Lazyness Is Not a Disability

Spare me from tubs of lard on Hoverounds.

I recently had the unmitigated joy of going to Disneyworld. It used to have a very efficient transportation system. Step out from your hotel room and short a bus or a water taxi would come and in moments wisk you away to one of the theme parks or other Disney delights.

Now, the world comes to a stop for people in electric wheel chairs. "You three give up your seats so they can be folded up to stow the electric cart; and you two give up your seat so he can sit down. There will be another bus in ten to twenty minutes."

Does it sound compassionate? Well, it isn't. These are not truly handicapped people. There is no clearing of eligibility for these people as there is with the red and blue handicapped placards at the DMV. The truly disabled have their own wheelchairs; and in many cases pride themselves on walking with crutches or canes. No, these are the fat and lazy who rent the carts as much for the extra privilege of access by going to the front of the queue lines as for the laziness of hauling their fat carcasses around. These are people who could use the extra expenditure of energy to forestall their inevitable appearance on America's Biggest Loser.

One can only long for the day that Obama's medical panels decide that joint replacement surgery is declared cost ineffective and no longer offered, so that these people can have the legal right to their ADA use.

A Federal Answer to a Personal Responsibility Question, NO!

I am already sick of hearing about freezing foreclosures. The level to deal with alleged deficiencies in the paperwork is in your dispossesory trial. A foreclosure is a legal proceding. It has rules. It seems that nobody in the 21st Century wants to play by the rules -- not the homeowners, not the mortgage companies, and not the government.

Look, mortgagees, you made a deal to pay for a loan of money. Pay it. Or give up the house!

Ok, you, bankers, play by the rules. I don't care how many houses you have in foreclosure right now. Dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s. File the paperwork the right way. Make sure you have the paperwork in hand. No cutting corners.

And you, Government, allow the bad loans to play themselves out and clear the market, or we will never recover.

And while we are at it, all of you in the press. The proper place to play this out is in the courts, not the Executive Branch, or the Legislature. The banks and borrowers make a contract. Allow contract law to be settled in the courts on a case-by-case basis as it should be. Believe it or not, the bank doesn't just show up one day and take the house. There is a legal procedure where the mortgage holder must file in state court for default and remedy. AND, the borrower has the right (read duty) to answer the complaint. If there is question of the standing of the lender, the debtor should make it known then. If you have been sending (or not sending or you wouldn't be here) your checks to Washington Mutual and Bank of America is filing your dispossessory, make it known in your answer. If you are in default you do not have a right to your house. Sorry, Charlie.

And finally, anything but enforcing the contract against delinquents is unfair. UNFAIR to those of us who live within our means, pay our bills, and fulfill our promises.

Uh Oh ...

Normally I agree with Dave Ramsey, at least at a personal economic level. It is good not to be in debt. And I even agree with him on another idea he spoke of today, but not for the same reason. I do not recommend to my friends to buy gold. My reason is that one does not make all that many $1000 (now $1300) purchases. Gold isn't an investment. It is a parking place. As is silver, which I do own and recommend. $20 increments. Dave Ramsey is worried about a gold "bubble", the price being unreasonably high and going down later. In what? Dollars? Unlike shrimp, lettuce, and even corn, silver and gold stay the same. An ounce of silver is worth an ounce of silver. No more. No less.The ounce of silver that I got for a dollar in 1964 is still worth ... an ounce of silver. The Federal Reserve Note I left in an old coat pocket and found recently now buys about 4% of what it would in 1964. That is the point. Dave Ramsey made a point about the Petroleum bubble last Summer when sweet crude went to $145 a barrel and gasoline was "$5 a gallon", and how that was a bubble too. But he missed the point: it wasn't petroleum nor gold that is the bubble. The dollar is the bubble, and a heavy one at that. When gasoline was $4.50 a gallon here, my ounce of silver bought four gallons of gasoline just like it did in 1964 when gasoline was 25¢ a gallon.

Right now, Mr. Ramsey, gold is at a record high, and silver is as high as it has been since the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the market many years ago. But, this is merely a symptom. The following is a commodity news clip from Friday October 9, 2010 from Brock Associates, a commodities broker to his clients:

Corn, soybean and wheat futures at the Chicago Board of Trade will all have expanded daily price limits on Monday as a result of Friday's sharp gains.
The daily price limit on corn futures will be expanded to 45 cents per bushel from the normal level of 30 cents.¹
...
Price limits will also expand on Monday for CBOT soymeal, soyoil and oats futures. For soymeal, the price limit widens to $30 a ton, from $20.

