Independence Day Cancelled

(API) In an unprecedented move, Independence Day has been canceled this year. According to a White House spokeperson, next year it will be replaced by Interdependence Day celebrate our need to rely ever more upon our Government and the end of the failed experiment in self-rule that marked the United States of the past.
More than 300 communities nationwide are canceling fireworks and celebrations. Spokesperson Hairy Blount stated that it was only right to eliminate this expensive waste of scarce energy and even government money that merely celebrated the "old dead white guys" that were originally responsible for the problems of the world today. "Besides', Blount stated, "think of the pollution that fireworks cause and its effect on the California Mud Dauber Wasp, an endangered species."
A joint Congressional - White House task force has tentatively settled on May first as the day of the proposed Interdepence Day holiday. Blount said "This will put us in step with the rest of the world."
Of course the usual far-right fringe groups and hate talk radio objected.

==30==

Note: More than 300 communities nationwide are canceling fireworks and celebrations -- perhaps yours too? Coincidence? I think not.

1 in 8 Went Hungry Last Year Campaign

We are currently being blitzed with ad advertising campaign that "1 in 8 went hungry last year - especially children" and "look at the people around you, 1 in 8 is not getting enough to eat", and "of every eight people you see interviewed on the news, one went hungry."
I did a search trying to find the source of this statistic. One of the first I found was Anderson Cooper's article. It and its comments constantly reference food banks, but not one reference to food stamps or the free and reduced lunch program. Nor is there any definition of what they mean by going hungry. (Does Weight Watchers count? As one of the commenters wrote "America is the only place I know that has 'hungry' people that are over weight")

Why does no one question this survey? It is treated like it is sacrosanct. Is it because the results support the conclusions they want to see? What constitutes hungry by their definition? I believe the original CNN survey was skewed deliberately with questions like "In the last year have you ever gone to bed hungry?" Even I can answer that one yes, but I was trying to avoid a late night snack that would give me reflux. And don't even get me started about the seven weeks I went without eating when I was receiving my cancer treatments - how would that count?

And how does anyone avoid the government food programs - especially the "Free and Reduced Lunch (and breakfast) Program"? I work in a school system and actually see the wasted food from the program - have you ever seen it? Of course this wasted food can't be reused, not even for the hogs, because it has been on a student's plate and then thrown away. This contributes so heavily to our refuse collection that we are having to retrofit our schools with trash compactor dumpsters.

Several of our schools have better than (better than?) 95% free lunch participation. Forget the reduced, it exists in name service only. Some of our schools even have a Summer drop-in for lunch program. Children may have lunch even if they are not in Summer school. For a child to go hungry in the United States requires a deliberate act of avoidance. But you cannot tell this 95% participation by the parent drop off lane. The cars driven are not the cheap beaters you would expect from a low income school - Mercedes and Lexus. What we really have, is like you say, misplaced priorities. But it is the misplaced priorities of the parents, not those of the government or the other members of society. The parents care more about the status of what they drive than how they feed their kids. But that is because we made it so they don't have to care - we will feed their children for them. That money is then free for toys and luxuries. This is turn weakens the family bond. Is that the real goal?

And Lucy, the food does miraculously appear on their kitchen tables. That is because of the current version of the food stamp program which is handled by an EBT card, so that the presenters don't even receive the scornful looks of the taxpayers at their over loaded carts. But, believe-it-or-not, there is resentment over this new system from the recipients. They can no longer have the change in cash to do with as they please. Bummer.

No one questions why after 40 years of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs - why is there reportedly more hunger now than before? Can it be because we are enabling irresponsible behavior?

Sixties Revival - Time To Bring Back An Oldie

Taxman
The Beatles

One, two, three, four...
Hrmm!
One, two, (one, two, three, four!)

Let me tell you how it will be;
There's one for you, nineteen for me.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all.
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

(if you drive a car;) - I'll tax the street;
(if you try to sit;) - I'll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold;) - I'll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk;) - I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Don't ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Obama)
If you don't want to pay some more. (ah-ah, miss Pelosi)
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
'Cause I'm the taxman,
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

And you're working for no one but me.

Taxman!

