George W. Bush: Presidential Criminal, Part 2

In George W. Bush: Presidential Criminal, Part 1, I discussed one of the major reasons why the evidence that this man is a criminal has now been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt. He knowingly and deliberately presided over a regime of torture against perceived enemies in blatant violation of the United States Constitution, U.S. and international laws.

That fact alone is enough to warrant a lengthy prison term for this criminal.

Can you imagine our first president, George Washington ever authorizing and presiding over the torture of British soldiers, all of whom were definitely in the category of enemy combatants invading American soil, during the Revolutionary war?

It is unimaginable.

That was before the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights even came into existence – there was no Fifth Amendment then; no Bill of Rights – it was a matter of common decency and humanity that our government did not engage in torture even though it might have been expedient to do so.

As far as I know, German and Japanese enemy combatants were not tortured by U.S forces as POW’s during World War II, at least not upon a systematic authorized from the top basis. There is no record of President Franklin Roosevelt or President Harry Truman presiding over a regime of torture. That kind of thing was unthinkable then, not to mention a clear violation of international treaties and the laws of war.

Before George W. Bush’s imaginary “War on Terror,” the U.S. had never engaged in a war or other conflict against enemy combatants in which torture was authorized and encouraged by the President and Commander in Chief of the United States of America. Yet German and Japanese enemy combatants were far more dangerous to our nation then than a ragged ill-equipped band of Muslim terrorists are today.

The Nazis and the Japs did it to our soldiers but the Americans didn’t reciprocate in kind. Enemy prisoners of war were treated well and humanely by our government in those days. That was when the United States of America had some honor and integrity.

George W. Bush and his regime of torture have left an ugly, indelible and irreversible stain upon the honor and integrity of America. Now other lesser nations will use his criminal example to justify their own torture regimes. America does it so why can’t they? We can no longer validly criticize other nations for systematic human rights violations against enemies.

George W. Bush is unrepentant for his crimes right up to this day.

He just gave a speech at the dedication of his new Presidential Center and Library in which he proudly proclaimed that: “Supporters come and go. But in the end leaders are defined by the convictions they hold. And my deepest conviction; the guiding principle of the administration is that the United States of America must strive to expand the reach of freedom: I believe that freedom is a gift from god.” 

So we see that throughout his eight year presidency this criminal fancied himself as on a mission from God who’s deepest conviction and guiding principle in office was to expand the reach of American style government – God’s gift -- into places like Iraq and Afghanistan – a purpose which is not set forth in the Constitution as part of his authorized presidential powers.

This deluded criminal megalomaniac actually thought he was on a mission from God, which in his mind justifies all his crimes.

The foremost guiding principle of any President of the United States is to execute the laws of the United States and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That’s his job. That is the purpose and authority granted to him under the Constitution.

That is what the presidential oath of office specifies as his primary duty. It is to execute our laws and preserve our freedoms – not engage in an imperialistic worldwide crusade to force American values upon the citizens of other nations by military means in the name of God.

George W Bush violated his presidential oath in the worst possible way. He initiated two totally unnecessary major military conflicts abroad in which the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people were slaughtered along with more than 4,000 American soldiers. These people lie dead because of him.

 He forced America on these people and those lucky enough to remain alive are less free than they ever were beforehand. Not only did he fail to expand the reach of freedom, which was beyond his authority in the first place, he actually made matters in those countries worse by his criminal actions.

He almost single handedly caused the great financial meltdown and lingering recession of 2007 and beyond. America still hasn’t recovered from his incompetent and criminal mismanagement of the economy.

Do we Americans enjoy more freedoms today than we did before this criminal torturer George W. Bush took office? Did this man expand the reach of freedom for us Americans now that we have the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FISA, and the TSA?

Of course not! He opened a hornets’ nest.

Americans enjoy far less freedoms today than at any other time in history thanks to George W. Bush: Presidential criminal.

George W. Bush: Presidential Criminal

Recent polls have suggested that the popularity of former president, George W. Bush, is recovering somewhat since he left office as the most unpopular president in history.  

 

And now his disastrous eight year administration is about to be whitewashed and forgotten even more as the George W. Bush Presidential Center is set to officially open on May 1, 2013.

The $250 million, 25 acre, 207,000 square feet complex, including Bush’s presidential library, a museum, the GWB Policy Institute, and the offices of the GWB Foundation, will become the second-largest presidential library in history, dedicated to polish this incompetent man’s legacy and completely distort history.

If there were ever any doubt there certainly isn’t any now that George W. Bush is and was a presidential criminal. This man should be occupying a prison cell, not dedicating a $250 million complex to his failed and felonious presidency. He’s not a war criminal because he never presided over any real war except for his own imagined undeclared “war on terror.” He’s just a common criminal who used his high office to commit crimes.

