The first act for 2010; repent

The first thing we need to do as a nation is repent.

The individual citizens, especially the men of our country, need to get on their knees and open their heart to Christ and ask the Lord to forgive our sins. I have asked God to forgive me for my sins and the sins of my nation.

Lord, forgive me for the murder of our unborn children. The American holocaust has claimed over 40 million victims. God forgive us for allowing this tragedy to continue in our nation.

God, forgive me for the murder of our soldiers. The brave men and women that signed up to defend our country have been abused by the leaders of our nation. We send these brave soldiers off to fight a war that cannot be won, a war predicated on lies. These lies were used to deceive us into thinking killing people who had done nothing to us was justified.

We are heading to 90k causalities from these two conflicts; almost 5k of these soldiers has sacrificed their lives. Forgive us for the families that now lack a mother/father/son/daughter. We should all be ashamed by the manner in which our soldiers honor and courage is disregarded as they are sent off to fight wars that serve global interests that will only make our country more unsafe.

Forgive us Lord for the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the countries we invaded.

Lord, forgive and guide us so that we can change the path we are walking upon as a nation. This path leads to the destruction of our nation and its entire people. We have walked astray of your statutes and are sure to be destroyed absent your grace.

Only a moral people can be free. I see our transgressions, sins and abominations leading us into tyranny. The sound of our actions screams for the tyranny. We must repent and allow God to guide us away from the coming destruction.

Peace to all – c2084

Wage Peace – Destroy Government

Hyperinflation Watch

By James Turk at Free Gold Money Report
December 23, 2009 – Contrary to common belief, hyperinflation does not arise from too much bank lending. The sole cause of hyperinflation is always too much government spending. The pattern is as follows.

The government spends more money than it is receiving in taxes, which forces it to borrow. As these deficits grow, they eventually exceed the market’s capacity or willingness to lend money to the government. Invariably, the central bank steps in and provides the government with the money it needs by creating it – as the saying goes – ‘out of thin air’, or what governments today call “quantitative easing”. The central bank does this in either of two ways.

In cash currency economies, where most commerce is completed by making payments with paper-currency, the central bank cranks up the printing press. Examples are the Weimar Germany hyperinflation in the early 1920s, and just recently, Zimbabwe.

In deposit-currency economies, where most commerce is conducted by making payments through the banking system with checks, wire transfers, plastic cards, and the like, the central bank uses electronic bookkeeping made possible through computers to put the newly created money directly into the government’s checking account. There are numerous examples of deposit-currency hyperinflation in the monetary history of Latin America, like the one that devastated Argentina in 1991.

These two different ways in which hyperinflation manifests itself are made clear in the following quote by Ben Bernanke before he was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost.”

There is of course a cost. There may not be one to the US government, but instead, the cost will be borne by everyone who holds dollars and loses purchasing power as a result of Mr. Bernanke creating as many dollars as the government wants to spend. The other word for this cost is inflation.

With this background, the US government’s financial position makes clear that it is heading toward an Argentine-style deposit currency hyperinflation. The first two months of the US government’s current fiscal year have resulted in a record $296.7 billion deficit. During this period, the Federal Reserve grew its balance sheet by about $65 billion, in effect purchasing about 22% of the federal government’s new debt. These purchases clearly show the Fed’s policy of “quantitative easing”.

The following chart illustrates that the difference between the US government’s monthly receipts and expenditures remains at record highs in November.

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Ernest Hemingway

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."
~E. Hemingway

"The more things change, the more they stay same."
~ no idea who said it - C2084

Starve the Iranians? No!

By Ron Paul at LRC

Before the House of Representatives: Statement Opposing the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, December 15, 2009

I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a US war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for “non-controversial” business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?

This legislation seeks to bar from doing business in the United States any foreign entity that sells refined petroleum to Iran or otherwise enhances Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum such as financing, brokering, underwriting, or providing ships for such. Such sanctions also apply to any entity that provides goods or services that enhance Iran’s ability to maintain or expand its domestic production of refined petroleum. This casts the sanctions net worldwide, with enormous international economic implications.

Recently, the Financial Times reported that, “[i]n recent months, Chinese companies have greatly expanded their presence in Iran's oil sector. In the coming months, Sinopec, the state-owned Chinese oil company, is scheduled to complete the expansion of the Tabriz and Shazand refineries – adding 3.3 million gallons of gasoline per day.”

Are we to conclude, with this in mind, that China or its major state-owned corporations will be forbidden by this legislation from doing business with the United States? What of our other trading partners who currently do business in Iran’s petroleum sector or insure those who do so? Has anyone seen an estimate of how this sanctions act will affect the US economy if it is actually enforced?

As we have learned with US sanctions on Iraq, and indeed with US sanctions on Cuba and elsewhere, it is citizens rather than governments who suffer most. The purpose of these sanctions is to change the regime in Iran, but past practice has demonstrated time and again that sanctions only strengthen regimes they target and marginalize any opposition. As would be the case were we in the US targeted for regime change by a foreign government, people in Iran will tend to put aside political and other differences to oppose that threatening external force. Thus this legislation will likely serve to strengthen the popularity of the current Iranian government. Any opposition continuing to function in Iran would be seen as operating in concert with the foreign entity seeking to overthrow the regime.

This legislation seeks to bring Iran in line with international demands regarding its nuclear materials enrichment programs, but what is ironic is that Section 2 of HR 2194 itself violates the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which both the United States and Iran are signatories. This section states that “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States…to prevent Iran from achieving the capability to make nuclear weapons, including by supporting international diplomatic efforts to halt Iran's uranium enrichment program.” Article V of the NPT states clearly that, “[n]othing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty.” As Iran has never been found in violation of the NPT – has never been found to have diverted nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes – this legislation seeking to deny Iran the right to enrichment even for peaceful purposes itself violates the NPT.

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that many of my colleagues opposing war on Iran will vote in favor of this legislation, seeing it as a step short of war to bring Iran into line with US demands. I would remind them that sanctions and the blockades that are required to enforce them are themselves acts of war according to international law. I urge my colleagues to reject this saber-rattling but ultimately counterproductive legislation.

Banks with political ties got bailouts, study shows

Banks with influence got access to bailouts, more money
By Steve Eder at Reuters

NEW YORK, Dec 21 (Reuters) - U.S. banks that spent more money on lobbying were more likely to get government bailout money, according to a study released on Monday.
Banks whose executives served on Federal Reserve boards were more likely to receive government bailout funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the study from Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura, professors at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

Banks with headquarters in the district of a U.S. House of Representatives member who serves on a committee or subcommittee relating to TARP also received more funds.
Political influence was most helpful for poorly performing banks, the study found.
"Political connections play an important role in a firm's access to capital," Sosyura, a University of Michigan assistant professor of finance, said in a statement.

Banks with an executive who sat on the board of a Federal Reserve Bank were 31 percent more likely to get bailouts through TARP's Capital Purchase Program, the study showed. Banks with ties to a finance committee member were 26 percent more likely to get capital purchase program funds.

