Pamela Hall and Sharad Karkhanis forwarded links that tell of the left's frustration with President-elect Barack Obama (PEBO). Hall links to her Silent Majority blog and focuses on anti-Iraqi-war activist Cindy Sheehan's article about PEBO and Hillary Clinton. Sheehan writes:
>"After the official appointments were confirmed, I told two of my closest friends that Obama has killed the US anti-war movement that has been on life support while it worked feverishly to elect him. But, in reality, Obama didn’t kill the movement, the movement committed suicide in (again) supporting a non-anti-war candidate solely because he is not George Bush and he knows how to say the words “hope and change” with a straight face and no hint of irony in his voice...
>"I would like to swallow the empty rhetoric of Obama and believe that everything’s going to be fine; but I know better. Even before he takes the oath of office, Obama has already sold us out to the US Military Industrial Complex. He has also sold out the people of Iraq, Palestine (the forgotten oppressed people), Pakistan, and certainly the innocent civilians of Afghanistan...
>"Obviously, Barack Obama does not want to solve any problems or stop, or even retard, the 'institutional momentum' towards disaster because his cabinet picks, advisers and staff (AIPAC hack, Rahm Emanuel) are all deeply mired (quagmire?) in the corrupt institutions and are directly responsible for the profound crap we are in today...If Obama really desired change, then he would appoint people who have been trying to fix the horrible problems that only worsened during the Bush years.
>"Well, I am starting a new group called: 'CWCBIMA' (Quick-be-ma)
>"'Change We Can Believe in, My Ass.'"
On December 8, the esteemed Sharad Karkhanis forwarded a link to a related politico.com article entitled "Liberals Voice Concerns About Obama":
"Now some are shedding a reluctance to puncture the liberal euphoria at being rid of President George W. Bush to say, in effect, that the new boss looks like the old boss.
"'He has confirmed what our suspicions were by surrounding himself with a centrist to right cabinet. But we do hope that before it's all over we can get at least one authentic progressive appointment,' said Tim Carpenter, national director of the Progressive Democrats of America.
"OpenLeft blogger Chris Bowers went so far as to issue this plaintive plea: “Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?
"Juan Cole, who runs a prominent anti-war blog called Informed Comment, said he worries Obama will get bad advice from Clinton on the Middle East, calling her too pro-Israel and 'belligerent' toward Iran. 'But overall, my estimation is that he has chosen competence over ideology, and I'm willing to cut him some slack,' Cole said.
"Other voices of the left don’t like what they’re seeing so far and aren’t waiting for more before they speak up.
"New York Times columnist Frank Rich warned that Obama’s economic team of Summers and Geithner reminded him of John F. Kennedy’s 'best and the brightest' team, who blundered in Vietnam despite their blue-chip pedigrees."
The "liberal" antidote to the last problem is to attack Sarah Palin as unqualified because she didn't go to Harvard, and appoint Caroline Kennedy to the Senate because she was on the board of directors of the American Ballet Theater but did go to Harvard and therefore is qualified in the view of pissant propagandists and their brainwashed, soon-to-be-impoverished-by-the-Fed minions. "Liberals" are true geniuses.
I'm sitting here drinking some hot chocolate and thinking--I disagree with Sheehan about the Iraqi War and Israel, but I agree with her in the abstract. I called the change that Obama represents "chump change" in a blog on December 2.
On June 16 I wrote:
"Mr. Obama claims to favor change, yet he is allied with specific economic interests, specifically Wall Street. In 2008, Goldman Sachs so far has given $2.7 million to Democrats and less than $1 million to Republicans. Goldman Sachs's contributions to Democrats has exceeded those to Republicans every year since 1990. To assuage public concern about excessive Wall Street influence on Obama, America's off-the-charts-insipid media provide testimonies from 'principled' Wall Street tycoons like George Soros and Warren Buffett that Obama is for 'change'. Of course, Messrs. Soros and Buffett do not discuss how Obama's 'change' will influence their own economic interests."
The kind of change that we can expect from PEBO was discussed yesterday in a New York Times editorial that I bloggedhere that admitted that the steps that Chair Ben Bernanke, Secretary Henry Paulson and President George W. Bush are taking will be inflationary, but the Times supports them anyway. In this context of saying that inflation is a necessary medicine the Times writes:
"For Barack Obama, the challenge is one of leadership. As president, Mr. Obama will have to convey optimism without over promising. He will have to inspire confidence, even in the absence of a dramatic turnaround — which is simply not in the cards. To his credit, Mr. Obama has already warned the American people that conditions will get worse before they get better."
