Uri Bezmenov

You Don't Really Believe America Won the "Cold War" Do You?



BFN/Fintan Dunne interpretation.

Past Blasts

Banned


Bloopers

Redistribution

As regular readers know, KAB in the past has solicited yearly for funds to keep KAB going; to keep the biting commentary and truth out there.

Well, dear readers, I believe those lean days of struggling to keep KAB afloat and getting the truth out there - those lean days will soon be over. Once Obama is elected and redistributes the wealth - KAB's bigger ship will come in.

That's right, no longer will KAB be forced to live in the cramped quarters of a 50 footer when we can have a 73 footer, or more, and we may even christen our ship when it comes in, Bamarama. (Being somewhat conservative KAB has chosen to forgo the ostentatious yachts with chopper pads.)

Testing Obama

BIDEN: "Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America," Biden was quoted telling a fundraiser in Seattle on Sunday. "Remember I said it standing here, if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

---- Only thing is ... Obama is no JFK and the "tester" will not be Nikita K.

The testing ground will be over Israel, and unlike the USSR, the testers today are willing, even eager, to go up in flames.

Grab your duct tape and plastic and get ready for the big one.

Per Il Nonno

Il Mondo - Jimmy Fontana


Ave-Maria - Nana Mouskouri


Speak Softly Love - Andy Williams


My Way - Frank Sinatra

Ending Like Detroit

The city of Detroit has the highest repossession rate for a major city in the US, with real-estate owned (REO) homes—that is, homes repossessed by banks or mortgage holders—at 3.7 percent in 2007. Cleveland, Ohio came in a close second with a 3 percent REO rate.

The social reality behind these figures is illustrated by a recent sale of a foreclosed home in Detroit. In September, a modest two-story single-family home on Detroit’s east side near the Detroit City Airport sold for one dollar. Less than two years ago, in November 2006, the same home sold for $65,000.

The one-dollar sale of the Detroit house even made the Sunday Times of London, which recently ran a piece titled “America’s Darkest Fear: to end up like Detroit.”

Toshiana noted the absence of the most basic services in the city of Detroit. “We don’t even have a grocery store anymore.”

She continued, “You actually have to go back to the early ’90s to see when all this started to happen. I could tell you a couple blocks I lived on in Detroit that I watched gradually torn down. They were really nice when I was there, but what happened? One place, I came back five years after I had moved, just to visit. I could not believe what had happened. The place was a mess; the houses were in terrible shape.

A 2006 Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) report, “The Impending Rate Shock,” singled out Detroit as one of the cities likely to experience a housing disaster.

ACORN should know: National non-profit ACORN Housing has been providing free housing counseling to low and moderate income homebuyers since 1987. We have opened HUD-certified, Fannie Mae-approved housing counseling offices across the US, helping over 50,000 families to achieve homeownership. ACORN Housing provides one-on-one mortgage loan counseling, first-time homebuyer classes, and helps clients obtain affordable mortgages through our unique lending partnerships.

----- The biggest problem for cities and towns like Detroit and Cleveland goes beyond the loss of jobs and bad loans. Detroit is a fine example of almost 40 years of government social programs helped along by NGO's. Detroit is a good example of what government and/or "program" dependency does to people.

I have known a dozen former homeowners locally who when they receive a few thousand dollars in tax refunds each year would not put it aside for mortgage payments, not spend a dime on upkeep, preferring instead to buy plasma screens, down payment on a new car to be repo-ed in 6 months, a trip to the river casinos, expensive clothes, and paying off some of the predatory payday loan places they cannot seem to avoid.

I remember when parents got up and made breakfast for their kids. I remember when parents packed school lunches. I remember when couples saved to buy a home and would go without a color TV if that's what it took to make the mortgage payments. I remember when gambling was penny-ante poker for my uncles around the kitchen table. I remember when to borrow between paychecks was something a self-respecting person would not do. Back in the "old days" when Big Daddy was an aging relative and not the Government.

You can blame the government, the liberals, the conservatives, the war, or globalization or some conspiracy of reptilians - but the basic problem is the US is going on it's third generation of a large class of people who believe the "good life" should be free and provided by the government, because for much of their lives it's been easy come/easy go. And that is exactly why so many are missing out on the good life - they're waiting for someone or something to provide it to them.

Americans may have wants, dreams, needs, but they have no pride - that's the social reality.

