Pat Speer

Yikes. 1. I am not now nor ever have been a Democrat. I was raised Republican. My dad was friends with Barry Goldwater, Jr. Upon turning 18, I registered as an independent. I cast my first vote in a presidential election for a moderate Republican, John Anderson. 2. The "divide and rule" strategy has not been one pushed primarily by Democrats, but by Republicans. Dems like Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden, have been elected by leaning towards the middle. This worked as well for Bush I. But Reagan, Bush II, and Trump have all courted the religious and racist right. 3. All this "fear psychosis" mumbo jumbo is garbage-ola--to use a clinical term--designed to let the self-satisfied off the hook for not seeing that Trump was and is a serious threat to humanity. There are elites of all stripes that try to shape history for their own benefit. And then there are monsters so desirous of power and attention that they are willing to sacrifice the lives and well-being of others, and even the security of their country, under the illusion it will make them an inch taller while laying flat on their back. Putin is one of those. And so is Trump. And no, I wasn't brain-washed by the MSM into thinking this way. If anything, I brain-washed them. Within days of the election I performed a deep dive into what had happened, and came to realize the mainstream media spin that Hillary had messed up and let a clown sneak into office by not addressing the economy was a myth, and that what had actually happened was that Trump had declared himself a generalissimo in a culture war designed to keep a white minority in power. Now I wasn't alone in this. Others such as Bill Maher saw it too and began predicting, as I, that Trump would not willingly concede the next election. And we were right. Years ago I read that the FBI had once flagged those opposing Hitler before WWII as PAF (Premature Anti-Fascists). To Hoover this was a sign not that these people were smart, and could see the writing on the wall, but that they were susceptible to Communist propaganda. I'm a modern-day PAF, and wear it as a badge of honor.

I don't know if you could be any more insulting. Responding to a tangible threat to the well-being of your friends and family is "psychosis"? Please. it's the real world. Trump was not just a threat to my way of life. He and his minions threatened our actual lives. On a near daily basis. You can not talk about him as just another statesman or policy-maker. He tried to become a dictator, and was willing to stomach mass carnage and un-civil war for power. There was no deep state plan to stop Trump. If there had been he would have been stopped years before the 2020 election. He had the Justice Dopt. largely under his control. He had the right-wing media under his control. He had millions of militarized defenders of the white way of life under his control. But democracy won in 2020. I'm sorry if that doesn't fit your world-view.

Oh boy, Ben and Chris are so off on this it's almost comical. The MSM was incredibly slow in realizing the threat Trump posed to America. They initially found him embarrassing and ridiculous, and only later (long after I had written my series of articles discussing what had really happened in 2016, in which I concluded Trump was essentially a fascist) realized there was more to it than some poor whites who'd been left behind voting for a TV personality who'd said he would help them. It was an attack on the left, and middle, and even center-right--way beyond any "attack" on the right by Obama or Hillary, etc. Dudes, understand. I live in a relatively quiet purple suburb. And yet under Trump's influence, and calling, hordes of camouflage-wearing white people began parading up and down our streets, blasting out Lee Greenwood, in caravans of white pick-up trucks designed to frighten and intimidate everyone other than them. 10-20% of the houses went from putting up flags on Memorial Day and the 4th of July to hoisting American, U.S. Military and Trump flags 24/7. Empty stores were converted into "Republican value" stores where Trump's devotees could gather and get their pictures taken with cardboard stand-ups of the whole Trump family. Not Lincoln. Or Reagan. Trump, and his family. Exclusively. It was deeply disturbing. So if you think people over-react when Trump talks of regaining office, etc. think about it this way: How would you feel if some goons took a dump on your front lawn, and then stood out on your front porch with a baseball bat threatening you if you came out to complain? Because that's what life was like here in suburbia under Trump.

I asked a good friend, a Lt. Colonel in U.S. Forces, to speak to some of his sniper friends re the ideal location for an assassination attempt. They told him what I'd already come to suspect from reading numerous books on sniping. From above, and behind, with as little lateral movement as possible. This makes the upper floors and roof of the Dal-Tex the ideal location for a sniper, and not the TSBD, or grassy knoll.

