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Guest Post: America: The List
Submitted by Brian Rogers
America: The List
If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.
I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘ Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.
- Proud To Be An American, Lee Greenwood
America, F*CK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother f*cking day yeah,
America, F*CK YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,
it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow
F*CK YEAH!
McDonalds, F*CK YEAH!
Wal-Mart, F*CK YEAH!
The Gap, F*CK YEAH!
Baseball, F*CK YEAH!
NFL, F*CK, YEAH!
Rock and roll, F*CK YEAH!
The Internet, F*CK YEAH!
Slavery, F*CK YEAH!
- America, F*ck Yeah,
Trey Parker (of South Park)
Coffee Shop at Union Square
I was out having drinks the other night with brilliant financial mind and Wall Street veteran Paulo Pereira. Paulo is a Brazilian-American who's worked on both the buy and sell-side for years and has a long track record covering many of the large natural resource exporting countries. A Yale grad with a degree in music, Paulo brings a unique perspective to finance and economics to say the least.
We decided to meet up at a great restaurant/bar on Manhattan's Union Square called Coffee Shop. Next time you're in NY, I highly recommend you add this cool spot to your agenda. The food is great, a mix of Brazilian and American fare, and you always have a real diverse crowd of folks to mingle with.
But it's the hostesses, waitresses and barmaids that bring in the crowds. You see, Coffee Shop, tends to employ many of Manhattan's aspiring super models and actresses. Let's just say the scenery is impressive and distracting. But I digress. Oh man, do I digress...
Anywho, Paulo and I started tilting back the Stellas and proceeded down the rabbit hole that is modern finance and politics. The usual topics came up that would be familiar to any regular Zero Hedge reader: the Bernank, gold, ZIRP, TBTF, silver price manipulation, BLS data manipulation, China, Brazil, Europe, Australia housing bubble, the upcoming sovereign debt crisis, the hypocrisy of my former idol Warren Buffett, the eloquence of Jim Rickards, the death of the 30-year bond bubble, blah, blah, blah... The list goes on.
But at some point in the evening we started focusing (to the extent that you can focus with 4 beers and 1 very distracting barmaid in the mix) on the way that the very words we use to think about ourselves as Americans have become somewhat, well, meaningless.
For example, Capitalism
First, a definition from the good folks at merriam-webster.com: Capitalism - an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decisions, and by prices, production and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market. (emphasis mine)
A couple of things should instantly jump out when applying even the most basic of critical thinking skills to the definition above.
First, as Martin Armstrong likes to frequently highlight, we now live in a political-economy. Precisely the opposite of a so-called free market. A true match made in hell.
Second, our economic system is currently characterized by a situation where 50% of every business transaction involves the use of a government granted monopoly currency controlled by a private consortium of banks. The good ol' USD.
So far we're falling a bit short on merriam-webster's standard.
Was Adam Smith wrong?
Remember the English dude Adam Smith? Adam was a pretty bright guy and expressed some really novel ideas (novel at the time anyway) which helped usher in a new way of commerce that would help raise millions of people globally out of abject poverty and serfdom.
But remember this, when ol' Adam was scratching out his notes, you had a choice on not only the good or service you purchased or sold, but also the currency or method of payment you could offer or receive. Both sides of the deal had to match or no go.
Today, the government, via the private consortium of banks, aka the Fed, control the currency side of every transaction with an iron fist.
At least they try to. What is the typical result when government tries to control the price of anything? Disruption, confusion, corruption, malinvestment, etc. And yet these guys think controlling the price of money is a good thing or even possible.
Best of luck with that cat-herding exercise. The chart of the USD over the last 100 years speaks volumes more than I could on the subject of currency stability.
Legal tender laws date back to the Civil War. Lincoln implemented them as an "emergency measure" (sound familiar in our post-911 world). He pinky swore that it was only temporary. Fast forward 150 years and we're still wearing that albatross around our neck.
Private decisions indeed.
Back to Coffee Shop, barmaids and "The List"
So besides the basic definition of capitalism, Paulo and I started chatting about other subjects in this country of ours where our perceptions and realities don't quite align.
In this spirit, I'm starting The List.
Let's get it all out there. America's dirty laundry that is. Our family secrets. The skeletons in the closet.
The goal is to create a list of the many and numerous ways in which our country is deluding itself into believing we are the greatest, smartest, most innovative, freedom loving country that ever was.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some unpatriotic ne'er do well. I love what the Founding Fathers of our country set out to accomplish, faults and all. I love it so much, I was willing to put my life on the line for this country by serving in a US Marine Corps special forces unit for 8 years (your move armchair patriot).
But we have drifted so far from the original concepts, I believe our current central planning apparatus more closely resembles the USSR than what most people think is the USA.
So I'm going to kick this list off but in no way do I intend this to be exhaustive.
Please, add your own comments and thoughts. Take the list and grow it. Spread it around. Repost it, tweet it, facebook it (whatever that means) and let's start the healing process by admitting what's wrong.
