Freedom to Fascism - Part III

http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2013/06/27/shepard-fairey-likes-those-nsa-themed-remixes-of-his-obama-hope-poster/

For those of you are just completely lost as to what's going on (I'll be repeating this, of course, during the course of the month, many times), we are currently running down the checklist of ways to figure out whether your country is going fascist.  It was going to be only a week long, but noting the number of checks, and the massive amount of material covered here on each and every check, well....it looks like we're going to run this for a MONTH, instead of a week.  For the list we're referring to, check back to Freedom to Fascism - Part I, and you'll have it.  Once a week, I'll be re-posting the link.  I think, since these are all linked together, and easy to cover, we're going to do 4 check marks at once, OK?

Todays Check mark is:

Check mark #3 - The President, as well as other Governmental Officials, regularly lie to you...

Wow.  I don't believe I'm even writing about it...but OK, just to make some of you happy, I'll address this.

Its almost a GIVEN that our Presidents lie to us.  Obama does it daily anymore.  G.W. didn't have a clue how to tell the truth.  Half the time, he didn't even know what he was saying, let alone whether it was a lie or not.  Clinton, although one of my more favorite Presidents, was a rather famous liar.  Reagan was pretty much the same as G.W., as was George Bush the First.  Nixon?  Notorious for it.

As for the rest, as well as any candidate for president, senator, governor, mayor, as well as school board member or class president?  It really doesn't matter.  The day they utter the word "candidate" in order to express their intended move on any governmental seat, that person begins to lie, even if he never ever lied to anyone in his life before.  We Americans consider it 2nd nature for anyone affiliated with power.  Do you notice, when the President decides to speak to the nation, or when a campaign ad comes on, that we generally either turn it down, change the channel or turn it off?  That's because there's nothing that this person says that we intend to believe anymore.  Say what you want, Obama, but the minute your lips start to move,  I'm tunin' you out buddy.  Stands to reason, if you're running for office, you're going to say whatever it is that we wanna hear, in order to win the vote, not what you really plan to achieve...no, we find THAT out when you take office, after the votes are counted.

Speaking of this, we're also going to mention, in this post, check mark #4, only because I've discussed this more times in this blog than I care to admit, and really have nothing more to say on the matter.

Check Mark #4 - Fraudulent Vote Counts.

If you're not quite sure this is a problem, then see my post of "Elections and the Electoral College"...I believe it was under Day #5 of the first 26 of America's Deadly sins we listed.  Let's move on then!

Check Mark #5 - Government Monitoring of Letters, Emails, Phone Calls and Checking Accounts.

See "The NSA" debacle., as well as Check Mark #6 below.  Man, this is gonna be an easy day for me!!

Check Mark #6 - Secret Courts.

Hmm...not sure bout this one...OK Alex, I think I know...What is the FISA??

DING DING DING!!

Yes, the FISA...Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  Under this act, a secret court was established to authorize government wiretaps in intelligence investigations in foreign countries.  Since its inception, it has expanded its means of obtaining its information in ways that, little by little, are steadily infringing on individual rights.  This court's procedures demand that all taps remain secret, including the information that's garnered from them.  Hearings and decisions are also secret, concerning this court, as well as the way it operates.  Several agencies, including the ACLU and Congress have demanded transcripts of what happens in this court, but the DOJ refuses to release this information - repeatedly.

Charles Grassley (Yes, he actually DOES do something after all!!) R-IA and Senator Leahy, D-VT have introduced the need for an oversight committee on this court.  Please, before things get worse, help your senators get this legislation passed!!!

Oh...I'm afraid we're just not quite finished, as yet.  Stay tuned kids.  There's tons more to come.  :D

Freedom to Facism - Part II

http://gideonspeaks.com/?tag=search-and-seizure

Check Mark #2:  Massive Warrant-less Searches.

It's my belief that this particular box has been checked for a very long time.  There are, naturally, exceptions to the Fourth Amendment that allow for this.  Can't survive as a nation unless we have exceptions to our rights, now can we?....riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

1.  Consent.  Now this is huge people.  Please, please, PLEASE remember that you are NEVER obligated to give your consent to a search without a warrant, where your home is concerned, because, "Well, it's the police!  They're gonna come in anyway whether you want them to or not, right?"....WRONG!!  If they come in anyway, and they do not have a warrant, then your rights are BEING VIOLATED!!  Here's another thing, anyone the police think have a right to be there, whether it's a roommate in your home, or a co-worker in the general area where your cubicle is, say across the aisle, and that person says "Sure, you can look, no problemmo!", then they're gonna search your area, using the Consent exception, and they will win whatever case you decide to bring against them.  BE SURE AND TELL YOUR CO-WORKERS AND ROOMMATES THAT THEY ARE NO TO GIVE CONSENT TO A WARRANT-LESS SEARCH OF YOUR HOME/APARTMENT OR OFFICE/CUBICLE SPACE!

