i know lots of people this will offend and some would rise to throwing punches at least over the content, including marine friends, but tell us where this ain't the truth;


Neither of my sons are Marines, and if any of them were, I would be embarrassed and ashamed to tell you. But many people have sons who are Marines—and are proud of it. I know this because of all the bumper stickers I have seen that read: “My Son Is a Marine.” Sometimes there is even another bumper sticker along side of it that reads: “I ♥ My Marine.”
The only thing worse than this is having a daughter who is a Marine.
Is having a son who is a Marine something to be proud of? Perhaps it was true at one time. It certainly isn’t true now.
What do people think when they see these “My Son Is a Marine” bumper stickers? No doubt most people think that it must be a great thing to have a son who is a Marine. The Marine Corps is the most “manly” branch of the military, is it not? Don’t the Marines defend our freedoms, protect us from terrorists, keep us from having to speak German, Japanese, Vietnamese, or Arabic, and fight “over there” so we don’t have to fight “over here”?
I don’t think any of these things. I think of what the bumper sticker really means.
If the parents of Marines put honest bumper stickers on their cars, perhaps they would say things like the following.........https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/12/laurence-m-vance/my-son-is-a-marine/

pat buchanan who has run for president in the past has a particularly interesting and accurate take on the state of affairs here in the land of the 'free' which many will appreciate even if they don't care to acknowledge the details. its good to hear some in influential positions identify and speak about the stupidity that runs rampant in the empire, even when only a part of it is displayed;

If Donald Trump told Michael Cohen to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels about a one-night stand a decade ago, that, says Jerome Nadler, incoming chair of House Judiciary, would be an “impeachable offense.”
This tells you what social media, cable TV and the great herd of talking heads will be consumed with for the next two years — the peccadillos and misdeeds of Trump, almost all of which occurred before being chosen as president of the United States.
“Everywhere President Trump looks,” writes The Washington Times’ Rowan Scarborough, “there are Democrats targeting him from New York to Washington to Maryland… lawmakers, state attorneys general, opposition researchers, bureaucrats and activist defense lawyers.
“They are aiming at Russia collusion, the Trump Organization, the Trump Foundation, a Trump hotel, Trump tax returns, Trump campaign finances and supposed money laundering.”
The full-court press is on. Day and night we will be hearing debate on the great question: Will the elites that loathe him succeed in bringing Trump down, driving him from office, and prosecuting and putting him in jail?
Says Adam Schiff, the incoming chair of the House intelligence committee: “Donald Trump may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.”........https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/12/patrick-j-buchanan/how-democracy-is-losing-the-world/

we will have to look hard to see who is the current martin luther according to this opinion which makes much sense. before the advent of the world of www. i certainly would have been much more limited in my sources of information as would we all;


Last September a very informative paper was published by the neoconservative Atlantic Council. In connection with this institution are such important public figures as Collin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger. The paper, written by John T. Watts, summarizes the main conclusions drawn at this year’s Sovereign Challenges Conference in Washington, DC. The text allows for a deep look into some of the minds of the American elite and their allies. Its reading is therefore highly recommended. The inclined reader, however, should sometimes overlook empty phrases and distracting rhetoric to get to the heart of the matter.
At its core, it’s about maintaining power. According to Watts, the big problem is “disinformation”, which is disseminated through new and alternative media. It destabilizes public institutions and in the worst case undermines the sovereignty of the state. This must be prevented.
Neoconservatives are fully aware that any state system ultimately depends on the trust of its citizens. Trust is the basis for the functioning of state institutions. New communication technologies, however, have increasingly enabled “extremist ideological” currents to spread their toxic messages and deprive people of confidence in existing institutions. It is precisely this loss of trust on the part of citizens that endangers the sovereignty of the state.1
The flood of information in the Internet age plays a decisive role because it makes targeted “disinformation” by small but well-organized groups possible in the first place. It leads to exaggeration, isolation and one-sidedness within one’s own “echo chamber”. According to Watts, the sudden availability of large amounts of information can overburden a society. Too much useless and qualitatively inferior information can lead to isolation and polarization. People specifically select their sources of information and limit themselves in the process. They even have to do so in view of the many alternatives available to them. But in doing so, they tend to rely on those sources that confirm and reinforce their own prejudices.........https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/12/karl-friedrich-israel/in-the-eyes-of-the-state-we-are-all-russian-bots-now/

the arrest in canada of a chinese corporate officer for evading the empire's sanctions on iran is an arrogant and ignorant move which will bring no good to any in the empire which bill bonner will tell you about here;


BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Whatever good was done by the Trump/Xi trade war truce in Buenos Aires was likely undone by what was done in Vancouver Airport earlier this month.

