One of the old tricks of European monarchies, social democracies and communist states for millenia past has been to distract the people from economic mismanagement and decline by introducing a scape goat or highly charged issue to deflect public attention. Perhaps the classic literary example of this is in the beginning of Shakespeare's Henry V when the Archbishop of Canterbury designs to suggest to the King that he is entitled to the kingdom of France under the Law of Salique in order to distract him from considering imposing a tax on church lands. And, of course, the Czars of Russia and later the Communist regimes frequently used the Jews to distract the populace from the mismanagement and poverty that the highly centralized feudalist system of Russia entailed. This strategem continued on through the Communist era. Today, Le Pen of France attempts a similar strategy.
The Obama campaign resorts to the "distraction card" in order to deflect attention from his intent to reenforce failed social democratic economic policies, especially the Federal Reserve Bank, economic regulation and cartelization of health care, that have increasingly impoverished the average American. Since the international gold standard was abolished in 1971, workers' average hourly real wage has declined worse than one percent per year, but the mass media has been telling the public that there is no inflation and that things are great because of cell phones even though both parents now work two jobs whereas thirty years ago one parent worked one job. Academic economists, the media's high brow equivalent, attribute economic decline to marginal income tax rates, a non-sequitor.
Given the economic instability that the social democratic system has created that go well beyond nonsensical explanations like marginal tax rates, Obama has decided to emphasize divisive race issues. Thus, John McCormack of Weekly Standard (hat tip Larwyn) reports that ABC News has video of Barack Obama telling voters in Missouri that the Republicans
"are going to try to...make you scared of me. You know he--oh, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all of those other presidents on those dollar bills."
Meanwhile, Hugh Hewitt (hat tip Larwyn) reports that Obama favors reparations:
"I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."
By raising the reparations issue Obama aims to distract Americans from the economic pain that they are about to suffer at the hands of our national economic planning czars, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson and their identical-twin-replacements under an Obama administration. What better way to distract from economic crisis than the reparations bugaboo?
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Illinois Petition for Investigation of Barack Obama's Birth Certificate
contrairimairi@aol.com has drafted a petition for residents of Illinois that demands an investigation of Barack Obama's birth certificate. If you live in Illinois please sign the petition, pass it around to your friends and forward it to her at contrairimairi@aol.com:
We, the undersigned residents of the State of Illinois, hereby demand that Barack Hussein Obama produce documentation of American citizenship in the form of a legal birth certificate. It is our understanding that Mr. Obama has heretofore refused to produce such a document. The residency requirement for qualification as a United States Senator includes United States citizenship. Without documentation, under United States law, Barack Hussein Obama may not legally qualify to represent the citizens of the State of Illinois. By signing this petition, we request that the State of Illinois investigate Mr. Obama's eligibility to serve in the Senate and make his birth certificate public immediately, and that with continued coverup
of documentation, we demand Mr. Obama's immediate removal from the Senate.
Previously, Rorschach of the Red Ink: Texas blog has reported that a petitioner closed down his petition because Obama supporters threatened him. The Obama candidacy is truly divisive in a way that the United States has not seen for a quarter century.
>"One person put up a website for an online petition calling for the REAL birth certificate to be released, but within hours of it going up, someone, using the site operator's home address, left a veiled threat against the site operator and his family.
"Petition Closed...A veiled threat was made against myself and my family which included our home address, so I have decided to close the petition for good. It is truly sad that political discourse in our country has come to this. "
We, the undersigned residents of the State of Illinois, hereby demand that Barack Hussein Obama produce documentation of American citizenship in the form of a legal birth certificate. It is our understanding that Mr. Obama has heretofore refused to produce such a document. The residency requirement for qualification as a United States Senator includes United States citizenship. Without documentation, under United States law, Barack Hussein Obama may not legally qualify to represent the citizens of the State of Illinois. By signing this petition, we request that the State of Illinois investigate Mr. Obama's eligibility to serve in the Senate and make his birth certificate public immediately, and that with continued coverup
of documentation, we demand Mr. Obama's immediate removal from the Senate.
Previously, Rorschach of the Red Ink: Texas blog has reported that a petitioner closed down his petition because Obama supporters threatened him. The Obama candidacy is truly divisive in a way that the United States has not seen for a quarter century.
>"One person put up a website for an online petition calling for the REAL birth certificate to be released, but within hours of it going up, someone, using the site operator's home address, left a veiled threat against the site operator and his family.
"Petition Closed...A veiled threat was made against myself and my family which included our home address, so I have decided to close the petition for good. It is truly sad that political discourse in our country has come to this. "
The American Media Crisis--The One Who Pays Is You
The media's monotonous support for the Obama campaign ratchets my curiosity about its declining standards. Yellow journalism and bias go back to the Federalist period of American history and before, and Jefferson was not above planting friendly journalists in positions in order to maximally irritate his opponents. But there are several differences between the factionalism of today's media and that of only a few decades ago. In the 1960s, there was still a significant degree of variability in the opinions of the major New York newspapers. Today, television and newspaper outlets conform to a social democratic norm and are increasingly shrill.
