SoylentNews

There's enough Akashic bad-karma residue on that one, to knock a Kali-yuga off it's millennial axis.

I think we should add a field for a ('submitters' comment' / 'first comment' / 'first post') feature to the story submission process below the 'The Scoop' field. Submitters would then be able to use this new comment field for their personal comment to accompany the story (if desired, or leave blank), potentially helping to keep excessive opinion/comments out of what theoretically should be the news story section but still tied to the submission so that when/if it goes live, their comment is automatically posted as the first comment. (Or, perhaps a specially flagged 'Submitters' Comment' but I really think it should just come up as the first regular post.) Not all of us can sit around hitting refresh waiting to see if our latest story submission has been published to try to add our view/comment near the beginning of the discussion which is, i'm sure, partly why comments/editorializing so often end up in the story part which is not really the Right Thing for several reasons, obviously...

This way, extra editorial/comment included in the 'story' part could easily be moved verbatim to the 'comments' section by the editor prepping the story so the submitter's views/comments/etc aren't being changed/reworded/munged in any way while cleaning up the actual story. I think this would solve many problems/annoyances with story submissions both from those who submit them and those who read the story summaries and hate the blatent editorializing, etc. It also means that the submitter gets 'First Post' automatically if they choose to put a comment in there, which I have no problem with.

I'm not saying to go all crazy, always moving every bit that's not story fact out to the comments, etc. (indeed, some story submissions are by their very nature a comment/question/editorial in whole or in part) but I think it could potentially help to clean things up and make the process smoother for many people, in many situations.

I can't imagine this being too difficult to implement and seems like a win-win-win-win.. all around to me.

Comments?

Consider that, in 2009, HRH Clinton (and UKs Milliband) unilaterally grifted Hamid Karzai with $5 BILLION lifted from US Humanitarian Aid to Afghanistan, and deposited it directly into his Bank of Kabul, as open bribe, in plain view, for Hajigak's vast iron and coking coal reserves, to counter the Chinese $3B bribe for Aynak's vast copper reserves.

Not an eyebrow was raised when Clinton flew to Kabul for no particular purpose five times, then announced her $-35MILLION bankrupt presidential campaign fund has been paid off by 'anonymous donors'.

Nor did anyone raise an eyebrow when HRH had to fly back to Kabul and grift Hamid with $3.5 BILLION more, (after he lost the $5 BILLION in Dubai R/E scams as so many have), to stave off collapse of the Bank of Kabul, and have an audit that would reveal what was already apparent to anyone with one good eye.

Kerry-Koch, Nuland, and Poroshenko are all from the same Tribe. Kerry-Koch has already pledged American financial aid. Do you really believe they can't skank another $5 BILLION out the State vault, in plain view, without a single word in the MSM? Of course they can!

This is the Time of Great Looting.

Karzai gifted the Hajigak lease to India. Hillary blew $8.5 BILLION for nothing, although, she did manage to skim $85MILLION off for herself, so, all in all, I guess it was worth it.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/06/ukraine-poroshenkos-hope-for-western-help-is-deluded.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01a73dd48c5d970d

"Because that illusion keeps you on our side."

THE RULES OF THE NEW ARISTOCRACY

It doesn't matter how much food costs increase, doesn't matter if you can only afford fast food, we will always be able to buy steak. And we will invest heavily in fast food stocks to ensure we make money off this. Doesn't matter how much gas costs, we will always be able to afford it.

In addition to poor food choices and health coverage, your kids will grow up without proper nutrition which will cause them problems on every level, from physical to educational difficulties. Our kids will grow up straight and true and healthy.

It doesn't matter how much an education costs, doesn't matter if your kids can't afford to go to college or come out with massive debt, we will always be able to send our kids to university. And because a lot of our income is derived from tax incentives and taxpayer-financed bailouts your taxes are sending our kids to school. But you do not have the right to any of our money to send your kid to school.

If you or your kids want to start a business, you will find that because we've sucked all the money out of the economy, there is simply no available cash around to help you finance your startup. (Unless you want to go to your friends online at sites like Indiegogo, and isn't that just cute?) We just cut our kids a check and tell them to go have fun.

Your kids are born with a glass ceiling above which they will almost certainly never have the opportunity to rise. Our kids are born with a marble floor beneath which they will never be allowed to fall.

