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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Is America in a Pre-Revolutionary State this July 4th? - PJM
2013-07-02
As we approach July 4, 2013, is America in a pre-revolutionary state? Are we headed for a Tahrir Square of our own with the attendant mammoth social turmoil, possibly even violence.

Could it happen here?
Of course not! The police state is our friend. It will protect us.
We are two-thirds of the way into the most incompetent presidency in our history. People everywhere are fed up. Even many of the so-called liberals who propelled The Champ into office have stopped defending him in the face of an unprecedented number of scandals coming at us one after the other like hideous monsters in some non-stop computer game.

And now looming is the monster of monsters, ChampCare, the healthcare reform almost no one wanted and fewer understood.

It will be administered by the IRS, an organization that has been revealed to be a kind of post-modern American Gestapo, asking not just to examine our accounting books but the books we read. What could be more totalitarian than that
Posted by:Besoeker

#32  Something like this - from Snowden's new home: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/07/09/russian-spy-games.html
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 23:51  

#31  You don't have the faintest idea of what areal police state looks like.

Apparently, neither do you.
Posted by: badanov   2013-07-02 21:48  

#30  Compared to the conspiracy-mongering loons who've taken over this site, Joe Mendiola comes across as a beacon of lucidity and calm reason.
Posted by: Lex    2013-07-02 21:22  

#29  Steve - you don't have the facts straight. Obama ESCALATED the war in Afghanistan. He put the hunt for bin Laden back on the front burner after Bush, and candidate Romney, and the Joint Chiefs and the CIA, all had decided to throw in the towel. He approved the raid when his advisers told him it was too risky. The drone strikes have had an enormous impact and have seriously degraded AQ's leadership and operational hierarchies.

Sorry, Steve, but that dog won't hunt. By nearly any measure, Obama has been ruthlessly effective - both more ruthless and more effective than his predecessor - in the global war on terror. Richard Clarke has made this case with devastating clarity as well.

Whatever the source of this frothing hatred of the current president, the facts don't lie: he unwound the colossal f***ups of his predecessor and also ratcheted up the war in the shadows, with great success.

Frankly, he deserves at least some gratitude for persevering like this in the face of so much ignorance and personalized hatred.
Posted by: Lex    2013-07-02 21:19  

#28   something has to occur that is severe or catastrophic enough to suspend the US Constitution + Habeas Corpus, Posse Commitatus, etc.

Let's pray that does not happen Joe.
Posted by: Besoeker   2013-07-02 20:13  

#27  Iff the Bammer is going to forcibly serve a 3rd POTUS term or more as many Netters fear, something has to occur that is severe or catastrophic enough to suspend the US Constitution + Habeas Corpus, Posse Commitatus, etc. US laws - BY LAW, A BAD US ECONOMY IN SEMI-OR NEAR-COLLAPSE IS NOT ENOUGH BY ITSELF TO REQUIRE THAT OBAMA SERVE ANOTHER 3rd-4th TERM AS POTUS.

Exclusive if Natural or Space Events, IMO this scenario will likely involve CHINA ANDOR IRAN, ESPEC "POST-US", FUTURE WORLD #1 WANNABE CHINA AS PER ITS ON-GOING, E-S-C-A-L-AT-I-N-G PUSH FOR UNCHALLENGED STRATEGIC ACCESS VEE THE ECS + SCS + INDIAN OCEAN REGION.

Could be a Military Conflict, or in alternate even a LACK OF MILITARY CONFLICT, I.E. "MUNICH II" AS PER CHINA-VS-JAPAN-VS-DEBT/SEQUESTER-RIDDEN-USA WHERE THE US-N-ONLY-THE-US MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN NUCLEAR-POSSIBLE CONFRONTATION + WAR; OR ELSE PAYING ITS DEBT + BORROWING FROM CHINA TO SUPPORT ITS BELOVED, SOON-TO-BE-GLOBAL WELFARE-NANNY STATE, WHERE THE US MAY UNILATERALLY OR WILFULLY GIVE UP SOVEREIGN TERRITORIES TO CHINA IN RETURN FOR PEACE + BOND BORROWING, + IRREGARDLESS IFF US VOTERS + OVERSEAS ALLIES WANT IT OR LIKE IT.

NATIONAL, GEOPOL SECURITY = FOOD STAMPS.

The clock is ticking faster-n-faster.

* So-called "A2/AREA-DENIAL" > As the US surrenders like France + rolls back across the Pacific toward EASTPAC + CONUS, it may choose to deny use of Guam-CNMI + other key Pacific Islands to the PLA by destroying their harbors + airfields, VEE ISLAND/LAND-SINKING "TECTONIC"
OR "EARTHQUAKE BOMBS" [Undergound = Subsurface EMP]. Iff China + PLA wishes to use these islands, it will have to re-develop everything out of its own pocket.

