Dave Easterly’s Bravo Sierra Blog

If Rudy Giuliani Were a Program in BASIC…

September 26, 2007 on 1:21 pm | In All Things Geeky, General, Political Musings |
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10 PRINT "9/11!"
20 GOTO 10


Doing My Part

September 26, 2007 on 12:41 pm | In General, Political Musings |
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It may not be much, but I’m doing what little bit I can…

How about you?

Please visit http://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate/ and do whatever you can to help take America back from the corrupt and morally bankrupt politicians and make the government “Of, By, and For The People” again.

An Open Letter to Keith Olbermann

September 14, 2007 on 5:24 pm | In General |
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Mr. Olbermann,
I will preface this message by stating that I am a great admirer of you and your show. However, I suspect that you feel the same way that I feel and a great many other Americans feel about the current sad state of journalism. Most of the major news networks are in the control of corporations that have major military-industrial complex ties and this shows through in what passes for news on these networks. You don’t see investigative reports of GE’s power and weapons operations on NBC, or Westinghouse’s activities on CBS, and I don’t even want to get started on Rupert Murdoch’s megalithic media machine.

It is to distract the average citizen from critical thinking and analysis of the world around them that people like O.J. Simpson, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton wind up on “serious” news shows. These people and their actions are not “news.” They have a network for them. It’s called “E Entertainment Television.” I issue a challenge to YOU, Mr. Olbermann. The next time they place in your hands a story about Britney or Paris or Brangelina or any of that ilk do one simple thing – REFUSE. Say “No. This is not news.” I have a great amount of respect for you and if any journalist in today’s world has the courage to take this one simple but bold step I believe it would be you.

Can you give us hope by proving me right?

Best regards,

Dave Easterly

Why Do People Keep Believing The Bush Administration?

September 14, 2007 on 9:28 am | In General |
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I see things happening in this great nation that disturb and anger me. The American people are being systematically abused by a sick, power-hungry sociopath and his lackeys. And yet we keep coming back for more – at least 36% of us do. It seems immediately apparent to me that George W. Bush doesn’t care about Liberty or Freedom or The Constitution or “Family Values” or any of the other traditionally conservative values, but some people defend him rabidly. I wanted to understand the thinking that made this possible but I simply couldn’t grasp how someone could turn a blind eye to this administration’s innumerable atrocities. And then I realized the truth – those people are suffering from a collective demented version of Battered Person Syndrome.

I get angry when I see people get into abusive relationships and no matter how many black eyes, bruises, and busted lips they get the victim keeps on going back to their abuser. And that’s how I see the relationship between the American people and their president. In abusive relationships lies abound. Lies to cover up the truth – “I tripped on the stairs” or “I walked into a door.” Insincere apologetic lies – “I’ll never hit you again” or “I promise I’ll get help so this won’t happen anymore.” Lies about who bears the burden of responsibility – “You MAKE me do this!” or “If you did what I told you to this wouldn’t happen!” Lies about motive – “I get so angry because I love you so much.” And worst of all, the lies with thinly veiled threats that draw the victims back into the endless cycle of violence – “I’m the only person that would love someone like you” or “No one else would want you. If you try to leave me you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

I know it’s a shite source, but… This is from Wikipedia’s article on Battered Person Syndrome:

Symptomology

ICD9 code 995.81 [1] shows the syndrome as including “battered person/man/spouse syndrome NEC” and any person presenting with identified physical descriptors rather than psychological descriptors falls under the general heading of “Adult physical abuse”, classified under “Injury and Poisoning” [2]. In lay terms, this is a reference to any person who, because of constant and severe domestic violence usually involving physical abuse by a partner, becomes depressed and unable to take any independent action that would allow him or her to escape the abuse. The condition explains why abused people often do not seek assistance from others, fight their abuser, or leave the abusive situation. Sufferers have low self-esteem, and often believe that the abuse is their fault. Such persons usually refuse to press criminal charges against their abuser, and refuse all offers of help, often becoming aggressive or abusive to others who attempt to offer assistance. Often sufferers will even seek out their very abuser for comfort shortly after an incident of abuse.

Doesn’t that sound a whole lot like what we see with President Bush? Abuse our rights and liberties a little and then tell us it’s for our own good or even that it’s our own fault? And his defenders won’t listen to reason or accept that we need help escaping the overreaching grasp of domestic policies and foreign policies design to deliberately wear down the resistance to an eventual authoritarian Police State by taking rights away little by little by little… Just as most abusive relationships don’t start with an outright beating – a push or shove here and there becomes a slap in the face later down the road and eventually it progresses over time to more and more severe violence until the victims finds themselves hospitalized or sometimes even worse. But they refuse help or intervention or to even accept that what their abuser has done to them is wrong! They won’t have their abuser face justice and in fact leap aggressively to the defense of the very person who has wronged them!