Sort of like a political and economic 12-step program. Hi, my name is Brian Rogers and I'm an asset of the state.
And I want to quit.
The List
1. Money - The US dollar is a currency controlled by a private consortium of banks under the Federal Reserve System. There is nothing "Federal" about the Federal Reserve, it is owned and absolutely controlled by bankers. Sound free?
2. The Federal Reserve System - The Fed is neither under the auspices of Executive, Legislative nor Judicial branches of government. The most important and largest decisions they make cannot be audited by any branch of the US government. Sound free?
3. Presidential authority - The POTUS can these days declare martial law and based on the language of the recently passed NDAA, arrest any US citizen he wants, anywhere he wants and hold them without due process for as long as he wants. All the POTUS has to say is that the person is a terrorist. Sound free?
4. Federal judges - Even in during Rome's imperial years, about half of the federal judges were voted by the people. Today, all Federal judges are political appointment. Sound free?
5. Electoral college - We do not have a popular vote. The masses just simply can't be trusted. We choose special delegates to enact the "final solution" (pun intended). Sound free?
6. Campaign finance - Corporations are people. Seriously. Mitt Romney was right. As long as national elections have an essentially uncapped spending limit, the game of politics will always be about money and who has the most. Those monied interests then become the only real constituent. Everyone else just gets lip service. In the meantime, average citizens everywhere are priced out of even trying to run for office given the exorbitant costs to participate in the system. Read my lips, sound free?
7. Term limits - Nope. We seem to like our political class and want to make sure that we can get the same old idiots year in and year out. They have no incentive to make hard choices, only political choices to keep their career feeding at the government trough. And the good ones, meaning the most political and successful at money raising, become furniture and stay for decades. Sound free?
8. Income taxes (or direct taxation) - You no longer have the right to 100% of the result of your hard work aka wages. The government has decreed that you must share your income with everyone else or go to jail. Ayn Rand once said that the basis for every totalitarian dictatorship was altruism. Sacrifice for the state. I certainly don't blindly follow Ms. Rand like Alan Greenspan did, but on this point I agree entirely. Sound free?
9. Legal tender laws - Don't like the dollar? Wish you could simply eject yourself out of the Federal Reserve System by buying some gold and silver coins and using them to make payment for goods and services? While some merchants may gladly do business with you, the transaction is very much illegal. You MUST use the FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES controlled and priced by the Oracles of Delphi at the Fed. Sound free?
10. "Cost" of money - Modern finance values assets using various pricing methods. All of these, however, share a common theme, they all discount future cash flows using the Risk Free rate which is normally defined as US Treasuries. The Fed is artificially controlling and manipulating US Treasuries. Therefore, every asset on the planet has a price that is artificial as the rates implicit in its price are not market rates. They are what the Bernank and the Oracles of Delphi think they should be. Sound free?
11. Two-party political system - Seriously, do I really need to break down the hypocrisy exhibited on a daily basis by team red and team blue? As Zero Hedge pointed out recently, 50% of the American public votes. About 50% of the public is politically active in the two major parties. Therefore, in any given election, the winner will only represent about 25% of the population. And we wonder why special interests get all the attention. Sound free?
What else?
Like I said, this list isn't meant to be exhaustive, in fact just the beginning. Please add your own ideas, improve on mine and pass this along.
In the meantime, it's a beautiful day here in Manhattan and I'm about to take a walk and enjoy it. I can still do that without asking permission or paying a tax so I'm going to take advantage.
Perhaps I'll stroll over to Coffee Shop again at Union Square.
On the way, perhaps I'll run into The Occupy Wall Street Movement at Union Square.
We can heckle the police about how they are working for the "man" while secretly justifying their thug tactics by thinking about the nice pension plan waiting for them at the end of their career rainbow.
The same pension plan that is rapidly becoming insolvent under the Bernank's ZIRP.
America. F*ck yeah.
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I don't know the author personally, but I wouldn't be surprised if he might admit exactly what you suggest. His tone gives me the impression of someone that used to be "in the system", had his "peak behind the curtain at the wizard" moment, and has now changed his mind.
Which raises a bigger question, what is the propaganda that causes so many "Morons" (as you so eloquently put it) to enlist in the Marines or any other branch of service in the first place? How is it that some of this country's best and brightest enlist or go to officer school to "do the bidding of said corporations" without understanding the broader consequences?
One last point, calling people Morons and fuck nuts is an excellent way to identify yourself as a moron and a fuck nut. Just saying.
Electronic Voting Machines with no audit. Sound free?
And they claim to need proprietary software (meaning we can't see the code to verify it) to "count votes". Seriously, I was a computer programmer for ten years and I could write that code in less than a day and so could any reasonable coder. What's the big secret? Unless, of course, nah, it couldn't be that.........
