POLITICAL: “… steal the passenger lifeboats …”

Sunday, November 4, 2012

http://lewrockwell.com/holland/holland72.1.html

Gold, Switzerland and the European Secessionist Movement
Anthony Wile interviews Ron Holland
The Daily Bell

*** begin quote ***

Ron Holland: Cutting rates, monetary stimulation and creating more fiat money seems to be the only option left to the central banking cartel in Europe and America. For the US, this creates a higher stock market thus making citizens feel more prosperous and less destitute than they really are. This always occurs during a presidential election campaign as the party in power and the president up for re-election need a positive – or in this case an improving – economy to increase their chances of winning the election. Both parties have done this for the last 40 years or so; nothing unusual here.

I really don’t view monetary easing as particularly harmful as it only postpones the inevitable for a little while longer, like moving up the angle of the Titanic as it was sinking from the bow with the stern higher up in the air. You stay dry for a few minutes longer but in the end, you still drown. Today politicians and central bankers are sort of like some crews on recent sinking cruise ships. They are using their time to steal the passenger lifeboats and safely get away while leaving the passengers to swim to shore or drown.

Also, the European Central Bank (ECB) and banking elite efforts to postpone their day of reckoning in Europe and New York is actually somewhat helpful to American citizens and investors. The investor risk in Europe is actually propelling funds into the American stock and bond markets as well as the dollar buying us a little extra time before the crisis crosses the Atlantic. In addition, the EU problems are helping the dollar in the near term on a relative basis to be stronger than it would be otherwise.

*** end quote ***

This is an insightful metaphor (i.e., the Titanic’s lifeboats).

It’s interesting and dangerous times.

How does the individual protect themselves and their families?

Clearly, one has to diversify one’s risks.

Make “insurance bets”.

If inflation picks up (more than it is now; if you believe the Gooferment’s numbers), then you have to take precautions.

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POLITICAL: Modern Day Bread Lines

Friday, November 2, 2012

http://lewrockwell.com/slavo/slavo125.html

Food Stamp Nation: What a Modern Day Bread Line Looks Like (Infographic) by Mac Slavo

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Wow. The e-benefits hides the actual problem!

This picture brings it out!

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POLITICAL: Once again, who knew what and when? Benghazi-gate file

Friday, October 26, 2012

http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2012/10/up-on-frequency.html

Thursday, October 18, 2012
Up on Frequency

*** begin quote ***

In recent posts, we’ve asked the fundamental question about the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans: what did the administration know, and when did they know it?

As we’ve noted, there was a steady stream of intelligence reporting on the attack, delivered at the FLASH/CRITIC level. Messages assigned that priority must be delivered to the President within 10 minutes of receipt. This traffic captured conversations between the Islamist factions responsible for the attack, before and during the assault on our compound. That’s why administration claims that incident was some sort of “demonstration gone bad” are nothing more than a lie.

*** end quote ***

This is a disaster. 

The President’s response to this is inexplicable.

There’s is no doubt that some one told the UN Ambassador to get out on the TV circuit and reaffirm the Administration’s tale.

So, as always, who knew what? When? And, what is the path of the strategy!

Argh!

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POLITICAL: Media Bias a la Candy Crowley

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/10/16/joe-trippi-crowleys-interruption-libya-looked-ref-just-threw-flag#ixzz29WUs0xt6

Joe Trippi: Crowley ‘Correcting’ Romney on Libya Looked Like ‘The Ref Just Threw the Flag’

By Noel Sheppard | October 16, 2012 | 23:20

*** begin quote ***

Conceivably the biggest moment in Tuesday’s presidential debate was when moderator Candy Crowley injected herself into the discussion siding with Barack Obama on remarks he claimed he made in the Rose Garden following the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

*** end quote ***

Against my better judgment, I watch the second debate because the Yankees were hopeless.

As all the “conservative” pundits predicted, Ms. Crowley couldn’t help but pile in on her “team’s side”.

I thought that wasn’t permitted by the rules of engagement?

And, what’s more she was WRONG!

Liberal bias!

Took the UN Ambassador on the TV circuit with a misleading at best story. Took the White House a week to walk it back and only after that DoI guy told to the truth to Congress. (You could almost hear the conversation right out of that Jack Ryan movie. “I ain’t going to jail. I’m the guy who always goes to jail.”) And BHO44 didn’t concede it until he was on the View.

Argh!

I can make some small allowance that perhaps it MIGHT be in the nation’s strategic interest to keep stuff quiet.