McHugh was part of JFK's inner circle. He is the main source regarding Johnson's cowardly behavior on the plane. Apparently he hated Johnson, and Johnson hated him right back. I think it was Manchester who reported that upon his arrival at AF1, McHugh was told the President was on the plane. He thought they meant JFK's corpse. Upon learning they meant Johnson, he purportedly blurted out "That's not my President!" or some such thing. In any event, there's little reason to believe he conspired against "his President," JFK.

I agree. They may have used the old expression as a code. Kinda like in Harry Potter, where they called Voldemort "He who shall not be named."

I just read the article, and Jeff makes another mistake beyond his assertion the "Who shot John" reference was a clear reference to the Kennedy assassination. He writes that Hunt blamed JFK for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Hunt wrote Give Us This day, a book on the Bay of Pigs. In it, he largely blamed Charles Cabell, who was asked point blank by Kennedy if air cover was absolutely necessary, and said "No." As I recall, Hunt also blamed the CIA chain-in-command, through which Cabell was tasked with talking to Kennedy, even though he wasn't up to snuff. Of course, it's also a myth that Kennedy refused to approve the air cover. After at first being told it was unnecessary, he approved it. But the CIA and Pentagon failed to coordinate watches, and the air cover wasn't there to protect the planes flying in from Nicaragua.

At one point, James Angleton testified: “A mansion has many rooms, I’m not privy to who shot John.” But this is not necessarily a reference to the Kennedy assassination. In 1986, William Safire discussed the expression "Who shot John" in a NY Times article: NOBODY REALLY cares who shot John. That's because who shot John is inherently dismissive, always used in the sense of a question that the speaker is not about to answer because it involves loathsome finger-pointing, unworthy of the fair-minded. When Marlin Fitzwater, press spokesman for Vice President George Bush, was asked about Bush's support of the President's policy to ship arms to Iran, he said, according to The Washington Post, ''that Bush does not want to discuss the process of 'who shot John' in making the Iran decisions.'' The reporter, David Hoffman, quoted the spokesman directly, adding, ''This is a classic example of the kind of thing for six years that George Bush has never commented on, in good times or bad.'' That derogation concerning blame-fixing has been steadily gaining currency. A 1977 recording by Nathan Page used those words as its title, and the expression must have been helped along by the ''Who Shot J.R.?'' promotion of the television drama ''Dallas.'' ''For the first three months of his campaign,'' wrote The Washington Post's T.R. Reid about Senator Edward M. Kennedy's quest for the Presidency in 1980, ''Kennedy flailed around on a sprawling spectrum of issues ranging from who-shot-John-in-Teheran to the wiretap provisions of the criminal code bill.'' Richard M. Nixon always liked the locution. In 1977, he told a reporter, Austin Scott, about the terrible personal pressures on former Attorney General John Mitchell, and concluded, ''And so, that's the human side of the story, which . . . I know that you and the press, you can't be interested in that. You can only be interested in 'Who shot John.' Well, go ahead. . . .'' Stuart Berg Flexner finds in his file of old slang citations that ''the earliest ones are British. Around 1860, there's a reference in the file to British Royal Military Academies where men sat around playing 'who shot John.' The Army phrase play who shot John might suggest its origin in a children's game, but there is simply not enough evidence.'' John was a slang term for a student at the British military schools, which might account for the origin, but this mystery never received the attention given that of an unrelated crime, ''Who killed Cock Robin?'' (to which the sparrow confessed). Those interested in the shooter of John are likely to run up against the stone wall of disdain at finger-pointing and contempt for the bandying-about of recriminations - as if those searching for the culprit were themselves blameworthy for being cruelly houndlike. If we must deal with this expression slanted in favor of the concealer, let's adopt a style: I prefer hyphenating, who-shot-John, to putting quotation marks around the noun clause or trying to set it off with the capitalization of Who. Thus, instead of getting into a ''who shot John'' or descending to a Who shot John, I would rather not be drawn into a who-shot-John. P.S. One of the first rock n roll songs was "Who Slapped John?" by Gene Vincent. It was clearly a play on the the children's game alluded to above.