But in the United States of America that’s what our presidents can do and they always get away with their crimes scot free. Bush is not the first presidential criminal and I’m sure he won’t be the last. Barack Obama seems to be following suit.

Richard M. Nixon was proven beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal who obstructed justice, attempted to cover up the crimes of his subordinates, lied under oath, repeatedly violated the constitution, and used his office to further his criminal actions.

Had he not resigned when he did he clearly would have been impeached, and had President Ford not pardoned him he no doubt would have been convicted of his crimes. But no – he has a presidential library today too, and his legacy seems to be glowing brighter as time goes by.

Bill Clinton was caught red handed committing perjury, lying under oath, and obstructing justice, all serious crimes, yet he narrowly escaped impeachment but not disbarment as a lawyer in his home state. Today he enjoys the status as an elder statesman in the Democratic Party and universal adoration and respect from the American public.

So while commoners like you and me can commit petty misdemeanors and find ourselves doing time in the slammer, presidential criminals can literally get away with murder in some instances, much less commit other serious felonies, and still remain respected pillars of society.

I knew that George W. Bush was a criminal while he was still in office. That’s why it comes as no surprise to me that a nonpartisan group led by a former top Bush administration official concluded a two-year review on last week that finds the former president and his top advisers knowingly ordered interrogation techniques that U.S. officials have previously referred to as torture.

George W. Bush presided over torture and now there is no longer any reasonable doubt. Both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have admitted in public that they specifically ordered the use of enhanced interrogation tactics.

You’re “damn right” we did it, they both admit, and “it was good,” “it worked” they both insist. But the Obama administration has consistently denied that the use of torture led to information that helped them find and assassinate al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“After conducting our own two-year investigation, weighing the credibility of all sources and studying the current public record, we have come to the regrettable, but unavoidable, conclusion that the United States did indeed engage in conduct that is clearly torture,” former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), who served as undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, declared.

The investigation includes interviews with dozens of people who have first-hand knowledge of the discussions about interrogation techniques and their implementation. Although Bush administration loyalists said at the time that “enhanced interrogation tactics” like stress positions, water boarding, mock executions, sensory deprivation and prolonged diapering were not torture, this report aims to specifically and finally emphasize that these activities meet the clinical definition of “torture.”

“What sets the United States apart as a world leader, in addition to our military might, are our values and respect for the rule of law. All the available evidence led us to conclude that, for many of these detainees, the U.S. violated both international law and treaties and our own laws, greatly diminishing America’s ability to forge important alliances around the world,” former Rep. James R. Jones (D-OK) added in the group’s advisory.

“This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players,” Hutchinson told The New York Times. “But I just think we learn from history. It’s incredibly important to have an accurate account not just of what happened but of how decisions were made.”

But now all criminal investigations into the Bush torture program have been called off by the Obama administration.

Yes, Barack Obama – isn’t he the guy that presided over the murder of the innocent 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki? Isn’t he the guy who is presiding over the murders of innocent bystanders in the imaginary “war on terror” on a daily basis?

UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo helped craft the Bush administration's torture and detention policies in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. He’s the guy who, while he was a deputy assistant attorney general, convinced the criminal Bush that torturing people was just fine.

There were plenty of other aiders and abettors in the administration who gleefully assisted George. W. Bush: Presidential Criminal. I’m sure all of them will have prominent places in the new George W. Bush Presidential Center and that all of their infamous crimes will soon be forgotten.

 

 

Bill of Rights Ignored at School

When prospective teachers and education administrators go to college to learn how to educate children in compulsory public schools it seems to me that they ought to all take a required short course about the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights because right now most of them can’t distinguish the Bill of Rights from a comic book.

Teachers and school officials today actually believe that the captive charges under their daily control and supervision enjoy no rights at all much less those set forth in the Bill of Rights. So these statist government agents make a habit of trampling on the rights of kids without even a second thought.

They actually think, for example, that they have the authority to compel a child’s attendance at school and then dictate such personal matters as hair styles and hair color to that child.

An Ohio kindergartner was recently suspended and punished by his school district because of his Mohawk haircut. School officials said his haircut was a disturbance to teachers and students in the classroom. The superintendent said the Mohawk haircut violated district rules on dress and grooming that is disruptive to the education process.

The child’s mother said that her son got the haircut because he thought it was “cool,” adding that other students were interested in it after his class returned from spring break. Now the plan is that he returns after 3 days with a shaved head.

A kindergartner with a shaved head; won’t that cause a disturbance to teachers and students in the classroom?

The bottom line is that a student’s hair style is his or her business and it is not within the legal authority of a school administrator to punish a student for electing to wear a popular hairstyle. It’s unconstitutional. Student’s have a First Amendment right to express themselves with their hair style.

