UNITED STATES HUBRIS, ARROGANCE AND HYPOCRISY IN UKRAINE

         

The stand off in Ukraine brings back memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  That delicate situation was negotiated by two rational human beings: Kennedy and Khrushchev. Both men, intelligent and sensible, knew it was unthinkable to go to war. So they worked out an agreement where the Russian leader removed his missiles from Cuba and the American president dismantled ours from Turkey.

But that was then, and this is now. Today, the United States appears to be in constant search of a war. Having learned nothing from our past mistakes in Iraq, Libya and Syria, we now threaten Russia with sanctions if they don't do as we wish. After what we did to Iraq, how hypocritical can a nation be?

What are we even doing in their backyard? What does Ukraine have to do with the United States? Did we, as many suggest, engineer the coup there with a bunch of Neo Nazis in order for us to build more missiles near the Russian border? If so, that would take us ever closer to the world hegemony we so eagerly desire.

The Chinese, now ever closer to the Russians, think we have crossed Obama's various lines in the sand to utter insanity. They think we're crazy. I have to agree. Our arrogance and hubris absolutely borders on madness.

If we place sanctions on the Russians, they would retaliate by selling their stash of U.S. dollars so fast, we wouldn't know what hit us. The Chinese would then do the same, and in no time at all the world would be a different place. There are $16 trillion sitting in foreign hands that would no longer want them. The demand for dollars and U.S. Treasury bonds would vaporize.

It seems like everyone in the U.S. mainstream media is calling for war. A well known retired general offered this brilliant piece of wisdom: "We can whip the Russians easy.  They can’t shoot straight.  We should attack and send troops to Poland and send the U.S. Navy to take the Black Sea base from the Russians."

Let us hope that commonsense and reason prevail over our insane hubris and arrogance.

March 7, 2014

COMMERCIALS EVERYWHERE: HAVE MERCY

Have you been watching television lately? Am I the only one aware of commercials taking over every single program? It's getting to the point where the editorial portion of the program is just a matter of filling in space between the commercials. What all this accomplishes, of course, is to reduce the human soul to a mere consumer of stuff.

The most insane advertising is being paid for by the drug companies. For example, do you have an enlarged prostate?. If so, our drug will bring needed relief. Side effects include, heart attacks, strokes, all types of cancers and intense suffering which leads to certain death. Talk to your doctor about shrinking that little bugger of yours.

Is it possible that people actually go to their physicians and ask for prescriptions for these harmless medicines? They sure must. The commercials keep running. That means they must be working.

Please God, if there is an afterlife or spirit world, let it be free of all advertising. I pray to You, Lord, that You provide a resting place devoid of uncultivated, tasteless creeps constantly hawking products at me that I don't need or want. That's all I ask. Thanks in advance, God.

February 12, 2014

THE HUNTING LOOPHOLE

I've been thinking a lot lately about the white tailed deer mating season and how it coincides with that species' hunting season. Having been a fly fisherman all my life, and on those rare occasions when I manage to emerge intellectually victorious over a trout, I carefully remove the little hook, give the beautiful fish a kiss and release him to continue his life's journey.

I first encountered my deer hunting dilemma up in the state of Maine. First, I must tell you that I have nothing against the sport if the motivation is to put  food on the table through the winter. But getting back to the incident in Maine, a woman by the name of Karen Wood was hanging out the laundry in her backyard when a hunter, mistaking her for a deer, blew her head off. And he was found innocent of all charges by claiming the HUNTING LOOPHOLE. After all, he had been hunting. He had made a simple hunting mistake.  What if he was only 90 feet from her clothesline. It was surely understandable when you consider that he had been HUNTING. Can you imagine what the authorities would have done to you and me if we had been slinking around a neighborhood with a high-powered rifle, and, in the process, shot a human being to death----if we could not claim the HUNTING LOOPHOLE?

Again, hypothetically, I have no problem with shooting a deer's head off for the culinary reason stated above. But it seems that hunters throughout the Northeast are complaining that they can no longer locate any "trophy" deer. You see, nature's way of balancing the deer herd is for coyotes and other predators to bring down the weakest animals, allowing the so called trophies to reproduce. So when I hear the trophy hunters bemoan the disappearance of the best and the brightest, I just ask them to look at their walls for an explanation.

Which brings me back to the coincidence of the mating season and hunting season of this proud animal. And I have a theory. Since there are estimated to be 330,000,000 guns out there (one for every man, woman and baby in the country), it would be a fair and just assumption that the majority are in the possession of Conservatives.  (Remember Cheney shooting his own companion). And it is equally obvious that hunting is the sport of choice for the right wing. So do you see what the dovetailing of the mating and the hunting season means? The Conservatives are committing abortion on a grand scale. Oh no, the hypocrisy is too much for my sensibilities.

Well, there is a rumor going around. I can't guarantee its validity. But the few remaining trophy deer are supposedly armed with AK47s and waiting in ambush for the two-legged trophies. And supposedly these deer have access to the very best taxidermists in the Northeast.

December 12, 2013

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE DOLLAR

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE DOLLAR

As the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination approaches, I think it is time to stop living in a fantasy world when it comes to why the United States goes to war, has someone killed or manipulates the gold market. They all have a common theme.