You're working from some incorrect assumptions. 1. I'm not unfairly stereotyping Trump voters. I did months of research on Trump voters vs. Hillary voters, and Trump voters had far more guns and drove far more pick-up trucks than Hillary voters. (They also liked softball, strawberry ice cream and were far more interested in penis enlargement.) While they were slightly more likely to have a high-school education than Hillary voters, they were far less likely to have a college education, or accept accepted science, like evolution. 2. The economy was not the main factor in the election. Trump states, by and large, had lower unemployment rates than Hillary states. A number of the states, such as the Dakotas and Wyoming, were incredibly prosperous during the Obama years. And yet they voted for Trump and Republicans in general like never before. It was a culture war. Trump declared war on brown people, people who didn't speak English or worship Christ, LGBTQ people, educated women who "didn't know their place," etc. We saw this with Reagan. He promised to take the country from the 80's back to the 50's. Trump tried to take it back to the 20's, only with Mussolini as President. P.S. I am not now and never have been a Democrat. My father was a Republican booster in the 60's. He threw parties for Barry Goldwater, Jr. And my hero was Abraham Lincoln. As a result I could never register as a Democrat and have been an Independent since the 70's.

Well, you clearly never read my series of articles on the election. The number of young people and minorities who came out to vote for Hillary more than offset the number of anger and religion-fueled whites who crawled out to vote for Trump. The problem, as has been pointed out, is that those young people and minorities were in states she was probably gonna win anyway. So her strategy could have been better. But it wasn't because of a sudden rush of poor unemployed whites in the rust-belt states. The blue-turned-red states had better than average economies and lower than average unemployment. The people in these states who switched to Trump did so for cultural reasons, not economic reasons. (Note: this was missed by most every pundit in the aftermath of the election, but I wrote about this within days of the election, and it was months before anyone in the mainstream media caught up with me... Yep, that's me, giving myself a pat on the back.) In any event, there was a sudden re-assessment by the mainstream media late in 2017 where they finally came to realize we were in the midst of a culture war, and that economics had little to do with the 2016 election. White Christians saw their way of life in danger and reflexively voted for the guy who told them they were the only real Americans. That was what it was about. Dems had aligned themselves with browns, gays, and Darwin, and that broke the bond they'd had with small town and rural pro-union whites that had once been a part of their coalition. We saw the same thing in the 60's, when Nixon broke a chunk off the Democratic coalition by going after Wallace voters. Well, it happened again. Former union people, many of them retired, voted for Trump because he made them feel good about themselves, in much the same way Fox News made them feel good about themselves. They were AMERICANS, and Trump was gonna MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, by upholding American values, and applauding those who chose to buy a pick-up truck and a gun rather than pursue a higher education.

A lot of our literature is filled with conflicted characters who do bad while thinking they are essentially good. They murder their rivals while single-handedly supporting orphanages, etc. It all goes back to Robin Hood, IMO. I'd bet the house LBJ saw himself in this light: "Yeah, I did some bad stuff, but I needed to so I could do the good stuff!" I suspect that's the nature of most politicians. I also suspect that the more bad they do, the more good they feel driven to do to balance the books.

Not at all. I've been paying attention to this stuff since the early 70's. And the Dems relax when they think they have the advantage. They think they have the demographics and are on the right side of history. The Republicans, on the other hand, know all too well they are a minority party and can only win through rabble-rousing, skullduggery and deception. Bush II pulled off a win (maybe) by playing the religion card and rallying the support of Catholic latinos. Trump opted to vilify latinos and did not have that option. The original story put forth after his "victory" by the supposedly left-wing media was that economically suppressed whites rallied around his xenophobic and populist demands. But the truth is that as many or more young person and/or racial minority rose up to vote against him as old white person rose up to vote for him. He lost the popular vote by a wide margin. And the close state races that helped him win were suspicious. This is far from the case with Biden, who won the popular vote by a large margin.

