Does Your Burger Match The Picture?

One of the things that has entertained me since coming to Indonesia is looking at the American fast food chains and how they've reinvented themselves over here.

The 7-11 chains in Jakarta are like mini-grocery stores combined with deco diners.  They are usually two-stories tall, with the food court on the ground floor and a slick chrome and formica dining area upstairs.  They are popular hang-outs for the late teen set, who load up on hotdogs and Slurpies, or even a beer or two, and then sit around in cliques for several hours at a time.

The only people hanging out at 7-11s in the states are panhandlers roughing up customers for loose change.

Pizza Hut is really quite a shocker.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a Pizza Hut dine-in joint back home, but here they have hostesses and menus and a whole range of unique designer pizzas

The Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King are pretty much like home, except you can buy rice balls and get hot sauce instead of ketchup with your fries.  The big difference here is that your food looks just like the pictures.  It is perfectly assembled and packaged with care and a bit of artistry.  The staff are friendly and helpful, and will bring the food to your table if you have to stand more than 30 seconds.

It makes me flash back to all the slopped together rubbish and the surly staff at most of the fast food joints I ever went to in the states.  None of it every looked like the photos.  The staff always give you the impression that they hate their job, and you too, and that it is a tremendous imposition on them to serve you.

I guess what it all boils down to is that America, at least in my lifetime, has been a place of vacuous promises with no real substance.  When you watch TeeVee, none of it resembles real life except that the characters look somewhat human, though far more quaffed than any of us real folk.

Service industries promise 'service', or at least we are led to believe that by the name of the industry.  Yet, the actual experience is far below what I would call 'service'.  You either get gum-smacking gansta wanna-bes, or overly cloy prepsters who are constantly auditioning for the next M-TeeVee 'reality' show.

Even American politics are hollowed out carnivals with endless haggling over a 'party platform' that is summarily trashed within 30 seconds after the oath of office has been read by rote.

About the only think one can think of that America has promised and actually delivered is the "American Dream".  It is, in every sense of the word, a dream, and just as tangible and real as a dream.  It's the "land of the free" with armed drones buzzing overhead.  It's the "home of the brave", where the populace is cowed by roving thugs with spiffy uniforms.  It's the defender of freedom and 'democracy', even if it means an offensive strike that contravenes all international law and convention to set up puppet dictators by fiat.

America is that great 'land of opportunity' where fully half the population takes some sort of government largess.  It is the place where Mom and Pop can't run their shop anymore because they have been regulated out of business.  The license fees, taxes, regulatory burdens, and mandatory insurance has complete gutted the meager profit they were able to eek out after the mega-box-stores rampaged through their market share and turned all their customers into wage slaves who can't afford to shop with Mom and Pop anymore.

We were told in school that in America, anyone could be president.  I suppose I missed all the footnotes about having to be a CIA spook or a bankster crook first.

We were told that America's greatness lay in the pages of her magnificent Constitution, yet even mentioning that document in a court of law will get you thrown in jail for criminal contempt (believe me I know).

I have to admit, though, that the man who promised 'hope' and 'change' delivered on his promises in spades. Now everyone 'hopes' he'll get thrown out of office and we can 'change' the administration.  Not that it matters much.  Obamney is the same thing with a pile of elephant dung behind him, rather than donkey.

Come to think of it, I have to believe the current occupant's new promise, as well.  "I'm not done yet," he says.  And indeed, there are still some tattered bits of the old Republic left to be discarded.  But again, even the promise of a premature Nobel Peace prize was a hollow and vaporous symbol, notable only for the magnificent sky show on the eve of the award ceremony.

Even the promise of 'we the people', for all its symbolism of a united citizenry striving together to perfect their union, is a fantasy.  When 'we the people' aren't at each other's throats over profound idealistic differences, we are being targeting and herded by the very federal offices created to protect our Natural Rights, which are now called civil rights and can be amended any time the 'civil authorities' feel threatened.

So it comes down to a choice, if one can abuse that great word thusly, between the current party in power that endorsed slavery, created the welfare state, bruought us the Federal Reserve and income tax, and gave us unlimited bloody human sacrifice (otherwise known as abortion), or the other party controlled by the oligarchs and corporatists whose only redeeming quality is that they would subdue the world for profit rather than club us to death with heart-bleeding idealism.

Once, America was the envy of the world.  It had government that at least had the veneer of lawful operation.  It's middle class lived lifestyles that were, in some cases, even beyond those of the rich in other parts of the world.  It promised endless upward mobility and ever increasing consumption.  It's technology and innovation were far beyond the capabilities of all but a handful of countries.
Now America's government is awash in blatant corruption, not unlike your favorite third-world dictatorship.  The world's middle classes are quickly catching up to that mythical suburban lifestyle, with most families able to afford breeder buses and full refrigerators and the latest electronic gee-gaws.  Even countries that were just a decade ago celebrating indoor plumbing are now sending folks into space and probes to other planets.

Is there nothing left for America to promise?  Or is its new promise to the world a war of endless carnage and remote-operated death machines?

It is times like these when nations serious about survival should turn to the deepest form of self-critical thinking.  But America seems intent on cataclysmic self-immolation instead.

The Spirit of 1776 is just that, another in a long line of fantasies and phantasms that bear little relevance to current reality.  The worst part about great dreams is that one must always wake up from them.  It's time to make the burger match the picture again.

