The American Way: Is it really the best? Solutions

Light Reveals All

It's about time.  The US election is over. Thank God. Let us now ask the right questions, poke the right buttons at the right time, and shine the spotlight on root problems and encourage  productive governance.  Shall Americans now pledge to make progress, or fall, disheartened and disorganized,  into a recession?

Well, okay. Let's ask why.  Like it or not, the people have spoken. Like it or not, worth repeating,   President Barack Obama, most observably the first black president of the United States was not only elected, but  confirmed and returned to the job-and that is all it really is--is a job.

It's a big job. All right, it's a big job, no doubt. Big perks, big hype, big White House, big government, big media, big everything.  Bottom line, his big  job is to lead the people   Let's use round numbers;  say some 300 million  almost-consenting- almost adults of the United States--must now be led through some very tough times.

Why is this suddenly perceived to be so problematic? 
 Here's the way I see it.  Even adults and educated people face disappointment when our candidates do not 'win'. Don't cry, baby.
What else is new?
 
 Have presidents not led the United States of America through tough economic and political times before? How about Pearl Harbor? How about Viet Nam?  How about the Cuban Missile Crisis?   How about 9/ll ?  How about the manipulated financial global meltdown and sub-prime mortgage fiasco? How about the Gulf oil disaster, Iraq, Katrina,  Afghanistan. ..ad nauseum,.....never mind  Sandy, the newest  ugly storm that just gob-smacked the east coast of the United States of America? 

The fact is there's always another tough challenge facing any sovereign nation--and there will always be tough issues to deal with regardless of who leads the nation or runs the highest office.

Were your personal feelings hurt? Get over it. Stop whining.  Hello?    Americans collectively chose Barack Obama for a second term. Are you now admitting the majority of the United States is WRONG?   I thought not.
 The time for political games, bickering and bitching  is over. 

The fix:  Don't like the system that ignores the popular vote?  Fix it. don't like the Electoral college or the makeup of the Supreme Court?  Change it! Your candidate didn't win? Nominate a better candidate next time. 

The election went your way? Congratulations. Now act like it and show that your ideas ARE better than the status quo. Prove your ideas ARE better options for all Americans. Compromise and common sense is essential

 You have responsibilities, and it is time to begin acting like responsible adults. 

 Collectively, you now have the responsibility, the obligation to hand an environmental gem and proud economic legacy to your children and  grandchildren, not an impossible debt load, an economic death sentence, a broken, collapsed country, and an ecological  disaster caused only by stubborn, short-sighted greedy corporations, Big Money, endless consumption,  blinders to obvious defects in foolish  ideology erroneously perceived to be perfection and iron-clad, or just plain stupidity and lack of common sense. 

 The fact is, Americans  need to work shoulder to shoulder, not nose to nose. 

Is the American way the best?  Prove it.  The world is watching.  America needs conciliatory, creative solutions, not childish rants of 'winners' or vindictive, destructive tantrums of 'losers'. Whether you are a Billionaire, a single mom, a speculator, entrepreneur,  a middle manager or an unemployed plumber--a quantum change in thinking by Americans  is required.  

Not "if your candidate wins next time", but now, today. 

Is that Incoming I hear?    

The Greater the Event, the Less we Hear ?

Silence is upon us.   Let us properly call that "selective silence".  


Why?  With the media frenzy that usually accompanies major events such as the nuclear disaster at Fukushima,  one might expect to see some expression of continued in the plight of Japan, but no.  The same strange abandonment of other man-made and natural disasters seems to disappear with with the same finesse from the media.  Is it too much to ask to be informed?  Radiation from Fukushima has already crossed North America, but officialdom, like the media, keeps it hushed.   Are we  "to glow before we know"  what is happening?  Is there a  "the greater the event, the less we hear"  edict hidden somewhere in government files?
Germany is  intelligently closing down ALL nuclear plants by 2020.  North America is strangely " silent"  about it  instead,  no such plans HERE.
  We don't have to wonder why. The invoking  of common sense itself would be an earth-shattering event that would have to be silenced.
Does wild game  in North America have to become "polluted and unfit for human consumption"  with Fukushima radiation   like the wild boars ARE ALREADY  today in Germany--from 900 miles away,  --the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago--before it becomes a "news story" again? 


The Haiti  earthquake disaster may as well have occurred  a hundred years ago;  the "live"  victims may be healed, but they still live in tent cities,  the city, reduced to rubble  is NOT yet rebuilt,  the aid  "disappearing" into the strangling, secret pockets  of the bureaucracy.  Has that story, too, been "worn out" by the media, no longer worth contaminating a news page or computer screen?
Strange silence is emerging over the  Iraq war,   --"winding down", is it?   Or is it in fact really just another very expensive military failure that will be glossed over,  the new government just as corrupt as Saddam himself, with all the facts hidden from the public?
Never mind that war, we have NEW ones. We line them up, one after the other. 

