Spring Training Bile

Every official that comes in
Cripples us, leaves us maimed
Silent and tamed
And with our flesh and bones
He builds his homes

-Rage Against the Machine, "War Within a Breath"

Any attempt on my part of providing weak explanations of why exactly I have not been as vocal, as angry, or why I've not been pounding on the table with a ten pound sledgehammer for others to wake up and simply become aware is immaterial to the argument. While this space began eleven years ago as a way for me to simply try to amuse my friend(s), it has long since wandered over and served as a means to speak my mind with regards to political and social philosophy.

Today is definitely the later.

Sublety is pointless, at this point.  A single well-aimed logical shot from the prone has been rendered ineffective. What is called for is a logical Mk-84 2000 lb. bomb.

Americans, you have just found yourself inside the Minimum Safe Distance (MSD) of my rage. Despite my best intentions to just maintain hope in the overarching ability of free men to reason, I look about and note that the siege engines of those people who are hell-bent on enslaving us are tightening ever closer. I've been scoffed at before, and I'm sure most of you just read this and roll your eyes at what is perceived as hyperbole.

However, were it simply hyperbole, I would've stopped writing these little rays of sunshine many years ago. I started all of this during the second Clinton administration, looking around me and seeing clearly that we were travelling in a direction that would inevitably result in the end of what many of us have taken an oath to protect and defend: our Constitution. I thought, when I took up the pen in 2001, that the threat was distant. I thought eight years ago that the most striking threat was that represented by Mohammedan Extremists. I was wrong.

The threat is us.

Americans.

I don't write this anymore assuming or hoping that you get a giggle and forward it to your friends, I write this because I don't hear it coming out of any of the popular media, and I think it may, in fact, be important enough, alarming enough, and sufficiently tragic enough that you will want to send it to those with whom YOU associate to make them aware of what is being done in their name.

However, so as not to put off those who don't want to read several thousand words worth of my vented spleen, I'll try to keep the argument on the early side of 500 (not counting the forward. HA! see what happened there? Read on, dear friends. Please click on the links. I didn't embed the text in hopes that reading it from other sources would lend credibility to an old, weathered patriot.)

Bile
Transition from Republic to Empire

1) A Brief Segue (no, not that gay two wheel thingy. Rather, a brief history lesson.)

It is generally accepted that the Roman Empire started slowly bending away from their republican heritage during the reforms that came about during the tribunal of Tiberius Graccus in 133 B.C. While the reforms by Tiberius, which sought to correct a manifestly unjust and corrupt land-grab by the ruling elite, can only obliquely be used as a metaphor for the recent troubles that were a result of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, the important aspect of the beginning of this period is the erosion of the influence of the Roman Senate, and by proxy, the Roman people themselves. This erosion, this disenfranchisement, is the parallel that I wish to draw.

It took until 27 B.C. for the Emperor Augustus (Octavian) to finally consolidate all power under the Roman throne.  106 years; that is what it took the Roman ruling class to steal the right of self-determination from their people.  In 133 B.C., each Roman citizen with the right to vote had some say regarding the laws that were being enacted in his name.  Three generations later, none had that right. How long, do you think, would it take for a free, educated populace to have their freedom taken from them?

The Federal Reserve Act was enacted in 1913.   That was 99 years ago.

2) "No, I assure you. Squirrel!  This administration. Squirrel!  Is dedicated to assisting the plight of the little... Squirrel!"

While these stories regarding the wholesale destruction of constitutional precedent have been out there, the following is what appears as "trending" by CNN.com right now:

Muslim Brotherhood to field presidential pick

Trayvon parents seek review of prosecutor

Pimco's Gross: More ETFs in the works

Taylor Swift wins big at the ACMs

I'm not sure whether it's ineptness by the media, corporate/government control of the media, or apathy by the consumers, but the fact that none of this is being talked about is a failure on the part of these people who claim to want to be the Woodwards and Bernsteins of the modern world.  The news is ineffective, showing you only what they think you want to see because the majority of the media is wholly owned and operated by entertainment corporations that pander to the lowest common denominator.  As a nation, we need to stop losing focus anytime someone yells "squirrel" at us.

[Okay, coming up are some links that support the argument. Please read them. Most are short and will increase your awareness of what is happening with regards to your government. Those that are actual links to government documents are longer, but still warrant a quick scan.] 

At 9:00 P.M. on New Year's Eve of 2011, when some of us were in the process of becoming somewhat overserved, President Obama was busy. At that time, he enacted the National Defense Authorization Act. This particular piece of legislation allows the Department of Defense to detain anyone on this planet, to include American Citizens such as, oh- you or me-, without due process "until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force." (quoted from the act itself:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf)

On March 16th, the Barack Obama administration signed an Executive Order that should terrify anyone who does not want to live in the Soviet Union. That Order was termed the "National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order". It eases restrictions on the President's ability to declare martial law, which he can do, as Jim Garrison from the Huffington Post says, "in peacetime without any national emergency to justify it. The language of the Order does not state that all these extraordinary measures will be done in the event of 'national security' or a 'national emergency.' They can simply be done for 'purposes of national defense,' clearly a broader remit that allows the government to do what it wants, when it wants, how it wants, to whomever it wants, all without any judicial restraint or due process". Once martial law has been declared, the President would be able to delegate to the Secretaries of the Executive branch to take control of the resources of this nation in the following ways:

• The Secretary of Defense would have power over all water resources;
• The Secretary of Commerce would have power over all material services and facilities, including construction materials;
• The Secretary of Transportation would have power over all forms of civilian transportation;
• The Secretary of Agriculture would have power over food resources and facilities, livestock plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment;
• The Secretary of Health and Human Services would have power over all health resources;
• The Secretary of Energy would have power over all forms of energy.

But don't take my word for it, go here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness and scroll down about two or three pages to "Sec. 201, Priorities and Allocations Authorities".

Additional websites to view regarding this particular ridiculously slippery slope:

A new law pertaining to your right to peaceful assembly: http://rt.com/usa/news/trespass-bill-obama-secret-227/

A discussion of your President's right to target and kill whomever he wishes, American citizen or not, by the Director of the FBI: http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-mueller-assassination-holder-193/

And finally, on the heels of all of this is the President's brief side-bar with Dmitry Mededev, the President of the Russian Federation: https://www.freespeech.org/photo/obama-meets-medvedev

"More flexibility". God help us all, should that come to pass...

Okay, I said it'd be a short post, and there it is. Please stay vigilant, my friends, as these forays into the rights given us under the Bill of Rights are not being reported by anyone.

...Don't mind me, I'm going out the same way I came in:

Yes, I know my enemies
They're the teachers who taught me to fight me
Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission
Ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite,
All of which are [have become] American dreams...
                    -Rage Against the Machine, "Know Your Enemy"

Immundus, ergo sum,
Unclean