Monday, August 30, 2010

Ben Bernanke, The Man in the Mirror!

When most of us look in the mirror what we see is the reverse image of our self, but sometimes we even miss that reality.

And this is exactly the problem that Bernanke and the FED are experiencing, the illusion, that he can save the economy by taking the country further into debt. The more money the FED creates becomes a larger burden on us, the US taxpayers.

How much can we undertake while the economy languished on the edge of total collapse?

Psychiatrists agree that our government is actually insane, why? Because the very definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and to expect a different outcome, surely Ben Bernanke and the FED meet this standard.

Through the first quarter of this year, Bernanke printed $1.5 trillion of paper currency and promptly bought $1.5 trillion in mortgage bonds, government agency bonds, and Treasury bonds. Now these bonds are an obligation imposed on the US taxpayers, who by the way are mainly economically indisposed.

But even as the entire effort was a failure, Bernanke is at it again.

If Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke honestly believes what he said at Jackson Hole on Friday — that he can save the economy by printing more money and buying more bonds — he needs to see a psychiatrists, the indication of this attempt to bolster the economy by acquiring more of the banks products, hasn’t stimulated the economy one bit. In fact the opposite has actually occurred, and hiding the true numbers of America’s unemployed is like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Unemployment doesn’t go away simply because of wishful thinking.

America needs jobs, real jobs to jump start the economy, and the illusion that jobs are being created won’t make the economy stronger. But where will these jobs come from?

One approach is to make it more expensive for companies that are outsourcing American jobs, through higher taxation, this is a real solution! Inflating the economy will have a dire consequence, higher prices and a deeper prolonged depression, that’s right depression!

Lessons were learned from the 1930’s but it takes an intellect to read what the government did to stimulate the economy, and after all what it took in the end hasn’t worked today, it took a world war… today our war efforts haven’t been able to stimulate the economy even though we have become a nation perpetually at war, why, because even our weapons and weaponry are outsourced, it appears even our own government has a greater interest in the world economy, lacking a real insight or concern for its own people!

Bernanke is a man that sees a different image in the mirror, and that image speaks a different language.

It will take a different administration to solve the problems facing America, doing the same thing over and over always results in the same outcome and Obama has yet to understand economics 101, but then, neither has our economist Bernanke.

Friday, August 13, 2010

NATO Alliance appears to be falling apart

The Netherlands has become the first country to actually end hostilities in Afghanistan , but they are not alone.

Canada is withdrawing troops next year, the UK has downsized its forces but is considering downsizing additional involvement, and Poland is pulling out by 2012. Germany is also considering scaling back their forces.

The NATO countries with the exception of the US no longer see the wisdom of a struggle that appears to be unwinnable. We are not winning the hearts and minds of the people, by killing them!

Civilian causalities in July alone number 270 and more than 600 wounded. And we are loosing the prime of America , our service men and women who are struggling to understand why they are there. Those that survive will carry the scars of war.

Afghanistan is no stranger to war, having achieved independence in 1919, yet while so many countries having invaded it; no country has been able to defeat it. With over two decades of wars, Afghanistan is left with a legacy of landmines that kill and maim Afghanistan civilians every month.

Countries that have tried and failed; The Persians, Greeks, Arabs, British, Mongols, Russians and now Americans have all in their turn tried to defeat these people, each has failed. But America has made the greatest mistake in failing to understand the resolve of these people. America was an invader, but more than that America has killed more than 20,000 civilians which are considered “collateral damage” a house could be considered collateral damage, but certainly we care more about humans, or at least we should.

America has made the grandest of mistakes, forging a war based on a lie, the so called War on Terror was not about 9-11 so much as the oil pipeline across the country. Now after civilian deaths are mounting and resentment is building among the people, other countries want out, but America has invested billions of dollars in Afghanistan infrastructure, with the view to remaining in the country indefinitely.

As Davis Petraeus, recently said of the Afghanistan struggle, "If we kill civilians or damage their property in the course of our operations, we will create more enemies than our operations eliminate,"

This we have done, we have created more terrorists than we have eliminated, and have been the best recruitment vehicle for the Taliban. Families are carrying photos of children maimed by US led NATO forces, chanting “Death to America ! Death to NATO”

Yes General Petraeus you are so right! What we have accomplished in the Mideast . We have made enemies that will last for two or more generations, and we have made the world less safe for Americans.

What’s left to accomplish?

It’s now time to bring our troops home!