12. Foreign Meddling. The Founding Fathers envisioned free trade with everyone, but alliances with no one. They would be horrified by the political assasinations that our government has conducted in other countries to benefit America's interests or our corporation's interests. We should treat other countries the way we would like to be treated. We have strayed a long way from this ideal.
"The Founding Fathers envisioned free trade with everyone..."
WTF??????
You've evidently never read any history, especially American colonial financial history, nor early American financial history.
That much is obvious....
I am talking about the anti-federalist founding fathers. Not Hamilton and his ilk.
Hey, I sure would enjoy drinking a beer with Brian too - and not for the drinking.
That is actually the much better list in the article!
this list is absolutely bogus and i suggest you drink something stronger the next time - much stronger.
the problem with america is the most venal, wicked, barbaric corruption anywhere in the world practiced at home and exported abroad....your brazillian friend should study his home country's history from 1964 when the cia trained torture squads came in to murder anyone who opposed the plutocratic elite "capitalist" system.....
the bush crime syndicate acting as the front man for the rockefeller axis of evil has bodysnatched america making it a loathesome pariah around the world....the cia torture squads have visited more misery on this world and spilled more blood than stalin....
america is a great idea if you are the 1% - everyone else can eat shit....and die for some bullshit patriotic cia made disaster....america is all about psychopathism, corporatism, and totalitarianism....see the squalor wherever america has touched its soil...
up vote for understanding the big picture, and not filtering it through a yankee lens.
I always love those name droppers (of Adam Smith, that is) whether it's that private bankster LBO scumbag, Romney or R-money, or this particular blog post or all the endless books which mention that "invisible hand" which the so-called financial experts know nothing about and would be advised to take their "invisible hand" to the corner and jack off while they STFU!
Adam Smith, a quick reprise:
Mr. Smith was against foreign investment (which means he would lock up anyone who offshored jobs, etc.);
Mr. Smith was against patent and trade secrets monopolies;
Mr. Smith was against speculation; and,
Mr. Smith was against inequitable distribution of pay and ownership!
Sound like any Adam Smith, or Wealth of Nations, mentioned lately????
I thought not.......
Oh, and how about
People who intend to vote must show valid ID, after which they are handed
Paper ballots that can be physically counted and stored, and then
Finger dipped in Purple ink to note that they have voted that day.
Maybe we need to have election monitors as well ...
Brian, with all due respect and all that, while you're out there heckling the local NY police thugs, you might also reflect on your 8 years of national regime thuggery in the Corp. Should the military make the list?
Legal tender is applicable only to incurred debt. If you want to conduct a transaction without using FRNs, that's fine and dandy, but you are obligated to receive the FRNs in payment if there is a debt incurred in the transaction and the debtor desires to pay in FRNs. To reiterate/clarify, no one incurs a debt in a direct exchange of goods and services and it subsequently doesn't fall under legal tender laws.
Could Walmart accept gold coins as payment if they wanted to?
Term limits are idiotic. They achieve nothing but rotating the idiots. You achieve nothing with term limits. It's like saying printing more money will give you more prosperity. Well arbitrarily forcing more idiots through the congressional ringer will not give you better candidates.
Creating money for physical economic and scientific expansion (i.e. wealth) creates prosperity just like knowing how to judge candidates on an individual and collectively nationwide basis and holding candidates to that standard...that and only that...will give you candidates that...gasp...propose and vote for policies that serve the American people.
People forget Ron Paul would of been term limited a long time ago, and thus wouldn't even be a candidate today for President. It doesn't matter who you are, or how well you serve the people, you're gone. Does anyone throw away a shirt after two wearings? Or do you wait until it's sufficiently soiled, stretched, faded, coming apart, etc? You want a system that allows you to keep the useful, and get rid of trash. We have that. Instead of focusing on real issues, some people apparently think that throwing the baby out with the bathwater will somehow result in better outcomes. No, it only creates a worse system, a system where we don't keep the good and throw out the trash, because it is no longer a possibility. You get rid of what little good remains from year to year, yet the continuance of traitors rotating in and out continues and accelerates to a higher baseline level.
Term limits are like saying alcoholics won't be alcoholics if you make the beer cans smaller. You just go through more cans.
Until people demand and know how to judge between candidates (and even start to care) you won't get better candidates. Term limits won't make people demand better candidates. Term limits won't help people judge them better. Term limits won't make people care more. These are facts, and they won't change.
Term limits will just make sure that the entire time the idiots are in office, they are serving their masters for that private job, because they only have a couple of terms to suck bankster corporate dick hard enough to get that job. Thus they'll have to focus on screwing over the people, and since they have no reason to do the opposite since they would only be able to be re-elected say once or twice, we'll have a congress in perpetuity that is a large portion lame duck and constantly looking for private jobs. As hard as it seems to believe, it would make Washington D.C. WORSE, for no benefit whatsoever.
