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I have my opinion and you have yours. Get over it.
One Pissed-Off Dude
by Gary Graham
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggraham/2009/01/06/one-pissed-off-dude-5/
I’m an American. This has always been my favorite label, but of late even that has seemed to mean less and less. Being called an American used to carry with it a certain pride and esprit de corps that now apparently is dated and passe. How else can one explain the rash of America-haters in our midst who only claim pride in America if a Leftist resides in the White House, and can only back a war effort if the decision to go to war was that of a Democrat.
I’m a Conservative. And I am also an actor who lives and works in Hollywood. Many of my friends advise me to keep that on the down-low, advise me to not speak up lest I scuttle any future employment prospects, so predominantly liberal is the entertainment biz. And yet I persist.
You see, I’m one pissed-off dude.
I’m told I’ll hurt my career if I continually spout off about Liberalism — which I see as a growing cancer in our society. Worldwide, I’ve seen Liberalism metastasize into virulent incarnations of Socialism, and, left unchecked, even into its malignant cousin, Communism. Only the arrogant or the somnambulist would think such a thing could never happen here. It’s a matter of increment. Once a group organizes into a coalition, it’s a short step to claiming the right to the property of another group. All that is necessary is for an individual’s right to personal property to become a secondary concern. The ‘needs’ of the group must supercede, dontcha know. It’s a vicious cycle – wants become needs become rights. The fact that the thievery is done at the behest of a ‘civilized’ government does not sanitize the crime.
“At least the highwayman has the decency to wear a mask.” – Author unknown.
So I’m told I should shut up. I make my living in the Hollywood community, and Hollywood is by and large run by Liberals. I’m told I need to stay quiet when the Left has their way over issues that affect my daily life. I’m told I need to learn how to get along with the Left, learn how to compromise. I need to be more open-minded. I need to be more tolerant.
I say F T S. Ask your 9-yr-old if you have trouble deciphering that. (No, wait, don’t.)
I don’t want to get along with the Left. I want to take them down. I want to expose their idiocy for what it is and reveal it as a harmful, dangerous succession of lies and deceptions. My friends say that that effort, aside from being fruitless, will cost me work. It will cost me my career. And I say Wait-a-minute, Bucko. Those folks who founded this country were willing to risk not only their careers, but their property, their families, their very lives…the least I can do in standing up for our precious freedoms is risk a silly television career. Not to compare myself with the brilliant thinkers who declared themselves independent of England and framed our Constitution…but those were some pretty pissed off dudes too. Compared to that, loss of a little TV or movie work seems pretty inconsequential. So in honor of Pissed Off Americans past and present, I rant.
I’m pissed off that everyone seems okay on having to press one for English. We’re supposed to be tolerant and understanding that maybe some folks who now live here (legally or not) might have trouble understanding what I’m saying to them if I speak in my native tongue, regardless of the extra cost to the rest of us. FTS.
I’m pissed that my sweet well-wishing friends and acquaintances now say “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas. Oh, we don’t want to offend the non-Christians, they’ll say. Again – FTS. ‘Happy Holidays’…nice and non-specific, soothingly generic. In keeping with the spirit of the season, I try not to show it – but I roll my eyes. Jeez, could you be any more spineless? Everybody walk on eggshells for the rest of your lives, living in perptual fear someone who holds a different religion, or sexual preference, or nationality is going to suffer some little offense if you actually wish them a lovely Christmas. “Oh we don’t celebrate Christmas.” “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, I don’t mean to offend you. Please enjoy the Holiday of Winter Solstice and Earth Renewal Day or whatever your heart leads to celebrate, if indeed you are even feeling like celebrating anything.” Shut up! Smile and say thanks. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Ramadan, Soulful Kwanzaa…whatever. Smile and say Thanks.
Can we all stop taking ourselves so damn seriously for half a minute? Hey – life ain’t a popularity contest. So grow a pair. Speak your mind and if someone can’t handle it, request that they take a hike. How the hell did we ever survive life before the all-knowing, all-caring ACLU began to run interference for all our tender sensibilities? It’s a wonder any of us grew up without some crippling psychosis that drove us to chop up our grandmother. I’m old enough to remember when Common Sense ruled the day. (*cue the Cranky Old Man music)
It irks me that Democrats are always looking to raise my taxes. I’m patriotic if I take it up the bum and don’t squeal. What’s worse, they don’t even have the integrity to call them taxes. They call them ‘fees’, or even, ‘contributions’. As I learned the word, a contribution is a volitional act. Left to free choice, I say I choose to not contribute more than I already do. Let all those who say we are overtaxed stand up with me. Those who think different can form a line to the left…and we on the right will leave you completely free to contribute more. Raising taxes takes food off my family’s table. I regard people who advocate doing so in the same vein as I would the burglar I confront in the dead of night – an enemy.
I’m pissed that I study the political issues of the day, educate myself, stay informed daily by a multitude of news sources from all slants…and yet, come election day, my informed vote is cancelled by some numbskull who votes for the nicest smile, who doesn’t know who the current vice-president is, or which party controls Congress, and what’s more, doesn’t care. Am I the only one who thinks a basic intelligence and general knowledge test should be a prerequisite for voting for our leaders? No? Too radical a notion? Well, then, why not just make the winner of American Idol president and save all the drama? Everyone can text in their vote. And Paula, Randy, and Simon… the new cabinet. “Tonight the State of the Union speech will be sung by the President, backed up by Rascal Flatts…and special guest duet with Secretary of State David Archuleta…”
I’m pissed off by how soft many in our nation have become. How whimpy the tone, how spineless the resolve. What happened to that brutally real notion that people should be held responsible for his or her actions? Nowadays, it always seems to be someone else’s fault, whatever it is. Got a life of poverty, it’s rich folks doing it to you.
Alcohol addiction, substance abuse, your mother never said she loves you. Having trouble finding work, it’s the white, black, purple guys keeping you down. Your car company is going under, it’s the unfair business practices abroad and an economic downturn. Hey, nimrods – newsflash. LIFE IS HARD. The End. Get used to it, suck it up, get some spine, invent some if you have none, and GET ON WITH IT!!!! I’d like to offer, in utter compassion, and speaking on behalf of at least several like-minded bretheren out there, a class-action BITCH-SLAP to every mamby-pamby, limp-wristed douche-bag of a complainer who has the audacity to hope that we hard-working, God-fearing, America-loving taxpayers should be forced to give you one penny of our income to enable you further in your responsibility-shirking, self-destructive habits. Get your collective shiite together, friends. I am not, nor are my friends, my brother’s keeper. Though my heart is open enough to come to someone’s need should an honest and sincere calamity befall a brother or sister… when did destitution become a virtue? Did my snooze button malfunction causing me to oversleep a couple decades? When did begging become a noble venture? You see them standing there bravely, “God bless”and something about ‘can’t find work’ scrawled on their cardboard. Victims of society, of Bush/Cheney, of Ronald Reagan, of any heartless Republican administration. And worse – hey, I’ve seen the sign people on the offramps, I’ve seen the green flow as we assuage our prosperity guilt – these guys are cleaning up! Am I in the wrong business? When, dear friends, did panhandling become a lucrative industry? FTS!
(Side note: I’ve personally offered several of these beggars who had written “Will work for food” to buy them lunch if they’ll do some yard work and fence painting for me, and the reaction was always the same. Hell no! They just want cash, right now! Hmmm…and yet the sign said… Forget about the begging, whatever happened to truth in advertising?)
Who can identify virtue, when there is no shame?
And speaking of shame…have you on the Left no shame when it comes to calling evil EVIL? What’s in a name — a terrorist by any other name is a ‘Jihadist’. A freedom fighter. A rebel. But when are we going to admit that there is an evil movement out there dedicated to our destruction. And it ain’t Sarah Palin and George Bush. It’s radical Islam and they want to cut your personal head off simply because you’re not throwing in with them.
You’re not on your knees worshiping their boy Allah, so for this you and everyone like you all over the world must die and die now. But wait, it’s a ‘religion of peace’, we’re told. Wow, not the last time I looked. If Islam is a religion of peace, where are all the peace-loving Muslim leaders decrying the radicals’ murderous actions? The beheadings, the suicide bombings, the IED’s, the blowing up innocents on buses? Where are the peaceful Islamists’ protests against Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, et al? You are a frog in a pot, Lefty – being boiled slowly, apparently too slowly for you to notice. Too much Climate Change on your mind to notice that the barbarians are at the gate. When the Nazis stormed into Jewish homes in 1939 I’m sure there were more than a few head-in-the sand myopic residents screaming about the troopers tracking mud on the carpet. If only they had had the ACLU to save the day… Human rights and clean carpets surely would have abound.