Perhaps what then-Senator Obama meant by "change" during his campaign was inflation. That was going to happen with or without him, so he wasn't wrong. "Change you can believe in" means "Wall Street, the Fed and I are going to scr*w you, you can believe it".
Ms. Sheehan is right to be angry. When he appointed President Bush's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, as his own secretary, PEBO confirmed that (a)my assertion back in June that his issues are domestic, economic, and linked to Wall Street was correct, (b) international issues and Iraq are of little consequence to him, (c) corruption will be the hallmark of his administration and (d) his followers are chumps.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Is The Future of The Republican Party A New World Order?
I received the following e-mail from "Ms. J. Kulig".
>Please pass this on to your contact list. I have started a NEW FORUM on my web site www.wethepeopleusa.ning.com to elicit any information anyone has regarding a New World Order. Much research is available. Let's put it in one place so people can judge for themselves if my observations and the observations of others, more learned than myself, have any merit.
>Dear Readers,
>First, let me state that I am a registered Repulican who voted for John McCain in this past election. I voted Republican because my values and beliefs are consistent with the 2008 RNC platformand because Barack Obama with too many Anti-American ties and a platform, which I believed, supported a Socialist agenda.
>Months before the election, I was disturbed to find out that Barack Obama might not even meet the "natural born" eligibility requirements to be elected to POTUS. The more I read, the more research that I conducted, the more I became convinced that Obama's rise to superstardom was an orchestrated effort that would have to involve both parties, high ranking government officials and the media. Why wasn't anyone standing up to avoid the impending constitutional crisis?
>To follow the slew of lawsuits that were being originated surrounding both Obama's and McCain's eligibility issues, (but particularly Obama's because McCain's eligibility issue, I thought had been addressed) I started a social networking site called WeThePeopleUSA.
>My site grew almost overnight, at a rate of about 30-50 members a day and now totals around 500 members. Unfortunately, after lawsuit after lawsuit was dismissed regarding Obama's presidential eligibilty, I noticed a rapid decline in member participation and new members joining the site.
>Fortunately, I never stopped searching for the truth, not just about Obama, but about the Republican Party...My Party. I wanted to know why, with so many questions concerning Obama's eligibilty, hadn't ANY high profile Republicans stepped up to voice their concern? Why had the "so-called" conservative media, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, etc. failed to report on this issue?
>Today, I am pretty much an expert on the Obama eligibility question and I have many links on my site that link to other sites that are also reporting this issue. However, the silence of the Republican Party and historical support that John McCain has given on behalf of illegal immigrants, NAFTA and the Council on Foreign Policy has caused me to ask more questions that I wasn't sure that I really wanted the answer to.
>Could McCain's loss to Obama have been part of the "master plan?" If so, how was it orchestrated and who were the players. Surely, the Republican's, our small government, capitalism loving party could not be behind such a betrayal. There must be some other explaination. This could not happen in America. What about our Supreme Court and George Bush's appointee for Chief Justice, John Roberts, surely, he would uphold the Constitution?
>Unfortunately, I found out that it IS happening, and that It has been happening for a very long time. I have concluded that the Republican Party, as it stands today, is a party that secretly supports a New World Order.
>Everything that is associated with Obama, including John McCain, his presidential opponent, and our Current and Former Republican Presidents is connected to this New World Order.
>The New World Order is a borderless society ruled by a central banking system which uses one currency in which individual rights are no longer protected and one government has total control. Many of the "elites" have recognized that a New World Order is needed and necessary. click here for quotes.
>From a False Credit Crisis to the Wars that have been started to create the New World Order, chaos has been created and terrorism used as an imminent danger, like 9/11 to scare people into giving up their constitutional rights.
>I am not a conspiracy theorist, I do not wear a tin-foil hat. I am an average average American, who, for most of my life, like many other Americans has been too busy trying to work and make a living and raise a family to seek out the truth on my own.
>I don't claim to have found out the complete "truth" only a list of questions, that yet to have been unanswered. Until we can answer these questions and get to the real truth, we can not determine how to move forward as a Party or even what the party should look like.