So you see, while some of us can readily recognize that what is being done to this country by Bush is horrific and unacceptable, there are those who cannot. I often see written responses to Bush supporters in forums and message boards asking “Can’t you SEE why this is wrong?” and I wondered the same thing myself. But I think now I know a little more than I did just a few days before. Those who keep going back to supporting Bush are just as much his victims as Habeas Corpus and Due Process and Individual Liberty – but they cannot accept or acknowledge it because they have been manipulated and beaten into thinking the way that this is the way things MUST be. They are beaten by the constant onslaught of corporate controlled media outlets like Fox News and CNN with messages that portray anything other than docile acceptance of Bush’s orders as “not patriotic”. Lied to with high and noble sounding words that in fact threaten greater and greater abuse should they resist – “Let’s call it a ‘USA Patriot Act’ so it will be accepted” or “If it’s named ‘The Protecting America Act’ anyone who opposes it will sound like they’re soft on terror.” This is right up there with the abusive spouse who says “I only beat you because I love you so much” when it comes to emotionally manipulating the vulnerable. By creating an ENVIRONMENT of fear, they then use their own fear against them.

THIS is why people to continue supporting Bush and his grabs for more and more executive power. THIS is why when confronted with hard evidence of Bush’s wrongdoing, his dishonorable actions, his criminal motives and the actions derived from them that they go into denial. And it’s why we cannot get an impeachment off the ground… Because we are suffering collectively from Battered Nation Syndrome. A calculating, malevolent abuser has driven our national self-esteem so low that we believe we cannot fight back. We feel powerless to help ourselves and unable to escape the circumstances created solely for the purpose or making us feel this way. But the abused sometimes come to their senses and escape the oppression of an abusive relationship, and that’s what WE need to do. When we recognize that we are suffering from Battered Nation Syndrome we can start to overcome the oppressiveness of that ever-present threat of abuse. We can stand up for ourselves and resist. But we must begin with a simple realization that we are BEING ABUSED in the first place. Many of us have realized it long ago, but for those who cannot yet see and defend their abusers please don’t belittle them with statements like “Are you blind?!?” or “Can’t you SEE what’s happening here?” because they probably can’t see it. Yet.

Wow! Those supposed “spammers” must have started cloning people!

September 13, 2007 on 9:40 am | In General, Political Musings |
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Ron Paul Rally at USC

Dr. Paul said he didn’t expect more than 50 or so people since this took place in the middle of a weekday. He got FAR more then he expected.

Video on YouTube at THIS PLAY LIST.

The Case For War Against Iran

September 11, 2007 on 12:07 am | In General, Political Musings |
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We keep hearing that Iran is pushing us towards war by interfering in Iraq – providing weapons and other support to insurgents. This may or may not be true but I feel that there is a more likely reason for America to go to war with Iran. The reason involves oil, but not so that WE can get it… In fact the real underlying reasons may surprise you so please keep reading.

The Background

We all know the importance of oil and its role in our current economy. But let’s look back at the US economy and foreign policy over the last several decades to see the pieces of this fairly simple puzzle.

Piece #1 – Let’s look at 1933 briefly… In that year two important things happened that put us at risk from Iran today but they had nothing to do with the Middle East or oil. It involved gold. That was when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took away the ability for Americans to exchange their dollars for gold. The second and far more insidious thing that happened was he made it ILLEGAL for an American to even _own_ gold bullion. It effectively became a “controlled substance.”
Piece #2 – The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement took our money away from the Gold Standard and moved it to a “Gold Exchange Standard.” This may seem like a small difference but in fact it’s staggeringly different. You see, before the Bretton Woods Agreement we could only have a finite amount of money in circulation because a dollar’s value was tied directly to a specific amount of gold held in reserve for those dollars. After Bretton Woods we could print far more money than we had gold with which to back it. It was still LIMITED, but it was still more than we really had and that lead to inflation. Under Bretton Woods only foreign governments could exchange dollars for gold. Citizens still could not and it was still illegal for you or me to own gold bullion.
Piece #3 – The late 1960s. The US dollar was relatively strong. Gas was cheap. Protesters were in the streets. We were in an unpopular war in Viet Nam and the draft meant that pretty much anyone could have a son or brother sent off to fight. During this tumultuous period in our history a large number of foreign governments decided to exercise their option under Bretton Woods to get gold for their dollars. This created a run on America’s gold reserves. In response to this, in August of 1971 President Richard Nixon “closed the gold window,” putting an end to the Bretton Woods Agreement. What this really meant was that we defaulted on our promise of backing our money with something of real value to all the foreign governments who held US dollars. In 1974 Gerald Ford made it legal for us to own gold bullion but now we had to buy it bearing the burden of inflation resulting from worthless fiat money so we got a lot less gold for those dollars than ever before.
Piece #4 – We overlap a little here because we have to go back to 1973 and the beginning of the Arab oil embargo. Up to then the Western oil companies had pretty much run roughshod over the oil producing nations. In the 1960s the oil producing nations got organized and formed OPEC but they weren’t taken very seriously until the embargo. Back then a barrel of oil was a little over $3. It jumped to more than $5 overnight and eventually reached nearly $12 in early 1974. After the end of the embargo we were able to negotiate an exclusivity deal with OPEC so that they would agree to only sell their oil to countries who would pay for it in US dollars. Today every country in the world that buys OPEC oil must pay in our US dollars.

