Liberal Psychoses

Good piece by Victor David Hanson

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson082511.html

Should I buy Gold and/or Silver?

From the Gold Money Foundation

Jim Sinclair interviewed by James Turk - conversation about gold

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF24atvN

Eric Sprott interviewed by James Turk - conversation about silver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt7EQTv3wy4

The Endless Vacation

The Hypocrite in Chief

These words may come back to bite the president. In this clip, Obama calls President Bush "unpatriotic" for adding to the national debt. Obama has added almost as much to the national debt in 3 years as Bush did in eight! That's "really unpatriotic". When President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 Trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. Bush's record on deficit spending was awful. During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion per year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama's presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion per year. That amounts to a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than under Bush.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyLmru6no4U

Markets react to S&P Downgrade

most recent video blog from Peter Schiff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O-k5MX0EI0

The Poisoned Fruit of Social Democracy

It is difficult not to notice that most of the financial, economic and societal problems making headlines in the world today are centered in Europe and the United States. The reality is that the "West" has finally reached the point of saturation wherein its economies and societies can no longer afford to guarantee a certainstandard of living for the citizens of these countries in exchange for votes.

These nations have two factors in common: 1) they are all either confirmed to be or determined (as in the case of the United States) to become socialist democracies; and 2) they have evolved into overwhelmingly consumption-based societies, greatly diminishing their goods-producing sector (which generates the real wealth of a nation), thus eroding their job-creation ability as well as the nation's wealth and tax base. Yet the governments of all these countries continue to deficit spend, over-tax (chasing wealth and job-creation off-shore) and borrow in an effort to meet the expectations of the people.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/the_poisoned_fruit_of_social_democracy.html

Liberal Logic

In a bid to stem taxpayer losses for bad loans guaranteed by federal housing agencies Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) proposed that borrowers be required to make a 5% down payment in order to qualify.

His proposal was rejected 57-42 on a party-line vote because, as Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) explained, "Passage of such a requirement would restrict home ownership to only those who can afford it."

Obama's Paradoxes

When Barack Obama won the election in 2008, he was quite right that the old system needed fixing. America’s debt, its poorly educated youth, its imbalances in trade, its counterproductive tax system, its out-of-control annual spending, its culture of entitlement and subsidies, all in perfect-storm fashion were starting to coalesce and weaken America from within and the perception of America abroad. The statesmanlike thing to do — in the manner of a once-naïve Harry Truman, who woke up to the threat of Soviet-inspired global Communism, or of a Bill Clinton, who finally addressed some of the contradictions of the welfare state and deficit spending — would have been to overhaul the tax system, recalibrate Social Security and Medicare, cut spending, lecture the citizenry on personal responsibility, and address the therapeutic curriculum in our failing schools. With a 70 percent approval rating and supermajorities in both houses of Congress, Obama could have done almost anything throughout 2009.

Instead, he chose the path of Jimmy Carter and the pre-1995 Bill Clinton — even more redistributive state programs, more stifling regulations, more petulant talk about “them,” more class warfare, more debt, and more failed big government.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274706/obama-s-paradoxes-victor-davis-hanson

(Un)Happy Birthday, Fiat Money

Forty years ago today, on the morning of Sunday, August 15, 1971, the US president, Richard Nixon, declared the inconvertibility of the dollar into gold.[1] The 20,000 tons of the yellow metal deposited in Fort Knox in 1944 had decreased substantially due to the high military costs of the Vietnam War. The United States — the leading global economic power — could not honor its financial commitments. This meant the end of a historical and monetary rule that, from the dawn of civilization, had made money a general medium of exchange and also a store of value. It began a new era of historical abnormality — that of fiat currency and central-bank monopoly, where the ability to provide credit and financing becomes as boundless as the production of legally enforced paper printed by the issuing bank.

http://mises.org/daily/5543/Unhappy-Birthday-Fiat-Money

Obama's Vision and The Constitution

It is hard to say just what Obama's vision of America is or whether he has a vision at all. More often than not, his is a negative vision. From his perspective, America is wrong in so many ways that it stands in need of radical change. At the heart of this negative vision is Obama's idea that America is not a "just" nation. Obama believes that fairness demands redistribution of wealth to the point that every citizen of the United States is entitled to a middle-class standard of living as a matter of right.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/obamas_vision_and_the_constitution.html

A Tottering Technocracy

We are witnessing a widespread crisis of faith in our progressive guardians of the last 30 years. These are the blue-chip, university-certified elite, employed by universities, government, and big-money private foundations and financial-services companies. The best recent examples are sorts like Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Robert Rubin, Steven Chu, and Timothy Geithner. Politicians like John Kerry, John Edwards, and Al Gore all share certain common characteristics of this Western technocracy: proper legal or academic credentials, ample service in elected or appointed government office, unabashed progressive politics, and a free pass to enjoy ample personal wealth without any perceived contradiction with their loud share-the-wealth egalitarian politics.

