What follows is the actual text of a letter written to the Boy King by a 95 year old WWII vet. I saved this with the intent of posting it, then lost track of the text. Found it again today, so here you go:
"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"
2010/01/31
2010/01/26
The State of the Union...
...is (take your pick) fractured, pissed, bankrupt, delusional...
In the last 12 months, we've added another two-plus trillion to the national debt and another eight trillion in unfunded liabilities to our total obligations. This ten trillion is money that was stolen from us just as surely as if it was taken in an armed robbery - it's just that money stolen in this way bears interest that future generations have to pay. Unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies and business failures have soared. The government has taken over two automakers, more than a hundred banks and bailed out a gaggle of Wall Street insiders - all with money they had to print out of thin air.
All the while, the Boy King and his fellow travelers have been focused intently on their wet dream - socialized medicine. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
We're a banana republic! When a once great nation is destroying itself by debt and delusion, we need to pay attention. I dread watching that petty little Marxist for an hour, but the collapse of an empire is a major chapter in history. To see the Pretender try to spin the last twelve months of damage to America will be worth the price.
So yes, I'll be watching the State of the Union speech. In American politics it's taboo to call a liar a liar during a live speech, so the idea has been advanced that the Republican "opposition" should just laugh tonight whenever he tells a particularly tall one or proposes some new gimmick. (That was for real?? We thought he was kidding!")
Laughter is a powerful weapon against a narcissist. Being laughed at on live TV will drive him nuts and throw him off his game. It would be great to see him lose it because America laughed at him. (And who knows - if the Republicans find that kind of fortitude they just might stumble on relevance as well. It's funny how these things work...)
In the aftermath, I'll have comments...
In the last 12 months, we've added another two-plus trillion to the national debt and another eight trillion in unfunded liabilities to our total obligations. This ten trillion is money that was stolen from us just as surely as if it was taken in an armed robbery - it's just that money stolen in this way bears interest that future generations have to pay. Unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies and business failures have soared. The government has taken over two automakers, more than a hundred banks and bailed out a gaggle of Wall Street insiders - all with money they had to print out of thin air.
All the while, the Boy King and his fellow travelers have been focused intently on their wet dream - socialized medicine. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
We're a banana republic! When a once great nation is destroying itself by debt and delusion, we need to pay attention. I dread watching that petty little Marxist for an hour, but the collapse of an empire is a major chapter in history. To see the Pretender try to spin the last twelve months of damage to America will be worth the price.
So yes, I'll be watching the State of the Union speech. In American politics it's taboo to call a liar a liar during a live speech, so the idea has been advanced that the Republican "opposition" should just laugh tonight whenever he tells a particularly tall one or proposes some new gimmick. (That was for real?? We thought he was kidding!")
Laughter is a powerful weapon against a narcissist. Being laughed at on live TV will drive him nuts and throw him off his game. It would be great to see him lose it because America laughed at him. (And who knows - if the Republicans find that kind of fortitude they just might stumble on relevance as well. It's funny how these things work...)
In the aftermath, I'll have comments...
2010/01/23
The Day the Dollar Died
In a morbid way, I'm enjoying the storyline of this work of all too plausible fiction set in the very near future.
It's at http://johngaltfla.com/blog3/category/the-day-the-dollar-died-series/
It's at http://johngaltfla.com/blog3/category/the-day-the-dollar-died-series/
The following editorial was forwarded to me. I do not know the original source, but regardless, the content is unsettling.
By Gemma Meyer
People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement).
Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveal trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.
America’s structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly Western, not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.
Writing letters to the press, manning stands at county fairs, hosting fund-raising dinners, attending rallies, setting up conferences, writing your Congressmen – - that is what you know, and what you are comfortable with. Those are the political methods you’ve created for yourselves to keep your country on track and to ensure political accountability.
But woe to you if – - or more likely, when – - the rules change. White Americans may soon find themselves unable or unwilling to stand up to challenge the new political methods that will be the inevitable result of the ethnic metamorphosis now taking place in America. Unable to cope with the new rules of the game – - violence, mob riots, intimidation through accusations of racism, demands for proportionality based on racial numbers, and all the other social and political weapons used by the have-nots to bludgeon treasure and power from the haves – - Americans, like others before them, will no doubt cave in. They will compromise away their independence and ultimately their way of life.
That is, exactly what happened in South Africa. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen.
Faced with revolution in the streets, strikes, civil unrest and the sheer terror and murder practiced by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC), the white government simply capitulated in order to achieve “peace.”
Westerners need peace. They need order and stability. They are builders and planners. But what we got was the peace of the grave for our society.
The Third World is different – - different peoples with different pasts and different cultures. Yet Westerners continue to mistake the psychology of the Third World and its peoples. Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are perfect examples of those mistakes. Sierra Leone is in perpetual civil war, and Zimbabwe – - once the thriving, stable Rhodesia – - is looting the very people (the white men) who feed the country. Yet Westerners do not admit that the same kind of savagery could come to America when enough immigrants of the right type assert themselves. The fact is, Americans are sitting ducks for Third World exploitation of the Western conscience of compassion.