Let’s take a short break here to look at where we’re going and where we’ve been… Before 1971 a dollar could be exchanged for a specific amount of gold. Between 1971 to 1975 the US dollar was basically worthless outside of America. After the OPEC agreement the dollar again had a value… in oil. That made the US dollar desirable outside the US again. So let’s return to our little puzzle now.

Piece #5 – In 2000 the Iraqis poked the US dollar with a sharp stick because they bucked the OPEC agreement by selling THEIR oil in exchange for Euros rather than US dollars. I believe that at that moment war with Iraq became inevitable not for military reasons and not to possess their oil but because they threatened the de facto Oil Standard that had replaced the Gold Standard.
Piece #6 – Six years ago the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked and that was used as a premise to wage war in the Middle East.
Piece #7 – Iran started to shift the sale of their oil away from the US dollar and over to the Euro beginning towards the end of 2005. If other OPEC nations follow suit the collapse of the dollar becomes inevitable.

So there it is… In 1973 the true value of a dollar went from 1/3rd of a barrel of oil to 1/5th of a barrel overnight and today it has DECREASED to about 1/75th of a barrel. Today Iran is selling some of their oil for Euros rather than US dollars which will likely drive this dollar value even further down. When Iraq did the same thing we were invading within 3 years. So don’t believe for an instant that when we go to war in Iran that it is about “terrorism” or “defense.” It will be about MONEY, just like the current quagmire in Iraq. And _THAT_ is what the current administration does not want you to realize. And that’s also why we cannot afford to WAIT to impeach Cheney and Bush. Because they WILL drag us deeper and deeper into an ever escalating series of wars and the worst possible scenario – the total collapse of the dollar due to the end of the OPEC Dollar Hegemony. In all honesty, nothing would make me happier than to be wrong or to never find out if I was right because we clean house by way of impeachment.

On General Petraeus’ Report and the Move On Ad

September 10, 2007 on 9:34 pm | In General, Political Musings |
This post is utterly devoid of comments. :(

First and foremost – MoveOn.org acted in the worst possible taste by taking out a full page ad describing an Army General as a traitor. If a pun that practically writes itself based on the man’s name is the best that MoveOn can come up with while spending such a huge chunk of their member’s money, I’d say that was pretty darned wasteful. I’ve made it clear what my feelings are about this “take the cheap-shot, low road” approach to MoveOn. I have subscribed to MoveOn’s email alerts for a long time – not because I agree with them but because it’s important to know what the “other side” is up to.

On to the Petraeus Report itself… The General obviously had an Excel wizard whipping out charts and graphs at a dizzying pace and quite frankly it is my belief that it was indeed a “rose colored glasses” view of the true situation. Data focused on the most significant positive spin possible and while it may have been the General’s “own personal assessment” we must also remember that it was HIS surge strategy suggestion to begin with and it pretty much toed the administration’s line. I’m thinking they’re ignoring one of the most significant factors of waging a military campaign in someplace like Iraq – IT’S 130° IN THE SHADE DURING THE SUMMER! Nobody wants to get out in that kind of heat. That’s why so many of the attacks that DO happen are at night now. Sounds like a no-brainer to me that there’s some small degree of decrease in attacks.