D *** NG IT, IT WAS ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY CATEGORICALLY UNDENIABLY .... AN "ACT(S) OF GOD", NOT SSSSSSHHHHHH...CCCCCCCCCC MAN-MADE EMP, ERGO THE US DOESN'T HAVE TO PAY FOR THE ISLANDS IT DESTROYED.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2013-07-02 20:06  

#26  He's not making war on jihadists, he's just drone-zapping people for want of better to do. That's not war.

He's bailing out of Afghanistan, leaving the people there to suffer under the Taliban, just as he bailed out of Iraq, leaving the people there to suffer more civil strife.

He's not closing Gitmo because the politics of doing so are bad. Give him time.

He's not making war on jihadis anywhere else. He's not particularly interested in fighting them.

Champ thinks the Tea Party is a bigger threat -- to him -- than the jihadis are. He's likely right.
Posted by: Steve White   2013-07-02 19:55  

#25  Mo, so if I understand you right, Obama's ruthless war on jihadists stems from ... an atheistic determination to crush all religious belief, everywhere, be it Muslim, Christian, Zoroastrian, whatever. Is that how you square this circle?
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 19:07  

#24  Still smartin' over being played by Snowden, B?

Snowden to B.: "We'll always have Sheremetyevo..."
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 19:04  

#23  Please! No more Victory Koffee for Lex. :-(
Posted by: Besoeker   2013-07-02 18:41  

#22  Actually, yes I do.

But let's hear it from someone who would have been executed by the government for what he was saying:

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
-Thomas Jefferson

It actually pairs well with this

The people of Asia were slaves, because they had not learned how to pronounce the word 'no'.
- Alexander the Great

Public site, because fuck'em that's why. What people seem to not understand is that the 1st Ammendment is there for both the people, and for the government: it is a safety valve. Let's go back to ol T.J. there. Say King George decreed that everyone in the colonies had to keep a logbook of their day, and turn it in to the local authority that evening. If something didn't jive or they thought someone wasn't playing ball, they could go to their house and question them. Jefferson may even concede that because there were indeed people actively working to overthrow the government that agents of the King were right to poke around, but to take records of everyone without warrent and he would not have had to draft a Declaration of Independance because there would have been outright rebellion.

These social programs, those are options. If I want to start a page and talk about myself in such detail burglers know if I'm home or not, that's my own damn fault and why I don't do that.

The government, however, is not an option. Have companies store data just in case, sure, but unfettered access to everything plugged into the web should cause pause. After reading Godel, Escher, & Bach - have you read that one? - I came away with the distinct feeling of the attempt to quantify emotion. If that was done, a simple spreadsheet could really pin a person down. I think an organization capable of hacking China can both hack the 7-11 camera system and run an emotion program.

Put that power into the hands of the guilty before innocent soon to be in charge of your medical access yes we do target people for their political beliefs and your Bobby Mcferrin school of comeback looks silly. In fact, if you could please, change your nym to REM, cuz your 2/2 with that slur on this topic. You have reminded me of my high school peers, so thank you for that.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2013-07-02 18:38  

#21  The tone of your posts indicates, Lex that you draw an income stream that depends on public sector money. That couldn't be influencing your voting habits, could it?
Posted by: no mo uro   2013-07-02 18:32  

#20  Oh and BTW, Obama is neither Christian nor Muslim.

I've always thought that the facts on the ground categorically disprove him being a member of Islam and have never bought into the rest of the center/right going down that path.

He plays at both publicly in order to gain votes, to be sure, but it's pretty obvious he's neither.

He's just another atheist leftist, and an opportunist. That's what the data suggest.
Posted by: no mo uro   2013-07-02 18:29  

#19  Your responses say it all, Lex.

Since you don't know it, I will provide you with the correct answer.

The only correct answer would have been "I would admit that I wa wrong all along, any political movement that promotes government power and growth over the private sector eventually ends up this way, I was fooled, I now recognize the goodness of limiting government, and I will do whatever it takes including take up arms to prevent harm from coming to my fellow Americans."

That answer should be given immediately and without preamble. If the shoes were on the other feet and I was asked the same about you, despite your general snideness and immaturity I would have responded that way without hesitation or attempt at snark.


Your faux nonchalance and "humor" translate directly to either "I would do nothing" or "I would cheer".

Case closed.
Posted by: no mo uro   2013-07-02 18:24  

#18  Guys, history is never going to exactly repeat itself. You abstract the lessons of the past, compare against similar falls into tyranny, and you notice the patterns, factoring in cultural quirks. you see the evil coming based on those patterns, and Lex jeers that you're stupid because "it hasn't arrived yet!" I say we flatter him, give him credit for being intelligent, then consider him a part of the Apparat or an enthusiastic supporter of what's obviously coming, indulging in gaslighting at the present.

What can you do when it DOES arrive? I recommend finding out if the Gulag speculation is true: What would have been different if a random implementer of "The Program" was unsure, when he kissed his wife and kids goodbye in the morning, that that would be the last time he would see them.

