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Is Trickle-Up Poverty the New Prosperity?
While being assaulted on all sides with Barack Obama’s “trickle-up poverty” and other progressive government boondoggles like Obamacare on top of trillion-dollar national deficits as far as the eye can see and well beyond . . . a strange new phenomenon has emerged to further muddy the waters already obscuring our future hopes. China is now selling off American debt and ridding itself of dollars so that now the largest holder of American debt is . . . drum roll, please, Maestro! . . . the United States Federal Reserve Banking System. Yes, you read that correctly. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is now in the voodoo economics business all the way up to his fuzzy skull.
Over the last three months, China has sold roughly $19 billion in treasury bonds and other U.S. debt instruments. China, in other words, has become concerned about the sheer size of the U.S. overall debt and the high probability that the Federal Reserve’s unceasing money printing for the last twenty-nine months has debased and devalued the world’s reserve currency for ‘lo these last 60+ years: the American Dollar. Looking back in history that’s exactly what happened to the British Pound Sterling which had been the World’s Reserve Currency for over two hundred years until the Brits ousted Winston Churchill with World War II still not entirely won and brought in their Labour (progressive-liberal) Party to run the show. Labour inflated their once proud currency so much that the citizens and nations of the world began dumping the Pound and fleeing for gold, silver, the gold-backed Swiss Franc and most commonly for the American Dollar.
The American Federal Reserve now standing as the largest holder of U.S. Treasury debt means that financing Obama’s third trillion-dollar federal budget deficit in succession has become something the rest of the world has begun to shy away from. China is still the largest foreign-holder of American debt, but the Chinese seem determined to remove their names from the top of that dubious list (other top foreign holders of U.S. debt instruments include: Japan, Russia, Brazil, India, Korea, England, France, Germany and Saudi Arabia). It also suggests that faith and trust in the “Almighty Buck” may be reaching a low-ebb.
Unlike hard money (gold and silver) and all hard-money backed currencies such as the Swiss Franc and the Kruggerand-backed South African money . . . paper money has zero intrinsic value . . . it only exists and continues to serve so long as people trust the government issuing the paper bills (and that goes double for a nation’s paper debt instruments). Bernanke has run the printing pressings so long that on a sheer mathematical basis the dollar of today is technically worth only as much as 3.4 pennies compared to the dollar of late 2008 when the financial crisis reached its low spot and the U.S. government started stepping in. What’s going on here? Why is Bernanke printing so much money?
Bernanke is a well-known student of the Great Depression and has written numerous articles suggesting that the reason the Great Depression turned from a “little-d depression” into a “capital-G/capital-D Great Depression” is because there was never sufficient money in circulation to head off relentless deflation. That is, he believes a vicious-circle of deflation was created and that the continuous dropping of prices fed off itself and destroyed jobs which destroyed buying power which destroyed businesses which destroyed more jobs, etc., etc.
There is some truth to what Mr. Bernanke suggests . . . but it’s a lot like yanking your starting pitcher off the mound with the score going from 2-1 in the 6th to 8-1 against you in the 8th . . . once so much damage has been done . . . almost nothing will work. Perhaps the twirler should have been sent to the showers when he looked tired after 120 pitches before the start of the 7th? Or after he’d allowed a home run and walked the next two batters with no outs in the 7th? Poor decisions early in a process can make finding good decisions later . . . very, very difficult.
Rajjpuut suggests a different reading of history is more accurate. Almost precisely a full decade before the infamous 1929 stock market crash we had a depression start-up that 98% of Americans never heard about. Progressive Woodrow Wilson’s so-called “Invisible Depression” started in late 1919 and was full-blown by the time Warren G. Harding was elected in November, 1920; and much worse when Harding took office in March of 1921 (they had a four-month Lame-Duck session in those days). Production had already dropped nation-wide by 26%. Ignoring the suggestions of his Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover for immediate implementation of numerous government aid programs and other subsidies . . . Harding did only four things:
1. Cut government spending by 48%
2. Cut taxes by 49%
3. Paid down the nation’s debt by 30%
4. Slashed government regulatory interference across the board
In fifteen months the economy had rebounded mightily (just a couple months later, Harding died in office so he barely got to enjoy his success). The United States was now well into the “Roaring Twenties” the most single prosperous rebound of any economy in the recorded history of the planet. Calvin Coolidge, Harding’s vice-president continued the Harding policies faithfully, but chose “not to run” in 1928. One of the most popular men in America and a famous philanthropist and author, Herbert Hoover ran for the presidency for the Republicans and won in a landslide over Democrat Al Smith. Only three men in history have become president of the U.S. without extensive military or business executive or elected experience: Taft, Obama and Hoover.
Hoover was a famous geologist and mining engineer who married the daughter of a rich banker. He believed mightily in the “Efficiency Movement” (if you’ve read Cheaper by the Dozen, the father, Frank Gilbreth, was founder of the Efficiency Movement) and believed that the economy was riddled with waste and inefficiency which could be dramatically improved by “experts” like him once they identified the problems and solved them. Hoover became, according to the New York Times “one of the Ten Most Important Living Americans” for his charitable and humanitarian work during World War I.
Hoover administered distribution of over two and one-half million tons of food to nine million war victims and was later named head of the brand new U.S. Food administration by Woodrow Wilson when the country entered the War. A member of the Supreme Economic Council after the war, as well as head of the American Relief Administration he continued organizing shipments to millions of starving people in Central Europe. A well-known philanthropist, Hoover like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson was like them a self-described “Progressive and Reformer.”
He came to be known as “Wonder-Boy” during the Harding-Coolidge administrations for his notorious and comical lust for expanding portions of everybody else’s bailiwicks into new roles for the Commerce Department. The reporters of his day called Hoover, "the Secretary of Commerce... and Under-Secretary of Everything Else!" Long before he had entered politics he had abandoned laissez-faire economic thinking. Outside of engineering and charitable work he was a terrible micro-manager always on the look out to fix what wasn’t broken. History shows that Hoover did one very important thing as Commerce Secretary: he codified and standardized traffic lights across the nation.
As soon as he was elected president Hoover set about planning the undoing of much of the good work created by Coolidge and Harding. He raised government spending and taxes and debt. He initiated numerous “eleemosynary” style federal activities (reminiscent of his charitable work in World War I) to protect workers and farmers and businesses from the natural vicissitudes of the free market economy. His biggest mistake was instituting a huge tariff designed to protect American farm workers from foreign competition but remove such protections from business; the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was to cause great consternation in the business world. The agricultural tariff increase was the second highest in U.S. history and put a lot of people out of work. Overall, once the stock market crashed in 1929, Hoover instituted the biggest big-government policies the nation had ever seen.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who had once praised Hoover in 1919 and tried to get him to run as the Democratic presidential candidate) and his v-p running mate Garner accused Hoover of being a socialist and promised that when elected they would:
1. Cut government spending severely
2. Cut taxes dramatically
3. Pay down the nation’s debt
4. Slashed government regulatory interference across the board and eliminate many of the socialistic programs of Hoover
Since these amounted to little more than promises to do what Harding had succeeded with in 1921, people embraced FDR and he won in a landslide taking office in March 1933. History shows that the bottom of the Great Depression was reached in July, 1933, and the bottom of our own “Great Recession” was reached in March, 2009, in each case shortly after the new president took office. Ordinarily the expectation is that after the bottom is reached, prosperity begins to return within six months. In both FDR’s and Barack Obama’s cases, however, government interference made things much, much worse.
FDR, of course, did exactly the opposite of what he promised. He dramatically raised taxes and government spending and debt and deficits. He expanded all of Hoover’s social and economic programs and added 40 of his own (just one law in 2010, Obamacare, created 384 new government agencies, so FDR was a piker compared to Barack) and made big government a way of life. He also confiscated gold coinage and then instituted an overnight inflation of 69% by pegging the dollar to gold at $35 per ounce (he’d given the citizens just $20.76) impoverishing the taxpayers while enriching the government. Of course doing what Harding did and avoiding what Hoover and FDR did is just common sense . . . something seemingly beyond Obama and Bernanke . . . .