(For example, if I was Prez, I would not have illed Bin Laden. He’d be in an undisclosed location with some nasty folks asking tough questions. And, even when presented with the downed helicopter, I’d lie to the TV and say ‘wasn’t us’. Stragteically. I also threaten anyone who did toe the party like with an assignment to be Presidential liaison with the Base Commander in Sitka Alaska. And, call the commander and have him in a cube at the end of the longest runway counting seagulls for his daily report.)

But in this case, I think this was al about CYA for the BHO44 reelection and nothing else.

Can “We, The Sheeple” see through the media bias and recognized a failed foreign policy?

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POLITICAL: SO the “debates” are scripted?

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

http://thepage.time.com/2012/10/14/moderator-role-under-scrutiny-before-the-debate/

Moderator Role Under Scrutiny — Before the Debate
By Mark Halperin | October 14, 2012

*** begin quote ***

In an unusual departure from the normal hostility that exists between the Obama and Romney campaigns, both parties wholeheartedly agreed with the Commission that they wished to avoid a repeat of what occurred four years ago. In 2008, NBC News’ Tom Brokaw moderated the town hall session between Obama and Republican nominee John McCain, and the two campaigns and the organizers felt that Brokaw redirected the topics too severely from the audience queries and asked too many of his own questions, limiting the number of citizens who got a chance at the microphone. Appearing on NBC News “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Brokaw said, “[I]t’s tricky for the moderator. I said that Candy Crowley ought to get combat gear after I went through that four years ago.” Brokaw told TIME, “I am satisfied citizens in the hall and online got a fair hearing.” Brokaw also said that while there was some press criticism of the job he did, he heard no complaints directly from the campaigns and a Commission official praised the debate to him as “good television.”

*** end quote ***

George Orwell must be rolling over.

Talk about propaganda.

Very carefully agreed as to what the people will see.

Argh!

Wake up, Sheeple. 

Lambs to the slaughter!

Another “reality” show.

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POLITICAL: Politicians only show the “good”; never the “harm” they do

Sunday, October 14, 2012

http://cafehayek.com/2012/10/threadbare-economics.html

Threadbare Economics

by DON BOUDREAUX on OCTOBER 11, 2012

in POLITICS, SEEN AND UNSEEN, TRADE

*** begin quote ***

This administration policy will win votes for the President from some textile workers in the Carolinas. And Mr. Sanchez and his big boss can now bask self-righteously in their imagined humanity.

But will Mr. Sanchez pose for pictures with poor families whose living standards fall because clothing is now made more costly? Will the administration stage press events to highlight the jobs lost because American consumers, obliged to spend more on clothing, will have less to spend on restaurant meals, evenings at the movies, and other goods and services? Will the President post photos on his website of Americans whose jobs are destroyed because foreigners will now have fewer dollars to spend and invest in the U.S.? Will Mr. Obama boast that his re-election strategy includes a policy that, by dulling the creative forces of competition, diminishes America’s economic dynamism and, hence, reduces its economic growth?

*** end quote ***

It’s our old friend Bastiat and those unseen unintended consequences!

Nasty old “rule”.  “Every time a politician says or does something, look for what’s behind the curtain.”

It’s like when the increased minimum wage law induced AT&T to automate the elevator operators out of their jobs. Some were capable of other work, but many were just let go. My cousin never worked again in her life. True she wasn’t the sharpest blade in the draw, but she was the unseen side of that increase in the minimum wage law.

So don’t tell me that real people are not hurt when the politicians run amok!

–30–

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POLITICAL: A record of theft and killing

Sunday, October 7, 2012

http://cafehayek.com/2012/10/spare-us.html

Spare Us
by Don Boudreaux on October 3, 2012

*** begin quote ***

Where, for example, was Mr. Obama’s empathy and sense of fairness in 2009 for Chrysler’s senior creditors – people he bullied into accepting fewer cents on the dollar than they were entitled to receive under long-established tenets of bankruptcy law? Mr. Obama’s “empathy” for the UAW – junior creditors (and political supporters) who gained what was stripped from the senior creditors – hardly excuses his lack of empathy for the senior creditors (and, by the way, also U.S. taxpayers) victimized by his political opportunism.

Much worse: where is Mr. Obama’s “empathy” for the hundreds of innocent Pakistanis killed – and the thousands daily terrorized – by the drone strikes that he authorizes? As The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf now-famously explained, “Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy.”*

*** end quote ***

Obama “screwed” my wife. Yup, she had GM Bonds in her retirement portfolio. She got NOTHING for them. Was it everything she had? Of course not, she was too smart to put more than one egg in any basket. But, it hurt her. Reminded her of childhood poverty. Apolitical all her life, she was torqued.

