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In a way I wish I could be more sympathetic with the Occupy movement. I finished a three part article on the Occupy thing in my local paper, and I’ve read a lot of crap on the net about their various activities around the country, but nothing I’ve read to this point has really explained what they’re stirred up about or why they are willing to get their heads busted and spend a night in a cell with Bubba. According to one source the Occupy movement is directed against economic and social inequality, and to a point the YouTube videos and newspaper articles bear this out with talk about them being the 99%, corporate greed and corrupt capitalists, but the people speaking the loudest for these mobs all look like recently unemployed yuppies and waanabe throwbacks to the anti-Vietnam war protesters of the late 60′s. Their inarticulate yammering borders on hysteria and whatever the message is that they are trying to get across seems far too vague amidst the flying rhetoric, the babble of the crowd, and the and the juvenile property damage wrecked by the lunatic fringe that has attached itself to them. In Oakland the crowd was chanting “End Capitalism;” that message came through loud and clear, but what didn’t compute in my mind was the why of it. What would it really mean to end capitalism? If we ended capitalism what would we base our economy on afterwards? How would ending capitalism make the economic situation of the people in this country more equitable? My gardener is a capitalist. He mows my yard and I pay him to do it, it works for him and it works for me. If we do away with capitalism would he be mowing my yard for free, or would I be paying him and mowing my yard myself? I suppose I might be a bit dense on this point and I would like somebody to draw me a picture of what this would look like or give me a diagram of how it would work because I just don’t get it.

I suppose that, deep down,  I think these Occupy people are nothing more than a bunch of idiots. The whole thing reminds me of the rabid-dog gun control crowd who want to prohibit a machine for the actions of its operator. Corporations are nothing more than companies. They provide services for which people choose to pay. The whole idea behind them is to make a profit, and the amount of profit they make is directly proportional to how many people desire the service they provide and are willing to pay for it. Where is the evil in that arrangement? If nobody were willing to pay for the service that a company was selling then how long would they remain in business? It doesn’t matter how big a company is or how much money they have now. Bank of America, Capital One, Chase Manhattan, how long would any of them last if it were not for the people who chose to do business with them? The fact is that many of the people who are out there bellowing the loudest have checking accounts and credit cards through the companies they are targeting and that sort of detracts from the credibility of the whole show. The real question should be is the problem rooted in the banks and the big corporations or is it in the government officials and elected representatives who secretly take their money in exchange for passing laws that benefit the banks and the big corporations unfairly, and at our expense? If this is the case, and I am fairly certain that it is, then ridding ourselves of capitalism, the one thing that has made this nation a land of prosperity and achievement for all, would be like shooting ourselves in the foot before a race. Why not fix the corruption in government, eliminate the laws they have passed to keep us all screwed to the floor and leave well enough alone?  I don’t like Bank of America any more than the next guy, but I am not about to cut my throat over it.

Why is it the Occupy crowd, as educated as they claim to be, can’t figure out that destroying capitalism and turning the big corporations into victims is not the brightest way to go when focusing on corruption seems like such an easy way to fix things up? Personally, I think that they know, but since it isn’t in line with their agenda they aren’t bringing it up. Besides it’s easy to get everyone fixated on the corporations and giving them a target keeps them from seeing the real villains.

The Occupy crowd claims that they represent 99% of the people but I suspect they represent far fewer. Aside from the perpetual joiners who leap onto every cause that wanders by, the crowds occupying the current protest sites around the country seem to be heavily weighted with college students, recent graduates, and characters wearing SEIU t-shirts. This explains a lot more than the rhetoric they’re spouting for dissemination through the news media, but whether or not is it something that you or I would normally support is something else. The colleges and universities in this country were long ago taken over by the extreme left and the curriculum offered is slanted to support their political views. The students are graded more on their ability to assimilate those views than they are on the absorption of actual knowledge. Degrees in mathematics, hard science and engineering have been declining for more than thirty years while graduates with degrees and even doctorates in ethnic studies, sociology, political science, and Hispanic Culture have soared. These are people that have taken out high interest rate educational loans over a period of four to six years while they pursued what amounts to the most worthless educational experience imaginable and thirty days after they finally graduate they find that they have absolutely no marketable skills that any employer is looking for. and as an added bonus, they are $175,000 in debt that they can’t pay off, and even if they filed for bankruptcy their educational loans won’t be discharged. It’s hard to imagine the joy of being 23 years old and starting your adult life with no job and $175,000 in debt. But is that a good reason for destroying the foundation of our nation’s economic system?

Honestly speaking, I suspect that rather than 99% of our society, the Occupy crowd actually represents about 43%. 43 is the percentage of Americans who are partially or completely reliant on financial assistance from state or federal government to meet their basic human needs. 43% of the nation is receiving some form of food stamps, housing subsidies or clothing allowance from the government and this number is growing very fast. This is the segment of American society most threatened by cuts to entitlement programs and without the ability to raise the tax money needed to pay for these programs, that threat is closer to becoming a reality and the amplitude of vocal outrage increases. But is that a good reason for destroying the foundation of our nation’s economic system?

When we hear the chants and speeches coming from the Occupy protestors are we actually hearing something that constitutes a legitimate complaint or are we letting our own displeasure with the current elected representatives lead us into agreeing with something that is completely unworkable. It’s easy to sympathize with the underdog, the poor family that has been psychologically conditioned to rely on others for their basic human needs, but do we really think that destroying our own way of life is going to help them. Wouldn’t it make more sense to strengthen the economy by eliminating the corrupt practices enshrined by crooked politicians and kick-starting the free market so that jobs were available? Rather than draining what little money the American middle class still might have to pay for the food, clothing and shelter of those who are either unable or unwilling to care for themselves, wouldn’t it make more sense to start cutting these programs back and wean these people off the public dole so that they could care for themselves and take some responsibility for their own lives?

With the 2012 Presidential Election coming up it is unlikely that you will hear anything of this nature proposed by the candidates from either party. If they want to get elected they will sympathize and pander to anyone listening. Unfortunately that is not going to solve the problem, and if we don’t solve it, it is going to get worse. The Occupy protestors might be a mass movement, but they do not represent the American people. If we really want to see a solution to the problems we face we need to quit listening to the guy with the degree in Hispanic Studies and start listening to the voice of common sense, otherwise we just keep losing and the other side will just keep taking.