In June, 2009, when the full-folly of the Obama policies began to outline themselves in sharp contrast to common sense . . . the Chinese held $896 billion in American debt; today they hold $764 billion a 15% reduction in greenback holdings. Since an outright flooding of the market with U.S. debt notes would destroy China as well as the U.S., it seems the Chinese are now buying up gold and silver in large quantities and making an orderly retreat from the dollar – leaving our suspect currency in the hands of less astute nations and of Ben Bernanke. Since the American trade deficit with China alone reached a record $273.1 Billion in 2010, the Chinese are going to have to work awfully hard to keep lowering their dollar holdings . . . so one suspects that gold and silver will continue to rise quickly.
Bernanke’s monetary policy, known as “Quantitative Easing” a.k.a. “irresponsibly printing money,” has seen the Federal Reserve recently buy up $600 billion worth of Treasury debt. Big Ben’s plan is to hold down interest rates and thus help lower the cost of federal government borrowing (to cover the Obama deficits) and incidentally increase inflation which he believes will stimulate economic growth and create jobs. This is a very Keynesian economic philosophy. In the months prior to his death in 1946, John Maynard Keynes (as the ending of the British Pound Sterling’s 200- year reign as the world’s reserve currency approached) who had long preached against the classical economic wisdom of Adam Smith and Smith’s “invisible hand of the marketplace,” like an atheist seeking God at the last hour repented . . . .
As Britain’s economic hole under the progressive Labor Party deepened, and his own death drew near, Keynes told Henry Clay of the Bank of England of his hopes that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” would somehow save the English economy and yank Britain out of the economic swamp it found itself in: "I find myself more and more relying for a solution of our problems on the ‘invisible hand’ which I tried to eject from economic thinking twenty years ago." The inflation destroyed the Pound Sterling as the Labor Party continued with government largesse and Keynes’ deathbed conversion went to naught.
Here in America recent spikes in food prices and energy costs are a direct consequence of Bernanke’s unofficial devaluation of the dollar. The government continues under-reporting of inflation assisted by the Labor Statistics Bureau’s refusal to include fluctuations in prices of food and energy. Bernanke, however, believes that deflation is still the rule and continues to inflate the currency to avoid a second Great Depression. Since job creation by the private sector is the key, perhaps the government ought to try: cutting spending; cutting taxes; eliminating debt; and getting the government out of the way of the free market . . . oops, that’s been mentioned before . . . .
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
The representatives the Tea Party got elected, headed by a leader who is carried away by emotions, are doing business as usual. We’ve no time for blubbering leaders.
Frankly, it is downright disgusting. We’ve hard-loser Democrats and gutless Republicans. America is face to face with a self-made economic meltdown ten times worse that the tsunami in Japan. The only thing new on the scene is the Tea Party. We let our demands be known and still no change!
Paradoxically, the battle is shaping up in America to full-fledged class warfare against capitalism. Yes, and capitalist China, headed by Communists, with money to loan, has cut off this Marxist dominated nation. The money currently being printed has nothing back of it. America has killed the proverbial goose that laid golden eggs. It is no longer if the dollar is going to be replaced as the world’s monetary standard. Slimy Worm Geithner has made it when it is going to be replaced. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Who is this worm working for? Thousands of Japanese have died due to an act of nature. How many people in America are going to die? We are sitting here witnessing our liberties being taken by madmen in the backrooms of America—no different than the other madmen who have been at the helm in recent times, gassing people to death, machine gunning and bombing people for their insane causes.
Basically, it’s two ideas in play: “for the good of all,” and God-given individual rights. Under the theory of “for the good of all,” the individual counts for naught. “The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property . . . and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” West Va. State Board of Education v. Barnette.
In the Bill of Rights, the Fifth Amendment gives the individual the right to demand due process of law. This means that you, individually, have the constitutional right to demand to be heard in a meaningful way in a meaningful place.
On the question of whether taxes are confiscatory, that issue was settled long ago, and taxes have not changed so much the same question should be heard again, says government. Government says the IRS is always right unless the taxpayer can prove the IRS wrong in court. In that case, the IRS is permitted to make the same mistake again without consequence. This is not confiscation. It is not obstruction of justice. In other words, government is always right and the taxpayer is always wrong. And where are the courts on this? In principle it is no different than courts in Nazi Germany. The United States does not give the individual a meaningful way to be heard on taxes. The courts granted the Communist Party U.S.A. the right to be heard on its taxes. The law in America is as meaningless as the law in Nazi Germany. Clearly, in America it is might makes right.
Case in point: The IRS made a “mistake,” after I challenged my tax as being unconstitutional. You don’t do that without dire consequences in America. The IRS taxed me too much. This IRS “mistake” was corrected in Tax Court. After the case was closed, the IRS made the same “mistake” again. In the U. S. District Court, the IRS admitted that said tax assessment was “wrongful.” The “mistake” was corrected and my property was refunded. The IRS then made a third “mistake.” Claiming the same tax assessment, the IRS demanded that my bank give the IRS every cent in my checking account. The District Court refused to reopen the case. My U. S. Senator, Democrat Bob Graham, refused to look into the matter, stating in a letter to me that the IRS was legally permitted to use “draconian” means of collecting tax. For a proven fact, the IRS is permitted to make unlimited mistakes. The theory of being “for the good of all” overrides IRS “mistakes.” Government entitlement overrides taxpayer rights. We’ve giving politicians the legal right to rob us for their express benefit. Politicians have the legal right to give their voting constituencies our sweat and we have no right whatsoever to our property or our incomes.
For the good of all, Hitler decreed that Jews didn’t have the right to live. For the good of all, hundreds of millions of human beings have been killed in the past century. Marxist Americans laud Chairman Mao, who felt that China could spare the millions of human beings he killed. It was for the good of all. We know what is next on the agenda. It is enough to make you cry. We should be greatly impressed by John Boehner’s tears, but who needs him? By the way, in the end I beat the IRS. They hung themselves with their own rope. Maybe we need me.
Much is being cussed and discussed about the state of education in Texas and the country in general. The Obamugabe wants to throw billions in new “investment” into the education system. One wonders what he expects to happen as a result.
Education is in its current state of disarray due to several things. Let’s look at a few.
Education is best served close to home by the citizenry:
Trying to “fix” education woes at the national level is a ludicrous but pathetic joke. Everything the federal government tries to “make better” they wind up trashing. The feds meddling has largely led to the current flap over the unions. The best thing that could happen to education is for the unions to decertify and disappear. Ok, hear me out before you hang me from the flagpole. Unions exist solely for the union thugs that run them. I have belonged to two unions over the years. All they did was take dues from me. They never made my life “better”, just more complicated. If we took teachers seriously as a vital profession and paid them accordingly, the unions would lose their appeal. Good teachers are worth far more than they are currently paid. Unions presumably exist to get them what they are really worth. The problem is, many are not worth what they got before the unions, let alone now. Which brings us to the second of the problems:
Who decided this clown was a teacher?
Many of our so-called educators are a really bad joke. They are totally incompetent to be serving as teachers. The unions make it impossible to weed out these misfits, so our children suffer the consequences. After stripping the federal government and the unions of any influence in the education of our children, we should immediately begin teacher competency testing. Boo – hiss! Ok so it is unpopular, at least among those who fall short of expectations. So be it. If we get rid of the deadwood, we can pay the good, serious educators what they are worth. I am not down on teachers. I have known and been taught by some really dedicated and brilliant people in my many years. In fact I have been fortunate to have studied under some absolutely stellar educators. A gentleman by the name of Henry Valli comes to mind. I won’t bore you with details, but this incredible educator should be recognized here. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the man responsible for my technical successes over the years. I am what I am largely due to his expertise in teaching and nurturing his students through the tortuous pathways of hard science. He made it easy and exciting. I wanted to learn; to be like him. He inspired as well as taught. My point here is we have many very good or excellent teachers in our schools; we should reward them accordingly. As for the other drones and wannabes, hit the road and find a job more suitable to your skills and motivation … like panhandling.
