The Independent Daily
 

A Reader Writes...

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



“...Where is all or any news about our corrupt President Obama and (Attorney General Eric) Holder ?” (R. Robert, AZ)


We’re not a “News” journal, Mr., Robert. We’re an opinion journal. We accept opinions from anyone who cares to submit an opinion as long as his or her written opinion meets the tests outlined in our Submissions section, Second Front Page.


As to President Obama: A cursory reading of the TID will yield several articles condemning many of his actions as counterintuitive to solving the vast difficulties we face. Sometimes, like a stopped clock though, his actions or inactions are spot-on.


We advance Independent thinking. It is up to you to decide for whom to vote, and how well they’re meeting your needs after being elected to office. Our job is only to give you fodder for thought and potentially increase your universe of understanding.


Sometimes, regardless of how well versed a reader may become, the results are the same, much like the axiom: You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.



Associated Press:

Lying Does Not Change Reality

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



A May 25, 2013 article by Associated Press writer Tom Raum, who must be on the Obama payroll, describes the vast economic improvements (italics added) realized in the last 18 months through the efforts of one President Obama. He describes how the Republicans are now in fallback position arguing other less salient issues having abandoned railing on Obama for the fiscal collapse occurring during the Bush administration.


Since this journal is neither Democrat nor Republican in slant, perhaps we can shed some light on the hyperbole Mr. Raum elected to supplant for data.


Mr. Raum says that, Republicans had little choice, given that the economy has gained considerable strength over the past 18 months. Today, the federal budget deficit is shrinking rapidly and tax receipts are rising.


The Federal Budget Deficit in fact continues to clock upward toward $17 trillion where at that point every man, woman, and child in America will owe $55,000.00. Use this very informative link to observe, in real-time, the very bad news: http://www.usdebtclock.org/#


Mr. Raum continued to say; Consumer confidence and spending are up, as are auto and housing sales. Stocks are near all-time highs.


Consumer Confidence is one of the most transient of indicators, falling and rising predicated on the day-to-day manic responses from those who read the disinformation reported through America’s slanted media, such as the AP. If it is up today, tomorrow it will be down, rising and falling with the regimen of an 80-year-old man on Viagra.


Housing is experiencing a rebound bringing asked-for prices back to about a 50 percent recovery of losses sustained in the Las Vegas, Phoenix, Southern California, and some other parts of the nation. Meanwhile, the market remains depressed, and in some cases continues to fall with no respite in sight for states like Florida, Michigan, Illinois, and New York. The data available is plentiful and available through Realtytrac.com and a plethora of other resources.


While unemployment is at 7.5 percent, it's down from the 10 percent of October 2009. Also, recent job creation in the private sector has been relatively strong.


Job creation has been predominantly in the Services sector, specifically in low-end jobs where anything barely above minimum wage attracts hordes of today’s recent college graduates.


Here’s the bottom line: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) changed the procedure to eliminate anyone who had elected not to pursue seeking employment in the four weeks prior to the report, or who had not found employment at the expiration of benefits.


As a result: There are currently 183 million Americans who comprise our potential Labor Force. A record 90 million Americans are not participating in the Labor Force who would otherwise be part of Working America. Some receive Disability, some Welfare, some are part of the growing Underground economy scratching out a living at flea markets and yard sales. Some eat out of dumpsters: That’s America today.


One last item: For the Dow Jones Industrial Average to have kept pace with inflation – only – since it began its downward spiral in April 2007, it should have closed at about 15,900. It didn’t. Read, They’re Dollars, Not Points, for a more in-depth analysis in the Archives section of this journal.


Lying is a pastime favored amongst alcoholics. The organization, Alcoholic Anonymous is an effective tool to help the alcoholic overcome both his or her consumption of alcohol and fabrication of reality. Maybe the AP can get a group rate.



Driving to the Grand Canyon?

Get ready to Bump and Grind

GL Hill

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



“If you plan to motor west…Travel my way, take the highway that is crappiest. Get your Jolts on route Eye-Fortiest.”


A cumbersome variation of the popular song – Get Your Kicks on Route 66 – and equally painful to drive: Interstate 40 (I-40) is the third-longest major east–west Interstate Highway in the United States (after I-90 and I-80). It’s one of the top three most traveled interstates in the US.


I-40 is just over 2555 miles long passing through North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma (Oklahoma City looks O, so pretty…No it doesn’t), Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Over three hundred and fifty-nine miles of this soon-to-be-derelict highway are in Arizona. It is a major transportation corridor for much of the goods that we Americans consume in vast and disproportionate quantities to the rest of the world. It’s also how thousands of tourists every year get to the Grand Canyon.


It’s like our Welcome mat.


Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) does an average job of keeping the pavement rolling through the cities; but once outside of (and between) Kingman, Seligman, Williams (turn left for the Grand Canyon) and Flagstaff, the road is reminiscent more of an old wagon trail filled with potholes and ruts grooved into the pavement, some the size of the Grand Canyon, thereby saving you additional travel and admission costs.


Currently most vehicles (including those huge semi-trucks pulling vans or flatbeds) straddle the line, either the lane line or shoulder line whether your driving in the lane next to them or not, to avoid this mostly-rutted, dilapidated interstate. Might we imagine that from this practice there would be an increase in the number of accidents?


You bet. Reminders such as burned pavement, abandoned automobile parts, hubcaps, blown tractor-trailer tires, and the skeletal remains of once-determined tourists litter the roadway.


Work performed in the past 5 years along the I-40 between mile marker 59 (east of Kingman) and 87 (nearly 30 miles) has consisted mainly of Metal Beam Guard Rail (MBGR) replacement, and mowing the shoulder and median (and thereby grinding the intentionally overlooked litter, including once-exuberant tourists, to a feathery covering swept away in the always windy region).


Major bridge work has occurred twice; and an inordinate number of turn-arounds were created near Kingman, all of which you cannot use: they are for emergency vehicle use only, having been built under the recently amended, I didn’t buy enough donuts provision safeguarding our Highway Patrol officers from undo hardship.


Road surface maintenance of Interstate 40 has been neglected with the exception of the occasional 3-man crew (ADOT’s version of the Blue Man Group) throwing shovels of asphalt into potholes near the interstate’s shoulder. To be accurate: One shovels; Two observe.


While ADOT guard rail replacement/repair crews and sign/post replacement crews block off an interstate lane for a mile or more prior to their work, these 3-man pothole patch crews have one orange cone (maybe) about 6 feet prior to their work area.  As the flow of traffic allows (remember that this is on one of the most travelled interstates in the US at posted speeds of 75 miles-per-hour), they toss a shovel full of asphalt into the pothole for the oncoming traffic to compact, and repeat this process until the hole is half-filled and all passing vehicles have at least 2 pounds per tire of the black, sticky stuff irrevocably adhered to the tread.


The requirements for pothole repair seem to be: 1) pothole must be close enough to the shoulder for the 3-man crew to fill from the shoulder; 2) pothole must be visible using Google Earth.


If the highway were actually maintained the need to replace hundreds of miles of MBGR would drop off substantially.


Curious as to when we might see much needed surface repairs to the I-40, I checked azdot.gov. 2013 work scheduled on I-40 in Mohave County is limited to “Bridge Rehabilitation” (in Kingman) and “Sign Rehabilitation” between Mile Marker (MM) 75 and 122. In other words, signs and bridges will be in Rehab for the year while the pavement continues to abuse vast quantities of alcohol and drugs.


In fiscal year 2014, “Pavement Preservation” (too late) is scheduled between MM 57 and 71.5 (this portion is also US-93; US-93 has had a huge amount of money thrown at it for the past several years). My hope is that “Pavement Preservation” will consist of resurfacing all lanes of the Interstate in both directions.


In fiscal year 2015, Pavement Preservation is scheduled along I-40, westbound between MM 74 and 79 (eastbound not listed for repair), and eastbound between MM 87 and 92 (westbound not listed for repair). The rutted and potholed section of I-40 between MM 79 and 87 is not referenced for pavement work in ADOT’s five-year forecast of work. Hopefully, there will still be some road surface of I-40 left to “preserve” by 2014 and 2015.


In 2009, ADOT was to receive an estimated $350 million for highway and bridge projects (explains the work and re-work of bridges) statewide as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Per azdot.gov, our Governor, Jan Brewer, was quoted as saying, “The transportation projects supported by economic recovery funds will benefit every Arizonan,” and “The creation of jobs is vital to our economy, and so are stronger connections between communities and our neighboring states. Arizonans will return to work and our roads will get the improvements they need.”