Conservatives believe that there is a liberal bias in the media and this is in part true. The corporate and financial interests that control the television and newspaper outlets are corporatist and social democratic because social democracy supports their financial interests. Thus, to understand the reason for the media's liberal bias, it is necessary to fathom the corporate interests that control the major media outlets and the economic conditions that favor their health.
Social democracy has always been a method by which corporate power deceives and controls a naive public. The history of the Progressives and the New Deal as ensuing from the exercise of a broadened interpretation of corporate power, that is for instance, as opposed to small business power, is well documented. The increased stridency of the mass media not only in support of Barack Obama but in its shrill uniformity (examples are MSNBC's Chris Matthews and CNN's Jack Cafferty and Lou Dobbs) suggest a crisis of confidence on the part of American elites. The crisis is economic and it is in its early stages.
The Bush administration has intensified the inflation of the past 25 years to a point that will necessitate a recession. But American financial and business institutions have been considerably weakened due to mismanagement and may not withstand a recession. The media's advertisers and corporate owners are in for a rough ride.
Wealth has been reallocated away from the economy's productive sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture, and the manufacturing firms as in the automobile industry that might be able to produce value are frequently not globally competitive. For them to become competitive the dollar needs to depreciate to the point where their exports become so. This will attract talent back to productive areas of the economy but will reduce the wealth base and force many Americans to reduce their living standards. As well, the reduction in the purchasing power of the dollar will be associated with an influx of dollars from abroad, causing additional price inflation here. This will cause instability. The reason for the price inflation is of course Federal Reserve policy that has subsidized the same firms that advertise through the mass media and include the mass media firms themselves.
In response to the depreciating dollar the Fed will need to raise interest rates. This will cause difficulties and perhaps bankruptcy of major American firms.
The mass media adopts an increasingly lock step tone in order to prepare for a series of economic crises whose causes it aims to distort. The beneficiaries of the long inflation of the past 25 years have been top managers, Wall Street and hedge funds. Oil speculation is not really an important component of this, and the media's recent tap dance about oil speculation is evidence of how it will continue to lie about the economic problems in the next decade. Barack Obama has received more donations from Wall Street and the financial community than has John McCain. He will avoid, with media support, addressing the underlying sources of the need for adjustment.
The one who pays is you.
Conservatives believe that there is a liberal bias in the media and this is in part true. The corporate and financial interests that control the television and newspaper outlets are corporatist and social democratic because social democracy supports their financial interests. Thus, to understand the reason for the media's liberal bias, it is necessary to fathom the corporate interests that control the major media outlets and the economic conditions that favor their health.
Social democracy has always been a method by which corporate power deceives and controls a naive public. The history of the Progressives and the New Deal as ensuing from the exercise of a broadened interpretation of corporate power, that is for instance, as opposed to small business power, is well documented. The increased stridency of the mass media not only in support of Barack Obama but in its shrill uniformity (examples are MSNBC's Chris Matthews and CNN's Jack Cafferty and Lou Dobbs) suggest a crisis of confidence on the part of American elites. The crisis is economic and it is in its early stages.
The Bush administration has intensified the inflation of the past 25 years to a point that will necessitate a recession. But American financial and business institutions have been considerably weakened due to mismanagement and may not withstand a recession. The media's advertisers and corporate owners are in for a rough ride.
Wealth has been reallocated away from the economy's productive sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture, and the manufacturing firms as in the automobile industry that might be able to produce value are frequently not globally competitive. For them to become competitive the dollar needs to depreciate to the point where their exports become so. This will attract talent back to productive areas of the economy but will reduce the wealth base and force many Americans to reduce their living standards. As well, the reduction in the purchasing power of the dollar will be associated with an influx of dollars from abroad, causing additional price inflation here. This will cause instability. The reason for the price inflation is of course Federal Reserve policy that has subsidized the same firms that advertise through the mass media and include the mass media firms themselves.
In response to the depreciating dollar the Fed will need to raise interest rates. This will cause difficulties and perhaps bankruptcy of major American firms.
The mass media adopts an increasingly lock step tone in order to prepare for a series of economic crises whose causes it aims to distort. The beneficiaries of the long inflation of the past 25 years have been top managers, Wall Street and hedge funds. Oil speculation is not really an important component of this, and the media's recent tap dance about oil speculation is evidence of how it will continue to lie about the economic problems in the next decade. Barack Obama has received more donations from Wall Street and the financial community than has John McCain. He will avoid, with media support, addressing the underlying sources of the need for adjustment.
The one who pays is you.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
My Neighbor and American Ingenuity
My neighbor had his sister's pressure washer for a few weeks. I hired him to do our front chimney at our house in West Shokan. The chimney hadn't been cleaned since Clayton's uncle built it in the 1950s. My neighbor is very talented. There is still some old fashioned American inegenuity left:
Before
After
Before
After
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