DR. BULLSHIT SPEAKS

SEPTEMBER 25, 2010.  This is a red-letter day.  Welcome to the inauguration of a new column.  Save them.  Some day, they’ll be worth millions.  Millions of what, I don’t know. 

From high above the media tombs of New York and Washington DC, I, the good doctor, offer a different slant on the news…

I received my PhD in Bullshit from a prominent Ivy League college many years ago, when the world was young.  My thesis focused on political bullshit, although I also dabbled in the fields of a far denser brand: medical bullshit.

I traveled the world and, first-hand, reveled in astonishing varieties of bullshit.  Israeli bullshit, Arab bullshit, Asian bullshit, African bullshit, European bullshit, South American bullshit, and of course the premier vacuumed-packed government-inspected American bullshit.  Several times on my voyage, I was on the verge of concluding there were Demons of Bullshit who were infecting the whole human species.  But I finally pulled back from that, one night in Tangier when, when standing at the bar of the old decaying version of the Hotel Tanjah Flandria, I received a revelation from within: people loved bullshit.  They loved listening to it, watching it, feeling it, handling it and propagating it.  They wanted it.

That changed everything… 

ITEM 1:  Steaming barrels of fetid rhetoric re gay marriage and straight marriage keep pouring on to the air waves.  “The sacred institution should be reserved for a man and a woman and a penis and a vagina.” 

Yeah.  Well, if it’s so sacred, get married in a church and have the dude in the cloak make up his own certificate and sign it.  I may be wrong, but did the early Pure-it-tans in Mass. stand in line at some log cabin city hall and apply for a license on a rainy Tuesday afternoon?  Did they take a number?  Is that what they needed to justify their nuptials? 

The state never had any business sticking its morbid nose in marriage, which by the way is not an institution at all, except in the overheated minds of moral pundits.  And forget special government benefits for the married, too.  That’s a load. 

You want to get married?  Man to man?  Woman to woman?  Woman to man?  Man to Buick?  Woman to Macy’s?  Do it yourselves on your own and shut up.  Now, of course, if you’re of a mind to stone or hang or decapitate your wife because you imagine she cheated on you, we’re in a different pew.  That’s felony murder special.  Guerney, straps, and IV.  But I digress.  Point is, nothing about marriage implies that government should be the slightest bit interested, concerned, or involved, any more than it should be involved in mapping wrinkles on old people’s asses.

ITEM 2:  This one you actually have to read.  Take your time.  Breathe. 

Rawsome, a natural health food store in Venice, CA, was raided this summer by local cops BRANDISHING WEAPONS.  The crisis?  Store was selling raw milk.  Have to use guns in a situation like that.  A kid might pull an AK out of a block of cheese. 

Parallel: New study out of Germany (authors from Robert Koch Institute et al): “A commercial cheese (acid curd) made from pasteurized milk caused a large listeriosis outbreak in Germany from October 2006 through February 2007…Of patients with available detailed information on cheese consumption (n=47), 70% reported to have consumed the incriminated cheese product. Recent European food safety alerts due to Listeria-contaminated cheeses more often concerned products made from pasteurized or heat-treated milk than from raw milk…”

Do we need a pop quiz for this?

ITEM 3:  Yesterday, Stephen Colbert testified before the House Subcommittee on Blah-Blah about migrant farm workers.  Reporters and most committee members were miffed at his in-character presentation.  Well, they would be.  Do habitual fakers enjoy seeing a conscious faker? 

Rule number one in politics and journalism: don’t break the trance.  The river of crap flowing out of Washington moves in stately profundity.  Do not turn around and point at the source.  “We’re the professional fakers.  We don’t want this kid coming in here and stealing our thunder.” 

But steal it he did.  Colbert is a liberal who plays a conservative on TV.  Next time, bring in Ann Coulter impersonating a liberal.  Come on.  Live a little, you pussies.

ITEM 4:  Washington DC.  Every morning at nine, up on the Hill, an inveterate craps player from Atlantic City with a solid cocaine habit rolls the dice in the rotunda.  By a predetermined system, the numbers on the dice are correlated with phrases in the novels of James Joyce.