Speaking of climate change, while we’re at it…if the argument is over…and the facts are clear…how is it we can predict the climate twenty years hence, when we can’t even predict with much accuracy if my ass is going to get wet attending my friend’s kid’s Bar Mitzvah next weekend. When did we give the title to anyone with a PhD in front of their name the added moniker of ‘Soothsayer’? I read Paul Erhlich’s book, THE POPULATION BOMB in the early ‘70’s and it scared the begeebers out of me. By his prediction, each human being in 2008 would have less than a square meter of space to live in. (William F. Buckley voice: “Ahh…Mr. Erhlich was unavailable for comment, ahhh… but stressed the importance of keeping his line clear, lest the Nobel Prize committee call.”) And Mr. Gore – I do believe in Climate Change. It’s called summer, spring, winter and fall. Happens each year whether I drive my SUV or not. FTS!
Before I came up with the inspired notion of tossing my life away and becoming an actor…I was fully ensconsed in the science department at the University of California, Irvine. I know the way it works. The professors confided in me. You need a problem to study, better yet a crisis, or you don’t get funding for your research. It’s that simple. One professor of botany told me that these very high-tech ultra-violet cameras we were frolicking through the fields looking at flowers through cost the University $200 thousand dollars. Off my open-mouthed gape, he shrugged, “Gotta spend the money, or next year they cut us back.” So yeah, you’re going to find a ton of scientists who swear we’re killing the planet…and we desperately need another three million dollars to study the problem.
I’m confident I could find two hundred accredited scientists to join me in an exhaustive study to find out why belly button lint is demagnetizing the moon leading to global flooding…if only Bill Gates will step up with some coin. FTS!
Lastly…can we finally be done with all the hatred? George Bush is very soon to be out of a job. Time to let up on him a bit, don’t you think? Erase the hate, Lefties. You can stop proclaiming him to be the anti-christ, evil incarnate, the boogeyman, Darth Vader, or the Heartbreak of Psoriasis. The guy did his best. Like him, don’t like him, he kept us from attack for seven-and-a-half years so let it go. Your guy is in now, so relax. Have fun again. Laugh without derision. Smile without the snide. You remember how? Take off your flak jackets, it’s going to be okay. Our brave warriors did some serious ass-kicking in the Middle East, and though there’s no shortage of crazy Islamo-fascist bad guys yet to come, at least they know who they’re f*cking with.
Somehow along the way, so many of you forgot one simple, undeniable tenet: We’re the good guys. We’re not imperialists, or else we would’ve nuked the oil countries into radioactive dust, then moved in and taken the oil. We don’t ‘torture’ prisoners, or lawyers for the Gitmo ‘detainees’ would have CNN photographing the horrid scars and missing limbs. We don’t bully smaller, less developed nations. On the contrary, we expend our more precious asset: the blood of our brave, bright and courageous young men and women – all in committed effort to free them from despotic, brutal dictators. We are not brash. In 1991 we amassed a coalition of 34 nations before we acted to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, and this after months and months of negotiations and U.N. resolutions. Twelve years later after waiting six months and seeing fourteen U.N. resolutions ignored by Hussein, George W. Bush had accrued a multi-national coalition and a majority vote in Congress before sending troops into Iraq. We are the big dog on the block. And yet we ask no penance from lesser countries. Instead we offer aid in the form of cash, medicine, and humanitarian help. When we go after bad guys in war, we don’t carpet bomb, or blow up civilian-filled buses. We have smart bombs that pinpoint targets to limit collateral civilian casualites. We’re the good guys. Only an entrenched self-loathing hatred of America will prevent you from seeing that. If that’s the case, you have my sympathy. But don’t let the door hit you on the way out. And yes, this is our country, whether a Democrat of a Republican occupies the White House.
Yeah, a lot of things piss me off. But I’m a ridiculously happy guy. I’m blessed with a wonderful family, terrific friends (many, many of them Liberals, oh yes), a strong Faith in God and a sweet certainty that this nation is on the side of good in the world…and that that good will overcome the bad.
I was asked by the founder of this site to write an article… an ‘opening salvo’. Considering who might read it, and who in Hollywood might be incensed, the temptation to parse words and couch my opinions was strong. But the guy in the mirror counsels me the loudest. I was always impressed with John Hancock, when, reminded that signing one’s name to that Declaration in Pennsylvania could very well lead to their deaths…solemnly stepped forward and with grand flourish signed his name in huge, legible script. In that grand spirit…
I hereby declare my independence…from the small-minded, America-hating, race-bating, Christian-bashing, class-warfare-waging, politically-correct, collectivist, Liberal Hollywood establishment.
Anybody got a problem with that, I’ll mapquest you directions to my front door, we’ll settle it like men.
Signed,
GARY GRAHAM
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggraham/2009/01/06/one-pissed-off-dude-5/
I think reeltime needs to loose the
GLBT and mature content videos. Some of these videos are posted on the front page of the new TV arrivals link(which has been the same for months). Its no telling how many people that have families and kids go to this page only to click away to a more family friendly site such as Hulu. What decent parent is going to let their little Johnny go to
http://www.reeltime.com/TitlesList.aspx?searchType=3&searchText=&CategoryPrefer=tv&category=New%20TV%20Arrivals
and choose between Bump(The Ultimate Gay Travel Companion)or Davey and Goliath.
I will not tell others about reeltime as long as the content is the way it is.
Maybe this is why traffic refuses to increase on Alexa and compete.
JMO
The false credit crisis got
Obama elected,
nationalized the banking system,
and bailed out the crooks on wall street.
Looks like it was all planned.
2009 Conclusion (so far) - There Was No Credit Crisis!
http://www.star-telegram.com/ed_wallace/story/1120785.html
2008 was one of the most important years of my second career. My columns in the Star-Telegram and BusinessWeek online, covering the energy issues we all faced, were the most reprinted and commented-on columns I’ve ever written.
Robert Bryce, managing editor of the Energy Tribune, recently wrote that he had been wrong to blame supply and demand issues for oil’s spiking prices. He now says I was right; overzealous speculation in oil was the main culprit. This week, in a piece the New York Times’ Heather Timmons wrote on oil speculation for Slate magazine, she quoted me to head up the anti-speculation part. The Columbia Journalism Review asked me to participate in a debate on Peak Oil, which the Houston Chronicle suggested everyone should read.
A member of Congress has called me for advice, one asking how to deal with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on oil, and one wondering how best to proceed on the probable Detroit bailout. It’s amazing how much impact one can have when your driving motivation is the average American family’s well being.
After oil collapsed, though, a new crisis arose, this time in the world’s financial markets. Calling emergency meetings, Congress looked for ways to salvage our financial system before "economic Armageddon" ensued.
Crying Wolf?
I don’t doubt that something truly serious has happened in both the world’s "shadow banking" system and the derivative markets — but by late September the reports that it was almost impossible to get a new car loan just didn’t sound right. They were quickly followed by reports that the credit market for consumers was locking up, that credit card companies were reducing customers’ credit limits, and that home equity loans had become unobtainable. Even American Express, the hardest credit card to obtain, hit hard times and needed a $3 billion cash infusion.
But, as with the relentless drumbeat justifying oil’s rising to $147 a barrel, something just wasn’t adding up here.
There’s no denying that some people with credit cards probably did have their limits reduced, and certainly many individuals who found they now had serious negative equity in their homes were locked out of second mortgages or refinancing. But I found it impossible to verify that anything much had changed for the average homeowner or credit card holder. Certainly it took only one day of research to disprove the statement that new car loans in September had been hard to obtain. Again I published articles in both the Star-Telegram and BusinessWeek, saying, "This credit news is wrong." Turns out I didn’t dig deep enough.
Self-Fulfilling Banshee Wail
To be honest, the relentless and consistently negative reporting on the state of the world’s financial system rattled even me — and I had anticipated this crisis. I sold all my stocks save Ford, which was already a major loser, almost two years ago. Starting this summer I locked down on virtually all discretionary spending, wondering what problems would be disclosed next. It’s obvious now that many others did too, because consumer spending plummeted nationwide.
