Bob VanDeHey's Posts (418)

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            Let us pray, for First Solar, Inc., may it prove to be the grand exception that truly tests (proves) the rule!
 
Accounting for only 1.3% of all energy provision in America, “Obama-approved” sources will never in the foreseeable future replace fossil fuels.  Of course, besides huge new fields (the Bakken Deposit) of oil and immense troves of natural gas . . . the United States has the world’s largest concentrations of Keragen (“oil shale”) with enough in Western Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to provide all the world’s energy needs for the next six and a half centuries. It goes without saying that petroleum, natural gas and keragen are all EVIL FOSSIL FUELS not to be considered by Barak the Bird-Brain.
 
 
#1 Detriment to Viable Alternatives
 for U.S. Energy? Expensive Unions!
 
 
            After forty-four years of unending subsidies and false starts, solar energy is not much further along than it was when Jimmy Carter first did the alternative energy foreplay routine on all his progressive friends. After all that time it’s getting harder and harder to build up their orgiastic excitement to the crescendo that used to bring progressives such a thrill back in the day . . . in short, like most of today’s alternative energy options, solar power is largely impotent when compared to the sheer power and virility that is petroleum, natural gas and coal which combined with nuclear and hydro-electric power yield 96.8% of America’s total energy. At present, no single alternative energy source produces more than the 1.6% of total energy provided by burning wood; and all of the documented alternatives taken together fail to match the 5.6% of total energy provided by hydro-electric power (which produces 20% of the world’s energy and 88% of the world’s renewable energy at present).
            When both transportation needs and home and industrial electricity are combined, the following information holds true:
 
RAE (Renewable “Alternative” Energy) –
            After all the hype and all the monetary drain, these sources (solar; wind; geo-thermal; tidal; waves; mirror) only amount to 1.3% of the nation’s total energy. The most ancient (and therefore NOT “alternative”) of our renewable energy sources, water-power and wood-burning 7.2% combined, still account for 84.7% of all renewable energy power usage in America in 2011. For the record, only water-power generation of electricity (hydro-electric power) among all the renewable forms is viable for large energy production. Also for the record, battery-powered cars get 47% of their electrical charges from coal furnaces . . .
Coal
Coal, which provides nearly half -- 47.3% -- of the power providing the nation’s electricity, accounts for 22.6% of all energy (91% of all coal is used for electricity) expenditure.
Hydro-electric Power
Is presently our major viable renewable energy source and accounts for 5.6% of all energy use in the country. Hydro-electricity is relatively new, (only 120 years old) but water-power for mills has been used for at least the last three thousand years. The failure of the other “alternative energy” ideas to catch on is graphically understood when you consider that 86% of all renewable energy comes from hydro-electric generating stations in dams and burning wood . . . and that the United States has one of the least expansive hydro-electric systems in the entire world.
Natural Gas
Provides 23.8% of all energy used in the country.
Nuclear (electric) Power  --
Only provides 8.5% of America’s energy.
Petroleum
36.6% of our total energy comes from oil; 71% of petroleum is used for transportation and 23% for industrial purposes.
Wood Burning
            Still accounts for 1.6% of all American energy and a larger share of our energy use than any single “renewable energy source” except, of course hydro-electric power.  Only wood-burning and hydro-electric power are viable renewable energy sources at present.
            Solar energy has proved to be a huge disappointment and its future is very much in the dark. Wind power has also left our sails slack, while geo-thermal has left its proponents cold.  Accounting for only 1.3% of all energy provision in America, “Obama-approved” sources will never in the foreseeable future replace fossil fuels.  Of course, besides huge new fields (the Bakken Deposit) of oil and immense troves of natural gas . . . the United States has the world’s largest concentrations of Keragen (“oil shale”) with enough in Western Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to provide all the world’s energy needs for the next six and a half centuries. It goes without saying that petroleum, natural gas and keragen are all EVIL FOSSIL FUELS not to be considered as viable alternatives by Barak the Bird-Brain. 
Progressives in Washington, D.C. have destroyed the economy with the thirty-four year old plague of CRA ’77 on the one hand creating the sub-prime lending crisis and our ongoing financial meltdown; and on the other hand with deliberate and malicious energy-blockage (no new refinery has been built in this country since 1974) bankrupting the country. Until they put us back to the dark ages (literally!!) they will not be happy. The contradictions of the green-energy fanatics stand out clearly in this next little item . . . .
            At present all “independent” American solar panel manufacturers have failed save one: First Solar, Inc.  First Solar, an unsubsidized firm unlike 99.8% of its still viable competitors, has disappointed investors again as net income for the last quarter fell 33% in the face of strong Chinese competition. The Chinese, of course, are able to put cheaper labor in their shops, something not possible in a country whose wage structure is driven by union demands. In short, the fault presumably lies NOT with First Solar, but with the economic conditions that progressives have handcuffed us with over the last six decades.
There may still be hope -- First Solar has gone directly against the grain (shades of “Rearden Metal,” Mr. Galt!) and sacrificed energy production capability thus far in the interest of lighter weight, production- cost savings and versatility. The company specializes in bendable thin-film solar panels which capture sunlight and convert it to electricity. First Solar’s film is only able to capture around 11% of the sunlight shining on the panel which is less efficient than wafer-style solar panels, which can capture anywhere from 20 to 25 percent of the sunlight shining on the panel. The wafer-style panels meanwhile are all being manufactured in this country by firms heavily-subsidized by the Obama government. In its favor, First Solar was the first company to bring cost-per-watt of solar energy below $1 . . . a huge, indeed the critical, step in making solar energy more competitive with traditional energy sources from fossil fuels. 
In short, First Solar is the first nearly viable solar energy manufacturer in America, it’s innovative and even intransigent (refusing to follow the herd and trusting in their own vision) and thanks to First Solar, there really has been a breakthrough in solar energy viability.  While other companies have concentrated on solar energy, First Solar has concentrated on cost-viability so that its products while only about as efficient as the panels installed in 1980 . . . now cost about 1.25% as much as they did back then. In other words, except for the influence of the unions on wages, First Solar might already be the world’s leader in providing solar energy. As it stands, however, they’re probably going to need to triple their efficiency past the wafer-companies in order to compete with the Chinese. 
Then there’s the matter of patent infringement, we can expect the Chinese, if First Solar ever does make it . . . to just steal the process (none of these niceties of paying patent royalties) and again put the American economy between the sword and the wall.   Let us pray, for First Solar, Inc. Its Chinese competitors like SunTech and JA Solar are the main rivals. Sun Tech had been the last U.S. independent solar panel manufacturer other than First Solar but now the Chinese and French own it. The long-term viability of First Solar is at stake and reportedly the rats are leaving the sinking ship (huge amounts of insider sales and departure of many of these insiders). Meanwhile besides the Chinese, First Solar must compete against heavily-subsidized but less efficient American firms. These firms (which would have all gone bankrupt by now) are still alive and still fighting to keep First Solar’s share of the solar panel market low. Much as the federal auto-bailout has threatened Ford’s survival, federal solar subsidies are now threatening the only viable American solar panel manufacturer. Let us pray, for First Solar, Inc., may it prove to be the grand exception that truly tests the rule! 
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
Read more…
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate

http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/04/critics-obamas-latest-long-form-birth-certificate-is-a-fake/

http://teapartyorg.ning.com/video/forgery-obama-birth?xg_source=activity

http://nobarack08.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/obamas-long-form-birth-certificate-not/

“. . . if an adroit 12-year old computer geek had master-minded this fraud it would, of necessity have been 96% more difficult to discover.”

“Before there were “birthers,” all this began with Hillary Clinton’s campaign allegations in late 2007 and early 2008.”

 

FoxNews and Mainstream Media Drop Ball

New Obama Birth Paper an Obvious Fake

 

They’re called “Techies” or “Geeks” and their research indicates that this week, whoever came up with the White House document purporting to be the valid and true long-form birth certificate from August, 1961 for Barack Obama was either extremely inept or deliberately wanted to be shown up as a fraud.  Where did all this “birther” controversy come from?

Before there were “birthers” as we know them, all this began with Hillary Clinton’s campaign allegations in late 2007 and early 2008.  The Democratic Party National Committee muckety-mucks were unwilling to get involved and later when obvious corruption such as bussing-in illegal voters from out of state won Obama 14 of the 16 caucus states whereas Hillary won 26 of the 42 voting states (some states use both processes on the same day), Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with the Democratic Party machinery again unwilling to step into the fray and make a ruling. The mainstream media refused to cover the story and then when Hillary lost the nomination began to attribute it strictly to “conspiracy-theorizing conservatives” never mentioning that Hillary’s people had first seen the problem for what it was: a threat to the Constitution of the United States and an audacious fraud.

For quite some time all Obama-doubters regardless of party had to content themselves with reports that his Social Security number on file for many years and many uses was one the Social Security Administration never actually issued to anyone; and that IF IT HAD BEEN ISSUED it would have been issued to a Connecticut resident not to one in Hawaii, back when Obama was still attending prep school on the Island on the issue date (when he was only sixteen).  The most helpful document was unavailable at that time.   And they’ve had to content themselves with a short-form birth certificate which was, if nothing else, internally-consistent although out of numerical order with earlier and later births in the same hospital.  

To repeat: all this began with Hillary Clinton’s campaign allegations in early 2008.  Let us be perfectly clear, IF HILLARY’s campaign in early 2008 had the evidence presented to the American people this week on WhiteHouse.gov . . . she and not Barack Obama would be the president of the United States . . . that is not a guess or a theory . . . that is virtually incontrovertible fact (barring a miracle, no Republican could win in 2008 with the economy as fouled as it was). However, if John McCain had this information in October, 2008, that would have proven miraculous and he would be the president . . . that’s how important the fraudulent information provided by that long-form birth certificate is . . . .

 All that changed with the surprise release this week of the long-requested, long-form document. Obama-lovers immediately said, “There, we knew it all along.” Obama doubters bit their tongues. Meanwhile the mainstream-lamestream media began crowing and they and even the always more vigilant FoxNews all simultaneously failed to investigate the document.

                This posting of the long-form document changed everything. Soon it was apparent that something akin to lunacy is going on. Whatever the absolute truth about the recently revealed “long-form” Obama birth certificate turns out to be  . . . one thing is obvious, the document we’re looking at is an inexpert computer-generated fake purportedly showing the truth from 1961 when no computers existed except in the military. Many sources on the internet have given highly credible evidence that the new document has been fraudulently created using “photo-shop-type” technology. Truly that document is so very obviously phony that it’s INCONCEIVABLE that anyone closely politically connected with Barack Obama could have deliberately created such an obviously phony “record” with any reasonable faith that its fakery would not be discovered within hours: a lot is at stake after all. This is the great mystery, why? And why now?  

The TRUE document, if such exists is thus still hidden from the American people. We repeat:  it’s INCONCEIVABLE that anyone closely politically connected with Barack Obama could have deliberately created such an obviously phony “record” with any reasonable faith that its fakery would not be discovered within hours.

ITEM: Posting of the long-form document linked above was a complete surprise to Obama’s political opponents and his allies alike. Why was it released this week? As a distraction from other chicanery?

ITEM: After thirty months of dodging the birth certificate issue and over $1.2 million spent by Obama and the Democratic National Committee to prevent efforts to have any documents at all released, suddenly the timing is right this week?? And suddenly this counterfeit long-form birth certificate is posted for all to see. How “inexpert” is this fake document . . . even at first viewing, Rajjpuut immediately had doubts . . . for example . . . .

ITEM: Rajjpuut’s first impression was that the “paper” was computer paper not generally available until at least a dozen years after Obama’s birth in 1961. . . but there was no proof of that, just some vague recollections from the past and the fact that of the perhaps 500 birth certificates he’s dealt with (verifying athletes’ and chess players’ age and eligibility) over the years, he’s never seen anything quite like that.  Perhaps a copy of an original birth certificate is now routinely produced on that paper . . . but he felt the original never could have been . . . in the end not having expertise in this area no definite conclusions could be made.

ITEM: His second impression was that the background computer pattern had been deliberately “woven” into the central “content” part of the document itself and did NOT match the external paper’s apparent newer age and higher contrast . . . it was as if the whole central image with its writing had been deliberately “cut and pasted” onto the larger paper expanse and carefully lined up with the external design pattern. Again, not having expertise in this area no definite conclusions could be made.

Item: Third impression -- the document presented appears very different from contemporary 1961 long-form records of birth for others in Hawaii (and in the supposed hospital where Obama was born) which the earlier revealed Obama short-form has often been compared to all these years. To be precise, it appears like someone took a modern COLB blank and filled in the “proper information” from 1961 and the information appears to be printed consistent with a modern computer rather than with a 1961 or earlier typewriter. This was sufficient to Rajjpuut to indicate that the item was probably phony . . . but he lacked expertise to make any authoritative conclusions.

ITEM: Certainly the data Rajjpuut had seen on 60’s era birth certificates such as the baby’s length and weight was not provided . . . data which one would expect on a legitimate birth certificate.

ITEM: Within a day, actually within five or six hours, people a lot more involved in the “documents field” and a lot more expert on computer graphics modification were pouring out their souls on the internet proving (by finding as few as three and as many as thirty-four different inconsistencies) that the document was fake and so stupidly faked that, in their opinions, no reasonable expert could doubt the counterfeiting.  Rajjpuut got the impression that if an adroit 12-year old computer geek had master-minded this fraud it would, of necessity have been 96% more difficult to discover.

ITEM: Many of the alleged inconsistencies were graphic; others were logical or even numerical; others were a combination of graphic and logical. Of some approximately sixty distinct critics, Rajjpuut opines that only one in twenty was dubious in its presentation (not necessarily in its conclusions – just unconvincing in its “science”).

ITEM: How were these examinations done?  The 95% of these experts who Rajjpuut found “convincing” all began the same way, they blew up the page by perhaps 300%-400% (kind of like Sherlock Holmes with his magnifying glass) and at that size a whole host of features about a document you weren’t aware of before come into sharp relief. At that size the “uneasy” feeling Rajjpuut got from his first and second impressions of the life-sized document become clearly manifest so that all the inconsistencies jump out at you. Rather than belabor the point here are five helpful websites and you, the reader, can judge for yourself:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate

http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/04/critics-obamas-latest-long-form-birth-certificate-is-a-fake/

http://teapartyorg.ning.com/video/forgery-obama-birth?xg_source=activity

http://nobarack08.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/obamas-long-form-birth-certificate-not/

http://marbiesblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/obamas-long-form-birth-certificate-is-another-fraud/

 

Now the problem with all this “birther” stuff (they prefer the term “Constitutionalists”) appears to the uninitiated to smack of a half-baked conspiracy theory of fifty-years duration (from 1961-2011). In actuality, however, the root cause of the matter seems to be a flighty self-described Marxist known as Stanley Ann Dunham (Barack’s mother) who lived 2/3 of her lifetime as a scatterbrained-communist always  thumbing her nose## at the United States and all it stood for. It’s not known where she delivered her son.  Given all the facts that we won’t go into, Canada is far more likely than Kenya (she was traced to Seattle and Vancouver back about the time Barack was purported to have been born) . . . but it is literally unknown. It is known that Stanley Ann’s mother (Barack’s maternal grandmother) Madeline (yes, that is the correct spelling, NOT Madilyn as given by hundreds of less thorough sites) who was a very industrious and conventional person put in the paperwork in Hawaii that generated the short-form; and that she had a birth announcement put into the newspaper (normally handled by the hospital and reporters) a few days after the reported birthday of Barack Obama. Because all the information on this short form is generated by the parents or grandparents and not state records  . . . it is thus how the controversy arises . . . and it arises because of Stanley Ann Dunham.

Whether or not Barack Obama was actually born in the United States, it appears that his mother Stanley Ann Dunham deliberately lost him his citizenship when she moved to Indonesia (which did not allow dual citizenships in those days) and once there married a high-placed local petroleum official, Lolo Soetoro, and the stepfather soon adopted the boy. So American citizenship, something which most of us value quite highly – was possibly deliberately put at risk for her son Barack not once, but twice by Ms. Dunham. Much of the sketchiness of Barack’s nebulous past can be attributed to the fact that he seems to have spent a good part of his youth under various names, most likely-provided by his mother. Barry was the most common given name but Obama, Soetero, Soweto and several other last names seem to have been used indiscriminately.

The mainstream media would have you believe that birthers/ Constitutionalists believe that Barack Obama is the devil and a worldwide conspiracy exists just to put him into control over the world . . . nothing of the sort, it is clearly Ms. Dunham who is the central personage in this little birther-drama. She may have even told Barack he was born in Kenya. Certainly she spent an awful lot of his early life telling him all the great things about his father Barak (that is correct spelling) Hussein Obama, Sr. a Marxist official** in the Kenyan post-colonial government (who lost his job when his very vocal demands for more “scientific socialism” a.k.a. communism) conflicted with the more moderate socialism of the Kenyata government. His paternal grandmother says our president was born there and she witnessed it, but no evidence has ever been produced documenting this claim.

Certainly, the Associated Press following a debate during his senate campaign relying on Obama-provided information called him a “Kenyan-born U.S. Senate hopeful” and this information was reprinted with the bigger story in Kenyan papers; and later Michelle Obama referred to her husband’s native land as Kenya.  This explains the context of the often-cited debate, in which Keyes faulted Obama for not being a “natural-born citizen”, and in which Obama, by his quick retort, “So what? I am running for Illinois Senator, not the presidency”, with Obama self-admitting that he was not eligible for the office of president. All this rather quickly became known by some in the Hillary campaign. Later, probably much later, someone decided that Barack’s maternal grandmother’s short-form indicating Hawaiian birth was essential to an Obama presidential effort . . . that’s when, in 2007, the short-form generated in 1961 first appeared as “evidence” in Obama’s favor and inconsistencies were brought to the Hilary Clinton campaign’s attention and the whole “birther” argument arose.

            It appears that the bottom line is this: Americans disgusted with the way the Republicans had governed from Washington, D.C. voted for a pig –in-a-poke known as “hope and change” and thanks to the mainstream media’s refusal to vett Obama, we don’t actually know who the present President of the United States actually is. On the one hand there’s the birth issue . . . which could be small potatoes or absolutely huge. Then there’s this sealing of all his records and college credentials and his frankly, slippery life narrative (Why did they build a statute to ten-year-0ld Barack in Indonesia and place it in the Muslim school he attended?) for both himself and for his mother and maternal grandfather. Then there’s the vast amount of radicals he’s installed into the government and especially as unvetted czars. And next is his apparently unashamed political dirty tricks and the brave promises for fairness, openness, transparency, oaths about turning his back on the corrupt old ways that dominate in D.C., and his pledge of bi-partisanship all added to government takeover of virtually everything possible . . . all of that makes Americans very suspicious. And now we have this phony document . . . .

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

 

## in fairness, Stanley Ann appears to have been very smart, just not “level-headed,” and she did do some good by helping indigent natives in the Eastern Hemisphere learn some really important skills like smithing while indoctrinating them into Marxism and anti-Americanism. Once she stopped studying Revolution she eventually got a degree in anthropology and, as mentioned, played a helpful “Peace-Corps-like” role.  Once she left America she never returned for any length of time. And she left Barack, Jr. to be raised by her parents.


**   http://www.politico.com/static/PPM41_eastafrica.html      
here’s a little sample of Barack, Jr.’s father’s thinking (notice the reference to 100% taxation, of the rich? Or of everybody?) Our Barack’s parents met in a Russian language class in Hawaii and were both Marxists.

 

Read more…

 


 

 
 

Obama Earns Kudus for
Bin Laden Raid, Slaying
 
Censure for Loud Mouth


          
     In an ideal world, President Obama would be telling us three weeks from now that Usama Bin Laden was killed, showing us a picture of the evil one in death, and saying that the information captured with him had already led to the killing of five other Al Qaeda bigwigs and the capture of three others. Mr. Obama deserves high praise for his decision to launch a gutsy Seal strike on the compound in Pakistan where UBL has been hiding out for about six years . . . he deserves acute censure for the idiocy of showboating on this when by merely keeping the secret for a few days, he’d be allowing American intelligence officials to deal a far greater blow to Al Qaeda. The CIA’s top officials must be going nuts taking orders from this idiot.
 
Ya'all live long, strong and ornery,
 
Rajjpuut 
Read more…

 

            “Mr. Obama has shown an undeniable pattern of associating preferentially with left-wing radicals and outright anti-American sorts  (Van Jones has called for the Revolution NOW and he’s just one of the President’s friends making similar pleas: Trumka for example has called for union violence) and he needs to be judged on that every bit as much as he’s judged on his incompetence.

 

 

Obama Preacher Refers to “3/5 of a Human

Being” and Slavery from 148 Years Ago

in Easter Sunday Sermon

 

 

             Feeling the need to attend an Easter Sunday service to remove the heat incurred after the President pointedly refused to utter the word “Easter” altogether, Barack Obama found himself back in Jeremiah Wright’s church – well, sort of. If your thesis about Barack Obama is that he is a race-baiting Black nationalist (which is not the thesis or hypothesis of Rajjpuut) this Easter Sunday would have cemented that notion as a highly probable explanation for all things Obama. This time the race-baiting Black victimization sermon came not from Reverend Jeremiah Wright but from Dr. Wallace Charles Smith, a Baptist minister in Washington, D.C. like Rev. Wright a master at driving iron wedges between the races.

             President Obama choice of spending Easter Sunday at the Shiloh Baptist Church, led by its controversial pastor Reverend Wallace Charles Smith . . . at the minimum showed that the poor judgment which got him in Dutch with the American people (incensed by his former pastor, Jeremy Wright saying “Not God bless America but God Damn America”) is still a part of the Obama psyche. Just as Wright when he blamed America for the 9/11 attacks saying “America’s chickens have come home to roost” based his sermons in the era of slavery, Wallace Charles Smith also has a well-recorded history of constantly reminding people of color that they were victims way back when and therefore they MUST now feel victimized and outside of contemporary American culture. Before looking at that history of Reverend Smith, however, which presumably Obama had NOT shared via videotape prior to attending the church, let’s see what Wallace’s Easter sermon was for the Obama family and the rest of his flock on April, 24, 2011.