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Herman Cain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, and he ran for the U.S. Senate in Georgia in 2004 but did not win in the primaries. His presidential campaign for the White House in 2012 began way back in 2010 when he hit all of the early presidential states, became a YouTube sensation, and addressed more than 40 Tea Party rallies around the country. Throughout all of this, his prior run for the presidency, his senatorial bid in 2004 and up until October of this year, a mere thirty day ago, in a presidential campaign that began over a year ago, not one word was said by any of the women who were suddenly overcome with a spasm of self-righteous indignation and are now claiming that back in 1997 he behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner with them. While this sort of trash may sell tons of newspapers, the fact is these women lack any sort of credibility and have nothing whatsoever to support their allegations.

I could just as easily claim that I caught Barack Obama in my back yard groping my dog. Furthermore, I am absolutely certain that there are numerous individuals out there who would be more than willing to allege that, they too, discovered Barack in their yard or barn doing the big nasty with their pet or their prize pig. The truth doesn’t matter when the news media gets on board and starts blasting the story across their headlines with every morning’s new edition. Repeating a lie often enough does not make it true, but to the easily swayed and the extremely gullible, anything nasty that shows up in newsprint is quickly bought into. In fact, the more vicious a rumor is, the more apt people are to buy into it even when there isn’t a shred of evidence to support it.

I look at the timing and substance of these allegations as a good indication of exactly how much neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party wants a credible candidate running for office. Consider the fact that if a candidate with any real sense of integrity and decency should actually run for the presidency, and against all odds, win the office, it would be the end of “business as usual” for both parties and neither of these corrupt political gangs are about to let that happen if they can scuttle it quickly before the average working people have a chance to get behind it and start pushing.

This country is not going to be pulled out of the frying pan by a die-hard Democrat or a die-hard Republican; they have too much invested in keeping things the way they have been and they are not about to let someone who might represent the people come in and screw up their party. However, if this nation is going to be put back on the right track it is going to take somebody that is not part of the current problem to do it. If Obama gets another four years we get more of the same. If Romney wins the election we get more of the same. If Perry wins the election we get more of the same and the same with Bachman, Gingrich, Huntsman, Santorum, Clinton or any of the others that have helped make the mess that we are in. If the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, why would we vote for the people that have already shown themselves to be dishonest, self-serving and politically corrupt while in office? Quit voting for political parties and political hacks and start voting for somebody that will do the job we want done.

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Barack Obama, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain

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If the only way that Rick Perry can get to the top of the Republican heap is to smear the character of his fellow Republicans I believe that says more about his character than any words he has to offer. The allegations of sexual harassment filling the newspapers with respect to Herman Cain are so old that their pubic hairs are grey and the fact of the matter is that they say absolutely nothing about Cain himself. He was a business leader in charge of a large operation when these allegations first came out and there are damn few business leaders of any size organization that don’t carry some sort of sexual harassment claim in their baggage. It happens to be one of the most popular claims anyone with a grudge can level and thousands of such allegations are filed every year only to be found without merit.

According to AP News the latest of these allegations comes from a woman who said she “considered” filing such a complaint against Cain as a result of remarks she claims he made back in the 1990′s. This is just about as far from credible information as one can get, and yet this is the sort of thing that Rick Perry is digging up and leaking to the press in the hope that Cain’s campaign goes belly up so he can grab a bigger piece of the pie for himself. Rick Perry’s campaign took off with a bang but it seems to have fizzled out since he began airing his extreme evangelical Christian beliefs, some of which are downright scary.

Personally I believe that, as a Republican candidate for President in 2012, Herman Cain might just be the biggest concern that the Democratic Party faces and they would be entirely orgasmic if Cain’s fellow Republican candidates ganged up on him in the effort to send him packing. For one thing, the Democrats could point at it and say they were right all along about the Republicans being nothing more than a bunch of racists. Not that it would really prove anything, but what the hell, what ultra-liberal Democrat needs proof? Cain’s presence in the GOP line-up hinders the Democratic Party’s ability to portray the GOP as the party of the filthy rich white guy, and that’s an image they need to pump full of air before we get too much closer to election time. The Democrats have portrayed themselves as the party that fights for the downtrodden and oppressed for so long that they’ve forgotten that they’re also the party that started the Ku Klux Klan and fought against integration in the South. A black man running for President on the GOP ticket will do major damage to nearly fifty years of liberal lies and propaganda.

At this point in time, Herman Cain is the closest thing to a Presidential candidate the GOP has in the race. Perry’s a Christian fanatic and as would prove to be as bad as any Islamic fanatic could be as a president. Romney is still not much of a conservative and while he may be the favored son of the GOP leadership because he comes closer to their new left leaning conservative positions, the fact is he is nearly as liberal as Obama. When you get right down to it, in a race between Romney and Obama it wouldn’t matter who you voted for because you would end up with the same old garbage either way.

All things considered, I will still vote for Ron Paul if he gets the nomination, but if he doesn’t I would like to see Herman Cain get a shot at it.

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Thirty years ago, 10 percent of California’s general revenue fund went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons. Today nearly 11 percent goes to prisons and 8 percent to higher education.

The top 1 percent of Americans now take in roughly one-fourth of America’s total income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent now controls 40 percent of the total. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent.

Seventy-five percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record or are physically unfit.

The United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Poverty rate rises in America:
One in six Americans are now living below the poverty line and the number of people whose income falls in the category of “poverty” is growing at a rapidly accelerating rate.

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It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that political campaigns, especially presidential campaigns, have a distinct habit of warping statistical calculations to benefit whichever side is using them to prop up their arguments and the 2012 presidential campaign season is already shaping up to be the number one textbook example of fabricated statistical information in the political history of the United States.

The official unemployment rate that is regularly disseminated by the U.S. Labor Department has a built-in political fudge-factor to reduce the actual percentage number of unemployed Americans by as much as 50% or more. In fact, the federal government has thrown so many questionable factors into the calculation process that it is impossible to do anything more than make an educated guess at what the actual unemployment rate might be. Currently the officially reported rate, sanctioned by the U.S. Labor Department, was at 9.1% in August, however the U-6 Unemployment Rate tracked by U.S. Labor Statistics put the figure at 16.2% for August, and many credible critics, including many congressional representatives affiliated with both the Democratic and Republican Parties are now claiming that the actual number of unemployed American citizens now exceeds 22% of the total American workforce. With an unemployment rate above 20% there is no question why any incumbent Washington politician would want to obscure the truth. For the sake of information, the U-6 rate for April, 2011 was 15.9% and four months later, in August it was up to 16.2%. Does anyone really need a politician from Washington to explain in which direction this problem is headed? Ironically, the more accurate statistics available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the demographic groups hardest hit by the steadily escalating unemployment rate are the very same groups that turned out in mass during the 2008 presidential election to support Barack Obama. Among the native born Black Americans the U-6 unemployment rate is as high as 42%, and native born Hispanic Americans are not doing much better with a reported U-6 unemployment rate as high as 36.5% while the uncategorized native-born Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 years of age, the crowd that turned out in droves to support Obama’s campaign for change in 2008 have a reported U-6 unemployment rate of 27.1% which is identical to the U-6 rate reported for the nation’s burgeoning population of immigrants both legal and illegal.