The bubble-text (thought but not stated) must have been, …yeah, as long as you live in Phoenix… Unfortunately, none of those funds seemed to have gone, or are scheduled to be going to maintain the I-40 road surface.


Is it all about discomfort? It has nothing to do with that: In the most and frequent extreme, it’s about swerving, maneuvering, avoiding, confronting, recovering, and the culminating accidents and deaths along this vital artery.


At the very least it’s about cracked windshields, destroyed tires and suspension systems, chipped paint, and knowing that most of our foreign tourists who travel the road are thinking, What the hell is wrong with this country?


I don’t know…we’re broke, I guess.

But, doesn’t our trash look nice ground up

like newly fallen snow?



Defaulty Thinking

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



Although it may be surprising to some, Congressional election campaigns are just over the horizon. Soon various candidates from the two primary parties, that are in fact only one, will begin focusing on their re-election to office to further perpetuate our current government.


Right now, per various polls, Congressional Approval rests somewhere between 18% to 22%. Ironically it is we the electorate who are responsible for both the growing abyss and for the commensurate discord permeating Congress, as well as for the resultant lack of forward movement in the halls of government. We cannot lay it off on those we put into office because we put them in office...


Americans are basically a very lazy bunch, unable to muster up the energy and time necessary to study alternative, independent candidates. To ask us to give up some small portion of our 42 hours per week of television viewing time to investigate other worthy candidates of independent thought who foresee a better America is just too painful.


Instead, we rely on those 42 viewing hours to teach us what we must know to make our decisions at the voting booth, if in fact we bother voting at all.


So, from the various networks - cable and otherwise - our minds are inundated with the possibility of only two choices: Democrat or Republican. To consider otherwise is to be thought of as too-far-afield, on-the-fringe, off-the-edge.


This is what the popular media teaches us because they are part of main-stream Default Thinking, too. Their job is to perpetuate the existing machine so that they may be assured of successful results.


Those who control the popular Ink media, like the LA and New York Times have specific agenda they wish to see advanced. It would be uncharacteristic of them to support candidates that perhaps are not clearly in-step with those ideals. Yet they do not control the electorate: Only the electorate’s lock-step obedience to their suggestions ensures their success.


The Independent Daily does not endorse candidates for office. We do, however, provide the tools to research and better understand independents who are seeking various elected offices - people with whose opinions you may largely agree.


As the race for Congressional seats opens we will list those candidates who offer non-default views on today’s critical issues facing America. We won’t tell you for whom to vote, though...


We’ll leave that to the sheepherders Fox, CNN, ABC et al.




Understanding Chained CPI

Jos. Warren

@WarrenHillFilms



Chained Consumer Price Indexing (CCPI) is on the precipice of implementation with far-reaching impact to millions of Americans, yet few understand how CCPI actually works. President Obama, whose annual pay has suffered a severe setback through the voluntary return of 5%, is very enthusiastic about Chained CPI.


The American Association of Retired People (AARP), the organization that begins sending invitations to join ever-earlier - now at about 7 years of age - and a variety of other organizations have all offered their interpretations of Chained CPI to help the average benefit recipient understand how the implementation of this unique system will impact the average future increase. But no one has gotten it right...until now. (Read on for an accurate description of how Chained CPI may affect you or your loved ones.)


At this time, 46.2 million Americans live below the Poverty Line and receive some small stipend to help chase off the wolf at the door. Some of the 46.2 million are includable in the 54 million Americans who receive Social Security as retirees and as survivors receiving benefits, and in the more than 8 million Americans receiving Supplemental Social Security, who have thus retired early due to alleged illness or disability. Then, too, the 3.5 million Americans receiving Welfare today are also potentially affected by the implementation of CCPI.


So, what’s different about CCPI versus the long-standing CPI used to-date for calculating benefit increases?


It’s an entirely different Market Basket approach to understanding how consumers shop. Famously, proponents of CCPI say that when we shop we carefully select those things we can afford in lieu of those things that have taken on an accelerated appreciation for whatever anomalic reason.


Those in favor of this system say something like, “If the price of beef is too high, then the consumer will select pork, instead” which seems completely rational until one begins to understand that the price of any meat has increased dramatically in the last few years for several reasons: The price of forage products to feed America’s meat producing industries owing to increased exports to, among other countries, China (see Shall We Gather at the Liver, in the Archives); A prolonged and ruthless drought in the Southwest; Increased cost of fuel for the transport of live and butchered meat products; and a plethora of other reasons.


So, the syllogism actually looks more like this: Consumer A, a 68 year-old retired woman receives $1,200 per month in Social Security benefits. She had worked all of her life both at a job and raising three children, one of whom was Killed in Action in Afghanistan. The other two children have moved away and are raising families of their own. One adult child is an unemployed Logger in Oregon. The second is married to a manufacturing manager whose job was outsourced to China.


Consumer A’s husband predeceased her three years before after a prolonged illness that forced them to sell their home at a time, like today, when the Fair Market Value was only a few thousand dollars more than when they bought the home nearly twenty years prior, to pay his medical bills. At that time they also had a Certificate of Deposit for a little more than $20,000 generating a yield from their bank, a recipient of several billions of dollars in government funding in 2009, of less than 1% per year, or about $180.


She can no longer drive because of the cost of fuel and automobile insurance, so she sold the family car. She is prescribed medication for hypertension but rarely can afford to refill the now-empty bottle. Her rent is $750 per month. Utilities average $190 per month.


Consumer A at the supermarket: As she approaches the meat counter she notices that the price of filet mignon has increased from last week’s $9 per pound to a little more than $12. Mon Dieu! She proclaims and vows to swear off expensive steak, at least for the next week.


She moves warily away from the Beef section to the Pork, and, after counting her remaining food money for the month, recognizing that she has about $28 for the next 17 days, she continues past Pork at $3.59 per pound and heads to the dog food aisle where she finds a very nice can of generic dog food containing the anatomical parts of cows and pigs that are not suitable for any other use.


The good news? It’s only thirty-nine cents per can, which means she can eat fairly heartily over the next 17 days, and perhaps by then filet mignon will be back down to a more reasonable level, and that, my dear children, is Chained Consumer Price Indexing.


Take heart, though: it will likely affect Obama’s pay too, resulting in a smaller increase in the $400,000 per year salary along with the $50,000 annual expense account, and $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment, plus the millions upon millions of dollars spent to support our Commander in Chief and his wife and children...


...and I mean millions.




Here We Go Again -

Nigeria: More Dead Children

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



From Der Spiegel:


“Second zero was the moment in which (Brandon) Bryant's (Drone pilot) digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.


“Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.


"’Did we just kill a kid?’ he asked the man sitting next to him.


"’Yeah, I guess that was a kid,’ the pilot replied.


"’Was that a kid?’ they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.


“Then, someone they didn't know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. ‘No. That was a dog,’ the person wrote.


“They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?”


But that’s OK: In Iraq and Afghanistan our Department of Defense classified Enemy Combatants as any (discernible or not) male over the age of 12. So, the child Bryant blew in to oblivion was obviously a hell-bent terrorist.


Now, rather than just continuing our failed missions in Afghanistan and Iraq we’re adding Nigeria to the mix, as well.


Why might we do that? Oil, once again. Using the same manufactured reasoning as before, Nigeria’s border to Mali represents a threshold over which Mali’s Al Qaeda Islamic Extremists will cross into neighboring Nigeria and wreak havoc with Nigeria’s hitherto peaceful citizens, converting them all to frothing Terrorists, whose secret thoughts involve blowing up a Wal-Mart in Duluth.


Does it matter that 33% of Nigeria’s vast Oil export business is directed to the United States? Does the fact that Nigeria’s very unpopular, yet Western-friendly president whose name belies any iota of Egalitarianism, Goodluck Jonathan, suppresses the people of Nigeria through a systematic enslavement of poverty while the wallets of those who administrate the government bulge from Oil pay-offs by Shell, Exxon-Mobil and the usual suspects?


Nigeria’s Oil production for the last few years has been hampered by a series of attacks and hooliganism directed at the Oil companies that dominate the region. History is chock-full of examples where those who dominate international markets often and frequently recruit our military to defend them against those who wish to expand or better-control operations on foreign soil.


No one ought to forget (USMC) General Butler’s words, "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives…”


Nigeria is no different than Iraq was to Exxon-Mobil. We did not go to Iraq to unseat a lone, deranged president. We went there to make the Majnoon and West Qurna oil fields safe for Shell and Exxon-Mobil, after Hussein revoked Russia’s leases a few months earlier: These are just easily verifiable facts, people: Remove your heads from your asses.