Last week, a West Virginia eighth-grade student was actually arrested by the police as well as suspended from school for the “crime” of wearing a National Rifle Association (NRA) t-shirt.

An in West Virginia was reportedly arrested and suspended last week after getting into an argument with his teacher about a National Rifle Association T-shirt he wore to school. Now he faces criminal charges of obstruction and disturbing the education process for refusing to change the shirt, which shows a rifle and the slogan, "protect your right."

This boy had the temerity to argue with his teacher who objected to the image of the gun on the shirt, so the police were called and he was arrested and briefly jailed "What they're doing is trying to take away my rights, my freedom of speech and my Second Amendment," said the kid.

"I don't see how anybody would have an issue with a hunting rifle and NRA put on a T-shirt, especially when policy doesn't forbid it," said his father.

Of course they are both absolutely right. This young man’s First Amendment rights have been rudely trampled asunder by school officials and teachers who have no clue as to the meaning of the Bill of rights.

Personally, I don’t like guns. I’ve never owned one nor do I plan to ever own one. I think they are dangerous and that the most likely person to be injured or killed by a gun is the owner. Guns are like sticks of dynamite or vials of cyanide poison. All it takes is one little mistake, one angry moment, one stupid drunken altercation, and someone gets hurt.

But I do understand why other people want to own guns and I do understand that they are often necessary for self protection as well as for hunting and other completely valid reasons. And I believe in the necessity for the Bill of Rights including the Second Amendment.

“… the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” declares the Second Amendment. I interpret that to mean that, not only to people have the fundamental right to own firearms, they have the right to bear, i.e. carry them at all times, and that right must not be infringed.

Well, sadly the Second Amendment, has been trashed like garbage since the founding fathers conceived it, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights, and there are politicians all over the place who would squash it completely given half a chance.  

As long as the Second Amendment is law then guns of the type depicted on this young man’s shirt are perfectly legal items the same as baseball bats, knives, and bouquets of flowers.

Had his shirt depicted a photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr., or President Obama he would not have been asked to remove it. So this arrest and suspension was clearly the result of viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.

But unfortunately, the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights are ignored at school.

 

Trashing the Bill of Rights

If the evidence establishes the guilt of 19 year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two Boston bomber suspects, then by all rights he should be held to pay for his crimes in accordance with the law. He should be subject to any just punishment the law allows.

 

That goes without saying.

 

What should also go without saying are the constitutional requirements that this criminal suspect shall not be compelled by government authorities to be a witness against himself, and shall not be deprived of his right to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense throughout the entire process after his arrest and while in custody.

 

In the rush to convict and punish the infamous Boston bomber here, this suspect has so far been denied both of those rights. If that can happen to him it can happen to anyone accused of a crime, including you and me.

 

The Bill of Rights is being trashed in the United States of America.

 

The Fifth Amendment clearly provides that: No person shall … be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself …

 

Likewise, the Sixth Amendment clearly provides that: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right … to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

 

Both of these fundamental constitutional rights are applicable immediately upon arrest and all the while the accused is in custody.

 

The well known Miranda v Arizona Supreme Court case was decided for the expressed purpose of implementing these rights, i.e. making sure the government authorities respect the Bill of Rights. Thus, the government authorities have a duty to administer the so-called Miranda warnings to criminal suspects, advising them of their right to remain silent and their right to an attorney before any interrogation.

 

Miranda created a presumption that "interrogation in custodial circumstances is inherently coercive" and that statements obtained under those circumstances "are inadmissible unless the subject is specifically informed of his Miranda rights and freely decides to forgo those rights."

 

The fifth and sixth Amendments mention no exceptions, but in typical fashion the government authorities with the eager assistance of the United States Supreme Court, frequently ignore these facts and carve out imaginary exceptions in the interest of expediency and manufactured necessity.

 

So the court, in 1980, invented the “Public Safety” exception to the Miranda rule and the fifth and sixth amendment requirements. This exception arose out of the case of New York v. Quarles, in which the police were chasing an armed suspect who hid his gun amongst grocery items on a supermarket shelf just before he was captured.

 

 

A police officer, before administering his Miranda rights, asked him where the gun was hidden and the suspect told him. The Supreme Court ruled that both the incriminating statement and the gun were admissible in evidence against him at trial because the officer needed an answer to the question about the location of the gun to ensure that its concealment in a public location would not endanger the public.

 

Thus, according to the Court, without regard to the actual motivation of the individual officers, Miranda need not be strictly followed in situations "in which police officers ask questions reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety." The Court also made clear that only those questions necessary for the police "to secure their own safety or the safety of the public" were permitted under the public safety exception

 

Voluntariness is the linchpin of the admissibility of any statement obtained as a result of government conduct. Thus; statements obtained by the government under the public safety exception cannot be coerced or obtained through tactics that violate fundamental notions of due process.