What you are describing is Apples and Oranges. Hillary won the 2016 election by a wide margin, only to lose in a suspicious manner to a known crook. Trump lost an election the polls and experts had pegged for Biden. There was no "surprise." There was no suspicious shift in the outcomes of any state. There were no anomalies like Biden winning all the close contests and Trump winning all the landslides in the biggest states. As far as the FBI, please... The FBI was so in the bag for Trump that Comey felt he had to announce a bs investigation into Hillary at the last minute. He could have done this on the sly but was concerned the NY FBI would tell Giuliani and he would tell the press and make it look like the FBI was out to get poor Donnie.

Come on. I studied the 2016 election in excruciating detail and reported on this in a series of articles: From Obama Nation to Abomination. And it was 100% clear that if anyone "stole"an election in recent history, it was Trump. This was a man without scruples, who bragged about using his power and fame to get away with crimes. And this was a man whose main business for decades was built around rigged machines. And, thirdly, this was a man whose supposed "election" was the "luckiest" in history. Well, Trump, as a casino owner, doesn't believe in luck. And studying the results of the 2016 election in comparison to other elections led me to believe it wasn't luck at all, but something else. (FWIW, I wrote these articles as a response to the media's collective blaming of Hillary for the loss, well before "Russiagate" hit the fan.) Here's an excerpt: Having established that the Electoral College has got to go, we can now look at some other aspects of the election. First and foremost of these is that Donald Trump was incredibly lucky in doing as well as he did...suspiciously lucky, even...so much so in fact that if he'd been as lucky in one of his former casinos they'd have pulled him off the floor and interrogated him in a room with a one-way mirror. Let's see if you agree... Since delegates to the Electoral College are almost all divvied up on a winner-take-all basis, that is, where the winner of a state receives all the delegates from that state no matter how slim the margin of victory, we can approximate the "luck" involved in the election by looking at the numerical margin of victory for each state divided by the number of delegates rewarded for that state. Here, then, are the states in order from the largest amount of over-votes per delegate in the 2016 election, to the smallest amount of over-votes per delegate. The abbreviation for each state is followed by the ranking of that state in population, as of the 2010 census. The subsequent numbers reflect the number of over-votes per delegate, that is, the number of votes over the number required to win in that state divided by the number of Electoral College delegates awarded for that victory. (Note: Bold states are states that voted for Clinton.) 1-10: DC (49) 90,036, MA (14,) 82,209, CA (1) 77,636, OK (28) 75,537, MD (19) 73,476, KY (26) 71,765, AL (23) 65,412, WV (38) 60,115, NY (3) 59,758, TN (17) 59,294, 11-20: ID (39) 54,823, MO (18) 53,244, AR (32) 50,730, LA (25) 49,811, IN (16) 47,651, IL (5) 47,236, WA (13) 43,414, NE (37) 42,293, ND (48) 41,012, KS (34) 40,669, 21-25: WY (51) 39,482, NJ (11) 39,024, SD (46) 36,754, MS (31) 35,931, HI (40) 34,511, 26-30: UT (33) 34,093, MT (44) 33,844, SC (24) 33,335, CT (29) 32,051, OR (27) 31,386, 31-40: VT (50) 27,735, OH (7) 24,825, IA (30) 24,552, TX (2) 21,241, RI (43) 17,996, DE (45) 16,825, VA (12) 16,310, AK (47) 15,644, CO (22) 15,154, GA (8) 13,196, 41-51: NM (36) 13,109, NC (10) 11,554, ME (41) 11,071, AZ (15) 8,294, NV (35) 4,534, MN (21) 4,477, FL (4) 3,893, WI (20) 2,275, PA (6) 2,215, NH (42) 684, MI (9) 669 While this at first might look like a healthy mix of good luck and bad luck for both candidates, a closer look reveals an amazing fact--the "luck" becomes incredibly one-sided once one takes account the population (and resulting delegate total) for these states. First, note that 16 of the 25 most under-represented victories (that is, victories in states in the top 25 above) occurred in states voting for Trump. Well, this reinforces what has already been demonstrated--that the Electoral College hurts red states, too, and that it is just a matter of time until it costs the Republicans an election. Now note that victories in 6 of the top 15 states by population (these fifteen representing roughly 2/3 of the over-all population) were under-represented in the Electoral College. Here they are in order from most under-represented to least: MA (14), CA (1), NY (3), IL (5), WA (13), NJ (11). Incredibly, Clinton won ALL six of these states! Now, look at the flip side--the 9 victories within the top 15 states by population that were over-represented in the Electoral College (that is, in the bottom 26 above). Here they are in order by most over-represented to least: MI (9), PA (6), FL (4), AZ (15), NC (10), GA (8), VA (12), TX (2), OH (7). Well, 8 of these 9 went to Trump. If one were to think like Trump and classify the vote results for the fifteen most populous states as deals, based on the reward received divided by margin of victory, then, it would look like this... Bad deals in order of badness, worst to not quite so bad: Clinton in Massachusetts, California, New York, Illinois, Washington, and New Jersey. No bad deals for Trump. Good deals in order of goodness, best to not quite as good: Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, Clinton in Virginia, and Trump in Ohio and Texas. Now, one might be tempted to credit Trump with using his ground game to eek out victories in every close big state but one. But there's a problem with this: he was often frugal in his advertising and there's no evidence his campaigning in these states led to undecided voters suddenly changing their minds about him. So, it remains a mystery as to why, of the top 15 states by population, Clinton won the 6 biggest landslides and Trump won the 6 closest races. If one assumes there is no unseen bias as to whether Clinton or Trump would get the best (or worst) deal, then, these numbers are quite surprising. Clinton won 20 of 50 states, so the odds of her winning an individual state was .4. .4 to the sixth power comes out to .4 of a percentile, or .004--which translates into odds as 250 to one. And that's just the odds of Clinton picking up the six worst deals. Trump won 30 of 50 states so let's say his chances of winning an individual state was .6. .6 to the sixth power comes out to 4.6%, or 0.046. .004 x .046 comes out to 0.0001866. The odds of BOTH Clinton getting the 6 worst deals and Trump getting the 6 best deals are thereby around 5359 to 1. Well, it follows that an election as one-sided in its "luck" as this one comes around every 21,436 years or so. When one realizes the magnitude of Trump's incredible "luck", moreover, it's hard not to consider the possibility Trump's "luck" was no coincidence... and that some of the closest races won by Trump--the races representing the best deals for Trump--were actually stolen...

