2010 Elections: Fear And Loathing of Tea Party Politics

Do you fear the Tea Party? Well fear not: political parties do not wield power in America. Even if the Tea Party swept into the political majority, nothing would change. Why? Because money rules this country; and money writes policy. Congress only follows the money and does what it says.

That said, there are some amazing politicians who need our support. Three come to mind in their ability to think critically and independently: Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold and Ron Paul. Of course Ron Paul is a Republican, a party who always supports corporate power over people, but a lot of what he says is right on the money. He floored me (and his rivals) in the 2007 GOP presidential debates when he mentioned our covert policies and the CIA's overthrow of Iran in 1953. Guiliani, who apparently flunked history as most of the others on that stage, was flabbergasted. And the debate was hosted by Fox News so Paul was in a losing battle. But it was an admirable performance that you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BB3NrSpRGE.

Kucinich and Feingold, like Paul, are both anti-war. They are also against printing dollars to finance war. Because, when you think about it, how do we do it? How do we have a financial collapse while sustaining two full-fledged wars, a dozen covert wars and well over 1000 overseas military installations? (Sure the official number is 865, but there are too many sites that are not on the books.) The answer is one that any child could guess: magic. The Federal Reserve makes money out of thin air. They are lucky because that money just happens to be the world's reserve currency, and therefore all commodities are priced in dollars. But with each dollar they make, the U.S. Treasury (which buys those dollars for T bills, notes and bonds) goes into debt by exchanging that debt for dollars. Since the U.S. Treasury is us, it's more like "we the people" who are in debt. And since the Fed is not us, that means we're in debt to whoever they are, which is beyond the scope of this conversation.

But the above politicians know this, and it's them and people like them are our smartest and only hope. They embody much more than any Obama democrat. And the Tea Party? Well they're not the smartest or brightest politicians, as their members tend to be all over the map policy-wise and only the crazy ones get attention. But the one thing they all agree on is reducing the national debt. Which is a good thing, since our wars are funded by debt, as seen above. If they had half the brains of Paul (Ron, not Rand!) they'd adopt all of his policies. A lot of those policies are in line with any progressive leftist. And in this leftist's opinion it is only the extremes that will solve the many real problems America faces. Hint: it's not gays in the military. Hint 2: we only get away with murder because the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Hint 3: we're making dollars out of thin air, thereby reducing its value.

If you connect the dots, you can see that the real problem is not illegal immigration or gay marriage, it's the impending collapse of the dollar through horrible policy. If the world decides at any point against using the dollar as it's currency, the American way of life is over. So more of the same policies of moderation, negotiation and compromise will only drive us further into deep waters by enforcing the status quo. Sure we were at Jon Stewarts Rally To Restore Sanity and it was a great event. But promoting center-of-the-road politics ala Obama will not solve any of our real problems. Jon Stewart knows that, which is why he grilled Obama on his show last week. The real problem lies with big corporate driven government fighting big endless wars that will only finally be lost when the dollar collapses. Is this really what we want? Or would we rather fight this freight train to nowhere by fighting the moderate politics of the status quo?

Real mavericks know that continuing on our current path will not end well. And these people are America's only hope and deserve our support and votes..

GoldishackGuerrillas.com


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Dear Obama.. This is what the news looks like when you're losing a war:

Blasts kill three NATO soldiersABC Online - 5 hours agoThree NATO soldiers were killed in attacks Afghanistan on Sunday, the alliance force said, taking to eight the number of international troops to die in the ...NATO says 3 US soldiers killed in roadside bombings in southern AfghanistanTODAYonline - 7 hours agoKABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - NATO says three US troops have died in two roadside bombings in the south. The latest deaths on Sunday increase to six the number ...Five NATO Troops Killed In Afghan SouthRadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - 18 hours agoA statement from NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said one soldier, whose nationality was not given, was killed by a homemade bomb, ...NATO: 3 US service members killed in AfghanistanThe Associated Press - Heidi Vogt - 20 hours agoKABUL, Afghanistan — Three US service members were killed in recent attacks in southern Afghanistan, the military coalition said Sunday. ...Afghanistan despatch: 'If Nato pulls out too early there will be civil war again'Telegraph.co.uk - Nick Meo - 20 hours agoThree years after he first travelled to Musa Qala, Nick Meo returns to Afghanistan and finds a town fearful that Nato's war is not going well, and dreading ...2 Danish soldiers killed, 3 wounded in Afghanistan blastThe Canadian Press - Aug 7, 2010COPENHAGEN — The Danish military says two Danish soldiers were killed by a bomb blast in Afghanistan. The military said two other Danish soldiers were ...Politician, two NATO troops killed in AfghanistanFour coalition service members, including two Americans, die in southern ...Island Crisis (blog) - Aug 7, 2010 KABUL (BNO NEWS) — Four coalition service members, including two Americans, were killed in two separate attacks in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, ...NATO in Afghanistan says 3 soldiers and three civilians killed in attacks ...TODAYonline - 19 hours ago KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - NATO forces say three soldiers - at least two of them American - have been killed in attacks in southern Afghanistan. ...

