Category: Economy

THE MENTAL DISEASE known as CATHOLOCISM

Ms. Freud is home today and has refused my pleading to not turn on CNN. However, as a lifelong Catholic (barely active) she flat out insisted on watching the Select-A-Pope spectacle on CNN.

Now, I was raised Catholic also (lapsed over 30 years), so the pomp and circumstance rituals were of no great surprise. What was surprising was my tremendous revulsion at their Other Worldly fantasy … almost to the point of throwing my glass of lemon-carrot juice at the television screen.

A bunch of old fuck men, mostly white, all serial masturbators (unless God changes males hormones to become less horny when faggots devote their lives to Him), wearing funny hats, and …. dresses, acting all solemn and important, as if God gives a fuck who THEY elect as the next Dope …. Errr, Pope. Kind of mind-blowingly absurd once you realize God can’t even hook up two normal humans without the benefit of ChristianMingle.com.

It’s just an all-boys club … complete with secret handshakes, secret oaths, and performing The Nasty in secret with little boys all over the world. It truly reminds me Jackie Gleason’s Moose Lodge on the Honeymooners, … they had secret handshakes too, as stupid little boys are wont to do. Only, these ass-clown Cardinals have an audience of about a billion people waiting to see the results of their secret balloting …. whether or not black or white smoke wafts from their little chimney.

Seriously, this religion has such a Comic Bookish feeling about it. A crappy Comic Book, at that.

Select-A-Pope … that’s the main thrust of this thread. Won’t spend too much time bashing that religion except to mention 5 other beliefs, plus a Bonus, that live on the Edge of Ridiculousness ….. things that make me wonder why there are any adult Catholics at all.

1– Papal Infallibility — assholes!! He’s a human being. All humans make mistakes. A quick and cursory glance regarding various popes will clear up any doubt how fucked in the head they are.

2– Indulgences —- aka, Let’s Make A Deal with God regarding how long someone gets tortured. Listen up numnuts, a God who takes pleasure in torturing the shit out of his created beings, isn’t one who is going to bargain. You’re pretty much fucked.

3—Transsubstantiation — the utterly childish belief that fermented grapes (bought at a store) magically and LITERALLY becomes Jesus’ actual blood …. and that a cracker (bought at a store) becomes literally Jesus’ body. I couldn’t believe this shit if I was high on two ounces of LSD.

4– Joseph never fucked Mary —– not once, not ever, even though the Bible says Jesus had brothers and sisters.

5)– Intersession —– the idea that a Priest is even needed as the link between you and God. Utter and total horseshit found nowhere in Scripture.

Bonus: The Doctrine of Look Away and STFU …… the principle whereby a Man of God can suck little boys dicks to his delight, and if he gets caught, merely gets reassigned to another parish.

.

The scary part of all this is that hundreds of millions of people believe this shit. You might even be one of them. (Don’t take this rant personally.)  Cockroaches don’t believe this shit, and that’s why they’ll survive our demise.

Who Is Benefitting?

Here is a bit of information I stumbled upon. One of the things we hear about is how the top 1% have been the heavy beneficiaries of the modern economy. However, the stats I just spotted contradict this (yes the top 1% have benefited, but not as much as I assumed). In fact, the stats seem to indicate that it has been the top 20% that has benefited the most – at the expense of the bottom 80%.

Total Net Worth
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1983 33.8% 47.5% 18.7%
1989 37.4% 46.2% 16.5%
1992 37.2% 46.6% 16.2%
1995 38.5% 45.4% 16.1%
1998 38.1% 45.3% 16.6%
2001 33.4% 51.0% 15.6%
2004 34.3% 50.3% 15.3%
2007 34.6% 50.5% 15.0%
2010 35.4% 53.5% 11.1%

Financial (Non-Home) Wealth
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1983 42.9% 48.4% 8.7%
1989 46.9% 46.5% 6.6%
1992 45.6% 46.7% 7.7%
1995 47.2% 45.9% 7.0%
1998 47.3% 43.6% 9.1%
2001 39.7% 51.5% 8.7%
2004 42.2% 50.3% 7.5%
2007 42.7% 50.3% 7.0%
2010 42.1% 53.5% 4.7%

In fact, from 1983 through 2010, the top 1%’s non-home wealth actually FELL as a percentage of total net wealth of the country, while the top 20% non-home wealth rose dramatically.

What does this tell me, if it is indeed the case? Well, a few things leap to mind. First, the bottom 80% is aging, and is undoubtably using up their savings, such as they are, as they age. Second, I suggest that the economy is becoming increasingly high-tech, and those with average educations and average intelligence are finding it increasingly hard to compete in an open marketplace. Third, the bottom 80% had their savings largely in home equity, and the housing price crash killed off those savings.

And so the wealth is concentrating ever more in the hands of the more able and the better prepared. And I would expect that trend to accelerate.

So, is the answer to the nation’s ills the redistribution of wealth from the more able and better prepared to the less able and the less prepared? That does not seem like a workable answer – to punish those that do and can, and reward those that do not and cannot.

$2 Trillion in Corporate Profits Perched Overseas

In a small effort to help assist during Admin’s sporadic posting week, I thought I would revisit the issue of US corporate taxes, and the resultant $2 trillion in profits that are sitting overseas, and which are unlikely to be brought into the US anytime soon due to the corporate tax rates in effect. Please forgive any typos as I am typing this directly into WordPress.

I just read today that Admin’s second most favorite company (sitting squarely behind IKEA in the number one spot), GE, has $108 billion in profits sitting overseas, which is being used to invest in overseas projects. Overall, there is believed to be around $2 trillion total in profits that foreign arms of US companies have made that are not being transferred to parent companies in the US owing to the corporate tax rate of 35%, which is, of course, the world’s highest. Those transfers will not be made, as it would be irrational for a company to do so.

Everyone knows that corporations pay little or no tax on their US profits, for a great many reasons – tax breaks, R+D credits, etc etc etc. Total corporate tax take is around $300 billion a year. However, any overseas profits brought back on shore would be hit with the full corporate tax rate, as the various rorts have already been used to minimize the tax on onshore profits. If the full $2 trillion were to be repatriated, it would mean an approximate tax bill of some $700 billion dollars. That is not going to happen, as the companies would rather be investing the $700 billion rather than just giving it away to the IRS. Further, if the money were repatriated, and the $1.3 trillion left after the tax take was invested in the US, the income on the money would be subject to the draconian 35% tax rate – as I have said, which is the highest in the world (at least the developed world). So the long and the short of it is, corporations are way ahead of the game if they do not bring the money home. Even very modest returns on their $2 trillion investment means the corporations are generating billions in income more than if they were to bring the money into the US.