As of late September, nearly 700 financial institutions had received bailouts of $205 billion under the capital purchase program, the study said.
The banking industry has long been criticized for using political influence to obtain bailouts.

Scott Talbott, a senior vice president with industry lobbying group The Financial Services Roundtable, said the study was skewed because it did not exclude nine of the largest banks that were "strongly asked" by the government to take bailouts.
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The Awards!

"The good, the bad, and the downright ugly"
By Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.com

“As always, Justin’s sharp points critique the ongoing obscenities of the war party and offer high ROI on your time spent. I usually post his articles however they have a strict policy so I will follow it out of respect for the antiwar team.” ~c2084 – editor

Read the Article

Famous Last Words…

"Most economists would say that, by the spring, we'll have positive job growth,"
~ Tim Geithner U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 23, 2009

"I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism... I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress"
~ Andrew W. Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 31, 1929

“These people are not stupid, or wrong, when they say these things, they are con men persuading their suckers. You, friend, are the sucker! My fellow Americans, please get a spine…soon. “
~ c2084, Editor – Enemy of the State December 23, 2009

Global Warming, Climategate, and the Dangers of ‘Expert Consensus’

By Jack Hunter from the Charleston City Paper

When our government was insisting that we go to war with Iraq, I told anyone who would listen that it didn't make any sense, that Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the U.S., and that our leaders were simply up to no good. My conservative friends angrily disagreed, almost in unison, declaring that the evidence supplied by the Bush White House concerning WMDs was comprehensive and concrete, and that the terror "crisis" was far too dire to entertain any dissent from some blind ignoramus like me.

Now the liberals have their own "crisis."

Global warming -- or to use the latest fashionable phrase, "climate change" -- has quickly become an article of faith for the Left. Heralding the importance of last week's Copenhagen Climate Summit, the left-leaning British daily The Guardian published the following: "Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency."

This is not the first time the media has aided the scientific community in an effort to warn the world about atmospheric Armageddon. As Gary Sutton of Forbes.com notes, in 1975 the U.S. government openly pushed the "coming ice age," while Random House published The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age." Sutton adds that "Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling in April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported 'many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age."

Fifty-six newspapers in 45 countries can't be wrong, can they? No more than Newsweek and The New York Times were wrong in the 1970s, not to mention the National Science Board who also sounded the "ice age" alarm in 1974.

When the now-famous "Climategate" story erupted recently, in which it was discovered through hacked e-mail accounts that prominent scientists might have fudged data to support global warming claims or sought to suppress climate change skeptics within their own ranks, the mainstream media was not quick to pick up the story.

As one e-mail from Climategate scientist Kevin Trenberth, concerning the failure of computer models, read, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't." Replied fellow scientist Michael Mann, "As we all know, this isn't about truth at all; it's about plausible deniability." Climategate seems to suggest that some global warming scientists were more interested in constructing a narrative to support their claims than properly informing the public based on sound data.

The same week Climategate broke, Voice of America News reported that "the Bush administration was looking for a link between the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington and Saddam Hussein, hours after the attacks took place," according to former British ambassador to the United States Christopher Meyer. "We found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun, which was another way of saying, 'It's not that Saddam has to prove himself innocent, we now bloody well have to prove he's guilty,'" Meyer said.

Would the "experts" in the lead up to the war in Iraq intentionally mislead the public or fabricate evidence to advance an agenda? Would the scientific establishment or mainstream media suppress pertinent information about climate change that contradicts their agenda?

The alleged authority of "expert" opinion does not hold much sway with me. I do not pretend to know more than government officials, journalists, scientists, economists, and various other sophists and calculators, but I do know that for all their collective wisdom, they are just as often wrong as they are right. Does anyone really believe that stimulus and TARP spending has helped the economy, as the "experts" contend? Does anyone really believe the Iraq war had a damn thing to do with terrorism, as government officials still claim?

It is this experience-driven skepticism that prevents me from becoming too worried about so-called global warming. The same liberals who shriek at my doubt and believe that science is beyond politics when it comes to their sacred issue of climate change conveniently forget that scientific consensus once told us that racial minorities were intellectually incapable of competing with their white counterparts or that homosexuality was a mental disorder. Oh, but that was just politics masquerading as science, the Left might say. Global warming is different.

And it may be different. Only time will tell. But one need not be an expert of any sort to recognize that for both Left and Right, faith dictates the facts and today's truths often become tomorrow's fiction. And it is mighty curious that for every new crisis, a massive and expansive government corrective is always the proposed solution.

Dred Scott Redux: Obama and the Supremes Stand Up for Slavery

By Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque
Friday December 18, 2009

While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty.

It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Here's how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

This extraordinary ruling occasioned none of those deep-delving "process stories" that glut the pages of the New York Times, where the minutiae of policy-making or political gaming is examined in highly-spun, microscopic detail doled out by self-interested insiders. Obviously, giving government the power to render whole classes of people "unpersons" was not an interesting subject for our media arbiters. It was news that wasn't fit to print. Likewise, the ruling provoked no thundering editorials in the Washington Post, no savvy analysis from the high commentariat -- and needless to say, no outrage whatsoever from all our fierce defenders of individual liberty on the Right.

But William Fisher noticed, and gave this report at AntiWar.com:
(editor: the antiwar.com link is no longer active)

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that "torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use."

...Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" – did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.

The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants."

The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of "national emergency." And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.

And yet this is what Barack Obama -- who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer -- has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution. They can't even been sued for, in the specific case under review, subjecting uncharged, indefinitely detained captives to "beatings, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, extreme hot and cold temperatures, death threats, interrogations at gunpoint, and threatened with unmuzzled dogs."
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Anger With Federal Government Not Enough

by Chuck Baldwin at Chuck Baldwin Live

According to Rasmussen Reports, "Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they're at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry.

"The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry."

The report goes on to say, "The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September.

"Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September."

The report also states, "The latest numbers show that only nine percent (9%) of voters trust the judgment of America's political leaders more than the judment of the American people." It further states, "Seventy-one percent
(71%) believe the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Sixty-eight percent (68%) believe that government and big business work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors."

Rasmussen Reports goes on to say that voter opposition to the proposed health care plan, government bailouts, and higher taxes is especially high.

See the report at:
Rasmussen Report
That Americans are angry with the federal government is nothing new. As a general rule, Americans STAY angry with the federal government. So what?
Nothing changes, anger and discontentment notwithstanding.

Oh! Occasionally, grassroots effort can be mustered in sufficient quantity to stop whatever happens to be the latest effort by the miscreants in Washington, D.C., that tramples our freedoms. But only occasionally. The only recent triumph I can think of was when G.W. Bush, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain tried to ram an amnesty bill for illegal aliens through Congress. But never fear, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid will pick up that particular baton soon enough.

I'm old enough to remember when giving the Panama Canal away was opposed by virtually everyone outside the Beltway. It changed nothing. Jimmy Carter and Congress gave it away, anyway. Most people oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So what? Our troops are not only still there, but more are on the way. Most people believe children should be allowed to pray and read the Bible in school. So what? They still are forbidden from doing so. Most people believed former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore had the right to post the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. So what? He was forced to take them down, anyway (and removed from office in the process). I could go on, but you get the point.