Those in the West who forced South Africa to surrender to the ANC and its leaders did not consider Africa to be the dangerous, corrupt, and savage place it is now in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Those Western politicians now have a similar problem looming on their own doorsteps: the demand for power and treasure from the non-Western peoples inside the realm.
It is already too late for South Africa, but not for Americans if enough people strengthen their spine and take on the race terrorists, the armies of the “politically correct” and, most dangerous of all, the craven politicians who believe “compassionate conservatism” will buy them a few more votes, a few more days of peace.
White South Africans, you should remember, have been in that part of Africa for the same amount of time whites have inhabited North America; yet ultimately South Africans voted for their very own suicide. We are not so very different from you.
We lost our country through skillful propaganda, pressure from abroad (not least from the U.S.A.) unrelenting charges of “oppression” and “racism,” and the shrewd assessment by African tyrants that the white man has many Achilles’ heels, the most significant of which are his compassion, his belief in the “equality of man,” and his “love your neighbor” philosophy – - none of which are part of Third World’s history.
The mainline churches played a big role in the demise of Western influence throughout Africa, too; especially in South Africa. Today’s tyrants were yesterday’s mission-school protégés. Many dictators in Africa were men of the cloth. They knew their clerical collars would deflect criticism and obfuscate their real aims, which had nothing whatever to do with the “brotherhood of man.”
Other tyrants, like the infamous Idi Amin, were trained and schooled by the whites themselves, at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard. After receiving the best from the West, they unleashed a resentful bloodlust against their benefactors.
From what I have seen and read thus far, I fear Americans will capitulate just as we did. Americans are, generally, a soft lot. They don’t want to quarrel or obstruct the claims of those who believe they were wronged. They like peace and quiet, and they want to compromise and be nice.
A television program that aired in South Africa showed a town meeting somewhere in Southern California where people met to complain about falling standards in the schools. Whites who politely spoke at the meeting clearly resented the influx of Mexican immigrants into their community. When a handful of Chicanos at the back hall shouted and waved their hands at them, the whites simply shrunk back into their seats rather than tell the noisemakers to shut up. They didn’t want to quarrel.
In America, the courts are still the final arbiters of society’s laws. But what will happen when your future majority refuses to abide by court rulings – - as in Zimbabwe. What will happen when the new majority says the judges are racists, and that they refuse to acknowledge “white man’s justice”? What will happen when the courts are filled with their people, or their sympathizers? In California, Proposition 187 has already been overturned.
What will you do when the future non-white majority decides to change the names of streets and cities? What will you do when they no longer want to use money that carries the portraits of old, dead white “racists” and slave owners? Will you cave in, like you did on flying the Confederate flag? What about the national anthem? Your official language?
Don’t laugh. When the “majority” took over in South Africa the first targets were our national symbols.
In another generation, America may well face what Africa is now experiencing – - invasions of private land by the “have-nots;” the decline in health care quality; roads and buildings in disrepair; the banishment of your history from the education of the young; the revolutionization of your justice system.
In South Africa today, only 9 percent of murderers end up in jail. Court dockets are regularly purchased and simply disappear. Magistrates can be bribed as can the prison authorities, making escapes commonplace. Vehicle and airplane licenses are regularly purchased, and forged school and university certificates are routine.
What would you think of the ritual slaughter of animals in your neighbor’s backyard? How do you clean up the blood and entrails that litter your suburban streets? How do you feel about the practice of witchcraft, in which the parts of your girls and boys are needed for “medicinal” purposes? Hoe do you react to the burning of witches?
Don’t laugh. All that is quite common in South Africa today.
Don’t imagine that government officials caught with their fingers in the till will be punished. Excuses – - like the need to overcome generations of white racism – - will be found to exonerate the guilty.
In fact, known criminals will be voted into office because of a racial solidarity among the majority that doesn’t exist among the whites. When Ian Smith of the old Rhodesia tried to stand up to the world, white South African politicians were among the Westerners pressuring him to surrender.
When Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe murders his political opponents, ignores unfavorable court decisions, terrorizes the population and siphons off millions from the state treasury for himself and his friends, South Africa’s new President Thabo Mbeki holds his hand and declares his support. That just happened a few weeks ago.
Your tax dollars will go to those who don’t earn and don’t pay. In South Africa, organizations that used to have access to state funds such as old age homes, the arts, and veteran’s services, are simply abandoned.
What will happen is that Western structures in America will be either destroyed from without, or transformed from within, used to suit the goals of the new rulers. And they will reign either through terror, as in Zimbabwe today, or exert other corrupt pressures to obtain, or buy votes. Once power is in the hands of aliens, don’t expect loyalty or devotion to principle from those whose jobs are at stake. One of the most surprising and tragic components of the disaster in South Africa is how many previously anti-ANC whites simply moved to the other side.