Term limits do squat except kick people out for no reason other than it sounds good to people with idiotic belief. Sorry, that's the truth. I don't like the idea of idiots continually re-elected to serve corporate interests, but only an awakening of the people will solve that, not some idiotic constraint that does nothing to address that core issue.
Term limits do NOTHING to actually change the problems we have, so it is nothing more than an exercise in futility. If anything, all you have is a bunch of rookies, who don't know shit, running the country. They'll think they are part of the solution...but not know what it is, just they specifically ARE the solution somehow, because they are someone new (being new doesn't mean better). Term limits are a DISTRACTION, nothing more. No matter how correct their ideas are or aren't, they're elevated to a status they don't deserve, simply by being new. So instead of focusing on ideas, people will focus on the hype of a new batch of people. People are fooling themselves really hard into thinking 'term limits' will change a damn thing. Term limits will create as many good congressional leaders as jobs created somewhere else just through printing money so rich fucks don't lose their gambling bets.
When you want to call people to action, at least call them to an action that matters. Term limits are a waste. Focus on something that actually matters. Like getting rid of the federal reserve....which you do. Should we call on people to call for term limits? Or ending the federal reserve system? Glass-Steagall or term limits? Which is an Obama promise of change that only a fool can believe in, and which one is an action of actual change. Hint: term limits are like Obama, you only think you got change.
America was created as a credit system (not a monetarist system), not as the current Federal Reserve system (monetary). We don't need to suck Adam Smith's cock. Adam Smith is revered far too much. Dogma is dogma. Adam Smith is as full of shit as Paul Krugman. Sometimes both might inadvertently get something right, as there are aspects of what both say that seem normal. A teaspoon of sugar with a gallon of bullshit. Both are viewed as legitimate in their own groupthink shrouded clique.
But it's the dogma that isn't needed, that gets lumped into them and all other monetarists, that distract us from reality and create poorer outcomes. To hell with Adam Smith, Paul Krugman, and all the various forms of monetarism. As a wise man once told me, 'capitalism is the best system that man has ever conceived of'. But that doesn't mean it's the best on every aspect of how someone in the 1700's thought and wrote about given the limited knowledge of the time and some serious fallacies. Same goes with all monetary theories. Provided the human race survives this bout of monetary induced insanity...this time with thermonuclear weapons....nothing about today is the 'best' mankind will ever develop. Sorry, no one alive is THAT good.
Which means you can take the best and appropriate aspects of capitalism, and marry it with our American Credit system, and have something better. That is what we had. A better version of capitalism than what Adam Smith talked about, but now we forget this, and so people want to go back to his ideas, even though our founders bettered him. But they don't know any better.
Right now we already have backtracked and went back to a version called monetary capitalism, which is poorer than our founders laid out. But since monetarism has evolved Adam Smith's crappy version of monetary capitalism into the debt based, fractional, fiat, fraud laden, skynet system, it seems better, even simpler than our current version of monetary capitalism, even though they are inherently the same and have inherently many of the same flaws. Focus the plans and calls to action on reality, not dogma. Which is why marrying actual (not pseudo) science through actionable wealth creating plans enabled by an American Credit System is so much better. It took the best portions of what people liked about capitalism, while limiting the bullshit Adam Smith also developed alongside it. Actual science is the most real, non-dogmatic, non-fungible way to base something in the universe. When you base plans on actual science it's awfully hard to fudge aspects of it. But using monetarist statistical models, you can hide anything, fudge anything. Even create pseudo science to drive a sort of pseudo-scientific dictatorship based on bullshit. Like.....
...Taxing consumption is idiotic, it's British Monarchy Green (the British monarchy created green fascism) Fascist bullshit ideology. Since monetary fraud does not necessarily need consumption (derivatives anyone?), the fraudsters can steal tax free, while everyone else has to pay taxes. The law of unintended consequences would see that 'doing something'...i.e. creating economic activity...would be discouraged. Great. Considering 2/3rds or more of all economic activity is business to business...i.e. businesses consuming....what you end up with is Mitt Romney (the legal fraudster) paying jack shit in taxes, while everyone else pays through the nose. That would be the way of such a monetarist system. Doing something real causes higher taxes because it causes consumption, thus everyone will just focus more on the paper fraud. Great system. Anything in the physical economy will be taxed to the hilt, because anything physical denotes consumption. What is left? The bullshit. The bullshit gets tax cuts, while the real gets tax hikes. Fucking great. Especially considering the monetary economy is collapsing due to the fraud outpacing the returns capable of a collapsing real physical economy.
