Ike and Me

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Dwight D. Eisenhower

So, having survived until 2009 without Armageddon, our job comes down to preventing war. How shall we do it?

Diplomacy? Dialogue? Talk them into peace? Let’s put the Secretary of State and our charismatic President on a mission. Tell them, “Pull out your “A” speeches and don’t come back until peace breaks out”.

How about isolation? Build the big wall. Close the borders completely, and close airports to foreign arrivals. Swarm over every tanker and merchant ship. Lock ‘em down’. Put Americans to work making those Taiwanese and Hong Kong products. We’d just stay home and be self sufficient. And we’d have to like it. We could put the Army shoulder to shoulder around the whole U.S. border. That’ll put some citizens back to work. Let’s see… no war, no fighting… except maybe within our own borders. There’d be cries of authoritarian control and lost freedom. Revolution.

Then, there’s the buy off. How does a thousand dollars per human sound? It can easily be done. Think about the boost in trade. Then, think about the boost in prices. Oh, well, supply and demand would take over and make fools of us all.

In a pinch, we could try strength and character. We could be role models for doing what’s right, and we could step up when there are wrongs to be handled. There’s some historical sense in that, World War 2, for example. Kuwait, for example. There’s prevention for you. Hitler and Kojo and Sadaam Hussein, for example. We could try a “no nonsense” tack. Rule of International law. No country above it. Enforcement by men of who have the courage and the weight to succeed. Men of enormous moral gravity. Men we could respect and follow.

E. E. Slater 2009

It has been known, understood, and accepted by scholars in the developed world that wealth is not created by governments, but it has not been clearly accepted that debt cannot be borne by governments.

Your government is a pauper in regal attire.  It’s a money shifter…a high horsepower engine of distribution.  But, the tide that raises all ships never flows directly from government.  At the end of the day, your government has no assets and no liabilities…it’s a zero sum operator.

The wealth and the debt are yours.  Right now in America, you and every other citizen owes about $40,000 to buy back the IOUs your Congress has written.  And, your Congress can’t pay.  So the question is:  Who’s holding the IOUs, and who’s going to have to pay?  Well, look in your wallet to see how many IOUs you have.  Cash?  An uncashed paycheck?  Look in your checkbook, your savings book, and at your 401k statement.  Add the market value of all your “stuff”.  Remember, you can’t add it unless you can sell it.  Look under your mattress.  That’s the collection I’m calling your “wealth”.

Now, add up your mortgage and all your other bills.  Add $40,000 for each person in your household.  That’s your debt.  But, wait!  Even if you can pull multiples of $40,000 out of your cache of “wealth” to pay your share and Mama’s share, what about all those Americans who can’t?  Sooner or later, you’ll chip in for all those shares, too.  You’ll think you’ve been robbed.  Someday, you’ll stare into that empty safe deposit box and wonder who stole your wealth.  Remember this little news flash.  You did when you voted.  You picked Representatives and Senators who unfortunately are inept money managers.  Concepts like “defraud”, “mismanage”, “abscond”, “fleece”, “embezzle”, “rob”, and “bamboozle” tend to reduce the milk toast term “inept” into insignificance.  Congressional “fiduciary flim flam” and “arrogant obfuscation” are labels that suit my way of thinking.

Ultimately, you’ll pay.  Perhaps you can just “feel good” about chipping in for all the less fortunate Americans who haven’t saved up for the “debt collector”.  Or, this time…perhaps you can vote.

Ed Slater August 2010  

Ineptocracy

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.


This is where we appear to be at this point in time. We truly are at the crossroads where the American electorate will decide in November, 2012, for better or for worse, what type of society we will be. Four more years of Obama will result in a situation where we cannot recover.

Hank and Fiona...one easy lesson

Hank and Fiona found the house of their dreams, and they applied at Friendly Bank for a mortgage loan.  They asked for $490,000, and were able to make a down payment of $10,000 (which they borrowed on their MasterCard).  This was all ok with the bank, because the bank got $300 for processing the loan application, and they got $1,200 in miscellaneous fees at closing.  Rob Hood, the realtor, got $30,000 from the seller for listing the home and assisting in the acquisition.  His realty company devoted a total of 15 hours to assist Hank and Fiona, thus earning $2,000 per hour.  Fannie Mae guaranteed the loan in response to a directive from the president, Bill Clinton.  Hank, Fiona, their bank, Fannie Mae, Bill Clinton, and Franklin Raines were pleased with themselves.  Barney Franks did a little dance.  Rob Hood bought a $48,000 Cadillac Escalade by putting $30,000 down and financing $18,000.  Financing was through Friendly Bank.

Hank worked for GM, where he was paid $58,000 in direct wages and $24,000 in fringe benefits.  Fiona worked for the Cadillac dealer in the accounting office.  She earned $22,000 per year.  Their take home pay was $5,000 a month, but the bank added the cash value of the fringe benefits, and calculated a monthly take home of $6,800.  Their mortgage payment would be $2,900.  A very risky high ratio of 43%.

You know what happened.  Thousands of car buyers bought Hondas, Toyotas, Hyundais, and Nissans instead of GM, Ford, and Chrysler cars.

Astute car buyers figured it out that lots of Big Three cars were albatrosses over laden with built-in obsolescence.  Engines would wear out in half the time, shocks and ball joints were doomed to 3-year lifetimes due to low-cost supplier syndrome, and rust at the Big Three was a treated like a strategic ally. Meanwhile, rice burners were routinely going 250,000 miles, rewarding their owners with high resale values and reliability factors. 

