Thought Goo Evolution 3

Ron Paul Answers Tough Questions From CNN

2012-02-20T19:54:00.000-06:00

Ron Paul is doing much better than the media would like you to believe.

If you believe in Ron Paul at all, donate a few bucks to his campaign. It can't hurt. It may even save America!

Link To The Ron Paul Store

News for Ron Paul

Ron Paul raised $4.5M in January

USA TODAY‎ - 3 hours ago

By Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul raised $4.5 million in January, his campaign just announced.

PayPal co-founder donates millions to Ron Paul super PAC

Its not over. The American people still have a chance. If Obama wins, we all loose.

ADHD - Changing Education Paradigms - Industrialized Education - Divergent Thinking!!!

2012-02-19T10:46:00.000-06:00

Brilliant! Watch this.

Why Barack Obama Must Be a One Term President

2012-02-19T10:08:00.003-06:00

Here is a piece of information given to me by one of my readers that helps to explain what Barack Obama is doing to this country and why so many thoughtful, intelligent people, both democrat and republican, desperately hope he is 1 term president.

Link to the American Thinker Article

Excerpt:

This administration is making a habit of directing government agencies to change their very jobs without congressional authority.

The military isn't there to fight wars, but perhaps to help with disaster assistance. The Department of Education is to issue guidelines on children's diets. NASA is to stop flying into outer space, and instead is to propagandize about the scientific contributions of Islam through the ages. The Department of Energy is to thwart energy independence by denying permits that would produce domestic energy.

And now the Export-Import Bank is to loan money to domestic customers engaging in domestic transactions.

This administration is abusing government, by using agencies for purposes other than their constitutional or statutory functions. This government by executive fiat grows ever more random, ever more disconnected from the reality of the legislation that chartered these departments and agencies as they wander ever farther afield.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based Customs broker and international trade compliance lecturer. His columns are regularly found in IllinoisReview.com.

The same reader who sent me this information sent me a parable that I posted earlier, which is also very helpful in explaining what Barack Obama is doing to America. I will re-post it at the bottom of this article.

I think it is very important that as many Americans as possible come to understand why people like me oppose and fear Barack Obama, what the Tea Party is mostly all about. And why Ron Paul is so important.

I think, and feel there is overwhelming proof, that;

Barack Obama and his administration have nothing but contempt for America and its people.

That they view the rule of law and government as are their play things, to be used and abused as they see fit.

And they are using and abusing government, heinously!

Even though Obama is a democrat, and the people's general perception of democrats are that they are the "liberal" side of the two party system, and thus generally less "establishment." Obama is, in fact, abusing power like no other President in history since Richard Nixon, and Nixon was nearly impeached for his abuses and had to resign his office.

I would argue that Obama's abuses of power are much grander, broader reaching and destructive.

Here is the parable I mentioned:

A little parable:

Monday:

President Obama announced today that he has issued an executive order requiring every American to eat $50 worth of pork each year.

President Obama's announcement was immediately praised by the Pork-Producers Council and the Hog Farm-Workers Union. In a rare joint statement, the industry group and the union pointed to declining rates of domestic pork sales, blaming it on "wrong-headed health concerns" and "post-NAFTA competition from Canadian bacon".

Declining sales, they said, was leading to severely diminished standards of living for pork-producers and farm laborers.

Tuesday:

An organization of Orthodox Jewish rabbis held a news conference at which they objected to Mr. Obama's pork-eating mandate, claiming that this requirement would violate long-held Jewish religious principles.

Within an hour, Occupy J-Street and Jews for Obama condemned the Orthodox rabbinate and said "it is high-time for Jewish religious law to be up-dated to reflect higher priorities, such as those advanced here by President Obama. Helping pork producers and farm workers, reducing the drain that unemployed farm workers place on the welfare system, and showing support for President Obama are much more important than some old, dusty biblical 'commandments' that are more than 100 years old. Who even reads them any more?"

Wednesday:

Several additional rabbinic and other Jewish organizations criticized the Obama pork mandate as violation of Constitutional rights securing the free exercise of religion and prohibiting the establishment of religion.

In other news, quarterly filings today with the Federal Election Commission showed that several pork producers and a very large number of persons identified as "farm workers" in the last 90 days have made maximum contributions to the Obama Reelection Campaign or have contributed significant sums to Obama-supporting Super PACs.

Thursday:

The U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and several Protestant organizations weighed in today on the Obama Pork Mandate, joining Jewish leaders in condemning what they decried as "another attack by President Obama on religious liberty in America."

Within an hour, Nutritionists for the Public Interest issued a statement saying that "Eating 'the other white meat' is, well, in the public interest. So is obeying President Obama."

Friday:

Imams in mosques all across the United States, preaching sermons at Friday Prayer, condemned the Obama mandate to eat pork as "a vile and unjustified trampling on the freedoms of believers."

Numerous prominent Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant leaders, joined by the heads of several civil rights and civil liberties organizations, held news conferences and issued written statements saying that in demanding that people of some faiths be required by government to violate the tenets of their religions was a threat to the religious liberty of people of all faiths.

Statements condemning the Obama pork-eating mandate were prepared to be read from pulpits in synagogues and churches all over the country during weekend services.

At 5:00 p.m. President Obama held a hastily-called news conference at The White House in which he announced an "accommodation" of "people who, on religious grounds, don't want to eat pork. No one has to eat pork against their will," said President Obama. "All anyone has to do is BUY pork. If you BUY pork, you don't have to eat it yourself.

You can throw it away -- or, better, give it to a nearby food pantry or soup kitchen. But pork producers and farm workers are suffering, We have to support them. And if everyone will send just $50 a year their way, which is not a lot to ask, then we will have saved a major part of the American economy from even greater suffering. This is a truly shovel-ready project. We're cutting out all the pretense of public works and just directly shoveling your money straight to people we think ought to have it."

Mr. Obama refused to take most questions. One reporter, however, asked him, "Where does the Federal Government get the authority to force people to buy pork, whether or not they actually eat it?"

As he walked away, Mr. Obama answered, "It is well-established in the courts that when people refrain from going into interstate commerce, their behavior -- doing nothing -- affects interstate commerce. By abstaining from pork, people are adversely affecting the interstate market for pork. So my authority comes from the Interstate Commerce Clause. Trust me on this, I'm a professor of constitutional law."

Later in the evening aides to Mr. Obama explained that the pork-buying mandate will be enforced by the IRS. Said the Secretary of Agriculture, "Either you attach receipts to your income tax form each year showing that you bought at least $50 worth of pork or you have to attach a check for $100."

An hour later, the President of Americans United for Subordination of Church to State, issued a statement praising "With this masterful compromise, President Obama has once again shown real respect for the religious beliefs of millions of Americans while still achieving the necessary goal of bailing out hundreds of failing pork producers and thousands of indigent pork farmers."

Saturday:

Speaker Boehner, appearing on a Saturday cable news program, said, "I don't get it. How can the President impose a mandate without Congressional action? And how can he impose a tax without Congressional action?"

Later Saturday, appearing on another cable news show, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid answered Speaker Boehner: "It's not a 'tax'. It's a 'penalty'. Besides, the President acted during a Congressional recess.

Speaker Boehner must not remember it, but last Monday the House and the Senate took a concurrent 15-minute bathroom break."

I can't stress enough how serious and lasting this complete disregard for the Constitution and government is. This is how totalitarianism and the suffering of people the world over happens. And its happening here, now.

The article below is the last law Barack Obama signed in 2011, while Americans were distracted with Christmas. It essentially allows for a KGB in America. This is real, its law, and it is a fact of American life today.

Countries that have laws like this are thought of as the "bad guys." Now "WE" are the bad guys! This abomination, "Marx, Hitler" law was passed without so much as American grumble.

Courtesy of ABC News: Link to original article

In his last official act of business in 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act from his vacation rental in Kailua, Hawaii. In a statement, the president said he did so with reservations about key provisions in the law — including a controversial component that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.

The legislation has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties groups, many Democrats, along with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called it “a slip into tyranny.” Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”

“Due process would be a thing of the past,” wrote Gens Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. “Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States – and hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.”

The president defended his action, writing that he signed the act, “chiefly because it authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, crucial services for service members and their families, and vital national security programs that must be renewed.”

--- Then why ad the part were you can imprison Americans forever without charge or a trial? Because your a Communist, that's why!
-- Me.

Senior administration officials, who asked not to be named, told ABC News, “The president strongly believes that to detain American citizens in military custody infinitely without trial, would be a break with our traditions and values as a nation, and wants to make sure that any type of authorization coming from congress, complies with our Constitution, our rules of war and any applicable laws.”

One official explained that President Obama does believe, however, that American citizens can be temporarily detained, and that the military has the right to capture and hold any citizen who is engaged in conflict against the United States. If various provisions in the law prove unworkable, the president could go back to Congress to ask for changes.

“The president is going to adhere to the policies that he has held over the last three years, making sure that none of these congressional provisions impede the ability of the counter terrorism and military professional from keeping the country safe,” the official said.

-- However the law says indefinitely, not temporarily. And now that the law is signed, you think Obama's or any other President, except maybe for Ron Paul, will check if its being abused?

Barack Obama said he signed this law into effect with "reservations," yea, reservations in hell -- Me

Evil wins when good men do nothing. So, what are you doing?

The Ron Paul Movement is Alive and Well!

2012-02-16T11:58:00.006-06:00

Ron Paul Is Secretly Taking Over The GOP — And It's Driving People Insane

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-paul-maine-caucuses-gop-takeover-2012-2#ixzz1mYxSM6sB

Excerpt from article:

By now, it is clear that the Maine caucuses were a complete mess.

Evidence is mounting that Mitt Romney's 194-vote victory over Ron Paul was prematurely announced, if not totally wrong.

Washington County canceled their caucus on Saturday on account of three inches of snow (hardly a blizzard by Maine standards), and other towns that scheduled their caucuses for this week have been left out of the vote count. Now, it looks like caucuses that did take place before Feb. 11 have also been left out of final tally.

As the full extent of the chaos unfolds, sources close to the Paul campaign tell Business Insider that it is looking increasingly like Romney's team might have a hand in denying Paul votes, noting that Romney has some admirably ruthless operatives on his side and a powerful incentive to avoid a fifth caucus loss this month.

And there is more: Notice the democrats!

The media, is white washing over Ron Paul's campaign, but the number of people who support him is still growing, and there are many more of us than you think! Millions more!

What you haven't heard is that huge numbers of democrats overwhelmingly support Ron Paul over Barack Obama. I live in Illinois, (democrat nation!), and I can tell you personally that every young person I talk to on campus supports Ron Paul, no matter how liberal, and that's how Barack Obama won!

Older voters in my area may be more cynical (how could they not be?), but none of them questions Ron Paul's integrity. And in the end people will vote for the man they believe to be genuine if you let them, and that is Ron Paul.

The establishment, may be able to block the true media reports about Ron Paul, but even if he doesn't win the nomination, his movement isn't going to get any smaller. His son may need to take over his principle, or another candidate, but it will continue!

Electing another insider like the one we have now, or have had before, will only make things worse for the American people.

As life get worse, fewer and fewer people will be able to delude themselves into thinking that we can ever go back to the way things were before, and they will come to realize that restoring the constitution, and limiting the size and spending of government is the only way to heal our nation.

Movie Log

2012-02-16T11:20:00.000-06:00

Movie Log
Dan Nelson
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 To Present…

Over the years I have seen some brilliant movies. Usually Lionsgate is the one to produce them. The problem is that as soon as they are returned I forget them. So from now on when I see a movie that really impressed me for whatever reason, I am going to log it here.
______________________________________________________

2010 marks a change in cinema viewing for me. I now officially see more movies at home than in the theater. The realization of the this makes me a little sad, but not so much as to change this new trend in my movie watching habits.

What is interesting about this is that I am seeing movies a half a year behind their release. So I see things like the Oscars, before the movies. I wrote earlier in this article that 2010 was a slow year for movies. That ended up not being the case. I simply saw the best movies of 2010 in 2011.
_____________________________________________________

Contagion (2011)

I typically do not like this genre, however, this movie is not typical. This is very much a movie-log worthy flick. It meets all 3 of my requirements; superior writing, acting and directing. I believe you will be blown away by this movie, and enthralled, as I was.

The use of time shifting in this movie is brilliantly done, and ads so much to the story.

The characters are "real." I left feeling that Kate Winslet's character was a true hero. Not someone I cried for, but felt pride for. Every performance was first rate.

Anonymous (2011)

Superior story, superior acting, so-so editing. This movie was a little to complex at first, but still qualifies as a must see.

The theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, who penned Shakespeare's plays. Set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I and the Essex rebellion against her.

The story, which I assume to be much researched, is, true or not, fascinating! If you like period pieces this one will really take you back!

Money Ball (2011)

A solid, very well made, enjoyable movie that is also interesting, and true.

I am not really a Brad Pitt or Jonah Hill fan, however these two shined in this movie. I'm glad I saw it!

Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

This movie is everything you think it is, non stop action, period! I simply have to give the creators credit. As hard as it is today to really go "over the top, " they did.

Actually they found fresh new "tops" to go over. The Burj climb alone is worth the price of the ticket.

The movie doubles as a huge BMW commercial. Normally this would piss me off, but I have a soft spot in my heart for BMW in the movies because they did such a hot job with the film shorts they did back in 2002 that made Clive Owen a star!

Here is the Link to the 2002 BMW movies

Midnight in Paris (2011)

Here you go! A slice of pure serendipity! This is a Woody Allen movie that surpasses Woody Allen movies. You do not have to like his genre to like this movie, it stands completely on its own.

You get a splash of his wit and style painted into an imaginative story line so endearing; suspension of disbelief just happens.

I found myself swept away by the story line, captivated by the actors, wishing, very strongly wishing, I could be there with Owen Wilson experiencing his adventure with him.

The movie was so well done, In a small way, I felt I had.

Margin Call (2011)

Wow! WOW! The best douche-bags on Wall Street movie since the original "Wall Street!"

Jeremy Irons portrays the icy, filthy greedy, no accountability, unadulterated scum that is the Wall Street/Washington mogul so well it will give you chills!

Kevin Spacey plays the disconnected corporate sell-out with crystal clear, stark cold reality.

Every performance was astounding, but I have to give a special mention to Demi Moore.

She's in the very first movie I ever put in this log, "Flawless," and she was great there too. She is a very underrated actress, who adds depth and character to a movie, and she masterfully holds her own with "the boys."

Because there hasn't been anything to write about movie wise in so long, I thought I would pay homage to my TOP 4 FAVORITE MOVIES of ALL TIME! Each one of these movies, to me, are pure genius, each in their own way.