All under the guidance of pseudo science groupthink known as an arbitrary set of limits imposed on us by the idiot ph.d theorized constraints like resources, energy, land, space, etc. These are false. There is no science that shows us concretely what mankind's limit of resource extraction/creation(yes resources can be created), limit of energy production, limit to land space (you can green deserts, find alternatives, etc), or not enough overall space for human beings and say garbage, is. There are no set limits of these things. None. Only our ability to want to find and develop means around a piss poor monetary planned present time limits of these things. What monetarism has set limits on, has no bearing on what the actual limits are. People quite easily forget this, and at the cost of just about everything. They even forget that the Earth is a very small, limited portion of this universe. Yet all the 'limits' we are talked about is viewed through a fake lens. We thus get the wrong answer. Make wrong decisions. Stop ourselves for no reason other than believing someone elses bullshit. You can create resources, you can mine and colonize other places. Even fusion isn't the end all be all of energy production. Ever hear of matter-anti-matter reaction? Yes Star Trek once again points out the obvious ~50 years early...so that no one can consider it a path of research that couldn't of happened because no one had thought of it. Wrong. Hell even in the 1990's they said it wouldn't be possible to have a video phone like Dick Tracy. Whoops. These projections or constraints aren't real, they aren't based on anything scientific. They are based on bullshit. Like monetarism. We have enough pathways and even previous laws and actions to base an adequate response to our monetary troubles that as we're falling off the cliff we refuse to believe we see the hundreds of vines, roots, branches available for us to grab, because we believe that at some point that branch might break a hundred years from now. Fucking shit. The answers are all around us, yet people cannot see. Fucking Helen Keller motherfuckers.
The rest of Brain Rogers's points are either spot on, or in the general neighborhood. Although the 'weighting' should maybe be a bit different. As there are thousands if not millions of actions that need to occur that are worthy, but we only need a handful to really turn this country, the world, and our species around. These are the ones that should be talked about and focused on. The rest can come (and some will solve themselves) after the problem creator, monetarism, is buried. We don't need to win the year 2200, we just need to win 2012, by winning the argument point by point with solutions that have worked, and ideas that can be created, are needed, and are achievable.
Monetarism creates the conditions for people to either need welfare, or if welfare is not provided, die/riot. More welfare won't prevent the riots/death completely, though it can temporarily mitigate some of this. But if people really want fewer welfare recipients, you need a system that allows people an opportunity to provide for themselves without welfare. Such a situation does not exist in America today. You are only fooling yourself if you think so. Getting rid of welfare, not only is fooling oneself by dogma at the expense of people, but using monetarist metrics, people will believe they solved the problem. Which in essence is one of the main problems with our country. We use so many bullshit dogmatic monetary metrics, when people believe they solved problems, really they just fooled themselves that they did by eliminating what they perceive is a metric that pointed to that. Now we're at a point where the feedback loop of the bullshit has paralyzed us beyond belief of grabbing easily identifiable solutions that are right in front of us. We've been told not to fish so much, we don't believe there are any fish in the sea.
Hey our economy is supposedly getting better because of less jobless claims and fewer people on unemployment, yet they forget that the pool of jobs is smaller, and people are kicked off unemployment. People don't realize that monetarism, and the result of monetary policy (like scientific research and capital expenditures) cause problems like runaway healthcare costs. The follies of monetarism are driving healthcare costs.
It isn't demographics. Demographics fuck over monetarist planned healthcare. Only because they believe the monetarist bullshit that they were preparing for it. Printing money today for fraud, causes healthcare costs to go up later. Bailing out AIG means that every person on medicare/medicaid, will cost more to care for, under a monetarist system.
When you personally, or private insurance, or medicare/medicaid pay for healthcare, you are not just paying for the care itself, you are paying for the embedded costs of the drug industry, of the construction industry, of many industries. Under our monetarist system, we had millions of homes being built that weren't needed, and guess who had to pay more for materials and labor because of this Mal-investment? That's right. Hospitals. Under Hill-Burton, hospitals were built by the gov't, in an era that didn't have speculative housing as a driver....thus the impact on the bills was minimal. But under our current monetary structure, they had to compete for materials, labor, and for-profit construction for hospitals to deal with, and the drugs you receive in them, cost more because of the advertising and because they didn't research cures. Most research that you are paying for is mis-allocated as well. They aren't trying to make scientific breakthroughs, they are trying to make a new drug that can be taken often...it doesn't cure the disease, but sufficiently masks the symptom. Would we be better funding a trillion in research for actual cures or a trillion dollars for the next iterations of Zypraxen, Yaz, Phen-Phen, etc? Our science is now arbitrary, which is something that science isn't supposed to be. Which means it isn't science. Healthcare costs so much because it is so screwed up. That is the BIGGEST issue. Monetarism is pointing us in the wrong direction.
Also there is one glaringly obvious wrong in this article, that is no one in the armed forces actually serves the country, they just make a promise to serve and follow orders with their lives, and they believe the grand lie that is by doing so (following orders) they are serving our country. You can use a pitchfork to bale hay or for mob purposes, but only one way is the correct way.