November car sales in Dallas Fort Worth hit a low not seen since the downturn of 1973 – 74; nationally new car showroom traffic was off nearly 70 percent. My question then became, "Are things really as bad as is being reported, or is it simply the reporting causing widespread panic that is making things worse?"
Then came December, and many dealers in Tarrant County were telling me that their sales had improved. At midmonth they expected to sell as many new vehicles as they had last December.
But the national bad news didn’t let up. New unemployment numbers were hitting levels not seen since the early eighties, while November home sales fell faster than expected. Tarrant County’s success notwithstanding, at midmonth new car sales nationwide were down — but by only 15 percent from a year ago. If things were really as bad as we’ve been told, those are unbelievably good figures.
What if — the same way we were duped about why oil cost so much, or led to believe that we had to invade Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction and were aligned with Al Qaeda — both the Federal Reserve and our Treasury Department have oversold this financial crisis?
There Was No Credit Crisis!
Again, I do believe there were some serious financial problems that had to be corrected, quickly. But what if the reality wasn’t as bad as we’ve been led to believe?
Remember, they told us consumer credit was locked up and gone, but we know that’s not true. Certainly numerous major banks took billions of dollars to restore their liquidity, but we now know that the money was forced on them; most of those banks said they were doing fine financially.
Certainly we have put well over $125 billion into AIG, but that was because their credit rating was downgraded and they couldn’t meet their requirements for credit default swaps — it wasn’t mortgages or bad outstanding loans that did AIG in.
One should also remember that the corporate failures on Wall Street were the investment banks, not the commercial entities. Investment banks cater to the rich.
And just as I wrote about the fact that there wasn’t a problem getting new car loans in September, contrary to the reporting, we now know that at about that time one Congressman called an expert. V.V. Chari, an economist with the University of Minnesota and an advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, was asked to look into the credit markets to find out why our financial system was in a near state of collapse. Chari looked the data and was stunned to find … nothing wrong with our lending system. For the most part he found it functionally normally and operating correctly.
Patrick Kehoe of Northwestern independently looked at the same data and came to the same conclusion. There was no credit crisis. And last month Celent Financial Services, using the Treasury Department’s own data, proved there was no lock-up in the financial market, while the National Federal of Business surveyed small business owners in November and determined no evidence of a credit crunch.
That’s right. While the head of the Federal Reserve and our Treasury Secretary were asking Congress to rescue our financial system, one advisor to the Fed and numerous independent economic groups looked at the same data and could find no problems.
Hide the Good News Why, Again?
The best predictions we’re hearing now are that our economy will return to normal once the housing market hits bottom and recovers — in a few years. And yes, foreclosures will likely continue through 2011, which I’ve written about, because of the Alt-A mortgages that will be resetting. Expensive losses will still be coming our way. But something has already happened in housing that has been widely ignored: California was Ground Zero for the current housing mess, and yet in November 2008 home sales were up 83 percent there over November 2007’s.
That’s not a typo: Home sales almost doubled in California last month. In fact, in the Inland Empire of Riverside-San Bernardino, they almost tripled, more than doubled in Sacramento and Ventura Country and almost doubled in San Diego year over year. This story was covered by Bloomberg Business … and ignored by everyone else.
To be fair to the subject, the average selling price of an existing home in California fell from $490,511 last November to only $285,680, but even that is great news. Here’s why: First, it took only 44.3 days to sell a home, and unsold inventory fell to just 6.9 months, down from over 14 months a year ago.
But second, home sales took off in California once their prices hit 2002 levels. Remember, that housing boom started in 2000, and prices did not fall back to 2000 levels — nor did consumer panic send housing under the equilibrium price before sales came back to life. Moreover, on an annualized basis, California home sales exceeded 500,000 units for the third month in a row. In the 13 Western states existing home sales were up 17.9 percent. These facts also prove that consumer credit isn’t locked up.
Sheepdogs Turned Wolves
My experience has been that when everyone is going one way on a story, with no counterbalance to the news, something is wrong. And if things were as bad and bleak as we’ve been told over and over again, we would already be in a massive depression — and we’re not.
At the same time, a Fed economist and several independent sources said the lending system wasn’t in meltdown as recently as September.
Why aren’t we hearing this?
It now appears at least possible that Americans have been put into a worse recession than would normally have happened — via widespread panic — simply because some Washington insiders needed to bail out their rich buddies on Wall Street. Therefore, we are in a downturn because of a crisis of confidence, not of liquidity. Our confidence was stolen — by the very people we trusted to protect it.
http://www.star-telegram.com/ed_wallace/story/1120785.html
Alevi's are found in Turkey, but who are the Druez?
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah are Shiite
Hamas are Sunni
Lebanon's government is Sunni
Iran is predominantly Shiite
The controlling Baath party in Syria(~10% of the population) are Shiite.
Al Qaeda are Sunnis
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are Sunni
Iran hates Israel so much they seem to be willing at least temporally to unite with the sunnis to fight Israel. The following article mentions a 'Muslim Brotherhood' replacing secular Arab regimes with Islamist governments.
Hezbollah 'redrawing' Mideast map
Monday, May 12, 2008
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Hezbollah's dramatic gains in Lebanon last week are just part of a regional process that began last year in the Gaza Strip and will continue in Jordan and Egypt, a Hamas official in the West Bank told The Washington Times.
Associated Press POWER FIGHT: Beirut neighborhoods echo with the sounds of gunfire and explosions for another day yesterday. The sectarian clashes have brought Lebanon closer to civil war than at any other time since the end of its 15-year conflict in 1990.
Sheik Yazeeb Khader, a Ramallah-based Hamas political activist and editor, said militant groups across the Middle East are gaining power at the expense of U.S.-backed regimes, just as Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Joshua Mitnick/The Washington Times Sheik Yazeeb Khader, a Hamas political supporter and an editor, perceives the current Lebanese conflict as another instance of Islamist progress.
"What happened in Gaza in 2007 is an achievement; now it is happening in 2008 in Lebanon. It's going to happen in 2009 in Jordan and it's going to happen in 2010 in Egypt," Sheik Khader said in an interview.
Associated Press Shi'ite gunmen yesterday patrol the streets of Chouwifat, Lebanon, an area south of Beirut where they took control after clashes with government supporters over the past few days.
"We are seeing a redrawing of the map of the Middle East where the forces of resistance and steadfastness are the ones moving the things on the ground."
His remarks highlight how a growing alliance linking Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah straddles the Shi'ite-Sunni rift.
The notion of new countries falling under Islamist influence reflects a goal of Hamas' parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood, of replacing secular Arab regimes with Islamist governments.
In the same way that Hamas' victory over the Palestinian Authority security forces in Gaza fighting last June profoundly disturbed neighboring Arab states, fighting in Lebanon yesterday and last week has sent shock waves throughout the Middle East and spurred an emergency meeting of the Arab League.
The Arab League is sending Secretary-General Amr Moussa to mediate among the Lebanese government, Hezbollah and Sunni supporters of the government.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, took a different approach to the standoff in Lebanon by saying that the fighting primarily served Israel.
Mr. Abu Zuhri called on each side to engage in dialogue instead of fighting.
But several supporters of Hamas in Gaza were comparing Hezbollah's advances into Sunni neighborhoods of Beirut to Hamas' overrunning of security forces loyal to Mr. Abbas.
The fighting of the past few days has brought Lebanon closer to armed internal conflict than at any other time since the end of its 15-year civil war in 1990.
In Israel, military and political leaders expressed concern that the Lebanese government, led by U.S.-backed Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, yielded to Hezbollah's show of force.
"What is going on in Lebanon at this hour is actually the overthrow of Lebanon by Hezbollah. The democratic Lebanese government will become a puppet government — an Iranian dream," said Ze'ev Boim, a lawmaker from Israel's governing Kadima party.
"It is particularly awful to see an Iranian battalion on the northern border of Israel."
Giora Eiland, Israel's former national security adviser, said the international community failed to insist that the government of Mr. Siniora confront Hezbollah, and is now paying the price.
Hezbollah's ascendance in Lebanon is likely to prompt a new round of fighting with Israel, he said.
"If, for the last two years, Hezbollah didn't move against us because it was more interested in grounding its position domestically in Lebanon, now Hezbollah will feel more at ease to operate against us," he said. "I think the good years are behind us."
Hezbollah fought Israel to a standoff in a 2006 war. The militant Shi'ite group battered Israeli cities with rockets, and an incursion by Israeli troops into southern Lebanon failed to stop the rocket attacks.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/12/hezbollah-redrawing-mideast-map/
In Gaza, the real enemy is Iran
Israeli attacks must not stop until Iran's proxy, Hamas, is defeated.
By Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren
January 4, 2009
Reporting from Jerusalem -- The images from the fighting in Gaza are harrowing but ultimately deceptive. They portray a mighty invading army, one equipped with F-16 jets that have bombed a civilian population defended by a few thousand fighters armed with primitive rockets. But widen the lens and the true nature of this conflict emerges. Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is a proxy for the real enemy Israel is confronting: Iran. And Israel's current operation against Hamas represents a unique chance to deal a strategic blow to Iranian expansionism.
Until now, the Iranian revolution has appeared unstoppable. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s ended with Iranian troops occupying Iraqi territory. Iranian influence then spread to Saudi Arabia's heavily Shiite and oil-rich Eastern province, and to Lebanon through Hezbollah. Since the fall of their long-standing enemy, Saddam Hussein, Iranians have deeply infiltrated Iraq. Syria has been drawn into Iran's sphere, and even the Sunni sheikdoms of the gulf now defer to Iran, dispatching foreign ministers to Tehran and defying international sanctions against it. Iran has co-opted Hamas, a Sunni organization closely linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, transforming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a jihad against the Jewish state. But Iran's boldest achievement has been to thwart world pressure and approach the nuclear threshold. Once fortified with nuclear weapons, Iranian hegemony in the Middle East would be complete.
All of which helps explain the public statements from moderate Arab leaders, such as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, who have blamed the end of the tenuous Israel-Hamas cease-fire on Hamas. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit has even called on the Arab world to stop using the U.N. as a forum for blaming Israel alone for the fighting, surely a first. Those leaders understand what many in the West have yet to grasp: The Middle East conflict is no longer just about creating a Palestinian state but about preventing the region's takeover by radical Islam. Indeed, Palestinian statehood is impossible without neutralizing the extremists who oppose any negotiated solution.
If Israel successfully overthrows Hamas in Gaza, it would strengthen anti-Iranian forces throughout the Mideast and signal the region that Iranian momentum can be reversed. The Israeli military operation could begin the process that topples a terrorist regime that seized power in the Gaza Stripin 2007 and has fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli neighborhoods.
And whether or not Hamas is ultimately overthrown, Israel can achieve substantial goals. The first is an absolute cease-fire. Previous cease-fires allowed Hamas to launch two or three rockets a week into Israel and to smuggle weapons into Gaza through tunnels. To obtain a cease-fire now, the international community should recognize Israel's right to respond to any aggression over its international border and monitor the closure of Hamas' weapons-smuggling tunnels.
Above all, the goal is to ensure that Hamas is unable to proclaim victory and thereby enhance Iranian prestige in the Arab world.
Yet even those limited goals are far from guaranteed. An earlier opportunity to check Iran -- during Israel's war against Hezbollah in 2006 -- was squandered through a combination of Israeli incompetence and international pressure. Hezbollah manipulated the Western media by grossly inflating the number of civilian casualties and even "recycling" corpses from one bombed site to another.
The international community responded by imposing a cease-fire before Israel could achieve its goals and installing a peacekeeping force that has since allowed Hezbollah to more than double its prewar arsenal. Though the Israeli army killed a quarter of Hezbollah's troops and destroyed its headquarters, Israel was widely perceived as the loser. The winner was Iran.
Israel learned the bitter lesson of Lebanon. For the last two years, the Israeli army has gone back to basics, rigorously training and restoring its fighting spirit. Israeli leaders drew on that spirit to attack Hamas bases in one of the most impressive airstrikes since the 1967 Six-Day War.
Yet the question remains whether the international community has learned its Lebanon lesson, or will once again allow the jihadists to win.
Hamas is attempting to portray the Israeli invasion as a war against the Palestinian people. Television viewers are being presented with heartbreaking images of dead and injured children and supposedly indiscriminate devastation. Palestinian doctors claim that Israel has blocked the supply of vital medicines, and humanitarian organizations warn of imminent starvation. In fact, many of those claims are exaggerated.
Though civilians have, tragically, been hurt, about three-quarters of the 400 Palestinians killed so far have been gunmen -- an impressive achievement given that Hamas fires rockets from apartments, mosques and schools and uses hospitals as hide-outs.
Israel has recently allowed nearly 200 truckloads of food and medicine to enter Gaza, even under shellfire. It is in Israel's urgent interest to minimize civilian suffering and forestall international criticism. For that same reason, Hamas welcomes the suffering of Palestinian civilians. According to a BBC report on Dec. 30, dozens of ambulances were dispatched by Egypt to its border with Gaza, only to remain empty because, according to Egyptian authorities, Hamas wasn't allowing wounded Palestinians to leave.
The international community must not be duped again. If Hamas is successful in manipulating world opinion into the imposition of a premature cease-fire, it will proclaim victory and continue to stockpile long-range missiles for the next round of fighting. That would mean another triumph for Iran.
No less crucially, the international community must not allow the Gaza crisis to divert its attention from the imminent -- and ultimate -- threat of a nuclear Iran. Intelligence sources now measure that threat in months rather than years.
President-elect Barack Obama has declared his intention to confront Iran through diplomacy. Ideally, that process should begin in the aftermath of an Iranian defeat. If Israel is allowed to achieve its goals in Gaza, the Obama administration will be better poised to achieve its goals in Iran.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. Michael B. Oren is a distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center and a professor at the foreign service school of Georgetown University.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-halevi4-2009jan04,0,1975444.story
Check the Gold and Platinum disparity now. Platinum is now cheaper than Gold!
Gold is $812/ounce
Platinum is $805/ounce
One group of market analyst is yelling for inflation and the other for deflation, but both groups are saying buy gold. You have to ask yourself what gives?
Gold Friendly Deflation Is Here-Get Used to It!
http://www.kitco.com/ind/Taylor/dec092008.html
Most people believe gold is a great hedge against inflation. What they don’t realize is that gold performs best during periods of deflation. Because of debt levels far greater than even those at peak 1930s level, prospects for the mother of all deflationary depressions is bearing in on us. We believe there is no asset better able to protect your wealth in this environment than gold. This is the first in a series of articles that attempts to warn of the case for deflation and for gold as protection against the potential harm it can ravage on unsuspecting citizens.
It was only three or four months ago that policy makers were very, very concerned about inflation. Oil had risen to $140 per barrel and all manner of hard and soft commodity prices had hit new highs. Then came the Lehman failure, and prices of virtually everything plunged with the speed at which we simply could not have imagined. Our Inflation/Deflation Watch (IDW) shown on your left says it all. Overall our IDW had risen by approximately 45% since January 31, 2005, and then crashed back to the starting point, mostly since the Lehman failure. Since our IDW is largely comprised of leading indicators like stocks and commodities prices, we have always believed it would indicate prices in the overall economy at a later point in time. Well, it hasn’t taken long for a collapse in commodities prices to feed their way into the economy, and what we are seeing is downright scary. Not only have producer and consumer prices fallen, but also, the extent of their fall at this early stage should be a warning that the forces of deflation are astoundingly great. For example, U.S. producer prices fell by a record 2.8% in October. That’s not an annual rate. That’s 2.8% in one month. Multiply that over 12 months and you get a non-compounded decline of 33.6%! Prices for intermediate goods fell 3.9% in October. Prices for crude goods sank 18.6%. Crude food prices dropped 11.1% for the month alone.
These price declines in the production chain have now started to filter through to the consumer. On November 19, the U.S. CPI was reportedly down 1.0%, its biggest monthly decline in 61 years! The “core” inflation measure had its first fall for 25 years. This is inherent in credit market deflation. Consumers have to spend a larger and larger portion of their incomes to pay down debt, such that they have little purchasing power left to buy goods and services. Softness in demand for goods and services then results in even lower prices in a chain reaction process that continues a great unwind, until an equilibrium level is reached.
The chart on your left(above)tells this story as it currently applies to America. America is broke and facing very, very hard times. Note the direction of the debt line (red line), which doesn’t even begin to add in the trillions of dollars now being borrowed to bail out crony capitalist friends of our Washington politicians. As of the end of 2007, total debt in the U.S. from all sectors (not including potential debt from derivative defaults, which could be much, much bigger) was $53 trillion. More important than the absolute amount of debt is the direction of the red line relative to the GDP (blue line). At some point, debt becomes so large that income is not capable of servicing it all. Initially, consumption of real goods and services gets squeezed, which is what is happening now. The economy then enters into a recession, as is now the case. That results in job losses, which in turn reduces demand still further. This process must take place until equilibrium is reached. No amount of government intervention can change that reality.