Unfortunately, America is too consumed with Gun Control at the moment to pay any attention to what our President is doing. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Do you really think that President Obama or any member of Congress finds the loss of 20 children in Connecticut unsettling?


From the U S Energy Information Administration:


“Nigeria's hydrocarbon resources are the mainstay of the country's economy, but development of the oil and natural gas sectors is often constrained by instability in the Niger Delta.


“Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa and has been a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) since 1971. In 2011, Nigeria produced about 2.53 million barrels per day (bbl/d) of total liquids, well below its oil production capacity of over 3 million bbl/d, due to production disruptions that have compromised portions of the country's oil for years (emphasis added). The Nigerian economy is heavily dependent on the oil sector, which accounts for over 95 percent of export earnings and about 40 percent of government revenues, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).


“The oil industry is primarily located in the Niger Delta where it has been a source of conflict. Local groups seeking a share of the oil wealth often attack the oil infrastructure and staff, forcing companies to declare force majeure on oil shipments. At the same time, oil theft, commonly referred to as "bunkering," leads to pipeline damage that is often severe, causing loss of production, pollution, and forcing companies to shut-in production.


“Foreign companies operating in joint ventures (JVs) or production sharing contracts (PSCs) with the NNPC include ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, Eni, Addax Petroleum (recently acquired by Sinopec of China), ConocoPhillips, Petrobras, StatoilHydro, and others.”


So, here we go again, just as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan…Advisors then troops, only now we’ve added drones to the pot: stirring well we can expect many dead Nigerians, and a reduced loss of Clean, Wholesome, Christian Americans: Because in truth it always has been as Colonel Oliver said in the movie, Hotel Rwanda, when speaking about the lack of American involvement during the genocide of hundreds of thousands of innocent people caught in the cross-fire of hate:


“You’re not even a nigger…”


Please Note: This is the Old Front Page. It has not been updated since June 9, 2013 and is here only for Archive purposes. Please go to the New Front Page at www.TheIndependentDaily.com, or send the editor a quick email at Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com and tell us what you’re reading, please.


In This Issue:

(Click on Page Headings to Navigate)


Kingman Page Special: A Resigning Mayor - Another Future Missed Opportunity ?


Front Page -

Chain Mail, National Security Agency

England’s Guardian, Better at Being a US Citizen Than Most Americans

Of Whores and Culture, A Reader Writes

Licking Bush, Is It Too Late?

Droning on about being droned, iDrone v.4, on the Way!

Wild and Crazy Guys! Fun and Games with the FBI

The Never-Made Episode about the ICC, How I Met Your Mother

My name is the Associated Press and, I’m an Alcoholic

TID regular Shepherd, Homeless in America

Hating in America: No Exit, and, Prelude to No Exit

On the Warpath, When is an Indian really an Indian?

GL Hill, Bump and Grind Your Way to the Grand Canyon!

Sixties Rock Bands and Nigerian Terrorism, Boko Haram

Get Ready for Congressional Elections: “Defaulty” Thinking

New Season! New Apathy! Don’t Miss,  American Idle

Unravelling the Mystery, Chain, Chain, Chain...Chain of Fools (CPI)

The Recovery: Fake, Fake, Fake...

John Kerry, Eat Your Heart Out

Pakistan’s Explosive Politics, and What America Has to Teach: Nothing.

Colonel Oliver says, “You’re not even a Nigger...” Nigeria: More Dead Children

Which Relieves Headaches Faster?  Sartre or Tylenol?

People Power: Soylent Brown


Second Front Page -

THE MOST SEARCHED FOR, AND READ IN THIS PUBLICATION:

Einstein’s Wristwatch (Special Relativity and Genesis)

And...

Why the Obama Administration is Peeling Apple to the Core: #1 Contributor Bill Gates

Good News and Bad,  The American Dream is Alive (in Vietnam)

The Bad Penny, Pervez Musharraf

You Are About To Be, ”Liked” by the IRS

Le Whoop Ass, Très Mal Mali

Links and Multi-Media


The Kingman Page

This Kingman Issue, Seen a UFO?

And, How the Grand Canyon was Formed, per the Hualapai Indians


Looking for a past article?

Use the Index to Past Articles by Author and Title Here

Or use the Google Search Below-Right at end of Column

(To use Search you must allow, “Google Ajax Search”)


Congressional Contact Information for all States (linked site)

How I Met Your Mother:

The Never-Made Episode About the International Criminal Court

Warren-Hill

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



In this episode, Marshall quits his job with his upscale law firm and finds employment with the International Criminal Court (ICC).


Set: Ted’s apartment.

Cast: Marshall, Lily, Ted, Barney and Robin


Marshall: So guess what happened today at the office…


Barney: You hooked up a Broway with two other lawyers in the men’s room and decided to leave Lily and little Marvin for a gay relationship in San Francisco?


Marshall: No…that was last week. Today I quit my job…again. I can’t stand working for that firm any longer. I didn’t go to law school and become a lawyer just to prostitute myself.


Robin: So you’re going to pimp Lily out instead?


Lily: Robin, don’t be a douche.


Ted: You know, I always meant to mention, Marshall, that you don’t really sound like a lawyer to me…you’re…forgive me for saying this, but you sound kind of too…stupid to have made it through undergraduate school, let alone law school.


Barney: It’s the way the script is written for this series…Ted! America’s really dumbed down. I mean, remember that half of America is intellectually below average, and that the average has fallen substantially over the last few decades, too. So, if the writers were to make Marshall say things that were consistent with his intellect, then less than half of our viewers would understand.


Robin: You nailed it, Barney…bump this! (She extends her fist.)


Lily: So what are we going to do, sweetie. I mean we have to support little Marvin, and what about the apartment?


Marshall: Well that’s the good news, Lilypad. I got a new job already. I start tomorrow as Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in the Hague.


Barney: That’s next to Tribeca, isn’t it?


Marshall: No, it’s in the Netherlands.


Barney: It’s in your nether regions?


Ted: The Netherlands, Barney. The International Criminal Court is the international tribunal responsible for bringing to justice those who commit atrocities, like, you know, genocide.


Robin: You mean like you people did in Iraq?


Barney: What do you mean, “you people”? O, that’s right, you’re Canadian…eh.


Marshall: She’s right, sort-of, Barney. Except back in 2002 when we first started HIMYM and President Bush was in office, he refused to sign-on to the Rome Statute.


Robin: (Nervous laugh) Yeah…and a year later he ordered the invasion of Iraq…it was so bogus. But he knew that if he signed the Rome Statute, given what he was about to do, that he’d probably find his ass in a slammer in Europe awaiting trial on…wait for it…War Crimes. I covered this on Channel 1 back then, you know…nobody cared, though.


Barney: You have no audience, Robin.


Robin: Yeah, right. Nobody did who opposed invading Iraq.


Lily: Well maybe President Obama will endorse the ICC now and place us under their judicial purview.


Robin: Their what?


Marshall: Not likely, Lily. In more than four years he’s done nothing but give lip service to the ICC because he has his own war agenda…remember we’re still in Afghanistan, and he’s deployed us into Nigeria…Syria may be next.


Ted: But that’s to protect Big Oil.


Marshall: Oil Shmoil, we’re killing innocent civilians with our misguided Drone systems and through our military. And that’s why he won’t sign it either.


Robin: But isn’t the president and everyone always ranting about bringing international criminals to justice?


Marshall: Yeah, but not our own.


Robin: Seems kind of hypocritical.


Ted: Do you think? Geez…hold everyone else up to a standard of morality by which we ourselves won’t abide. It’s unconscionable…I don’t know why anyone who’s been brought to trial hasn’t raised the issue.


Barney: You mean, like, “You can place me on trial when you bring the murderer, George Bush to trial?”


Ted: Yeah, something like that.


Barney: Ted, look: Most Americans are like the women I bang. You know that.


Ted: That stupid? (laugh track)


Robin: Let’s go downstairs and get a drink.


Lily: It’s only seven in the morning and I have to teach kindergarten in an hour…but I guess a few cocktails won’t hurt…lead the way.


Fade-Out


In the opening titles of our film, The Abduction and Trial of George Bush (view online for free here), we mention the coincidental nature of Bush’s refusal in 2002 to endorse the Rome Statute and to thereunder subject America’s leadership to the same moral standards as we impose on other countries. Of course, the reason for Bush’s rejection became apparent in March 2003 with the invasion of Iraq resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women and children, many of whom were “intentionally targeted” (key phraseology).