War is America’s greatest export

We have been at war almost every year since the founding of the republic. War has become our way of life, viewed in its greatest light from movies, to video games to the ROTC it is never out of our range of vision

But most of these wars have been illegal, like Korea - Vietnam - Cambodia - Granada - Panama - Kosovo - Afghanistan - and twice with Iraq, yet there were many more, the side excursions and support operations in a dozen other places around the globe.

American presidents have declared war in each instance or declared a “police Action” where America service personnel have been deployed to foreign places without congresses participation, yet to declare war is a function of congress and any attempt to pass that responsibility to the president is an act considered to be ultra vires, yet our people continue to go where they are sent and to die there! We ask for what cause?

Did we protect our freedom by invading Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Granada, Panama, Kosovo, Afghanistan, or Iraq? Or was there some ulterior motive for our wars of choice?

Like resources?

War has always been our way of life. War is our culture. War is our industry and our chief export. And as long as Americans are willing to fight and die for causes they don’t understand it will remain our heritage.

War simply, is about everything and yet about nothing, it is the essence of historical fabrication. War has always lacked honesty and integrity! War requires propaganda to incite the population, and that means that the Media Must be controlled!

War is for the large corporations who profit from our death, the banks that finance this travesty, and unconscionably for oil and drugs, the resource that draws us in.

War is a travesty that we force upon nation. It is a mockery of modern civilizations. War promotes no just end but brings suffering and spreads violence, because for every one America kills dozens will spring forth to revenge them, and so we are perpetually fighting a cause that we as a nation are too ignorant to understand. Violence will always be met with violence. Just as intellect will be met with speech!

Perhaps the way to peace is to have the leaders of the country’s embittered to stand against each other and spare the populations a needless letting of their blood.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we as a people will see through this charade and say, we have had enough, NO more!

Obama gives Due Process a new meaning

Since the founding of our republic due process has meant an established course for judicial proceedings or other governmental activities designed to safeguard the legal rights of the individual. These safeguards comport with our constitutional provisions regarding criminal procedure and are found in Amendments IV, V, VI, and VIII.

When an official of government becomes a judge, a jury and an executioner, there has been no justice, and therefore No Due Process.

This has now become the state of our law.

President Obama, who is himself an attorney, has authorized our CIA to assassinate an American citizen without providing this individual his day in court, indeed this is a very dangerous precedent.

Anwar al-Awlaki, is a Muslim cleric, born in New Mexico US, he is an American Citizen by birth. He stands accused of having ties to al-Qaeda in Yemen and links to two attacks inside the United States last year.

Awlaki may stand accused of these crimes but has not been convicted in any court of law, indeed he has not even been tried in absentia. The CIA has added Awlaki to a growing list of about two dozen people targeted for assassination. Several are Americans.

Both Bush and Obama have justified these lethal policies under what they perceive to be “the laws of war” which they premise allows them to use lethal force against enemy combatants. However, Enemy combatant is a term historically referring to members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. But Awlaki has not been personally involved in attacks against either American’s or our interests, neither has he been involved in armed confrontations with US or NATO forces. So to apply this term against Awlaki may be an abuse of a political discretion and policy.

Of concern is that these death lists may be used to kill individuals far from any battlefield or when they are not presenting an immediate threat.

As for Awlaki, it is also unclear what intelligence exists that would justify CIA and military forces to hunt him down and kill him without any judicial review.

In February, constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, who has become a champion of Civil rights, offered his opinion, “American citizens have the same protections whether on US soil or not”, pointing to Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957),

This round of assassinations is yet another thorn prodding the American psyche. It is a dangerous precedent and should not be employed except as a last resort, and then only in an unusual circumstance with undisputed, verified and collaborated evidence.

The danger that emanates from this policy is that any American may be placed on this list even while living in the US, merely because he speaks out against government policy, this is not China or Russia, this is the United States, and so far we retain that right to descent.

As far as political expediency this is truly a step back through that portal leading to a medieval time, and the end result will be the creation of another Martyr eliciting more anger toward the US.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Wake Up People!

People just don’t get it!

A recent Rasmussen Poll shows that 58% of American consumers are against an Obama administration plan for partial mortgage forgiveness.

Their reasoning, which really escapes me, is that it will be unfair for those who are making their payments on time!

As Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz once said, “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

People are way and afar upside down in their mortgages because banks like Countrywide scammed them into taking out loans that bank executives and their colleagues knew were for more than the properties were worth.

Appraisers were even in on the scams. They were paid by the banks to overvalue these properties, and why? Because the banks were making points based on the amounts of the loans they made.

Now, for the first time during the Obama administration, the President comes up with an idea that will really help the economy and the American people, in their insatiable need to profess ignorance, don’t get it.