With the 2012 presidential election looming just over the horizon, Obama’s approval rating sinking faster than the Titanic, and nearly one quarter of the nation’s willing and available workforce unemployed and frantically seeking any sort of employment, you might think that our illustrious president, the beacon of hope in a floundering economy, would take whatever steps were necessary to ensure the creation of jobs that American workers could fill. The basic truth is that unemployed workers are not happy and if they are not happy when Election Day rolls around they are going to vote for a different administration regardless of who is responsible for their situation or what lies they are told. Without any doubt this is a serious problem for the incumbent president and one that he would certainly like to see go away, but the fact is this problem is not going to disappear and it will probably get a lot worse due to some of the more recent changes Obama has encouraged if not implemented himself.

Obama’s presidential directive regarding the deportation of illegal aliens effectively guts the American immigration laws by making it nearly impossible for American immigration authorities to effectively do what the American taxpayers are paying them to do. There are already an estimated 20 to 40 million illegal aliens in the U.S. and there are more than 8,000 new illegal aliens entering the country every day. Illegal aliens comprise more than half of all construction company employees. They have literally taken over many of the building trades forcing American workers onto unemployment. New home construction and the skilled building trades have been the foundation of middle-class prosperity since the end of World War II. Even if 27.1% of the nation’s estimated 20 to 40 million illegal aliens are unemployed as the Labor Department’s statistics indicate that still leaves 72.9% of the working age illegal aliens employed in positions that American citizens are desperate to fill. Inasmuch as the federal government could care less how many illegal aliens are taking American jobs and the exact number is not tracked the best possible guess is that anywhere from 15 to 29 million illegal aliens are working in the U.S. and that is pretty close to the number of unemployed American citizens who are actively, but unsuccessfully looking for jobs. It seems like such an easy problem to fix, but since the government won’t implement E-Verify or deport any of the illegal aliens they catch the solution to the problem remains a long ways off.

Another major obstacle in the path of widespread job creation is Barack Obama’s completely over-the-top willingness to do the bidding of this nation’s over-bloated national labor organizations. Admittedly, since they were a major force behind getting him elected he feels indebted to them and without the campaign contributions provided to the Democratic Party from the union dues of their members, the DNC would have a tough time getting anyone elected to office, especially if they had to stand on merit alone. Be that as it may, companies that would otherwise be hiring new employees are holding off until they see which way the wind blows as far as some of the labor union proposed legislative acts are concerned. Primary among the labor union’s proposed legislative acts is the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” which is designed to eliminate the requirement of secret ballot elections from union organizing attempts. Secret ballot elections have been protecting American workers from being intimidated into voting for union representation for many decades and there is no sound or logical justification for eliminating this protection other than compensating the unions for past favors done. It certainly adds no benefit to American workers but it does put all American companies at the mercy of labor unions that can come in at any time and wreak havoc on even the best of employment situations. As long as the threat of this legislative atrocity remains dangling over the heads of American business companies will lean to the side of caution in their hiring practices, and in the event that this atrocious piece of legislative garbage is actually passed into law we can count on seeing explosive growth in the number of companies that are outsourcing work overseas or moving their entire operation out of the country. To implement something like the “Employee Free Choice Act” during a time of economic instability and high unemployment would be sheer lunacy and a good indication that neither our elected representatives nor our president has a handle on the basic law of cause and effect.

Then again, we already have a good indication of how far Obama will go to pay back the labor unions for funneling so many millions of their member’s dues money into his campaign and that indication was made extremely clear by his recess appointments of Lafe Solomon and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) general counsel Craig Becker to positions of authority on the National Labor Relations Board. The thought that either of these two union fanatics would be sitting in positions of importance overseeing the rights of American workers and their employers was too much even for quite a few liberal Democrats and Obama’s earlier attempt to nominate Craig Becker to the NLRB was blown out of the water by bipartisan opposition in the U.S. Senate. With the knowledge that an attempt to appoint Lafe Solomon to the position of general counsel for the NLRB would fare no better in the Senate Obama decided to do an end run and appointed both me to the Labor Board during a congressional recess when he could do so without opposition from either party. The fact that even many of the Senate Democrats opposed these nominations speaks volumes to the fanaticism of these two die-hard labor activists. Craig Becker has long favored the position that labor unions should be given carte blanche to do whatever they feel necessary in the face of company opposition and Lafe Solomon has publicly stated that company need to be restrained from taking any action in their own defense against union organizers.

Currently, Lafe Solomon has become very active in the NLRB’s case against Boeing and in April he accused them of violating federal law by deciding to build a new 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina. At a time when most companies are cutting costs and reducing their workforce Boeing built a $750 million dollar manufacturing facility in South Carolina, hired thousands of workers to and invested heavily in their training so they could staff it rather than follow the example of so many others and send the work overseas where it could be done so much cheaper. Boeing officials unwittingly admitted that the decision to base the plant in South Carolina was made in part on the fact that it is a right to work state. Boeing’s admission provoked the ire of the NLRB and Solomon expressed the opinion that Boeing’s actions constituted an unfair attempt to deprive the company’s union represented employees of their death grip on every plane the company produced. Furthermore, Solomon argued, Boeings decision to locate their new manufacturing facility in South Carolina was an act of intentional retaliation against the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union representatives of Boeing’s manufacturing facility in Washington State. As it now stands Boeing is three years behind schedule on their 787 Dreamliner contract and if Solomon gets his way they will be stuck with a 750 million dollar manufacturing facility in South Carolina that they can’t run and thousands of newly hired and trained employees that the company will be forced to terminate. If the NLRB succeeds in closing down the South Carolina facility there is no guarantee that the work on the 787 Dreamliner will be done at the company’s union represented plant in Washington State. It is much more likely that Boeing will lose the contract altogether and the work will end up being done in France by Airbus, Boeing’s chief European rival. The National Labor Relations Board’s heavy-handed persecution of Boeing is entirely unprecedented in light of the fact that the company has done nothing illegal and thousands of other companies have taken similar cost-saving actions like this in the past, however, the fanatical labor advocacy demonstrated by the NLRB in this case has sent a clear message to all American companies. The current presidential administration is willing to give the labor organizations the upper hand in legal disputes with American companies regardless of the consequences to the nation’s economy or to the American workers, and it will be a cold day in hell before another American company the size of Boeing offers a helping hand to this country’s growing population of unemployed. Incidentally, while the fanatics at the NLRB are working to close down the South Carolina Boeing plant, Hilda Solis, President Obama’s labor secretary has been bragging about Obama’s masterful ability to create jobs, and in one press release she stated, “In the Charleston area alone, more than 900 manufacturing jobs have been added since July 2010 — an increase of 4.3 percent.”