Four Questions? Unbelievable Playground

(c)2011 r.a. kukkee

May 2nd approaches .  With the Canadian Federal election and campaigns in full swing, it is not surprising to see the playground empty. It is not  surprising to see, but difficult to understand  why any leader of any honest political party would  reasonably find it necessary to  "limit" reporters to FOUR questions a day. 

Four questions that are supposed to provide  enough "answers"  that will in turn somehow magically convince 34,000,000 election-exhausted  Canadians that a Conservative majority is deserved after a  problematic minority? 

Would a majority Liberal government be any better?

 Think about it.   We're more than  a bit skeptical.

Is the "Opposition" any better out on the campaign trail?  You guess.   

Here at Incoming Bytes, everyone is allowed to draw their own  opinion at will,  but  the majority of  election-savvy Canadians recognize  that campaigns are artificial events designed to deceive.     This is not just a policy to make an already tightly-scripted,  memorized,  highly-controlled plastic campaign  more effective,  but rather to  guard the fort and keep the  hidden agenda hidden more effectively, so please....the electorate does know better.

All Canadians know that such tools are  official  Party Muzzles  for ANY  politician that is almost guaranteed to make a mistake when tired,   grab someone by the throat,  stutter,  stammer, stammer a horrible gaffe , blow a line, promise the sky,  slobber all over the baby,  say the wrong thing,  stumble into enemy territory, insert both feet into  the foaming mouth, ---and  thereby throw  the "perfect"  political  campaign  off track, out into space, --or more likely,  as we commonly observe,   bury it  up to the hips in  the inevitable pile of crumpets out behind the horse barn. 

Such are political campaigns, nice try, boys.... but they do NOTHING to answer  REAL questions.  Funny,  the truth always comes out. 

We have questions. Real ones.  Not "approved" by the event organizer, changed to suit the campaign manager, or tweaked for an optimal  photo op.

• Just who IS stealing the election here?
•  Who tried to create a coalition in 2004 and is pretending otherwise?
•  Who has the WORST attendance record in parliament? 
• Does ANYONE deserve a majority? 
• Which Political party has NOT been scandalized or corrupted in the last 40 years?
• Who has told the most blatant, willful lies?
• Who has made the most inflated  promises, knowing full well they can not be kept?
• Who is buying the Canadian electorate with their own money? 
• Why do we still have a Senate which does nothing but cost taxpayers more every year? 
• Why are corrupt politicians allowed to collect fat Senate pensions?
•  Why is a  treasonous, regional separatist  party allowed to sit in our House of Commons ? 
•  Why are Canadians subsidizing petroleum companies when consumers are being gouged and gasoline is over $6.00/ gallon?
• Why are we exporting oil to the U.S. of A.  that has it's own GIGANTIC shale oil reserves? 
• Why are Canadian taxpayers subsidizing the oil sands to export that same oil to the USA ? 
• Why are Seniors in Canada forced to live below the poverty level?
• Why are Canadian troops still in Afghanistan? 
• Why are we buying  $150M per copy F35's  with  no engines?  
• Why did we spend a BILLION dollars on the G-20 summit? 
• Who is INTENT on gutting Canada's universal health care system-- perhaps the best health in the world? 
• Why should Canadians  possibly believe a "majority" would do any better, or more honest ?
•  Why is "fear-mongering" being used instead of common sense and logic? 
• Where are YOU taking OUR Canada??

OOPS.....that's more than four questions ----in  less than five minutes, ...imagine that.  hm.................What are we going to do for the REST of the campaign ? 

Let's face it,  in any political forum,  four questions a day doesn't cut it,,,,,,period.

Let's  cut the bull and call it what it really is,  a canned, memorized campaign  intended to  numb the minds of the election-weary electorate so REAL issues will never be addressed.   

Sadly,  it is clear that Canadians have a right to be skeptical.   Canadians have a right to a better, more responsible and more honest government.   
Get out in the playground and provide some good, honest governance, that's what you're being PAID to do. 

I know one thing; as a skeptical  Canadian voter I  have no intention to vote for "the dishonest". 

That's my opinion  and I'm sticking to it. 

The Talking Heads Debate : Repetitive Rhetoric, and Ominous Silence

It never fails to amuse observers of politics  how politicians defend their self-perceived  perfect records with the practiced lines of  child actors seeking perfection in a public school play, repeating the same Party rhetoric over and over whilst  accusing  one another of disrespect for Canadians and Democracy and the dignified Process of Governance.
The more likely fact is, political talking heads  collectively seem to increasingly lack any respect for Canadian voters, process,  honesty or  government itself, --and not surprisingly, Canada does not hold a monopoly on that contemporary political  phenomenon.

