In 2002 when neo-cons within the U.S. military and inside the Bush White House worked hard to deceive Congress and the American people into cheering for an unprovoked attack against the non-threatening nation of Iraq, steady and repetitive neo-connish messaging cleared the pathway to aggressive war.

Not only was Saddam Hussein's Iraq not a threat to the U.S. in 2002-2003….after a decade of harsh sanctions mainly affecting non-military Iraqis….but Hussein's military capabilities had never returned to pre-Iraq War I levels. The con by the…umm….neo-cons was to convince Americans who didn't know any better, and were still filled with vengeful hate from 9-11, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein were about to devastate the east coast of the U.S., as well as Israel and Europe…or all three simultaneously.

In 21st century America, it's all about the messaging. Veracity has nothing to do with any of it.

The Iraq Sequel.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that sanctions so far had not caused Iran's leaders to change their pursuit of nuclear capabilities.

But he said some Iranian officials appear more willing to conduct an attack in the United States if they feel threatened, citing last year's alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

"The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials – probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime," Clapper said in his Senate testimony.

"We are also concerned about Iranian plotting against U.S. or allied interests overseas," he said.

Insert 2002 Bushie claim here. "Smoking gun-mushroom cloud", "grave and gathering danger", "there's no doubt Saddam is reconstituting blah, blah effing blah"…..you know how it works, or should by now. But Americans in the beginning of the 21st century have become a caricature of a "short attention span theater" skit…..can't recall what happened last week, let alone what happened almost a decade ago.

And so the deceptive and duplicitous neo-con message machine cranks up again. This time in order to dupe U.S. citizens into accepting yet another military assault on yet another middle eastern sovereign nation.

How it's done.

In October of 2011, U.S. officials launched a new propaganda message against Iran claiming that Iran planned an assassination attempt of the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Why Iran would risk nuclear annihilation at the hands of the U.S. and/or Israel over some cockamamie Mexican drug cartel/Quds Force story of clusterf*ckness…..was never explained.

Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst at the Rand Corporation, found it "difficult" to believe that Khamenei or Suleimani would order such an attack that "would put all of Iran's objectives and strategies at risk".

Reza Sayyah from CNN questioned the plausibility of the claim by asking, "Did an elite branch of Iran's military handpick a divorced, 56-year-old Iranian-American used-car salesman from Texas to hire a hitman from a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the ambassador to Saudi Arabia by blowing up a bomb in a crowded restaurant in Washington?"

Sure it's ridiculous…but then Saddam Hussein plotting to spray anthrax down on the eastern seaboard of the U.S….was a ridiculous notion as well…and yet that deceptive and ridiculous story reached the homes of millions of post-9-11, still-feeling-vengeful Americans.

See how DNI Chief James Clapper carefully constructs his misleading message meant to gin up support for a U.S. attack of Iran?

"The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials – probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime,"

Using the laughable, really, claim that a used car salesman from Texas, allegedly hiring a Mexican drug-cartel hitman, was about to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S…..and that the highest leaders in Iran were behind the laughable story….using that as his springboard of disinformation, Clapper then implies that Iranian leaders are…"probably", "more willing"…to do what?

"conduct an attack in the U.S."

See? Just like Saddam was about to do in 2002.

Of course, when disinformation…like Saddam spraying anthrax over New York using small prop planes…. doesn't carry quite the deceptive punch neo-cons are looking for…any DNI can always fall back on the old American standby….

"We're doing a lot with the Israelis, working together with them. And of course for them, this is, as they have characterized, is an existential threat," Clapper said.

I wonder if Iran considers the 200 nuclear-tipped warheads the Israeli government has pointed in their direction to be, you know, "an existential threat"?

The WTF-ness of this latest propaganda salvo ginning up support for an eventual military attack against Iran is found in this Clapper comment….

"We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so," he said in written testimony. "We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."

Iran does not have a nuclear weapon right now and Clapper admits that he and his smart guys don't know if Iran will "eventually decide" to make one or not, but those wily Iranian leaders are, you know, keeping their "options" open…..so who knows, right?

All I can conclude about this clumsy, juvenile attempt to rah-rah the nation into another act of pre-emptive military aggression….is that the militaristic neo-cons who work so hard to deceive us into slaughtering more Muslims…..are in need of better script writers.

Mitt Romney's primary line of attack against President Obama.

Romney claims that Obama has been a job destroyer, while he was a job-creating businessman. For example, he told Fox News: "This is a president who lost more jobs during his tenure than any president since Hoover. This is 2 million jobs that he lost as president."

This is Mitt's mantra. Obama has failed to put Americans back to work. Obama has destroyed, will destroy, or is in the process of destroying, the U.S. economy. Not only is Romney going ahead with this main attack line against President Obama during the campaign, but the entire conservative and GOP movement has been repeating the same charge for 3 years running.

We hear it so often, most of us probably don't even hear it anymore. From the moment Barack Obama was inaugurated it began. Starting on January 20, 2009 the cries went up that the new Dark Knight Democratic president was "destroying" America.