FWIW, I analyzed all the statements regarding Youngblood and Johnson, and it's fairly clear Youngblood did turn in his seat, tell Johnson to get down, and try to cover Johnson. Where Johnson and Youngblood stretched the truth was in asserting Youngblood climbed into the backseat and sat on Johnson. That almost certainly did not happen.

The firecrackers used as diversionary devices in WWII were long-fused firecrackers. I assume the time between lighting the firecracker and its explosion was determined by the length of its fuse. In any event, they could go off when no one was around. And that was the idea. Japanese and German snipers would light one in Position A, then move to Position B, which had a clear view of Position A or the approach to Position A. The cracker would then explode. The snipers were then able to fire upon the soldiers descending on or surrounding Position A, and skedaddle afterwards. As stated, I found mention of these tactics in WWII military journals, essentially warning American soldiers to be cautious when approaching sniper's nests, as they could be a trap. I found, furthermore, that in the modern military they still use these devices. But that they are now remote-controlled. The thought occurs, then, that the last two shots (bang bang) were synchronized by a shooter from behind with a man lighting a firecracker. To do this, they would probably have to be in communication. The man lighting the firecracker would say "T minus ten" (or whatever) when lighting the fuse (which he had presumably cut to a specific length). The sniper would then fire upon "ten." So perhaps we should be looking for someone walking away from the knoll area some 10-20 seconds before the shooting. I don't believe there's footage of that area at that time. But it might be worth a look.

No one was looking for it.