A further issue is that transfer pricing is being rorted mightily. Companies are doing all possible to make sure their overseas arms post a profit, and for their US entities to not post a profit. The best way to do this is to ensure that the overseas entities sell goods to their US entities at inflated prices, thus maximizing overseas profits and minimizing US profits. And vice versa. There is huge incentive to do this, and it is being done on a very large scale, despite attempts to keep it from happening.

An interesting fact is that around $1.5 trillion of the overseas profits are actually held in US banks. The overseas entities send their profits to US banks to hold, and it is not deemed to be returned to the US. It is simply a foreign entity having accounts in the US. The main reason it is done is to protect the parent corporation from swings in the exchange rate of the US dollar. So rather than holding the profits in ringits or baht or whatever, the foreign arms open a US bank account and deposit the foreign earnings into JP Morgan, US treasuries, or whatever.

So, to summarize, the curent tax system 1) gives corporations incentive to leave foreign profits overseas, and not bring the profits back to the US, and 2) gives incentives to artificially minimize US profits by transferring the profits to the overseas arms of the US corporations so as to minimize US tax. It takes a particular kind of stupid to come up with a system that achieves exactly the opposite of what it should.

I understand that this can be a very complex issue, but the current system is promoting the flow of capital out of the US into countries that the US is competing against in a world-wide marketplace. It seems to me that the tax rate shuld reflect the global market, and a corporate tax rate of around 15 to 20% would eliminate the incentive which exists to 1) minimize US earnings in favor of foreign earnings, and 2) hold profits overseas. It would result in a significant increase in US capital expenditure, which would make the US more internationally competitive, and would create high-end, good paying jobs, and would make direct competitor nations less competetive at the same time, starving them of capital and profits.

It is beyond my ability to calculate the tax gain or loss this would create. There is currently around $300 billion in corporate taxes paid per year. A lower rate would certainly take from that pool but it would be at least somewhat offset by job creation and the resulting personal income tax take, some tax on repatriated profits, and some tax on profits not shifted overseas via transfer pricing.

It is the definition of insanity for a nation to have the highest tax rates in the world, which the US does. It will invariable starve the nation of capital, will give incentive to transfer profits and jobs overseas, and will lead to a continued economic crisis. The answer is not to keep increasing corporate and personal taxes, but rather there needs to be a system that provides incentive for corporations to remain onshore, and for individuals to put their capital at risk. Such a system does not exist today, and those determined to redistribute wealth are failing to understand that they are killing off the flow of capital. A socialist agenda will not return the US to prosperity. People and corporations need incentive to risk their wealth and their labor, and such incentives have largely disappeared.

Report from Greece: Entitled, Lazy, Hate Americans, Blame the Immigrants

I was talking to a co-worker today who just got back from Greece to settle an estate.  I always find it fascinating to travel to other countries or to get first-hand accounts of what others have recently experienced when they travel abroad.  There’s plenty to criticize here in America, but I’ll tell ya, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else!

In the case of my co-worker, she’s of Greek descent but has lived in America most of her life.  So, she’s American. She works hard, is married to a hard working executive, does all the stuff Americans that I associate with do.  She gets it.  She says Greeks don’t.  She just had to make a quick trip over there to settle an estate from some distant relative who owned some rental properties and she was astounded by how much it has changed since she was there years ago and by just how bad it is there – how bad the people are, really.

A Few Anecdotes.

Entitlements – Pension from 40 for life – So, her aunt has been living off a pension of something like 3,000 Euro/Month for 27 years now.  She’s only 67.  She retired at 40.  That’s right.  What was her occupation?……

Find Out Just How Bad it is in Greece.

BRAVE NEW WORLD (Oldie but Goodie)

Originally published in December 2009.

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.”Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley wrote the dystopian novel Brave New World in 1931 at the inauguration of the last Crisis period in America. Dystopia is the often futuristic vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution, nuclear fallout and/or the abridgement of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and other kinds of pain. The novel was his response to the writings of H.G. Wells (Men Like Gods) and George Bernard Shaw which glorified socialism and a one World State. Orwell’s 1984, written in 1948, is the other famous dystopian novel of the era. Huxley had visited America during the Roaring 20’s and his experience provided the character for the novel. He was outraged by America’s out of control materialistic egocentric society. He witnessed youthful superficiality, commercialization, sexual promiscuity, and a self centered culture. Fellow writer G.K. Chesterton explained his view of Huxley’s novel:

 “After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism. Brave New World is more of a revolt against Utopia than against Victoria.”

Using Technology to Control Society

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” Aldous Huxley

Science and technology are not inherently good or bad. They can be used or misused. They offer promise or peril. Ultimately, humanity can benefit from science and technology or it can be detrimental to our planet. Huxley envisioned a horrifying future where mankind used science and technology in a self destructive manner. He was disillusioned with the decadence of society and disgusted by the behavior of his class. Huxley’s outlook is a world where the vast majority of the populace is united under one World State. The world is restricted to two billion inhabitants. The inhabitants are strictly divided into five castes.  The world is controlled by Alphas and their subordinates, Betas. Below them, in descending order of brainpower and physique, are Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons. Each caste is further subdivided into Plus and Minus (save for Epsilons, which are regular or semi-moron). Reproductive technology, referred to as the Bokanovsky Process, is used by the government (Alphas & Betas) to manage the number of human beings and their functions. The process is applied to fertilized human eggs in-vitro, causing them to split into identical genetic copies of the original. The State has eliminated procreation by loving couples. Ovaries are surgically removed from women. The lower caste children are created in hatcheries.

At the very pinnacle of society sit Alpha Double-Pluses, who serve as the future scientists and top administrators of the world. People in different castes are conditioned to be happy in their own way – they do not feel resentment towards other castes, but rather feel a slight contempt for people not members of their own caste.  The upper castes are intelligent, and have managerial jobs, where as the lower castes do the manual labor. The Alpha’s have what we would consider the best jobs, and it continues down until the Epsilons, who have the least skilled jobs. The Alphas are tall and fair, while the Epsilons are dark skinned.