After 75 rolls of the dice, these phrases are connected in order.  That will be the Bill debated on the floor of the House and Senate.

At 3PM, two Victoria’s Secret models—one in the White House and one on the Hill—fart, and everyone goes home for the day.

ITEM 5:  The other day, I was listening to some talk-show host starting to work up a lather about excessive taxes.  Outrage was building in him.  Clean honest outrage, like wind sweeping clouds off the city.  Then a woman called who was a charity worker, soup organizer, and she said, “I hear anger in your voice.”  This was a goody-good putdown, you see.  She heard anger.  O gosh oh gee, the game is over, because the host is angry, and that means he can’t be on the right track.  He must be mired in his own ISSUES.  She’s the shrink, and he’s the patient.  The woman was getting away with it.  The host said, “I’m not angry.”  That was his stupid mistake.  She wouldn’t quit.  She kept coming, like some kind of dental drill out of a Unitarian save-the-world-I’m-giving-everything-to-everybody-and-I-love-you-too-even-though-you’re-a-selfish-prick riff.  I could hear that dental drill going at the end of her snake’s tail.  Slithering bright snake of her own Lord in the grass.  Sociopathic altruism.  A beautiful thing.  When a big foot finally comes down on it, the blood that flows isn’t red, it isn’t blue, it’s an inhuman green.  Like lubricating fluid in a machine.

ITEM 6:  All over this country, you can find playgrounds and ball fields empty.  Nothing happening.  Aside from TV, video games, and obesity, want to know why?  Insurance policies.  If soccer mom’s precious little Kyle falls down rounding second base and gets a boo-boo and mommy isn’t there to kiss it and make it better, her hubby can sue the school for half a mil without blinking—and the insurance won’t cover it.  Because the “activity” wasn’t “supervised.”  It was just kids playing like they’re supposed to.  Now they have GPS chips behind their ears. “Oh look, little Harry’s crossing the street against the light.  Call out the SWAT team.” 

“Hi honey.  Did you have a good intramural game today?”

“It was okay.  We lost.”

“WHAT?  They kept score?  Wait ‘til I tell your father.  He’ll have the firm all over those motherfuckers.  Do you feel damaged?”

“Somewhat depressed, mom.  It may be a transient event.  Hard to say at the moment.  But I’m certainly registering the sensation of being abused.”

“Of course you are!  I’m going to take some photos.  Stand over there by the fireplace.  Then I’ll call Dr. Blitzkrieg and arrange an emergency session.  Do you have your Zoloft in your Fannie Pack?”

“No.  Don’t you remember?  You scarfed down the last few yesterday.  Then, in an entirely unrelated incident, you tried to stab the fucking dog.”  

DR. BULLSHIT

www.nomorefakenews.com

NEWS ROUNDUP FOR A JADED BUT SECURE AUDIENCE

SEPTEMBER 24, 2010.  ITEM 1: Okay, so the Democrats and Republicans in the senate are launching proposals to settle the issue of the death tax—AKA, the estate tax. 

You know, where you croak and your lawyer reads the will to your relatives, all of whom have calculators in their hands.     

The Democrats want to grab 55% of any estate worth above $1 million.  The Republicans want 35% of any estate above $5 million.

Am I missing something here?  Is there some intrinsic mystical reason for considering death a “taxable moment?”  Or is it just another opportunity to grab huge chunks of loot from people who can’t complain because they’re in a box in the ground?

I thought so.

You work all your life, you accumulate assets, but they aren’t yours.  Only part is yours.  And your passing marks the fact that the feds have their hands up your stuff.

“So at the funeral of my beloved father today, I want to welcome family and friends…and the IRS, who is taking 55 points from his estate.  As an aside, how can I get in on this friggin’ racket?”

ITEM 2: Drudge headline this morning: DC OVERRUN BY ‘STINK BUGS’.  Hey, we know that.  They crawl around, don’t do anything useful, and man do they look ugly.  Frank, Waxman, add your own faves…

ITEM 3:  Warren Buffet tells taxpayers to get over their anger.  It’s not productive, he says.  Thanks, Warren.  I was looking for a little of that homespun wisdom.  Now will you buy me an ice cream cone at the corner sweet shop?  Taxpayer anger was probably unproductive back in 1776, too.  That Tom Paine was a real prick. 

