On December 18, 1904, seven men left for Ottawa. Their objective: to win the Stanley Cup.

 However, the interesting part of this story isn’t the ice hockey game. That was rather anti-climatic compared to what led up to the match itself.

  In an ironic twist, the latest batch of leaked embassy documents concerns the owners of the domain name wikileaks.ch.

 No, they didn’t leak information about themselves. Wikileaks.ch is owned by an entirely separate entity. An entity with its own agenda, it’s own history. An international political movement that is officially registered in 20 countries and is active in 20 others, including the United States. It might be the biggest international grassroots political movement that you’ve never heard of.

 It’s called Pirates Parties International, and it deserves a closer look.

   Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has raised the ghastly specter of Reaganomics.

 “If we cut taxes for the wealthy, while maintaining massive military spending in support of two wars, then the new Republican Congress will be empowered to cut social programs in order to reduce the deficit,” Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a longtime friend and sometimes critic of the president, said in a statement. “So it will be a choice between cutting programs for the poor, children, the unemployed, the uninsured and veterans or allowing deficits to pile up. That was President Reagan’s strategy: A ‘starve the beast’ plan of lowered taxes and increased military spending that would force Congress to make deep cuts in program for the most vulnerable.”

 Is Obamanomics really Reaganomics? And is that a bad thing?

  Many people think that Reagan was one of our greatest presidents, and Reaganomics was his defining legacy.

 This is a good place to stop and examine exactly what Reaganomics was and what it means. Most importantly, let’s look at the raw numbers so no one can confuse us with spin.

  We’ve heard a lot about how the economy has created one million jobs since the end of the recession in 2009, but until recently we haven’t heard anyone break down what those jobs are like.

  That changed last week when David Stockman appeared on CNBC.

Stockman interview begins three minutes in

 “The jobs that they count every month and people get excited about are really part-time jobs,” he said.

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”

– Mohandas Gandhi

 The global mega-banks may control our politicians, but they don’t control the public.

All around the world the recently subservient serfs are causing all sorts of trouble for the ruling oligarchy.

 That trouble could start as early as tomorrow.

 Bank managers across France were waiting a little nervously for the start of business on Tuesday after the former football star Eric Cantona urged his compatriots to stage a bank run and trigger a revolution.

 Around 40,000 people in France have pledged to withdraw their money from the banks tomorrow. Another 9,000 in UK have pledged to do the same.

  You can find the organization’s web site at bankrun2010.com.

 Of course this is just one of the many grassroots revolts underway in the world.

  He’s a vocal opponent of current policy. He says the government is keeping secrets from you and lying to you.

 His conservative opponents are apoplectic with anger. They are calling for his head. He has been investigated for imaginary federal crimes.

  But most of all, his opponents are attacking his character. They are accusing him of being a sexual deviant.

 No, I’m not talking about Julian Assange in 2010. I’m talking about Scott Ritter in 2002.

 I’m only mildly interested in the documents that Wikileaks have published.

Like the Pentagon Papers that Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971, the documents that Wikileaks are giving the news media aren’t all that shocking to most of the thinking public.

  The real story here is the official reaction, whether it was Ellsberg in 1972, Ritter in 2002, or Assange in 2010.

  Forget the details of the documents for a moment and look at the government reactions.

  A few days ago Bonddad basically did a call-out diary to all skeptics on the economy. He called everyone who doubted the strength of the recovery a “Zombie Bear” (i.e. unthinking pessimist).

  He then went on to unload nearly three dozen charts.

 The one thing I could never accuse Bonddad of is an inability to read a chart. He’s got that down. My criticism of Bonddad has always been something else – he never asks “Why?”

 Since Bonddad would count me as a skeptic, and since Bonddad felt it necessary to call me out, I feel obligated to respond in kind.

  Most people who have been following the news about Ireland are aware of the austerity measures, such as middle-class tax hikes, the lowering of the minimum wage, and massive layoffs. But the most outrageous action the government is taking concerns pensions.

 Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin attacked the intention to use the National Pension Reserve Fund to help provide a further €10 billion in further capital for the banks. In total, the banks could end up getting another €35 billion if their losses are bigger than expected.

 It’s a case of blatant theft. The government is stealing from the working class to give to the wealthy bank creditors.

 Ireland is not alone.

“The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment.”

 – David Brooks

 According to wealthy conservatives, class and wealth inequality has never been a factor in American history. Of course these are the same guys who believe that the Boston Tea Party was about high tea taxes when in fact it was a protest against government tax breaks for a huge multinational corporation.

   Can you imagine today’s Tea Party movement protesting corporate tax cuts? I can’t.

 Today’s Tea Party, which is largely ignorant about the event that it is named from, would be shocked to discover the revolutionary spirit of America was founded on class war.

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”

– Mohandas Gandhi

 Watching this great country being slowly crushed into a third-world plutocracy by the greedy and powerful is probably the most infuriating event in my life. Good people are being impoverished while bad people buy our government.

 What makes it worse is seeing both of the political parties compete in demonstrating their sycophancy to Wall Street money. It makes elections virtually meaningless.

 It’s enough to make a person surrender to despair.

 But then I remember something important – the money that Wall Street uses to buy our government is our money. The power that Wall Street wields only exists because the people allow it.

  All power originates from the people and we can take it back as easily as it was stolen from us. We can do it without firing a shot or shedding any blood.

 The example for how to it is about to be set in Europe.

  Ireland did everything right, according to the bankers of the world. They slashed wages, services, and public employment. After two years of sacrifice what do they have to show for it?

 Wages have fallen and unemployment is around 13%. That much was expected. What wasn’t expected is that the markets would punish the nation for crushing the domestic economy because of the austerity measures.

 “We do not really see how Ireland is going to be able to ‘hold on’ without EFSF help,” one euro zone source with knowledge of the talks said.

  “Obviously since this implies a pretty tough programme for the government and to some extent a loss of sovereignty, they want to think twice…” the source said.

 In other words, things are going to get even harder for Ireland. What will Ireland get in return? The ability to go even deeper into debt.

  Republican leaders unveiled a new, multi-step plan that will remake the American economy and turn the country into a capitalism utopia virtually overnight.

 “All it takes for this plan to work is for everyone to believe hard enough,” explained Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. “Otherwise it will be all the fault of the Democrats when it fails.”

   The Republican plan for fixing the problem of the long-term unemployed involves relocating them to Glittenwood, the magical land of jobs.