Think about who we are in America. Think about what we’ve become. We are not a beacon of freedom any longer: We are the harbinger of death. That’s why there is no other nation in the world more hated…


Other nations and peoples are not jealous of our now-depleted wealth: they fear us as we do ourselves.


Editor’s Note: The author denies that this episode was advanced to the producers of the popular TV show referenced, and that he has no connection with the show in any way. It’s intent is to cause the reader to consider the implications of our conflicting position regarding the ICC and the tribunal’s mission.



Boko Haram:

Know Your Sixties Rock Bands

Warren-Hill

@WarrenHillFilms


Editor’s note: The BBC like most biased mainstream media, in their 16 May issue re-tell a story about Boko Haram describing the atrocities this group of murderers committed while omitting how our ally, the Nigerian Army, has razed thousands of homes and killed hundreds of noncombatant women and children. Once again, a US ally is cut from the same fabric as those we oppose. When will we learn?


The BBC’s dissimulated story may be read here.


As a service to the younger readers of The Independent Daily we thought it might be helpful to your music enjoyment if we helped you to better identify popular 60s Rock bands, and gave you some tips on how to differentiate them from more recent ensembles.


Formed in 1967, Procol Harum will forever be remembered for their classic hit, A Whiter Shade of Pale:



Procol Harum


The group below is known for their 2013 cover hit of the Talking Heads earlier smash by nearly the same name, Burning Down Your House, after first rejecting a remake of, A Whiter Shade of Pale for unknown reasons. Boko Haram is largely popular in Nigeria and other areas of Africa:



Boko Haram


(It’s easy to confuse the two groups. Remember this simple rule, though: do not seek autographs from the latter.)


Although in truth it appears that our ally, the Nigerian Army whose mission it is to improve the flow of oil for Conoco-Phillips, et al., is responsible for the deaths of about 180 civilians in the town of Baga.


Destroying some 2,275 homes in the process, Nigerian Armed Forces attempted to oust the suspected presence of Boko Haram by turning lives and housing into ash. (They found no one.)


Once again, we find ourselves in bed with a Coyote Ugly ally for the greed of Oil. (Read, Nigeria: More Dead Children, on this page.)


Obviously, the Nigerian Army are just not

Classic Rock music fans. (If you live in Nigeria, watch the Entertainment section of your local newspaper to find out when Boko Haram, the Nigerian Army, or US Drones will be in your town...and leave.)


United Lesbians:

Together We Can Lick Bush!

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



My only complaint about Gay organizations is that they spend far too much time advancing the cause of Same-Sex Marriage, and pushing acceptance of Openly Gay status while seeking membership, as an example, to social service and youth groups to which they were always admitted without the declaration of their being homosexual. (Read, Scout’s Honor, in the Archives section.)


Scouting was always open to Gay kids; Gay couples have always lived together; And in many states and countries couples found easy ways to care for one another financially and otherwise without the need to be acknowledged as homosexual by the government: Far too much time and energy is being expended pursuing the rationalization of a biological act.


The shame of it all isn’t in being homosexual. The shame is in wasting that much coordinated direction and force on something as ludicrous as striving to gain societal acceptance of a sexual act seen as reprehensible by a percentage of the world’s population who practice a sexual act seen equally as distasteful by those who advocate homosexuality.


When, in fact, that focus, drive, energy, enthusiasm and commitment (which I applaud), might better have been focused on something more akin to protecting the far more basic premise of one’s right to live without fear of the consequences of greed and hate, such as the hundreds of thousands of innocents who perished at the direction of George Bush in Iraq, and the many thousands who suffer today in America from hate and ignorance.


Where were these people in the year 2003 who now demand recognition for a sexual practice when the US government was about to embark on a path to certain death for many in the Middle East?


Why is their sexuality more important than the life of a child? Why do they not see that the larger picture of basic Human Rights must necessarily outweigh acknowledged concern for the sexual practices of a few?


That’s the shame of it all, from my perspective...


California’s Dianne Feinstein supports same-sex unions. She supports Gay rights. She is a strident-supporter of minority rights. She was a supporter of the war in Iraq.


Feinstein is on record as having said that in his tenure as president, George Bush made “false statements” regarding the need to initiate military action. She therefore excuses herself from bad judgement.


As a United States Senator, is Feinstein not obligated to initiate proceedings in the US Senate to investigate her allegations?


Is it not the sworn duty of a United States Senator to pursue what she alleges to be a High Crime on the part of our then-President Bush?


I implore you! The corruption and rampant misdirection of our government today is symptomatic of our past apathy. Correct the past and we will do much to bring  about a more obedient government: One that fears the electorate.  Read, Fun and Games with the FBI, below.




Prelude to, No Exit (below)

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com


My omnivorous appetite for reading takes in the Sciences, Religion, Biographies, Fiction, and whatever else comes my way. I like to read Nelson DeMille, as an example, for pure entertainment: His first-person narratives are free-flowing, humorous, and sometimes plainly fifth-grade funny – a level a part of me (that hasn’t grown up yet) is comfortable with.


But reading his latest, The Panther, was disappointing. His growing demonization of America’s and the world’s Muslim population is patently opportunistic riding on the wave of Hate set into motion a little more than a decade ago and building still today. Yet his editorial staff carry traditional Jewish surnames: What were these people thinking when they read this stereotype-saturated, hate-filled pulp? Have they forgotten history, or is it all about the money?


With few exceptions, watch what comes out of Hollywood’s traditional cinema empires and you’ll see the continued flogging of Muslims-cum-Terrorists hell-bent on destroying our way of life…such as it is.


Vilified openly, no other ethnic group has been subject to as extensive a pummeling as the Muslims since Jews in Germany in the 1930’s. But that was supposed to be the Dark Ages for modern humanity, was it not?


Television, Radio, Ink, and Electronic Media all feel unfettered by convention, liberally and loosely lambasting those who follow the ways of Islam. There is no specified Hating season: Hate anytime, anywhere with impunity.


John Sides and Kimberly Gross of George Washington University set about to quantify and thus better understand this normative aberration in, Stereotypes of Muslims and Support for the War on Terror, available here through GWU. In this extensive study they discovered the obvious, but something worth restating, There is no other ethnic group in America today more universally disparaged and thus hated than the Muslim.


This is symptomatic of an insane society. Read anything by Erich Fromm regarding how a society such as ours may become so normatively delusional the consequences of which become lethal…as it was in Germany and much of Europe in the 1930s. This is conditioned behavior that has led to the devolution of our society.


An interesting aside: Even China’s cinema viewing public finds American films below their intellectual level, instead thirsting for those that involve the more enlightened aspects of our species’ capabilities. Think about that next time you watch a TV program depicting Muslims negatively. Measure your internal responses to the images and words.


Better yet, throw out your television…


No Exit

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com


On the increase over the last several years, Hate Crimes - specifically directed to Muslims and Jews - is what’s pushing America’s bull market this year, rocketing the Dow Jones Hate Index (DJHI) into record territory. This according to newly released data by the US State Department’s John Kerry. Read it here.


...Bill Maher (Jewish) speaking with Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison (African-American), called the Quran a “hate-filled holy book”...


Becoming so commonplace (and thus apparently acceptable) in the media, soon on your favorite cable channel you’ll be able to catch the premiere episode of NBC’s new sitcom, Everybody Hates Abdul.


Strange bedfellows, indeed: Muslims and Jews.


The abyss grows in America as the (real) Dow trends upward, and the Middle Class slowly evaporates; Homelessness continues to surge with more than three million families living in temporary shelters or substandard and makeshift housing. To most of us they are invisible.


So are the millions who have dropped off the unemployment database because they did not search for work in the four weeks prior to being counted. Why did they quit looking? Because there are no jobs.


They, along with the Working Poor and those others struggling to get by are lost in America. They need to blame someone, and our government is far too vague, aloof, and threatening a target. Most Americans fear their government. They don’t fear the (insert your choice: Muslim, Black, Hispanic, or Jewish) family man running the small grocery on the corner. So, while they’d probably prefer to punch the US Congress in the nose, Moshe or Mohamed will have to do.


Ever read Sartre’s, Anti-Semite and Jew?


People who Hate need someone tangible and approachable on whom they may pile their troubles: We are a nation of victims. We do not accept responsibility for our actions, so why would we do so for our circumstances? Americas courtrooms are filled with  those who profess to be victims. Most prevail.