Straightforward working information that CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and MSNBC, and even FOX didn't find important enough to mention even though it is a suspension of rules designed to control runaway panic selling and buying. Couple that with this information from today's Economic Policy Journal:

Corn prices have hit a two-year high in early morning trading, jumping more than 8 per cent.
CBOT December corn surged by an expanded daily limit of 45 cents, or 8.5 per cent, to $5.73¼ per bushel, the highest since September 2008. In the last two trading sessions, corn is up more than 15%.

Now, remember that little decal on your gas pump last time you bought gas - "may contain 10% ethanol". Ethanol, alcohol made from corn by Archer Daniels Midland in Clinton Iowa. They are competing with you for the food you eat and the feed that feeds the food that you eat.



No, Dave, you don't have to trade in commodities for the price of commodities to reach down and bite you².
Dave, usually I try to live my live in rules you would approve. I have little to no debt (depending on when you ask me. After a trip or after the next month). But I do have some holdings in silver of which you would not approve. They are not an investment. They are an insurance. Just like term insurance on my life, my silver is an insurance against financial calamity. And just like the life insurance, the health insurance, and more obviously, the fire insurance, I hope never to take advantage of it. I don't track its value from day-to-day looking for my opportunity to sell and make a profit. What would I put my safety net in? Dollars? A 401k?
You often advise your listeners to put their savings in a 401k. Do you suppose that the surge in the price of commodities on Friday and Monday might possibly be connected with a recess hearing at the U. S. Senate on Thursday that revived a long dormant plan to nationalize 401k and other tax sheltered savings plans.

Democrats in the Senate on Thursday held a recess hearing covering a taxpayer bailout of union pensions and a plan to seize private 401(k) plans to more "fairly" distribute taxpayer-funded pensions to everyone.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee heard from hand-picked witnesses advocating the infamous "Guaranteed Retirement Account" (GRA) authored by Theresa Guilarducci.
...
In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a "fair" pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions.³

Which 2000 page lame-duck omnibus bill will this be hidden in? Between theft like this and the regulations-and-debt coming out of Washington, is there any wonder that people are afraid of the future of the dollar?



¹ What this means is that there are no sellers willing to sell at the mandated price high limit. So far, people can not be forced to sell at a loss. Stay tuned.
² Gold here may diverge from the other commodities as it is a hedge against currency variation only, i.e. it does not get traded like all the other commodities primarily as a regulator of supply against future commercial demand - even silver is an industrial metal and traded that way as its primary purpose. Speculation and arbitrage are parasitic riders on the primary purpose of commodity trading; even if, sometimes the tail wags the dog.
³ http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39336

War Against The Weak

I am currently reading War Against The Weak, Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, by Edwin Black. I would describe it as alternately fascinating, boring, horrifying, and intriguing. It documents many of the things Glenn Beck has spoken of on his television show for the last few months - in great detail, and referenced and documented. It will go on, I have been clued in, to explain how the Fabians, Socialists, and Progressives and their elitist attempt to engineer the family tree of mankind became Hitler's attempt to prune that tree by genocide.

The question I am awaiting the answer for is: When did the Progressives change from being elitists trying to eliminate us lesser people from competing in the Malthusian dilemma to elitists being our benefactor protecting us from every sling-and-arrow of life, physics, economics, and biology? Or indeed, Have they?


I have pondered for a long time why so many "Liberal"¹ policies seem to side with death over life. You know, little things like abortion, of course; but also euthanasia; disarming the potential victims of crime; opposition to execution or even harsh imprisonment of violent criminals²; the destruction (in the name of fairness) of the World's best medical system³; policies that will inevitably destroy the currency and savings of the elderly and others on fixed incomes; and an almost zealous promotion of homosexuality coupled with a suspension of normal epidemic tracking of aids (even making a person's AIDS status a secret from the very medical people who would come into contact with him)⁴.

My Democratic Liberal friends seem to have a blind faith in the Federal Government whenever the titular head is a Democrat and a blind paranoia about the Presidency when a Republican is in charge despite the fact that there is little change other than a minimal reduction in the progress forward to total government control of our lives. This, despite the fact that there is an elite ruling class that comprises both parties with a common Ivy League education for both (Both Bush and Obama had Harvard educations); and a persistence of the operating levels of the Federal Government no matter who is in charge. Somehow my friends have a fierce distrust of "business" despite the relative dispersal of control, but have trust in a monolithic government with the power to legally use deadly force. I don't get it.