>How many "elites" in the Republican party today are connected to the New World Order? We MUST determine this before we can Stand United and Rebuild the Party.
>Your thoughts and comments are encouraged. Please note: I have completed extensive research on both Obama and McCain's citizenship, as well as, the NWO, but I did not want to overload the reader here. A few links are provided for your reference, which link to more material you can read on your own to decide for yourself if ALL YOUR QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS have truly been addressed by your party.
>Thank you.
>Please pass this on to your contact list. I have started a NEW FORUM on my web site www.wethepeopleusa.ning.com to elicit any information anyone has regarding a New World Order. Much research is available. Let's put it in one place so people can judge for themselves if my observations and the observations of others, more learned than myself, have any merit.
>Dear Readers,
>First, let me state that I am a registered Repulican who voted for John McCain in this past election. I voted Republican because my values and beliefs are consistent with the 2008 RNC platformand because Barack Obama with too many Anti-American ties and a platform, which I believed, supported a Socialist agenda.
>Months before the election, I was disturbed to find out that Barack Obama might not even meet the "natural born" eligibility requirements to be elected to POTUS. The more I read, the more research that I conducted, the more I became convinced that Obama's rise to superstardom was an orchestrated effort that would have to involve both parties, high ranking government officials and the media. Why wasn't anyone standing up to avoid the impending constitutional crisis?
>To follow the slew of lawsuits that were being originated surrounding both Obama's and McCain's eligibility issues, (but particularly Obama's because McCain's eligibility issue, I thought had been addressed) I started a social networking site called WeThePeopleUSA.
>My site grew almost overnight, at a rate of about 30-50 members a day and now totals around 500 members. Unfortunately, after lawsuit after lawsuit was dismissed regarding Obama's presidential eligibilty, I noticed a rapid decline in member participation and new members joining the site.
>Fortunately, I never stopped searching for the truth, not just about Obama, but about the Republican Party...My Party. I wanted to know why, with so many questions concerning Obama's eligibilty, hadn't ANY high profile Republicans stepped up to voice their concern? Why had the "so-called" conservative media, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, etc. failed to report on this issue?
>Today, I am pretty much an expert on the Obama eligibility question and I have many links on my site that link to other sites that are also reporting this issue. However, the silence of the Republican Party and historical support that John McCain has given on behalf of illegal immigrants, NAFTA and the Council on Foreign Policy has caused me to ask more questions that I wasn't sure that I really wanted the answer to.
>Could McCain's loss to Obama have been part of the "master plan?" If so, how was it orchestrated and who were the players. Surely, the Republican's, our small government, capitalism loving party could not be behind such a betrayal. There must be some other explaination. This could not happen in America. What about our Supreme Court and George Bush's appointee for Chief Justice, John Roberts, surely, he would uphold the Constitution?
>Unfortunately, I found out that it IS happening, and that It has been happening for a very long time. I have concluded that the Republican Party, as it stands today, is a party that secretly supports a New World Order.
>Everything that is associated with Obama, including John McCain, his presidential opponent, and our Current and Former Republican Presidents is connected to this New World Order.
>The New World Order is a borderless society ruled by a central banking system which uses one currency in which individual rights are no longer protected and one government has total control. Many of the "elites" have recognized that a New World Order is needed and necessary. click here for quotes.
>From a False Credit Crisis to the Wars that have been started to create the New World Order, chaos has been created and terrorism used as an imminent danger, like 9/11 to scare people into giving up their constitutional rights.
>I am not a conspiracy theorist, I do not wear a tin-foil hat. I am an average average American, who, for most of my life, like many other Americans has been too busy trying to work and make a living and raise a family to seek out the truth on my own.
>I don't claim to have found out the complete "truth" only a list of questions, that yet to have been unanswered. Until we can answer these questions and get to the real truth, we can not determine how to move forward as a Party or even what the party should look like.
>How many "elites" in the Republican party today are connected to the New World Order? We MUST determine this before we can Stand United and Rebuild the Party.
>Your thoughts and comments are encouraged. Please note: I have completed extensive research on both Obama and McCain's citizenship, as well as, the NWO, but I did not want to overload the reader here. A few links are provided for your reference, which link to more material you can read on your own to decide for yourself if ALL YOUR QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS have truly been addressed by your party.
>Thank you.