For me, as I became more anti-war as I got older and wiser, the war and killing of innocents was most objectionable. Candidate Obama hammered Bush43 on water boarding. Seems like murder is worse to me.

Argh! 

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POLITICAL: Do “we” really understand the cost of war?

Saturday, October 6, 2012

http://lewrockwell.com/woods/woods201.html

I Was Fooled by the War-Makers

by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

*** begin quote ***

Twenty years ago, as I was completing my freshman year in college, I was a full-blown neoconservative. Except I didn’t know it. Having concluded that I was not a leftist, I simply decided by process of elimination that I must be a Rush Limbaughian.

Like most people, I was unaware that any alternative to those two choices existed, or that in some ways they were two sides of a common statist coin. In particular, I embraced a neoconservative foreign policy with gusto. The way to show you weren’t a commie was by supporting the U.S. military as it doled out summary justice to bad guys all over the world. And frankly, it was exciting to watch it all unfold on TV.

I never gave the human cost of war a second thought and became impatient with anyone who did. War was like a video game I could enjoy from the comfort of my home. Devastation and human suffering were quite beside the point: the righteous U.S. government was dispensing justice to the wicked, and that was that. What are you, a liberal?

*** and ***

Mothers and fathers were crying themselves to exhaustion over children they had lost, or who, worse still, were dying agonizing deaths before their very eyes. There is no worse anguish for parents than to watch their children suffer and to be helpless to do anything about it.

Was it really right that we Americans should meanwhile be celebrating with a Bob Hope special, and – on cue – flattered by the ceaseless reminders that ours was the awesomest country ever?

*** end quote ***

How can anyone be for war?

How can anyone support BHO44’s “drone war”?

How do we explain the deaths of 2,000 American youths?

Sorry, but I too was once fooled by the welfare / warfare state!

This scale of killing was never envisioned by the Constitution. The political class doesn’t even follow these supposed limits. How was war in Libya declared? By Presidential fiat! 

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POLITICAL: The O’Reilly Stewart debate; the 2012 Lincoln Douglas equivalent?

Friday, October 5, 2012

http://www.therumble2012.com/index.html

Bill O’Reilly. Jon Stewart. 2 podiums. 1 Air-Conditioned Auditorium. “O’Reilly v Stewart 2012: The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium” will be streamed live, Saturday, October 6th at 8pm ET from Lisner Auditorium at The George Washington University. O’Reilly and Stewart will take an entertaining and comedic approach to today’s pressing political issues in an attempt to find the best direction for America. “The Rumble 2012” will surely be a must-see event! If you pre-order by October 1st, you can suggest a question that Jon and Bill may answer during the debate. Pre-Order Now to be a part of the action! 

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MY question:

How can we get the girls and boys home from AfPak and Iraq? Only Ron Paul gave us a choice to get them out. With him out and basically BHO43 and Mitt have the same non-policy. The “anti-war” movement has been shown to be astroturf for the democrats. But the Taft wing of the R’s was definitely an anti war tradition. Given the blood and treasure wasted, how do “we” get out? Viet Nam, Republic of taught “We, The Sheeple” nothing!

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POLITICAL: France has a top rate of 75%

Friday, September 28, 2012

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/28/us-france-budget-idUSBRE88R0AK20120928

France taxes rich and business to slash deficit
By Daniel Flynn and Leigh Thomas
PARIS | Fri Sep 28, 2012 7:49am EDT

*** begin quote ***

(Reuters) – President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government unveiled sharp tax hikes on business and the rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showing France has the fiscal rigor to remain at the core of the euro zone.

The package will recoup 30 billion euros ($39 billion) for the public purse with a goal of narrowing the deficit to 3.0 percent of national output next year from 4.5 percent this year – France’s toughest single belt-tightening in 30 years.

But with record unemployment and a barrage of data pointing to economic stagnation, there are fears the deficit target will slip as France falls short of the modest 0.8 percent economic growth rate on which it is banking for next year.

*** end quote ***

Here’s a country that’s going be a laboratory for high tax rates.

Better them than us.

The USA has growth rate below 2 and the true unemployment rate (U6) above 15%.

The Gooferment deficit, debt, and spending are spinning out of control; the Senate doesn’t even deign to do a budget.

I’m no fan of either party’s offering. But four more years of European style Gooferment is going to push the economy over the edge.

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