The novel takes place in the year 2540 in London. The disturbing aspect is that we are now in the year 2009 and much of Huxley’s vision has come to fruition. At the heart of the World State’s control of its population is its rigid control over sexual mores and reproductive rights. Reproductive rights are controlled through an authoritarian system that sterilizes about two-thirds of women, requires the rest to use contraceptives, and surgically removes ovaries when it needs to produce new humans. The act of sex is controlled by a system of social rewards for promiscuity and lack of commitment. The United States has restricted population growth through a number of methods. Abortion on demand was made the law of the land in 1973. Since that date 50 million abortions have been performed in the U.S. I ask myself how many Martin Luther Kings, Stephen Hawkings, and Ernest Hemingways have been among those aborted before having the chance to positively impact our world.

abortions

Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute

Over 12 million women in the U.S. use the pill (available since 1960) on a daily basis in order to avoid pregnancy. The morning after pill was introduced in 1999. Planned Parenthood, created in 1916, has 850 locations in the United States offering easy access to abortions and other forms of contraception. The net result of these government supported efforts has been to cut the birth rate in half in the last century.

Year Births1 Rate2
1910 2,777,000 30.1
1920 2,950,000 27.7
1930 2,618,000 21.3
1940 2,559,000 19.4
1950 3,632,000 24.1
19603 4,257,850 23.7
19703 3,731,386 18.4
1980 3,612,258 15.9
1990 4,179,000 16.7
2000 4,058,814 14.7
2005 4,138,349 14.0

“We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early success of science, but in a rather grisly morning after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimportant or actually deteriorated ends.” Aldous Huxley

The upper classes in the U.S. have persuaded the lower classes to restrict their reproduction. They promote non-consequential promiscuity among the other classes while reproducing and raising the new ruling class. American society is also segmented into castes as portrayed by Huxley. The Alpha Double-Pluses are the Harvard MBAs running Goldman Sachs and the other mega-banks. Others in the Alpha caste are the Bushes, Kennedys, Rockefellers, Clintons, Gores, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Paul Krugman. The Betas include Congressmen, bank executives, government bureaucrats, military leaders, and corporate executives. The Gammas and Deltas are the working classes that do the hard work without ever advancing. The Epsilons are the morons produced by the inner city public school system. They fill the non-thinking manual labor jobs of society.

The Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons are brought up in conditioning centers. The Alphas and the Betas use technology to mould them into their predetermined roles in society. They use operant conditioning and sleep teaching to modify the behavior of the lower castes. Hatcheries rely on machines to condition bottled embryos to heat, sudden motion, and disease, allowing the embryos to fulfill their predestined jobs in specific climates. The science exists today to produce whatever traits are desired in our children. The procedure is called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and is being practiced in fertility clinics in the U.S.

unnatural selection

Those in control of America also use conditioning and teaching to keep the lower classes in their place. The ruling elite send their children to exclusive private schools, grooming them for Harvard, Yale and Stanford. This guarantees they will be given the high level positions in business and government. After decades of pumping billions of tax dollars into public schools while instituting politically correct diversity programs to dumb down the curriculum, the ruling elite have conditioned a vast swath of Americans to care more about Tiger Woods’ driving and night putting skills than about the National Debt or the insidiousness of Federal Reserve induced inflation.

Total 18 Yrs No High School High School Some Associates Bachelors Advanced
& Over Degree Degree College Degree Degree Degree
millions       No Degree      
All Races 224,703 32,010 69,480 44,168 18,589 40,070 20,387
14.2% 30.9% 19.7% 8.3% 17.8% 9.1%
White 154,603 14,457 48,207 31,488 13,753 30,809 15,890
9.4% 31.2% 20.4% 8.9% 19.9% 10.3%
Asian 10,277 1,153 1,965 1,478 667 3,106 1,907
11.2% 19.1% 14.4% 6.5% 30.2% 18.6%
Black 26,363 4,779 9,213 5,659 2,132 3,215 1,364
18.1% 34.9% 21.5% 8.1% 12.2% 5.2%
Hispanic 30,286 11,191 9,130 4,684 1,729 2,539 1,012
37.0% 30.1% 15.5% 5.7% 8.4% 3.3%

Source: Census Bureau

Just as in Brave New World, the ruling Alphas are White and the lowest class Epsilons are dark skinned. Blacks and Hispanics represent 50% of all the high school dropouts even though they only make up 25% of the population. This guarantees a life of blue-collar low paying jobs for these people. Whites obtain 78% of the advanced degrees, guaranteeing them the positions of leadership in society. The social welfare state implemented by the ruling elite provides enough sustenance to the lower classes to keep them anesthetized, ignorant and easily manipulated. Whites also obtain 77% of the bachelor’s degrees, assuring that they will fill the Beta administrator positions in society.

Another technological method of keeping the masses tranquilized and distracted in the Brave New World is through high tech sports and entertainment. Sport is a pillar of the World State consisting of various games and activities which use high-tech equipment. Another key aspect of entertainment is the “feelies”. Users rest their hands on metal knobs protruding from the arms of their chair, allowing them to feel the physical sensations of the actors on-screen (usually in sexually-themed films). The mass production of HDTVs, CD players, Laptop computers, Blackberries, iPhones, iPods, luxury automobiles and other electronic toys distributed to the masses through easy credit policies has successfully distracted the populace from the pillaging of the country by the Alphas at Goldman Sachs. The feelies of today are 24 hour cable TV with 600 stations, downloadable movies, an unlimited amount of free porn on the internet, strip joints, and prostitution. Sports addicts can attend baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, wrestling, boxing, auto racing, and Michael Vick sponsored dog fighting events year round, or watch it on TV 24 hours per day. With mindless jobs and unlimited distractions, the preponderance of citizens are as docile as sheep.

Soma is a biological method used by the Alphas to keep the lower castes sedated. It is a drug that provides an easy escape from the hassles of daily life and is employed by the government as a method of control through pleasure. It is ubiquitous and ordinary among the culture of the novel and everyone is shown to use it at some point, in various situations: sex, relaxation, concentration, confidence. It is seemingly a single-chemical combination of many of today’s drugs’ effects, giving its users the full hedonistic spectrum depending on dosage. As a kind of “sacrament,” it also represents the use of religion to control society. Huxley’s description of soma reveals its power:

“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is.”