The United States of America is standing on the brink of an economic disaster of immense proportions, millions of American citizens are unemployed, many have totally exhausted their unemployment benefits and maxed out their credit cards trying to stay afloat, mortgage foreclosures are at a historic high and contrary to what the government is saying, there is no recourse available to stave off the demanding creditors that would rather force you into the street and take your home than listen to your problems; the politicians in Washington D.C. respond to the desperate needs of the American people by currying favor with friendly special interest groups and labor unions interested only in their accumulation of political power, and trading legislative action for campaign contributions and pledges of support when they next come up for election while entirely credible solutions to every problem this nation is currently facing are either kicked to the back burner or are thrown completely out of the kitchen.

An AP Newswire poll released this morning indicates that 63% of the polls respondents are more than willing to give up their personal freedoms so the government can effectively fight the terrorists that nearly all of these individuals believe are coming from outside the United States, however, the Department of Homeland Security stated quite some time ago that foreign terrorists are the least of our concerns and domestic terrorism is the biggest threat to the stability of the present government. As the sewage of government corruption, outright lies and the empty promises of self-centered professional politicians floods in around us and we stare into the hollow eyes of what the United States government has become, those of us who have not sold off every weapon in our possession in the effort to pay the bills should count their lucky stars because the day is quickly approaching when your continued existence will depend on them.

There is no longer any question of whether or not we are going down, the only question worth asking anymore is how the liberal, the concerned, the caring, the politically correct and socially conscious people of this nation will taste when they are barbecued for dinner.

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Barack Obama is lying through his teeth when he portrays himself as an innocent bystander in the congressional battle over the debt ceiling. Any compromise according to the terms of the battle he has established for the Democratic members of Congress is unlikely for the simple reason that the Democrats are unwilling to accept anything less than their entire Christmas list, and Obama has vowed to veto anything that doesn’t meet his unreasonable demands.

The President has not demonstrated any reluctance to threaten the pay for American soldiers stationed around the world and seems to dismiss the catastrophic damage that action would have on their struggling families surviving on an American soldier’s miserly income. Nor has he been reluctant to threaten the fixed income of this nation’s elderly Social Security recipients, the most fragile of all Americans on the economic spectrum. However, the president has said nothing at all about the ever-increasing influx of unskilled, semi-literate illegal aliens currently residing in the U.S. and receiving federally subsidized healthcare, housing assistance, educational assistance, food stamps, and in many cases, Social Security checks from a trust fund that they have never paid into.

Despite the positive messages of economic recovery being carefully crafted for the American news media by the White House administration, the American economy is no better today than it was the day that Obama first stepped into office. The increases in productivity we hear so much about would be considered mere fluctuations by any other administration and stock markets around the world are erratically swinging up and down with each new bit of propaganda released. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 99.07 points in the first half-hour of trading this last Friday alone, and it is completely obvious that no sense of stability exists in the American market. Raising the debt ceiling in this sort of an unstable economic environment could trigger a torrential flood of liquidity into the global economy which could jump start inflation in many emerging economies around the world, even as it strangled our own fragile and faltering economic recovery.

If the U.S. Congress does not increase the debt ceiling by August 5th, Obama has warned that the nation would default on the national debt, and as a consequence, many investors would lose confidence and the triple “A” credit rating of the country would tumble, which in turn would force the interest rate up for future loans. What Obama has not said is that there are sufficient funds in the U.S. Treasury to continue paying the interest due on the loans that we have taken for many months to come, and as long as we continue to make those payments, no state of default would exist. If the federal government does allow some or all of those debts to go into a state of default, even when the money to pay the amount due is available, that action will clearly be self-inflicted and the sole justification for it will be entirely political in nature. If the United States defaults on the obligation to pay the debts that it has incurred, it will not be because it lacks the means to pay those debts, but because the Obama Administration and the Democrat controlled U.S. Senate are willing to gamble with the future well-being of the American people in a high-stakes poker game for the continued control of the American government.

The Democrats called the clock as the Republicans were busy stumbling over their feet, and at the last minute they tried to back into a win with bluster and bravado. Both sides are all in and the pot’s so huge the chips are rolling off onto the floor, the Republicans need to catch perfect to pull this out of the fire with nothing more than a deuce to seven low and they know they’re drawing thin. The unreadable Democrats are hoping like hell that they can float over what they suspect is their opponents flop bet and bluff them into a fold. Several of the on-lookers have suffered coronaries in the excitement and the EMTs, who have them spread out on the floor nearby just declared one dead when their zapper failed to restart his heart, but none of the players seem to notice, or care about this minor distraction. A lot of people get off on the rush of a good game but when you’re seeing it from the perspective of a chip on the table it just doesn’t have the same appeal. If all of us were not sitting in the pot piled up in the center of the gaming table, we might better appreciate the excitement and adrenaline rush of a game that truly puts the highest of the Vegas high-rollers to shame.

When you consider all of the great things that you have ever been told about your nation, the history, the struggles, the personal sacrifice and the heart wrenching tug of patriotism you feel as you hear the national anthem and see the flag being raised, you don’t like to think that the whole thing is being run by a bunch of over-stuffed, self-aggrandizing slobs who would capriciously risk the future welfare of the American people along with their kids and grandchildren for decades to come for the sole purpose of gaining something that they should not be allowed to have in the first place, and that “something” is exactly what this entire debate is all about. It is not merely about the budget or the debt ceiling; it is about having 100% control over the future decisions made by our government. It’s all about power, and about having the authority to do as one pleases. To leave things as they are, to alter them in your favor, or even to use that power to dismantle the safeguards that protect our liberty, and accelerate the slow creep of tyranny’s tentacles as the social structure and income distribution of the subservient masses are realigned to affect compliance with a vision none of us are privy to. Unfettered government was the bane of our forefathers, and the political representatives in which we have placed so much trust are about to give us a firsthand demonstration of why those august gentlemen of old held that view.

If I have given the impression that it’s only the Democrats who labor under the burden of guilt in this picture than I must apologize for that image is incorrect, for across that gaming table piled high with the hopes and concerns of so many Americans sit the Republican players of the game we’re watching. A game in which you and all you hope for in the future amount to nothing more than a thin circular disk of plastic and paper – one of many on the pile. It’s far beyond being merely unfortunate, but as any poker player can tell you, one side will win and the other will lose, and the chips will remain nothing more than chips. The chips never win the game.