 

The Quarles case makes clear that the public safety exception is strictly limited to the immediate exigent circumstances. There is no legal authority as far as I know that allows the government authority to hold a suspect in custody for hours, days, weeks and even months – indefinitely -- for the purpose of interrogating him without an attorney present.

 

But that is exactly what is happening right now with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston bomber suspect. He’s being held incommunicado for questioning without an attorney. News reports indicate that the authorities intend to question him at length about his personal associations, his motives, his connections to terrorist groups and the like, none of which falls within the ambit of the public safety exception.

 

This man is an American citizen. This could be you or me. Suppose he is aware of his rights to remain silent and have an attorney; will the authorities stop the questioning if he invokes his rights? Will they respect his constitutional rights? Will they allow him an attorney?

 

Or will they torture him as they definitely have done with other suspected terrorists? Will he be water boarded; deprived of sleep; threatened; coerced? I think there is an excellent chance of that and that is exactly the kind of thing that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments were intended to prevent.

 

Senator Lindsey Graham and other bellowing hard-line foaming at the mouth politicians are even demanding that this American citizen be declared an “enemy combatant” and thereby deprived of any and all rights. For the purpose of expediency they think they have the right to just declare people enemy combatants so they don’t have to deal with the Bill of Rights. The War on Terror against phantom enemies they believe gives them that right.

 

They’re trashing the Bill of Rights.

What Dr. Keith Ablow Doesn’t Understand About Terrorists

Anyone familiar with Fox News and the Fox News Channel knows Dr. Keith Ablow, psychiatrist, member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, and resident psycho-babbler in chief.

Dr. Ablow is a nice personable young man, often called upon to comment from a psychiatric point of view on current topics of the day, but more often than not he just doesn’t understand what he’s talking about and his opinions come out horribly wrong.

I’ve written about Dr. Ablow’s lack of basic understanding several times on this blog.

See: Authority! What Dr. Keith Ablow Doesn’t Understand About Liberty;

       Authority! What Dr Keith Ablow Doesn't Understand About Liberty: Part 2;

       Authority! What Dr. Keith Ablow Doesn’t Understand About Psychiatry;

       Authority! Dr. Keith Ablow: Fox News Resident Statist Psychiatrist

Now, after the Boston Marathon terrorist bombing attack, it once again seems that the good Dr. Ablow, the guy who is supposed to understand psychology and human motives, doesn’t understand beans about terrorists. He tries to feed us the same old unsubstantiated statist government propaganda that terrorists attack us because we are free.

If I have heard that nonsense once I’ve heard it a thousand times from politicians, pundits and tube puppets everywhere who simply think that it is necessary to whitewash the real reasons for terrorism because the real reasons reflect badly upon them and upon the government of the United States.

“The pursuit of liberty is a marathon,” writes Ablow. “The attacker or attackers today used bombs in backpacks … They chose the streets of Boston … Because the target of those who hate freedom is anyone who loves it, anywhere, anytime.”

“Here is the irony:  We are vulnerable, because we are free and strong.  These qualities attract the ire of those who would have us shackled and weak, who are consumed by hatred for individual possibilities, rather than love for what a free person can dream about and strive for and accomplish.”

“Please tell your children this”, Ablow concludes:  “We are attacked in America because we speak about and believe in the power of people to guide themselves through life, to make their own decisions, to think their own thoughts, to speak freely and to pursue their own happiness.”

“Tell them that as long as the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial and the Statue of Liberty grace our great land that those opposed to equality and free will always see us as enemies.  Tell them that we must always be vigilant, but never afraid.”

“Tell them that we cannot be defeated, because the truth wins, every time.  And we, in America, hold great truths to be self-evident.”

“Tell them that liberty is a marathon.”

What a concentrated load of useless rubbish!

Terrorism has nothing to do with our liberty. Liberty in America is not something which must be pursued like in a marathon. We’re supposed to already have it enshrined within the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We want to protect it from the grasping aspirations of government, not pursue it from the likes of a ragged band of terrorists.

The terrorists don’t give a shit about our freedoms. That’s not what they hate about the U.S.A.

The terrorists aren’t trying to shackle us and make us weak. They’re not out to stifle American  individuals dreams for a better life, or for individuals to make their own life’s decisions and think their own thoughts, to speak freely, and pursue individual happiness.

The terrorists don’t give a rat’s ass that American individuals want equality and free will.

So, Dr. Ablow’s analyses amounts to utter nonsense. He doesn’t have a clue as to what he is babbling about.

I’m not aware of a single terrorist who, after being arrested, confessed that they became a terrorist because Americans are free. There are lots and lots of nations on this planet where the citizens enjoy just as much or more freedoms than Americans.

Why don’t the terrorists attack those nations?

