A PLATONIC AMERICAN REPUBLIC.

A PLATONIC AMERICAN REPUBLIC.

The Goddess of
Liberty has been
Hijacked so many times in
200 years.

Our nation has "evolved" somewhat over the 236 odd ball years . BUT do we have the most perfect government , as envisioned by our Founding Fathers ? Obviously we never did . (1)>>Our nation had to struggle with Slavery , and equal rights for women . I guess that our nation's makers feared that one day we will head into a oligarchic form of government. In the last decade we have entered a new phase of (1.1)>>anarchy in our system. We may have indeed have a two forms of"governments" that claim to represent or "values"  . Our two party system is made of  a party of (2)>>oligarchic's  & Plutarch's . If you bare in mind the Democratic Party and Republican Party . Many Americans think they live within a Liberal Democracy which favors the freedom of the citizens of the state. Every 2-4 years we have the freedom to elect new officials whose purpose it is to serve their constituents. These elected officials do not serve us they serve the corporations lining their pockets more than the people. I would like everyone to sit back and ponder this. Do you feel you live in such a nation? An oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a (3)>>small segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, or military control. These states are often controlled bypolitically powerful families whose children are heavily conditioned and mentored to be heirs of the power of the oligarchy. In this country we do not have royalty, but we do have great wealth that controls most of this country. ( Examples : The Clinton's , Bush's and soon the Trump Dynasty )  I am sure the children of these wealthy people are groomed to take over when they pass. I wonder if the ruling rich can be considered royalty. More and more Americans today argue that corporations now control the US government. The US political system operates within a corporate cage. If you want to run for office, you have to take corporate cash – and so you have to serve corporate interests. Corporate control of government is also defined as fascism. As the Godfather of Fascism, Benito Mussolini once summed it up: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”The Electoral College, gerrymandering, photo IDs and other voter suppression tactics are just some of the practices that keep America from being a democracy. In Bush vs. Gore, the Supreme Court gave the election to Bush even though Gore received more than a half million more popular votes. When the person receiving the most votes isn't the winner of the election, then that country is not a democracy. There is a study called  “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” The researchers examined an exhaustive array of data and legislation covering the period of U.S. policy from 1981 to 2002. Their conclusion is that the economic elite, sometimes referred to as the ‘investment class,’ dominates and steers the direction of the broad expanse of government policy.  It’s authors encapsulate their findings in this statement:“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence,” says the peer-reviewed study.Some will balk at this report and reflexively read into it glimmers of ‘class envy’. But that would be dismissing the report’s conclusions too lightly. There are numerous every day examples to support the findings of the report. We are, of course, a democracy, but not in Plato’s (Athenian) sense of a state in which all major decisions are made by majority vote of all citizens.  Such pure democracy would be possible for us today, with people voting on everything via, say, cell phones.  But we rightly don’t trust ourselves this far —IF THE most famous philosopher of all were alive today, he might find America remarkably similar to his own Athens of the fifth century BC. Socrates would witness a vibrant and proud democracy, and disdain it as an indulgence of the benighted, unphilosophical “herd”. He would interrogate America's politicians, talk-radio and cable-television pundits in search of honest discussions that lead to truth, and thereby expose their confusion, contradictions and ignorance. He would avail himself of America's as of Athens's freedom of speech, and simultaneously be horrified by the speciousness of the speech that Americans choose to make. And he would challenge America just as he had provoked Athens, and possibly be prosecuted and condemned for it a second time.

Plato's Connection to our Americanism .

Plato in his ancient
writings warns against
a " democratic"
government , he was
right as I explain .