Now, remember, if you will, that the police are sometimes very devious, and may try to pull a fast one on you when you arrive in court, armed with a complaint that they just waltzed in and looked anyway, regardless of your answer of "NO!" to a search of your home.  If you answer the door to the police, and stand at your door to talk to them with the door open, or step outside to talk to them while leaving your door open, this can be misconstrued in court as "an open invitation" and can be ruled as consent if the police decide to pull that on you, in order to get inside without a warrant.  To avoid this, if the answer to "Who is it?" then extracts an answer of "The Police", grab your house keys, step outside and pull your door shut.  There is, then, no misinterpretation of your intention where consent is concerned.

2.  Administrative Searches.  The Government (Not law enforcement, mind you) can pull out of their hat, a reason to do a search called the Administrative Search, involving, usually, a fire inspection or to search for building code violations ("All of this is for your safety, of course!").  Court authorization is required for Administrative searches, but standards governing these are considerably low, therefore, the warrants are more easily issued.  They will, however, not need a warrant for things that involve businesses that are involved in highly regulated industries, such as those that produce things like nuclear power, liquor, tobacco, etc.  Remember, AGAIN, that where your home or business office that ISN'T involved in anything government regulated, that you do not have to let inspectors into your home or office without a warrant!!

3.  Exigent circumstances.  One of my favorites, exigent circumstances are emergency situations where, if law enforcement were to wait for a warrant, they might lose key evidence or persons if they don't move quickly; and therefore are allowed to enter without one.  Examples of this can (and usually do) include drug sales or manufacturing (if they wait too long, the people involved might see the police and flush all their drugs down the toity before the warrant arrives), theft (we may decide to quickly file serial numbers off of the things we stole) or unknown fleeing criminals or fugitives (we might warn them to hide or quickly shove them out the back door and set 'em on fire so they run faster).  If a criminal is running from the police and sees your door open, then opts to go for it, then enters your home, the police can and will come in right behind him without needing a warrant to do so.  If anything you have lying about the house is in plain view, like the ounce of pot you just bought, they can grab that after they get done grabbing the fleeing felon...which of course, brings us TO:

4.  Plain View.  In the example above, when there are Exigent circumstances, and the police are looking for the drugs they busted through your door for, if they happen to come across a counterfeiting machine in "plain view" they can confiscate (seize) this as well during the same legal entry.

This doesn't mean that, if the police see drugs sitting on your kitchen table through a window, that they can enter the house without a warrant and seize it, but if they see you noticing the police, then grabbing some drugs, then running through the living room holding a bag of weed, and it looks as though you're making a mad dash for the toilet in order to flush it to get rid of the evidence, then they can burst through your door without a warrant, because these circumstances are then considered exigent.

5.  Martial Law.  The last and final exception to your Fourth Amendment Rights is one I hope we are never fortunate enough to experience, Martial Law.  I discuss Martial Law in this blog, under "The Right to Privacy (Sorry...the Expectation Thereof)", so at the risk of repeating myself, I won't go into this further.  Read the post, you won't be disappointed.  Below is the direct link to it, in case you don't feel like doing a search:

http://themightyswordamericas26deadlysins.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-right-to-privacy-sorrythe.html

OK, so what does all of this have to do with the post, you might ask?  I rattled these things off, mainly, because it was important that you know what are considered exceptions to a warrant search; in order to give you our check mark for the day.  If a knock on your door turns out any other way than what we discussed, America, your rights are being violated, and you have an equal right to bring suit against the police department, governmental or state agency at fault.  Of course, usually by the time something like this gets to court, the damage is more than done, and is, as well, irreversible.

If you Google warrant-less searches in America, there are 461,000 results, America.  Ten results are too many.  Youtube comes off with around 1700 videos relating to it.  One is entirely too many.  But the biggest offender of this, of course, is the NSA, the Federal Government agency in charge of our National Security, and their countless warrant-less searches they've performed on our private phone calls and conversations, as unveiled JUST RECENTLY in the Obama Administration.  Do...NOT...STAND FOR THIS!!  Don't roll over...AGAIN!  Don't let this one get by us kids; because if there is ever an event in our history that will accomplish more for Government Transparency, and force it and our Government into accountability, it's this one event.  If we roll over on this one, you can surely believe that a fascist nation won't be far behind. Stay tuned, there's oh so much MORE to come!!  :D

Freedom to Fascism - Part I

http://www.angelfire.com/hi/TWA800/clintoneo.html

OK, OK...so we went bust.  We screwed up.  We fell and/or washed out.  Because Opensource.com decided to do what I had intended to,  Government Transparency is NO MORE (as well as duly covered instead by Opensource.com, of course).  Oh, it's all good America.  Why, you ask?  Because I'm about to save the day.  There might be a Government Openness Week...but, I'm betting NOBODY has an "American Freedom to Fascism Week!!"  And so it begins...