It's the legitimacy of the orders that determines whether or not they actually serve our country. They were ordered and followed those orders to engage in acts that were detrimental to our country. In WWII our armed forces dealt with a problem that arose due to monetarism running amok which eventually reached the Hawaiian shores that needed to be dealt with. (and of course after the war, monetarism started sucking up the 'spoils', and of course we knew beforehand that we were cornering the Japanese Empire).
As for Korea, Vietnam, Gulf-War, War on Terror, and all the little ones in between....like Panama, Grenada, or Libya. None of these served our interests. Only monetarist banksters. That doesn't mean it's all or nothing, because there have been patriots in the armed forces that have for instance, stopped imperial campaigns from happening. Those are soldiers that served our interests. There are some now, fighting against the banksters and their political and intelligence cronies who want war in Syria and Iran. Will they be successful? Our nation, the world, and perhaps our species are at stake. So serving in the armed forces alone doesn't mean you served your country. Only when the nation asks you to do something that is actually for the country, and as such by carrying that order out risked their life, did they actually serve our country. At least in the generic sense.
Soldiers are offering up their lives in the service for their country, yet time and time again that offer has been used against them, and their service has been squandered for merely the appearance of service because it involved shooting, life risking, and sweat. However through their actions actually made the country worse for the benefit of a select few. No patriot can ignore the obvious nature of their deleterious actions and consider it service. They are lying to themselves. Bullets flying make the reality of their 'service' more real, but not the validity of their actions more just.
Yes, that means every soldier that served in Iraq and Afghanistan did not serve our country any more than an armchair patriot. That's reality. If anything, the armchair patriot, whatever that means, actually did more, by screwing up America less. Remember of course it takes over a million dollars to train an imperial warrior. But of course, it isn't always all or nothing on that front either. Did they engage in monetary fraud legalized like Mitt Romney? Were they part of the businesses that made up the military/industrial complex? Did they take out loans they knew they couldn't pay back? Did they lobby for the laws that destroyed this country? Did they make decisions based on bullshit in opposition to what reality was telling them? Well then they were part of the problem too.
The only people serving our nation, are ones that know the nuances of all this stuff, and steadfastly refuse to budge on any of it (or get lucky from time to time that their actions fall under that umbrella, not because they know the larger reasons, but because they can tell on the smaller level that such an action is the right course). But who cares, patting oneself on the back of a destroyed nation serves no purpose. Fighting the bullshit we face with actual solutions, which are known...well known, to solve the real problems we still and increasingly face, is just the correct action to take. Everything else is merely stroking your privates.
So if we want to stay on the course of reality, here it is.
Impeach Obama (plenty of impeachable offenses and the obvious knowledge that he won't enact any of the measures needed to turn this country around such as....)
Glass-Steagall (takes us from utterly insolvent to merely bankrupt....there is a difference..and it is known)
American Credit System (we have needs, we have scientific progress that can be achieved to meet those needs in the present while scaling up for the future, but not enough money will be in the system once the fraud is taken out for this to occur...so under the policy of the founding fathers, we utter credit to fill the vacuum and meanwhile achieve what no amount of federal reserve dollars printed for fraudulent gambling debts will bring...actual physical economic progress.) The downstream effects of private business are immeasurable.
Utter credit for science driver programs to recreate the physical economy we need, and drive the science that will achieve it. It really isn't hard. (and to those that say science can solve our problems...guess what, we haven't tried, we've been doing the opposite for many decades. The drivers to our scientific progression have been dismantled since the Saturn V rocket was shelved...which was before the 1st moon landing. So when Neil Armstrong walked onto the moon, we were actually already in decline, enjoying the fat from previous capital expenditures.) People who don't think science will help, haven't stopped to realize we haven't yet tried it, and that yes, it will work. Let 1000 years from now problems be decided by THEM. Otherwise we are using linear thinking to the idiotic extreme as a self-limiting behavior, to keep us from engaging in known solutions, because of bullshit sophistry, all under the lunatic impression that we've been engaging in scientific progress because we have Viagra and Ipads and that we know what they will know 1000 years from now, today. Sorry Viagra and ipads are not scientific progress, and if the idiots couldn't see a Dick Tracy video phone being possible when Cell Phones had already been sold for ten years, then yes, the myopia from today will appear stunning over a thousand years.
We don't need to play the behavior game, and rely on mob mentalities to enact the known and historical solutions, much of which rest on the basis of the founding of this country.
America was founded (one of many) to be against monetarism. Now we're for it. Even when some realize that some sections of monetarism need to go, they still hold onto other parts of monetarism, and use the metrics of this bullshit system that monetarism gave us to try to destroy certain parts of monetarism. But there is a problem with this. Using monetarism to destroy select portions of monetarism won't work. Inherently there is always an oligarchical way (to squirm) out (and remain in control) when you continue to constrain your thinking and thus actions on what is ultimately an oligarchical principle, monetarism. You have to destroy the whole faux idea of monetarism, in order to succeed. It deserves to be destroyed. It serves no purpose, except for the oligarchy. Sadly, most people still haven't gone deep enough into the rabbit hole to figure this out.