Obama The Infuriating

We here at the shack have always been infuriated by the way in which America is run: by the rich, for the rich. We argue and argue against a system gone horribly wrong, but what more can we do? we're up against huge conglomerates who have lots of money with endless zeros on the ends of their numbers, like billions and trillions. we have nothing. except people. granted it's a lot of people but not yet in the trillions. assuming $1 = 1 human life, we've lost the battle. and that's a truly optimistic equation, because history has proven human life is worthless.

Now we have a president who seemingly came out of nowhere with a promise of change. And he has the change in skin color, notably different from all the other presidents in history, to convince you that change is here. During the election season the Guerrillas were writing our first album, War. Some people told us to finish it up and get it out before the elections because Obama is coming to right all the wrongs. we were skeptical. i mean, it IS still America, isn't it? the country that doesn't hesitate to war against poor people worldwide? how far outside the system could Obama be?

Well we have our answer. He's entrenched in American business as usual: the business of corporate dominance over people and endless wars to secure this dominance. From overthrowing the government of Honduras to bombing Pakistan weekly and more (there's a complete list of countries we're active in here: http://www.thenation.com/blog/obamas-expanding-covert-wars)... to passing watered-down healthcare legislation that was supported by all pharmaceutical and healthcare companies.. to proudly leaning right after it passed, declaring offshore drilling as "safe". we have a president that IS business as usual. what is unusual is his gift of oration, which placates us into thinking someone is in charge of this ship, but really only corporations are, leaving no one in charge of our mother ship earth. we are on a slippery slope of self-annihilation in the pursuit of a man made construct of money, which is becoming worthless because the money system is unsustainable. the billionaires are grabbing real resources from the earth, while the rest are trying to create more digits/zeros in our bank accounts. we want growth! we want more growth! GDP, quarterly reports, everything keep growing! so is it any wonder that we landed 12,000 troups in Haiti and virtually no one in the Gulf? this illustrates perfectly that America is for the corporation and against poor people. and it's further illustrated daily in the news.

But there are some people who know what needs to be done. there was an earth summit in Cochabamba, Boliva, in April of this year. unfortunately i was too devastated by the loss of my sister to care, and the main stream media doesn't care about anything important, but this is where the people who care about the earth gathered. for more information, visit DemocracyNow.org for their April broadcasts from Cochabamba. because in order to save the planet we need to stop the growth of MONEY which, in the end, is completely worthless anyway ..

McChrystal admits failure to cut civilian death

McChrystal admits failure to cut civilian death: "'We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,' the top general said."

Really? This is an astounding admission for a top US general. In this short blog post, we laud the general for saying something that hasn't been said out loud in America's history by Pentagon brass. But he isn't apologizing, and it doesn't change our sordid history of killing many civilians in many countries over many years. Plus this sure as hell doesn't help the "war on terror". If anything, America is creating more terrorists right now than at any other time in history. For those who've lost a family member or their entire families to the American military (killing most of one family seems to happen often), becoming a terrorist would seem to be the easy option borne out of the pain and grief they feel.

But for some reason we don't feel, as the general's words make clear ..

Haiti and the End of Poverty

Turn Your TV Off!

It's amazing how you can identify tv watchers just by their opinions. they're usually pretty conservative and fearful, and sound similar to other people who watch tv as their prime news source. many viewers will use the same adjectives to describe the latest horror they've witnessed: words like "they" (...want to kill us/ hate us for our freedom/ whatever) or the latest i've heard, "Obama and his henchmen forced banks to loan poor people money". this one is particularly hilarious since the banks control everything, including Obama.

Haiti

which brings us to the latest debacle: Haiti. i've heard even liberals defend Haiti (from the Rush Limbaughs and Pat Robertons of the world) by saying "...they just happen to be poor!" ... and so starts another argument. a little review of history, which they don't teach in school or talk about on television, will tell us that Haiti did NOT "just happen to be poor" -- they're supposed to be poor. this has been American and European policy for two centuries. ever wonder why Preval has been president for so long? (similar to Karzai in Afghanistan.) why are there no real elections in these places? why is Aristide currently in exile in S Africa? well the answer is simple: it's U.S. policy.

Why Do We Do This?

well this has another simple answer: money. which brings me to an amazing new movie called The End Of Poverty. "Poverty is no accident" -- you'll find right on their website (theendofpoverty.com). refreshingly honest, and very true. our supposed "aid" to the poorest countries in the world is literally robbing and killing them.