You may remember...waaaaaaay back.  If not, just close your eyes...look at your eyelids...that's good.  Now remember...remember...there was a post, ages ago.  Day #15.  Obaaaaaama.  Now you got it.  I gave you a link to a list of ways to tell if your country is going fascist.  If you just can't get with me on the whole eyelid thing, it's OK, really.  I brought the link with me, have no fear:

http://prorev.com/fascisthints.htm

So, what we're going to do, is write about each.  And every.  Single.  One of the check marks.  You know, self-diagnostics, as it were.  Oh, we'll have facts.   We'll have figures.  We'll have charts, graphs, photos, examples, witnesses, interviews...yes, it just might rival everything I promised you the other would be, but was not meant to be, in this blog.

SO LET'S GET STARTED ALREADY, SHALL WE?

Check #1 - Your president ignores the law passed by legislation.

OK, let's take a look at that one.  Probably the most glaring example of any Presidency, where ignoring the law is concerned, is a favorite of mine:  the ability to write Executive Orders.  I didn't have a clue about these (mostly because I didn't ever hear about these little gems) until my late 40s.  Why is that, you might wonder?  Oh, these were a HUGE secret...evidently.  I then discovered that, no matter what we want, no matter what congress wants, we have a little loophole our Presidents love to exploit called the Executive Order.  If all else fails, we can override EVERYTHING no one wants, and with a flick of the pen, we can sign into law just about anything our little President can think of.  It's un-"Veto"-able, un-revocable, and Un-Constitutional kids.  Something we should have NEVER agreed to allow or let happen.

The National Archives keep a running record of all executive orders, back as far as 1936. So I took a look, and I found a big commonality to each order that just drives me into a frenzy.  These new, "I'm right, you're wrong" immediately enforceable laws are now unchangeable, once signed by our residing President, whichever one we have serving at the time.  They might later be amended, and parts may be laid to rest...but the damage is often done before these orders are fixed by anyone.

Worse, even, is the fact that, depending on the President, we just went hog-wild.  The American Presidency Project (www.theamericanpresidencyproject.com) lists each and every President's Executive Orders, and what they said.  We won't go into each President, but we will take a look at the upwards trend in the number of Executive Orders.

Executive orders stayed in single digits from George up to Jackson.  Jackson had 12.  From Jackson to Grant, they stayed in the double digits.  Grant had 217 of these little orders.  He started the trend upwards.  Through the great (?) Theodore Roosevelt, Executive Orders sometimes numbered into 3 digits.  Mr. Roosevelt the First's number? 1083 of 'em.  Wow.  Oh, but it doesn't stop with him.  Woodrow Wilson's number was 1800+.  Franklin D, probably the largest offender?  3.  Thousand.  500.  22.  You have GOT to be kidding.

From there it weaves up and down from 4 to 3 digits and back again.  I think you get the picture though; it's become a serious problem since the Roosevelts.  Every one of these orders is a finger in the face of America.  Some are very damaging to everything we stand for as a free nation with rights.  It essentially says that no matter what we think or believe, want or need, it can be whisked away with any one order.

Ratification or the revocation of these orders HAS to be implemented, or one day there might just be an Executive Order stating that you are no longer allowed to wear your cherished tighty-whiteys, or to abolish your right to buy two cell phones in a year from the same company.  This is easily the most socialist tool we allow our Presidents to use, and I have the feeling the numbers may easily go up from here.

Then, there's that little thing that we had, where Obama just wants to completely bypass the Amendment that controls how many years a President can serve over our country, which, in this writer's opinion, just goes against all Constitutionality, as well as serving as a shining example of a man trying to establish a little totalitarianism.

Join us tomorrow.  We shall continue!!

Senior Mistreatment/Abandonment

Courtesy of motifake.com

Today we're gonna discuss a subject that just makes me plain ol' sick to my stomach.  I plan to lay it down well, to where it hits you in the gut, tears up your insides and makes you feel like the really awful people you really have the ability to be, and, may already be.  What are we talking about?  Seniors.  Our eld people.  The people that raised you, fed you, took care of you and helped shape you into the person you are today.  Your parents, for cryin' out loud.  What's wrong with you America, that you would abandon these people when they need you most??  When they reach that time they can't take care of themselves anymore.  Now, since they can't work, can't handle babysitting, have lost their minds, or WHATEVER...now you want nothing to do with them anymore.