Anger and opposition to Washington's policies and edicts--no matter now egregious--hardly ever translate into anything beyond words of frustration.
And Washington politicians don't pay much attention to rhetoric--not even their own.

You see, the wizards in Washington and on Wall Street have us figured out.
Along with their compatriots in the propaganda press corps, they know that no matter how loudly we scream, how much we protest, or how angry we become, the system is rigged to protect them. The best we the people can seem to come up with is "throwing the bums out" every two or four years. BUT NOTHING CHANGES--at least, not in terms of restoring the fundamental principles of freedom and constitutional government.

Throw out George H.W. Bush in 1992, and nothing changes. Throw the Democrats out of Congress in 1994, and nothing changes. Throw Bill Clinton's party out of the White House in 2000, and nothing changes. Throw out G.W. Bush's Republicans in 2008, and nothing changes. The only thing that happens with a changing of the guard is an escalation in the pace of whatever version of socialism--or Big Government program--is currently in vogue. With Bush it meant expanding the Warfare State. With Obama it means expanding the Welfare State. But both do everything they can to expand Big Government.

When will we awaken to the reality that Washington, D.C., has had the American people chasing their tails for decades? People, wake up! As long as we continue to focus our attention and energy on Washington, D.C., we will only continue to supply more rope to those who wish to hang us.

Washington, D.C., is too far gone to salvage. Admit it! Washington is a cesspool, a landfill, and a putrid pond of corruption and duplicity. Neither the Republican nor Democratic Party will ever allow a principled constitutionalist to become its Presidential nominee. No matter whom we elect as President, the beat toward Big-Government socialism and one-world internationalism will go on without interruption. Big Government scalawags own the entire federal system, including Big Media, Big Business, Big Labor, Big Religion, and Big Special Interest Groups. They are all feeding at the government teat.

Therefore, it is absolutely obligatory that freedom-minded Americans refocus their attention to electing State legislators, governors, judges and sheriffs who will fearlessly defend their God-given liberties. And, as plainly and emphatically as I know how to say it, I am telling you: ONLY THE STATES CAN DEFEND OUR LIBERTY NOW! And awakening to this reality means we will have to completely readjust our thinking and priorities.

It means awakening to the fact that Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly (and the rest of Big Media's talking heads) are, for the most part, irrelevant to providing real solutions to the continuing loss of liberty.
And, in truth, they are, more often than not, part of the problem, because they continue to focus our attention on Washington, D.C., and off the source of genuine solution, which lies with the states drawing a constitutional line in the sand for freedom. Good grief! Beck and O'Reilly have recently even advocated for higher federal taxes! Yeah! That's a real solution: more power and money to Washington, D.C. Ughhh!

Instead of getting all worked up about what Glenn Beck says or what Sarah Palin says or what CFR member and Big Government neocon Newt Gingrich says, start paying attention to what your State legislators and candidates are saying.

If we had more State legislators such as Washington State's Matthew Shea; Georgia's Bobby Franklin; Pennsylvania's Sam Rohrer; New Hampshire's Dan Itse; Michigan's Paul Opsommer; Oklahoma's Randy Brogdon, Sally Kern and Charles Key; Montana's Rick Jore, Greg Hinkle, and Joel Boniek; Tennessee's Susan Lynn; South Carolina's Michael Pitts and Lee Bright; Missouri's Jim Guest and Cynthia Davis; and sheriffs such as South Carolina's Ray Nash, Arizona's Richard Mack and Joe Arpaio, Montana's Jay Printz and Shane Harrington, etc., it wouldn't matter what those nincompoops inside the Beltway do. The federal government cannot violate your rights and steal your freedoms without the consent and approbation of your State government.

Folks, let's get down to where the rubber meets the road: the reason we are in the miserable mess we are in is because the states have--either wittingly or unwittingly--ceded their authority and independence to Washington, D.C.
Therefore, it is now critical that states reclaim their authority--authority that is duly granted them under the US Constitution.

All of us who call ourselves conservatives or constitutionalists or libertarians (who, no doubt, compose a majority, especially in "red" states) need to retake our State governments. Elect a governor who knows how to say "No" to the federal government. Elect a State legislature that knows how to say "No" to Washington, D.C. Elect sheriffs and State judges who understand the Constitution, State sovereignty, and the principles of freedom--and who are courageous enough to defend those sacred principles in the face of attempted federal usurpation.

The truth is, for all intents and purposes, we could turn off television completely and be in no worse shape. And newspapers are no better. The vast majority of them blatantly support and promote Big Government. As Mark Twain said, "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."

With Big Media, it's all about Washington politics. Period. For the most part, the conservative-liberal/Republican-Democrat paradigm is nothing but a distraction at best, and a scam at worst, to keep all of us safely on the federal reservation, where we are without hope or recourse to actually change anything.

Ladies and Gentlemen, freedom in America has only one hope: the resurrection of State independence and sovereignty. Fortunately, there are rumblings around the country that this revival has already begun.

The last time I checked, some 38 states have introduced Tenth Amendment resolutions--or some form of federal nullification proposals--in their State assemblies. To follow the status of various states' rights initiatives, keep an eye on these two web sites:
10th Amendment Center
Liberty Defense League
If conservatives/constitutionalists/libertarians would spend as much time and energy influencing elections and policies at the State and local levels as they attempt to do at the national level, we could turn this floundering ship of state around. If he had the support and backing of his State's legislature and sheriffs, imagine what ONE constitutionalist governor could do. I get goose bumps thinking about it!

Imagine a State with its own financial system--its own currency, banks, regulatory agencies, etc. Imagine a State with its own militia--under the authority of the governor only--completely independent from any responsibility to the President or federal government. Imagine a State with an education system unfettered by the federal Department of Education.
Imagine a State where the BLM, the FBI, the ATF, and the DEA had to actually submit to State law. Imagine a State with no federal bribes, or federal "funding" as it is commonly called--except as is constitutionally constructed (with no strings attached). Imagine a State with its own health care system. Imagine a State with no FEMA--UNLESS INVITED IN. Imagine a State that would not allow Washington's spooks to unlawfully spy on law-abiding citizens. Imagine a State that actually had a say in how much land the federal government could claim for its own. Imagine a State where citizens never had to worry about a national ID act. Imagine a State that would protect the right of its citizens to freely express their faith in the public square. Imagine a State that did not demand that its farmers put RFID computer chips in their livestock. Imagine a State that would let you drill a well without reporting it to the federal government. And for some really fun mind games, imagine a State that would be willing to challenge the constitutionality and legitimacy of the direct income tax and the IRS. All of this--and more--is attainable with a constitutionalist State government committed to protecting the liberties of its citizens.

