Yet in how many countries are we bombing targets with our drones? Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and perhaps more.   I ask you.   Is bombing an act of war?  Of course.   Is it an act of war if is a missile  is shot from a drone?   Same answer.   Have we declared war?  We have not been asked.

On seemingly another subject, there has been a trade show that recurred for five years called the Wiretappers Ball. It is by invitation only and the FBI, the Secret Service and many  other US agencies which are invited and purchase huge contracts from private wiretapping corporations.  These firms also sell their wares to Syrians who are using the internet  to tweet for freedom from repression.  This too is in abject contravention of the constitution quoted above.

But these two items make the same point.   We are accostomed to living in violation of the US Constitution.   There are hundreds if not thousands of other examples, but two  are sufficient. One affects your personal security, the other your national security.  We are paying into a lawless government.

How can we the people be secure in our houses, email and effects when our own government is funding the wiretapping industry?    How can we say No to war when we are not asked, when war has not been declared, or denied in 65 years?  Is war so informal?   Does no one think: ‘I wonder whose bombs are those blowing up my neighbors house and family?’

This is profoundly disingenuous. How do we get out of this, when the candidates running for President do not discuss this, or when the congress does not require simply this:   Follow the Constitution.

All our public servants have sworn an oath to do just that.

The ‘King Clause’ *of the constitution states:

The Fourth Amendment reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In short it means you and your stuff are free, unless there is a search warrant signed by a judge with particulars stating where, who and what is to be searched and seized.

That was regretfully obliterated by the ‘lone wolf ‘ provision of the patriot act. The enemy needs no affiliation.   That means is could be you, or me, anybody.

Sorry, they say.   There is no law, The world is a dangerous place and we are here to protect you…. but forget the fourth amendment and all the millions of Americans who swore to protect it, and those who died thinking they were protecting it.

I have been too morose to post this.   I guess you could call it denial, the first stage of grieving.     I have a good carpenter friend who just lost his house.  Oh, and his family.   He got securitized out of his mortgage after eleven years paying on it.  I  feel I am losing my country.  I made the vow as I entered the Navy to protect and defend the constitution.    So did President Obama and all congressmen and senators now serving.  I repeat myself because I cannot believe all these people do not honor their own word.

What nudged me out of my stupor was when Miss USA was driven to tears by the personal violation by a TSA airport frisker.   Flying home through Dallas she had the ‘freedom of choice’ to get radiation from a new high powered airport scanner that virtually undress you and gives an unhealthy dose of radiation, or to be molested by a female TSA frisk specialist.  But that is for another post.

The P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act was prewritten when 9-11 happened and was passed with the hysteria of that very dramatic moment, quickly.  It was not deeply considered then, nor by the congress  when it sunsetted a decade later, conveinently, Osama bin Laden had just been killed and a huge trove of intelligence was captured, and what responsible congressman had the political counterwieght to say “Stop Everything, let us discusss the Forth Amendment and the Patriot act.”  Few, the two Oregon Senators  Wyden and Merkley and Udhall from Utah, but not enough.  So the Patriot Act was extended without discussion another four years, fourteen years after September 11th of 2001.      Meanwhile, the population, especially those who travel by air, become habituated to being frisked for….. being in the USA.

And that is the latest from yourconstitution.   Honored, in the breach.

The US government is facing being shut down in two weeks. Why? The Republicans demand a cut of $60 Billion, yet our debt is largely financed by China which increases our dependence. The request is not unreasonable.

The resistance from the Democrats comes from concern that cuts in social services will expand unemployment and will kill the fragile economic recovery. That too, is a reasonable concern.

What is unreasonable is that our annual “defense” expense is $651 Billion per year, or $2,100 for every man, woman, infant and retiree obligating them to pay for our (undeclared) wars. A family of four is obliged to pay $8,400 every year for this.

Our war in Afghanistan now has lasted longer than World War I, World War II and the Korean War combined, and to win what? To seize a criminal personality named Osama bin Laden.

The obvious solution is to declare victory and exit Afghanistan.   We do not need that territory. Ronald Reagan’s military chief Bing West says it is time to go. Ten years. Armies are good at killing people. They are NOT good at nation building. Why? They do not speak the language. Our soldiers are trained in shooting, not speaking. Different job. What are we doing? Shooting wood gatherers from the air. Engaging in a thousand night raids a month. We are generating enemies. Repeat: We are generating enemies. That is why we must stop, aside from breaking the bank.

To quote Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “.. Any future Defense Secretary who advises the President to again send a large land army to Asia, or into the Middle East or Africa, should have his head examined.” …. West Point speech, February 25th, 2011.