In Philadelphia some 2,000 years after Plato and Aristotle’s time, a group of men was trying to write a constitution. George Washington, James Madison, and the other framers of the Constitution were dedicated to constructing a just government. Americans had overthrown what they considered a tyrannous British government. The framers wanted to create a national government free of tyranny, governed by the rule of law.The new American nation was quite different from the ancient Greek city-states. Still, many of the framers at Philadelphia had studied and understood Plato’s and Aristotle’s political philosophies. And they were grappling with many of the same political questions.In Plato’s Republic, leaders commune with the gods and find meaning in nature’s movements that are invisible to the vast backwash of humanity. When the rulers speak, the ruled listen and obey without hesitation. All know their place in Plato’s society. The USA is ripe for such a system and those who rule know it. Americans believe what they are told to believe. For example, fully 80 percent of the Americans believed George Bush II when he stated that pre-invasion Iraq had scores of unmanned aerial vehicles armed with biological weapons ready to rain death on the continental USA, and that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks in New York City and Arlington, Virginia on September 11, 2001. Thomas Jefferson’s quaint statement about the American public being "intelligent" was wildly off the mark. Of course, then again, he was not referring to the public but to his well-to-do peers.Plato had it right for he knew that the endgame of all governing and profit/war-making classes has always been to entertain each other on the domestic and foreign stage. He also knew that those who rule need the masses as they serve as both pawns and audience for the powerful. But like most elites, Plato feared anarchy and democracy as too untidy. The Greek Philosopher Plato also believed that aristocracies would devolve into timocracy (rule by property owners) when less superior people are admitted to the aristocratic class.  That would further lead to oligarchy (rule by a few) where the rich rule over the poor.  That would lead to democracy (rule by the many), which would inevitably reduce itself to tyranny (rule by one) when someone has to take power. Yet Plato seems to describe America today, much less the opposite of what can be conceived as a nation  .We know much about Plato's teachings, because he wrote dialogues between Socrates and others that would explore philosophical issues. These dialogues would be used in his school as starting points for discussion; these discussions and Plato's final word on the dialogues have all been lost to us. The Platonic dialogues consist of Socrates asking questions of another and proving, through these questions, that the other person has the wrong idea on the subject. Initially, Plato seems to have carried on the philosophy of Socrates, concentrating on the dialectical examination of basic ethical issues: what is friendship? what is virtue? can virtue be taught? In these early Platonic dialogues, Socrates questions another person and proves, through these questions, that the other person has the wrong idea on the subject. These dialogues never answer the questions they begin with.The most famous of Plato's dialogues is an immense dialogue called The Republic , and, next to his account of Socrates's trial, The Apology , The Republic is one of the single most influential works in Western philosophy. Essentially, it deals with the central problem of how to live a good life; this inquiry is shaped into the parallel questions (a) what is justice in the State, or what would an ideal State be like, and (b) what is a just individual?Naturally these questions also encompass many others, such as how the citizens of a state should be educated, what kinds of arts should be encouraged, what form its government should take, who should do the governing and for what rewards, what is the nature of the soul, and finally what (if any) divine sanctions and afterlife should be thought to exist. The dialogue, then, covers just about every aspect of Plato's thought. There are several central aspects to the dialogue that sum up Platonic thought extremely well: a.) what the nature of justice is; b.) the nature of an ideal republic; and c.) the allegory of the cave and the divided line, both of which explain Plato's theory of forms. The democrats & republicans  make laws in support of  OUR democracy; the aristocrats  influence , make laws that support their government of the well-born; the propertied make laws that protect their status and keep their businesses going; and so on. This belief implies, firstly, that justice is not a universal moral value but a notion relative to expediency of the dominant status quo group; secondly, that justice is in the exclusive interest of the dominant group; thirdly, that justice is used as a means of oppression and thus is harmful to the powerless; fourthly, that there is neither any common good nor harmony of interests between those who are in a position of power and those who are not. All there is, is a domination by the powerful and privileged over the powerless. The moral language of justice is used merely instrumentally to conceal the interests of the dominant group and to make these interests appear universal. The powerful “declare what they have made - what is to their own advantage - to be just” It is generally believed today that democracy, “government of the people by the people and for the people,” is the best and only fully justifiable political system. The distinct features of democracy are freedom and equality. Democracy can be described as the rule of the free people who govern themselves, either directly or though their representatives, in their own interest. Why does Plato not consider democracy the best form of government? In the Republic he criticizes the direct and unchecked democracy of his time precisely because of its leading features (557a-564a). Firstly, although freedom is for Plato a true value, democracy involves the danger of excessive freedom, of doing as one likes, which leads to anarchy. Secondly, equality, related to the belief that everyone has the right and equal capacity to rule, brings to politics all kinds of power-seeking individuals, motivated by personal gain rather than public good. Democracy is thus highly corruptible. It opens gates to demagogues, potential dictators, and can thus lead to tyranny. Hence, although it may not be applicable to modern liberal democracies, Plato’s main charge against the democracy he knows from the ancient Greek political practice is that it is unstable, leading from anarchy to tyranny, and that it lacks leaders with proper skill and morals. Democracy depends on chance and must be mixed with competent leadership (501b). Without able and virtuous leaders, such as Solon or Pericles, who come and go by chance, it is not a good form of government. But even Pericles, who as Socrates says made people “wilder” rather than more virtuous, is considered not to be the best leader (Gorgias, 516c). If ruling a state is a craft, indeed statecraft, Plato argues, then politics needs expert rulers, and they cannot come to it merely by accident, but must be carefully selected and prepared in the course of extensive training. Making political decisions requires good judgment. Politics needs competence, at least in the form of today’s civil servants. Who then should the experts be and why? Why does Plato in the Republic decide to hand the steering wheel of the state to philosophers? The less obvious example of “accepted tyranny” one could argue is that, under present-day systems, states such as Great Britain suffer some degree of elective dictatorship – a lack of necessary scrutiny on the executive branch of government. Whilst in power with a large enough majority to make internal party revolt a non-issue, virtually unlimited power is granted to the Prime Minister and his government – essentially fitting the Platonic definition of tyranny – where insufficient checks and balances are in place to prevent centralisation of power and abuse of that power. Elections are held “at least” once every five years, but in a constantly changing world it is not hard to claim that this alone is a rather inadequate way for the public to express support or non-confidence in their government.

No King's to RULE in America.

For 200 years American  "Democracy"
has been dominated by
the all seeing EYE.

In Common Sense (January 1776) Thomas Paine reminded the American colonists that in a free republic “ the law is king” and that if a day were to be set aside to celebrate the republic’s achievements then it should not be focused on a single man but on the law itself. The definition of democracy is key in understanding Plato’s argument for rule by philosophers. Nowadays, most modern states are democratic, in the sense that people have a say in the running of the state. Since Plato’s time there has been a debate regarding what democracy is: whether it is the idea of majority rule, or what has come to be known as the ‘Madisonian view’ that democracy involves the protection of minorities. To Plato, it all boils down to what democracy means, literally. Democracy is ‘the rule by the demos’, where ‘demos’ can be understood as ‘the people’, and as “‘the mob’…the unfit” (Wolff; 2006, 67). As Wolff argues, “Making political decisions requires judgement and skill. It should, Plato urges, be left to the experts.” (Wolff; 2006, 67). To further emphasize this, Plato uses the ‘craft analogy’, drawing on the allegory of the ship. Plato and his contemporaries had a strong distrust of the common man, since people tend to act on emotion instead of reasonable rational thought. Centuries later The Age of Enlightenment brought an emphasis on rejecting the hierarchical structure of the past in favor of power coming from the governed, not the government. The idea of a democracy for the people and of the people was revisited through many writing during this period, often, and ironically, inspired by the ancient Greeks, even Plato's critiques of democracy. These critiques were acknowledged and confronted in Federalist Paper No. 49, in which James Madison writes that the Constitution will solve some of the problems Plato raises:

"As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived, it seems strictly consonant to the republican theory, to recur to the same original authority, not only whenever it may be necessary to enlarge, diminish, or new-model the powers of the government, but also whenever any one of the departments may commit encroachments on the chartered authorities of the others...If it be true that all governments rest on opinion, it is no less true that the strength of opinion in each individual, and its practical influence on his conduct, depend much on the number which he supposes to have entertained the same opinion. The reason of man, like man himself, is timid and cautious when left alone, and acquires firmness and confidence in proportion to the number with which it is associated. When the examples which fortify opinion are ANCIENT as well as NUMEROUS, they are known to have a double effect. In a nation of philosophers, this consideration ought to be disregarded. A reverence for the laws would be sufficiently inculcated by the voice of an enlightened reason. But a nation of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato. And in every other nation, the most rational government will not find it a superfluous advantage to have the prejudices of the community on its side."

 But if the philosopher rules for his own sake, why is he better than any other politician? Plato’s answer is that the pursuit of wisdom is itself a necessary component of ruling well; we need to know what it is we’re aiming at before we can try to reach it. True ruling is the art of enabling one’s subjects to be as excellent as possible, to live the best lives they can, given their various abilities. But what constitutes the best life? This question is rarely discussed by politicians, but it is the fundamental concern of philosophy. Only on the basis of philosophical reflections on the good life can a ruler design institutions to facilitate lives that are as stable and rewarding as possible. So non-philosophers—The super rich have control over the political process, ensuring that the government and its officials no longer act in the interests of the general will, but rather of the particular wills of wealthy persons. Those affluent individuals are most often guilty of ignoring their social responsibilities in favor of widening their own hegemony. The rich place themselves above the people, above the government, and above the law, asserting their dominance through coercion, intimidation, brainwashing, bribery, blackmail, and propaganda. Plutocrats hijack the nation’s education system, enabling themselves to sway public intellectual debate in their favor. Let us repeat what  Plato, in his still provocative “Republic,” proposed that there are five types of government: aristocracy (rule by the “best”, that is, by experts specially trained at governance), timarchy (rule by those guided by their courage and sense of honor), oligarchy (rule by a wealthy minority), democracy (rule by the people as a whole—a “mob” as Plato saw it), and tyranny (rule by a despot answerable to no one but himself).  Plato’s categorization is a good starting point for thinking about the nature of our government.  Although we don’t fit precisely any one of these type, each seems to express an element of our political system. In the United States in 200 years we have had all five.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>anarchy The USA has begun its flirtation with anarchy. But anarchy, like democracy, is anathema to the ruling classes and can’t be tolerated for any length of time. As a result, the ruling classes will create a crisis and will attempt to implement a society as described in Plato’s Republic—an alternative to representative government. The USA will transition from anarchy to a Platonic tyranny sometime during the second term (2004-2008) of George Bush II. (2)>>oligarchic's  & Plutarch's .The vast wealth that has accumulated at the top of the American economy is not itself the problem. The problem is that political power tends to rise to where the money is. And this combination of great wealth with political power leads to greater and greater accumulations and concentrations of both — tilting the playing field in favor of the Kochs & Trump's  and their ilk, and against the rest of us. Yet the ruling elite by far is of the wealthier citizens , who hold the power in Congress .America is not yet an oligarchy, but that’s where the Kochs and a few other billionaires are taking us. (3)>>small segment of society .On Nov. 16, 2011, USA Today revealed that 57 members of Congress, republicans and democrats alike, are amongst the wealthiest top 1% of Americans. According to the article, “Congress also has 250 millionaires, the data shows. The median net worth: $891,506, almost nine times the typical household.” And in whose interests have these government officials been acting over the last decade? The answer is overwhelmingly in favour of the 1%, who now take 40% of the national income per year — that’s 18% more than a decade ago!. (1)>>Our nation had to struggle with Slavery , and equal rights for women . Our "more perfect government" for 200 years lagged behind , debated . The question of slavery had provoked the consciousness of the Founding Fathers  , it was a moral issue . Yet if we think hard , America should have banned slavery down right from 1789 . We have to thank greed , and the wealthy stakeholders that prevented slavery from ending . It took a Civil War , bloodshed , yet even with emancipation , it took another 100 years till Dr. Martin Luther King to end the struggle . As I write this , for African- Americans the struggle is still on going . The Question of women's rights and the right to vote was as much linked to the question of slavery . Our Constitutional framers thought that "all men are created equal..." . In their mindset women basically had a inferior role . Rich White women were basically for the rich white man a "chattel" , their was another  question like with the notion that  black slaves had no souls ,  if women had souls ? In essence society of that time dehumanized other races  . Women did not make the list for Constitutional rights because of a mere religious view.  Yet the struggle for women to have equality as much now debated issue of same sex legality of the use of the word "marriage" has brought out the table . For the right to vote women won out their cause in American politics , still if we want to give equality a measure a more humbled America , people of all races , genders may have no reason to struggle , for the lawmakers who made laws in 200 years may have created so much unnecessary suffering .

New Hampshire primary offered little surprise.......