I repeat: freedom in America has only one hope: the resurrection of State independence and sovereignty. In the US Constitution, our Founding Fathers sagaciously reserved to State governments their independence and sovereignty, knowing that they had the awesome responsibility of being the last (and greatest) vanguard of liberty for the American people. They never intended or imagined that the states would ever become a doormat for the central government (which is what most of them have become).

In this regard, the states that are proposing State sovereignty resolutions should immediately band together to overturn the 17th Amendment, because this amendment strips the states of their constitutional powers by turning US senators into Washington insiders, who are more beholden to Washington interests than the interests and well-being of the states that they are supposed to represent.

If the 71% of voters who are angry with the federal government would channel their energies into electing constitutionalist governors and State legislators, their anger might actually produce real and lasting change. As it is, efforts to "reform" Washington, D.C., are like trying to teach a hog to take a bath. Instead, let the hog wallow in the mud, but make sure the mudhole stays small; don't let it spread to your back yard. And keeping that Washington mudhole small is the job of the states. And, in case you have not noticed, the mudhole has already grown to the point that it's not just in your back yard; it's on your front porch and about to consume your whole house.

American Purgatory

By G$ Simmons and Brett Buchanan at Scope Labs December 15, 2009

Are financial markets a direct reflection of the overall health of a nation? I wish they were not, but I fear they are.

I wonder at times if our nation has entered a state of purgatory – all of us mulling around in the waiting room to Hell, anxiously counting the minutes until the grim reaper saunters through the door sickle in hand his mission to send us off to eternal damnation. Unfortunately, there is little time to close this door so that we may stave off this potential fate that looms so near. What we need to alter this course is a procession of men who possess moral fortitude and common sense, men of rationality and reason. Men of action who will set in motion the dismantling of institutions that bleed this nation dry.

Hope is not a strategy. This present state of manufactured optimism emanating from the White House and our news outlets is contemptible. We are in dire need of new reformist leadership and of new voices that will speak the truth. A national purification is long overdue. Time is not on our side. Look at the track record this nation has racked up over the last few decades and this economic and moral purgatory in which we find ourselves might very well mark the beginning of our walk of death down the long road to Hell.

I make this analogy of a national state of purgatory not in jest, but rather in practical terms. This nation has gone the way of an absolute meltdown of morality and ethics. We’ve reverted to a sort of Wild West where anything goes. From the halls of congress to our corporate boardrooms our collective morality bar has sunk so low we cannot go any lower without disconnecting from the great past this nation is starved to regain. We stand dangerously close to the point where immorality begets our undoing.

Personally, I am father to a daughter of fourteen years. Brett, my co-author, is father to a twenty-month old daughter and an eighteen-year old son. We desperately want to create for our children a better world. But we are fallible men, and certainly not saints. The paragraphs you are about to read are not written from some moral high ground, or a Holier-than-thou pulpit, but rather from saddened hearts when we see that by walking our own moral tightrope, if we were to allow ourselves to slip below the bar, however slightly, we would be just as guilty as the worst perpetrators of our nation’s moral destruction. Also, when witness to greater moral transgressions, by our own inaction, we become part of the problem. And we are just two men. Amplify this by fifty million, one hundred million, or three hundred million fold and it is no wonder immorality permeates our society.

This article is our personal effort to call people’s attention to the truth. The brevity of our circumstance is immeasurable by past reference. Economically, we have never been so challenged. Over the past few decades a gullible US population cheered the halls of congress and the Oval Office alike as the incestuous bedfellows of money and politics ushered in a financial Coup d’état – co-opting our public trusts with the greed and excess of Wall Street. Profits are now had at any cost – damn the long-term consequences. Instead of being exposed as the obvious fraud he was, Bernie Maddoff was coddled by the SEC – an institution whose role as regulator is a complete failure. As Wall Street and Washington raped an entire nation, employees of the SEC were too busy surfing porn on the Internet and running private businesses instead of doing the jobs taxpayers pay them to do. All the while, young girls were selling their virginity to the highest bidder in public cyber-forums where grown men (not hormonally charged teenage boys) seek out their sexual fantasies in the netherworld of Internet pornography.

What of the wives, children, and even parents of these men? Do they approve of such questionable actions?

Think of our children turning on the television to see people eating bile, cow blood, and live bugs for money on game shows like Fear Factor, or Flavor Flav and his hit reality show where he maintains a stable of women all of whom physically fight each other to have sex with him because he’s a celebrity – and a damn ugly one at that. And finally, there’s always Survivor, the ultimate demonstration of all things wrong with modern human interaction. A reality show that pits person against person in a deceitful game of moral destruction where lack of ethics are rewarded, instead of punished. Survivor, this is what our nation’s leadership has become. Win at any cost. Damn the future of anyone but myself.

Morality is in great part the measure of a nation. Have we unlearned morality? Is this why we find ourselves staring down the abyss?

We are allowing ourselves to become more corrupt by the minute. We stare into the face of our future being raped, but we do nothing. We are as corrupt as the corrupters. We accept the unacceptable. We fail to understand that absolute power, corrupts absolutely. In what will go down as the greatest financial heist in history our leaders have chosen to reward corrupt individuals and their hollow corporations for what are arguably criminal levels of risk behavior by the moneyed elite of this country. What message does that send to our children, or to anyone for that matter? Be as corrupt as possible in the US and you will be rewarded? Be the biggest failure jeopardizing the fate of others then stand in the corporate welfare line with all the other wealthiest institutions of the world, your greedy hand extended for a government bailout check while you simultaneously foreclose on an entire nation? Talk about the rich corralling the masses. It’s no wonder someone coined the term “The Sheeple.”

The path we traveled to this purgatorial limbo is both easily understood and misunderstood. The answers to understanding are sometimes right in front of us. What are seemingly benign things or actions, those everyday judgments or decisions we make to do one thing or another, are not always benign. Tell a little white lie to make that one sale that will put us into our bonus. Rig the game in our favor so that we might enjoy a little more opulence for the few decades we have remaining on this planet. Look the other way while the Federal Reserve and Wall Street blow economic bubble after economic bubble and in the process create a six-hundred trillion dollar shadow banking system that plays by no one’s rules but its own. In the case of Goldman Sachs, and Wall Street in general, lie, cheat, and steal their way to profitability at the expense of three hundred million taxpayers. The fact is that we have become an uncooperative nation willing to take advantage of anyone for the sake of profit. The idea of building a cooperative future where everyone wins has been sacrificed at the altar of short-mindedness.

It might be this purgatorial limbo I speak of is simpler than it appears. It could be that we are collectively suffering the consequences of the “Peter Principle”, or getting to the job of failure. This principle supposes that an individual rises in a corporate hierarchy to their first level of incompetence. An assembly worker gets promoted to supervisor then to assistant manager, then manager, until he next gets promoted to an upper management job for which he is ill equipped and subsequently gets promoted no further as he can no longer demonstrate the competence required for the task at hand. He rather relies on subordinates who are then stuck with an upper manager who cannot carry out his own duties. Could this be the state of our nation?