All of it was strategically planned by the Orwellian corporate messengers whom we are oh-so-privileged to have as our overlords. Repetition is vitally important when branding the brains of the public you wish to deceive. The most often repeated word by conservatives and Republicans in describing President Obama….is some form of the word destroy. Obama is destroying America. Obama is destroying the nation's economy. Obama is a job destroyer.

I think it's a good time to look at some charts to determine how much destruction President Obama has done to the nation's economy and employment. I mean, for three continuous years, that's the only message heard from the Party Of Lincoln. Obama has destroyed our economy. Obama has destroyed jobs.

True or no?

The shaded area of the above chart represents employment before, during and after the official period of recession which began during the George W. Bush presidency. As is abundantly clear, only during the first year of the Obama presidency did our economy continue to shed jobs. As is also abundantly clear from the chart, the momentum of job losses during the sad, closing scenes of the Bush presidency was so severe that it took 6-9 more months after Bush left office for the massive job losses to bottom out.

From June of 2009 forward…..the last 2 1/2 years….employment, while sluggish, returned to positive territory.

Yet, Mitt Romney plans to build his campaign to beat Obama on misleading lines like this…."Obama has put us on a road to decline."

The bikini employment chart above is yet another rendering of this same fact. The crashing in employment came during the Bush presidency with enough negative momentum to spill over into the first 6 year of the new Obama presidency. But look at what's happened the last 2 years since. Employment has grown. And not because of government hiring either. Since 2008, 500,000 public sector jobs have been eliminated.

Now, an Obama critic can look at the bikini chart and tell me that job creation is still not strong enough…and I would agree. But to state that Obama's presidency is "destroying" the American economy and private sector job creation is simply not factual.

The Dear Leader of the conservative movement in America, Rush Limbaugh…

"…The president of the United States, Barack Obama, is destroying the United States economy. There is no other way to describe this, systematically destroying it,”

The conservative propaganda outlet Newsmax…

Obama is a human wrecking ball single-handedly destroying our economy and bankrupting the nation.

The DOW index chart above covers the last 3 years since President Obama took office. Take a good hard look. If there is any truth to the conservative claims that Obama is "destroying" our national economy, why would Serious investors be driving the DOW to a three year high? Why would investors be buying stock in American corporations if, in fact, Obama was "destroying" the U.S. economy? Do you think investors want to lose money?

In summary: President Obama has not destroyed the economy nor new job creation. The empirical data is overwhelming. After the hangover wore off from an economic crash that began in December 2007 under George W. Bush's watch…..the nation has experienced private sector job growth upwards to 2 million. After the "bears" in the market sold off starting in the fall of 2007, they have turned bullish ever since.

The one thing, however, which has been "destroyed" over the last three years…..and I can say this unequivocally…..is the credibility of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. They simply lie….without ceasing.

P.S. I think there's some irony in the fact that even though Bush/Cheney did not protect the nation from attack on 9-11, they never tired of telling us how they kept us safe from attack after 9-11. And yet, today's conservatives and Republicans insist that President Obama's first 6 months in office is the only period worth examining when evaluating employment and the national economy. Seems odd, perhaps dishonest.

Myth making is an industry within politics. In our age of smorgasboard news,….just choose what you like….myth making has exploded. Americans can no longer agree on one narrative of what just happened yesterday. Our politics, if not our entire culture, has accepted post-modernism: there is no real truth.

Back in the Bill Clinton days….before the internet and Fox News exploded as primary sources of information, much of it false….myth making was all the rage. If you took the words of conservative and Village media as truth, then you believed that Hillary Clinton was a murderer, or a lesbian…or both. And that President Clinton was most likely still running drugs down in Arkansas and Tennessee. Those were the salad days of what I refer to as wingnuttery.

Today, unfortunately, myth making and a post modern approach to politics has matured into the ghastly, disformed creature we call our modern political discourse.

One particular ongoing story today illustrates what I'm getting at. Operation Fast and Furious.

As you may know, Darrel Issa (R-CA), House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman, and richest man in the House…..has decided to go after President Obama through the ATF program Fast and Furious. Issa, and other wild-eyed Republicans, think that they have some impeachable material to use against President Obama after Obama wins a second term. If it all leads to the impeachment of a second-in-a-row Democratic president, then, all the better. Those who doubt what I'm saying may want to look at this article entitled, "Fast and Furious" Just Might Be President Obama's Watergate, from this past September in Forbes.

Issa accuses the Obama administration of…..

…acting recklessly by losing track of almost 2,000 guns on the Southwest border in a botched ATF operation called Fast and Furious. Two of those weapons were recovered near the body of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

Here is how the richest representative in the House characterizes the role Obama's Justice Department played in Fast and Furious.