 (1)>>New Hampshire primary offered little surprise in terms of who actually won: ...Trump .It’s the headline on every newspaper and website around the country: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won a resounding victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in yesterday’s New Hampshire Democratic primary. But there’s another story the media has been much slower to pick up on.Because despite his 22-point victory, Sanders didn’t walk away with the most New Hampshire delegates.Clinton did. The other hand there is a narrowing downward spiral  for GOP contenders . It's again  no surprise that  Carly Fiorina is exiting the Republican presidential race after a seventh-place showing , and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has suspended his campaign for president.Although Christie faced the biggest challenge of his gubernatorial tenure that fall, when Hurricane Sandy struck New Jersey, he would never again hold the popular appeal that he did with his party before 2012. He angered many Republicans by publicly embracing President Obama during a disaster tour days before the election. And one year later, Christie was dragged into what became known as "Bridgegate," when some of his top aides created several days of gridlock in the New York City suburb of Fort Lee, N.J., as an alleged act of political retribution. The next in line , Marco Rubio,Jeb Bush likely will follow in disappointment .Throughout the race, Christie stood out for his blunt statements and a seeming inability to sugarcoat his assessments of the competition -- and by February, (1.2)>>Marco Rubio was bearing the brunt of it.As the field moved from Iowa to New Hampshire, Rubio became the star following a breakout performance in the caucuses. But many candidates, including Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich had pinned their hopes on New Hampshire.Christie took to mocking Rubio's scripted style and work in Washington, calling him the "boy in the bubble" because, according to Christie, the Florida senator was too protected by staff.In the eighth Republican debate, just a few days before the New Hampshire primary, it was Christie who knocked the air out of Rubio -- and claimed his putdown as enough to earn a ticket out of New Hampshire. For Carly,  personally I think it was a waste of her time and money on a failed platform , starting in California she tried for the governorship after she ran  (2)>>HP to the ground . She basically had no experience as a elected official . Carly has to work on that .   She looked however good during the debates and made a lot of very good arguments. Too bad she couldn't generate enough buzz to get media attention.  No matter how many of the 2016 Republican presidential candidates stand on stage, in a given primary moment, Fiorina is the only one who isn’t in a suit and tie. The predictable, servile eye is drawn to this difference. Fiorina knows this, and on Wednesday took advantage. Fiorina shared failure with Sarah Palin , Palin has lost two elections in her political career - when running for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska and when running for VPOTUS. Palin has won every other election she entered by being herself and following deeply held political principles ... and often when all the consultants and pundits were critical of her open, honest no filters approach to delivering her political message. So Connecting the political dots , Palin’s rise to fame within the party—and then nationally, of course—concluding that it had a lot to do with her gender and little to do with her track record. (At that point, she had been governor for less than two years.) In 2010, writing in her New York Times opinion column, Maureen Dowd called Sarah Palin the GOP “Queen Bee,” a reference to her status among other women in the GOP.Five years later, it seems the GOP has finally found a new Queen: Carly Fiorina. In 1999, Fiorina became a household name—at least in a certain kind of household—when she was named CEO of Hewlett-Packard, making her the first female head of a Fortune 20 company. (She was fired in 2005 after a series of scandalous leaks.) In 2008, Fiorina was one of McCain’s chief economic advisors, and Palin and Fiorina supported one another over the years: Fiorina defended Palin against “sexist attacks” in 2008; later, in 2010, Palin endorsed Fiorina’s campaign for Barbara Boxer’s California Senate seat. Still, the (new) New Republic has developed a bizarre obsession with likening Fiorina to Palin. an article asked whether “Fiorina is the new Palin.” The evidence: that both Palin and Fiorina had at times criticized Hillary Clinton. Of course, by that standard, Ted Cruz, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders are all the new Sarah Palin.
rigged,and rigged.

Right now, nearly every state allocates 100 percent of its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state as a whole. (3)>>Lund’s proposal would change that calculation in the blue state of Michigan, however, while continuing to award each red state’s full slate of electoral votes to the Republican candidate for president. If this plan had been in effect in 2012, for example, Mitt Romney would have won a quarter of Michigan’s electoral votes despite losing the state to President Obama by nearly 10 points.  After being proven right about how the Iowa caucus is rigged, it is time to look at the New Hampshire primary.Did you know: New Hampshire allows undeclared voters to cast ballots in either the Democratic or Republican primary. The whole thing has been rigged ever since they altered the electoral system to give all a states electoral votes to the candidate that gets over 50% of the popular vote instead of as the founders had it where each vote was cast in accordance with the district (section of the state) they represented voted. Essentially giving three states the ability to decide who gets elected by ignoring at least 49.9% of the people within the states and giving their votes to the other candidate.Voting in this manner is reminiscent of corporate voting of shareholders: whoever has the most shares sways the vote accordingly. And clearly Mrs. Clinton is holding all the right cards to win the nomination. The reporting that New Hampshire was a crushing defeat for Mrs. Clinton is disingenuous. I suspect that it is being done for effect. Remember the "comeback kid?" This is right from the bag of Clinton's election strategy tricks. And when she wins South Carolina, the adulating press will be fawning over Mrs. Clinton and how she is on the comeback trail.Trump has already gotten conservative results just by running… first by partnering with conservative Jeff Sessions to co-write his immigration plan, then got more discussions going about the un-Constitutionality of anchor babies, and now wants to limit Muslim immigration! Did anyone else know before Trump came along and blasted the “limit Muslim immigration” that we have a law on the books that gives the President that power, that it already survived a Supreme Court challenge, passed by a Democrat Congress and used by a Democrat President to actually prevent Muslims from immigration?!?! Given that a substantial portion of the posters on this site seem to think that Obama somehow stole 2012 despite a crushing lack of evidence that he did any such thing (and consistent pre-election poling pointing to an Obama win), I can’t help but think that the deranged sub-set who support Trump will be quick to call jaws-of-defeat triumph by another candidate “theft.” Hillary, being the Queen Democratic Bigwig, has amassed quite a collection of these other bigwigs pledging to vote for her (355 to be exact). With some quick Excel work, Millennials figure out that Hillary already had 14.9 percent of the votes she needed to get the nomination before the first caucus was ever tallied in Iowa.In his Jan. 13 State of the Union address, Obama climbed on the bandwagon. He lamented that, over seven years, he and congressional Republicans hadn't been able to agree on "what role the government should play in making sure the system's not rigged in favor of the wealthiest and big corporations."  Republicans, who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of all this rigging, also see themselves as victims. The problem is that government interferes with free markets to benefit cronies, who in turn give them kickbacks. It's a nasty alliance that stifles innovation and results in a lower standard of living and less freedom for most, and increasing wealth and power for the elite few in the government-corporate alliance. In some ways, the tea party and the occupy people are shaking their fists at two heads of the same hydra.It just doesn't matter on who you vote; at the federal level the electoral college will do the bidding of the Reptilian Overlords and at the state and municipal levels the citizens will choose via their paycheck. Everyone is bought off in this country. 

