No topic tonight. I imagine no one would read it anyway, as most of you will be spending time with family and friends, giving thanks for all that we have. I am thankful for all of you, who allow me to rant and rave on a subject that is near to my heart, liberty. Politics is a passion that you all allow me to participate in, in my own small way. I am thankful for my health, my family, and my wife, who puts up with far more than she should have to bear. I am thankful for my puppy, the gargantuan cat, and a son who is my pride and joy. I am thankful for all that I have, as there are so many struggling to get by these days. Remember those folks today. Set aside your distaste for whichever side of the political spectrum you are on, make a plate of food from your leftovers, and go out and find someone who was going to go without. It will make you feel better, and it will make their holiday a little more bearable. For any who visit today, post away below on whatever subjects you want to discuss. Remember there will be no article written Thursday night.
Enjoy the Holiday with Those Who Matter
November 26, 2009 By
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Happy Thanksgiving to all. Let’s take this day to appreciate our blessings including family.
ObaMao and the 535 have the day off, so they can’t do more damage today.
Great day and safe travels.
Have a good holiday, all!
Now can we all please get behind The President? I mean, if this doesn’t make you want to vote for him, nothing will.
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=11&year=2009&base_name=which_party_is_best_prepared_t
And they have a plan.
“For my own part I wish the Eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character… the Turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.” – Ben Franklin
Cheers to all and a Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to all here. I am thankful for my family, my health, and all my friends, which includes every single one of you here, for you are all my on site close knit group of friends who I love and will cherish for ever.
Thank You All So Very Much.
Judy
Happy turkey-day to you and yours, Judy.
I am thankful a bunch of stuff, but I’m busy working today, so I’m not going to bother listing them all. I am not thankful for that fact.
Grr.
Hi Mathius
Happy Thanksgiving to you too, and to your lovely wife.
What do you mean, you’re busy working today? You mean at home, or are you actually at work?
At work. At the office. By myself. Doing work. On Thanksgiving. For no appreciation. For no extra pay. For no comp days.
And I’ll probably be late to dinner with the in laws.
But it’s all ok, because I get to wear jeans and a polo today (read with heavy sarcasm).
You mean to tell me that you’re working instead of taking off today, WHY.
Well, because I have a salary. It’s a subtle fact of nature that a salary means that, for the duration of my employment, my company owns me. They may feel free to treat me as human chattel.
I will tell you once I get my bonus if it was worth it.
Hey, everybody is entitled to have Thanksgiving off. Yes, I know thee are a lot of people who don’t get any holidays off, so don’t say it.
Are you that dedicated Matt that you have to work today? Oh, I’m just kidding you, hope you know.
I’m just biding my time until son’s come over and make the ravioli. That’s their job for today, I did mine yesterday.
No, Matt.
You are an economically confused fella!
The company does not own you.
You are trading with it.
You are trading your time and skill – which you have too much of – for money – which you have too little of.
When the day comes that you have too little time to sell anymore, and enough money that you no longer need to trade for more of it, you will do some different trades other than using your time.
You are buying money with your time and skill.
I am not getting a fair exchange rate.
Then learn how to negotiate better…
Or…
…improve the product you are selling to your buyer.
The problem is neither my negotiation nor my skill set. The problem is that the job market sucks and I am lucky to have a job at all in this field, so beggars can’t be choosers.
Supply exceeds demand, thus I get screwed.
Then your skill set sucks, if you feel you are getting screwed.
Start looking at yourself like an economic good.
Business buys results. If you make results, they will buy.
When I consulted for the bank, the President said to me:
“If you charge me $1,000 and I make $1,000 – I’ll happily pay. If you charge $10,000 and I make $12,000, I’ll happily pay.
If you charge $1million and I make $1.2million, I’ll write the check to cash if you want.
You now understand why my rate to the bank was $450/hr. I made them more than that.
It is easier in a dry market to earn more money!
Companies are desperate to find cost savings and new earnings
They will pay big bucks to someone who can save them even more bucks or earn them bucks.
Now is the time the real cream moves to the top and the weak stagnant.
Augment your skills – 2 hrs a day/5 days a week – 10 hrs a week. A course in university was only 30 hrs lecture time!
If you could learn a subject course in 30 hrs, you should be able to learn a valuable additional capability for a company in the same amount of time.
I dare you to try it.
“If you charge me $1,000 and I make $1,200″– obviously have to give more than one receives…
damn lack of an editor
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the holiday emailing from L. Neil Smith:
“On Thanksgiving, true libertarians celebrate the early failure and demise of socialism in colonial America, and the reaffirmation — through the harshest tests reality could provide — of individual freedom and private capitalism.
Unfortunately, those lessons, central and vital to all of our dreams, hopes, and aspirations, seem to need to be learned all over again from time to time.
Ours is just such a time.”
And a Happy Thanksgiving to you too Kent. Hope all is well with you.
Things are fine here. Thanks, and I hope your day is nice.
Thank you, it’s getting there, one son is here and the other one is due to come soon.
Happy T Day to all….and that even includes you, Matt
I luv ya man..
Happy T Day to the troops and the Vets.
Here is a toast to all “clink”
D13
AMEN to that D13
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Thanks buddy.. you too
Black Flag about Voting
“I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank. ” – Barack Obama Campaign Promise – October 27, 2007
OBAMA PLANS 34K MORE TROOPS FOR AFGHANISTAN
Plan to Be Announced on December 1
White House officials announced today that President Barack Obama will address the nation on December 1 to unveil his new Afghanistan escalation strategy, putting an end to months of speculation and allowing NATO to approve its own escalation later that week.
Though the final decision took over three months for the administration to make the announcement does not appear to be far outside the expected range of options, and the 34,000-man escalation that was reportedly favored for the past month is said to be the plan of choice.
Remember BF’s “Do not Vote #3″ – they have no obligation to fulfill their promises nor suffer any consequence for lying, nor do voters have any recourse to the betrayal.
Your vote is meaningless except to agree to the system.
Happy Thanksgiving Flag
Hope you and family will have a wonderful day today.
And to you, too, Judy
Thank you. Hope you’re feeling pretty much back to normal.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Today we rest, eat, watch football, spend time with family and friends, and give thanks for everybody in our lives. Enjoy the moment! Tomorrow, the fight against tyranny will resume!
G!
Happy Thanksgiving to you G and to your daughter. Hope your day will be filled with love and lots of good food, or the love of good food, whichever.
Take Care
Judy
Happy T-Day Judy. Pass on my Holiday wishes to the family. While I’m not cooking a big feast for just me and the daughter, the neighbors have already said we will have a feast anyway! It will be a good day, watching the football game, and getting packed for hunting.
G!
Bet you’re really looking forward to that too, aren’t you G, especially being able to spend time with your younger brother too. Bet you’re excited to see him too. I know your dad is, with what he was telling me yesterday, that he’s so excited to see him again.
Happy Thanksgiving !! This is appropriate !
Pet Turkey
Sen Mary Landrieu of Louisiana was able to squeeze the Health Care bill for $300 million in pork. Here’s a Christian Science Monitor story.
Here: features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/11/24/healthcares-dealbreakers-mary-landrieu-likes-her-300-million/
Ooops – Guess the [img src=" "] code didnt take !!
Try this: http://www.bokbluster.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/091124boklore.jpg
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving Frank.
This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii
for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes
all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body,
he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now.
He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president.
Dear President Obama,
My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don’t believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.
I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos’n Mate. Now I live in a “rest home” located on the western end of Pearl Harbor allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.
One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.
So here goes.
I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.
I can’t figure out what country you are the president of.
You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:
” We’re no longer a Christian nation”
” America is arrogant” – (Your wife even
announced to the world,”America is mean-
spirited. ” Please tell her to try preaching
that nonsense to 23 generations of our
war dead buried all over the globe who
died for no other reason than to free a
whole lot of strangers from tyranny and
hopelessness.)
I’d say shame on the both of you but I don’t think you like America nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.
After 9/11 you said,” America hasn’t lived up to her
ideals.”
Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British ? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War ? I hope you didn’t mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers,husbands,and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII,because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around because we stand for freedom.
I don’t think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.
Take a little advice from a very old geezer,young man.
Shape up and start acting like an American.If you don’t, I’ll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue .You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.
And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don’t want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts who was putting up a fight ? You don’t mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don’t want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are,terrorists.
One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now,son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you’re not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you’re thinking of.
You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president.
You’re not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That’s not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now. And I sure as hell don’t want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.
Sincerely,
Harold B. Estes
When a 95 year old hero of the “the Greatest Generation”
stands up and speaks out like this, I think we owe it
to him to send his words to as many Americans as
we can. Please pass it on.
Right on Harold! Someone needs to find him and invite him to SUFA. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
And to you too Anita.
Thought I’d pass along a little humor today.
One day my housework-challenged husband decided
to wash his sweatshirt.
Seconds after he stepped into the laundry room,
he shouted to me, ‘What setting do I use on the
washing machine?’
‘It depends,’ I replied.
‘What does it say on your shirt?’
He yelled back, ‘ OHIO STATE ! ‘
And they say
blondes are dumb….
—————————————————————-
A couple is lying
in bed. The man says,
‘I am going to make
you the happiest woman in the world…’
The woman replies,
‘I’ll miss you……..
—————————-
‘It’s just too hot to wear clothes today,’
Jack says as he stepped out of the shower, ‘honey, what do you think the
neighbors would think if I mowed the lawn like this?’
‘Probably that I married you for your money,’ she replied.
——————————————-
Q: What do you
call an intelligent, good looking, sensitive man?
A: A rumor
——————————————-
Dear Lord,
I pray for Wisdom to understand my man;
Love to forgive him;
and Patience for his moods..
Because, Lord, if I pray for Strength,
I’ll beat him to death.
AMEN
——————————————————————————————————————————-
Q: Why do little boys whine?
A: They are practicing to be
men.
————————————————–
Q: What do you
call a handcuffed man?
A: Trustworthy..
———————————————
Q: What does it
mean when a man is in your bed gasping
for breath and calling your name?
A: You did not hold the pillow down long enough.
——————————————
Q: Why do men whistle when they
are sitting on the toilet?
A: It helps them remember which end to wipe..
——————————————-
Q: How do you
keep your husband from reading your e-mail?
A: Rename the
email folder ‘Instruction Manuals’
————————————————-
Send this to at least five bright,
funny women you know and make their day! And send this to five
bright men who have enough sense of humor to take it!
To Err Is Human, To Blame It On Someone Else Shows Management Potential!
Dubai Halts Payments on Dubai World Debt
The government of Dubai is in major financial trouble.
The government late Wednesday said it would restructure Dubai World and announced a six-month “standstill” on repayments of the state-run wide-ranging conglomerate’s debt.
Government-owned Dubai World is a conglomerate with interests in real estate, ports and the leisure industry. The firm carries around $60 billion in liabilities. Credit agencies Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the debt of a range of government-related firms, including DP World, after the restructuring announcement.
The dollar amounts involved with Dubai are small, in the grand scheme of things, but this is a sovereign entity.
As one would expect, markets are reacting negatively. Stock markets are down across the board. The dollar is climbing.
Normally, an unimportant trading day, this year because of this news, the trading day after Thanksgiving is going to be something to watch.
PS;
This is warming #322 – this is potentially a tipping point default.
Happy black friday flag, hmm.. sounds like your personal holiday. What’s your take on the drop in gold? Some of the pundits are saying it’s coming out of dubai — selling to cover debt. I’m thinking dip, but would appreciate your thoughts. c
It very temporary, and I agree, it is ‘folks’ going to cash (remember gold is not cash in today’s market) to prepare themselves for a default.