More equal that others

From NONE DARE CALL IT CONSPIRACY by Gary Allen (pub. 1971)

Our problem is that most of us believe socialism is what the socialists want us to believe it is-a share-the wealth program. That is the theory. But is that how it works? Let us examine the only Socialist countries according to the Socialist definition of the word extant in the world today. These are the Communist countries. The Communists themselves refer to these as Socialist countries, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Here in the reality of socialism you have a tiny oligarchial clique at the top, usually numbering no more than three percent of the total population, controlling the total wealth, total production and the very lives of the other ninety-seven percent. Certainly even the most naive observe that Mr. Brezhnev doesn't live like one of the poor peasants out on the great Russian steppes. But, according to socialist theory, he is supposed to do just that!

If one understands that socialism is not a share-the Wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite. The plan of the conspirator Insiders then is to socialize the United States, not to Communize it.

Need proof? Just try to imagine Michelle Obama* or Nancy Pelosi sitting in a waiting room with you to see your coming Government Socialized Medical Office doctor. Or any government office for that matter. The elite plan to stay elite - if not more so. For that matter, imagine any public official or their spouse having to put up with that same Government bureaucracy as you. As George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

*Remember, she is just a private person - just like you.

The Velocity of Money

Cash goes round and round
based on a post by Sabine McNeill

It is August. In a small town on the Florida panhandle, holiday season is in full swing, but it is raining so there is not too much business happening. Everyone is heavily in debt. Luckily, a rich English tourist arrives in the foyer of the small local hotel. He asks for a room and puts a one hundred dollar Federal Reserve note on the reception counter, takes a key and goes to inspect the room located up the stairs on the third floor.

The hotel owner takes the banknote in a hurry and rushes to his meat supplier to whom he owes $100.

The butcher takes the money and races to his supplier to pay his debt.

The wholesaler rushes to the farmer to pay $100 for pigs he purchased some time ago.

The farmer triumphantly gives the $100 note to a local prostitute who gave him her services on credit. (Bear with me, It's just a parable)

The prostitute goes quickly to Mr. Patel, the hotel manager, to whom she owed $100 for the use of a room to entertain "clients".

At that moment, the rich Englishman is coming down to reception and informs the hotel owner that the proposed room is unsatisfactory, takes back his $100 bill, and departs. There was no profit or income, but everyone no longer has any debt, and the small townspeople look optimistically towards their future.

And the moral of the story?
Cash is ‘real’. An IOU is TRUST.

What Is A Dollar?

From The Coinage Act of April 2, 1792 (1 Stat. 246) comes the answer to my long standing question " What is a dollar?

DOLLARS OR UNITS--each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver.

What is a dollar not?

A dollar is not a rectangular piece of green paper 6.14 inches long and 2.61 inches wide. You may call that a dollar bill if you like or a note, but it is not a dollar. What is this banknote we call a dollar bill? It is a kind of negotiable instrument, a promissory note made by a bank payable to the bearer on demand in dollars. A dollar has a specific absolute definition. It is not self-referential.

The dollar and its fortunes, and the United States of America and its fortunes are inextricably tied together for all time. luxomni

Debasing Our Currency

From the The Coinage Act of April 2, 1792
(1 Stat. 246)

Section 19. And be it further enacted, That if any of the gold or silver coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint shall be debased or made worse as to the proportion of the fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same out to be pursuant to the directions of this act, through the default or with the connivance of any of the officers or persons who shall be employed at the said mint, for the purpose of profit or gain, or otherwise with a fraudulent intent, and if any of the said officers or persons shall embezzle any of the metals which shall at any time be committed to their charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins which shall be struck or coined at the said mint, every such officer or person who shall commit any or either of the said offenses, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and shall suffer death.

It sounds like our founding fathers were a little serious about their money. I wonder what they would think of the current lot of rounders who occupy Washington, DC, today, who are not content to debase the currency 100%, but are now debasing even that? Out predecessors were so serious about unbacked money that even Lincoln's piddling little foray into United States Notes reverberated anger for fifty years. And that was a parallel currency to provide liquidity in times of hoarding.

The United States Constitution itself is also rather serious about its money. From Article One, section 10 reads:

Section 10. No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.