American leaders bluster about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, but their actions speak otherwise. Americans can sedate themselves legally with alcohol, over the counter prescriptions, and tobacco. Almost 10% of the entire U.S. population, or 27 million people, are taking anti-depressant pills. Over 4 million children are being drugged with Ritalin every day to make them malleable. The government looks the other way as the middle class uses marijuana, heroine, and cocaine. The Epsilons (Blacks & Hispanics) on the other hand are prosecuted, with 2.3 million of them occupying cells in the thousands of prisons in the U.S. There are thousands of churches in the U.S. preaching the good word and sedating the masses. As they preach morality and sacrifice, there have been recurring instances of sexual deviation covered up church hierarchy and the bilking of congregations out of millions in contributions for the enrichment of the church leaders.

1920-2006

Consumer Society

“Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself from thinking.People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.” Aldous Huxley

Huxley formulated his dystopian world after observing the excessiveness of Americans during the Roaring 20’s. If he thought things were decadent and Americans were self consumed in the 1920’s, Huxley’s head would explode at the debauchery, ignorance materialism, and shallowness of Americans today. Our landfills contain more wealth than entire Third World countries. We throw away over 100 billion pounds of edible food per year. In his Brave New World Revisited, written in 1958, Huxley clearly laid out the dangers of consumerism:

“Consumerism re­quires the services of expert salesmen versed in all the arts (including the more insidious arts) of persuasion. Under a free enterprise system commercial propa­ganda by any and every means is absolutely indis­pensable. But the indispensable is not necessarily the desirable. What is demonstrably good in the sphere of economics may be far from good for men and women as voters or even as human beings.”

“Consider a simple example. Most cos­metics are made of lanolin, which is a mixture of purified wool fat and water beaten up into an emulsion. This emulsion has many valuable properties: it penetrates the skin, it does not become rancid, it is mildly antiseptic and so forth. But the commercial prop­agandists do not speak about the genuine virtues of the emulsion. They give it some picturesquely volup­tuous name, talk ecstatically and misleadingly about feminine beauty and show pictures of gorgeous blondes nourishing their tissues with skin food. “The cosmetic manufacturers,” one of their number has written, “are not selling lanolin, they are selling hope.” For this hope, this fraudulent implication of a promise that they will be transfigured, women will pay ten or twenty times the value of the emulsion which the propagandists have so skilfully related, by means of misleading symbols, to a deep-seated and almost universal feminine wish — the wish to be more attrac­tive to members of the opposite sex. The principles underlying this kind of propaganda are extremely sim­ple. Find some common desire, some widespread uncon­scious fear or anxiety; think out some way to relate this wish or fear to the product you have to sell; then build a bridge of verbal or pictorial symbols over which your customer can pass from fact to compensa­tory dream, and from the dream to the illusion that your product, when purchased, will make the dream come true.”

Our economic advancement has been marketed to Americans as “true happiness from consumption”. Every need can be realized through material gain. Success as a society is measured by GDP growth and the facade of prosperity. In Brave New World children are conditioned from birth to value consumption with such platitudes as “ending is better than mending,” which means buy a new one instead of fixing the old one. America has become the definitive throwaway society. Product waste has grown from 92 pounds per person per year in 1905 to 1,242 pounds per person per year in 2005. American human beings are lumped into the category of consumers by the mainstream media. Consumerism and consumer debt have been the contaminated lifeblood of the United States for the last three decades. Government actively promotes gambling by the poor, offering them false hope for riches. Americans squander $160 billion per year on lotteries and in casinos. Our society has become even more extreme than the Brave New World as we have outsourced our production to foreign countries, thereby gutting our economy. Even at the dawn of television Huxley realized the immense power for propagandists:

“Thanks to compulsory education and the rotary press, the propagandist has been able, for many years past, to convey his messages to virtually every adult in every civilized country. Today, thanks to radio and television, he is in the happy position of being able to communicate even with unschooled adults and not yet literate children.”

United States advertising expenditures, 1920–2007 in constant 2007 dollars (billions)*

us ad expenditures

The mass media is owned and controlled by mega-corporations run by the Alphas of our society. Colleges graduate thousands of people with the skills to manipulate the uninformed masses through advertising and propaganda. What passes for news organizations are just propaganda machines for a particular point of view. The public is distracted by the seemingly major differences between the two main political parties. The reality is that both parties are controlled by banking and corporate interests who pay for the laws that benefit their interests. Huxley’s description of political candidates in 1958 is even truer today:

“The methods now being used to merchan­dise the political candidate as though he were a deo­dorant positively guarantee the electorate against ever hearing the truth about anything.”

News people must be beautiful and entertainment is indispensable. They provide the people what they want – 24 hour coverage of Tiger Woods’ sex life, weeks of reporting about Michael Jackson’s death, and 10 seconds about the $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities we are leaving future generations. Truth is an inconvenience in the consumer society.

Incompatibility of Happiness & Truth

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.” Aldous Huxley

Mustapha Mond, World State Controller, believes that the population is better off with happiness than truth. In the Brave New World happiness is represented by immediate gratification of every citizen’s desire for food, sex, drugs, nice clothes, and other consumer trinkets. If the proletariats think they are happy, they won’t need to think or question reality. The World State cannot allow individuality to blossom. Free thinking individuals seek the truth. Spending time alone is considered an outrageous waste of time and money. Confession to a craving for individuality is shocking, horrifying, and embarrassing. John, the savage, grew up outside the World State and has studied Shakespeare. Everything that Shakespeare stood for: passion, love, intensity, seeking truth, relationships, and tragic endings, are at odds with the World State foundation. They cannot allow truth and true human happiness to exist in society or the Alphas will lose control.

The United States is the richest most powerful country in the history of the world. Our poorest live better than the aristocracy lived 100 years ago. We have indoor plumbing, air conditioning, heaters, clean water, automobiles, trains, jet airplanes, televisions, CD players, portable gadgets galore, free public education, fast food, gyms to work off the fast food, movies, the internet, restaurants, bars, concerts, sporting events, casinos, home improvement stores, grocery stores, discount stores, Wal-Mart, clothes stores, jewelry stores, dollar stores, churches, Disney World, Las Vegas, and Graceland. These are the “things” that are supposed to make Americans happy. Going into the woods alone, like Thoreau, to think is frowned upon. The propagandists sell the American public happiness in the form of material goods and services. If you don’t feel happy, take a pill. If you aren’t happy with your appearance have plastic surgery. If your spouse isn’t making you happy, cheat or get a divorce and try again. If your neighbor outdoes you by getting a $20,000 kitchen remodel, get yourself a $40,000 kitchen remodel. Happiness is a 6,000 sq ft McMansion with 5 bathrooms, a pool, game room, and Jacuzzi for your family of three. Having your neighbors see you driving a BMW 750Li will surely make you happy. Wearing a Rolex will definitely make you happy. If you die with the most toys, you’re still dead. Until reading a book to your three year old at bedtime is valued more than staying at the office until 10:00 pm to complete an investment offering, our society is destined for decline. Ours is not to reason why, but simply to do and die with a bare minimum of fuss.