The Matrix (1999)

Army of Darkness (1992)

The Princess Bride (1987)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Hesher (2010)

Its horribly slim pickings for movies this time of year, nothing in the theaters, nothing to rent, so I dig deeper than usual, trying to find something worth seeing. And, once in a great while a little serendipity happens.

This movie was a guilty pleasure; offensive, tasteless and very well done. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who can find the humor and sentiment in a "white-trash" situation comedy.

Win Win (2011)

Does Paul Giamatti not make bad movies, or are the movies just better because he's in them?

Giamatti rocks in this flick, as usual. But I have to say Alex Shaffer, the 17 year old real wrestling champ that played the part of Kyle, was never upstaged, or drowned out. He was integral to the story and very believable.

Burt Young slam-dunked the grandpa character.

Its just not fair in a flick this well done to pick favorites, everyone brought their A-game.

The Beaver (2011)

Not really a happy movie, but a good movie. I felt it did a really good job of showing the impossible nature of mental illness, and how hard it is to stick by someone with one.

This movie is more of an learning experience than an entertainment, but I give it full marks for writing, directing and acting. I'm not sorry I saw it, and I will remember it.

Limitless (2011)

Really good flick, and a great story!
I want NZT!
Maybe I would finish one of my f'n books.

Bradley Cooper is going places, places with red carpets and over-dressed skinny chicks. The guy can act, and this movie is good enough to take him to the next level.

Abbie Cornish too, wow, I had know idea who she was till now. She belongs in more movies.

This movie is a must rent, and will appeal to a very wide audience.

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

OK, this was a good flick. This movie has everything I like about movies. Really good writing, directing and acting combined with a good story and great characters.

I felt this one. I was swept along by it. And I just have to say that Marisa Tomei is just so much fun to watch, she has always been a fantastic character actress, since the beginning of her career. And I know lots of people give McConaughay shit because he's good looking. But he really plays this one. Josh Lucas and John Leguizamo (scary brilliant) stand and deliver.

I was very happy we brought this one home. I bet you will be too.

Source Code (2011)

I was surprised. I saw the advertisement for this flick and said "nah". I was wrong. Jake Gyllenhaal proved once again that he is "leading man" material, and Michelle Monahan was captivating.

I call this type of movie borderline scifi, because its so close to what's possible that you can't help but go huh? Its a very cerebral movie. The explanation scenes in the bonus material are really cool. Definitely a worth renting flick.

X Men First Class (2011)

Wow! Unbelievable! Maybe I am enjoying these movies so much because I am expecting them to be crap. But I wait a couple of days to write their reviews. And days latter, I still can't think of anything bad to say about them. The first 3 X men movies were decent, but not good enough to end up in the log. This movie stands head an shoulders above it predecessors. My wife who knew nothing of the Xmen was enthralled by this movie, as was I, as an Xmen enthusiast.

As with every movie that goes into my log. The writing was superb! It was a pure joy to watch Xmen First Class! This movie continues a bright, enjoyable movie going experience for 2011, for my wife and I.

Thor (2011)

Seldom is the bar raised high for a movie.

For this to happen, writing, directing, and acting have to come together harmoniously, surpassing my expectations.

I never expect it to happen. Not with a summer blockbuster, and certainly not with a super-hero movie.

But it happened! Thor hurtled "Mjolnir" through the 3D IMAX screen, striking me squarely in my serendipity! Leaving me dumbstruck with a stupid smile on my face!

There are 3 key points I would like to make about this movie;

First, in the comic era I grew up in, Thor was one of my lessor "hero's". Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Batman always rotated in top position.

After this movie, Thor earned a place in the upper echelon of my favorite comic book hero's. And that's a testament to the good writing.

Even with Iron Man the writing was predictable. Iron man has to fight an armored villain, the Hulk has to fight a Hulk-like villain. Yadda yadda yadda, bla bla bla. Shake it up for me guys.

Thor had "characters!" Still limited in that they were all Thor-type characters but they were interesting. I love it when side kicks are as fun as the main players.

Second. When my wife asked me if I wanted to see Thor in 3D, I said no. I have been sadly disappointed with 3D. It has not been worth the extra money in the past.

We saw this movie in 3D IMAX and it was worth it! I’m not sure what they did, but the 3D was much improved.

This movie was gorgeous, visual "Ka-pow!"

Third, actor Chris Hemsworth was "perfect" as Thor!. He makes Brad Pit look like a French pastry.

He got my wife worked up, and I got to reap the benefit! She wants to see the movie again, and I'm OK with that!

Thor got my summer of to a good start. See this movie in the biggest venue you can!

The Tourist (2010)

This movie only got average reviews. I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Certainly no harm in renting it.

Country Strong (2010)

A very well done movie, with as much realism as "movie charm". Fantastic characters.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009)
The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009)
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest (2009)

A Brilliant Trilogy! The films are Swedish, the story lines are dark, the movies are not for everyone. The writing is pure genius. Lisbeth and Mikael are my literary heroes!

The Kings Speech (2010)

Its a no-brainer! It won Academy Awards for "Best Picture", "Best Director" and "Best Actor". And now it wins the most important award a motion picture can hope to receive, a spot on "The Brazilian Wax Poetics Movie Log"!

A thoroughly enjoyable, must see movie.

Unstoppable (2010)

Now this was a movie! And a true story to boot! I feel guilty that I didn't see this in the theater. This is truly a big screen worthy flick. It is everything I love about movies. Hard to believe it really happened.

Inside Job (2010)

A fantastic movie! "Documentary" It explains clearly how the United States government was purchased by Wall Street and how Wall Street trashed the whole world economy with no accountability.

Fair Game (2010)

Great flick! "Docudrama" shows how the Bush administration wanted Weapons of Mass Destruction to be in Iraq so bad, they only listened to people who said they were , plunging us into 13+ years of endless war.

And how they punished those who disagreed with them.

Love and Other Drugs (2010)

Remarkably funny! Remarkably good. Worth renting.
Gives a you an idea of why doctors work so hard to push drugs on you that you don't need.

The Town (2010)

Actually saw this Jan 2011. That's why its not listed earlier.

Because of the unfortunate string of crap that Ben Affleck has been involved in I didn't intend to see this movie. I was wrong.

I forgot that Ben Affleck can write and has talent. This is a really good flick, well written and directed, by, wait for it... "Ben Affleck" Good job! And he got to have sex with two really adorable chicks in the movie!

True Grit! (2010)

Oh yea! It's because of movies like this that I write my movie log.

Story line and character development, that's all that needs to be said. The fact that this movie is a re-make takes nothing away from it. In fact, it adds something, because the effort put into the characters wasn't expected.

It seemed like a really dry year for movies, but I logged 5 really good ones, which isn't bad. They were just so spread out it was like crossing the desert between flicks.

For 2010, out of my top 5 movies logged. I'm gonna have to say that Inception is #1 and True Grit is number #2. Both Academy Award winners!.

RED (2010)

Awesome! Fun, really, really fun!

Bruce Willis as Frank Moses
Mary-Louise Parker as Sarah Roses
Morgan Freeman as Joe Matheson
Helen Mirren as Victoria
John Malkovich as Marvin Boggs
Karl Urban as William Cooper
Julian McMahon as Vice President Robert Stanton.
Ernest Borgnine as Henry, The Records Keeper
Richard Dreyfuss as Alexander Dunning
Brian Cox as Ivan Simanov
James Remar as Gabriel Synger
Rebecca Pidgeon as Cynthia Wilkes

This is a movie you actually buy!

Everyone's performance was memorable! Malcovich was "insane!" Dreyfuss played his best "asshole" role since portraying Dick Cheney in "W". Willis managed to pull off "bad-ass". Rebecca Pidgeon played a perfect "bitch". Karl Urban managed to scare me and have me sympathize with him at the same time, and that's not easy.

Helen Mirren and Brian Cox were brilliant! Freeman was his usual outstanding!

But most of all, Mary Louise Parker just stole the show! Her character is so messed up, lonely, and beautiful, I fell head over heals in love with her! She played a perfect "beautiful disaster!" I've noticed her before, but never really got just how captivating she is! Wow! Shwing! See this flick!

Inception (2010)

Its been a really dry year for movies in 2010. The only 2 really memorable, entertaining movies for the whole second half of the year are; Inception for it's sheer brilliance in every aspect of film making, starting with fantastic writing, mind-blowing (literally) cinematography, wonderful acting and direction. Inception is as close to perfect 10 as you can come.

Jackass 3D (2010)

And Jackass 3D for its raw, painful, unbelievably riotously funny, shit filled, frat boy humor. I made the comment to my friend after the show, that the two funniest movies I have seen in the past 20 years have been the Jackass movies.

The Book of Eli (2010)

OK, so its been done before. A post apocalyptic story with a tough guy and hot babes. In this case really hot! Go Mila, and go Jennifer! Wow, there’s a love sandwich! But this movie separates itself from all the rest with really good writing. All movies have great special effects now, so more than ever, its all about the writing. Eli, for a big budget studio movie really paid attention to the story. Denzel, as usual, gave a perfect performance. This, and remember the Titans are my two favorite Denzel movies.

Some will kill to have it. He will kill to protect it.

A post-apocalyptic tale, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind.

Capitalism A Love Story (2009)

I have always hated Michael Moore, thought he was to one sided. Well he is. Our side. This movie is a masterpiece. Bill Maher referred to this work as Michael Moore’s “Magnum Opus” and I would agree. My perspective on the decline of America has now been forever changed. I now see that the destruction of Liberty in our country does not come from the Democrat or Republican parties but the wholesale purchase of both by Wall Street, who were encouraged, and supported by the apathy of the American people.

On the 20-year anniversary of his groundbreaking masterpiece Roger & Me, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story comes home to the issue he’s been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world). But this time the culprit is much bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene far wider than Flint, Michigan. From Middle America, to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan, Michael Moore will once again take film goers into uncharted territory. With both humor and outrage, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story explores a taboo question: What is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? Years ago, that love seemed so innocent. Today, however, the American dream is looking more like a nightmare as families pay the price with their jobs, their homes and their savings. Moore takes us into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal…and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. Capitalism: A Love Story is both a culmination of Moore’s previous works and a look into what a more hopeful future could look like. It is Michael Moore’s ultimate quest to answer the question he’s posed throughout his illustrious filmmaking career: Who are we and why do we behave the way that we do? (Written by Overture Films)

Goya’s Ghost (2006)

This movie is the very essence of extraordinary! The very reason I created my movie log , so as not to forget a masterpiece of this caliber! Extraordinarily WRITTEN, ACTED and DIRECTED. The depth of the Characters and their situations could not have been more masterfully portrayed! Such a joyful surprise! An amazing movie!

Goya’s Ghosts is a 2006 Spanish film directed by Miloš Forman, and produced by Xuxa Producciones (Spain) and by Saul Zaentz, and written by Miloš Forman and Jean-Claude Carrière. The film stars Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem, and Stellan Skarsgård, and was shot on location in Spain during late 2005. The film was written, produced and performed in English language although it is a Spanish production.

The beginning of the film is set in the year 1792, as Spain reels amidst the turmoil and upheaval of the French Revolution. Francisco Goya is a renowned painter, who, among others, does portraits for the royal family as the Official Court Painter to the King and Queen.

The Spanish Inquisition is disturbed by part of Goya’s work. Brother Lorenzo is hiring Goya to paint a portrait and defends him, saying that his works are not evil, they just show evil. He recommends the Church step up the fight against anti-Roman Catholic practices. He requests and is put in charge of intensifying the Inquisition.

Amazing Grace (2006)

Another masterpiece. See it to expand your mind. You will learn so much! This movie is in the same class as Goya’s Ghost.

Amazing Grace is a 2006 film directed by Michael Apted about the campaign against the slave trade in 18th century Britain, led by William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the hymn “Amazing Grace” and the film also recounts John Newton’s writing of the hymn.

Frost/Nixon (2008)

Thought it might be interesting. Turned out to be very interesting. The writing and the superb acting tells the story exceptionally well. For me it was enlightening to get a grasp of American history during the first years of my life, when I didn’t care, and thought America was mom, muscle cars and apple pie. Of course back then, for me, it was!

Frost/Nixon is a 2008 historical drama film based on the eponymous play by Peter Morgan which dramatizes the Frost/Nixon interviews of 1977. The film version was directed by Ron Howard and produced by Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment

UP(2009)

Everybody in the theater cried, except me of course, I am much to stogy and mature to cry over a cartoon. Yea right! I only heard everyone else’s sniffles when I stopped. Supper hart felt, suspension of disbelief movie. The 3D wasn’t as pronounced, as eye popping as some other 3D movies I have seen recently, but the story was much more moving.

By tying thousands of balloon to his home, 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Right after lifting off, however, he learns he isn’t alone on his journey, since Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years his junior, has inadvertently become a stowaway on the trip.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

I wanted to hate it. I couldn’t, the movie was masterfully written and beautiful to watch.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a 2008 American fantasy drama film, based on the 1921 short story of the same name written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The film was directed by David Fincher, written by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, and stars Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The film was released in the United States on December 25, 2008.

The film received thirteen Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Pitt, and Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson. It won three Oscars for Art Direction, Makeup, and Visual Effects.

The Departed (2006)

Seriously, one of the best mob stories ever done. Nicholson was mind blowing! Every performance was top notch! And I am still pissed off at what happened in the story, like it was real.

The Departed is a 2006 American crime-thriller film remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs. The Departed was directed by Martin Scorsese, written by William Monahan and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg and Ray Winstone. The film won four Academy Awards at the 79th Academy Awards, including the Best Picture, and a Best Director win for Scorsese.

This film takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, where notorious Irish Mob boss Francis “Frank” Costello (Nicholson) plants Colin Sullivan (Damon) as an informant within the Massachusetts State Police. Simultaneously, the police assign undercover cop Billy Costigan, Jr. (DiCaprio) to infiltrate Costello’s crew. When both sides of the law realize the situation, each man attempts to discover the other’s true identity before being found out.

The Secret Life of Bees (2008)

I was impressed by the superb writing, the fine acting the compelling story, much like every movie in this log. I found myself wishing I could sit down and have a lemonade with Queen Latifah’s character on the back porch or her pink house. Actually I left this movie feeling I had left their house after visiting a while. I can only dream that someday I could write a story nearly as well.

The Secret Life of Bees is a historical fiction 2002 bestselling novel by American author Sue Monk Kidd. It received much critical acclaim and was a New York Times bestseller. It was nominated for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and has been adapted into a film by Gina Prince-Bythewood that stars Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson. The film was released on October 17, 2008.

Changeling (2008)

One of the most powerful stories I have heard. Ms. Collins should be remembered as an American Hero. The story was so incredible I had a hard time acknowledging that it was true. She stood against pure evil. The evil of the local government and the evil of a serial killer! Her story deserves more than just to be an interesting side topic. She made a difference and should be written into the history books.