And this brings me to the chart below, which pictures the work of my good friend Ian Gordon. Ian has had this chart of the past four Kondratieff cycles posted. These cycles date back to just before the Revolutionary War—in other words, before the U.S. was born as a nation! I urge you to go to Ian’s Web site, (www.thelongwaveanalyst.com), where there are many, very valuable charts and information about the Kondratieff cycle also known as the Long Wave. Ian is a financier who has done very well, funding junior gold mining companies. But he is also a student of economic history, and I consider him to be one of my best friends. In 2007, Mrs. Taylor and I stayed at his beautiful home in British Columbia that looks out over the bay into the United States. I have a very high regard for Ian’s work and think it is highly credible. I say that as a person who has learned to know him well. He is a very honest person and has a high degree of integrity.
What you see above are actual data for stock prices, a proxy for gold prices when they were fixed, and commodity prices (PPI before 1949 and CRB after that). Also pictured are U.S. Treasury yields as well as AAA corporate bonds.
What we see from this historical data are long-term expansion and contractions of the global economy that had, until recently, lasted 50 to 60 years. The current cycle started in 1949 at the end of WWII, so it is already 59 years in duration.
Ian has divided a given K-cycle into the four seasons of our year. The first three seasons, spring, summer, and autumn, are marked by economic expansion. The economy is improving during spring, from a devastating end of the last cycle. It heats up during summer and the best of times are in the autumn. Each of these cycles has unique characteristics when certain kinds of investments are very desirable. For example, in the spring, which in this cycle started in 1949 and lasted until 1966, stocks are a good investment. In the summer, which lasted from 1966 through 1980 and is marked by rising levels of inflation, commodities and gold are a good investment. During the fall (1980-2000 in this cycle), stocks and bonds are great investments. But the winter, which is what we entered into in 2000, is a tough time, because it is marked by a massive unwinding of an overextension of credit. Excessive debt has to be wrung out of the system through massive bankruptcies and unemployment.
The important thing to note is that government is ultimately powerless to stop the dreaded K-winter. It can, as it is now doing and as it did in the last K-winter in the 1930s, intervene with monetary and fiscal policy. But that policy will be unsuccessful in restoring prosperity. Because their “remedies” are in fact the root of the problem in the first place (namely excessive debt), their actions make the problem worse and longer lasting than if they did nothing. The K-winter season always begins with a stock market peak, which in fact occurred in 2000. The great housing bubble, which was a totally false economy, delayed the great day of reckoning by doubling the total debt outstanding! And now with massive bailouts, total debt is skyrocketing to even higher and more unsustainable levels. The end may well be more horrendous than anything our grandparents experienced in the 1930s.
America is now a bankrupt country and the potential exists for something far worse even than what our parents and grandparents experienced in the 1930s. Indeed, people like Robert Prechter who has studied long-term cycles, think we could be heading toward a 500-year event. Interestingly, Dr. Robert McHugh, who writes The Technical Indicator newsletter, wrote the following on Saturday, November 22.
“We now find ourselves in a catastrophic Bear Market, Grand Supercycle degree Wave {IV} down, which is correcting a Bull Market from 1718, before the United States even started. We show this degree labeling in the big picture chart on page 13 in this weekend's newsletter to subscribers. How do we know this? Because the S&P 500 fell to 752 Thursday, below the closing low the market formed at the bottom of the Bear Market in 2002. It means that low in 2002 was primary degree wave (4), that prices have now fallen below that bottom, which means the rally from 2002 to 2007 is a completed primary degree wave (5), which is all that was needed to complete a series of larger degree wave fives, supercycle degree wave (V)'s top, and Cycle degree wave V's top. This is not good. It means there is a very high probability that we are going to see new lows far below Thursday's 752. This hurricane is not over, not by a long shot.
“However, the good news is we are about to enter a period of relative calm, the second phase - a rally/sideways phase - to this three phase Bear market. This Grand Supercycle wave {IV} down is correcting centuries of rally very fast, and furiously. Time-wise, it may be relatively short compared to other Grand Super cycle waves, but damage-wise, this Bear Market is going to change the world as we know it.”
Then on Monday, November 25, Dr. McHugh wrote the following:
“There is a good chance that wave (B) up started Friday, November 21st, that wave (A) down, the first phase of this three phase Bear Market ended precisely on our most recent phi mate turn date, Thursday, November 20th, 2008. This second phase will be a calm before the next major storm, so use it wisely to raise cash.
“This phase is a gift. The eye of the hurricane storm, which is a category 5 financial storm. A second chance to raise cash at higher prices. Because, once it completes, a world rattling catastrophic plunge is coming, one that will take prices far lower than anyone - even Bears - imagine, wave (C) down. Wave (C) down could be so bad as to usher in mergers of nations, where nations become states within new larger nations. This coming political solution to wave (C)'s calamity is good reason to accumulate Gold.”
From a completely different angle, but drawing a similar conclusion are the managers of the Bearing Fund, Kevin Duffy and Bill Laggner, who we interviewed in our November 2008 monthly issue. It should be noted that the Bearing Fund has increased the value of its investors by 143% since its inception in July 2002. That funds’ proprietary credit bubble model enabled them to position themselves for this first leg down in what has proven to be a devastating bear market in equities. The fund managers anticipate the potential for a very major event that could be worse than that of the 1930s along the lines of Dr. McHug’s vision as well.
In the next article in this series, I will talk about the size of the debt deflation problem and why it may simply be too big to fix. The important thing to realize is that in this environment, because the cost of production is in decline, gold mining profits margins are improving. Now that we are at the start of this deflationary trend, we think there are several emerging gold mining companies that should do very well for their investors even as the general equity markets are in a longer term decline. Such was the case in the 1930s when Homestake Mining rose by over 600% even as though the Dow had lost nearly 90% at one point in time. Go to www.miningstocks.com to subscribe to J Taylor’s Gold, Energy & Tech Stocks newsletter to learn of emerging gold producers not yet on the radar screens of institutional investors.
gold and platinum were only 7 dollars apart earlier today
OUR REAL ROOTS:
This is one e-mail that needs to be shared. But
then, we must pray that we are not already too
late. God help us.
Did you know that 52 of the 55 signers of The
Declaration of Independence were orthodox, deeply
committed Christians? The other three all believed
in the Bible as the divine truth, the God of
scripture, and His personal intervention.
It is the same congress that formed the American
Bible Society. Immediately after creating the
Declaration of Independence, the Continental
Congress voted to purchase and import 20,000 copies
of scripture for the people of this nation.
Patrick Henry, who is called the firebrand of the
American Revolution, is still remembered for his
words, 'Give me liberty or give me death.' But in
current textbooks the context of these words is
deleted. Here is what he said: 'An appeal to arms
and the God of hosts is all that is left us. But we
shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just
God that presides over the destinies of nations. The
battle sir, is not of the strong alone. Is life so
dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the
price of chains and slavery? Forbid it almighty God.
I know not what course others may take, but as for
me, give me liberty, or give me death.'
These sentences have been erased from our textbooks.
Was Patrick Henry a Christian? The following year,
1776, he wrote this 'It cannot be emphasized too
strongly or too often that this great nation was
founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not
on religion, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For
that reason alone, people of other faiths have been
afforded freedom of worship here.'
Consider these words that Thomas Jefferson wrote on
the front of his well- worn Bible: 'I am a
Christian, that is to say a disciple of the
doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our
whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of
our Creator and, I hope, to the pure doctrine of
Jesus also.'
Consider these words from George Washington, the
Father of our Nation, in his farewell speech on
September 19, 1796:
'It is impossible to govern the world without God
and the Bible. Of all the dispositions and habits
that lead to political prosperity, our religion and
morality are the indispensable supporters. Let us
with caution indulge the supposition that morality
can be maintained without religion. Reason and
experience both forbid us to expect that our
national morality can prevail in exclusion of
religious principle.'
Was George Washington a Christian? Consider these
words from his personal prayer book: 'Oh, eternal
and everlasting God, direct my thoughts, words and
work. Wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of
the lamb and purge my heart by the Holy Spirit.
Daily, frame me more and more in the likeness of thy
son, Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and
dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time
obtain the resurrection of the justified unto
eternal life. Bless, O Lord, the whole race of
mankind and let the world be filled with the
knowledge of thy son, Jesus Christ.'