A couple of points. 1. The use of firecrackers as diversionary devices was a sniping technique employed by both the Japanese and Germans in WWII. This is something I was able to demonstrate using American military publications, and report on my website. 2. Yes, the guns of the Wild West used a different powder that released far more smoke than more modern powder. Thus, the name of the show: Gunsmoke. 3. As demonstrated on my website, the witness reports were not random throughout the plaza. Those right in front of the TSBD by and large thought they heard a sound from west of the building. This is strong evidence for a sound coming from this location. And those hearing four shots were almost all near the corner of Houston and Elm. This suggests the possibility that a second shooter was in or on one of the buildings at this location. It is also worth noting that, regardless of how many shots they heard, a majority of the closest witnesses heard a shot after the head shot. This is quite easily demonstrated and is one of the key points that should be brought up in any program designed to tear down the story currently pushed as the facts about what happened.

As an attendee at numerous JFK conventions and JFK-related functions I can vouch that the JFK research community is not a healthy lot. When my wife and I first got together, she accompanied me to a Lancer Conference. By the second day she refused to leave the room. Guys with uncombed combovers would come up to me and say "So I saw your presentation. You think the government lied. Well let me tell you who was behind it all: Ari Onassis." And then go on and on about Onassis. At a local presentation, a guy came up to me to ask about my research--supposedly. Within a minute or so he had changed gears and decided to convince me we were all being poisoned by chemtrails. When my wife and I left the presentation he got between my open door and the car, and wouldn't let me shut the door until he had his say. After about ten minutes, I said we had to go, and was able to move him aside. He then chased our car across the parking lot and into the street while pointing at the sky and yelling "See! They're right there! Why can't people see them?" or some such thing. In short, too many "researchers" are really wide-eyed theorists, desperate not to find pieces to a puzzle, but to cram whatever pieces are leftover into the puzzle they think they've put together. To others it may look like a jumble, but in their mind, it all fits.

It was a book that explained how record contracts work, released just as the indie and DIY movement was taking flight. Its author made the transition to conducting seminars for beginning artists. It helped many a young artist avoid the major label minefield.

Have you read "Confessions of a Record Producer"? I was impressed and provided some of the material for the follow-up.

I actually think there was a stretch in late 66 and early 67 where Life Magazine and The NY Times were pushing for a re-investigation of the assassination. This was shut down by mid 67 via the AP series of articles defending the WC, and CBS' 4-part special. It was if the mainstream media collectively said "never mind." This left Garrison standing alone as the only major public figure pushing for a new investigation. And this was most unfortunate. His face and voice seemed odd and undoubtedly put off many a casual observer. While I am mostly a supporter, it's easy to see how he proved so divisive to the research community. I mean, you've been studying the case for years and think you are onto something. And then this weirdo politician comes along and repeats many of your talking points, mixed-in with some of his own, which sound incredibly far-fetched. And now you know it will be difficult to continue your research without being thought of as one of his "followers". You can't help but lose some enthusiasm, if not your actual interest. And then they showed the Z-film on TV... And things revved back up again...