Even the homeowners it would help don’t get it. It makes me wonder if perhaps the fluoride in America’s drinking water has really destroyed too many brain cells and America simply can’t think.

It was the banks that brought the mortgage value to its current low level, not the homeowners. You cannot continue to foreclose at the level the banks were without dropping the entire market. In Las Vegas alone, there were, at one point, 80,000 foreclosures pending and more than 1,000 occurring daily.

To add to the picture, the subprime loans made to prime borrowers had payments that reset higher -- in some cases, the mortgage payment actually doubled. Is this the borrowers fault? I think not, as evidenced by recent litigation proving that bank fraud was overwhelmingly evident with ALL banks. Yet, the government bailed out the financial institutions and consumers applauded. But now that Obama finally appears to have taken an interest in saving borrowers along with the economy, America can’t see the forest for the trees.

Please explain to me why the majority of Americans simply don’t understand that the massively high foreclosure rate has destroyed not only the mortgage values in the surrounding areas of these homes but the economy itself. How does it benefit society to have more than 4% of U.S. homes sitting vacant while families are forced to live in tent cities?

One of the major obstacles to sustained job growth is the lack of a semblance of stability in the economy. Keeping people in their homes would be a good beginning.

Foreclosures have dragged the economy to its current low. The subprime interest rate, with its variable teaser – which, by the way, was given to prime borrowers -- has drained society of money that could have sustained the economy without us ever having had to get into this crisis. This financial crisis has been based on greed, and we, the unassuming public, have been the pawns of an elite financial society that feeds on us.

Come on America. Wake up, the roses are dying!

As an interesting side note, I took a poll in an office with 32 employees and all were in favor of the President’s plan!

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Obama takes cronyism to a new level surpassing George W. Bush

In the midst of the worst “depression” since the 1930’s, President Obama, already considered a puppet of big business and discredited as a real president, has used $17,000,000 in stimulus money to create jobs. But not as you would expect!

It appears that the president’s wife has a brother.

The First Lady’s brother just happens to be Craig Robinson, basketball coach at Oregon State University. He is, of course, related to the President by marriage.

Obama’s Undersecretary of Education, Martha Kanter, upon learning of the termination of the President’s brother-in- law, was immediately dispatched by Obama to the University with a check in hand for $17,000,000 to give to the University’s Athletic Director, Bob DeCarolis, so that Robinson could retain his job!.

And, yes, the president’s brother-in -law is still employed.

It all goes to show that stimulus money can save jobs -- but only if you are related to the president!

Monday, August 2, 2010

NATO Alliance appears to be falling apart

The Netherlands has become the first country to actually end hostilities in Afghanistan , but they are not alone.

Canada is withdrawing troops next year, the UK has downsized its forces but is considering downsizing additional involvement, and Poland is pulling out by 2012. Germany is also considering scaling back their forces.

The NATO countries with the exception of the US no longer see the wisdom of a struggle that appears to be unwinnable. We are not winning the hearts and minds of the people, by killing them!

Civilian causalities in July alone number 270 and more than 600 wounded. And we are loosing the prime of America , our service men and women who are struggling to understand why they are there. Those that survive will carry the scars of war.

Afghanistan is no stranger to war, having achieved independence in 1919, yet while so many countries having invaded it; no country has been able to defeat it. With over two decades of wars, Afghanistan is left with a legacy of landmines that kill and maim Afghanistan civilians every month.

Countries that have tried and failed; The Persians, Greeks, Arabs, British, Mongols, Russians and now Americans have all in their turn tried to defeat these people, each has failed. But America has made the greatest mistake in failing to understand the resolve of these people. America was an invader, but more than that America has killed more than 20,000 civilians which are considered “collateral damage” a house could be considered collateral damage, but certainly we care more about humans, or at least we should. America has made the grandest of mistakes, forging a war based on a lie, the so called War on Terror was not about 9-11 so much as the oil pipeline across the country. Now after civilian deaths are mounting and resentment is building among the people, other countries want out, but America has invested billions of dollars in Afghanistan infrastructure, with the view to remaining in the country indefinitely.

As Davis Petraeus, recently said of the Afghanistan struggle, "If we kill civilians or damage their property in the course of our operations, we will create more enemies than our operations eliminate,"

This we have done, we have created more terrorists than we have eliminated, and have been the best recruitment vehicle for the Taliban. Families are carrying photos of children maimed by US led NATO forces, chanting “Death to America ! Death to NATO” Yes General Petraeus you are so right!

What we have accomplished in the Mideast . We have made enemies that will last for two or more generations, and we have made the world less safe for Americans. What’s left to accomplish? It’s now time to bring our troops home!