dory. 

DON'T BE ANYONE'S SYCOPHANT

  Speaking of countering propaganda. How about the concept that friendship with Law Enforcement means enforcing a broad American Criminal Class/Citizenry with no shared responsibility for the Criminal Enterprise System's creation. Because politics are polls to know how much discrimination can be gotten away with? But plain damned time to be civilized and not this godawful ruthless mess.

JUSTICE FOR THE PLANT(WEED) IN AMERICA'S REDNECK STATES?  

  Culturally Immoral Nonsense not to weed out the Criminal Enterprise System. Anyone in the Law Enforcement business could tell you. No matter what a bad intoxicant may influence. That's nothing compared to when the chemicals within us are ego-driven to express superiority and when real damage occurs. Governors Gateway of New York and New Jersey, who are coincidentally having a tunnel, no doubt temporarily, named in their honors? Governors, any thoughts besides repeating bad laws teach citizens respect for authority when the opposite occurred and America should want this historically diagnosed remnant of jingoistic prejudice righted? Until America admits what's wrong, how's the rest of the world supposed to admit anything? Stern punishment may be an answer but the American Prison System's really cruel and inhuman. Everything weighed, prisoners aren't the only problem with the prison system yet they're held responsible for what's wrong. Man. Punishment is supposed to suck but we still haven't evolved from our predator roots. How's a world to improve that doesn't? That clings to tradition making believe morality's worth all this stress. When its obsessiveness obviously produced a mess.   

CLEAN SLATE?

  It's probably not generally realized President Putin's writing history? But every time the reasonable excuse of righteous sovereignty and protecting Russians in other countries comes up, that even though it's not fair to Russians in those places, now, who grew up there. Reality is it is the result of corrupt Moscow domination planting Russians over the entire Soviet Union. That however unfortunate it is, and not those Russians' faults. By not being a staple of objective, duo-faceted, reporting. The fact becomes lesser known till not general knowledge at all. No matter how many different places facts are recorded, the truth isn't quite in the business of controlling people's minds. Now is it? 
  Perhaps smug public arrogance reaches a, quite easily kicked out from under, soapbox. As an entirely inadequate defense, worthy of derisive sneer. The tradition has me hooked and novel prepared my hopping on. Anticipating however corroboration comes. Or:

ON REFLECTION

Wrong if there's evidence.

  Sunday morning, 11/9/15. The song For What It's Worth was used by Will Shortz the puzzle master for The New York Times on a Corporation For Public Corporate Broadcasting entity, NPR. National Public Radio. Asked during the Sunday Puzzle segment was the answer Buffalo Springfield that the NPR host, contestant and Mr. Shortz acknowledged was before their times to remember. A seminal song in the history of American protest but before their time. A pop tune? Yet much in American history before all our times is relentlessly indoctrinated into us ad nauseam. For the purpose of forgetting a thorougher understanding of history? Because indoctrination superseding education is authoritarianism and beware of that and reality's tough signals to grasp. 

  Endless revenge. Cornered Outlooks. Logic. That's what's needed to take hold and not swung all-over-the-place because we don't really know exactly what logic is half-the-time when politically no one admits anything. The problem of not admitting mistakes is why nothing's solved. A façade too profitable to address in terms of ethical failures? 

  Well. In The New York Times Book Review, Paul Collier, professor of Economics and Public Policy at Oxford University, finished a, snicker, scathing review of David Rieff's The Reproach Of Hunger reproaching the book's missing - "an opportunity to wrestle with how such stale ideologies contribute to the persistence of hunger." Grasped point? Politics faced? Eh? Political wonder? Oh. 

