2013 – Page 2 – The Burning Platform

Humanity in 2 minutes …….. (spectacular, really)

Turn up the speakers. Watch in full screen.

We start with a bang. We end in a bang.

RAND PAUL vs. THE NSA TRAITORS

Who has betrayed the trust of the American people? Edward Snowden or the NSA & Obama?

Who are the real traitors, treating the Constitution like toilet paper?

I’m glad there is one voice in Congress telling the truth and realizing the true enemy of the people.

Is it a surprise his last name is Paul?

Rand Paul Plots NSA Class-Action Lawsuit Options

The anti-surveillance senator has recruited ‘hundreds of thousands’ of plaintiffs

By Steven Nelson

December 17, 2013

After months of consideration, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is moving closer to filing a lawsuit in federal court against National Security Agency surveillance programs.

A senior Paul staffer says U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon’s Monday decision that NSA opponents have standing to sue over the bulk collection of phone records makes Paul “much more likely” to file his own lawsuit.

[READ: Judge Orders NSA to Stop Collecting Phone Records]

The senior staffer, who spoke with U.S. News on background, says hundreds of thousands of people volunteered online as possible plaintiffs after Paul first floated the idea of a class-action lawsuit in June.

The senator has not firmly decided to file suit and it’s still possible Paul will choose to instead assist with three already-filed lawsuits against the NSA.

If Paul does file a lawsuit it would be the fourth major legal attack against the NSA’s bulk collection and five-year storage of American phone records.

Lawsuits against the phone-record collection are already filed in federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch in Washington, D.C., and by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

Klayman won a major victory against the NSA on Monday, with Leon ruling the phone record program is likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Leon granted a preliminary injunction barring the collection, but stayed implementation pending appeal.

Unlike the possible Paul lawsuit, Klayman only sought a handful of original plaintiffs. He is seeking for the “class” he represents to be defined by Leon to include all Americans affected by the program, which purportedly helps scuttle terrorist plots – an accomplishment Leon disputed.

The senior Paul staffer stressed that Paul is currently evaluating strategy options. If a lawsuit is filed, it would likely be in either D.C. or Kentucky. It’s unclear which Paul-affiliated entity would file the challenge.

“As of now the senator is in the process of finding the best lawyer to file the [possible] suit [and] is still accepting more plaintiffs for the case,” Paul spokeswoman Eleanor May said.

[ALSO: Second Judge ‘Skeptical’ About Legal Case for NSA Surveillance]

The website of Paul’s political action committee, RANDPAC, currently has a pop-up advertisement that asks prospective plaintiffs to provide their name, email address and ZIP code. The ad says it seeks 10 million plaintiffs and asks for “a generous donation to help rally up to ten million Americans to support my lawsuit to stop Big Brother.”

Regardless of the legal approach selected, the senior staffer said Paul’s footwork to seek plaintiffs should help with possible standing issues, which have historically – although not in the initial Klayman case decision – derailed anti-surveillance lawsuits.

The pending EFF and ACLU lawsuits also do not have a large number of individuals named as plaintiffs. The EFF lawsuit is brought by a coalition of advocacy groups and the ACLU’s challenge is brought by the organization itself, as a customer of Verizon Business Network Services, the entity specified in an officially recognized court order leaked by Edward Snowden.

Although Judge Leon took a preliminary sledgehammer to the Justice Department’s legal argument and U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley of New York is also considering an injunction request from the ACLU, the Paul staffer stressed the legal fight may take a while to resolve and said the senator wouldn’t be too late to have a meaningful impact.

In the sweeping Monday victory for NSA critics, Leon ruled Klayman had standing to challenge the phone record collection, that his court had the authority to review Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court actions, that the landmark 1979 case Smith v. Maryland was ill-suited to justify the surveillance and that the program likely violates the Fourth Amendment.

[BROWSE: Editorial Cartoons on the NSA]

Leon described the collection as “almost-Orwellian” and said “the government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive.”

Paul, who has introduced legislation to ease standing issues and also to forbid indiscriminate collection of Americans’ records, applauded Leon’s decision Monday.

“I will continue to fight against the violations of Americans’ constitutional rights through illegal phone surveillance until it is stopped once and for all,” he said in a release.

In addition to considering a lawsuit against the phone record collection, Paul is also looking at legal options against NSA Internet programs. Klayman is currently suing to halt the PRISM Internet program, but Leon did not grant an injunction in that case.

How GRATITUDE can change your life

I know 10 minutes is a long time to watch a video. But, I don’t think you’d be disappointed if you did.

There are some spectacular images.

At 3:45 …. behold the wisdom of a little child.

At 4:50 …. behold the wisdom of an aged man.

We live in a shitty world therefore, I hate too much. I can’t seem to help it, even though I know how destructive it is to my well being. Sometimes I wish I could be satisfied being a Pollyanna.

There is Bible verse that meant much to me when I was a believer …. and still does today … at least in my rare moments of clarity ——— “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.”

Because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. It isn’t what goes into your mouth that defiles, but what comes out of it. Sometimes I scare myself at what a hateful old prick I’ve become.

TBP TAPER POLL

Ben Bernanke’s last Federal Reserve meeting concludes today. His reign or error is over. The man never saw the housing bubble. The man never saw the 2008 crash coming. The man’s solution to our debt problem has been to encourage the addition of trillions in debt to our existing mountain. The man’s solution to every problem is his printing press and helicopters. He will now write a book about how he saved the world and eventually be hired as a “consultant” by his Wall Street bank puppeteers.

At 2:00 pm today he will announce the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Will he announce a tapering of the $85 billion per month to just $75 billion per month? The MSM is attempting to create a frenzy of interest, but the country just yawns. At least 98% of the morons in this country don’t even know that Bernanke is buying $1.2 trillion of debt per year in order to prop up the stock market and this joke of an economy. If you asked the average shmuck on the corner about the taper, they’d think it was Justin Bieber’s new hairstyle. Does Bernanke have the balls to disappoint his Wall Street owners? Or does he want to go out with the stock market hitting all-time highs? I believe he will not announce a taper, setting Yellen up for the fall that will happen in 2014. Bernanke is a cowardly toady for the ruling elite.

But this is TBP, where the people are awake. So let’s have a multi-part poll.

When will Helicopter Ben and the other Fed goons begin a taper?

Today
January
March
Never

If Bennie Bucks announces a taper, how much will it be?

$5 billion
$10 billion
$15 billion

If Bennie announces a taper, the stock market will…..

Fall dramatically
Fall mildly
Rise dramatically
Rise mildly
Yawn and do nothing

If Bennie delays the taper until sometime in the future, the stock market will……

Soar to new all-time highs
Soar to new all-time highs
Soar to new all-time highs

When the ultimate result of Bernanke’s reckless policies is the destruction of the American economic system, he should be…….

Hung from a lampost on Wall Street next to Dimon and Blankfein
Drawn and quartered
Electrocuted like the dude in The Green Mile without wetting the sponge
Shot in the head with a 44 Magnum by Clint Eastwood after he says “I gotsta know”

Today I Say Something Nice about a Politician

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

I’m obviously no fan of politicians, but I also like to give credit where it is due. I did pick up one very valuable lesson from a politician, something that contributed substantially to my life.