ITEM 4:  1% of the UK population is gay and lesbian.  National survey.  But here’s the good part.  A half of one percent, when given the choice of listing themselves as straight, gay, or bisexual, said they were “other.”  They’re the most interesting ones.  Animals?  Tree trunks?  Fire hydrants?  Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason?  I’m waiting for an activist group forming around the idea of gay men coming out of the closet and admitting they’re really straight.  Wait.  It’ll happen.  You know why?  Because by my count, 84% of people want to confess a secret, any secret, and if there’s a sliver of a chance they can get on TV to do it, they’ll friggin’ say ANYTHING.

ITEM 5:  Is Hillary Duff ready for motherhood?  Question was posed by ET or TMZ or Crapola Video News.  Not ready to give a considered answer yet.  But how about Hillary Clinton running for veep along side Obama?  Don’t count it out.  Bill gets appointed as ambassador to England or Germany to keep him out of the way.  Build-a-Burger.

ITEM 6:  Now that the hubbub has died down and is rotting in the sun—the book was wrong.  The movie was wrong.  It should have been Love, Pray, Eat.  Eat yourself into oblivion.  Far more interesting.

ITEM 7:  Nasal spray cures shyness.  Study reveals that shooting oxytocin up your nose—the so-called love hormone—allows socially unproficient types to achieve more empathy.  But do we want them to?  It might turn out to be another nightmare form of political correctness.  How about a spray that makes you more rebellious, intelligent, and daring in situations where everything hangs in the balance?

ITEM 8:  In case anyone’s still interested, since the current news cycle on it is done, the Mosque at Ground Zero is complete bullshit.  And I’m not even talking about hidden agendas.  Anyone who builds a big center dedicated to peace, understanding, international good will, and cooperation is fronting a line of old fashioned jive.  It means nothing.  It does nothing except produce mountains of insincere brain-wasting rhetoric and bad lunches. 

ITEM 9:  Tumors may cure chemotherapy.  Don’t count it out.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010.  You may recall that the decision to launch the current 18-month surge in military action came after President Obama engaged in a six-month appraisal of the situation.  Obama explored the matter from top to bottom.  He consulted with military advisors.  He dragged out every possible option.

So what are we doing in Afghanistan again? 

Let’s review.

Shortly after 9/11, Bush ordered the US invasion.  Supposedly, the goal was to find Osama Bin Laden and also knock out Al Qaeda training camps.

Rapidly, those objectives became entangled with overpowering the Taliban, the strongest military and political force in the country.  The Taliban was cooperating with Al Qaeda: That was the rationale.

Bush’s mission, according to press reports and White House press releases, was a partial success.  Although Bin Laden was never found, Al Qaeda enclaves were destroyed.  And the Taliban was pushed into relative obscurity.

A US handpicked Afghan president was elected with the goal of unifying the country.

Fast forward to Obama.  Predictably, the Taliban had come out of the woodwork and was asserting its supremacy once again.  Al Qaeda encampments were operating out of the no-man’s land between Afghanistan and Pakistan and inside Pakistan, where according to some experts, they always had been. 

The decision to go back into Afghanistan with more troops was based on the idea that the people and tribes and clans and villages of the country could be extricated from Taliban control if US troops took on an overt role as helpers and builders.  Villages would be cooperatively strengthened and made more independent, etc.

This proposition presented several obstacles.  Tribes and clans in Afghanistan have been warring with each other for centuries.  Afghanistan was never a true nation.  Disentangling locals from the Taliban would demand thousands of micro-managed operations.  Of course, once US troops left, as Obama promised they would, after 18 months, the Taliban would reappear and resume their coercive conquests.  Finally, the new central government of the country, a corrupt bunch, was viewed by most of the population as a remote power having no relevance or connection to their own concerns or lives. 

To date, there is no sign that any of these obstacles have been overcome decisively.

What reason do we have to believe they will be?

And why, again, did Obama think he could gain significant ground in Afghanistan?  How was this a war whose goals could be met?