American Thinker…

"The Department of Justice's conduct in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious has been nothing short of shameful," said Chairman Issa. "From its initial denials that nothing improper occurred, to efforts to silence whistleblowers who wanted to tell Congress what really happened, to its continuing refusal to discuss or share documents related to this cover-up, the Justice Department has fought tooth and nail to hide the full truth about what occurred and what senior officials knew."

The Reverend's response to this Issa myth making was to explain that Fast and Furious is not unique…and that during President George W. Bush's tenure….an almost identical program was being run by ATF and the U.S. Border Patrol. Conservative commenters scoffed.

In order to squelch yet another myth before it fully forms into a wingnut legend…..read this…

The Justice Department sent nearly 500 pages of documents to Republican lawmakers Thursday that suggest the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives may have used questionable tactics and lost track of American-made weapons in a gun trafficking investigation on the Mexican border as early as 2006.

….

The newly released email messages and briefing papers suggest there may be similarities between the Obama operation "Fast and Furious" and an earlier effort during the Bush administration to target the flow of guns into Mexico. The papers include several communications between ATF supervisors and Justice Department prosecutors in Arizona who were trying to build a case against "a very powerful, aggressive and violent" Mexican drug cartel in an earlier operation dubbed "Wide Receiver."

A senior Obama administration Justice Department official who briefed reporters on the documents said the papers show law enforcement officers in the Bush years could have filed criminal conspiracy and false statements charges against lower level figures in the gun trafficking operation, but they decided to watch and wait until they could move higher up the chain of command.

"We want the… manufacturing and distribution pieces also – we want it all," an ATF official wrote in March 2006.

In December, Issa denied that Bush's Operation Wide Receiver had any similarity with Obama's Fast and Furious….

“The difference in the previous administration is there was coordination with the Mexican government,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said at a hearing in December. “They made a real effort under Wide Receiver to pass off a small amount of weapons and track them.”

Umm…no…

…new documents DOJ disclosed to congressional investigators on Thursday indicate that ATF officials didn’t even consider looping Mexican authorities in on their operation until several months after the investigation began and ATF had already lost track of weapons that likely ended up in Mexico.

Republicans and many conservatives actually think that if Obama does something equal or similar to what a previous Republican president has done….that it's different somehow, I guess, because Obama is a Democrat. But that is the stuff of mythology….and blind partisanship.

Insisting that a Justice Department ATF program under a Republican president warrants no comment or consideration…..and at the same time insisting that the same program under a Democratic president is worthy of impeachment….is the stuff of American conservative political mythology.

It's a little like those huge deficits Republicans didn't notice during the Bush years, isn't it?

Many times I've heard Village spokespeople rhetorically ask…why did we go into Iraq? Why the Iraq war? These Village talking heads know the answer to that question, but in typical Village fashion, cannot explain it to the unwashed masses because then people like Bill Kristol, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the rest of the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) gang….all respected Villagers themselves…would be embarrassed, put on the spot, perhaps even arrested. Village members simply can't be treated that way.

So Village media personnel act as if the reason the U.S. attacked the non-threatening nation of Iraq is still a mystery….something better left to future historians. Sure, Villagers will tell us that WMD were not found there, lots of people died, Saddam was killed and so forth….but corporate media, to this very day, still refuses to explain the real reason why we invaded Iraq.

Perhaps corporate media Villagers missed this from General Wesley Clark in 2007…..

After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon’s plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the “coup” being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called “a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century”:

Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: “Why haven’t we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?”

He said: “Sir, it’s worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

Clark went on to relate a conversation he had with Paul Wolfowitz in 1991….

Clark said the aim of this plot was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”

The answer to the question, why did we attack and occupy Iraq beginning in 2003?…is found in the long wishlist of a handful of hyper-hawks who make up the membership of PNAC, and apparently, much of the leadership of our military-industrial complex.

The following people signed on to PNAC's "statement of principles" in the 90's…..recognize any of the names?

Elliott Abrams
Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett
John Ellis "Jeb" Bush
Richard B. Cheney
Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter
Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes
Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama
Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Norman Podhoretz
J. Danforth Quayle
Peter W. Rodman
Stephen P. Rosen
Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld
Vin Weber
George Weigel
Paul Wolfowitz

After 9-11, with so many PNAC members working for the Bush administration, it doesn't take a Mensa member to figure out what happened. PNAC members took 9-11 as the opportunity they had been praying for….a "new Pearl Harbor event"….and the rest, as they say, is history.

The obvious problem with all of this is that no one bothered to explain to the American people why the PNAC'ers inside the Bush administration were leading us into what they were leading us into. Instead, the Bushies made stuff up to scare us with….WMD, al-Qaeda affiliation, etc. And the reason is obvious. The American people were rightfully exercised over 9-11…..but would the American people agree to accept a "long war" of middle east conquest and domination meant to pre-empt any future enemies from controlling the shipping lanes and valuable resources under the sands of the middle east?

The Bushies decided to make stuff up rather than explain what the PNAC Brotherhood was really up to. They calculated that they would have a better chance of getting what they wanted by tricking the American people and Congress using fear and lies…..and it worked.