It sounds like a restriction only on the states, but it is a restriction on itself as well, for in those days we truly were the United States of America, and not the People's Republic of America as we morphed into from the early 20th Century under the Progressives culminating in President Obama. And the Federal Government restricted by the Constitution and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments could do nothing that the states could not legally do unless written into the Constitution.

Where is Our News?

Where is Our News? Covering the important stuff like Paris Hilton and Perez Hilton. Keeping us up to date on Madonna's adoption and the Iranian non-election*. Italy? American media's big interest in Italy right now is a murder trial of a college exchange student.

What is Europe talking about? Bonds. U. S. Federal Reserve Bonds. U. S. bearer bonds**. One hundred thirty-four billion dollars worth being smuggled through Italy to Switzerland by two middle-aged Japanese men. The amount is so great, very few countries have holdings that size or larger. The story is being circulated that the bonds are either smuggled for secret liquidation so as not to depress the price prior to sale; or counterfeit. Counterfeit? "Let me borrow a bond for a few days so I can copy it in fine detail"? Not bloody likely.



So whose are they? Who is missing 134 billion dollars?
Who is secretly cashing out their American holdings?
Do you suppose they are a little p.o.ed?
And do Japanese still commit hari-kari when they make a big screw-up?

Will someone please wake up the American news services.




*The results of the election are almost immaterial. The President is but a spokesman for the Mullahs who really run the country and even choose the candidates for the election.
**Yes, they are bearer bonds. Despite what some pundits are saying, ownership may be transferred without re-registration and presented by any agent. Hence, bearer bonds.

Do you reject news based on who brings it to you?

Or even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

A fair warning. I am referring you to a video produced by Lydon LaRouches's people. I know little of Larouche other than what NBC, CBS, and CNN have told me. But I also know that the networks lie when they feel it will help the Progressive Statist cause. But the facts in the video seem to comply with history that I read in the past before the history books became so bland and politically correct.

And yes, I feel much personal trepidation about the Progressives and their historically stated and now strangely silent eugenic goals about the useless, as my old age, retirement and imminent uselessness approach.

Have provided Caveat Emptors, let me point you to the following You Tube video that pretty well sums up my sneaking suspicions and conclusions.

Brave New World Order?

From the Foreword from the second printing of the Aldous Huxley's classic, Brave New World:

"There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarians should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

"To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and school teachers."

On the Worth of Man

From Economic, one of George Bernard Shaw's Fabian Essays (1889)

"It was the increase of population that spread cultivation and civilization from the center to the snow line, and at last forced men to sell themselves to the lords of the soil: it is the same "force that continues to multiply men so that their exchange value fails slowly and surely until it disappears altogether - until even black chattel slaves are released as not worth keeping in a land where men of all colors are to be had for nothing. This is the condition of our English laborers today: they are no longer even dirt cheap; they are valueless, and can be had for nothing.

...

But your slaves are beyond caring for your cries: they breed like rabbits; and their poverty breeds filth, ugliness, dishonesty, disease, obscenity, drunkenness, and murder. In the midst of the riches which their labour piles up for you, their misery rises up too and stifles you. You withdraw in disgust to the other end of the town from them; you appoint special carriages on your railways and special seats in your churches and theaters for them; you set your life apart from theirs by every class barrier you can devise; and yet they swarm about you still: your face gets stamped with your habitual loathing and suspicion of them: your ears get so filled with the language of the vilest of them that you break into it when you lose your self-control: they poison your life as remorselessly as you have sacrificed theirs heartlessly."


Ah, How the Elite love their underclass.

Useless Eaters or Do You Suppose They Are Meant What They Wrote?

My brother used to describe it as "Paranoia, the thinking man's mental illness". I ponder "suppose the really are out to get us?" Or more correctly, do you suppose the originators of the Progressive Movement and eugenics really meant what they wrote?

By writing here "look at what they are doing", I am adding myself to the list of crackpots and whack-jobs who see conspiracies behind every tree; but why then do all the pieces fit together so neatly?

People like George Bernard Shaw, Jeremy Bentham, William Petty-the Earl of Shelburne, H.G. Wells and Lord Bertrand Russell are generally credited with setting the wheels in motion for Progressivism. They are generally thought of as thinkers, not rulers, so what was their goal? They were following by less than one hundred years the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus who wrote on over-population and the potential, nay certainty, of ultimately population outstripping the production of food to support them. The Progressives would have undoubtedly been aware of Malthus' work and the Malthusian Trap. And Eugenics was long ago an advocated Progressive idea that is now never mentioned directly.