That said, Dubai’s issue is not temporary. It could create a cascade with a conclusion that would shorten timescales.
I am posting a video link below
And, CSM, Gold today dropped from 1190 to 1135, back up to 1180 –
….in 5 hours!
Gold is starting to saw-tooth with differences of $50 AN HOUR….
Warning #323 – be preapred warnings are coming faster.
Black Flag,
Where can I find your list? I’d like to look at it. I think I may have missed it. Thanks.
List?
Yeah, didn’t you post a list of warnings a while ago? I see you and others mention warning #xxx……..
Am I totally confused now??
Warning numbers sometimes appear – assume every economic post I offer is a warning.
Certain circumstances merit greater highlight, so I am more likely to explicitly warn.
Ahhh….thanks
From the “Early to Rise” web site yesterday.
Being the day before Thanksgiving, I have a 30-minute “task” for you that will make you feel good and bring you many future blessings.
Step One: Take out five sheets of paper. Nice stationery, if you have it.
Step Two: Think about the people in your life who help you. And not just in the obvious ways. For example, think of someone who:
• makes you laugh
• inspires you
• you can count on, no matter what
• has taught you a valuable lesson
• you love
Step Three: Handwrite a thank you note to each of them. It should take no more than two or three minutes per person. Ten to 15 minutes to write all five letters.
Step Four: Address five envelopes.
Step Five: Take them to the post office and mail them.
Question: Do I have to write them on paper and post them? Won’t e-mail do just as well?
Answer: No.
Problem: I’m not good at writing letters. This will take me all day!
Solution: The letters don’t need to be long, perfervid, or poetic. Just two, three, or four sentences that express what each person means to you. Be brief, but be specific. Identify — as simply, truly, and precisely as you can — the reason for your gratitude.
To make it extra easy, you can use this as your template:
Dear Harry,
I was thinking of you this afternoon and found myself grinning in public. It occurred to me that you have always brought a smile to my face. I wanted you to know that I am grateful for it.
Your friend,
Michael Masterson
As I said, you will get two benefits from this exercise. You will have a good, warm feeling when you write the letter. And you will be encouraging and deepening a relationship that is good for you.
Doing it on Thanksgiving Day provides a reason. I would recommend adding something about this motivation. It provides a “reason why.” People like reasons why.
You identify yourself as someone who perceives value — his. You identify yourself as someone who cares — about him. He is interested in himself. He will be prepared to let you into a favored circle: people who appreciate him. “He can’t be all wrong.”
Maybe he will do something else for you someday. Or not do something negative that you really deserve.
Service to others is self-serving. This is the #1 principle of success in business (and everything else). Be a servant.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
You too Cyndi, Hope you’re doing well today.
I’m doing great Judy! My sweetie and I had a wonderful meal with The Gang. The base commander stopped by to wish us all a Happy Thanksgiving, and then here in a little while, my sweetie (but not the Col.) and I off to a friend’s house for drinks on the lanai. Doesn’t get too much better than that if you can’t be with all the loved ones around the globe.
How about you? Did you get some help in the kitchen?
Well, Cyndi, that’s sounds great, wish I could be there with you, I can use a vacation.
Yes, I did have help. I made spaghetti sauce and meatballs, but we made homemade cheese ravioli, hubby made the dough, the boys made the ravioli,my oldest made the garlic bread, I did the salad. My oldest son and his girlfriend cleaned up for me, that’s why I’m got to be here.
I made 2 pumpkin pies from scratch yesterday, but the crust is made different than your normal crust. It’s made with quick cooking rolled oats, crushed almonds, a little brown sugar, a little veggie oil and water, so it’ll be interesting to see what it taste like.
Right now everybody is watching the movie Balto, but after that it’s Jeff Dunham.
Glad you had a good Thanksgiving, and that all is going well with you.
Thanks! My boyfriend and I are taking the sailbaot out this afternoon. I’ll send warm tropical thoughts to you, so if you feel a pleasant tremor in the force, its just for you…
Thanks Cyndi, hope I can feel it. Getting very cloudy here with the possibility of rain and snow, windy too.
But, go ahead and rub your nice warm weather in, and if it does rain and snow here, I’ll make sure I send you some cold weather. LOL!
Actually, a little cold weather would be an interesting change. We have endless summer here. I love summer, but a little cool would be nice. Oh well, no point in missing it too much when you’ve got outdoor activites to keep you busy. I didn’t mean to rub it in.
Oh sure you didn’t mean to rub it in, but I can’t blame you there. Just giving you a hard time there Cyndi.
Don’t blame you for taking advantage of nice warm, tropical, weather, I would too.
I don’t mind the colder weather, just don’t like the snow, hate driving in it, too many idiots that don’t know how.
Only suppose to be like this for today, then tomorrow, suppose to get more sunny days.
My boys love it when it snows, especially in the mountains, so they can go snow boarding. In fact, that’s what they’re going to do this Sunday. They would have gone tomorrow, but my youngest has to work an 8 hour shift at our local hospital in ER. Part of his EMT course training, plus it will help him when he applies to med school in about a year and a half.
Hey Girl,
Giving me a hard time is Ray’s job! Don’t be horning in on his job, he might not like it! LOL!!
Your mention of the cold weather reminded me of being back in Florida. In the winter, the cold fronts move through. My boyfriend and I would fire up the ceramic fire pit in the back yard and pull up a couple of chairs. Then we’d roast bratwursts and drink wine. The cats would come out to play and beg for bratties. It was good times.
The nights here are too warm to even think of a campfire, not to mention that sort of thing is very controlled here. Sigh….
Down aat bottom, too squishy here.
Updated November 26, 2009
Why Ayn Rand Still Resonates
By Onkar Ghate
The key to Rand’s enduring popularity is that she appeals not to the immaturity but to the idealism of youth.
From the pages of The New York Times to the signs of tea party protesters to Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” Ayn Rand is everywhere.
The Economist reported on the dramatic surge of sales of “Atlas Shrugged,” likely to exceed 400,000 copies this year, crediting the eerie parallels between Rand’s story and governmental takeovers of the financial markets. But her appeal reaches much deeper than politics.
As an educator I can attest to the fact that she is wildly popular among the young, who typically are not very political. Some 27,000 students submitted entries this year to essay contests on her novels and, in the past three years alone, high-school teachers have requested over 900,000 copies of “Anthem” and “The Fountainhead” to use in their classrooms. They know that students respond to her stories and heroes as to few other books.
Sadly, however, it remains all too common for a young person to be told–as I was told in high school–that interest in Rand is a stage he will (or should) grow out of. You may have seen versions of this attitude in the many recent stories about her. “It’s fine to believe in that now,” the refrain goes, “but wait until you’re older. You’ll discover that life isn’t like that.”
But when you actually consider the essence of what Rand teaches, the accusation that her philosophy is childish over-simplification stands as condemnation not of her ideas but of the adult world from which the accusation stems.
The key to Rand’s enduring popularity is that she appeals not to the immaturity but to the idealism of youth. She wrote in 1969: “There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days–the conviction that ideas matter.” The nature of this conviction? “That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one’s mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth.”
To sustain this youthful conviction throughout life, Rand teaches, you must achieve a radical independence of mind. Independence does not mean doing whatever you feel like doing but rather forging your convictions and choosing your actions rationally, carefully, scientifically. It is refusal to subordinate your ideas or values to the “public interest,” as liberals demand, or to the “glory of God,” as conservatives demand. It is refusal to grant obedience to any authority, human or divine.
The independent mind rejects faith — secular or supernatural — and embraces reason as an absolute. “The noblest act you have ever performed,” declares the hero of “Atlas Shrugged,” “is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four.” Rand meant it.
The conviction that ideas matter represents a profound dedication to self. It requires that you not passively absorb your society’s moral views, however well-entrenched, but instead question and study the entire field of good and evil. Perhaps alone among modern novels, this is what “Atlas Shrugged”–with its critique of Judeo-Christian, Kantian and Utilitarian morality, along with its presentation of a new moral code of rational self-interest–demands of its readers.
“To take ideas seriously,” Rand writes, “means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true,” that you recognize “that truth and knowledge are of crucial, personal, selfish importance to you and to your own life.”
Her approach here is the opposite of the view that ideals transcend this world, one’s interests and human comprehension–that idealism is, according to a former President whose words are echoed by virtually every leader today, “to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself.”
In a world that equates idealism with otherworldliness, faith, and sacrifice of self, while simultaneously reminding us that, as a conservative commentator puts it, “perfection in the life of man on earth” is impossible–Ayn Rand stands alone. She argues that perfection is possible to man the rational animal, if you are ready to work for it.
Hold your own life as your highest value, follow reason, submit to no authority, pursue unwaveringly the true and the good, create a life of productive achievement and personal, selfish joy–enact these demanding values and virtues, Rand teaches, and an ideal world, here on earth, is “real, it’s possible–it’s yours.”
Does an adult world that dismisses this philosophy as “simplistic” not convict itself?
Thankfully, Rand had the courage to take on that world and challenge its rampant skepticism, eager cynicism and unyielding demand for compromise, to portray and explain–at the most fundamental level–the heroic in man.
What I tell my students is that they must never let that world extinguish their dedication to, in “Atlas Shrugged’s” words, “the best within us.”
please view my blog
Happy Black Friday to all!
Not sure if there will be much discussion today, but if there is I can floow along at work.
With all the crazy legislation heading to the floor of the Senate in the coming weeks, If Obamacare or cap and trade gets passed, would either of these bills violate your STATE Constitutional Rights? Ohio is written in very simple, straight forward words, and these bills may do just that. If they do, what action can we take at the state level?
G!
Igor Panarin and the CIA both predicted a constitutional crisis in our near future. This healthcare bill is just one more thing to add to the whole tenth amendment issue. It’s almost like the federal government is intentionally provoking a breakup of our union. I dont like it. Our republic must stand as one nation, (Under God), indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I don’t want to see states seceed. Remember what happened last time? And it for for the same basic reason too,…economics vs. geo-political. I don’t like where we’re headed. It just doesn’t look good. It lookes like our system is being systematically broke down and destroyed by our very own government. WTF?
I am beginning to wonder whether McCarthy was on to something.
Greetings Bottom Line,
Why do you believe our republic MUST stand as one nation? This situtation reminds me of a marriage full of hate and anger, where neither party is going to cooperate with the other even if it means total destruction the entire family. Wouldn’t it better if one party files for divorce, rather than keep fighting until both sides, and the children, are destroyed? I think we’d be better off IF we could reduce government size and spending. I don’t see that happening. Most Americans are like that married couple, and have no knowledge of what it takes to make a successful marriage. Likewise, most voters have no idea of what it takes to make a successful nation.
I don’t like where we’re headed either, but I don’t see how we can go back. I also agree that our government is being destroyed from within, and that McCarthy was on to something. We’ll know soon enough, I think.
I believe we are stronger united. I’m not sure there is any real answer to our predicament. I just think that being divided puts us at greater risk to a number of things like, civil war, losing states to other nations, extreme economic ramifications, etc.
It’s just plain bad…as in scary bad.
I agree with you. United we are stronger. It is unfortunate that our politicans and alleged leaders have spent the last thirty or so years dividing us. The worst part of it is that most Americans doesn’t see how they have been manipulated and continue to be manipulated. When you point it out to them, they just dig in their heels.
Let them.
Save yourself, and your people(family/friends).
They should have at least listened.
When/IF it all goes down, They’ll likely agree.