Terrorists hate the U.S.A. because the United States government is a super imperialistic political and military force which seeks to meddle into the affairs and politics of other nations and impose its will upon their populations.

Terrorists in the Middle East, for example, hate the fact that the U.S. government maintains military bases and a powerful military presence in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan and several other countries in the region.

They don’t like foreign occupiers invading their homelands with intent to meddle by force into their lives. They hate America because of the United States government, the United States military, and the United States acts of global imperialism.

That’s why they are terrorists; it’s not about the freedom of individual Americans.

That’s what Dr. Keith Ablow doesn’t understand about terrorists.

 

Not a Shred

Robert Murphy, a well known Christian theistic apologist, on his Free Advise blog, frequently referenced in the pages of RRND, is apparently sick and tired of libertarian atheists like me constantly maintaining that there is not a shred of evidence for God.

When evolutionary biologists, for example, say things like: “the Darwinian theory of common descent is as well-established as the law of gravity,” Murphy deems that “insane.”

Well, It’s not insane. It’s a fact. The whole science of modern biology rests upon that simple fact.

 

When some agnostics tell him: “I do not reject the existence of God out of hand, and in that weak sense I’m an agnostic, not an atheist. I can’t prove there is no God; But if he does exist, why isn’t there a shred of evidence?” Murphy recoils with indignant disgust.

Murphy claims that there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God.

 

Now, if Mr. Murphy wants to define “God” as nature, then I would wholeheartedly agree with him that there is plenty of evidence for the existence of God. Or if he defines “God” as existence he’ll get no argument from me for nature and existence are essentially the same concept. When we talk about nature and existence we are talking about reality.

 

But Murphy is a Christian so I’m sure he is not inclined to define “God” as nature or existence. That would completely contradict his entire Holy Bible which sets forth in abundance a fairly detailed description of this character he knows as “God.”

 

I’ll return to that point below, but first I take note that Murphy posits only two arguments which he maintains are evidence of “God” and an “afterlife.“

 

First he points to his fine-tuning argument, the unexpected beauty of mathematics, “my own personal experiences… as well as the whole legacy of a guy named Jesus thing.”

 

Yes, mathematics is beautiful, but so are kittens and puppies, but these facts do not provide a shred of evidence that the “God” of the Holy Bible is a reality apart from pure fantasy.

 

Second, he points to instances of so-called out of body or what he deems as “after death” experiences recounted from people who have been resuscitated after their hearts have stopped and/or their brains have flat lined. There have been people who have remarkably recovered after several minutes or even an hour of “death” and have described what was going on around them during that time together with beautiful visions an “afterlife.”

 

Of course, I don’t doubt for a moment that these things have indeed occurred, but it is quite obvious to me that these folks were not dead. Just because the heart stops and the brain flat lines doesn’t mean that the patient cannot be resuscitated with CPR or  by other means. That happens frequently in medicine. Because they are not quite dead yet. It’s all interesting, fascinating and awesome, but they just aren’t dead.

 

If Mr. Murphy can point to a scientifically verified example of a decomposing corpse or a skeleton being resuscitated and telling fantastic tales of an afterlife then that might indeed be evidence of an afterlife. That might even make a believer out of me. But until then he has not demonstrated a shred of evidence.

 

“Finally:” Murphy declares: “I hardly expect this blog post to change anyone’s mind on the ultimate question of whether there is God or an afterlife. But can we at least stop saying, “There’s no evidence for your irrational beliefs.”? There’s a bunch of evidence, it’s just that many atheists apparently can’t even see it.”

 

That’s right. I just don’t see it because there is not a shred.

 

Now, back to the “God” in the Holy Bible which is the only God Murphy believe exists and claims that there’s a bunch of evidence to support that belief.

 

I am sure that as a good Christian man Mr. Murphy has read the Bible. I suggest that he read it carefully again paying close attention to the physical descriptions of “God” in His own words and the word of Moses and the other notable biblical figures mentioned in the text who supposedly knew God personally .

 

In the book of Genesis one of the first things he will discover is that God describes his own physical appearance as that of a man: On the sixth day … “God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Gen: 1:26) God, therefore, looks like a man, talks like a man, acts like a man, thinks like a man and uses consciousness like a man.

 

Murphy’s God is a man.

 

Moses, who reportedly saw God in person, said of Him: “The Lord is a man of war.” Ex: 15:3

 

“And God spake all these words, saying … I the LORD thy God am a jealous God.” Ex: 20:1, 5

 

“For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” Ex: 34:13

 

“And I will bring distress upon men that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the LORD: and their blood shall be poured out as dust and their flesh as the dung… Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.” Zeph: 1:16, 17

 

Murphy’s “God” is a jealous man.