One you lose social, cultural, and political dominance, there is no getting it back again.
Unfortunately, your habits and values work against you. You cannot fight terror and street mobs with letters to your Congressmen. You cannot fight accusations of racism with prayer meetings. You cannot appeal to the goodness of your fellow man when the fellow man despises you for your weakness and hacks off the arms and legs of his political opponents.
To survive, Americans must never lose the power they now enjoy to people from alien cultures. Above all, don’t put yourselves to the test of fighting only when your backs are against the wall. You will probably fail.
Millions around the world want your good life. But make no mistake: They care not for the high-minded ideals of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and your Constitution. What they want are your possessions, your power, and your status.
And they already know that their allies among you, the “human rights activists,” the skillful lawyers and the left-wing politicians will fight for them, and not for you. They will exploit your compassions and your Christian charity, and your good will.
They have studied you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and they know your weaknesses as well.
They know what to do.
Do you?"
Gemma Meyer is the nom de plume of a South African Journalist
By Gemma Meyer
People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement).
Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveal trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.
America’s structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly Western, not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.
Writing letters to the press, manning stands at county fairs, hosting fund-raising dinners, attending rallies, setting up conferences, writing your Congressmen – - that is what you know, and what you are comfortable with. Those are the political methods you’ve created for yourselves to keep your country on track and to ensure political accountability.
But woe to you if – - or more likely, when – - the rules change. White Americans may soon find themselves unable or unwilling to stand up to challenge the new political methods that will be the inevitable result of the ethnic metamorphosis now taking place in America. Unable to cope with the new rules of the game – - violence, mob riots, intimidation through accusations of racism, demands for proportionality based on racial numbers, and all the other social and political weapons used by the have-nots to bludgeon treasure and power from the haves – - Americans, like others before them, will no doubt cave in. They will compromise away their independence and ultimately their way of life.
That is, exactly what happened in South Africa. I know, because I was there and I saw it happen.
Faced with revolution in the streets, strikes, civil unrest and the sheer terror and murder practiced by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC), the white government simply capitulated in order to achieve “peace.”
Westerners need peace. They need order and stability. They are builders and planners. But what we got was the peace of the grave for our society.
The Third World is different – - different peoples with different pasts and different cultures. Yet Westerners continue to mistake the psychology of the Third World and its peoples. Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are perfect examples of those mistakes. Sierra Leone is in perpetual civil war, and Zimbabwe – - once the thriving, stable Rhodesia – - is looting the very people (the white men) who feed the country. Yet Westerners do not admit that the same kind of savagery could come to America when enough immigrants of the right type assert themselves. The fact is, Americans are sitting ducks for Third World exploitation of the Western conscience of compassion.
Those in the West who forced South Africa to surrender to the ANC and its leaders did not consider Africa to be the dangerous, corrupt, and savage place it is now in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Those Western politicians now have a similar problem looming on their own doorsteps: the demand for power and treasure from the non-Western peoples inside the realm.
It is already too late for South Africa, but not for Americans if enough people strengthen their spine and take on the race terrorists, the armies of the “politically correct” and, most dangerous of all, the craven politicians who believe “compassionate conservatism” will buy them a few more votes, a few more days of peace.
White South Africans, you should remember, have been in that part of Africa for the same amount of time whites have inhabited North America; yet ultimately South Africans voted for their very own suicide. We are not so very different from you.
We lost our country through skillful propaganda, pressure from abroad (not least from the U.S.A.) unrelenting charges of “oppression” and “racism,” and the shrewd assessment by African tyrants that the white man has many Achilles’ heels, the most significant of which are his compassion, his belief in the “equality of man,” and his “love your neighbor” philosophy – - none of which are part of Third World’s history.
The mainline churches played a big role in the demise of Western influence throughout Africa, too; especially in South Africa. Today’s tyrants were yesterday’s mission-school protégés. Many dictators in Africa were men of the cloth. They knew their clerical collars would deflect criticism and obfuscate their real aims, which had nothing whatever to do with the “brotherhood of man.”
Other tyrants, like the infamous Idi Amin, were trained and schooled by the whites themselves, at Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard. After receiving the best from the West, they unleashed a resentful bloodlust against their benefactors.
From what I have seen and read thus far, I fear Americans will capitulate just as we did. Americans are, generally, a soft lot. They don’t want to quarrel or obstruct the claims of those who believe they were wronged. They like peace and quiet, and they want to compromise and be nice.
A television program that aired in South Africa showed a town meeting somewhere in Southern California where people met to complain about falling standards in the schools. Whites who politely spoke at the meeting clearly resented the influx of Mexican immigrants into their community. When a handful of Chicanos at the back hall shouted and waved their hands at them, the whites simply shrunk back into their seats rather than tell the noisemakers to shut up. They didn’t want to quarrel.