It was either the late 1980s or the very early 1990s, and I was listening to the Milt Rosenberg show on WGN radio, which was the best interview show I’ve ever known. Milt’s guest that night was Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of England. In the middle of the interview, in just a passing comment, she said this:

Habits are either the best of friends or the bitterest of foes.

Perhaps I was just ready to hear it, but I realized in that moment that I could arrange my life in beneficial and painless ways by creating productive habits.

Short Pain, Long Gain

I had learned the rules of creating habits some time prior to this radio show (in a book by Dr. Robert Anthony):

If you repeat an action for 28 days, it will become a habit.

(That action, by the way, could include thinking in specific ways.)

Here is a harmless experiment to prove that statement:

Fold your hands by interlacing your fingers. Next, check to see which hand is on top; usually it is the left index (pointer) finger that ends up on the top of the pile. Now, reverse the order – if your left is on top, put the right on top, or vise versa. This will probably feel uncomfortable. For the next several weeks, make yourself use the reversed order. No exceptions allowed. Be tough on yourself.

If you do this religiously, at the end of four weeks (28 days), you will be doing it automatically, and the original order will feel almost as uncomfortable as the reverse order does now.

Do this right away and prove it to yourself.

Now for the Next Step

Make a list of useful habits in whatever area(s) of life you want, and start creating them in yourself. You’ll have to remember to force yourself to do or think the new things from your list. But if you do it, you’ll create productive habits.

And once those productive habits are made, you will gather fruit from them for the rest of your life. Once created, a habit is automatic. You’ll end up doing useful things with zero stress, and for a long, long time.

So where to start?

That’s really something only you can decide but I’d almost bet that something has started popping up in your consciousness already. If so, write it down and spend some time considering it.

What you want to find are silly or wasteful habits. Be honest with yourself and examine yourself. What have you always done that isn’t working in your interests? Whatever you find should be changed. It will probably be best to go one at a time, but change these habits. And rather than just trying to stop the bad habit, replace it with a good habit.

At one time, I was in the habit of reading a newspaper every day. But I soon found that I was spending a lot of time on it, and that I got much better news on the Internet, in less time. So, even though I enjoyed my daily paper, it was no longer worth my time and worked against me. So, I changed the habit into checking Internet news sites and saved myself about 15 minutes per day.

If you end up saving just ten minutes per day, you’ll get more than an hour of free time per week. That’s about five hours per month, and about sixty one hours per year. Over ten years, that’s almost a month and a half of waking time.

The payoff from that extra time can be profound.

Perhaps even more important than that is knowing that you can improve your life. Wanting to improve your life is a fine impulse, but knowing that you can takes you to a considerably higher level.

Here is a final thought on habits from an unwilling politician, George Washington:

Rise early, that by habit it may become familiar, agreeable, healthy, and profitable. It may, for a while, be irksome to do this, but that will wear off; and the practice will produce a rich harvest forever thereafter; whether in public or private walks of life.

That’s a comment from someone who had actually done this and knew from experience.

And with that, let it not be said that I never write anything nice about politicians.

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

“WASTEBOOK”, PISSING YOUR MONEY AWAY

Everyone is racing out to buy lottery tickets to win $630 million (at last count), which is kind of hilarious, because the criminals in Washington pissed away $30 billion without blinking an eye. Dr. Coburn completed his annual “wastebook” and all the crap your tax dollars are wasted on. Enjoy!

null

Government Blatantly Wastes $30 Billion This Year

Brianna Ehley, The Fiscal Times, December 17, 2013

When the sequester cuts slashed $85 billion from the federal budget, crippling federal programs like Head Start and halting crucial research at the National Institutes of Health, the government continued spending tax dollars on things like 3-D pizza printers for NASA, a beachfront property loan program for millionaires, and a $300 million Army surveillance blimp that doesn’t work.

Those are just three of the 100 examples of egregious government waste that cost taxpayers $30 billion this year–all detailed in Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) annual “Wastebook,” released Tuesday.

The report, obtained Monday night by The Fiscal Times, documents a host of federally-subsidized programs and projects that have incurred significant costs while offering little or no benefit to taxpayers.

The report isn’t just big ticket items, it also includes a spate of rather obscure, little-known projects as well, including a federally funded grant of nearly $400,000 awarded to Yale University to study the “oddity of the duck penis.” Another includes a $200,000 grant from the International Trade Administration was awarded to a group of indie rock execs to travel the world and discover new music.

“Collectively these cost more than $30 billion in a year when Washington would have you believe everything that could be done has been done to control unnecessary spending,” Coburn said in a statement. “Had just these 100 been eliminated, the sequester amount would have been reduced nearly a third without any noticeable disruption.”

In his report, Coburn wastes no time in taking aim at his colleagues in the do-nothing 113th Congress, which, he says, achieved very little this year, aside from passing 56 laws, forcing a 16-day government shutdown and maintaining an approval rating that hovers around 10 percent.

“The first session of the 113th Congress will likely go down in history as the least productive in history, more notable for what it do not do than what it did,” Coburn said. He added that the government shutdown cost taxpayers $400 million reinstating paychecks for furloughed federal employees earning more than $100,000 a year. This includes members of Congress.

“Congress should not be paid when it fails to pass an annual budget required by law,” Coburn said.

The latest “Wastebook” was released just ahead of a Senate vote on a bipartisan budget deal brokered by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray, which passed the House last week.

Coburn, a Republican and known deficit-hawk, voiced his disappointment in the deal during an interview on MSNBC last week, saying it doesn’t go far enough to address the long-term debt and doesn’t achieve any savings by eliminating any of the wasteful spending highlighted in his report.

“None of that’s addressed in this. None of the waste, the duplication, the fraud. None of it,” he said.

Here are some of the highlights in the report:

Beachfront Property for Millionaires — $500 million: A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) home loan program, created to help people with low and moderate incomes afford a home in “rural areas” has been used by many millionaires in “resort communities” in tropical paradises like Hawaii. According to the report, more than 100 individuals or families received loan guarantees for $500,000 or more from the USDA to purchase a home in Hawaii. And here’s the kicker, “if these new homeowners later cannot afford their new homes it’s no problem, the federal government will protect the banks from losses by repaying 90 percent of the loans,” the report says. Last year, it paid nearly $500 million in lost claims.

Botched Blimp — $300 million: The Army spent three and a half years and nearly $300 million building a football field-sized blimp called the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, to provide continuous surveillance over Afghanistan battlefields, but the project was riddled with errors and cost-overruns so the Army eventually just sold it back to the contractor.

NASA’s “Pillownauts” — $360,000: During the shutdown, 97 percent of NASA’s staff was laid off, still the agency was paying 20 people $18,000 each to literally lie around and do nothing for 70 days with their body “slightly tilted forward” for a study to help scientists learn how astronauts bodies will change in space flight. However, NASA isn’t planning any missions anytime in the foreseeable future, since it no longer has a manned space program…So they people getting paid to lie in bed all day might as well keep dreaming.

Fort Hood Shooter Still on Federal Payroll — $53,000 (in 2013): Alleged Fort Hood Shooter Major Nadal Hasson, continues to get paid federal salary since the Military Code of Justice doesn’t allow a soldier to be suspended until they are found guilty. He made $52,952 in 2013 and $278,000 total since he allegedly killed 13 and injured 32 in 2009.

NASA Looks for Intelligent Life in Congress — $3 million: Since NASA’s space program has been grounded, it’s left to search for intelligent life on Earth. Curiously enough, it has chosen to explore Capitol Hill and the inner workings of Congress. Teaming up with Georgetown University, NASA will embark on its next mission of hosting a one-week seminar exploring how Congress works—almost as complicated and mysterious as the solar system?

Television Ads for Hurricane Sandy — $65 million: Of the $60.4 billion Congress appropriated for areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy, at least $65 million were put toward local television ads. Instead of rushing aid to the people who need it most, state-level officials in New York and New Jersey spent the money on tourism-related TV advertisements. Making this particularly vexing for some local residents, the flow of disaster aid has been both paltry and slow,” the report said.

Duplicate IT Systems — $321 million: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spent over $30 million on two IT programs that serve the same purpose. Both support “immigration enforcement booking management, which includes the processing of apprehended illegal aliens suspected of committing criminal violations of immigration law. However, DHS said it has no plans to address the duplicative expenditures. Similar problems have accorded at DOD, where the Air Force has two duplicative IT systems. In fact, according to a recent GAO report, three agencies have spent $321 million for overlapping IT purposes over the past several years.

Bureau of Print and Engraving Ruined New $100 Bills — $4 million: The new $100 dollar bills that came out in October, after several setbacks pushed back their release date. One of the latest incidents happened in the fall when too much ink was applied to the paper (known as “mashing”). As a result, the Federal Reserve returned the bills to the Bureau and demanded a refund. The incident cost the taxpayer about $4 million.

Half a Million to Spruce Up Block in Kansas Town — $500,000: The Department of Transportation awarded Rossville, Kansas—a tiny town with a population of 1,150—a grant of $532,000 to make one-block in the downtown area “more decorative and colorful.” According to the report, the “decorative and colorful improvements to one street block in Rossville, Kansas cost U.S. taxpayers $462 per resident of Rossville or $38,000 for each of the 14 businesses located on this block of Main Street.” Hopefully now taxpayers across the country will swarm to Rossville to enjoy the block they helped pay for.

NASA’s 3D Pizza Printer — $125,000: NASA awarded a $124,955 grant to Arjun Contractor to build a 3-D pizza printer. The space agency spends about $1 million on “Martian food development.” According to the report, a NASA scientist involved in the 3D printer pizza said it could be years until the creation becomes feasible. Too bad, it sounds out of this world.

Uncle Sam Looking for Romance on the Web – (NEH) $914,000. The Popular Romance Project has received nearly $1 million from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) since 2010 to “explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective—while looking back across time as far as the ancient Greeks.”

Mass Destruction of Weapons – (Department of Defense) $7 billion. As the U.S. war effort in the Middle East winds to a close, the military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds worth of useable vehicles and other military equipment. The military has decided that it will simply destroy more than $7 billion worth of equipment rather than sell it or ship it back home.

Millions Spent Building, Promoting an Insurance Plan Few Want and a Website that Doesn’t Work – (Department of Health and Human Services) At least $379 million. With nearly half-a-billion dollars in government funding put behind promoting a product that relatively few people seem interested in purchasing off a website that doesn’t work, Obamacare is perhaps the biggest marketing flop since Coca-Cola introduced the world to “New Coke” in 1985.

Government Study Finds Out Wives Should Calm Down (NIH) $325,525. If your wife is angry at you and you don’t want her to stay that way, you might avoid passing along the findings of this government study. Wives would find marriage more satisfying if they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands, according to government-funded research.

Federally Funded Solar Panels Covered at Manchester-Boston Airport Because the Glare Blinds Pilots and Controllers (FAA) – $3.5 million. When officials at the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in New Hampshire installed new solar panels, they did not anticipate one quarter of them would not be used 18 months later. In Spring 2012, the panels were placed on top of the airport’s parking garage, and 25 percent have remained there, covered with a tarp, rendering them useless. Problems with the new panels were noticed almost immediately by air traffic controllers who claimed that for 45 minutes each day, glare made it difficult to oversee the airport’s runways.

Need Brains! Fighting Zombies with Pluses and Minuses — (NC) $150,000, A grant from NSF went to a company in North Carolina to develop a math learning game based on the zombie apocalypse.

NASA’s Little Green Man (NASA) — $390,000. Since NASA is no longer conducting space flights, they have plenty of time and money to fund a YouTube TV show and cartoon series called “Green Ninja” in which a man dressed in a Green Ninja costume teaches children about global warming.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/12/17/10-Most-Absurd-Stories-Government-Waste-Year#sthash.OP9ttFnF.dpuf
http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=e7359436-1572-414e-8acc-0222cad1c7d5&ContentType_id=d741b7a7-7863-4223-9904-8cb9378aa03a&Group_id=7a55cb96-4639-4dac-8c0c-99a4a227bd3a

null

KEEPING IT REAL

“One only needs to reflect on the dramatic decline in the value of the dollar that has taken place since the Fed was established in 1913. The goods and services you could buy for $1.00 in 1913 now cost nearly $21.00. Another way to look at this is from the perspective of the purchasing power of the dollar itself. It has fallen to less than $0.05 of its 1913 value. We might say that the government and its banking cartel have together stolen $0.95 of every dollar as they have pursued a relentlessly inflationary policy.” – Ron Paul – End the Fed

The BLS reported the CPI this morning. They tell me that inflation is well contained and has only risen by 1.2% in the past twelve months. Our beloved Federal Reserve chairman is worried inflation is too low. It is fascinating that the only people worried about inflation being too low are Ivy League educated economists and bankers whose wealth depends upon the middle class sinking further into poverty. As a person who lives in the real world, I can honestly say I like it when the things I need to buy cost less today than they did last year. When did inflation become a good thing for the average American? Our country was somehow able to grow from a fledgling new country to a world power in just over a century while experiencing mild deflation, except during times of war. The fallacy that inflation is beneficial to the common man has been peddled by bankers since 1971 when Nixon and his cronies closed the gold window and unleashed the inflationary boogeyman in the form of feckless politicians, captured Keynesian academics, and greedy soulless bankers.

It is no coincidence inflation accelerated the moment politicians, academics and bankers were unleashed to spend your money at will in order to obtain votes, Nobel prizes in economics, and ill-gotten obscene levels of wealth. David Stockman described Nixon’s dreadful sellout of the American people in his brilliant new book:

“Nixon’s estimable free market advisors who gathered at the Camp David weekend were to an astonishing degree clueless as to the consequences of their recommendation to close the gold window and float the dollar. In their wildest imaginations they did not foresee that this would unhinge the monetary and financial nervous system of capitalism. They had no premonition at all that it would pave the way for a forty-year storm of financialization and a debt-besotted symbiosis between central bankers possessed by delusions of grandeur and private gamblers intoxicated with visions of delirious wealth.” –David Stockman – The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

The USD has lost 83% of its purchasing power since 1971. The moment Nixon began playing politics with the USD and bullied the Federal Reserve Chairman into pumping up the money supply prior to the 1972 election, the inflation genie got out of the bottle and led to the miserable stagflation of the 1970’s. It took extreme measures by Paul Volcker to get it back under control in the early 1980’s. Since Volcker we’ve had nothing but academics and toadies who have chosen to change the definition of inflation in order to mislead the average American regarding how badly they are getting screwed. Every refinement, tweak, adjustment, or revision to the calculation of CPI has been designed to produce a lower figure. Why control inflation when you can just change the calculation to suit your purposes?

Over the proceeding decades, the BLS has sliced and diced the CPI in such a way that they can make it say whatever TPTB want it to say. They need to keep the mushrooms (you) in the dark regarding your standard of living deteriorating, while the beneficiaries of inflation (bankers, politicians) see their standard of living soaring. They have made hedonistic “adjustments”, quality “adjustments”, substitution “adjustments” and geometric weighting “adjustments”, all with the sole purpose to reduce the level reported to the American people on a monthly basis.

CPI was supposed to measure a common basket of goods and services that Americans needed to purchase in order to live their lives. If the price for this basket rose, you had inflation. If the price for this basket fell, you had deflation. The politicians, academics, bankers and government bureaucrats decided if the price of steak went up by 10%, you would switch to chicken, therefore the price of steak did not go up by 10%. They decided if the price of a new car went up 5%, but you now had heated seats, the price didn’t really go up 5%. They now want to change to a chained CPI, which will further depress the reported figure. CPI no longer represents the increase in price of goods and services you need to live your day to day life.

Even the composition of the index doesn’t match the true cost picture for the average American. Somehow they bury the energy component within multiple categories and have the gall to argue that energy costs only comprise 9.6% of the average American expense budget. Tell that to the suburban two worker family that drives 30,000 miles per year and has to heat and cool a 2,000 square foot home. I doubt that too many families only spend 7% of their money on medical care. Housing accounts for 41% of the CPI calculation, but it is again a made up calculation called owner’s equivalent rent. Only an Ivy League economist could explain the calculation. The fact that home prices have risen by 12%, rents have risen by 4% and mortgage rates have risen from 3.25% to 4.5% in the last year somehow results in a 2.4% annual rate of inflation for housing.

If you have the feeling your standard of living has been falling for the last few decades even though your owners tell you the economy is expanding, inflation is contained, unemployment is falling, the stock market is rising, and consumer spending is growing, then you might be smarter than a 5th grader. The financial elite ruling class are counting on the dreadful public education system, along with their mainstream corporate media propaganda arms, to keep the techno-distracted math challenged masses from understanding how the financialization of the country has resulted in their demise.

Being a skeptical sort, I decided to verify the accuracy of the CPI propaganda issued by the Bureau of Lies and Scams. The combination of the internet and memories from my youth provide a powerful and accurate assessment about the truthfulness of our government. I decided to create a chart of goods and services that average Americans have spent their hard earned wages on for decades. In a matter of minutes I was able to obtain prices from 1971 for various items common to most people. I was eight years old in 1971, being raised in a middle class one earner household on the salary of a truck driver. The chart below provides the proof the government CPI data is a bad joke and the American people are the butt of that joke.


Category	1971	2013	% Change
Average Price of New Car	$3,470	$31,252	800.6%
Average Price of New Home	$26,000	$245,800	845.4%
Gallon of Gasoline	$0.36	$3.50	872.2%
Natural Gas	$0.35	$4.00	1042.9%
Loaf of Bread	$0.20	$2.20	1000.0%
Sirloin Steak per pound	$1.19	$7.00	488.2%
Dozen Eggs	$0.25	$1.90	660.0%
Box of cereal 12 oz	$0.36	$3.50	872.2%
Pack of Cigarettes	$0.32	$6.00	1775.0%
College Tuition – Private	$1,832	$30,094	1542.7%
Monthly Rent	$150	$1,073	615.3%
Baseball ticket – Phila	$2	$23	1050.0%
Movie ticket	$1.50	$9.00	500.0%
Maximum Social Security Tax	$406	$8,950	2104.4%
Median Household Income	$9,028	$51,017	465.1%
Median wage per worker	$6,497	$27,519	323.6%
Average Hourly Earnings	$3.60	$20.31	464.2%
CPI	40.5	232.0	472.8%
Consumer Credit Outstanding (tril.)	$0.14	$3.07	2092.9%
Mortgage Debt Outstanding (tril.)	$0.51	$13.18	2484.3%

The BLS tells me the CPI has risen by 473% since 1971. The very same agency also tells me average hourly earnings have risen by 464% since 1971. This means the average worker is earning less than they did in 1971 in real terms. The median wage per worker has lagged CPI dramatically, as the averages have been skewed by those making outrageous compensation in the financial world. Median household income has barely kept pace with inflation even though households were forced to send both parents into the workforce, with the expected consequences of higher divorce rates and children left to fend for themselves or be raised by strangers.

By the government’s own measures, the average American’s standard of living has fallen since 1971. But, we also know the government has been manipulating the CPI figure lower since the mid-1980’s. After examining the true cost increases for housing, transportation, energy, food, education and entertainment, you would have to be brain dead or an Ivy League economist to believe inflation since 1971 has only been 473%. If home prices and car prices are 800% higher, while the energy needed to power and heat them are 900% to 1,000% higher, and the cost of food is 500% to 1,000% higher, how could the CPI only be 473% higher?

There are far more people going to college today than in 1971. With college tuition 1,500% higher, how can this not be reflected in the CPI? It certainly isn’t because the education is better. Statistics show the uneducated poor are more likely to smoke. Lucky for them, cigarette prices have risen at a rate of 4 times CPI due to the government taxing the crap out of them to fund their various taxpayer boondoggles. Inflation always hurts the poor and enriches the peddlers of debt.

My dad would take me to the brand new Veterans Stadium (built for $50 million in 1971) to see the Phillies in the early 1970’s. He paid $2.00 for a general admission seat and kids got in for 50 cents. We would buy a bag of soft pretzels outside the stadium and bring them into the park. We’d get a hot dog and soda for another $1. The entire outing to see a baseball game was about $5. Today, if I wanted to bring my family of five to a Phillies game at Citizen Bank Park (built for $458 million and paid for by the taxpayer) the lowest cost for the outing would be about $200. In 1971, you could spend a vacation week at the Jersey shore for $200. Now it gets you 3 hours of watching spoiled millionaires playing a child’s game while sitting with a bunch of foul mouthed drunks.

I also found it fascinating that the most regressive tax on earth, the Social Security tax, which hammers the poor and middle class while leaving the rich virtually unscathed has gone up by 2,100% since 1971. The rate in 1971 was 5.2% and the maximum salary level was $7,800. Today, the rate is 7.65% and the maximum level is $113,700. This increased cost for every middle class American is not factored into the inflation figures. Why would the government need to increase the maximum taxable wages by 1,500% when wages have gone up by less than 500%? The hard working truck driver bears the full impact, while Jamie Dimon not so much.

So now that I’ve proved beyond a shadow of a doubt the prices of everything we need to live have far outpaced our wages and the patently false drivel published by the BLS and parroted by the MSM, what are the implications? Well that is an easy one and is summed up by the last two entries in the chart. The average American has been lured into $16 trillion of debt over the last forty years in a pathetic attempt to keep up with the Joneses. Consumer credit (credit cards, auto loans, student loans) has gone up by 2,100% and mortgage debt has gone up by 2,500%. The American people have been sold a false lifestyle dream built on easy credit by evil bankers and Madison Avenue PR maggots.

There are those who would blame the people who have chosen to live far beyond their means. They have a point. The American people certainly haven’t shown a penchant for delayed gratification, saving for the future, or consuming less than they produce. But it takes two to tango and the lead in this dance of debt has been and continues to be the Federal Reserve and their Wall Street bank owners. It’s always reasonable to ask – Who benefits? – when trying to figure out why something has happened over time. Did the American people benefit by increasing the debt owed to Wall Street banks from $650 billion in 1971 to $16.25 trillion today? I don’t think so, based upon the visible deterioration I am witnessing in my suburban paradise.

The financialization of America; where Wall Street con artists,shysters and swindlers rake in billions for shuffling paper and making risky casino bets; mega-corporations ship blue collar middle class jobs to Asia in an all out effort to increase quarterly profits; politicians spend future generations into the poor house in order to get re-elected; and the Federal Reserve purposefully creates monetary inflation to prop up the corrupt system; has systematically destroyed the working middle class and created generations of debt slaves. The American people have been foolish, infantile, and easily duped. But it is clear to me who the real culprits in our long downward spiral have been. Lord Acton stated the obvious, many years ago:

“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.” ― John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

WHY DIDN’T WE INVADE SAUDI ARABIA?

Inquiring minds want to know why the Saudi connection to 9/11 has been covered up? We know for a fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. We know they were funded by high level Saudi officials. Therefore, Saudi Arabia is the country we should have gone to war with. Why didn’t we? Why the continued coverup to this day? Why?

Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup

By Paul Sperry

December 15, 2013 | 5:13am

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

It was kept secret and remains so today.

President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words).

A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.

Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

The findings, if confirmed, would back up open-source reporting showing the hijackers had, at a minimum, ties to several Saudi officials and agents while they were preparing for their attacks inside the United States. In fact, they got help from Saudi VIPs from coast to coast:

LOS ANGELES: Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy allegedly arranged for an advance team to receive two of the Saudi hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — as they arrived at LAX in 2000. One of the advance men, Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent, left the LA consulate and met the hijackers at a local restaurant. (Bayoumi left the United States two months before the attacks, while Thumairy was deported back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11.)

SAN DIEGO: Bayoumi and another suspected Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, set up essentially a forward operating base in San Diego for the hijackers after leaving LA. They were provided rooms, rent and phones, as well as private meetings with an American al Qaeda cleric who would later become notorious, Anwar al-Awlaki, at a Saudi-funded mosque he ran in a nearby suburb. They were also feted at a welcoming party. (Bassnan also fled the United States just before the attacks.)

WASHINGTON: Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling some $130,000 to Bassnan while he was handling the hijackers. Though the Bandars claim the checks were “welfare” for Bassnan’s supposedly ill wife, the money nonetheless made its way into the hijackers’ hands.

Other al Qaeda funding was traced back to Bandar and his embassy — so much so that by 2004 Riggs Bank of Washington had dropped the Saudis as a client.

The next year, as a number of embassy employees popped up in terror probes, Riyadh recalled Bandar.

“Our investigations contributed to the ambassador’s departure,” an investigator who worked with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington told me, though Bandar says he left for “personal reasons.”

FALLS CHURCH, VA.: In 2001, Awlaki and the San Diego hijackers turned up together again — this time at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a Pentagon-area mosque built with funds from the Saudi Embassy. Awlaki was recruited 3,000 miles away to head the mosque. As its imam, Awlaki helped the hijackers, who showed up at his doorstep as if on cue. He tasked a handler to help them acquire apartments and IDs before they attacked the Pentagon.

Awlaki worked closely with the Saudi Embassy. He lectured at a Saudi Islamic think tank in Merrifield, Va., chaired by Bandar. Saudi travel itinerary documents I’ve obtained show he also served as the official imam on Saudi Embassy-sponsored trips to Mecca and tours of Saudi holy sites.

Most suspiciously, though, Awlaki fled the United States on a Saudi jet about a year after 9/11.

As I first reported in my book, “Infiltration,” quoting from classified US documents, the Saudi-sponsored cleric was briefly detained at JFK before being released into the custody of a “Saudi representative.” A federal warrant for Awlaki’s arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the previous day. A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

HERNDON, VA.: On the eve of the attacks, top Saudi government official Saleh Hussayen checked into the same Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport as three of the Saudi hijackers who targeted the Pentagon. Hussayen had left a nearby hotel to move into the hijackers’ hotel. Did he meet with them? The FBI never found out. They let him go after he “feigned a seizure,” one agent recalled. (Hussayen’s name doesn’t appear in the separate 9/11 Commission Report, which clears the Saudis.)

SARASOTA, FLA.: 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited a home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd. FBI agents investigating the connection in 2002 found that visitor logs for the gated community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers. Just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi luxury home was abandoned. Three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, were left in the driveway. Inside, opulent furniture was untouched.

Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He says it’s a “coverup.”

Is the federal government protecting the Saudis? Case agents tell me they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House and FBI responses to the attacks.

Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he met with the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while discussing the attacks.

Bill Doyle, who lost his son in the World Trade Center attacks and heads the Coalition of 9/11 Families, calls the suppression of Saudi evidence a “coverup beyond belief.” Last week, he sent out an e-mail to relatives urging them to phone their representatives in Congress to support the resolution and read for themselves the censored 28 pages.

Astonishing as that sounds, few lawmakers in fact have bothered to read the classified section of arguably the most important investigation in US history.

Granted, it’s not easy to do. It took a monthlong letter-writing campaign by Jones and Lynch to convince the House intelligence panel to give them access to the material.

But it’s critical they take the time to read it and pressure the White House to let all Americans read it. This isn’t water under the bridge. The information is still relevant today. Pursuing leads further, getting to the bottom of the foreign support, could help head off another 9/11.

As the frustrated Joint Inquiry authors warned, in an overlooked addendum to their heavily redacted 2002 report, “State-sponsored terrorism substantially increases the likelihood of successful and more lethal attacks within the United States.”

Their findings must be released, even if they forever change US-Saudi relations. If an oil-rich foreign power was capable of orchestrating simultaneous bulls-eye hits on our centers of commerce and defense a dozen years ago, it may be able to pull off similarly devastating attacks today.

Members of Congress reluctant to read the full report ought to remember that the 9/11 assault missed its fourth target: them.

Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration” and “Muslim Mafia.”

Pearl Harbor Historiography: A Lesson in Academic Housecleaning

By Gary North

December 9, 2013

The Establishment Cover-Up Continues

Robert Stinnett closes his excellent summary article on Pearl Harbor historiography with these words: “Though the Freedom of Information Act freed the foreknowledge documents from the secretive vaults to the sunlight of the National Archives in 1995, a cottage industry continues to cover up America’s foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor.” Cottage industry, indeed! This cottage industry is the entire professional guild of salaried historians.

Pearl Harbor’s Establishment historiography remains as secure in its tenured cocoon as it was when I began college in 1959. American history textbooks are as free from the truth about Roosevelt’s deliberate provocation of Japan, and his advance knowledge of Pearl Harbor, as they were in 1943. Mr. Stinnett does not have a Ph.D., nor is he employed as a history instructor. He was therefore in a position to tell the truth. This was equally true of journalist George Morgenstern, whose 1947 book on Pearl Harbor was the first to put the story together in one detailed volume. The historical guild paid no attention to Morgenstern. We shall see if it pays attention to Stinnett. I strongly doubt that the reception will be either favorable or widespread.

A week ago, I sent a letter to a group of my subscribers. It provided background on the issues raised by Mr. Stinnett. I made this point, in the context of how intellectual guilds operate. They adopt a three-phase position on a controversial new idea.

The story isn’t true.
The story is true, but so what?
We always knew it was true.

I then illustrated this with the historiography of Pearl Harbor. Here is what I wrote.

* * * * * * * *

Consider the conservatives’ account of Roosevelt’s advance warning of the Japanese attack in late 1941. When George Morgenstern wrote Pearl Harbor: The Story of a Secret War, only right-wing Devin-Adair would publish it (1947). The book was ridiculed by academic historians as being a pack of unsubstantiated opinions written by a mere journalist — and a Chicago Tribune journalist at that. When the premier liberal historian, Charles A. Beard, said much the same thing the next year in President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War (Yale University Press), he was dismissed by his colleagues as senile, and he permanently lost his reputation. When the premier American diplomatic historian, Charles C. Tansill, said it again in 1952 in his Back Door to War (Regnery), he, too, was shoved down the liberals’ memory hole.

Today, the revisionist account of Pearl Harbor is more widely accepted, and is gaining ground fast. Another journalist, Robert B. Stinnett, recently found the “smoking gun” — an 8-page 1940 memo by a lieutenant commander in the navy on how to get Japan to attack us, a memo that Roosevelt adopted, point by point. His book is titled, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor(Free Press, 1999). Stinnett served under a young George Bush during World War II. His book is the capstone to his career.

The liberals are now moving to stage 2: “The story is true, but so what?” Stinnett’s book argues that Roosevelt basically did the right thing in luring the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. This attack overcame America’s anti-interventionists, who had 88% of the people behind them in 1940. Pearl Harbor got us into the War in Europe.

It didn’t, of course. Hitler’s suicidal declaration of war on the United States on the following Thursday is what got us into the European war.

It will be a long time before liberal historians get to stage 3: “We always knew it was true.” They will not admit how they smeared the reputations of first-rate historians who told the truth early, and then for the next fifty years used their power over graduate schools and professional academic journals to screen out the truth. The issue was power, and liberals respect it and use it.

* * * * * * * * * *

What happened to Beard sent a warning to any aspiring young grad student who might have been tempted to follow in Beard’s revisionist path. Beard was at the end of a long and distinguished career. He was the only scholar ever to be elected as president of both the American Historical Association and the American Political Science Association. But his academic achievements gained him no mercy when he broke ranks on Pearl Harbor. James J. Martin, the premier revisionist historian after Harry Elmer Barnes died in 1968, in 1981 provided an account of what happened.

Beard not only infuriated the influential supporters of Roosevelt by his insistence that the continuous deception by the President in making his steady moves toward war while endlessly talking about his peacefulness (few were allowed to forget his pre-election promise in 1940 never to send Americans off to a war outside U.S. borders) was in essentials, as Leighton described it, “completely to undermine constitutional government and set the stage for a Caesar” (Beard’s famed peroration on pp. 582-584 of his Epilogue to President Roosevelt is required reading in this context.) He had opened up another sore while writing his book with a famed article in the Saturday Evening Post for October 4, 1947, “Who’s to Write the History of the War?,” in which he revealed that the Rockefeller Foundation, working with its alter ego, the Council on Foreign Relations, had provided $139,000 for the latter to spend in underwriting an official-line history of how the war had come about, in an effort to defeat at the start the same kind of “debunking” historical campaign which had immediately followed the end of World War I. Beard complained of inaccessibility of various documents, which he was sure would be fully available to anyone doing an Establishment version of the wartime past, convinced that these would be sat on as ‘classified’ for a generation or more. . . .

So it was understandable that the following February, two months before the publication of President Roosevelt, when the National Institute of Arts and Letters awarded Beard their gold medal for the best historical work published in the preceding decade, that his erstwhile liberal admirers would reach the end of their tolerance. The highlight of their protest was the resignation in rage from the Institute by one of its most influential members, Lewis Mumford, accompanied by abuse of Beard so extreme that it led to a memorable chiding to Mumford from Harry Elmer Barnes in a 11/2 column letter to the editors of the Chicago Tribune, published 11 February 1948. But the attack on Beard had barely begun.

With the publication of President Roosevelt two months later, in April, the denunciation of Beard became a veritable industry, and the most eminent of the Roosevelt academic defenders were recruited to contribute to the character assassination. Probably the most outrageous was that of Harvard’s Samuel Eliot Morison, Roosevelt’s handpicked choice to write a history of American naval operations in World War II, and even elevated to the rank of Admiral in recognition of his labors. But the outline of the total campaign aimed at Beard is substantial, extensively documented in the later editions of Barnes’s booklet The Struggle Against the Historical Blackout (especially 6th thru. 9th).

Beard died in 1949. His book on Roosevelt was allowed — a mild word, given the circumstances — to go out of print almost immediately, and it was never reprinted. Maybe the Web will resurrect it. I hope so.

The final product of the Council on Foreign Relations’ investment of $139,000 in 1946 — a lot of money in 1946 — was the standard Establishment history of the coming of the war, written by William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation: The World Crisis of 1937-1940 and American Foreign Policy (1952). It was still the standard account two decades later. Its perspective remains dominant on campus today. Langer was a professor of history at Harvard. So was Gleason — medieval history — until he moved to Washington after Pearl Harbor, to join the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the CIA. He later became the official historian of the State Department. Establishment enough for you? (The other standard book was Herbert Feis’s Road to Pearl Harbor (1950). He had served as the State Department’s Advisor for International Economic Affairs.) Yes, the victors always write the history books, but when the historians are actually policy-setting participants in the war, the words “court history” take on new meaning.