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson081111.html

Revenge of the Gods of the Copybook Headings

All of our economic woes, more or less, have come from defiance of what Rudyard Kipling called the Gods of the Copybook Headings. These are the nonpartisan, scientific, and implacable laws of economics and human behavior.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/the_revenge_of_the_gods_of_the_copybook_headings.html

"The first ten amendments were proposed and adopted largely because of fear that Government might unduly interfere with prized individual liberties. The people wanted and demanded a Bill of Rights written into their Constitution. The amendments embodying the Bill of Rights were intended to curb all branches of the Federal Government in the fields touched by the amendments—Legislative, Executive, and Judicial." -- Justice Hugo L. Black (1886-1971)

US Supreme Court Justice Source: Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 71 (Dissent) (1947).

Obama's New Bill of Rights

Thought for the Day

"All men have equal rights, but not to equal things." -- Edmund Burke
(1729-1797) Irish-born British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker

To Pig to Fail

Thoughts on the Welfare State

"Welfare mostly subsidizes people in poverty, helping few escape from it. In their hearts, most people who are poor would like to be rich, or at least self-sustaining, but this president never talks about how they might achieve that goal. Instead, he criticizes those who made the right choices and now enjoy the fruits of their labor. Rather than use successful people as examples for the poor to follow, the president seeks to punish the rich with higher taxes and more regulations on their businesses." Cal Thomas Columnist 2011

"It is precisely this clinging to victimhood as a means of demonstrating one’s
virtue and advancing one’s well-being that has led us into a society in which
welfare and quotas are “civil rights,” government handouts are “entitlements,”
and payment to girls having babies out of wedlock are “compassionate,” while
hard-working, ambitious people are “greedy,” punishment of crime is
“oppression,” and an independent thinker who stands for courage and
self-reliance is dismissed as an “Uncle Tom.” J. Tucker Alford

"Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this:
The communist seeing the rich man and his fine home says, “No man should have so much.”
The capitalist seeing the same thing says, “All men should have as much.” "
Phelps Adams (1903-1991) Chief Washington correspondent for The New York Sun (1928-50), adminstrative vice president for United States Steel (1950-67)

The Debt Sky

Although advocates of government projects try to appropriate the aura of market investment, their schemes can’t escape being acts of consumption. They are guided not by market prices and expected consumer preferences but by politicians’ wish to be reelected. The funds won’t be acquired by consent and therefore put to a market test, and the services won’t be offered on the market to free consumers with the power to say no thank you. Rather, resources will be acquired either by taxation, that is, by the threat of force, or by borrowing, which is possible only because the government has power to tax. Any resulting services will be provided not on the market but through the political process in which some are compelled to subsidize others. Costs are severed from benefits.

The lesson then is that real and dramatic spending cuts through a radical reduction in what government does is the authentic way to stimulate economic growth, not to mention expand individual freedom.

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/the-debt-sky/

Peter Schiff on S&P AA+ rating of US Sovereign Debt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgNLTb58K_Y

American Animal Farm

The original vision of an entrepreneurial, capitalist republic has devolved now to a social democratic nightmare where government programs actually suffocate initiative and enterprise. Literal, and figurative, industry is now vilified from the Oval Office. At the local level, especially in urban areas, social democrats thrive in dysfunctional, one-party towns. These urban blights cannot afford incompetence, even; it must be subsidized.

Fifty percent of the population pays no income taxes, but they do have the vote. This constituency has no skin in the game except, maybe, to collect a government check. There's no incentive for fiscal prudence when deadbeats can be bought with other people's money.

The American crisis was not created by reformers or conservatives. It was created by a bovine electorate and a porcine federal government -- a horrible model that actually cultivates social pathologies for political purposes. More than four out of ten dollars spent by Washington must be borrowed to finance what now amounts to an American "Animal Farm." Indeed, George! The pigs have taken over again. Napoleon and Squealer are back.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/the_american_animal_farm.html

Why Capitalism is worth Defending

As Obama demonizes the wealthy and pitches a dozen plans to restructure the economy, opponents of this program need a reminder of what exactly we're fighting for. We are resisting bureaucracy, central planning, and encroachments on our freedom and communities. But this does not get to the heart of the matter. We are not only an opposition movement, countering the president and his partisans' agenda. More fundamentally, we stand in defense of the greatest engine of material prosperity in human history, the fount of civilization, peace, and modernity: capitalism.

There is a myth that capitalism is the dominating doctrine. It seems almost everyone believes this, most finding it at least somewhat unfortunate, which itself should tell you there's a problem with assuming capitalism's unchallenged popularity. In fact, capitalism has few authentic defenders. Conservatives pretend to support it but make exceptions for education, energy, agriculture, labor, central banking, borders, intellectual property, and drugs, to say nothing of national defense and criminal justice. Even worse, many conservatives of the anticorporatist, localist variety are more protectionist and economically nationalistic than the establishment Right. They will sacrifice property rights for their cultural preferences on guns, religion, so-called family values, and certainly patriotism. With friends like these, capitalism needs truer allies.

http://mises.org/daily/5505/Why-Capitalism-Is-Worth-Defending

Why the debt ceiling "compromise" should have been opposed

This deal does nothing to fix the overreaches of both parties over the past few years: Obamacare, TARP, trillion-dollar wars, runaway entitlement spending. They are all cemented into place with this deal, and their legacy will be trillions of dollars in new debt.