Training up an Afghan army has proved to be an extremely difficult feat.  Soldiers desert, they steal supplies, they feel only a faint obligation to police their own country.  So when US forces come home, what will be left behind?

What was and is Obama thinking?

In August, Afghan President Karzai issued an invitation to hold new discussions with President Obama about the course of the war.  Karzai stated that the war should not be about villages; it should be about shutting down Taliban terrorist attacks.  Karzai also remarked that civilian casualties caused by foreign troops continue to be a major source of resentment among the Afghan population. 

In other words, by Karzai’s estimate, the war is a failure.  Whatever good will is being engendered by the “village-building” efforts of US troops is being undermined by the civilian casualties. 

No matter what platitudes one might want to ascribe to war, it always involves destroying civilians.  We can wish that it should not be so, but then we are talking about something other than war.  Surely, Obama and his generals understood this going in.  Restrictive rules of military engagement don’t eliminate bringing harm to civilians, and these rules also open US soldiers to grave danger.

Perhaps Obama’s real objective in Afghanistan has been to avoid the embarrassment of watching a US-created central government topple into the dust.  If so, that’s a scant and cruel motive for war—especially since the Karzai crowd seems entirely capable of bringing itself down.

Or perhaps the US is in Afghanistan because certain people are hoping to control the oil/natural gas pipeline across the country, if it is eventually built.  Or because of the estimated trillion-dollar mineral deposits which have been known about for some time.  Or because the opium poppy business is worth many billions.  We can speculate on these and other motives—establishing, for example, US military platforms close to Russia and Iran—but meanwhile, the US administration is no closer to achieving its vaguely stated goals for the war than it was when Obama took office.

The human and financial costs for this quagmire are very steep.  And no amount of high-flying noble rhetoric coming out of the White House will curtail those costs or, as far as the eye can see, bring America closer to national security.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport is the author of the LOGIC AND ANALYSIS course for home schoolers.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

HEALING EXCURSIONS

SEPTEMBER 12, 2010.  Yesterday, I wrote and sent out an article about a technique for reducing stress.  I call it Excursions.  These are “guided imagery” sessions, in which a person experiences other dimensions of energy and other places…

I’ve been working with clients in this way for many years now.

Well, the Excursions can go a lot farther than my previous description.  Let me start with a recent statement from a very close friend:   

“I am just out of the Rehab ward of a local hospital due to a stroke that affected my left side.  As I lay thinking about procedures that they use, I realized that it wasn’t enough for me. 

“I remembered that Jon had done an audiotape titled Excursions for the purpose of expanding the power and scope of our imagination.  We got together with the idea that he could help me imagine myself back to my normal physical state.  We did six wonderful Excursions, and after the second one I could grip with my left hand which was something I could not do at all up to that point.  As the Excursions progressed, my condition progressed rapidly to the place where I could return to the office after only two weeks on that ward.

“The medical establishment knows so little about our multidimensional SELF.  And it was the Excursions from Jon that my imagination needed in order to reestablish the connection of my motor nerves with that part of the brain that had been cut off.  There is nothing mechanical that can replace this magnificent healing technique because all healing of any significance must start with the imagination.  I am so thankful for Jon and his unique talents.”

There is so much to say about all this.  Let me start here.  When a human being is in transition, which is to say, passing from a less inclusive to a more inclusive state of mind, many new possibilities enter the equation.  Data, material, ideas, images, energies which formerly made no sense or could not be included are now relevant.

I’m not talking about an ironclad system of new beliefs or thoughts.  I’m talking about an expansion in which SPACE AND THE FUTURE open up to an extraordinary degree. 

In this state, Excursions can produce results that go far beyond the reduction of stress. 

That is because healing takes place on many levels.  You can’t count them all or label them or put them into neat categories.  Connections which were formerly IMPOSSIBLE are now, suddenly, operating.

And when we glimpse or see those new connections, we realize we had been living in a limited set of spaces.  We had been accepting consensus reality and molding our options and choices based on that consensus.

Through these improvised Excursions, imagination comes to the fore as a vital force, and old notions of reality are surpassed.

My friend was ready for such a transition, and in our sessions, she was somehow, quite naturally, able to accelerate beyond the “normal” process of recovery into another path of healing.