Stop Being Anyone's Sycophant

  Leading back to this speculation's original topic, symbolism. My mother, to sound convincing, could have told me about November 10th's Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Republican debaters, as well as of myself. That "sitting on your laurels" is the deeper threat to integrity one shouldn't want but expect? Ooo, they're so confident. If they wanted they could whip up gloss on a fire hydrant. And have. But gag me with a totalitarian whip. Fixing requires admitting responsibility for error and that's what's politically unreasonable. Anything pitched the public's smudge-able and capably pasted over? Why kids in the Middle East revengefully execute jihad against a world that had nothing to do with them but revenge. Insane. Learned at another confused generation's knees? Blah, blah, blah. Build more walls. Antagonize into infinity. Which none of us would see so business as usual, right-o. 
  While Putin's criticized, World Leaders continue perfecting their learning Leverage 101 too. Push when shoved. Vladimir Putin, sir? The world's on your shoulders. But not what you think you see around you. Because truly, the future will value The Glory of Nations as second to the honor of individuals. Get your hands dirty for Russia, Mr. Aristocrat who's in jeopardy of equation with history's perpetual succession of Oblomovs. Taking off your shirt's a photo-op. We all deserve better. Especially you, Comrade Putin. You're not fixing what's better left done. Justice would negate crime not ensure its prosperity. Facing history is doing much more than just what's convenient. Law and Order is not Authoritarian nonsense, or at least it shouldn't be. Eh America? 
  Expect a world where sense makes no sense. When the constant mystery's why money's not circulating. Rational minimum wages. While recognizing value, the significance is manipulating money's the only short term solution available. The hope minimum wage ever means that? Honestly appears to be fool's gold. And the penny's insignificance is the evidence. Look. People so smart a lot's solved with a lot of money. While destroying the heart of surviving with a little that's pretend aristocracy's fuel for belief in ruthless strength. If it can't even be intellectually questioned that inflation's a con? Something's hiding the truth. 
  Politically? Andy Griffith's Sheriff Taylor ruling Mayberry is the dream. But what keeps turning up is the actor's more accurate portrayal, Lonesome Rhodes? The realistically crass part of our ruthlessly political souls? 

  Politicians disseminate whatever sticks. So prone to miss broad appraisals? Perhaps when advisors take a long lunch? Transfixed by soup and façade? Considering ethics aren't incentive. Money can't but does disappear in tight circulation. Shrewd or schmucks. Whatever floats ethical boats? But capitalism is socialism. So obviously, a lot screwed up. Time upright meant upright, not revenge. Except no one admits knowing nothing. Uh huh. Geniuses? Ah-men.

CMF

Wonder why today's 

tomorrow's myth?

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Seriously SurReal

FREE SPEECH: Tough Nugget For KREMLIN To Absorb

  For 20th Century Russian/Soviet History fans, the recent revival of Show Trials made famous by Joseph Stalin, is too much nostalgia for the well crafted prosecution. Persecution. Pictured from left are three members of the punk band Pussy Riot, Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, and Maria Alyokhina, 24, at their hearing on Friday in Moscow where they’re currently on trial for theatrics of their own. The New York Times story titled Punk Band Feels Wrath of a Sterner Kremlin, has reporters ELLEN BARRY and ANDREW ROTH describing how when four young women in balaclavas performed a crude anti-Putin song on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in February, it seemed like just one more episode in a season of audacious, absurdist and occasionally offensive protest. Instead, this case is becoming a bellwether event in the Russian capital, signaling an end to the Kremlin’s chilly tolerance of the winter’s large demonstrations. The three women arrested after their February performance have been held in custody for more than four months, that was extended on Friday by six, through next January and they could be sent to prison for seven years.

  The Times and Reuters compared their preliminary hearings to the trial of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky which took place in the same building. While that case tested Russians’ feelings toward a billionaire businessman, this one targets slender young women with hooded sweatshirts and Twitter accounts who are avatars of the protest movement itself.

  Stanislav O. Samutsevich, 73, whose daughter is one of the defendants, said he was appalled when he heard of the church performance. But the government’s response is so disproportionate, he changed his mind. His voice shaking, while waiting outside the courtroom, Mr. Samutsevich said, “They led the girls into the courtroom in handcuffs. These small girls … half the size of the officers. There is something especially disturbing about it for me. It seems absurd.”

  The criminal prosecution rests on the performance’s inciting religious hatred. An argument supported by Orthodox activists who say the women are Satanists. There are ten witnesses, considered victims in the court proceeding, who’ve said they suffered “moral damage.” A cathedral security guard, “had trouble sleeping after the crime in the cathedral,” said his lawyer, Mikhail Kuznetsov who was interviewed by the newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti. Mr. Kuznetsov said, the band “is only a tiny visible tip of the iceberg of extremists who are trying to destroy the thousand-year-old basis of the Russian Orthodox Church by provoking a schism and using lies to lead the flock not to God but to Satan.” The newspaper further quoted Mr. Kuznetsov as saying, “Behind this stand the real enemies of both our state and Orthodoxy.” The performance at the cathedral “could soon grow into events comparable to the explosion of the twin towers in America.”