American period drama film directed by Clint Eastwood and written by J. Michael Straczynski. The film begins in 1928 Los Angeles and tells the true story of a woman who recognizes that the boy returned after her son’s disappearance is an impostor. After confronting the city authorities, she is vilified as an unfit mother and branded delusional. The events were related to the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, a kidnapping and murder case that was uncovered in 1928.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

An great example of fantastic writing. Characters and situations with heart wrapped in clever story.

British drama film directed by Danny Boyle, co-directed by Loveleen Tandan,[3] and written by Simon Beaufoy. It is an adaptation of the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-nominated novel Q and A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup.

Gran Torino (2008)

The writing on this is superb. There is a lot more to this movie than you might think. Real characters you can’t help care about.

Clint Eastwood stars as Walt Kowalski, a widower who holds onto his prejudices despite the changes in his Michigan neighborhood and the world around him. Kowalski is a grumpy, tough-minded, unhappy old man, who can’t get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in mint condition. When his neighbor Tao, a young Hmong teenager under pressure from his gang member cousin, tries to steal his Gran Torino, Kowalski sets out to reform the youth. Drawn against his will into the life of Tao’s family, Kowalski is soon taking steps to protect them from the gangs that infest their neighborhood. Written by Alfie Hitchie

Religulous (2008)

In my opinion the most important work of the 21st century, disguised as a comedy.

American comedy/documentary film written by and starring political comedian Bill Maher and directed by Larry Charles. According to Maher, the title of the film is a portmanteau derived from the words “religion” and “ridiculous”; the documentary examines and satirizes organized religion and religious belief.

A range of views on the various world religions are explored as Bill Maher travels to numerous religious destinations, such as Jerusalem, the Vatican, and Salt Lake City, interviewing believers from a variety of backgrounds and groups, including Jews for Jesus, Christians, Muslims, former Mormons, Satanists, and Hasidic Jews. He travels to Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London and satirically preaches Scientology beliefs.

P.S. I Love You (2007)

Uber chick flick, my wife forced me to watch it. Glad she did. Writing – Brilliant! Acting – Superb! and Cecelia Ahern is the most beautiful novelist in the world. You can see her on the DVD extras.

Directed by Richard LaGravenese. With Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, Lisa Kudrow and Gina Girshawn.
Irish writer Cecelia Ahern’s first novel, published in 2004.
Flawless

Flawless (2007)

Holly cow! Superb writing. Its a long film, slow moving and detailed. Better for watching at home that at the movie theater. But I can’t think of a minute were I wasn’t glued to the story! This movie sets a benchmark for character development, direction, cinematography, writing and acting.

Directed by Michael Radford. With Demi Moore, Michael Caine, Lambert Wilson. A crime/drama set in 1960 London.

Change for a Dollar - A Masterpiece that Must Be Shared!

2012-02-14T00:48:00.000-06:00

A Little Parable That Can Help You Understand How American Government Has Been Perverted, and Why People "Like Me" Have Come To Realize That RESTORING THE CONSTITUTION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TASK OF OUR GENERATION!

2012-02-13T22:34:00.003-06:00

A little parable:

Monday:

President Obama announced today that he has issued an executive order requiring every American to eat $50 worth of pork each year.

President Obama's announcement was immediately praised by the Pork-Producers Council and the Hog Farm-Workers Union. In a rare joint statement, the industry group and the union pointed to declining rates of domestic pork sales, blaming it on "wrong-headed health concerns" and "post-NAFTA competition from Canadian bacon".

Declining sales, they said, was leading to severely diminished standards of living for pork-producers and farm laborers.

Tuesday:

An organization of Orthodox Jewish rabbis held a news conference at which they objected to Mr. Obama's pork-eating mandate, claiming that this requirement would violate long-held Jewish religious principles.

Within an hour, Occupy J-Street and Jews for Obama condemned the Orthodox rabbinate and said "it is high-time for Jewish religious law to be up-dated to reflect higher priorities, such as those advanced here by President Obama. Helping pork producers and farm workers, reducing the drain that unemployed farm workers place on the welfare system, and showing support for President Obama are much more important than some old, dusty biblical 'commandments' that are more than 100 years old. Who even reads them any more?"

Wednesday:

Several additional rabbinic and other Jewish organizations criticized the Obama pork mandate as violation of Constitutional rights securing the free exercise of religion and prohibiting the establishment of religion.

In other news, quarterly filings today with the Federal Election Commission showed that several pork producers and a very large number of persons identified as "farm workers" in the last 90 days have made maximum contributions to the Obama Reelection Campaign or have contributed significant sums to Obama-supporting Super PACs.

Thursday:

The U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and several Protestant organizations weighed in today on the Obama Pork Mandate, joining Jewish leaders in condemning what they decried as "another attack by President Obama on religious liberty in America."

Within an hour, Nutritionists for the Public Interest issued a statement saying that "Eating 'the other white meat' is, well, in the public interest. So is obeying President Obama."

Friday:

Imams in mosques all across the United States, preaching sermons at Friday Prayer, condemned the Obama mandate to eat pork as "a vile and unjustified trampling on the freedoms of believers."

Numerous prominent Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant leaders, joined by the heads of several civil rights and civil liberties organizations, held news conferences and issued written statements saying that in demanding that people of some faiths be required by government to violate the tenets of their religions was a threat to the religious liberty of people of all faiths.

Statements condemning the Obama pork-eating mandate were prepared to be read from pulpits in synagogues and churches all over the country during weekend services.

At 5:00 p.m. President Obama held a hastily-called news conference at The White House in which he announced an "accommodation" of "people who, on religious grounds, don't want to eat pork. No one has to eat pork against their will," said President Obama. "All anyone has to do is BUY pork. If you BUY pork, you don't have to eat it yourself.

You can throw it away -- or, better, give it to a nearby food pantry or soup kitchen. But pork producers and farm workers are suffering, We have to support them. And if everyone will send just $50 a year their way, which is not a lot to ask, then we will have saved a major part of the American economy from even greater suffering. This is a truly shovel-ready project. We're cutting out all the pretense of public works and just directly shoveling your money straight to people we think ought to have it."

Mr. Obama refused to take most questions. One reporter, however, asked him, "Where does the Federal Government get the authority to force people to buy pork, whether or not they actually eat it?"

As he walked away, Mr. Obama answered, "It is well-established in the courts that when people refrain from going into interstate commerce, their behavior -- doing nothing -- affects interstate commerce. By abstaining from pork, people are adversely affecting the interstate market for pork. So my authority comes from the Interstate Commerce Clause. Trust me on this, I'm a professor of constitutional law."

Later in the evening aides to Mr. Obama explained that the pork-buying mandate will be enforced by the IRS. Said the Secretary of Agriculture, "Either you attach receipts to your income tax form each year showing that you bought at least $50 worth of pork or you have to attach a check for $100."

An hour later, the President of Americans United for Subordination of Church to State, issued a statement praising "With this masterful compromise, President Obama has once again shown real respect for the religious beliefs of millions of Americans while still achieving the necessary goal of bailing out hundreds of failing pork producers and thousands of indigent pork farmers."

Saturday:

Speaker Boehner, appearing on a Saturday cable news program, said, "I don't get it. How can the President impose a mandate without Congressional action? And how can he impose a tax without Congressional action?"

Later Saturday, appearing on another cable news show, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid answered Speaker Boehner: "It's not a 'tax'. It's a 'penalty'. Besides, the President acted during a Congressional recess.

Speaker Boehner must not remember it, but last Monday the House and the Senate took a concurrent 15-minute bathroom break."

MOTIVATION - "Be Great, Powerful Beyond Measure" - Best Inspirational Video Ever

2012-02-04T17:15:00.000-06:00

A kid brought this in to English class the other day. Its my new favorite video of all time.

Video footage from Snatch. Audio clips from Muhammad Ali's speech, Rocky, and Coach Carter. Still photography by Gabriel Stiritz and Lauren Herreid. Music from Transformers and Gladiator. Hanz Zimmer.

Video by Eric Horner -- Brilliant Eric, you made something great!

Here are the full words to this video:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure, beyond measure.

Ima show you, how great I am.

Last night I cut the light off in my bedroom, hit the switch, and was in the bed before the room was dark.

Ima show you, how great I am.

Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick, Im so mean I make medicine sick.

Ima show you, how great I am.

This kids gonna be the best kid in the world.
This kids gonna be somebody better than anybody I ever knew.

Ima show you, how great I am.

I have wrastled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale, I done handcuffed lightnin, thrown thunder in jail.

Ima show you, how great I am.

All you chumps are gonna bow when I whoop him, all of you, I know you got him, I know youve got him picked, but the mans in trouble, Ima show you how great I am.

But somewhere along the line you changed, you stopped being you.

You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you youre no good, and when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow.

Let me tell you something you already know, the world aint all sunshine and rainbows, its a very mean and nasty place and I dont care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.

You, me, or nobody, is gonna hit as hard as life; but it aint about how hard you hit, its about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward.
That's how winning is done.

Cause if you're willin to go through all the battling you gotta go through to get to where you wanna get, who's got the right to stop you.

I mean maybe some of you guys got something you never finished, something you really want to do, something you never said to somebody, something.

And youre told no even after you pay your dues, whos got the right to tell you that, who? Nobody.

Its your right to listen to your gut, it aint nobody's right to say no, after you earn the right to be where you want to be and do what you want to do.

Now if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth.

But youve gotta be willing to take the hits.
And not pointing fingers saying you aint where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody.

Cowards do that and that aint you!

You're better than that!

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

All you chumps are gonna bow when I whoop him, all of you, I know you got him, I know youve got him picked, but the mans in trouble, Ima show you how great I am.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

2012-01-19T00:19:00.001-06:00

This speech by Ron Paul eloquently represents everything We the people of the United States need to fear and fight; Due process has been removed, military control of the "us" is now legal, the media white washes everything we hear and see as news, and now the government wants to seize control of the internet, so that people like "me," who blog the truth, can be silenced.

I feel as German writers must of felt in the 30's watching the rise of the SS. And I feel as helpless now as those who saw the "writing on the wall" then.

Barack Obama is a communist! But that isn't what truly scares me. What I am truly terrified of is that no one in the House and the Senate, democrat or republican ever did anything to oppose him. In fact they put this all in motion before he was elected.

And what makes my heart sink even further into despair is that I don't think most Americans realize how bad their lives will become if the Constitution isn't restored. Most don't comprehend how much they have already lost.

What we've lost is "everything" that we can loose. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Freedom of Speech, Due Process, and freedom from Taxation Without Representation. These things are gone now.

The people that took them away, planned to, for a long time. And Barack Obama is just part of the evil, not the whole evil.

The other GOP candidates are just fluff, bluster without substance. I don't believe for a second that America's slip into the abyss will even slow if any of them are elected.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who is willing and capable of Restoring America Now!

I pray to God that enough people come to understand what that truly means.

Obama's and Congress's Current Spending Plan and Deficit Solution - Brilliant!!!!

2012-01-16T13:44:00.000-06:00

Reducing the size and spending of the Government is the only way to save this country. Period.

Ron Paul "Big" Debate Party at The Cubby Bear North, Lincolnshire, IL

2012-01-13T15:24:00.000-06:00

21661 North Milwaukee Avenue , Lincolnshire, IL
Jan 19th, 2012. Starting @ 7pm

Ron Paul is the Top Contender for President for several reasons:

1. He is the only candidate that will actually attempt to reduce the size and spending of the government.

I, and millions of other Americans, believe that this is the only action that can save our badly broken country.

2. Ron Paul is a conservative Christian, but he is not a beat you over the head with a bible, take us backwards conservative.

He represents many of the ideals that most democrats hold dear, while at the same time representing many of the ideals that many republicans (the people, not the establishment) hold dear. And he has a quality that no American is used to in a Presidential candidate, he is honest!

You will never completely agree with someone who is honest with you. All of the candidates in the past that you agreed with, lied to you. Ron Paul, with whom you may disagree with, is telling you the truth. I would rather disagree with an honest man, than agree with a liar, wouldn't you?

3. Ron Paul isn't a fool, he isn't going to remove Social Security for those who need it, or leave America defenseless and isolated, his goal is the opposite, and our military and foreign policy experts agree with him.

4. His goal is to restore what America has lost; "The Constitution" The document that protects our "Liberty", and our "Liberty" is dying right before our eyes.

Liberty;
a. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
b. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
c. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction,hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.

5. Ron Paul isn't extreme;

Adding 4.5 trillion dollars to our already bankrupted country in 3 years is extreme.
Plunging us into another 20 years, or more, of war is extreme.
Doing nothing to cut spending even though massive debt historically has always lead to hyper inflation and economic collapse is extreme.
Forgetting your own countries Constitution and passing laws through regulation, is extreme.
Crushing new business development with regulation is extreme.
And finally, living in a country were you can't trust the media to tell you the truth, were every story is censored based on what a few corporations want you know, is extreme...

You can support Ron Paul by coming to the party, and it wouldn't hurt if you bought some Ron Paul stuff. Thanks for reading!

TAKE ME TO THE RON PAUL STORE!

Michael A. Crowley, PE - My New Hero!

2012-01-11T18:12:00.005-06:00

My wife likes to make fun of me because I have hero's. Well here is one more. An American hero, Michael A. Crowley. My new hero!

Michael A. Crowley, PE is the owner of Crowley & Associates, Inc. And was President and an owner of Crowley, Crisp & Associates, Inc. And Michael A. Crowley, PC. As President of Crowley & Associates, Inc., Mike is a lead designer of water supply, treatment and storage projects, regional sewage lift station design, and residential and commercial site development projects and is responsible for the management of the firm. Mike’s industry background includes over 20 years experience in the civil engineering field inclusive of executive level responsibilities in Marketing and Project Management. Prior to founding Michael A. Crowley, PC, Mike held positions with several engineering firms in North Carolina and Maine . Mike holds a B.S. Degree in Civil Engineering from University of Maine and a Master of Business Administration from Boston College . Mike is a member of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and holds professional registrations in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Arkansas, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Indiana, Maine, Tennessee, Australia, and Trinidad & Tobago, West Indies. Mike is a native of Norridgewock , Maine . The Crowley family resides in Wake Forest .

To All My Valued Employees,

There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn't pose a threat to your job.

What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country. Of course, as your employer, I am forbidden to tell you whom to vote for - it is against the law to discriminate based on political affiliation, race, creed, religion, etc.

Please vote for who you think will serve your interests the best. However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interest. First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a back story.

This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You saw my big home at last years Christmas party. I'm sure all these flashy icons of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life. However, what you don't see is the back story.