Bogeyman Program

The U.S. stock market warmed to the idea of a ceasefire last Monday morning. Then came word that the U.S. government had arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese technology firm Huawei. The feds got the Canadians to collar the poor woman while she was changing planes in Vancouver.
Few people in the U.S. have ever heard of Huawei. Still, the event had a pin-like look to it. And by the end of the week, investors had lost $1 trillion. This morning, by inference from futures trading, they are set to lose a half a trillion more.
What was Ms. Wanzhou’s crime? Mass murder? Grand larceny?
Nope. Even she didn’t know what the charges were..............https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/12/10/americas-franz-ferdinand-moment/

here are many aspects of the french yellow vest protests that you'll never hear from 'our free press' and they all make sense when you consider them;

The Yellow Vest Movement – weekend 8 and 9 December – Round 4. Some say, they are the worst riots in France since the student-driven mini-Revolution of May 1968. Over the four weekends, hundreds of thousands were in the streets, middle class people, from students to workers to outright employees and housewives. The police force increases by every new Round – and so do the demonstrators. Today – more than 8,000 police, a considerable increase from last weekend’s 5,000-plus. Tens of thousands Yellow Vests demonstrated; police reported more than 1,600 arrests.

There are tanks in the streets – not seen for at least ten years – burning cars and shop fronts, vandalized buildings. The police are fighting them with teargas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Police brutality seems to be unavoidable, However, apparently more moderate than on other occasions. Nevertheless, a youtube is circulating, where a group of riot gear protected police beat up a helpless Yellow Vest, already on the ground and defenseless. These are the pictures you see on TV.

And the globalized ‘everybodies’ throughout Europe and the (western) world sit comfortably in their fauteuils, shaking their heads – “the French again; they are never content, always want more” – having apparently no idea that what they, the French workers, had rightfully accumulated in terms of social funds and public infrastructure – hospitals, schools – since WWII (instead of paying for a heavy army) is being ‘legally’ stolen by a small elite who put a Rothschild banker – Macron – in power to pass the necessary legislation to make the fraud legal.

Voilà. So simple. Most of the fauteuil warriors have no idea that the hangmen are stealthily coming to them too. By the time they wake up and see the light irradiated by the French Yellow Vests – it might be too late. It’s not for nothing, that Europe, under the command of the unelected European Commission (EC), has become increasingly militarized and a conglomerate police state, to be ready when general discontent spreads and political and social upheavals start. We may be at that point.

For now, the Hot Spot is Paris, in particular the lush Champs Élysées, symbol for the rich and powerful, the French elite. But the movement is spreading rapidly to other cities in France – and would you believe, to other EU countries, like Belgium and the Netherlands. They have seen the yellow light and realized that what the French claim back has been stolen from them too.

The malaise is not just French, Belgian, Dutch or German, but of course, also persists in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, the latter countries and people about whom you hardly hear and read anymore, they are done with. The banking cartel has them under control. No public attention needs to focus on their plight anymore. Except for Italy, their brazen resistance to Brussels, is still a problem for the kings of finance. – Chapeau Italy!............https://journal-neo.org/2018/12/11/the-macron-implosion-will-it-spread-to-other-eu-members/

ray charles could easily see how much of a fraud this 'russian hacking' was and has become. its hilarious at best when watching the extremely overpaid talking heads fret about the russian influence on 'our' government, and in this bit kunstler will explore some of that mess;


The media branch of “the Resistance” wet its pantsuits last Friday when Robert Mueller released sentencing memos on Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, the human keys to the dungeon they would like to toss Mr. Trump into. Over in the House of Representatives, incoming Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler spooged himself into a rapture as visions of impeachment lap-danced in his head. Their victory orgasms may prove premature.
The memos themselves were not all they were cracked up to be. Despite Mr. Mueller turning the screws of federal prosecution on them for months on end, neither Manafort or Cohen has composed the narrative the Special Counsel wants, so the memos were, in effect, an attempt to run some high voltage through the screws, to goose out a last-minute change-of-heart in the two patsies. Manafort has been stuffed into solitary confinement and Cohen threatened with forty years of jail time, Their stoicism so far suggests this is not the triumphal climax that the spinners of RussiaGate seek.
Mr. Trump’s response to all this has seemed, at best, retiring and ineffectual. He’s actually done next to nothing to fight back, besides some juvenile tweets, issued perhaps to alert his antagonists that he’s paying attention. Given the lack of evidence for the basic predicate of RussiaGate — that the Trump election campaign “colluded” with Russia — and the abundant evidence of crimes against Mr. Trump by his adversaries in prosecuting this fraud, and the legal machinery silently in motion backstage of RussiaGate — there’s a lot of room for the story to flip upside down.....http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/not-so-fast/

here is proof that the empire really believes it has the right to rule the world and in this case it had  a foreign citizen kidnapped in canada for the alleged crime of trading with iran, where in fact in china its not a crime;

Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies, fraudulently represented the company in order to get around US and EU sanctions on Iran, a packed courtroom in Vancouver, Canada, heard on Friday.

Meng, a daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, was in the British Columbia Supreme Court for a bail hearing, as the US seeks her extradition on fraud charges. The hearing ended without a decision and will continue on Monday.

The US is seeking to extradite Meng in relation to Huawei’s alleged use of an unofficial subsidiary, Skycom, to skirt the sanctions, a lawyer representing the Canadian government said.

Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on December 1 as she changed planes and has been detained ever since..........https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/2177013/huawei-executive-sabrina-meng-wanzhou-fraudulently-represented-company