Hate is even popularized in the media...even by Jews who ought to know better. Perhaps America’s Jewish population just hasn’t taken the time to realize that the targets of Hate are one in the same: anyone on whom one’s troubles may be blamed, however remotely and disassociated: Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics. Everyone’s scrambling to climb up what remains of the ladder to avoid the caldron seething with those left behind.


Here’s an example: Bill Maher (Jewish) speaking with Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison (African-American), called the Quran a “hate-filled holy book”. In this way, Maher can pander to America’s hate mongers and demonstrate that both Jews and Blacks regard Muslims in the same light - hopefully distancing themselves from Hate.


That won’t work: Jewish Uncle Tom (Fetter Thomashefsky?) doesn’t play to the ignorant. Self-loathing doesn’t work either. The only thing that will work, in fact, is not allowing yourself to Hate.


This Jewish guy I’ve read, once said, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Better words to consider than those of Bill Maher.


Kerry says, “I’ll eat your heart!”

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



Well, not actually John Kerry but a representative of the rebel forces doing battle in the Syrian civil war our Secretary of State is urging us to support....did say that.


Not only did this rebel proclaim his intent, shared by many in the rebel faction, but he actually demonstrated his willingness to fulfill this macabre oath by eating the heart of a Syrian soldier on video after removing it from the soldier's chest cavity.


Read, The Problem With “Terrorists”, and Soylent Brown, below. Nigeria, Syria, Mali, Afghanistan, and still in Iraq, our Foreign Policy benefits only the Oil industry. These are civil wars, stemming from, to a large extent, our destabilization of the Middle East.


Does John Kerry’s willingness to embroil us in another conflict qualify him for Hypocrite of the Year, or only the Hannibal Lecter Award for Culinary Excellence? Or, is he, too, so addle-pated that he can’t recall his own testimony regarding the civil war in Vietnam?


Maybe this is nothing more than a shrewd marketing ploy to boost sales of his wife’s Heinz 57 brand ketchup in the Middle East...



Heinz: Good For (and On) Your Heart



Pakistan: Explosive Politics

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



The 2012 General Election in America was largely decided by barely a simple majority of eligible voters: Overall about 57% of those eligible reluctantly trudged to the polls to cast their ballots, with a fairly large percentage completing Absentee ballots far earlier than the official November date.


Blacks in America turned out slightly higher than their White racial counterparts, 66.2% of those eligible to vote versus 64.1%, much to the chagrin of Mr. Romney, and Hispanics fell far below both averaging about 44%. America’s media serving the Black population are self-congratulatory about the numbers.


Some observations:


Recalling the many hardships and struggles associated with capturing the right to vote in America, as recently as only 50 years past, eligible Black voters in America ought to have been at the polls in near 100% turnout.


Hispanics, whose voting ranks are growing steadily upward to a point of potentially controlling election results in many states - and nationally - are disappointing, seemingly abdicating their Democratic responsibility and thus insuring that more bad immigration thinking, as an example, will find its way into law...


White people, too, obviously lack involvement, and through their complacency and laziness guarantee that their vision of America will continue to erode, regardless of how much they blog otherwise.


In Pakistan, the voter turnout in this last election seating Nawaz Sharif, saw scores of people die by bombing attacks and countless others brutally and forever maimed both physically and mentally in the weeks leading up to, and on the day of the election.


The Pakistan electorate queued up by the thousands at polling places throughout the country fully aware and expectant that there was the likelihood for violence and death. They were neither disappointed nor undaunted.


Voter turnout? More than 60%.


A truly functional Democracy depends on the involvement of its citizens, leading and directing its government through the people the electorate places in office.


One of the purported reasons for our various military actions in increasing geographies throughout the Middle East and elsewhere is to bring Democracy to regions and countries where the citizenry allegedly have no voice in the direction of their future, and to teach them participatory government. Ironic, isn’t it?


Sartre vs. Tylenol

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



MSN.com recently featured an article based on some very bad research correlating a reduced Fear of Death to Tylenol Use. Flawed desperately, the research did serve to remind me of my research at the University of San Francisco in the late 1970s studying what correlation, if any, existed between Death Anxiety and Achievement Motivation. In other words, and very simply, Did varying levels of individual fear of death cause us to a varying individual extent, to get up off our asses and do those things we might not otherwise do in our lives, recognizing that the Grim Reaper loiters nearby for us all?


In the MSN article, for those experiencing what they termed, “Existential Angst” Tylenol apparently had some assuaging effect. But, Existential Angst, from an Existentialist’s perspective far transcends only the angst associated with life’s quick passage.


In America we have lost the edge associated with what I believe is a healthy level of Woe necessary to Achievement, and we are thus a fairly useless collective of non-go-getters. Here are some of the creative measures we take in America to avoid life’s noetic realities for our population Aged 12 and over:


Illicit Drug Use: About 9% of our population uses Illicit Drugs regularly, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Illicit Drugs means, marijuana/hashish, cocaine (including crack), heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, or prescription-type psychotherapeutics used non-medically (meaning not prescribed and used just for the hell of it). Obviously, the number far exceeds the above for all those who use Illicit Drugs on a less-than-regular basis.


Anti-Depressant Drugs: About 13% of our population regularly uses prescribed Anti-Depressant drugs to combat sensations of discordance regularly associated with feelings of helplessness, uselessness, and a lack of definition of one’s self, or any of the other various conditions described by Sartre in Being and Nothingness, Nausea, or Troubled Sleep.


Alcohol: At the very minimum 67% of Americans consume alcohol, many far below the legal drinking age. Fully at least 15% of Americans are recognized alcoholics dependent on alcohol on a daily basis, thus the CDC spends vast amounts of money investigating tobacco use and suggesting courses of action, but does not take on the far more devastating issue of alcohol.


Television: In America only 5% of households Do Not watch television. Conversely, 95% of households do. The average household watches 42 hours of TV per week saturating themselves with mindless drivel and opinions not of their own construction. TV does, however, take the edge of one’s finite existence capturing the mind’s complete attention both obviously and subliminally and replaces healthy angst with contrived feelings of wholeness achievable through the acquisition of clothes, cars, sexual conquests, and the promise of ever-lasting health and happiness (see Anti-Depressant addictions, above).


Religion: According to the PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life, 71% of us are “Absolutely Certain” of God. 70% believe that our Religion will lead to an “Eternal After Life”, or about the same as those who use alcohol regularly. So, why bother with this life…


Where does this leave America? Plainly, nearly 100% of the population is medicated to avoid the issue of life’s finality. Some use drugs, prescribed or otherwise, while the vast majority of us use the unassailable and, unfortunately, not subject to online after-purchase consumer reviews of Religion to justify both our actions and inactions.


In retrospect, Tylenol doesn’t seem so bad.



 

The Guardian

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



“…The US Center for Constitutional Rights said it appeared to be "the broadest surveillance order to ever have been issued".”



The United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper has exposed our NSA and FBI’s Secret Court Order to Verizon for the release of all customer telephone records.


Under fire for disclosing the document which came to the Guardian through surreptitious channels, in it the National Security Agency makes their incontrovertible request with the direct approval of President Obama et al.


In it: Verizon is required to hand over data "on an ongoing, daily basis" until 19 July; Covers all local and domestic US phone calls, and calls from the US abroad, but not calls made wholly in foreign countries; (Data) to be provided includes telephone numbers, handset identifying numbers, calling cards used and the time and duration of calls; And it, Prohibits disclosure of the order's existence. Oops...too late.


There is no point in further clipping an already well-written story, so read the entire BBC report here.


Also, read Fun and Games with the FBI, below. Then, America, write and tell us if you enjoyed the last episode of American Idol.



Fun and Games with the FBI

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



“…The FBI made 16,511 national security letter requests for information regarding 7,201 people in 2011, the latest data available.”



A June 1 AP story by Paul Elias details what happens when Google decides to take on the Federal Bureau of Investigation: Google and you lose – Big Time.


Here’s an excerpt: “A federal judge has ruled that Google Inc. must comply with the FBI's warrantless demands for customer data, rejecting the company's argument that the government's practice of issuing so-called national security letters to telecommunication companies, Internet service providers, banks and others was unconstitutional and unnecessary.


“FBI counter-terrorism agents began issuing the secret letters, which don't require a judge's approval, after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.


“The letters are used to collect unlimited kinds of sensitive, private information, such as financial and phone records and have prompted complaints of government privacy violations in the name of national security.”


If you should elect to go to the FBI’s site, you’ll have an opportunity to visit the tab, Fun and Games, under which, presumably, someone who is the subject of investigation attempts to gain access to his or her FBI file. Good luck with that...