Keep Your Hand On Your Wallet

Kagen, a loud-mouthed, femi-Nazi, who represented Obama at the Supreme Court on a number of occasions to pretect his dirty secret (not an American), gets the nod for Supreme Court justice.

Thanks honey, job well done.

Immelt, former big wig with General Electric, a monsterous multi-national corporation that received bail-out money from the government, is now heading up Obama's supra-legal advisory board.

Daley, a 'former' shark with Goldman Sachs, is appointed top dog over government money.

Looks to me like the Banana Republic is alive and doing well in North America. Political croney-ism and daisy-chains of back-scratchers abound in the new fascist state once known as the Shining City on the Hill.

One other thing to notice in all this is the proliferation of banksters in top positions and unelected authority in the US government. Why is this important to notice?

Perhaps you have watched as major corporations go bankrupt. Or maybe you or someone you know has declared bankruptcy. One feature of this process is that the courts and creditors get appointed to watch over the dispostion of assets and cash. They tell the bankrupt party where and how much they can spend.

Now we shift our gaze over to the US federal government, and lo!, we see courts and overseers from banks being appointed to key financial and legal positions. Hmmm...do you think the US is bankrupt?

What's worse, is all those poor guys, who for years have been saying things like your birth certificate and various registrations with government entities are actually guarantees against the national debt, may be right. You may now be an asset of the country's receivers and they are overseeing how you will be disposed.

It also makes sense why there is so much focus on pentions and retirement accounts. You no longer own them. You, as guarantor for the US national debt, now owe all your assets in payment thereof.

In fact, there was one judge who stood in the way of federal take-overs of private pensions. He ruled against the government in a key case that set back the effort. That judge is now dead...shot by a guy named Jared Loughner down in Arizona.

In fact, anyone who is blowing whistles or standing in the way of take-over by the banksters is being 'liquidated.' Because it doesn't suit the ruling class to be outed just yet, they are taking out anyone who threatens their timeline, whatever that may be.

If it were just announced that the US was bankrupt, there'd be blood in the streets tomorrow, and that would greatly slow the banksters' efforts to gather up their chips on the table. It is imperative that we be kept ignorant until all the 'Is' are dotted and 'Ts' are crossed on the Remerwork. Can't have the rubes taking their chips off the table first.

Using another metaphor, can't have the sheep panicking before they get sheered.

Remember back when Obama was 'inaugurated?' He 'bungled' the oath of office, which was later 're-administered' in private by the chief justice of the Supreme Court? There's a reason Obama never took the oath of office (that whole private thing was a ruse because someone caught it the first time).

You see, Obama is a foreign agent acting as the outside, disinterested party overseeing the dismantling and sell-off of USA, Inc. He has systematically appointed banksters to key positions. He has spread the wealth around among his croneys, who have protected his identity while he did his job.

Because of the rules of mediation and arbitration, you can't have a party with a vested interest overseeing the process. So we had to have a foreigner with no iron in the fire to take over the ship of state, as it sinks beneath the waves.

It's brilliant, really. If anyone accuses Obama of being a traitor, he can simply say that he's not an American, and so can't be a traitor. He's just a foreign agent, working for a foreign corporation (Federal Reserve), overseeing the sell-off of assets as the country is liquidated to pay its debt.

And since the US now has a debt equal to its annual gross domestic product, it is, by definition, bankrupt.

Since you have a Social Security number and a birth certificate (notice Obama doesn't have one of those), you are personally liable for the debt. Ipso facto, quid pro quo, summa non quoquil.

As the Joker might say, "It's all part of the plaaaaaan."

The real kicker is that all the conspiracy theories that were so carefully sidelined over the years, about 'staw man' and so forth, they're all true. In the next couple of years, you are going to see it become glaringly obvious. And for those promoting paying off your house and other non-liquid assets, it doesn't matter. As a numbered slave of the machine, you are personally liable for the national debt. No arguement.

If you know what you are looking for, the signs are everywhere, but you have to be looking for them. For those living inside the US and innundated with the media from every direction, you are constantly being misdirected, as if at the hands of a master magician. Just to be sure, you are being fluoridated and Paxiled into submission, so that you are incapable of both seeing the deception, and working up the rage necessary to do something about it.

In short, you are controlled, from head to toe, in every sense of the word.

As a back-up plan, any group who has seen through the fog has been demonized as domestic terrorists: Tea Partiers, Constitutionalists, Libertarians, etc. Those are the bad guys for pointing out the deception, not the ones promulgating it.

Remember, the original definition of terrorist, until the 1950s or so, was always a government acting to terrorize citizens as a means of control. Obviously, that's still the case.

Americans can no longer muster the political cajones to really affect change. In the last election, they were effectively herded back to the previous party of destruction. And so it has gone for decades, back and forth between the two parties of no choice.

No one seems to have figured out the game, or they are too damn scared to do anything about it. In either case, the result is the same.

Thus, receivership proceeds apace. More banksters are appointed to oversee the liquidation of America. A foreign agent is in charge of the executive office and no one is allowed dissent. The illusion is complete.

We keep getting told that some corporations are too big to fail, but apparantly the entire country is not.

You still have a moment to get you money out of the system and put it into things that can be easily hidden, but only a moment. Soon, it will all be gone and all I will be able to do is say, "I told you so."

"And on that day, I won't want to, Master Wayne," said Alfred.