I started this company 12 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living space was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.

My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn't have time to date. Often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business -- hard work, discipline, and sacrifice.

Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting Nordstrom's for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the Goodwill store extracting any clothing item that didn't look like it was birthed in the 70's.

My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business --- with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had.

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9 am, mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5 PM, I don't. There is no "off" button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I eat, ****, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this business is attached to me like a 1 day old baby.

You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden -- the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations... You never realize the back story and the sacrifices I've made. Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail out all the people who didn't.

The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for. Yes, business ownership has its benefits but the price I've paid is steep and not without wounds. Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why:

I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don't pay enough. I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him. Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my "stimulus" check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check?

Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country. The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck you'd quit and you wouldn't work here. I mean, why should you? That's nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, I agree which is why your job is in jeopardy. Here is what many of you don't understand .. to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn't need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don't defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the mud of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine.

Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change you can keep. So where am I going with all this? It's quite simple. If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child's future. Frankly, it isn't my problem any more. Then, I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire.

You see, I'm done. I'm done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.

While tax cuts to 95% of America sounds great on paper, don't forget the back story: If there is no job, there is no income to tax. A tax cut on zero dollars is zero. So, when you make decision to vote, ask yourself, who understands the economics of business ownership and who doesn't? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions and you should know who might be the one capable of saving your job. While the media wants to tell you "It's the economy Stupid" I'm telling you it isn't.

If you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steamrolled the Constitution, and will have changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me in the South Caribbean sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about.

Michael A. Crowley, PE
Crowley, Crisp & Associates, Inc.

Our Reasons for The Upcoming War with Iran

2012-01-03T12:05:00.002-06:00

Transcript of Prime Minister Netanyahu's address to U.S. Congress, May 24, 2011

-- My friends, you don't have to -- you don't need to do nation- building in Israel. We're already built. (Laughter, applause.) You don't need to export democracy to Israel. We've already got it. (Applause.) And you don't need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves. (Cheers, applause.)

You've been very generous in giving us tools to do the job of defending Israel on our own. Thank you all, and thank you, President Obama, for your steadfast commitment to Israel's security. I know economic times are tough. I deeply appreciate this. (Applause.)

Some of you have been telling me that your belief has been reaffirmed in recent months that support for Israel's security is a wise investment in our common future, for an epic battle is now under way in the Middle East between tyranny and freedom. A great convulsion is shaking the earth from the Khyber Pass to the Straits of Gibraltar.

-- Courageous Arab protesters are now struggling to secure these very same rights for their peoples, for their societies. We're proud in Israel that over 1 million Arab citizens of Israel have been enjoying these rights for decades. (Applause.) Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.

(Applause.) Now, I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of 1 percent are truly free, and they're all citizens of Israel. (Applause.)

This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East; Israel is what's right about the Middle East. (Applause.)

-- But while we hope for the best and while we work for the best, we must also recognize that powerful forces oppose this future. They oppose modernity. They oppose democracy. They oppose peace.

Foremost among these forces is Iran. The tyranny in Tehran brutalizes its own people. It supports attacks against Americans troops in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It subjugates Lebanon and Gaza. It sponsors terror worldwide.

When I last stood here, I spoke of the consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Now time is running out. The hinge of history may soon turn, for the greatest danger of all could soon be upon us: a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.

-- A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world.

See, I want you to understand what this means, because if we don't stop it, it's coming. They could put a bomb anywhere. They could put it in a missile; they're working on missiles that could reach this city. They could put it on a -- on a ship inside a container; could reach every port. They could eventually put it in a suitcase or in a subway.

Now, the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads on the stand. Less than seven decades after 6 million Jews were murdered, Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Leaders who spew such venom should be banned from every respectable forum on the planet. (Applause.)
________________________________________________

OK - So Congress was sold after this speech, and we will be going to war with Iran.

The Washington Post - NY Judge Rules that Iran, The Taliban, al-Qaida are Liable for 9-11, Dec 22, 2011

Still think we're not going to war with Iran?

I knew about the Taliban, al-Qaida, but when did Iran become responsible for 9-11? And what happened to Saddam Hussein? (I threw that in for grins, I know he was never responsible.)

I want to be fair, I want to look at both sides and make an informed decision. So I am left with the question; Can the American people survive the economic consequences of another 10 years of war?

I think no. No we can not.

Now the Obama administration can make anyone they want to "disappear."

And war is a forgone conclusion, planned months ago.

Is Iran really the enemy, or are they the distraction needed to divert our attention from the enemy within our own government?

Worse case scenario, the answer is "yes" to both questions.

I think both. And it gives me no joy to think that way.

Obama Signs Act to Allow Detention of American Citizens Indefinetly, Without a Charge, Let Alone a Trial

2012-01-03T10:07:00.000-06:00

America just died.

Its been 24 years since the wall came down, and the Obama administration has decided to have America trade places with the old soviet union.

Officially at the end of 2011, the America we thought we knew is gone.

I am no longer hoping that America can be "saved." Now the best I can hope for is that America can be "re-born." And I wont hold my breath. If Barack Obama is re-elected in 2012 there will be no hope.

I've said that Barack Obama would heap on as much debt and do as much damage to America as he could before he's gone. But when I said that, I had no idea of what the "damage" would be. Sadly, now I realize there is no limit.

Obama has proven that the well being of the American people is nowhere on his agenda, and never was.

The best trick satan ever pulled off was making people believe he doesn't exist. The best trick Barack Obama pulled off was making people believe he is an American Democrat.

A republican woman said this to me a while ago; In electing Barack Obama we actually elected Dick Cheney and George W. Bush for a 3rd term!

Under Barack Obama, all of George Bush's (Cheney's) policies have escalated!

Courtesy of ABC News: Link to original article

In his last official act of business in 2011, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act from his vacation rental in Kailua, Hawaii. In a statement, the president said he did so with reservations about key provisions in the law — including a controversial component that would allow the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.

The legislation has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties groups, many Democrats, along with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who called it “a slip into tyranny.” Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”

“Due process would be a thing of the past,” wrote Gens Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. “Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States – and hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.”

The president defended his action, writing that he signed the act, “chiefly because it authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, crucial services for service members and their families, and vital national security programs that must be renewed.”

--- Then why ad the part were you can imprison Americans forever without charge or a trial? Because your a Communist, that's why!

-- Me.

Senior administration officials, who asked not to be named, told ABC News, “The president strongly believes that to detain American citizens in military custody infinitely without trial, would be a break with our traditions and values as a nation, and wants to make sure that any type of authorization coming from congress, complies with our Constitution, our rules of war and any applicable laws.”

One official explained that President Obama does believe, however, that American citizens can be temporarily detained, and that the military has the right to capture and hold any citizen who is engaged in conflict against the United States. If various provisions in the law prove unworkable, the president could go back to Congress to ask for changes.

“The president is going to adhere to the policies that he has held over the last three years, making sure that none of these congressional provisions impede the ability of the counter terrorism and military professional from keeping the country safe,” the official said.

-- However the law says indefinitely, not temporarily. And now that the law is signed, you think Obama's or any other President, except maybe for Ron Paul, will check if its being abused?

Barack Obama said he signed this law into effect with "reservations," yea, reservations in hell!

You know what the best part of this law is?

If you don't like what I'm writing, don't worry, because eventually I'll just disappear.

You may think its not going to get that bad. I say it already is! --Me

Foreign Policy Experts Agree With Ron Paul’s Controversial Foreign Policy

2012-01-02T16:05:00.002-06:00

Courtesy of ABC News Link to original article

Ron Paul is often chided by his Republican opponents for his extreme views on American foreign policy. His calls for ending all foreign wars and shutting hundreds of military bases across the globe have drawn howls from his GOP rivals, who have labeled the moves irresponsible and naïve.

His campaign pledge of cutting all foreign aid and withdrawing U.S. participation in the World Trade Organization and the United Nations has been at odds with even the most conservative members of his own party.

Yet as voting day in Iowa and New Hampshire draws near, Paul, the Congressman from Texas, is finding support for his non-interventionist positions from a growing number of foreign policy experts.

“He’s attacking our rich lazy friends, why is that not more popular,” said Harvey Sapolsky, emeritus professor of public policy and organization at MIT. He backs Paul’s calls for reducing America’s military budget, arguing that much of it is used to defend wealthy nations’ security.
A huge, Cold War-era global presence — with hundreds of overseas military bases — isn’t necessary, now that the Soviet threat is over and the collapse of communism, Sapolsky said.

“It’s not in America’s interest,” said Sapolsky, who added that despite the drumbeat in the media over the fear of terrorism, America is the safest it has ever been in its history.

Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is also another foreign policy expert who agrees that the United States is extraordinarily secure due to its geography and nuclear weapons, and doesn’t need a huge global presence.

He also argued that the United States’ military is being used in overseas conflicts with little or no national interest, specifically pointing to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Preble gave Paul credit for being one of the few outspoken critics of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

For sure America’s attitudes toward the war has changed and popular opinion seems to be on his side.

It’s evident at most of his campaign stops, where Paul’s calls for the troops to return home are met with thunderous applause and the occasional standing ovation.

“A lot of people won’t say come home,” Sapolsky said. “But Ron Paul does and that’s great.”

Shutting down military bases and ceasing to deal with other nations with threats and violence is not isolationism. It is the opposite. Opening ourselves up to friendship, honest trade and diplomacy is the foreign policy of peace and prosperity. It is the only foreign policy that will not bankrupt us in short order, as our current actions most definitely will. I share the disappointment of the American people in the foreign policy rhetoric coming from the administration. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome's did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.

2011-12-31T20:47:00.003-06:00

This is us! This is who we are. Its not pretty. In fact, its ugly, and shameful.

It's definitely not what I have come to think of as American. So I ask you, all of you, any of you, that read my blog or that found this article by accident?

Forget what you think you know about anything having to do with the middle east for a moment.

Then let me ask you a question; What purpose will it serve, what will we accomplish, spending 1 to 2 trillion dollars per year to occupy the land surrounding Iran for the next 20 years?

Because that is America's plan. Its a forgone conclusion, and is business as usual.

America is already 20 to 25 trillion dollars in debt. (Based on NPR news sources)

Republicans, tell me, please. How does America get 25 trillion dollars out of debt?

Barack Obama, and Congress currently ask for another trillion dollars every 6 months to keep the government running. Do you still hope, like Congress, that ignoring this problem long enough will make it go away?

Democrats, In standing with Ron Paul, I am not against you, I don't disagree with you. I stand with you and the terrified Republican minded people who see America dying.

Democrats, I give you this thought; In electing Barack Obama, (I do not blame you for this, I never saw this coming.) What you actually did, was elect George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for a 3rd term.

Under Barack Obama, WAR, DEBT, and POVERTY have escalated, and the foreign policies that began with George W. Bush are growing, even as America is dying.

Business as usual.

In Illinois (The most corrupt state in the union, and the state that gave the U.S. Barack Obama) the Republican elections will come down to Ron Paul and Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney was hand picked by the establishment, to maintain business as usual.

Ron Paul, has clearly and bravely stated for 20 years, that business as usual will destroy America. How bad does it have to get for the people of America, democrat and republican minded alike, to come to realize that he has been right all this time.

Think about this ad.

What Are You Doing New Years Eve? by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Happy New Years Everyone!

2011-12-31T19:47:00.000-06:00

The Corruption of America By: Porter Stansberry

2011-12-29T11:46:00.002-06:00

The numbers tell us America is in decline... if not outright collapse.

I say "the numbers tell us" because I've become very sensitive to the impact this kind of statement has on people. When I warned about the impending bankruptcy of General Motors in 2006 and 2007, readers actually blamed me for the company's problems – as if my warnings to the public were the real problem, rather than GM's $400 billion in debt.

The claim was absurd. But the resentment my work engendered was real.

So please... before you read this issue, which makes several arresting claims about the future of our country... understand I am only writing about the facts as I find them today. I am only drawing conclusions based on the situation as it stands. I am not saying that these conditions can't improve. Or that they won't improve.

The truth is, I am optimistic. I believe our country is heading into a crisis. But I also believe that... sooner or later... Americans will make the right choices and put our country back on sound footing.

Please pay careful attention to the data I cite. And please send me corrections to the facts. I will happily publish any correction that can be substantiated. But please don't send me threats, accusations against my character, or baseless claims about my lack of patriotism. If I didn't love our country, none of these facts would bother me. I wouldn't have bothered writing this letter.

I know this is a politically charged and emotional issue. My conclusions will not be easy for most readers to accept. Likewise, many of the things I am writing about this month will challenge my subscribers to re-examine what they believe about their country. The facts about America today tell a painful story about a country in a steep decline, beset by problems of its own making.

One last point, before we begin... I realize that this kind of macro-economic/political analysis is not, primarily, what you pay me for. You rightly expect me to provide you with investment opportunities – whether bull market, bear market, or total societal collapse. And that's what I've done every month for more than 15 years.

But that's not what I've done this month. You won't find any investment ideas at all in these pages. This issue is unlike any other I have ever written.

I'm sure it will spark a wave of cancellations – costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I fear it will spark a tremendous amount of controversy. Many people will surely accuse me of deliberately writing inflammatory things in order to stir the pot and gain attention. That's not my intention. The truth is, I've gone to great lengths throughout my career to protect my privacy.

I am speaking out now because I believe someone must. And I have the resources to do it. I am sharing these ideas with my subscribers because I know we have arrived at the moment of a long-brewing crisis.

Our political leaders, our business leaders, and our cultural leaders have made a series of catastrophic choices. The result has been a long decline in America's standard of living.

For decades, we have papered over these problems with massive amounts of borrowing. But now, our debts total close to 400% of GDP, and America is the world's largest borrower (after being the world's largest creditor only 40 years ago)... And the holes in our society can no longer be hidden...

We've reached the point where we will have to fix what lies at the heart of America's decline... or be satisfied with a vastly lower standard of living in the future.

How do I know? How do I statistically define the decline of America?

The broadest measure of national wealth is per-capita gross domestic product (GDP). Economists use this figure to judge standards of living around the world. It shows the value of the country's annual production divided by the number of its citizens. No, the production isn't actually divided among all the citizens, but this measure provides us with a fair benchmark to compare different economies around the world. Likewise, this measure shows the growth (or the decline) in wealth in societies across time.

So... is America growing richer or poorer based on per-capita GDP? Seems like a simple enough question, doesn't it? Is our economy growing faster than our population? Are we, as individuals, becoming more affluent? Or is the pie, measured on a per-person basis, growing smaller?

This is the most fundamental measure of the success or the failure of any political system or culture. Are the legal and social rules we live under aiding our economic development or holding us back? What do the numbers say?