Are you having a sound sleep, America?



Don’t Buy Your New iDrone yet:

iDrone 4 is on the way

Jos. Warren

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



Recently in the news for their tax practices involving the shifting of revenues from one country to another in order to obviate tax liability in the United States, Apple is only one of the scores of US-International manufacturing concerns to advantage from the complexities of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) and more liberal tax laws in, as an example, Ireland.


Many of our larger publicly-held companies do business based both in the United States and abroad simultaneously where they may manufacture products, like Apple in China, or elsewhere where the cost of labor is relatively cheap, while confining engineering and design to stateside operations.



Apple’s iPhone: They’re Great!


For those companies who manufacture Terrorists, like the United States Military along with their well-compensated suppliers, foreign tax safe-havens are an aspect of operations important to maintaining stockholder compensation and interest, too.


Drone makers are today an important component of the US Terrorists Manufacturing Industry (TMI). TMI’s powerful lobbying group consists of companies such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, and General Dynamics, to name a few. Here’s a very comprehensive article regarding this industry that appeared on KPBS.


Together these companies comprise the bulk of US manufacturing capability to keep the world supplied in Terrorists, including all future iterations as technology evolves to permit improvements in how Terrorists interface with the United States.


Here’s how this works: Americans (and others) reading Obama’s May 23rd True Confessions broadcast regarding the deaths of US citizens killed by Drone attack will read it as civilians, failing to comprehend that there are thousands, perhaps tens-of-thousands of other citizens of those countries we have Droned who have been killed and crippled by this form of automatonic warfare in every region wherein Drones are deployed.


The simple mathematical reality is that for every one person killed we manufacture maybe 100 more potential Terrorists as a result of being “accidentally” and unmercifully Droned out of a brother, sister, father, mother, and/or child. This is a great return on our manufacturing investment and ensures that we will never run out of opportunities for further advancement in the TMI.


Jumping on potential market-share, General Dynamics has unveiled its new iDrone v.4 pictured below. Intuitive user interface and portability assures it of popularity. Numerous Apps for the typical end user will be available including iHellfire, iSpy, iSeeyou, iKillyou, iLoveamerica, iPhone, and of course, uArefucked.





You’ve Got Mail!

General Dynamics’ iDrone: If it rings, don’t answer!


Editor’s note: Let it be known that The Independent Daily was the first to use the word, Droned as a verb, id est, I Droned, You Droned, He Droned, She Droned, They Droned, and We Droned them into oblivion, thus winning their hearts and minds, because that’s all that was left of them.


GTT

Gone To Texas? Why?

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



The BBC and various news outlets have been reporting on the US Census Bureau's recent release of data declaring Texas as the “To-go-to” state in the US. Collectively they’ve painted a fairly rosy picture of the Lone Star describing its people as “...a mix of liberal and conservative...” and featuring them as inclusion-oriented and politically diverse.


There must be another Texas that I don’t know about.


They correctly describe the opportunities for employment, though, owing largely to Texas’ disregard for on-the-job safety and the health of its workers. Rick Perry, Texas’ present governor and one-time presidential candidate might have described his laissez-faire approach to a class of Texas 4th grade children by saying, “Losing your daddy in uh accydent ain’t so bad...sometimes he don’t end up dead...just gets a leg lopped off and yur kin gets money for that...”


So, armed with worker-security in mind, and realizing that the US economy has been reduced to the Stone Age, Texas is now a shining light - a beacon of Free Enterprise and opportunity, but don’t expect much in the way of intelligent discourse from most Texans. Expect...what you would expect from a Texan: Remember that these are the same people who in 1998 lashed James Byrd with a chain to the back of a pickup truck dragging him to his death and decapitation.


They are the same people who execute far and away more Americans each year than the total of those who die worldwide in terrorists attacks. The sick, the lame, the mentally defective, women and children: no one’s safe from Texas’ Kafkaesque penal system.


The BBC describes the average Texan as being just right of Center. What they fail to mention is that the political scale has become somewhat skewed to the right, thus, “Right of Center” might more closely align with the Human Rights practices of Idi Amin.


Then too, this is a very large geography of people who daily hear voices when there is no one around, and who have active conversations with a blue-eyed, sandy-blond, White man named, Jesus, whose portrayed genetics obviously belie his Semitic heritage. They ask Him for good health while swilling beer and distilled spirits; The strength to continue killing those who do not believe in their delusions; And the continued right to own firearms, which they call “guns”.


The recent defeat of the Manchin-Toomey bill, which would have made background checks for gun purchases universal, is owed largely to Texans. The bill would have required Health workers to report to the central database anyone whose mental state was deficient. The obvious difficulty this would have posed for most Texans is evident.


In its provisions, Manchin-Toomey would have prescribed further study of the bill’s limitations by members of, among other professions, Religious leaders, including Texas’ vast number of far-right crazed fundamentalist Bible-thumpers. You see, blind fundamentalism is OK as long as it’s for Jesus, who as I recall, deplored intolerance.


I would guess Robert Duvall in Lonesome Dove said it best, “...ain’t no kind of man lower than a Texan...” The good news is that apparently every American who shares in this insanity will be fairly centralized leading eventually to some form of sequestration whereafter a high wall will be built around Texas’ borders precluding its residents from escaping and possibly contaminating the rest of America. Let’s hope George Bush is at home when they build it.



Don’t miss our special “Texas Sudoku” column right.


Homelessness in 300 Words

Jack Shepherd

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



Most editors give you 300 hundred words, so here goes: No breakfast, no job, electric is off, gas, and water too. No Cable TV. The car was impounded for no insurance.


Food banks we gave to in the past have become our refuge. My kids take a shower at the school or church, and sometimes the gas station. My little boy asks if it is bad because he wants a birthday cake, and I cry at my impotence to provide.


Five years no work, no welfare yet, we are holding out so those who need it more get it. No medical access or cardboard signs that say, Please Help. Knocking on doors and asking for work gives us a sense of pride at $5.00 an hour.

      

It’s spooky, you know, to see someone like us and just know they are in it, too. A smile while the glimmer of a tear hides in the shadows, and at fifty or forty something is horribly wrong. Is it me?


Day labor jobs are closed, and dumpster hunting is getting crowded while the blood banks are saying, Sorry you got a cold!

      

Don’t give up, I cheer the family on as I tell them why we can’t burden others in the family or friends, as I pray for Obamacare to kick in and cover the hospital bills. And I lie, Hey kids, we’re going on vacation to learn subsistent ways of life. Chop wood and carry water: live off the land. What the hell else can I do?

      

Things are getting better the President says, and yet today I can tell you I once walked across the country for declarations of awareness for the Homeless in the 1990’s. Today it is far worse: Hope has been recalled by social democracy.


An organization that for years has been striving to eradicate Homelessness, and one of which I am very familiar and have developed a long and reciprocal relationship with in the advancement of awareness and cure, is the National Coalition for the Homeless. May I ask that you consider donating to this cause?




Clicking on this link will bring you to their website. No donation is too small...

Thank you. -JS



America’s Indians:

When is an Indian an Indian?

Warren-Hill

WarrenHillProductions@gmail.com



There are about 3,000,000 Indians in America today. By some anthropologists’ estimates that may be about the same number in North America at the point just prior to the first European “white discovery” of the continent.


They are divided into about 560 Tribes or individual Indian Nations. Each nation is relatively self-governed and with the financial backing of our government through your taxes responds to the needs of its tribal members. What’s different about the 3 million today versus the 3 million 500 years ago?


Referred to variously as Indian Blood Level or Blood Quantum, a concept that came into vogue maybe three hundred years past, most of the genetic makeup of America’s Indians had by then reached a point of stasis: Genetically the Indian was, at that point, a snapshot of the characteristic makeup of American Indians based on Tribe or Clan. Some years later that began to change as African, European, Spanish and other ethnicities blended, either voluntarily or otherwise with autochthonous Americans.


It’s important to remember that the American Indian did not miraculously appear in North America like “reeds in a river” or through the “spirit of buffalo on the plains” as various Creation stories allege, but rather as the result of a migration from Asia, over what was the Beringia: the landmass that connected northeast Siberia to Alaska during the last ice age. So, until 15,000 years ago no one was Native to America.


In other words, our American Indian, until not very long ago, would have been identified as Chinese (or perhaps Mongolian): not a view that anyone other than a geneticist or anthropologist would embrace because it fundamentally negates the continued need for reparation and financial support.