Fiona was laid off.  Hank was furloughed (he got a payday anyhow as a result of the sweet UAW contract, consisting of 90% of his normal pay).  Soon, Hank, Fiona, and a significant number of other jobless, helpless citizens felt the pinch, and those insane mortgage payments were missed.  An avalanche of foreclosures and bankruptcies followed.  It was an avalanche Fannie Mae could not survive.  Fannie Mae had paid Franklin Raines a 20 million dollar salary to bet the farm on a Clinton trifecta of (1) irresponsible loan approvals, (2) insane loan guarantees, and (3) a hope that the American people would not understand what was happening.

When Fannie Mae’s reserve of guarantee money was depleted, the banks stopped getting their guaranteed funds.  The Cadillac dealer missed his floor plan payment.  First, a few new home buyers backed out, and then more retreated to just make do with their existing homes.  Sales of used homes plummeted.  Rob Hood’s plan to make $2,000 per hour went west in three months.  Franklin Raines drove off with a fortune.  Bill Clinton created his own headline:  “Bush Watches as the Economy Crashes”.  Barney Frank resorted to the Clinton playbook, and denied all responsibility every time he was asked.   

Now, let’s figure out where the money went, and how to solve the problems of joblessness, foreclosure, bankruptcy, and despair.

1. Hank and Fiona bought a house they couldn’t afford.  Their incomes came indirectly from car buying customers.
2. The Friendly Bank loaned money on risky terms, but Fannie Mae took all the risk out by guaranteeing the mortgages.
3. The Master Card people assumed at least 95% of all the people like Hank and Fiona could continue to make their payments.
4. Rob Hood wrongly assumed he could list and sell a $500,000 house every month.
5. Bill Clinton assumed he would be judged a super hero by the blue collar crowd.
6. Franklin Raines figured he could perpetuate a $20,000,000 per year salary and bonus package, because he was in the “in” crowd.
7. Barney Franks assumed his dreams of being on top would all come true, because he was comfortable with his “untouchable” mystique.
8. The Cadillac dealer ordered all the Cadillacs he could floor-plan because he didn’t want to miss out on one sale.

America needs to know what the root of the problem is.  After all, preventing the next debacle is in our hands.  The root is Arrogance.

·         Hank and Fiona were ignorant victims of “gambler’s arrogance”

·         Rob Hood was a victim of “real estate broker’s arrogance”

·         General Motors was a victim of incompetent, gutless, arrogant management.

·         General Motors stockholders were gambling victims who arrogantly believed GM was too big to fail.

·         Bill Clinton arrogantly thought he’d play God with other people’s money.

·         Barney Frank arrogantly told disbelievers he was right and they were ignorant.

·         Now, President Obama arrogantly sent taxpayer’s money to bail out all the arrogant, incompetent, gutless, gambling addicted losers.

  

One-World Government?

Now that the United Nations has passed a global climate tax on (who else?) the United States and any other nation that has any wealth left, what are we to think of this new UN slush fund?    This is nothing more than another attempt to redistribute our wealth to UN elitists and bureaucrats first and then whatever scraps are left over, to various third-world nations.  The UN is composed of over 100 nations who are run by thugs, dictators, and despots who do not share our values.  The best thing we could do is to give all UN types 48 hours notice to vacate our sovereign land as we are repossessing it under our eminent domain laws.  And by the way, we are confiscating all personal property until you pay up all the parking tickets you have accumulated during your stay here.  And when you are gone, we are turning the real estate over to Donald Trump to develop into condos.  New York City could use some more property tax revenue.
We do not accept your phony "man-made global climate change" hoax.


CLIMATE CHANGE GLOSSARY


PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.

SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.

DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.

CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce ‘panic for profit.’

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to “Peace” in any meaningful way.

DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see “DENIER,” above.

CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for “DATA” by “DENIERS.” Also skilled at affecting an aura of “Smartest Person in the Room” to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.

JUNK SCIENCE: The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge.

Corzine... would you buy a used car from this man?

" I honestly do not know what happened to that $1.2 billion dollars. But don't look in my back pocket."

Without Refutation

The scientific evidence for evolution is very strong, and evolution's message is that only flexible and adaptable organisms survive in a world of constant change. Reduced to everyday individual terms, it means no single behavioral pattern can for all time be branded “correct” or “normal.” This is the core reason religion fails to provide for real human needs (hunger, for example), and this failing is shared by psychology – they both put forth a fixed behavioral model in a constantly changing world.
 
It must be clear that clinical psychology can make these wild claims and offer questionable therapies only because there is no practical likelihood of refutation – no clear criteria to invalidate a claim. This, in turn, is because human psychology is not a science, it is very largely a belief system similar to religion. 

Why Serve?

Tax the Coots

US wealth gap between young and old is widest ever


By HOPE YEN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record and saddled them with housing and college debt.

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday.

While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation.

The obvious cure for this terrible inequality is for the elderly to PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE !! Tax those rich old coots. They won't live long enough to spend all their dough anyway (especially when Obama lets us pull the plug.) Equal opportunity involves too much hard work. Income equality is the answer.

Hasta Luego, Jay

Thousands of well-wishing citizens from seven Midwest states are flocking to Minnesota to wave bye bye to former Gov. Jesse Ventura. Ventura, who is upset by the dismissal of his airport security lawsuit sent out vibes that he loves spending time in Mexico.

Ventura, also a former wrestling star, sued the U.S. government in January, alleging that airport scans and pat-downs amounted to unreasonable search and seizure. He said he was subjected to a body pat-down last November. Ventura said he hasn't flown since and won't fly commercially again.

He said “I’m outa here, and I’m gonna give hammer locks to those phony, sniveling well-wishers”. Citizens are converging on the Midway Rail Station at 730 Transfer Road, in St. Paul.