In the Brave New World the policies of the State dehumanize the population. Stability and artificially induced happiness are more imperative than humanity and truth. Mustapha Mond explains to John that social stability has required the sacrifice of art, science, and religion. John protests that, without these things, human life is not worth living. After John eventually succumbs to the lure of the World State version of happiness, he hangs himself. An ending truly worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy. The pillars of our society are based upon the acquisition of material possessions using debt. Our society glorifies steroid taking athletes, sex crazed sports icons, drugged out entertainment personalities, vacuous TV housewives, and moronic cosmetically enhanced movie stars. Those who seek truth through questioning the status quo or digging for answers to questions the State doesn’t want asked, risk alienation and scorn. The Alphas (bankers) of our society issue the debt and convince the masses that accumulating more stuff will make them happy. The Alphas (media titans) use their mass media to persuade, manipulate, and sell their message of material happiness to the masses. The Alphas (politicians) use the taxes collected from the masses and the dollars printed by the bankers to distribute social welfare benefits to the lower classes, keeping them sedated and under control. Seeking the truth through the study of literature, the questioning of authority, and pondering of our existence on this earth are rare. Those who question and doubt the propaganda put out by those in authority are shunned and denigrated as being unpatriotic.

“Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.” Aldous Huxley

Dangers of an All-Powerful State

“Freedom is therefore a great good, tolerance a great virtue and regimentation a great misfortune. Meanwhile there is still some freedom left in the world. Many young people, it is true, do not seem to value freedom. But some of us still believe that, with­out freedom, human beings cannot become fully hu­man and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable. Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.” Aldous Huxley

The all powerful State in Brave New World uses technology and mind control starting before birth until death to instruct people what they want. Power over the citizens is maintained by lulling them into a false sense of happiness and contentment to the point where personal freedom and thinking are unnecessary. Superficiality is encouraged by the World Controllers. The consequences of citizens rolling over to the rulers are a loss of dignity, morals, values, and emotions—in short, a loss of humanity. Amazingly, this book was written in 1931. Huxley’s vision, which seemed so outrageous in 1931, has come to fruition in less than 70 years, versus the 600 years in the novel. Huxley realized that technological advances which are almost universally hailed as progress are fraught with danger. Man has built higher than he can climb; man has unleashed power he is unable to control. Brave New World is Huxley’s warning to make man realize that since knowledge is power, he who manages and exploits knowledge exerts the authority. Science and technology should be the servants of man – man should not be adapted and enslaved to them.

In the novel the “Nine Years’ War” broke out in 2049 AD. It can be deduced that the conflict broke out in Europe, affected most of the planet, and caused enormous physical damage. It is repeatedly stated that chemical and biological weapons were broadly used during the war, particularly in mass air-raids against cities. Following the war the global economy collapsed and created an unprecedented worldwide economic crisis. Realizing that they could not force people to adopt the new lifestyle, the World Controllers instead united the planet into the One World State and began a nonviolent movement of change. This campaign included the closing of museums, the suppression of almost all literature published before 2059 AD, and the destruction of the few historical world monuments that had survived the Nine Years’ War. The type of war described in the novel is a very feasible scenario in our current environment. It is interesting that a worldwide economic crisis was the trigger for a One World Government. Our current worldwide economic crisis has resulted in our Federal Reserve propping up European banks with U.S. taxpayer funds and unprecedented coordination between worldwide fiscal policies.

Huxley wrote his novel in 1931 at the outset of the Great Depression. His vision did not take long to crystallize. FDR initiated social programs on a vast scale to satiate the masses with manual labor government created jobs and social services that encouraged reliance upon the state at the expense of freedom and liberty. His nightmare world became more of a reality after World War II as progressives were successful in creating the United Nations, NATO, World Bank, IMF, Bretton Woods system, and GATT. These organizations reduced the freedom of individual countries to the benefit of worldwide bureaucracies. These organizations have gained power over time, but their total incompetence and ineffectiveness has kept them from gaining total control over world populations.

We are now at a crucial juncture as the worldwide financial crisis and the sham global warming crisis are being used by the New World Order crowd to confiscate more of our freedoms and liberties. Socialist minded world leaders Gordon Brown and Barack Obama, along with the revered Henry Kissinger have referenced a New World Order while offering their Keynesian spending solutions to the worldwide financial crisis. A number of Obama advisors have written they support a one world government. The Copenhagen Conference on Global Warming has drawn thousands of one world government apostles. They want to use the scientifically unproven environmental crisis as a way to impose worldwide taxes on sovereign nations and to compel the citizens of the world to honor their green agenda. The use of propaganda in our school systems to scare children by telling them that polar bears are all dying, is part of their plan. Again, the subtle use of media and propaganda to influence the thinking of the willfully ignorant public has worked.

Dystopian Nation  

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley

When I started this article I was unsure whether Huxley’s nightmare would resonate in our current reality. Sadly, much of his novel applies to our society. Even sadder, our society now resembles an amalgamation of the two most famous dystopian novels in history: 1984 and Brave New World. Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the two views of the future:

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no-one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.”

Our civilization has fused the worst of both novels. Many people in our country aren’t capable of reading a book. Supposedly educated people have no interest in reading a book. The government withholds or manipulates information that is spoon fed to the public. Trivial meaningless information floods the airwaves, keeping the public continuously diverted from seeking truth. The truth is lost in shades of grey and purposeful misinformation. Supposed differences between the ruling parties distract the public from realizing they are being fleeced by those in power. Government has used fear to create agencies and departments that have taken away our liberties and freedoms through Orwellian surveillance techniques. Our dumbed down culture of hero worship, material pleasures, and ego enhancement is the representation of triviality. The Alphas have used our fears and desires to distract us from their plans to dominate and control every aspect of our lives. Their success is all but assured at this point.

I’m not optimistic that there are enough Americans who value freedom over presumed safety, security, and social welfare benefits. The public has been duped into believing thrilling falsehoods rather than unexciting truths. Huxley explains how the propagandists have stolen our freedom:

“In their anti-rational propaganda the enemies of freedom systematically pervert the resources of lang­uage in order to wheedle or stampede their victims into thinking, feeling and acting as they, the mind-manipulators, want them to think, feel and act. An education for freedom (and for the love and intelli­gence which are at once the conditions and the results of freedom) must be, among other things, an educa­tion in the proper uses of language.”

I do not pretend to have the answers. Intellectual curiosity, a skeptical nature, and not buying into our shallow culture are the best chance for change. Reading or re-reading Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited will open your eyes to our plight. The current Fourth Turning will end in glory or tragedy. The choices we make as a society in the next 10 to 15 years will ultimately decide our fate. Huxley’s advice in Brave New World Revisited is wise, pertinent, and implementable today:

  • As recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely func­tional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily cooperating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Govern­ment.
  • If you wish to avoid the spiritual impoverishment of individuals and whole societies, leave the metropolis and revive the small country community, or alternately humanize the me­tropolis by creating within its network of mechanical organization the urban equivalents of small country communities, in which individuals can meet and co­operate as complete persons, not as the mere embodi­ments of specialized functions.

As citizens of the American Republic we must answer the question posed by Huxley:

“Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge? Does a majority of the population think it worthwhile to take a good deal of trouble, in order to halt and, if possible, reverse the current drift toward totalitarian control of everything?”

“There is no darkness but ignorance. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” William Shakespeare

Corporatism – State-Controlled Capitalism

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

The Dow is at a record high and so are corporate profits – so why does it feel like most of the country is deeply suffering right now?  Real household income is the lowest that it has been in a decade, poverty is absolutely soaring, 47 million Americans are on food stamps and the middle class is being systematically destroyed.  How can big corporations be doing so well while most American families are having such a hard time?  Isn’t their wealth supposed to “trickle down” to the rest of us?  Unfortunately, that is not how the real world works.

Today, most big corporations are trying to minimize the number of “expensive” American workers on their payrolls as much as they can.  If the big corporation that is employing you can figure out a way to replace you with a worker in China or with a robot, it will probably do it.  Corporations are in existence to maximize wealth for their shareholders, and most of the time the largest corporations are dominated by the monopoly men of the global elite.  Over the decades, the politicians that have their campaigns funded by these monopoly men have rigged the game so that the big corporations are able to easily dominate everything.  But this was never what those that founded this country intended.

America was supposed to be a place where the power of collectivist institutions would be greatly limited, and individuals and small businesses would be free to compete in a capitalist system that would reward anyone that had a good idea and that was willing to work hard.  But today, our economy is completely and totally dominated by a massively bloated federal government and by absolutely gigantic predator corporations that are greatly favored by our massively bloated federal government.  Our founders tried to warn us about the dangers of allowing government, banks and corporations to accumulate too much power, but we didn’t listen.  Now they dominate everything, and the rest of us are fighting for table scraps.

In early America, most states had strict laws governing the size and scope of corporations.  Individuals and small businesses thrived in such an environment, and the United States experienced a period of explosive economic growth.  We showed the rest of the world that capitalism really works, and we eventually built the largest middle class that the world had ever seen.

But now we have replaced capitalism with something that I like to call “corporatism”.  In many ways, it shares a lot of characteristics with communism, and that is why nations such as communist China have embraced it so readily.  Under “corporatism”, monolithic predator corporations run around sucking up as much wealth and economic power as they possibly can.  Most individuals and small businesses cannot compete and end up getting absorbed by the corporations.  These mammoth collectivist institutions are in private hands rather than in government hands (as would be the case under a pure form of communism), but the results are pretty much the same either way.  A tiny elite at the top gets almost all of the economic rewards.

There are some out there that would suggest that the answer to our problems is to move more in the direction of “socialism”, but to be honest that wouldn’t be the solution to anything.  It would just change how the table scraps that the rest of us are getting are distributed.

If we truly wanted a return to prosperity, we need to dramatically shift the rules of the game so that they are tilted back in favor of individuals and small businesses. A much more pure form of capitalism would mean more wealth, less poverty and a more equitable distribution of the economic rewards in this country.

But it will never happen.  Most of our politicians are married to the big corporations and the wealthy elitists that fund their campaigns.  And most Americans are so uneducated that they believe that what we actually have today is “capitalism” and that the only alternative is to go “to the left” toward socialism.

Very few people out there are suggesting that we need to greatly reduce the power of the federal government and greatly reduce the power of the big corporations, but that is exactly what we need to do.  We need to give individuals and small businesses room to breathe once again.

With each passing year, things get even worse.  In fact, the founder of Subway Restaurants recently said that the environment for small businesses is so toxic in America today that he never would have been able to start Subway if he had to do it today.

For much more on how small business is being strangled to death in the United States, please see my previous article entitled “We Are Witnessing The Death Of Small Business In America“.

What I want to do now is to discuss some of the results that “corporatism” is producing in America.

First of all, we continue to see incomes go down even though we live in an inflationary economy.

As Time Magazine recently reported, personal incomes took a huge nosedive during the month of January…

Data released by the Commerce Department last week showed that personal income fell 3.6% in January, the biggest decline in 20 years. The drop was even bigger when taxes and inflation are taken into account. Real personal disposable income fell by 4%, the biggest monthly drop in half a century.

But this is part of a longer term trend.  Median household income in the U.S. has declined for four consecutive years, and it is now significantly lower than it was all the way back in 2001…

Real median US household income — that’s “real,” as in “adjusted for inflation” — was $50,054 in 2011, the most recent data available from the US Census Bureau. That’s 8% lower than the 2007 peak of $54,489.

Meanwhile, big corporations are absolutely raking in the cash.  The following is from a recent New York Times article…

“So far in this recovery, corporations have captured an unusually high share of the income gains,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The U.S. corporate sector is in a lot better health than the overall economy. And until we get a full recovery in the labor market, this will persist.”

 

The result has been a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India.

Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low.

Just check out the following chart.  Corporate profits have absolutely exploded over the past decade…

Corporate Profits After Tax

Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP continue to fall rapidly…

Wages And Salaries As A Percentage Of GDP

Most of the jobs being created in America today are “low wage” jobs.  Tens of millions of Americans are working as hard as they can only to find that they can barely put food on the table and provide a roof over the heads of their children.  The ranks of the “working poor” are exploding and the middle class continues to shrink.

Many of you that are reading this article are members of the working poor.  You know what it is like to stare up at your ceiling at night wondering how you are going to pay the bills next month.

