All Wars Are Bankers' Wars

All Wars Are Bankers’ Wars: This documentary film explores the central banking’s connection behind America’s wars. Direct quotes from the founders, presidents, and other world leaders are cited regarding each of the major wars America was involved in, beginning with the American Revolution, King George III and Benjamin Franklin, and culminating with a warning and solution to avoiding World War III.

Watch video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5hfEBupAeo4

A Staunch Liberal Who Believes Today's Media Is Dangerous

This past September 21st Pat Caddell gave a speech at the Accuracy in Media Conference.  Caddell is a Democratic pollster who worked for George McGovern and served as pollster for Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, Joe Biden, Jerry Brown and others.  He is currently, among other things, a Fox News analyst.  The transcript of his speech is linked below.  Early in his speech he said: "I think we're at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not."  It is fair to say that he harbors serious concerns with mainstream media bias and its unique power to influence public thinking.  Since the speech is quite long I will offer four more quotes to provide a taste for what he covers.

"We have a First Amendment not because the Founding Fathers liked the press—they hated the press—but they believed, as [Thomas] Jefferson said, that in order to have a free country, in order to be a free people, we needed a free press."

"We designed a constitutional system with many checks and balances. The one that had no checks and balances was the press, and that was done under an implicit understanding that, somehow, the press would protect the people from the government and the power by telling—somehow allowing—people to have the truth. That is being abrogated as we speak, and has been for some time. It is now creating the danger that I spoke to."

"George Stephanopoulos, a former advisor to Bill Clinton—who every morning, while Rahm Emmanuel was Chief of Staff, had his call with Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville, and the three of them have been doing it for years—and he is held out as a journalist. He has two platforms. I mean, he’s a political hack masquerading as a journalist."

"But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people."

I think you get the point.  Time permitting, read the entire speech and the Q&A portion, too.  For a more recent example of Caddell's point see second link.  George Burns

http://www.aim.org/video/pat-caddell-the-audacity-of-corruption/

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/02/28/from-the-most-transparent-administration-in-history-to-threatening-and-attacking-bob-woodward/?singlepage=true

 

Thought's of the day

Sequestration Apocalypse NOW

 

The left is in full-fledged freak out mode over the coming sequestration apocalypse NOW. Only government would be alarmed at trimming a $3.6 trillion budget by 2% or less. It’s absolute nonsense. Could the sequester be a blessing in disguise?

Maxine Waters makes dumbest point ever, claims 170 million jobs will be lost

 

It wasn’t long ago that Nancy Pelosi claimed 500 million jobs would be lost per month if there was no government stimulus. Maxine Waters is taking a page from Skeletor’s book by claiming if no deal is made on the sequester cuts, 170 million jobs will be cut. Quite a claim considering only about 130 million people in America have jobs.

State Department’s Keystone report

The State Department released preliminary findings of a new environmental impact study surrounding the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, but made no clear recommendation as to whether the the pipeline should be held up for environmental or economic reasons. Trying to make sense of the nearly 2,000 pages of findings were fluster by one State Department official who stressed that the document “does not come out one way or the other and make a decision” about whether the U.S. should or should not go forward with the project. 

The Obama Debt Tracker

More than $6 trillion of total new national debt added in just 4.1 years.

Since President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated into office just over four years ago, Obama, the democrats, and a few spineless republican "leaders" in congress have increased the total combined national debt by more than six trillion dollars:



Date                   Debt Held by the Public         Intragovernmental Holdings   Total Public Debt Outstanding

01/20/2009        6,307,310,739,681.66          4,319,566,309,231.42          10,626,877,048,913.08
02/28/2013      11,822,436,182,671.08          4,864,852,997,544.29          16,687,289,180,215.37


In this time period, the debt has increased precisely $6,060,412,131,302.29, and worst of all, the overwhelming bulk of this is debt held by the public which has been borrowed from foreign governments like the communist Chinese.

This is an absolutely mind-blowing increase of over $4 billion each and every single day. Six trillion dollars is approximately $19,000 for every single man, woman, and child in the United States.

And given that true economic recovery appears to be nowhere in sight and the federal reserve continues to endlessly monetize the debt and pump countless billions into the markets via quantitative easing, it is pretty much a certainly that the next trillion dollars of debt will be accumulated before we know it.