I do plan to let them, though I get no pleasure from it. I doubt they’ll admit that I was right with my ‘crazy/stupid/gullible, right-wing predictions’. That won’t stop them from expecting my help, either. My daughter will be my top priority. At least she doesn’t insult me, even if it crosses her mind to do so. Unless the others can convince me that they know they were mistaken, and SINCERELY apologize to me, they can find someone else to give them help and assistance. Anything I can do to help those who didn’t insist on bring this evil down on all of us, will get any help I’m able to provide, what little it is likely to be.
Good luck on saving your loved ones. They have a chance because they have you.
Good morning everyone
Hope all is doing good today, and I can assume that everyone has had a good day yesterday, frenzing on turkey, all the trimmings, pumpkin pie, and football. Here’s hoping that you all recovered.
Have a good day today.
These men are not crackpots.
But why do I think (and hope) they are wrong?
Because I think the Federal Reserve will pull back and stop buying T-bills, and let the U.S. government find buyers at high rates of interest.
The FED will keep the big banks afloat. The others will become cannon fodder in Great
Depression 2.
If I am wrong, and these guys are right, the division of labor will collapse along with the dollar. That scenario is life-threatening.
If you think these guys are right, buy the things you think you will buy with your gold coins. Buy them with your digital money.
Black Flag:
What is a good skill set to learn today for the future? My skill set is Human Resources and Labor Relations and it is not a valuable skill set today.
I think you were involved with computers but may be wrong.
Yes, I am a very specialized highly complex technology problem solver. It pays well, when there is work.
Computers will only become more complex and take over more duties. This is the future for the next few generations. Offshoots from that – automation/robots – adult eduction (to teach displaced workers new skills), etc. are all growth markets.
There are two equally valid paths to a choice:
- Improve ones specialty skills – move up from Competent to Expert Master; from Expert to Master
- A wholly new skill; “more baskets for the eggs”.
It takes ~100 hours of study to become competent.
It takes ~1000 hours of further study to become an expert.
It takes ~5000 hours of further study to become a master.
Use the 80/20 rule – both sides of it. It takes a little time to get a lot of results. Most of the money in any genre is made by a very small number of people.
Black Flag:
What type of computer training would be good to pursue? What type of courses? I have an opportunity to go back to school under the Trade Act (part of NAFTA or as a result of NAFTA). If I am still in this area, I may want to pursue some technical training in computers.
In my field, the next level to pursue to get to the Master level would be to become a labor law attorney — to go to law school. There is no law school close to where I live. Also, there are plenty of lawyers out there and many are unemployed.
I’m thinking about some type of career change. Some field that would be stable, if there is such a thing in the future.
Birdman,
What are your hobbies? May be you can gain more skill in one of those. Didn’t you mention welding or something along those lines? My profession is in the electronics field. My hobby is dress making. People will need clothing even if there’s no electricity. See? Maybe you’ve got some skill that will be in demand in the event of a collapse. Even if there is isn’t a collapse, you can still make money or trade for supplies….
Cyndi P:
I weld as a hobby making beds, pot racks, coat racks, etc. My daughter is home for Thanksgiving and I’ll see if she can help me set up a web site and get something posted on the internet.
Hi Birdman
Would be interested in seeing your site when you get it up and running.
Are you going to post it up here?
Hope you’re doing well.
That sounds like a very useful skill. You could probably branch out a bit. Maybe learn how to make tools, and other basic equipment. Maybe give some thought to what life was like in the rural areas of the country during the 1930s. What sort of metal impliments did folks use for their daily existance? If you figure out how to expand your item list, make sure you stock up on the supplies needed while you still can.
Two ideas – but you have to look around.
Most people do not know how to fix a computer. So MINOR computer repair skills is a good one – where you can come in and replace a bad hard drive (and save their data) – people will pay hundreds to save pictures of their kids they ‘lost’ on that hard drive.
Anything major – its just cheaper to buy another computer – so being knowledgeable on how to migrate their system from an old machine to new is very good too.
This is all “local” work. You can drive an hour and do the work. This is the work that can save a family from disaster.
If we assume that travel will become limited as the situation worsens, it is worth looking around at what a local community will begin to need.
Reading about the Great Depression is very helpful.
Repair over buying new – so repairman of “whatever” will be valuable.
Making things out of nothing – like making parts for machines with a lathe, etc.
Computer Repair will keep you local – but you can’t charge too much – so steady work, average pay.
Computer Programming – there is an endless need for programs for every part of a business. If you know a business that hasn’t computerized a process, there is an opportunity. If one guy hasn’t, thousands haven’t.
The stuff I do is so esoteric, you have to work a decade to be where I was 5 years ago – but its possible and lucrative – but you need to do something else to help pay the bills until then.
Learn then train. Being a computer teacher – since you only have be slightly more knowledgeable then your students, this is a good career too.
As I offer here – you are merely a commodity. So sell yourself like one.
If there is too many and they don’t have jobs – its because they aren’t making a product differentiation to anyone – they are all the same and a dime a dozen.
So, at all times, sell yourself to why you have a features and capabilities that makes you a better hire at more money.
When I started consulting, I had a friend in New York was also a consultant and we happened into a one-up-manship about charge rates.
We were at about $50/hr., and bragging who was better than who, I raised my next job to $75, and got it.
He did too, so I raised my next job to $100, he went to $110.
I charged out then at $125, and he went to $130, I raised to $150.
In about 60 days, we had moved ourselves from $50 to $150 – without losing one customer.
I pushed on, $175, 200, 250 — he got rattled but stayed at $200 and declared me ‘winner’ – but I pushed on even higher.
I found an interesting thing, the higher I charged, the busier I got! I was being run off my feet.
People buy quality – if you charge a mint, you must be gold.
I reached $450/hr and very comfortable in the number of hours I received. Occasionally, I charged even more – once, $5,000/hr.
Earning $3,000/day pays a lot of bills! But it was two things – the packaging and the product – the sizzle and the steak. You need both.
(PS: I don’t make that much today – I’m far less a workaholic then I was 20 years ago)
Black Flag:
Do you have programmable logic controller skills (PLC)? Basic electrical skills?
I wasn’t kidding when I said to you and JAC that I have an idea for a new type of generator. I don’t know if it would work but I’m willing to try it out on a small scale but need a special type of electrical control device. A PLC would probably work but I’m not sure.
Yes, and yes. I wouldn’t say they are much higher then competent though.
If you’d like me to look at it, email it to me.
You have to swear secrecy and sign a confidentiality agreement.
Free Energy Is Real.
People have already started to figure it out.
Magnets and Tesla’s studies are gonna put the power companies out of buisness.
I love it.
Bottom Line:
I think I am figuring it out. It will still take energy but I hope it is far more efficient than a normal turbine generator. Much less maintenance too.
I’ve had similar ideas.
There are many youtube videos demonstrating magnetic perpetual motion type generators.
I’m curious what kind of torque they produce.
I wish I had a shop and some $ to play with.
I’ve seen some videos in the past like this. My idea has nothing to do with perpetual motion.
Interesting video BF.
If you were to guess, How long would you say we have before the collapse?
What is your definition of collapse?
Do you mean “systemic default” or do you mean “death of money”
Today, I had a nice conversation with a couple of very smart friends. One postulated this theory – and I think it holds some interest for me.
The question is, from ‘knowing the systemic default has happened, how long before the entire society starts acting/suffering because of it?”
The Fall of the Roman Empire took 250 years. The speed of the Fall was determined by the speed of communication – the speed of a man walking. It would take about 20 years for a man to walk, at a normal pace (stopping for food and rest, etc) from one end to the other. Thus, from knowledge of collapse to completion took 12x longer than the speed of information.
Today, something “happens” – though instantly sent everywhere, it really doesn’t reach the People for about 5 to 7 days – say a week. Thus, from the point of default to systemic consequences will take 12 weeks.
The lesson – if you knew about the Roman collapse, you did not have to worry one bit. You be dead of old age before the consequences met you.
Today, if you are not ready RIGHT NOW, you’re dead. You cannot move fast enough to make up the necessary preparations in merely 12 weeks.
Black Flag:
How much money did it cost you to purchase a 6 months supply of food for your wife and children?
I believe you purchased a small generator (1000 watts or something like that). Is that sufficient for your needs? Is it gasoline or propane? How much gasoline or propane do you maintain on hand?
Other than the standard list of items that you posted in the past, is there anything else we should do to prepare? I don’t have any gold. I’m thinking about cashing in my IRA this year and using the money to pay off my mortgage and get completely out of debt.
“… 6 months supply of food for your wife and children?…”
We started with a bulk purchase to cover only two months. Since we had nothing – this cost us about $1200.
After that, we bought only on sale – then, we picked 4x our consumption. This evened out our budget, and also built our reserves. It probably cost us another $1000 to fill in the last 4 months.
We continue with that program until we have a year’s worth. Why? Maybe it will be a year of hell – or, we will have more mouths to feed for the 4 to 6 months. Either way, we make options. Storage (inventory) creates options (more mouths, longer time, something to sell, etc.)
We lose one, of course, mobility. If we have to bug out, we will have to abandon a good portion of it… there are always trade offs.
Yes, to run very basic appliances and the deep freeze.
Gasoline, and I have 36 hrs of run time in fuel. I do not anticipate running it constantly for 36hrs. – 2 on, 6 off …. for the deep freeze.
Gold is the last part to buy – buy what you would have to buy when you need gold to buy, except do it today.
Debt free is always a good thing. If we go bad, but not self-destruct, you are a big winner.
If we self-destruct, it wouldn’t have mattered either way.
Play the odds – we just go bad – and therefore you’ll be the big winner.
Black Flag:
What would have to occur for you to bug out?
If the U.S. goes down, I think other countries would be impacted around the world. Wouldn’t it be better here than in other countries?
Birdman,
Bug Out – a hundred miles to my brother-in-law 2500 acre property.
When would I do this? When the city services start to fail.
There are no countries immune to the collapse of the USA. USA is as good a place as anywhere else.
February?
There are traditional times of the year that “bad” happens.
October, late January, June.
Things tend to hold on until these times because these seem to be the drop-dead dates for margin calls, loans, or some sort of payments due.
They match the typical business cycle of Western business.
Well before then the air will “smell bad” if it is going to be bad. Most deny bad things, so they’ll wait until the announcement that hell has arrived.
Be smarter.
If you smell smoke, get out of the building. Don’t wait until the fireman are searching for you. They’ll rarely find you in time – or won’t even try in the first place…..
Oh, and September. That’s another “bad” month
BF,
Because of reasons primarily regarding employment …For a few years, I’ve been in the position of being able to drop what I’m doing, pull up stakes in 4 hrs. or less, transport myself and all my belongings(to include survival/camping gear) to anywhere in the united states in 72 hrs. or less without being tracked, and only needing to stop for gas every 700 miles.
I.E. If I was living in Jacksonville FL. on monday and needed to move to L.A., I could start the process of packing immediately and arrive in L.A. by thursday.
I believe the possible economic crash could very well be the trigger for worse things.
If survival means buggin’ out and literally running to the hills…I have and am in a standby/ready position.
I already have a couple spots awaiting my arrival, and canned goods in boxes. As long as I have a couple hours to see it coming, I think I will be okay.
So, when you say…
“Be smarter.
If you smell smoke, get out of the building. Don’t wait until the fireman are searching for you. They’ll rarely find you in time – or won’t even try in the first place…”
Know I am already ready and have been.
It would be nice to see it coming at least a few hours ahead of time.
If I wake up and see that the DOW has dropped to 0, …by sunset(maybe even by noon), I can be where I need to be for hell breaking loose.
You and G-Man brothers or what?
Depending on what I want to take, I’m a 24 hr or a two week bug out.
Comes with having a kid….
You are so ahead of the curve, you’re looking at everyone else’s butt!