Consider these words by John Adams, our second
president, who also served as chairman of the
American Bible Society.
In an address to military leaders he said, 'We have
no government armed with the power capable of
contending with human passions, unbridled by
morality and true religion. Our constitution was
made only for a moral and religious people. It is
wholly inadequate to the government of any other.'
How about our first Court Justice, John Jay?
He stated that when we select our national leaders,
if we are to preserve our Nation, we must select
Christians. 'Providence has given to our people the
choice of their rulers and it is the duty as well as
the privilege and interest of our Christian Nation
to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.'
John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, was the sixth
U.S. President.
He was also the chairman of the American Bible
Society, which he considered his highest and most
important role. On July 4, 1821, President Adams
said, 'The highest glory of the American Revolution
was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the
principles of civil government with the principles
of Christianity.'
Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President of the United
States reaffirmed this truth when he wrote, 'The
foundations of our society and our government rest
so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would
be difficult to support them if faith in these
teachings would cease to be practically universal in
our country.'
In 1782, the United States Congress voted this
resolution: 'The congress of the United States
recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in
all schools.'
William Holmes McGuffey is the author of the
McGuffey Reader, which was used for over 100 years
in our public schools with over 125 million copies
sold until it was stopped in 1963. President Lincoln
called him the 'Schoolmaster of the Nation.'
Listen to these words of Mr. McGuffey: 'The
Christian religion is the religion of our country.
From it are derived our notions on character of
God, on the great moral Governor of the universe. On
its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our
free institutions. From no source has the author
drawn more conspicuously than from the sacred
Scriptures. From all these extracts from the Bible I
make no apology.'
Of the first 108 universities founded in America,
106 were distinctly Christian, including the first.
Harvard University, chartered in 1636. In the
original Harvard Student Handbook rule number 1 was
that students seeking entrance must know Latin and
Greek so that they could study the scriptures:
'Let every student be plainly instructed and
earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of
his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus
Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3; and
therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation
of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the
Lord only giveth wisdom, let everyone seriously set
himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him
(Proverbs 2:3).'
For over 100 years, more than 50% of all Harvard
graduates were pastors!
It is clear from history that the Bible and the
Christian faith, were foundational in our
educational and judicial system. However in 1947,
there was a radical change of direction in the
Supreme Court.
Here is the prayer that was banished:
'Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on
Thee. We beg Thy blessings upon us and our parents
and our teachers and our country.
Amen.'
In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled that Bible
reading was outlawed as unconstitutional in the
public school system. The court offered this
justification: 'If portions of the New Testament
were read without explanation, they could and have
been psychologically harmful to children.'
Bible reading was now unconstitutional , though the
Bible was quoted 94 percent of the time by those who
wrote our constitution and shaped our Nation and its
system of education and justice and government.
In 1965, the Courts denied as unconstitutional the
rights of a student in the public school cafeteria
to bow his head and pray audibly for his food.
In 1980, Stone vs. Graham outlawed the Ten
Commandments in our public schools.
The Supreme Court said this: 'If the posted copies
of the Ten Commandments were to have any effect at
all, it would be to induce school children to read
them. And if they read them, meditated upon them,
and perhaps venerated and observed them, this is not
a permissible objective.'
Is it not a permissible objective to allow our
children to follow the moral principles of the Ten
Commandments?
James Madison, the primary author of the
Constitution of the United States, said this: 'We
have staked the whole future of our new nation, not
upon the power of government; far from it. We have
staked the future of all our political constitutions
upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern
ourselves according to the moral principles of the
Ten Commandments.'
Today we are asking God to bless America. But how
can He bless a Nation that has departed so far from
Him?
Most of what you read in this article has been
erased from our textbooks. Revisionists have
rewritten history to remove the truth about our
country's Christian roots. I , Mary Jones, the
designer of this web page, encourage all who read
and agree with the words herein, to share it with
others, so that the truth of our nation's history
may be told.
Last chance for Constitution?
Posted: December 01, 2008
1:00 am Eastern
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=82370
© 2008
Most Americans don't realize it yet, but this Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court will review whether Barack Obama is indeed constitutionally eligible to become the next president.
The justices will hold a conference on the question and consider the case for formal review.
The case is brought by Leo C. Donofrio against Nina Wells, the New Jersey secretary of state, and questions whether Obama is a "natural-born citizen" as required by Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.
If four of the nine justices vote to hear the case in full, oral argument may be scheduled.
It would seem a simple matter to resolve.
Barack Obama could have put this issue to rest long ago by producing a complete birth certificate from Hawaii. Instead, he has chosen to stonewall the matter, citing a website post of what can only be characterized as a partial representation of a birth certificate – one that has been criticized as a forgery.
Whether the birth certificate posted on various websites is genuine or not is almost beside the point as to his eligibility. Since Hawaii was known to register foreign births in the 1960s, the portion of the certificate released by the Obama campaign proves nothing, since it does not reveal such details as the hospital in which he was allegedly born.
Meanwhile, some of Obama's own Kenyan relatives claim to have been present at his birth in Mombasa.
This controversy, which some have dismissed as frivolous, is as serious as the literal meaning of the Constitution itself.
As I have stated before, I have little doubt a thorough investigation will prove Obama is qualified to serve the office of the presidency as a "natural-born citizen." I don't believe his campaign would ever have been successful with the specter of legal ineligibility hanging over his head.
Nevertheless, I think it is imperative to be faithful to the Constitution and to offer the American people full disclosure on such a fundamentally important matter.
Clearly, Obama doesn't think so.
(Column continues below)
But what about our U.S. Supreme Court?
Do the justices have the courage to face up to this question?
I believe they will be much more likely to do so – to take this matter seriously – if they see real demonstrations of public interest. I know of no better way for you to show that interest than to sign WND's petition.
This petition was launched just over a week ago and now boasts more than 120,000 names.
All those signing it are receiving updates on controversy. The names will be delivered to the U.S. Supreme Court in time for its review Friday. This week will represent your last chance to impact that review.
The day this petition campaign was launched, a judge in Hawaii dismissed one challenge to produce the birth certificate stating he did not believe there was sufficient public interest demonstrated. Let's be sure the same is not the case with the Supreme Court review.
I hope you will join me in this fight for truth, justice and the American way by signing the petition. Help me spread the word. Let's turn up the heat. Send this column and the petition far and wide. Share it with your neighbors. Honor the Constitution. Save this country's most vital institutions and its honor. Seek the truth. Demand accountability.
Time is running out.
The Electoral College is due to convene Dec. 15 – in less than a month.
Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the next president Jan. 20 – less than two months from now.
Do you believe the American people have a right to know for certain their next president is constitutionally eligible for the job?
Without a chance to inspect that birth certificate for themselves, do you think we can ever be certain?
If the Constitution is not taken seriously as concerns the eligibility of the president, is it likely to be taken seriously in other matters?
If you don't take responsibility and initiative on this issue, I am convinced no one else will.
Take your stand for accountability, truth, the rule of law and the Constitution.
Sign the petition now.
E-mail it to all of your friends.
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=82370
The car of the future: It flies
Get ready, Detroit - this small firm is keeping up with the Jetsons.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/02/smallbusiness/flying_car.fsb/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
December 4, 2008: 6:13 AM ET
Since the Wright brothers, there have been more than 100 attempts to build drivable planes or flying cars. They all failed commercially.
Drive this airplane
Icon Aircraft is readying a light-sport aircraft owners can fly with only a driver's license and 20 hours of flight training. Take a peek at the A5, coming in 2010.
The car of the future: It flies
(Fortune Small Business) -- Carl Dietrich always dreamed of building a flying car. Instead, the pragmatic inventor ended up creating what he calls a roadable aircraft, a plane that folds up its wings on landing and takes to the highway. In 2010, after three years of development, his vehicle, the Transition, will be available to customers for $194,000 a pop.
Terrafugia, the Woburn, Mass. company behind the Transition, began as an extracurricular activity for Dietrich while he was completing his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Dietrich, 31, knew from the start that the odds were stacked against his project. Since the time of the Wright brothers, there have been more than 100 attempts to build drivable planes or flying cars. All have failed commercially.
"The basic problem is simple: A car is heavy, a plane is light," says Lionel Salisbury, publisher of the Roadable Times, a Web site devoted to chronicling flying-car attempts. "The two don't go together well."