****************

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1.2)>>Marco Rubio. President Obama's voodoo may have  slurred the speech of Rubio. This storyline became a prevailing theme of the 2016 campaign beginning with Saturday night's debate in Manchester, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie blasted Rubio as inexperienced and whose campaign was based on a "memorized 25-second speech." Rubio played into the attack as he repeatedly during the exchange said some variation on this line: "This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true. He knows exactly what he’s doing."  It's voodoo.(2)>>HP to the ground .Even more striking, Mrs. Fiorina, the only former female chief executive among the candidates, continues to promote her business experience on the trail, yet she was fired by Hewlett-Packard after the company’s stock dropped by half in 2005. She has long blamed her failings at running the technology giant on the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the deepening recession in Silicon Valley after the Sept. 11 .  (3)>>Lund’s proposal. State Rep. Pete Lund maintains that the many critics of his plan to revise the way Michigan elects presidents fail to understand the benefits of making the Mitten State more attractive to the candidates. In recent election cycles, he said, 40 of the 50 states have been largely ignored by the presidential candidates. Michigan, once a battleground state and a coveted prize, is now in the mostly-forgotten category. By giving both candidates a share of electoral votes, the lawmaker insists, Michigan will become a routine destination for those seeking the White House. A survey of Michigan voters showed 73% overall support for a national popular vote for President, that would make Michigan more important in presidential elections, and would force the candidates wanting to win to be concerned about Michigan The National Popular Vote bill would make every vote, everywhere, politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps of pre-determined outcomes. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states, like Michigan, that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.National Popular Vote would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency, to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by replacing state winner-take-all laws for awarding electoral votes. 

Curious about Zika Virus.

"Brazil sends 200,000 soldiers to stop spread of Zika."
Will America deploy the same
style military , now that Zika
is here?

We all have been hearing about the poorly understood Zika virus outbreak across Brazil took a turn in the wrong direction this week. Local public health authorities announced that, in addition to severe birth defects, the infection may be linked to a paralytic condition called Guillain-Barré Syndrome, or GBS. Well the news about Zika keep's getting worse enough for the  (1)>>bizarre ( and pandemic like). It’s ironic then that a conspiracy theory about a real virus - the Zika epidemic currently affecting Brazil - is currently exhibiting just such break-out behavior. The first outing I can find came via an obscure post on Reddit on 25 January. The location should have rung warning bells: it was in a sub-Reddit category titled “conspiracies”, sandwiched between 9/11 truther rants, and was written anonymously under the giveaway pseudonym (1.2)>>“redditsucksatbanning”.  Science has known about the Zika virus since the 1940s, and as far as symptoms go, it has never caused shrunken head syndrome in babies before this year. What has changed? Each of the affected womem ALSO took the pertussis vaccine to "protect" their children. What I'm trying to say is, it's NOT the Zika virus that is causing the problems with the children, the heads of those children look like some form of a"mutation" that genetically alters growth ..In some African countries, this mosquito exists and has been endemic for years and years. No reported cases of Zika or microencephaly. Health officials have been talking about it this week. So perhaps these populations are immune to the virus or perhaps something else causes the condition, not the virus? I'm inclined to believe we aren't being told the full story of Zika (not a surprise) and there are other causes or factors at play that governments or health experts are trying to protect. Sound conspiracy-like? Maybe, but if I hadn't heard professional doctors come forward to say this mosquito has been living among us for decades. The first confirmed case of transmission of ZIKA infection in the Americas was reported from Easter Island, off the coast of Chile in June 2014. Around February 2015, states in the North East of Brazil began reporting a disease associated with a rash.Over 14,000 cases of rash-related illness were reported in Salvador, Brazil between Feb-June 2015. In May 2015, Brazil identified the infection as due to virus Zika and confirm autochthonous transmission (the spread of infection from one individual to another in the same area) in the states of Bahia and Rio Grande do Norte.

I am quoting a source here that adds to some speculation that the (2)>>mosquito born pandemic is something else :

Until now, it was thought the virus was only transmitted by mosquitoes, although there was some speculation it may be sexually-transmitted as well.‘Now that we know Zika virus can be transmitted through sex, this increases our awareness campaign in educating the public about protecting themselves and others,’ said Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services. (URL : http://www.conspiracyclub.co/2016/02/03/sexually-transmitted-case-of-zika-virus-reported-in-us/)

"THEY" are TRYING to SCARE the HELL out of US.... 