After all, that IS the way the IRS works: they have to rely on severely bankrupting and making a random person's life miserable so EVERYONE thinks it COULD happen to them, when the fact is that they couldn't do it if EVERYONE did it. Same principle with tyrannies in the past and present: lop off the heads of those who stand out and stand up.

The key innovation of the NSA spy program is NOT the massive data gathering, but the establishing of a nodal map of interrelationships that can be analyzed using graph methods, looking for characteristics of central nodes. Looking for the ears of corn that grow above the mass.

It'll be a Gestapo all right, but just much more efficient and targeted, and thus much lower profile, creating rumors of power and seeming omniscience. Not acting that way NOW, of course, but all the elements are there. Lex cries "trust us!" but given his behavior here, I would say "no way, twat."
Posted by: Ptah   2013-07-02 18:22  

#17  Jon Stewart's a (literal) clown.

I'm really curious to understand this paranoid fantasy about Christians and lions, er, death camps. How the phuque do you go from
a) Obama has ordered the tageted killings of hundreds of Al Qaeda leaders and operatives and pushed against all his advisers to seek and kill Bin Laden - in other words Obama is far more ruthless than his conservative Christian predecessor was in bringing the war to Islamist terrorists who are targeting us infidels for slaughter;
... to
B) Obama is a power-mad muslim seeking to destroy Christianity.

Can't you at least spin a * coherent * paranoid fantasy?
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 18:11  

#16  From the 'liberal' Jon Stewart's take.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2013-07-02 17:53  

#15  Mo,

I'm genuinely curious: what exactly is the evidence for your wild fantasy of being "carted off to the camps"? By whom? Where?

To put it another way: WTF you smokin, boy?
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 17:53  

#14  You do know, boy, that it is your fellow traveller left-of-center elite wannabes that are heavily into the "fluoride hurts my bodily fluids" in 2013, right? That the right no longer has a dog in that hunt, and hasn't for decades? That every fluoridation initiative that has been defeated in the past several years has gone down to earthy-crunchy leftist activism, people with politics just like you? That the Sterling Hayden's of our time are all left-of center in their politics, like you are?

Seeing as you are so much smarter, well-informed, and just plain better than the rest of us troglodytes, it sure is mystifying that you didn't know that.

Posted by: no mo uro   2013-07-02 16:57  

#13  Failure, boy.

Not even humorous or witty either. That you thought it was is proof that you aren't fully human.

Try again, boy.
Posted by: no mo uro   2013-07-02 16:48  

#12  "Second Base," etc: haha!

Your Gestapo's got a pretty good sense of humor to allow you to make jokes at its expense like that.

Or maybe you meant SgtSchultz and ColKlink's Gestapo?
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 16:13  

#11  So is the Big O returning from Africa for the 4th of July, this being the 2nd of July, or will the coup d'état be occurring without him, curious minds want to know.
Posted by: Vespasian Clusoper8865   2013-07-02 16:06  

#10  What's the frequency, mo?
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 16:04  

#9  Riddle me this, boy.

If the police state did come, and they did start carting off authentic Christians and advocates of limited government to the camps, what (exactly and precisely) would you do about it?

Remember,if your answer is, "You guys are crazy, paranoid, conspiracy theorists, I won't even dignify that question with an answer", then it is a 100% proven fact that you are one of the people who would at best do nothing but in all likelihood would cheer the government on. (There has never been a time or society in history when this wasn't the case, and you are no better, smarter, more informed, or more ethical than those people in those societies.)

It's just that. A proven fact. Denials will equal lies.

Only one answer is acceptable, and most of the 'burgers will recognize it.

Go.

Posted by: no mo uro   2013-07-02 15:51  

#8  OK, so riddle me this, fellow underground resistance members: why are you using a public website to broadcast to the GestapoSSkgb your IP address?

Is it because they've alreaDy POiSonEd oUr pRECioUS bOdILY FLUIDZZ?!?!?
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 15:26  

#7  We have plenty of understanding of a police state, Lex. We're literate and we consume news. We've watched what has happened elsewhere in the world.

You don't have to LIVE in a police state to know when one is coming. Indeed, it's better to fix the problem BEFORE you end up living in a police state.
Posted by: Steve White   2013-07-02 15:21  

#6  Right. Or is it TSA = the SS?
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 15:20  

#5  Don't fly anywhere, do you Lex. Drop by the airport and meet the TSA goons.
Posted by: Mugsy Glink   2013-07-02 14:56  

#4  "Gestapo"! Giggle.

You guys have gone off the deep end.

You don't have the faintest idea of what areal police state looks like.
Posted by: Lex   2013-07-02 14:44  

#3  Depends if people like Barack Hessian Obama's IRS troops quartering in our home computers, tracking our on-line pizza ordering habits for death health panel scoring, in case you don't need an operation sometime.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2013-07-02 14:20  

#2  ...and we'll see that word again - unexpectedly.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2013-07-02 13:59  

#1  In a word, Yes. The elites are so disconnected, and the press is so much part of the machinery, that they have no idea.
Posted by: OldSpook   2013-07-02 13:34