If you accidentally provide incorrect information on your tax return, you could lose your house, your possessions, and your livelihood. We lie all the time on our tax information and none of us ever have to deal with this. We squirrel away trillions of dollars in overseas accounts and do all we can to ensure that your money never leaves our control because we'll doubtless need to scoop out more of it soon.

You live in a Company Town; we pay you to work for us, while making sure that we own all the stores in town that sell our goods, the doctors offices where you go in town, the restaurants where you eat, and that we charge you just enough to make sure that at the end of the week you don't have any leftover money to squirrel away, so you can never leave the company town, can never get ahead, and can never risk criticizing the company town. You work for us. We own the town where you live. We own you.

If one of you takes a hundred dollar bill from the cash register, you will go to jail. If we take billions out of the savings of ordinary people then crash the economy, costing thousands of jobs, not one of us will ever be prosecuted. Because the New Aristocracy is above such things. So we'll just keep on doing it. Enjoy the ride.

Your local police belong to us now. We have militarized them into soldiers who treat you like terrorists. If you speak against us, we will ensure that you are tear gassed and beaten and handcuffed and caged into "free speech zones" designed to make you forget that the whole country was supposed to be a free speech zone. But now you have free speech only when and where we say you can have it. Meanwhile, we can say and do pretty much anything we want, to you or anyone else, and get away with it.

If you happen to figure out our game and talk about it, we will accuse you of Class Warfare, in order to distract anyone from realizing that yes, there was a class war, that it was against you, that the war is over, and we won.

Yes, you get a chance to vote for congresspeople and senators and presidents. But only after we've decided, long before the first ballot is ever cast, which candidate we will finance. Those we like, those who will give us what we want first and foremost, we will finance and you will get to vote on one of the two pre-screened candidates we have given you. If we don't like them, if we think they will challenge us, we will not finance them and you will never have the chance to vote on them. Because you don't get a real vote in the New Aristocracy.

We own the White House. We own Congress. They pass the bills we write for them. They make the laws we want them to make, and make sure that they only limit you, never us. We own the courts. We own the lawyers. They are the club we use to beat you into submission.

There are no Democratic or Republican Senators, or Congresspeople or Presidents. Those parties have not existed for decades. There is only the Party of the New Aristocracy. The rest is Kabuki theater. It is Mexican Wrestling. It is the illusion of choice, of difference, of democracy. This is not a democracy. It is a monarchy of money. In that monarchy, we are the Aristocracy, the royalty, and what we say, goes.

If you dump trash illegally, you will be fined and potentially arrested. If we dump hundreds of tons of toxic waste into rivers and streams, none of us will ever be arrested and if we are fined, we will simply raise our prices so that you are the one to actually pay for what we did.

We are the New Aristocracy, and we do not pay fines.

We are the New Aristocracy, and we are immune from prosecution.

We are the New Aristocracy, and we find your poverty and your powerlessness and your struggles disgusting. You are beneath us.

Understand something: we don't want you to succeed. We don't want someone coming along to slice the pie into smaller pieces. We want to own all of it. If we really wanted more of you where we are, do you think we would have spent the last thirty years consolidating every major company into smaller and smaller groups owned by fewer and fewer people?

We are the New Aristocracy because we were born into it. We got our money the old fashioned, Medieval way: our parents gave it to us. We were born into the wealth that we stole from you and your family over the last fifty years. You were not born into anything other than poverty and struggle. You will never be us. You will never have our advantages. And we like it that way.

We like that you peer through the bars of your cage to all that we have. We like that you think you can have it yourself one day. Because that illusion keeps you on our side. But you will never have those things. We've made sure of that. Because what you're looking at is ours, and we do not share.

The world we have carefully constructed for you is like one of those boardwalk games of chance where if you knock down the big pins with a baseball, you win a huge prize. But the pins are weighted and positioned so that you will never, ever knock them down. Yet you'll keep paying anyway, and keep throwing, until you exhaust yourself and your wallet. And we like it that way.

We don't want you to have opportunities, we don't want you to have an education, we don't want you to have a voice in what happens to you, we don't want you healthy, we don't want you to do anything but be frightened, helpless, docile consumers who will eat and watch and buy what we tell you to eat and watch and buy while we keep all the good stuff to ourselves.

Because you're not in our club.

Because we are the New Aristocracy.

And you are the New Peasants.

And we very, very, very much like it that way.

NT