Today, most Americans are living very close to the edge financially.  A recent article by NBC News staff writer Allison Linn shared some of their stories.  The following is one example…

Crystal Dupont knows what it’s like to try to live on the federal minimum wage.

Dupont has no health insurance, so she hasn’t seen a doctor in two years. She’s behind on her car payments and has taken out pawn shop and payday loans to cover other monthly expenses. She eats beans and oatmeal when her food budget gets low.

 

When she got her tax refund recently, she used the money to get ahead on her light bill.

 

“I try to live within my means, but sometimes you just can’t,” said Dupont, 25. The Houston resident works 30 to 40 hours a week taking customer service calls, earning between $7.25 and $8 an hour. That came to about $15,000 last year.

 

It’s a wage she’s lived on for a while now, but just barely.

Sadly, the number of Americans that are “just barely” surviving continues to grow.

But if corporate profits are soaring to unprecedented heights, then who is getting all of those rewards?

The monopoly men of the global elite are.

Just check out the following video which does a great job of illustrating how corporatism has systematically funneled all of the economic rewards in our system to the very top…

Once again, I want to make it very clear that I am not advocating socialism as the answer in any way, shape or form.  Socialism takes away the incentive to create wealth and it almost always results in almost all of the economic rewards going to a very tiny elite anyway.

As I said earlier, what we need is a return to a much more pure form of capitalism, but this is so foreign to the way that most people think that most people will not be able to grasp this.

It certainly would be possible to greatly reduce the power of the federal government and greatly reduce the power of the big corporations at the same time, but this is so “outside the box” for most people that they cannot even conceive of doing such a thing.

We need to create an environment where individuals and small businesses can thrive once again.  But instead, most of us are content to continue “playing the game” and getting enslaved in even more debt.

For example, according to CNBC, auto loans just continue to get larger and continue to get stretched out for longer periods of time…

American car buyers, attracted by new models and cheap financing, are taking out bigger auto loans and stretching out the terms of those loans to a new record length.

New analysis from Experian Automotive shows the average new car loan in the fourth quarter of last year was $26,691 and stretched out over an average of 65 months. The length of the average loan is one month longer than the previous record set in the third quarter of last year.

What will they think of next?

Will we eventually have auto loans that get paid off over 10 years?

By the way, that is another way that the monopoly men of the global elite get all of our money.  They enslave us to debt, and we spend year after year of our lives slaving away to make them even wealthier.

They are very smart.  There is a reason why they have 32 TRILLION dollars stashed away in offshore tax havens.  They know how to play the game, and they are very happy that most of the rest of us are asleep.

Fortunately, it appears that an increasing number of Americans are waking up.

For example, I wanted to share with you all an excerpt from a comment that one of my readers left on one of my recent articles…

In the past year, I’ve been slowly but surely waking up to the nonsense happening around me. There’s so many things I need to simply get off my chest, so excuse the length of this post. Recently in the past two years, I’ve gotten married and have been medically discharged from the Marines after being injured in Afghanistan. Being 23 years old and married, my goal is secure a secure a future for my family, but with the way things are going, I’m not exactly sure how much of a future we’re going to have in 50 years. I can’t explain it, but I’ve felt this need to change my attitude and motivations lately.

 

I started by turning off the garbage music, television and other mindless entertainment that seems to plague my generation. It was easier than it looked – I don’t miss most of it really. The next order of business was to educate myself on world news, so that’s what I did. Every day, like clockwork, I check all major mainstream news feeds (NBC, Fox, Abc, CNN, Reuters, BBC, etc.) as well as not-so-mainstream news sites – yours being one of them. It’s incredible how fast our world changes and the manner in which it changes. The local 10 o’clock doesn’t show anything but local news, sports, weather, lottery #’s and whatever else they decide to throw in. It’s a night and day difference once you start to actually research and see what’s happening all over the world. Look at the number of comments about a news story on the economy and then look at a celebrity story on the “news”….People are so blind, it truly amazes me.

 

My friends, family and classmates at college seem to be under a spell of some sort. They’re distracted – and it’s contagious. Nobody I know gives a damn about global affairs/economics. They’re more interested in the newest iPhone, cars, shows, movies, and just about anything else you can think of. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with these things, but my friends/family/peers are CONSUMED by these distractions. When the election was taking place in 2012, every Tom, Dick and Harry on Facebook had an opinion and rant. After the circus ended however, everyone simply went back to posting about parties, kittens, Farmville etc. It’s a huge joke.

 

For me, it’s little terrifying and exciting to see history unfolding in front of our eyes. This country of ours is going through big changes now that will most certainly affect our future, so I strive to adapt and prepare myself and my family. I’m looking at buying my first home this summer. Right now I live in an apartment right outside Philly and spend more money on rent than most pay for a mortgage. I need a house with a little land to raise chickens, grow fruits/vegetables, store canned food – and to be as independent from the system as I can. For my job, I wanted a skill/trade that people would always need, so I picked the funeral business. On the side, I work in construction and have been learning everything there is to know about building with my own two hands. I feel as though these old forgotten skills are going to be handy in a short while.

Hopefully we can get a lot more people to wake up and start breaking out of “the matrix” of control that is all around us.

Right now, the system is designed to continually funnel more money and more power to the very top of the pyramid.  The global elite are becoming more dominant with each passing day.  Unless something dramatic happens, at some point the American people will become so powerless that they won’t be able to do anything about it even if they wanted to.

The idea of a very tiny elite completely dominating all the rest of us goes against everything that America is supposed to stand for.  In the end, it will result in absolute tyranny if it is not stopped.

Who Runs The World - Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Are Pulling The Strings

Stucky’s MYTHBUSTER Episode

“What is history, but a set of lies agreed upon?”
————– Napoleon Bonaparte (supposedly)

Needing a break from the doom and gloom, I hope this is a fun and educational post. Then again, most people hate if their favorite myth is challenged. So, I expect some “you’re full of shit” responses … as if I care. I didn’t verify the stories. Do your own homework. I’m not providing links. Do your own homework. Besides, maybe only 5% of you click on them anyway. So, let’s get going.

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AMERICAN MYTHS

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GUN FIGHTS WERE COMMON IN THE VIOLENT WILD WEST

We believe this myth because of one reason only; the power of TV to create perceptions. How many murders do you suppose these old western towns saw a year? How about five? That was the most murders any old-west town saw in any one year. Ever. Most towns averaged about 1.5 murders a year, and not all of those were shooting. You were way more likely to be murdered in Baltimore in 2008 than you were in Tombstone in 1881, the year of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral (body count — 3) …. and the town’s most violent year ever.