The detail of the sexual transmission drastically changes the nature of it being a mosquito infection to something other than a virus . Health officials in Dallas say two people there have been diagnosed with Zika virus, including one who was infected through sexual transmission, the first such case documented in the United States. The patient's infection was confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CBS DFW reports. Wait, so the Zika virus is an STD? I thought it was mosquito based? Ahhhh, yesssss, the latest scare virus for the North America media to flip out over when it’s nothing to even be slightly concerned about for anyone in a developed country. But, as always, there are a lot of people who’s jobs are dependent on people being paniced and scared over these things and so whenever someone like Zika or Ebola or H1N1 pop up, these fearmongers go into overdrive with their efforts and voila! Whole bunch of stories about a virus that doesn’t have a chance of infecting the modern world.And sexually transmitted? Ummm, if you have a virus and you have sex with someone, with all the fluid transfer and whatnot, odds are pretty good you’re going to get that virus too — whether it’s a cold or Zika or AIDS. Basic health 101, people.AS a new pathogen getting lots of attention from the mass media and the rest of the control system, and WE just  awakened to some globalist plans ? , we  may want to pay very close attention. The establishment mainstream media continue to parrot the same hysteria regarding the Zika virus – that it's causing birth defects – but there is so much information intentionally being left out. The mainstream media's false narrative. It isn’t quite the Ebola-style scare, but it brings with it a much more focused and sinister agenda to scare us , and it’s already underway in 2016. We have had the BIRD FLU , H1N1 and EBOLA over the last eight years . This new one first has to be ingrained in the public mind . As Zika becomes the newest health scare, health authorities are urging women to delay pregnancy. News reports are multiplying the scare tactics, warning people not to travel or procreate. Pictures of babies with shrunken heads and small brains are flashed across the screen as Zika virus is blamed for causing a record number of birth defects called microcephaly. Want more hysteria? The Daily Mail indicates pregnant women are being warned not to travel to 22 countries in Latin America and Africa. Several Zika cases are being reported in Italy, the UK, and Spain.And of course the focus of this "Zika Virus" seems to be exclusively towards pregnant women and the falsehood that anyone exposed to the virus should not bother to get pregnant as well. U.S. lawmakers have begun to press the Obama administration for details of its response to Zika. At least 31 people in the country have been infected, all of them after travel to affected countries.I've been to these rodeos before:HIV , West Nile, Swine Flu ,SARS and Ebola. During the Ebola scare of 2014, which turned out to essentially be a (2)>>fake pandemic, For instance, people were treating a supposedly delay virus in a ridiculous way, e.g. by walking through ebola-infected water with sandals. The Government was clearly using crisis actors, just as they do with all the false flag events of recent years. At the time, almost all the MSM and even many in the alternative media were hyping the threat, knowingly or not. So let’s take a little side trip to Scam City and examine the science behind the Zika virus and the assertion that it is causing birth defects.Before a virus can be said to cause disease, a few procedures need to occur. First, the virus must be proved to exist. It has to be isolated from a human carrier as diseased tissue, and then that tissue has to be put under an electron microscope, where many, many (Zika) viruses can be seen. Second, tests have to be run on many suspected human cases, and these tests have to reveal very large amounts of Zika in the body. That’s your basic starter kit for deciding that a virus might be causing actual human disease. Investigators and researchers will ignore the fact that there is a very real health crisis in Brazil, and it has existed for a long time. The rampant use of toxic pesticides, grinding poverty, contaminated water, lack of basic sanitation, overcrowding, the takeover of farm land by major corporations, prior toxic vaccine campaigns—these are all factors that cause massive illness, suffering, and death in Brazil.If you had a few billion bucks and straight-line control of fawning media, you could concoct the most ridiculous and absurd story of fear anyone ever heard of, and the networks would blast it out as absolute fact. And people all over the world would believe it and tremble.

NOTES AND COMMENTS: 

(1)>>bizarre ( and pandemic like). It alleged that the UK-based small company Oxitec, which began releasing genetically engineered male-sterile mosquitoes in 2011 in north-eastern Brazil in order to combat dengue disease, may have inadvertently caused the Zika outbreak. Oxitec’s approach involves releasing non-biting males - which have been genetically engineered to carry a gene that is lethal to their offspring - to mate with wild females. If there is a patent on the Zika virus then it is not a natural virus but means it has been made or altered by man.. much like genetically modified food with Monsanto holding patents on each one. One might assume then if the virus is further altered, then there could be ownership changes.. such as with a reported mutation that has occurred between the French Polynesia outbreak and this outbreak in Brazil of Zika. (2)>>mosquito.  For now, scientists believe that Zika is mainly carried by a specific type of mosquito called Aedes aegypti, which spreads the disease through bites.Aedes mosquitoes bite during the day and are incredibly well adapted to thrive alongside humans. They can breed and rest in small pools of water and moist environments around people's homes and apartments. (You can see examples of the mosquito's main aquatic habitats here, ranging from rain-filled cavities in trees to outdoor pots and animal drinking pans.)(1.2)>>“redditsucksatbanning”. Here is Oxitec back in 2015 proudly announcing that their GM mosquito has decimated the local mosquito population in a field trial:http://www.oxitec.com/press-release-oxitec-mosquito-works-to-control-aedes-aegypti-indengue-hotspo/Releases of the genetically engineered Oxitec mosquito, commonly known as ‘Friendly Aedes aegypti’, reduced the dengue mosquito population in an area of Juazeiro, Brazil by 95%, well below the modelled threshold for epidemic disease transmission. (2)>>fake pandemic. According to this article the Brazilian government has been vaccinating tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pregnant women in its country during the past year. A large portion of these pregnancies are occurring in Brazil’s northeastern region, notably in the state of Pernambuco—the country’s fastest growing population center. ( https://idsent.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/tdap-vaccinations-for-all-pregnant-women-in-brazil-mandated-in-late-2014/ ) The Zika virus scare has the finger prints of big pharma and conventional medicine all over it. And how about this tiny fact that has not been reported in the mainstream media: The Rockefeller Foundation owns the patent on the virus! Of significance, the Zika virus is a commodity which can be purchased online from the ATCC-LGC for 599 Euros with royalties accruing to the Rockefeller Foundation.