The deal:

• Adds at least $7 trillion to our debt over the next 10 years. The deal purports to "cut" $2.1 trillion, but the "cut" is from a baseline that adds $10 trillion to the debt. This deal, even if all targets are met and the Super Committee wields its mandate - results in a BEST case scenario of still adding more than $7 trillion more in debt over the next 10 years. That is sickening.
• Never, ever balances.
• The Super Committee's mandate is to add $7 trillion in new debt. Let's be clear: $2.1 trillion in reductions off a nearly $10 trillion,10-year debt is still more than $7 trillion in debt. The Super Committee limits the constitutional check of the filibuster by expediting passage of bills with a simple majority. The Super Committee is not precluded from any issue, therefore the filibuster could be rendered moot. In addition, the plan harms the possible passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment. Since the goal is never to balance, having the BBA as a "trigger" ensures that the committee will simply report its $1.2 trillion deficit reduction plan and never move to a BBA vote.
• It cuts too slowly. Even if you believe cutting $2.1 trillion out of $10 trillion is a good compromise, surely we can start cutting quickly, say $200 billion-$300 billion per year, right? Wrong. This plan so badly backloads the alleged savings that the cuts are simply meaningless. Why do we believe that the goal of $2.5 trillion over 10 years (that's an average of $250 billion per year) will EVER be met if the first two years cuts are $20 billion and $50 billion. There is simply no path in this bill even to the meager savings they are alleging will take place.

Betrayed Again

The Tea Party has been maligned, abused, falsely accused, mocked and derided for standing for freedom and fiscal responsibility. 22 stood against Boehner’s suicidal plan that was nothing more than cover for a revisit to the McConnell/Reid monstrosity. We will remember these heroes and what they stand for.

So what do Republicans do? Why they come up with pointless plans that in reality are no different from the Democrats. Don’t talk to me about a Balanced Budget Amendment. They aren’t serious, they only put in a provision to get a chance to vote on it. It will never materialize that way. It’s another lie. And the cuts are a joke – they will not happen. Forget about capping spending – the Cloward and Piven frenzy of spending continues its suicidal dance, capering gleefully toward the chasm’s edge.

And some of those we believed to be true Tea Party patriots have been seduced by the dark side. They caved at the first opportunity and turned away from those who helped elect them. Spines we thought were forged from steel morphed into slinkies in record time.

“If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Samuel Adams

Congress is still deadlocked on the budget. God help us if the horrific McConnell/Reidplan goes through empowering a Super Congress, raising the debt ceiling by 3 Trillion with staggered cuts that will almost assuredly never materialize. But if it does not go through, I believe Obama will opt for an Executive Order, using the 14th Amendment as cover, ushering us into a dictatorship with an iron grip on America’s throat and jackboots dancing an evil jig on the Constitution. Boehner and all the other RINOs are complicit. We are watching what you do, not what you say.

As Boehner and McConnell strike a deal with the devil, the clock ticks on towards the Tuesday deadline. As for me, I take the conservative stand come hell or high water. Patriots prepare. Progressives be damned.

Peter Schiff - straight talker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t01xdDphC4

14 minutes of valuable information - if you don't have time to listen to it all, fast forward to the last 3 minutes

Mt. Debtmore

The entire US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2010 was $14.62 Trillion. The US debt ceiling currently stands at $14.294 Trillion, which was exceeded in May of 2011. Obama and Congress will be raising the debt ceiling well above our US GDP. Does this make America economically stronger or weaker? To say that our government is simply spending more than it takes in is an understatement when it comes to the out-of-control spending we’ve experienced under President Obama; what he’s doing is dangerous. He has spent about $12.2 Trillion in just 3 years; that’s $5.15 Trillion more than the approximate $7.05 Trillion that was given to him by taxpayers. Let’s look at it another way… It took roughly 220 years for our nation to accumulate $5.181 Trillion in debt which occurred in 1996. From 1996 to the end of 2008 (12 years), another $4.473 Trillion was added to our national debt, which is why we screamed for Bush to stop spending. Obama is adding $5.15 Trillion in just 3 years.

Cloward-Piven Paradise?

Combine class warfare, demonizing the rich, getting as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible, and pushing the economic system to collapse and you have a flawless formula for Cloward-Piven 2.0 -- and a vehicle that ensures Obama remains in power. The premise of the Cloward-Piven collective/anti-capitalist gospel decried "individual mobility and achievement," celebrated organized labor, fostered the principle that "if each finally found himself in the same relative economic relationship to his fellows ... all were infinitely better off."

The duo taught that if you flooded the welfare rolls and bankrupted the cities and ultimately the nation, it would foster economic collapse, which would lead to political turmoil so severe that socialism would be accepted as a fix to an out-of-control set of circumstances.

The idea was that if people were starving and the only way to eat was to accept government cheese, rather than starve, the masses would agree to what they would otherwise reject.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/cloward-piven_paradise_now.html