I am actually writing to correct an earlier point I made about my time in the record industry. I had implied the big record companies were disorganized. In retrospect, they were fairly well organized, and not for the public good. 1. They conspired to sell CDs at a list price roughly double that of LPs, even though CDs were cheaper to make. This continued until Napster and iTunes made downloads a cheaper alternative. At that point the prices came crashing downwards. 2. They conspired to change the packaging of CDs from longbox to jewel case. When the large retailers complained (as they had easily converted their display bins from LP bins to longbox bins, but would have to buy new bins to display jewel cases) the big record companies gave the large retailers a 2% price break for jewel case CDs--at the same time they added a 2 or 3% increase in the overall price. As I recall, all the majors did this. At the same time. 3. They conspired to keep artists tied to what was then the standard contract--7 records over 7 years, which essentially tied a young artist to a label for life (seeing as most labels would not accept an album per year, and preferred to drag the contract out for 15 years or so). I reported on a government hearing on this issue for a news letter. LeAnn Rimes, the Eagles, Bing Crosby's wife, and others took the stand to complain that the standard contract was a scam designed to screw artists. Which brings me to the next point... 4. They conspired to call CDs an experimental format, and paid artists roughly half royalties on CDs long after CDs had become the dominant format. A large label could easily have broken ranks and announced their artists would get paid full royalties on CDs, and used this as a tool to get more prominent artists. But no one did. And it was only through legal maneuvers that artists such as Frank Zappa, Chicago, and the Eagles gained higher royalties and some measure of control over their music catalog. (Prince tried to break through this by changing his name, etc, which goes to show the desperate measures needed to break from the corporate grip.) Of course, there were the smaller labels and distributors--the Indies--who did not play the major label game. Some artists, such as Ani DiFranco, were quite successful selling their own CDs at a budget price through their own distribution channels. Which leads me to another point about the big record companies. 5. They conspired to buy up most of the racks and window displays in the major retailers. They would buy a window display or a spinner rack by the counter and put brand new artists no one ever heard of right there. This was at a tremendous expense, but the costs were charged back to the artists as recoupable expenses. The main reason they did this was to prevent an indie label from getting a prime position. This, then, furthered the illusion that you needed to be on a major label to reach a large audience. 6. They were so desperate to maintain this illusion, moreover, that they got in bed with the mafia. As recounted in the book Hit Men, organized crime had bribed many if not most of the top radio stations to allow them "exclusive" promotion rights. This meant that only a designated promoter could approach a station's radio programmer about adding new songs to its playlist. In effect, this was organized payola. If a song was not "promoted" to a programmer it could not get played. And the ones doing the promoting were getting paid by the major record companies to both promote their records and NOT promote indie records. And standing in the background, collecting his cut, was John Gotti... (In case you were wondering, this was the main reason Michael Jackson and George Michael had hit after hit after hit from the same albums... CBS was paying off the mafia to make sure these songs were played ad nauseam.) In any event, this organized evil came largely as a response to outside threats. While I do think there were plenty of conference calls regarding "What should we do about blank?" or "How do we protect our business model?" I'd bet there was little or no planning beyond the next quarter, or year. And that each major lived in constant fear one of the other majors would break ranks and offer a product more artist and customer friendly. (This did, after a crash, come to be. But notice how music is no longer at the forefront of popular culture, and that you no longer see the latest hits in bins at stores like WalMart, Target, and Costco. Alas, it almost makes one nostalgic for the good old days of evil record companies.)

Here's something I think we can all agree upon... There is an element of American business that is not as concerned with making quality products people would like to buy, as they are in making products people feel they need to buy, even if they are crap. I think Martin Luther King would turn over in his grave if he saw the younger generations (somewhat) freed by his efforts, turn around and enslave themselves to credit debt and pay day lenders so they can buy bling and Air Jordans. And it's not just the black community, by any means. How many people have no money in the bank but still feel the need to get the latest iPhone, or widescreen TV? Or skin cream? I know this last one is missed by most men, thankfully, but a large fortune is spent every year on skin cream by women so out of shape and unattractive no one would want to look at them no matter how their skin smelled. And that's not even to get into shoes. I've known women who were maxed out on their credit cards at the same time they had a closet filled with dozens (and in one case over a hundred) pairs of shoes they have never worn. Why? So, yes, I will agree that there is an element of mind control to big business--and that this stems from the top down, i.e. from people who want to control the public for their own selfish reasons. I would also agree that at times these people step into politics, and ask a government to overthrow another government that is interfering in their profit margin. But do they have organized meetings with other powerful businesses where they approve or disapprove the world's events? I don't think so. I attended some of the top conferences of the record business, and they were a disorganized bunch of scoundrels, with the accent on disorganized.

Yes, there are powerful elites who meet with others to pursue their interests. But no, they don't always use their power to the detriment of others. It is a fact that the little guys pay the highest price in a war. And yet the New World Order pursued after WWII stabilized large parts of the globe, and allowed a middle class to develop in nations impoverished by the world wars. As far as it being a rigged game, yes, I agree. Whatever this is it is not a meritocracy. But there's enough movement between the have-nots to the haves to keep most Americans believing it can happen to them. Even though it almost certainly will not. It's kinda like joining a Monopoly game after all the top properties have been handed out, and hotels have been added. You might get lucky and make it to Go without landing on Boardwalk, but your luck can only hold out for so long. In my case, I developed leukemia last year. I hate insurance companies, but if my wife didn't have a good job with insurance I would almost certainly be scattered somewhere. Last I looked the bill was over 2 million, and climbing...