Murphy’s “God” is actually the conceptual abstracted metaphor of a human being – a man – who is far more evil, depraved, wicked, flawed, and fallible than the worst of real human beings. That is the contextual reality of the matter. It is all plainly written in scripture.

 

Murphy’s “God” is a man at all times: vain, forgetful, jealous, unkind, heartless, cruel, arbitrary, unpredictable, deceitful, ungrateful, unloving, tyrannical, mad, merciless, incompetent, petty, vile, prudish, bigoted, vicious, spiteful, devious, murderous, cunning, hateful, greedy, biased, racist, capricious, bungling, mean, ruthless, prejudiced, dictatorial, intemperate, dishonest, neurotic, chauvinistic, stupid, irrational, boastful, bloodthirsty, sadistic, psychopathic, corrupt, scheming, and unforgiving. Think of any pejorative human attribute. The God of Genesis has it.

 

Now consider Murphy’s Jesus, the son of his “God,” and whom he believes is one and the same with “God.” Again, his bible informs us that Jesus is a flesh and blood man: “And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body… And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Matthew 26:26-28.

 

So Murphy’s “God” is a man and a metaphor for ultimate human Authority!

 

Is Murphy’s claim rational? Is there any evidence whatsoever that a man – Murphy’s “God” of all things -- created the entire universe, the galaxies, the stars, planet Earth, mankind, all living things and everything else which exists and has ever existed in the cosmos?

 

Not a shred.

Enemy of the People

With the astonishing revelation last week that the IRS is reading the private emails of ordinary people, without a warrant and without their knowledge and consent, in blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures, there is no longer the slightest doubt in my mind that the government of the United States of America has become public enemy number one.

Your own government is your worst enemy; the worst enemy of the people; far worse than any or all of the heinous criminals on the FBI’s ten most wanted list; worse than all the tin pot dictators and authoritarian despots anywhere on the planet combined; and more dangerous to your own personal and private well being than any disease or pestilence which has ever plagued human beings since the dawn of history.

This monstrous government agency, the IRS and its Gestapo Criminal Tax Division, freely admit without shame that it has been sending its own subpoenas – not court authorized subpoenas, mind you -- to Internet providers demanding that they turn over private emails as well as Face Book postings without a warrant and without telling the subjects what’s going on.

These government criminals claim that people don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their emails. But the last time I checked every one of the multi-million email accounts in the United States is password protected. The idea is that no one is supposed to have access to your emails without the password.

If this fact alone is not enough to establish a reasonable expectation of privacy, then why would anyone have a password? After all, private emails are no different than private letters. They often contain some of the most confidential information about the lives and thoughts of their authors – intimate love letters, family correspondence, business secrets, attorney-client communications, doctor-patient consultations, etc.

This kind of electronic governmental burglary is no different than sending black bag operatives breaking into private homes to rummage thou the contents of unknowing occupants desk drawers in search of their most private and intimate correspondence.

The arrogance of your government politicians, appointed officials, bureaucrats, and agents is simply mind boggling.

The IRS is committing treason. They are traitors by their own admission. Any government official who willfully violates the constitutional rights of its citizens is committing treason against all the people of the United States. Such criminals should be subject to the death penalty or lengthy terms at hard labor in prison in the same fashion of any other infamous traitor.

Over the last century Americans have been slowly but surely sacrificing their precious constitutional rights to the state drip by drip.

It was precisely 100 years ago when the dreaded Internal Revenue Service came into existence. Before 1913 your government was constitutionally prohibited from establishing any individual income tax.

Your government was fully financed then without such taxes and without the requirement that citizens report their private financial information to the state each and every year. Such things were unheard of back then when citizens of this country were actually free.

But somehow the parasitical class of politicians in Congress bamboozled the people into ratifying the 16th Amendment to the Constitution which opened the door for the government criminals to collect (loot) income taxes.

Perhaps the people were lulled into complacency by the fact that only about 1% of the populace were thought to ever be required to pay any income tax, and the fact that the tax rates were very low at first.  

Now, however, 100 years later, almost everyone is paying income taxes and your government, via the criminal operations of the IRS, is stealing as much as 40-50% and more from the income of some taxpayers. The revenue from income taxes alone to the government every year is in the $trillions of dollars.

It’s enough to make every one of the nation’s founding fathers choke on their own vomit. Surely none of them had the least suspicion that the monster they created would eventually consume bite by bite nearly all of the cherished liberty and freedoms of the people.

In fact, today the people of the United States are oppressed by their own government far in excess of the oppressions laid upon the colonists by the British Crown before the Revolutionary War.  

Our forefathers fought a revolutionary war against King George and the British Parliament only to render their descendants burdened and oppressed far worse by the new government during the next 235 years.

That new government in 1789 has become an ongoing and rapidly growing criminal enterprise in 2013 – the number one enemy of the people.