Have we been promoted as far as our competence allows? Are we in fact incompetent to handle our future? Have we now elected a man just incompetent enough for the Presidency who is being manipulated by Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, and a circle of (previous) Wall Street insiders now on the government payroll as cabinet members and high-ranking advisors? The saddest thing is that we sit idly by whilst our virtue is being stolen. We do nothing.

A view of the world through rose-colored glasses does no one, any good. We are not as resilient as we think we are. Instead, we exist in a world of synthetic productivity where multi-tasking renders us incapable of doing anything effectively or with any level of competence. Multi-tasking, that art of simultaneous ineffectiveness is a counter productive weapon that to a large degree has contributed to the potential failure of this nation. If you were to listen to Alan Greenspan however, you would believe that multi-tasking through technological gains by way of the “new paradigm” was the gold at the end of the Information Superhighway and that exotic mortgages and the burgeoning spending class paved the road to riches. We now know these premises to be empirically wrong.

It can now be argued that what would seemingly be advancements in productivity are proving to be setbacks. The Information Superhighway has led us to an era of technological arrogance. In reality all we have accomplished is to dilute our ability to carry out simple tasks as we click from a quarterly sales report due in an hour, to Facebook, to on-line solitaire, to writing an email explaining to our boss why the quarterly report will be delayed this day. We are a nation of excuse makers. We look for someone else to keep us one step ahead of our accumulating debt that smothers the potential of what could have been an equitable future. Ironically, it is our technological arrogance that impedes our ability to produce and manufacture our way to prosperity.

Craftsmen who used to flock to this country to fulfill the needs of a manufacturing base flock here no more. “Made in the USA” used to mean something. It meant quality. It was the definition of industrial capitalism. But now through the wonders of globalization we have exported our craftsmanship through an outflow of jobs to China and India as we turned everyone in the USA into real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and web designers – a perfect playground for bankers to ply their craft, lending money in every creative manner both thinkable, and unthinkable. “Made in the USA” has been reduced to the status of punch-line – synonymous only with “Mortgage Backed Securities” and other “Toxic Derivatives.”

Is it any wonder we have evolved into the ‘entitled society’? If we weren’t on the government payroll, or subsidized by the US taxpayer through social welfare then we were borrowing our way to prosperity. Enter the God-fearing middle class. Just dumb enough to buy into the scam a couple hundred million people began signing over their paychecks, selling their future for the enjoyment of having things now. We were transformed into non-productive Sheeple, selling our souls for an easier life in lieu of a better future for our children. At our current rate of productive attrition we will soon be a nation of declawed housecats, possessing no skill-set whatsoever to survive in a world where the ability to produce real goods still reins supreme. Yet we remain the ‘entitled society’, when we are entitled to nothing.
We forget (through economic amnesia) that throughout history all societies fail. Nicolaus Copernicus maintained that civilizations failed when bad money, controlled and understood by an elite few, drove out good money. The same can be said for morality. Bad, drives out good. This is a reality of which we should all be acutely aware but rather are immune to its possibility. We dangerously believe we cannot fail.

That, in fact, is the greatest gamble of all. A roll of the dice against history, a bet against all natural laws of the universe, all things are in a state of entropy. All things eventually wither away to nothing. To possess longevity is to be ahead of the universe. Sadly, we have constructed a fragile world that produces material things that do not last. The fiat money we use as the currency of our production is by design, destructive itself. The Federal Reserve prints greed, nothing more. But still we covet it. We pursue it as if it had value. And in this pursuit we destroy earth’s resources as if the laws of nature have no relevance. We believe there is only now.

We forget (through economic amnesia) that throughout history all societies fail. Nicolaus Copernicus maintained that civilizations failed when bad money, controlled and understood by an elite few, drove out good money. The same can be said for morality. Bad, drives out good. This is a reality of which we should all be acutely aware but rather are immune to its possibility. We dangerously believe we cannot fail. That, in fact, is the greatest gamble of all. A roll of the dice against history, a bet against all natural laws of the universe, all things are in a state of entropy. All things eventually wither away to nothing. To possess longevity is to be ahead of the universe. Sadly, we have constructed a fragile world that produces material things that do not last. The fiat money we use as the currency of our production is by design, destructive itself. The Federal Reserve prints greed, nothing more. But still we covet it. We pursue it as if it had value. And in this pursuit we destroy earth’s resources as if the laws of nature have no relevance. We believe there is only now.

The War Democrats

Joe Sestak and the rationale for war
By Justin Raimondo from AntiWar.com

A recent op ed piece by Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn.), a former admiral, is typical of the Bushian "logic" which continues to dominate the making of American foreign policy in the age of Obama. The style is different – gone are the preening neocon Napoleons – but, given American’s war-weariness, Sestak’s "reluctant warrior" routine is subtly insidious:

"I understand the concerns about sending more troops to Afghanistan. No one wants to put more of our service members in harm’s way. No one wants to be spending more of our resources abroad when there is so much to be done at home."

I would add: no one wants to kill thousands of Afghans for no good reason except the Obama administration’s goal of proving its virility in the realm of national security, but a) Sestak seems not to give a flying [expletive deleted] about the lives of non-Americans, since he didn’t see fit to mention it, and b) he has been critical of the Obama stimulus plan, complaining that it hasn’t shown enough results quickly enough, but perhaps he thinks a good shot of military Keynesianism is what’s required. After all, as he acknowledged in an interview with talkingpointsmemo.com, about 20 percent of a typical congressional representative’s district – presumably he was speaking about local conditions – is economically dependent on the armaments industry. Thanks to John Murtha and his confreres in the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, Pennsylvania has an outsized share of the "defense" industry’s government subsidies, and this undoubtedly plays a big role in Sestak’s primary bid to unseat newly-converted Democratic Senator Arlen Specter – who opposes the Afghan escalation.

Sestak is going after Specter on this issue, appealing to conservative Democrats, the sort who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries and are prone to go Republican. Unable to garner the White House’s endorsement – Obama is going along with the party leadership in supporting Specter – the spurned Sestak is nevertheless holding high the banner of Obama-ism in echoing the same tired arguments trotted out by the Dear Leader in his let’s-escalate speech. Yes, "after eight years and significant missteps, concern is justified," Sestak avers. "But the American people should be assured of three things:

"This mission is necessary: If we were to leave now, Afghanistan would return to the conditions that allowed us to be struck on 9/11. More importantly, a failed Afghanistan would critically destabilize Pakistan, which currently faces an existential threat from al Qaeda and allied extremists."

"The conditions that allowed us to be struck on 9/11" existed not in Afghanistan, but right here in the US. Those conditions had nothing to do with Afghanistan’s lack of a central government, and everything to do with the laxness of our security measures here at home. The Taliban may have been in the drivers’ seat in Kabul, but what really enabled al-Qaeda wasn’t Mullah Omar but rather the ease [.pdf] with which our immigration laws allowed al-Qaeda to enter the country – and the complete cluelessness of and lack of coordination between the various intelligence-gathering and law enforcement agencies upon whom billions had been lavished to prevent just such a catastrophe.
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End the Fed!