Politicians  seem to ooze honesty on television  collectively,   but  fail to admit the real  reason they are there,  the  really big issue,  which is not health care,   not  their concern  about Canada being misrepresented  in Foreign Affairs,  not $175M fighter jets, not the military involvement in Libya or Afghanistan,  not the Economy, even though" it's the economy, stupid" , and  certainly not  budgetary concerns including excessive waste spent in  Tony's   cute little Gazebo-infested  Conservative riding  that required  $50M  all at once just to build Gazebos and get "spruced up"  for viewing  by G20 leaders --for at least 15, maybe 20 minutes,   according to the Auditor-General's "not-to-be-trusted report"..... and  she's used to seeing stuff like that,   $2.6B wasted on an inefficient, foolish gun registry,  Multi-million-dollare fake lakes, $10M  long fences  and thousands of riot-equipped police to keep  citizens at bay,   G-8 Billion-dollar boondoggles,  being ruled in contempt of parliament,  Senator crookery  or anything of that "let's avoid that lickety-split"   nature.
We don't address.....well, we don't  REALLY want to address THOSE things on "national debate" night.

The real issue behind the  charade is the  primal driving force, well  hidden ,   which is the maintenance of an old-boy's security web, a  political party mutual admiration society  that behind closed doors,  studies diligently  the mechanics of the Prime Directive of that Society ---which is interpreted  in camera as :
" How do we ensure we're all  getting elected yet again so we get to keep our very big MP Pensions and make sure WE get tucked nice and neatly into the Senate too, even if we're crooks and scallywags ?" 
Perhaps it is written in a "mission statement" somewhere,  maybe on the back of  a brown  envelope containing big wads of cash.

With the "unwanted"  May 2nd election coming upon us fast,  another "National all party debate" was held today, except that all of the party leaders were not allowed to participate,  to wit,  Ms. Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party was excluded simply  because the Green party has not a single seat in the House of Commons;  the outrageous fact that NOBODY is "sitting"  in the House of Commons once an election is called seems to have been ignored,  but we all suspect  Ms. Green Elizabeth May doesn't support big corporations, including the  crabby, nasty   media group  that  excluded her from the DEBATE.
How can we have a debate if all parties are not represented?   Ans:  " Fill debate with Canned Questions, meaningless repetitive  blather, maybe nobody will notice."
Maybe they're all afraid of  Ms. May, she's an astute type, if a bit quirky, or maybe they just don't like green stuff like spinach.
Funny, they managed to  include  Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, wannabe kingmaker supreme,  who is constantly vowing to remove Quebec from Canada even though he knows Quebec can be soon divided up into rather large  enclaves of Canadian loyalists  if Canada should be parted, but he carried on like a trooper anyway. 
      The Harper-Ignatieff mutual admiration and exchange Chapter of the group expressed the strongest disdain  for each other and the other members present,  but Gilles  scuffled away,  and Jack Layton calmly  representing the NDP  kept them busy slip-sliding around.   At times it seemed  Jack  was actually winning the debate with  calm and wit a la crutch,  with  Gilles  crustily  pretending his Bloc representation of Quebec in the Canadian National debate actually makes  a difference in said  National debate.
He scored  one for the Nipper  on  old Harper's  coalition-bent  letter though,  make that Harper's old coalition letter,   no doubt about that one.   Making bed with the Bloc, a paper enemy and pale-faced ghost, it was.  Stephen appeared uncomfortable with that timely reminder.
But, bottom line, no score was noted anywhere  by tired political observers; it's all been seen before, lies,  lies, promises,  loads of sheeple manure, and   Iggy's Liberal  "a chicken in every pot"  promises,  "gotta get after those guns",  ...and ....and.... and nothing has, or ever will  change.

Meantime, out in the real world,  with the Japanese Fukushima disaster now being compared to Chernobyl,  not a word was mentioned.  
Ominous silence. We don't wish to be told we're about to  be glowing in the dark anyway, do we? 

Perhaps we should  blame Ms.  May for that one too after all, she wasn't there to bring it  up.  We can't blame Elizabeth?    Excluded you say?    No  matter.  The Talking Heads have spoken and Canadian Politics is fine and well and predicable as can be. 
That's just as well, Canadians like talking heads,  high taxes, wasteful spending,  crooked politics,  $6.00/gallon gas  and predictability--and we all know nothing is going to change, no matter WHO is elected.
We'll go vote anyway, at least we get to see the neighbours  at the polling station and chat a bit.
That's my opinion  and I'm sticking to it.
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EXILE: Is the Revival of an old punishment a Solution to Home-Grown Terrorists?