Educated Idiots and other intellectually challenged persons:
Many (far too many) of the folks graduating from our high schools and colleges are functionally illiterate. Many can’t read and write at an 8th grade level. Yet, these are the future leaders of the country and the movers and shakers of our commercial endeavors. What went wrong? Well, refer to the previous for a moment. There is an old saying among computer programmers: “garbage in – garbage out.” You get out of a system what you put into it. If our kids are being short-changed by the skills of their instructors, it is time to rid ourselves of the problem. This is the easier part of the solution. The more difficult part is correcting the curriculum. For decades, we have been in dumb-down mode. Instead of teaching our kids to be the best they can be and to excel, we instead teach them that mediocrity is the “norm” and they needn’t be upset if home work interferes with the latest X-Box offering. Forget learning, enjoy yourself while you can. Then, later, when they do try to gain employment, they find they have no knowledge or skills that are marketable. So they turn to welfare or mooching off of friends and family. Or they find themselves charring cow parts for a fast food restaurant. What needs to happen is for local school boards to take control of curriculum. Make the course of study fit the grade level. If a student can’t cut the tasks set before them, mentor them or set them back until they can. Teach up to expectations, not down to the lowest common denominator. Make the course of study demanding, make the student excel. To do less is criminal and unconscionable. Ask the Jaimie Escalantes of the world how it’s done.
Where are the parents?
And finally, MAKE the parents get involved. Teachers only have the students for a small part of the day; parents are responsible for the rest of the time. If the parents don’t actively support and continue the efforts the teachers make, the result is doomed to fail. Parents must take an active hand in school district management. Question the curriculum and demand that it teach the essentials needed to succeed in the coming world. Hold the district and teachers to the highest standards of education. And finally….
Where goes the republic?
Return to teaching American Government and Civics in high schools, at all grade levels. It is appalling that over half the students in high school today can’t figure out Presidential succession or who their senators and congress-people are. Many don’t know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Few can tell you where the Constitution was written or when. Some can’t even tell us who the nation’s first President was. How can they expect to be informed voters if they don’t have a clue how the government is SUPPOSED to work? This is perhaps the most dangerous of the problems. The liberal-progressive movement can only thrive if the future voters are politically ignorant and apathetic. An informed, intelligent voter is very difficult to deceive. Many of the problems we face as a nation can be directly traced back to education of the masses over the last two or three decades. It is vital we reverse this trend. If we don’t, we are doomed as a republic and we will continue to slide into socialism or something worse.
Japan Moves 8’; Earth 10”; Reactors Deteriorate;
Nuclear-Waste Cataclysm Awaits???
Murphy’s Law and recently revealed Japanese nuclear-incompetence may be setting the world up for an absolute disaster. First the background: The entire nation of Japan and all its islands moved a full eight feet closer to the United States; and the entire earth was shifted ten inches on its axis (and rotational speed slowed slightly) by the recent 8.9 mega-quake striking the sea floor near northeast Japan. The ensuing tsunami (tidal wave) was, naturally enough, worse than anyone prepared for . . . in other words an unimaginable amount of power struck the Japanese and unimaginably devastating consequences are now happening.
Unimaginable to you and me is not the same as "unforeseeable" in the world of engineering, or shouldn’t be. However, the up-to-now competent Japanese engineering community seems to have blundered badly in one respect that might soon come to haunt them and many of us: nuclear waste storage. Incredibly enough, reports say that the Japanese have been storing the radioactive waste on site – get this – in rooms above the reactor containment areas. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this sort of idiocy could instantaneously turn the worst-case scenario into a mega-disaster for the ages.
Murphy ’s Law (“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way!”) is now in play. The densely-populated Japanese islands hold fifty-five reactors. Many of them have been idiotically clumped together (economical in many ways, but dangerous to the nth degree) so unfortunately, threats to one reactor’s core could conceivably threaten the whole group and even make normal human operation of the nearby ones impossible.
Three of those reactors (two at the Fukushima site) have now been assigned to the scrap heap as emergency sea water cooling has been introduced into them destroying all future value as power generators. Granted moving a monstrously huge island eight feet eastward is hard to predict . . . but, clumping reactors in close proximity and storing highly dangerous nuclear waste above the reactors themselves; these are the sorts of acts that can win a whole truckload of Darwin Awards (given to those who find ultra-ignorant ways to wipe themselves out of reproducing and affecting the gene pool) for a people whose intelligence and engineering savvy had been famous worldwide up to recently.
Rajjpuut would suggest that whole volumes will soon be written about the errors of judgment attached to Japan’s nuclear industry. What to do about the waste now? OUCH! Moving it away from the threatened reactors seems very wise, but remember they’ve had over 300 aftershocks; more than 120 of those aftershocks have been of greater magnitude than the quake that demolished parts of New Zealand last week; more than 150 of these aftershocks have been greater than 6.0 reading – do you want trucks of nuclear waste travelling around the flattened landscape waiting for one more 6.3 Richter Scale tremor to destroy the trucks and release their deadly cargo everywhere? OUCH!
Since multiple meltdowns (multiple meltdowns!!!) are now a distinct possibility on top of everything else that's attacked the island; we recommend the American management experts Kepner-Tregoe be invited in to help the Japanese deal with this unmitigated mess (a K-T technical phrase describing a conflagration and confluence of intertwined problems) ASAP. Pray for Japan.
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
Ranting unions and their bought and paid for politicians are like quacking ducks waiting to be shot down. It isn’t a pretty picture. They are bringing America much pain and suffering.
Billionaire investors are bailing out of the stock market and buying gold. They say there is no way out of the worst depression ever. You don’t know what is coming because you never experienced it. These people are billionaires because they can read the signs.
Americans, based on their past, tend to believe they are invincible. I’m a World War II veteran. I can tell you for sure that a great many present day Americans are nothing like the World World II Americans. I can read the signs. A great many Americans have had it too good for too long.
Foreign governments don’t see America the way said fuzzy thinking Americans see themselves. They don’t like what America is doing with the dollar standard, which was established after World War II. You can thank my generation of Americans. We were the most trusted people in the world. The world can’t trust the present generation of fuzzy thinking Americans. Their America, represented by that slimy worm, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, are shamefully screwing the world, riding on the reputation my fellow Americans built.
Russia, China and other nations are secretly meeting in an effort to replace the dollar as the world monetary standard. It is no longer if the dollar is going to be replaced but when. I’m giving it six months. You are probably appalled at the price of gasoline today, but you are paying a fraction of what Europeans pay for their gasoline. Why? The dollar is the world standard currency. So, actually, you are enjoying the advantages my generation left, but that is not going to last. You are soon going to pay terrible consequences for the slick, unscrupulous acts of your government, the government you support.
Nobody wants to lend spendthrift America money. China has already cut America off. The only way to keep the economy from going into the tank is to print money. We’re already seeing the effects. America’s government, after deliberately painting America into a corner, is currently taking the American people, those too dim witted to know, on a snipe hunt, all the time getting us deeper in the hole.
All that I report lines up with the movements in the heavens. We are leaving the Age of Pisces, moving into the Age of Aquarius, an age of brotherhood and fraternity.
Those quacking union bosses, those who say they are out to give us the American dream, watch interest rates skyrocket; watch inflation take off; watch the economy melt down, when it is too late to do anything. The cat is already out of the bag. While you watch your savings vaporize, union bosses and government busy as bees, while Congress sits on its rear. Watch your American Dream materialize. Soon enough, you will be looking at a banana republic. All the blame will go to the filthy, greedy rich, with union bosses, the new rich, with all the power. You will be left up a creek and kissing their feet if you know what is good for you.
If you were to ask me what I think lies in your future, I would tell you that everything is cyclic. With every end comes a new beginning. The American Dream is really the end of the union bosses’ dream. The new beginning is galactic. How does this grab you? I’m 36 years ahead of this time. In other words, my current thinking is like the thinking in 2047. Those born today have a great future. Everything you are witness to now will be history. What is coming, you would not believe because you don’t know the subtle workings of the universe.