Oh, but you sure needed them when your husband left you, and you needed someone to help you through it for almost a year, because it took you that long to get over it, mentally.  It was OK to lean on them when the CEO at your company stole your nest-egg and cleaned out what little you had saved up for the future, then needed them to co-sign a loan for you to keep the bills paid.  It was OK, too, when both of you had to go on separate business trips for 2 weeks and you didn't wanna pay babysitters and you thought of them as being someone that could help.

But now, when they can't even get out of their chairs anymore, or they've forgotten their own names, as well as yours - now you wanna toss 'em into a nursing home and forget they even exist.  SHAME on you America.  How can you do that to them, after everything they've done FOR YOU??  They never stopped being your parents, even when you were bad.  They loved you and helped you whenever they could.  Now you wanna store 'em away in formaldehyde till they rot away and die.  Then you can just pitch 'em into a 6' deep ditch and put a nice headstone on them, forgetting to change up their flowers the following year.  I'm ashamed to be standing alongside the better portion of you.  The sad thing is, there's an awful lot of you that mistreat your elders, in one way or another.  This is gotta stop America.

Of course, kids have a bad enough time respecting their parents anymore, let alone their grandparents.  And parents, well, they're just grown-up kids themselves, most often.  And for those of you just sitting around waiting for the day when you don't have to deal with your parents anymore, but on the other hand can't wait to see what they're gonna leave you when they die?  The way things are in America, added to the way you're trained in the art of greed, it doesn't really surprise me much to see you hangin' over your parents, while they're on their deathbeds, like vultures.  I'd almost have to say that I expect that kind of behavior out of the better portion of you, really.  Just expect and don't be surprised when your kids exhibit the same behavior, when you eventually reach YOUR twilight years.

I'd have to say, though, that the thing I most despise, as far as the general behavior of adult children of parents, is when their parents become too old to live by themselves, and where a nursing home or something similar is really the only option.  It's when you put them there...and then just leave them there, basically and essentially abondoning them.  You don't go see them, you rarely call them, you never have them over anymore, and you don't take their grandkids to see them either, mostly, because if you don't care about them, why should they be excited to go see them?  Where do you think they get that?  FROM YOU!!  You rate your parents as non-important, and it only serves to show your children that they're nothing to give a crap about.  Even worse, is when one parent dies, and the other is just distraught and upset...and when you talk to the surviving parent, you mistake their grief as incompetency.  C'mon y'all.  If you were the wife of your current husband for 50 years and did everything together, and depended on him automatically to take care of certain things...around the house, and out in the world, that person essentially becomes half...of you.  An extention.  Of COURSE you're going to be lost without them in your life!!  No, a little emotional support is all that's needed here, more so than dumping them to the curb.

Respect them.  Support them.  Be there for them.  Give them what they gave you.  Love.  Unconditional.  Imperative.  If they have to be in a home, because you can't take them on, fine.  See them.  OFTEN.  Take the kids. CALL THEM, if naught else.  Show them that they're still important in your life.  They will be and should be, 'til the day they die.

Now, as to the subject of mistreatment, I can't believe I'm even talking about it.  What the hell goes through a person's mind, I fail to comprehend.  How could anyone, unless the parent put them through a traumatic experience as a child, beat a parent...or anyone for that matter, because they can't rightly defend themselves.  This to me is sick, spiteful, and should NOT be tolerated under any condition.  Enough said.  Again, for shame!  Even if they did abuse you in some way, I guarantee the guilt from whatever they did has eaten their souls up and left them empty...and I can almost bet that they want nothing more at this point in their life, than to beg your forgiveness.  Give them a chance to ask.  Talk to 'em, and don't pull the punches either.  Tell your parent(s) how you felt when you were their children.  Get it off your chest, I insist.  Then maybe, if your dad insists on sneering at you and says that, at the time, you deserved every punch he doled out on you, then, and only then, I'd be all for you pulling off your belt and giving THEM forty whacks.  So unless you catch your father/mother chuckling about the way you got put in your place when THEY were parenting YOU, if I even guess that you might be possibly considering giving your parents a return beating or two for the crap you have to go through while taking care of THEM, you can best believe I'll be all for bringing back the electric chair or the guilotine.  Don't EVEN tempt me.

So...in case you haven't caught on to the timing here, it's mother's day.  If she's in another state, CALL HER.  If you're not speaking anymore, make an attempt to speak.  If she's lost her mind, give her a piece of yours.  If she's gone, bring her flowers.  Believe me, she more than likely deserved it.  Don't make me tell you again when Father's Day comes around either.  Try and remember to love and respect your parents.  Then, quite possibly, through your example, your kids won't pull the plug on you while you're dying off.  :D