On my side of things, I need to take these Excursions into places and energies that exceed ordinary standards and models. 

Perhaps this brief article gives you a bit more insight into what I’m working with.

For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

UN-STRESSING LIFE—A TECHNIQUE

SEPTEMBER 11, 2010.  Let me start right off with a testimonial from a client, and then I’ll explain what this is all about:

“Some years ago, I was in the midst of an emotional crisis, (not really all that unusual for me), but this was a big one, causing me a great deal of stress.  I was leaving my home and city of forty years and was very upset and confused as to what to do and where to go next.  I live on the East Coast and Jon is on the West so we worked by telephone.  Once a week we spoke.  He would lead me through a series of guided visualizations which I taped and listened to every day.  They were extraordinary, touching me on a very deep level.  They bi-passed the critical thinking part of my brain and without my really becoming aware of it, my whole perspective and psyche began to change.  The stresses and anxiety took a back seat and I began to think more assertively and focus in on what I really wanted.  Those weeks and months turned out to be a magical time of growth and learning.  I owe Jon a debt of gratitude for this magnificent journey which certainly could not have happened without his help.”

Harriet Effron

For the past 15 years, I’ve been developing various methods to eliminate stress. 

During the last two years, I’ve been receiving more queries about these strategies—because in the current economic landscape, people are feeling pressure.

The best technique I’ve found for dealing with stress is what I call the Excursion.  Through what is popularly labeled “guided imagery,” I take people on Excursions into other spaces where energies that diminish stress and increase health enter the body and the mind.

These Excursions don’t require effort or struggle.  The client simply follows along and receives the benefits of the trip.

An Excursion operates in two ways.  It introduces de-stressing energies, and it allows the client, for a short time, to “inhabit” an alternate space where problems and solutions don’t exist.

In these landscapes, a person taps into fulfillment and idealized circumstances.  The mind and emotions are given a heightened vacation and begin to learn, piece by piece, what self-realization feels like.

Life tends to train the mind to accept a condition of dissatisfaction.  Getting out of this box requires the direct experience of something quite different: fulfillment.

The Excursion provides that.

The telephone sessions are short—about 15-20 minutes.  Over the course of several sessions, the client, without effort, is reoriented in the direction of greater happiness and less stress.

Many clients record these sessions for later use.

Feel free to contact me at qjrconsulting@gmail.com.  I can work individuals or groups.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

AUGUST 26, 2010.  A hundred years ago, in America, an old idea was given new legs:

Help everybody.

It seemed like a simple premise, even if its implications would eventually shred every sentence in the Constitution, like a worm eating paper.

Most of the proponents of this idea have experienced a jolt of personal adrenaline from it—as in, “Why didn’t I think of this before, why was I so focused on Me, why did I imagine my small mind was more important than the collective mind, of course this why we’re all here on planet Earth.”

Good for them.

And of course, who would carry the freight of this grand “help everybody”premise?  Government.  No other body or institution would be up to the task.

Much of the growth of government over the last century has involved burgeoning bureaucracies whose purpose is to do good.  Help everybody.

Now, that gigantic expansion is running into a brick wall.

The federal government and state governments can’t pay for the cost of saving every soul.

If you look at California and Illinois, you’ll see the state governments were in big financial trouble long before the financial meltdown of 2008.  So were other states.  And the budget woes of the feds have been the stuff of legends since the 1950s.

The point is simple.  If you expect to give everything to everybody, it’s wise to add up the price tag, project future outlays, and check your bank account.

And if tax increases form the basis of your strategy, you’d also better nail down the percentage of wages you’ll eventually have to extract from working people.  50%?  60%?  70%? 

It’s just common sense.

But almost nobody in government wanted to face that.

And now we’re here.

We’re at the crossroads where doing good for everybody and bankruptcy meet at the OK Corral.

But of course, when the army of “help everybody” plus those who are given the free stuff discover their system is irretrievably broken, they don’t like it.

They don’t care that there is no money to pay for “services.”

And what about the architects of this dream of endless financial altruism?  What do they think?

The architects think the grand solution, up the road from here, is going to be a complete revamping of the present money system.  That’s what they envision as the Final Bailout.

And not just in America.  Everywhere.