Based on what I read in Numerology and the Divine Triangle, in Astrologer’s Handbook, in Cosmos and Psyche, in The Physics of Consciousness, in The Mystery of Atlantis, in Heaven’s Mirror, in various publications on UFOs, and in The Scofield Study Bible, We are at the beginning of a quantum leap forward. Although the mind is prone to be focused on the present, it really has no particular place in space-time. Look at Middle-East Muslims—living and dressing as they did in the year 600 A.D., when their prophet Mohammad lived, and still fighting holy wars. They are nuts. Look at progressives—living in La La Land. They think they have all the answers. They are nuts. It is pitiful how little they know.
No one has ever seen the nanotechnical world. A pinhead is a million nanometers in diameter. Atom smashers give science snapshots. Every snapshot of an atom looks different. Nobody knows what happens in-between. Quantum physicist Niels Bohr said, “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Quantum physicist Richard Feynman said, “I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics. Do not keep asking yourself, if you can possibly help it, ‘but how can it be like that?’ Nobody knows how it can be like that.”
What do they know? No one can imagine heavenly bodies a thousand light years distant. While you may live in it, and because you think of your physical being as your whole, you are nowhere close to knowing the time-space consortium. In one respect, the space-time consortium is the means of separating events. My life, since Good Friday 1975, the day I departed my old life, has been legendary.
Good Friday is the day Catholics commemorate—as the day Christ was crucified. I headed into an unknown future with faith in myself, which connects with Christ’s crucifixion. The orthodoxy crucified Jesus. This day, the day I cut my umbilical cord with my past—and never gave it a thought—in retrospect it connected with rebirth. I set out to discover the real me. Numerology gives us the number 1. This was my second cyclic series. All the other numerology numbers fell in order. I was on my path of destiny. My life greatly improved.
I’m self-taught in the school of hard knocks. The establishment conceives of beautiful ends and then tries to force all the pieces to fit. That’s no way to live. I went by numerology’s numbers. I perceive. I don’t know how my life could be any better.
I forgot to add in my list of valuable books Time-Life’s set of world history books, and The “Higher Law” Background of American Constitutional Law. America’s Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that worked, but they could not live by it. They felt they had to make the Constitution better—to suit the needs of the time. They didn’t know that everything is cyclic.
We read in The “Higher Law” what the Roman judge Cicero reasoned: “We are born for justice, and right is not the mere arbitrary construction of opinion, but an institution of nature.” Cicero was as popular with Roman authority as Jesus was with Jewish authority. He barely got away with his life. Roman authority stripped Cicero of his rank and exiled him with nothing. “When you are in Rome you do as the Romans do.” But we see that history does not buy the notion.
Authorities plant the idea that they are the distributors of rights and grow a crop of thistles. Union workers have the right to double the pay of non-union workers. Everyone has the right to the best of health care. It’s bankrupting the nation. Obviously, the authorities don’t know the law.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” As a Christian, I was made to feel guilty. We are taught that we are selfish, ugly acting children who need intelligent supervision. We buy that notion, and just look where we are.
Jesus said, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God is not way out there in the space-time consortium, so far away we can’t find God, or hidden within the atoms. God is internal. The kingdom of heaven is the space-time consortium. When I studied the Constitution and felt a bigger than life calling, I accepted the idea that God is in me, not external. Who am I if the Constitution is for the good of all?
Here is the official government position, as the Court stated in Flast v. Cohen, a taxpayer case: “As we understand it, the Government’s position is that the constitutional scheme of separation of powers, and the deference owed by the federal judiciary to the other two branches of government within that scheme, present an absolute bar to taxpayer suits challenging the validity of federal spending programs. The Government views such suits as involving no more than the mere disagreement by the taxpayer ‘with the uses to which tax money is put.’ According to the Government, the resolution of such disagreements is committed to other branches of the Federal Government and not to the judiciary. Consequently, the Government contends that, under no circumstances, should standing be conferred on federal taxpayers to challenge a federal taxing and spending program. An analysis of the function served by standing limitations compels a rejection of the Government’s position.”
The court: “The fundamental aspect of standing is that it focuses on the party seeking to get his complaint before a federal court and not on the issues he wishes to have adjudicated. The ‘gist of the question of standing’ is whether the party seeking relief has alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.”
In your ignorance of the law, would you not think I was screwed up in the head to take on the IRS? What if I told you it was my bigger than life calling? Would you not think I needed counseling? Of course you would, simply because you have not been educated to believe that the IRS is your servant. Your ignorance of the law has left you without the right to one penny of your sweat. Your fundamental rights are inferior to government entitlements. I’m way ahead of you. With the “Higher Law,” I made the IRS eat crow on the front page of The Palm Beach Post.
You must first pay your taxes. But quoting the Court, if you can show that you have a personal stake of any consequence in the outcome, you have standing in the federal judiciary. They have not taken that right away yet.
They say it is always darkest before the dawn. Under “World Wars, Cold War, and September 11,” cultural historian Richard Tarnas, in Cosmos and Psyche, speaking of moving away from the Age of Pisces, “these three to four year periods, as did a widespread sense of epochal closure: ‘the end of an era,’ ‘the end of innocence,’ the destruction of an earlier mode of life that in retrospect may seem to have been marked by widespread indulgence, decadence, naïveté, denial , and inflation,” “seek ye the kingdom of God,” the Age of Aquarius is here. But for those of you who have little or no faith in yourselves, I give you Uncle Sam.
“The survival-value of human intelligence has never been proved.” Michael Crichton late-great science-fiction novelist speaking to us from his first great novel, The Andromeda Strain
“Human beings can be made to believe anything and to advocate dangerous actions, so long as the supposed authority behind the ideas is SCIENCE.” Rajjpuut’s thematic extraction from Crichton’s last novel State of Fear
To Err is Too Damn Human
The word “Chernobyl” comes immediately to mind. The situation in Japan has deteriorated markedly in the last fifteen hours. The so-called “perfect storm” has hit. 1. An 8.9 magnitude earthquake (3,000 times more powerful than the one that hit New Zealand recently) struck from the ocean floor near northeast Japan. 2. A huge tsunami generated by the earthquake struck the region. 3. The combination of seawater and the original earthquake and 136 aftershocks each greater than 6.0 on the Richter Scale destroyed the viability at least one nuclear power plant at the Fukushima site powering Tokyo turning it into a serious ecological threat. 4. Several mechanical back-up systems wisely created to prevent “the perfect storm” have so utterly and miserably failed that they might as well have taken on a mind of their own and deliberately sabotaged the whole endeavor 5. It appears that initial planning and particularly site location for at least some of the fifty-five Japanese plants was less than circumspect and for the Fukushima nuclear plants (more than one are located there – tell me it ain’t so, Lord!) was downright criminal. 6. It is very, very likely that human error after the initial earthquake also played a part in the ongoing disaster.
Short of a magic-bullet solution, this mess is on course to deteriorate far worse and far more rapidly than most of us can imagine. Japan is a densely-populated nation and an island. Japan is the site of routine and powerful earthquake activity on the “Pacific Rim of fire.” Japan has suffered a horrific 8.9 magnitude earthquake and 136 severe aftershocks most of them rivaling the power of the earthquake that hit New Zealand. If normal “protocols” following a major earthquake occur, Japan can expect Mother Nature to send them a string of tremors lasting at least the next five weeks . . . each of them with the potential to make the Fukushima situation categorically WORSE. Think of the British Petroleum disaster one year ago. Now multiply the potential ill-effects by half a trillion . . . it’s not just a mess. It’s the ultimate mess (note: the term “mess” is an exacting term first applied to human activity in a meaningful and scientific way by Americans Charles Kepner and Benjamin Tregoe and their Kepner-Tregoe Management Systems program beginning in the late 50’s and early 60’s, more on this later). Perhaps two of the worst effects in the long run from this situation will be adding weaponry to the environmental saboteurs’; and Jihadist saboteurs’ arsenals . . . any doubt where they’ll tend to aim their attacks now? Let’s try to put this disaster into perspective . . . .