This all helps in explaining recent comments by John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman over President Obama's removal of U.S. military forces inside Iraq. To the neo-cons who understand and embrace the principles of U.S. Empire as outlined by PNAC….leaving Iraq is, like W. said, "the only reason we could lose Iraq is if we leave"

The purpose of invading Iraq was to initiate the PNAC middle east policy of endless war. It was to begin with Iraq and spread, as Wolfowitz clearly told Wesley Clark, to at least 7 countries there. According to the PNAC outline, the U.S. was to dismantle regimes, set up U.S. military bases and proceed to project U.S. power throughout the region.

Neo-conservatives still dominate our foreign policy and defense departments. And now they have set their sights on Iran.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon ordered his White House thugs to go after Daniel Ellsberg for making public the Pentagon Papers. The Papers were quite an embarrassment to Nixon's White House. Nixon responded by beginning a campaign "against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally." Part of that campaign we know now as the Watergate burglary. Watergate eventually led to President Nixon's resignation.

Today, I feel sympathy for Nixon. Not because he wasn't a deeply disturbed and lawless Republican President…he was….but because, if he were president today, Nixon would have had the liberty to simply 'disappear' Daniel Ellsberg. Watergate would have never been necessary, and Nixon could have finished out his second term without having to resign in humiliation.

Let me explain.

Two weeks ago, President Obama threatened to veto the 2012 Defense Authorization Act if the bill constrained the presidency in any way from…"collecting intelligence, incapacitating dangerous terrorists, and protecting the American people"…..in whatever way the Commander in Chief determined.

Now, Obama has withdrawn his veto threat.

The counterterrorism section of the bill….

…states that the entire world, including American soil, is a battlefield in the war on terror. It expands the U.S. military’s authority to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, even citizens, suspected of aiding terrorists.

The Defense Authorization Bill will finally legalize the illegal practices we have been practicing as a nation for over 10 years now. Indefinite detention without due process, even for U.S. citizens…..a "world war" where no corner of the earth is immune from U.S. military attack or invasion, and an expansion of the totally bogus "war on terror" broadening it to include "supporters" of "terrorism"…..and allowing the president to decide what that all means.

For those who generally support President Obama's presidency, as I do, make no mistake……it was President Obama, himself, who fought to include U.S. citizens in his indefinite detention without due process powers. It is President Obama who wanted to include U.S. citizens as possible Gitmo permanent detainees. It is President Obama who fought to include suspected U.S. citizens as potential defendants in military trials.

Listen carefully to what Carl Levin (D-MI) said from the Senate floor….

It was the "White House" who demanded the removal of language in Section 1031 of the bill which would exclude U.S. citizens from indefinite detention without civilian trials. It was President Obama, the same man who repeatedly denounced Bush/Cheney lawlessness before being elected president, who is now responsible for "legalizing" and even expanding that same lawlessness.

Signing this Defense Authorization Bill will be Obama's lowest moment as president and will surely set the stage for a future president to become a full-fledged military dictator, untethered from the clear legal restrictions outlined in the Constitution. Yet another example of how America is giving up on it's 200+ year democracy.

And so today, The Reverend has a bit of sympathy for former President Richard Nixon. You see, if Nixon could have only claimed the powers that President Obama is claiming today, he could have simply declared Daniel Ellsberg and editors of the New York Times as "enemy combatants", or "terrorists". Nixon could have had whomever his political enemies of the 70's were….picked up by military police and sent to Guantanamo or indefinitely detained without trial in some foreign hellhole of a prison…maybe even assassinated.

Watergate would have never happened and Nixon would have never had to resign the presidency…..if only he had boldly demanded the presidential powers which Obama claims today. After all, wasn't the Soviet enemy much more of a threat to the Homeland than box-cutter-wielding, stateless, Islamic extremists?

To Republicans who rejoice in my criticisms of a Democratic president….I would point out the support you gave Bush/Cheney in defending their limitless claims of power in illegally waging their contrived and bogus "war on terror." To Democratic voters who support President Obama….I would challenge any excuses offered up in defense of what is very obviously an unconstitutional power grab by this president.

And finally…..I ask all readers to give some thought to a potential Newt Gingrich presidency. A Gingrich presidency with almost limitless unilateral power to round up, incarcerate without charge or trial, and detain indefinitely in Guantanamo prison…U.S. citizens who a President Gingrich, alone, would declare to be "enemies of the state."

Oddly, all this doesn't look like "liberty" and "freedom" to me…..but one thing is for sure….Nixon would have loved it.

Agreement between congressional Republicans and Democrats, authentic bipartisanship, is rarely witnessed today. But there is one part of U.S. policy where the D's and the R's completely agree. Endless war and indefinite detention…even of U.S citizens. Yesterday the Senate passed a $662 billion defense bill 93-7. Nothing passes the Senate by such a wide margin any more. The Senate action is a clear illustration of what our Leadership holds dear. Unquestioned bipartisan approval to fund America's Worldwide Empire…..and to continue, indefinitely, our worldwide "war" against a tactic.