The bottom line is that Iraq has degraded into a civil war. Period. Our stated goals were to remove the Hussein regime from power and help them establish their own democratically elected government. Both those jobs are done, so why do we stay? We hear talk about “Iran exploiting a power vacuum” and “defeating Al Qaeda” and so on. But why are these things OUR problem? We’ve trained and armed over 340,000 Iraqi Security Forces. The central government doesn’t deploy them into the high-risk areas where our men and women in uniform are doing the most dangerous work. Our soldiers are risking their lives to train local police departments, they’re building infrastructure, and they’re doing a great many other positive things. But they are still a military and the primary function of a military is to either defend their OWN country or to defeat another MILITARY enemy. The mission they are being given now does not fit either of those descriptions. The convoluted and illogical claims that “fighting over there means not having to fight them here on our own soil” equals “defense” is spurious at best. If they were here engaged in REAL defense rather than nation building there would certainly be few of them coming home wounded or in flag-draped boxes. The simple truth is that if we allowed airlines to defend their passengers and their cockpits, put more properly trained armed Air Marshals on flights, secured our borders to keep out those foreigners who represent a real threat to our security, and enforce the laws that were already on the books BEFORE we were attacked here then NONE of these groups could pose any real threat to Americans here within our own borders.

With regard to the future outlook from the General’s report, I would say that “pre-surge troop levels by July, 2008″ is completely unacceptable. Being the same place 1 year from now as we were 6 months ago is not my idea of progress, especially if we are still engaging in “police actions” abroad while leaving our own borders as unprotected as they are right now. It is not our military’s job to police foreign lands when that land’s government fails to do so. We do nothing but fuel radicalism by remaining and killing more and more Muslims. We make ourselves the easiest possible targets by putting ourselves directly in reach of their limited ability to attack us. We’re doing more favors for our enemies than our allies by staying. And all the while we keep playing nice with Saudi Arabia when the reality of the situation is that the Al Qaeda presence in Iraq is made up of Saudis rather than Iranians. Of course we heard from General Petraeus that they were encountering lots of Iranian weapons and such in the fighting which is part of the bid to sell the American people on an armed conflict with Iran in the near future. See my next post for why I believe that we WILL have a confrontation with Iran if we don’t end the Bush administration as soon as possible with an impeachment for Cheney first and then Bush immediately after.

Help Get Dr. Ron Paul on Letterman and Leno Shows!

September 9, 2007 on 11:47 am | In General, Political Musings |
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Email Late Night with David Letterman at cbsmailbag@aol.com.
Email NBC regarding The Tonight Show with Jay Leno using the online form at http://www.nbc.com/Footer/Contact_Us/ and select “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” from the drop down menu or click here.

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UPDATE! Courtesy of masamunecyrus from DIGG:
There’s a “Suggest a Guest” page on the Tonight Show’s site.

http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/about/contact.shtml

It only works in IE, but it just opens up a mailto: link. If you’d like to suggest a guest, just send an e-mail to ” tonightshowfeedback@nbcuni.com ” with a subject of ” Suggest a Guest “.

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Here is a sample of what I sent to each network:

Dear [Network],
I think it would be a great thing for [HOST] to interview Dr. Ron
Paul on [SHOW NAME]! Dr. Ron Paul has been the winner of several
states’ GOP straw polls and the majority of all the post-debate online and
text message polls and I’m certain that a significant number of other viewers
like me would enjoy hearing more about the candidate’s views.

Thank you very much.

Best Regards,
Dave Easterly

My Letter to the Editor

September 7, 2007 on 10:59 am | In General, Political Musings |
This post is utterly devoid of comments. :(

I submitted this letter today. I doubt it will see the light of day, but… here it is:

To my fellow Patriotic Americans:
People who make victims of our courageous men and women in uniform for their own political gain are the TRUE enemies of America. It doesn’t matter if they kill them with an IED by the roadside or with profit-motivated marching orders against the will of the majority of American people — either crime has the same result. Halliburton, The Carlyle Group, Blackwater USA, and the rest of the Military-Industrial complex want to sustain this war indefinitely because BILLIONS of the tax dollars you and I pay flow freely from the Capitol and Pentagon. THESE are the war profiteers that own and control Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, et.al. and they do not care how many of your sons and daughters die for their gain. Selling their citizens’ best interests to their corporate masters while LYING to the American People that we are “being protected” and “made safer by taking the war to the enemy” is the impeachable offense. The only thing protected by maintaining an illogical and irresponsible foreign policy in the Middle East is the profits of these corporate leviathans… and of course the Bush family’s “bosom buddies” the Saudi oil sheiks like Bin Laden Oil. Clinton was impeached for lying about something that didn’t get ANYONE killed. Bush and Cheney’s lies are soaked in the blood of patriotic American soldiers and countless innocent civilians.