Unfortunately, it's a harder question to answer than it should be. The problem is, we don't have a sound currency with which to measure GDP through time. Until 1971, the U.S. dollar was defined as a certain amount of gold. And the price of gold was fixed by international agreement. It didn't actually begin to trade freely until 1975. Therefore, the value of the U.S. dollar (and thus the value of U.S. production, which is measured in dollars) was manipulated higher for many years.

Even today, our government's nominal GDP figures are greatly influenced by inflation. The influence of inflation is particularly pernicious in GDP studies. You see, inflation, which actually reduces our standard of living, drives up the amount of nominal GDP. So it creates the appearance of a wealthier country... while the nation is actually getting poorer.

The only real way to accurately measure per-capita GDP is to build our own model. The need to build our own tools tells you something important – the government doesn't want anyone to know the answer to this question. It could easily publish data far more accurate than the indexes it puts out. But government doesn't want anyone to know. And it wants to be able to say "those aren't the real data" when studies like ours produce bad news.

So pay attention to how we built our charts. You can see for yourself that our data are far more accurate than the government's figures. Our data are based on the real purchasing power of the currency, not the nominal numbers, which are completely meaningless in the real world.

The question we are trying to answer is: What would per-capita GDP numbers look like, if we used a real-world currency, like gold, or a basket of commodity prices, instead of the paper-based U.S. dollar? What would the figures be if we measured GDP in sound money instead of the government's funny money?

Here's how we figured it out. We took the government numbers for nominal GDP and measured them first against commodity prices, and later (after it began to trade freely) gold. We used a standard commodity index (the CRB) up to 1975 and gold post-1975. The result of this analysis shows you the real trend in U.S. per-capita GDP, as measured on a real-world purchasing power basis.

Our analysis shows you what's actually happened to our real standard of living. The results, we suspect, will surprise even the most bearish among you.

America is in a steep decline.

Americans Are Getting Poorer – Fast

Let me anticipate the "official" criticism of our study. Many people will claim that our numbers aren't "real." They will say that we "mined" the data to produce a chart that showed a steep decline.

That's simply not so. All we've done is convert the government's nominal GDP stats into a fixed currency value that's based on real-world purchasing power. The fact is, our data are far more accurate than the government's because they represent the real-world experience. That's why our data are far more closely correlated to other real-world studies of wealth in America.

Consider, for example, annual sales of automobiles. Auto sales peaked in 1985 (11 million) and have been declining at a fairly steady rate since 1999. In 2009, Americans bought just 5.4 million passenger cars. As a result, the median age of a registered vehicle in the U.S. is almost 10 years.

Our data shows that real per-capita wealth peaked in the late 1960s. Guess when we find the absolutely lowest median age of the U.S. fleet? In 1969. At the end of the 1960s, the median age of all the cars on the road in the U.S. was only 5.1 years. Even as recently as 1990, the median age was only 6.5 years.

Rich people buy new cars. Poor people do not.

Most important, our data "proves" something I know many of you have felt or perceived for many years. You've seen the decline of your neighborhoods. You've gone years without being able to earn more money in your job. Or you've seen your purchasing power decrease to the point where you're now substituting lower-quality products on your grocery list for the brand-name products you used to buy.

You can see how much harder it is on your children to find good jobs, to buy good housing or a new car. As a result, few people under the age of 40 have the same kind of "life story" as their parents.

And because they can't "make it," many have decided to "fake it." The average college student now graduates with $24,000 in debt... and by his late 20s has racked up more than $6,000 in credit card debt. Meanwhile, median earnings for Americans aged 25-34 equals $34,000-$38,000. (Source: Demos.org, "The Economic State of Young America," November 2011.)

Can you imagine starting your life out as an adult with a personal debt-to-income level at close to 100%? What does this say about the state of our economy? What does this say about the state of our culture?

Who Suffers Most

It's not only the young that are having trouble in America. It is also the old.

Debt levels among households headed by people older than 62 have been rising for two decades. The average mortgage size for this population is now $71,000 – five times larger than it was in 1987 (adjusted for inflation), according to William Apgar of Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Older Americans are also more reliant on credit card debt than ever before... credit card debt. From 1992 through 2007 (which is the latest data available) older Americans took on credit card debt at a faster pace than the population as a whole. According to USA Today, lower- and middle-income Americans aged 65 and older now carry an average of more than $10,000 in credit card debt, up 26% since only 2005.

Given average interest rates of 20% for these debts, it's a fair bet that these obligations will never be repaid. But they will have a terrible impact on the standard of living of these older Americans.

What in the heck is going on? Don't Americans pay off their mortgages before they retire? Don't they work hard during their careers, save, and invest, so they can move to Florida and spend their retirement in comfort?

Older Americans living with credit card debt! This doesn't sound like America, does it? Or maybe it does.

My bet is that most of my subscribers know that something has gone terribly wrong with America. It's not easy to figure out how all of this happened... but you know from your own experiences that these numbers aren't wrong. It might not be pleasant to think about... but these figures paint a sad but accurate picture: America is not the country it was 40 years ago. These changes are warping our economy, politics, and culture.

In this month's issue, I'd like to try to define a few of the core reasons we're in this situation. I can't possibly analyze all the factors that have led to this decline. But I want to document the growth of graft in politics. I want to demonstrate – with real facts and examples – how public company leadership has deteriorated. And I want to document some of the things that are occurring in the broader society, all of which I believe are linked to this fundamental decline in our standard of living.
You see, I believe the decline of our country is primarily a decline of our culture.

We have lost our sense of honor, humility, and the dedication to personal responsibility that, for more than 200 years, made our country the greatest hope for mankind. I want to detail some of the factors that gave rise to the current entitlement society. We have become a country of people who believe their well-being is someone Else's responsibility.

I've labeled these problems: The Corruption of America.

These problems manifest themselves in different ways across institutions in all parts of our society. But at their root, they are simply facets of the same stone. They are all part of the same essential problem.

The corruption of America isn't happening in one part of our country... or in one type of institution. It is happening across the landscape of our society, in almost every institution. It's a kind of moral decay... a kind of greed... a kind of desperate grasp for power... And it's destroying our nation.

The Ethos of 'Getting Yours'

Americans know, in their bones, that something terrible is happening. Maybe you can't articulate it. Maybe you don't have the statistics to understand exactly what's going on. But my bet is, you think about it a lot.

For me, a poignant moment of recognition came this month.
Bloomberg news published an article based on confidential sources about how Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and the Republican U.S. Treasury secretary during the financial crisis, held a secret meeting with the top 20 hedge-fund managers in New York City in late July 2008. This was about two weeks after he testified to Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "well-capitalized."

I knew for a fact that what Paulson told Congress wasn't true. I wrote my entire June 2008 newsletter detailing exactly why Fannie and Freddie certainly had billions in losses that they had not yet revealed to investors – $500 billion in losses, at least. There was no question in my mind, both companies were insolvent – "zeros," as I explained.

And yet, in front of Congress, the U.S. Treasury secretary was saying exactly the opposite. Either I was a liar... or he was.

Then... only a few days later... what did Paulson tell those hedge-fund managers?

He told them the same thing I had written in my newsletter. He told them the opposite of what he'd said publicly to Congress. He told these billionaire investors that Fannie and Freddie were a disaster... They would require an enormous, multibillion-dollar bailout... The U.S. government would have to take them over... And their shareholders would be completely wiped out.

Here you had a high-government official, explicitly lying to Congress (and by extension, the general public), while giving the real facts to a group of people who represented the financial interests of the world's wealthiest folks. The story didn't come to the public's attention for two years.

This was the most outrageous example of graft and corruption I have ever seen. Certainly it involves more billions of dollars in misappropriated value than any other similar story I can recall. These managers had the risk-free ability to make tens of billions of dollars, if not hundreds of billions, by using derivatives to capitalize on what they knew was the imminent collapse of the world's largest mortgage bank. Who picked up the tab? You know perfectly well. It was you and me, the taxpayers.

(One of the investment managers present at this meeting was Steve Rattner, who by that point was already deeply involved in another bit of graft, his efforts to bribe New York state pension-fund managers for large investments into his hedge fund, from which he earned perhaps as much as $100 million. He later settled the charges for a mere $10 million shortly after Andrew Cuomo was elected governor of New York.)

The Bloomberg story... about a crooked Treasury secretary handing a room full of crooked billionaires inside information worth billions of dollars... hardly caused a ripple. As far as I know, no actions are being planned against Henry Paulson or any of the hedge-fund managers involved. No other major media outlet picked up the story. I saw nothing about it from the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission.

What does that say about our country when even the most egregious kind of corruption – involving hundreds of billions of dollars – is simply ignored?

It seems like everyone in our country has lost his moral bearing, from the highest government officials and senior corporate leaders all the way down to schoolteachers and local community leaders. The ethos of my fellow Americans seems to have changed from one of personal integrity and responsibility to "getting yours" – the all-out attempt, by any means possible, to get the most amount of benefits with the least amount of work.

You can see this in everything from the lowering of school standards (revising the SAT) to the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional, college, and high school sports. Cheating has become a way of life in America.

I have an idea about how this happened... about the root cause of this kind of corruption and why it was inevitable, given some of the basic facts regarding how we've organized our government and our corporations.

Let me show you the numbers – the hard facts – behind what's happened to our country...

The Corruption of Politics

I'll start with one of the biggest factors in the decline of our civilization – the link between welfare, education, crime, and politics.

It is routinely alleged in national political debates that something is fundamentally unfair and un-American about the huge "wealth gap" between the poorest Americans and the wealthiest. Some politicians like to argue that the poor never have a real shot at the American dream, and as a nation, we owe them more and more of our resources to correct this injustice. Most important, it is alleged that only the government has the resources to correct this inequality.

This is a dangerous notion...

First, it promotes the idea of entitlement. Entitlement is a fairly new idea in the American political lexicon – perhaps because most of our nation's wealth is still fairly new. The American idea of entitlement argues that because you were born into a rich society, other people owe you something. The idea has become pervasive in our culture. It underlies the basic assumptions behind the idea of a "wealth gap." Implicit is the assumption that successful Americans haven't rightfully earned their wealth... that in one way or another, they've taken advantage of the society and have an obligation to give back most of what they've "taken."

As you'll see, I believe the idea of entitlement lies at the root of many of our most serious cultural problems.

The more obvious problem is the idea that the government is responsible for fixing the "wealth gap." But the government has proved wholly ineffective at dealing with poverty in America. The data is nearly conclusive that government efforts are far more likely to be the cause of the wealth gap than the solution.

The simple fact is, the government has to take resources from someone before it can dole them out to others. And this act of taking turns out to be economically destructive. It reduces the market's incentives for entrepreneurs. The more you take from the productive members of society, the less productive they become. That's the primary lesson of the history of socialism. Yet... many of our political leaders seem oblivious to this iron law of human nature.

Consider a simple analysis that compares the unemployment rate with the size of the federal government's spending, as measured against GDP. (We created this chart after reading a similar analysis at Mark Perry's excellent financial blog, Carpe Diem.)

As you can see in this chart, the larger the government grows as a percentage of our economy, the higher unemployment rises. The more government, the less opportunity. These figures are similar when studied comparatively across many different countries.

We also know from decades of experience that little of the government's funding for the poor will ever reach those who are actually in need. Instead, these kinds of socialist policies end up sending billions of dollars into the hands of unions, "community organizers," and other sponsors of the Democratic Party. This tightens their political control of America's inner cities, which have become the source of our country's most intractable social problems.

Believe me, I have reams of data and decades of case studies for these conclusions. But before we get to my proof, I want you to simply assume that what I'm saying is 100% correct. Assume most of the government's social spending ends up corrupting the politics of the inner city. Assume these efforts actually make the "wealth gap" larger.

Assume these policies and the politicians who sponsor them are actually creating a society of complete dependence, where the spread of ignorance has created entire generations of people who aren't educated enough to know they've been enslaved by their own leaders.

If these things are true, if my conclusions are exactly right, what would America's poorest communities look like today?

It has now been almost 50 years since the start of the War on Poverty, President Lyndon Johnson's program to radically increase domestic welfare spending. These programs and their various spinoffs have been at the center of Democratic politics ever since. In fact, if you compare speeches about these programs from the mid-1960s until today, you will find the verbiage never changes. Obama is merely echoing the same calls for "social justice" that Robert Kennedy used in his ill-fated 1968 campaign for president.

But besides the soaring rhetoric, besides the promise of a "chicken in every pot," what have these programs actually achieved? The wholesale destruction of urban communities across America, communities that are overwhelmingly African American. If the intention of these programs had been to destroy black communities, you could have hardly done more damage than the last 50 years of Democratic policy.

I don't think most Americans realize how dangerous these communities have become or the toll they take on our country as a whole. That's primarily because talking about this problem is seen as racist. That's complete nonsense. The victims of these policies are primarily black people. Trying to help them restore dignity and independence to their communities isn't a racist goal. It's humanitarian.

And let me offer a prediction... Sooner or later, the people in these communities are going to finally point their finger at the politicians who've lied and pandered to them for decades, all while stealing from them at every turn. When that moment comes, having a track record of correctly speaking out about the real nature of these problems will be a valuable political asset.

No, I'm not running for office... I'm just trying to buck-up the politicians who I know read this letter. They need to get out in front of this issue.

Let me give you some of the numbers that define the enormous scope of these problems.

According to the NAACP, Texas taxpayers spent $175 million in 2009 to imprison residents from a small part of Houston – only 10 zip codes out of 75. Thus, people from neighborhoods that are home to only about 10% of the city's population account for more than 33% of the state's entire $500 million annual prison spending. These neighborhoods are overwhelmingly poor and African American.

In Pennsylvania, taxpayers will spend $290 million in 2009 to imprison residents from just 11 of Philadelphia's neighborhoods, representing about 25% of the city population. On this relatively small urban area, the state will spend roughly half its $500 million prison budget. These neighborhoods are overwhelmingly poor and African American.

In New York, taxpayers will spend $539 million to imprison residents from only 24 of New York City's 200 different neighborhoods. Only 16% of the city's population lives in these areas, but they will account for nearly half of the state's $1.1 billion prison budget. These neighborhoods are overwhelmingly poor and African American.

America has many problems... but these neighborhoods represent more than a society in decline. Life in these places reflects a complete collapse of Western civilization. What's happening in these communities? A breakdown of the family and the resulting collapse of the school system. What you have left is crime – violent and political.

In Detroit, only 27% of the black male students in the school system graduate from high school. This is not a racial problem: Only 19% of the white male students graduate from those same schools. What's causing this problem? A complete breakdown of society. When communities can no longer teach their children the most basic academic skills, such as reading, math, history, literature, and economics... what future can we expect? And what kind of society do you expect after several generations of total ignorance?

