Bad American

Are You In Main Core?

May 7, 2008 · 3 Comments

ICH from Radar Magazine

I’m pretty sure I am. How high up I have no idea and probably won’t until the time comes.

I have been reluctant to get into this too deeply. But I believe that it’s necessary to post this story and have the readers consider it.

Listmaking of potential ‘enemies of the state’ go back to J. Edgar Hoover and probably long before that in  one form or another. But with today’s technology, computers can and do keep track of everyone based on the electronic trails we leave while living our normal lives.

In fact, every keystroke I am making right now is being cataloged. If you scoff at this, please read the article.

The core part of the article:

Let’s imagine a harrowing scenario: coordinated bombings in several American cities culminating in a major blast—say, a suitcase nuke—in New York City. Thousands of civilians are dead. Commerce is paralyzed. A state of emergency is declared by the president. Continuity of Governance plans that were developed during the Cold War and have been aggressively revised since 9/11 go into effect. Surviving government officials are shuttled to protected underground complexes carved into the hills of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Power shifts to a “parallel government” that consists of scores of secretly preselected officials. (As far back as the 1980s, Donald Rumsfeld, then CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and Dick Cheney, then a congressman from Wyoming, were slated to step into key positions during a declared emergency.) The executive branch is the sole and absolute seat of authority, with Congress and the judiciary relegated to advisory roles at best. The country becomes, within a matter of hours, a police state.

Interestingly, plans drawn up during the Reagan administration suggest this parallel government would be ruling under authority given by law to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, home of the same hapless bunch that recently proved themselves unable to distribute water to desperate hurricane victims. The agency’s incompetence in tackling natural disasters is less surprising when one considers that, since its inception in the 1970s, much of its focus has been on planning for the survival of the federal government in the wake of a decapitating nuclear strike.

Under law, during a national emergency, FEMA and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, would be empowered to seize private and public property, all forms of transport, and all food supplies. The agency could dispatch military commanders to run state and local governments, and it could order the arrest of citizens without a warrant, holding them without trial for as long as the acting government deems necessary. From the comfortable perspective of peaceful times, such behavior by the government may seem farfetched. But it was not so very long ago that FDR ordered 120,000 Japanese-Americans—everyone from infants to the elderly—be held in detention camps for the duration of World War II. This is widely regarded as a shameful moment in U.S. history, a lesson learned. But a long trail of federal documents indicates that the possibility of large-scale detention has never quite been abandoned by federal authorities. Around the time of the 1968 race riots, for instance, a paper drawn up at the U.S. Army War College detailed plans for rounding up millions of “militants” and “American negroes” who were to be held at “assembly centers or relocation camps.” In the late 1980s, the Austin American-Statesman and other publications reported the existence of 10 detention camp sites on military facilities nationwide, where hundreds of thousands of people could be held in the event of domestic political upheaval. More such facilities were commissioned in 2006, when Kellogg Brown & Root—then a subsidiary of Halliburton—was handed a $385 million contract to establish “temporary detention and processing capabilities” for the Department of Homeland Security. The contract is short on details, stating only that the facilities would be used for “an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs.” Just what those “new programs” might be is not specified.

In the days after our hypothetical terror attack, events might play out like this: With the population gripped by fear and anger, authorities undertake unprecedented actions in the name of public safety. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security begin actively scrutinizing people who—for a tremendously broad set of reasons—have been flagged in Main Core as potential domestic threats. Some of these individuals might receive a letter or a phone call, others a request to register with local authorities. Still others might hear a knock on the door and find police or armed soldiers outside. In some instances, the authorities might just ask a few questions. Other suspects might be arrested and escorted to federal holding facilities, where they could be detained without counsel until the state of emergency is no longer in effect.

But do yourself a favor and read the rest.

I don’t think that a system like this is a pipe dream - for our state to function for the benefit of the transnational monetary elite such a system is absolutely necessary. Again, in times of constricted natural resources and economy catastrophe, the single biggest problem for any government of the elite is to control that population. That’s not fiction - it’s fact and is the guiding principle behind the vast majority of continuity of government and disaster plans.