Unless we cut the counterproductive spending; we should have our head examined.

We are a canoe crosswise to the current , upstream from Niagara Falls and half of the paddlers are paddling right, half are paddling left, and our captain is saying right, left, right…..      What is next?

This mid-term election cost Three Billion dollars,one billion more than the last presidential election… which  shouts what we call elections have become auctions.  They are not elections but bribe-a-thons… and why?  Because they Pay.

The elections tell us that people are very unhappy.  They recognize they are getting screwed. Fine.  and yet seemingly are economically ignorant.   We have the largest Republican majority since 1928.  Dear reader of history… what does that portend?  Look up what happened between 1928 and 1938 and you will find The Great Depression.    No offense, but releasing the entrepreneurial spirit when nobody has any money and  what you get is Mexico, not Nirvana.   Except Americans(Yankees), in general are neither as happy nor generous nor as entrepreneurial as our neighbors to the south. (Drug war exploits, which have a US mainspring, to the contrary).         History will not repeat itself, as Mark Twain said… but it will rhyme.       And piking will not change this trend.

Yet there is a definitive reason that catalyzes our current dilemma, which we could call the failure in the experiment in democracy.   The free press has failed the electorate.  It is an amnesia engine.  Why?  We have confused free-gratis with free-liberty.   We expect our news to be free of charge (gratis ) and forget the dictum, he who pays the piper calls the tune.     Billionaires determine the “mainstream” news channels, fund the pundits and we allow them to do so, with newspapers that are shoppers (advertising vehicles) with a prepurchased editorial slant, and No effective investagitive reporting.   Why?       He who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune.     The tune is divided government, and thus corporate freedom, paid for by the Koch brothers and the crew that has driven our economic bus over the cliff.  Hello New York.  Hello Hedge Funds.  Hello Insurance, big Pharma and the usual suspects.   On this point FDR and Benito Mussolini agreed: “Corporatism is Fascism”.     Here we are with corporations calling the shots, foreign wars a-breeding with their very predictable profit centers, and domestic population in disarray.

The private equity people are doing just fine though, thank you – they say, for all this 1/4% money.   The economic lingo for our current situation is called the “consolidation phase” of the business cycle.   That is where the agents that have good access to credit (i.e. friends of the money center banks) buy up all the ‘troubled assets’, meaning anybody that is having a tough time in this tough economy.  Are you one of these private equity folks?   I doubt it.  Less than 1% of us are.

The cure in my view is threefold.  a)First we must cure our collective amnesia.  We need a functioning free (liberty) press that is funded by free (liberty) people. We must  rekindle having two ‘newspapers’ in each city, meaning a news gathering organization that is strong enough to fund, support and defend investigative reporters, and those ‘newspapers’ need to be funded by You, Dear Citizen…. not special interests, business interests, or any other none geographic, non-human interest.  And funded by your neighbors as well, with whom you are willing to discuss the events of the day.   This could easily be done with some thoughtful legislation (sic) requiring that one half of your ISP bill be paid to content.  The People must fund the Press from their own pockets.

b) Second we must recall the first three words of the US constitution and make them real:  ”We the People”.  It does not begin with we the corporations, we the lawyers, nor even we the supreme court justices.   This government gets its authority from the consent of the governed  and its creations, such as the military, the CIA, the corporations, and the banks are subordinate to that.  Currently we have this upside down.  If you, fellow citizen are willing to lie down and accept that money is speech, and corporations are people, then the Constitution, which all of our military personnel and all federal officials swear to protect and defend, is dead.   It is moribund at this state, you must agree.   I assert, as a veteran and a man in his 65th year that At No Time during my life has the Congress Declared War though the US has initiated some big ones, Viet Nam, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan  and many smaller ones and it seems on the eve of this election an new one with Yemen.    Yet in order to assert our rights under the constitution, we must effectively communicate as a political community, civilly, and with respect of each other and for the differences that are a natural outcome of human perspective.    We shall either be free(liberty) or oppressed, and the trend is not good.   We will likely be oppressed if one half of the electorate believe the other half are idiots.