Monday, December 22, 2008
New York Times Aims to Destroy Your Pension
In a December 22 editorial the New York Times openly advocates inflation as a "cure" for unspecified "ailments" in the economy. Goldbug Howard S. Katz, who runs an investment newsletter, brought the article to my attention earlier today. Katz has been tracking the rapid expansion of Federal Reserve Bank Credit, monetary reserves and the money supply and argues that the safest way to secure your retirement is to take a pro-gold, anti-dollar position despite recent run-ups in the dollar. The stimulus the Fed is providing will lead to a bull market in stocks but a super-bull in commodities. Katz also argues that the current "crisis" has been a media phenomenon fabricated in response to bankers' demands for extra liquidity in order to extract additional wealth from America's declining economy (by declining I mean suffering from long-term, century-long misallocation of resources due to Federal Reserve and "Progressive" policies).
Allow me to quote the from the December 22 article entitled "The Printing Press Cure":
"The Federal Reserve as much as admitted last week that lowering the benchmark interest rate — even to zero — would not be powerful enough medicine to revive today’s ailing economy. And so it has opted for the printing-press cure, pledging for the foreseeable future to pump vast sums into banks, other financial firms, businesses and households.
"Economic history — of the Great Depression of the 1930s and Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s — suggests that the Fed is doing the right thing. Confronted then, as now, with the twin scourges of deepening recession and incipient deflation, governments did more damage with too little intervention than they would have done with too much.
"But that doesn’t make such intervention 'good.' It’s a big and unfortunate risk in itself."
One of the outcomes of inflationary Fed policy will be the destruction of retirement benefits based on wages earned prior to the inflation (that is, pensions of people who retired prior to the inflation during the coming 5-10 years). Many boomers will likely fall into this category. As boomers retire on annuities, traditional pensions or hold assets in Guaranteed Investment Contracts, savings accounts, safe bonds or other dollar-denominated assets, their well-being will be destroyed as the Times and Wall Street cheer on.
As well, wages do not typically keep pace with inflation. Thus, the already stretched worker will be stretched ever tighter in a Wall Street drawn noose. Employment relations, already weakened by past rounds of inflation, regulation, and globalization, will become weaker. Employers will find it in their interest to terminate post-retirement medical insurance and other benefits that keep pace with inflation. During the 1970s and 1980s employers resented indexing and escalator clauses that caused wages to keep pace with inflation. It is likely that they will be encouraged to reduce or terminate benefits just at the time that health care costs go under exponentially increasing pressure because of the retirement of the baby boomers. The problem cannot be solved by nationally sponsored health insurance because the cost pressures are demographic. All nationally sponsored insurance can do is ration care so that none of the fingers will be sewn back on, just as they wouldn't be in Cuba or France.
The Times does not say exactly why it thinks the economy is in so much trouble that inflation is necessary. Is there a law of economics that states that a few years of excessive mortgage lending necessitates inflation? Why was late nineteenth century America able to produce rising (instead of falling, as the Times advocates) wages, rising productivity, rising employment levels, absorption of massive amounts of immigration and the very deflation that the Times so dreads? Why was it possible to thrive before the Fed was founded, and why are we now in so much trouble after a century of the Fed's existence?
Two of the funnier sentences in the editorial are these:
"To jump-start the economy requires getting money to those who will spend it fast and in full. That includes unemployed workers, low- and middle-income families, and state and local governments."
Back in the 1940s and 1950s the Times supported urban renewal on the pretext that it would lead to better housing for the poor and middle class. Instead, the funding, which was huge in New York City, was given to developers, some of whom were friends of the Times's owners, the Ochs Sulzbergers. The developers used it to exercise extensive private-use eminent domain, banishing factory jobs from New York, destroying low-income neighborhoods and building expensive office buildings and co-ops for millionaires. The middle class was set up in dreary suburbs on Long Island like Levittown under the same programs (of Title I and Title II) and high-crime urban ghettos for minorities were established featuring dreadful public housing projects built with the Times's glowing support. Yes, the Times always has the interests of the poor and middle class in mind.
Now, the Times tells its readers that there is a "crisis" (what it is is never specified) and that Barack Obama's leadership in the interest of inflation is essential.
I do not normally pay attention to what the Times has to say, and this article sums up why. There are two categories of people who read the Times. The first is the people who take them seriously as an information and opinion source. Such people are lost souls at the fringes of society, and I feel sorry for them. The second is the people who read the Times in order to find out what the lost souls are thinking. But the lost souls are headed for the poor house, and the times when the Times's opinions mattered are passed. Let us bury the last copy of the Times in Adolph Ochs's grave.