Surely, I’m not advocating another armed revolution – the government has the means to crush the American people – but sooner or later the people must rise up in the voting booths to  demand representatives in government who will stop the ever exceeding corruption and rot which has creeped into the fabric of our beautiful land.

The government of today is not satisfied with the taxes its Gestapo agency, the IRS, collects by force. Soon it will be coming after your heard earned retirement savings. The Obama administration is on record saying that America has a government that believes it has the moral authority to decide just what a "reasonable" level of retirement savings is.

Your government literally steals your hard earned income and gives it away to other governments for reasons that have no benefit whatsoever to you or the ordinary American taxpayer. People in foreign countries, countries that are even hostile to us, are taking your money for their own benefit and to your detriment.

Your government, for example, is simply giving away this year alone 12 F-16 fighter jets, together with 200 Abrams tanks, and hundreds of millions  of dollars worth of other military hardware, $billions of taxpayer dollars altogether, to the nation of Egypt, a country whose government and populace absolutely hate your guts and the guts of our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel.

In recent comments translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, Egyptian president Morsi, and his fanatical Muslim Brotherhood associates, urged that the children of Egypt be taught to hate Jews. “Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them," (that’s us) he said in 2010. They must be nursed on hatred. The hatred must continue.”

The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is completing a massive construction project just south of Salt Lake City, Utah, for a gargantuan super secret computer intelligence data center. It will amount to a huge new spy gathering, national security, and data collection center with storage capacities in the neighborhood of 5 zettabytes of data.

Critics, including former NSA employees, say the data center is front and center in the debate over liberty, security and privacy.

This will be George Orwell’s Big Brother on steroids.

"It's in secret so you don't really know," explained a former NSA employee. "It's benign, right. If I haven't -- and if I haven't done anything wrong it doesn't matter. The only way you can have perfect security is have a perfect surveillance state. That's George Orwell. That's 1984. That's what that would look like."

Former NSA employee and whistle blower Bill Binney, worries about the possibility that the government's stunning new capacity to collect, store and analyze data could be abused. "It's really a-- turnkey situation, where it could be turned quickly and become a totalitarian state pretty quickly," he said. "The capacities to do that is being set up. Now it's a question of if we get the wrong person in office, or if certain people set up their network internally in government, they could make that happen quickly."

Meanwhile, in the state of Florida, government teachers are instructing their young compulsory education charges to write letters about their willingness to give up constitutional rights. The father of a 10-year-old boy said his son was told to write a note reading, "I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure," after a civics lesson at the end of last year.

You see, that is the ultimate purpose of modern day American government, federal, state and local. It wants the ignorant sheeple to voluntarily give up their constitutional rights without a struggle.

It has grotesquely morphed into an ugly blood sucking parasite -- the number one enemy of the people.

In Salem Oregon, state legislators voted unanimously for a bill requiring the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited daily in all Oregon public classrooms. They insist that the pledge to a nation “under God” is an important part of civic education. The bill would also require each classroom to display the American flag.

Standard practice for reciting the pledge in Oregon schools is to have students stand facing the flag with their right hands placed over their hearts. It’s exactly the same kind of pledge the Nazi’s forced little school children to recite verbatim during Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich. Ignorant little kids are taught to mindlessly swear allegiance to the government which unbeknownst to them is actually public enemy number one.

Its chief sponsor said he believes the Pledge of Allegiance teaches students about the nation's legacy. "We need to teach kids the symbolism of that flag ... That flag stands for America. That flag stands for your freedoms. That flag stands for everything this country's ever done, has been or will be in the future."

That flag stands for the enemy of the people.

Why Can’t I Go to Cuba? – Part 2

I’ve always wanted to visit Cuba. It is a beautiful Caribbean island, I’m told, with many cultural attractions, nice people, great food, and lively music. But I’m an American and my government tells me that I am not at liberty to go there. If I do, I’d be committing a crime. 

Why?

I can go to Russia, Vietnam, communist China, and even North Korea or Iran, the latest American designated bogey man nations, but I can’t go to the benign island of Cuba, a nation that has never posed any threat whatsoever to me, or to the United States of America.

I can visit just about any other nation in the world if they would have me, and I’m sure that Cuba would, but my statist government in the so-called land of the free and home of the brave says: “No!,” “No” You can’t go.

I wrote that just over a year ago in a piece entitled “Why Can’t I Go to Cuba,” in which I explained that a tiny minority of Cuban Americans, bitter about things that happened in Cuba more than 54 years ago, have successfully prevailed upon the U.S. government all this time to stifle American citizens travel opportunities to Cuba.

The irony is that Uncle Sam didn’t object to American-Cuban tourism when the brutal fascist right wing dictator Generalissimo Batista was looting the country and murdering its inhabitants.