The presumption of the Glen Becks of the world is that the goal is to rule. To enslave us. But what if ... what if the goal is to thin the herd? To reduce the population. The elimination of a few million, tens-of-millions, hundreds-of-millions, or even billions of us to conserve the resources of the earth. One would presume that they would exempt themselves from this plan, by sheer nature of their importance to the system, just as they can lecture us about driving our family car to the store while they fly a 747 from Washington to Richmond, VA.

What would be evidence of that kind of thought? Of course there were the Jumbo-Wars of World War I and II. Millions killed for little or no reason. What if they had all lived and propagated - now a second or third generation after WWII? Okay, but wars are getting more efficient. They aren't killing off the number they used to.

Abortion? Which side is the pro-abortion side? The Progressives, of course. Suppose that each of the 36 million aborted babies had lived? And bred again (and again)?

Euthanasia? Get rid of more useless eaters.

Homosexuality? Even without AIDS, it is a population reducer. Why else would the schools and the television elevate its position from fringe to normal? Now they are even stressing marriage to encourage a lifetime non-breeding commitment.

Medicine? Ration health care to the old and poor useless eaters and they are gone.

Gun control and crime control? Keep crime out among the masses. Take guns from the honest and law-abiding. No guns to protect yourselves as decreed by the people with armed guards who live in gated communities or estates.

Have the media constantly panic the sheeple, especially about food or health issues. Did you ever know anyone to eat an ALAR poisoned apple? Constant panic on non-issues raises the stress level.

Drugs? By making it a profitable contraband, the use of drugs is actually encouraged and the increased profits increase violent crime. Who is even shocked anymore by the daily inner city drug shooting(s)?

And finally, the wink and nod toward the Muslim countries developing atomic weapons. When, not if, it happens, the blast will be in an inner city killing millions of the people the Progressives would like to get rid of anyway. Endgame. Mostly useless eaters gone.

"The 'surplus population' thus created is targeted for death as 'useless eaters' in terms so clearly expressed in the Global 2000 Report [to the President].

"By the year 2000 the world SHALL have rid itself of at least 100 million 'useless eaters' and by the year 2050, the number culled SHALL amount to not less than 400 million." (Page nine, paragraph four)"

I have long wondered why the Liberal Democrats always seemed to be on the side of death. My problem was that I viewed it as a coincidence. That Perhaps they instinctively thought that if the Pro-Life Republicans opposed an issue then they were obliged to favor it. I no longer think that that ignorance applies to the leaders of the Democratic Party. But how do you explain the millions of people at the bottom of that pyramid - the useless eaters that the Liberal, Progressive, Democrats hold in such disdain? Those millions of people who are voting against their very existence?

Shooting At the Holocaust Museum

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A lone gunman killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday before being wounded himself by return fire from other guards, sources confirmed to CNN.
Police cars mass outside the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington after a shooting there on Wednesday.

The suspect was identified as James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland, two law enforcement officials told CNN.
********************************
As the caretaker for an 88-year-old, I am shocked! My first though was a vision of him hobbling his walker away from the scene of the crime. But then I thought about his name and age and a question came to my mind. Was he Hitler youth? What is his background really?
More to develop later.

Gettysburg Forwarding Address

..that this nation, under Obama, shall have a new birth of redistribution -- and that this people of the Government, by the Government, for the Government, shall become no better than the rest of the earth.

Throat Cancer Advice

Here is a repost of some advice I left a cancer patient named Clifto on alt.support.cancer several years ago. I found it while checking something else. I am reposting it on the off chance it will help someone somewhere who is about to undergo radiotherapy cancer treatment of the head and neck.
******************************************************************************

clifto wrote:
> Chris Ness wrote:
>> I had 35 [sic. actually 37] bouts with the mask. It bothered me less than the Amifostine
>> session at the chemo [clinic] before each treatment and its side effects;

> Please tell me about that. Considering how the story changed about my
> chemo treatments to come, I'd like to braced for this in case they
> throw that in too.