Brothers, he-he. (salutes G)
BF,
It’s not like I’m necessarily preparing for the apocalypse, It’s just inherent to my blue collar semi-nomadic lifestyle to already be geared up and in a ready state.
Getting ready in 4 hours or less and driving a few hundred miles doesn’t have to be about running to the hills.
It could be about making it to a job in another city in time for a brief period of good weather to do some exterior painting.
But it works just as well for running to the hills if need be.
Hi All,
Hope you had a wonderful day yesterday and if you stood in line at 4:00am this morning, you were successful in getting that super, duper deal!
Here, food was delicious, family all gets along, Packers won (I know, only Detroit), temps are mild so made the annual Thanksgiving morning run very pleasant. All in all, a very fun day.
Dubai news is troubling, thanks for the background info, BF. I do need to revisit that warning list of yours – don’t remember that there were so many.
Doing some online shopping, Christmas decorating, playing Christmas music, and might even start some cookie baking. ‘Tis the season!
Have a great day everyone!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100002318/dubai-is-just-a-harbinger-of-things-to-come-for-sovereign-debt/
Dubai is just a harbinger of things to come for sovereign debt
By Jeremy Warner Economics Last updated: November 27th, 2009
15 Comments Comment on this article
Watch out. This may be just the beginning. In the scale of things, the debt problems of Dubai are little more than a flea bite. Dubai’s sovereign debts total “just” $80bn, which counts for nothing against the trillions being raised by advanced economies to plug fiscal deficits.
Dubai has been a one-way ticket of economic expansion until recently
Small wonder, though, that this minor tremor has sent such shock waves around the wider capital markets. The fear is that threatened default in this tiny desert kingdom is just a harginger of things to come for government debt markets as a whole. According to new estimates by Moody’s, the credit rating agency, the total stock of sovereign debt worldwide will have risen by nearly 50 per cent between 2007 and 2010 to $15.3 trillion. The great bulk of this increase comes not from irrelevant little states like Dubai, but from the big advanced economies – America, Europe, and Japan.
Perversely, they are for the time being beneficiaries of the “flight to safety” that trouble in Dubai has sparked. Government bond yields in the major advanced economies have fallen in response to the crisis in the Gulf. If experience of the banking crisis, when investors removed their money from one bank only to find that the one they had put it into looked just as dodgy, is anything to go by, this effect will not last.
Up until now, markets have assumed that the ruinous fiscal cost of addressing the financial and economic crisis was probably just about affordable to the major economies. That view may be about to be challenged.
I’m going to be writing more about the fallout for Dubai and its implications for the advanced economies in tomorrow’s paper
Cyndi
The only time I was ever in Florida, was when we went there in I believe in 1996. Went to Orlando, Disney World when our boys were younger. It was very nice there I recall, except for the daily rain showers. No biggies, they only lasted for like 10, 15 minutes. We were there for a week, and that was the fastest week I ever had.
Didn’t see the boys that much really, they were off doing their thing, and me and hubby were off doing ours. At least they couldn’t get lost.
Going to go for a bit, youngest son is here,he has to do some laundry, and I’m going to take advantage of him to stay with my mom and go run an errand. Will get back with you later if you’re still here. Have fun on your boat. I’ll be picturing a nice warm sunny breeze blowing as I go out in this damn wind and cold air.
From the Daily Reckoning….
Freak Show
By Bill Bonner
London, England
Governments benefit from ‘teaser’ rates. Wait ’til they come to an end…
There are so many breathtaking things going on around us we practically suffocate. Last week, three-month US Treasury-bills yielded all of 0.015% interest. Some yields were below zero. In effect, investors gave the government money. The government thanked them and promised to give them back less money three months later. How do you explain this strange transaction? Was there a full moon?
Moonlight on the week of November 6 must have been especially intense. Bids totaled a record $361 billion for just $86 billion worth of T- bills. This was $100 billion more than the peak set during the credit crisis a year ago. What? A third of a trillion dollars, per week, gives itself up to the hard labor of government service and asks for nothing in return?
Even lending to the government for much longer period yields little to the investor. The 10-year yield is only 3.32%. Thirty-year lenders get only 100 basis points more. And this in a currency that is melting faster than polar ice. Gold, the traditional bank reserve, is soaring in comparison. Not surprising; the US dollar money supply – measured by the US monetary base – rose 147% over the past 24 months.
The only thing rising faster than the demand for government debt is the supply of it. All major governments of the West – and Japan – are now borrowing as if their lives depended on it. The IMF predicts that Britain’s ratio of public debt to GDP will rise 50% between 2007 and 2014. In America, the increase is forecast to take taxpayers nearly to the debt levels of WWII. Those estimates are probably far too low, since they depend on an economic ‘recovery’ that will almost certainly prove to be a disappointment. The purpose of a depression is to get rid of bad debts and correct bad investment decisions. But an economy cannot correct itself unless it is allowed to enter a correction. When you try to prevent it, you get a zombie economy in constant need of freshly borrowed blood. Debts rise, but with no recovery. As reported on this back page, former US Office of Management and Budget director David Stockman expects a zombie economy in the US, with deficits twice as great as those now projected…that is, of $2 trillion per year, not $1 trillion. This will send US debt beyond WWII levels…up to Japan- like heights.
Other governments, too, are likely to see similar swelling in their public debt limbs. All right-thinking economists and commentators have come to the same conclusion – that fiscal and monetary stimulus must continue until the ‘recovery’ is more manifest. Worse, they’ve been trapped by the logic of Keynesianism itself. Now, everything is ‘stimulus.’ Nothing can be cut. The boils cannot be lanced.
When you come to the end of a war, spending is naturally reduced.
Deficits can go home with the troops. Debts can be paid down. But there is no end in sight for these deficits. Because only a small part of them is the direct consequence of the war against depression. Instead, they are merely the inevitable result of governments that spend too much money. In the US this “structural deficit” is estimated by the IMF at 3.7% of GDP. In Japan and Britain it is twice that amount.
Whatever else can be said of it, this freak show cannot go on forever. The US has $2 trillion worth of short-term bills that must be refinanced in the next 12 months. It must also refinance about $1 trillion more of notes and bonds. That’s without adding any additional debt! So put a deficit of $1.5 trillion on top of that and you have $4.5 trillion of financing for the US alone.
But the US is not the only one fishing in this pond. Japan’s national debt already measures 200% of its GDP and is increasing rapidly. So far, Japan’s deficits have been financed internally. The Japanese saved 20% of their household incomes in 1980. But the Japanese are aging. When they retire, people cease saving and begin drawing on savings to cover living expenses. At the current pace, the household savings rate should fall to zero in 5 years. Then, who will buy Japan’s bonds? Who will cover Japan’s deficits? The same people who are supposed to cover America’s deficits?
Taken all together, the world’s governments will need $1 trillion per month, in financing, over the next 12 months, according to an estimate in the Financial Times. Who has that kind of money? Total US savings are only $700 billion. Even the Chinese, if they put their entire cash pile to it, could only fund the deficits for about 67 days’ worth. Warren Buffett? Less than 48 hours.
There is also the problem of paying the interest on rising debt loads. Thanks to the forgetfulness or credulity of the world’s lenders, borrowers now benefit from exceptionally low rates – just like the ‘teaser’ rates once accorded to sub-prime lenders. But the tease will come to an end soon. Even the Obama Administration forecasts interest payments to rise from $200 billion at present to $700 billion by 2019. This assumes interest rates only regress to ‘normal.’ But “hot money” from the feds has acted like spent nuclear fuel; every fish in the financial pond now seems to have two heads and a bag over both of them. The freaks of November 2009 may be replaced by things perhaps no less strange, but in a different way. The last time gold was over $800 lenders to the US government demanded yields in excess of 18% in order to part with their money. That was odd too. But it had very different consequences for investors.
Enjoy your long weekend,
Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning
I was over at American Thinker and saw this reader comment.:
A thought came to me: what if Khalid Shaikh Mohammed wants to extend the length of the trial and then claims that Barack Obama is not a US citizen and thus he has no authority to appoint an Attorney General or order this trial? All KSM and his attorneys have to do is quote the court papers of Orly Taitz and former Penn. Deputy Atty. Gen. Philip Berg challenging Obama’s citizenship. This could threaten to throw the country into a Constitutional crisis. Do you think the terrorists are adverse to seeing a governmental crisis in the US? Of course not. In fact, I’m not even sure Obama would object, because it would give him a basis for declaring martial law.
And some of ya’ll say I’m crazy.
And some of ya’ll say I’m crazy
No – you are saying you are crazy. That is the first step in converting you to be a liberal Cyndi – you have to first admit you are crazy.
“what if Khalid Shaikh Mohammed wants to extend the length of the trial and then claims that Barack Obama is not a US citizen and thus he has no authority to appoint an Attorney General or order this trial?”
- He can claim anything he wants – without an accepted motion his irrational views do not mean squat. But Cyndi – I like this connection you are making – connecting KSM to Orly Taitz (terrorist connected to Orly). Maybe the next link there is that anyone who supports Orly also supports KSM? Now THAT WOULD BE Cuh-RAZY!
Ray,
Did you notice these are not my words? I found this somewhere else and thought I’d post it for KICKS.
When are you going to get a sense of humor?
Maybe Orly should represent KSM
Have any of ya’ll been been following this? I keep hearing snippets…
Obama Finds Legal Way Around The 2nd. Amendment and Uses It.
Wed Oct 14, 2009 11:56pm EDT Reuters News Service
The Full Article Here
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE59E0Q920091015
Subject: Obama Takes First Step in Banning All Firearms
On Wednesday Obama Took the First Major Step in a Plan to Ban All Firearms in the United States
On Wednesday the Obama administration took its first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States . The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments. These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The laws are designed and intended to lead to the complete ban and confiscation of all firearms.
The Obama administration is attempting to use tactics and methods of gun control that will inflict major damage to our 2nd Amendment before US citizens even understand what has happened. Obama can appear before the public and tell them that he does not intend to pursue any legislation (in the United States) that will lead to new gun control laws, while cloaked in secrecy, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is committing the US to international treaties and foreign gun control laws. Does that mean Obama is telling the truth? What it means is that there will be no publicized gun control debates in the media or votes in Congress. We will wake up one morning and find that the United States has signed a treaty that prohibits firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public. We will wake up another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that prohibits any transfer of firearm ownership. And then, we will wake up yet another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that requires US citizens to deliver any firearm they own to the local government collection and destruction center or face imprisonment.
This is not a joke nor a false warning.. As sure as government health care will be forced on us by the Obama administration through whatever means necessary, so will gun control.
Read the Article
U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto.
The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush’s administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.
The Full Article
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE59E0Q920091015
NWO
BL – you’re a wrasslin’ fan eh? (“NWO”)
Necessary to forming a New World Order, The geopolitical/legal and economic systems of nations/unions must be integrated. Capitalist/republican systems and socialist/fascist systems and totalitarian/communist systems, etc.. don’t match. They have to be converted to the same.
It’s like fractions…
You can’t add thirds and fourths and sixths. First you have to find the least common denominator(12), and convert them. Then add, then reduce.
1/3 + 4/6 + 1/4 =
4/12 + 8/12 + 3/12 = 15/12
15/12 = 1 1/4 = 1.25
1.25 = NWO
International governing bodies making rules that subtly encroach on a sovereign nation’s rights COULD be interpreted as slowly converting laws to the same system.
I’m not necessarily saying that that is the case, but if it is the case, I won’t be surprised.
A nation of hundreds of millions of constitutionally protected gun totin’ trained killers could present a problem for an entity wanting to force them into global socialism.
…Which is exactly what they intended when they wrote the second amendment.
We have the right to defend our way of life and a constitutionally protected right to equip ourselves with tools to do so.