            Reverend Wallace Smith talked about his own grandson and then somehow segued into a litany of references to “3/5 of a human being” referring to the census status of the slave on December 31, 1862 on the eve of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation . . . that is, he was bemoaning a great wrong that had begun to be corrected over 168 years ago. Tie that into the Easter spirit of uplift and rebirth and renewal if you can!

So we have Washington, D.C. with perhaps 800 Black congregations led by Black pastors all clamoring for the President of the United States to visit them and Mr. Obama winds up front and center at this guy’s church. But perhaps the pastor was just having a bad Sunday? Unfortunately, Reverend Wallace Smith has nothing but bad Sundays it seems. He spends a lot of time talking about White Robes and Jim Crow and a truly surprising lot of the time calling Talk Radio and FoxNews racists almost as if he had a vested interest in his flock only listening to certain media modalities. Mr. Obama, of course, just as he did for twenty years in the church of Reverend Jeremiah Wright was legitimizing this radical pastor . . . ah, but you say, “Reverend Smith doesn’t sound that radical . . .”

             Reverend Smith, unlike Reverend Wright, is not a bombastic fire-eater. He speaks in far more muted tones and in a less pointedly anti-White fashion . . . but that’s merely a difference in style NOT in content. The predominant message at Shiloh Baptist is RACE OPPRESSION. Black victimhood is Smith’s credo and Black grievance perpetuation is his undeniable purpose. A thousand years from now and a couple dozen generations of Reverend Smiths we can expect the man or woman in the pulpit to still be Black-grievance mongering because Black victimhood, damnit should never be allowed to end. Whitey MUST pay!

             Reverend Smith is appalled at Blacks who make it on their own without once resorting to Affirmative Action. Segregation, he insists, has never gone away just become a more subtle societal pressure felt most strongly from talk radio and FoxNews and other monsters who insist that Affirmative Action actually hurts Black and fosters Black dependency upon the Federal Government for non-ending handouts. He blames “the plight of the Black citizen” upon continuing White oppression for hundreds of years  -- an oppression now less easily pinpointed (“Jim Crow has set aside his white sheet and now wears blue pinstripes and carries a briefcase . . . Jim Crow**, Esquire.”).  Smith compared Rush Limbaugh to the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Council. In other words, conservatives -  a.k.a. Mr. Obama’s critics – can’t be opposed to his actions because of policy differences but are dyed-in-the-wool racists seeking to perpetuate an Amercan apartheid. For Mr. Smith and many others on the left, disagreeing with progressivism is not only wrong, but evil-deep-seated intolerance and bigotry. Let us remind you, of Rajjpuut’s outlook on this matter in no uncertain terms:

            a)    Barack Obama was elected President of the United States receiving more White votes and a higher percentage of White votes in 2008 than Kerry in 2004 or Gore in 2000 received . . . roughly 48% of the White votes, high for a Democrat.

            b)    John McCain received roughly 4.5% of the Black vote less than 1/10 of that 48%. Since Racism obviously does exist, the questions here are: “Which group is the most racist?”  “Does harping on an unchangeable past and emphasizing unchangeable ills  from almost fourteen decades ago as carried out by Black Separationists like Wright, Farrakhan and Smith help or hurt the Black community in its efforts to gain the American Dream?”

            c)    It is entirely likely that folks like Barack Obama, Reverend Wright, the Democratic Party as a whole, and you, Reverend Smith, have a vested interest in keeping the Black citizen in victim-mode and helplessly dependent upon the government . . . .

            d)   It is entirely probable that the vilification that self-made heroic Blacks like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Florida freshman Representative Allen West constantly receive from people like Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Wright, the Democratic Party as a whole, and from you, Reverend Smith, has done more to hurt today’s Black Community than all the vile acts of the Ku Klux Klan put together.

            e)    President Obama’s judgment is clearly the topic of discussion here: his long relationship with Wright; and then showing up in a church dominated by another like-spirited and like-minded radical hate-mongered (Smith) tends to push three possible conclusions upon us: 

                     1)              This is where President Obama is comfortable because this is what President Obama believes in his heart of hearts . . . or

                     2)             President Obama makes very poor decisions about who he associates with and who he puts into positions of responsibility around him (Van Jones, Eric Holder, Anita Dunn,  John Holdren, Bill Ayers, and even Michelle Obama (“This is the first time I’ve been proud of America”) are all radicals seemingly twenty times more likely to criticize this country than to stand up for her or to seek to advance her traditional goodness.

                     3)             Mr. Obama is comfortable only among the people mentioned because he does not believe that America is good. Van Jones recently joined an organization seeking legal rights on a par with humans for Mother Nature and everything within her.

                     4)             Guilt by REPEATED association is NOT the same as “guilt by association.” As much as Obama defenders like Alan Colmes like to point at every similar criticism of the Anointed One Barack as unfair and resorting to “guilt by association,” the fact is that singular acts are one thing and constant, continual and brazenly repeated acts are quite another. Mr. Obama has shown an undeniable pattern of associating preferentially with left-wing radicals and outright anti-American sorts (Van Jones has called for the Revolution NOW and he’s just one of the President’s friends making similar pleas: Trumka for example has called for union violence) and he needs to be judged on that every bit as much as he’s judged on his incompetence.

 

       In a related story, Obama’s former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones who resigned when his radical past, his vile insults against Republicans and his 9/11 Truther membership came to light is now pushing for a “new global architecture of environmental law” that would give Mother Nature the same legal rights in our courts as human beings.

      Rajjpuut would certainly like to be able to sue Mother Nature for the loss of my mother to mosquito-borne encephalitis almost forty years ago; and then there’s all those times I got sunburned and the cat’s scratching up our carpet  . . . . Oh, sorry, Van Jones isn’t joking. 

      Self-admitted communist, Van Jones is now a spokesman and one of the newer board members of the “Pachamama Alliance” in Nancy Pelosi’s Land (San Francisco) of Nuts . . . seeking to extend human rights (complete with enforceable laws) to nature itself on the international scene, ah me . . . these are the kinds of radicals the President has surrounded himself with (all the while declaiming the “extremism” of the TEA Party, FoxNews, and talk radio?) and it definitely appears that these radicals are NOT loyal Americans . . . by extension, the President’s own patriotism comes under question. Question their loyalties  . . . and you again, by extension, question the President’s loyalties, his greater agenda . . . .

      Just by coincidence, another “spokesman” lost his cushy job the other day . . . The AFLAC Duck got fired, long live the new AFLAC Duck. “Why?” one might wonder did the AFLAC Duck get fired and what has that got to do with the price of Chinese Tea or with Obama and Reverend Smith?  Or with “loyalty” for that matter?

      In essence, the AFLAC Duck, or more accurately the long-time voice of the AFLAC Duck is gone because he knew nothing of common sense and nothing of loyalty. AFLAC’s reinsurance business is well-known in this country but their biggest customer by far is Japan.  Actor Gilbert Gottfried lost his position for making controversial remarks highly critical of Japan. Apparently Mr. Gottfried didn’t realize that he was working for two separate entities: AFLAC itself and AFLAC’s customers. Mr. Obama would do well to learn a lesson from the AFLAC Duck, for he too is working for two separate entities: the American people and more especially the American Taxpayer who pays his check (reduced now to only 53% of Americans). It’s almost as if you’re President of a left-wing Black nation and uninterested in the other 84% of America that is neither Black nor left-wing progressive. You work for us, Mr. Obama, all of us; but it sure looks like you’re enthusiastically at work for those who hate this country and the rest of be damned. 

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

 

** Allow us to nitpick.   Rev. Smith's characterization of Jim Crow above is very, very strange. It’s as if he's got present-day Whites becoming Jim Crow and White-favoring actions and White-favoring laws becoming Jim Crow laws. In point of fact, “Jim Crow” and “Jim Crow laws” has always referred to Blacks themselves and to the segregationist laws originally designed to keep Blacks “in their place” and subservient to the White Supremacist Segregationists.  In Rajjpuut’s not so-humble opinion, Affirmative Action so treasured by the Black Community and the preachings of you, Smith, as well as Wright and Farrakhan are the real Jim Crow laws in this day and age.  We must protest the deliberate pretense by the mainstream media that this Sunday's sermon never happened just as the "God damn America" speech by Reverend Wright never happened . . . Mr. Obama has repeatedly put his character (or lack thereof) on the line for all to see, and the left-leaning media, continues protecting his image as always. 

 

Read more…


 

 
 
“PAX Americana” to Go
the Way of the Greenback??
 
 
            The American progressive-left may have its fondest wish coming true according to a recent projection of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicting that the Red Chinese economy will surpass America’s sometime in 2016, just five years from now. Under an evaluation system known as PPP or Purchasing Power Parities, the IMF compared economies in “real terms” and their comparison shows the Chinese economy expanding to $19 TRillion by 2016 from its present $11.2 TRillion (while the American Economy rises from $15.2 TRillion to $18.8 TRillion) so that China overtakes America’s share of the world economy as it slips down to 17.7% while China’s cut of the pie climbs to 18% and rising. For perspective, ten years ago the American economy was ten times the size of China’s.
 
            Is this latest IMF projection accurate? There are three good reasons to doubt its veracity in Rajjpuut’s not-so-humble opinion:   
 
1)    The dominant influence of the scoundrel George Soros upon the activities and emphases of the IMF . . . .
2)   The overt proclivity of China to fudge and adulterate the figures when it comes to their money which has been artificially propped up rather than allowed to float free against other currencies. 
3)    It’s unprecedented in history for an already large and booming economy to undergo a 70% productivity increase within a five-year period.
 
Speaking to the first issue, multi-billionaire Soros has been seeking to destroy the American Dollar for roughly seven years now and the so-called “great philanthropist” (a.k.a. “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” and “The International Man of MISERY”) who has made his fortune destroying currencies in Europe, Eurasia and Southeast Asia has had all fifty-two of his progressive American foundations funding the rise of his favorite Marxist, Barack Obama, for the last five years . . . his man “on the inside.” In other words the puppet Obama has no interest in becoming a real boy when those strings feel so good. 
 
On the second issue . . . anyone could take any figures whatsoever from the Chinese and work them any way they wanted and you’d be no closer to the truth than a snowball is to a glacier. And the third figure seems like it’s come from smoke and mirrors and wishful thinking . . . all of which doesn’t say it’s impossible, only that it’s highly unlikely.
 
For the sake of argument let’s be ultra-conservative and conced that the semi-slave economy in China has the U.S.A by the short hairs because something pretty rotten is going on in Washington, D.C. and whatever that something is . . .  it’s weighing down the American economy so heavily that the IMF figures are 100% accurate . . . it does not take a crystal ball or tea leaves to understand that 100% of Obama’s economic policies have failed on the side of dollar-destruction rather than shoring up the American economy . . . and since Rajjpuut’s antipathy for our Neo-Marxist president is so very high . . . your blog-writer might be allowing his feelings to color the situation. However, given all the available facts, it seems unfortunately that the IMF report if not at least very close to accurate is certainly leaning in the proper direction    . . . which makes it, potentially “a blessing in disguise” or what any sensible patriot would call an “immediate fire alarm” for our so-called “leaders” in Washington, particularly Obama, Geithner, Bernanke, and Harry Reid.
 
            Unless immediate and significant spending cuts; a balanced-budget amendment; an elimination of about 20% of the government’s activities; and business-friendly environment are created within the next year, the IMF projection is likely to come true within ten or twelve years in any case and then . . . the world will become a very different place. Consider the historical precedents: the United States first eased ahead of Great Britain economically about 1890. Both the United States and Germany were economically more powerful about 1914 when the First World War sprang up. Even before the end of World War II, in mid-1945, when the Labour Party ousted Winston Churchill and began instituting its progressive and highly-inflationary “reforms” the British Pound Sterling (which had been the World’s Reserve Currency (WRC) for roughly 220 years) shifted into deeply-troubled waters. By 1950 the American Dollar had become the new WRC.
 
            While the Imperial British had some gross failings (as our own colonial experience reminds us) the world with Britain as the greatest military and economic power was a relatively benign place. As long as the Brits got their cut from their own colonies, anything short of the Mau-Mau Rebellion was not going to provoke too much agitation from the London powers-that-be. This situation was continued with the rise of America and the American Dollar . . . except for mistakes borne of ignorance (all too common, unfortunately) the Yanks ran a pretty orderly shop. With America as the world’s dominant economic and military power, generally speaking, things were downright friendly. Consider this almost three-hundred year period of Anglo-Saxon hegemony . . . and most particularly the last 60-odd years of PAX Americana (a generally peaceful time all around a planet dominated by the United States).
 
            For example, can you imagine Adolf Hitler in charge of an Empire against which Mohandas K. Gandhi is agitating for Indian Independence? Khrushchev ever giving the Panama Canal back to Panamanians? The Spanish Empire that preceded the Brits facing down Martin Luther King’s demonstrations; the rise of Nelson Mandela’s government amidst a minority government of a different race in South Africa under China’s rule?
 
            How much charitable good has the United States dropped upon the world’s people via its Navy and Air Force? How beneficial has our model of free markets and democratic-republicanism been for the emerging countries of the world as the age of colonialism slips behind us? How much forthright protection has the U.S. military provided against rogue states during the last three score years? Ah, but it appears the “king is dying, long live the new Chinese king.”
 
How much different will the world be under dominance of a Communist Chinese government that forces sterilization; forces abortion; limits the number of children; fires upon demonstrators in Tiananmen Square; and is among the leaders in human rights violations performed upon its own citizens? Statism; communism, collectivism and fascism have killed nearly 204 million people in the last 75 years (since Spain’s Civil War in 1936) even though those totalitarian cultures never rose to the absolutely dominant level that Britain and the United States have. The implication is easily made that chaos will be the result if and when China becomes the “Mu Gai PanKock of the Walk.” It’s supposed that the hard left in this country will rejoice as one of their own takes center stage but the song (sung to the tune of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) might become:
 
 
We’ve cried cap’lists should
Be removed for good
Barack, of course, agreed
And he took the lead . . . .
 
 
Now----
There’s a firing squad
Busy in the yard
We just smile and say
As our lovely friends die
Marx, he, told us lies ------
 
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 

Read more…


 http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=25965F12-6D1A-11E0-8CAB-00212804637C
 

 
Only government can take a perfectly useful commodity such as paper, print a few numbers on it and make it worthless . . .
 
 
American Economy Facing
Death by 10,000 Cuts
 
 
It's too early to calculate if the recent International Monetary Fund's projection (see link above) that the "Age of America" will end in five years when the Chinese Economy surpasses America's is accurate.  However, you don’t have to be a gypsy fortune-teller to read-between-the-lines well enough to see that the American economy is dying the death by ten thousand cuts. Of course, many (if not most) of our fearless leaders in Congress and the White House are proclaiming an ongoing recovery. We’re not talking the Mississippi here, but de-Nile, deep, deep denial. Until we’re willing to face up to the truth, no solutions are possible. The progressive leadership in this country over the last forty-eight years (only Ronald Reagan is exempt among presidents and both chambers of every single congress has been guilty with the verdict still out on our present House of Representatives) have destroyed the greatest economic machinery the world has ever known and substantially weakened and corrupted the greatest and freest society ever known. 
Except for producing reality TV series and useless TV networks, we almost don’t create or build anything any more . . . we certainly don’t create jobs. The American Dollar whose original symbol was a capital “U” with a capital “S” atop it has been led to a slow death. Thanks to our leaders we are almost literally drowning in debt: $14.3 TRillion officially; plus $115 TRillion in UNfunded liabilities (Social Security; Medicare; the federal side of Medicaid) or a total of almost $130 TRillion we purposefully ignore discussing; plus, oh yes, that Welfare State that just got Obamacare added onto it . . . .

www.prisonplanet.com/24-signs-of-economic-decline-in-america.html
In a recent article the Prison Planet website told a sad story . . . when we’re through examining their cataloging of the situation . . . besides some parenthetical comments you’ll see immediately after each item, Rajjpuut has three shocking insights to add to the picture, Prison Planet said . . . .

The Economic Collapse: 24 signs of economic decline in America
 
#1 Standard & Poor’s just altered its outlook on U.S. government debt from “stable” to “negative” and warned the U.S. that it could very soon lose its AAA rating (the last time this happened was during the three months following the December 7, 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor).

#2 China has announced that they are going to reduce their holdings of U.S. dollars (China, Brazil, Russia, and several other countries have openly called for elimination of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and China, Russia, Brazil and India have been moving out of Greenbacks into gold and silver).

#3 Hedge fund manager Dennis Gartman says that “panic dollar selling is setting in” and that the U.S. dollar could be in for a huge decline (the dollar has lost 24% of its value this last decade).

#4 The biggest bond fund in the world, PIMCO, is now short-selling U.S. government bonds.

#5 This cruel economy is causing “ghost towns” and “ghost neighborhoods” to appear all across the United States. There are quite a few counties across the nation that now have home vacancy rates of over 50% (Las Vegas, Nevada has one of the highest home vacancy rates in the nation . . . it’s so bad there that there’s a mini-construction “boom” going on . . . what? why? because rather than clients moving into the ghost neighborhoods for a bargain price they prefer to get into whole new sub-divisions with other people nearby rather than a seedy area over-run by kangaroo rats).

#6 There are now about 7.25 million fewer jobs in America than when the recession began back in October, 2007.

#7 The average American family is having a really tough time right now. Only 45.4% of Americans had a job during 2010. The last time the employment level was that low was back in 1983.

#8 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.

#9 The average large company’s CEO made 343 times more money than the average American worker did last year.

#10 Gas prices reached five dollars per gallon at a gas station in Washington, DC on April 19th, 2011. Could we see $6 gas soon?

#11 Over the past 12 months the average price of gasoline in the United States has gone up by about 30%.

#12 Due to rising fuel prices, American Airlines lost a staggering $436 million during the first quarter of 2011.

#13 U.S. households are now receiving more income from the U.S. government than they are paying to the government in taxes.

#14 Approximately one out of every four dollars that the U.S. government borrows goes to pay the interest on the national debt.

#15 Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.

#16 Total credit card debt in the United States is now more than 8 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

#17 Average household debt in the United States has now reached a level of 136% of average household income. In China, average household debt is only 17% of average household income (1/8 as high a percentage on a lot less earnings).

#18 The average American now spends approximately 23 percent of his or her income on just two items food and gasoline (forty years ago that number was about 7%).

#19 In a recent survey conducted by Deloitte Consulting, 74 percent of Americans said that they planned to slow down their spending in coming months due to rising prices.


#20 Over 59 percent of all Americans now receive money from the federal government in one form or another.

#21 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average length of UNemployment in the U.S. is now an all-time record 39 weeks.

#22 As the economy continues to collapse, frustration among young people will continue to grow and we will see more seemingly “random acts of violence”. One shocking example of this happened on a Metropolitan Atlanta Mass Transit Area (MARTA) vehicle recently. The following is how a local Atlanta newspaper described the attack . . . .
 
               Roughly two dozen teens, chanting the name of a well-known Atlanta gang, brought mob rule to
MARTA early Sunday morning, overwhelming nervous passengers and assaulting two Delta flight attendants.
 
#23 Some Americans have become so desperate for cash that they are literally popping the gold teeth right out of their mouths and selling them to pawn shops.

#24 As the economy has declined, the American people have been gobbling up larger and larger amounts of antidepressants and other prescription drugs. In fact, the American people spent 60 billion dollars more on prescription drugs in 2010 than they did in 2005.

            To understand the full picture, consider this: Barack Obama’s puppet-master, George Soros (the “man who broke the Bank of England” and owner of some 52 progressive-foundations that have been working to undermine the U.S. economy for the last nine years as well as funding Barack Obama’s campaigns) is openly calling for the Chinese Yuan to replace the Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Soros, who has been called responsible for the destruction of at least six other currencies, is now heavily invested in the Dollar’s destruction. Every day that we refuse to emulate the British and adopt severe austerity measures, the closer Mr. Soros gets to adding another few hundred billion dollars worth of profit to his net worth. However, it’s not likely that Barack Obama will cut his own strings and act for the good of the American people against George Soros.
Real money, such as gold or silver, does not change in value over time although because of supply and demand considerations and new inventions, etc. it may be used to buy more or buy less of certain commodities. Paper money which is NOT backed by gold or silver (fiat money) always becomes worth less over time and eventually worthless. Right now Americans are shocked that the dollar has officially lost 24% of its value in a decade . . . but that’s only the official figure. The Federal Reserve Bankers under Fed Chief Ben Bernanke have not so much been “printing money” but merely creating it electronically. If the official figures took into account all Mr. Bernanke’s shenanigans and the world valued the Dollar accordingly then the 2011 dollar would be worth between 3-4 pennies from the 2001 DOLLAR.  Leave it to government to take a perfectly useful commodity such as paper, print a few numbers on it and make it absolutely worthless . . . by the way, gold prices have risen 45% in the last eighteen months; silver has risen 58% in the last four months as people and nations are abandoning paper currencies like the Dollar, Euro and Yen. 
            The combined U.S. National Debt and UNfunded liabilities and Welfare responsibilities of the American government right now is equal to about three and one-half times the Gross Domestic Product ($57 TRillion) of the entire world . . . and yet the highly visible film-maker Michael Moore, all the unions, and the Progressives in congress from both parties claim there is “plenty of money” and refuse to cut spending and are debating when and how and how much to increase the debt ceiling right now. They’re counting on higher taxes upon “the rich” (those married couples earning a combined $250,000 or more who create all our small business jobs) to solve all our problems while continuing to create higher deficits, the one thing NOT on their agenda: spending cutbacks.
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
Read more…

 

Atlas Shrugged Part I

 

Eschews Mere Verisimilitude

 

for Absolute Economic Reality

 

                One of the strange things about the ‘global warming' advocates is that the most stringent ones among them like University of Wisconsin law professor Joel Rogers are intelligent enough to understand that what they advocate in economic sacrifice wouldn’t actually work anyway.  Rogers (who with Barack Obama, Al Gore, Franklin Raines, George Soros (via about fifty of his progressive foundations), Valerie Jarrett and Goldman Sachs were all behind the now abandoned and almost forgotten CCX <Chicago Climate eXchange> scam) when speaking only (he thought) to his leftwing buddies candidly admits that even taking technology back to 1895 wouldn’t restore conditions sufficient to eliminate what they believe is an inevitable global warming catastrophe, that is, in other words the debate from their viewpoint is all about gaining political power and not about any other reality or potential reality. 