They imagine, in other words, a permanent globalist intervention that will have repercussions far beyond a new form of money. 

The means of production and distribution of goods and services will come under an umbrella of Central Planning.  For the planet.

Whatever new incarnation money takes will flow from that superstructure of Central Planning.  It will envelop the Earth and usher in a new age of Justice for All.

Therefore, in the meantime, borrow, borrow to pay the interest on the first loan, borrow wherever you can.  Fall deeper into debt, it doesn’t matter.  The cavalry is over the hill and they’re coming.

It has to come, because the noblest motive is Help Everybody, and nothing else really matters.

These architects are waiting until they think the present crisis is cutting deep enough—so that few people will object to a massive reorganization of society.

In such a society, individual freedom will be a word that is severely tempered by “what is best for everybody.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing signs of this shift for a long time.  And I’ve noticed that in back of every sign is the same rationalization: “the common good.”

When I search the Constitution for evidence that this is what the Founders wanted, I don’t find any.

When I look around at society, I see more and more people who look to the government to save their souls.  So why don’t senators and Congressmen and presidents just don the robes of priests and get it over with?  Why don’t they burn incense and candles on Capitol Hill and in the White House and chant mantras for The Special and Sacred Cosmology of Everybody?

Let’s stop pretending.

As the Help Everybody mantra spread through the ever-growing bureaucracy of government, certain individuals inside the bureaucracy saw the mantra as a way to advance their careers.  Individuals like Reid, Pelosi, Obama, for example.  They could merge doing good with personal power.  They didn’t even have to think about the difference between “my power” and “the good.”  The two became One.  When the occasion demanded, they could turn on either spigot. 

They could sense the mantra growing and expanding, until it became “the idea whose time has come.”  Then they could feel the thrill of riding that wave to victory.

“Help everybody get everything all the time” is now a bona fide religion, and it is omnipresent in government.  The Founders may have been able to curtail the formation of a state religion when they wrote the Constitution, but they couldn’t stop the growth of this disguised religion.

Let’s use an acronym for the “help everybody get everything all the time” religion.  HEGEAT.  Bow down to the Faith.

There are certain principles or instructions or corollaries that flow from the basic premise of HEGEAT:

Give special privileges to those who may have been denied help in the past.

Allot special status to those who need the most help.

Take from those who don’t need help and give to those who do need help.  Take as much as possible.

Exhibit tolerance without limit to those who are labeled as victims—even if they aren’t really victims.  Extend this tolerance to those victims who want to destroy nations, because that impulse toward destruction arose only because they were denied, at some point, getting everything for nothing. 

Offer as much free stuff as possible to those who emigrate to any given nation.  There aren’t really any nations anymore.  There are only places that are able to give more free stuff or less free stuff.

The priesthood of HEGEAT may offer everything and anything to populations, while at the same time leveraging this charity into a form of control.

If the ability of HEGEAT to keep giving free stuff diminishes because there is no money left to pay for it, change the game.  Invent a new form of money that will allow the giveaway to continue.

Insist, despite advancing technology that can produce more with less energy, that there is only a finite amount of resources on the planet—and therefore the allocation of these finite resources must emanate from HEGEAT Central Planning, the spiritual headquarters of Earth.

Consider all business self-centered and self-absorbed and greedy and the enemy of HEGEAT.  Find new and better ways to limit the ability of businesses to make and sell their products and services.  Of course, in the long run, this strategy will severely curtail the capacity to give everybody everything all the time, but that situation is solved by redefining what is possible and lowering expectations.

On and on and on, keep saying, “Children are our best hope.”  And use any and all means to keep giving children Everything, because that will surely make them feel good about themselves, even if they haven’t earned or achieved anything.  Just by being, by existing, the kids deserve everything that can be doled out to them.  To make sure the children grow up to be all they can be, interfere at every turn with what their parents believe is the best way to raise them.  Socially engineer, medicate, diagnose, protect, award, graduate, coach, monitor, celebrate, and elevate children.

In every way possible, induce amnesia on the subject of the FREE AND POWERFUL INDIVIDUAL.

HEGEAT!

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for home schoolers.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

ANOTHER LOGIC TESTIMONIAL

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for home schoolers and adults.