There is a growing problem the west must face, and soon.
Civilized western countries are sadly discovering“home-grown” terrorists within their borders, radicalized  individuals holding  passports and legal citizenship by being born or naturalized in Canada, the United States, France, Germany or England.
 Some individuals have already been found guilty of  planning terrorist attacks on their respective countries  in spite of the fact they should clearly pledge allegiance  instead of training and planning treasonous, death-dealing  terrorist attacks upon the innocent within their borders.

The Asian Times Online, based in Hong Kong,  citing Taliban sources, has recently reported that as many as a dozen Canadians were being trained “for jihad” in Pakistan by al Quaida.   These recalcitrant individuals  were reportedly being specially trained for attacks within large cities in Canada. (1)
“The Canadian RCMP and their security and intelligence partners” are reportedly investigating the information. The report adds that other westerners from the U.S, Britain, and Germany area also being trained for jihad in North Waziristan, Pakistan, which borders on Afghanistan.  The Canadians reportedly joined Jihad al-Islami, an Egyptian terrorist organization.

Canada is not alone with this problem.  As many as 30 or 40 “hardcore terrorists” from Germany are known to be in the same area of Pakistan.  “A spokeswoman for Germany's Federal Criminal Police office said in October there was "concrete evidence" that 70 German citizens had undergone terror training in Pakistan’s lawless border region and that about a third of the militants had returned to Germany.”(1)

Returned to Germany?  The question must be posed, “Why were they allowed to return to Germany?”    Will the radicalized, terrorist-minded Canadians now also  be allowed to innocently “return” to Canada to carry out their terrorist attacks any time they wish ?
Let us give our heads a shake.  The western world needs to remove the blinders it is now wearing. The concept of treason comes to mind.

Treason  has been known to be punishable by death in times past. The death sentence was usually carried out by “hanging by the neck until dead”. It sounds kind of barbaric, but do fanatic  suicide bombers that kill or maim thousands of people annually care if their own terrorist activities are “barbaric”?  No.
 Regardless, in civilized countries, the concept of  “an eye for an eye” and a death sentence inflicted is considered to be  repulsive to the majority of peace-loving people.  That was not always so. .
I remain unconvinced that modern society retains the stomach for applying the death sentence even to radicalized  individuals who, only a few years ago, might have been quickly hung for treason or murder,  and a few centuries prior to that, may have been disemboweled,  drawn and quartered with their remains “spread to the corners of the kingdom”,  their heads left to dry on tall pike-poles as a deterrent to any new  would-be perpetrators. Some found “less guilty” may have been  chained in dungeons until they became repentant skeletons.
So be it. Times have changed.  What can be done now?

 I fail to see how any civilized society should be required to feed and care for  such evil individuals,  maintained in a nice federal penitentiary, a dark dungeon or otherwise, with  a nice  warm bed, television,  good books,  education, rehabilitation,  and entertainment provided to them even for a day, much less for a lifetime of luxury and enough time to foment other evil, destructive plans.
Modern times demand different solutions.
 Back in the “good old days” as punishment for any number of crimes, such recalcitrant, evil or misguided individuals might also have been exiled,   banned permanently from a village or city, or in the extreme, shipped off to live elsewhere offshore  quite uncomfortably,   never to be allowed to return to their  homes  under any circumstance.  The basic concept was to ship convicted individuals to live where they can ultimately  harm no one but themselves. Great Britain shipped thousands of convicts and criminals to Australia.

Is it time for civilized nations to begin using the same  legal process once more?  Let us evaluate whether complete removal of these individuals from our  society and country will act as a deterrent.  Most Canadians  believe that living in Canada is a privilege, not a God-given right and it involves responsibilities, demands loyalty rather than deception, and most certainly should not permit  treason, terrorist activities, and murderous acts.
“ Sir, do you wish to be a fanatic?  You have been trained for terrorist Jihadist attacks upon Canadians?  You are hereby deemed to have willfully abused and discarded your rights and privileges as a Canadian.  As of today, you  are no longer a Canadian citizen..... Hereafter, within a period of 24 hours,  you shall be shipped off to live elsewhere, in a third-world hole of your choice, and you shall remain there for the rest of your natural life. Do not try to return to Canada under the penalty of death. ...... “ Bye-bye”....   “Next case!”  

Perhaps we really  should revive the concept of permanent exile.    It just might be worth a try.
(1)  http://ca.news.yahoo.com/rcmp-probe-report-saying-canadians-training-al-qaida-20110114-194834-598.html