 

http://yourdaddy.net/crime-inc-joel-rogers-explains-the-myth-cap-and-trade/

 

           In another global warming speech Rogers literally called for parents to tie the global warming myth in with the Santa Claus myth so that once their little kids grow up to be voters they’d do anything to protect Santa from the global warming floods.  It got a few laughs, but the undercurrent was unfortunately serious.   Of course that’s precisely what’s happening with Saturday morning cartoons all carrying a leftist theme with the corporations and producers always painted as the bad guys.  Thank God, a whole lot of kids still grow up to mistrust all myths and all caricatures and cartoons.

 

          Putting aside the myth of global warming, what about the reality of $37/gallon gasoline at some time in the future, IF current anti-business, anti-energy, anti-freedom, and anti-human policies are allowed to continue?  That strange but plausible question is the driving force behind the independently produced, tiny-budget big-screen portrayal of Atlas Shrugged Part I.  Could this happen by 2016?  Unlikely, but possible.  Anyway, it is 2016 and gasoline now has reached $37.00 per gallon.  The only viable means of transportation for the masses at those prices are trains and boats with the automobile and aviation industries almost dead and buried . . . only the super-rich can afford them.  That is how Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged gets tied into today’s present reality so beautifully . . . and, of course, it makes 100% economic sense. 

          The economy gets knocked back to the Depression era 1930’s by the effect of a progressive congress' and president’s interference all stifling the profit incentive . . . and the story is free to unfold in a powerful montage of images very similar to today’s 24-hour news cycle.  Make sure to watch Atlas Shrugged Part I, which if the U.S. Constitution is the “Bible of the TEA Party,” Rajjpuut is tempted to call “The TEA Party’s Book of Exodus.”

 

           In a related mood, two more bits of news.  A)  there’s purportedly a conservative version of YouTube called WooTv.us   which seems worth knowing about, but which seems to me a bit of soft-sell for Obama aimed at swaying gullible independents rather than Constitutional- or fiscal-conservatives, I’d recommend you watch at least five or six of their mini-videos and decide about it for yourself B) If you’ve heard Krista Branch’s “I Am America” and “Remember Who We Are!  then surely here, one of them if it’s not our Star Spangled Banner . . . is  the TEA Party’s America the Beautiful  . . . lovely songs, worth owning both of them here’s where you can buy them both and here are the lyrics, etc. :

 

http://www.amazon.com/Remember-Who-We-Are/dp/B00420HFF2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303543448&sr=1-1-catcorr

 

I Am America

 

Pay no attention to the people in the street
Crying out for accountability
Make a joke of what we believe
Say we don't matter 'cause you disagree
Pretend you're kings, sit on your throne
Look down your nose at the peasants below

 

I've got some news, we're taking names
We're waiting now for the judgment day

I am America, one voice, united we stand
I am America, one hope to heal our land

There is still work that must be done
I will not rest until we've won

I am America

You preach your tolerance, but lecture me
Is there no end to your own hypocrisy
Your god is power, you have no shame
Your only interest is political gain

You hide your eyes and refuse to listen
You play your games and abuse the system
You stuff your pockets while Rome is burning
I've got a feeling that the tide is turning

I will not give up on this fight
I will not fade into the light, I am America

You stuff your pockets while Rome is burning
I've got a feeling that the tide is turning

I am America, one voice, united we stand
I am America, one hope to heal our land

I will not give up on this fight
I will not fade into the light, I am America
 

 

Remember Who We Are

 

It’s our time to take a stand
Remember Who We Are (Remember Who We Are)
There’s a call across this land
Remember Who We Are (Remember Who We Are)

We were a city on a hill
A candle in the dark
It started long ago
We have come so far

[Chorus]
We keep our faith
When there is no way out
When there is little hope
We show no doubt
We know the distance
No matter how hard
Remember Who We Are

We’ve paid a price to be free
Remember Who We Are
With our blood sweat and tears
Remember Who We Are
Will our children be the ones asking us one day
Why we didn’t do enough
Why we gave it all away

[Chorus]
We keep our faith
When there is no way out
When there is little hope
We show no doubt
We go the distance
No matter how far
Remember Who We Are

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes we will run and not be faint
The time has come for taking chances
We are the masters of our fate.

[Breakdown]
We keep our faith
When there is no way out
When there is little hope
We show no doubt
We go the distance
No matter how hard

[Chorus]
We keep our faith
When there is no way out
When there is little hope
We show no doubt
We know the distance
No matter how hard (oh oh)
Remember Who We Are

Remember Who We Are

 

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

 

Rajjpuut

Read more…
 
"Grover Norquist once said, “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub . . . "  “I don't know if I'd go that far, but I can tell you one thing: I'm sick of the damned thing taking out (questionable) mortgages in my name.”                http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/
 
 
                "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live it for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live his for mine." -- John Galt from Atlas Shrugged the novel by Ayn Rand
 
 
"Who is Midas Mulligan?" Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
Missed the Boat, but Only Barely
 
 
            Prophecy has never been humanity’s strong suit . . . not talking about “educated guesses” and “fact-based hunches here” . . . but serious prophecies, predictions and prognostications. Perhaps one in twenty thousand really off-the-wall predictions for the future ever comes true. Novelist Ayn (rhymes with “mine” though most people rhyme it with “main”**) Rand in her novels and non-fiction philosophy books incidentally made thousands of predictions and most of her most fundamental ones are coming true, sort of . . .  Let’s take our present financial meltdown and ongoing economic malaise, for example . . .  it’s too bad Rand never went acorn-hunting as a child, or should we say “ACORN-hunting?” If she had, the intriguing question running throughout her monumental masterpiece might not have been “Who is John Galt?” but rather, “Who is Midas Mulligan?” 
 
            In the novel (now made into a sensational low-budget independent film Atlas Shrugged Part I) the unseen Galt permeates our awareness as a potentially-sinister, confusing and mysterious presence. In real life, however, it is definitely the Midas Mulligans who are more likely to run the world. By the way, the movie Atlas Shrugged Part I is proving a huge consternation for all the (mostly left-wing) critics out there, roughly 85% of the pundits panned it with only 2% proving highly enthusiastic about its prospects.  Virtually everyone who actually sees the movie (94%) rates the flick quite highly and, depending which article you read, numbers like 85%, 86% and 88%  of them are “widely enthusiastic” about the search to discover “Who is John Galt?” The limited release to 299 theaters has proved very successful and now a 499 theater expanded-release is going on, with a wider 1,000 theater-release planned for May 1st.  Let's get back to Midas . . . .
 
            Rand’s creation “Midas” Mulligan was born Michael Mulligan and fought his way from nothing to become a highly successful, wealthy banker. After a lamestream-mainstream media hack called Mulligan, “Midas,” in a highly derogatory “slam” which Mulligan took as a huge compliment . . . the banker Mulligan thereafter insisted upon being called Midas after first having his name legally-changed. 
 
In a shocking case of reality imitating fiction, Ms. Rand’s Mulligan finds himself being forced by the government via court order to lend money to an utterly incompetent and unworthy loan applicant. Of course, the reality being “predicted” a full twenty years before it happened was progressive president Jimmy Carter’s first congress (with loads of progressive Democrats and about fifteen progressive Republicans) passing the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA ’77) thus forcing banks and other mortgage lenders to knowingly make highly ill-advised loans to pathetically unqualified home-loan applicants.   In the novel, Midas of course, refuses to make the loan, totally ignores the court order, liquidates his entire financial empire, pays off his depositors and joins Galt’s underground movement.
 
In real life, alas, there were no Midas Mulligans.  ACORN when originally created in 1977 (to exploit CRA ’77) by a George Wiley, Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven NWRO (National Welfare “RIGHTS” Organization) confederate named Wade Rathke stood for ARKANSAS Community Organizations for Reform Now) ACORN was a test-creation for Piven, Cloward and Wiley who by that time were already bragging publically and in print about their success in bankrupting New York City (it was given a federal bailout in 1975), almost bankrupting New York State, and putting the entire nation into a huge tailspin by having Wiley create an army of welfare recipients (they doubled the rolls across the nation in three years between NWRO’s creation in 1967 and 1970) using Saul Alinsky “street tactics” to implement the Cloward-Piven Strategy of “managed chaos” first published in The Nation in 1966.
 
 
            Wade Rathke, who had been sent to Arkansas in1970 to teach the Alinsky tactics and implement C-P Strategy there for the NWRO, was chosen because of the presence of a charismatic young lieutenant governor in that state who was very simpatico with C-P Strategy and Alinsky tactics: Bill Clinton. It’s notable that in the C-P article in The Nation, Cloward, Piven had set out to create an NGI (national guaranteed income) thus SNAP! they said, wiping out poverty in one-fell-swoop while taking advantage of the progressive Democratic sweep in 1964 and the ensuing “War on Poverty” and creation of Medicare and the federal side of Medicaid by the ultra-progressive Lyndon Baines Johnson’s administration. While bragging about their great deeds (they didn’t get any serious interest for GNI but did almost destroy the economy – the two year-long 1973-74 recession was the second worst financial disaster in history after the Great Depression) Cloward and Piven advised their followers that the next areas of emphasis were to be: voter registration and the system of public housing. Rathke came up with a slightly altered emphasis, based upon CRA ’77: Arkansas ACORN would create its chaos in voter registration and mortgage-lending. With no Midas Mulligan’s out there to protect us, here’s a synopsis of the ACORN “success” story:
 
I.       ACORN Voter Registration efforts
 
A.    Ran the biggest voter registration drive in Arkansas history in 1977-78. Threw away all would-be Republican registrants and easily made Bill Clinton Arkansas governor in 1978.
 
B.    (Except for the first Reagan sweep in 1980) kept Clinton in office for twelve of the next fourteen years.
 
C.    Clinton returned the favor in his first months in the Oval Office in 1993 by passing the Motor Voter Act (a.k.a. “A License for voter fraud”) with Cloward and Piven standing behind the President during the signing ceremony in a picture found all over the internet. See it here:
 
D.   ACORN continued its fraudulent voter registration practices and even received federal money to do so and for census work up to 2010
 
II.   ACORN Abuses CRA ’77 Mortgage-Guarantees
 
A.    Operating only in Arkansas took 1975’s nationwide “suspect” home loan percentage from 0.24% to 0.51% (loans granted with 3% down or less) by 1985
 
B.    Based upon success with voter registration and the home-loan program ACORN is expanded to all fifty states and renamed “Associations of Community Organizations for Reform Now” by 1995, one in seven home loans is suspect; by 2005 34% of them.
 
C.    Bill Clinton sets about REALLY repaying ACORN for its support.
Even while getting Motor Voter passed, President Clinton began incredibly debilitating actions affecting the home-loan industry he’d not been able to impact while in Arkansas. Democrats regard Clinton as the first and greatest ACORN president.
 
1.      In 1993 he drew up a huge regulatory expansion of CRA ‘77
 
2.     Twice in 1995 Clinton and the congress passed CRA ’77 legislative expansions with incompetent Speaker Newt Gingrich as his unwitting foil.
 
3.     Barack Obama serves as ACORN lawyer between 1994 and 1996, brow-beating and shaking-down home-lenders with Saul Alinsky tactics. Obama is teaching “Constitutional Law” and “Rules for Radicals” (Alinsky’s second book) in evening classes and proves successful in getting large future quotas placed upon banks for ‘sub-prime’ loans and often even gets ACORN donations from them in the Chicago area.
 
4.     In 1998, Clinton passed a “steroid-version” CRA ’77 expansion. Between 1998 and 2007, where before it had been difficult to get unqualified borrowers into $100-$120,000 homes . . . all over the country people without jobs, without a decent credit rating, without even rental histories, whose only “income” is food stamps or other welfare, and, yes, even illegal aliens are now more easily put into $350 - $450,000 homes. 34% of all home loans are sub-prime highly suspect loans -- many of them with 0% down payment.
 
5.     George W. Bush addresses the nation or congress nineteen times to try to get CRA ’77 repealed starting in January, 2005. Thirty months later a belated and very weak version of his bill is passed in July, 2007, it helps some. Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will say in August, 2010, that Bush’s actions saved the nation from a much deeper recession and kept us from a staggering collapse in housing prices. Nevertheless, it’s all too little, too late and in October, 2007, the sub-prime lending crisis is clearly upon us and the meltdown begins.
 
The phenomenal website http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/ published an April 19th blog comparing the actions of the government to identity thieves; the great author of How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, Harry Brown who once ran for president under the Libertarian banner, said there was little moral difference between government and the Mafia or other organized crime syndicates. Well as for me, everything I needed to know about government’s evils came from Ayn Rand’s remarkable hero: John Galt.
 
And let us leave you with one last Atlas Shrugged quote: 
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia.  "Have you ever asked ‘what is the root of money?’  Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods (and services) produced and men able to produce them.  Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.   Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force.  Money is made possible only by the men who produce.  Is this what you consider evil?..."
 
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
 
Rajjpuut
 
 
**            ‘Tis very fitting today to think of Ayn Rand as a gold “mine” akin to the Founding Fathers and to relate to her strong support for unfettered individualism, lower taxes, and property rights which we associate with the word “MINE.”
 
"Grover Norquist once said, “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub . . . "  “I don't know if I'd go that far, but I can tell you one thing: I'm sick of the damned thing taking out (questionable) mortgages in my name.”                http://www.whoisjohngalt.com/
 
                "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live it for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live his for mine." -- John Galt from Atlas Shrugged the novel by Ayn Rand
 
 
 
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           It’s been less than two weeks since the Republican House leadership caved into President Obama and received just $392 million in real cuts for the fiscal 2011 budget; and just two days since the Standard & Poors bond rating services listed a negative outlook for the United States’ fiscal future and already the effects are being felt as worldwide distrust of the once-mighty dollar is evident everywhere:
 
Item: George Soros, “The Man who Broke the Bank of England” a.k.a. the “International Man of Misery” who’s earned his tens of billions by wrecking currencies and whole economies especially in Europe and SE Asia  . . . is moving in for the kill. Soros -- the biggest individual funder of the Obama campaign for presidency via 54 separate U.S. and foreign foundations -- claims that the U.S. Dollar as evidenced by the S&P ratings adjustment is “no longer the world’s reserve currency.” Soros added that the dollar is plunging so quickly in value, central banks and investors have no choice but to shift away from the Greenback to avoid huge losses and that oil, gold and other commodities as well as currencies such as the Chinese Yuan, Euro and Yen are taking up the slack.
Item:  The price of gold has shot up to $1,503 the highest in history; silver moved up to $44.77 zeroing-in on its all-time high price of $51.28. Gold has risen 6.5% since the New Year; silver has climbed 55% in the same period.
Item: Numerous restaurants in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles have raised their prices and some have placed easily-read signs saying they take foreign currency such as the Mexican Peso, the French Franc, the British Pound and Canada’s dollar.
Item: The U.S. dollar index is currently near a 16-month low at roughly 74.30 against a basket of other currencies. The Federal Reserve banks’ easy-money policies are now coming under heavy criticism from Democrats as well as Republicans.
Item: Ethanol subsidizing continues although everyone who understands the problem realizes that Ethanol 1) is only viable because of government subsidies and cannot stand on its own and b)Ethanol causes far more pollution in sum than gasoline does because of the huge costs required to transport corn to the ethanol plants (not quite the same as an oil pipeline). Meanwhile the price of corn and corn products, which are found in about 300-different common foods, are sky-rocketing and surprise, so is the price of food.
Item: The price of oil, which seemed to be ebbing last week, has jumped back almost $5 to $110.60 a barrel. Gasoline prices above $4 per gallon are fast becoming commonplace.
Item: There may be a bit of a silver-lining to this last item. Whenever gasoline gets above $3.30 a gallon, Methanol becomes quite an attractive alternative as does Natural Gas. Both would require about a $150-200 retrofit to be used in cars, but they’re cheaper than gas now; much cleaner; much more abundant in the United States than anywhere else. Some environmentalists claim that while it’s better than gasoline, Natural Gas is still nasty pollution-wise.   At roughly$2.20 a gallon for gasoline we have a real cheap alternative – and of course sometime soon we could see gas prices double that in this country . . . keragen a.k.a. marlstone a.k.a. oil shale (it’s neither shale; nor oil and takes a mining rather than drilling operation to free from the ground. Right now the huge keragen deposits in Western Colorado, NE Utah; and Southwest Wyoming could provide 400 years worth of fuel for the entire world. The leader in that technology is TOSCO (“The Oil-Shale Co.”) and guess who our only real competitor for Keragen dominance might become? China. So you’d better believe it would be in our interests to develop keragen quickly before China does.
An Only Casually-Related Item: Even as 53% of Americans still blame our financial troubles on George W. Bush -- Goldman Sachs has just this week received a blistering new rain of criticism for making a fortune during the financial meltdown by short-selling many of those ridiculous lumped-together-mortgage packages based upon shoddy sub-prime home loans that banks and mortgage companies had been forced to make since President Carter first passed the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977 (CRA ’77). CRA’ 77 law was expanded four times by President Clinton which Bush fought to repeal for 30 consecutive months between January, 2005 and July, 2007. Finally, a bi-partisan too-little, too-late bill passed which in August, 2010, Treasury Secretary Geithner paid respect to Bush for his efforts, by saying his law prevented a much worse meltdown and an utter collapse in home prices. Rajjpuut says, “Congratulations to Goldman Sachs! ”Isn’t it amazing how successful the left-wing is at blaming the free-markets and conservatives for every disaster caused by progressive left-wing interference in the free markets? 
After Clinton’s 1998 steroid-version expansion of CRA ’77 people without jobs; with horrific credit ratings; without rental histories; with only food stamps to declare as “income”; and even illegal aliens found it, easy thanks to ACORN, to get into $300,000 and $400,000 homes than people with good credit, etc. had faced in trying to get into $150,000 homes a decade earlier. If you’re uninformed and believe that conservatives pushed the economy into a ditch you deserve what Obama and the rest of the big spenders are giving us . . . the rest of us don’t. PS: who was the most famous ACORN attorney at getting home loan compliance forcing mortgage companies to make knowingly bad loans in Chicago?   Who was at the same time teaching night classes in self-described “Neo-Communist” Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”??? Barack Hussein Obama. In 1995 and 1996 Obama not only was successful in getting such outrageous loans repeatedly and getting promises of further compliance but also in securing large ACORN donations. Does all this make you proud to be an American?
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
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“It now seems that Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke here in America are the equivalent of a combined level 9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster elsewhere.”
 
“The only reasons that anyone anywhere would buy or accept the Yen, Euro or Dollar right now is because they are either stupid or mad or have no choice (like retirees on Social Security). Get out! Get out! Get out! Put your retirement immediately into gold and silver . . . this government has not shown itself worthy of your trust. 
 