There is no economic reason to make people suffer. There is no economic reason to allow legalized fraud. There is no economic reason we have to endure this crap. We just live in a fucked up system that tells us dogmatic reasons that we have to. All bullshit. All unnecessary. Yet people say we need to let people suffer, allow fraud, and endure all this, because the alternative is worse or there is no other way to enact change? No, that's a lie. The alternative is the only thing better, and waiting for strife is a poor decision. This country was founded upon ditching that crap. Nothing that we've gained since then goes against this. Healthcare doesn't go against this. Scientific research doesn't go against this. The increasing complexity of the physical economy doesn't go against this.
But people still don't realize how deep and tightly the tentacles of monetarism has latched around their brains rendering them incapable of thinking. The limits of man are entirely man made. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are no constraints of man that cannot be overcome through ditching bullshit and focusing on reality and finding creative solutions. There are plenty of resources. Plenty of space. Plenty of scientific progress to discover. Plenty of physical economic progress that can be created. The constraints are due to our reliance on dogmatic monetarism to solve these problems without any real project to tackle these issues. To use an example, a person who knows how to fish, but doesn't, may starve. Well that's where we are. We know how to 'fish', yet we don't do it, because monetarism has convinced us we don't need to, or that we can't because there are not enough fishing rods. Build more. Use a stick. Develop a different way...like a net. Monetarism ensures there are no alternatives, ensures us being cornered, because monetarism only serves the oligarchy, who just happened to create and promote monetarism to corner us into shifting our wealth to them based on whatever resources in whatever quantity are available at the time. Creating shortages is a tactic, a monetarist tactic. A bullshit tactic.
We haven't even touched the realities that people who are screwed over, won't revolt for a very long time. If they cannot figure out how to oppose monetarism, they'll be crushed under it's boot for a very long time, unnecessarily, until conditions become so bad, they revolt. But that could be years, decades, centuries, or never. Africa is still a colony, and even if it revolts, it doesn't change anything. Because they don't know how to fight monetarism. Revolting doesn't fix monetarism, it just might shuffle the deck of monetarists and the group of monetarist collaborators. But again, it takes a long time for people to revolt, and none of it is necessary. We can change things before a revolt occurs, or lose a good portion of our lives for no reason other than waiting on people to become desperate, and THEN think they'll for once think things through and while hungry can think clearly. A recipe for disaster, and a recipe for tyrants. The problem and solution is known, there is no reason to wait for a revolt out of desperation, and if one waits, you may be waiting a very long time, with the opposite of results. Such are the collapse of civilizations.
If monetarism is the milk
Then the people are the cream
Whose dead float to the top
That is a completely ridiculous statement.
2 terms are enough for any politician, no matter how good or bad he/she is. We need less career politicians.
That term limits would make things worse, is only your speculation. There is no evidence at all for such. As a counterexample I saw Swiss federal politics morphing from a bunch of amateurs sometimes bumbling along for all to see, to professional politicians to who no lie is too outrageous to postulate.
P.S.
Complaint #664.
Google did not invent the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee did. Berners-Lee is one of the pioneer voices in favour of Net Neutrality and has expressed the view that ISPs should supply "connectivity with no strings attached," and should neither control nor monitor customers' browsing activities without their expressed consent. He advocates the idea that net neutrality is a kind of human network right: "Threats to the Internet, such as companies or governments that interfere with or snoop on Internet traffic, compromise basic human network rights."
googleads.time.wasting.diminution.of.my.unfacebooked.doubletracked.explorations.of.asswipe.options.net and other such programs used by this site and others are an unwanted, uninvited, and undesirable intrusion of my personal privacy. I'll politely attempt to notify them from here to take me out and leave me out of their user profiles from this time forward, please. Execute client preferences routine: 10 leave...20 me...30 the fuck...40 alone...50 fuckwads. END PROGRAM.
Larry Davis:
You are a "big man" hiding under the brown paper bag, tapping your iPad keys. You wouldn't last 5 seconds in an "altercation". Your younger woman in Biarritz would have to try to save your ass.
Semper Fi
Spondoolix
You are correct. I am a big man in many senses (6'3-6'4, iq, cock, weight, strength, sadly not wallet or modesty, etc) especially what you are dwelling on: genital girth. You want to wrap your lips around my penis until it expands and makes it hard for you to breath. Most military guys probably do. I have some nice incotex pants and a mets hat on and it probably drives you crazy with lust. Unfortuantely, I'm not gay but I am flattered. Morover, I am a relatively good fighter and grappler who enjoys a fight every now and again. In addition to my grappling, a good friend of mine fought in the K1 and we used to spar (admittedly he would kick my ass but I've never had too much of a problem in any scuffle). Marines like you just fight like pussies with guns, knives, or some dirty tricks they learn at basic training (where they jerk each other off at night) but take off your gun and I would wear you out pussy. Hope you are good on the ground (you are accustomed to bing on your knees alot). You like to fight with 18 guys having your back but know that in a one on one setting I would FUCK YOU UP BADLY. Takedown BITCHEZZ. I like to finish with straight leg locks so unless you concuss me (I would just avoid your right hand as I awlays do-wait for you to throw some cowboy haymaker shit you can land it but then you are on the ground) you won't walk home.