Oh, and IMHO, Wrestlin’ sux.
BL – sorry – you missed by bad attempt at humor – the notion of NWO is a farce much as ‘professional wrestling’ – I don’t buy. At the end of the day sovereign people will remain as such. Maybe not easily – but they will.
No, I’M sorry. I responded with your success at humor with whatever random thought that came to mind while reading yours and cyndi’s posts.
It’s funny to see how many search results you get for wrestling when you google “new world order”.
To clarify a few things in Cyndi’s post:
1. The majority of her post (that which is not the Reuters Article) was actually lifted from one or more other blog sites – here is one example: http://www.gunssavelife.com/blog/?p=439
2. The Reuters articles says nothing of the sort she is claiming – the ‘conclusions’ are merely more fringe right wing fearmongering that says to you – even attempting to regulate international arms sales or deals is or will lead to a violation of your 2nd amendment right (a completely fabricated lie). If I followed the crazy line of thought I’d suggest to you that Cindy advocates removing any barrier anywhere that involves guns sales – such that even terrorists and name-that-bad-guy can more easily obtain weapons to kill you. But I won’t do that – that is crazy talk. Arguing with the thought process of nutjobs like John Bolten is like arguing with a pit bull hell bent on eating his own bowel movements – its never a good idea and it will only leave both of you messy.
3. The longer the right condones such insanity by silence, the longer we all suffer from having rational conservative thought enter the vernacular – we keep slipping away from ‘what makes sense’ to concocting the perfect storm for every action, thought or word uttered by this administration. This isn’t Obama nuthugging – this is merely saying that driving the debate into the ditch just means you have to call in a tow truck and try and drag the debate back onto the road.
Ray,
Being on of the “fringe right fearmongers”, there is more truth than hype to Cyndi’s post. The fringe left has been trying for years to use international law to circumvent US law such as the Constitution.
What would the Kyoto agreement lead to today? The international community could fine the US for its CO2 output, while China and India expanded their emissions and the US was forced to buy their “dirty” products, that are too expensive to produce here.
Think also, some of the Supreme Court members have consulted “International Law”, which should have no place in determining American law.
And what will be the results of such a treaty? China, France and Russia violated the “Food for Oil”
treaty, which lead to the Iraq war. Where is Mexico getting their guns? Yes, some are from the US, but those are semi-automatic. Where are the bulk of fully automatic firearms coming from? This is destabilizing their government, and having drug lords take over does not leave me feeling warm and cozy. From Reuters,
“Arms exporters China, Russia and Israel abstained last year in a U.N. vote on the issue.
The proposed treaty is opposed by conservative U.S. think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which said last month that it would not restrict the access of “dictators and terrorists” to arms but would be used to reduce the ability of democracies such as Israel to defend their people.”
Dictators and terrorists will benefit. Look at the history of gun confiscation. How many millions have died after their gun ownership was taken?
From FOX,
Despite concerns over the negotiations, Fillon said “France is open to cooperation with Russia, including in defense,” adding that it makes no sense to discuss including Russia in a joint European economy then fall back on “outdated reflexes,” Reuters reported.
The Mistral, estimated to cost roughly $450 million to $500 million, could become Russia’s biggest international arms purchase.
Do we really think France sharing NATO technology is a good thing? NATO radar, missile defenses, etc.?
Hello LOI,
I’m concerned, but not surprised, that France seems to be throwing its future in with the Russians. There are some serious implications. I suspect they see the writing on the wall, so to speak. I wonder how many of our allies will bail out on us now.
Ray,
I didn’t CLAIM anything, nor did I LIFT anything from somwhere else other than the email that a friend of mine sent me. Thus the question: Have any of ya’ll been following this? I keep hearing snippets. Sheesh.
CYNDI,
I follow this issue closely, for at least ten years the NRA has called yearly asking for money to fight the UN’s attempt to control our gun’s. I think the senate would have to ratify it also, first. Then there would be a Supreme Court challenge.
I will let you know if/when the NRA starts in, it will not get past their watchdogs. They have also started in on ACORN, which has
supported gun control in several large cities.
Glad your Thanksgiving in paradise was a good one. We had a nice, big family, one dayer, easier to recover from the overeating.
Thanks, LOI. I’m glad you had a good one too.
Its interesting that you’ve been able to keep up with this for ten years. I knew the Left has been working on this for awhile so I would have thought the Ray would have been informed of it as well.
From the Daily Reckoning:
Joel Bowman, with some cheery holiday words from Taipei, Taiwan…
Today we have something extraordinary for you to ponder. We call it, in the prescribed, politico-doublespeak of the times, a “recovery.” Allow us to elaborate for just a moment…
A “recovery,” as defined by the same economic talent that led us into mass speculative temptation in the first place, is a magical reversal of fortunes for the global economy.
What is this recovery based on? Glad you asked, because here comes the extraordinary part…it is underpinned by the hysterical, back-slapping delusion that comes from accepting that there is, in fact, a recovery. It is real, in other words, because we are told it is real.
Convinced yet?
As the late astronomer, Carl Sagan, was fond of saying, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” In the absence of such evidence, let us examine the faith-based foundation on which the stability of the world’s largest economy now rests.
Below are a few tenets all sworn Recoverites must accept, any and all evidence to the contrary be damned:
1. That a consumer economy can continue to grow exponentially, even as the consumers themselves are forced to economize…
Where once manufacturing, innovation and a solid savings base held sturdy the US economy, there is now consumption, a waning service industry and a fiscally constipating accumulation of debt.
With household liabilities as a percentage of disposable income running at almost 130% for the average American family, and official unemployment bubbling over a 26-year peak of 10.2%, it’s tough going at the mall…even for the mighty US consumer…and even after the government has bribed him to go out and spend!
Already GDP estimates for the September quarter were revised downward – from 3.5% to 2.8% – after it became clear that the effects of the Cash for Clunkers program – the governmental equivalent of economic Viagra – had worn off sooner than expected. Barely had the poor consumer got his pants off and his wallet out when his many embarrassing deficits became all too apparent.
2. That the notices of liability printed by the Feds – commonly referred to as “greenbacks” – will enjoy the infinite confidence and unyielding patience of the nation’s foreign creditors…
For the past year we have heard rumblings from the BRIC nations, in particular China, over the government-sponsored debasement of the greenback. Most recently, Liu Mingkang, the Middle Kingdom’s chief banking regulator, argued that the combination of a weak dollar with persistently low interest rates had encouraged a “huge carry trade” that was having a “massive impact on global asset prices.”
It is no secret that “dollar alternatives” are openly discussed among large holders of US paper. So shaky is the dollar, in fact, that even a (briskly discredited) rumor in an English paper about OPEC nations ditching the buck sent the world’s “reserve” currency into a tailspin, tipping off gold’s current trailblazing rise – itself another indicator of fear and loathing of the once almighty buck.
(As we were jotting these few words, midweek, the greenback had just fallen below one Swiss franc for only the second time ever, reaching a 15-month low on the dollar index and approaching a 14-year low against the yen.)
3. That those creditors will continue to reinvest said monies back into the increasingly regulated and overtaxed US securities exchanges…
And that’s to say nothing of the growing minority of American citizens and companies already, wisely, looking for ways to flee their own shores with the hope of doing business in more accommodating, less intrusive arenas.
4. That extorting money from current and future workers in order to allocate it to the nation’s least efficient industries is a positive long-term strategy…
Over the past year, the government of the United States of America has pumped more money into its flailing economy than the total value of all the gold ever mined in world history…doubled.
Before we go on, let us remember that each and every one of those dollars – and the trillions more splashed around by the do-gooder interventionalists of the world – are dollars that are NOT now available to private citizens or the thousands of small businesses that might have benefited from a little extra cash during this whole crisis.
The true opportunity cost of this gross misallocation of vital resources will, of course, never be known. What is known, however, is that said bailouts helped the federal budget deficit along to a post WWII record of more than $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009. Treasury officials warn the national debt limit of $12.1 trillion may be reached and breached by as early as December.
5. That those still purchasing stocks are better informed than the industries’ insiders…
Insider selling increased during the latest week from $960 million in sales to over $1.39 billion. That compares with “buys” totaling just $160 million. The ratio of selling to buying has, at times during this stock market rally, stretched to as much as 31:1.
Is there something outsiders know that insiders don’t? Unlikely.
6. And, that the geniuses who missed the warning signs of the biggest bust up in modern financial history are the most qualified to guide us out of it…
Even up until the very eve of the crisis, elected and unelected politicians assured those who knew better that the vast and plentiful risks to the financial industry were contained. Clearly, they were not. At every juncture since then, those leaders and others have sought to impose the very measures – currency debasement, deficit spending, increased state intervention, bailouts, nationalizations etc. – that history tells us lead to outright ruin.
Sir Isaac Newton – himself a man of faith…and a devout student of alchemy – once wrote, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
What is perhaps the most galling of this entire financial debacle is that, with the abundance of insightful economists history has granted us, today’s leaders should appear proud to be seen standing on the shoulders of earthworms.
That, in itself, is something even the most delusional among us ought to have serious trouble believing in.
For anyone who might be around, here are some pretty god jokes.
Marriage (Part I )
Typical macho man married typical good-looking lady, and
after the wedding, he laid down the following rules:
‘I’ll be home when I want, if I want and at what time
I want — and I don’t expect any hassle from you.
I expect a great dinner to be on the table unless
I tell you that I won’t be home for dinner.
I’ll go hunting, fishing, boozing, and card-playing
when I want with my old buddies, and don’t you
give me a hard time about it.
Those are my rules. Any comments?’
His new bride said:
‘No, that’s fine with me. Just understand that there will be sex
here at seven o’clock every night…whether you’re here or not.’
(DARN SHE’S GOOD!)
************************************************
Marriage (Part II)
Husband and wife had a bitter quarrel on the day of their 40th wedding anniversary!
The husband yells, ‘When you die, I’m getting you a headstone
that reads, ‘Here Lies My Wife — Cold As Ever’!’
‘Yeah?’ she replies. ‘When you die, I’m getting you a headstone
that reads, ‘Here Lies My Husband — Stiff At Last’!’
(HE ASKED FOR IT!)
*****************************************
Marriage (Part III)
Husband (a doctor) and his wife are having a fight at the breakfast table.
Husband gets up in a rage and says, ‘And you are no
good in bed either,’ and storms out of the house.
After some time he realizes he was nasty and
decides to make amends and rings her up.
She comes to the phone after many rings, and the irritated husband
says, ‘What took you so long to answer to the phone?’
She says, ‘I was in bed.’
‘In bed this early, doing what?’
‘Getting a second opinion!’
(YEP, HE HAD THAT COMING, TOO!)
*****************************************
Marriage (Part IV)
A man has six children and is very proud of his achievement
He is so proud of himself, that he starts calling his
wife,’ Mother of Six’ in spite of her objections.
One night, they go to a party. The man decides that it IS time to go home
and wants to find out if his wife is ready to leave as well. He shouts
at the top of his voice, ‘Shall we go home Mother of Six?’
His wife, irritated by her husband’s lack of discretion,
shouts right back, ‘Any time you’re ready, Father of Four.’
(RIGHT ON, LADY!)
*****************************************
THE SILENT TREATMENT
A man and his wife were having some problems at home
and were giving each other the silent treatment.
Suddenly the man realized that the next day he would need his wife
to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight.
Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece
of paper,’Please wake me at 5:00 AM.’ He left it where he knew she would find it.
The next morning the man woke up, only to discover it
was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight.
Furious, he was about to go to see why his wife hadn’t wakened him when he
noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, ‘It is 5:00 AM. Wake up.’
Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.