We’ve all seen techno-thriller movies with the now common theme of “technology-run-amuck.” It wasn’t always so. The idea itself was so powerful that Hollywood itself couldn’t even hope to handle it adequately. For example, they took one of the greatest novels of all time, Frankenstein, and made such a farce out of it in numerous variations for sixty years, that when finally an honest rendition of the novel was produced they had to name it “Mary Shelley’s” Frankenstein to let people know this was the real McCoy exactly as the great novelist wrote it and not some hangover from the Hollywood 1940’s. They even had to get Robert De Niro to play the part of Adam, Victor Frankenstein’s misbegotten creation to lend authenticity to the project.
The single greatest pioneer of this genre of sci-fi, late great sci-fi writer Michael Crichton wrote many extremely popular books and was part of several truly great movies as well. Two of his greatest endeavors were found near the beginning of his rise to fame and near the end of his days: The Andromeda Strain and the lesser known but seriously provocative State of Fear. The two novels present alternating views of human reality, neither one of them very flattering. In the Andromeda Strain Crichton ventures the idea that the survival value of intelligence has never been adequately documented and thus we often become our own worst enemies. The message in State of Fear is even more pointed and poignant . . . human beings can be made to believe anything and to do any dangerous things, so long as the authority behind the lies is “science.” One is reminded of the so-called science of “eugenics” operating as a founding principle within Nazism. The Nazis actually made serious long-term trips to the Himalayas to “investigate Aryan roots.”
Crichton’s suggesting in State of Fear that in the name of the supposedly good (e.g. “environmentalism”) reacting to perceived techno-threats, we are also capable of tremendously stupid actions with the potential to create enormous dangers** to ourselves. Taken together the message from the two books is easily underestimated: To err is human; and human arrogance makes all problems exponentially worse. This is the story of the third hit in Japan: the nuclear disaster following the earthquake, the tsunami, the 136 aftershocks and everything else that went wrong. As a tenet from Messers Kepner and Tregoe which has so often been validated puts it: “the most important management activity is potential problem analysis (PPA) and follow-up prevention; the most important question in PPA is “What could go wrong?”
When you find the answer to the question “What could go wrong?” is “Absolutely everything!” You know somebody didn’t ask the vital question seriously enough in the first place. Let us break down this “mess” into its component disasters:
1. Should a nuclear reactor ever be built in an earthquake zone, “What could go wrong?”
2. Should a nuclear reactor ever be built near enough to the coastline that a tsunami could conceivably hit it, “What could go wrong?”
3. Should two or three or more nuclear reactors ever be built within fifty miles of one another? If multiple reactors are built within very close proximity, “What could go wrong if one reactor has a severe lack of coolant accident? Could things be made exponentially worse by the presence of a second reactor so near?”
4. Even if a nuclear reactor’s redundant safety systems survive a severe earthquake, “What could go wrong if a tsunami hits?”
5. Even if a nuclear reactor’s redundant safety systems survive a severe earthquake and a tsunami, “What could go wrong if a string of aftershocks more than 6.0 on the Richter Scale hit?”
6. Even if a nuclear reactor’s redundant safety systems survive a severe earthquake and a tsunami, and a string of aftershocks more than 6.0 on the Richter Scale, “What could go wrong if back-up power systems fail?
7. Even if a nuclear reactor’s redundant safety systems survive a severe earthquake and a tsunami and a string of aftershocks more than 6.0 on the Richter Scale and a failure of backup power systems to employ, “What if the core still cannot be cooled and what if even heroic human endeavors fail to return the core to safe levels?”
Such is the anatomy of a mess: a confluent congregation of problems each of which by itself might not amount to an insurmountable problem, but which in their overwhelming negative synergy can prove disastrous. Let’s add the final questions . . . .
8. What if human operator or human management error is added to the other problems?”
9. What if human slowness in the face of conflicting evaluations is added to the other problems?
10.What if danger to human operators and/or managers makes even trained proper responses impossible?
11. What if the universe decided to make an example of us on this one?
You get the picture . . . the road to hell can indeed be paved with the very best of intentions, but a certain amount of stupidity makes the devil’s work go ever so much smoother.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** For example, the banning of DDT has unnecessarily killed roughly 78 million people (just from malaria, not to mention five other serious widespread insect-borne tropical diseases) since 1972 based upon the pseudo-scientific book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The 1972 level of 40,000 malaria deaths annually worldwide has now deteriorated to 2.1 million deaths annually. The pseudo-science of global warning by reverting the entire globe to energy use reminiscent of the early 1800’s would result in death by starvation, etc. of perhaps two-thirds of present humanity within two or three years if the most “ambitious” anti-global warming solutions were employed. Some solutions are much more dangerous than the problems (if the problems even actually exist). Crichton’s State of Fear is the perfect vessel for understanding the political biases rampant among people who use the environmental movement as a vehicle for personal empowerment, wealth and CONTROL.
I am middle-class American who works everyday to pay my rent and contribute to society by paying taxes. It is very unfair that people can live a lifetime of practically free rent through the section 8 voucher program. I agree that the elderly and the disabled should be provided with the opportunity for low-cost rentals. The elderly and totally disabled depend on a modest social security check which is not enough to afford an apartment at full rent. I do not agree that low-income individuals should be provided with a lifetime voucher. This life time voucher does not motivate them to work.
For example: Serious time-lines. A single mother with three children gets a voucher, pays about $50 rent. This mother gets the voucher when the children are ages 2, 4 and 5. Eighteen years later the kids are no longer in her home, why does she get to keep her voucher to continue to pay $50 rent. This should have been enough time for this mother to go back to school or get a better paying job.
For example: Fraud with lifetime voucher. Today, mortgage payments are about the same as rent. Section 8 voucher families will buy a home and put it in another family’s member name. The voucher family will then rent the home and have Section 8 make the mortgage payment. In thirty years, when the home is paid off the voucher family will then out-right own a home with section 8 monies.
For example: No motivation. I believe serious time lines need to be put on vouchers to get people back to work. The voucher families are told “if you make more money, your rent will increase”. This causes no motivation to work or do anything to contribute to society.
I believe that if vouchers are provided with a five year time limit, it will increase the possibility for other families to participate. It will also motivate people to do something to change their living arrangements. This would also allow more monies for the elderly and the “totally disabled” to have an opportunity for a voucher. After all they are the most vulnerable people.
Left wing Media is gives Obama a Hall Pass on everything that they would be outraged if it were a conservative leader. Surprising video.
We need to hold our government accountable regardless of the agenda of political parties or groups.
The next dozen or so times you talk with the Creator, put in a good word for the Japanese who really need all the help, divine or otherwise, they can get. In the wake of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, in the last half hour things just got a lot worse. The news is, in short: not good. According to reliable sources in Japan, “an explosion” at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant injured several workers and began emitting either smoke or steam about ten minutes after a loud explosion was heard.
Purportedly the ceiling of the reactor’s radiation containment building collapsed. Cause of the explosion is under investigation but any such damage at any nuclear plant is cause for serious concern. Rajjpuut, who worked as an electronic technician and reactor operator on the U.S.S. Truxtun (a nuclear-powered frigate), has not been optimistic since he first heard roughly 24 hours ago that several Japanese reactors had scrammed and that two were having cooling system problems. In the worst-case scenario, a meltdown is underway already. Lesser scenarios are much less potent and deadly, but hardly anything to cheer about except to say, “Hurrah, NO meltdown is going on yet!” Apparently the problems all ensued when several normally reliable back-up systems failed at the same time as the reactor "fail-safe" scram on the heels of the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake which struck northeast Japan.