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Congressmen James Clyburn, D-South Carolina, John Larson, D-Connecticut, who chairs the Democratic caucus, and Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles, seem to believe they’ve struck gold, or at least silver in the form of a silver bullet by which Barack Obama would be empowered with the ability to unilaterally usurp the power of our politically polarized congressional, raise the nation’s debt ceiling by presidential fiat, and save us all from certain economic catastrophe brief seconds before our mothers, our flags and our apple pies are snatched away forever by the dastardly actions of mustachioed villains.

In succinct terms, these liberal representatives of the American people’s best interests are urging Obama to invoke a clause from the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which, according to their somewhat questionable understanding, gives Obama the presidential authority to cut through the Gordian Knot of political bickering that has paralyzed congressional action on the budget, and single handedly raise the debt limit by executive order, thereby ensuring the continued good credit rating of the United States.

James Clyburn is the guy that denounced Bill Clinton as a racist after Clinton compared Obama’s 2008 victory in the South Carolina primary to Jesse Jackson’s win in the 1988 primary election. He is also the character that leveled the hysterical allegation that the number two primary political party in the U.S., the GOP is a plague on the American people, as opposed to being the legitimate party of the opposition as any reasonable Democratic representative would view them. Clyburn is also one of those Washington politicians who seems to think that the really good changes, the history making changes in government, come not as a result of congressional debate among the legitimate representatives of the people, but as a result of presidential actions stretching the bonds of legal authority. To support this view he points to the Emancipation Proclamation, the executive order to racially integrate the armed forces, and the executive order that ended desegregation in the public schools. In each of these examples congressional action was stymied by incessant political bickering and the resolution that was necessary to solve the problem being confronted came only as a result of an executive order issued on the authority of the President at the time. I will point out that all of Clyburn’s examples have to do with items that are considered sacrosanct civil rights victories by various minority groups, however, I will not speculate on why he chose these specific examples or why he believes they are relevant to the issue of the debt ceiling.

Clyburn’s exuberant support for Obama unilaterally ending the congressional debt ceiling debate with a presidential mandate has attracted a great deal of attention in the press, and as the deadline for action moves closer, the bug-eyed panic of the overly-liberal American press will seek to pound the American public into jellied submission with an ever-increasing supply of speculative opinion regarding the 14th Amendment provision now being waved about like some magical talisman that will protect us all from the catastrophic consequences that these same hysterical journalists spit and spew about as if they had any real basis for valid concern.

Admittedly, when the 14th Amendment provision being spoken of here, is removed from the context of the numerous paragraphs preceding it as well as the few that follow, and this single paragraph, freed from its context, is placed under glass in a vacuum so that it can only be seen from one side, it might be possible (with sufficient squinting) to extract something along the lines of what Mr. Clyburn claims to see in those lines of text. However, freed from these onerous restrictions, and sitting in the company of it’s intended brethren (the paragraphs before and after), Clyburn’s vision of extreme presidential license dissolves into nothingness like overly enlarged and pixilated print suddenly brought into focus so that it can be read and understood properly.

The provision in question, Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, reads as follows: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

With the exception of three words, and the context of the entire 14th Amendment surrounding Section 4, Clyburn’s interpretation appears to be watertight, however, with the inclusion of the requirement that the public debt in question be “authorized by law” the bottom of his apparent watertight container falls out and we are drenched with his illogical cherry-picking of statements taken out of context. Furthermore, when the purloined Section 4 is placed back into the context of the entire 14th Amendment, the entire container, which we mistakenly considered watertight, evaporates like mist in a high wind and we are left standing there with nothing but the handle, and even that may not be a substantial as it seems.

Eight hundred and twenty-two days after the last shot of the Civil War was fired, South Carolina ratified the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and it became the law of the land. The 14th Amendment is considered one of the three Reconstruction Amendments in that the provisions it contains were written with the intent of rectifying the numerous problems associated with the American Civil War and the Southern State’s secession from the Union, and rebuilding the Union. The Amendment contains a number of provisions directly addressing the Confederacy and the leaders of the secessionist government. The citizenship provision of the 14th Amendment provides a broader definition of citizenship that anything that previously existed and specifically overruled the Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in the case, Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that blacks could not be citizens of the United States. The Due Process provision of the 14th Amendment prohibited state and local governments from unfairly depriving persons of life, liberty, or property, and the Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause established that each state ensure equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment which has been called the “public debt clause,” confirmed the legitimacy of all United States public debt incurred as a result of the Civil War and legally appropriated by the U.S. Congress. It also established that the United States government would not be liable for any losses suffered as a result of freeing the slaves nor would the U.S. government be liable for debts incurred by the Confederacy. The express intention obvious in Section 4 of the 14th Amendment was to bring an end to all further debate regarding the financial obligations of the United States government directly attributed to the Civil War.

In the infinite wisdom of the U.S. Supreme Court, the 14th Amendment has risen from the ashes of the bloody rebellion which it attempted to correct, and like many good laws with predetermined intent, it has been applied to issues entirely foreign to the purposes of it’s authors, but that is another issue, and one best left for another time.

Were it not for the fact that the 14th Amendment was written specifically to correct the issues that arose from the Civil War, and a few other minor items that James Clyburn neglected to take into consideration, Obama might be able to wield the authority of a true dictator and make all of the unilateral decision he could ever dream of. If it weren’t for the pesky nature of having to put things into their proper context many things would be so easy. Section 4 states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned,” and therein lies a formidable obstacle. Before a public debt can be considered valid according to this provision, it must be “authorized by law,” and before any debt can be considered “authorized by law” under the terms of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, that debt must be incurred with the authorization of Congress because the U.S. Congress is the only branch of the American government constitutionally authorized to borrow money on the credit of the United States (see Section 8 – Powers of Congress). The Executive Branch of the United States government cannot arbitrarily and certainly not unilaterally make a decision to borrow money on the credit of the United States, and to do so would be a serious violation of the U.S. Constitution, to say nothing of a gross usurpation of congressional power. Even in his wildest authoritarian dreams, Obama cannot borrow didily-squat against the credit of this nation.