¹ I put Liberal in quotes, because the meaning has changed so in today's usage. Where Liberal was once Libertarian and on the side of the individual freedom of man, now it is about collectivism, restriction, control, and group identities, in other word, Fascist.
² I know this seems contradictory, but in not doing it, society sentences the victims rather than the perpetrators to death.
³ Here we go again. If England, Cuba, and Canada are so great, Not only why do their leaders come here for treatment, but what great advancements in medicine have come from those systems?
⁴ It seems perhaps the goal of the social planners is the same as the psychosis of some AIDS victims - the deliberate spread of the disease?

What Kind of Union ... ?

Watching reports about Steven Colbert testifying before Congress about illegal immigrants at hearings ultimately sponsored by the United Farm Workers made me wonder about something that left me puzzled for some time. What kind of union takes care of its workers by encouraging workers who would undercut the employability of its members? What could they possibly think would happen to their current workers by encouraging dilution of the work force? The argument they make is that then all the workers will be union and the wage will not be undercut; but this benefits only the union coffers and not the individual worker - neither the existing member nor the new one. Typically, work is fairly divided with each getting a supposedly equal share. (I know this one having suffered through it doing union work in the 70's and 80's. We spent a lot of time is US District Court) But what that really means is that the worker makes less than they would have without the union. But the union officers ... they do well.

Similarly what was the AARP thinking when they pushed a medical plan that takes from Medicare to give to people of an age when they should be working and able to pay their own way. Shooting their members in the foot they are.

Endgame

(Let me be the gloom preceding everyone's doom)

In life as in chess, moves sometimes are inevitable and unavoidable after a point. I think politically we are there now. Everyone is so relieved that the Republicans are (most likely) going to retake the House of Representatives and Senate in six weeks. But let me tell you how it will play out due to a fifth column press and unthinking gullible voters.

The lame duck House and Senate will ram through a number of seriously damaging pieces of legislation in the remaining weeks of 2010, "Cap and Trade", "Card Check", "Amnesty for illegal aliens" and probably more. President Obama will sign them immediately. The incoming House and Senate will try to rescind or repeal those nation-destroying bills of the 111th Congress.

The President will veto them.

The press will demonize the 112th Congress for being against the common man even though most of the new laws that they are trying to overturn benefit certain elite groups and individuals.

There will be insufficient voting strength to overturn the veto.

The new laws of the 111th congress will further deteriorate the economic state of the US, with expatriation of the super-wealthy, with collapse of the remaining industrial base, and disruptions in fuel and food supply.

The whole time the press will excoriate the 112th Congress for the damage they have have done in exact counterpoint to how they blamed Bush for the damage of the 110th Congress.

And finally, debt will collapse the US dollar which will render moot the U. S. Constitution and leave George Soros, Obama, and Obama's brownshirts* (who are currently mobilizing for an anti-tea-party march in Washington DC) to step-in to fill the void to the thanks and the cheers of the ignorant American underclasses, the press, and the newest political elites.

Checkmate!

*Want to see who they are? Are there any of these groups you would feel at home with?

Where are Proportion and Consistancy?

As I was driving between jobs this morning, I noticed three police cars arranged in a semi-circle blocking off a through road nearby. As I drove on I passed a police command-and-control truck as large as a fire truck racing toward the scene. But, a little further away on a side street I found the front of a sub-division where one of my schools is located blocked.
I went on to my destination, another school and went about my business. Later, I found out what the scare was about: a woman threw a box under a bus while both were stopped at a stoplight; and the bus had proceeded on to its destination, a minor elementary school. Now, when the police are called they must do their thing and go by the book. But who called and why? Did a student on the bus exaggerate someone littering to avoid a test or overdue homework? Or did some passerby see someone dispose of their McDonald's breakfast out the window? Or maybe, it was a serious but inefficient serious threat from the bus driver's jilted spouse or lover? In any reasonable event, it was not an international jihadi terrorist going to claim her 72 virgins at Minor Elementary.

But all this is prelude to my point. After hearing the news report on the radio I spoke with several people at a nearby middle school who were all of the opinion that we can't be too careful in this day and age, it just might be a Muslim terrorist. Now why the Muslim extremists would pick this minor elementary, Minor Elementary, I have no idea. World Trade Center, Pentagon, Eiffel Tower I can see. But a minor school in the middle of nowhere in suburban Atlanta? Why start here?

But even this is only prelude. MY real observation is that these women that are telling me that there is every reason to always fear the worst about the possibility of terrorists attacking this group of kindergarteners through fifth graders are the very same ones by whom I recently was lectured about how the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on 9/11 were Bush's staged inside jobs. Now, which is it? Are they out to get us or aren't they? Or are they only really out to get us if a Democrat is President?