Worst news of all at that time was that the backup cooling system was inoperable. Nuclear energy comes from heated water in a contained primary system heated by nuclear fuel generating steam in a secondary system that turns turbines serving as generators of electricity. The primary system of a nuclear plant MUST be contained/housed inside thick radiation-proof walls and never be allowed to overheat or to come in contact with ordinary atmosphere. Nuclear fuel rods generate incredible heat which must be removed constantly by a reliable cooling system. Because of the high density population on Japan, the short- and long-term health risks are almost unimaginably stark for people in the vicinity. Complicating the issue is that the Fukushima nuclear site is a multiple reactor location with at least two operating reactors. No word yet on the cooling systems for other Fukushima reactors. Pray for the Japanese people.
Worst news of all at that time was that the backup cooling system was inoperable. Nuclear energy comes from heated water in a contained primary system heated by nuclear fuel generating steam in a secondary system that turns turbines serving as generators of electricity. The primary system of a nuclear plant MUST be contained/housed inside thick radiation-proof walls and never be allowed to overheat or to come in contact with ordinary atmosphere. Nuclear fuel rods generate incredible heat which must be removed constantly by a reliable cooling system. Because of the high density population on Japan, the short- and long-term health risks are almost unimaginably stark for people in the vicinity. Complicating the issue is that the Fukushima nuclear site is a multiple reactor location with at least two operating reactors. No word yet on the cooling systems for other Fukushima reactors. Pray for the Japanese people.
Say a sincere and righteous prayer,
Rajjpuut
“You can always fool every one of the people who feel that your lies encompass their pre-conceived foolish notions and presumed (but irrational) best interests.” Rajjpuut
"Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We will build a solid state without an ounce of gold behind it." - Adolf Hitler
"I find myself more and more relying for a solution of our problems on the “invisible hand” which I tried to eject from economic thinking twenty years ago." John Maynard Keynes (nearing his death) in 1946
Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama
Inflating Our Dollars in Hopes
of Avoiding Double-Dip Recession
It’s a monstrous game of “Hot Potato.” The winner of the “Biggest Fool Trophy” for economics’ “bigger fool theory of market crashes and bubbles” is right now being fought out among three extraordinary combatants . . . a) the Chinese and other nations’ government officials hoping to avoid collapse of their own economies b) Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats and c) the American public. All parties, though they may not yet realize it, are faced with the disaster of being the last one holding more and more worth less and eventually worthless American dollars. Let’s examine the battlefield they’re contesting upon.
The history is brief but poignant: the oldest continuing currency in the world is the British Pound Sterling (BPS) first minted in 775 A.D when "sterlings" or silver pennies were the main currency; 240 sterlings or “pence” weighed one pound. Silver is relatively heavy so you can imagine how small these sterlings were: just 1/15 of an ounce each. Their earliest common use was to bribe the Viking invaders with so-called danegeld and that money became the currency of many
Scandanavian nations as well as England.
Scandanavian nations as well as England.
For over two hundred years between the early 18th and middle 20th Centuries, the BPS was esteemed as the world’s reserve currency (a currency from one country held in substantial quantities by a significant amount of the world’s other nations whose leaders believe this “hoarding” of the originating country's currency as a “reserve” was in the best interests of their countries and the leaders themselves).
Before World War I the BPS was clearly and easily the most important international currency with London the world's most important financial hub. Over 60% of global trade was financed, invoiced and settled in sterling, and the largest proportion of official reserves owned by the world’s nations, apart from silver and gold, was found in BPS notes. Although not even all the territories within the British Empire itself used the BPS as their local currency, most of those that did NOT, pegged their local currency at a fixed rate to sterling, as did many foreign countries outside the Empire including virtually every advanced and important country in the world. But this two-century old revered status for the BPS was soon to end . . . .
After World War I, the two greatest economies of the planet (America and Britain) had long based their economic thoughts and actions on the hero of the Scottish Enlightenment Adam Smith, author of . . . the Wealth of Nations (1776) a long-titled book that profoundly motivated our American Founding Fathers when they started drawing up a Constitution eleven years later. Smith who had referred to the idea of “the invisible hand” in his books History of Astronomy and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, eventually found his real niche and talked about “the invisible hand” of the marketplace; and laissez-faire capitalism as the foundation of sound economics. And England and America as a result of common sense and listening to Adam Smith found themselves prospering mightily. Smiths' fundamental tenet was this: free market economies are more productive and beneficial to their societies and both England and America largely practiced what Smith preached and prospered mightily over the next century and a half. But something new was very rotten in England . . . .
England’s own John Maynard Keynes became one of the world’s most trusted economists and Keynes believed that gold and silver and currencies pegged to precious metals were holding back economic growth around the world. Keynes’s two-volume economic idiocy* Treatise on Money, was published in 1930** and Britain left the gold standard in 1931^^, and many foolish countries that had pegged their currencies to gold and kept reserves in the BPS went along with the nonsense, most especially those countries within the British Commonwealth of Nations. These countries and others around the world became known as the "sterling bloc".
After World War II ended, the ungrateful British citizens ousted Winston Churchill and welcomed in the progressives (the Labor Party) who began to immediately and seriously inflate the British Pound. In response most countries outside the Commonwealth quickly began jettisoning the pound in droves. The world faced economic chaos. The natural action of the wise countries was to put their reserves in gold or silver; but they also wanted a more flexible currency as part of their reserves. Since that time, the American Dollar has been the world’s reserve currency and has dominated the international scene for over sixty years.
However, all has not been peachy keen for dollar holders . . . .
1) Richard Nixon in the midst of a pervasive and lengthy American stock market crash (it ran from 1969 with a brief hiatus in ’70-’71 to become a full-fledged meltdown in 1973-74) sabotaged many of them when he let the dollar float against gold. Nixon's and his second vice- president Gerald Ford's and especially the actions of President Jimmy Carter (inflation briefly reached 21% near the end of his single-term presidency) caused much consternation among dollar-holders.
2) About late 1998, many worldwide holders of the dollars again began to feel serious misgivings about the effect of sub-prime home lending policies festering in America and began ridding themselves of dollars. In the decade between 1999 and 2009, many began putting their reserves into other currencies (most notably the Euro). The peak dollar holdings in 1999 at 70.9% plunged to 62.2% in 2009; while the Euro became the 2nd favorite reserve currency going from 17.9% to 27.3% holdings. Since mid-2009, serious discussions have been taking place about replacing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has made a recommendation to that effect while countries like China and Russia and Brazil and India are exploring conducting trade among themselves in their native currencies (Yuan, Ruble, Real and Rupee), while buying gold and silver and lowering their dollar holdings.
Dollar holders face another serious threat in the Obama era. Neither the IMF nor the many foreigners and foreign nations holding American Dollars already . . . and especially not those foreign governments most-willing in the past to loan money to Americans (by buying our Treasury Notes and other debt instruments) . . . are enthused by the deliberate and egregious inflationary actions of Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
C) Bernanke has been running the money printing presses full-time for over thirty months right now. Currently, if mathematics alone (and not pure trust and tradition) were the telling factor in how much the 2011 American dollar should be worth, it would weigh in about 1/30 of the value of the October, 2008 American Dollar.
D. In February, 2011, President Barack Obama’s feeble attempt at a national budget showed willful refusal to deal with our nation's and the world's "dollar problem." Obama, Pelosi, Reid, the vast majority of Democrats and Union leaders and Michael Moore go so far as to deny any debt crisis exists. It seems you can always fool every one of the people who feel that your lies encompass their pre-conceived notions and presumed (but irrational) best interests. Obama and the progressive are now threatening even greater American deficits and national debt. This shows the world that unless the Republican House of Representatives can change the nation’s direction . . . loaning America money and holding American dollars is one of the stupidest actions anyone can make. This brings us back to paragraph one above, where we (presuming that the Republican efforts to eliminate the debt and balance the budget fall short of success) said:
It’s a monstrous game of “Hot Potato.” The winner of the “Biggest Fool Trophy” for economics’ “bigger fool theory of market crashes and bubbles” is right now being fought out among three extraordinary combatants . . . a) the Chinese and other nations’ government officials hoping to avoid collapse of their own economies b) Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats and c) the American public. Who will be the sucker left holding the American Dollar?