The idea that the President can do anything necessary to avoid defaulting on the national debt is ludicrous and without foundation. Even if, as some interpretations would have it, defaulting on the national debt is impermissible and by itself a violation of the constitution, the simple fact of the matter is that there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, including the 14th Amendment suggesting that a President may, at his discretion, assume the authority of the legislature if he deems it necessary to prevent a violation of the Constitution. Where would the stopping point of such authority end? If Obama decided to eliminate the division of power that our system of government has been founded on, which is what it would take for him to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, then he would also have the authority to unilaterally raise taxes, to print more money when he thought he needed it, or to sell off federal property as he saw fit. He could subdivide Yosemite National Park and raise taxes to pay for the construction of low-income housing for welfare addicted liberals who have supported him in the past, and he could do it all without ever bothering to mention anything to Congress because they would be even more irrelevant than they are today.

The argument that Barack Obama can unilaterally invoke the 14th Amendment’s public debt provision and raise the debt ceiling by presidential fiat lacks merit. However, if if, by some twisted interpretation of the language, he felt sufficiently justified in doing so there is a great deal of doubt that his action would resolve the problem because a huge black cloud of doubt would hang ominously over any bonds issued as a result of his action and potential investors would face the very likely possibility that the federal government might, at some point in the future, refuse to honor those debts as being legitimate. The risk associated with this fear could force investors to lose confidence and result in a steep increase in the interest rates, a catastrophic consequence that would rapidly accelerate the national debt and cost the American people billions of dollars.

This nation was founded on principles that function best through the mechanisms of free speech, access to credible information, and open debate. The most glaring failure of our current situation is an undeniable indication that, while the principles remain, the mechanism that forces them to mesh like the gears of a clock are not being applied. The role of our President is not to threaten the economic welfare of old people soldiers in the effort to say public opinion, and the role of Congress is not to set the President up for failure at the expense of the American people. In these efforts the offices of both are diminished and our image as a nation is made to suffer more than it is already suffering at the hands of our current leaders.

There is little doubt that in a reasonable society, and with legitimate leadership on both sides of the issue, this problem would not arise, and if it did, it would be easily resolved by honest debate and compromise. However, as societies go, we ceased to be reasonable many years ago and our elected representatives in Washington, the self-styled leaders of the two primary warring factions in this debate, represent not what is best for the American people they purportedly represent, but their own best interests, including, amongst many, what’s good for the party they are affiliated with, their odds of re-election and their ability to stack the deck in favor of their personal investment portfolio. In light of the burden these hidden agendas place on our elected representatives, is it any wonder that the American people are constantly on the losing side of every Washington equation? Solving the problem of the debt ceiling, the budget or any of the numerous actual and imagined crises makes exciting fodder for the political war being waged by the liberal news media against the conservative status quo, and the Democrats against the Republicans, but speaking strictly from a realistic point of view, none of it solves any of the real problems that are currently dragging this nation down into the gutter and the people along with it. As a distraction, it is certainly entertaining, but shouldn’t we, the American people, expect more from our government than entertaining drama? The truth would be a good place to start.

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Sixteen years ago, amidst the threat of another government shutdown like we are facing today, Newt Gingrich, one of many Republican presidential candidates for 2012 was then serving as the 58th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. In 1995, Gingrich found himself representing the face of American conservatism in the dramatic standoff against Bill Clinton’s unwillingness to make the budget cuts that resulted in the 1995-1996 government shutdowns. Similar to what we are seeing today, the Republican opposition to Clinton’s economic demands was suffering from deep internal divisions brought about by the unrelenting pressure of Clinton’s administration and even more pressure being applied by the nation’s predominantly Democratic news media. While Clinton’s approval rating was falling like a stone during the shutdowns, the Democrats found an opportunity to make Gingrich’s opposition to Clinton look like a personal vendetta. The Clinton administration pushed this perspective for all it was worth and the news media adopted the fabrication as the gospel truth. Newt Gingrich couldn’t stand up against the constant personal attacks coming at him from all sides and quickly caved in to the president’s demands. Clinton’s approval rating went higher than it had ever been once the budget was signed into law and as an added bonus Clinton was elected to a second term and the Republicans lost eight seats in the House during the 1996 elections.

According to the figures I got from the government’s accounting website, the federal government is taking in around $200 billion per month, the interest on the national debt runs an average of $29 billion per month, Medicare & Medicaid at approximately $50 billion per month, Social Security at another $50 billion and military and VA costs at around $5.8 billion. $50 billion x 2 + $29 billion + $5.8 billion = $134.8 billion & $200 billion – that = $65.2 billion remaining each month after the major government debts are paid. After all the bills are paid the government is sitting there with $65.2 billion dollars of the tax payer’s money that they can piss away on all sorts of ridiculous projects as they see fit, but they seem to think that this is insufficient. Why is that? If I want to take a vacation when things are tight financially and I can’t just plunk down a big chunk of change, then I have to save for a month or two in order to finance my vacation. What’s the matter with the government having to save up the tax dollars we give them when things are tight and they want to finance some outrageous boondoggle that benefits thirty-two people hidden in the swamps of Georgia? They already have the ability to borrow up to $14.3 trillion dollars and force all of us to foot the future bill. Why is that outrageous amount of money insufficient for their needs?

What does the federal government plan to do that is going to actually benefit the American people who will be paying the bills? When is the last time they built a major highway across the nation, or refurbished an old one without charging the states for the cost? When is the last time that they purchased a major piece of land for a national park that everyone could use and enjoy without having to pay an arm and a leg to get in? When was the last time they actually improved anything without making somebody in Washington richer than hell or financing some political fool’s personal empire.

The federal government is gung ho to benefit the criminals that sneak into our country illegally, but what have they done for the people that put them in office and then get stuck with their bills? Illegal aliens get subsidized college educations and no-interest home loans but combat veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan can’t find jobs to support themselves and their families and their kids get no breaks on college tuition. The federal government has a multitude of special programs to ensure that the kids of illegal aliens get the finest medical care available but American citizens who are up in their years get forced into sub-standard clinics for Medicare and Medicaid services provided by med-school drop-outs who treat them like they were constantly whining hypochondriacs, and routinely withhold medical services resulting in deaths that would have been avoided by any legitimate physician. The federal government will stop the payment of wages earned by American soldiers who are serving their nation overseas but they will not stop the payment of entitlements to criminals that have violated American immigration laws by entering the U.S. without the proper immigration authorization.

We have been here before and survived the consequences. This is not the first time we’ve been in these financial waters and it won’t be the last. The threats we are hearing from the Democrats now are the same threats that the Democrats of 1995-96 were throwing around when we faced this situation last, and they are as bogus today as they were then. If the budget fails to pass and Obama does not get his borrowing limit raised he can exercise his discretionary authority to make people miserable. He can punish the military personnel by withholding their pay and he can cut Medicare and Medicaid payments to the senior citizens, but it is entirely discretionary and he can chose to cut something else if that’s what he want to do. Cuts in military pay and Medicare are not going to balance anything in the government’s budget and everybody in Washington knows that. Cuts in military pay and Medicare are designed to cause great hardship on the American citizens and as a direct result yield the greatest amount of outrage possible. Our nation’s Democratic leadership is hoping and praying for that outrage, okay, maybe they aren’t praying, but they are hoping. They have been gearing up the Whitehouse press corps and the news media to deflect that outrage onto the Republicans who denied them the increase in spending power. “We didn’t want to do that to your grandma but they gave us no choice!”