There was no objection to Americans visiting Cuba when most of the Hotels, casinos and other popular tourist destinations were controlled by the most infamous of American mafia mobsters.

The United States Navy used to dock vessels there on a regular basis to provide R and R for our sailors. They loved the place.

But as soon as the communist Fidel Castro seized power and ended all the corruption, booting all the mafia gangsters out and obliging all the Cuban fat cats to flee; that’s when the U.S.A. slapped a total embargo on Cuba and forbade almost all Americans from visiting or spending any money there.

Mafia gangsters were fine but communists were not.

Communist dictators in China, Vietnam and many other totalitarian nations are some of America’s biggest allies and trading partners today. China alone has purchased $billions of dollars worth of our financial instruments, allowing our government to stay afloat, and also provides many thousands of imported products loved by American consumers.

Why has the United States continued to unreasonably and mercilessly pick on Cuba as the scapegoat for its disdain for communism while we wholeheartedly engage in trade and diplomatic relations with all the other communist and totalitarian hell holes on the planet?

Again, it’s that tiny minority of exiled Cuban Americans calling the shots and depriving the rest of us with the right to engage with our friendly Cuban neighbors.

These bitter and angry dissidents, currently led by Cuban-American politicians, such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and U.S. House Reps, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, are presently crying foul over the fact that pop stars Beyonce and her husband Jay-Z were allowed to visit Cuba.

Rubio expressed anger over the by Beyonce and Jay-Z trip, calling it an opportunity that the Castro regime “seized on for propaganda purposes.”

They wrote letters to U.S. Department of Treasury saying that they represent a community that has been "deeply and personally harmed by the Castro regime's atrocities."

Well, I have no doubt that some of the families of these Cuban exiles have suffered from the policies of the Castro regime. After all, he’s a communist despot, but so were the despots in China, Vietnam, North Korea, and other totalitarian states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Why is it that Americans can visit those places and spend money but not Cuba? It just doesn’t make any sense.

U.S. citizens are not allowed to travel to Cuba for mere tourism, though they can obtain licenses from the government for academic, religious, journalistic or cultural exchange trips.

Those license requirements were tightened last year after Sen. Rubio, R-Fla., criticized the programs as cover-ups for tourism. Rubio derided groups that were granted licenses for activities such as salsa dancing and a trip to the Cuban Ministry of Culture.

Why is it that the U.S. is empowered to allow some handpicked citizens to enjoy travel to Cuba while denying the same opportunity to all other Americans?

Sen. Rubio still doesn’t want any Americans to go. But apparently his Cuban-born maternal grandfather was ordered deported from Florida a decade before Rubio’s birth because he flew in without a visa. So why isn’t he angry with the U.S. government? The U.S. is the real culprit in this story.

Arturo Lopez-Levy, a Cuban economist and analyst who lectures at the University of Denver, said the Beyonce Jay-Z trip and subsequent fallout were "a call to take a fresh look at the U.S. policy toward Cuba with the candidness of an adolescent."

"It is difficult to defend a policy that stomps on the same rights it preaches," he wrote in a column published in The Huffington Post. "Since the migratory reforms made by Cuba in January, that eliminated most of the restrictions on travel from the totalitarian period, Cubans, under a communist regime have fewer legal impediments to visiting the U.S. than U.S. citizens have to visiting Cuba."

He’s right, Cuban political dissidents have greater freedom to travel abroad today than ordinary American citizens who are used to liberty and freedom.

While Sen. Rubio wants to make it a great deal harder for Americans to visit Cuba, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat from Florida, has called for easing rules on travel to the island.

She says that Cuban leader Raul Castro is making changes in the nation and that the United States should rethink its approach to travel and the embargo. “Cuba is changing,” she told reporters. “They are still a hard-core Communist nation, but they are embarking on market reforms in their economy that deserve encouragement.”

She is also right. There is no question that the government of Cuba wants to engage with and be friends with the United States. And 60% of Americans favor re-establishing ties with Cuba, according to the last Gallup poll on the question.

Secretary of State, John Kerry has long been in favor of ending cold war sanctions against Cuba’s communist regime. He has criticized the “power of the Cuban-American lobby” and a half-century of hatred of Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro.

"We have a frozen, stalemated counterproductive policy [on Cuba], said Kerry in the year 2000. “… There's just a complete and total contradiction between the ways we deal with China, the way we deal with Russia, the way we have been dealing with Cuba. … The only reason we don't re-evaluate the policy is the politics of Florida.”

The U.S. should “engage” with Cuba just as we have with communist countries like Vietnam and China says our new Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, who has also been a long time critic of the 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba and restrictions on travel to the Caribbean nation.

It’s high time to lift the decade’s old embargo on a beautiful island and tourist destination located only 90 miles from our shores so that free American citizens no longer have to ask:

Why can’t I go to Cuba?