  So are we to believe the exaggerated distrust following America’s tragedy emanates from Stalin’s police state protectionism too? Or that basically people can believe whatever we want, whether the PR of governments acceptably promotes a peaceful, compassionate, cooperative humanity, or not? Because in court Friday, lawyers for the victims argued the February 21st performance unleashed a wave of extremism that culminated in a terrorist attack on two Muslim leaders in Tatarstan on Thursday. Though it’s doubtful an omnipotent God/Allah needs help from any of us at all. But go team nonetheless.

  The Times said the government picked a ripe opportunity to crack down since many Russians found the cathedral performance offensive. It’s taken months to provoke support for the women, even in opposition-minded Moscow. But the balance seemed to shift last month, when a roster of famous artists and musicians, including some vocal supporters of Mr. Putin, signed a petition contending the case “compromises the Russian judicial system and undermines trust in the authorities.” Though a poll released Friday by the independent Levada Center found a substantial proportion of 37 percent of Muscovites viewed the prosecution positively and 50 percent negatively. Meaning a jury would rule what on the government’s behalf?

  “When it began to turn into this fantastic biblical story, social attitudes toward the girls changed radically,” said Marat Guelman, a former political consultant and gallery owner whose projects have been denounced by religious activists. “Most of the population now are not so much talking about what Pussy Riot did as much as their fear that these people want to introduce some kind of Orthodox Taliban to Russia, that they will take power,” Mr. Guelman said. “So now I think the authorities are making a big mistake, taking revenge in this way. Society will not support this.”

  Lev Rubinstein, a poet, said, “We are seeing an attempt to return the country not to the Soviet period, but to the 17th century.” So apparently still, especially now, it’s not sufficiently understood how that was also Stalin’s authoritarian direction, too.

  Andrei Damer, an Orthodox missionary, said the performance had crossed the line that separated political speech from blasphemy. “One can criticize the authorities, but one cannot scold the authorities like these girls did. From God’s point of view, where they are now is just.” Right. Free speech be damned is what Allah/God can be credited with through the mouths of man. Uh huh.

  Friday’s hearing was closed to the public and defense lawyers said court officials brought a Rottweiler and scolded them for posting updates on Twitter. The defense filed a motion requesting Patriarch Kirill I and President Vladimir V. Putin testify in court. Mark Feigin, one of the lawyers, said, “As Mr. Putin in a decisive manner influences the decision of this court, it would be proper from the legal standpoint to interrogate him.” Though it’s hard to see how antagonizing the court benefits the women who’ll ultimately pay the price for men deciding their fates.

  Pyotr Verzilov, Ms. Tolokonnikova’s husband, said his wife had long understood public protests carried serious risks in Russia. Both were active in Voina, a radical art collective that gained widespread popularity recently with a series of politically tinged actions, such as a punk-rock performance in a Moscow courtroom, or a 210-foot penis painted, guerrilla-style, on a St. Petersburg drawbridge that rose up pointing at the offices of the state security service, F.S.B. But those penalties turned out mild since the penis project actually won a contemporary art prize sponsored by the Ministry of Culture.

  Neither Mr. Verzilov nor his wife thought the authorities would react so harshly this time. He took the couple’s 4-year-old daughter to a hearing this month when it was rumored the three women might be released. On Friday he went without their daughter. “She understands what is happening,” he said. “She tells everyone that Putin put Mother in a cage and now we have to fight so that they’ll let her out.” Please Vladimir?

  Today Reuters’ headlined Putin will not testify. Printing the court rejected a request to call President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to testify in the trial of the three women held in jail on hooliganism charges since storming the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February to stage a “punk prayer” to the Virgin Mary to “Throw Putin Out!”

  The court ruled at Monday’s preliminary hearing, the trial will start in a week, on July 30, and will be broadcast on the court’s website. But contrary to that possibility for openness, defense lawyer Mark Feigin said the court had rejected a list of 34 people he wanted to call as witnesses, including Putin and Kirill. The court gave no reason but said the defense would be able to make further applications to call witnesses during the trial, Feigin told Reuters, adding, “So for now only the prosecution side’s witnesses will take part.” While predictably, the case has drawn criticism from human rights groups and opposition activists and U.S. rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ frontman Anthony Kiedis performed in a “Pussy Riot” T-shirt at concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow last week. If only free speech were enough, then maybe the Kremlin’s exercise of that right could also lead all of us past the past’s tragic future we’re still humanly, godforsakenly experiencing NOW.

7/23/2012

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FREE SPEECH: Tough Nugget For KREMLIN To Absorb

7/23/2012 concluded: If only free speech were enough, then maybe the Kremlin’s exercise of that right could also lead all of us past the past’s tragic future we’re still humanly, godforsakenly experiencing NOW.