 
 
Credit Worthiness Doubts Plague the Once ALMIGHTY $$
Gold Prices Soar, S & P Makes Long Overdue
Negative Critique of U.S. Credit Rating
 
 
 
Gold prices moved to their highest in history in response to monetary shocks involving the Euro and the American Dollar. The incalculable damage done to America's once proud monetary system (for 60 odd years now, the Dollar has been the world's reserve currency) by the policies of Barack Obama and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke over the last twenty-seven months have just received their long-awaited first official comeuppance.   Standard & Poors has for the first time in history yesterday put a “negative” outlook rating upon the AAA credit rating of U.S. government Bonds. 
The American credit rating has never been anything but “stable” up till now. This long overdue move put American stock markets in a tailspin at least for Monday, 2011’s official Tax Day. Gold finished the day at $1493.00 per ounce while silver climbed to over $43.70 per ounce on the dramatic news.  In contrast, after being down over 250 points (1.9%) for most of the session the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended Monday off 140 points or down over 1.14%.   The announcement by S&P and the falling of the Euro combined for a bad day for financial markets in the West.
European nations are taking a belated but realistic look at the devastation that the insolvency of the P.H.I.G.I.E.S. countries (Portugal, Hungary, Ireland, GREECE, Italy, England and Spain; with England recently showing semi-drastic policy-change in support of their economy) where the specter of non-stop bailouts has created huge ripples in the world currency and stock markets. The debt crisis in Europe, despite the bailouts has seen the European community as a whole show evidence of some belt-tightening.  Here in America, however, Barack Obama has been spending and creating entitlements and big government like a maniac . . . and he’s been willfully abetted by the inflationary policies of Bernanke. 
The United States is one of just nineteen governments that enjoy S&P's highest, triple-A sovereign credit rating. It has had that rating, and a stable outlook, since 1941, when Standard Statistics merged with Poor's Publishing to form S&P.  S&P’s two predecessor agencies also gave the United States their highest ratings. S&P's warning came as a surprise, but only in the sense "that somebody decided to say the emperor has no clothes," says Howard Simons, a strategist with Bianco Research.
“If an agreement (on cutting deficit, national debt and UNfunded liabilities in the U.S.A.) is not reached and meaningful implementation does not begin . . . this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns,” New York-based S&P said today in a report that maintained its top rating on U.S. long-term debt while lowering the outlook to “negative” for the first time. 
By comparison, S&P is widely rumored to be considering lowering the Japanese bond rating because of the effect of the three-pronged disaster that struck that Island recently. Up to now Japan has enjoyed an AAA rating with a “negative” outlook but been able to sell their bonds at lower interest rates because besides eschewing inflationary monetary policies, the Japanese are a long-reputed “nation of savers not debtors” and the internal demand for the nation’s bonds among its people is very high. It now seems that Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke here in America are equivalent to a combined level 9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster** elsewhere.  Rajjpuut looks at some crucial wealth-protecting alternatives to normal investing in the footnotes including so-called “Forever Stamps.”
Standard & Poor’s put the U.S. government on notice it could lose its AAA credit rating unless policy makers agree on a plan by 2013 to reduce budget deficits and the national debt. “If an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation does not begin by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns,” New York-based S&P said in its report.
S&P said there’s a one-in-three chance that the rating might be cut within two years and that its “baseline assumption” is that Congress and the Obama administration will come to terms on a plan to reduce record deficits. Treasuries and the dollar rebounded from early losses following the statement, while stocks declined.  Another financial rating service, Moody’s Investor Service, which has a stable outlook on U.S. debt, today said the U.S. budget debate is “positive” for the country’s credit. The S&P  action puts pressure on Obama and House Republicans to come to agreement on plans to reduce the national debt, which S&P says could rise to 84 percent of gross domestic product by 2013 roughly a 25% increase from where it was when Obama took office in January, 2009.
In response, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called the S&P warning “a wake-up call for those in Washington asking Congress to blindly increase the debt limit.” S&P’s negative outlook “makes clear that the debt-limit increase proposed by the Obama administration must be accompanied by meaningful fiscal reforms that immediately reduce federal spending and stop our nation from digging itself further into debt,” the Virginia Republican said in a statement. Overseas investors hold about half of the roughly $9 trillion in outstanding marketable U.S. debt, including $1.2 trillion held by China and $ 0.9 trillion held by Japan. The specter of the Japanese government and China selling out American bonds and not renewing has many in Washington worried.
S&P failed to mention the $14.29 trillion debt ceiling, but said that if current American budget negotiations fail, it might not be possible to get an agreement until at least the 2014 budget cycle. Our Treasury Department has said the borrowing limit will be reached no later than May 16, at which point it will turn to emergency measures that provide borrowing room through about July 8. Republican leaders in Congress have said they will NOT back increasing the debt ceiling unless Obama agrees to more specific steps to trim the budget deficit, estimated to top $1.6 trillion this year, as well as agreeing to significant cuts. Nevertheless, despite all the attention the Dollar has recently received, the Euro is balancing on the edge of disaster and the Euro has risen in recent months compared to the Dollar. It seems that many worldwide investors are stuck in their ways considering only two currencies. Gold and silver, however, have seen meteoric rises in value compared to the Yen, Dollar and Euro.
Yes, there are other currencies more at risk. But the U.S. has, relative to its AAA peers, very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness and the path to addressing these is not clear according to the S&P report. The report also said that from 2003 to 2008, the U.S. total government deficit fluctuated between 2 and 5 percent of gross domestic product. "Already noticeably larger than that of most 'AAA' rated sovereigns, it ballooned to more than 11 percent (under Obama) in 2009 and has yet to recover."
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
**
      The reader surely noticed that worldwide investors have for the most part shown little imagination in lining up their investment options for the last decade. The only reasons that anyone anywhere would buy the Yen, Euro or Dollar right now is because they are either stupid or mad or have no choice (like retirees on Social Security). Get out! Get out! Get out! Put your retirement immediately into gold and silver (or into “Forever Stamps” ???)  . . . this government has not shown itself worthy of your trust.  
      Taking the tiniest step to purchasing old-fashioned hard money (gold and silver coinage) would have provided investors a boost of roughly 450% in the case of gold and 420% for silver in the last decade. WE ARE LIVING THROUGH INFLATIONARY TIMES . . . fiat, paper currency (paper money NOT backed by gold and silver) is at great risk. Of course, one can always buy bullion gold or silver . . . but the advantage especially of junk silver (90% silver U.S. coins minted before 1965) is that they come in a “package” people are used to dealing with. Robert Ringer (author of “Winning through <despite> Intimidation”) and Harry Browne (author of “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World) as early as 1973 were touting the opportunity in “junk silver” following the LBJ years.     
      After LBJ, Carter and now after Obama gets through with us . . . junk silver looks to be among the smartest investments possible. Shortly after the government began taking the silver content out of dimes, quarters and half dollars (55.5% in 1965 under LBJ; and the rest in 1971 by Nixon) the price of silver reached $1.65 per ounce, the break-even point. Silver is now at $43.87 per ounce. When it reaches $51.15 per ounce it will have earned its investors in 1965 3000% gain plus the original value. Let’s say two more things about silver . . . .
     Silver is heavy, so for those hoping to store great wealth:  alternatives like gold, platinum and palladium are much more desirable in the short run. Let Rajjpuut urge you, however, to keep a lot of silver handy. Why? Because . . . .
A.                           Silver is a very, very handy and very recognizable unit of exchange for emergency uses and even for everyday purchasing.
B.                           A strange thing has happened in industry. Gold and silver have always been necessary for manufacturing especially in electronics for both metals and up to recently in photography for silver. The fact is that because of silver’s relative cheapness, it has been the preferred metal in industry. Since when used industrially, a metal is seldom recovered . . . silver, at any given time is now RARER than gold in human hands. (It’s still easier to mine silver which is often found with gold in the earth and more common, but silver because of its cheapness is used so much more frequently in industry that the amount of silver held for wealth repository or for jewelry is less than the amount of gold. Rarity makes things valuable so in Rajjpuut’s twisted mind, silver is the better buy.
C.                            Historically the easily most common ratio of gold to silver value has been in the 15/1 – 16/1 range. So if gold is worth $1500 than IF the ratio was holding, silver would be selling at $100 per ounce about $150 higher than its present value. So again the balance of value now favors silver.
      Silver, alas, is heavy. Gold, platinum and palladium are so very valuable that making small purchases with them is not feasible . . . here’s another alternative:  so-called “Forever stamps.”   Background: when he was a boy, Rajjpuut lived in Germany and had a brief spell as a junior philatelist, a stamp collector. One of the most remarkable things he experienced was the beautiful mint Adolf Hitler stamps he collected with tiny values like 60 pfenning (then 15 cents American) compared to stamps issued during the German Weimar Republic with enormously high values like 200,000 Deutsch Marks many of which even had the original cost blacked out or just lined through and a higher value printed upon them.   The four Deutsch Marks to a Dollar before World War I eventually reached $26 TRillion DM to the buck by November, 1923, at the height of their severe inflation (about the time Adolf Hitler became a well-known national name by attempting the “Beer-Hall Putsch” in Munich <that is, attempting a coup d’ etat at pistol point upon the Bavarian State>). What’s that got to do with the price of tea? The U.S. Post Office “leadership” has decided they can save on printing costs and inconvenience for customers and themselves by printing “Forever Stamps.” The post offices hope to avoid constant rushes of huge customer lines for 1-cent, 3-cent, 5-cent stamps, etc. in their facilities when they start changing stamp prices more frequently due to rising## inflation. 
      The idea is that stamps printed without a price label and only the words “First Class” written upon them will be issued. Again: notice that NO price will be shown. So, if say, the price of a first-class stamp is now $.50 and the cost of first-class postage increases to say $5.00 per letter in four years, for example . . . even though postage has increased nine times to now cost ten times the original value, the postal customers’ old stamps still do the trick. In INFLATIONARY times that’s a huge boon for the customer savvy enough to have bought in bulk early on in the inflationary history. Stamps, of course, are light but need more protection from the elements especially water. For convenience sake the best way to buy in Rajjpuut’s not-so-humble opinion is in 100 stamp rolls which come in a protective seal.    So a 100-roll of stamps today costs, say $50.00 and will do the same trick as a 100-roll of stamps four years from now, but the hundred-roll of stamps at that time in the future costs $500.00. For those doing a lot of posting, the value of keeping ahead of postal rates is obvious. For the rest of us, stamps can be used as a very convenient form of MONEY.
Of course, collectible stamps and coins are also great storehouses of value, however, unlike everyday items like ordinary silver coins and ordinary postage stamps -- which both can be used easily AS MONEY – collectible items are “illiquid.”   “Liquid” means easy to dispose of. Dollar bills are highly liquid, but valuable stamps or coins are hard to get rid of without losing a lot of money, because stamp collectors and coin collectors interested in paying you what the item is truly worth are hard to find especially during financial crisis.  Pawnshop dealers might give you 35%. So, at most only 5% or 6% of your “portfolio” should be tied up in illiquid assets whatever they be, unless you are amazingly rich . . . in which case, you’d buy lots of valuables and hie thee to a safer haven where inflation is not a prospect. Rajjpuut hope this overview on protecting your wealth helps. He also hopes his 100% wrong about the need to take such extraordinary means. However, in his estimation, these are desperate times courtesy of BHO and call for desperate measures.
##
      Is there any advantage from Forever Stamps for the Post Office, you might ask?  Once purchased, a forever stamp is a perpetual stamp that never expires or declines in value. It's value, therefore, is the First-Class Mail stamp postage rate for a one ounce letter at the time of use (not the purchase-day cost) . . . so isn’t the post office risking bankruptcy? Perhaps not! First of all, the Post Office gets an immediate cash flow. Nobody buys those 100-stamp rolls and uses all 100 immediately . . . if they’re such a big operation and need 100 stamps or more per day, they get a special rate and print their postage labels right at their business. These Forever Stamps are aimed at the individual postal customer. So the post office saves on employees manning their front counter and has all this cash to use now when prices are what they are now, not what they’ll be in the future . . . with good management (oh-oh?!) they’ll stay well ahead of the curve and might show a string of profits for once. However, if the hyper-inflation -- that Bernanke and Obama seemed hell-bent on giving us -- comes about, that might be a different story.   People all over the country who’ve bought up dozens or hundreds of Forever Stamps using them like money in exchanges with tiny businesses who use even five to ten stamps daily could put a dramatic strain on the post office finances. Besides Rajjpuut might go into the “Forever Stamp” counterfeiting business . . . .
 
 

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          “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
“If, after I depart this vale of tears, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at a homely girl.”
“I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.”  
All three quotes from H.L. Mencken
 
Educating the American Voter about Economics
 
            When it comes to economics, politics and your tax burden, ignorance is definitely NOT bliss. The “Great Cynic,” H.L. Mencken, spent a lot of time talking about “Boobus Americanus,” that poor sucker better known as the American Taxpayer and Voter. Why was Mencken so negative about the common American? A recent survey found that 38% of Americans think that “Cash for Clunkers” (CFC) was a great idea. Among the 43% of Americans who say CFC was definitely a bad idea, only about one in ten of these “doubters” can rationally explain why** CFC was a mistake.
            This is clearly NOT the time to be ignorant about economics and politics. Our nation needs far more educated and aware citizens to get involved in fiscally- and Constitutionally-conservative interventions in the political process, not to mentioned informed voting. 
Rajjpuut highly recommends that the voter/taxpayer who feels the need to self-educate on economics look over these brief (4-7 minutes each) videos, etc. As far as educating yourself to the dangers we face HERE and NOW . . . the best education may be these simple words, from a source unexpected by most Americans:
 
            Here’s your Rajjpuut-recommended self-education program. Look over each video or other link below -- just one per day, but view it twice back-to-back. In a very short time you will know more about economics than 95% of all Americans do. You will also be roughly five times more expert on the subject than the average member of congress has been since 1913 when they voted to give us both the Federal Reserve Bank and the Income Tax.
 
 
Happy homework . . . after the process works for you, let others know . . . .
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
**  Why Cash for Clunkers (CFC) was a bad idea:
 
A.     You can NOT create prosperity by destruction as the famous “Broken Window Parable” illustrates 
 
B.     A whole generation of used cars was destroyed before their times. As a consequence today the price of the average used car is between $1,800 and $1,900 more expensive than it was before CFC . . . dramatically hurting those most in need of a good used car, the lower- and lower-middle-classes.
 
C.      The auto sales charts prove that the CFC program created only a temporary “spike” in car sales which returned to the normal non-descript charted path as soon as the program was ended . . . but, meanwhile all that money that otherwise would have gone to ten thousand other places was concentrated upon the auto industry hurting the rest of the economy. The consumers’ money was merely diverted from those ten thousand places in the economy to one specific industry, auto manufacturing, the consumers’/voters’/taxpayers’ money meanwhile must, of necessity pay for this sooner or later.
 
D.     The government did not have the money it gave away. It had to borrow that money and thus increase the deficit and national debt all of which further dampens the economy and even threatens economic destruction.
 
E.     The pollution created in making a new lower-pollution car ahead of its time is far worse than letting the normal wear-down over the lifetime of the destroyed “clunkers” go on naturally.
 
F.      When you take into account the manufacturing process, hybrid cars are actually much worse environmentally than the older generation of cars. Lithium batteries and nickel use is among the most ravaging thing you can do to the environment.
 
G.     Lies told about the “success” of Cash for Clunkers will inspire more contra-productive government programs along the same lines. Notice that we still have the ethanol program which actually hurts the environment more (all sorts of hidden transportation pollution is involved) and costs the taxpayers far more than plain old gas does.
 
 
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It’s safe to say that Barack Obama is in bed with the unions, the media and our giant corporations . . . . “In addition to CBS Corporation and the Washington Post Company, recipients of ERRP funding include the United Auto Workers union, which secured $206,798,086 in taxpayer money, AT&T, which took in $140,022,949, and General Electric (GE), which raked in $36,607,818. GE has made headlines recently for not paying any U.S. taxes last year. IBM got $12,989,690 in taxpayer money.
 
“Verizon pulled $91,702,538 in taxpayer cash, too, and General Motors received $19,002,669. More than $6 million went to different Teamsters groups nationwide, and millions more went to the United Mine Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).” Rajjpuut’s opinion/Daily Caller’s FACTS
 
 
 
 
General Electric Receives $36 Million Bribe
From Obamacare Slush Fund After Its NBC Affiliate
Cheer-Led Barack Obama’s 2008 Election
 
 
            Mr. Obama has just handed the world his own personal Watergate.  The facts are all there in public documents including congressional hearings and reports . . . and not surprisingly NBC, CBS, and the Washington Post (all of which received bribes from the Obamacare Slush funds) are not covering the story. But similarly the New York Times and ABC and CNN are largely ignoring the issue as well.
 
            The story got its legs when Minnesota Representative and TEA Party favorite Michelle Bachmann revealed in mid-March that Obamacare had been illegally funded to the tune of $105 Billion. Ms. Bachmann revealed a huge complex of virtual “slush-funds” mostly run through Kathleen Sibelius’ Health and Human Resource Dept. The Daily Caller website soon put skin and fancy clothing on the rest of this enormous skeleton in Barack Obama’s closet when it revealed that besides several Obama-supporting unions, that the Washington Post and  the CBS Television Network had between them both received the equivalent of a combined bribe of $1.3 million. CBS and the Post have been enthusiastic Obama supporters who seemingly refuse to run any negative stories at all on the Obama administration. 
 
        
 

The 800# gorilla now has been given headgear. The suspected news that General Electric, Corp. was the recipient of a similar bribe this time to the tune of $36 million is, coming straight on the heels of a recent story that GE paid NO TAXES on $14 Billion in profits was a potential bombshell that has NOW BEEN CONFIRMED. Still the media mentioned above have refused to cover the story. The feather in the cap of the 800# gorilla is the most shocking of all.  General Electric, you see, up to recently owned NBC and MSNBC the two most ardent of all those cheerleading for the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign. GE CEO Jeffrey Immeldt, you’ll recall was recently appointed to head up Mr. Obama’s job-creation czar; and last summer had been involved in controversy for seeking to quash anti-Obama reporting by GE’s affiliate news stations. It’s safe to say that Barack Obama is in bed with the unions, the media and our giant corporations . . . .

According to Daily Caller which broke the story, “In addition to CBS Corporation and the Washington Post Company, recipients of ERRP funding include the United Auto Workers union, which secured $206,798,086 in taxpayer money, AT&T, which took in $140,022,949, and General Electric (GE), which raked in $36,607,818. GE has made headlines recently for not paying any U.S. taxes last year. IBM got $12,989,690 in taxpayer money. With all that money in all these corrupt hands, it’s safe to say that Barack Obama could count on hundreds of millions in campaign donations from the unions and big business; and mountains of favorable press reports from CBS, NBC, MSNBC, the Washington Post, etc.

“Verizon pulled $91,702,538 in taxpayer cash, too, and General Motors received $19,002,669. More than $6 million went to different Teamsters groups nationwide, and millions more went to the United Mine Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).”   

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

 
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“The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money.”
 
“It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. CBS and Washington Post will just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.”

 
Obama Bribes CBS and Washington Post with
$1, 295,000 from Obamacare Slush Fund
 
 
            Sometimes it’s hard to figure things out. This “thing” discussed in this blog, however, although it’s a deep and moderately complicated issue, is now becoming quite clear. You do remember** when the much-ballyhooed New York Times and all its sycophants such as MSNBC, the Washington Post and CBS -- awhile back used the assassination attempt on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as an opportunity immediately to assert that hate-mongering by right-wing media outlets like talk radio, FoxNews and the “new online media” (more on this later) had driven a crazed right-winger to the attempt and to the resulting six deaths and wounding of thirteen; and then they all quickly dropped that line when it was proved that the would-be assassin was a crazed left-winger who asserted in his private blogs that he’d contributed to Ms. Giffords campaigns and who criticized the left for not moving fast enough (for being too slow in starting “the revolution,” perhaps?). No apologies or retractions were ever aired or printed by the Times, Post, MSNBC, CBS, etc. ad nauseum. Presumably the story they printed is 100% correct and needed no retractions?
Naturally they still continued to decry the nation’s conservatives as racists and haters responsible for all the evil in the world (that is, they continue around-the-clock demagoguery such as is now evident in the ongoing debt; deficit; debt-ceiling and budget stories^^) and in our country and then they called for less sharp “political rhetoric” (by which they meant anything a conservative might say) meanwhile over the past three years having ignored at least 80% of the real stories, with real evidence that have been revealed, they continue to glorify Barack Obama; Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid; big government; big taxes; big spending; huge UNfunded entitlement programs amounting to over $100 TRillion; huge deficits; a monstrously huge national debt; the unabated printing of money by the Federal Reserve Bankers and the inflation it’s causing; not to mention the campaign promises of one Obama to “bankrupt the coal industry” and that his “energy policy of cap and trade would necessarily cause electrical and other energy prices to skyrocket.” Those sound like real news to any intelligent and patriotic American, but not to the mainstream, lamestream media. That’s the background for this interesting story . . . and those caught red-handed in corruption . . . .
As mentioned above, some things are difficult to figure out. Rajjpuut, who was his J-school’s academic excellence award winner in journalism and who had some thirty feature excellent feature stories printed in the local daily while interning, loves journalism, real journalism that is . . . the kind that serves as a watchdog over government corruption and helps keep the voters informed . . . but Rajjpuut is no fan of the crony journalism that passes for news-gathering everywhere you look.  This time, however, it seems that the guilty parties on both sides of the corruption have been caught once again with their hands in the cookie jar.
 Now it turns out that the reason the leftwing media types have been cheering on the smaller government corruptions so prevalent in the Barack Obama administration and ignoring all the larger ones is that they’re not really neutral news-gatherers at all . . . no, no, no:  they’ve had a horse in the race all along . . . here’s another group of related stories they won’t choose to run:
 
ITEM: The Obamacare bill that passed, the one no one had time to read was NOT the bill promised but one substituted at the last minute just before the voting which illegally funded the program’s start-up $108 Billion beyond merely providing the ways and means . . . that is, it illegally took away the rights of future congresses to decide upon its funding year after year.
ITEM: That same Obamacare has provisions for several unmonitored slush funds most of them under the auspices of Health and Human Services Secretary Sibelius.
 
ITEM: Reporter Matthew Boyle of the Daily Caller online news website revealed less than two weeks ago that several of these socialized-medicine slush funds were used to dole out several Billion dollars to favored recipients. From one of these slush funds called EERP (Early Retiree Re-insurance Program) almost $2 Billion worth of contributions to specific political allies including several unions; select corporations; and some government pension funds many associated with labor unions all were made within the last year. The Daily Caller is one of the “new media” that the mainstream media has been so unceasingly critical of. Their story unlike the typical mainstream media story on politics had no editorial opinion,  just facts easily verified by anyone actually seeking truth.
 ITEM: Two of Barack Obama’s biggest media cheerleaders: the Washington Post and CBS Television received hundreds of thousands of dollars each from EERP thus bankrolling the health care of these Obama-supporting cash-challenged companies’ retirement fund with government money a.k.a. your taxes and mine. “The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money,” according to research presented by the Daily Caller. “It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to the Daily Caller.  “When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. (So now) CBS and Washington Post will just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.” 
ITEM: You will not be surprised to know that neither the Washington Post nor CBS nor the rest of the mainstream left-leaning media have reported on these corrupt practices.
 
ITEM:   A follow-up story on another “new media” blogsite:  Hot Air revealed that both The Washington Post and CBS have totally ignored problems with the slush fund secretly bankrolling health care for their early retirees.  Hot Air reported that a search for ERRP on the Post website last week revealed ZERO, zilch, nada concerning the corrupt practices.   Indeed,  searching the Post website for the full name of the slush fund revealed only one article from a right-wing source.   In keeping with that trend, a search on the CBS website, for ERRP also produced no entries — while a search for the full name of the slush fund returned only one entry, a link to the Obama administration’s health care reform website.
 
ITEM: The contrast in style and substance between the new media that the left has been so strongly critical of could not be greater. Real news, real watch-dogging of our government and its corruptions has been the domain of the right-wing media for quite some time. Even when both were criticizing President George W. Bush . . . while the left indulged in mere name-calling . . . evidence and supporting factual connections on subjects like Bush’s failure to protect the border; and the increased pace of shipping jobs overseas during the Bush administration came largely from the news gatherers among the right-wing media.
 