In America, the courts are still the final arbiters of society’s laws. But what will happen when your future majority refuses to abide by court rulings – - as in Zimbabwe. What will happen when the new majority says the judges are racists, and that they refuse to acknowledge “white man’s justice”? What will happen when the courts are filled with their people, or their sympathizers? In California, Proposition 187 has already been overturned.
What will you do when the future non-white majority decides to change the names of streets and cities? What will you do when they no longer want to use money that carries the portraits of old, dead white “racists” and slave owners? Will you cave in, like you did on flying the Confederate flag? What about the national anthem? Your official language?
Don’t laugh. When the “majority” took over in South Africa the first targets were our national symbols.
In another generation, America may well face what Africa is now experiencing – - invasions of private land by the “have-nots;” the decline in health care quality; roads and buildings in disrepair; the banishment of your history from the education of the young; the revolutionization of your justice system.
In South Africa today, only 9 percent of murderers end up in jail. Court dockets are regularly purchased and simply disappear. Magistrates can be bribed as can the prison authorities, making escapes commonplace. Vehicle and airplane licenses are regularly purchased, and forged school and university certificates are routine.
What would you think of the ritual slaughter of animals in your neighbor’s backyard? How do you clean up the blood and entrails that litter your suburban streets? How do you feel about the practice of witchcraft, in which the parts of your girls and boys are needed for “medicinal” purposes? Hoe do you react to the burning of witches?
Don’t laugh. All that is quite common in South Africa today.
Don’t imagine that government officials caught with their fingers in the till will be punished. Excuses – - like the need to overcome generations of white racism – - will be found to exonerate the guilty.
In fact, known criminals will be voted into office because of a racial solidarity among the majority that doesn’t exist among the whites. When Ian Smith of the old Rhodesia tried to stand up to the world, white South African politicians were among the Westerners pressuring him to surrender.
When Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe murders his political opponents, ignores unfavorable court decisions, terrorizes the population and siphons off millions from the state treasury for himself and his friends, South Africa’s new President Thabo Mbeki holds his hand and declares his support. That just happened a few weeks ago.
Your tax dollars will go to those who don’t earn and don’t pay. In South Africa, organizations that used to have access to state funds such as old age homes, the arts, and veteran’s services, are simply abandoned.
What will happen is that Western structures in America will be either destroyed from without, or transformed from within, used to suit the goals of the new rulers. And they will reign either through terror, as in Zimbabwe today, or exert other corrupt pressures to obtain, or buy votes. Once power is in the hands of aliens, don’t expect loyalty or devotion to principle from those whose jobs are at stake. One of the most surprising and tragic components of the disaster in South Africa is how many previously anti-ANC whites simply moved to the other side.
One you lose social, cultural, and political dominance, there is no getting it back again.
Unfortunately, your habits and values work against you. You cannot fight terror and street mobs with letters to your Congressmen. You cannot fight accusations of racism with prayer meetings. You cannot appeal to the goodness of your fellow man when the fellow man despises you for your weakness and hacks off the arms and legs of his political opponents.
To survive, Americans must never lose the power they now enjoy to people from alien cultures. Above all, don’t put yourselves to the test of fighting only when your backs are against the wall. You will probably fail.
Millions around the world want your good life. But make no mistake: They care not for the high-minded ideals of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and your Constitution. What they want are your possessions, your power, and your status.
And they already know that their allies among you, the “human rights activists,” the skillful lawyers and the left-wing politicians will fight for them, and not for you. They will exploit your compassions and your Christian charity, and your good will.
They have studied you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and they know your weaknesses as well.
They know what to do.
Do you?"
Gemma Meyer is the nom de plume of a South African Journalist
2010/01/21
The US Isn't As Free As It Used To Be
From the Wall Street Journal. No surprise, if you've been conscious this last 12 months: "The United States is losing ground to its major competitors in the global marketplace, according to the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom released today by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. This year, of the world's 20 largest economies, the U.S. suffered the largest drop in overall economic freedom. Its score declined to 78 from 80.7 on the 0 to 100 Index scale.
The U.S. lost ground on many fronts. Scores declined in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom. Losses were particularly significant in the areas of financial and monetary freedom and property rights. Driving it all were the federal government's interventionist responses to the financial and economic crises of the last two years, which have included politically influenced regulatory changes, protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed "too big to fail." These policies have resulted in job losses, discouraged entrepreneurship, and saddled America with unprecedented government deficits."
The U.S. lost ground on many fronts. Scores declined in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom. Losses were particularly significant in the areas of financial and monetary freedom and property rights. Driving it all were the federal government's interventionist responses to the financial and economic crises of the last two years, which have included politically influenced regulatory changes, protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed "too big to fail." These policies have resulted in job losses, discouraged entrepreneurship, and saddled America with unprecedented government deficits."
Superior Minds...
"Superior minds are concerned with ideas,
average minds are concerned with events,
inferior minds are concerned with personalities."