March 27 - May 1, 2018

Logical Threads

  April 17th. Politics' circus-tral aspects include insight, such as Sean Hannity hardly needing the publicity. What America's Public Forum doesn't seem to lack is a script.

  April 19th. "Pompeo and Kim Jong-un got along" news readers announced, ... 

History's Not Changed At All? 
Looking Forward To Tyrants Getting Along?

  Yes, variables are happening, from which, hope's derivable. Except the idea's taking hold that these are the people capably doing this, when their just reinforcing each others' position they're the power, right or wrong. 

April 16

  I either, don’t believe, or don’t particularly care, whether Russians have incriminating evidence on the president. Beyond individuals, ruthlessness's larger picture is the more perplexing question. The root of our disjointedly not being a, completely, whole ethical humanity. Beyond which laws, that only reach so far in their defense of morality, are exploited. The ethical lapse embraced, and forged, by countless self-serving, self-satisfied, generations. That peccadillo greed we can see, but are far from officially cutting open on an operating table. 

  And so it goes. Crap. 

Fanfare For The Common Person

  I love the Aaron Copland tune. Especially as done by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The calm steady beat rolling up to anthemic chords. How political influence also cascades in waves across, even the most, serious agendas and public opinions. Where discord and blind obedience are worked to feverous pitches, pausing to unleash again and producing The News', general overall, message of overloaded numbness. The problem, as such, being, that the perpetually dilemma riddled world's photogenic tragedies are victimized by the conflicts of power so far removed from individuals' experiences, life's commonly not fair and arbitrarily poised against any us. Justice's blindness. 

  Notice now, that when commending the noble knights of war who're defending us, the crescendo hits such pitches, it's as if General Jack D. Ripper himself were saving our "vital bodily fluids." No? Well maybe. Still, eerily close.

  ...

  So the CBS Radio Bloomberg Business spokesperson repeated their pitch that the president's negotiating style is hard, soft, hard. Yep, news business. The mantra already cascades the land. What politician doesn't crowd, and devour, the plate? Free Speech seems a tough nut to crack, even outside the Kremlin. 

  Hello. 

The Evening News 1990

by Arthur Hailey

  Page 523 - An industrialist describing his media company's relationship with ownership. 

  Elliot retreated to his desk and sat down behind it. He waved Margot to a chair as he said, "The danger of thinking writers or reporters are something special. They aren't, although they sometimes believe they are and get exaggerated ideas about their own importance. The fact is, there's never a shortage of writers. Cut one down, two more spring up like weeds." 

Explaining President Trump's En Vogue 

  Well, isn't this an era of provocative headlines? Besides FREE SPEECH: Tough Nugget For KREMLIN To Absorb, Explaining President Trump's En Vogue sounds like a troublemaker. While both hint of the preference for thinking about things a little more. Then maybe corruption needn't be so ingrained, that the law's an incapable refuge for perpetrators and victims alike. Maybe it's best not to forget more reminders from the local CBS Radio National Business News moderator explaining the president's negotiating style. Hard, soften, then come back hard again. Like baking cookies with a cookie cutter? Not when there's so much to world leaders' agreements that don't even make it to small print. It's an Italian film, Dante's Circus. The trampoline excitement on instant repeat. 

  Speculating, the limits and constraints on free speech are universal. So prohibitively expensive, opinions are silenced or owned, no matter the purported ideology. A crisis long endured, that the freedom of the internet was supposed to break but instead reinforced. To a degree? Degrees. Nothing about anything's set in stone, except power ruling triumphantly. As long as ruthless enough to win, is this planet's operating premise. We are, what's colloquially called, up s___'s creek.

  Will history have lax judgement concerning the legacy of the current head of the EPA for dissolving pollution standards rather than pollution? One person, with powerful allies? Pooh. The ball was dropped on transitioning long ago. Where's the mobile throne industry on transitioning all automobiles to electric? And electric engines that self-charge? Scott Pruitt? Unimaginative pawn. 

  ... Controlling what people think is what happens when forced to have an opinion.  Don't Be Anyone's Sycophant. Patriotism's more than being that. And may Stalin rest as distressed as any of us. Amen. 

  Publications noted: Nearly two decades before the deadly fire on the 50th floor of Trump Tower, President Trump was among the most prominent New York developers lobbying against legislation that would have required sprinklers in all residential buildings.

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