*****************************************
God may have created man before woman, but there
is always a rough draft before the masterpiece.
Judy Dear, as you sew, LOL
You might want to check out why the Barbi Twins are outraged with Obama, some Masterful thinking, or why we make so many blond jokes.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,576585,00.html
HI LOI
I saw that yesterday, and most blond jokes don’t bother me, depends on the joke really. I do have a sense of humor, so, go ahead, and tell all the blond jokes you want, you won’t offend me, I don’t think. LOL!
Hope you’re doing good today.
HEY Flag
If you’re up to it, and since it seems so slow here, would love to read another saga from your life. It’s been a while and you did say you would, but, it is up to you. And no, you don’t owe it to me, just asking if you wouldn’t mind.
I can read it tomorrow when I wake up.
Have a good rest of the night.
Judy
I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding on our part.
Iran Earmarks $20M for Militant Groups Who Oppose West
Sunday, November 29, 2009, FOX News
TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian state radio says the country’s parliament has approved a bill earmarking $20 million to support militant groups opposing the West.
It was not immediately clear which groups would receive funding from Iran, but Tehran already backs the Islamic militants Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The report says the money will also be used to investigate alleged U.S. and British human rights abuses and plots against Iran.
State radio said Sunday a committee that includes representatives from the intelligence and foreign ministries will decide how to divide the budget.
The move is seen as a reaction to U.S. and British criticism of Iran’s violent crackdown on protests after the disputed June presidential election.
Good Morning to All!
It’s going to be a nice day in the wilds of Pa. Preparing for the opening day of rifle season for the elusive whitetail deer. This has been more like a holiday all my life, rather than just hunting. Many family members are together for this joyous event.
But this year is different for me and Dad. We aren’t just going hunting, we’re making it an important part of our preparation for the future. Our goal is to get 5 deer, and can a majority of that. On average, we get 45 quarts per deer, all in all, it should fill a second closet of canned goods.
It’s going to get colder (yea!!!) and the herd is very healthy. Should be a great time. I will try to chime in from time to time and say hello, and maybe debate some, but it’s up to the deer at this point.
Hope everyone has a good day, and a good upcoming week!
PEACE!
G!
Anyone care to venture a guess as to what the ‘investigation’ will conclude?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8383713.stm
Inquiry into stolen climate e-mails
By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst, BBC News
The supposed e-mails have been widely circulated on the web
Details of a university inquiry into e-mails stolen from scientists at one of the UK’s leading climate research units are likely to be made public next week.
Announcement of a chair of the inquiry and terms of reference will probably be made on Monday, a source says.
The University of East Anglia’s (UEA) press office did not confirm the date.
But a spokesperson said information about the investigation into the hack at UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) would be made public very soon.
Scientists will be scrutinising the choice of chair and the terms of reference.
One senior climate scientist told me that the chair would have to be a person accepted by both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics as a highly respected figure without strong connections to either group.
BBC News understands that senior individuals at UEA have acknowledged the potential damage to the university’s reputation from the CRU affair and are anxious to clear the institution’s name.
But there is a risk that some people will not accept the findings of any inquiry unless it is fully independent, as demanded by the former UK Chancellor Lord Lawson earlier in the week.
A petition is running on the 10 Downing Street website calling for CRU to be suspended from preparation of any government climate statistics until the allegations have been fully investigated.
Some researchers would not comment until they had seen UEA’s nominated chairman and terms of reference.
But Professor Sir John Houghton, chair of the IPCC’s first science panel, said he would not support an inquiry as many of those demanding one were biased.
Phil Willis MP said the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee – of which he is chair – had written to UEA asking for copies of the e-mails and an explanation. Depending on the response, the committee will decide whether to proceed further.
Professor Sir David King, the former government chief scientist, told BBC News there are three key issues:
how did the leakage occur – was there any payment in the process?
the alleged behaviour of the scientists indicated by the e-mails
does this have any impact on the scientific conclusion?
If an independent inquiry encompassed all three aspects, Professor Sir David said he would support it.
Here’s another “investigation” where we can probably already guess the outcome:
http://www.examiner.com/x-28973-Essex-County-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m11d28-Penn-State-to-investigate-Michael-Mannor-whitewash-him
I say they’ll choose “White Wash”. They are so close to achieving their objectives. They’re not about to let it all slip away.
Iran deciding to ignore the IAEA by government decree.
Iran electing to drop out of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty if the IAEA does not leave them alone.
Bluster about building 10 new nuclear facilities. (This is actually bluster).
Developing a Plutonium trigger.
Wonder what this means.
Link? D13
I am a computer illiterate on how to link to a blog or reference. I am a user…I break ‘em and want others to fix em…, however, the story about the IAEA was on the news (TV) two days ago….there is a reference on Foxnews.com today or yesterday.
CNN was reporting the dropping out of the NPT if they (IAEA and the International Community)do not leave them alone. This was TV both yesterday and today.
The Plutonium trigger was reported by a Russian and French Report ( do not know how reliable ) about 7 days ago. I posted it several days ago.
The ten new centrifuges is on the news today. Saw it on Fox and again on MSNBC. But they reported that it would take years to build them.
I do not know how much of this is threat. The news and the Foxnews.com reported that the new facilities are mainly bluster….but who the hell knows.
Oh, and when I referenced government decree, that is not entirely accurate….it came from the head cleric, whoever that is. I call the clerics the government.
I think it means that in the not too distant future, there will a significant reduction of living humans on the planet.
When will this senseless killing of police officers stop?
4 Police Officers Shot Dead Near Washington State Air Force Base
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Nov. 29: Four officers were shot and killed while sitting in a coffee shop in Lakewood, Wash.
Nov. 29: Four officers were shot and killed while sitting in a coffee shop in Lakewood, Wash.
Four police officers were shot dead in a targeted ambush at a Lakewood, Wash., state coffee house, a sheriff’s official said Sunday.
The attack occurred at Forza Coffee Co., east of McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma, Wash., about 35 miles south of Seattle.
Officers are now searching for one male suspect who opened fire in the shop before fleeing on foot, q13Fox.com reported. Police have not yet ruled out an accomplice.
Pierce County Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said the four officers killed — three men and a woman from the Lakewood Police Department — were in uniform and catching up on paperwork at the beginning of their shifts when they were attacked at 8:15 a.m.
They are the first Lakewood officers killed since the department was formed in 2004.
When the police stop harassing suspects to the point of desperation.
Oh, come on now Flag, what makes you think someone was being harassed? They were in a coffee shop minding their own business, I’m sure. Not all cops harass people.
No man acts to slaughter another without a reason.
Now Flag…we both know better than that.
Do you remember when those 4 cops in Oakland Calif were killed by that guy? It was a routine stop and he opened fire on 5 of them, but one lived, the other 4 died. I know that, because my sister knew and worked with all of them. So, please, I know how you feel about authority and all, but not every single cop out there harasses people.
Wow, BF, even from you, knowing your anti-police stance, that is pretty harsh and unfair.
It will get worse before it gets better.
There are no “good cops” anymore. Don’t believe me? Where are the police who refuse to enforce bad “laws”? Where are the cops who refuse to kick in doors in the middle of the night to enforce “drug laws”? Where are the police who refuse to man the checkpoints? Where are the cops who refuse to be the hired thugs when the IRS wants to make an example of a person who is simply trying to keep their own property? Where are the cops who not only refuse to enforce these “laws” and commit these acts, but take their “constitutional duties” seriously enough to arrest those cops who are not as ethical and do enforce the immoral “laws”? They don’t exist.
I’m not saying anyone should go shooting cops while they sip coffee. Save it for when they are actively engaged in committing evil. Why don’t people understand, for all their tyrannical acts there are, and will continue to be, “blowback” and unintended consequences. I have no sympathy for bad guys who made their own beds.
You want to know where all the cops are to do what you said, ask their chiefs and their higher ups. Cops can’t just go banging on doors and kicking them in without authority from their superiors. Maybe some do, but not all.
Granted, there are some bad cops out there, some who are on the take, some who look the other way, but you can’t judge them all in that same category.
There has to be some state of law, other wise there would be nothing but chaos everywhere, and I would hope that there are some here who think that.
Do you honestly believe that without some order, that the people can do better? Just take the law into their own hands and do what ever? What about all those people who are behind bars, should they be set free? Should they not be punished for their crimes? I don’t mean by being put to death, but if they do the crime, then like the old saying goes, they should do the time for what they have done.
If you commit a crime against some one, should you be allowed to go free, because you don’t think you did anything wrong? IF you and others here feel that way, then maybe I’m in the wrong group of people.
“Just following orders” didn’t cut it in Nuremburg, and doesn’t cut it with me. Good cops would defy bad orders, even if it means they lose their jobs, which is probably why there are no good cops. The system won’t allow them to keep thier jobs. That only confirms what I said.
Most people in prison are not there for harming anyone. Most are there for violating “victimless crimes”. You know, “mala prohibitum” “offenses”. Most people should not be “punished” for their “crimes” by sitting in a cage, but should be paying restitution. Prison is where good people who did non-harmful things that government doesn’t approve of learn to be real aggressive parasites. Prison in the vast majority of cases is the worst possible “solution”.
If anyone attacks an innocent person they should be help accountable IF they survive their attack against a fully-armed, self-owning target. Even in these cases prison is probably not the most sensible response.
“Order” does not come from “laws” which attempt to control volunatary behavior. That is “chaos-by-government” where consequences are not tied to actions in any reasonable way.
“”If anyone attacks an innocent person they should be help accountable IF they survive their attack against a fully-armed, self-owning target”"
I like it, Kent. Unfortunately, the bleeding hearts of our society would be very distressed. Somehow, they believe that sitting in a cage is more compassionate than learning that there are well and truly consequences for one’s actions.
Too bad for them. It is only by giving them the “authority” to make “laws” that violate our human rights and responsibilities that we end up having to listen to them.
I agree with you there. Are you advocating that every citizen without a violent criminal record be required/allowed to conceal carry? I’ve heard that in towns that mandate concealed weapons, crime is very low, if non existant…..
Reply at bottom
And what those who murder some one Kent? Should they be let off? What if some one did harm to your daughter, or any member of your family, I mean serious harm? Would you let them walk, or would you expect some kind of justice be done.
You can’t take the law into your own hands, then you’d be in trouble. Then what?
What about rapists, should they be let go, how about child killers, should they be let go too? You actually think that if some ones robs you at gun point, nothing should be done to them if they are caught? If some one breaks into your home, robs you threatens to kill you or a family member if you don’t cooperate, you won’t do anything? Come on, I can’t believe you wouldn’t do anything.
Very few people are in prison for murder or rape. Those should not be “let off”. These kind of people have a much greater fear of meeting up with an armed target than of getting arrested. Why is that?
Government protects these parasites from you and me much more than it protects you from them. You need to realize this sad fact.
In case of some attack on me or my family, I would not expect “justice” from government. That is like expecting to get milk from a light bulb. Some things can not be fixed, and sometimes you will feel the need to do “the wrong thing” and accept the consequences. Someone harming my daughter might just be one of those times for me. In a free society I would gladly face arbitration from my peers if that happened. As I say, only in the current “system” is “justice” a foreign concept.
If someone breaks in to my house right now, I would shoot them. Yes, I am armed right now, like all times. I am under much greater danger of being kidnapped (“arrested”) by agents of the state than of being successfully victimized by a freelance thug. Same thing with being mugged at gunpoint. If they are successful at that career choice it is because too many people are afraid of being caught carrying (and using) the proper self-defensive tools.
I would do what was appropriate, but I would NOT rely on their kindred spirits of the police department.
I didn’t see this before I put my answer from your previous post. But please read what I put down below.