ITEM: Mr. Boyle’s original column in the Daily Caller was no exception. Research uncovered from Congressional testimony and other public documents was only part of his story he also sought and collected opposing points of view just like they teach you in J-school. And let us repeat:  there was zero editorial comment to be found in Boyle’s story . . . just the facts, Ma'am, just the facts.
 
ITEM: This latest abuse of public funds highlights the danger of ever-over-growing, ever-more-powerful centralized government and especially it sounds a warning about the abuses to come as the additional controls over the healthcare marketplace begin to unfold.
 
ITEM: Isn’t it ironic that real journalism severely-criticized by the cheerleaders of the left, uncovered a real story about real corruption between Mr. Obama’s so-called Healthcare Reform programs and between the same left-wing media that unthinkingly and uncritically supports every foolish idea Barack Obama presents them. “Bought and Paid For” is how one old friend of Rajjpuut’s father’s used to put it . . . “Bought and Paid For!”

 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
** You do remember when these “usual subjects” ran stories for a month after the morning in late March, 2009, when Obamacare was passed (with Nancy Pelosi and her crowd marching up the Capitol steps bearing the over-sized gavel) claiming the “racist” TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party guilty of spitting on Black Democratic congressmen and calling them “nig_ers” “23 times. Of course when Andrew Breitbart offered $100,000 reward for conclusive evidence that this happened (he required just one instance of using the “N-word” to validate the charges and collect the $100,000) . . . strangely among all the dozens of reporters and cameras and videotape cassettes in evidence, no one has ever collected the money; indeed, no one has ever attempted to collect Breitbart’s money . . . but, of course, no apologies to the supposedly “racist, hate-mongering, stupid and astroturf” TEA Party was ever made. And, naturally, the amount of evidence showing this supposed racism, hate-mongering, stupidity and that they not a grassroots uprising but are a “Republican Party front organization has also not been forthcoming.
^^ The demagoguery is always the same: there is no debt crisis; there is enough money, especially if we take all that the rich (who create jobs via small business) have. Our children and grandchildren will only be hurt if the Republicans interfere with all the UNfunded entitlement programs the left insists are actually very well-funded. Those evil, insensitive conservatives want to throw grandma and all the poor out in the streets; and their highest desire is to see all welfare recipients eating catfood.
 
 
 
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“Soros, you see is making a great BLUFF and his multi-billions are now at risk . . . .”
 
 
 
Are Ben ‘n Barack Deliberately
Undermining Economy for Soros
 
 
            Multi-billionaire supposed philanthropist~~ George Soros has now stepped out into the open. The man with the self-acknowledged “God complex” has pulled off the kid gloves and is moving in for the kill. Declaring that the dollar as we’ve known it is dead, not in so many words – but yes, in fact, Soros claimed at a recent conference at Bretton-Woods, New Hampshire that the American Dollar was no longer the world’s reserve currency. The “Man who Broke the Bank of England” (1992) a.k.a “The International Man of Misery,” infamous for preparing and profiting from the destruction of numerous nations’ currencies -- Soros laughingly talked about the badly-weakened Dollar now sharing duty with the Euro, the Yen and several other currencies. For those in the know, that highly gross insult wasn’t lost upon us . . . .
 
Soros knows as do we that 1) in the wake of bailing out Greece, Ireland and Portugal and preparing to bail out Italy, Spain and possibly Hungary . . . the Euro is a horrifically threatened currency and also that  2) the Japanese Yen has been devastated by the monster earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactor problems and thirty huge aftershocks (the latest this week measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale) . . . in short the Dollar (if indeed it’s only on a par with the Yen and Euro), as George suggests, is dead as a doornail. 
 
George didn’t have his billions back in the late 40’s when the British Pound Sterling gave up its two-century old position as the world’s reserve currency to the United States’ greenback, so he wasn’t able to profit from that terrific misery . . . but “Spooky Dude” definitely knows his history. Because of that, Soros said that efforts to attack the American DEBT were short-sighted and the only way for our economy to survive was to risk incurring a lot more debt to get the economy humming. He put it this way, “The big question is not whether the U.S. Dollar should be the world’s reserve currency. It no longer is. That role is shared with the Euro, Yen and other currencies and commodities such as gold, oil . . . .”
 
Acting as if he, King George, was the acknowledged leader of the entire world, Soros set up his economic conference on the site of the famous Bretton-Woods economic conference which charted the monetary future of the planet as the end of World War II approached. That first Bretton Woods agreement established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world’s major industrial states in the mid-20th Century.  In planning the rebuilding of the international economic system as the European and Pacific Wars still raged, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton-Woods, N.H. and after proper deliberation signed the Bretton-Woods Agreements during the first three weeks of July 1944. Soros at his Bretton-Woods meetings has called for the renunciation of the American Dollar right here on American soil in a particularly grandiose and self-serving manner.
 
All that not being enough for Spooky George, he tried his hand at straightforward sabotage as well. In his prescription to rush the fall of the Buck once and for all, Soros pretended he was offering good economic advice designed to save the currency as he pooh-poohed calls for strengthening the dollar by dealing with the debt (such as Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan has made with his proposed 2012 budget) saying, “There is very a strong push to tighten the budget as a way to reduce government spending… In my opinion, the country could actually absorb some more debt in order to get the economy going. If you have a growing economy, you can tolerate a higher level of debt.” Soros, you see is making a great BLUFF and his multi-billions are now at risk . . . . 
 
That’s right, Soros who has twice before made a play to bring the United States’ fiscal house down around us was NOT counting on the fiscal-conservative backlash that has dominated the U.S. political scene since mid-2010 and sent so many progressive big-spending politicians’ (88% of them progressive Democrats) packing in the most recent elections.  As a result his “bets” against America are deeply at risk. He is heavily invested in futures positions based upon the collapse of our currency . . . thus preparing to once again repeat the successful currency forays that made him a multi-billionaire while helping wreck the economies of Britain (a second time), Russia, Malaysia, etc., etc. ad nauseum.   Next to the radical jihadist element of Islam, no one hates the United States nearly so much as George Soros does. He made his first big play to cut the country down to size, by pouring billions into the Kerry election campaign in 2004 and into anti-George W. Bush propaganda. Bush #2 was not our wisest president, no doubt . . . but he was patriotic enough and wise enough NOT to get under George Soros’s thumb (something that Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama cannot say) and wise enough NOT to consider printing money as a satisfactory answer to any sort of problem. Barack Obama, by comparison, is a George Soros puppet.
 
Speaking of “the great man who’s now along with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) already spent over $1.2 million to prevent efforts to find his birth certificate” -- less than a week ago President Obama became the first to throw his hat officially into the ring as a declared candidate for the presidency in 2012 . . . now he and his campaign are officially prepared to receive all the millions that Soros and his fifty progressive foundations can pour his way.   If the policies of Barack Obama have been seemingly impossible to understand, one has only to ask three questions to clear up the matter completely. A) What would the international communists and America’s labor leaders want him to do to undermine the United States?  B) What would George Soros prefer? And C) How can he best disguise his loyalties to Georgie S. and his Red Friends.  Usually the first two questions generate the same answer and Barack’s duty is clear. When there is conflict between the two positions, Obama is forced to think for himself and his trademark “dithering” becomes apparent as he seeks to chart Path C.
 
Whether or not Barack proves to be a one-term president will likely depend upon the economy and/or his ability to sell Americans on his contention that the economy belongs 100% to his predecessor – always has, always will.   With the liberal media on his side, it won’t necessarily be a hard sell.   Surprisingly, 34% of voters still give him good or excellent marks on running the economy although only 14% believe their taxes will go down due to Obama’s governing; only 30% now see their own financial picture as good or excellent; and 69% of American voters call themselves “at least somewhat angry” about the policies of the government. With the unending help of the media, Obama will likely be made a hero by the media for the passage of the 2011 budget with two more challenges ahead: the status of the national debt (he wants to raise the Debt Ceiling up well past $15 TRillion) and the 2012 budget drafted by Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan (which cuts $6.2 TRillion from the debt over the next decade; compared to Mr. Obama’s budget which increased spending 4% and ratchet up the deficits and debt as well.
 
Obama’s unwitting^^ partner in crime in making King George’s dreams come true is Ben Bernanke, Chief of the Federal Reserve Banking System. The stagnation the country has felt economically is now being compounded by Bernanke-created inflation. At present the ceaseless physical and electronic creation of money by Mr. Bernanke has made the 2011 U.S. dollar technically worth only 3.2 pennies worth if the late 2008 greenback. The treasury department has hidden our current inflation by A) insisting that food and fuel costs don’t count and B) by overweighting the cost of housing in the current inflation statistics.  Since we don’t buy houses everyday and since we do need food and fuel every day, in reality we are now paying 16% more for the everyday necessities than we did when George W. Bush was president. While the civilized world has been ostentatiously tightening its belt Bernanke, Barack, Soros & other Sons of B______ have been seriously counterfeiting the American Dollar. 
 
You need look no further than the Euro . . . this abysmally weak currency is now trading very strong about 1 4/9 as valuable as the Buck. All over the globe folks are noticing and buying gold, silver, oil, or other currencies with their dollars. Few are eager to embrace dollars unless they’re given bonus amounts. The debt and the inflation scare are two sides of the same coin with Barack, Ben and Soros the edge of that coin . . . trying to sell the world and Americans on the notion that stagflation is a great step on the road to repairing the American economy.   Surprisingly, George Soros might be even more over-extended than the American economy is. If his bluff doesn’t work and doesn’t help rush the American economy into absolute bankruptcy, King George might just find himself a mere hundred millionaire again, more’s the pity. 
 
Besides that potential problem: 1) George’s funding for ACORN has now proven a major liability 2) Soros, Gore, Obama, Raines, Rogers, Strong, both Clintons, several Goldman Sach’s bigwigs and at least 54 other top progressives already lost their shirts when their little cap and trade scheme backfired and they had to sell out their holdings in the CCX (Chicago Climate eXchange) after neither legislative bullying nor Obama-ordered EPA regulatory bullying proved sufficient to move the nation toward full carbon-trading. Instead of hundreds of billions of profits they wound up collectively losing millions. Al Gore just missed becoming the first “Green Billionaire” and Soros’ foundations suffered mightily. Bottom line, Barack Obama badly owes his puppet-master . . . do not expect him to cave in on the Ryan budget in any way, shape or form. Unlike the first ACORN president who delivered the Motor-Voter Act and four separate expansions** of CRA ’77 to ACORN in payment for their corrupt backing . . . the totally incompetent “Anointed One” Barack Obama has failed to deliver much of anything to his handlers. The Deficit-Ceiling votes and the Ryan Budget Package will undoubtedly be his last hurrah unless he finds unmitigated success . . . which the G.O.P. can hand him or deny.
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
~~          Philanthropist is a euphemism used by progressives to describe King George Soros. Like all euphemisms, this is a LIE to hide truth that’s harsh, offensive or blunt.
According to Canada Free Press, “George Soros is a ‘philanthropist’ if by ‘philanthropist’ we mean one who creates chaos, destruction and financial ruin for his own personal gain, it’s a perfect fit.  Calling Soros a philanthropist is rather like referring to the Nazi block wardens as Neighborhood Watch.” They go on . . . .
“Soros certainly gives lots of money away.  But a philanthropist acts to improve the human condition.  Soros acts solely to improve the Soros condition.  Despite the lofty sounding rhetoric about an Open Society, Soros’ objective is to wreck the United States.  Actually Soros never really defines his Open Society.  The concept arose in the 1930s with the notion of a moral code based on “universal principles”.  After tweaking the concept to suit his own purposes, Soros adopted his own version of an Open Society which would be one in which the US has no power. 
“Soros was born in Hungary in 1930 to non-practicing Jewish parents.  His father, a lawyer was able to hide their identities and young George was recruited by the Nazi’s Judenrat to hand out flyers deceptively directing Jews to turn themselves in for deportation to the death camps.  Soros later said he found the work exhilarating.  Later passing himself as an official’s godson, he accompanied his benefactor confiscating valuables from innocent Jews.  Soros would later tell Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes that he had ‘no remorse’ about what he had done.
“In fact, Soros doesn’t have remorse for much, if anything.  In The Shadow Party (David Horowitz and Richard Poe, 2006), Soros is quoted as saying that ‘conscience clouds an investor’s judgment.’”
Additionally, our philanthropist Mr. Soros has been accused several times of illegal currency manipulation and also was convicted in France of insider trading . . . certainly he has no compassion for the victims of his monetary shenanigans.
 
^^Bernanke is a self-mis-directed-would-be patriot who mistakenly believes he and only he correctly understands American economic history. Big Ben has written several scholarly papers on the Great Depression. He actually believes that by and large Hoover on the one hand and FDR and his administration on the other did a relatively good job and that a huge amount of the blame for the depth and duration of the Great Depression were caused by unenlightened Federal Reserve policies and too-tight monetary$$ policies. The Fed was undoubtedly at fault somewhat, but the anti-capitalistic actions of Hoover and FDR are the root cause. When he’s not allowed to read his own writing, Bernanke makes a lot more sense. Indeed, at times he sounds like he’s got his finger on the pulse of things when he says he favors
a)     “Reducing the U.S. budget deficit by reform of the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs”
b)      Accomplished by cutting spending, or entitlement payments or raising taxes or some combination of those three actions. 
He notably does not account for the debilitating effect of raising taxes on prosperity . . . .
$$ No one seems to know, much less take advantage of the great historical lesson known as the “Invisible Depression” wherein Woodrow Wilson’s (much more acute recession than the 1929 market crash brought about) severe recession was tamed in fifteen months by President Warren G. Harding’s combination of cutting spending by 49%; cutting taxes by 48% and paying down the debt 30%. FDR, while calling Hoover “a socialist” promised to repeat the Harding formula, but, of course, did exactly the opposite and extended the depression into a 12.5 year Great Depression.
 
** CRA ’77 was the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 passed by Jimmy Carter and progressive politicians (about 86% of them Democrats). This was the greatest government interference in the free market ever conceived. Banks and mortgage companies were required to knowingly make abysmally bad loans to unqualified would-be home owners. In 1976, 0.24% of home loans were considered ‘suspect.’ Thanks to ACORN (then the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now) working almost totally in Arkansas under Governor Bill Clinton, that rate for the entire nation doubled to 0.51% suspect loans by 1986. When Clinton took office in 1993 he repaid ACORN (become the Associations of Community Organizations for Reform Now) with the Motor-Voter Act and a huge regulatory expansion of CRA ’77 almost immediately. In 1995 he twice legislatively expanded CRA ’77. By 1996, 14.08% of all home loans in the country were suspect. In 1998, Clinton passed the steroid-version expansion of CRA legislation. By 2000, the housing bubble was underway and the sub-prime lending crisis was a fact of life by 2005 when 34% of all home loans were suspect . . . but the situation was much worse than the numbers showed: instead of a tiny amount of loans at 3% down payment for $80,000 and $120,000 homes we had a huge amount of 0% loans on homes in the $320,000 to $480,000 range. Instead of “iffy” loans to former military officers attending college on the GI Bill (0.24% in 1976); we now had horrifically bad loans at 0% to people without jobs; with horrible credit ratings; without even rental histories; whose only “income” was food stamps; and even to illegal aliens. If you’re confused by all this and why the word “deliberately” was deliberately used in the headline to his blog: here’s some information on the progressives’ Cloward-Piven Strategy published in 1966, which deliberately bankrupted New York City in 1975 requiring a federal bailout . . . .
 
 
 
 
 

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 http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/racepolitics_research2011.html
 
TEA Party Voters Constitute
a Different Breed of Conservative
 
 
            Wiser Research and Rasmussen Reports recently published new polls with intriguing depictions of TEA Party voters and society’s perceptions of them . . . . Of course, literally hundreds of surveys about the TEA Party have been conducted. Dozens more comparing TEA (“Taxed Enough Already” or “Taken Enough Abuse”) Party folks to typical conservatives or to typical Americans, typical Republicans or to Independents have also been done in the last year. Some of the most common claims of the mainstream media about the TEA Party were absolutely and quickly refuted by the mainstream polling organizations . . . the following “generic” poll information comes from numerous surveys on the subject which will be followed by the two recent and more specific surveys about the TEA folk from Rasmussen Reports; and Wiser Research . . . we’ll look far more closely at the Rasmussen and Wiser data. Here are the conclusions about the make up of the TEA Party that can be drawn from mainstream research thus far:
1) TEA Pary members were not stupid as liberal pundits suggested, but more highly educated than the general populace and than other conservatives.  
2) They were not racists, but less likely to be hold racist views than the general populace. 
3) They were more likely to be older than 45. 
4) The other demographics of the TEA Party vary somewhat from region to region. However, in general they are older -- more than 150% as likely to be over 65 as under age 28. Men outnumbered women by about 56-44 among TEA Partiers. Blacks and Hispanics are represented among the TEA Party but around 50% less frequently than found in the general populace for both groups. Catholics are found among the TEA Party about 30% less frequently than in the general populace;  Jews are found about 60% less frequently than among the general populace. Asians are found at about 10% less often than in the general populace. TEA Party events are often family events for younger couples that are involved.
5) TEA Partiers are more likely to be successful and enjoy higher earnings. 
6) More likely to own a business or represent a profession such as doctor, architect, engineer, computer-programmer etc. than the general public.
7) The mainstream media were right about one thing:  TEA Partiers were far more likely to watch FOXNews regularly and far more likely to question the “fairness” of other popular media sources of information such as the traditional broadcast networks.
8) They come from all over the political spectrum but typically described themselves as Republicans 54% of the time; as Independents or “Other” 28%; as Democrats 12%; and as Libertarians 6%.
9)   Despite efforts to portray them as extremists, recent surveys show that 47% of the voters regard their own views as closer to the TEA Party then to those of our representatives or senators and 54% say the TEA Party views are closer to theirs than what they perceive to be the views of President Obama.
10)   TEA Party people are far more likely than other voters to call themselves “Fiscal-Conservatives”; “Constitutional-Conservatives”; or “Libertarians.”
11) TEA Party people are far more likely to describe themselves as “well-informed on the issues” than regular conservatives 58% to 41% and than the general public where only 30% agreed with that self-description.
12) While studies by groups like the Huffington post seem to aim at portraying TEA Partiers as “trailer trash” and “100% sold on” the Republican Party: TEA Partiers “perhaps because of their age” come from a higher than average income levels and largely describe themselves as previously “inactive” politically.
13) Perhaps because of their age, TEA Party members are more likely than members of the general public to have owned or managed a business or to have served in managerial positions than the general public.
14) TEA Partiers are more likely to regard themselves as “very well-informed politically” and “economically” than the general public. About 78% of them agree with the statement “Lower taxes creates jobs.”
15) The single-most consistent aspect of the TEA Party that everyone agrees upon is that they are overwhelmingly conservative. Studies have shown that only 6-10% of TEA Partiers consider themselves “liberal” and only 22-25% consider themselves to have “centrist” political views.   When the word “moderate” is used, however, a large amount of the TEA Party considers themselves to be fiscally-conservative moderates.
16) Under-represented professions among TEA Partiers include teachers and lawyers.  Union involvement is found, but less than among average voters.  Many are involved in the computer industry or information technology.
17) TEA Party people are far LESS likely to describe themselves as “Socially-Conservative” and more likely to call themselves “Social- Moderates” or even “Social-liberals” than regular conservatives. They are far less likely to think that total bans on abortion; absolute right to prayer in public schools; teaching creationism in public schools; or gun control are “major issues at this time” and far more likely to point to debt; jobs; runaway government spending; and expansion of government as the most serious issues of our day. While both types of conservatives are highly likely to oppose gay marriage, TEA Party conservatives are more likely to approve of or be neutral toward the gay lifestyle. These numbers and attitudes have been fairly consistent for the last year regardless of who’s doing the polling.
18) While we’ve seen no polling data on this, Rajjpuut has done a lot of “informal polling” and would describe the “level of violence” found at TEA Party demonstrations (perhaps in keeping with their age) as “virtually non-existent” especially compared with that of the left-wing activist and Union activist demonstrations he’s seen. Similarly examining the “rhetoric” found on signs at such demonstrations shows the TEA Party placards generally “staying on topic” and complaining about policies and events in comparison to left-wing activism (say in Wisconsin) as vitriolic and often aimed at personalities . . . which is diametrically opposed to the viewpoints expressed by mainstream pundits characterizing the two groups.  
The only “violence” ever seen by Rajjpuut at a TEA Party event was when someone tried to infiltrate a TEA Party group (with photographers in tow) bearing a racist reference to Obama. The young man was physically conducted off the premises by four athletic-looking young TEA Party men and his racist sign destroyed completely. The mainstream media didn’t cover that on the nightly news, however. That’s concludes our broad outline of who the TEA Party is . . . .
http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/racepolitics_research2011.html
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2011/48_say_their_views_closer_to_tea_party_than_congress
           In the two surveys linked above, the pollsters zeroed in on some specific beliefs or specific impact of TEA Party conservatives compared to regular conservatives. The second link is to a recent Rasmussen Reports poll on the TEA Party which tracks the public perception of TEA Partiers very closely. The top link from Wiser Research really aimed to zoom in on a few areas where the TEA Party is claimed by the media to be “more extreme” than Republicans or other conservatives.
            Rasmussen leads off his poll with this comment: “In the ongoing budget-cutting debate in Washington, some congressional Democrats have accused their Republican opponents of being ‘held captive’ by the Tea Party movement, but voters identified with the Tea Party more than Congress. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters say when it comes to the major issues facing the country, their views are closer to the average Tea Party member as opposed to the average member of Congress. Just 22% say their views are closer to those of the average congressman. Even more (30%) aren’t sure.”
            Results of the Rasmussen polling added that 49% of likely voters see the TEA Party movement as “good for the country; while 26% see it as bad for the country; and 16% see the TEA Party as a neutral entity neither good nor bad. 78% of Republicans and 54% of Independents see the TEA Party as good for the country; while 48% of Democrats see it as bad for the country. 45% of likely voters believe the average TEA Party member has a better understanding of the problems (and their solutions?) facing the country than the average member of congress; while only 31% see the average member of congress having a better understanding.
            At present 22% of the populace claim they are part of the TEA Party movement; 12% say that someone close to them is a TEA Party Member; and 14% say they aren’t sure. 94% of the political-class have no ties to the TEA Party and 69% of the political class believe the TEA Party is a bad thing. (Over the years depending upon the economy, between 6-15% of voters identify themselves as part of the political class by their answers to three specific questions from Rasmussen pollers, while 54-70% respond to those same three questions in keeping with “mainstream” views. 59% of mainstream voters see the TEA Party as good for the country. 
The Rasmussen Reports poll concludes saying, “41% of all voters think the Tea Party will play a bigger role in the 2012 election campaigns than it did in 2010; 30% see the TEA Party’s role “about the same”; while 21% say they expect a smaller role in 2012. Voters see the words “Tea Party” a bit more positively as a political label these days, while the terms “liberal” and “progressive” have lost ground even among Democrats. “Conservative” remains the most popular description. While Rasmussen has earned a reputation for professionalism and accuracy and beaten all other polling groups in predicting the final vote percentages over the last three presidential election cycles . . . some have claimed that Rasmussen is “conservative-leaning.” For balance we’ll look at a recent poll on the TEA Party conducted by a supposedly independent and neutral survey group: Wiser Research . . . .
            In the Wiser Research the survey concluded that it appears that there is “an emerging split among conservatives” and asked “how will this affect Republicans in 2012?”   While admiring the polling’s ingenuity, Rajjpuut finds such conclusions, highly questionable largely because of the way the polling was conducted.   Wiser sought responses to opinion statements from regular conservatives and from TEA Party conservatives and then sought to assess the differences in response. Since Wiser was looking for differences, it’s not at all surprising that they found them. Rajjpuut’s totally different conclusions are found below; here are the Wiser opinion-generating statements:
A)        “Barack Obama is destroying the country.”
B)       “Obama is a socialist.”
C)        “I want to see Obama’s policies fail.”
D)        “Obama is a practicing Christian/Muslim.”
E)       “Obama does not have a U.S. birth certificate.”
As stated above, Wiser Research was looking for differences and found them. Except for the first three questions, however, they got a lot of “not sure” responses. Across the board the TEA Party members were more likely to agree with the statements and to believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim than regular conservatives were. First let’s look at those responses according to Wiser:
A)       “Barack Obama is destroying the country” elicited a huge difference between regular conservatives and the TEA Party. 6% of regular conservatives agreed with the statement while 71% of TEA Party Conservatives agreed.
B)       “Obama is a Socialist” showed another great divide, but not quite so marked this time: 75% of the TEA Party members believe Obama is a Socialist compared to 40% of regular conservatives.
C)        “I want to see Obama’s policies fail” was agreed to by 76% of TEA Partiers, but only by 32% of non-TEA Party conservatives.
D)       “Obama is a practicing Muslim” was agreed to by 27% of the TEA Party and 16% of other conservatives; and the corollary “Obama is a practicing Christian” was agreed to again by 27% of TEA Partiers; but 46% of other conservatives. Note: Among all voters various studies have shown that Obama is considered a Muslim by roughly 16% of the populace.
 