Sequester

During his press conference on friday the President provided his assessment of the implications of sequester. Mr. Obama continued his dissembling.  He was calm and serious in his presentation and told the White House press corps and the public that he had done all he could to reach a compromise to avoid the sequester from happening.  He made it clear that he was not successful because Republicans were unwilling to yield to his position on a compromise of his choosing.  He failed to mention that sequester was his idea.  He failed to mention that his so call attempt at compromise was really a breach of his prior agreement to not raise taxes (the Republicans compromised last year by giving in to his demands for both a tax increase and an increase in the debt ceiling in exchange for honest efforts in 2013 to reform the tax code, reform entitlement programs, and stop tax increases).  He did not mention that he signed the sequester into law.  He failed to mention that he reneged on his no tax increase promise by refusing to compromise on any Republican offer unless the deal included another increase in taxes.  He failed to mention that the Republican controlled House of Representatives had passed two proposals to minimize the impacts of sequester but that the Democrat controlled Senate (Harry Reid) refused to consider either of them.  He failed to mention that the "so called" draconian cuts that sequester imposes were just a 2.4%  reduction in INCREASES in government spending spread over the next TEN years.  He talked a good game in the press conference but failed yet again to tell the truth.  He did, however, present examples of harm to the American people that the sequester HE signed into law that evoke emotional feelings rather than rational thoughts (ie: teachers being laid off, kids no longer having access to day care, border guards laid off, workers getting less pay and impacting family incomes, etc).  He did not mention the rational steps that minimize human emotions such as removing waste or eliminating redundant and/or useless programs/offices.  He/his bureaucrasies have that authority. There are billions that can be saved by taking such steps.  Nor did he mention that the net affect of what he wants to do by undoing the sequester is to continue to spend more of what WE pay in taxes or what HE can borrow from those willing to loan us more money at interest.  Interest, by the way, that WE have to pay with yet MORE of OUR taxes.  His expressed concern for the American people and our economy is hard to fathom.  Indeed, the constraints on our economy imposed by his regulatory blizzard and his reckless spending, on the other hand, have hurt and hurt bad.  His four years in office have been filled with economic malaise, increased bankruptsies, unemployment at or near 8% (longer than any period since the Great Depression) and little measurable real growth while government spending increased by 16 PERCENT (much of it wasted on bailouts with losses estimated to be in the billions, crony paybacks, failed green energy investments, etc.).  The fact is that sequester is nothing more than a bit more than a 2% reduction in the amount the government can spend over the next 10 years.  After a 16% increase in the last four years, reasonable people would agree that this small reduction in spending growth over ten years should be manageable. Economic growth results from private enterprise economic activity; not government spending which in fact removes money from the economy via taxation.  The President's misrepresentations are intended to deflect attention away from, if you will, the harm he has had a large part in inflicting on us/the nation while simultaneously trying to convince us that he has really done just the opposite.  In other words he is trying to convince us that our problems are all the fault of the uncooperative and misguided republicans who will not compromise with HIM because they do not realize that it is HE who has all the answers.  However, his credibility on the whole sequester matter deserves serious inquiry.  The below links provides insight.   George Burns

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/022813-646267-obama-labels-new-revenues-as-spending-cuts.htm

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/02/28/obama/

The Real Objective

This short piece goes beyond the comments I offered in the sequester email sent this afternoon.  George Burns

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-caddell-schoen-criticism/2013/03/01/id/492739?s=al&promo_code=12A45-1

Dallas Fed’s Fisher: Fed Should End its ‘Monetary Ritalin’

Now is the time of the Fed to end its “monetary Ritalin,” says Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher.

“I think it’s really time to taper this off,” Fisher told CNBC. “It doesn’t mean stop it. We’re not going from Wild Turkey to cold turkey. But I do think we’ve run up to the limits of the efficacy of what we’re doing. It’s a good time to do it.”

The Fed is buying $85 billion of mortgage-backed securities and Treasury holdings a month in an effort to keep interest rates low and spur the economy and reduce unemployment.

Read more: http://www.moneynews.com/Economy/Fisher-Fed-Ritalin-monetary-policy/2013/03/01/id/492715?s=al&promo_code=12A45-1#ixzz2MLH7GDeh

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT'S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!!!

WHERE DID THAT MONEY GO?

 

Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500. Read that again. Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny? We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government. Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back. If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd have $892,919.98.

 

If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.

 

Another thing with me.... I have two deceased husbands who died in their 50's, (one was 51 and the other one was 59 before one percent of their social security could be drawn. I worked all my life and am drawing 100% on my own social security). Their S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S. all their lives.

 

THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.

 

Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance! Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!

 

Remember Congressional benefits? --- free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days. Now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?

 

We're "broke" and we can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless. Yet in the last few months we have provided aid to Haiti , Chile and Turkey . And now Pakistan ......home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!

 

Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed S.S. income' receive no additional federal aid nor do they get any financial breaks, while our government and religious organizations pour hundreds of billions of $$$ and tons of food to foreign countries!

 

They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.