Here is what you are supporting when you support the imprisonment of people who have committed “crimes” against no one but “the state” and support those who enforce such “laws”: link
I’m sorry, but this is a perfect illustration of the evil that is acceptible to everyone on the pro-government side.
Okay Kent, I think we have come to an impasse here, and I think we’re not going to get anywhere with this, really I don’t. I have had several arguments with Flag about things, and I’m pretty sure we have agreed to disagree, and I think this is one of those things with you.
I love ya Kent, but I really don’t want to argue with you about this. You have your beliefs and I have mine, and I think it best to leave it at that.
You’re not going to change my mind about the way I feel about this, and I know I’m certainly not going to change yours anytime soon.
And about that old German SS, I won’t go there either, because you might not agree with what I have to say about that, I don’t know. But, right now, I’m going to take a dinner break, and if you’re still here and want to know what I think, then I’ll tell you gladly.
Hi Judy,
I’d like to know your thoughts. I’m not looking for an argument either….;) I’m just curious.
Hey Cyndi
I’ll answer at the bottom, gets a little squishy here.
I am fine with agreeing to disagree. I’m never looking for a fight, although I will not shy away from explaining why I hold to the principles I do when asked.
I believe you too Kent, and thanks for our truce too. You’re a good guy, and like with Flag, there are just certain things I won’t go into.
Perhaps you should change the terminology you use….try another word that “suspects”.
Below is an excerpt from an article at AT. I thought it interesting to consider….
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/if_we_sacrifice_jerusalem_why.html
…..Let’s pretend there is no Pax Americana. Obama sounds like he’s ready to shaft Israel, which certainly would be consistent with his whole upbringing and his locked-in Leftist worldview. Jerusalem, according to the administration, is doing the dirty on the Palestinians by adding housing in the city for Jews. Funny thing: Nobody seemed to mind much when Obama sent that message to Benjamin Netanyahu (least of all the Israelis, who just ignored it).
Well, the Left has managed to harbor an inveterate hatred of Israel while not losing many Jewish liberal votes. Shafting Israel is a no-lose proposition for them. And still they keep their liberal Jewish voters. It is a miracle to behold.
No wonder Obama wants to walk away from that troublesome little country that gets all the Arabs so angry. What’s he got to lose?
Well, Taiwan, for one thing. There’s another troublesome little country right off the coast of mighty China, which owns a lot of U.S. debt and had some mighty suspicious lines into the last two Democrat administrations. Nothing would please China more than having the U.S. Navy withdraw its protection from Taiwan.
See? Obama’s making peace already.
Then there’s South Korea, another troublesome partner.
Why not have the Kim family take over the South? It’s no skin off our noses. The conquest of South Korea could probably feed the hungry people of the North for years and years before the whole peninsula went kaput. And Kim Jong-il could finally get his nukes to work.
We could dump Afghanistan, too. Obama is turning up his nose at Hamid Karzai because his reelection looked dubious…which makes Kabul sound just like Chicago. It takes awesome gall for a Chicago Machine politician to criticize an impoverished and nearly ungovernable third-world country for its electoral imperfections.
Well, let’s send Mayor Daley over there to fix Afghan politics. Maybe he can teach them to make the dead rise up on Election Day. That way, Afghanistan will come up to the high Illinois standards of democratic probity.
That solves our biggest foreign policy problems, right?
But that’s not all. Why should the United States defend Europe against the Russians? Or protect the free nations of Asia against China and North Korea? Why not let them all go down? And why do we have to defend free trade in the world? Why are we in the Persian Gulf? Just think of all the money we can save — and we’ll need that money if O-Mob-O-Care passes Congress.
We’ve subsidized Europe’s and Asia’s defenses for sixty years. Maybe Uncle Vlad the Poisoner over in Moscow would be willing to protect Europe against militant Islam just the way he did with Chechnya. For a price, of course.
To be sure, if we walk away from our allies, they will inevitably build up their own nukes and missiles. Japan could have WMDs rather quickly, with South Korea and Taiwan not far behind. The French would be happy to supply nukes to the emerging EU army. Israel and the Saudis both want to stop the mad Twelver Cult in Tehran before it gets nukes. All nations want to survive; they may hate each other, but that has never stopped alliances. Europeans who hated each other still made alliances for a thousand years before the United States became a world power. They can do it again.
Pax Americana has been the most benevolent imperial enterprise in all of human history, bar none. Our good friends in Europe love to rant at us, especially if they can get us to knuckle under on Euro-socialism, which puts them in charge of the United States. After all, that’s the dominant goal of the EU and U.N. corruptocracy. That’s what the global warming fraud has been all about.
The newly appointed president of the EU just declared that 2009 is the first year of global governance. Guess who gets to do the global governance? It’s not us. No, this is Year One of the Belgian Empire.
Americans forget that we’ve defended the civilized world for almost a hundred years because the Europeans couldn’t be trusted to do it. Europe has been the source of almost every single act of aggressive imperialism in the last two centuries, from Napoleon to Bismarck, Karl Marx, the Kaiser, Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin in the Cold War. Japan is the sole significant imperialist outlier. Our liberal media constantly cover up that inconvenient fact.
But it is true, and we forget it at our peril.
Euro-imperialism is rising again today under the smiling face of EU socialism. That’s Obama’s creed, as we know. That’s why he keeps apologizing for the United States to all the socialists of the world.
Obama’s mental blinders come straight from Karl Marx’s Prussia in the 19th century and from V.I. Lenin in 1917. Now those were real imperialism, not the Coca-Cola kind that has our European friends crying in their beer.
If we walk away from the world, the Israelis, the Saudis, the Brits, the Czechs and Poles, the Germans, Japanese and South Koreans have to accelerate their own nuke and missile defenses, because in the nuclear age, that’s their only chance for survival. China may not really want to see Japan owning nuclear weapons and missiles. They still smart from the pain of Nanking. Obama’s deep bow to Emperor Akihito did not buy him any friends in Beijing.
Tehran already tried to stir up riots in Mecca. Without the United States to control the Gulf, what is to keep the Iranians from overrunning Saudi Arabia? They have the population and the military power to do it. If the U.S. goes home, all the Iranians have to do is bust through the desert (good tank country) and go straight to the Holy Cities of Islam. Think they wouldn’t dare, if they owned a nice set of nukes and missiles? Who would stop them? Obama?
For sixty years we’ve lived with the fantasy that the world has become a safe place at last, and that peace is the natural condition of mankind. Let’s see if Barack Obama is fool enough to tinker with that delicately balanced contraption.
The last time a delicate power balance broke apart, the immediate result was World War I, Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution, and Hitler. If Obama walks away from Afghanistan, Israel, and Taiwan, then we will see Europe and Asia switching all their alliances very fast. Pull out that American peg from the big circus tent, and it won’t look anything like peace on earth, good will to men, forever and ever, amen.
It might look a lot more like August 1914.
Cyndi: “Are you advocating that every citizen without a violent criminal record be required/allowed to conceal carry? I’ve heard that in towns that mandate concealed weapons, crime is very low, if non existant…..”
Government should have no say in the matter one way or another. I would never demand that anyone carry a gun if they don’t want to. No gun “laws” of any sort, ever.
Any “laws” that prohibit “violent criminals” from being armed only end up hurting the rest of the people. If a person is a “violent criminal” he will not comply with the “laws” forbidding him to carry a gun anyway. The problem is that once you allow a government to decide who is a “violent criminal” and decide who is allowed (or required) to carry a weapon, you open up a whole Pandora’s Box of “interpretation of the law” and it never helps honest people. Never.
I agree that a violent criminal won’t comply with the laws. I admit that the current situation only makes it worse. So what’s the solution?
Remove all “laws” regulating weapons and only worry about intentional misuse of those weapons. Don’t penalize people for self-defense, and if there is doubt, side with the person who appears to have acted in self defense. Will there be mistakes? Yes. Just as there are innocent people in prison and on death row now. (Google “Corey Maye”) Nothing is perfect.
Mostly it comes down to “worry about your own life and don’t meddle with others who are harming no innocent person even if their voluntary choices disgust and repel you”. There is no way to impose your values on others without giving them the “authority” to do the same to you. Focus on what matters: agression and fraud. The rest will sort itself out in the best possible (not “perfect”) way.
I can go with that. I don’t need to google Cory Maye to know that there are innocent people on death row and in prision.
Maybe after the coming Great Collapse, the Remnant will set up society in the manner you mention. It would probably better than what we have now, and certainly wouldn’t be any worse.
Martin Armstrong is an economic cycle theorist whose works I have been reading for the past 6 months . He is currently in federal prison at Fort Dix and his work is published thru scribd at http://www.scribd.com/kzuur58. Mr. Armstrong created a computer based forecasting program that was accurate enough in the 90′s to attract the attention of several foreign governments as well as the CIA.
He has been held almost 9 years for contempt of court (not quite the longest on record) and has only recently began an additional 5 year sentence for his original alleged crime of securities fraud. He has been held longer than the alleged crimes warranted already. The clients who where affected by his arrest and the seizure of his accounts have all been repaid 100%.
He currently has writs of habeas corpus before the supreme court and before another in New Jersey where Ft Dix is located. According to the law governing the prison system, prisoners cannot be moved without the approval of the court. Right now, with a new warden in place for 5 days, officials at Ft Dix are making arrangements to move Mr. Armstrong to a prison in Brooklyn.
This is what Nate Martin says about the situation: “First let’s review the facts… whatever you believe about his innocence or guilt or innocence of any crime, the facts are that he was never put on trial for any crime. He was held in contempt of court for not producing what the judge ordered him to produce, something which he claims he didn’t have. He was placed in MDC Manhattan and was basically TORTURED. According to Nancy, he was locked in solitary confinement for almost the entire duration, suffering days on end and at times was intentionally awaken every hour or so all night long, night after night, in an attempt to get him to sign a confession. He was repeatedly told that he would not get the chance to see his 91 year old mother alive again if he did not sign the confession. This took place off and on for SEVEN YEARS. Then one day a huge convict, “a known homicidal maniac” named George, was locked in his cell with him where he proceeded to beat and strangle him until he thought he was dead. Later, according to Armstrong, a fellow inmate stated that the guards watched the beating and refused to open the door to stop it. He lost most of his teeth, and now, over two years later is still missing them because the prison system only has one dentist for over 5,000 inmates. He suffered a detached retina, broken ribs and other internal injuries that left him in intensive care.
They offered him a plea agreement to TIME SERVED if he would plea guilty and after 7 years, he could take no more and agreed, obviously under heavy duress. However, after pleading guilty, the judge instead of living up to the plea agreement sentenced him to the maximum amount allowable and he is now not scheduled for release until September of 2011, first eligible for parole in March 2011. His current location is at Ft. Dix, New Jersey where he is only 20 minutes from his mother and sister, a relatively safe facility. His sister takes his infirmed mother to visit him once a week, but she will not be able to make the journey into Manhattan. He is now under great stress as he believes he may not survive while inside the new location.
Inside this facility, I am told, he will be basically strip searched with nearly every movement, and he is not granted some of the “privileges” that he currently has access to, thus producing his work will be impaired, if not eliminated all together.”
I am not a lawyer, never even played one on television, but this seems to me to be a travesty. Please pass this information along to anyone that could help. Letters and phone call count. Contacts are provided at the scribd link
I saw something on here a couple of days ago that got me to thinking and ended up inspiring this column: Perfect-sized states?
If you have time and the inclination to have your beliefs challenged, give it a visit.
I like it, Kent! I request one minor change however. Can we keep Floriduh and lose California?