Why would we listen to this guy about anything - he has had it wrong, very wrong, multiple times. Please remember; if a man fools you once shame on him, if he fools you twice, three, four, more times shame on YOU!
Watch and see why we should END THE FED!!!

Indiana: City Threatens $2500 Fines for Challenging Traffic Tickets

the Newspaper.com
December 09, 2009
(Editor: this is a typical response in a totalitarian society, and yes, we live in one)

Motorists who receive minor parking or traffic tickets in Indianapolis, Indiana are being threatened with fines of up to $2500 if they attempt to take the ticket to court. A local attorney with the firm Roberts and Bishop was so outraged by what he saw in Marion County traffic court that he filed a class action suit yesterday seeking to have the practice banned as unconstitutional.

"The deck is stacked against the motorist," lawyer Paul K. Ogden wrote. "To penalize that person for seeking justice seems wrong. I know it is done for the purpose of discouraging baseless challenges to tickets and clogging the docket, but in the process you are also penalizing people who have a legitimate defense and want a chance to present it to the court."

The city made explicit the threat of additional fines for challenging parking tickets in a November 30 press release announcing a deal between Indianapolis and a private firm, T2 Systems, to hand over operations of a parking ticket court to increase municipal income.

"Using Six Sigma process improvement strategies, it is estimated that under this program the city may collect an additional $352,000 to $520,000 in parking citation revenue over the next 12 months," the city press release stated. "If citations are not paid prior to their scheduled hearing, the city may request a fine of up to $2500 per citation. Upon receiving a judgment for an unpaid citation, individuals responsible could be subject to collections actions or having their vehicle registration suspended."
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It is Time to Leave Afghanistan

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives
Statement Before Foreign Affairs Committee

December 10, 2009

Mr. Speaker thank you for holding these important hearings on US policy in Afghanistan. I would like to welcome the witnesses, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry and General Stanley A. McChrystal, and thank them for appearing before this Committee.

I have serious concerns, however, about the president’s decision to add some 30,000 troops and an as yet undisclosed number of civilian personnel to escalate our Afghan operation. This “surge” will bring US troop levels to approximately those of the Soviets when they occupied Afghanistan with disastrous result back in the 1980s. I fear the US military occupation of Afghanistan may end up similarly unsuccessful.

In late 1986 Soviet armed forces commander, Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, told then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "Military actions in Afghanistan will soon be seven years old. There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nonetheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of rebels.” Soon Gorbachev began the Soviet withdrawal from its Afghan misadventure. Thousands were dead on both sides, yet the occupation failed to produce a stable national Afghan government.

Eight years into our own war in Afghanistan the Soviet commander’s words ring eerily familiar. Part of the problem stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. It is our presence as occupiers that feeds the insurgency. As would be the case if we were invaded and occupied, diverse groups have put aside their disagreements to unify against foreign occupation. Adding more US troops will only assist those who recruit fighters to attack our soldiers and who use the US occupation to convince villages to side with the Taliban.

Proponents of the president’s Afghanistan escalation cite the successful “surge” in Iraq as evidence that this second surge will have similar results. I fear they might be correct about the similar result, but I dispute the success propaganda about Iraq. In fact, the violence in Iraq only temporarily subsided with the completion of the ethnic cleansing of Shi’ites from Sunni neighborhoods and vice versa – and all neighborhoods of Christians. Those Sunni fighters who remained were easily turned against the foreign al-Qaeda presence when offered US money and weapons. We are increasingly seeing this “success” breaking down: sectarian violence is flaring up and this time the various groups are better armed with US-provided weapons. Similarly, the insurgents paid by the US to stop their attacks are increasingly restive now that the Iraqi government is no longer paying bribes on a regular basis. So I am skeptical about reports on the success of the Iraqi surge.

Likewise, we are told that we have to “win” in Afghanistan so that al-Qaeda cannot use Afghan territory to plan further attacks against the US. We need to remember that the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 was, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, largely planned in the United States (and Germany) by terrorists who were in our country legally. According to the logic of those who endorse military action against Afghanistan because al-Qaeda was physically present, one could argue in favor of US airstrikes against several US states and Germany! It makes no sense. The Taliban allowed al-Qaeda to remain in Afghanistan because both had been engaged, with US assistance, in the insurgency against the Soviet occupation.

Nevertheless, the president’s National Security Advisor, Gen. James Jones, USMC (Ret.), said in a recent interview that less than 100 al-Qaeda remain in Afghanistan and that the chance they would reconstitute a significant presence there was slim. Are we to believe that 30,000 more troops are needed to defeat 100 al-Qaeda fighters? I fear that there will be increasing pressure for the US to invade Pakistan, to where many Taliban and al-Qaeda have escaped. Already CIA drone attacks on Pakistan have destabilized that country and have killed scores of innocents, producing strong anti-American feelings and calls for revenge. I do not see how that contributes to our national security.

The president’s top advisor for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said recently, “I would say this about defining success in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the simplest sense, the Supreme Court test for another issue, we’ll know it when we see it.” That does not inspire much confidence.

Supporters of this surge argue that we must train an Afghan national army to take over and strengthen the rule and authority of Kabul. But experts have noted that the ranks of the Afghan national army are increasingly being filled by the Tajik minority at the expense of the Pashtun plurality. US diplomat Matthew Hoh, who resigned as Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. Government in Zabul Province, noted in his resignation letter that he “fail[s] to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.” Mr. Hoh went on to write that “[L]ike the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by [the Afghan] people.”

I have always opposed nation-building as unconstitutional and ineffective. Afghanistan is no different. Without a real strategy in Afghanistan, without a vision of what victory will look like, we are left with the empty rhetoric of the last administration that “when the Afghan people stand up, the US will stand down.” I am afraid the only solution to the Afghanistan quagmire is a rapid and complete US withdrawal from that country and the region. We cannot afford to maintain this empire and our occupation of these foreign lands is not making us any safer. It is time to leave Afghanistan

Hopenhagen's dirty secret

By Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times

BEIJING - A November 21 caption on the cover of China Daily read, "Three women seem to dwarf the Bird's Nest [National Stadium] as they enjoy the winter sunshine and the blue sky on Friday. Beijing experienced its 260th blue-sky day in 2009 on Friday, reaching its target 41 days before the end of the year."

One might argue that the Chinese secret for climate control and reaching "targets" is that God is a card-carrying member of the Communist Party - and he has the "targets" of five-year plans to meet, just like anybody else (except "splittists"). God, of course, would not dream of becoming a splittist.

Only last month, no less than 1.34 million cars were sold across China. Now that's a greenhouse gas bonanza. Compare it to Beijing's new target of reducing per-unit gross domestic product carbon intensity by 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2020. What will they do with all these cars - exile them in North Korea?

Chinese businessmen, though, remain on target. Many have landed in Copenhagen for the United Nations climate change conference, and apart from sealing a smorgasbord of great new deals they have already made public their "dedication to exploring models of low-carbon economic growth".