- Jeff Cooper
It's no accident that the mainstream media is suffused with event and personality oriented news and programming. They don't want you dwelling in the realm of ideas. The act of thinking could (and should) endanger the entire American power structure - virtually all of which is immoral, illogical, mathematically unsustainable and (if you care) unconstitutional.
Moral: It's more critical than ever that you don't allow yourself to be distracted, and the idea you should focus on is this: no one else has any legitimate claim on your labor.
Not even if you're a doctor.
average minds are concerned with events,
inferior minds are concerned with personalities."
- Jeff Cooper
It's no accident that the mainstream media is suffused with event and personality oriented news and programming. They don't want you dwelling in the realm of ideas. The act of thinking could (and should) endanger the entire American power structure - virtually all of which is immoral, illogical, mathematically unsustainable and (if you care) unconstitutional.
Moral: It's more critical than ever that you don't allow yourself to be distracted, and the idea you should focus on is this: no one else has any legitimate claim on your labor.
Not even if you're a doctor.
Haiti
The earthquakes in Haiti have brought that little island hell-hole into the limelight (and at a VERY convenient moment when TPTB want you focused on anything except our own government). The resulting frenzied coverage of this third-world cesspool rekindled my long-standing concern and frustration with how too many Americans dispense charity.
Haiti's in the Western Hemisphere, but their "government" is essentially an African tribal kleptocracy. To the extent that anyone governs anything down there, it is done purely for personal gain. Too much of the aid we naively send down there ends up in the offshore accounts of corrupt ministers. By any honest measure, it ranks as one of the most corrupt governments on earth.
A great illustration of this is found in a comparison of Haiti's per capita annual GDP with that of the Dominican Republic (which occupies the balance of the island): Dominican Republic: $7400, Haiti: $1300. If the final score of a high school basketball game was 74 to 13 and your team scored 13, you'd be looking for a new coach, not flying him dinner.
Before the earthquake hit, there were already over ten thousand organizations from around the world giving aid to Haiti. This for a population of only nine million (more like 8.8 million now, I suppose). Many if not most of these aid groups are church-based. In my own tiny rural county, I personally know several people who have traveled there to try to help, and several more who gave money and supplies for the trip. (I applaud their intentions, but am at a loss to see where the populace of Haiti has significantly benefited from all the effort. Would the outcome of the earthquake be any different if we had done nothing for the last 20 years???)
This is a staggering number of people giving aid. Counting all the church members abroad, there are probably millions more people helping than there are to be helped. The sad state of the country prior to the earthquake proves that the problems down there are deeply rooted in very dark areas of human nature. Food, medicine and clothes clearly won't produce a Haiti that is any different next year than last. We're just 1) enabling the corruption, and 2) keeping the peasants alive to suffer under it.
With all the outside "aid" over the years the Haitian people themselves have developed a handout expectation/dependence that borders on repulsive. (I would expect my goats to bleat for food, but an entire nation of humans should know better.) We've been all too eager to accommodate, so I surmise that very few of the people trying to help have looked at the whole mess very critically. Since we've also ignored their real problem for decades, the Haitians themselves have no expectation of change. Waiting around for the next handout is actually rational behavior under the circumstances, and I don't blame them for it at all. I blame us.
To me, this boils down to the difference between teaching a man to fish and merely feeding him a meal. This earthquake produced a teachable moment of gargantuan proportions. We already have troops down there. The government, such as it was, is now nonexistent. We can't be accused of overthrowing anything, since there's nothing to overthrow.
Why not make all aid for rebuilding contingent on adoption of the International Building Code? (Given the "culture" down there some of the remedies in the Code of Hammurabi could be folded in for good measure, and you need to google this if you don't know what I'm talking about...)
Rather than rebuild anything FOR them, we should hire American construction workers (a few of whom just happen to be looking for work right now) to train and supervise Haitians, who will be paid in food. (Aid should be contingent on effort. You only get fed after you work! This is a perfectly fair pay scale, since these very people are presently engaged in begging or subsistence farming anyway.)
We also have a golden opportunity to do away with the self-defeating expectation of perpetual corruption down there. At the same time we're teaching them how to physically rebuild, most of the organizations who are already engaged in aiding Haiti should refocus their efforts on education. (The medical guys should stick to their guns, but most of the rest should help Haiti shake off it's third world voodoo mentality.) Teaching the basics will do - ethics, reading, ethics, logic, ethics, writing, ethics, math, ethics, Austrian Economics, ethics - all with an emphasis on ethics. (Did I make my point yet?) In other words, we would specifically set out to destroy the practices of voodoo and kleptocracy with ethics and logic.
We'd likely have to keep this up for a generation or three, but since we're now poised to assist them in perpetuity this is actually an attractive alternative.
(These ideas presuppose that everyone offering aid has honest intentions. The ethics part is particularly far fetched, since the globalists running America are hell-bent on destroying OUR constitution. It's a real leap to believe that they would tolerate individual liberty springing up anywhere else in the world. The whole idea is actually preposterous, and I offer it more as commentary than in expectation of results.)