These men will tell you ANYTHING to keep their power so they can then funnel obscene amounts of money to their well-connected corporate friends. They will manipulate your sense of patriotism, your religious faith, and most of all they will use FEAR… They have proven again and again to be untrustworthy, dishonest, and devoid of honor.

Impeachment is the only option that will free us from the greed and authoritarianism that would have us surrender our liberties under the marketing name of “freedom” and lose our Constitutional protection of the Bill of Rights under the name of “justice.”
Here is just a small part of the “false bill of goods” sold to Americans under deliberately deceptive names:

>USA PATRIOT Act – Strips away fundamental Constitution rights from citizens and non-citizens alike.

>Security and Prosperity Partnership – Diminishes our National Sovereignty, REDUCES our ability to secure our borders, and moves us one step closer to a North American Union where our Constitution would be subverted and our currency could be replaced with the Amero.

>Protect America Act – Extends the surveillance power from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to cover American citizens within our borders without adequate judicial oversight. The potential for abuse and misuse to silence dissent of those who pose NO SECURITY RISK is obvious and chilling.

>The Clear Skies Initiative – Made it EASIER for auto companies to sell gas guzzling obscenities like Hummers and Suburbans and such because they were classified as “light trucks.” (On an editorial note… These are “passenger cars” that should have to meet the same mileage requirements of a sedan — and for those of you who feel “macho” driving a big SUV let me burst your bubble… That’s no truck. It’s a ridiculously tall station wagon. Get over yourself.)

>No Child Left Behind – Ties the hands of teachers to adjust to the different needs of her class and rather than helping to fix problems at under-performing schools it strips more money AWAY from those schools that are struggling. Has no real variance for children in Special Education from regular classes. REDUCES emphasis on sciences, math, history, et.al. to push a limited set of reading program like Open Court that just coincidentally happen to be produced by Texas companies with close financial ties to the Bush family.

It becomes clear that these people think nothing of selling us lies at an obscene margin of profit for themselves and their sycophantic corporate sponsors. They have trampled upon their solemn and sacred oath to uphold the Constitution. They regularly disregard our will and our rights. And they have forgotten that it is they who serve US and not the other way around.

If these were men of honor and integrity they would resign and never show their faces on American soil again. Alas, they are not and so it befalls us to become their conscience for them instead. Impeachment is the only message we can send that will reign in their greed and lust for power and authoritarian control.

Calling All True Patriots!

September 6, 2007 on 3:37 pm | In General, Personal, Political Musings |
This post is utterly devoid of comments. :(

In light of many recent events in the mass media that ignore the atrocities committed by the members of the CFR and their World Bank/IMF controlled military-industrial complex I feel compelled to speak my mind. War profiteers will never opt for peace when the endless flood of blood money flows so freely from the fountains of Washington D.C. and London. The constant erosion of our Precious Liberty and National Sovereignty to satisfy the Globalist agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations to make our Nation a member state in their New World Order can no longer be tolerated.

The Globalist Elitists are the minority. WE are the ones not fooled by their shiny wrappers and slick corporate media image and WE ARE MANY! We grow tired of a controlled news media and long for the return of true and honest journalism. We are weary with lies and empty promises and we seek the truth from leaders of integrity and honor. We no longer sit idly by and think there is nothing we can do because we have SEEN that we are NOT alone. We have a voice and that voice grows louder each day as more and more Free Thinkers, Lovers of Liberty, and True Patriots join us in unison. Our battle cry is “Liberty, Justice, and Peace for all!” And the pillars of the usurpers’ palaces are beginning to shudder and tremble. The mouthpieces of the Establishments dare not face us on the battlefields of Logic, Reason, and Common Sense and try to lure us instead into the quicksand of Innuendo and Marginalization. We must not let them lead us to the low ground where they might drown us in accusations of “Conspiracy Theorist” and “Isolationist” but rather force them to come to us. Come where we have fortified ourselves with walls of Truth and Fact and armed ourselves with Respect for The Rule of Law and Egalitarian Equality.

We do not align ourselves with a single man, but rather with a set of Principles and Ideals that made our Nation great. These Principles and Ideals are the ONLY road back to Greatness and we are thankful to have a man leading the way. But should he fall by the wayside our march will NOT be deterred. Our patriotic devotion and love for freedom will not wane. And we will no longer feel alone and powerless for we now all march side by side and shoulder to shoulder with a common goal and a uniting cause.

You will not stop us. You will not be able to ignore us any more. We are coming… AND WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK!