Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Obama's Kenya Birth Certificate?

         A Young Barack Obama With His Kenyan Grandmother

                  (Image from olbroad.files.wordpress.com)

For more than a year, there have been allegations that Barack Obama is not what the Constitution requires a President to be.  That is "a natural-born American citizen."  Obama has not helped by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep much of his paper trail documents sealed off from the public - including various documents bearing on the details of his birth.

But McCain got very different treatment.  He was required to produce a valid birth certificate, and to literally obtain an Act of Congress to verify that he met the "natural-born American citizen" requirement, because of being born in a U.S. military hospital in Panama.  But no one has made such a requirement of Obama.  Why the difference?

Now a certified Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama has surfaced, for sale on eBay!  That story surfaced on Saturday June 27 on WND at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102271.  That was followed by postings at daily Kos at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/27/747403/-and-the-shippings-free., then at Free Republic at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2280617/posts  and #222 at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2280528/posts?page=226#226.  Now that copy has been wirhdrawn twice from eBay and re-listed.  The seller seems to be upping the ante in order to up the price.

There are also video copies of an interview with Obama's Kenyan grandmother, in which she says clearly that Obama was born in Kenya, in a hospital in Mombasa, during a visit by his mother and father.  See at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlFc4wCpvSo&NR=1 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OirvxsUsxb0&NR=1/

Obama's campaign posted his Hawaiian birth certificate on a website, but there are unanswered questions about it, and some problems.  It is the "short form", not the "vault copy," a longer form with more details, such as the attending doctor and nurse.  But Obama will not release his vault copy.  That raises the question as to whether there even is a vault copy.  Hawaii gave short copies - like that on his website - to people not born there, but whose parents lived there and asked for such a certificate.  That might be what his posted short-copy birth certificate is.  If not, he could quickly put that question to rest by merely releasing the Vault Copy.

In addition, there are claims that even the short-copy birth certificate is a forgery.  (See video at at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QdyLOUHz-A&NR=1.)

What does all this mean?  If it turns out that Obama did not meet the requirements of being "a natural-born American citizen", his election would be invalidated and he could no longer be President.  In fact, he should not even have run for the office.

Such a very weighty matter should be investigated promptly,  until it is either disproved - settling the question in his favor - or proved.  We are in a Constitutional limbo until one or the other happens.  The very least Obama should do is to cooperate fully, speedily producing all requested documents he is presently withholding.  Since they will evenrually be discovered whether he does or not, that would do the most to prove his honest intentions and preserve his reputation.

Canadian-Style Health Care for U.S.

                    (Image from ecophon-international.com)

Canada has government-run health care.  Here are some of the problems:

* A 16% higher cancer death rate in Canada
 
* An eight week wait for radiation therapy for cancer patients
 
* 42% of Canadians die of colon cancer vs. 31% in the US
 
* Cutbacks in diagnostic testing
 
* The best meds for chemo therapy are not available
 
* No way out of the system; you can't even pay for services yourself

Why is health care so bad north of the border?  Because there are too few doctors to treat everybody and cost savings -- which slice medical incomes -- drive doctors out of the profession.  When Obama calls for a 21% cut in Medicare fees to physicians and a $2500 cut in health costs per capita, that is exactly the kind of downward spiral in medical care quality he will bring to the United States.   By making too few doctors cover too many patients, he will cut the quality of care to everybody.
 
As Obama's proposals make their way through Congress, it is vital to get up to speed on what is happening in Canada, so we can stop it from happening here. 

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Taken from Dick Morris' newsletter June 25, 2009.  See www.dickmorris.com .

Dought Is Provoking Rattlesnake Bites

(Image from infidelsparadise.files.wordpess.com)

From "Drought Provoking Snakebites in Central Texas," by Katherine Stolp, KEYE-TV, Austin, Texas, 6-17-09.  At http://www.keyetv.com/news/local/story/Drought-provoking-snake-bites-in-Central-Texas/kbcfxUl030SXUd9VzBx1lw.cspx

Hospitals across Central Texas say they’re seeing an alarming increase in rattlesnake bites. Hays County treated five people for the bites in recent weeks. Travis County reported 11 rattlesnake bites in the last three months.

Experts tell CBS 42 it is mating season, but it’s mostly the drought that’s pushing them into residential areas to find water.

“They’ve caused more human fatalities than any other snake in our country,” Jarrod Forthman said...He knows first hand about the dangers of these snakes. One bit him on his thumb years ago.

 

AP photo - A photograph of a rattlesnake bite on the hand of Russ Johnson, president of the Phoenix Herpetological Society, is shown atop of a rattlesnake cage Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“It feels like you’ve just been set on fire,” he said about the pain.

Forthman told us his thumb swelled to the size of an orange, and then burst. Five surgeries and more than $100,000 worth of medical bills later; he’s left with an amputated thumb.

“Fortunately, I’ve only had one of those mistakes and it didn’t cost my life,” he said.

Forthman works with snakes every day...he said he’s never seen so many rattlesnakes, especially near residential areas, than right now. “These snakes are everywhere.”...

John Moseley with San Marcos/Hays County EMS told us it’s startling how many calls the dispatch center is now receiving for rattlesnake bites. “We’ve had three in the last week,” Moseley said.

(snip)

During the day, you most likely won’t find snakes in the grass, but under rocks or in drainage ditches trying to stay cool. At night, they are more prevalent in areas with high grass, near some source of water. Rattlesnakes won’t chase you, but if someone gets too close and they feel threatened, the snakes will most likely strike.

If you get bitten by a rattlesnake, it can be deadly. Experts say to call 911 immediately, try to stay calm and keep your blood circulation as slow as possible. The sooner the venom gets to the heart, the less chances of survival

Iran - New Leader May Emerge

                         (Image from alarabiya.net)

Two views about what is about to happen in Iran are developing so far.  George Friedman, head of Stratfor, makes a strong case that nothing much will change in Iran because of the protests, at www.stratfor.com.  The other view is that whatever happens on the streets, the leadership will change, perhaps drastically. 

One proponent of that view is Richard Fernandez, who was involved in the insurrection against dictator Marcos in the Philippines in his youth.  He maintains that whether they want to or not, the leaders of Iran will be changed by the protests, in unexpected ways .  (He hosts the excellent Belmont Club blog at http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/)

More support of Fernandez' view comes in fresh news from Al Arabia in Dubai, at http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/06/21/76567.html. 

Here is a quick summary of the two opposing views as to whether or not Iran will change.

Friedman notes that for a revolution to be successful, first, an aggrieved part of the population must take to the streets of a major city, usually the capitol, and be joined by protestors in other cities.  That has happened.  Second, when the regime responds, it must be hard and must use "outsiders", troops not sympathetic to the protestors.  That is happening now.  A third requirement for success, however, has not happened.  That is that other classes need to join the class that started the protests.  The protestors are mostly young, relatively prosperous, "modernized," with many students.  Other classes have not joined them in any significant numbers so far.  So by accepted standards, the green "revolution" will likely fail.  Friedman does add, however, that such events put the rulers under great tension, and that significant changes could result.

The news from Dubai, however, indicates that great changes are brewing at the top in Iran.  Rafsanjani, head of the Council of Experts, is pushing to get rid of the post of Supreme Leader.  This would oust Khameni.  This movement is supported by a large number of Ayatollahs, including the most influential of all, Ayatollah Sistani from Iraq.  Rafsanjani is also pressing to depose Ahmadinijad.  There is a reasonable chance that these changes will happen.  (Read the story at http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/06/21/76567.html.)

At any rate, there is hidden turmoil at the top in Iran.  Huge changes are being attempted as a result of the turmoil in the streets.

Please - pray for Iran.

California Is Collapsing

                          (Image from greenwichmeantime.com)

Well-known nvestment advisor Martin Weiss warns that California is about to collapse.  If California goes, the effect on the U.S. will be tremendous.  California's economy is 1/8 of the total U.S. economy.  A collapse would have a huge effect on the country's economy.  (See at http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/california-collapsing-34271.)

     (Image from moneyandmarkets.com)

“Our wallet is empty.
Our bank is closed. And
our credit is dried up.”

So said Governor Arnold Schwarzenager before a joint session of the California legislature.  The state faces a stunning $24.3 billion budget deficit.  There seems to be no chance of a federal bail-out.  Large cut-backs in the state payroll are coming, which will add to the 11.5% California jobless rate.  Education and welfare programs will be slashed.

Meanwhile, downgrades are coming in California's credit rating, which is already lowest of all U.S. states.  Moody's announced Friday it may have to cut California's rating by several points in one fell swoop. 

The big problem: Once downgraded, California's rating is likely to fall below the minimal level legally required for most money market funds, forcing these funds to dump California paper posthaste....

It's obvious its debt merits a junk bond rating from every Wall Street rating agency.  And it's equally obvious that the ratings agencies are artificially inflating the rating, stalling downgrades, and grossly understating the risk to investors.  (Emphasis added)

Weiss recommends getting out of all California paper now, saying that waiting until after their credit ratings fall could be too late.

He also urges his investors to consider dumping all tax-exempt bonds, in case California defaults.  That could set off a chain reaction of bond price plunges and defaults throughout the municipal bond market.  He warns:

Don't underestimate the impact California's depression is having — and will continue to have — on the rest of the U.S. economy. At $1.8 trillion, the state's GDP is so large, any further deterioration could wipe out every so-called "green shoot" in the national economy seen to date.  

Stay safe, with a big portion of your nest egg in cash, tucked away in short-term Treasury bills ... and with a very modest portion in gold, as an insurance policy against a dollar decline.  (Emphasis added.)

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used by permission:

This investment news is brought to you by Money and Markets. Money and Markets is a free daily investment newsletter from Martin D. Weiss and Weiss Research analysts offering the latest investing news and financial insights for the stock market, including tips and advice on investing in gold, energy and oil. Dr. Weiss is a leader in the fields of investing, interest rates, financial safety and economic forecasting. To view archives or subscribe, visit http://www.moneyandmarkets.com.

The Importance of Iran

Iranian government demonstrators bused in from outlying areas today (note the number wearing white, the recommended color.)

                      (Image from huffingtonpost.com)

Iran has been wracked by huge street demonstrations of those protesting the election results that seemed to show that Presidetn Ahmadinijad was massively re-elected.

 

                         (Image from guardian.co.uk)

(Note the green that is the color identifying the anti-government protestors)

Could the protestors cause a change in government?  It is still possible, depending on such things as whether parts of the armed forces come over to their side.

What difference might that make?  The world's major flash points right now center around North Korea and Israel.  Iran is a major player in both.  Iran works closely with North Korea to spread nuclear bomb-making capacity.  Iran also finances and directs Hisbollah, the major threat to Israel from Lebanon, and Hamas, the major threat to Israel from the west.  Also the current president, Ahmadjinidad, has been promising to destroy Israel.

A new government might see changes in all of these.  So what happens in Iran in the next few days is of the greatest importance.  We need to watch closely, and to pray.

Abortion Has Deformed A Great Nation

  Child in the Womb at 20 weeks 

   (Image from tpckona.com)

Mother Teresa wrote to the Supreme Court in 1994:

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation.  The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.

It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience.

It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters" And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign." *

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."  **

As an economist, I would only add that if the 50 million or so children aborted in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade in 1973 were alive today, we would not be facing such devastating futures now in Medicare, Social Security and retirement.  If they were alive today, both Medicare and Social Security would be solvent or nearly so.  Their presence and their work would have been a great help to their now-aging parents.  Their absence will mean an uncertain  and alarming future for their parents' generation. 

Abortion has been the great tragedy of our time, not only for those aborted, not only for the brothers and sisters who never knew them, but also for the deep, mostly unacknowledged losses suffered by their twice-bereft parents - bereft in their youth, and bereft again in their old age.  The absence of those missing children in the lives of aged parents will have an increaslngly unfortunate effect.  

Little did we dream, back then, as masters of the universe..."When we were young, and sure to have our way."

________________

* Mother Teresa in her 1994 letter to the Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade, at http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/nvp/roe/mothertheresa_roe.html

**  Mother Theresa -- "Notable and Quotable," Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94, p. A14. 

Should the U.S. Break Up?

                                (Image from infowars.net)

There is a growing drive to do that, described in the Wall Street Journal.*  

Many states now are trying to take back the rights given them by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.** 

To do that, a majority of State legislatures have now passed legislation declaring "State sovreignty" and reclaiming the rights of the States usurped by the U.S. Congress.  That movement is thriving and may have some success.  Its aim is to take back much power from the powerful central government, and give the people more control by bringing government closer to them.

But what the WSJ article describes, however, it not that, but a movement in some States to secede from the U.S.  That is different, and more drastic.  It says not to imagine a revolution, but a "devolution":

Imagine this instead: a devolution. Picture an America that is run not, as now, by a top-heavy Washington autocracy but, in freewheeling style, by an assemblage of largely autonomous regional republics reflecting the eclectic economic and cultural character of the society.

There might be an austere Republic of New England, with a natural strength in higher education and technology; a Caribbean-flavored city-state Republic of Greater Miami...and maybe even a Republic of Las Vegas...California? America’s broke, ill-governed and way-too-big nation-like state might be saved, truly saved, not by an emergency federal bailout, but by a merciful carve-up into a trio of republics that would rely on their own ingenuity in making their connections to the wider world.

The article argues this would be faithful to post-industrial realities as well as correcting the "creeping centralization of power in Washington."

In a new time when new currents favor the little over the big, the U.S. may be too super-sized for the 21st century,  Right now, the U.S. federal government is in the process of growing still more, trying to collect even more power in its hands.  But that could be making it into a dinosaur.  And a lot of folks are getting more and more uneasy and upset about what looks like a federal power grab.

A backlash is growing outside Washington D.C.

In April, at an anti-tax “tea party” held in Austin, Governor Rick Perry of Texas had his speech interrupted by cries of “secede.” The Governor did not sound inclined to disagree. “Texas is a unique place,” he later told reporters attending the rally. “When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.”

Such sentiments resonate beyond the libertarian fringe. The Daily Kos, a liberal Web site, recently asked Perry’s fellow Texas Republicans, “Do you think Texas would be better off as an independent nation or as part of the United States of America? It was an even split: 48% for the U.S., 48% for a sovereign Texas, 4% not sure. Amongst all Texans, more than a third—35%—said an independent Texas would be better.

From conservative Alaska to liberal Vermont, states are talking secession.

The philosophical tie that binds these otherwise odd bedfellows is belief in the birthright of Americans to run their own affairs, free from centralized control. Their hallowed parchment is Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, on behalf of the original 13 British colonies, penned in 1776, 11 years before the framers of the Constitution gathered for their convention in Philadelphia. “The right of secession precedes the Constitution—the United States was born out of secession,”

These devolutionists trace their case back to the anti-federalists, which included Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.  They felt the union gave too much power to the center at the expense of the rest.

But the anti-federalist case took a dark turn 150 years ago when the Confederacy used it to secede over the issue of slavery.  Since then, anti-federalism has had to defend its motives.  Now, after 150 years, after the death of slavery, and after the demise of the large industrial economy that contributed to the triumph of the North over the South, there is a new model.  Just as we got used to "the new industrial state," led by a master-planned economy, things changed.  Looking back at our system now, we see problems as far as the eye can see.  And that's not all.

In a globalized economy transformed by technological innovations hatched by happily-unguided entrepreneurs, history seems to be driving one nail after another into the coffin of the big, which is why the Obama planners...may be doomed to fail. No one anymore expects the best ideas to come from the biggest actors in the economy, so should anyone expect the best thinking to be done by the whales of the political world?

Diplomat and historian George Kennan, one of the very few who predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, suggested the U.S. might be too big too:  In 1993, he wrote that the U.S. had also become a 

“monster country,” afflicted by a swollen bureaucracy and “the hubris of inordinate size,” ...in his 1993 book, “Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy.” Things might work better, he suggested, if the nation was “decentralized into something like a dozen constituent republics, absorbing not only the powers of the existing states but a considerable part of those of the present federal establishment.”

Kennan’s genius was to foresee that matters might take on an organic, a bottom-up, life of their own, especially in a society as dynamic and as creative as America.

Other mega-unit states might also benefit from more smallness, including India with its 1.2 billion people and the EU.  Even small England is splitting up as Scotland breaks off.  Even China may eventually split up.  Remember - the tiny city-state of Singapore won the international ranking as "the most innovative country."  There are benefits to smallness.

Should Americans decide to decentralize, they could

...draw on their natural inventiveness and democratic tradition by patenting a formula for getting the job done in a gradual and cooperative way. In so doing, geopolitical history...would be made. 

So why not America as the global leader of a devolution? America’s return to its origins—to its type—could turn out to be an act of creative political destruction, with “we the people” the better for it.

—Paul Starobin is the author of After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age, recently published by Viking, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

(Hat Tip to Charlie Meek at www.faithfacts.org.)

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* At http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204482304574219813708759806.html 

** Amendment XX: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

Safeway Beats Government at Good Health Care

                              (Image from ufcw.org)

Safeway's health care program certainly is getting attention!*  On TV, testifying before Congress in the lead-up to a Democrat Health Care Bill, the Safeway CEO is being asked to explain how they do a seeming healthcare miracle.  Safeway, with some 200,000 employees, has been able to help its workers achieve health levels 30% above the national average.  At the same time, they have been able to hold the costs of their health insurance program steady at $1 billion a year over the past several years.  This is unheard-of, at a time when health care costs are rising around 15% a year nationally.

Why is this important?  Because such successful private-sector programs help make government-run universal healthcare unneccessary.  If it can be better done by the private sector, that would avoid the drawbacks to government-run programs.

Safeway has done that with money incentives for behavior that increases health.  To see how, see the story at the link at the bottom.   Also, watch a short video where President Obama comments on such programs as Safeway's at http://www.coalition4healthcare.org/latestVideo/?_c=y1petxpuba94ly. 

The Wall Street Journal also has an article about the Safeway program at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476804026308603.html.  And a Safeway outline of its program can be seen at http://www.coalition4healthcare.org/about/stories/detail.php?_c=y1petxpuba94ly&id=jhi9qprehwept. 

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* At http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/13/BUKC185K2D.DTL&type=business, San Francisco Chronicle, Andrew S. Ross, Sunday, June 14, 2009, "Safeway's Health Care Program Gets Attention."

The Deceitfulness of Riches

                                  (Image from home.halden.net)

Jesus warns about "the deceitfulness of riches" as some of the "thorns" that keep the good seed of God's word from sprouting and growing in our lives.  (Mark 4:19)

He did not warn, in that place, of the riches themselves being harmful,  But rather, he spoke only of their deceitfulness.  What deceitfulness?  How do riches deceive?  I would say because of all the problems they promise to erase.  Riches seem to offer new doors opened, many more choices,  an increase in security, freedom from worry about doing without, about being poor.  Riches promise all these things, and even delivers on many of them, at least sometimes.

But what happens when an entire country is deceived by riches?  When it thinks that being rich is the most important thing?  When it thinks that if it is rich, it is secure?  Perhaps what happens then is some version of the great Meltdown we are going through.  Is not our borrowing and spending so much a sign of too much concern with riches?  With an ever-growing focus on having more and more, right now? 

Listen to how J.R. Nyquist sees it: *

It is interesting, in light of this, to think of our own civilization. Today’s individual enjoys wealth and power unknown to previous generations. We have the power to travel great distances in a short time. We have instantaneous communications, the accumulated learning of the centuries at our fingertips, but the scope of our thinking is narrow and our minds more ignorant than ever. The power of modern civilization has not made us better people. Instead of bestowing worthiness on us, our wealth and technology merely reveal our unworthiness.

We think that we are more sophisticated than our grandfathers. But we are less sophisticated, by far. Our descent into darkness is best demonstrated by listing old artists beside new artists; by listing old statesmen beside new statesmen; by comparing the lives of our grandparents to our own. The sociologist notices that more children are born outside of marriage, that epidemic cheating has taken our schools by the throat, that we have incompetence in business and government, that we find banality and ignorance on all sides. What conclusion can he draw? The powers and advantages of modern life haven’t made us worthy. They merely serve to amplify and accelerate our unworthiness.

Then Nyquist adds:

I am amazed by those who think the U.S. economy is going to recover, that global peace is attainable, that American liberties are going to survive American barbarism. Look at our culture today: men are no longer men, and women are no longer women; capitalists no longer uphold free market principles; constitutional government no longer adheres to the Constitution; enemies are treated as friends. Nobody reads the signs. Nobody sees what is coming. Look at the birthrate among Europeans. Look at the abandonment of European culture. Look at the Muslim birthrate. Europe will be Islamic in fifty years. Long before that, the Russians and Chinese will achieve nuclear dominance of the globe. What do you think the investment climate will be in 2059?

So then, what will life be like for Americans?  They might be surprised.  One of the rewarding things about the Great Depression (I lived through it, so hear me out) was the new focus on things money can't buy.  On family, friends, church, country.  On the simple, inexpensive pleasures.  On being grateful for what you have.  On helping out those who had less.  On extended families and friends sticking together and coping together.  On character.

Riches not only are not so important as they seem.  They are also a liar.  They promise what they cannot deliver.  In that, they are deceitful.  Worst of all, they turn us away from so much that really is better. 

The long, hard time we are entering will to some extent free many of us from "the deceitfulness of riches."  That will give us a chance to focus on things that are so valuable and important that even riches could never buy them.  For many, it will also allow the word ot God to flourish in our lives.  Not having riches can actually be one of the better things in life, strange as that may seem.  Especially if we turn our attention to God, again or at last.

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* At http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2009/0501.html

Miranda Rights Now Read to Battlefield Terrorists

                         (Image from weazelzippers.net)

Now the FBI is stationed in Afghanistan, reading captured enemy combatants their "Miranda Rights" before they can be questioned.  That gives them the right to be silent, and the right to a lawyer.  This is effectively the end to our best source of intelligence, and therefore a new risk to our safety.  It also is a constitutional issue, as it gives rights to foreigners that have been given only to our own citizens before - without any act of Congress.  It also goes against the accepted laws of war.

Yesterday the Weekly Standard wrote:

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

...But Republicans on Capitol Hill are not happy. “When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the 'right to remain silent,’” says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation--lawyering up.”

According to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. “The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people – ‘Take the option. You want a lawyer.’”

Rogers adds: “The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he’s building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer – you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone.”

One thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide information about future attacks. Had Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had a lawyer, Tenet wrote, “I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people.” (All emphases added.)

From the Weekly Standard at http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/06/miranda_rights_for_terrorists.asp

Posted by Stephen F. Hayes on June 10, 2009 02:05 PM

The Strangeness of North Korea

North Korea at Night by Satellite (South Korea is the one with lights)

                        (Image from offtopic.kjmcm.dk)

How often have you heard about the ghostly streets of North Korea?  Here is a photo tour of North Korea, the most closed country in the world.  The pictures were taken and captioned by a Russian tourist - closely accompanied and controlled, of course, by the usual minders.  So what you will seeing is the very best North Korea has to offer.  You will be fascinated.  At http://www.eatliver.com/north-korea/. 

Why Are Oil Prices Rising?

                                 (Image from smh.com)

Oil demand in the U.S. is falling, so why are oil prices going up? The reasons lie in the developing world and China's rising oil demand.  See what investment advisor Sean Broderick has to say about that in his short video from this morning, at http://www.uncommonwisdomdaily.com/?p=752.*   (Video from Sean Broderick of Uncommon Wisdom, by permission.)* 

It may help to remember that China owns about $1 trillion of U.S. debt, so there is little possibility of the U.S. bringing any pressure on China.  In stark terms the situation is that we borrowed China's money and spent it.  Now they cannot be sure of getting it back.  That is affecting everything, including our ability to negotiate. 

Again, it comes back to the decades-long American spending spree based on borrowed money..

_________________

* Permission statement from Uncommon Wisdon: "This investment news is brought to you by Uncommon Wisdom. Uncommon Wisdom is a free daily investment newsletter from Weiss Research analysts offering the latest investing news and financial insights for the stock market, precious metals, natural resources, Asian and South American markets. From time to time, the authors of Uncommon Wisdom also cover other topics they feel can contribute to making you healthy, wealthy and wise. To view archives or subscribe, visit http://www.uncommonwisdomdaily.com."

"Green" Transport Not So Green, Say Scientists

              (Image from whatcar.com)

Driving your SUV may be better for the environment than taking the train.*  Huh? 

Do you prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, to keep from hurting the planet?  You may be wrong, according to a new U.S. study. 

Its authors point out...we have been focusing on simple "tailpipe" tallies.  But it is total fossil fuel used per trip, per person that counts. 

It could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city -- even in an SUV...than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport. .."There's no overall solution that's the same all the time."

The pair give an example of how the use of oil, gas or coal to generate electricity to power trains can skew the picture.

Boston's metro system has high energy efficiency.  But 82% comes from dirty fossil fuels...San Francisco's local railway is less energy-efficient than Boston's. But it turns out to be rather greener, as only 49 percent of the electricity is derived from fossils.

The paper points out that the "tailpipe" quotient does not include emissions that come from building transport infrastructure -- railways, airport terminals, roads and so on -- nor the emissions that come from maintaining this infrastructure over its operational lifetime.

A...car or even an 4x4 (SUV) that is fully occupied may be responsible for less greenhouse gas per kilometer travelled per person than a suburban train that is a quarter full...

"Government policy has historically relied on energy and emission analysis of automobiles, buses, trains and aircraft at their tailpipe, ignoring vehicle production and maintenance, infrastructure provision and fuel production requirements to support these modes," they say.   (All emphases added.)

_________________

* At http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.243153c6a091a3b942a75077729e8c92.c51&show_article=1

Obama "Sort of God" - Evan Thomas, Newsweek

           Newsweek's Evan Thomas         

        (Image from newsbusters.org)

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas said Friday on Chris Matthew's Hardball show on MSNBC, "I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God," Sounding more like a cult-follower than a respected newsman. 

(See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37B_nOdRTAA)

Matthews had been praising Obama's speech, saying "I think the President's speech yesterday was the reason we Americans elected him. It was grand. It was positive. Hopeful...But what I liked about the President's speech in Cairo was that it showed a complete humility...The question now is whether the President we elected and spoke for us so grandly yesterday can carry out the great vision he gave us and to the world."

Matthews discussed Obama’s upcoming speech marking the 65^th anniversary of D-Day and compared it to that of Ronald Reagan. He then turned to Thomas and asked: "Reagan and World War II and the sense of us as the good guys in the world, how are we doing?" Thomas replied: "Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama’s had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he – he has a very different job from – Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial."  (At http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2009/06/05/newsweek-s-evan-thomas-obama-sort-god.)

But it should be noted, however, that Thomas was wrong about the U.S. being viewed as the good guys during Reagan's time.  On the contrary, there were massive anti-U.S. protests in Europe during Reagan's time, calling for a "nuclear freeze," and opposing our placing missiles in Europe to protect it from a Russian attack.  Europeans did not look at the U.S. as the "good guy" then.

The real difference between Reagan's time and now is that there were more U.S. citizens then who viewed the U.S. as "the good guys."  This change is something we did to ourselves, under the teaching of the mainstream media and the Left..

If Israel Ceases to Exist...

                             (Image from theodora.com)

In "If Obama Abandons Israel, What Then?" at American Thinker, Victor Sharpe asks,

"So what would a world without Israel be like? *

For starters, the only true functioning democracy in the region will have vanished...

Palestine, the fraudulent state that Israel haters finally foisted upon the world, will remain  as underdeveloped as most other Arab states despite enormous donor sums forever falling like manna into a black hole. Saddled with the highest birthrate in the world, most Palestinian Arabs will remain unemployed because of the inability of their terrorist government to create viable institutions and infrastructures and because there will no longer be an Israel for the Palestinian Arabs to work in. 

Both Jordan and Egypt will be terrified of the fatal exposure on their borders of this new Iranian and Al Qaida backed Palestinian base for worldwide terror... 

Syria will still menace and subvert the once predominately Christian state of Lebanon and still make territorial demands upon Jordan and Palestine, which it always considered historically part of southern Syria.

Those Arab states without oil will still envy those Arab states awash with the commodity, and water, always in short supply in the Middle East, will become the most precious liquid to wage war over.

The intra-Islamic animosity between the Sunnis and the Shia will not abate but become ever more violent in civil wars, especially after the U.S. finally withdraws all its forces from Iraq, now slated by Obama for 2011. No doubt Al Qaeda and Iran will have taken note and are plotting accordingly.

Egypt will still be discriminating against its Christian Coptic minority despite endless denials. Christians will continue to endure persecution in an increasingly Arab and Moslem dominated world from Africa to Indonesia. 

Hindus will still be victims of Moslem terror and the Kashmir issue will remain a flashpoint between Hindu India and Moslem Pakistan -- both nuclear powers. Buddhists in Thailand will still be battling Moslem insurgents in the south of that country as will the Christians in the south of the Philippines.

Cairo, the capital of the largest and most powerful Arab state, will continue vying with Damascus and Riyadh for leadership of the Arab world's own version of the 19^th century's Great Game.  And all the while the menace of non-Arab Iran will loom over them all.

The ever suffering Kurds, who truly deserve an independent state of their own, will still be pressing Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran for such a state and those countries will still be violently denying them their national aspirations.

Iran's mullahs will still be hell-bent on developing even more Islamic nuclear bombs. Such weapons atop ever more powerful ICBMs and perhaps now located on the eastern shore of  the Mediterranean will inevitably threaten the West -- and Israel will not be there to be blamed.

Al-Qaeda, even without Osama bin Laden, will still receive enormous funds from Islamic and Arab states and continue its campaign against the "infidels." Even without the excuse of U.S. troops any longer in Iraq, the Islamists will target Europe and America with suicide killers, just as they perpetrated their grisly work among hapless Israeli civilians. 

All this will be the reality in a world that can no longer have Israel to blame for its ills.

The world hated the stateless Jews and now it hates the State of the Jews. But Israel may yet survive and find leaders who present a strong, resolute defiance to the world's siren calls for it to commit national suicide, all for the sake of an illusory peace.  

From Madrid to Oslo to Camp David great demands were made upon Israel to take risks for peace, the majority of which Israel met. Far lesser demands were made upon the Palestinian Arabs, which they have hardly ever met.

President Obama, nevertheless, plans on perpetuating the discredited two-state solution and will press Israel to give away its biblical heartland to create the 23^rd Arab state. That is the goal of Hillary Clinton and her so-called dream team...

President Reagan at first believed the received wisdom that all problems in the Middle East stemmed from the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It was Israel's Menachem Begin who disabused him of that fallacy and educated him on biblical and post biblical Jewish history in its ancestral homeland.

Prime Minister Begin and President Reagan...were both conservatives. Binyamin Netanyahu is a fiscal conservative while President Obama is anything but, and the President's foreign policy as it relates to the Israel-Arab conflict is jarringly in opposition to that of Netanyahu and Israel's conservative parties.

Netanyahu may yet educate the new American President to the ties that bind Israel to its land and to the immense dangers to all from Iran. Perhaps he will be the man to save both Israel and the United States from irreparable harm.

If not, all the democracies of the world will stumble before Iran's ascendant theocracy and Israel will not be there for them to blame.

Victor Sharpe writes on Jewish history and the Arab-Israel conflict. He is the author of the book: Politicide - The attempted murder of the Jewish state

________________________

* At http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/if_obama_abandons_israel_what_1.html.

U.S. Entitlement Programs Broke Sooner Than Expected

                              (Image from 3.bp.blogspot.com)

Professor Bainbridge writes that government entitlement programs will crash sooner then we thought, at  http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2009/05/entitlement-program-insolvency.html

As the Obama administration continues to plan the biggest expansion of entitlements in American history via health care "reform," comes a report from his own administration that key existing entitlement programs are very nearly insolvent:

The financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security has significantly worsened, as the bad economy and mounting job losses have pushed both programs years closer to insolvency, according to a grim report issued Tuesday by the Obama administration.

The new projection, in an annual report from the programs’ trustees, says that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2017, just a year after President Obama would leave office if re-elected to a second term. Last year the trustees said they expected the fund to last until 2019.

The trustees also said that Social Security’s reserves now face depletion in 2037, four years sooner than the previous projection of 2041. The projections assume that there are no changes in current benefits, policies and tax rates. ...

The darker picture facing the two programs will complicate the president’s spending plans and policy ambitions; just Monday, the administration raised its estimate of the federal budget deficit this year to $1.84 trillion, the largest on record.

The time is past when Obama could just shrug this sort of news off as fallout from the prior administration. He owns this deficit. It's his budget. He has responsibility for entitlement reform, especially since his party controls both houses of Congress. Yet, he plans to open the federal tap even wider. It makes no sense.

The Obama administration wants you to believe, as Andrew Biggs observes, that:

... the real culprit is rising per capita health care costs – called "excess cost growth" – which push up spending even if the population doesn't get older. ... Under [this] view, only comprehensive health care reform – meaning, reform of private sector health provision in addition to government health plans – can stop rising prices. ...

[In fact, however,their own data]  shows is that aging will be the largest driver of entitlement cost growth out through 2040 and likely beyond. ... Over the next 30 years, population aging is our main entitlements problem and it makes sense to seek solutions that are based on the problem we have, not the problem we want to have. Without downplaying healthcare funding issues, which are significant today and will grow even more so in the future, I can't help but think that some on the left have latched onto this new view because it promotes a policy outcome they happen to favor: increased government control over private sector health care provision for working-age people. I suspect that many of these folks would favor more government control even if health care costs weren't rising.

In other words, we're going to socialize 17% of the economy and it won't solve a...thing. This has to be the issue of the 2010 election cycle.

(All emphases added)

As the Obama administration continues to plan the biggest expansion of entitlements in American history via health care "reform," comes a report from his own administration that key existing entitlement programs are very nearly insolvent:

The financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security has significantly worsened, as the bad economy and mounting job losses have pushed both programs years closer to insolvency, according to a grim report issued Tuesday by the Obama administration.

The new projection, in an annual report from the programs’ trustees, says that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2017, just a year after President Obama would leave office if re-elected to a second term. Last year the trustees said they expected the fund to last until 2019.

The trustees also said that Social Security’s reserves now face depletion in 2037, four years sooner than the previous projection of 2041. The projections assume that there are no changes in current benefits, policies and tax rates. ...

The darker picture facing the two programs will complicate the president’s spending plans and policy ambitions; just Monday, the administration raised its estimate of the federal budget deficit this year to $1.84 trillion, the largest on record.

The time is past when Obama could just shrug this sort of news off as fallout from the prior administration. He owns this deficit. It's his budget. He has responsibility for entitlement reform, especially since his party controls both houses of Congress. Yet, he plans to open the federal tap even wider. It makes no sense.

The Obama administration wants you to believe, as Andrew Biggs observes, that:

... the real culprit is rising per capita health care costs – called "excess cost growth" – which push up spending even if the population doesn't get older. ... Under [this] view, only comprehensive health care reform – meaning, reform of private sector health provision in addition to government health plans – can stop rising prices. ...

[In fact, however,their own data]  shows is that aging will be the largest driver of entitlement cost growth out through 2040 and likely beyond. ... Over the next 30 years, population aging is our main entitlements problem and it makes sense to seek solutions that are based on the problem we have, not the problem we want to have. Without downplaying healthcare funding issues, which are significant today and will grow even more so in the future, I can't help but think that some on the left have latched onto this new view because it promotes a policy outcome they happen to favor: increased government control over private sector health care provision for working-age people. I suspect that many of these folks would favor more government control even if health care costs weren't rising.

In other words, we're going to socialize 17% of the economy and it won't solve a...thing. This has to be the issue of the 2010 election cycle.

(All emphases added)

California Will Run Out Of Money By June 16

                     (Image from theage.com)

See this video of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenager's speech before the California State Legislature yesterday, at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83eJEaTAJE8.  Notice how he proposes to cut their spending.

 

 

U.S. Government Owes $63.8 TRILLION

             (Image from christianpf.com)

U.S. household debt has jumped to an average of $668, 621 this year.  That counts not ony the $121,000 personal debt of the average household, but also their share of the national debt, which is $546,668 per household.  So says  Dennis Cauchon at USA TODAY, at http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-05-28-debt_N.htm

Just in the past year taxpayers are on the hook for an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments...from an explosion of federal borrowing...plus an aging population driving up the costs of Medicare and Social Security...

The latest increase raises federal obligations to a record $546,668 per household in 2008, according to the USA TODAY analysis. That's quadruple what the average U.S. household owes for all mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt combined.

"We have a huge implicit mortgage on every household in America — except, unlike a real mortgage, it's not backed up by a house," says David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, the government's top auditor.

The government took on $6.8 trillion in new obligations in 2008, pushing the total owed to a record $63.8 trillion.

The numbers measure what's needed today — set aside in a lump sum, earning interest — to pay benefits that won't be covered by future taxes.

Congress can reduce or increase the burden by changing laws that determine taxes and benefits for programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Here are the crucial federal obligations:

• Social Security...will grow by 1 million to 2 million beneficiaries a year from 2008 through 2032, up from 500,000 a year in the 1990s...Average benefit: $12,089 in 2008.

• Medicare. More than 1 million a year will enroll starting in 2011 when the first Baby Boomer turns 65. Average 2008 benefit: $11,018.

•Retirement programs. Congress has not set aside money to pay military and civil servant pensions or health care for retirees. These unfunded obligations have increased an average of $300 billion a year since 2003 and now stand at $5.3 trillion.

(All empnases added.)

U.S. Capitalism Gone With A Whimper - Pravda

                  (Image from dealbreaker.com)

Pravda, the dominant Russian newspaper, said on 4-27-09 at http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Then Pravda described how this came about..

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger ...than for their constitutional rights. Then they...lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blinds the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches...were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks... were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting...If this keeps up another year...America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

Finally Pravda accuses American politicians of being no better than Russia's own thieves.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look like little more than ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in sheer volume. Should we congratulate them?

But read the whole article for yourself.

Servicemen Can't Speak at Faith-Based Events

  Sergeant 1st Class Greg Stube, Highly Decorated U.S. Army Green Beret                       

                              (Image from covingtonleader.com)

This is from Charlie Stokes, about Obama's new ruling that Servicemen and women are not allowed to speak at faith-based events:

"I wanted to give ya'll some disturbing information on our wonderful president. 

"I work with the Catch-A-Dream Foundation (www.catchadream.org) which provides hunting and fishing trips to childen with life-threatening illnesses.  It is a great program needless to say.   

"This past weekend we had our annual banquet/fundraiser event in Starkville, MS.  As part of the program, we had scheduled Sgt. 1st Class Greg Stube, a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret and inspirational speaker who was severely injured while deployed overseas and didn't have much of a chance for survival.  Greg is stationed at Ft. Bragg  and received permission from his commanding officer to come speak at our function. 

"Everything was on go until Obama made a policy that NO U.S. SERVICEMAN CAN SPEAK AT ANY FAITH-BASED PUBLIC EVENTS ANYMORE.  Needless to say, Greg had to cancel his speaking event with us. 

"Didn't know if anyone else was aware of this new policy.  Wonder what kind of news we all will receive next?"

Charlie Stokes
Area Agronomy Agent/County Director
MSU Extension Service
517 Hwy. 145 N. Ste. 1
Aberdeen, MS 39730
Phone: 662-369-8683
Fax: 662-369-3682
E-mail: charlies@ext.msstate.edu
"Remember, Freedom Isn't Free"

(Hat tip to Fred and Gene Hannah from Parker Lane United Methodist Church, Austin, TX)

How To Prepare For Hard Times

     (Image from operationmilitarykids.org)

If everyone is not asking this question right now, they should be.  One thing we can be sure of is that hard times are ahead.  The government is printing money like crazy, which will bring inflation.  At the same time, people are losing jobs, so incomes are down.  The hostile parts of the world seem to think the U.S. is weak now, and are showing signs of defiance and aggression.  There could be war - many wars - in our future. Attacks on the U.S. may be more likely.  The foolish will not prepare, but the wise will.  But how?  And who can best tell us?  Probably 2 groups:  those who have been there.  And those with a good track record of dealing with disasters.

Personally, I have a few slender qualifications.  I remember the Great Depression very well, and how many of us managed.  And also the shortages and inflation of the following WWII years, and how we managed then.  Also, my training as an economist gives some depth.  As a former investor, I did duck out of the stock market just ahead of the last crash.  And I did learn how to help some 5000 poor or homeless people move up, over 18 years of starting and running charities.  Beyond that, I can only summarize some suggestions from some of the better experts out there.  Here then, is my summary, for whatever use it may be:

1.  Hold on to your savings!

If you are in the stock market through 401Ks or whatever, this is not a good time to be there.  Stock market experts expect some bear-market "bounces" (translation: a very temporary uptick in the market).  These are a good time to sell your equities.  Bonds?  Get some expert advice first.  The U.S. is flooding the market with U.S. bonds, with world-wide effects.  Could you lose money or pay penalties if you get out of your stock investments?  You alone will have to decide whether it would be worth losing some in order to preserve any of your savings at all.  There may not be many future opportunities to get out with at least some of your savings intact.

Where to re-invest?  Banks (ordinary deposit banks, not investment banks) are insured by the government, up to $250,000 per account.  They don't pay much interest, but your savings are safe.  Bank CDs pay a bit more, and can be "laddered" (example: bought at times that will cause some of them to mature every month or quarter, etc.) for those who need to live on the interest.  Gold coins are a good investment.  Keep them in a bank deposit box, not at your home.  Paper investments are a risk.  Investment in commodities (but not real estate for the present) are not likely to become worth zero.  Investments should be liquid (easily and quickly sold, or in cash or near-cash.)  That is because you might have to live on your savings.

2.  Protect you and yours from theft and crime.

Police departments will be cut.  Crimes will rise.  In the Great Depression, crime rates stayed low.  But that was because, compared to now, there was almost no crime before the Depression.  Now, however, crime rates are already high.  They can be expected to get worse.  Tighten up your home security.  Do not keep valuables there.  You should have a gun, but only if you get trained in how to use it and to keep it safe.  Train yourself and family in how to be safe personally, whether at home or away.  Consider living in a small town if you can.  Crime rates are usually much lower there.

3.  Cut your spending severely.

Pretend you have lost your job, for instance.  Then cut your spinding about in half.  That is severe, but not nearly as severe as it would be if you actually lost your job!  So pretend now and sock the money away.  How?  Maybe move to a much cheaper residence.  It would help if there were room to have a vegetable garden, maybe some chickens.  Maybe sell your new car and get a good older car.  Sell your 2nd car.  Arrange car pools, etc.  Stop buying clothes.  Stop buying almost everything!  Entertain yourself at home.

Don't wait!  The purpose of this is to start putting money away as soon as you can, in case you lose your job or have to take a pay cut.  And if those don't get you, the coming inflation will mean your future income will not go as far.  Start now!

Your new motto: "make do, patch it, mend it, fix it, use it up, wear it out."  That was the Great Depression motto.  It works.  Clothes were passed from kid to kid, from family member to other family members.  So were dishes, furniture, etc.

4.  Get as much additional income as you can right now, while you still can.  Right now it may be possible to get an extra job or sell services like yard care in addition to your main job.  It will be hard on you, but later on, those extra jobs will be very scarce.  And it will bring in more money for your to save.

5.  If unemployed, take ANY JOB YOU CAN GET.  Part-time, menial, anything that is not illegal, immoral or harmful to your health.  Even if it does not pay enough to live on.  You are better off with some money coming in than with zero money coming in.  And you can always be looking out for better work, better deals.  The important thing is to have at least some income.  And you will feel better having at least some work.

6.  Sell everything you can possibly do without.  Sell it now, not later.  Now there will be more people to buy, and at higher prices.  Later on, when depression and inflation are worse, not so many.  Try eBay, Craig's list, yard sales, garage sales, Amazon.com used books.  Sock the money away.

7.  Start a vegetable garden.  And plant some fruit trees.  This looks like a long depression, so you may have time to wait for them to start bearing fruit.  During the Great Depression, most of the U.S. lived in towns of less than 5,000 people.  There were many vegetable gardens.  We had a big one in a vacant lot next door, shared with the family on the other side.  We also had a tiny, 2-atory barn and barnyard, attached to a chicken house and chicken yard, at the back of the small lot of our rented house.  (Most people did not own their homes then.)  We kept a milk cow there and her calf.  The annual calf was slaugtered and stored as cuts of beef for us by a freeze-locker business in town.  We had about a gallon of fresh milk a day.  My dad would stake the cow out, using a long rope, using a vacant lot as a pasture for her, before he left for work.  He would bring her home when he came back at night.  My sister and I turned the handle of the churn to make butter.  We had plenty of fresh eggs, and chicken once a week.  Surplus chickens were frozen as "fryers" (6 months old) in our commercial freeze-locker downtown.  At that time, there were no home freezers, and very few electric refrigerators.  We had an ice-box, built like a refrigerator but with an wooden door, and an ice man delivered blocks of ice for it.  A tree in the back yard provided cherries.  Mother canned surplus vegetables in jars.  It all helped, and helped us stay healthy as well as well-fed.

8.  Do all you can to protect your and your family's health.  Most of us already know what to do.  Eat right.  Sleep enough.  Exercise.  Drop bad habits.  No sweets (sugar means tooth cavities.)  For most of us, lose weight.  Read up on staying healthy.  You won't be able to afford risking bad health.

9.  Get out of debt and stay out.  Don't borrow money.  Close your credit cards.  Buy only what you have cash-on-hand to pay for.  Any debt you have increases your financial danger.

10.  Get what good financial advice you can - carefully.  When I invested in the stock market, I subscribed to a few stock market newsletters.  The best one was from Martin Weiss.  It was through his advice that I got out of the stock market just before the last crash.  You may have seen him on TV or when he testifies before Congress, or have read his interviews in the Washington Post or Business Week.  He was one of the few to predict this Meltdown and when it would happen accurately.  He has a free newsletter as well as a subscription one, which I can recommend.*  Also his new best-seller, "The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide " **  His credentials for giving disaster advice are excellent.

______________

* Weiss free newsletter at www.moneyandmarkets.com

** at Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_0_16?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+ultimate+depression+survival+guide&sprefix=The+ultimate+dep.

David Broder, WaPo - "The Size of Obama's Gamble"

David Broder, Washington Post

David Broder , Liberal Journalist, the "Dean" of liberal pundits presiding at the Washington Post itself, has seen what he did not see before about Obama and his team.  He writes:

The size of the gamble that President Obama is taking every day is simply staggering... putting at risk the future well-being of the country and the Democratic Party's control of Washington.*   (read the rest of the article at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/obamas_selfconfidence_propels.html) 

Another commenter adds:

I've come to believe that the Obama crowd is naive to the point of stupidity. They are very intelligent, mind you...But intelligent people are often deeply stuck in their fix-the-world fantasies, which makes them idiot savants. 

These people have never accomplished anything but suckering the voters --- and each other...

They seem to have no concept of the economy... making Monopoly money and forcing energy-using corporations to pay for it. They have no concept of productive investment compared to a wild spending spree on feel-good ideas, or on kickbacks to their buddies in Chicago .

After all the "community organizer" hoo-hah they still learned nothing from the welfare fiasco that was inflicted on Black families by LBJ's War on Poverty, --- by way of family breakdown, helpless dependency, drugs, and gang warfare. They've just abolished Bill Clinton's version of welfare reform, which was forced upon him by the Gingrich Congress, and which has ended up really helping people, not hurting them.

Conclusion: These folks are arrogant and ignorant. Intelligent, yes, articulate, yes, and utterly persuasive to millions of suckers, yes. But reality has a harsh way with fools.  (Read the rest at http://www.sodahead.com/blog/48842/the-size-of-the-gamble-that-president-obama-is-taking.)

Obama - "We're Out Of Money"

On Saturday May 23, President Obama told C-SPAN host Steve Scully, "We are out of money."*

C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president. Here are some bits from the interview:

"SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

"OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now...So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.

"So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare." 

Then Scully brings up General Motors and California:

"SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” your reaction?

"OBAMA: Well, you know...we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. et out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries...

"SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?

"OBAMA: No." 

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* http://www.drudgereport.com/flashocs.htm

Trying to Grasp the Coming Disaster

                       (Image from mises.org)

There is a strange reason I have not posted for a month.  I have simply been unable to comprehend,  to really grasp, what is about to happen to this country and to the world.  It has not been from lack of trying.  I spend my days reading, researching, probing into what is coming and why.  But it scarcely seems real.

Why?  Everything still looks so normal!  I look out over the city and nothing seems to have changed.  Yet I know it is coming, and already partly here.  It has been something like being on a coast and awaiting a tsuname wave that is coming within an hour.  It might not seem real, because everything would look so normal while we wait.  We would look around at the streets and houses,  and try to comprehend that what we were looking at would shortly be replaced by smashed houses floating in swirling water.  We might even know that afterward, it would be hard to imagine the "normal" that we had been seeing before the disaster.  But before it fully arrived, it would not seem real.  Just as now there is a comprehension gap, even though so much of the future is becoming clear.  I suspect many are struggling, as I am, to really believe all that is happening.  It keeps coming, faster and faster.

                       (Image from Drexel.edu)

Not that it's the end of the world.  But it is the end of an era, the end of living as we have, and likely the end of the U.S. as we have known it.  For all the world, a Great Depression.  Most countries will suffer more than we will.  In the U.S., add inflation to the mix of falling incomes and unemployment.   With our national debt finally coming due, the government will no longer be able to borrow its way out of trouble.  Retirement, medical care, all government programs are at risk.  And there is more, much more.

Then there is the swelling effect on world security.  The Pax Americana is being challenged, and if we continue cutting the military - now at the lowest percentage of national income in 60 years - and standing back from every provocation, there soon will be more wars in the world.  Our own security is also under new challenges.

As things develop, I will try to do better at posting regularly.  Grasping the seriousness and shape of our new landscape will be all too unavoidable soon enough.  No time left for feelings of unreality.

Somali Refugees Big Problem Too

       

                             (Image from refugee.org)

Somali refugees are a growing problem, because so many are criminals.

Kenya, which has suffered from Somali raiders for centuries, is now turning back Somalis seeking asylum.  The UN demands that Kenya allow a fourth Somali refugee camp be established in northeastern Kenya.  The three camps already there hold over 250,000 Somalis.  The UN is also trying to get Kenya to stop sending Somali refugees back.  Kenya accepted 60,000 Somali refugees last year, and have had no end of problems with them.

Somali gunmen try to use the refugee camps as rest areas.  Worse, they sometimes do some looting in Kenya, instead of going back to Somali to steal.  So Kenya has told the UN to stuff it, and is turning away most Somalis trying to flee into Kenya. 

Somali Islamic radical group Al Shabaab has warned Kenya to not interfere with its gunmen operating along the border.  This is a typically Somali attitude towards Kenyans.   Kenya has a lot of powerful allies, like the United States, and is not that intimidated.  But the Somalis militants are violent and unpredictable, so the Kenyans are braced for anything.  Kenya has officially closed the border, but Somalis continue to use it for refugees, or smuggling.  Islamic terrorists can use Kenyan airports and ports to get in and out, although there is less scrutiny up north in Puntland and Somaliland, where passage to Yemen, Sudan or Saudi Arabia is easily arranged.  Eritrea and Sudan are particularly hospitable to Islamic radicals.

Smuggling Somalis into Europe is a big business for the network of criminal gangs from Somalia, Yemen, Africa and Europe.  Somalis who can pay, send or smuggle family members to safety in Europe and North America.  Some of the men return to fight for clan or religious militias.  A Somali who was a naturalized Canadian citizen was recently killed while involved in a raid into Ethiopia.

Al Shabaab and the Transitional National Government (TNG) are trying to gain more control over foreign aid groups.  Foreign aid is the main source of food for several million Somalis, and a major source of income for warlords.  The aid groups are forced to pay for security (a "protection racket") in order to assure the safety of their staff.   Last year, 34 aid workers were killed in Somalia, 26 were kidnapped, and 13 of these are still being held .

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From http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/somalia/articles/20090409.aspx

Obama Scientist - "I Will Return Us To Age of Smog"

                          Obama Science Advisor John Holdren

 As AP and others reported, Obama's science advisor John Holdren wants to reintroduce smog to the atmosphere.

The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air...One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air — making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested — could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.

Still, "we might get desperate enough to want to use it," he added.

Holdren also suggested expensive gigantic artificial trees

...to suck carbon dioxide...out of the air and store it. 

Besides, global warming is good for people while cooling is bad.  The last warming period, 1000-1400, was much better for the population than the last cooling period, 1400-1850.

Global warming is also not as bad as pollution.  One scientist explains about Russian pollution: *

...how horrible the pollution used to be in the industrial communist cities. We were not talking about CO2 which is a completely innocent gas - but about SO2, SO3, NOx, CO, NH3, ozone, particulate carbon, and similar stuff. Children began to be slightly sick. Acid rains were killing forests. Weeks of schooling outside the cities had to become mandatory.

Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge / Krušné hory) on the heavily industrialized EastGerman-Czech border at the end of the 1980s (the end of the communist era). Acid rains did the job. Today, the mountains are thriving again.

Capitalism cured all these things. People didn't want to live in a contaminated environment and they actually became able to influence whether their environment is healthy. Unnecessarily dirty technologies - whose main goal was to fulfill communists' arbitrary and absurd 5-year plans - have disappeared, useless portions of the heavy industry were reduced, affordable gadgets to clean the air coming out of plans could have been bought, and the pollution decreased by an order of magnitude.

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*  At Communism, capitalism, and environment 

Climate-Caused Insanity on Earth Day

 

(From Earth Day article at MSN Green today.)*

On Earth Day, many are led to fear a future with an earth ruined by man-caused climate change.  Others fear a future with human society badly damaged by drastic changes - but by those who fear man-caused climate change.  And that would be a future with little or no man-caused changes in the climate. 

Who is right?  The new U.S. government which has just re-defined the clean, natural gas CO2 as "polluting?"  (Is this the way we will do "science" now?)  Or the great body of scientists - including many of the best - who say that man-caused global warming is not a problem?**

And which way are we to go?  With the crippling, enormous cost of the changes proposed by the "Warmists"?  With all the impact on the poor of the earth that will bring?

Or with striving to keep a whipped-up mass green hysteria in some rational perspective?

While we all want a cleaner, healthier earth, this is not the way.  Sadly, Earth Day has now become Crazy Day. 

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* at http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/living-green/staticslideshowgreenchan.aspx?cp-documentid=18995580&imageindex=6

** For a recent summary of the issue, see http://www.gerrycharlottephelps.com/2007/02/sunspots_cosmic.html.  Then see more starting on the left of this page, under the categories "environment" and "enviro-lunacy". 

Rebuilding High Civilization

                         (Image from stpetersmo.net)

That is what we must prepare for, starting now or very soon.  The economic tsunami that is coming is of a size and fury capable of destroying high civilization from the face of the earth.  That may be especially true for the more advanced civilizations.  That seems odd, because they are also the richer civilizations, with more resources, more margin with which to begin again.  But their very structure also becomes more fragile with every added advance, more easy to disrupt and harder to restore. 

It appears more and more certain that a very bad time is ahead.  It is of the size and kind that led to the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War.  Is it a few years away, or a few months?  We cannot know.  But we can start preparing for scarcity, poverty, disruption and wars.  That is for our physical survival.

But survival for what?  A new dark age, full of dictators, war lords, old cruelties, famines and plagues?  Perhaps without much in the way of books or even literacy, much less the arts and humanities.  Or the re-establishment and rebirth of a high civilization. 

How would we possibly rebuild high civilization again?  I would suggest two things first.  The second would be to guard and establish anew our rare American freedoms.  The first, however, is needed to make that possible.  Basically, our freedoms were not built totally on our constitution, though it was framed by as erudite and capable founders as ever graced any country.  No, they themselves said that the new republic and its constitution would not work without something else.  That was a "religious and moral" people.

Guided by deep immersion in a thoroughly Christian culture, they argued and debated, collaborated and fought, to work out the constitutional structure they left us.  The very division of our government into three competing, opposing powers was based on a particular passage in the Bible.  That structure also grew out of their view of humankind as fallen and not perfectable, which came from their Christian convictions, common to the time.  Our very old republic has lasted over 230 years, structured on what they left us as a guide.

We have gained by overcoming the slavery and legalized racial discrimination.that were beyond what was possible for them to achieve at the time of the founding.  But arguably, we have also lost much of the freedom they tried to secure to themselves and to us, their posterity.

It is not possible for our present system to work now, much less to be rebuilt and restored during a great disaster such as we face, without re-Christianizing the country.  The same is true for effectively post-Christian cultures, such as Europe and Russia.

Re-Christianizing is also the best thing we can do to preserve what is dearest to us; our freedoms.  Those freedoms are at great risk in hard, turbulent, dangerous times with much risk of wars. 

The founders said our system will not work "without a moral and religious people."  By "religious", they meant Christianity, their own faith and the faith on which they stood to stake "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor."  Quite possibly, they never conceived of a time when there would be so little evangelism and discipling that Christianity would fall to such a low ebb as now.  Likely they took the strong Christian culture in which they lived and moved for granted, like fish take water for granted.  They knew absolutely that it was necessary to freedom.  But they may not have realized that it would decline so, and our freedoms with it.

Today, we have almost lost and forgotten the habits needed to spread Christianity.  That is the presistent evangelizing and proselytizing, the constant discipling and teaching, the planting of new churches and growing of old ones, and the serving of the needy and afflicted in our communities, our country and our world, in the special ways that Christians should.

Re-Christianizing is our best hope  It is even our best hope for anything like a better life on this earth.  It always was.  The sooner we get started, or start afresh, the better.

Take The Money Back!

                     (Image from thisislondon.co.uk)

In the last few months our economic future has been turned upside-down.  The national debt we have piled up for decades is beginning to come due.  The debt is being made worse fast, by government spending on a scale we have never seen before.  The government deficit for this year alone will easily top 3.5 trillion - more than the debt of the last several presidents combined.  In addition, the Federal Reserve has been printing money hand over fist - which also is adding more trillions to the debt

But that's only the beginning.  We have known for years that much bigger financial crises are coming.  Social Security.  Expanded Medicare.  Now Welfare has been resurrected from the dead, and will be a huge expense in future years.  In addition, other countries are no longer willing to carry much of our trade debt.  Current estimates of U.S. national future debt top $1.5 quadrillion.*  (A quadrillion is 1000 trillions or a million billions.)  The interest on our national debt alone will be larger than our national production in the lifetime of some of those already born.

So what is our government doing?  Spending like drunken sailors.  More every day.  Living in who knows what dream world.

Now some banks want to repay the taxpayers' bail-out money that they got.  But the Obama administration does not want to take it.  What is going on?  Here is what the Wall Street Journal says:**

My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

It is not for nothing that rage has been turned on those wicked financiers. The banks are at the core of the administration's thrust: By managing the money, government can steer the whole economy even more firmly down the left fork in the road.

If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash -- which was often forced on them in the first place -- the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That's what's happening right now.

Do American citizens have anything to say about this?  It is their money, after all.  Maybe tomorrow's "Tea Parties" will help them make their voice heard.

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* See http://actindependent.org/G20.pdf.  Also, just Google "$1.5 quadrillion U.S. debt."

** http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123879833094588163.html