But seriously, ladies, if the world is that scary and fearful a place, maybe you better go home and hide under your bed - all day, every day.

Aren't Progressives Wonderful People?

This is a fascinating speech by War Against the Weak author Edwin Black who also wrote IBM and the Holocast.
It was an interesting dissertation about the English and American origins of Eugenics in the Hitlerian style. What was conspicuous to me though was that there was no mention of the terms Fabian, Socialist, or Progressive; even though he named many of the most important people in those movements. It almost seems like a conscious omission. He even answered a question whether the eugenics movement still existed by saying "Yes, in the Aryan Nation". That is a prison gang and of no general influence in the outside world. Later, he calls in and answers a question about whether socialized medicine has eugenic impact by stating emphatically that "no, only national policy would do that", completely ignoring that rationing would accomplish exactly that while all would be benignly blaming economics; and further ignoring that the elites will always have the best access to medicine whether they are corporate giants or powerful and connected politicians thus naturally selecting themselves and their kin and ilk.

WARNING: This is an hour and three minute long video. You should watch but it is long.

More Foreclosure ... I thought there was a recovery.

I have been following the legal notices for some time now. A year ago I was astounded how many foreclosures there were in the paper of record for Gwinnett County (suburban Atlanta) where I live. Last Thursday was this month's posting. Still more than 150 nine column pages of foreclosure notices. I found myself wondering how many there actually were, but I am too lazy to count. Fortunately, WSB news counted for me and broadcast the news as I was driving to one of my schools. 2100 foreclosures this month. Last year at this time I computed the count of column inches as 28,000. This years there are almost exactly the same number of pages with exactly the same number of columns, 9 per page, for a total again of 28,000 inches - 10 inches per listing. Only one problem the ones I see are not 10 inches long. I think they have under-reported the number of foreclosures. Could that be deliberate?

A Little Disappointed

For a long time, I have been defending the "Tea Party Movement" from charges that Tea Party is a religious movement, from the perception that somehow fundamentalist Christians were the only ones who opposed a massive Federal government. The media tries very hard to paint those who oppose the ever-increasing concentration of authority and power at that one level of governance as narrow-minded "think-as-I-think" religious zealots. Well, many of us are handing them the brush to paint us with.

On Saturday August 28th, Glenn Beck held a gathering at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. He called it the Restoring Honor rally. Although I did not go, it seems to me that this is more than an honorable, admirable pursuit, it is a necessity if we are to prevent becoming slaves to a modern feudal system based out of Washington, DC. But suddenly I am seeing in my mailbox and on my Facebook watched an undercurrent of "Glen Beck is a ... Mormon". "He is trying to be the religious leader of the country". There seems to be as much backlash from the far right Christians as from the far left Socialists. Well, I missed the part where he was trying to make me a Mormon. I heard it as go back to your church; and he appears to be trying very hard to keep a balance of faiths so it remains non-sectarian. I guess there really are levels at which the far-right and far-left are similar. Both are screaming as they see a threat from individual thought and freedom.

So, to the "Tea Party" candidate who barrages my mailbox daily, You miss the point. It is not about replacing one earthly master with another. We are no better served as servants of a theocratic ruling class than a secular one. It is about our personal sovereignty. We do not belong to the Imperial Federal Government to be used and abused as the ruling class desires; no matter whether that ruling class is bureaucrats or theocrats. They belong to us. They are our employees and as such we can give them no more rights than we have ourselves. We can not give them the right to steal or the right to kill. These are not rights that we ever possessed to give them. It really is time for us to remind them and put them back into check. We will never be able to do that as long as we self-divide on whether we are Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Atheist, or Mormon. We will have to stand together on this. We shall all stand together or we shall all hang separately.

Indian Givers

I was never certain if the term Indian Giver referred to the South-Asian sub-continent or the American aboriginal Indian. But now I am fairly certain that it refers to the American aboriginal variety - Mexican in particular. There is a tremendous area of southern Arizona that has become off-limits to American citizens due to being unsafe. I have not once heard the mainstream media refer to this area by its name. That name we all had to learn in sixth grade geography: The Gadsden Purchase. Known as Venta de La Mesilla, or "Sale of La Mesilla" in Mexico, this was the last territorial acquisition of the continental United States and was purchased by Franklin Pierce for a mere ten million pre-inflation gold dollars. (Someone on Wikipedia extrapolates that to 241.333 million of todays dollars. 25 to 1 is a four cent dollar. About right.)