Charity Is No Match For Ignorance

there's been a lot of giving to the tune of $500 million for Haiti. although this aid does, i hope, help, remember that it is no match for what our governments and corporations are taking from the same people you're trying to give to. there's no way 20, 50 or even 1000 dollars is going to cover the literally billions in raw materials and cheap labor that places like Haiti provide for our companies.

Want To Help?

the greatest aid you can give to Haiti and most other incredibly poor countries (Somalia, Congo, all of Latin America until recently) is true democracy. sure you can give money to organizations like PIH.org, who know the roots of the problems of the Haitian people. but we have to battle television, which is in every household broadcasting nightly without any regard to history. when Americans, armed with this knowledge, care, then more than half the battle will be won..

Avatar, the Pope, China and general mayhem

A Shack Taking on the Bulldozers

Avatar: it's great to see a pop film that's so subversive. the storyline is a reminder of what humans do: covet the stuff they "find". whether it's Palestine, the Americas or Australia (and probably every other place on earth), humans take what they want and destroy a lot in the process. i mean seriously -- god forbid there was a life form on the moon who didn't have guns! we'd annihilate them and take their dirt.

so .. it's nice to see a film about such atrocities actually doing really well in the box office. it's obvious that JUSTICE, something we're denied on a daily basis, resonates with the people of the world. and of course the usual suspects are against it, like the Pope and China. the pope (i'm sick of capitalizing this word) thinks it's sacrilegious because the fictional na-vi people worship nature instead of god proper. and the chinese, well they're used to taking land from their own people whenever they want, since most property is owned by "the people", meaning the government. and if the real people of china found dragons to fly, well "the people" of the government would be screwed.

so chalk one up for the good guys. i mean, it's fiction, but we can dream, can't we?

ok back on track

no more show listings here, that's GG news only. this blog is where we rant, and we're back baby!

2009! oh 2009, where'd you go? hope and change bleeds into winter 2010 with scarcely anything going right: Iraq is treading water with a burning underbelly of violence that isn't covered in the news anymore. Afghanistan is looking at a 40,000 troop increase whenever Obama gets the balls to officially announce it (he's been unofficially announcing this for months to get us used to it). the middle east is the middle east, all the usual suspects doing all the usual things to each other. American drones blow something up in Pakistan once a week. And our tacit support for a Honduran coup is a grand old memory of the America we've always been: an America on the wrong side of justice.

many americans, actually most, don't know the history of their own country. our history is so convoluted that you'd think it's a government conspiracy not to teach it! but that's impossible in a land as free as ours. lets just say that our textbooks are faulty, as well as our news media. for real news we need to turn to fake news in Jon Stewart to give us the real information.

sure the economy didn't completely tank if you believe government GDP numbers. sure we have health care "reform" making it's way through congress. sure we're focusing on a "good war" in Afganistan. all these things are great, if you believe them. but we need real change in this country, which will take a complete break from everything we've learned to be. America's greatest contribution to the world is that of ultra-consumption. but that is no way to live if you want a future. our future without real wholesale change in the way we live, is no future at all.

and that's a sneak preview of our Guerrilla Manifesto album, out 2010..

2 shows

usually our blog is some kind of systemic rant, but today we'll simply announce our first 2 NYC shows:

Friday Oct 2nd at Pianos we're doing an acoustic set at 7.30 for our friend and amazing musician Cock Lorge. A lot of great artists and comedians will be on this night, headlined by Cock's own great band and cock-filled music: www.cocklorge.com

Saturday Oct 3rd we're playing full band to blow the windows out at Sidewalk Cafe in the East Village. An amazing hip hop lineup this night put together by the one and only Kid Lucky and featuring some of NYC's finest underground MC's. Free.

These shows will both be hot and polar opposites, so pick your poison and down the hatch!

-0- Guerrillas

.69 cents can feed who?

.69 cents can feed a family for a day.  or so the story goes from your favorite NGO.  so how many families would a trillion dollars feed?  the answer (everyone!) is blowing in the wind because THAT money is not for them.  it's for the people who need it least, because if you don't give it to them then the economy will fall apart.  or so the story goes.

the real story goes like this:  money does not exist.  it's simply been manufactured like any other product, but in this case the "product" is paper if you're lucky, or just a number in a computer usually.  it's unfortunate because we work really hard for our money.  but what is it exactly?  well it's always been a number punched into a computer by a banker.  something derived from something a value which creates a loan, which is then loaned out at least 10 times over which make a good portion of money absolutely baseless.  the part that has any value at all (the car for instance on a car loan) has long been forgotten by the time the rest of the loans, and money keyboard punched into the system

so what if we sent a trillion of these to feed every person in need of food.  why not, right?  or does AIG need this money more?  or hell, give em both.  we're just printing (or more likely typing) it up.  why not type up a trillion to feed every starving person in the world?  it'd take me all of 10 seconds to type a trillion into the computer -- 1,000,000,000.  whoops, that's a billion.  lets try again: 1,000,000,000,000.  much better.  wow that's $1000 for each of our starving billion in this world.  was that so hard?