I am one-half Italian. To most people I’ve met over the years, that’s not really Italian. And so it isn’t when compared to those who live in the predominantly Italian neighborhoods of New York, and elsewhere. Neither culturally nor genetically. Yet, as a country we continue to make vast annual reparation payments to American Indians who are, in the majority of cases, far less Indian than I am Italian.


Today’s tribes individually set standards for what they consider acceptable blood level specific to the tribe. In other words, not mixing Indian heritage between tribes essentially preventing America’s Indian population from shopping around for the best tribal benefits, and also guaranteeing that the tribe’s heritage, such as it may be, remains intact. For some tribes Heritage means the ability to operate a casino without paying taxes and with only 1/32nd Indian blood.


Across the US: At the highest end of the scale, the Ute nation requires a 5/8 Blood Quantum. And, from there it descends through 1/2 for our Arizona White Mountain Apache, to 1/4 for Arizona’s Yaqui tribe, to 1/8 for the Oklahoma Comanche, to 1/16 for Arizona’s Fort Sill Apache, to 1/32 for the Kaw nation, to, maybe nothing for Choctaw, Delaware, Shawnee, and a slew of others, the only requirement for membership being a traceable familial lineage to an earlier tribal registration, such as the Dawes Roll completed as late as 1907.


This does not mean that those listed on this century-old roll possess Indian blood, as we define it today, but may mean only that a distant relative was a captive, a slave, or had freely joined the tribe sometime just prior to completion of the Roll. Thus, many of the names on the Dawes Roll and described ethnicities are frequently non-Indian and are likely of African, Spanish, or other genetic descent.


As an aside, our local Hualapai tribal council has designated the necessary Blood Quantum level as 1/4.


There are other tribes actively pursuing federal recognition the requirements for membership we might classify as loose and generally based on one’s eagerness to become an American Indian. Why? To quote the Native American Times describing the efforts of the Houma tribe to gain federal registration, “Federal recognition is important because it could lead to financial and educational assistance for tribal members.”


How much financial assistance? Direct and indirect financial support amounts to more than $42 billion dollars per year. This does not include federal spending in support of infrastructure, defense, and so on, distributed for the benefit of all US citizens. (Here’s a .pdf file that details much of what we spend annually.)


That’s more than $14,000 annually for every Indian man, woman, and child, regardless of Blood Level.


Every decade we spend one-half trillion dollars in support of what remains of a genetically diminishing Indian population, financially supporting under the guise of reparations Americans who are in some cases 31/32nd European: What you and I may commonly call White folks.


Exacerbating the inequity further, federal, state and local governments rarely derive tax revenues from Sales, Motor Vehicle Fuel, Real Estate Property, Income, and all of the many other taxes we pay in support of our government.


Our 2012 National Trade Deficit with China was a record $315 billion. Given the genetics, can’t we count that into the mix and call it even?



American Idle

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



According to the US Department of Agriculture, right now in America more than 17 million households across our nation are starving, up by 3 million from just five years before.


The Dow is being regaled by many as nearing an all-time High, yet since 2007 it has not even kept pace with simple inflation (CPI adjusted Dow, 15,859), but has manufactured thousands of new millionaires.


With the Sequestration reduction, the budget for our Department of Defense (DoD) has more than doubled in the past ten years to more than $650 billion, and that does not take into account off-the-books DoD expenditures exceeding $300 billion.


At the very least, 16 million children in America every day do not get enough to eat.


Our Vice-President Joe Biden ran up more than $500,000 in hotel and meal expenses (only for he and his staff) during one week in Paris this past February, which we paid.


Homelessness has reached epidemic proportions with as many as 4 million living in makeshift shelters, if sheltered at all, and millions more distributed in homeless housing facilities.


Our National Debt is rapidly approaching $17 trillion, or $53,000 for every man, woman and child in America.


46.2 million Americans live below the federal poverty line, up by more than 15 million in the past decade.


The Federal Reserve has injected more than $3 trillion in newly printed money into the US economy through its purchases of mortgage-backed and Treasury securities.


The number of the unemployed in America remains above 14 million according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.


Funding for education continues in 26 of our states to be slashed, while the majority of the rest of the states remains at or below pre-Recession levels.


America’s Department of Defense is offshoring weapons manufacturing to South America.


Our 2012 Trade Deficit with China exceeded $300 billion.


When will you set aside your inane fixation with American Idol and speak out?



Fake Recovery; Fake Job Gains; Fake, Fake, Fake...

Warren-Hill

@WarrenHillFilms


Some shallow-of-thought Americans probably find the sound bites being fed to them satisfying: among them, a reported growth in employment means fewer people walking around aimlessly looking for work, and a restoration of pre-2007 America. Nothing, absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. Job growth, such as it is, is principally in Retail, Service, and much of it part-time work, at that – jobs that do nothing to fuel economic growth. Read, Forget the Fiscal Cliff: We’ve Been Doomed for Decades, in the Archives section and understand what really drives a healthy economy.


Now, on to the actual condition of America today: From the government’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics, Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for whites (6.8 percent) declined in February while the rates for adult men (7.1 percent), adult women (7.0 percent), teenagers (25.1 percent), blacks (13.8 percent), and Hispanics (9.6 percent) showed little or no change.


So, the only conclusion one may draw, given the combined realities of reported economic growth, is that more White people are working the checkout stands at Wal-Mart.


From the same report: In February, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was about (sic) unchanged at 4.8 million…In February, 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, the same as a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.


Is our current economic situation getting better or worse? We don’t know. We do know that the US Government, our own Department of Defense, though, is doing little to improve job growth in the US when it exports a half-billion plus US Dollar contract for military aircraft to a Brazilian company rather than a domestic company employing American workers. What are they thinking? Or, are they thinking? Read one report here from MSN.com.


Does this mean that we may expect sometime in the not-too-distant-future a Chinese-made Drone, armed with Colombian-made missiles, being commanded by US forces to blow our American asses off the face of the earth? Let’s hope not.


Soylent Brown*

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



Or, How To Render Human Flesh Into a Liquid Suitable

as a Motor Vehicle Fuel


I’m certain that by now waging costly wars in order to secure Oil rights from defeated countries must be ponderous to the Joint Venture (JV) running this country (i.e. the country formerly known as the United States of America).


Between Iraq and Afghanistan the human cost has exceeded 6,000 good, clean, Christian American lives, while the financial end - the truly troubling issue to our “government” -  totals trillions of dollars.  Now, President Obama, who of course ought to be far less trigger-happy than his addlepated predecessor, GWB, and had vowed to be so during his first campaign, has linked us up with Nigeria in a contrived war against Mali’s insurgents. (Read, Nigeria: More Dead Children, below.)


In this version of the game, Oil Wars, V3.3, we will no longer risk the lives of good Christian men or women of any ethnicity or sexual preference, instead employing the same technology currently used to overfly and monitor good Christian Americans: Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to be precise. (One may think that the drones overhead here in America are not armed with Hellfire missiles…but sadly, they are.)


These drones are “flown” by predominantly youthful pilots who sit at computer consoles in Nevada, California, New Mexico, and elsewhere in the United States far away from their human targets. These are the same geeky, self-centered, socially-inept people whom you or your children knew in college or high school who had no regard for their siblings, parents, or classmates and were perfectly content to sit in front of their computers for hours on-end wanking-off to porn and playing blood-drenched simulated contests of violence. Our Department of Defense loves these mindless, ultra-desensitized little bastards.


They don’t deploy to Europe, nor do they drink at the local watering holes of quaint villages outside Marseille while desperately trying to bang the local talent after swarthily confessing their fear of death’s icy hand on their shoulders. “I may be dead tomorrow, mademoiselle…please take pity on me.”


Distant of spirit and geography, and thus removed from danger, they play video games that kill: Mercilessly, without apprehension, suddenly and completely, those who happen to be anywhere within blast proximity of a target. Our government thinks that’s wonderful. You may, too. Hell is probably bubbling over with people who feel exactly that way.


President Obama, who has more kills on record than even George Bush, loves this technology. The New York Times thinks that’s OK, too, saying that Mr. Obama, “A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Mr. Obama believes that he should take moral responsibility for such actions.” You can read the entire article here.


Ironically, the editor is also a student of Thomas Aquinas being a graduate of a Jesuit university. In fact for many of us back then, diversionary reading consisted of pawing through the many pages and profundities within the Summa Theologica, and Aquinas’ other writings. It is from the Theologica that we find, “Wherefore he who does not remove something whence homicide results whereas he ought to remove it, is in a sense guilty of voluntary homicide.” There is no other spin Obama may put to those words: He is a murderer by Aquinas’ clear summation.