Stretch limo from Kyoto
Congested by 1,200 stretch limos (and only five electric cars) and 140 private jets serving the real VIPs among the 15,000 delegates, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders gorging on rows of sustainable foie gras (plus free sex - courtesy of Copenhagen's 1,400-strong sex worker's union; talk about carbon dating ...), Copenhagen has been dubbed Hopenhagen. But reasons to be cheerful are slim.

Speaking on behalf of the Group of 77 countries and China, the Sudanese ambassador, Ibrahim Mirghani Ibrahim, has made it clear the North's maneuvers to circumvent the Kyoto protocol and at the same time to corner the South won't fly. Under Kyoto, adopted in 1997, the industrialized North had committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 5% against 1990 levels over 2008-2012. Everybody broke their quotas.
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Administration extends $700B bailout until Oct

Audit: Taxpayers lose big on AIG, auto bailouts as Administration extends $700 billion fund

AP Business Writers
(Editor: The Taxpayers lost money on these bail outs – what a surprise – NOT!)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration has extended the $700 billion financial bailout program until October, setting up a struggle between Democrats who favor using some of the leftover money to help generate jobs and Republicans who say it should be used to shrink soaring budget deficits.

The administration insists the bailout fund is still needed to prevent further turmoil in the banking system. In announcing the decision Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said extending the program also will help homeowners struggling to avoid losing homes to foreclosures and small businesses having trouble getting loans.

The decision came on the same day the administration acknowledged two key bailout programs lost a total of $61 billion. The bailout of insurance giant American International Group Inc. and the lifeline thrown to struggling automakers each cost more than $30 billion, according to Treasury data disclosed in a report from the Government Accountability Office.

The administration is now projecting the losses to the government from the bailout program will be around $141 billion -- $200 billion less than it estimated two months ago.
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2s30s Hits Thirty-Year Wide

By Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

Just in case there is anyone still doubting what an impact the Fed's intervention in the bond market has had courtesy of the first (soon to be followed by second) QE program, one needs look no further than the 2s30s curve, which, at 372 bps is now the widest it has been in thirty years. However, regardless, of how one interprets Bernanke's indirect market manipulation, one thing is sure - investors are walking, no running, for the hills when it comes to the long-end of the curve. We wish Geithner all the best in his attempt to issue hundreds of billions of debt with a tenor greater than 10 years.

Premiums reported offered to defer gold delivery

From GATA
5:25p ET Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Rick Ackerman's commentary tonight at GoldSeek quotes most interesting remarks from a friend who is a London gold trader and claims to have been offered a premium of 125 percent not to take delivery of September gold contracts because the LBMA's supply of real metal is so tight. Even if the trader meant a premium of 25 percent, the situation would be extraordinary and would support similar things reported anonymously lately. Also encouraging is the trader's reference to the concentrated short position in the metals run by JPMorganChase on behalf of the Federal Reserve to support the dollar.

Maybe word of the gold price suppression scheme really is getting around despite the near-blackout in the mainstream financial news media.

Ackerman's commentary is headlined "Will China 'Amnesty' Birth the Black Swan?" and you can find it at GoldSeek here:
Will China 'Amnesty' Birth the Black Swan
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *
Join GATA here:
Vancouver Resource Investment Conference
Sunday and Monday, January 17 and 18, 2010
Hyatt and Fairmont Conference Hotels
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Watching Social Security Eat the Young Alive

by Bill Frezza at Real Clear Markets

My 26 year old son got the most extraordinary letter from the Social Security Administration last week. In plain English it admitted that the system was a Ponzi scheme destined for bankruptcy more than a decade before he reaches retirement age. It warned that if he is to have any hope of retiring he'd better start saving on his own. Anyone who wasn't personally hypnotized by FDR knows this to be true. Yet I was still surprised that such a frank government confession didn't make national news.

The two-page pamphlet entitled "What young workers should know about Social Security and saving" reminds us that 50 million, or one in six, Americans will collect more than $614 Billion dollars in Social Security benefits this year. It informs young people that the Security Taxes they now pay go into a "Trust Fund" that is used to pay current beneficiaries. Paying off early investors with funds taken from later investors is precisely how Wikipedia defines a Ponzi scheme. The pamphlet advises that the Social Security Board of Trustees estimates that the "Trust Fund" will be depleted before my son's 54th birthday. Because people are living longer and the birth rate is low, it goes on, taxes paid by workers in the future will not be enough to pay the benefits promised in his personalized retirement account statement enclosed with the pamphlet. Imagine what hell would break loose if Schwab or Fidelity Investments enclosed a confession like this when they mailed investors their 401(k) statements.

On top of the negative rate of return young people paying into Social Security are expected to suffer, the pamphlet concludes that my son should plan on taking an additional 24% haircut on the benefits promised in his statement. This is the same healthy young kid being told that he will soon have to buy an artificially overpriced health insurance policy so his premiums can be redistributed to aging Baby Boomers lobbying Congress for free stuff.
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Pelosi Endorses ‘Global’ Tax on Stocks, Bonds, and other Financial Transactions

By Matt Cover CNSNEWS.COM

(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) endorsed the idea of a “global” tax on stock trades and other financial transactions, saying the estimated $150 billion in annual revenue from such a tax could be used to help fund more stimulus spending.

At her weekly press briefing on Thursday, Pelosi said the financial transactions tax (HR4191) currently before Congress would have to be made “global” to keep U.S. investors from taking their business overseas and out of taxable reach.
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More of the Same!

Great cartoon by Kevin Tuma

Looking through Government Lies on Economy

Tax withholding is the clearest indicator of what is happening with employment and corporate earnings.

What these charts mean is somehow, someway, the state will need to take more from you. It will be in the form of fees, tickets, taxes and any other creative way they can remove the fruits of your labor from you – it is a coming my friends.



The Bureau of Labor & Statics can play with the definition of what unemployed means, the ole' Clinton trick of what is the definition of is, is?

The fact is, what matters is how much people are earning, and that is why these charts are so telling. Individual withholdings are down Y-O-Y, and the corporate withholdings are in the negative.



The real economy is suffocating from too many regulations and taxes - and all these criminals in DC will try to do is bring us more of the same.

The Meaning of ClimateGate

By William Anderson at C4L

Almost anyone who can read has heard about the "Climategate" scandal in which emails between the scientists that have been at the forefront of promoting the apocalyptic views of "climate change" were hacked and then made public. The snippets I have read confirm my worst fears, as we are seeing exactly what happens when the political process completely hijacks science.

As an Austrian economist, I don't worship at the feet of the "scientific community," in large part because the "scientific community" is able to engage in trickery but defend its actions in the name of "preserving science." However, because of my own experience in publishing papers in refereed journals and knowing the experiences of others, I can see what has been happening over the past decade in "climate science," and I can tell you that while it is not rigged, it is close to being so.

Modern science is all about receiving grants, and the biggest checkbooks are those wielded by governments, and governments expect certain results. For example, the government two decades ago funded research into the alleged "acid rain" problems and the researchers reached very different conclusions than what the U.S. Government, and especially Congress and the George H.W. Bush administration (and his William Reilly-led EPA) had wanted to see.