These problems are still found primarily in urban areas, but they are spreading across the country. In Pinellas County, Florida, only 21% of black male students graduate from high school. In Palm Beach County, Florida, you find a similar number. Likewise Duval County, Florida... and Jefferson Parish, Louisiana... and Charleston County, South Carolina. In Nebraska, only 40% of black male students graduate from high school. In Nevada, only 45%. In New York state, only 25%.

What opportunities are available in America to people without even a basic education? The New York Times reports almost 70% of black males without a high school diploma are unemployed in the United States.

In many predominantly black, urban communities, the actual unemployment rate is close to 100% for young dropouts. Given these figures, it isn't surprising that many of these people end up in jail.

According to various studies, black males who dropped out of school by age 16 are four times more likely to end up in jail than those who remained in school. Crime is literally all they know. Likewise, a black youth whose mother was a high school dropout is 88% more likely to end up in jail. These are the two primary reasons nearly one in 11 adult black men are either in jail or on parole.

How did this all happen? How did we end up with expensive schools that can't teach? How did we end up with young mothers who aren't married? How did we end up with entire generations of people who won't – and probably can't – work in the labor force? How did we end up with a skyrocketing prison population? The prison population in America has soared from less than half a million people in 1980 to more than 2.5 million people today. More than 7 million adults are in prison or on parole in the United States. We have an incarceration rate that's seven times higher than any other industrialized nation.

The land of the free?

Let's ask the most basic question: What has the gigantic increase in welfare spending and education spending done for the underclass of America? It seems apparent that growth in federal spending has caused far more harm than good. When you study these neighborhoods, what you find is a horrifying story that's been repeated, generation after generation since the early 1960s. It's a story of families who have been destroyed by their dependency on the state.

The truly extraordinary part is that all these things happened after these neighborhoods began voting and electing their own (typically black and Democratic) leadership. The socialism they voted for themselves led most directly to the destruction of their communities. It was their own mayors, ward leaders, and congressmen who chose this path for these communities.

Let me show you one case study – Detroit.

How Socialism Came to America...
and Destroyed Detroit

In 1961, the last Republican mayor of Detroit, Louis C. Miriani, lost his re-election bid. He probably would have lost to anyone who ran against him because he was known to be a crook. He later served 10 years in prison for tax evasion.

The man who defeated him, Jerome Cavanagh, was a Democrat. He ushered in a new kind of politics in Detroit. Cavanagh, who was white, got elected by promising to give Detroit's African American population the civil rights they deserved. But he didn't stop there. Seeing the political advantage to serving this community's interests, he did all he could to bring government benefits and government spending to Detroit's black community.

Cavanagh brought socialism to Detroit.

Mayor Cavanagh was the only elected official to serve on President Johnson's Model Cities task force. The program was modeled after Soviet efforts to rebuild whole urban areas in Eastern Europe. At the time, this centralized approach to urban development was proclaimed as an advantage to the Soviet system, something that could give them an edge in the Cold War.

Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which attempted to turn a nine-square-mile section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a "Model City." To help finance the effort, Cavanagh pushed a new income tax through the state legislature and a "commuter tax" on city workers. He promised the mostly poor and black residents of the Model City area that the rich would pay for all of these benefits. He bought their votes with taxes they didn't have to pay.
It was classic American socialism.

More than $400 million was spent on the program – and that was back when quarters still had actual silver in them. The feds and Democratic city mayors were soon telling people where to live, what to build, and what businesses to open or close. In return, the people received cash, training, education, and health care.

But they didn't like being told what to do... or how to live. Not surprisingly, the Model Cities program was a disaster for Detroit. Within five years, it had helped trigger a complete breakdown of civil order and the city's population began to rapidly decline.

On July 23, 1967, police attempted to break up a notorious "blind pig" in the heart of the new Model City. Blind pigs were after-hours clubs that featured gambling and prostitution. They were part of the black culture of Detroit, with many having been in operation since the Prohibition period. The community tolerated these establishments – but the political leadership didn't want any blind pigs in the new Model City area.

On this particular night, at this particular club, the community was celebrating the return of two Vietnam War veterans. More than 80 people had packed into the club. The police decided to arrest everyone present, including the two war vets. This outraged the entire neighborhood, which began to riot. The scene turned into the worst race riot of the 1960s.

As my friend Doug Casey likes to say about the War on Poverty, "The poor lost." The violence killed more than 40 people and left more than 5,000 people homeless. One of the first stores to be looted was a black-owned pharmacy. The largest black-owned clothing store in the city was also burned to the ground. Cavanagh did nothing to stop the riots. (He claimed a large police presence would make matters worse.) Five days later, President Johnson sent in two divisions of paratroopers to put down the insurrection.

The situation destabilized the entire city. Most of the people who could afford to leave did. Over the next 18 months, 140,000 upper- and middle-class residents – almost all of them white – left the city.

And so, you might ask... after five years of centralized planning, higher taxes, and a fleeing population, what did the government decide to do with its grand experiment? You'll never guess...

Seeing it had accomplished nothing but failure... The government expanded the Model City program with 1974's Community Development Block Grant Program. Here again, politicians would decide which groups (and even individuals) would receive state funds for various "renewal" schemes. Later, big business was brought into the fold. In exchange for various concessions, the Big Three automakers "gave" $488 million to the city for use in still more redevelopment schemes in the mid-1990s.

What happened? Even with all of their power and all of the money, centralized planners couldn't succeed with any of their plans. Nearly all of the upper- and middle-class citizens left Detroit. The poor fled, too. The Model City area lost 63% of its population and 45% of its housing units from the inception of the program through 1990.

Even today, the crisis continues. At a recent auction of nearly 9,000 seized homes and lots, less than one-fifth of the available properties sold, even with bidding starting at $500. You literally can't give away most of the property in Model City areas today. The properties put up for sale represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area the size of Boston. Detroit properties in foreclosure have more than tripled since 2007.

None of this is surprising. It's exactly what you'd expect to see given the implementation of a socialist scheme like a Model Cities' program. Quite simply, coercion doesn't work for economic development. You cannot tax yourself into prosperity.

It might buy votes... but sooner or later the voters will realize all that's been promised was a lie. Won't they?... Maybe not.

You see, the failure of the Model Cities program and of the War on Poverty wasn't surprising. What is surprising is that every single mayor of Detroit since 1961 has been a Democrat. And extremely liberal, black politicians have filled almost every major political office in the city since the mid-1960s.

For example, John Conyers, Jr. has represented most of Detroit's worst neighborhoods since 1965. Today, Conyers is the second-longest serving congressman in the House. And his election track record could be described as "Putin-esque." Conyers doesn't merely win all of his election campaigns... He wins by margins that aren't explainable in a normal, two-party system.

He defeated Republican Robert Blackwell in 1964, getting 84% of the vote. He was re-elected 13 times in a row from that district, all with a greater margin of victory than 85%. Ironically, the district was so ill-served by his socialistic policies that about half of the people moved away. The population losses led to redistricting. From then on, his margin of victory has fallen... to "only" around 80%.

These election results don't seem reasonable, do they? They aren't. By controlling the state legislature in Michigan, the Democrats are able to draw the congressional districts in a way that guarantees them almost permanent control. It's no different than what despots do all over the world. They hold an "election." But it's only for show.

And what do the Democrats do with this power? They push a form of American socialism. This political system features transfer payments, government jobs, and lucrative government contracts to voters in exchange for political support – and in many cases, outright bribes. They do all of these things under the cover of "progressive" politics and "social justice."

But if you brush away the veneer, what you find is a history of abuse of power, corruption, and outright bribery. Conyers himself was found guilty of several minor ethical violations in 2006 – mainly of using his staff as personal servants, forcing them to babysit and chauffer his children. In 1992, he was one of the most egregious abusers of the House Banking scandal. He wrote 273 bad checks and left his account overdrawn for nine months. But that's all small-time graft compared to how things really work in his office and in his district.

How do I know? Well... just ask yourself where Conyers' wife sleeps today.

Monica Conyers, the wife of the second-longest tenured congressman in the United States, sleeps in a federal prison in West Virginia. She pled guilty to bribery in June 2009. She is serving a 37-month sentence for accepting $60,000 in bribes as the president pro tempore of the Detroit City Council. And yet... and yet... Conyers won re-election handily in 2010.

How is that possible?

These kinds of people and their political philosophy have destroyed what was once America's fourth-largest city. There is almost nothing left of what was the capital of America's industrial heartland. It's not hard to understand what has happened. When you start taxing people at extremely progressive rates to pay for socialist "benefits"... when you start telling them which schools their children must attend... when you start giving jobs away to people based on political patronage, race, or anything other than ability... you quash human freedom, you create dependency. And you deter capital and investment... which bogs down productivity and economic growth. If continued for long enough, it leads to social collapse.

And Conyers is hardly an anomaly. Just look at those same blighted districts in Houston and Philadelphia...

In Houston, most of the city's worst neighborhoods in terms of high-school graduation rates and crime are found in Texas Congressional District 18, where Democrats have won every election since the district was created through re-zoning in 1972. In 1994, Sheila Jackson Lee won the seat by promising to deliver more federal benefits to her constituents...

To appreciate the sterling representation the Honorable Ms. Jackson Lee provides, consider this... In 2010 in bizarre remarks before Congress, she demanded the government recognize victory in Vietnam. You can try to figure out what she's talking about here. She also alleged racism on the part of her fellow members of Congress who were voting against raising the debt ceiling. Don't believe it? View for yourself.

In Philadelphia, Chaka Fattah represents the worst parts of the city, Pennsylvania's 2nd Congressional District. The 2nd District is the fifth-most Democratic Congressional District out of the 435 in Congress (and the most Democratic outside of New York) based on the consistency and margin of Democratic victories. A black Democrat has held the seat since 1963.

Among Chaka Fattah's political highlights is his economically illiterate plan to implement a 1% surcharge on all financial transactions and transfers in lieu of all other forms of tax. This ill-fated plan, which hasn't gotten a single co-sponsor, ignores everything we know about actual human behavior. (If you implemented such a cost to financial transactions, the viability of those transactions would be destroyed and they wouldn't occur.)

Fattah's other notable political position is his support for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia's case has been a cause célèbre for years. The details of his endless appeals are tedious... just know the evidence presented against him is overwhelming. And the Fraternal Order of Police has consistently campaigned against Fattah's re-election over his support of Mumia.

The larger point is... These districts are among the most blighted in our nation. Society has broken down there to a horrible degree. Opportunity has vanished... Crime is rampant... Dependency on the state is the norm. The leadership in these communities should be the most scrutinized, their elected positions among the most contested. And yet, they are the safest seats in Congress. The officials dominance goes unchallenged.

Why haven't these policies and these leaders been dropped – even after they've pled guilty to outright bribery? You would think having experienced enough failure, having lived through horrible riots, terrible crime, total economic collapse, brazen corruption... that sooner or later, the voters in Detroit (and many other cities in America) would come to their senses. But that's not what happened. Instead, these systems have continued to fail up to the point of total collapse. It is as if one part of our society decided to run off the cliff... and then continued to do so for decades.

Why? Why did this happen? Why does it continue to happen?

Government Employee Unions:
Organized Corruption

A big part of the answer lies in understanding the key mechanism in the Democratic Party's funding system. (Don't worry... so far, we've been talking about Democratic Party failures, but I'll get to the Republicans next. The corruption of America is a bipartisan problem.)

We can trace the origins of these ultraliberal politicians and the beginnings of America's severe urban decline to the early 1960s. Yes, that was when the civil rights movement inspired the black community to take political power. But that wouldn't have necessarily led them to embrace socialism. Americans of all races largely rejected socialism for decades.

That all changed in the mid-1960s. Facing tough mid-term elections, the Democratic Party convinced President John F. Kennedy to allow the federal workforce to unionize. Executive order 10988 – signed on January 17, 1962 – permitted federal employees to organize unions and bargain collectively for higher wages and benefits. This set the stage for similar measures in cities and states across the country and led to a transformation of the union workforce. (Technically, Wisconsin became the first state to allow collective bargaining from state employees in 1959. But that's an outlier. Most states followed the federal lead.)

This represented a major change in both Democratic Party strategy and a major revolution in American politics. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the most liberal president in history prior to Barack Obama, recognized that allowing collective bargaining on behalf of government workers was incompatible with a free democratic system of government...

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. – President Franklin Roosevelt in a letter to Luther Steward, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, August 16, 1937.

A government union turns the public servant into the public's master. It is a means of using the government's own spending to organize control of that government. And that is exactly what's happened. The government, unlike private companies, isn't limited by normal economics because the government controls the monopoly on force and has the power to levy taxes.

The power of unions had long been held in check by market forces. Companies that gave too much to the unions in terms of pay or benefits soon found themselves driven out of the market because of high costs or poor products. Except in cases of government bailouts (like GM), these companies soon went out of work and their union members were left unemployed.

Nobody could reliably adopt truly socialistic policies because eventually, the costs of those bad ideas limited the power of the people promoting them. The growth of unions stalled in the 1950s, and they began to shrink in the 1960s. This caused a crisis in the Democratic Party (among the principal beneficiaries of union dues). Something had to be done.

Organizing unions made up of state employees completely eliminated the ability of market forces to temper their power.

After all, taxes aren't subject to the demands of consumers. Following Kennedy's executive order, membership in public employee unions – The American Federal of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Teachers' National Education Association (NEA) – boomed. So did their contributions to liberal, Democratic politicians.

These socialist organizations now had access to funding that wasn't limited by market forces. They could control entire generations of politicians. And they did. From 1989 to 2004, AFSCME was the largest single donor to federal political campaigns in the country. More than 98% of its donations went to Democratic candidates.

To see the damage the heavy involvement of these unions has on the community, consider one government service – education.

The Democrats largely control all the areas plagued by the worst schools in the United States – the inner city schools of America's big cities. A voucher system that would empower parents to send their children to better schools and introduce competition for government funding is a simple and proven way to improve both the results and cost-effectiveness.

If the Democratic Party were truly interested in the actual well-being of the communities it serves, supporting voucher plans and charter schools is among the first things you'd expect them to pass. But in fact, it is the last thing they would ever voluntarily do. It is the Democratic Party that stands firmly against any significant changes to the public school system – despite its obvious failure – because of lobbying by the NEA.
This is so clearly an example of graft and corruption that you must doubt the ability of the system to function.

Besides this obvious problem, there is a tremendous amount of corruption in the various direct transfer payment programs that have been organized and supported by the Democrats and their union backers, which have created an entire subculture of people who live and trade in various forms of welfare. If you don't believe me, spend a few days shopping in your nearest ghetto. Look for the "Use EBT Here" and "We Accept WIC" signs... They're essentially gift tags... demonstrating your compulsory largesse to the good folks of that neighborhood.
And people addicted to transfer payments will never see how their dependency is destroying their community. That's exactly what happened in Detroit.