This brings me to my last point on aiding those in need, which goes directly to our priorities: There are now unemployed people living in at least three tent cities within a 50 mile radius of where I live (and I live in out in the country!). I'm aware of several individuals and a whole family living nearby in cars and/or vans as well. It's high time all the "helpful" people in America turned their attention to their own nation and (preferably) their own neighborhood.
Yes, I know it's far easier to care passionately about a problem that's three thousand miles away than about a problem down at the other end of your own block. You can write a few checks, perhaps take an exotic vacation and you'll feel great about yourself. Unlike helping your neighbor, there's no chance the helpless needy bastard will ring your doorbell sometime next week looking for even more help.
If you know more about some Haitian family than your elderly or jobless neighbor, I'm talking to you. If you'd gladly send a $1000 check to Haiti but wouldn't help a neighbor catch up on his house payment or buy food, I'm talking to you. If you'd travel to Haiti to build an orphanage but wouldn't paint and caulk a little old lady's house in your own hometown, I'm talking to you.
We (as a nation) need to figure out what went wrong here at home, and we need to do so PDQ. We need to pull together, clean house and then help our own countrymen back to their feet. Along the road to an American renaissance we'll rediscover what actually betters peoples lives, which will make any future foreign aid far more moral and thus more effective.
Time is short. Get with it...
Haiti's in the Western Hemisphere, but their "government" is essentially an African tribal kleptocracy. To the extent that anyone governs anything down there, it is done purely for personal gain. Too much of the aid we naively send down there ends up in the offshore accounts of corrupt ministers. By any honest measure, it ranks as one of the most corrupt governments on earth.
A great illustration of this is found in a comparison of Haiti's per capita annual GDP with that of the Dominican Republic (which occupies the balance of the island): Dominican Republic: $7400, Haiti: $1300. If the final score of a high school basketball game was 74 to 13 and your team scored 13, you'd be looking for a new coach, not flying him dinner.
Before the earthquake hit, there were already over ten thousand organizations from around the world giving aid to Haiti. This for a population of only nine million (more like 8.8 million now, I suppose). Many if not most of these aid groups are church-based. In my own tiny rural county, I personally know several people who have traveled there to try to help, and several more who gave money and supplies for the trip. (I applaud their intentions, but am at a loss to see where the populace of Haiti has significantly benefited from all the effort. Would the outcome of the earthquake be any different if we had done nothing for the last 20 years???)
This is a staggering number of people giving aid. Counting all the church members abroad, there are probably millions more people helping than there are to be helped. The sad state of the country prior to the earthquake proves that the problems down there are deeply rooted in very dark areas of human nature. Food, medicine and clothes clearly won't produce a Haiti that is any different next year than last. We're just 1) enabling the corruption, and 2) keeping the peasants alive to suffer under it.
With all the outside "aid" over the years the Haitian people themselves have developed a handout expectation/dependence that borders on repulsive. (I would expect my goats to bleat for food, but an entire nation of humans should know better.) We've been all too eager to accommodate, so I surmise that very few of the people trying to help have looked at the whole mess very critically. Since we've also ignored their real problem for decades, the Haitians themselves have no expectation of change. Waiting around for the next handout is actually rational behavior under the circumstances, and I don't blame them for it at all. I blame us.
To me, this boils down to the difference between teaching a man to fish and merely feeding him a meal. This earthquake produced a teachable moment of gargantuan proportions. We already have troops down there. The government, such as it was, is now nonexistent. We can't be accused of overthrowing anything, since there's nothing to overthrow.
Why not make all aid for rebuilding contingent on adoption of the International Building Code? (Given the "culture" down there some of the remedies in the Code of Hammurabi could be folded in for good measure, and you need to google this if you don't know what I'm talking about...)
Rather than rebuild anything FOR them, we should hire American construction workers (a few of whom just happen to be looking for work right now) to train and supervise Haitians, who will be paid in food. (Aid should be contingent on effort. You only get fed after you work! This is a perfectly fair pay scale, since these very people are presently engaged in begging or subsistence farming anyway.)
We also have a golden opportunity to do away with the self-defeating expectation of perpetual corruption down there. At the same time we're teaching them how to physically rebuild, most of the organizations who are already engaged in aiding Haiti should refocus their efforts on education. (The medical guys should stick to their guns, but most of the rest should help Haiti shake off it's third world voodoo mentality.) Teaching the basics will do - ethics, reading, ethics, logic, ethics, writing, ethics, math, ethics, Austrian Economics, ethics - all with an emphasis on ethics. (Did I make my point yet?) In other words, we would specifically set out to destroy the practices of voodoo and kleptocracy with ethics and logic.
We'd likely have to keep this up for a generation or three, but since we're now poised to assist them in perpetuity this is actually an attractive alternative.