As far as your own retirement goes, I would seriously consider gold, gold stocks, silver, agricultural commodities, the "DBC" and Swiss Francs. Keeping your money in US dollars is akin to flushing it down the drain.
Allow me to quote the from the December 22 article entitled "The Printing Press Cure":
"The Federal Reserve as much as admitted last week that lowering the benchmark interest rate — even to zero — would not be powerful enough medicine to revive today’s ailing economy. And so it has opted for the printing-press cure, pledging for the foreseeable future to pump vast sums into banks, other financial firms, businesses and households.
"Economic history — of the Great Depression of the 1930s and Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s — suggests that the Fed is doing the right thing. Confronted then, as now, with the twin scourges of deepening recession and incipient deflation, governments did more damage with too little intervention than they would have done with too much.
"But that doesn’t make such intervention 'good.' It’s a big and unfortunate risk in itself."
One of the outcomes of inflationary Fed policy will be the destruction of retirement benefits based on wages earned prior to the inflation (that is, pensions of people who retired prior to the inflation during the coming 5-10 years). Many boomers will likely fall into this category. As boomers retire on annuities, traditional pensions or hold assets in Guaranteed Investment Contracts, savings accounts, safe bonds or other dollar-denominated assets, their well-being will be destroyed as the Times and Wall Street cheer on.
As well, wages do not typically keep pace with inflation. Thus, the already stretched worker will be stretched ever tighter in a Wall Street drawn noose. Employment relations, already weakened by past rounds of inflation, regulation, and globalization, will become weaker. Employers will find it in their interest to terminate post-retirement medical insurance and other benefits that keep pace with inflation. During the 1970s and 1980s employers resented indexing and escalator clauses that caused wages to keep pace with inflation. It is likely that they will be encouraged to reduce or terminate benefits just at the time that health care costs go under exponentially increasing pressure because of the retirement of the baby boomers. The problem cannot be solved by nationally sponsored health insurance because the cost pressures are demographic. All nationally sponsored insurance can do is ration care so that none of the fingers will be sewn back on, just as they wouldn't be in Cuba or France.
The Times does not say exactly why it thinks the economy is in so much trouble that inflation is necessary. Is there a law of economics that states that a few years of excessive mortgage lending necessitates inflation? Why was late nineteenth century America able to produce rising (instead of falling, as the Times advocates) wages, rising productivity, rising employment levels, absorption of massive amounts of immigration and the very deflation that the Times so dreads? Why was it possible to thrive before the Fed was founded, and why are we now in so much trouble after a century of the Fed's existence?
Two of the funnier sentences in the editorial are these:
"To jump-start the economy requires getting money to those who will spend it fast and in full. That includes unemployed workers, low- and middle-income families, and state and local governments."
Back in the 1940s and 1950s the Times supported urban renewal on the pretext that it would lead to better housing for the poor and middle class. Instead, the funding, which was huge in New York City, was given to developers, some of whom were friends of the Times's owners, the Ochs Sulzbergers. The developers used it to exercise extensive private-use eminent domain, banishing factory jobs from New York, destroying low-income neighborhoods and building expensive office buildings and co-ops for millionaires. The middle class was set up in dreary suburbs on Long Island like Levittown under the same programs (of Title I and Title II) and high-crime urban ghettos for minorities were established featuring dreadful public housing projects built with the Times's glowing support. Yes, the Times always has the interests of the poor and middle class in mind.
Now, the Times tells its readers that there is a "crisis" (what it is is never specified) and that Barack Obama's leadership in the interest of inflation is essential.
I do not normally pay attention to what the Times has to say, and this article sums up why. There are two categories of people who read the Times. The first is the people who take them seriously as an information and opinion source. Such people are lost souls at the fringes of society, and I feel sorry for them. The second is the people who read the Times in order to find out what the lost souls are thinking. But the lost souls are headed for the poor house, and the times when the Times's opinions mattered are passed. Let us bury the last copy of the Times in Adolph Ochs's grave.
As far as your own retirement goes, I would seriously consider gold, gold stocks, silver, agricultural commodities, the "DBC" and Swiss Francs. Keeping your money in US dollars is akin to flushing it down the drain.
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