Dietrich's early sketches envisioned a plane that would be driven rather than an automobile that took flight. At every step of the process, he was guided by the need to create something to be used in today's world, not tomorrow's.
So he and his team designed the Transition with regular car tires instead of aircraft tires. When the wings are folded up, the craft can park in a typical home garage, and it even runs on premium gasoline rather than aviation fuel. "We knew we could build it," Dietrich says. "The question was, 'Can we make money on it?' The key was not to base the business plan around a market that is not real."
Transition's design team studied the history of similar machines and the inventors who failed to bring their concepts to market. The most notable was Moulton "Molt" Taylor, a former Navy pilot who designed his first Aerocar in 1949, launched it in 1956 and produced a grand total of six vehicles.
Terrafugia concluded that the Aerocar failed because it was too difficult to convert from plane to car. "You had to unbolt the wings and reassemble them into a trailer," says Anna Mracek Dietrich, Carl's wife and the company's COO.
Terrafugia doesn't lack for competitors. In Los Angeles, Icon Aircraft is currently marketing a towable light aircraft that is amphibious (price tag: $139,000). In Alvin, Texas, LaBiche Aerospace has developed a flying sports car, which is classified as an experimental aircraft, and is taking orders for the $175,000 kits. Milner Motors, a father-and-son team based in Vancouver, Wash. and Bethesda, Md., is working on a prototype for a drivable plane that it expects to sell for $450,000. Publicly traded Moller International (MLER) in Davis, Calif. has designed a personal aircraft that takes off and lands vertically. (Moller is not yet taking deposits.) There are others as well, but Terrafugia appears to be further along than most in bringing its product to market.
The bulk of Terrafugia's initial funding - much of Carl Dietrich's $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for outstanding innovation - was spent building a Transition prototype. Dietrich found some of his first investors at AirVenture Oshkosh, a festival that the Experimental Aircraft Association sponsors every August in Oshkosh, Wis. By December 2006 the company had secured several hundred thousand dollars in convertible notes. Since then, Terrafugia has completed five other convertible-note financings and recently closed its first round of equity financing. Another round is planned for 2009.
Terrafugia plans to manufacture the Transition in-house for now, although the Dietrichs aren't opposed to partnering with a larger manufacturer in the future. Meanwhile, they're negotiating with the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation to settle on a design that satisfies both aircraft and auto regulators. That doesn't even begin to address the substantial insurance challenges.
"The auto insurance people and the aircraft insurance people don't even talk to each other," says Richard Gersh, a former insurance industry executive and Terrafugia's vice president of business development.
The FAA gave Terrafugia a boost in 2004, when it relaxed structural and maintenance requirements for ultralight planes by adopting the Sport Pilot and Light-Sport Aircraft Rule. This allowed experimental aircraft designers to push the technological envelope.
In the next five years, Dietrich hopes to sell a few hundred Transitions, mostly to wealthy private pilots and professionals who need to make short but regular flights. As FSB went to press, Terrafugia had gathered 40 deposits and its order backlog totaled more than $8 million.
While the company doesn't anticipate mainstream adoption of the Transition, Dietrich does expect an envy factor: "You see it in your neighbor's driveway," he says, "and you realize that he has a freedom you lack."
http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/02/smallbusiness/flying_car.fsb/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
Jim Rogers seems to think agriculture will profit more than gold in the coming years.
His prediction for the guys on Wall Street:
"Why should the American public have to pay hundreds of billions of dollars of debt to bail out some guys driving Maserati's on Wall Street and by the way all those guys drivng Maserati's better learn to drive tractors because the next 10 years - 20 years the farmers are going to have the Maserati's and these guys are going to be driving tractors."
200,000 Silver American Eagles Sold Out in 24 Hours… Amazing!
12/01/2008 01:53:00 PM, Posted by APMEX, One Comment
For those still looking to buy silver.
http://www.apmex.com/
APMEX kicked off our 12 Days of Christmas promotion on Cyber Monday and the results have been phenomenal. We expected this would be a great sale on a very popular item, but didn't expect the flood of customers. It was like watching the flood of people at Wal-Mart on Black Friday looking for flat panel TV's.
Amazingly, we sold out of our supply of 200,000 Silver American eagles within the span of 24 hours!
A huge number of customers flooded the site, causing the shopping cart system to crash earlier in the day. With our site down, customers lined up on the phone to place their orders. Needless to say, our trading department was a madhouse. Phones were ringing off the hook from the colossal amounts of orders.
While we would have liked to be able to return everyone's calls, the sheer volume made this impossible. We're trying our best to order more, but at this point we can't make any guarantees. Be sure and check back with us regularly. We'll keep you updated on events as they develop.
As a substitution we have reduced the price of 2009 Silver Maple Leafs to $3.49 over spot in any quantity while supplies last.
It may be that the article is "self-serving", but the message is clear as the saying goes, "Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it"
Borrow away. It's not my article, but a link found in your article.
An interesting article.
The link within this article http://www.usagold.com/GermanNightmare.html
- The Nightmare German Inflation by Scientific Market Analysis, 1970
also has some good lessons to be learned.
Some of the highlights read:
First, it would be wrong to think that everyone was opposed to inflation. Many big business leaders accepted it cheerfully. It wiped out their debts. They knew how to protect themselves and even profit--by speculating in foreign exchange, by converting money into goods and fixed plant, by borrowing money from the bank and using it to buy up cheap stocks and competing companies. Their wage costs, in true value, decreased, swelling their profits. Yet many workers also thought that they were benefiting, at least in the earlier stages of the inflation. Their wages were increased, and it took time before they recognized that, with prices soaring even faster, they were actually suffering a cut in true income.
A crew of speculators arose who traded in goods and foreign exchange, they had a vested interest in continued inflations. And the government could not help realizing that the inflation was wiping out its burden of debt and would ease its financial problems.
The tax system virtually broke down. Businessmen found that by merely delaying tax payments, the depreciation in the mark would virtually eliminate their true value. But the government, lacking adequate income, felt forced to resort more and more to creating money. By October 1923, 1% of government income came from taxes and 99% from the creation of new money.
As inflation proceeded, people rushed to buy goods and get rid of their depreciated money. For similar reasons, businessmen hastened to buy machinery, to build new factories, to buy huge stocks of coal, steel and other raw materials. Those who had access to credit borrowed heavily for these purposes, and inflation wiped out their debt. There was a tremendous conversion of working capital into fixed investments. Business was booming and unemployment virtually vanished until the last stages of the inflation.
Bewildering fluctuations in costs prices and wages made it impossible to allocate resources and production rationally. More and more, the businessman became a speculator in goods and currencies. However, very few businesses failed, since their debts were constantly wiped out by inflation. Bankruptcies had run to 815 per month in 1913; by late 1923 they were 10 per month.
By mid-1923 workers were being paid as often as three times a day. Their wives would meet them, take the money and rush to the shops to exchange it for goods. However, by this time, more and more often, shops were empty. Storekeepers could not obtain goods or could not do business fast enough to protect their cash receipts. Farmers refused to bring produce into the city in return for worthless paper. Food riots broke out. Parties of workers marched into the countryside to dig up vegetables and to loot the farms. Businesses started to close down and unemployment suddenly soared. The economy was collapsing.
http://www.usagold.com/germannightmare.html
Your right. Anything good would have to be by accident. Then they would find a way to tax that away.
In 1998 the security guards let me board a plane in Tucson with a backpack full of rocks. I don't think I could do that today.
This is probably the governments plan to get the country out of the mortgage mess. The good news is you own your own home. The bad news is you can't afford the basic necessities of life.
When hyperinflation occurs wouldn't it be easier to pay off your mortgage when that mortgage(locked in at todays price) becomes a small percentage of the hyperinflated salary?
or am I incorrectly assuming that the average salary(if there are any jobs) would also hyperinflate enough to provide pocket change for a mortgage payoff.
XSNX made a good run today on news
If You Want Cheap Gold Coins, Canada Has Them
By Tom Dyson
November 25, 2008
I don't trust my bank. And I don't trust the dollar.
As far as my savings are concerned, I'd rather keep them in gold. And I don't mean gold futures or gold certificates or gold mining shares. I'm talking about physical gold bullion in a safety deposit box.
My family thinks I'm taking a big risk. But as I see it, they're the ones taking the risk. I'm the one storing my money in the world's safest asset... the asset that's been used as money for 5,000 years... and the only money that's no one else's liability. The Three Best
Gold Investments Right Now
Besides, what have I got to lose? My bank pays less than 3% on its savings accounts.