We did not go to war in Iraq because of the so-called weapons of mass destruction that our former pal, the right-wing dictator, Saddam Hussein, supposedly possessed. The real reason we went after Saddam was that he had threatened to use the Euro to sell his oil to the rest of the world. He was going to bypass the U.S. Petrodollar. To the United States government and the Federal Reserve, that constituted a capital crime. He was marked for assassination in order to protect our paper dollar counterfeit scheme.

Likewise in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, another long-time right-wing dictator buddy of the U.S., was killed because he planned to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars, demanding payment instead in gold-backed “dinars” (a single African currency made from gold). The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit. Gaddafi's strategy literally had the potential to bring down the dollar. So much for Gaddafi; he had to be disposed of, as well.

Which brings me back to the JFK killing. When John Kennedy became president, he took an adversarial approach to the Federal Reserve. Knowing full well that our Constitution made it clear that only the U.S. government could mint the money of our country, Kennedy had the U.S. Treasury issue U.S. Treasury notes as opposed to the Federal Reserve notes which are printed by a cartel of private bankers and is blatantly unconstitutional. What Kennedy did was considered sacrilegious by the Federal Reserve and its powerful banker friends. JFK was a marked man. It is my opinion----I can't prove it----that the Fed, its power under siege by a Liberal president, hired a Communist-leaning hit man to do the deed so as to disguise the real motivation.

As is obvious, the overall theme here is to protect the U.S. dollar. The current enemy of the dollar is, of course, gold, which our central bank and its agents, the too-big-to-fail banks, manipulate in an effort to buy time for the reserve currency of the world. It is a hopeless endeavor. The U.S. dollar is fast approaching the endgame.

November 6, 2013

GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN PURE RACISM

                                   
                             GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN PURE RACISM

The shut down of the U.S. government by the bigots on the far right has absolutely nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act. That act was voted on and became the law of the land which was further vetted and upheld by the Supreme Court. Whether they like it or not, they know full well there is nothing they can do about it.

No, the reason for holding the government hostage is all about plain old racism. These Fascists have made it clear that their entire agenda is to bring down Obama. Right wing Conservatives have dealt with numerous Democratic presidents throughout the years, and they somehow always managed to compromise and therefore get things done. But their hatred for Obama is based purely on the color of this President's skin.

Shutting down the government is one thing. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling and plunging the U.S. into default for the first time in history is quite another. The consequences would be catastrophic. So let's see if their blatant racism is great enough for them to ruin the credit of the United States along with the U.S. dollar.

Someone is going to have to blink. In the past it has always been Obama. This time it is the right wing extremists' turn. With the stakes beyond the comatose American people's comprehension, the bigots will blink or the Republican party will be toast.

October 4, 2013

NO BOMBA OBAMA

NO BOMBA OBAMA

There appears to have been no education gained from our experiences in Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. When the United States takes it upon itself to interfere militarily in places where it does not belong, unintended consequences are the inevitable result leading to the loss of life and treasure.

Our allies and our Congress do not seem to be very interested in backing the President's vow to strike Syria for having crossed his ill-advised red line when it comes to chemical weapons. In fact, it is not clear that all of these weapons of mass destruction came from the brutal Assad. The unsavory mix of rebels are certainly not the kind of people you would invite to dinner.

President Obama has gone out of his way to place himself between a rock and a hard place. Let us hope that he does not place ego and personal credibility above common sense. For those of us where education has taken place, we should make it known to the struggling commander-in-chief: NO BOMBA, OBAMA.

September 6, 2013



FINANCIAL CRISIS LOOMS AHEAD

The next financial crisis is a "when," not an "if." The previous meltdown in 2008 was caused by the too-big-to-fail banks. Those same banks are now bigger, and their ridiculously leveraged, opaque, over-the-counter derivative bets are also bigger. Nothing has been done to fix a single thing. In other words, everything that was wrong in 2008 is worse today. 50 million people are on food stamps, 24 million unemployed, 11 million on disability, 76% of Americans have no savings at all, 46% have less than $800 in savings And we are witnessing the conversion of America into a part-time working society.

At the start of the last crisis the Federal Reserve's balance sheet was $800 billion. Today it is $3.3 trillion and increasing at $1 trillion a year. What you have, therefore, is a banking system that is bigger and riskier than it was in 2008 and no funds to bail them out when the inevitable takes place because the Federal Reserved is tapped out.

 As long-term bonds, the largest bubble in financial history, is bursting before our eyes, interest rates will continue to rise which will make it more and more difficult for the U.S. Treasury to finance its existing debt with new debt. This Ponzi scheme will go on as long as people and rigged markets remain addicted to the heroin of paper money created out of thin air.

To maintain the confidence and delay the inescapable crisis that looms ahead, the government issues phony numbers on GDP, unemployment, inflation etc. But as the old saying goes: "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

We are now seeing the beginning of the dreaded loss in confidence. Foreigners just sold a record number of U.S. Treasury bonds in a desperate effort to get out of harm's way. New housing starts just plunged 13% in a single month. This further traps the Fed, since  there is no way for them to taper their $85 billion purchase of bonds per month. Should they do so, the markets and the economy would collapse, and the Fed would have to return with even greater stimulus. Always remember, as another familiar adage makes clear: "The emperor has no clothes."

August 24, 2013