I read Admiral Kimmel’s Story (Regnery, 1955) in 1958. That same year, I read anti-Roosevelt journalist John T. Flynn’s The Roosevelt Myth (Devin-Adair, 1948). At age 16, I became a World War II revisionist.

In 1963, I had a conversation with Thomas Thalken, who later became the librarian of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. We were then both employed by a short-lived think tank, the Center for American Studies. He was its librarian. I was a summer intern, fresh out of college. He had earned a master’s degree in history under Tansill a decade earlier. He told me that Tansill had advised him not to earn a Ph.D. in history. Tansill had said that anyone who taught the truth about America’s entry into World War II would see his career end before it even began. Thalken took his advice.

This is why there are no tenured World War II revisionists who write in this still-taboo and well-policed field. The guild screened them out, beginning in the early 1950′s. Beard and Tansill by 1960 were remembered only for their non-WWII revisionist writings. Barnes was forgotten. Martin — in my view, the most accomplished American revisionist historian — never became known on campus. Anthony Kubek spent his career on the academic fringes. What the guild did to Barnes, Beard, Tansill at the end of their careers, and to Martin at the beginning of his, posted a warning sign: Dead End.

I went on to earn a Ph.D. in American history, but I never did teach in my field. Neither did Bruce Bartlett, who wrote The Pearl Harbor Cover-Up (Arlington House, 1978). (Our paths crossed briefly in 1976: we were both on Congressman Ron Paul’s Washington staff.) Bartlett did not earn a Ph.D. Instead, as a supply-sider on Jack Kemp’s Congressional staff, he wrote his way into economic policy-making.

This is typical of the handful of WWII revisionists in the post-Tansill era. Most of them never made it onto a campus, and of the few who did, they did not teach WWII revisionism. The WWII revisionist books of 1947-55 were out of print by 1960. They remain out of print.

In 1966, an aged Barnes wrote a brief introduction to an article that appeared in a small-circulation journal published by libertarian pioneer Robert Lefevre, Rampart Journal. At the end of his introduction, Barnes wrote: “We should be able to look foreword to something more honest and dependable in the quarter of a century between now and the fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.” Nice dream; no fulfillment. World War II revisionism remains a fringe movement of non-certified, non-subsidized historians.

Conclusion

In 1958, the only book critical of Franklin Roosevelt’s domestic policies and his foreign policies was Flynn’s book. In 1958, it was out of print. In the Year of Our Lord, 2000, it remains the only book critical of Roosevelt’s domestic and foreign policies.

We haven’t come a long way, baby.

Things are beginning to change for the better. The Web has begun to chip away at every academic guild’s monopoly. What is taught in college classrooms no longer has the same authority that it possessed in 1960. But until the subsidizing of higher education by the state ends, and until the state-licensed accreditation oligopoly ends or is overcome by new, “price-competitive technologies,” it will remain an uphill battle for Pearl Harbor revisionists in academia.

WAR ON CHRISTMAS

null

9-Year-Old Suspended For Saying ‘Merry Christmas’ To Teacher

San Francisco, CA — The ‘war on Christmas’ continues as a simple well-wishing of ‘Merry Christmas’ has led to big trouble for one fourth-grade San Francisco boy this week.

Timothy Dawson, a 9-year-old student at Argon Elementary School in San Francisco, CA., was in the school cafeteria Monday eating with friends when he was taken to the principal’s office and given a week-long suspension. His punishment was consequence for saying ‘Merry Christmas’ to his homeroom teacher earlier that morning.

Dawson’s teacher, 35-year-old Paul Horner who is an outspoken Atheist, was offended at the students display of Christmas spirit and had staff suspend the young boy for the rest of the week.

“I say ‘Merry Christmas’ to everyone,” the boy told CNN. “I didn’t think it would cause so much trouble just for saying a couple little words.”

The boy’s mother, Laura Dawson, 41, was fuming over the issue.

“You don’t traumatize a child who loves to go to school, who wanted to be early every day to school, you don’t make him cry, just for wishing someone Merry Christmas,” she told reporters, holding back tears. “You just don’t do it.”

Reporters spoke with Mr. Horner as he was leaving from school on Tuesday. “I warned the children not to bring religion into my classroom,” Horner said. “Maybe he’ll [Tim] listen to adults next time.”

Argon Elementary School officials declined to comment.

We have located the email address for the Atheist teacher in the story, Paul Horner. I think he deserves a nice well-wishing of Merry Christmas!

Email: [email protected]

http://nationalreport.net/9-year-old-suspended-saying-merry-christmas-teacher/#sthash.PshgDLXX.dpuf

null

Outside Argon Elementary school where the war on Christmas was declared

null

War on Christmas

Once again this holiday season, the right to celebrate Christmas is under attack. it’s happening in your community.
http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/12/12/war-christmas

ESPN dives headfirst into the War on Christmas

ESPN dives headfirst into the War on Christmas

null

RECYLING Like You’ve NEVER Seen Before

I’ve spent most of the week at my father’s house. He’s so damn lost without mom. Been cooking, cleaning, fixing, painting, and since he can’t drive at night I drive him to the rehab-center where we spend about three hours with mom trying to cheer her up. It’s been hectic, but satisfying that we can be of service. (I have greatly enjoyed the shitfest in llpoh’s article!)

So, one day I bring home .. from dad’s house … a small trash bag to throw away. Ms Freud asks “Why?”. I tell her my parents do not have a garbage disposal service. “What??”. Yeah, that’s right. For decades … as long as I can remember, actually … my parents have been the Masters of Recycling.

EVERYTHING get recycled …. at least 97.475%. ALL metals, glass, plastic, and paper. There is ZERO food thrown away … peelings, pits, seeds, bones, …. whatever, all gets buried in a compost pile. My parents literally produce one small garbage bag the size of an office wastepaper container per month. I still don’t fully understand it, but they do it. They don’t even throw away water from the kitchen sink!! When the container needs to be changed, the old water is dumped in the yard to water the plants. “Why waste good water down the sink when the flowers need it!” I think they even recycle used toilet paper when I’m not looking.

And they re-use everything over and over. Baggies are washed and reused for about a year. lol Mom can make a roll of Aluminum Foil last half a year … she’ll just wash it down with a soapy sponge, dry it, fold it, and reuse it another 20 times. They haven’t bought a storage container (glass jar, plastic tupperware, etc) since 1963 … we get all the containers we need from the food we buy. Mom seems to like pickle jars the best cuz the glass is usually thick and that removable lid lasts forever. When my mom and dad were in better health they had a “One Mile Rule” …. generally any trip under one mile meant we left the car in the driveway and we … GASP!! …walked. So, even into her early 50’s my mom would walk to and from the grocery (to my great embarrassment) store pulling one of these;

My parents aren’t libtards. They are quite conservative. They aren’t tree-hugger save-the-whales types either. They are simply incredibly good stewards of what the earth brings forth. Everything to them is a gift and to squander it, especially by using it only once, is a Mortal Sin that will doom you to hell. I can’t imagine what America would look like if 300 million people lived like that. Can you? I’m no longer embarrassed. I am so proud of them.