I'd advise you to own at least a couple of ounces of gold, too... if nothing else, for insurance purposes.
Coins are the best way for individuals to buy gold. They come in small denominations, they're portable, and you can exchange them for cash anywhere in the world at gold's international spot price.
Here's the thing: Right now, gold coins are hard to find. Even if you can find them, they're more expensive than usual.
In normal markets, you can buy silver coins below the spot price and gold at a 1% or 2% premium to the spot price. I've spoken to at least six gold coin dealers in the last week. Three of them were out of stock. Of the dealers still in stock, the cheapest gold coins I found were selling for a 5% premium to the gold price.
In other words, with gold at $800, you'd have to spend at least $840 on a one-ounce coin. The scarcity of silver coins is even worse. One dealer told me he was paying $16 for one-ounce silver coins, purchased in bulk. Right now, the spot price of silver is $9 an ounce. So the premium's almost 80%.
The financial crisis is the reason for this mispricing. Demand for coins, one-ounce bars, and other "retail" denominations of gold has outpaced the ability of fabricators to make them.
There is no shortage of physical gold. If you wanted to buy a kilo or a 100-ounce bar, you'd have no problem.
The shortage is just a short-term supply problem at the retail level. Gold producers will take advantage of the premium and ramp up production. So in a few months, the big mark-ups will disappear.
That said, if you want to buy small quantities of gold right now, go to Canada.
The Bank of Nova Scotia is one of the world's largest precious-metals dealers. If you go to the Hollis Street branch in Halifax, Nova Scotia, or the King Street West branch in Toronto, they'll sell you Canadian Maple Leaf coins at a 3.7% premium to spot and one-ounce wafers at a 2.6% premium to spot.
Good investing,
Tom
P.S. Gold doesn't show up in airport security metal detectors. I've tested this with gold coins before. But if you're traveling across the border with more than $10,000 worth of gold or currency, you must declare it at the border. They'll run your name and make sure you're not a money launderer. That's it.
Editor's note: Tom Dyson is a regular contributor to DailyWealth, a free investment newsletter focused on the world's best contrarian opportunities. We write with a simple belief in mind: You don't have to take big risks to make big money with your investments.
http://www.dailywealth.com/archive/2008/nov/2008_nov_25.asp
GOLD IS SOARING, YOU JUST DON'T REALIZE IT
This is "gold week" in Market Notes. We're devoting an entire week to showing you some amazing gold charts...
You might have watched gold fall from a high around $1,000 to below $725 and wondered what the heck was going on. Gold is known as a "crisis hedge"... an asset that soars when stocks, bonds, and the economy are performing terribly. The confusing thing is, investors have had a lifetime of crisis thrown their way in 2008, but gold has actually declined in price, right?
Actually, wrong. Yes, gold is down more than $170 an ounce from its summer highs. But that's when you measure it in U.S. dollars. Problem is, many folks around the world measure gold in different terms. Take the 300 million Europeans who use the euro as their currency.
Today's chart is the price of gold measured in euros. As you can see, gold is strong in the eyes of a European. Currencies tend to fall when their home economies weaken... when there aren't enough jobs or when folks get into too much debt. This is what's happening in Europe. The bull market in gold is alive and well... and we'll show you why this week.
http://www.dailywealth.com/archive/2008/nov/2008_nov_25.asp
and it's helping to drag the price of gold down and support the dollar.
$1.51 in Kansas City
http://www.kcgasprices.com/
I'm being ripped off in my town paying $1.90
as the rainbow is to remind us of.
don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries
Forget the economic worries here is something new to worry about.
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20081113/118296502.html
Another great flood: time to build an ark?
19:27 | 13/ 11/ 2008
MOSCOW. (Andrei Kislyakov, scientific commentator, for RIA Novosti) - The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what's to come.
Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. On October 30, the last time nature went on the rampage, there were hundreds of victims. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004. China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently.
These natural disasters, which have swept our planet in recent years, indicate that the world has entered an era not only of a political, but also of climatic instability. Most scientists - biologists and environmentalists - tend to blame the human race for the catastrophic climate change on the Earth. No doubt, the greenhouse effect due to industrial activity plays a considerable role in global warming, but there are other reasons worth considering.
The Earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years.
This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet - a gigantic electrical machine - has had its energy balance upset. He expressed this viewpoint in 2004. Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the Earth's magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has been established that when the Earth's rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity.
If we accept that all processes on Earth run according to cosmic cycles, which, in turn, depend on the Solar System's position in our Galaxy, then humankind may be facing another Great Flood.
The Solar System, including the Earth, travels through the Galaxy in spiraling elliptic paths. The cycle time for the larger spiral is 200-210 million years, and for the smaller one, which determines minor galactic cycles, 26,000 years. Correspondingly, half a cycle lasts 130 centuries. This period almost exactly coincides with the date of the last Flood, the occurrence of which was real. The myths and legends of many peoples including that of the Bible recorded the event.
The Flood has been dated rather precisely: at 11,100 BC. If we accept that the civilized society on Earth has been developing for 400,000 years, then this period saw 30 great floods, and we are witnessing the beginnings of the thirty-first flood.
The cosmic cycles are so gigantically long by human standards that they have little impact on the life of people, but the active initial phase of the galactic cycle is of vital importance for the development of civilization. In the view of Russian scientists, the Earth currently finds itself at precisely this point in the cycle.
The transitional process in the electrical machine "planet Earth" can be divided into three phases. During the first - lasting 300 to 500 years - a relatively quick change in the direction of cross current (according to the law of electric machines) will alter the Earth's magnetic field, with the Northern magnetic pole shifting to the eastern part of the Arctic Ocean. This change in the Earth's magnetic field is accompanied by strong magnetic storms, earthquakes and disastrous atmospheric events caused by a change in the circulation of oceanic waters and the atmosphere.
The change in the magnetic field leads to changes in the Earth's ozone layer, which cause abrupt leaps in the biosphere's evolution owing to the altered level of radiation. As the average temperature of the planet rises, ice glaciers begin to thaw, raising ocean levels across the world.
The first, "warm" phase of the transitional period is the shortest and most active. This period witnesses a relatively fast braking of the planet and the release of tremendous amounts of heat, leading to global warming.
In the second phase, the magnetic field will stabilize. The Earth will slowly increase its speed of rotation, and the electrical machine "Earth" will revert to near normal speed. The increased speed of rotation will bring on a cold spell, the ice glaciers will regain their mass, and the oceans will displace their former volumes.
In the third phase, the transitional period will end, the speed of Earth rotation will stabilize, and the planet's energy balance will return to the conditions of previous millennia.
Following the last Great Flood, people began migrating from East to West. Are we now to see a great exodus to the East?
It looks as if we should give serious thought to developing Siberia ...
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
No more thinking until after the martini
thanks, it is now one of my favorite stories.
If time stops at the speed of light that means all light is timeless. The light that comes to us from the stars at the far end of the universe is as fresh and new as the day it was created many billions of years ago.
Maybe light doesn't move at all, but you and all the mass surrounding you moving away from the light at 186,000mps.
So maybe as a result of all this movement of mass through the spatial dimensions time is created.
Since in this case light doesn't move, then it would be timeless.
If you could travel faster than 186,000mps, then you could reverse the speed of your mass moving through space and pass before (stationary)particles of light previously created...
This is giving me a headache. NO more thinking for today!
Who in their right mind would ever want to see another Fuhrer "get established".
Rep. Paul Broun is not yet comparing anyone to Hitler.
"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road."
I don't care what Obama looks like. Anyone with such radical views needs watching and I'm glad that someone in Washington is actually watching.
Georgia congressman warns of Obama dictatorship
By BEN EVANS – 17 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."
Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.
"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."
Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado in which he called for expanding the nation's foreign service.
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
The Obama transition team declined to comment on Broun's remarks. But spokesman Tommy Vietor said Obama was referring in the speech to a proposal for a civilian reserve corps that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts such as rebuilding infrastructure — an idea endorsed by the Bush administration.
Broun said he believes Obama would move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national security force.
Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.
"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road."
On the Net:
Rep. Paul Broun: http://broun.house.gov/
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iRxZox4GFoIweckPDP1oRhKBlHOwD94CDDM80
Video found at
http://www.citizenslim.com/
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Appreciate the update Todd!
Keep up the good work.
McCain should purchase an hour of national television time and run this video.