American Leadership stands united on one thing and one thing only….waging endless war against radicalized Islam. "The Long War." A doubling of defense spending has not been enough to bring the unsophisticated and stateless extremists to justice. Ten years of killing, ten years of bombing, ten years of expanding the Empire into many middle eastern nations has not been enough for our Leaders. We must press on to finally destroy the tactic of killing one's self in order to kill and terrify others. An accomplishment that is entirely impossible to attain.

Inside the lengthy defense spending bill, in section 1031, Congress has laid out new detention of detainee guidelines which include indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens without the muss and fuss of constitutional guarantees against depriving U.S. citizens of due process. Guantanamo is not just for foreigners anymore…..

Sen.(Rand) Paul: “My question would be under the provisions would it be possible that an American citizen then could be declared an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely.”

Sen. McCain: “I think that as long as that individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat.”

Here’s what Sen. (Lindsey) Graham said in the Senate on Nov. 17:

“1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

For those who actually still believe that our government Leaders are prohibited from depriving citizens of their constitutional rights….as Ron Paul and I do….here's the Doc's take…

Rep. Ron Paul calls this bill “one of the most anti-liberty pieces of legislation of our lifetime.” He says it’s “destructive of our Constitution.”

And Ron's son…

His son Sen. Rand Paul says, “There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will at the hands of a too-powerful state – our constitution, and the checks we put on government power. Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then the terrorists have won.”

Well, Rand…the "terrorist have won". But really…hasn't that been clear for a long time now? Box cutter wielding international criminals have forced the U.S. to take once-guaranteed rights away from every American citizen. Our Leaders over the last 10 years have convinced us that sacrificing our rights is part and parcel of the way we'll "defeat the enemy."

The Pauls, especially Ron, have given the neo-cons in his party and in the Democratic Party a fit. He's a thorn in the side of Empire Expanding Neo-Cons because he keeps bringing up that "goddamn piece of paper" which used to be the American contract, the American charter. But as yesterday's vote proves, our Leaders no longer view the Constitution as binding.

If the Senate bill is reconciled in the House and signed by Obama (he has threatened a veto, probably won't)….any U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil, who the President deems an enemy combatant, and only on his say so….can be taken into custody and transferred to Guantanamo prison and possibly never heard from again. And that's if the President at the time doesn't order that citizen's assassination first. No trial, no charges, no lawyers, no due process…..nothing. Indefinite detention of a U.S. citizen and without any thread of due process as guaranteed under the "goddamn piece of paper."

So while the Village continues to stoke the bogus argument every day that Obama and the Democrats are orchestrating a huge government takeover of all things involving economics…..Democrats and Republicans are working together to…well…orchestrate a huge government takeover of our Constitutional rights.

If TEA Party supporters were as diligent at protecting citizens from the threat of indefinite detention without due process…as they are about protecting citizens from the threat of taking responsibility for their own health insurance…..maybe the TEAs, the ACLU and OWS could have stood together to fend off yesterday's huge governmental power grab.

Last night's GOP-CNN primary debate in Vegas was a tad more exciting than the previous debates I've watched.

Debate transcript here.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, in my opinion, ended his chances last night with his petulant behavior towards Mitt Romney. If looks could do damage, Perry's looks in Romney's direction after several Romney backhands, would have knocked out Cassius Clay. (Extra credit if you know who that is)

Several times Perry's comments directed towards Romney were booed by the audience. Keep in mind, however, that the biggest, and longest, applause was for Herman Cain's insistence that if Americans are not wealthy or don't have a job…it's their own fault.

Compassionate conservatives…..they were not.

After spending the entire first round of questions and answers on bashing Herman Cain's plan to send $9.99 pizzas to all Americans…or something….I listened intently for the non-9-9-9'er candidates to explain how they would, you know, create new jobs for Americans…..15 million of whom are currently out of work.

I listened….I listened….and all I heard was this:

Repeal ObamaCare. Strip government regulations from big businesses. Lower taxes on the so-called "job creators"..translation: rich people.

First rebuttal. The Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to Speaker Boehner about the cost of repealing ObamaCare. The CBO concluded that repealing Obamacare would add $145 billion to the national deficit over ten years. In addition, "32 million fewer nonelderly people would have health insurance by 2019", if the Affordable Care Act is repealed.

Additionally….if ObamaCare, as the CBO determined, would add 32 million currently uninsured Americans to health insurance rolls….how could it be that that much new medical-care demand would not require millions of new jobs in the medical industry? Repealing Obamacare, then….would eliminate all those new jobs.

Second rebuttal. Cutting regulations on big business will not create jobs. It may make those big businesses a little bit more profitable so that they can send out bigger dividend checks to a handful of very wealthy shareholders…..but as we've witnessed over the last three decades….any savings to big business would wind up going upline rather than downline to hire new workers or give current employees raises.