Categories: Police state

NOT Over

May 7, 2008 · No Comments

Obama at his breakfast photo op in Greenwood, Indiana Tuesday. And yes, I HAVE been to Greenwood and actually ATE in that restaurant (the food’s pretty good). For more on what one diner patron thought of Obama, see the quote highlighted in blue below. But, according to the NY Times, one of the two guys sitting here said he’d vote for Obama. I don’t know which one that was.

I wish it was because I’m getting sick of the entire charade, but this Democratic nomination fight is not over.

Not by a longshot.

Of course, the pundits are all saying it’s over this morning - that Obama’s North Carolina landslide and squeaker loss in Indiana seals the deal for the charismatic Senator from Illinois. The Huffington Post and the Drudge Report come together in agreement on this issue.

So. How long have some of you been watching the Clintons anyway?

And you really think she’s going to quit?

She’s lending her campaign more millions and her aides are presenting an obstinate face to the TV media this morning.

And check this out:

With few states left, she and her aides said they would step up their efforts to count the disputed results in Florida and Michigan, where the states held contests in defiance of Democratic Party rules. If Mrs. Clinton can win the battle to have the delegations from those two states seated at the conventions on the basis of the vote there, she could greatly reduce Mr. Obama’s lead in pledged delegates.

But neither candidate actively campaigned in Florida or Michigan, and Mr. Obama did not appear on the Michigan ballot.

Still, in a sign of where the Clinton campaign is going, her aides are asserting that the winner will need 2,209 delegates, not 2,025. That higher number reflects the full inclusion of Florida and Michigan, which held their primaries before the date permitted by the Democratic Party.

Maureen Dowd:

Fox News reports that the Clintons are planning a summer campaign with TV appearances, fliers and rallies, between the end of the primary and the convention, to drag back superdelegates trying to flock to Obama. The Democratic race has been a scorpion and a butterfly in a bottle. Hillary tore Barry’s wings off, and so psyched him out with her silly goading — “Enough about the speeches and the big rallies!” she cried — that he gave up his magical trump cards.

But that’s not all: there’s still one very big race card left for the Clintons to play (overtly now) to the superdelegates: that Barack Obama cannot win white America in a general election against John McCain.

And they’ll use this kind of anecdotal evidence (plus the polling data that will back it up) from the Dowd column:

Wandering around Indiana, appearing in neighborhoods and at diners without any advance notice, talking to handfuls of people, Obama strived to seem less lofty and more mortal. Hounded by Hillary, Bill and Rev. Wright, he just looked sort of numb. When Obama went to an 11:30 p.m. shift change at an auto components plant here, a Newsday reporter on the scene noted that many of the white men “were less likely to smile or look him in the eye or seem impressed with him.”

In a restaurant in Greenwood on Tuesday, Obama approached an older white guy who waved him off, muttering afterwards to a reporter: “I can’t stand him. He’s a Muslim. He’s not even pro-American as far as I’m concerned.”

Which is why Obama, as a nominee is probably a dead duck not only in Indiana, but the entire South, all the Confederate border states and even some eastern states like Pennsylvania.

Check the map

I’ll stand by what I said to a customer in the book store I worked at in Iowa way back in February of 2007: sorry, America is not ready to elect a black president.

Of course if Hillary conceded and threw her wholehearted support behind Obama, he’d have more than a fighting chance: he’d literally be a shoo-in with most of her white blue collar votes following him.

But since her whole reason for drawing breath to live is to be President of the United States, if she can’t have it, neither will he. And she’ll be back in 2012. Count on it.

Not that the country is ready for Hillary either, but that’s another story entirely. She does have a better chance in the electoral college by far, but if she wrestles the nomination from Obama, blacks and disaffected young people stay home and she’s a dead duck too.

At this point all John McCain really has to do is wrap his crinkly white skin in the American flag and bide his time. You can see the train wreck coming from here.

Now if Clinton concedes in the next week or so, I’ll gladly admit I’m wrong. But I doubt I’ll have to.

Hillary Clinton will do ANYTHING she has to to win or she will destroy Obama in the process. Bottom line.

Categories: Politics as Usual · Race · The Perpetual Campaign