He can be contacted at qjrconsulting@gmail.com   

JULY 21, 2010.  A mother of two children in California is home-schooling her oldest son.  She ordered my course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, and is using it with success.  Here is what she recently had to say.  I think you’ll find it interesting.

“I didn’t really understand what logic was, when I started reading your articles about it.  Prior to that, I assumed I knew how to analyze material and information.  My method was simple: Consider the source.  This was my whole approach.

“If I trusted an author and believed in him, I accepted his information.  If I didn’t trust him because he was writing for the ‘wrong’ newspaper or website, I rejected his conclusions. 

“With a source I trusted, I would even fill in holes in his work, to make it come out right.  I’d assume he was leaving out facts to make his argument simpler and easier to understand.

“Once I ordered your course and started studying the teacher’s manual, I realized there were better ways to judge information.  The most important thing was, I realized I could be my own independent judge, because I now had standards I could apply.

“Before then, I really had no standards.  I wasn’t sure any existed.  The teacher’s manual opened my eyes.  By the time I was half way through it, I saw that I could analyze a passage and follow the line of reasoning in it.  I could see where the author was heading, and I could figure out whether he was getting there or forcing a conclusion where none really existed.

“Now I have gone through the manual twice.  Something new has happened.  I see circumstantial arguments are everywhere.  Authors are collecting ideas and facts and shaping a persuasive case…but they are more like lawyers in a courtroom.  They are using these facts and ideas to build the best defense they can, but they are cutting corners.  They have a conclusion they want to arrive at, and they’ll manipulate whatever they need to, to get there.

“I can now pinpoint the flaws in their arguments very precisely.  As I teach the course to my son, he’s doing the same thing.  He sees how persuasion is shaped, and he can explain an argument contained in an article very clearly.  He can show me where the author is fudging results and departing from logic.  It’s very gratifying to see him developing this ability.

“It hit me one day that, in an open society, we will always have people trying to persuade each other that they are right.  There will always be argument and counter-argument.  This can be a good thing, if we know enough logic to be able to decide for ourselves who is making the most valid argument. 

“If we lack training and education in logic, we’ll be swayed in the wind from one side to another, and we’ll end up making very questionable choices…”

Margo Y.

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 30 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He is the author of Logic and Analysis, a new course for home schools.  His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com.  He can be contacted at qjrconsulting@gmail.com 

OBAMA CALLS AL QAEDA RACIST

JULY 14, 2010.  Some very strange statements have been coming out of the White House lately.     

Speaking like the president of an African nation, Obama called Al Qaeda a racist organization, because:

It bombed a venue in Uganda;

It uses black men only in low-level positions, as suicide bombers.

In other words, if Al Qaeda had a few black executives in a corner office with a nice view, it would be improving its profile?

Why does Obama ignore what Al Qaeda has done in America?

Is the destruction of American lives a passé issue?

If a terrorist group kills people all over the world, is the fact that it now kills Africans any more important than the lives it destroys elsewhere?

Terrorists kill people.  That’s what they do.  They don’t care about the color of their skin.  In this respect, they’re an equal-opportunity murderer.

And terrorists will use, as suicide bombers, any people who will go along for the ride.  Again, skin color doesn’t matter. 

Perhaps Obama is talking about a “hate crime.”  So if these Al Qaeda killers in Uganda are caught, they can be executed twice, once for murder, and once for hating.

Al Qaeda kills Americans because they are Americans, citizens of the “evil empire.”  Is that not, by current definition, also a hate crime?  Isn’t that singling out a particular group for destruction?

Calling Al Qaeda racist is on a par with calling Jim Jones a purveyor of unhealthy foods, because the cyanide he used to kill 909 of his followers in Guyana was inserted into sugar-laden, artificially colored Kool-Aid.

Calling Al Qaeda racist is on a par with calling Adolf Eichmann guilty of fraud because, after organizing the murder of huge numbers of Jews in Eastern Europe, he worked under a false name for Mercedes Benz in Argentina. 

Calling Al Qaeda racist is on a par with calling the Son of Sam, who killed six people, wounded seven, and terrorized the city of New York for a whole summer, an unregistered gun owner because he had no license to carry the .44 he used in the killing spree.