(BTW - note that Detroit/MI is heavily democratic/progressive as is long-time Cleveland congressman Kucinich. What does that tell you?)

Levi Stubbs (Four Tops) 1936-2008

When She Was My Girl

The One

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Sunday that he will be voting for Sen. Barack Obama, citing the Democrat's "ability to inspire" and the "inclusive nature of his campaign. He has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Powell, the man who over the years has covered for 2 Bushes and 2 wars, plans to vote Democrat.

Mainstream media is pushing Obama as "the one" just as easily as they pushed GW back in 2000 as the one - who would bring change. We saw where George W as "that one" has taken us.

The next one, apparently Obama, will finish the national transformation, comrade.

Italian Emigrants

Who's NeoEmpire

Yet another article on the decline and fall of the American empire.

Now, basically I agree with much of what this author says. I.e.: "People of real quality not only do not gravitate toward political leadership... The sooner this country gives up its dreams of world-bestriding dominance ... the better off we will be."

But - here's an issue I have with the constant drumbeat of and for the collapse of empire. Who will take its place? Do folks honestly believe, once they have finished voicing the hope for a better America to rise from the ashes of its demise, that the world will live as one, in perfect harmony with liberty and justice for all?

They seem pretty sure that China, Russia, EU, or XYZ will not step up to wear the robe of empire. When has the world not had a ruling power/empire? Do you really think the fall of American Empire will be replaced with a more benign or benevolent one?

Face it people - you will live under the rule of some Power Unit whether you like it or not. The question is - who's empire?

Articles such as Evidence of Decline are a dime a dozen and such prattle has been around at least since my great grandparents and grandparents time. Writers then too swore the self-indulgence, decadence, adventurism, and political corruption of the 1890s gilded age, the roaring '20s, and/or the free love '60s, were evidence of impending and imminent decline and doom. Ending each of those eras was a depression with periods of civil unrest/violence, and wars, with more power handed to the Government - under the misguided notion that Government would fulfill the promise of heaven - where billions will live in idyllic peace. Playing harps around the campfire?

And, many of my ancestors, being followers of the Good Book, believed such eras were prophetic proof of Revelations and Jesus returning to reign with 1000 years of peace after a lot of fire and brim, or something like that. Weird weather patterns and other events of nature were also omens of the second coming of the Lord who would straighten us all out.

I sometimes find it a bit humorous that many of today's non-religious "progressives" also believe in prophetic collapses and some "power" bringing a reign of world peace and justice - they just think man as lord will do it and not some guy in the sky.

Let the fall begin, so world leaders can convene, probably in Brussels or Vienna, and look down upon the milling billions to reward or punish our behavior, decrees issued without bias of course and as usual based on utility and productivity of we pissants.

At least the author above managed to get through another sky-is-falling but it's-good-for-us article without injecting the term "neocons." Although I wouldn't be surprised if in the future those NeoOne World Peacekeepers are telling our great grandchildren they are not eligible for some Utopian benefit because of global reconstruction - and they will refer the blame back to something as equally and sphincterally abstract such as the policies of those former marauding "neocons" or "neoliberals."

Only You Can Sweeten My Coffee

Casinos - Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye


The Platters - Only You

Making Bread

The latest bailout. I remember in the '80s the S&L bailout, $500 billion was the quoted taxpayer price tag on that one, which was also supposed to somehow save we the people and the economy so we would live long and prosper.

Yet here we are again.

My parents, grandparents and great grandparents survived the Great Depression and thus so will we if one comes. They too had to cough up x-illions to repay x-illions of borrowed dollars - but nothing like today.

During the Great Depression banks, stores, and factories closed. Subsequent laws in 1932 gave the Government more power than it has ever had - supposedly to ease the depression.

Each and every subsequent "crises" has given more power to the government. Geeze, Bubba, a conspiracist might think these crisis are planned and/or manipulated.

It is said during the Great Depression that 225,000 people roamed the country looking for work, food, shelter. For many others times were lean but little different than the frugal lives they were living before, and for others not much was different - colleges still turned out graduates, Hollywood still made movies and people still paid to see them, most folks still managed to pay their debts. People still made fortunes, had families, built homes, opened small businesses.

Americans do not have the same outlook today as my parents and grandparents. As my grandfather once said of the Great Depression: "By the time the government came to help - most everyone had helped themselves."