(These ideas presuppose that everyone offering aid has honest intentions. The ethics part is particularly far fetched, since the globalists running America are hell-bent on destroying OUR constitution. It's a real leap to believe that they would tolerate individual liberty springing up anywhere else in the world. The whole idea is actually preposterous, and I offer it more as commentary than in expectation of results.)
This brings me to my last point on aiding those in need, which goes directly to our priorities: There are now unemployed people living in at least three tent cities within a 50 mile radius of where I live (and I live in out in the country!). I'm aware of several individuals and a whole family living nearby in cars and/or vans as well. It's high time all the "helpful" people in America turned their attention to their own nation and (preferably) their own neighborhood.
Yes, I know it's far easier to care passionately about a problem that's three thousand miles away than about a problem down at the other end of your own block. You can write a few checks, perhaps take an exotic vacation and you'll feel great about yourself. Unlike helping your neighbor, there's no chance the helpless needy bastard will ring your doorbell sometime next week looking for even more help.
If you know more about some Haitian family than your elderly or jobless neighbor, I'm talking to you. If you'd gladly send a $1000 check to Haiti but wouldn't help a neighbor catch up on his house payment or buy food, I'm talking to you. If you'd travel to Haiti to build an orphanage but wouldn't paint and caulk a little old lady's house in your own hometown, I'm talking to you.
We (as a nation) need to figure out what went wrong here at home, and we need to do so PDQ. We need to pull together, clean house and then help our own countrymen back to their feet. Along the road to an American renaissance we'll rediscover what actually betters peoples lives, which will make any future foreign aid far more moral and thus more effective.
Time is short. Get with it...
And Vaseline's NOT Included...
Senate Democrats are poised to raise the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion - an increase of $1.9 trillion. They project/pretend/hallucinate that this will be sufficient to cover the government's borrowing needs through the rest of this year.
An anonymous finance committee member said "You see, we sorta borrowed too much, which, like, well, you know, turned out to be a mistake, sorta, so we're borrowing some more to, like, fix it now. Or at least, er, the money we need to prepare, um, to get ready to, like, to commence to begin to start, uh, working on, like, fixing it." (Ha - sure sounds like them, doesn't it??)
Perhaps people will wake up to what they're doing to us when a Big Mac is $89.95, Coke (diet, of course) is $35 and you can't afford fries because you need your other $1150 to fill the tank.
Then again, maybe not...
An anonymous finance committee member said "You see, we sorta borrowed too much, which, like, well, you know, turned out to be a mistake, sorta, so we're borrowing some more to, like, fix it now. Or at least, er, the money we need to prepare, um, to get ready to, like, to commence to begin to start, uh, working on, like, fixing it." (Ha - sure sounds like them, doesn't it??)
Perhaps people will wake up to what they're doing to us when a Big Mac is $89.95, Coke (diet, of course) is $35 and you can't afford fries because you need your other $1150 to fill the tank.
Then again, maybe not...
2010/01/20
Massachusetts Special Election
Count along with me: 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3... Yep, turns out there several "third rails" in politics, the fatally underfunded and endlessly pilfered Social Security program is just one of many. Gun control is another, and how 'bout that socialized medicine thingy???
Since the Boy King ascended to the throne, I've watched in amazement as the Congressional Red Army enthusiastically reprised Hillary's "behind closed doors/top secret/sweetheart deals" health care debacle without even a token rewrite of her original script. As with most remakes, this new cast was in many ways even less appealing than the original.
Letterman? Leno? O'Brien? Musical sitcoms? Don't need any of 'em - this midterm election cycle will surpass any contrived entertainment. There'll likely be a lot more Republicans in office by this time next year, but more importantly this may mark the last time the American public ricochets from one wing of the left-right contrivance to the other.
Here's why: The .gov's appetite for money and power during this downturn has genuinely alarmed the gentle left as well as the center and much of the right. The left-right paradigm is wearing thin and an increasing number of everyday folks are starting to see through it. (Heat will do that to fog...)
I talk politics with a lot of people, and most everyone across the spectrum now agrees that the most humane thing government can do for most people is leave them the hell alone. A new atmosphere of critical thinking is forming. Should the Republicans again fail to bring a sincere liberty-oriented limited government mindset to the table the left/right shell game may be over. They could easily fail at this, as Peak Sincerity actually occurred a while back in American politics. (It'll be such a fascinating year!)
Brown ran as a centrist... (although I always thought that in Massachusetts John Kerry was a centrist!) Brown has a likable persona, but in actuality he's a RINO, and we shouldn't get our hopes up just yet.
On the bright side, this is another (and largest to date) rejection of Obama, and it's a also a repudiation of socialized medicine and of heavy-handed leftist governance in general. What the media lackeys (who still yearn for socialist utopia) won't tell you is that this rejection took place in a state that just tried socialized medicine, and that said experiment failed spectacularly. Moreover, it was Republican Mitt Romney who both proposed and signed the legislation, which illustrates why the Republicans had better pay just as much attention to the mood of the public as the Dems! Sure, the Repubs are getting a real present from the voters (with Obama starring as Santa Claus) but there are strings attached this time.