E)       “Obama does not have a U.S. birth certificate” garnered 26% agreement from the TEA Party but only 17% from other conservatives. Note: study after study have shown that 18-20% of all American voters believe the president cannot produce a legitimate American birth certificate and that independents are far more likely than Democrats and only slightly less likely than Republicans to believe this is true.
The “self-fulfilling prophecy” aspect of human affairs (and human polling) has been documented for at least the last eighty years  -- we tend to find what we expect to find and the truth be damned.  Rajjpuut sees these Wiser numbers, especially in response to the first statement, to be far, far out of line with reality as he or anyone he knows has experienced it. He’d daresay that it would be impossible to find any group of self-described conservatives anywhere who’d respond to the statement “Barack Obama is destroying the country” with less than 30% agreement. If the statement was rephrased, “The policies of Barack Obama are destroying the country,” than it’s doubtful that less than 60% agreement could be found among any group of self-described conservatives in America. What exactly is this “opinion” of Rajjpuut based upon? 
A)   Despite attempts to portray America as a racist nation, Barack Obama got more White votes than John Kerry or Al Gore. Almost 48% of White voters supported him. In contrast less than 5% of Black vote backed McCain . . . racism, seems to come from the other direction or should we call it Black backlash?
B)    Barack Obama got a huge benefit of the doubt after his election in 2008. 72% of Americans approved of his performance when polled on Inauguration Day including 45% who highly approved (in contrast only 15% of Americans highly disapproved of Obama’s performance at that time). Rajjpuut backed “the lesser of two evils” McCain-Palin ticket; but admits feeling good about the country electing a Black man as its president.  Unfortunately, that feeling was gone within six weeks . . . .
C)   Things have changed for Mr. Obama, his level of support has fallen dramatically. Mr. Obama didn’t somehow get “blacker” or otherwise racially objectional overnight; nor did White voters suddenly become more racist. Mr. Obama’s policies quite frankly and simply are hurting the country and the voters have noticed and become angry or at least disappointed about that.
As everyone knows, the honeymoon was over rather quickly.   Almost immediately Obama’s actions made it clear that the man practiced highly dubious politics, especially his economic actions and policies. By mid-March of 2009, the TEA Party had arisen out of nowhere in objection to government policies these individuals regarded as anti-American; socialistic; anti-common sense; anti-Constitutional and expansive. That Barack Obama was at the center of these policies was obvious to all . . . so once the political opposition arose, it’s natural that he, personally, would be the center of the debate. 
Again, if the statement “Barack Obama’s policies are destroying this country” had been used, it’s likely that very little rift would have been shown between conservatives. The TEA Party arose first against Mr. Obama’s policies while the entire nation didn’t think about repudiating them until a couple months before the last election. With eighteen extra months to crystallize their understanding, it’s natural that the TEA Party would be slightly more likely to see Obama as personally responsible.  Rajjpuut would prefer not to impugn the motives of Wiser Research, but clearly sloppy interview technique and dubious methodology seem to be involved.
            The task that Wiser Research took upon itself: to find major differences between TEA Party conservatives compared to all conservatives seems to have shown success. However, since in study after study . . . conservatives of all ilks regard protecting the Constitution and American Way of Life; growing the economy; stopping the growth in government; creating a balanced budget; dealing with the National Debt and unfunded liabilities; and ethics in government as the most important issues of our day -- and TEA Party conservatives have consistently shown themselves the most adamant in desiring the government to face up to these issues . . . .
The Wiser Research study’s final conclusions that a rift is developing between Republicans (notice their research was on self-identified “conservatives,” but their conclusion talks about Republicans) and the TEA Party may be of little import since currently fiscal-conservativism and Constitutional-conservativism seems to be the driving impetus of the broader electorate. IF such a wide rift actually exists it’s not likely to manifest itself when such a huge area of “easy” agreement lies before the two groups and the general voting public as well. Additionally, the central fallacy of the Wiser Research conclusion emerges from their polling technique in which clearly Barack Obama (and not his policies specifically; or progressive political policies in general) was the focal point. So long as the man’s policies are seen as antithetical to conservative values, no rift matters.
The one key finding of the Wiser study (that the TEA Party believes more strongly that “Obama is destroying the country” by a ratio of 71% to 6% over ordinary conservatives) puts their whole study in question in Rajjpuut’s mind until it can be replicated by a more respected polling organization. When it is further revealed that Wiser comes to this conclusion and another conclusion (from a different study) that the TEA Party harbors more racial resentment than other conservatives – something none of the other more accredited studies has ever shown . . . one cannot be blamed for suggesting that it looks likes Wiser went out of its way 1) to back the Obama administration’s “party line” about the largely “unsavory” nature of the TEA Party and 2) actually attempted to incite a rift amongs conservative voters which could only benefit Barack Obama. Rajjpuut would suggest that Rasmussen and other more respected polling outfits take up this Wiser study and conduct a similar one of their own. The numbers 71% and 6%, however, are so out of line with real life that, as mentioned, the whole Wiser study is made suspect.
 
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
 
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                 The so-called "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" that attempted to run an Israeli naval blockade  and was funded by a feminine-Marxist organization called Code Pink; and planned by Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dorn (you remember them, the bomb makers) celebrates its first anniversary this May 15, 2011.  What else is so special about that date?
 
 
 
Beware the Ides of May, 2011? Yep!
 
 
            As reported right here in Rajjpuut’s Folly several times already in the past year . . . “THE Revolution” is underway. “THE Revolution,” you say, “Hold it, hold it, when did this start? Why wasn’t I informed? . . . er’ what revolution?” Note to self:  ignorance is not bliss. Long-form headline:   The Radical Left has Now Joined with Radical Islam to Initiate “THE Revolution” NOT Only Here in the United States, but Around the World . . . these moves are a culmination of several trends long in evidence . . . details to follow, and for those interested in marking your calendar: May 15, 2011 is the key date . . . .
 
ITEM: If you’ve been plotting something for at least 65 years and been piling up successes furtively under the cover of dark, you must become pretty emboldened to finally come out into the open in the bright light of day . . . that’s the story for socialist and communist Americans and the union LEADERS who are right now openly calling for and planning open revolt.
 
ITEM: if you’ve got a grievance 63 years in the boiling (since the creation of Israel, the Jewish State) and been pretty damn violent about it the whole time without success, you’ll welcome anyone who promises to join with you in common cause . . . that’s the story for the Islamic Jihadists who since Sayyid Qutb first came to Greeley, Colorado (see: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11) to attend the University of Northern Colorado (then called “Colorado State College of Education”) shortly after publishing his first book Social Justice in Islam have been looking for a chance to martyr themselves to bring about an Islamic Caliphate and Mohammed’s Paradise on Earth. Qutb succeeded in 1966 and before his hanging remarked, “Thank God!   I performed Jihad for fifteen years to earn this martyrdom.”
 
ITEM: Osama Bin Laden, founded Al Qaeda in August, 1988, (even before the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan less than a year later; largely accomplished thanks to huge cash and weapons influxes and military training from the United States) but the organization was kept a secret. That date is important because already at that date Bin Laden had his eye on western targets even while the war with the Soviets was still raging. Even at that date the ultimate goal was world conquest for Islam. That goal has NOT changed. 
            A believer whenever possible in pure Muslim activism, Bin Laden (a Saudi) went to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in late 1990 asking to be allowed to free Kuwait from the conquest of Saddam Hussein with a purely Islamic military from many Arabian nations. He was sent away. 
When Bush #1 sent in the coalition forces to neutralize and defeat Saddam Hussein’s forces, Bin Laden was aghast that “infidels” could be invited onto sacred Islamic territory to defeat Muslims. He publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military, saying that the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia) profaned sacred soil.  Not liking to have their monarch criticized publicly, the Saudis tried to catch and silence Bin Laden. Soon after U.S. troops were allowed on Saudi soil, Bin Laden’s organization in Saudi Arabia was raided by Saudi secret police and information released to the American FBI which on November 8, 1990 led to a raid on the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, a man with numerous Al Qaeda ties, which uncovered a great deal of evidence of terrorist plots against America including plans to blow up New York City (NYC) skyscrapers.  Just a few months later, in 1991 Osama publicly declared unilateral war against the United States.   The Arab world knew about this. The CIA and top level politicians knew about this; you were never told. 
            Despite Bin Laden’s declaration of war and the information discovered from the Nosair raid, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was a partial success for Al Qaeda. The CIA and top level politicians, of course, knew all about all of this; again you were never told. During the next decade Osama and his buddies were responsible for attacks all around the world; most notably for several dozen terrorist attacks in the Middle East, Africa and Asia; and for blowing a hole in the side of the American destroyer USS Cole at port in Yemen in 1998; he and Ayman al-Zawahir co-signed a fatwa that same year declaring the killing of North Americans and their allies “an individual duty for every Muslim”; and most infamously for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon in Washington. D.C. Note to self: it does not take two to make a war . . . .
 
ITEM: “THE Revolution,” (like the attacks from Al Qaeda) constitutes a war whether you like it or not or whether or not you’re even aware of it. You now -- in this blog -- have been given information that the main launch point for highly visible and irrefutable assaults upon you, our Constitution and the American way of life is May 15, 2011. Up to now “THE Revolution” has been going on all around you for forty-four years. 
The ground for the battlefield was originally scouted and prepared by self-proclaimed “neo-Marxist” Saul Alinsky of Chicago with his two books Reveille for Radicals (1946); and Rules for Radicals (1971). The two were how-to primers on radical activism aimed at community organizers in big cities. Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Lucifer (a.k.a. “Satan”) . . . that dedication has been removed in modern editions but there are still plenty of the old books around and Rajjpuut checked one out of the library less than six years ago, yep “Satan with a starting capital of just one snake” who “won his own kingdom” was lauded as “the first radical.”  Alinsky “tactics” (sometimes called “street theater”) were seen all over the New Left movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Some thought they were too “tame.” 
Most notable among these were terrorist Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dorn/Dohrn (both spellings are very common and she’s also given her first name often as ‘Bernadine’) who once they left the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS -- because they were “too busy examining each other’s navels”) joined the Weather Underground sometimes called the Weathermen for whom they made and planted bombs during that era killing and maiming some police and others and losing more than a few Weathermen to incompetence.  Both Ayers and Dorn are still alive; both are close friends of the President of the United States; more on those two later.
ITEM: “Tactics” is how you wage war on a day-by-day basis. “Strategy” is what the long-range goals of the daily tactics aim to accomplish. With Alinsky’s ugly tactics now well-polished, what the progressive- (we must ‘progress’ beyond the ‘outdated and ill-conceived Constitution’ if we are ever to make ‘progress’ toward Utopia on earth) leftists needed now was a grand strategy defining how to make the goal (takeover of the United States and destruction of Capitalism) over time become a reality. Two Columbia University (NYC) Marxist professors Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven provided that strategy with their May 2, 1966 article in The Nation magazine The Weight of the Poor: a Strategy to End Poverty. Suddenly everything fell into place.   Almost immediately the ideas they espoused became known as “Cloward-Piven Strategy” and C-P Strategy has remained the radical left’s most powerful, albeit slow, strategic idea ever since.
 
ITEM: The theme of the article was that the poor should be used as shock-troopers and only by making the rest of the nation fear them could the poor gain their rightful economic equality. The intermediate goal should be according to Cloward and Piven GNI (a guaranteed national income).   The basis for their strategy was that Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson had the previous year not only got us into war in Southeast Asia; created the two government spending boondoggles Medicare; and Medicaid (with a state side as well as a federal one which now constitute UNfunded liabilities of $75 TRillion); but also launched a “War on Poverty” dramatically expanding old and adding new welfare programs. Cloward and Piven decided that with Alinsky street tactics they could dramatically increase the number of welfare recipients, virtually bankrupt the nation and then get the Democratic Party (where they owned the most influence) to pass a GNI law  . . . POOF! SNAP! Abracadabra! ending poverty and advancing the revolution, they thought, dramatically virtually overnight.
 
ITEM: It took them part of eight years to know semi-success. The full story is found here in a recent Rajjpuut’s Folly in its painfully-detailed entirety:
 
 
The short version is: After creating something called the NWRO in 1967 with Black militant George Wiley, Cloward and Piven crapped in their own nest by bankrupting NYC which was bailed out by the federal government in 1975; and almost bankrupted the State of New York and many other states and big cities by doubling welfare rolls by 1970 from eight to sixteen million recipients. 
C&P and Wiley declared victory even though GNI was never seriously discussed in Congress. They publicly bragged about the great thing they’d done. They told their followers to now concentrate their attention on voter registration and federal housing. In 1977, one of the first things the new progressive president, Jimmy Carter, did was pass a bill called CRA ’77 (the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977) forcing lenders to knowingly make bad loans to unqualified would-be home owners. Wade Rathke, a Wiley Lieutenant sent to Arkansas in 1970 was in 1977 assigned to be the lead in creating a model organization in Arkansas to follow-up 0n the new C&P marching orders while taking advantage of CRA ’77 with C-P Strategies just as they had originally done with the welfare laws. Again the full version of events is found here:
 
 
 
ITEM: The nutshell version is that ACORN (Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now) was created in 1977. Using voter fraud** they elected an up and coming young Arkansas lieutenant governor to governor in 1978 and kept him in that post for 12 of the next 14 years until getting him elected president in 1972. Along the way they perfected their voter registration shenanigans and housing corruptions Alinsky-style so well that Rathke’s organization was expanded to every state and renamed (Associations of Community Organizations for Reform Now). They were so successful on the housing front that just by them operating in Arkansas they began to change the face of federal housing very quickly. In 1975 only one in every 404 home loans in the country was considered “suspect.” Typically, this suspect loan was made at 3% down payment to someone considered a very good risk such as an ex-military officer going to college on the GI Bill. After ACORN got involved (just in Arkansas, remember) by 1985 one in every 196 home loans was “suspect” and over half of those suspect loans were CRA ’77 loans in Arkansas and in other states that ACORN had recently spread to. These Arkansas loans were made to absolutely unqualified buyers.
 
ITEM: after five expansions of CRA ’77 (four expansions by ACORN president Bill Clinton alone) the financial meltdown of 2007 would hit the country like a kidney kick from a mule. As for Barack Obama, he was not only a community organizer in Chicago . . . he was also:
 
A.     An ACORN attorney in 1994, '95 and '96 shaking down home mortgage companies not only for bad loans now; but for long-range promises of bad loan quotas for the future and even donations to ACORN itself.
B.    An attorney-professor teaching both Constitutional Law and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in Chicago.
 
ITEM: After two legislative expansions of CRA ’77 in 1995 Bill Clinton (he also made a huge regulatory expansion of CRA ‘77 in 1993; and passed the Motor-Voter Act^^ in 1993 with Cloward and Piven standing behind him in the official photo) paid off his ACORN allies handsomely with a steroid-version legislative expansion of CRA ’77 in 1998. By 2005 more than one in three home loans was now suspect (34%) many of them made at 0.0% down payment for homes costing over $300,000 made to virtually homeless## clients.   The full details again should be known by every voting American:
 
 
That brings us almost up to date: So what exactly do we mean by “THE Revolution” and why do we say May 15, 2011 is so important? The answer to that question goes back roughly a year ago. About that time, the “near-ground-zero mosque was floated as a trial balloon to see if the American Mainstream media would back it and they did. Shariah Law in America as a viable option has been pressed by the extreme left and Eric Holder’s INJustice Department since that time. On the other end in early spring, 2010, several powerful American Union personalities and other prominent American leftists visited a few European capitals and roughly 17-18 Middle Eastern predominantly Muslim countries. They arranged discussions about forming a coalition to destroy what they hate most -- American Capitalism. Out of that discussion came the wave of so-called Democratic revolts across the Middle East; the so-called “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” blockade run; Shariah$$ Law- acceptability being promoted (it’s actually already part of law in some places in Europe); and plans to unite because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” 
What we mean by “THE Revolution" is exactly the same thing the left has meant by “THE Revolution" since before Alinsky, Ayers, Cloward, Piven, Wiley and others could talk. It means the downfall of the United States of America; the expansion of leftist efforts in many countries and introduction of a global government believing as they, the leftists do. By the way, the Jihadist will be fine with just the downfall of the United States but they want an Islamic Caliphate and to behead all who fail to capitulate to Islam on some glorious day in the future. But you knew all that . . . here’s what you didn’t know:
 
Item: The so-called Gaza Freedom Flotilla funded by a feminine Marxist organization called Code Pink; and planned by Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dorn (you remember them, the bomb makers) celebrates its first anniversary this May 15, 2011. 
This was the first known incidence of leftists in America and radical Jihadist Muslims joining forces. They (a group of Jihadist members of the Muslim Brotherhood (an organization that first became serious in Egypt under Sayyid Qutb) attempted to run the Israeli naval blockade (aimed at preventing arms and other military supplies getting to Gaza and to Jihadists elsewhere) and although the violence that naturally followed was at each step of the way begun and escalated by the Jihadists (each of whom had made video wills for their relatives before sailing that were captured by Israeli agents) the mainstream-lamestream media in America covered the whole affair as if it was an Israeli-provoked atrocity. Naturally the Arab press went hog-wild with the story . . . oh, sorry; Muslims don’t go hog-wild, so uh, camel-wild . . . 
Among other results of this evil-vile collaboration:  Mubarak is out and the “Democracy” that follows looks to be a Jihadocracy for Egypt similar to what rules now in Iran with no more enforcement of the (neutral toward) Israel peace agreement or the Trade (with Israel) agreements that Mubarak had long upheld despite their unpopularity among his people; there are now serious uprisings in almost all the Muslim Middle East; and the old version of Moammar Gadhafi is now looking pretty good as America seriously contemplates funding the Jihadist rebels out to oust his despotic butt. Anyway the first anniversary of that blockade-run attempt (May 15, 2011) will see a confluence of openly atrocious events in the Middle East and in America. Four in particular need to be exposed right now: 
            #1 Code Pink, Ayers and Dorn again are uniting once again for a repeat of the blockade-running event on May 15, 2011.
            #2 As SEIU Union bigwig Stephen Lerner promised (it’s all on videotape at my Rajjpuut’s Folly blog site in a different blog): 
 
 
the assault on the American banking system he’s planned . . . and designed to deal the ultimate crippling blow to capitalism is scheduled for May 15, 2011.
            #3 A whole range of nasty union demonstrations are scheduled to coincide with . . . wait for it . . . May 15, 2011.   The Union movement has now gone global (Workers of the world unite!) and far more Marxist. Go to the websites of the AFL-CIO or SEIU and see all their propaganda about all the countries “standing with Wisconsin.” They believe that Capitalism is on the ropes and all they have to do now is keep attacking the free market system until they can land a haymaker . . . and move their twisted statist philosophies into the forefront.
            #4 A restoration of lost land in which Muslim Arabs on all sides of Israel are supposed to simply walk into the country and “reclaim their acreage” is also scheduled for, yep, you guessed it . . . May 15, 2011. Beware the Ides of May.
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
** ACORN ran a very successful voter registration drive across Arkansas; unfortunately, those who signed up as Republicans never had their paperwork delivered to the voting authorities and that’s how young William Jefferson Clinton won the state governorship in 1978. He lost the post in 1980 during the Reagan landslide, but got elected the next twelve years before becoming our first ACORN president.
^^ Motor-Voter was called “a twelve-lane highway to voter fraud” by those who understood it.
## After Clinton’s Steroid-expansion of CRA ‘77 legislatively in 1998, ACORN found it much easier to put unqualified home loan recipients into $440,000 homes in 1999 than they could into $110,000 homes five or six years earlier. These folks were typically:
A.      Without jobs
B.     Lacking decent credit ratings
C.      Often without even a rental history
D.     Welfare recipients, and especially . . . .
E.      People whose only “income” was food stamps
F.      Even illegal aliens
 
Even though this blog involves a lot of reading, every educated American voter should know the full details here: 
 
 
$$ That means things like total control and oppression of women and the burkha requirement; and solely “mosque activities” of Shariah law be allowed and left alone as long as only Muslims are involved. In other words the U.S. Constitution would NOT apply to Muslims in the country.
 