“The effects on jobs are negligible. They’re (government regulations) not job-creating or job-destroying on average,” said Richard Morgenstern, who served in the EPA from the Reagan to Clinton years and is now at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan think tank.

I would add to this section the fact that the deregulation of the financial industry in 1999-2000 was the catalyst for our deep recession beginning in 2007. Government deregulation of the financial industry, basically giving banks and money shufflers the power to "self-regulate"……resulted in that industry virtually destroying the national economy.

For GOP presidential candidates to be calling for further deregulation after what we've been through the last 4 years, particularly their calls to repeal Dodd-Frank, can only be understood by realizing that the modern Republican Party is simply an extension of Wall Street, the government enforcer for the wildly rich and powerful.

Third rebuttal. If it were true that lowering taxes on corporations and very rich people resulted in big new job creation…..then we would have witnessed a huge glut of new jobs during the Bush administration. Instead, what actually happened during our lowest federal tax rate period since Truman's presidency….was 8 years of the lowest job creation numbers in America's modern history.

If lowering tax rates on our nation's richest actually resulted in a windfall of new jobs being created….then it would be understandable right now for Republican presidential hopefuls to be calling for lowering taxes on our nation's richest. But, alas….we have 8 years of objective historical numbers to evaluate, and lowering taxes on the rich in the 00's resulted in the most anemic jobs creation in my lifetime….and I'm old.

What was absent from all this supply side, faith based, bullsh*t during last night's Vegas debate was ANY talk of stimulating the economy right now through government spending. To today's Republicans, new government spending, even in a terrible recession complete with 9% unemployment, is our nation's biggest enemy. Next to raising taxes a few percentage points on millionaires and billionaires, that is.

The Hill…

The CBO said that the original (2011) Obama stimulus bill would involve $447 billion in tax cuts and new spending—the same estimate given by the administration. It said the bill would raise $450 billion over ten years. The result is a $3 billion decrease in deficits over ten years.

CBO also said that the bill “could have a noticeable impact on economic growth and employment in the next few years.”

Finally….I would just add that, unfortunately, ALL of the GOP presidential candidates in Vegas last night are simply operating under false, faith-based assumptions….which any student with The Google can disprove in less than 10 minutes. Supply side economics…..or put more simply….top-down economics, where the wealthy and powerful are given unimaginable giveaways and breaks under the assumption that all of those giveaways and breaks will "trickle down" to the unwashed masses…..has proven to be a pitiful, miserable and total failure.

Realizing that truth….that supply-side economics has been tried for three decades and proven to be a bitter and unjust failure….why would any GOP presidential candidate in 2011 be calling for more of the same?

President Obama's biggest disappointment, at least to progressives, has been his, I guess, "rebirth", as a neo-conservative.

During Obama's campaign for the presidency, he made political hay out of George and Dick's offshore gulags, torture of detainees, unprovoked military attacks and occupations of countries posing no threat to America, eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, secrecy, and much more. Rightfully so. The Bush years were marked by an expansion of presidential powers in violation of the Constitution….and the worst part is, the Bushies got away with all of it…thus setting a precedent.

But now Obama has made the Bushie doctrine, his doctrine. Now, the lawlessness of the neo-con Bush regime has been made into a bipartisan, and probably permanent, national doctrine.

Obama has continued the neo-conservative and lawless foreign policies of his predecessors. What's more, Obama has expanded those lawless powers….with his shiny new lawlessness theory that the President has the power to order the assassination of U.S. citizens on only his say so.

Indeed, all the ususal-suspect neo-cons,….Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Dick Cheney, many others….have heaped high praise on Obama the Neo-con….especially because Obama ordered the assassination of the U.S. citizen, Awlaki. It's worthy of remark that the only policy with which neo-con renegades from the Bush administration agree with Obama is on Obama's embrace of neo-con lawlessness.

That said….and with the understanding that American neo-cons have long ago targeted Iran for takeover…..it's interesting to see the Obama administration, including Obama and Hillary Clinton, hellbent to make something huge out of the recent allegations of an assassination plot by two Iranians against the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

(AG Eric) Holder called the bomb plot a flagrant violation of U.S. and international law. And Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, "We will not let other countries use our soil as their battleground."

Behold the double standard. Or is it simply a total lack of self-awareness?

Since 9-11-2001, the United States government has declared that the entire globe is a "battlefield" where U.S. military forces have the perfect right to wage war just about any way they see fit. In other words, at the same time that DOJ officials are claiming that "other countries" cannot be permitted to "use our soil as a battleground"….U.S. officials have claimed the unique right among all nations…to "use the soil" of any country as our "battlefield."

Chalk it up to "American exceptionalism"….or blindness….or whatever. The point becomes: do as we say, not as we do.

Two weeks ago, the United States assassinated one of its enemies in Yemen, on Yemeni soil. If the U.S. believes it has the right to assassinate enemies like Anwar Awlaki anywhere in the world in the name of a "war on terror" that has no geographical limitation, how can it then argue that other nations don't have a similar right to track down their enemies and kill them wherever they're found?