Barack Obama is predicting economic “Armageddon” if he and fellow Democrats don’t get their way and the opportunity to spend additional billions of our tax dollars on programs and entitlements that benefit few. The sky will fall into our laps, geriatric old folks will keel over in their tracks, our soldier’s will all convert to radical Islam, China will barge in and take over the U.S., and Jesus will hate all of us forever. Of course none of these things will happen, and the bad things that do happen will be engineered by politicians in the attempt to create pressure on other politicians. In short, the whole thing is a load of shit and we should not fall into the middle of it because the only people that will lose in this deal is us. That is you and me -the people who will be expected to foot the bill. Obama threatened the Republican opposition by telling them not to call his bluff, and that is exactly what the American people should be hoping for. Call his bluff. Let the whole frigging mess go into meltdown mode. Break off that furry little arm that keeps reaching into our wallets for more and more of our income; stuff it up the butt of the government monkey it was formerly attached to and send it on its way. It is not time to say no to more government money grabbing, it’s time to say “Fuck no.”

I can be as sympathetic as the next guy but when it comes to either feeding myself or feeding the 40 million illegal aliens our government has allowed to take up residence here illegally, then screw the illegal aliens, their mothers and their kids. Most of us are just barely scraping by as it is. People who are making a hundred grand a year are living from one paycheck to the next, wondering if they are going to be able to make their next hyper-inflated house payment and still feed their kids, and nobody in Washington D.C. is thinking about throwing them a life-preserver so why in the hell are we bailing out every semi-literate, nail-bender and drywall worker scrabbling over the border fence and through the Sonoran desert on their way to Los Angeles? That may sound pretty selfish to some but it’s just common sense to me. We take care of our own first, and then if anything is left over, we can lend others a helping hand.

Hopefully this time around the Republicans won’t cave in like they did in 1996, but I won’t be getting my hopes up too much. After all they are no too different from the Democrats when it comes to their inclination towards corruption. Maybe the best we can hope for is that in this knock-down-drag-out the Democrats and the Republicans slit each other’s throats and both sides bleed out before our eyes. Now that’s my idea of “Change.” In the meantime, let’s move on to something important or create a new crisis that has more appeal.

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Winging along on the hypothesis that only white kids have the security of a stable home life and parental concern necessary to complete the homework assignments given to them in school, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has declared homework to be “Racist,” and plan to force teachers to cap homework assignments at 10% of the student’s grade.

From my perspective this is nothing more than the city’s department of education attempting to create a way around their abject failure to effectively teach anything of merit to their students. The Los Angeles school system, like the educational systems throughout the state, has a well-deserved reputation for pathetic incompetence. Their ultra-liberal agenda has virtually paralyzed their ability to impart knowledge to the young students entrusted to them by the tax paying citizens and the teachers are required to spend the majority of their time pandering to the offspring of illegal aliens who cannot speak a word of English while the English speaking children succumb to boredom, and neither group finishes school with the ability to read or perform simple mathematical problems. With nearly half of the city’s high school students dropping out before graduation, the need to legitimize their incompetence is apparent.

Millions of educated, normal and productive adults managed to graduate from high schools around the country long before the current crop of liberal excuse makers took over this nation’s educational system and turned it into a monumental fiasco. What worked for them would work well for the children of today if it was given a chance and these mealy-mouthed teachers were held strictly accountable for the work they were hired to do.

As a native Californian, an American citizen and a tax-payer shackled to the outrageous debt growing exponentially as a result of the unfettered spending of my so-called elected representatives in both groups, I want to see more liberal teachers in the unemployment lines, not less. I want to see kids inundated with homework to the point where they have little time for anything else. I want to get something besides excuses for the millions of dollars spent on education. I want kids to learn, become brilliant, prosperous and filthy rich by creating new businesses and inventing gadgets that nobody ever dreamed of before. The key to prosperity for this nation is with our kids and we are not doing them any favors by coddling them when they’re young because nobody is going to coddle them when they are older.

As for the stupidity of California’s educators, read the article yourself and savor the depths of your own disgust.

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It seems that nobody in our federal government’s multiplicity of departments or agencies has the responsibility for tracking the growing number of American citizens that are losing, or have lost their homes and been shoved out onto the streets as a result of the predatory lending practices of this nation’s number one government sanctioned criminal enterprise, the banking industry. If there is such an agency or department, and an accurate tally of the banking industries victims are known then that information is a closely guarded secret, and the estimates that are being released through the news media are intentionally designed to minimize the severity of the catastrophe as part of the concerted effort to convince us that the economy, thanks to the current administration, is on the mend and hope for the future is justified. However, there are anywhere from 16 to 20 million American families whose home mortgages are significantly “upside down,” “underwater,” have “negative equity” or any of the other vague euphemisms for being financially gang raped to the point of near death, and convincing them that things are looking up for the future is going to take a bit more than manipulating a few statistics, telling a half-dozen new lies, or cooking up some hollow promise of future action that never occurs, and if it does, fails to apply to anyone but the slimmest margin of well-favored minority supporters.

The well-turned euphemistic terms for losing their homes and suffering the trauma associated with families being forcibly evicted to the street are just part of the manipulative effort to depersonalize the situation being discussed. Statistics and percentages raise no disruptive racket and have no faces to stare back at us, and that is precisely what the current crop of overly corrupted “elected representatives of the people” does not want us to consider.

Our political leaders are overjoyed with the public’s acceptance of meaningless numbers, financial jargon, and empty promises of solutions that always seem to fall short of accomplishing anything beyond making it easier for the banks to loot the homes of the vanquished citizenry.

Hope for the future is the 21st century American equivalent of the Roman circus.

Hope distracts our attention from the fact that millions of middle-class American families are being forced out of their homes, displaced to an unknown and decidedly insecure future. It’s about shattered dreams, kids being uprooted from their schools and friends, it’s about entire families losing their sense of security and stability, it’s about the shameful stigma of ruined credit, the loss of social standing and credibility among one’s family and peers, it’s about people being victimized by a banking industry that has been subsidized with tax money taken from their wages by the government, and finally, it’s about the government of the United States turning its back on millions of American citizens and it’s about the death and dismemberment of the American dream.