How cool is this??!! I can combine my recycling story with a music video!! I know how much you love my taste in music. This is simply amazing, dontchya think???

PEOPLE OF WAL-MART – WE’RE ALL DOOMED

Is there anything sexier than Walmart selfies? I mean, they are classy, sexy and practical all rolled into one pic! Anyway, enjoy these selfies, and before I forget I wanted to point out how hot that blonde’s Adam’s apple was.

Is it weird my first thought right now is if she is willing to show some boobies at Walmart then she probably could have put that to good use and skipped some Black Friday lines? Also, boobs are the best. Just in case anyone had any doubt as to what is the best, it’s boobs. The answer has always been and will always be boobs.

I feel your pain lady. Sometimes I think Walmart has 30 lanes just to show you that it could be fast and convenient to check out but would rather make you and everyone else wait in line at the 4 lanes that are open and always seem to be manned by the slowest human beings allowed by law.

The extremely popular infatuation with Hello Kitty is something I’ll never understand. But whatever, the real issue at hand is if I were to force you to chose to pick between driving that car the rest of your life or getting that tattoo which would you choose? Also, is that a DarthVader/Hello Kitty hybrid tattoo?

In case of emergency, toss those puppies up over your shoulders and use them as a life preserver.

Pictures like these two bring a tear to my eye because I know this vicious circle of bad decision making will (unfortunately for these kids) continue through the generations. Parents set examples, kids follow examples, kid ends up on People Of Walmart. Music to my ears!

I hate it when the muffin batter spills up over the pan like that. I usually just toss ‘em out and start from scratch. Objections? Do I hear any objections? Yeah I didn’t think so.

Holy hell, I really hope that is George Carlin back from the dead because he is one of the funniest guys ever. Chances are good it’s just some guy that hates people, mainly because everyone calls him George Carlin.

My mind is blown at the amount of mullet awesomeness going on here. Which one do you guys love more? The flowing eagle locks that just majestically transform into fringe or what I assume the real meth addict Jesse Pinkman would actually look like?

It’s a battle of bottom biscuits in what I think is also a battle of the sexes? I’m not really 100% sure the one in the backpack is a dude, but let’s be real here, that outfit doesn’t work well on any human being so it doesn’t matter.

When you have bodies like this, it’s almost a crime to wear a shirt. I mean, who doesn’t love a lower back hair tramp stamp?

Ri-DONK-ulously low prices mo-fo!….Also, where is the PeopleOfWalmart donk? Let’s get on that people!

Holy mother of mercy. You just pulled off a spot-on Magda from There’s Something About Mary of epic proportions!

Because pants are for all of you caged sheep that play by society’s rules…and aren’t tripping on shrooms

I see you’re working up quite a sweat from all those kisses you’re getting. Might wanna let that sucker breathe a minute sweetheart.

More like “How the Grinch Stole My Childhood Innocence.”

Pffft amateur, my accountant does her own dreadlocks at work. So I know I’m all set. Choke on that baby!!

How do you like your public ass cracks? Over the top or a little drive-thru window action?

This lady has a toilet paper tail and yet I somehow think she looks better than those idiots running around with fur tails on. So yeah, try that one on for size weird anime kids. Also, why hasn’t someone helped her out yet? I feel like that would be too big to miss for long.

The Enforcers Just Watered the Seeds of Their Destruction

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

The Silk Road marketplace was closed by the Feds on October 2nd. Its operator sits in a jail cell in New York. The users were scattered and victory was declared.

But a funny thing happened while all the politicians, FBI agents, and assorted naysayers were congratulating themselves…

The movement didn’t lay down and die.

The people who comprise it did not run away like scared little sheep… like Fed victims had a hundred times before. Instead, they re-formed and got back to business.

Today, there are at least six new, Silk Road-type marketplaces, including a Silk Road 2.0, with a new Dread Pirate Roberts.

Six is probably a very conservative number, by the way.

These new markets are improvements to the original Silk Road:

One includes two-factor PGP encryption.
Another uses both Bitcoin and Litecoin and caters to customers in Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc.
One new market claims to invite only top vendors and has promised a p2p-based escrow to prevent the possibility of administrators stealing user funds. They handle Litecoin and Bitcoin and provide good customer service.
Another operates on the I2P network rather than Tor and supports p2p escrow rather than centralized escrow.
One innovative market lets the users build it with modules, like WordPress, and with open source code.

(If you’re not the most technically minded, all that jargon might not mean much. In essence, these are just examples of how the market is fighting back and getting more sophisticated and more secure with each new generation.)

One more thing: If you think these markets are just about drugs, you’re missing the primary point. The discussion board at Silk Road was full of Rothbardian economics and the philosophies of freedom.

What This Means

What this means is that the Silk Road people – the Internet freedom people – refused to lay down and die. Rather than cringing in terror, they got back up and started rebuilding. So, instead of one Silk Road, there are now at least six. And there will probably be many more, soon.

These people are pressing on. They are not running away. They believe that their way is the better way, and they are holding to it, regardless of slanders and threats and scams and attacks.

And this means that the control freaks have lost a big battle. They attacked, they spread their terror, and they cranked the propaganda machine that for decades made the masses confess the enforcers as almighty.

But this time the targets didn’t flee in terror, didn’t cower in fear, and no longer believed that the enforcers were gods.

Instead, they acted according to their own judgment, and in their own interests.

Circle autumn 2013 on your calendar, because the terror of the enforcers just failed, for the first time in a long time.

Are There Lessons Here?

Yes, and the big one is this: In the end, a better philosophy (if it is understood) wins.

The free Internet and its free commerce philosophy offers men and women truth, understanding, and strong, direct relationships. The statist alternative offers fear, theft, punishment, an occasional promise of plunder, and intrusion into every relationship in your life.

And even though statism had a massive initial advantage, the freedom philosophy is now asserting itself. Our ways are better and our people are better. And our free Internet, free commerce philosophy is producing people who aren’t quitting, even when they are bruised and bloodied.

When you stop to think about it, a life of automatic obedience to the enforcer is based upon the wildest of claims:

That cops are more noble and trustworthy than we are, that their bosses are definitely nobler than we are, and that power does not, in fact, corrupt.
That government workers are somehow a better class of beings, but perhaps only while they are working for the state.
That intimidation, lies, threats, and violence are transformed into goodness when inflicted by men wearing blue shirts with brass pins.
That politicians, whom we all know to be liars and money-whores, somehow produce pristinely moral results in their offices.

Stated this way – and I think this is a fair way to state them – these ideas are ridiculous.

Almost everyone knows that enforcers are more predatory and more threatening than average working guys. People certainly know it when they drive down a highway and pass one of them with a radar gun; they’ve just been conditioned to not connect certain dots.

The great change of this moment is that the Internet people have started to act on what they know.

A corner has been turned. It may be some time until the reality of it sinks in and spreads, but this is an important moment: This time, the victims refused to lay down and die.

And the enforcers just watered the seeds of their own destruction.

Paul Rosenberg