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 30 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He is the author of Logic and Analysis, a new course for home schools.  His work can be found at www.nomorefakenews.com.  He can be contacted at qjrconsulting@gmail.com 

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND LOGIC

By Jon Rappoport

Author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS,

a course for home schools

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

For several months now, I’ve been writing articles about logic, and I’ve made connections between that subject and the founding of the American Republic.

As a corollary, I’ve mentioned that the disappearance of logic as a primary subject in US schools has accompanied a long, gradual erosion of individual freedom and independence.

Now I’ve discovered an even closer link: It leads to Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence.

THIS IS OF ENORMOUS IMPORTANCE.

I just came across a letter to the editor of Commentary Magazine.  The letter was published in the January 1979 issue.  It came from a Jefferson scholar, Wilbur Samuel Howell.

Howell makes several key points.  As a college student, Jefferson studied philosophy and logic under Professor William Small, at William and Mary.  Small had come to the college from Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had studied under William Duncan, a renowned logician and author of Elements of Logick.  Indeed, Jefferson later remarked Professor Small went a long way toward shaping his life.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the Declaration of Independence would adhere to a logical structure.  Indeed, the Declaration is a kind of argument from first premises, through to a conclusion.

I went back and read the Declaration, and I’ll open up its logical structure.

It begins with this:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Jefferson, in this prologue, indicates that the people should state their reasons for separating from a ruling power.  Before he goes on to do that, he enunciates his first premises. 

All men have rights, and to secure them, they create governments. 

Second, the people have the authority to abolish any ruler that tries to destroy those rights, and, in its place, the people should institute a new government. 

Third, when a long history of tyrannical abuse proves that the old government cannot be corrected, the people have a duty to overthrow it.

Here is the text:   

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

What remains is for Jefferson to list the abuses of the British Crown; to prove, in other words, that the king has, in fact, brought on such a stream of tyrannical actions.

Well, here they are:   

“He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

“He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

“He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

“He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

“He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

“He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

“He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

“For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

“For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

“For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

“For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

“For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

“For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

“For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

“He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

“He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

“He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

At this point, Jefferson makes it clear that the colonists have tried, without success, to correct these tyrannical abuses through peaceful means.  They are not acting in haste:

“In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

“Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

Jefferson then announces his conclusion, based on the original premises of his argument and the examples he has cited to confirm that the heart of these premises is true:

“We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Fire, passion, even poetry, held within the flow of a logical progression.

I point this out to show that the Founders were not only acquainted with the use of logic, they wanted to make their great case for freedom and independence by using its power.

In their minds, freedom and logic were connected. 

If in our schools, in 2010, logic as a distinct subject has been reduced to paltry terms, how are students able to grasp the majestic nature of freedom, as expressed in the Declaration?  How are they able to understand that living in freedom is more than vaguely drifting from one slogan to another, one addled piece of political rhetoric to another?

Note:  James Madison, thought of by many as the father of the Constitution, studied logic intensely at the College of New Jersey.  In fact, we have 122 pages of Madison’s own handwritten notes from the course.  The course followed the pattern laid down in a famous 17^th-century book, Logic or the Art of Thinking.

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 25 years.  Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, he has published articles in LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.  He has taught in several private schools in New York and Los Angeles, and has tutored extensively in remedial English at Santa Monica College.  At Amherst College, where he graduated with a BA in philosophy, he studied formal logic under Joseph Epstein, a revered professor of philosophy.  He is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a course for home schools.  He can be contacted at qjrconsulting@gmail.com

RAPPOPORT INTERVIEWS TIM O’ SHEA

JULY 12, 2010.  This Wednesday, on my radio show, I’ll be interviewing Dr. Tim O’ Shea on the subject of vaccines.  Tim has been researching and writing about vaccines for many years. 

His latest book is VACCINATION IS NOT IMMUNIZATION.

To catch the show live, go to www.ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com and click on the “listen live” button.  

The show airs every week on Wednesdays at 4PM Pacific Time.

To pick up the show later in the archive, go to:

http://garynull.squarespace.com/the-jon-rappoport-show/

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com