Our local, state and federal government representatives are working overtime trying to figure out new and exciting ways to convince all of us that what we are seeing with our own two eyes is, in truth, a massive illusion, and anyone who believes otherwise is a delusional fool, unpatriotic, possibly a racist of some sort, a despoiler of our planet’s environmental system, or at the very least, an anarchistic and anti-social asshole. They insist that “hope,” the most weightless of all human commodities, and “faith in our government leaders” will somehow reverse reality while miraculously overcoming any problem that arises. Statistical data means nothing, and there are no lessons from history worth considering so long as our “Hope” is sufficient and our “Faith” unwavering. Also, providing that we, the American voters, turn out in large numbers to support their efforts by re-electing them in the future, and don’t turn to the dark side in the delusional belief that we can change reality by switching the political party in power. The saddest and most unavoidable fact of modern life in the United States of America today is that our elected leaders are counting on our abysmal ignorance to see them through, and even sadder still is the fact that we will not let them down.

In 2007 the federal government collected more than $2.4 trillion in tax revenues after refunds. $248.6 billion of that tax revenues came from individual taxpayers and the rest of it came from the allegedly greedy corporations who purportedly never pay their fair share, or so we are being told. An additional $350 billion in taxes due went uncollected, and this represents the unfulfilled tax obligations of the uber-rich fat cats with superheros acting as their tax attorneys as well as the growing number of political elitists who are above the tax laws that oppress the common folk, and seemingly considered unaccountable for their criminal actions. How much of that tax money was directly used to benefit the American people, to rebuild our crumbling metaphors or to run the American government? Every dime of the money collected by the IRS in taxes was spirited away to private banking enterprises to service the loans they have made to the American government. That is, 100% of every tax penny collected from the paychecks of the American workers and culled from the corporate accounts of the alleged tax evading corporate dead beats was promptly and unceremoniously stuffed into the fur-lined pockets of the private bankers who have engineered the financial collapse of our nation and now circle overhead in breathless anticipation of the profitable meal awaiting them when the stumbling body wandering through the financial desert beneath them gasps it’s last breath and hits the sand face down in death.

The money our government expends in the effort to continue its day to day operations, the fantastic amount of money being funneled into the income redistribution efforts of our government’s massive social welfare programs (the largest item in our federal budget), is all the result of additional loans taken out by our government from the various banking institutions to which we are already so deeply indebted. The national debt currently being carried by the United States is now above $14 trillion, and it it is not already, the amount of our nation’s indebtedness will soon surpass the nation’s yearly total gross domestic product. That is the point where we could give everything of value manufactured in this nation to pay off the debt we owe and still fall short. It is also the point where our currency begins to lose value, our creditors begin to lose faith in our ability to repay our debts, and our country’s financial framework and economy takes a head-long dive into the deep end of a dry pool.

The abyss of ruin yawns wide at our feet, and yet the American voters are beset by confusion as to whether or not they should vote for a president who believes that he can use their hard-earned wages to spend his way out of debt, and even as they ponder the answer to this seemingly easy riddle, that president is working tirelessly to counteract their potential negative decision by buying the support of minority special interest groups with promises to kick open the immigration floodgates further inundating the nation with illiterate, unskilled immigrant bodies in complete disregard for the fact that there are no jobs for them to fill and nearly 23% of all working age American citizens are, themselves, unemployed, under-employed, and have no real prospects for future employment at any point in the foreseeable future.

The United States of America is said to be the most technologically advanced nation the world has ever seen, it is reputed to possess the finest educational resources in all of humanity’s known and recorded history. As rumor has it, America stands tall as a beacon of enlightenment in a world filled with darkness, despair, political corruption and tyrannical depravity. Despite all of this, the technology, the educational attainment, and the much over-rated enlightenment, the American people are paralyzed by confusion and befuddled by indecision when faced with the simple decision of whether or not we should leap headlong into the flaming and bottomless pit of destruction as our political leadership is encouraging us to do, and in fact, are advising us is the only true, compassionate and sane course of action that we can possibly take, regardless of the obvious reality, the reality we know in our hearts and our guts, regardless of the knowledge that we cannot defy the financial laws of common sense forever, regardless of the looming day of reckoning bearing down upon us like a massive tsunami that will dwarf the destruction of all such natural disasters in the past, regardless of the fact that our government leaders are betting on the fools gamble, and the cost of failure includes the loss of everything, including our nation, freedom, liberty, our homes, our security, our way of life, all that we hold sacred in life, everything we love, and essentially, all that makes life worth living. The sweet, short and most succinct answer to the question being asked by these confused and befuddled individuals is that, yes, we can spend our way out of debt, the politicians in Washington have seen the big picture of what’s what, and they alone know the secret way out, you must have Hope, you must have Faith. We cannot go backwards so the only direction open is forward, government must grow to ensure prosperity, blah, blah, blah… This is the biggest lie to slide off Satan’s oily tongue in the entire history of evil, and many are the pathetic souls who have swallowed the demon’s hook. Are we, the American people so blindly stupid and self-absorbed that we can see no other way?

The founders of this nation bequeathed to all American citizens a legacy of freedom and liberty. That freedom and liberty was ensured to us by the limited form of government they established. A form of government in which no Department of Education existed, no Department of Commerce existed, no Environmental Protection Agency existed, no Department of Labor existed and no Department of Housing and Urban Development existed. In fact, none of the legions of countless federal agencies, departments, congressional committees and boards that waste money and make our lives miserable with redundant laws and needless regulations existed. There was no central bank to manipulate our nation’s economy, endlessly juggle our nation’s financial books to make things appear differently than they really were, there were no income taxes, no corporate taxes and for that matter, no corporations to hide behind special legislative deals carved out for them at the expense of everyone else. Under that noble form of government our currency was backed by precious metals, the depth of our nation’s pocket was only so deep, and the keepers of the drawstring around that purse were ever mindful of their responsibility to the public’s trust. This was the fertile ground upon which freedom and liberty thrived, and it is the claim of fools and liars that we cannot go back to what worked so well in the past.

Of course we cannot expect something so priceless to come without sacrifice on our parts. We would have to give up an increasingly oppressive government, debts that can never be paid, an elitist political class that believes they are above the common men they are meant to serve, a rapidly disintegrating economy, and a snot-nosed president serving a private agenda that seems to include making everything worse. We would also have to give up on the idea that “hope” is the only recourse available to a people whose God given rights are being trampled and taken away, whose nation is being sold off to the highest foreign bidder, whose government has become riddled with corruption, and whose future looks a bleak and ominous as ours does today. It’s the sort of choice that makes you wonder how anyone could possibly be confused about any of it.

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