so what exactly makes money tick?  and why did we create a system where it's based on .. nothing?  one word can sum it up .. greed.  if you could make money from nothing, wouldn't you do it?  all you really need is some computer terminals and a big, well-built sign that says "First (any word here) Bank" with some sturdy glass doors and .. voila!  you're in business.

but lets say we hit some kind of snag and the system starts shaking.  who's to blame then?  the people who created it.  but who needs the most help?  the same people who created it seem to need the most money to stabilize it.  ok, no problem.  a few keys into the keyboard should fix it.  10,000,000,000 -- there i did it!  system fixed!

there's a chasm between fact and fiction, between value and nothingness.  one would think (and as a child you grow up to believe) that society is firmly rooted in the former. but nothing could be further from the truth.  what is growing more apparent on a daily basis is that society is firmly rooted in fiction. the power of image, of the bullet proof glass windows, a well-pressed suit and an esoteric vocabulary.  THIS is our money system.  

as any good capitalist would disagree, "capital" adds no value to our system.  just because you HAVE money does not mean that you deserve to EARN money.  what then would you be doing for society?  nothing.  same goes for land (also capital).  just because you HAVE land does not mean you deserve repeated payments for it for the rest of your family's lifetime.  why should it?  because your great grandfather was smart enough to be a Rockefeller and take/buy the center of Manhattan?

i make music.  do i get a perpetual royalty for it until the end of time?  no!  we all own the great classical works that are in the public domain.  not even God collects on the bible, so why should landowners get this?  why should the owners of money not have to do anything more for society but make tons more money?

the system doesn't make a bit of sense.  the system was created by the first rich people who discovered it.  much like columbus who discovered america, it wasn't made to accomodate any newcomers.  it was made for these first people only, or as i like to say that the system is "first come first served".  sure you can live the "american dream" and become a millionaire.  who cares?  they don't.  but they DO want total control over the system.  a few millions don't mean a thing.

2 examples we can take:  banks and healthcare.  so you're walking down the street and need some money.  go to an ATM and pay 1.50 for a $20 bill.  worth it?  why did you just have to pay that to get your own money out of the bank?  what did they actually do for you?  is this a service to society?  or take the healthcare bureaucracy:  a huge administration hellbent on making you ineligible for your benefits.  banks are 20% of our economy.  but what are they actually doing for us?  what percentage of our economy is "landowners"?  or healthcare?  which is projected to be 20% within 10 years.  add all of these up, add in many extraneous government agencies and you have a whole bunch of people that do absolutely nothing to add to a productive society.   America is stuck in traffic, and these people are the toll we all pay just to exist.  

and for the poor who only need .69 cents a day to survive, it seems we can't punch a number into a computer that is less than a billion anymore ..

Who elected Rush Limbaugh?

Why is this guy still talking? Why is he addressing the nation on Fox news? Why is he the de-facto head of the Republican Party?

As if we weren't tired as hell of tired right-wing rhetoric, they just keep coming. Complaining about welfare states and Obama's spending, they are a true testament to the short attention span that allows history revision to happen. Who spent this country into ruin? Not the Democrats -- Bill Clinton was the only president in 30 years to balance the federal budget.

Here's what a bitching Republican likes to do: cut taxes while waging as many wars as possible, create whole new agencies that duplicate the work of other agencies (Homeland Security), not tax the wealthiest corporations AT ALL, provide subsidies for the largest corporations like agri-business (which is destroying our health) and oil companies (which is destroying our planet).

Now he's challenging Obama to a debate. What's to debate? the Right has failed America. Oh wait, they want another chance? the free markets weren't really free enough to do their magic? Let the people decide what to do with their money? let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps while we carry the largest corporations on our hands?

More and more aggravation. These guys are still here and going strong, ready to pounce on any misstep. They want and got the peoples money, now all they need to do is convince us that it will trickle BACK DOWN to us. "Thanks for the money, maybe we'll employ a few of you down the line some time. Bye!"

It's the American Dream. It's socialism for the top, capitalism for the bottom. America was built by the rich for the rich. And for all their bitching about welfare spending we're about to give more money out to the richest 1% of the population then all the welfare spending of these last decades. I'm sure we won't even have a number until it's too late, thanks to geniuses like Geithner, Bernanke and Summers, who are all part of the problem. Unchecked they will bankrupt America and the American Dream will be what it's always been: hope that one day we'll live like them.. (echo, echo, ech..)