Some made bread.

My grandfather told a story from the depression of him and gramma and 2 other adult family members and their dozen or so young children who all shared a 2-story farmhouse during the worst years of the depression. Economically it may have been some of the worst of times but the stories of family unity sound far better than today's spoiled and isolated "modern" households.

My folks were the kings and queens of recycling long before it was trendy and green - from cooking grease to Christmas wrapping, button bags, rag bags, mason jars, clothing and shoes, everything handed down and down and down. Did you know cowpies and/or corncobs can be used for fuel? Old bedsheets and towels for diapers. Rabbit and squirrel feasts. My mom was a genius who turned water, flour, and meat grease into gravy. The men could outsmart a bear over a tree with honey and the women could snap a snake's head in the blackberry briar.

The men and women took work when and where they found it, they gardened, canned, bartered. They did without. They "went on diets" so the kids could always eat. They grew corn that fattened the chicken and geese; they ate chicken feet and chicken necks and sold the rest of the chicken, and feather pillows, to the "rich" people in town.

And yes on occasion they engaged in ... a little slightly ... ahem ... uh ... illegal activity. Aunt Kezzie's loaves of bread were famous in the county but not as sought after as uncle Oscar's homemade hooch. Oscar and Kezzie would argue over yeast - necessary in making bread and liquor.

One day the sheriff knocked at the door and 10-year-old Chester answered to a burly big-bellied uniform who drawled "Ya daddy here boy?" Chester: "Yassuh, he upstairs makin' bread." I can still hear my parents and grandparents laughing about that one.

It was not Roosevelt's programs or government handouts to the people that ended the Great Depression - it was WWII. Although many expert economists will argue it isn't so. But those empty factories were restarted and geared up for total war, hello Rosie Riveter. After WWII the 1950s boom lifted nearly everyone's boat as the conqueror had marched home with investments. Home ownership, cars, road trips to Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, and 2 chickens in every pot. Business was booming. The rise of the largest middle class the world has ever known was during the 1950s - short-lived, but live it did, churning out college grads who came from sharecropper parents, and suburbs and shopping centers spreading and sprawling within reach of daddy's Rambler stationwagon.

Don't be silly - the '50s were the age of peace and prosperity - not the Clinton era.

Whether you support the bailout or not - just remember that with each "new deal" in a crisis the little people are given a few pennies more in the soup stamp line, maybe a new coat of paint on substandard affordable housing, and enough wages or "assistance" to keep the cable propaganda on - along with all the crime and entertainment you can stomach watching.

If you cannot see the price tag for the new century American way of life - you're reading the wrong blog.

I'm still amused by "progressives" who rant the longest and loudest about US government's failures, but damned if they aren't the first in line expecting that very same government to "help us/save us." Is that a head-scratcher or what? Why would anyone in their right mind expect rescue from a government they believe is evil, corrupt, murdering, incompetent, failing?

It appears Bubba that America has become a nation of WWW - weak, waddling, whiners - waiting for the day when Government will make sure everyone has the same, is the same. But it will not be called conformity, no no no Bub - something like equal economic rights will do - as the majority will stand equal hours of time in the government help line. Where's my free goody basket and pass the paperwork for more gimme please. What a bore of a life that must be.

The spirit and independence of my parents and grandparents generations is nearly dead. RIP.

Regardless what the rich or poor are squealing for - may all the luck be with those brave souls who still believe work, sacrifice, and patience is the road to take - it's certainly less traveled these days.

(Oh, the sheriff only wanted to buy a jar of uncle Oscar's liquor, no arrests were made.)

McKinney Missing

A few marbles I believe.

I just heard, former congresswoman and presidential runner, Cynthia McKinney claims that during Katrina 5000 prisoners were murdered by one shot to the head and their bodies disposed of in the Louisiana swamps. The mother of a NG who was charged by DoD to dispose of the bodies told his mother who told McKinney.

I believe in government cover-ups and criminality - but this is over the top. I've warned you about McKinney in the past, that she is not the speak-truth-to-power-icon her supporters maker her out to be. McKinney portrayed herself as a 911 truther, raising valid questions about 911, and now she begins to lower her own cred with questionable accusations of 5000 bodies tossed in a swamp, which somehow didn't attract any attention at the time.

I suspect Cynthia is well-compensated for her role in the political sideshow.