I do understand that the purchase gives the continental United States that linear filled in geometric look of our border that we are all familiar with, but if the Mexicans really want that land that badly; and if, apparently, our Government does not really wish to continue owning it; then maybe, they should sell it back de jure rather than give it back de facto. With improvements, it should be worth considerably more than 241 million dollars in gold. Lets see, there are highways, and the restaurants in Tucson and ...

The Mood of the American Electorate

Time Magazine Cover: Is America Islamophobic?

While I am not one to even suggest prohibiting the Cordoba Center for Islamic Bragging (I say meet it in kind); I have to take issue with the ad hominem defense of the center.

First of all, we are well served to be Islamophobic, "in fear of Islam". One is not paranoid when they really are out to get you. Islam has been at war with all non-Muslims for all its existence. Peaceful coexistence is contrary to the Quran. Despite the best protestations of the American Liberal Media, their own words damn them. And when the time comes, there will not be exceptions made for being a dhimmi (Arabic: ذمي‎ [ˈðɪmːiː]).

Second, Islam is America-phobic also, and has been since the days of Thomas Jefferson. They have been increasingly so for the last forty years, as have their violent attacks on Americans, Europeans, and Asians.

Time Magazine, if you wish to defend the Cordoba Center, defend it on the basis of the United States' freedoms of speech, of assembly, and religion. Attacking the American public for feeling offended and not sharing your infinite wisdom is adding insult to injury. It does nothing to change anyone's mind. It reinforces the general public perception that Time magazine, the media, and the Eastern elites are un-American. And most important, it reinforces the divide between Islam and the rest of the world.

In Defense of the Ground Zero Mosque

Contrary to what the Political Correctness Police would have us believe, there is no right not to be offended.

I am sorry, but it is so. There is, however, a right to the free practice of religion. Of course they can build. There is also a right to free speech. You can stand outside with a protest sign or build a billboard across the street saying "Jesus Saves". These are parts of the strength of America.

So, maybe, this might be better ...

On one side of the mosque build a synagogue. On the other build a Christian church, preferably a Pentecostal variety of some kind.

And my personal favorites, on the other side of the street, with flashing neon and chase lights a spectacular topless (bottomless?) club. And with smoke a-blowing, a TastyPig Bar-B-Que.

Like I said, in America, no one has the right not to be offended.

No point in building a gay bar, though, some things don't offend the Moslems.

Election Campaigns That Still Don't "Get It"

It is Political Season in Georgia, and I am so sick and tired of Politicians whose sole reason to vote for them is that their opponent is worse. I have reached the end of my rope. In this case it is a man who wants to be our Attorney General and he wastes three pages of his four page brochure, his one chance to tell me why he would be a good AG and what he would do to help hold us back from the abyss that our President and Congress are trying to push us into. He wastes it telling me about his opponents infidelity - on three pages!

On his one remaining page what information does he try to squeeze in? Well, 2.4 inches at the top of his 11 inches is address space. Then 4.5 inches of the obligatory smiling family picture. Then the obligatory "Proven Conservative Leader" boilerplate. A 12 point line about how he got an "'A+' rating from the Georgia Christian Coalition." That tells me both good and bad about him - the good that he probably is a decent person, but the bad is that he is probably the kind of anti-libertarian Republican that drives people away from the Republican Party, especially when we need to scale back the size, power and cost of ALL OUR GOVERNMENTS. And finally, the coup de grace, the obligatory Pro-Life line. Sam, you aren't pregnant. You aren't running for gynecologist. You aren't even running for the legislature where you could pursue the issue. It has nothing to do with Attorney General. So why is it there? Twice. Twice because this section has a second column consisting of a 16 point this time list of "PROVEN. CONSERVATIVE. PRO-LIFE", his logo and "REPUBLICAN".
I think it is a cynical grab at what he thinks conservative voters are. Cynical because he thinks we, like he, are more concerned about trying to control others than we are about our own freedom, independence, fiscal responsibility and the Georgia and United States Constitutions. He is just another professional politician more interested in getting himself a job than in fixing our government.
No, Sam, I won't be voting for you. It doesn't mean I will vote for your opponent, but I won't vote for you.

Do not reward negative campaigning.
Force them to tell us about what they will do, or withhold your vote.

Seventh Level of Hell

Unlike Dante, I do not know who it is reserved for or what I have done to go there; but I do know what it is:

It is an endless loop of Pachelbel's Canon in D played over and over wowing & fluttering and fading in & out, interrupted every 45 seconds by "Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line for the next available [agent]"; knowing full well that if you hang up, you will only have to go back to square one and start over again.

State of New Jersey, Treasury Department, Division of Pensions, fix the damn tape, or better yet, use a digital recorder - they don't wear out!