Congress is playing the snuff videographer role-- in the worst kind of reality show imaginable.

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Congress is playing the snuff videographer role-- in the most horrific reality show imaginable.

There was a local network video cameraman, a number of years ago. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but it goes something like this: There was a scene where violence was occurring. The cameraman kept the camera rolling as a person was dying, instead of putting down the camera and calling for or offering help. He had to be thinking that this footage would win him an award or promotion. Afterwards, some, not all, questioned his priorities and judgment.

Today, we have a congress-- 540 legislators-- doing something very similar-- doing what they think they need to do to hold onto their jobs, while they watch a victim suffering from horrible injuries and do nothing. Only the victim is America-- the millions hit by the crashing economy, the subprime mortgage crisis, the 47 million without health insurance, the hundreds of thousand of troops coming home with head injuries or PTSD... and the members of congress watch, playing it safe, shamelessly failing to act, to take principled stands, instead, protecting their asses, saving their jobs.

Americans are awakening to the real threats to America and terrorism and the Iraq occupation are not at the top of the list.

The big questions are; What will happen to my retirement IRA or 401K? How will I pay my exploding mortgage payment? Do I have to stockpile food and water. Should I start a vegetable garden so I can survive this?

Jeanne, a local fellow activist friend, forwarded this to me:

Quoted from Atrios today: ROTFL
To paraphrase a commenter over at Firedoglake:

How's that plan for putting social security into the hands of Citibank, Merrill Lynch and the other financial 'wizards' as President Bush had so strongly urged looking now?

The threat America faces is not from Muslim terrorists. That is and has always been a distraction from the real threat-- a predatory, right wing supported administration working to destroy government and the laws and regulations which require that corporations hew to laws and decency, justice and fairness in the treatment of people and society. For seven years, that destruction has been eating away at the protections former administration put in place. The Democratic candidates know they will have a massive job of healing, repair and rebuilding, when they take office next year. But this year, we face a perfect storm of new and worse threats, as the deregulation, the sabotage at the federal agency level bears rotten fruit for the transnational corporations that now hold no loyalty to the USA.

Yesterday, we missed a major economic bullet. Or should I say that Bernanke used an economic weapon of enormous power-- the most powerful rate cut in 24 years-- to reduce the damage. And Bernanke deserves credit. His strategy worked.

The question is, if Bernacke used such a powerful tool/weapon yesterday, what does he have left, because this economic mess is far from over. According to a U.S.News and World Report article, In Private, Bernanke Tells Horror Stories,

"...in private he has expressed growing pessimism about the economy. Whispers has learned that has told people in recent weeks that the economic situation some see falling into recession will be much worse than he has admitted to publicly.

We're told by those who've heard him that he says the first six months of this year will be "bad," an adjective that some interpret this as signaling there is better than a 50-50 chance for a recession. Even worse, the former Princeton prof believes the ensuing recovery will be "weak" because of persistent problems in the housing market that will result in subdued consumer spending."

But today, we must give him credit. Electronic futures trading had foreshadowed a 500 point drop, and when the stock exchange opened, the DOW dropped 400 points. The announcement of the 75 basis point drop in the bank borrowing rate stemmed an ugly tide... effectively, cutting the drop to just a tad over 25% of what had been feared and making the US stock market's reaction to the previous day's international crash much milder.

Unfortunately, the question arises, how many times can massive rate cuts be applied, before there are diminishing returns?

A few days ago, I wrote that all Bernanke has is an up-down switch for moving the prime rate. I was wrong. He had another trick up his sleeve, and it worked.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the manipulation of the prime rate is becoming less and less effective in influencing the economy, because there are so many additional global factors which also influence the economy. It would be nice if the nation's leadership-- congress or the Whitehouse-- could flip a switch and correct the problems we face. But that doesn't happen in reality USA. Doesn't happen with Petraeus in Iraq, doesn't happen with the housing crisis, the subprime mortgage crisis, the impending credit-tightening crisis, health care and so many more.

Yesterday, Bush and off the table Pelosi and do nothing Reid got together to discuss the size of the bandaids to be used on the massively hemorrhaging economy.

The solution to these kinds of problems is simple-- inspired, visionary, courageous leadership that supports strong government and enforcement of regulations already in place to police abusive corporate behaviors.

Easy to say, not so easy to find. This kind of solution does not fend well with 15 second sound bytes or smarmy, know it all TV political commentators. Serious, earnest, visionary leaders are laughed at and mocked by the mainstream media, maybe because the solutions these leaders offer threaten the uber corporate owners of the corpstream media.

We have serious problems in America and the corpstream MSM are focusing on stupid, mentally ill, drug and alcohol abusing actresses, overdosing actors, personality pecadillos of candidate spouses. As the USA loses trillions of dollars in equity, in lost jobs and industries, in failed opportunities, blame the megacorporations that own and decide policy for the mainstream media. Democracy depends upon enlightened, open media to maintain transparency and citizen awareness. In technological times when our world is more complex than ever, it is essential for the media to function even better. But that's not happening.

Our legislators should be on top of the media. Instead they are cowed and manipulated by it, another sign of leadership weakness and failure. Unfortunately, this is not something that a politician can do alone. Legislators should band together and pass legislation that puts the media in its place. Parties should band together and negotiate with the media. It happened, in a small way, with FOX news, when the Dems refused to hold debates with Fox news. They could be doing much more, as I described shortly after the Nov. 2006 Dem election victory.

Today, the media are discussing the tax breaks-- the "stimulus package" Bush, Pelosi and Reid are negotiating.

This morning, CNN has a poll running, asking, Should the government do more to avert a recession. and the response is running 80% FOR more government intervention. What ever happened to all those anti-government Bush voters?

In a crisis, people don't trust and can't depend upon corporations that are responsible first and foremost to profits. Yet we now have a government frighteningly saturated with, or should I say thoroughly polluted with Bush appointees who are loyal to anti-government, anti regulation, anti-consumer, pro-corporatism principles-- and I hesitate to use the word principles in association with Bush appointees.

Which gets back to a topic I write about a lot-- impeachment. America faces many threats and dangers today. The citizenry has finally awoken to the reality that the real threat to America has come from within-- bad decisions, lies that led to war

But they have not put it all together yet-- that Bush-Cheney and their rubber stamping congress-- Dem and Republican-- are the base problem. Yes the Democrats too. Yesterday I wrote, asking "Are the Dems in congress are criminally insane?" Maybe. How else do we explain their failure to do what it will take to rescue the USA from the clutches of the predators currently running it into the ground?

It is time to tell the media to start doing their jobs.

It is time to tell your representative in the house of representatives to get off his or her fucking ass and start supporting impeachment.

It is time to tell your house rep and your senators to stop funding the occupation in Iraq, that you are no longer buying the constantly shifting "goals" of the occupation, that the surge did not work, that the goal was not pacification, it was political action and cooperation-- and that goal is STILL on the table.

It is time to tell your representative in the house of representatives to dump Nancy Pelosi and Stenny Hoyer and to replace them with someone who will respond to the will of the people, not the weak bladders and sphincters that seem to be making the decisions currently.

You want to see the economy fixed? Fix the root causes. You want to stop the bleeding? Don't talk about which size bandage to use. Take the goddamn knife out of the wound.

BTW, I'm watching CNBC today, more than ever, not the latest on dead celebrities on MSNBC and CNN.  

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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