63-64 IQ and cock? Yes, that sounds about right.
Yeah reading isn't your shit anyway. Your zero hedge name is the same as Peter North's porn series. Google search Matt Ramsey.
You are correct. I am a big man in many senses (6'3-6'4, iq, cock, weight, strength, sadly not wallet or modesty, etc) especially what you are dwelling on: genital girth. You want to wrap your lips around my penis until it expands and makes it hard for you to breath. Most military guys probably do. I have some nice incotex pants and a mets hat on and it probably drives you crazy with lust. Unfortuantely, I'm not gay but I am flattered. Morover, I am a relatively good fighter and grappler who enjoys a fight every now and again. In addition to my grappling, a good friend of mine fought in the K1 and we used to spar (admittedly he would kick my ass but I've never had too much of a problem in any scuffle). Marines like you just fight like pussies with guns, knives, or some dirty tricks they learn at basic training (where they jerk each other off at night) but take off your gun and I would wear you out pussy. Hope you are good on the ground (you are accustomed to bing on your knees alot). You like to fight with 18 guys having your back but know that in a one on one setting I would FUCK YOU UP BADLY. Takedown BITCHEZZ. I like to finish with straight leg locks so unless you concuss me (I would just avoid your right hand as I awlays do-wait for you to throw some cowboy haymaker shit you can land it but then you are on the ground) you won't walk home.
Bureaucratic inertia is the death of empires. Decline is a natural process of bureacracies that are not constantly filleted, especially so with the anti racketeeriing institutions. Any constitutional republic's charter will be eaten by termites from within in the absence of tumult.
The Western Empire that gloats over its rise and usurping of the Eastern Empire due to the process of internal competitiveness and the desperate strides forward made during times of internal conflict and rivalry cannot self examine when elite self interest controls the prosecutorial and judicial resources.
The last decent US legislative decencies were the anti trust laws and Glass Steagal. Some have mentioned the judicial appoinntment process but none have gone after the academic boards and the monotheist "western liberal intellectualism" that routed the Roman Empire. How many truly think that Ron Paul can save the flame of the Vestal Virgins in the US republic?
The end of the line of these times is the return of the time of proscription. A Lucius Cornelius Sulla reincarnate is just around the corner. Now this is the sort of list that this audience might use to create some attention (the ensuing corresponding Orwellian hate crime legislation drawn up by the executive and lawmakers will be enough evidence to draw public attention and inspire many.
Many poster have just discovered they hate the Electoral College because Tyler did - lol. The EC is a check against sectionalism whereby one region (the South, let's say) votes 90% for one candidate who runs about 40% elsewhere.
It's close to that today with Democrats rolling up 80% majorities in big cities while losing 80% of the counties. A final caution - the 2000 FL situation could be resolved because it was contained and what mattered was the electoral vote. Imagine a case of fraud in IL or NJ? How would illegal votes be negated if everything was thrown into one big pot? Just a question.
The sign of our times, ubiqutous dilution!
- monetary dilution, aka inflation
- food (taste has been inflated away)
- education (now you have to be a PhD to get accepted to similar positions Bachelors used to populate mere 30-40 years ago)
- quality of everything (it is no longer possible to buy stuff that will last for decades, it is no longer possible to fix stuff - you have to replace everything every few years!)
- moral values (everything is relative now, everything is accepted, rules are for old farts)
I think the time is coming where the people of earth have to face the reality that the political organizations called states have failed. That we when we look at them, we realize that the state is not us, and is not part of us, but is in fact inimical to our every human need - and that we need to disarm the state, subjugate it and possibly even destroy it to realize our freedom.
This means we need to unwind and analyse its subtle grasp over us, namely nationism. Where we are able to divide in our own mind the land, society, people and values that we love - from the adversial state - that we see these two as being separate entities. The state has a name, and we should call it by its name, in order to further differentiate it in our mind - one the one side we have the people, on the other we have the government - and these groups have become implacable enemies.
If every person embraced the knowledge that they own their own body, and the product of their own hands - and that only justice itself was an acceptable authority over them - and nothing else, then the state itself would cease to exist over night.
We no longer need states, in fact we have never needed states - men are perfectly able to interact with each other fairly and justly with only two things being necessary - that there is a common system of justice, and that property rights (including thye property of ones body) are fully respected by that system of justice.
It is time for a revolution of thought - we we lay aside the failed experiments of the last couple of centuries, and men become free - ruled only by justice - rejecting any claim that other men have any legitimate right to exersise unjust force.