As an aside, these new-age “pilots” are now eligible to receive the Distinguished Warfare Medal, awarded solely to U.S. service members involved in unmanned aerial drone and cyber warfare operations. Read more here. America’s many and often somewhat seedy VFW posts have made a special concession, as well, permitting Drone Pilots who have remotely killed on foreign soil to Live Chat with those who have actually experienced combat. The Drone Pilot is permitted to drink a beer while chatting at his or her computer. Off-color jokes about homosexuals and minorities are, of course, encouraged.


Even this protracted and protected form of war is not without its costs: They are, however, purely financial, thus adding only to the pump price of every gallon of refined crude oil taken into custody as a result, while not to the roster of dead at Arlington Cemetery.


However, once the economy begins to collapse again, as it surely will given the fiscal folly of late and notwithstanding the temporary Bull Market, which isn’t if one applies only an inflationary adjustment, this increasing per-gallon cost will become unacceptable to the gasoline-burning public and to our government, as the American Motorist, just as he did in 2007 and 2008, is unable to pay both mortgage and cost of fuel. Think we’re on stable fiscal ground? Then you may not understand the consequences of the Federal Reserve’s actions as of late stockpiling more than 3 trillion USD in bond purchases from newly printed money...there’s a consequence to such silliness. For more, read the Bloomberg’s report, here. Or, for a more complete analysis, Business Insider, here.


Then, once again mortgages will go into default on a grand scale; businesses will layoff vast numbers of workers, more so than they are today; our Banking industry will once more collapse, being propped up momentarily by America’s taxpaying public; GM will get another hefty handout for defying logic and continuing to sell fossil fuel burning vehicles; the Dow will dump; Congress will continue to stuff themselves on self-serving legislation directed to rewarding the incompetent and disregarding the obvious…


…and you’ll know it’s over when Homeland Security takes its first Drone shot at

an American citizen here on US soil,

and that is an inevitable consequence of our government’s current disregard for human life.


As a reminder, the US Government has outlined the conditions under which US citizens may be extrajudicially executed by Drone-fire on foreign soil: Read the BBC’s report here.


Then again, our friends at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or, Dr. Strangelove, Inc., continue to plan new and exciting ways to propagate Drone usage throughout the world, the end result of which will be an international network of US surveillance and certain death.


So, to short-cut the process and to save many of the companies who now direct and control the former United States a lot of money, we consulted with Dr. Frederic Zeitgeist, a noted chemist. Dr. Zeitgeist assures us that, in fact, the human body can be rendered-down to a combustible fuel.


Famously, he tells us, Albert Einstein’s E=MC2 makes it very clear that the energy present within all organic forms is proportionately far and away greater than their apparent or seemingly inconsequential mass. A raisin, as an example, contains enough potential energy to fuel the electrical needs of the city of Manhattan for one full day, while Michael Bloomberg is of sufficient enough bulk to propel the city for one year, and he’s Kosher.


Dr. Zeitgeist believes that those of Islamic or Muslim background are best suited for what he calls the process of Homo-Reduction, which has nothing to do with lessening the Gay population through Hetero-Therapy. Homo-Reduction, or simply, HR, is a non-energy consuming process that, through the staged use of benzene and toluene will reduce the human body to a combustible substance with a Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) exactly the same as refined petroleum, or gasoline as we call it (“Petrol” according to the Nancies in England).


Dr. Zeitgeist theorizes that the average Muslim woman, man, or larger child can be so processed resulting in a combustible liquid equivalent to about one barrel of market-ready gasoline. The opportunities are thus endless: Presently, our government must, 1) Contrive an acceptable war scenario and successfully sell the idea to the average American, who is too preoccupied with Gun Control to care, 2) Launch an aggressive invasion through either drones and/or ground and air forces, 3) Police up the dead, and dispose of the bodies so that no one notices the kill-rate for women and children, 4) Secure the oil fields, 5) Bid them out in a contrived free-market auction as we did in Iraq, 6) Lift crude oil from the secured wells, 7) Process crude for export, 8) Permit members of the JV running this country to gouge the American consumer with inflated prices and contrived scarcity.


In the improved version the Downstream side (distribution) is far more efficient: Following Step 3, above, the dead Children, Women and Men are merely cooked-down following Dr. Zeitgeist’s process and immediately shipped back to the States for use as motor vehicle fuel.


Of course, the same process could be used in Venezuela now that Hugo Chavez is gone, may he rest in peace: That is what we were waiting for. Already the US is insinuating itself into the successorship of the country - our government didn’t waste a moment. And, what do we want?


We want a far more Capitalist-leaning leadership who isn’t hell-bent on returning the country’s resources to its citizens, uplifting them from poverty. We want Exxon-Mobil and ConocoPhilips back in there running things.


And, if Obama and his Oil Lords don’t get what they want, my guess is that the spicy Venezuelan diet has nourished a populace that would lend itself to a much higher Octane rating very suitable for NASCAR.


* For the unaware, Soylent Green was a very popular film from 1973 in which excess population was rendered into a food product, Soylent Green wafers, originally named for the color lent it by its primary ingredient, seaweed. The film starred Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson. (-Ed. Thanks for the reminder, Jack.)



 
An Online Journal of Independent Views & Discussion June 9, 2013 www.TheIndependentDaily.com Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com Name, Website, All Contents copyright 2011-13, Warren-Hill Productions Published in Northern Arizona, USAhttp://www.TheIndependentDaily.commailto:editor@TheIndependentDaily.comshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1

A Different Perspective


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Controlling the NSA

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com



Nothing ought to be more at the forefront of discussion and thought for Americans today than the continued and ever-expanding violations of our Constitution by our government.


The latest, of course, is the sustained abuse of power by the FBI and NSA (National Security Agency). Beginning with the Bush administration introduction of Draconian, Orwellian, and plain-ol’ Fascist tactics of intercepting private email, phone calls, snail mail, and every other means we have for communicating amongst ourselves, which heretofore we imagined as privileged, our lives must now be an open book: Open to intelligence agencies; Open to the IRS (financial information is shared within various agencies); Open by pass-through to local law enforcement.


There ought to be massive outrage and protest. There ought to be the initial rumblings of civil unrest. There ought to be much more indignation and condemnation by every single American, save, expectantly, by those whose livelihood is made by lasciviously peeping into every recess of our forsaken private lives.


Please say that you’re not too preoccupied with Facebook – one of the very resources through whom the government, by agreement with Facebook, is data-dumping your existence into massive computer banks.


Don’t tell us that you’d like to take the time to write and express your outrage at our government but you’re too busy texting dinner arrangements, while that text and every other you’ve sent is collected and sieved for clues for possible dissension.


Take the time to help counter this outrage. Send an email.


To us…at Guily@PeoplevsBush.be


Use any subject line you’d like but include several key words for the NSA’s edification. Here are some of the words and phrases for which the NSA scans:


“Terrorism, Al Qaeda, Terror, Attack, Abu Sayyaf, Car Bomb, Somalia, Jihad, Join our Militia, Place the bomb, Fertilizer Bomb, Kill Him, President Should Be…, Time To Change, Get Ready for the Revolution, Nuclear Reactor is…, Peace be Unto You, We Must Keep the Government from…, Time for them to Die” and others. Pick a few.


Do not make an actual threat, though.


If you do, you may find yourself in harm’s way and subject to criminal penalty. Just copy and paste the words, personalizing them in some inoffensive way, and send it to the email address above. Instead, say something like, “My dog, a Nigerian Terrorist, has planted a fertilizer bomb near the white house where I keep my tools. That devil must die.”


What will happen? Ideally NSA traffic will increase to a level that will make it very difficult for them to continue their un-Constitutional trespass for some short period of time while they sift through increased suspect correspondence. At a minimum it will create a little concern.


Notwithstanding how the courts may have ruled regarding the Constitutionality of administrative search warrants and wholesale warrantless searches, any sixth grade student can handily tell you that it is illegal. It’s invasive. It’s criminal. It is not the way we do things in America. It is the way Fascists operate.


So, as Bonnie Raitt said, “Let’s give them something to talk about…”


We won’t read your emails. But we will give you a periodic update to let you know how well you’re doing. O, and if you don’t hear from me for a few weeks, “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money...” Honduras is nice this time of year.



 

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Obama on Syria: "What we are envisioning is something limited. It is something proportional. It will degrade Assad's capabilities. At the same time we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition."


We ask, How will killing more people, and arming those who will in-turn be better able to kill more people, result in less killing? This is not about death: This is about Oil.