Acid rain, apparently, was not going to destroy U.S. forests, lakes, and rivers, and the government was ticked, really ticked. The EPA attempted to destroy the career of one scientist, Edward Krug, who had a paper in the prestigious Science in 1983 that demonstrated that lakes with high acidity were located in watersheds where the soil happened to be acidic. Furthermore, as Krug and other researchers noted, acid lakes existed in many places around the globe hundreds of years before "industrial society" became the norm.
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Who Wants War?

By The Honorable Rep. Dr. Ron Paul at Campaign for Liberty

If anyone still doubted that this administration's foreign policy would bring any kind of change, this week's debate on Afghanistan should remove all doubt. The President's stated justifications for sending more troops to Afghanistan and escalating war amount to little more than recycling all the false reasons we began the conflict. It is so discouraging to see this coming from our new leadership, when the people were hoping for peace. New polls show that 49% of the people favor minding our own business on the world stage, up from 30% in 2002. Perpetual war is not solving anything. Indeed continually seeking out monsters to destroy abroad only threatens our security here at home as international resentment against us builds. The people understand this and are becoming increasingly frustrated at not being heard by the decision-makers. The leaders say some things the people want to hear, but change never comes.

One has to ask, if the people who elected these leaders so obviously do not want these wars, who does? Eisenhower warned of the increasing power and influence of the military industrial complex and it seems his worst fears have come true. He believed in a strong national defense, as do I, but warned that the building up of permanent military and weapons industries could prove dangerous if their influence got out of hand. After all, if you make your money on war, peace does you no good. With trillions of dollars at stake, there is tremendous incentive to keep the decision makers fearful of every threat in the world, real or imagined, present or future, no matter how ridiculous and far-fetched. The Bush Doctrine demonstrates how very successful the war lobby was philosophically with the last administration. And they are succeeding just as well with this one, in spite of having the so-called "peace candidate" in office.

We now find ourselves in another foreign policy quagmire with little hope of victory, and not even a definition of victory. Eisenhower said that only an alert and informed electorate could keep these war racketeering pressures at bay. He was right, and the key is for the people to ensure that their elected leaders follow the Constitution. The Constitution requires a declaration of war by Congress in order to legitimately go to war. Bypassing this critical step makes it far too easy to waste resources on nebulous and never-ending conflicts. Without clear goals, the conflicts last forever and drain the country of blood and treasure. The drafters of the Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war precisely because they feared allowing the executive unfettered discretion in military affairs. They understood that making it easy for leaders to wage foreign wars would threaten domestic liberties.

Responses to attacks on our soil should be swift and brief. Wars we fight should always be defensive, clearly defined and Constitutional. The Bush Doctrine of targeting potential enemies before they do anything to us is dangerously vague and easily abused. There is nothing left to win in Afghanistan and everything to lose. Today's military actions are yet another futile exercise in nation building and have nothing to do with our nation's security, or with 9/11. Most experts agree that Bin Laden and anyone remotely connected to 9/11 left Afghanistan long ago, but our troops remain. The pressures of the war racketeers need to be put in check before we are brought to our knees by them. Unfortunately, it will require a mighty effort by the people to get the leadership to finally listen.

Copenhagen: the AGW druids at Copenhagen know they are on a losing wicket and it shows

By Gerald Warner at The Daily Telegraph

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen – or is it? For AGW fanatics this was supposed to be the climactic moment, the Machtergreifung that would initiate global government and penal taxes through which the hard-earned money of Western citizens would become a burnt holocaust to the religion of Global Warming, the few remaining heretics would be anathematised and the New World Order would commence.

But it is not working out like that. True, the thousands of parasites – politicians, safely bought scientists, civil servants, myth-compliant journalists and other free loaders have duly converged on the Danish capital. But, for the Climate Moonies, it has turned into a Barmecide feast. Even they know that something is wrong. They are frothing and foaming at the mouth more hysterically than ever – but the world is not listening.

Climategate is the elephant in the room, the skeleton at the feast. Scepticism was supposed to have been eliminated by now; instead, it has captured majority opinion. It is untrue to say that Britain is split 50-50 – though that, in itself, would be a defeat for warmists – close study of all the surveys shows that scepticism was running at closer to 60 per cent – before Climategate even broke. The script said that man-made global warming was to be regarded as an established fact, that sceptics should not even be given the courtesy of an argument.

Now the warmists are on the back foot, thoroughly on the defensive. Even six months ago, who ever thought that Energy Secretary Ed Milliband would be conceding, on the opening day of Copenhagen, that convincing people of global warming remains a “huge challenge”? Yet it goes beyond even that. I would be the last person on earth to minimise the importance of Climategate or to deny credit, in any way, to those scientists and journalists who have so tirelessly exposed it. And, of course, it has had an important effect.

But there is more than that to the irreducible scepticism of the public. Even before dodgy e-mails emerged, the public was realising that this was a scheme, not to save the planet, but to make Al Gore a billionaire. Gore was trying to charge $1,200 a time for people to shake hands and be photographed with him at Copenhagen. Is that the conduct of a man who urgently believes the planet is about to be scorched to a cinder? Is the United Nations a trusted institution?
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ATHEISM IS A FRAUD

By Dave Daubenmire at News with Views
December 3rd 2009

Atheism is the established religion in America. Humanism, Environmentalism, Darwinism, Materialism, and Global Warming are examples of its denominations. It is all fake, made up. Atheists don’t believe in no god, but rather, that they are god. Atheists believe man is the final judge. That is why they flock to government positions. Government “officials” are the Bishops in this man-made religion. Money is their communion wafer.

Government establishment requires three things: Mandatory membership, mandatory citizen support through taxation, and membership in order to hold public office. Government schools are religious schools. They are not “public” schools. Eighty-five percent of Americans self-identify as Christians. If the schools were “public” they would teach Christian values, instead, they teach Atheism.
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A Granular Look Into a $6 Billion REIT: Is This the Next GGP?

By Reggie Middleton at the Boom Bust Blog .
(Editor note: This is someone who provides data and analysis actually worth the price charged – this following post is example of what he does for free)

This is a corrected and extended update of my glance into the Macerich update. This post was delayed due to material data input errors which have been rectified. I've decided to offer a peak into the ongoing analysis of its property portfolio, which combined with its credit and cash flow situation brings to mind the concerns that I have had about GGP about a year before it collapsed (see "GGP and the type of investigative analysis you will not get from your brokerage house.").

In looking at the data that I am about to display, I want readers to think of MAC as an investment entity that you, yourself, would run as a real estate investor. Think of your ability to make money over time, and the viability of your entity if you would actually lose money. As a property investor, I view MAC's properties in terms of being underwater or being profitable on a capital appreciation and NOI basis. As of 11/09, many of MAC's properties are significantly underwater, the ramifications of which depend on the financing utilized, since the use of debt has literally wiped out all of the equity in some, has made others require an equity infusion to roll over the mortgage, and has simply destroyed shareholder capital in other cases.
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