I've posted about Amifostine a few times. It was developed to prevent
radiation sickness in Air Force pilots I'm told. Amifostine is dripped 15
to 30 minutes prior to Radiation to prevent damage to to gums, teeth roots
and parotid glands. It's side effects for me were a blood pressure of
90/50. Lightheadedness, dizziness, sometimes nausea and vomiting. I am told
that many people don't tolerate the treatment and don't complete it. I want
to keep my teeth, so I was going to tolerate it no matter what. Another
problem or another solution I don't know which was that since I had a drip
everyday, They would leave the line in my arm for three days at the first
of the week and two at the end. It beat everyday sticks, but it was
uncomfortable. It couldn't be done at the Radiotherapists, it had to be
done at the Chemo clinic up the street. When I would arrive at the RT, I
would be moved to the front of the line and treated almost immediately.
Because of the side effects, there was no way I could drive. But for me it
was all worth it if I can keep my teeth.

>> Clifto though seems to have claustrophobia.

> To extremes. Even panicked out of an "open" MRI. Made it through the PET
> with eyes closed and lots of xanax.


>> And about the mask fit don't discount the
>> psychological element here either. You are fighting it. Get control of
>> yourself. You are the key.

I am going to stick with my original advice. I don't/didn't like needles and
treatments any more than anyone else. But I know that others have survived
the treatments and I will too. And you will too. It is a question of
selling yourself on being calm. Remember why you are there and why this is
necessary. Breathe deeply and calmly for a start. Think calm and patient.

> I have no idea where to start. I appear to be as much a wuss as a
> claustrophobe. Just the appearance of my nurse is enough to start the
> withdrawal into myself.

Maybe the withdrawl is your way of meditating?

>> In the grand scheme of things, these treatments
>> are short. Even the radiations effects last much longer and they go
>> anyway eventually too.

To me, in many ways, the two months after the treatments ended were worse
than the treatments themselves. Especialy the first three weeks. The body
is still reacting to the treatments, But you are by yourself. Nothing to do
but slough off the dead tissue, half-way sleep, and heal. No more star of
the treatments and nurses and family interest. Just slogging through
healing. During the treatments you have work. Appointments to keep and
business to attend to. During the healing you have Maury Povich.

Environmental Justice

East Julliette Mill House
Originally uploaded by luxomni

The new head of the Environmental Protection agency is Lisa Jackson is an environmental justice activist. Apparently companies deliberately place their pollution in low income and minority racial areas. I am not sure I buy this chicken and egg argument. Just for starters, no one builds low income housing in expensive areas, nor do they spend the money to build factories in expensive areas. But more than that, with the added price of mandated modern codes, much of the least expensive housing is older housing. While there are some older houses that have been sub-divided to make multiple and affordable family residences, most of it has always been low end housing, now made lower by age and location, like the mill house above. Without taking into consideration how than area like this is further dilapidated by low-end tenants, or how living here is the culmination of a lifetime of choices made by the tenants to pursue the wrong priorities; the truth is that in all real estate, location is everything. And location is the largest component of cost. Increased cost of land would be passed on the the tenant and would end up competing with the environmentally un-just housing to which the tenants would flee.

What do the Russians Know That The U.S. Media Won't Tell You?

This is the way they see what is happening to us. This is not Fox News which I see as 'fair and balanced' because it presents both viewpoints and one of my coworkers see as ultra-conservative because it dares present the right viewpoint as well as the left. This is not CNN, which see the world through rose colored glasses except when viewing the United States for which it sees (even now) only evil. This is Pravda, Russian for 'Truth'. See what they think.

What do the Russians Know That The U.S. Media Won't Tell You?

Geithner's New Comedy Act on Far East Tour.

BEIJING, June 1 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday reassured the Chinese government that its huge holdings of dollar assets are safe and reaffirmed his faith in a strong U.S. currency.

A major goal of Geithner's maiden visit to China as Treasury chief is to allay concerns that Washington's bulging budget deficit and ultra-loose monetary policy will fan inflation, undermining both the dollar and U.S. bonds.

China is the biggest foreign owner of U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. data shows that it held $768 billion in Treasuries as of March, but some analysts believe China's total U.S. dollar-denominated investments could be twice as high.

"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.

His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.