IOWA CAUCUS @ Crossroads of History , allegory .

America is at the crossroads of history , IF  this election when & it's over is not going to leave any one with a savory smile . WHO you get in the WHITE HOUSE is whom you deserve . We all  had ample time to CHANGE everything way back in 2012 . We would probably would have not have had Trump , Mrs. Clinton , Sanders , Rubio and Cruz . The Man that should had been elected should have been (1)>>Mitt Romney .That's just one finding in a brutal CNN poll, released a few years ago, which shows Romney topping Obama in a re-election rematch by a whopping nine-point margin, 53 percent to 44 percent. That's an even larger spread than CNN found in November 2014 , when a survey had Romney winning a redo 49 percent to 45 percent. WHY I am I say this ??? First we do

have a real quagmire in our political system, ****yes all the candidates SUCK . I came to that conclusion that the re-election of Mr. Obama was catastrophic to the American system . Obama had enough mojo (voodoo) to cast a hex on the Republicans who for eight years , though bitterly against Obama , soon turned on each other . The GOP , ultra-right so called  "tea par - tiers" soon lost all credibility with TRUE Reagan CONSERVATIVES. Now the GOP has , though the (1.2)>>IOWA CAUCUS debacle has made Cruz the winner , they've just kicked their can in the political gutter . Their poster boy obvious first choice in the populist vote is TRUMP.  That has scared the GOP of not embracing Trump out of fear of him , that he's bit too radical , less rational choice.Cruz is no less a Trump , he is just as radical for the radicals who are has hard line (1.3)>>"Pat" Buchanan  , but no sure winner Cruz is not going to make it .MEANWHILE we look at the Democratic Party , they are in no worse shape than the GOP , just look at the candidates it's so narrow and one sided , even though Bernie Sanders is there as a standby, it's centered on the election

of   (2)>>Mrs. Clinton . Obama's voodoo also damaged the Democrats , they have no one else but Mrs. Clinton , Between the serially unpopular, cost-raising, care stealing Affordable Care Act that bears his name, a stagnant economy, and a deteriorating Middle East, there's not much for the Democratic leader to hang his hat on. And nationwide, it's been devastating for Democrats. Since Obama was first elected, Democrats have lost at least 14 Senate seats. (Louisiana is another likely loss.) The party has lost more than 70 seats in the House, and will field its smallest caucus in the next Congress since before FDR. Only 18 states have Democrat governors, compared to 29 states when Obama took office. Around 1,000 state legislative seats have shifted to the Republicans. The GOP will control 68 of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers, again the largest disparity since before FDR. HONESTLY I don't how Mrs. Clinton is going to run this country in 2017? There is so much GOP opposition it would have been the wiser to have elected TRUMP.The Democrat party has long been a disgrace, but even that is gone now. Despite the media, both mainstream and alternative, predictions of the demise of the Republican Party (IMO, fueled by

their hatred of Donald Trump), the Democratic Party is losing its stranglehold on working Americans. Their base is shrinking; while, in general, this group would rather vote Democrat, their belief that the Republicans have done less damage, has reached their consciousness via their pocketbooks, has made them open to Republican candidates. If the Democrats want to stop this hemorrhage, they have to nix Hillary. Although Obama has done a lot of damage, most Americans, still like him, even if they think he was a horrible President. Clinton is not perceived that way.  The presidential selection process is out of whack — as, to be sure, are many things relating to politics and government, both at the national and the state level. That the 2012  presidential campaign should have gone toward Romney is all to true now,   has gone on throughout 2016 and has another year to run, is one vital piece of the evidence. You don't need this long to pick a president. Unless, the picking of the president has become somehow the most important thing Americans do: more important than forming families, looking for work, buying homes, getting through school and college and/or saving for retirement. Americans have let it slide down hill, Politics has gotten so divisive and difficult to understand that I fear it discourages potential leaders from considering public office. The hangers-on will always be with us as professional politicos, but an emerging new class of leaders will be held in abeyance by lack of money, support or the courage of conviction to invest what it takes to succeed in the cesspool of politics.  Trump # 2. Donald Trump was surprisingly humble after his second place finish in Iowa. “We finished second,” he told supporters minutes after Cruz was declared the winner, “and I want to tell you something: I’m just honored. I’m really honored. And I want to congratulate Ted, and I want to congratulate all of the incredible candidates, including Mike Huckabee, who has become a really good friend of mine.”NO CRUZ CONTROL. For instance,