Okay, about that old German SS, and how they want to put him on trial. I ask, WHY? For what I read, he was just a guard, was he not, and he was only following orders, right? Yes, I know they put all the others on trial if they were still alive, and for what I understand about this one, he is the last of them that they want to try for doing what he did.
My thoughts are, and mind you, these are only my thought here, okay. I think what good will it do to try this guy? What I mean is, he’s 89 years old, not in good health for what the article said, and he is looking at 15 years if he lives that long, so what good can become of it?
Granted, there will be descendants of those who were murdered by the Germans in those awful ways they did what they did. But will it really solve anything now for something that happened over 65 years ago? Sure, those descendants will get satisfaction for it, but to me, it’s like paying restitution’s for slavery to those who had family that were slaves.
I know there are those descendants who still hate the Germans for what they did, as much as there are descendants of slaves who hate whites for what they did. I believe it was all wrong all the way around the Jewish people were treated, but it wasn’t all Jewish people either. There were a lot of Polish people who were put into these encampments as well. What about their restitution’s, do they get any benefit from it as well?
My mother worked with a gal who was in one of those encampments with her mother. Her brother and father were murdered by the Germans, and as far as I know, I’m not sure if she had any other relatives in those camps. But my mother said, that, that gal had a number tattooed on her arm and she proceeded to tell my mom about when she was there as a little girl. She told my mom for what she could remember what it was like there, and she said it was not a very nice place to be. I don’t know if this lady is still alive or not, my mom lost contact with after she retired from work some 30 years ago.
I also remember when we lived in Burbank, Ca. there was this guy who owned or worked at this liquor store where I would pick up a couple things from time to time. Anyway, there were a group of school kids there, and they were not being very good there, and that guy told them to leave, they didn’t, he got angry, and they asked him, what’s the matter with you old man, what are you German or something, that guy then chased those kids out of the store but before he did, he showed them the number tattoo on his arm and told them he was not, but he was Jewish and he was at one of those camps. Those kids then apologized to him after that. He then told them about what happened to him while being there, although he didn’t say much, because he said he doesn’t like to talk about it.
Don’t know why I told you this, but I felt it was within this subject of the old German SS guard. But like I said before, I don’t/can’t see what good it’s going to do to put this guy on trial for something that happened 65 years ago.
So, there you have it, those are my thoughts on this, and why and what I believe. Not sure if either one of those people were at Auschwitz, but I can only imagine how they felt. Not too sure if either one of those people are still alive or not either. You figure, my mom is 87, so it’s a very real possibility that they could be. After all, my mom was in her early 50′s when she retired, and I’m 58 now, so that was a long time ago.
I agree that it is pointless to try an 89 year-old man for something he did in his youth. That isn’t what I was referring to in my comment about “just following orders” though. This was the excuse used by many of the foot-soldiers and guards of the Nazis, and it was not accepted as a defense during their trials at Nuremburg. People are responsible for their own actions no matter who has told them to do something wrong. Humans have the ability to obey or not, knowing there will be consequences either way.
Thanks Judy.
When I was in High school, one of my English teachers had the number tatooed on her forearm. She told us where she received it, but not any more than that.
As for putting that old prison guard on trial, I have mixed emotions. I agree that there really isn’t much that’s going to change if he rots in jail for the rest of his life. On the other hand, knowing that yet another person MAY have gotten away with murder, doesn’t set well either. Then, I wonder if it really WAS cold blooded murder, or did he kill because he feared he would be killed himself, if he didn’t kill as ordered? As Black Flag said the other day, why die a futile death? Say the guard in question chose not to follow the kill order, and is subsequently shot and killed for not following orders. Another guard steps up and carries out the order. So now we have an additional victim. And what if that additional victim had a family that depended on him? Our hypothetical guard probably wouldn’t have had much time to comtemplate his predicament and needed to make an immediate decision. I can tell you which one I would chose. I would follow the order and see my familiy again. Of course there would be plenty of armchair moralists passing judgement on me for it. It wouldn’t much matter to me if it meant I got to keep me and my family alive, at least until the armchair moralists got around to holding me accountable for the crimes of others.
You bring up very good points there Cyndi, but we have to remember that was over 65 years now, and I believe he was following orders and if he didn’t, there was a very good possibility that he too could have been shot.
Personally, I thought Hitler was nuts. But, I remember hearing a long time ago, and please tell me if I’m wrong here. But, I remember hearing that he was half Jewish and for some reason he hated the Jews for some reason or other, and that’s why he did what he did. Makes no sense to me really. Doesn’t matter to me what a person’s nationality is, that’s not what makes a person who they are.
I heard Hitler had advanced syphillis and that’s what made him ‘crazy’. I don’t know if he was crazy or just plain evil. I, too have heard that he was half Jewish, but I don’t know for sure. I also don’t know if he really hated Jews or was indifferent and just used them to further his agenda. Now as then, there was no shortage of anti-semitism. The Jews made a convenient enemy for him to rally the masses against. Hilter also used the confiscated wealth of the Jews to pay for all the social programs he promised the people. If I remember, 1942 was the year that most of the Jew’s wealth ‘hit’ the system. Over all, I think Hitler would have used any ethnic group to suit his ends. Lenin did the same thing based in class. In America, we a combination of both. Whites are considered hateful racist oppressors (by certain groups) and the rich are demonized for ‘stealing’ the wealth. I’m concerned where this all will lead, given what the history tell us.
I don’t know what I would do unless I was in that position. I would hope I would do the right thing. I would rather be dead than to have to explain to my children why I killed innocent people simply to save my own life. .
It makes me think about the old man, though. His moment of truth, if we imagine he killed to save his own skin, was when he chose to enter “the service”. From that moment on his complicity with evil was sealed. He put on the uniform and took responsibility for the acts of the group he chose to be associated with. He was probably thinking his side would win and the history books would call him and his “brothers” heroes. It is a gamble he lost.
But think what would/could have happened if we didn’t win the war though Kent, Things would be so much different here than they are now,
But, then, that’s a whole different story that I don’t feel like getting into now.
So, on that note, I will be you adieu, and say my good nights.
Have a good rest of the night Kent, and a great day tomorrow.
You take care.
Its hard for any of us to say for sure how we’d react in any given situation if we haven’t actually been in it before. You say you’d rather be dead than tell your children you killed innocent people so you could stay alive. Chances are you would never have to discuss it with them, and even if you did, they’d probably forgive you. Certainly I wouldn’t pass judgement on someone for that one. That said, I agree with you that when someone joins up a group that advocates murder of innocents, things get a bit dicey. Still, I’d be very reluctant to assume evil, or pass judgement on the low ranks of the group. American service men join up with the belief they are defending their families and nation. I don’t think that makes them evil. Our government as of yet, is not systematically murdering its own citizens(Death Row inmates excepted) for political/ecological/economical purposes. Should our government begin to do that, I would hope that service men and women, would resign in protest. Of course, they may not have the luxury of doing that. I’m sure some of Hitler’s troops were very uncomfortable with what was going on but had no escape. Who could fault them for getting along as best they could? I won’t do it.
Even if I never told my children of my treachery, I would still know. I could not live with myself if I killed innocent people just because I was ordered to. Maybe it is just because I am not very obedient to “authority”… I don’t know.
“Our government as of yet, is not systematically murdering its own citizens”
Ignoring for a fact that the government owns no one (“its own citizens”) are you not aware of “The Civil War”, “The Indian Wars”, Ruby Ridge, Mount Carmel, “MOVE”, and policies that have high numbers of “collateral damage” deaths such as the “War on (some) Drugs”, “gun control”, the response to hurricane Katrina, etc.?
There’s a lot of gray area. Don’t forget that most people don’t spend a lot of time contemplating government actions. In most of the instances you mentioned both sides were armed. To me an innocent is someone unarmed and not behaving in a agressive manner. I’m not talking about some muslim wife a of terrorist getting blown to pieces while her husband hides behind her burqah, so to speak. Unless she’s a US citizen or legal resident I don’t include her the ‘own citizen’ catagory.
Cyndi-
“To me an innocent is someone unarmed and not behaving in a agressive manner”.
I am never “innocent” in your eyes in that case, since although I do not behave aggressively, I am always armed.
If someone attacks your home (Waco and Ruby Ridge), and you defend it, you are not the one “behaving in a agressive manner”. That burden falls upon those who are attacking you. It is your right and responsibility to defend you home and family from aggressors, even if they wear badges or uniforms.
The more you know about what happened in those instances, the real background and events, the less you would blame the victims of government aggression for their deaths.
And I, too, would not be innocent.
“Unarmed”??
Never.
Well, except visiting Judy
I’m taking a test today for a carry permit. Then I go for training Tues, Wed, and Thursday. Then I take my training receipt to the Court House, pay them over a hundred dollars, take a form from the Court House to the Sheriff’s Department where they finger print me, take my picture and background check me. Then some council meets and decides whether to issue me the permit, which if I’m lucky I’ll have by February.
I started this process in September waiting for a class.
Guys,
Just being in possession of a weapon doesn’t make you ‘agressive’ to me. Its violent behavior combined with possessing a weapon that changes it for me. Or just being violent with fist and feet. And for the record, if I’m shooting at you, by all means shoot back.
In my above example, I was thinking about Jews that were rounded up and sent to the death camps. NOT militia types standing up to the US government for whatever reason, valid or not. Don’t you agree that those are two different situations?
No. Both are people being murdered by government. The armed people just understand it is better to die fighting than be slaughtered like sheep. That’s all.
Okay.
Have a good night Cyndi and hope to see you on the morrow.
You take care now.
Looks like those lying ‘racist’ Birthers are at it again…..
http://atlah.org/atlahworldwide/?p=1240
Homeland Security Launches Investigation of Dr. Manning
Birdman- Why ask permission to exercise a basic human right? If you were “required” to apply (and pay for) for an “eating permit” would you? Is armed self defense a right or a privilege?
I’m not putting you down for trying to get a permit, I am just wondering if you really think such permits are justifiable.
Cyndi P- One last point on your “armed militia or Jews being rounded up” question. Do you know the history of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising? This was an example of some poorly armed Jews deciding they were not going to be rounded up quietly and successfully holding back the Nazis for weeks before being overpowered. And it’s another reason why the word “insurgents” does not make me have the knee-jerk reaction the Pentagon’s “news releases” would wish me to have.
Kent,
I lived in Germany for over seven years and I’m quite familiar with Nazi Germany and what happened to the Jews. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising delayed the inevitable by a few weeks. So what. Wouldn’t the Jews, all of them and many others as well, have been better off by acknowledging, early on, the threat they faced and dealing with it? I wonder how many denied what was happening until they got off the cattle cars and saw the words Arbeit Macht Frei. I suspect that some of them still didn’t get it and happly walked into the ‘showers’ with a smile on their faces.
I’m a believer in not letting things deteriorate to the point that armed conflict is the only solution. Unfortunately, I believe were are now past that point in our current situation. When it turns violent, I won’t be blaming those who have taken up arms.
Yes, they only delayed the inevitable, but all of life is only delaying our inevitable deaths. When confronted with evil it is preferable, in my eyes, to fight back and take a few with you. They also serve as an inspiration and reminder to the people who remember their stand. That is not a waste, and is why we should never forget. That is why I can’t just write it off with a “So what”.
It would have been better if they had dealt with the threat early. “Patriotism” prevents people from seeing the truth. Had someone assassinated Hitler early on, he would have been portrayed as a kook or worse. Jews (and others) should have never obeyed the “gun control” laws that were passed (and which the US’s “Gun Control Act of 1968″ is an almost verbatim translation of). Those who see what is coming are always defamed by those who don’t wish to see.
I don’t want armed conflict, but I will make certain if it is forced on me that I can go out fighting and take a few of the b**tards with me.