and C) We must reclaim our money.   We must recognize, realize, and reclaim the power that comes with the creation of money and make it a community property.  Yes we must haveh checks and balances to be certain it is not abused.  Few understand the archana of the Federal Reserve System with its twelve districts, and many presidents, and boards of directors as well as boards of governers and its firehose of informations and it’s one perminent member of the Open Market Committee.    Yet while its original plan may have been well intended (or not) as a balance of public and private interests in creating our money, the result is five money center banks call the shots.  They make ungodly sums the would make a hedgefund director blush, and with that engage in social control.  They fund the auction/election process lamented at the top of this article as well as funding the empire which instigates the wars also mentioned above.  Electoral funding reform is a downstream solution.  A key to reclaiming our money is exemplified by the bank of North Dakota, a state bank in which the citizens of that state receive the benefits from that money circulated and created in that state.  Your interest write off my make your mind figure that bank money is free to you… but your wallet remembers.  The banks have swallowed up the tax space.  Ellen Hodgson Brown has done a wonderful job of explaining this very subtle, yet powerful way of harnessing for the good, the immense power within the creation of money.   The power of money must, with checks and balances, support the domestic public.  Not empire and the purchase of elections and wars abroad.

*Understanding Central Banking is a head scratch.   It was a bone of contention between Jefferson and Hamilton and Jackson to boot.   It’s previous incarnation was with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and created a central banking function ( a lender of last resort) but left the ownership of that power in private hands.   What is now going on in August of 2010 is seat of the pants and brand new territory.    My recommendation on understanding this is by reading the book: Web of  Debt by Ellen Hodgson Brown.  It is clearly written, and an amazingly well told story.     If only the younger generation can get ahold of the old walnut shell trick before I did.

What we get, if we actually get away…. from media, city rhythms, from other’s sounds, from our inner hum-drum…. is genuine inspiration. Ancient trees, moss covered fortresses that have withstood centuries of rain and wind. and that wind, which I never understood till this year, is very orderly. Yes, it makes us confused, it disturbs us with the dust it raises, but it is not confused. It is the gentle mover. It moves the dapples in the canopy of trees that shade the earth from the scorching sun. That sun that we will seek for warmth as the dry autumn falls upon us as leaves fall upon the ground, now in summer that sun burns what it touches. The earth, it misses its ancient canopy.

It is amazing to me that so few realize the profundity of the gift that old trees give. A lofty canopy of rich cool shade, with tall stems reaching deep into spongy soil netted with roots and mycorrhizal rhizomes, or as the Indians used to say: grandfathers shaking hands, beneath the ground. Big trees not only provide shade, and in their death – topsoil, oh, and the air we breath, the culture of their roots provides the nursery for soil creation, home to the flowers of rot: mushrooms.

My patriotism is nourished by the land, the respect for the land that the original people here had and still have. They are sometimes called Indians, sometimes called Native Americans, but in practice here, in the Pacific Northwest, They call themselves by the name of the river near which they were born. The Yakima, the Warm Springs, the Cowlitz, the Stillaguamish, the Tulalips all members of the Salish, or Salmon Eaters. Try googling
Salish.

So inventive we Americans. Coming back from the woods, refreshed, inspired. I wonder how many city dwellers now across the land, create the chance, to be so inspired.

Item One: Authorities in Jerusalem bulldozed an Arabic graveyard to make way for a Museum of Tolerance.

Item Two: There is national consternation in the USA that a New York City muslim group wants to build a mosque and cultural center two blocks from ground zero, which some are calling sacred ground.

Item Three: Six hundred retired NFL football players are suing a video game outfit because their football game players resemble them.

Item Four: Nick Merrill, and New York city ISP operator finally broke his silence after being “gagged” by an FBI gag order since 2005. In 2005 he was served with a “National Security Letter” which required him to provide FBI agents with the searches and data on his subscribers, yet with no warrant from a judge provided. What is wrong with that? you say.

It is a violation of the first, fourth and fifth amendments of the Bill of Rights, I say.

The constitution and the Bill of Right is on this site. Can you state, not with names but in simple constitutional language what rights of Nick Merrill were violated? (This is described as the practice of citizenship; and practice makes pretty good.)

I have not been able to comment on the above absurdity…… which is actual news, for the last two days. I cannot find a clown suit loud enough, or a mouth pucker round enough. Please comment and help me out of my dumbfound.

______David

A subtext to this entire site is that for a constitutional country whose document begins with We the People, the People (you) must know the law. It is my lament that The King was replaced by The People, and the People have deferred to the Lawyers. You can state your rights to anyone: lawyer, policeman or judge, and that person must obey. The constitution has replaced the king with You, citizen. The President presides over the Congress (which means ‘to walk upright together’) He presides, he is not king. He took an Oath to preserve and protect the constitution. Only if he forsakes his oath and congress does not obey the ‘king clause’ (Article I, section 8, clause 11) is he then king. I ask: where are we, relative to the king, when the president has assassination powers anywhere on the globe with drones, jackals, and a black budget?

We now have a President who is also a Constitutional scholar. Can we as a People hold him to his scholarship?