Unless the G.O.P. can work a miracle . . . who will be the biggest fool of all still holding onto American dollars rather than using them as toilet paper by 2013? One world famous economic theorist once said, “"Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We will build a solid state without an ounce of gold behind it." On the theory that you can’t go too far wrong doing precisely the opposite of whatever Adolf Hitler would recommend, a lot of the “contestants” will undoubtedly opt-out of the contest and buy gold and silver. Another man finally wised up at the very end . . . "I find myself more and more relying for a solution of our problems on Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ which I tried to eject from economic thinking twenty years ago," said John Maynard Keynes nearing his death in 1946 just before the BPS lost its place as the world’s reserve currency.
Isn’t it funny how the wisest words spoken by some of the world’s most influential progressives are totally ignored? FDR and labor leader George Meany and Jimmy Carter, for example, all agreed that allowing labor unions among government employees is a horrible idea. The founder of Keynesian economics, John Maynard Keynes himself, admitted that Adam Smith had been right and he’d been mistaken . . . but the progressives remember only their nonsense and, indeed, come to worship it. In all this talk about “millions” as “chump change” and “billions” as “insignificant,” let’s examine what they really mean. Politicians love the public’s inability to deal with large amounts of money, since it frees them to do just about whatever they please . . . think of this: we are currently $14.1 TRillion in debt so paying off the debt at $1 per second means that . . .
1 million seconds = approximately 12 days to pay off $1 million
1 billion seconds = 32 years to pay off $1 Billion
1 trillion seconds = 32,000 years to pay off $1 Trillion
14.1 trillion seconds = 451,000 years to pay off $14.1 TRillion
Now let’s get back to that game of Hot Potato. Rajjpuut encourages you NOT to be the last one holding dollars in serious quantities when inflation rears its ugly head. Good luck!
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
^^ Influenced also by Keynes, FDR confiscated all non-numismatic American gold in 1933 giving the holders of the coins $20.76 per ounce of gold. He then pegged the value of gold at $35.00 an ounce thus within months inflating American paper currency by 68.6% and robbing the people, to enrich the federal government – a move that turned the depression with a little ‘d’ into the 12.5 year long Great Depression. Compare the dealings of progressive presidents Woodrow Wilson and FDR to Harding (and his vice president Calvin Coolidge who succeeded Harding when he died in office) in dealing with the “Invisible Depression,”(see the next footnote) should you ever get confused about what’s best for the people and how the purported best-interests of the nation almost always amount to out-and-out theft from hard-working and thrifty individuals.
** Keynes’ “thinking” in 1930 deliberately ignored the fact that the American resurgence (“The Roaring 20’s”) from the “Invisible Depression of 1920” came almost immediately on the heels of the policies of President Warren G. Harding who cut government spending by 48%; cut federal taxes by 49% and paid down the national debt by 30% ending Woodrow Wilson's depression in fifteen months. Perhaps Keynes believed that the progressive policies of Wilson that created the debacle were responsible for the greatest single-decade jump in prosperity the world has ever known? In any case like many English Fabian-Socialists, Keynes embraced and encouraged progressivism. His ideas fitting right in with the demands of totalitarian states and wannabes everywhere have been thunderously applauded for 80 years but never once worked satisfactorily . . . hmmmm.
In an eerie resemblance to a science fiction novel, the man that would be King today had the gall to state that we have more production of oil and energy now than we have had in years. Taking credit for what someone else (Clinton in 1997) did before him, the Imposter-in-Chief gave another lecture to the American public on something he only knows how to destroy, and not create. The brief spike in oil-production was the fruit of over a decades' worth of regulatory misery and insanity, finally allowing some shallow-well platforms to begin producing, which had absolutely NOTHING to do with Obama's policies. These were leases let under Bill "IS-IS" Clinton.
Following the inexorable march of historical parody and irony, The One again painted a picture that only could be viewed by those on toxic hallucinoginic drugs; i.e. Pelosi, Reid, Trumka et.al. as being a thundering economic success story. So let's get something straight here...
There were very real and justified concerns about who should attain positions of power concerning the governance and protection of, and the just administration of laws and our Constitution, by our Founding Fathers. Possessing intellects and knowledge far surpassing even the most astute professors of today, they knew the lessons of history, and were sorely familiar with the depredations afforded them by the monarchy of England.
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indespensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of men and citizens..." George Washington, Farewell Address
Look at where we are today. You don't have to look hard to find the very testimony to the truths and warnings the Founding Fathers gave us sitting in the White House, most seats of Congress, and right down to our local officials.
The egregious treason around us now only gives me strength. Or, in other words, I'm really pissed and I know I will make a stand, and I know there will be many others with me. God Bless
The US Supreme Court has ruled that you have the right under the First Amendment to protest military funerals.. I invite you to start your protest in my front yard and we can see if your First Amendment is better than my Second Amendment..
by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism Blog
My wife was seated in the airport waiting to catch her flight back home. So far so good. She was already past security waiting in the gate area. As usual, she was reading a book trying to pass the minutes until it was time to board. My wife can be as entertained by people watching as anyone. However if she has a good book, she would rather tune out the world and slip into a well written story, but not today. On this day, she along with everyone else in the gate area were going to have their concentration shattered by a guy on his cell phone. For sake of discussion, let’s call him Barry. Barry had a pretty deep voice, and he was talking loud.
It didn’t matter if you had on headphones, wore hearing aids or were half-deaf, you could hear Barry. His baritone voice blasted through the atmosphere at the gate such that everyone could hear every word he was saying. It became very clear, very quickly he was trying his best to get out of the dog house. It was obvious from his side of the conversation that Barry was in deep TROUBLE. He was in trouble with his girlfriend Liberty, and she was really ticked off. You couldn’t hear her side of the conversation, but it definitely was NOT PG-13. Barry was doing his best to convince his girlfriend over the phone that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. She wasn’t buying it.
That’s part of the reason why he was talking so loud. Continue...
FOR THE LAST TIME ... THE DOG IS NOT FOR SALE !!!
Tonight we had a great presentation on Tea Party Radio. David Toy had invited a representative of the Fair Tax movement---PLEASE visit them at http://fairtax.org ---Rich, and he provided a very comprehensive and informative, and due to time constraints, unfortunately brief synopsis of the Fair Tax. (He will be back on Monday--be there or be square.) Having been a vocal proponent of the Fair Tax initiative for a number of years also, as many Tea Party people are anyway, I was very pleased with the response and the message. Being from Georgia, my wife and I have been aware of, and involved in to one point or another, the Fair Tax initiative, and have always supported Rep. John Linder, one of the original sponsors, in his efforts to bring this to the forefront. The "powers-that-be" would do anything in their power to prevent this from happening, and have from the get-go. In the inimitable words of Martin Profitt Martin, "they can go bite a hog."
So, I'd like to add a little background, and a little flavor to the "debate." Let's start with the idea that your money is your property...you've earned it, and there is no other way to describe it. John Adams had a word or two on this, to wit: "The moment that the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. PROPERTY MUST BE SECURED OR LIBERTY CANNOT EXIST." Read through the Federalist Papers, beginning with # 32 concerning taxation, you will glean a great deal about the debate our Founding Fathers engaged in concerning this most essential, and destructive, power of government, and the checks and balances they engineered to mitigate such a formidable force.
James Madison, in Federalist # 51, mused---"It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices (as Constitutional chains) should be necessary to control the abuses of govenment. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections of human nature? If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. [But lacking these] in framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this; YOU MUST FIRST ENABLE THE GOVERNMENT TO CONTROL THE GOVERNED, AND IN THE NEXT PLACE, OBLIGE IT TO CONTROL ITSELF."
The issue of taxation has almost always taken center stage, most notably in the last 100 years, since 1913, a year of most ignoble mention. The idea that your money is not your property is one of the legs that the redistribution-crowd has always stood on. Your hard-earned money has been ill-gotten, stolen from the poor helpless hungry hordes who have populated the world from time immemorial. You sorry, greedy MONSTERS!