Bottom line: When a McCain machine campaigns for socialized medicine and a Romney machine authors and then signs such a scheme into law, the Republicans have as much if not more to learn from this election as the Dems. I say more, because unlike the Dems they pretend to know better.
For all my criticism and caution, I can state with confidence that there's at least a rather widespread recognition that we're on the wrong path. For Ted Kennedy's seat to go to ANY Republican speaks volumes! Overall a fine day, and hey, Mary Jo - this one's for you!
Since the Boy King ascended to the throne, I've watched in amazement as the Congressional Red Army enthusiastically reprised Hillary's "behind closed doors/top secret/sweetheart deals" health care debacle without even a token rewrite of her original script. As with most remakes, this new cast was in many ways even less appealing than the original.
Letterman? Leno? O'Brien? Musical sitcoms? Don't need any of 'em - this midterm election cycle will surpass any contrived entertainment. There'll likely be a lot more Republicans in office by this time next year, but more importantly this may mark the last time the American public ricochets from one wing of the left-right contrivance to the other.
Here's why: The .gov's appetite for money and power during this downturn has genuinely alarmed the gentle left as well as the center and much of the right. The left-right paradigm is wearing thin and an increasing number of everyday folks are starting to see through it. (Heat will do that to fog...)
I talk politics with a lot of people, and most everyone across the spectrum now agrees that the most humane thing government can do for most people is leave them the hell alone. A new atmosphere of critical thinking is forming. Should the Republicans again fail to bring a sincere liberty-oriented limited government mindset to the table the left/right shell game may be over. They could easily fail at this, as Peak Sincerity actually occurred a while back in American politics. (It'll be such a fascinating year!)
Brown ran as a centrist... (although I always thought that in Massachusetts John Kerry was a centrist!) Brown has a likable persona, but in actuality he's a RINO, and we shouldn't get our hopes up just yet.
On the bright side, this is another (and largest to date) rejection of Obama, and it's a also a repudiation of socialized medicine and of heavy-handed leftist governance in general. What the media lackeys (who still yearn for socialist utopia) won't tell you is that this rejection took place in a state that just tried socialized medicine, and that said experiment failed spectacularly. Moreover, it was Republican Mitt Romney who both proposed and signed the legislation, which illustrates why the Republicans had better pay just as much attention to the mood of the public as the Dems! Sure, the Repubs are getting a real present from the voters (with Obama starring as Santa Claus) but there are strings attached this time.
Bottom line: When a McCain machine campaigns for socialized medicine and a Romney machine authors and then signs such a scheme into law, the Republicans have as much if not more to learn from this election as the Dems. I say more, because unlike the Dems they pretend to know better.
For all my criticism and caution, I can state with confidence that there's at least a rather widespread recognition that we're on the wrong path. For Ted Kennedy's seat to go to ANY Republican speaks volumes! Overall a fine day, and hey, Mary Jo - this one's for you!
Wall Street Insiders and the Sheep Who Enable Them
Insider selling into this bear market rally continues apace, this last week at a 24:1 ratio over buyers. (And no, option exercises are not included in this number. It's just sales!) Minus any significant new capital inflows and slogging along at conspicuously low trading volumes, this "recovery" seems ready to pop into the next leg down. If you're "all in" this market, it's not exactly like teams from New Zealand are on their way to shear you, but a better analogy escapes me at the moment.
2010/01/19
The Truth About Unemployment...
...can be found on the same page as the lie. The Bureau of Labor Statistics emits an assortment of "U" figures including the "U-3" (the "official" unemployment figure used by the media) and the "U-6" (the truer figure which includes all the folks who are unemployed / underemployed / given up looking, etc.). Turns out that this "underutilized" segment of the labor force is indeed larger than the media would have us know.
I relish this contrast between "official" and the truth - it's as good as anything you read in Pravda in the old days. Couldn't make the link work, so here's the address: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
I relish this contrast between "official" and the truth - it's as good as anything you read in Pravda in the old days. Couldn't make the link work, so here's the address: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm
2010/01/14
Animated Unemployment Map
Here's a well done map by LaToya Egwuekwe showing the progression of job loss from January 2007 to November 2009. Note that the purple represents 7.0-9.9% unemployment and black represents 10% and above. The map loses precision as unemployment worsens, and it needs to be revised to show the areas with highest unemployment more clearly. (Perhaps orange and red could be used to show >12% and >15%?)
It's appropriate, though, that the colors chosen paint America as one large bruise. Wonder if that was intentional??
It's appropriate, though, that the colors chosen paint America as one large bruise. Wonder if that was intentional??
2010/01/07
Where Are We???
I'm not sure with whom this originated. Regardless of who said it first, it is truly sobering to consider where America stands today...
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
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