Other than simply chanting very loudly…U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A…..in order to drown out those objecting to such an obvious double standard….the U.S. really cannot argue convincingly that we, of all nations, are the only ones who are allowed to use the soil of foreign countries to conduct military adventures against our "enemies."

Why is it that the U.S., alone, should have the power to wage war against alleged enemies anywhere we choose to wage that war…..yet other nations shouldn't also have that power?

The L.A. Times editor finishes with a huge understatement…

The world is unlikely to accept that the United States has a right to behave as it wishes without accountability all around the globe and that other nations do not.

Ya' think?

If you really want to find out what this alleged Iranian plot to off a Saudi ambassador is about….read Glenn Greenwald's excellent take. Here's a description by folks who knew the alleged plotter which describes him as hapless….just like many of the others whom U.S. officials have coaxed into staging a plot against the U.S., and then later, announced how safe those officials had kept us by breaking up a domestic plot they, themselves, nurtured into existence.

But the ass-kicker of the day on this story goes to President Obama,…

“There’s a great similarity between how Iran operates and how North Korea operates, a willingness on their part to break international rules, to flout international norms, to not live up to their own commitments. And each time they do that, the United States will join with its partners and allies in making sure that they pay a price,” Obama said.

If the similarity between how N. Korea and Iran operate is….."a willingness…to break international rules, to flout international norms…"….then, the United States of America operates in a similar fashion to N. Korea and Iran.

What else could violating the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment(s) be called? I mean other than operating similarly to Iran or N. Korea?

How about Guantonomo? Our offshore, secret, prisons? Isn't there a "great similarity" between the U.S. and N.Korea and Iran concerning gulags?

How about the American violation of international norms prohibiting attacking a sovereign nation (Iraq) which poses no threat to the U.S? Hell, Iran doesn't even do stuff like that….only the U.S.

Obama may think he is standing strong by talking all Cheney-like over this most recent ginned-up emergency. But the rest of the world's occupants who heard Obama's words yesterday recognize the gargantuan double standard and lack of self-awareness contained in his words.

When Barack Obama became president, American conservatives and unattached-to-reality libertarians immediately began trumping the terrible, awful, horrible nature of our nation's "runaway" debt. Oddly, during the George W. Bush years, when our national debt doubled, it was almost impossible to find even one conservative or libertarian whose hair was on fire over the impending doom about to befall our country because of debt. Apparently, debt is partisan that way.

One of the more popular talking points of conservatives during the Obama presidency has been that our national debt, now over $14 trillion, is fast approaching 100% of national GDP…gross domestic product. In other words, the U.S. is carrying debt which comes close to equaling the total amount of our national yearly business activity. To conservatives,…those who self-muted during the doubling of our debt from 2001-2009….the closer our nation comes to a 100% debt-to-GDP ration…..the closer we come to doomsday.

Many, if not most, Americans carry a debt-to-GFP (gross family product) ratio higher than 100%. Mortgages, car loans, school debt, credit cards, etc……added up….will most likely surpass an average family's yearly GFP. Doomsday, apparently, has arrived for virtually all American households.

But that's not the point of my post today. This is….

If you look at the chart on the left you find world rankings for corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP. Norway has the highest corporate taxes-to-GDP ratio with a little over 8%, while the United States has the second lowest corporate taxes-to-GDP ratio at 1.3%. Second lowest…..in the industrialized world.

Conservatives can't simply dismiss these corporate taxes-to-GDP numbers….unless, of course, they want to also dismiss the terrible, awful, horrible national debt-to-GDP numbers that the U.S. is carrying right now.

But conservatives, and some Democrats, have also been telling Americans that one of the reasons why our economy is sluggish…is because corporate tax rates are just so effing high in the U.S…..that corporations simply don't have any incentive anymore to make money. Lower, or eliminate those god-awful corporate taxes, conservatives tell us, and America will prosper again.

As we can see from the chart…..American corporations pay the second lowest corporate taxes, as compared to GDP, in the world. Yet, we're asked to believe that those second lowest taxes are choking off any incentives corporations might have had to expand and add more business.

Naturally, this conservative/libertarian talking point is a crock of dooey.

American Fortune 500 corporations are sitting on $2 trillion of CASH. And that's after two quarters of breaking new profit records. What we have then, in reality not in talking points, is a group of very successful and cash-flush corporations who have just set new records for profit-making….AND…who are paying corporate taxes at the second lowest rate, as compared to GDP, in the world.

Does that all logically add up to American corporations being frustrated or discouraged by oh-so-oppressive corporate tax rates? Does that sound like a recipe where U.S. corporations will simply throw their hands up in total despair…..all because awful, horrible, terrible corporate tax rates have taken ALL incentive out of continuing to do business in the U.S.?

Of course it doesn't. And that is the point. Very rich American business people are taking the opportunity that the economic recession has offered them to deceptively argue that corporate taxes are just too high…..and unless those corporate taxes are lowered…..our country will never be able to come back from the worst recession since the 30's.