 
 

 
 
 

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“There are lies, damn lies, statistics . . . and then there are damnable statistical lies from politicians.” 
Rajjpuut
 
“When you combine ignorance and borrowed money, the results can get interesting.” 
Warren Buffet
 
 
 
Wide-spread Housing Collapse Underway
Main Obama Program Fails, ‘Cash for Keys’ Proposed
 
 
NOTE:  CBS Moneywatch today, ran an article entitled “Why the Housing Market is three times worse than you think.” Since Rajjpuut has several times mentioned that when it comes to housing, the situation is probably seven or eight times worse than the administration wants people to believe, it’s time to clear the air.   This blog concerns HAMP and other failed big government housing initiatives and how they’ve destroyed the U.S. housing market now and possibly well into the future. Many American readers know very little about the background of the situation which is provided in the next few paragraphs. If you’re well-informed, skip the introduction and head right down to the “red” paragraph below and start reading there . . . if you’ve foolishly been thinking over the years that politics and the economy don’t matter – don’t affect you, read and understand every word and continue to the footnotes and read and understand that as well. As the Kingston Trio once sang, “Citizens, hear me out, this could happen to you!”
            As every would-be bride knows, it’s “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" . . . and yes, a similar pattern is starting to develop. The “old” is the outdated Keynesian idea that government can create real and meaningful jobs in free markets and that government interference could actually save free markets in times of duress; can improve the free market system. 
The “new” under Obama was a series of handouts and bailouts bearing his signature ‘zero oversight, zero results’ label . . . first came the Obama $787 billion second-stimulus.  Then “Cash for Clunkers” in mid-2009 proved itself an expensive program that accomplished little or nothing and absolutely destroyed the used car market so badly that’s its effects are still in place today: the average used car today costs $1,778 more than an average used car cost in 2009, hurting poorer Americans more than all others. Then came HomeStar, unofficially known as “Cash for Caulkers,” launched later that same year to encourage economic growth by offering incentives to homeowner and retailers and small business owners for improving their homes’ etc.’s energy efficiency.  The program got all tied up in bureaucratic red tape when Republican oversight indicated that the beneficiaries would mostly tend to come from a narrow-range of construction firms that had contributed to the Obama presidential run in 2008. “Cash for Keys” (more below) is a similar program which has an importantly distinct “wrinkle.”
“Something borrowed” includes all the same lies that made Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) such a left-wing hero even though he took an ordinary recession and extended it out to 12.5 years until Pearl Harbor finally jump-started the economy and ended the country’s horrific malaise. In this age of real information available in real-time, however, the slick lies that allowed FDR to confiscate the nation’s gold coinage from citizens and then to re-peg the price of an ounce of gold from $20.76 up to $35 an ounce (a theft of the wealth of the citizens and an overnight inflation of roughly 69% which mugged 92% of all Americans <gold coin holders> on the one hand; and then impoverished 100% of the nation on the other) aren’t able to fester so long as there are now in the information age watchdogs like The Wall Street Journal and Fox News (and to a lesser extent USA Today) defying the liberal media’s cheerleading for the Obama administration and holding their feet to the fire every single day; 24 hours a day.  Even though most citizens don't bother to educate themselves as to political reality; the 24-7 news cycle makes it impossible eventually for the majority to stay ignorant forever.  When they "wise up" often their bitterness toward the liars in government can be dramatic:  as we saw on the last Election Day.
Under real media scrutiny, Joe Biden’s remarkable rhetorical statement (“Are we going to have to borrow trillions, to keep from going bankrupt? Yes!”) was quickly revealed for the preposterous notion it was and not repeated.  When a poll earlier this week showed that 60% of Americans do NOT approve of Obama’s economic programs and then virtually identical results came from the always trustworthy Rasmussen Reports, it shows that Americans sooner or later get the picture.   Only 36% of Americans think the Obama economic programs are sound.  57% are so convinced that they're in favor of a government shutdown so long as substantial budget cuts result.
Something “blue” is the result of all the government interference in the once great American housing market. We’ll only touch briefly here on the well-documented fact that it was government interference** which created the crisis in the first place (see the footnote if you’ve been too busy watching sitcoms and IRreality shows to notice how the government stuck it to us . . . and pay attention from now on). We will mention that the job-killing government interference that supposedly was designed to expand job opportunities in the free market has had the exact opposite effect. The money that normally would sit on the sidelines during the initial stages of a recession and then come into play has stayed there on the sidelines for two and a half years now. The bottom of the recession, as shown by the American stock markets which usually get it close to right, was in mid-March, 2009 six months after the height of the financial crisis. Typically in normal times within another nine or ten months (that would mean at the end of 2009 or January of 2010) an all-out recovery is well underway. 
However, thanks to all the new government regulation and interference and all the confusion and uncertainty that’s been created . . . even larger amounts of capital has stayed uninvested by small business, the engine of economic recovery. This is money that would have been working in the free markets for fourteen or fifteen months already which is too frightened by the economic assault Barack has lain upon them. Obamacare, is one of the administration’s worst moves ever. The new law all by itself created 384 new government agencies (in 12+ years FDR only created 39 new agencies) – no, that is NOT a typo, 384 new agencies and all their red tape anti-business bureaucracy Americans now have to deal with. Now let us move on to something’s “double-blue.”
On Tuesday, March 29th, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to end HAMP one of president Obama’s most ambitious housing programs. HAMP (the Home Affordable Modification Program) was designed to keep homeowners in their homes despite being on the road to foreclosure for not paying their mortgages. Republicans and virtually all so-called “Blue-dog” Democrats agree nearly 100% that HAMP was a fiasco, a monumental failure. There are lies, damn lies, statistics . . . and then there are damnable statistical lies from politicians . . . such as when Janet Napolitano tells us with contrived data that the borders are safer than ever; or President Obama assures us that his approach to the housing approach is actually working quite well; and justifying his request to modify and expand the program . . . .
“Real” (meaningful numerical information designed to highlight a problem and point at a solution) statistics tell a different story than the Obama folk would have you believe. As soon as the repeal HAMP bill was passed in the House, fifty Democratic reps sent a message to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner urging that he reform HAMP: “HAMP must change to meet its potential.” The real stats show a deeply flawed program. Besides the few Blue-dog Dems voting for the bill, most Democrats know that HAMP is the poster boy for failed government interference and government spending boondoggles, but they feel they must vote with their caucus and their president . . . so the HAMP repeal vote faces a highly uncertain future in the senate . . . not to mention that Barack Obama has said he will definitely veto the HAMP repeal bill should it reach the Oval Office.     What is it about HAMP that Democrats find to love? First, the facts . . . .
The outgoing special investigator general for TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program), Neil Barofsky, called HAMP a "failure," in an interview with CNN on March 24th. He said HAMP was supposed to help 3 to 4 million underwater homeowners stay in their homes. But so far, it has only managed to help less than half a million do so despite immense expenditures of time and money.   "It's really one of the deep failures of TARP," Barofsky said. "TARP wasn't supposed to just help the banks return to profitability, it was also supposed to help people stay in their homes." Mr. Geithner at the Treasury has pointed out, on several occasions, that while the HAMP program could be better, it's the only federal program spurring mortgage servicers to help homeowners. 
What goes unmentioned among all the administration spin is that because of the huge amount of time and red-tape involved with HAMP and the refusal of many aggrieved foreclosed owners to leave their properties the possibility of a genuine recovery in the American housing market is years away. Until these depressed properties are handled, their shadow hangs over all potential dealings as the vast majority of Americans paying their mortgages every month find that their once “most valuable asset” (their home) has now become a monstrous drag on their personal finances. Should they want to sell, they face depressed prices and/or long periods of uncertainty before a buyer can be found. If they hold onto their homes they face 3%-10% drops in value that threaten in many cases to put them “underwater” on their mortgage despite their homes’ built-up equities. 
Barack Obama’s refusal to insist that reasonable foreclosures be allowed to proceed is a huge black cloud hanging over the nation’s real estate marketing. Of course, Barack as an ACORN lawyer in the mid-90’s was helping shake down lenders and setting up a lot of these very same loans to ignorant and unworthy clients by extorting banks to abide with the federal government’s CRA ’77 legislation forcing them to make horrifically bad home loans so perhaps his judgment in the matter is clouded. Besides clearing this nebulous situation up, the Republican HAMP repeal bill will knock $1.3 billion off the federal deficits. So why does Obama and why do the progressives Democrats love HAMP? Despite all their claims about Bush and “the car in the ditch,” most Democrats know who really caused the financial meltdown we saw beginning in late 2007. They’d prefer, however, to continue to lie to themselves and to the American voter.  
HAMP is their last ditch effort to prove to themselves that despite the obvious facts on display . . . government interference works; that they really did NOT undermine and cut the legs off the U.S. economy with all their constant mortgage industry interference beginning with CRA ’77 (see the earlier mentioned footnote** below). Of course the fact that the original CRA President was Jimmy Carter; and our first ACORN president Bill Clinton, expanded Community Reinvestment ACT ‘77 legislation once by regulatory fiat in 1993; twice by separate legislations in 1995; and by a steroid-version expansion of the law in 1998; and the fact that Barack Obama was an ACORN lawyer for parts of three years shaking down banks and mortgage companies to extort their involvement in CRA 77 and grant knowingly unsound loans to knowingly terribly fiscally-unworthy clients . . . these facts should not color your evaluation of progressive politicians and their competence now, should it?
So what is the big picture here? What’s going on in the housing markets? When can we expect a full recovery? Recent reports show that new home sales hit a record low in February, 2011. Last week we found out that 19 of the 20 largest metros areas according to Standard and Poors, experienced a pricing slump in January. This is horrible news three years into the financial meltdown and almost by itself guarantees a “double-dip” recession. Ah, but the situation degenerates even more . . . .
The good news is that besides some job growth and a tiny wage growth . . . American banks are finally looking at the economy with a rosier perspective and are now far more likely to grant home loans.   However, the fly-in-the-ointment is the nasty situation with depressed and foreclosed homes mentioned above. It’s what the mortgage industry calls “shadow inventory.” Besides the alarming backlog of older homes on the market and the relative DEPRESSION in new home turnover, there is this nagging shadow inventory that can’t be dealt with properly because of the government red tape; Obama’s intransigent belief that his programs are infallible; and Eric Holder’s “INJUSTICE DEPARTMENT” standing in the way, protecting the unworthy ACORN-inspired borrowers over the forced-to-loan-‘em-money-by-your-stupid-CRA ’77-law banks and handcuffing the entire U.S. economy as a result.
Here’s what the statistics tell us: A) 3.5 million existing homes are being tracked by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) which, at their current prices, are homes that would sell on average only after 8.5 – 9 full months’ exposure on the market. B) The “shadow inventory” that the government and the banking industry would like to pretend isn’t fouling their nets is, if you press them, another 1.8 million homes definitely likely to hit the market sometime soon in our futures. Why? Some people will eventually “just walk away” from their underwater mortgages; or from their job losses which have made them unable to continue paying on older homes in which they’ve some real equity; most of these people are now anywhere from three months to nine months behind in paying their mortgages and foreclosure is now a definite prospect. And what is the likely result of all this shadow inventory eventually? A large chunk of these homes will appear on the market and the NAR’s projected nine month turnaround will then jump to an average of two years . . . a literal disaster for home-sellers and C) in reality the biggest lie of our time concerning the mortgage industry is now coming to light: it appears that a hither-to unreported severely underwater shadow inventory has been glossed over until now. 
These are two million homeowners who now find themselves at least 50 percent underwater on their mortgages. A huge percentage of these folk were the “beneficiaries” of the CRA ’77 legislation and ACORN’s efforts to put the jobless and poor credit risks and even illegal aliens into expensive homes (that statement is zero exaggeration, but LITERALLY 100% true). A leftist rebellion has charged many of these folks with a zeal for ignoring the facts of life and staying in their homes (despite years of not paying their mortgages in many cases) despite the official proceedings. To say that this element is a severe drag on the housing market is to underestimate reality by 600% in Rajjpuut’s opinion. IF they are allowed to get away with this the banks are really in trouble. IF they get away with this, what’s also to stop normal, honest debtors who can afford their mortgages but who find themselves underwater from saying “Screw it? I like their idea!” What would prevent that? This sort of widespread collapse of private property would mean the end of America as we know it.
Rather than facing reality, the Obama administration is looking at creating another government-spending and government-interference boondoggle called “Cash for Keys.” Their idea is to give $21,000 to all the bad loan recipients from CRA ’77 so they’ll vacate their homes and the housing market can finally start to return to normalcy. So the progressives in the federal government almost bankrupted the banks and mortgage companies by forcing them to make horrifically bad loans to those people (many of whom could not honestly afford an $800 used car) and after bailing out the banks, they’re going to bailout these fools who couldn’t figure that there was no way in hell they could ever pay off their home loans . . . . Now do you still believe in making government bigger? What do you think of government-forced redistribution of wealth schemes now?
For the home-sellers in the worst-hit states: (New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland, Florida, Delaware, Georgia, Connecticut, Alabama, California and Washington) those turnover numbers are beginning to drag out already. Only four states seem to have a semi-healthy housing industry outlook for 2011-2012: the aforementioned North Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Montana. Sugar-coating all this information is the Obama strategy to get him through the next nineteen months and re-elected . . . excess sugar is terrible for your health.
As a quick side note: if you’re in the market for a home, present mortgage rates are very much on your side, so take your time, look over the available housing carefully; don’t be afraid to offer 50%-60% of asking price. After initial refusal you might find a bargain home in five or six weeks. If you’re selling a home, make sure you live in North Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming or Montana; or look to hold onto it for 8-10 years when the markets might hopefully rebound and stabilize at a higher level. Of course, if we wind up with hyper-inflation in the next decade, your home and its present ridiculously high mortgage might just prove to be your saving grace if you can survive the ravages of 80% or higher inflation. Good luck, America!
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
** “When you combine ignorance and borrowed money, the results can get interesting.” Warren Buffet                  Buffet’s comment not only applies to the unworthy and ignorant borrowers (perhaps worthy of a 55% down payment loan for an inexpensive home if they won a lesser part of the lottery some day, but definitely NOT worthy of a 0.0% loan on a $400,000 home) blogged about here . . . but also to the ignorant and heavily mortgaged Federal Government. Are you far better off now, than you were $5 TRillion ago? I’m not and neither is the country. How did we get into this mess? It’s a long but very interesting story . . . .
 
ITEM:  In 1975, 64% of American private citizens owned their own homes, then the highest in the world. Only one loan in 404 was considered “suspect.” 90% of home loans were granted with 20% to 33% down payment. Even the “suspect” loans were special cases, typically military officers attending college on the GI bill who received mortgages in some cases with 3% down payment. In short our private home ownership mortgage system was NOT broken. But progressive politicians of both parties would soon fix that, and us.
 
 
A decade earlier, a progressive president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, not only got us deeply involved in war in South East Asia, but also launched an expensive “War on Poverty” which included Medicare and the Federal side of Medicaid that today face a combined $68 TRillion in unfunded liabilities; a broad expansion of Social Security benefits (now with $36 TRillion in unfunded liabilities); and a sweeping and, of course, overly generous and anti-work-incentivized welfare set of expansions. About the time this was happening, a husband and wife neo-Marxist team, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, published an article in The Nation magazine in 1966 entitled The Weight of the Poor: a Strategy to End Poverty which has come to be popularly known as the “Cloward-Piven Strategy;” the two were Columbia University professors not opposed to crapping in their own nest (New York City) as you’ll soon see. In C-P Strategy the poor are unwittingly used as leftist storm troopers in their attempt to bankrupt the federal government of the United States. 
Their stated goal -- when they established the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in 1967 with Black militant activist George Wiley – was to bankrupt the welfare system by creating a huge welfare state and thus to cause such financial chaos they’d get the Democratic Party to institute a Guaranteed National Income (GNI). This approach they said would SNAP! eliminate poverty; totally destabilize American capitalism; and set the country on the fast lane to “the Revolution.” Frances Piven, by the way, is still alive and still calling for “The Revolution” and violence and blood in the streets today. Rajjpuut bets “Nana Frannie” makes a wonderful peachy-keen grandmother – wanna bet she knits some wonderful Afghans?
Their Alinsky street-battling worked wonders in the welfare offices (self-proclaimed “neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky is famous for Reveille for Radicals in 1946; and Rules for Radical in 1971 he also was a mentor to Hillary Clinton and his “Rules for Radicals” course was taught in Chicago by Professor Barack Obama) and C-P strategy worked “wonderfully,” welfare rolls were doubled within three and a half years and by 1975, New York City was bankrupt; New York State itself was on the verge of bankruptcy and numerous large metropolitan areas and big-city states around the country were also in dire fiscal straits. NYC was bailed out by the federal government in November that year. 
Wiley and Cloward and Piven took to publically boasting of the “great things they’d accomplished” even though their stated goal (GNI) was never an idea discussed seriously in Congress;” then they called upon their followers (using the “Saul Alinsky street tactics” Wiley had perfected for future endeavors) to now get involved in federal housing and in voter registration. Therein hangs the meat of our tale . . . .
ITEM: As new president Jimmy Carter took office in January, 1977, a Wiley-NWRO lieutenant sent to Arkansas about 1970, Wade Rathke, was assigned the task of coming up with a Cloward and Piven type organization along the lines of the NWRO to test out in Arkansas. Arkansas was chosen because it was far from the “media glare” and because they had an up-and-coming young politician whose thinking ran to progressive aims that C and P and Wiley strongly believed in: Bill Clinton, at 30 years old one of the youngest Lieutenant Governors in the country and one of the nation’s most promising Democrats. 
                The stimulus for the Rathke assignment was that Carter and the Democrats had promised CRA ’77- (Community Reinvestment Act of 1977) type legislation designed to spread the wealth by forcing mortgage companies to make home loans to bad risk clients (at that time just in the inner cities) who, as they saw it, might otherwise not be in the housing market for ten or twelve years. Perhaps 4% of Americans understand the whole big picture of Cloward and Piven and of Carter’s CRA ’77 legislation and how it led inexorably to the financial meltdown of 2007. It’s a fascinating story. But first consider this: it took Cloward and Piven’s NWRO parts of eight years to bankrupt NYC and nearly bankrupt New York State and with Bill Clinton’s unending support, it took ACORN roughly 30 years to bring down the USA and almost ruin it irreparably. 
ACORN (originally the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now) was created at virtually the same moment as Carter’s CRA ’77 law was signed. At first ACORN was largely ineffective in getting housing action but they went out almost immediately and began registering voters for the 1978 Arkansas election. They signed an enormous bunch of people up; many of them were even real people really eligible to vote in Arkansas. They also threw all the Republican registrants paperwork in the trash which threw the 1978 election dramatically to William Jefferson Clinton, the state’s new governor. At that time Arkansas governors were only elected to two-year terms, later that changed. Nevertheless with ACORN’s backing Bill Clinton remained Arkansas governor for 12 of the next 14 years and became president of the United States in 1992. Meanwhile ACORN had figured out how to get lots of bad home loans for risky clients. In a little while, ACORN was found in all 50 states and now stood for: Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.  By 1985, the action of ACORN limited only to Arkansas had made a big difference in overall mortgages in the entire United States. The number of suspect loans was roughly doubled: from 1 in every 404 in 1975, to 1 in 196 by 1985.
ITEM:  The election of Bill Clinton in 1992 was a welcome relief for progressives after the fiasco that was Jimmy Carter in 1980; and the non-electables Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988. Even though Clinton made the CRA ’77 situation much worse, it would be unfair to give Democrats all the blame. About 80% of Democrats were progressives in the early 1990’s but progressive Republicans played a role every step of the way and, even a non-vigilant conservative president caused us a lot of problems. George H. W. Bush who succeeded in upholding 45 out of 46 presidential vetoes against a big-spending congress saw a bill pass his desk that he approved of except for two or three small details. Instead of standing his ground, Bush #1 signed the bill into law instead of vetoing it and sending it back to Congress for removal of the offending parts. Too bad, part of that bill was an expansion of CRA mortgage legislation into the big federal mortgage programs Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac -- a huge mistake. The good thing was that the original CRA ’77 was a poorly constructed law that mostly any conscientious mortgage company could largely ignore.
                Bill Clinton came into office in January, 1993 aiming to put across a very ambitious conservative agenda including government health care. He was beholden to ACORN and to all the Cloward-Piven people and more importantly he largely believed as they did. His first two major actions were aimed at re-paying them.   You’ll recall that ACORN was created in response to the C-P call for their supporters to get involved in voter registration and in federal housing after their success in bankrupting NYC . . . Clinton passed the “Motor Voter Act” called by opponents “a twelve-lane highway to voter fraud.” No doubt the ACORN people considered Motor Voter to be a great help to their registrations scams. If you’ll visit this picture of the Motor Voter signing ceremony you’ll see something very important in the picture:
Yes, if you visited the Wikipedia link given earlier you’re right, that is Frances Fox Piven in the green sweater standing almost directly behind President Clinton with her husband Richard Cloward the tall man with glasses to her immediate left watching the Motor Voter Act get signed into law.
                Clinton also used the regulatory fiat of his office to turn the rather cumbersome CRA ’77 legislation into a powerful and more easily enforceable law. Now it would not be so easy for mortgage lenders to laugh off the notion of making bad loans to unqualified would-be home buyers . . . now it would become part of their everyday life. Twice in the year 1995, Clinton was able to sneak bills further expanding CRA ’77 through Congress even though it was dominated by Republican majorities in the House and Senate. Newt Gingrich the Speaker of the House did a horrible job and allowed almost anything the Democrats could dream of into numerous “compromise bills.” During this time a Chicago attorney named Barack Obama was working for ACORN and shaking down home loan companies. Obama was reputed to be so good at his job that court appearances never happened. The Banks just caved in, agreed to a certain pattern of loans and usually even offered up a donation to ACORN thanks to Barack’s persuasiveness. By 1995, one in every seven home loans was suspect and also offered at less than 3% down payment.
Finally, in 1998 Clinton passed the steroid version of CRA ’77 in 1998. Obama was long gone but the ’98 Clinton expansion of CRA put ACORN in the driver seat. From now on they’d have less trouble getting unqualified loan recipients into $440,000 homes than they had getting them into $110,000 homes a decade earlier. ACORN had elevated its shake-down processes into a science. Where before loans for moderately bad risks had been common, the new law made it easy for ACORN to get home loans for people without jobs; people with bad credit ratings; people without even rental histories; people whose only “income” was food stamps; or other welfare roll recipients; and even illegal aliens. By 2005, 1 in every 3 home loans (34% to be precise) was granted to unqualified loan recipients at 3% down payment or less . . . many of them at 0% down. The housing bubble was accelerating and America was in trouble.
Perhaps the first person to write about the seriousness of the bubble was investech.com guru James Stack out of Whitefish, Montana. As early as late November, 2003, Stack was upon the problem like ugly on an ape. He soon began including a graph of the Housing Industry bubble which he said had been created by senseless sub-prime loans that could never be expected to be repaid. That graph slowly changing month after month was a regular part of the investech weekly reports for roughly the next 5 ½ years. The Republicans of the Bush #2 administration figured things out by late December, 2004 and presented Congress with a bill undoing the 1998 Clinton expansion and many of the most harmful features of all the CRA ’77 legislation. President Bush gave nineteen separate speeches about the unraveling of the American economy that CRA ’77 was bringing about. The bill was defeated every time and the liberal press virtually totally ignored the story. Rajjpuut, who had been warning people since December, 2003 was aghast. Here was the most serious financial debacle of our time and no one cared. 
Finally, 30 months after their first try, the Republicans passed a seriously watered-down version of the anti-CRA ’77 bill in July, 2007 just about the time the problem became Unignorable. It was, of course too little, too late. Nevertheless, according to a speech Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made in August, 2010, Bush’s efforts probably saved the nation from absolute financial Armageddon and he credits Bush in particular for preventing a total meltdown in housing prices. So as far as that little fable Mr. Obama delights in about the Republicans, conservatives and Wall Street driving the economy in the ditch . . . the truth is quite different. Here it is:
George W. Bush seeing the progressives, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and most Democrats deliberately pushing the car (the economy) toward a 500 foot-cliff,  jumped into the front seat grabbed the steering wheel and hit the brakes and guided it into the nearest friendly-looking ditch.  Amen.
 