Cruz’s team sent out mailers over the weekend, which, according to Politico, “showed the name of the person receiving the mail at the top and then gave them a grade on an A to F scale. Below, it showed their neighbors and their voting scores. It urged them to caucus next week and warned, ‘A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.’” The mailers might not have violated any laws, but Iowa’s Republican secretary of state remarked that they weren’t “in keeping with the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses.”Cruz is also taking heat for putting out a release during the caucuses stating that (3)>>Ben Carson was skipping New Hampshire and retreating to Florida, implying that Carson was suspending his campaign. Although Cruz later apologized, the damage was already done. Carson’s campaign died weeks ago, but he still has a lot of support in Iowa. If Cruz’s release deterred even a few Carson supporters, it made a difference. Carson’s senior communications strategist, Jason Osborne, condemned the Cruz campaign, saying “it calls into question the results.” Somewhere along the way, the story got twisted. Cruz campaign aides alerted supporters in Iowa that Carson might be a goner. Before long there were allegations that the Cruz campaign had suppressed Carson's vote total by spreading rumors that Carson was giving up on the race.Shortly after the CNN report came out, Carson's campaign downplayed the significance, saying the candidate needed a fresh set of clothes. Meanwhile, political analysts generally agreed with Tapper and Bash's assessment that it was unusual for a presidential candidate to not rush to New Hampshire. Virtually all of Carson's rivals hurried to New Hampshire after the caucuses. Ted  Cruz has lied his way to the top.  Unfortunately the right-wing Tea Party wack jobs in Iowa fawned all over him.  Cruz will be lucky to hold on to his Senate seat next time. As the World situation gets worse and worse, America is entering another election cycle ( do they ever leave it?). This go around we have two Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders leading their pack. The Republicans have Donald Trump, Ben Carson , Mark Rubio and a slew of others still vying to be the GOP candidate. Both parties are completely bereft to the point that they seemingly trade the White House between themselves every 8 years. It's easier for the parties to equally share in the preplanned misery they have in store for the masses as neither ever fulfill their campaign promises. America has been a duopoly now undermined by homemade political dynasties that offer nothing but spokesmen who are little more than fake, hollow leaders.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

****yes all the candidates SUCK . KORN front man Jonathan Davis got to talking about politics and the 2016 race.“They all suck. The f**king candidates, they all suck. Why can’t there be anybody good?,” said Davis. “I just want the America I had as a kid growing up, and it’s not that no more.”“I like Rand Paul, but that’s never gonna happen.”Davis also had a choice in the last election, “Ron Paul should have been president, but that would have never happened.”“I believe presidents are chosen, not elected. Why is [every] president f**king related? You tell me that. No little guy is gonna make it,” he said.It’s all so corrupt.”(1)>>Mitt Romney .But what if Mitt Romney had won in 2012? America would now be nearly 200 days into his first term in the White House. It is worth pondering how different things might look. Yet interviews with former aides, along with recently-disclosed internal documents, reveal the former Bay State governor to be more interesting, even radical. During his first 200 days in office, he planned a “continual stream of rapid changes” to the way that America taxes and spends, cares for its sick and needy and regulates business. Aides drew comparisons, as incoming administrations often do, to the frenetic activity of Franklin Roosevelt’s early months in office, during which he signed 15 big bills.Michael Leavitt, the former Utah governor who chaired Mr Romney’s transition team, describes plans to deliver a “jolt of confidence” by showing seriousness in a few big areas. He would simplify America’s spaghetti-spill of a tax code. He would grapple with the deficit; expand domestic energy production; and reduce the role of government in health care by hollowing out “Obamacare” reforms. Success was to be measured by bosses releasing cash they were hoarding when Mr Obama was president, and rushing to join a Romney-led American revival. Trump # 2. Still stinging from his first defeat as a presidential candidate, Donald Trump rolled into New Hampshire on Thursday with a new mantra: There is no such thing as too much campaigning.He also broke from his usual playbook by taking questions from the audience at the first of many events planned for Thursday.  (3)>>Ben Carson . Ben Carson was incensed as the results of Monday night’s Iowa caucuses rolled in, accusing the winner of spreading falsehoods about him at caucus sites.Carson’s team claimed that Ted Cruz’s campaign deliberately sent emails to supporters to spread false rumors at caucus sites that Carson had dropped out, so his supporters would caucus for other candidates. And after initially denying any wrongdoing late Monday, Cruz apologized Tuesdayand called it a “mistake.”“That is really quite a dirty trick,” Carson told reporters Monday evening. “That’s the very kind of thing that irritated me enough to get into this quagmire.”(1.2)>>IOWA CAUCUS . As a result of the coin toss, Clinton was awarded an additional delegate, meaning she took five of the precinct’s eight, while Sanders received three. One thing is clear after Monday night's Iowa caucuses: there's a long, volatile election season ahead before two deeply fractured parties can unite behind a nominee. Republican Ted Cruz bested Donald Trump, raising questions about the billionaire's reliance on his celebrity instead of traditional political organization. And Marco Rubio's stronger-than-expected showing could mark him as the establishment's best hope against a grassroots revolt in next week's New Hampshire primary and beyond. (2)>>Mrs. Clinton .The Liberal Media mantra of the 1992 presidential election was that it was time for a “young” American president from a “new generation”, not incumbent Republican president George HW Bush of the World War II generation (born in 1924). And so Bill Clinton was elected that year as the first president from the so-called Baby Boom generation (born in 1946).Then in 2008 we were supposed to vote for Obama because he would be “the first black president” even though Obama is half-white. And now we are supposed to elect Hillary Clinton president in 2016 because she would be “the first woman president”. (1.3)>>"Pat" Buchanan . On the NEIL CAVUTO show Buchanan said this about Ted Cruz : 

PAT BUCHANAN: Well, I think you're right. I think what Ted Cruz was trying to do is what Jean Kirkpatrick did at the 1984 convention of the Republicans where she referred to San Francisco Democrats a number of times and people laughed and cheered, but you're right, Neil. When folks think of New York now, and what is the image? A lot of us think of the image as firemen running into a burning building and climbing up stairs to rescue people when there's a good probability those buildings are going to collapse on top of them, which is what happened. So, I think that it was a tin eared comment by Senator Cruz and I think he's going to pay a place for it and was Donald Trump's best moment in the debate and it's one reasons that a number of people say it was his best debate and he won it.