Greed knows no limits. Just as we've seen the sockpuppets for the American rich, the GOP, hold the nation hostage for the sake of the top 2%…..so too we are seeing hugely profitable American corporations, sitting on mountains of cash, paying the second lowest corporate taxes in the world as compared to GDP…..whine and moan that our economy can't revitalize itself until those oh-so-stifling corporate tax rates are lowered or eliminated.

Don't believe a word of it. If numbers….if arithmetic means anything…..it should tell us that in America today, the rich few and the Fortune 500 corporations have never had it so good. That's why the battle for the narrative has been waged so fiercely. If Americans fully realize that a few very rich Americans and very flush and profitable corporations are actually basking in historically low taxes, while the rest of us fight for the employment crumbs falling off their tables……Americans just might insist that these very fortunate few, you know, pony up a bit more on the tax side.

So the next time some conservative/libertarian know-nothing spouts off about taxes being so suffocatingly high on the Titans of Commerce….remember THIS talking point…..while sitting on $2 trillion in cash reserves after setting new quarterly profit records….U.S. corporations pay the second lowest corporate taxes (as compared to GDP) in the world.

Call me crazy…but it sure looks like American corporations are competing just fine.

It seems that Bloomberg took a new poll….

A majority of Americans say job growth would best be revived with prescriptions favored by the (Republican) party: cuts in government spending and taxes, the Bloomberg Poll shows. Even 40 percent of Democrats share that view.

….

Though Americans rate unemployment and the economy as a greater concern than the deficit and government spending, the issues are now closely connected. Sixty-five percent of respondents say they believe the size of the federal deficit is “a major reason” the jobless rate hasn’t dropped significantly.

….

Republican criticism of the federal budget growth has gained traction with the public. Fifty-five percent of poll respondents say cuts in spending and taxes would be more likely to bring down unemployment than would maintaining or increasing government spending, as Obama did in his 2009 stimulus package.

What this Bloomberg poll demonstrates….at least to me….is that repeating falsehoods over and over is a successful way for propagandists….deception artists…..to get Americans to believe a lie.

In September, 2003…..70% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9-11 attacks. He wasn't. And there was no evidence that he was. Yet, corporate media…..anxious to do the bidding of the Bush administration at the time…..spun out the administration's lies repeatedly over a 2+ year period until 70% of average Americans believed in the lie.

The same thing has happened since the collapse of America's economy and the election of Democratic President Barack Obama. Wall Street banksters gamed a deregulated, "on your honor", system…..risking our nation's economic future in a risky gambling game consisting of huge bets on mortgage derivatives and credit default swaps. Those Wall Street gamblers crapped out…..and now average American workers and families are paying for it.

The Tea Party, conveniently, organized and rolled out their nonsensical conservative movement before the smoke had cleared from Wall Street's implosion. The Tea Party instantly became the darling of corporate media….they became joined at the hip, as it were….the media spouting the Tea Party "message" each and every day for months and months on end. What was that message? Government debt had become such an emergency problem that it just had to be addressed…now….and new taxes would not be tolerated.

Every day, every night….corporate media spouted the claims of the Teabaggers as gospel….deficits and debt were elevated to a prominent place in all discussions, despite the fact that the same corporate media was entirely silent during the doubling-of-the-debt years of a Republican president.

The goal of the propagandists, paid for by our richest citizens, was to prevent increasing taxes in the wake of the Wall Street disaster. A corollary goal was to fight and fend off any new regulatory structure on the Wall Street crooks' casino operations.

"Cutting government spending" became the new war cry…..the new "Saddam was in on 9-11" lie. Now, a majority of Americans, according to Bloomberg, just as they did in 2003, have accepted the lie as truth.

Cutting government spending in the middle of a lack-of-demand recession, a recession with interest rates at historic lows…..is the opposite of what Americans should be embracing. Cutting government spending….taking more demand out of the economy, laying off more workers…..will only make our economic woes greater.

Cutting taxes…especially on the rich….will do nothing to create jobs and revive our economy. Deep historic tax cuts during the last administration did not catapult our national economy into the high-growth lane. But after hearing the same falsehood over and over on teevee, on radio and in print…..Americans logical thought processes have been neutralized…..the new Big Lie accepted.

The size of the deficit has nothing, whatsoever, to do with our jobless rate. No conservative has been able to present a convincing causal case between high deficits and high unemployment…..yet 65% of Americans now believe that the deficit is hindering job creation.

55% now think that cutting government spending and cutting taxes would bring down unemployment numbers…..when doing so would actually extend and possibly worsen the recession.

Convincing Americans to believe in lies is the full time job of corporate media. There's method to the lie-repeating madness. Readers may think that such a conspiracy to deceive could not possibly be successful in such a free country like the U.S……but I would ask those readers to consider the 100,000 dead Iraqis and the 4500 dead U.S. soldiers who are now dead because U.S government leaders, working hand in glove with corporate media, convinced the American public to believe in a lie.

Now they've done it again.