It's that key word "deliberately" that is most disturbing on two levels:  first, that one of our major parties has been hijacked by people (progressives) who put their own agenda totally and utterly ahead of the nation's because they know best for all of us; and secondly, the fact that only two main news sources in the country have considered this story important enough to cover.  Just in case you don't know what progressivism is:  it's the conviction that we must "progress" beyond the 'outdated and ill-conceived U.S. Constitution' if we are to make necessary "progress" toward an earthly Utopia.
 
 
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Hating Gadhafi, Country Commits
to Expensive Blind Date with Terrorist Rebels
 
 
            Leave it to Barack Obama and his administration to hopefully change one of the murkiest foreign situations in recent memory into the absolutely murkiest one ever . . . no end game description of what we’re trying to accomplish has been provided; no knowledge of the recipients of our beneficence is available; and no limits to our engagement have been hinted at . . . one could call the Libyan action a “pig in a poke” only at risk of a class-action suit for defamation from ordinary pigs in pokes . . . .
 
Item: The day-to-day changes in strategic oversight have not only been dramatic from Defense Secretary Gates; Secretary of State Clinton, NATO leaders; the U.N. coalition; and, of course the President, but each one of these parties have each given at least three different appraisals to the world’s press. Obama has muddied the waters worse than all the rest of them put together.
 
Item: Reports from the field and from NATO experts say that elements of Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Iranian terrorist group Vivac, and the Muslim Brotherhood are found among the so-called “Democracy-loving Rebels” now opposing Moammar the Transvestite in Libya. One high-ranking NATO general, however, put us all at ease saying that a “flickering” of Al Qaeda presence had been found so far. Undefined is the word “flickering” . . . does it mean 2%? 20%? Perhaps 60%?
 
Item: The suggestion from knowledgeable moderate Muslims in the United States is that in the less moderate Islamic countries, up to 90% of their populations are in favor of Shariah Law instituting among other things: stoning to death for adulterers; public floggings; severe oppression of females including requirement for wearing of the burkha; institutionalized rapings (a female victim must provide four male witnesses to the rape or risk being condemned for lack of chastity and stoned to death) condoned by the justice system; cutting off of hands as a punishment for theft; beheading of infidels; and beheading of Muslims who convert to other religions; etc., etc. ad nauseum.  The question is then . . . even if not one terrorist is involved, are these rebels interested in replacing the secular state now in Libya with a new Islamic Jihadocracy akin to the Taliban?
 
Item: Despite claims to the country, the United States is dominating and leading the operation. In the matter of Tomahawk missiles for example, the U.S. is putting in $56 million worth of them daily. Total expenditure by the rest of the so-called “coalition” so far? Four. Total U.S. cost thus far is more than $600 million for over 235 American Tomahawks compared to just nine by our “allies.” The proportion of air sorties has been similarly unbalanced.
 
Item: Meanwhile in the Middle East, President Obama is now upping the ante with more talks every day about arming the rebels. President Obama has also renewed his call for an “independent Palestinian State (he first mentioned this last September with a “deadline” of one year) to be put in place by this September, 2011, despite being embroiled in Libya. And Obama has also said that turning over the operation to NATO is now being “reconsidered” in accord with the U.N. doctrine of “Necessary Protection.” The Arab League and other Muslim countries have suggested that the “Protect” doctrine would justify them sending inspectors into Israel to document abuse of Muslim citizens there. Last time Rajjpuut checked, the human rights violations from Muslim states upon Muslim citizens outnumbered the ordinary failings of Democracies like America and Israel by say, 10,000 to 1 . . . .
 
Item: The Egyptian military is now talking with the Muslim Brotherhood (who gave us 9/11, bless them; read The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 for the full history). As most of you know, Egypt has always been not only the most populous Middle Eastern country, but also one of the most modern and secular. A study of opinions in Egypt two weeks before the opposition to Mubarak surfaced showed that 85% of the Egyptians queried favored institution of Shariah Law in their country. Of what use is a democracy of savages? Democracy is totally unimportant compared to other little considerations like basic human decency and rights; not to mention real justice.
 
            In sum, unless he is personally and deliberately seeking to instigate the Biblical version of events known as “Armageddon,” there is absolutely zero sense to the Obama Middle East policy decisions of the last three months and the notion of going on a blind date with (arming) the Libyan rebels made even less sense than getting involved there in the first place. Events in Libya via the U.N. are all about French and British oil interests and not one single other thing and getting involved in someone else's civil war and deciding to institute a regime change is never a good idea.
 
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
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Video Tape Exposes Union Rush to start “The Revolution”

 
 
Union Economic Terrorists Conspire
to End Western Civ In America NOW
 
 
       I’ve never had someone who’s visited my home several times, wind up plotting the end of Western Civilization, have you?   Well, it seems Barack Obama can’t say the same thing.  
Among Barack’s more radical friends like Van Jones, Steven Lerner, AFL/CIO President Trumka and SEIU President Andy Stern and 60’s bomb-builder William Ayers of Weatherman Underground infamy . . . are a lot of violent people who think that American consumption and your prosperity and your property are obviously the world’s biggest problems. White House logs show that SEIU (Service Employees International Union) bigwig Stern is the single most-frequent visitor and Trumka not only visits the White House almost as often as Stern, but brags among the Union rank and file, “I talk with the President every day.” Recent evidence suggests that they’ haven’t spent all their time talking about an American Renaissance, no sir . . . not talking about creating jobs and rebuilding the economy either.   No, quite the contrary . . . .
Frequent Whitehouse visitors Steven Lerner and Van Jones (ex-Green Jobs Czar) have discussed this little matter of bringing down capitalism quite often in public meetings and over the public airwaves and internet.  In Van Jones' case dozens of hours of his "let's blow the whole capitalistic system to hell and replace it with our superior one" speeches are available.  But Van Jones never gets down to specifics about how to do the dirty deeds. Lerner, on the other hand who’s only officially visited the White House four times to see Mr. Obama has just had a speech of his (plotting the immediate overthrow of capitalism through the destruction and scape-goating of J.P. Morgan Chase Bank) now going ballistic over the internet.  And Lerner gets down and dirty about sabotaging the American economy and why it's necessary:  to save the unions' power.   Silly Americans, can’t they see that "The Revolution" is good for everybody but those capitalist pigs? 
            To those of us who’ve been monitoring the Obama administration carefully, none of this is a surprise. 
What might be surprising, nay shocking to the rest of America is that The Revolution has already started . . . the first steps toward Lerner’s planned for destabilization are underway already.  Lerner, who is a high official involved with finances for one of the country's most-powerful unions, SEIU, has a secret plan to "destabilize" the country.   Which, Thank God! are no longer secret . . . .
The entire Lerner tape can be found here . . .
OR here:
What follows is a full transcript from The Blaze, the Glenn Beck website that uncovered the bigger story and also this Lerner speech made Sunday, March 19, 2011, just two days ago. Notice how you’ve heard Michael Moore, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, President Obama and all the union leaders and key Democrats tell us that there is no debt problem,” yet Lerner talking to his "fellow travellers" (Communist code phrase), has no reason to fib about the obvious facts and reveals the truth about how serious the debt crisis is . . . and how he intends to use that truth to strangle the economic lifeblood out of this country . . . .  So, damnit, wake up, and you decide . . . is this real? Are the Unions and (by extension) their great friend Barack Obama plotting to destroy this country so that they and progressivism might thrive? Remember progressivism is a hundred +-year old movement in this country saying, “We must ‘progress’ beyond the ‘outdated and ill-conceived U.S. Constitution’ if we are to make ‘progress’ toward a socialist Utopia on earth.” Listen to the video and you decide. Is the chaos they’re deliberately hoping to evoke with all its anger, fear, confusion and violence . . . is that what you want for your nation, your children, your family and your future? 
 
FULL TRANSCRIPT FROM THE BLAZE + background info
 
The SPEAKER: Stephen Lerner. Speaker at the Left Forum 2011 "Towards a Politics of Solidarity" Pace University March 19, 2011

Stephen Lerner -- is the architect of the SEIU's groundbreaking “Justice for Janitors” campaign.  He led the union's banking and finance campaign and has partnered with unions and groups in Europe, South American and recently in the Middle East in campaigns to hold financial institutions accountable and destabilize governments. As director of the union's private equity project, he launched a long campaign to expose what he called “the over-leveraged feeding frenzy of private equity firms during the boom years that led to the ensuing economic disaster.” 
The Speaker’s unexposed LIE: Lerner never mentions that a progressive mortgage program** (CRA ’77) that forced lending institutions to knowingly make ill-advised home loans to unqualified recipients created the sub-prime lending crisis that bankrupted the country.  After only 1 in every 404 home mortgages was “suspect” in 1977 and the system wasn't broken . . . Progressives of both parties, but about 88% Democrats, saw that CRA ’77 was created and expanded five times in the ensuing 21 years so that almost a decade later, in mid-2007, one in every three home loans(34%) was suspect . . . as $400,000 homes were in some cases pushed by ACORN for illegal aliens; and people whose only income was “food stamps”; and all sorts of people without jobs and without decent credit ratings.  What was Barack Obama doing in 1994-96? He spent it working as an ACORN lawyer shaking down mortgage lenders to force them to make these terribly stupid loans in accord with CRA ’77.  Nor does he mention how Cloward-Piven progressive strategy almost bankrupted New York State; did bankrupt New York City (requiring a federal bailout in 1975); and caused huge fiscal problems for all 50 states . . . nor how Cloward, Piven and George Wiley publicly bragged about the great thing they'd deliberately done in the name of progressivism.

The TRANSCRIPT:  Steven Lerner speaking . . . .

It feels to me after a long time of being on defense that something is starting to turn in the world and we just have to decide if we are on defense or offense.  Maybe there is a different way to look at some of these questions  it’s hard for me to think about any part of organizing without thinking what just happened with this economic crisis and what it means.

                I don't know how to have a discussion about labor and community if we don't first say what do we need to do at this time in history what is the strategy that gives us some chance of winning because I spent my life time as a union organizer doing justice for janitors, a lot of things. 
It seems we are at a moment where the world is going to get much, much worse or much, much better

                Unions are almost dead we cannot survive doing what we do but the simple fact of the matter is community organizations (Like ACORN, Rajjpuut) are almost dead also and if you think about what we need to do it may give us some direction which is essentially what the folks that are in charge - the big banks and everything - what they want is stability

                 Every time there is a crisis in the world they say, well, the markets are stable. 
What's changed in America is the economy doing well has nothing to do with the rest of us.  They figured out that they don't need us to be rich they can do very well in a global market without us so what does this have to do with community and labor organizing anymore?

                 We need to figure out in a much more through direct action more concrete way how we are really trying to disrupt and create uncertainty for capital for how corporations operate.  The thing about a boom and bust economy is it is actually incredibly fragile.

                 There are actually extraordinary things we could do right now to start to destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild the movement.  For example, 10% of homeowners are underwater right now -- their home is worth a lot less than they’ll end up paying for it.  10% of those people are in strategic default, meaning they are refusing to pay but they are staying in their home that's totally spontaneous they figured out it takes a year to kick me out of my home because foreclosure is backed up.  If you could double that number you would; you could put banks at the edge of insolvency again.

                Students have a trillion dollar debt.  We have an entire economy that is built on debt and banks so the question would be what would happen if we organized homeowners in mass to do a mortgage strike if we get half a million people to agree to it; it would literally cause a new finical crisis for the banks not for us we would be doing quite well.  We wouldn't be paying anything.  Government is being strangled by debt

                The four things we could do that could really upset wall street:

1. One is if city and state and other  government entities demanded to renegotiate their debt and you might say why would the banks ever do it  - because city and counties could say we won’t do business with you in the future if you won’t renegotiate the debt now.

              So we could leverage the power we have of government and say two things,  "we won’t do business with you JP Morgan Chase anymore unless you do two things: you reduce the price of our interest  and second you rewrite the mortgages for everybody in the communities.  We could make them do that

2. The second thing is there is a whole question in Europe about students’ rates in debt structure. What would happen if students said, “We are not going to pay” ??  It’s a trillion dollars. Think about Republicans screaming about debt a trillion dollars in student debt

3. There is a third thing we can think about what if public employee unions instead of just being on the defensive  put on the collective bargaining table when they negotiate they say we demand as a condition of negotiation that the government renegotiate - it’s crazy that you’re paying too much interest to your buddies the bankers it’s a strike issue  - we will strike unless you force the banks to renegotiate.

4. Then if you add on top of that if we really thought about moving the kind of disruption in Madison, Wisconsin but moving that to Wall Street and moving that to other cities around the country.

              We basically say, "you stole seventeen trillion dollars - you've impoverished us and we are going to make it impossible for you to operate.  Labor can’t lead this right now so if labor can’t lead but we are a critical part of it  we do have money we have millions of members who are furious.  But I don't think this kind of movement can happen unless community groups and other activists take the lead. 
If we really believe that we are in a transformative stage of  what's happening in capitalism.

            Then we need to confront this in a serious way and develop real ability to put a boot in the wheel^^  then we have to think not about labor and community alliances  we have to think about how together we are building something that really has the capacity to disrupt how the system operates.  We need to think about a whole new way of thinking about this not as a partnership but building something new.

            We have to think much more creatively. The key thing. . . What does the other side fear the most - they fear disruption. They fear uncertainty. Every article about Europe says as they rioted in Greece the markets went down. 
The folks that control this country care about one thing how the stock market goes what the bond market does how the bonuses goes. We have a very simple strategy:
  • How do we bring down the stock market?
  • How do we bring down their bonuses?
  • How do we interfere with their ability to be rich?

               And that means we have to politically isolate them, economically isolate them  and disrupt them.  It’s not all theory I’ll do a pitch.

               So a bunch of us around the country think who would be a really good company to hate we decided that would be JP Morgan Chase  and so we are going to roll out over the next couple of months what would hopefully be an exciting campaign about JP Morgan Chase that is really about challenge the power of Wall Street. 
And so what we are looking at  is the first week in May can we get enough people together starting now to really have an week of action in New York I don't want to give any details because I don't know if there are any police agents in the room.

               The goal would be that we will roll out of New York the first week of May. We will connect three ideas:
  • that we are not broke there is plenty of money
  • "they" have the money  - we need to get it back
  • and that they are using Bloomberg and other people in government as the vehicle to try and  destroy us

               And so we need to take on those folks at the same time and that we will start here we are going to look at a week of civil disobedience - direct action all over the city then roll into the JP Morgan shareholder meeting which they moved out of New York because I guess they were afraid because of Columbus.
               There is going to be a ten-state mobilization to try and shut down that meeting and then looking at bank shareholder meetings around the country  and try and create some moments like Madison except where we are on offense instead of defense.

               Where we have brave and heroic battles challenging the power of the giant corporations. We hope to inspire a much bigger movement about redistributing wealth and power in the country and that labor can’t do itself that community groups can’t do themselves but maybe we can work something new and different that can be brave enough  and daring and nimble enough to do that kind of thing.

Read more:  http://www.businessinsider.com/seiu-union-plan-to-destroy-jpmorgan#ixzz1HN3ZPmnt
 
            Looks like the ball is in your court now, Citizen, do you think they, (people like Lerner, Stern, Trumka, and yes, Obama) should be able to bring the whole country down? Do you think America is evil? Or do you think this country’s worth fighting for? Maybe you’re tired of your taxes paying for union benefits enough to bankrupt our staes; and for monstrous political war chests a lot; and those war chests getting people elected who are plotting your destruction and making their own political power permanent?
            As for Rajjpuut, he's looking for a Red, White and Blue Old Glory ascot. I think Bill O’Reilly would be willing to sell one for $10 and use the money to fund 7-8 worthy charities with . . . do good with charitible giving; show your patriotism; and let the anarchistic pinkos know that people don't see it their way at all.
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
**The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA ’77) was passed about as quickly as Jimmy Carter could get into office. It was expanded five times with the steroid version expansion happening in 1998 under Bill Clinton. Clinton was responsible for a presidential edict expanding the law in 1993 (as soon as he got into office); two more expansions in 1995; and the steroid version mentioned earlier, in 1998. Bush tried to get the law undone in January, 2005 but was defeated in congress. Finally, 30 months later a bi-partisan bill that was much weaker was passed in July, 2007. It proved too little, too late, but did prevent an absolute collapse in home prices. Mr. Lerner’s actions would finish the job . . . .
 
^^ Wooden shoes or sabots were thrown into the machinery of the forced labor camps: hence our word “sabotage.”
 
 
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Big East Tournament Teams

Prove Unworthy in NCAA Battles

 

 

            It was a stupid, stupid thing to do and the results were highly predictable.  “It” in this case was the lunacy of  the NCAA’s selection committee on Selection Sunday putting eleven Big East teams into the NCAA 2011 Men’s Basketball Tournament and top-seeding two of those teams (one at #1 and another at #2).  The Big East has done nothing to justify that kind of reverence from the selection committee; and more importantly, history predicted they would do little.   

           Given that the Big East’s track record in the 2010 tournament was a combined record of 8-8 futility from its eight entrants and none of them made the Final Four -- one can only regard this year's selection committee as eaters of loco weed.  At present, only the Big East Champion UConn Huskies and the under-rated Marquette Golden Eagles are still in the NCAA hunt.  Some mighty good teams like Colorado, Cleveland State, Missouri State, and Harvard had to stay at home because the selection committee decided that mediocre teams from the Big East were more exciting and more competitive than strong teams from other areas. 

           Rajjpuut suggests that the selection committee stifle its erection for the Big East and adjust their thinking in terms of fairness.  For example, in a 16-team league only the top seven teams should qualify at a maximum; in a 12-team league only the top 5 qualify at max; in a ten team league a maximum of four qualifiers; and a maximum of three qualifiers from an eight-team league.  The play of Butler (from the always ignored Horizon League), to name just one upset-hungry fivesome, both this year and last shows that the top teams in some of the lesser-reputed conferences deserve far more respect . . . and that goes for tough runner-ups in those conferences.  Green Bay-born Rajjpuut, for one believes that Colorado would have easily handed every Big East entrant except for U. Conn its head had they been allowed into the tournament.  The Big East largely sucked this year and last, the only question is “Why?”**

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

 

**   Rajjpuut suggests that teams that are struggling for high positions in their conferences gain a certain edge that mediocre teams never get.  Certainly teams in 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th place in an over-rated conference have little to brag about.  Only two of the Big East losses have been to other Big East teams this year.

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