Today, we have a black, Democratic president, who came to power in the most corrupt state in the union – Illinois. Right now, two former Illinois governors have been convicted for corruption. One for blatantly trying to sell the Senate seat Obama vacated when he became president.

And realize... not a single member of Obama's cabinet has any kind of private-sector experience.

On the other hand, he has extremely close ties to the unions. He had the most liberal voting record of any senator during his tenure in Congress. His agenda is explicitly socialist: "I think we should spread the wealth around a little bit."

The likelihood America will become more and more like Detroit is growing – rapidly. Politicians now control the banking sector, most of the manufacturing sector (including autos), and a large amount of media. They are threatening to take over health care and the production of electricity via cap-and-trade rules and subsidies promoting solar power. These are major threats to the wealth and well-being of America. America is under siege by corrupt socialists.

And the big problem is... these kinds of political systems can't be reformed because their power base is the government itself, thanks to the creation of government employee unions. That sets the stage for a collapse...

Look around... Taxes can no longer be raised without people actively fleeing states. This has happened in several places – New York, New Jersey, and California, to name a few.

In Maryland – where my company is headquartered – the Democratic state government couldn't balance the budget in 2009, so it decided to double the income tax rate on citizens with more than $1 million in annual income. That left the rich facing a 9.45% marginal state and local income tax. Put that on top of a 36% federal rate, throw in another 6% for Social Security and Medicare, and you're looking at a top marginal rate in excess of 50%. What kind of smart, hard-working citizen is going to give the government more than half his income if he can move somewhere else and pay substantially less?

The liberal editorial board at the Baltimore Sun happily praised the measure and predicted Maryland's top earners would "grin and bear it."

What a bunch of fools.

Instead, the rich left town. The number of million-dollar incomes in the state of Maryland declined by more than 30%, from 3,000 filers to only 2,000. Rather than gaining the predicted $106 million in income from these filers, Maryland collected $100 million less than it did the year before.

Do you think Maryland will rescind such stupidly progressive taxes? No way. It's good politics to promise the voters that only the rich will pay. No, it doesn't work. But that doesn't matter – not until the entire system collapses. And that's why such a collapse is inevitable. It happens all the time. The political promises expand and expand. The rate of marginal tax goes higher and higher. The tax base narrows and tax collection declines. Government debts soar, until... sooner or later... the interest rate soars because lenders realize there is no way they will ever get their money back.

That's what's happening now all over Europe.

And it will happen here next.

The states and their union employees have reached the inevitable endgame. The numbers in many states are mind-numbing. Illinois' pension liability now exceeds $100 billion. Roughly half is unfunded. In California, the pension liability is $50 billion. Another 10 states have unfunded pension liabilities in excess of $10 billion.

The Pew Foundation estimates when retiree health care benefits are included, the total unfunded liabilities of the state governments currently exceed $1 trillion.

These debts are not currently on the books of any institution in America. They're merely promises made by our state and local governments. But these promises add up to a bill we cannot possibly pay – not if we plan to honor the $20 trillion the federal government currently owes (which includes all of the debts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).

What does this mean for the future of America? I'm sorry... But it's not good.

Everyone knows what happens to socialist countries. They eventually collapse for the simple reason that everyone cannot live at the expensive of his neighbor – not for long.

And if you want to see what socialism will do to our country, don't go to the Eastern-bloc countries of the former Soviet Union. They got rid of that kind of government 20 years ago. Now they've got low, flat taxes and booming economies. You might visit Cuba or spend time in Venezuela. You'll find socialism there, certainly. But you don't have to go that far...

All you really have to do is visit Detroit.

You can drop Congressman Conyers a Thank You note after your visit.

Welfare for the Rich, Too

Our country's core problems are not found in only one political party.
There is just as much corruption, if not more, on the Republican side of the aisle. It was, for example, as I pointed out earlier, a white, Republican-appointed Treasury secretary (Henry Paulson) who tipped off 20 top hedge-fund managers about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's imminent collapse after assuring the public that it wouldn't happen.

For big business, the powerful role of government in our society is simply too valuable to ignore. And the amount of corruption it inspires is stunning. Few politicians even bother trying to hide the fact that they're bought and sold like furniture.

Take Newt Gingrich. The white, Republican former House speaker was paid $1.6 million for "consulting" by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during a period of time the two firms were under constant attack by Newt's fellow Republicans. Were the attacks efforts to truly reform a major threat to our financial system... or were they merely shakedowns? All we know for certain is Fannie and Freddie collapsed, just as many Republicans warned they would. The Republican effort to reform the firms failed. Newt collected $1.6 million.

Fannie and Freddie could end up costing taxpayers as much as $500 billion. No, I'm not ignoring the colossal role the Democrats played in staffing Fannie and Freddie, lobbying Congress for the companies, etc. I'm simply pointing out that, in Washington, everything and everyone seems to be for sale, on both sides of the aisle.

I realize that's nothing new. What is new is the scope of the corruption and how brazenly our leaders have embraced it.

Think about the new prescription drug benefit – 2003's Medicare Modernization Act. The law provided public funding for both public and private prescription drug benefits. (IBM, for example, estimated it would save $400 million over 10 years on retiree benefits thanks to the law.) At the same time, the law banned the federal government from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies. In summary, the law basically requires the federal government to pay for the prescription drugs of just about anyone over the age of 65 and requires the government to pay full retail prices.

There are now around 25 million beneficiaries of this law (not including the pharmaceutical companies). The average annual benefit is currently about $1,500. The total cost of the legislation over the next decade is expected to be around $1 trillion. This represents the largest expansion of Medicare in the history of the U.S.

The benefit was approved by a Republican-dominated Congress, in a midnight vote. Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin, then chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees the pharmaceutical industry, organized the vote. Two months later, Tauzin resigned his seat and took a job paying $2.5 million per year as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. The pharmaceutical industry continues to spend $100 million per year on campaign contributions and lobbying.

Americans are left paying the world's highest prices for drugs. Worse, we have extended the entitlement sentiment into the one area of the economy where personal responsibility is crucial. For most people, good health can be achieved by maintaining a disciplined diet and simple exercise. Offering free pills in lieu of such steps will only further the serious problem of diabetes and obesity we face.

And remember... this law was passed by Republicans and signed into law by a Republican president.

I could go on and on here...

There is a tremendous amount of corruption between the federal government and big business. There's even more corruption at the state and local level. Here's one simple expression of what's happening...

As late as 1969, the U.S. tax code required "only" 16,500 pages. By 2007, the code grew to 67,506 pages. The current form 1040 instruction booklet is 155 pages long. Obviously none of this is necessary for the collection of taxes. The code has been shaped by the corruption of our government, which in turn was shaped by the corruption of our society.
Here's another simple measure. Look at how much of federal spending goes directly to millionaires and big business.

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, of Oklahoma, recently published a report on the subject entitled "Subsidies of the Rich and Famous." According to the study, the feds are now spending around $200 billion annually on direct transfer payments to the very rich.

Given the state of our national finances, this is patently absurd. Merely getting rid of these payments would result in a substantial reduction (almost 15%) of our annual federal deficit. And yet... despite the collapsing dollar, our soaring debt loads, and the lowest civilian employment levels since the Great Depression... everything seems to be business as usual in Washington D.C.

Doesn't that make you sick? There's simply no excuse for this kind of governance. None. Americans deserve a vastly better and more ethical federal government. But we will never get it unless we can find a way to hold our leaders personally accountable for what's happening.

Here's a simple solution. Hold the senators and congressmen personally liable for any deficit, each year. We elected these people to be our leaders. We did not elect them to spend us into bankruptcy. We did not elect them to feather their own nests with unlimited public spending. We did not elect them to buy votes. The only way to stop what's happening is to make them personally responsible for their actions. Either they will balance the budget or face personal financial ruin.

Demanding personal accountability for fiduciary responsibilities would have an immediate and profound impact on our society. It would wipe out the entitlement mentality that's destroying our society – almost overnight.

Restoring personal accountability is also crucial if we hope to restore confidence in our public corporations and capital markets, which were once the broadest, most efficient, and most trusted in the world.

The Corruption of the Corporation

If you think I'm exaggerating the problems we face or the far-reaching impact of the entitlement culture we've allowed to develop in America... then explain the following fact...

The 10 largest American bankruptcies in history have all occurred in the last decade: Lehman Brothers ($691 billion), Washington Mutual ($327 billion), WorldCom ($103 billion), General Motors ($91 billion), CIT ($80.4 billion), Enron ($65 billion), Conseco ($61.4 billion), MF Global ($41 billion), Chrysler ($39.3 billion), and Thornburg Mortgage ($36.5 billion).

All of these failures have a few things in common: extremely well-compensated CEOs with long tenures (which suggests the board of directors was asleep at the wheel), vast amounts of debt that would seem completely unsafe by any reasonable standard, and accounting policies that deliberately misled investors. Most tellingly, in the majority of these cases, board members and the executive management have no material investment in the company.

In every single case, the financial jeopardy was apparent – for years. In fact, at Stansberry & Associates, we accurately predicted several of these bankruptcies and warned about nearly all of them. (Several others we accurately forecast were narrowly avoided thanks to the TARP program and other federal bailouts.) We are far from the best-connected or the smartest financial analysts in the world. Yet... almost every single Wall Street firm remained silent… and so did the ratings agencies.

You never saw most of these problems revealed to the public, either in the Wall Street Journal or other mainstream news sources. What was almost common knowledge in financial circles was never shared with the public, which continued to buy these stocks (and many others in a similar situation) all the way down. Most Americans' 401(k)s were eviscerated. But the bonuses on Wall Street never fell.

I can't name a single major Wall Street firm that hasn't engaged in massive fraud over the last decade. Not one. They have all paid massive fines to the SEC. But in only one of these cases was any firm held criminally responsible. And that firm was Arthur Anderson – Enron's accountant! What about the bankers who actually lent the firm money against collateral they knew was bogus? What about the investment bankers who sold Enron's stock to the public, even though it knew the earnings were fraudulent? And what happened to the huge corporations whose depositors, executives, and lawyers were full, active partners in the fraud that bankrupted Enron – namely Citigroup and JPMorgan, the two largest banks on Wall Street?

The Senate subcommittee investigating Enron's collapse had this to say about Citigroup and JPMorgan: "The evidence... demonstrates that Citigroup and JPMorgan actively aided Enron in executing transactions, despite knowing the transactions utilized deceptive accounting or tax strategies, in return for substantial fees or favorable consideration in other business dealings."

So what happened? Almost nothing. In August 2003, the banks settled with the SEC for a combined $255 million. They did not admit guilt. Nor did they stop committing fraud.

The very next year, in 2004, Citigroup settled for $2.65 billion (yes, billion) to get out of charges it had defrauded lenders and investors in the collapse of WorldCom.

(Ironically, the plaintiff who brought this case was New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi. Hevesi, like Monica Conyers, is currently in jail, for corruption charges. Yes, really. In April, he was sentenced to up to four years in prison in the Steve Rattner-related bribery case I also mentioned earlier. In America today, even the people who are going after the banks for fraud are themselves corrupt.)

AIG paid $800 million in a settlement in 2006 – just two years before its collapse nearly triggered a global financial catastrophe, requiring a $125 billion federal bailout. Fannie Mae paid $400 million to settle accounting charges in 2006, just two years before its collapse cost taxpayers more than $100 billion. Its CEO, Franklin Raines, walked away with close to $100 million in compensation and was never criminally charged.

Goldman Sachs paid $550 million in 2010 related to fraudulent mortgage securities. Citigroup paid $400 million in 2003 for bogus equity research. Invesco paid $325 million in 2004, after it admitting to ripping off its own mutual-fund investors via a late-trading scheme. Prudential was also "dinged" $270 million in the same scandal.

I could go on... but you surely get the point. Nearly every major financial fiduciary in the United States has been involved in serious malfeasance in the last decade. The sums of these settlements indicate transgressions that should rise to the level of criminal indictments...

The Rigas family, for example, was thrown into prison after defrauding investors in Adelphia Communications. Their settlement with the government was "only" $715 million. Citigroup, on the other hand, has paid settlements close to five times that amount over the last decade... but not a single criminal charge has been filed. Adelphia Cable didn't owe their subscribers a fiduciary duty. All of the Wall Street firms I mentioned did.

If that's not corruption, what is? And if all of this doesn't make you sick, what will?

We've written volumes about the other major corporate scandals over the past decade. We broke the executive options abuse story, for example, in 2002, showing how companies like Broadcom, Juniper Networks, and Apple Computer were ripping off shareholders by printing massive amounts of employee stock options (most of which went to executives) and then re-pricing them when their stock prices fell.

Under the system, all of the company's cash flows (and more) would have to go to share buybacks in order to prevent massive dilution. Thus, the employees were actually stealing the company's earnings. Most people on Wall Street knew this and were shorting the companies whose abuses were the most egregious. But the scheme wasn't revealed to the public (outside of our newsletter) until 2006 when the Wall Street Journal finally wrote about the issue.

Steve Jobs, who was one of the most flagrant options abusers at both Apple and Pixar, got off the hook by naming Al Gore to the board of directors... and giving him millions in options grants. To this date, Apple Computer has not paid out a single penny in dividends to its rightful owners (its shareholders). Yet over the last decade, it has increased its outstanding share count via options issuance by 47%.

What can you do about the corruption of America's public companies? Here's a very simple solution: Make the board of directors personally liable for fraud, negligence, and depositor losses. If you're on the board of MF Global, for example, and your firm fails because your CEO bet $6.3 billion in Italian bonds… your depositors – who are still missing more than $1 billion – ought to be allowed to sue you personally. Currently, a combination of legal liability limits and insurance (so-called D&O policies), paid for by the corporation, prevent any real personal liability – even in clear cases of fraud.

Franklin Raines, for example, who had Fannie Mae's accounting set up to maximize his annual bonuses in violation of accounting standards was fined $2 million in a settlement with regulators. An insurance company paid the fine. The company paid the premiums on that policy.

The concept of the corporate shield for legal liability was created so that limited partners (like common-stock holders) couldn't be held liable for the damages caused by the general partner's actions or misdeeds. Over time, that shield has been extended to the general partners of public companies – the board of directors and the executive management team. But these people are paid to run the company. If they engage in fraud or are negligent in their duties, they ought to be held liable.

If you were to simply make that one legal change, the conduct of America's corporations – especially those with fiduciary responsibilities to depositors – would change overnight. Confidence in America's public companies and capital markets would soar. But... as long as the idea of entitlement remains ascendant, dictating that executives keep most of the profit but none of the risk... our capital markets will continue to suffer and the management of our public companies will be rife with negligence and fraud.