Well, let's look at that for a second. I've worked all my life (I'm 55) and worked hard. I don't have much now, due to taxes and a really bad economy, which I won't get into right now. Whole "nother story. But as a small businessman, I can tell you that it really sucks when an employee who always stays broke, when he works, if he works at all before he gets fired, gets over $7000 in income-tax returns, when he hasn't paid in a dime! The system is not a system...it is a scam. It is a Ponzi scheme of incredible proportions, fueled by unbridled greed and SLOTH.
It really is that simple. And it has caught up to us. We can no longer afford to subsidize people who won't contribute, we have borrowed more than we can ever pay back, and the Progressive Tax Structure that we suffer under was designed and promoted by one Karl Marx and Frederick Engels of Communism-fame. While you're looking over the Federalist Papers, you might want to try wading through the Communist Manifesto for a good hard look at where we're going, and you'll also then be able to see the intentions of the folks who are taking us, like cattle to slaughter, right to where they want us.
James Madison also had this to say: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations...this danger ought to be wisely guarded against."
As we all know, the usurpations have now snow-balled to levels before un-thought of. We alone are the ones with the power and the ability to begin to right the many wrongs that have brought us to the brink of ruin, through debt, spending, and a complete and total break-down between We The People and those we thought we could trust to represent us to a government that has morphed into a Federal Monstrosity.
We've been warned, we have a road-map, we have a mission and very concrete goals. We WILL restore this nation, by upholding our Founding Principles, and remaining vocal and active and most of all, effective. God Bless this Nation, and God Bless you all.
1952
President Truman
established one day a year as a
"National Day of Prayer."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In
1988
President Reagan
designated the
First Thursday in May of each year as
the National Day of Prayer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In June
2007
(then)
Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama
declared that the USA
"Was no longer a
Christian nation."
---------------------------------------------------------------
This year
President Obama
canceled the
21st annual National Day
of Prayer ceremony
at the White
House under the ruse
Of "not wanting to offend anyone"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUT... on September 25, 2009
from 4 AM until 7 PM,
a National Day of Prayer
FOR THE MUSLIM RELIGION
was Held on Capitol Hill,
Beside the White House.
There were over 50,000 Muslims
in D.C. that day.
HE PRAYS WITH THE MUSLIMS!
I guess it Doesn't matter
if "Christians"
Are offended by this event -
We obviously
Don't count as
"anyone" Anymore.
The direction this country is headed
should strike fear in the heart of every Christian,
especially knowing that the
Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be
converted, they should be annihilated.
This is not a Rumor -
Go to the website
To confirm this info:
http://www.islamoncapitolhill.com
Al-Jazeera Channel Given Rave Reviews
by American Secretary of State Clinton
You might be as surprised as Rajjpuut is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has now become a great fan of the Arabic newspaper Al-Jazeera long known as an “instigator of anti-American viewpoints” and propaganda . . . .
http:// seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/television/2014428287_webclinton07.html?syndication=rss
Has Al-Jazeera done a dramatic about face or is Clinton entering early senility? “Al-Jazeera, Clinton suggests has become a leader in “changing people’s minds and attitudes” according to what Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Like it or hate it, it is really effective,” Ms. Clinton continued. Going to the horse’s mouth, however, Rajjpuut discovered that Clinton’s contention that Al-Jazeera was gaining an American following was pure horse crap, unadulterated pure horse crap. According to my old friend Amin, a retired navy officer who would prefer NOT to have his last name in print, Al-Jazeera is part of the problem with Muslim radicalization . . . rather than just some neutral dispenser of news.
According to Amin, Clinton is out to popularize Al-Jazeera because the progressives in America and the radical/political Islamists have the same agenda: hate for conservative America (and more pointedly in the case of Al-Jazeera: for America as the #1 super-power). He says the Al-Jazeera channel has made almost no inroads in America except in Washington, D.C. and that Clinton was exaggerating when she described how popular the Muslim network was becoming in the United States. Al-Jazeera is a broadcast and cable Arabic TV station headquartered in Qatar that is an ultra-popular and ultra-radical voice across the Muslim Middle East.
Amin shows no ambivalence about the station, “Al-Jazeera is “very, very dangerous.” They often show the same news in English that they show in Arabic. Amin describes the English language version as always “muted and comparatively neutral” alongside the Arabic language broadcast which is "very inflammatory." Besides this many American Muslims can read the Arabic writing scrawling along the bottom of the screen which often gives a totally different impact; and they are often referred to the Al-Jazeera and other radical websites available in both English and Arabic.
“Secretary Clinton is being very naïve if she thinks Al-Jazeera can serve her purposes, whatever they are, without bringing all of us some severe repercussions.” He described the so-called ground-zero mosque controversy as an example of the left “bedding down with rabid dogs” . . . Shariah Law is “not a joke unless you consider public floggings; stoning; beheadings; and all loss of female rights as humorous.” They are absolutely serious when they talk about the “flag of Islam someday flying over the White House and the implementation of Shariah Law here in the U.S. eventually.” Amin related the near Ground Zero-Mosque issue to one of the most popular programs on Al-Jazeera: “Shariah and Life” and said that the English version of the program included many references to the Quran which actually were, if you bothered to read them, totally opposite in meaning from the English words spoken on the program. The following link which expands Amin’s ideas . . .
http://staringattheview.blogspot.com/2010/07/al-jazeera-christian-muslim-coexistence.html
is about a particular program from "Shariah and Life" talking about Christian-Muslim co-existence and Jewish-Muslim co-existence neutrally in the English language version but which actually turns out to be (if you visit the Quran) one unending anti-Semitic and anti-Christian hate message after another. Don’t you just love Hillary Clinton?
This phenomenon of Muslim radicals aligning with the American Progressive left is becoming more commonplace. Between February and mid-April in 2010, leading union activists from this country and Britain made an extended field trip to the Muslim countries of the Middle East to press upon the unemployed there; the young; and many young and middle-aged workers how much unions could help their plight; and giving them instructions on how best to incite the rebellions we now see taking place across North Africa and the Middle East. Now “surprisingly” we are seeing out-and-out rebellion in the same countries the union reps visited (what a coincidence)! Now the Union leaders in Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin are talking repeatedly about “Wis-Cairo” and implying that American unions are being inspired by the “Democratic activism” among Muslim countries . . . OH, PLEASE! Not that word “Democracy!” Democracy absolutely does NOT matter . . . here’s why . . . .
In one nationwide study, 85% of the Egyptian’s surveyed just before the demonstrations that eventually led to the ousting of strongman Mubarak, said that Sharia Law (allowing thieves’ hands to be cut off; requiring raped women to provide four male witnesses to pursue a case against her attacker; stoning adulterers to death; requiring women to cover their bodies from head to foot; allowing beheading of those who practice or discuss other religions; allow public flogging for minor offenses) . . . Sharia law, they said, overwhelmingly, was the best governing and legal system . . . thus, according to more than five out of every six Egyptian citizens surveyed, infidels like you and me should be killed for the good of Egypt and of Islam, NICE! 85% of any country’s population is a powerful force. And how do you feel about 85% of a country supporting savagery, idiocy and condemning freedom of religion and all the other freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution? Their so-called “Cries for Democracy” will undoubtedly result in merely another country like Iran where Muslim Thuggocracy/ Theocracy dominates everyday life. This is what Democracy looks like? God forbid, but it may be closer than you think.
Just a few Sundays ago radical British Muslim activist Anjem Choudary revealed the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood’s plans for western civilization: “The East and the West will one day be governed by Shariah. One day the flag of Islam will fly over both the White House and #10 Downing Street.” Mob rule and stoning deaths seem far-fetched, of course, but the takeover of the Wisconsin Capitol and the flight of the Democratic senators have moved us several giant steps closer to Rule by Super Thugs compared to which, the union thugs even those like the obese Mr. Trumka are utter bantam weights.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