Is This Fascism?

Earlier this year, in my June issue, I tried to define the unique blend of socialism for the poor, corporate welfare for the rich, paper money for the government, and credit excess for the middle class that has shaped America for most of the last 40 years. I wrote...

You can't just call our economic system "socialism." It's not. There's a profit motive and private ownership of nearly all assets. Socialism has neither of these. Besides, far too many people have become far too rich in our system to simply label it "socialism"...
Our system isn't truly capitalism either, though. The State intervenes in almost every industry, often in a big and expensive way. With government at all levels making up more than 40% of GDP, it's fair to say we live in a State-dominated society...
A certain class of people has the power to not only protect itself from these policies but to profit as well. These people have used the last 40 years to produce massive amounts of paper wealth. And they are now desperately trying to convert those paper accounts into real wealth, which explains the exploding price of farmland and precious metals.

This explosion of wealth at the top of the "food chain" is the main feature of what I call New American Socialism. It's a system fueled by paper money, the constant expansion of debt, and a kind of corruption that's hard to police because it occurs within the boundaries of the law...
In the New American Socialism, the power of the system produces private profits. In this way, it provides a huge incentive to entrepreneurs and politicians to work together on behalf of the system. This is what keeps the system going. This is what keeps it from collapsing upon itself. And this, unfortunately, is why the imbalances in the world economy will continue to grow until the entire global monetary system itself implodes.

I continue to believe that's a very accurate description of what's happening to our country. But... many subscribers wrote in and complained that what I was calling "New American Socialism" was nothing new at all – it was actually fascism.
Webster's defines fascism as...

a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

That's not what's happening in America – at least, not yet. To this point, there's little direct forcible suppression of opposition and little exultation of the federal government. And while certain congressional districts have become socially regimented and politically repressive, that's not a widespread phenomenon.

Many people fear this is where we're heading... that as conditions deteriorate and the currency collapses, the government will move to take still more power. I don't think that's likely – at least, not for long...
I do agree that the nation will soon face a choice between heading down the path towards fascism... or turning back the power of government and restoring the limited Republic that was our birthright. I continue to believe Americans will choose personal liberty.

I believe they will choose more freedom rather than more totalitarian rule. I don't believe Americans will tolerate martial law for long – even in the advent of a real emergency, which I do believe will occur.
What gives me confidence for the future? Gun sales, for one thing. U.S. citizens legally own around 270 million firearms – about 88 guns per 100 citizens (including children) today.

That's a hard population to police without its consent. America is the No. 1 country in the world as ranked by the number of guns per-capita. That plays a major factor in the kind of government you will see take root in America. Things might go too far in this country for a while... And I'd argue they've been going the wrong way for too long. But the government can only take things so far before they'll be faced with a very angry, well-armed opposition.

If the government attempts to take our guns... my opinion would change immediately. But that's one right the Supreme Court has been strengthening recently. It gives me hope that most people in America still understand that the right to bear arms has little to do with protecting ourselves from crime and everything to do with protecting ourselves from government...

Thanks for a Great Year

I hope you've enjoyed – or at least been challenged to think in new ways – by this issue of my newsletter. I've been thinking about the issues for a long time and believe they are important. Whether you agree with my analysis or not, I hope you'll share these ideas with people in your circle of influence. Together, we can certainly draw far more attention to the moral failings of our leaders and the risk we face by the growth of the entitlement culture.

Once again… please realize, I'm not taking a political side here. I'm not saying the Democrats are singularly responsible for the state of our country. I'm not saying the Republicans are all to blame. And I'm not saying this is a black problem or a white problem. The problem is rooted in the corrupt belief that you can live at the expense of your neighbor... that we have become a nation where the vast majority of people believe their well-being is primarily, someone else's responsibility.

This bankrupt belief has taken complete control of our government, educational system, medical industry, and our corporations. And unless we demand better from each other and our political leaders, our society is doomed to collapse under the crushing weight of the Corruption of America.

It's time we got back to our traditions as Americans and started doing more to take care of our families, communities, and ourselves.

I feel so strongly about these ideas, I'd like you to forward this issue to everyone you know. We almost never allow this copyright violation... But in this case, feel free to forward as many times as you want. Print it up and pass copies around your hometown.

We are wrapping up the best year ever for this advisory in terms of readership. I hope you'll agree that many of the key themes we've been working on have turned out an awful lot like we predicted. The global sovereign debt crisis continues. The stock market has not been a great place for your savings. Many of our short sell recommendations – particularly First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) – have led to big profits. For those of you unwilling or unable to speculate and hedge, my advice to hold gold and Treasury bills has produced double-digit gains, with almost no volatility.

For subscribers who are new to this publication, I don't often focus on this kind of political analysis. I know our main job is to find ways to help you make more money with your investments. But the fact is... right now, politics drives the markets. And that may be true for some time...

Regardless... I pledge to get back to my knitting in the next issue.

Thank you very much for your support. You've given me the best job in the world. I take it – and the trust you show in me – seriously.

Warm regards,
Porter Stansberry
Baltimore, Maryland
December 15, 2011

P.S. If you are interested in learning more about these ideas—what has gone wrong in America in recent years, and what I believe will happen next—you might enjoy watching a free video I recently produced. In this video, I explain what is probably the biggest corruption in America today, and how it will likely lead to yet another U.S. crisis, affecting everything about your everyday life. I also explain some simple steps you can take today, to protect yourself and your family. You can watch this free video on the Internet, here.

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LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This work is based on SEC filings, current events, interviews, corporate press releases, and what we've learned as financial journalists. It may contain errors and you shouldn't make any investment decision based solely on what you read here. It's your money and your responsibility. Stansberry & Associates Investment Research expressly forbids its writers from having a financial interest in any security they recommend to our subscribers. And all Stansberry & Associates Investment Research (and affiliated companies), employees, and agents must wait 24 hours after an initial trade recommendation is published on the Internet, or 72 hours after a direct mail publication is sent, before acting on that recommendation.

Phil Donahue Interviewing Milton Friedman Thirty Years Ago.

2011-12-29T11:19:00.001-06:00

The Eurozone,the Euro, and the Complete Failure of Socialism, Again

2011-12-28T07:08:00.005-06:00

The economies of Europe and America have always been a mix of socialist and capitalist.

Europe has always been more socialist than America, and thus has always teetered on the edge of destruction, but has always survived. This has allowed people to think socialism works.

Interestingly enough, what has kept Europe's socialism afloat in the past has been America's success. We buy their stuff in mass quantities, their economy survives.

And Europe used to be capitalist enough to solve some of its own problems.

But in 1999, Europeans cast off their capitalism and embarked on yet another "great socialist experiment." They lashed together the economies of 17 nations, and now their screwed.

In the past, with Europe's semi-capitalist model, if a country like Greece or Spain's economy failed they could tank the value of their currency to encourage tourism and bring in fresh capitol. A remarkably simple capitalist solution that worked for years.

Now under the Eurozone, all smaller countries like Greece and Spain can do is borrow more money. And, there is no American economic growth (which Europe based their economic recovery on) to help them.

And voila! Yet another great socialist experiment is bringing about the ruin of millions. It really is that simple.

Why Ron Paul? Because Congress is Getting Richer, and America Poorer

2011-12-28T06:22:00.018-06:00

There is no red or blue, democrat or republican on Capital Hill, only players and sell-outs.

Many of us have come to realize that Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate with any integrity or principle at all, but please remember also that we need to fire nearly every member of the Senate to effect any real "Change." And we need to fire every Congressman that has served more than 3 terms.

Only then can the business of selling off Americans futures in Congress slow, (it will never end).

Also, I would like to clarify a point.

There is a difference between Capitalism an Corporation-ism;

Capitalism rewards "you" for your hard work, and lets you keep what "earned"

Corporation-ism rewards the "very big" for being "very big" even when their actions are "criminal"

Congress's Corporation-ism

Here are just a few, they :

Passed NAFTA, throwing away (conservative estimates) 4 million jobs and changing 13 million jobs from good paying jobs, to low paying jobs.
Protected (think about this please, they protected it) predatory (what should be illegal, and is immoral) lending, even as the FBI published reports begging Congress to let them do something about it.
Removed the Glass-Steagall act, allowing banks to screw "everybody" and grow "to big to fail!"
Coddled and protected Wall Street, giving them complete immunity.
Screw the small American farmer in favor of the corporate farm every chance they get, and recently did so again.

By "forgetting" about the Constitution, Congress has used regulation to pass laws, and in doing so has taken control of "everything," encompassing the whole country into the bureaucracy of government, and in doing so, is destroying it!

Do you know what the difference between the countries you see on TV, where the people are throwing fire bombs at police over burnt out cars and bombed out buildings, and America is?

Hyper Inflation
Poverty
Corrupt Government
The rule of an elite Oligarch that will never give up power no matter how many suffer (Usually supported by America)

Whats the last difference between us and them now, the only linchpin holding back the fall the country with the greatest economic and social equality the world has ever seen?

Hyper Inflation

Whats Congress doing about it?

This:

Do you think that Ron Paul is extreme?

I would argue that yes he is extreme, because defending the Constitution is a very extreme thing to do.

The people that created it were called rebels, and the war they fought over their ideals was called "Revolutionary," and they would have been killed for creating it if they lost their war. But they didn't loose, and now they're called our "founding fathers."

Why was the Constitution created? To limit the power of government and protect the individual rights and liberty of Americans.

And up to that point, only the French had come up with anything close to it. Very very extreme!

But now our leaders and our media would like you to believe that caring about the Constitution, and the horrible sacrifices people made to protect it, somehow isn't "fashionable."

Well I argue that the defending the Constitution, and limiting the size and SPENDING of government is fashionable, In fact I'm wearing it right now!

Ron Paul is the only candidate whom has "never" changed his views and beliefs in order to become "fashionable," and in doing so has inadvertently become very fashionable, stylish even!

Congress is so 20 minutes ago!

Ron Paul is being slammed by the GOP right now for two reasons:

He's winning!

He's not a sell-out, and will actually change things!

I leave you tonight with one final thought: What is more extreme, and more scary for you?

Letting Congress continue the course their on; adding 2 to 4 trillion dollars of debt per year, inevitably leading to hyper inflation, the collapse of the American economy, poverty and suffering world wide, martial law, and everything else you thought could only happen to "them."

Or?

Restoring the constitution, limiting the size and spending of government, and restoring liberty and true capitalism. Basically all the things that made America prosperous in the first place?

I argue, with my heart, my head, and my gut. That voting for any other candidate other than Ron Paul, will lead to scenario number 1.

Even if Ron Paul should win however, the House and the Senate, still need to be dealt with.

Ford F-150 Motor Trend's Truck of the Year!

2011-12-26T12:17:00.000-06:00

Ah, and I drive this!

Notice the refinements:

Pro Constitution, Pro Liberty Graphics!
Personalized Dan "The Computer Guy!" door accents!
Economic, no car payment, low insurance styling!
New for 2012! Extra rust on the rear bumper, and hot new bungee cord to hold it in place!
Superior handling, with 15 year old shocks and generic tires to hug the road!
New state of the art squirt bottle comes standard for washing away dirt away off the sexy "cracked" windshield!

Yes folks, anyone can drive a "nice" truck. But if you really want to make and impression, pull up in "The Ugly Truckling!"

The truck that says, "I'm not over compensating for shit!"

People Flying, It Never Gets Old

2011-12-13T16:15:00.000-06:00

My Muse! My Inspiration! My Joy! Two Child Prodigies!

2011-12-01T13:32:00.000-06:00

Jackie Evancho (Age 11) Nessun Dorma!

Sophia Grace (Age 8) and Rosie (Age 5) on Ellen

Big Oil - Blowback - And Gene Roddenberry?

2011-11-25T17:53:00.002-06:00

I would like to thank my cousin for these little tidbits.

I digress for a moment. My thoughts may seem to wander from the topics above, but they are related.

Gene Roddenberry was fond of saying that no "bad guy" was ever completely bad.

Most of your comic book "super hero's" create their own worst enemies, and so do we.

I don't agree with Barack Obama, and I probably don't like him, but he is not completely wrong. (I know, its a big circle)

As American's were constantly being herded like sheep in whatever direction, Big Oil wants us to go.

And we have it good. God help you if you live on foreign soil, and there's oil in that soil, you're fu****, perpetually and chronically fu****!

So what are we in now? 10(Corrected, I posted 12) years of war with countries who were no threat to America, except, that they may be able to disrupt the flow of oil. 50+ years of conflict with Iran, caused by us.

And now American's are spitting and jeering at Barack Obama for wanting to keep solar power alive in America.

Granted, I understand that giving 500 million tax dollars to a company you know its going to fail, is asinine, and cronyism at its worst. I can't defend that.

That's why Barack is a one term President. But I believe his intentions are sincere for wanting to keep solar power "alive" in general, for several reasons;

First, China is going ahead full steam with solar power.

Second, The argument that American solar power companies simply have to fail because they can't compete with China, is bullshit.

Third, (Do you remember this?) solar power was a "great idea" when gas was $4+ a gallon.

Alternative energy always seems to make sense when American's are pissed off, and then we seem to hate it when gas prices go down.

Another President, whom I disagree with, but who was not completely wrong, Jimmy Carter, in 1980 proposed a $65 billion alternative energy research and development bill. He even put solar panels on the white house.

(At the same time, the consequences of the U.S. fu***** with Iran over oil, hit us in the first wave in 1979 with the taking of U.S. hostages)

OPEC in response to Carter's bill dropped the price of gas down to a $1 a gallon, Ronald Regan took the solar panels off the White House, and American's started buying BIG SUV's, and MUSEUM SIZED HOUSES!

Now 22 years later, we have been fighting insanely expensive (in life, limbs and money) wars for 10 years, occupying countries who were never a threat to America, pissing off billions of people, all in order to surround Iran and keep the flow of oil coming from the middle east.

Now imagine that we didn't need all that fu***** oil. What a peaceful world it would be, and cleaner!

American solar companies are mostly dead now, alternative energy is once again on a distant back burner, and America is fu***** with Iran like never before.

My guess is that gas prices will continue to go down, American's will become blissfully - ignorantly happy again, and in a few years the consequences of our action over the past 12 years will hit us like a ton of bricks.

Those consequences will manifest themselves in violence and skyrocketing gas prices.

And when that happens, American's will say; "We need alternative energy!"

So in the end, the people we think of as "the bad guys" may not be "good guys" but their not completely bad.

Presidents who may not have been "right" weren't all "wrong."

And Americans; were just sheep being led. Baa baa!