As for the traditional Western gunfight as depicted in movies, the inaccuracy of handguns at the time would have made quick-drawing skill irrelevant: It was simply so unlikely you’d hit a guy on the first, second or third shot that it didn’t really matter which guy got out his gun first. Forget about “fanning,” rapidly cocking a single-action revolver between rounds like Clint Eastwood does in A Fistful of Dollars. You’d be lucky to hit a henchman if the duel took place in a closet.

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“WAR OF THE WORLDS” – WHEN AMERICANS WENT BAT-SHIT CRAZY

How stupid do we think Americans were back then? Orson Welles’ radio production supposedly plunged millions of Americans into mass hysteria, as frightened listeners overloaded phone lines, fled cities, rushed to warn their loved ones, rioted and even attempted suicide for fear of the alien attack. Life Magazine even ran a photo of a farmer defending his land against the Martians, shotgun in hand. Newspapers happily jumped on reporting the panic in the days and weeks afterward, and even Adolf Hitler commented on the supposed hysteria. Something to the effect of, “An army of futuristic war machines trying to take over the planet.”

The reality? Total bullshit. Life Magazine just had the Mr. Shotgun Guy pose for it. Most of the War of the Worlds freak-out was exactly as fake as that photo. There’s no doubt that SOME people thought the broadcast was real. Radio was still new and a fake news broadcast had literally never been done before.

Reports of people immediately flying into a panic–attempting suicide, hallucinating alien death rays or fleeing to the countryside with guns in hand—were all anecdotal stories told second hand with no names attached. And although the phone lines to the studio were unusually busy that night, mixed in with the people asking for information, were people praising or complaining about a show that seemed like it was clearly designed to create a mass panic. FACT is; people back then would have reacted in exactly the way we would today: flipped to another station, called somebody to ask what was going on, or just looked out the damn window. Why did this myth take hold back then? Same reason 9-11 Truthers exist …. a good portion of the populace thrives on Bullshit.

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“NO IRISH NEED APPLY” SIGNS WERE COMMON.

There is a core of truth to this, but it is exaggerated in collective memory. Yes, Irish Catholics faced discrimination. “No Irish Need Apply” newspaper advertisements existed. Workplace signs were not common, but Irish were effectively barred from “better”occupations and shunted into low-paying factory work and domestic service.

Well know historian Richard Jensen stated in “The Journal of Social History”; —- ““The fact that Irish vividly ‘remember’ NINA signs is a curious historical puzzle. There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign at a specific location. No particular business enterprise is named as a culprit. No historian, archivist, or museum curator has ever located one; no photograph or drawing exists. No other ethnic group complained about being singled out by comparable signs. Only Irish Catholics have reported seeing the sign in America—no Protestant, no Jew, no non-Irish Catholic has reported seeing one.”

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AMERICA BECAME INDEPENDENT ON JULY 4, 1776

Probably not 1 in 1,000 Americans knows the following. The American Revolution raged for another seven years after July 4, 1776. Independence from England was finally granted on September 3, 1783 when Britain’s George III and US leaders signed the Definitive Treaty of Peace.

[Bonus: During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress in 1774 chose Peyton Randolph as the first President. George Washington was actually America’s 15th President, albeit the 1st elected by the people.]

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BUNKER HILL WAS ONE OF THE KEY BATTLES IN THE REVOLUTION

Bunker Hill had no major effect on the Revolution. The battle was small, involving only a few thousand men altogether, the battle didn’t change the war in any particular way or introduce some new way of warfare. The British were about to withdraw from Boston anyhow even before the battle.

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BENEDICT ARNOLD HATED AMERICA

He loved America. His betrayal was tit-got-tat, because he felt America betrayed him first.
He was arguably America’s best general. On numerous occasions he saved America from total defeat. The most notable being the Battle of Saratoga where he disobeyed orders and turned defeat into victory. That victory turned the tide of the war and led France to ally itself with America.

He never received any credit for his achievements. Lies were spread about him throughout the army and scandals erupted. Even George Washington, whom Arnold thought was his friend, abandoned him and gave credit to Arnold’s victory at Saratoga to Horatio Gates, a man who nearly lost the revolution at Saratoga had it not been for Arnold. Arnold was demoted to a small garrison post The sense of complete betrayal and insult angered Arnold, and led him to betray America.

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BEN FRANKLIN FLIES A KITE IN 1752

No. The experiment was done by French scientist Jacques de Romas in 1753. When De Romas asked the Paris Academy of Sciences to acknowledge that he had been the first to successfully complete the experiment, the committee agreed, provided Franklin didn’t provide details demonstrating that he had priority. Franklin was uncharacteristically silent on the subject.

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THERE WERE 13 COLONIES

As settlements were founded, each new city was recognized as its own colony: for example, Connecticut contained 500 distinct “colonies” before they were merged into one in 1661. Sometimes colonies were mashed together into mega-colonies, like the short-lived, super-unpopular Dominion of New England, which incorporated Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine, plus New York and New Jersey for a couple of years. Colonies also split, like Massachusetts, which spawned New Hampshire in 1679. And some colonies weren’t colonies at all: while it’s often listed as one of the

But on to 1775. There weren’t even 13 colonies then. Delaware wasn’t technically a colony or a province. Designated “the Lower Counties on the Delaware,” it had its own assembly but fell under the authority of the governor of Pennsylvania until it declared itself an independent state in August 1776. So technically, there were just 12 colonies in 1775 and 13 states in 1776.

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LIZZIE BORDEN – AMERICA’S FIRST WOMAN AX MURDERER

Do you have to be over 50 to recall this childrens’ poem? — “Lizzie Borden took an ax/ And gave her mother forty whacks / And when she saw what she had done / She gave her father forty-one” — First of all, the father was axed 11 times, mom 19 times. Lizzie was found innocent of the crime after a mere one hour of jury deliberation. Folklore says the rhyme was made up by an anonymous writer as a tune to sell newspapers. Lizzie was relatively well off when she died — $50,000 in the bank in 1927 — but the community ostracized her even after the trial, and only a handful of people showed up at her funeral.

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EVERYONE WAS KILLED AT THE ALAMO

The official Alamo website tries to correct this persistent myth: “It is true that nearly all of the TEXANS UNDER ARMS inside the fort were killed in the March 6, 1836, attack. However, nearly twenty women and children, who experienced the twelve days of siege leading to the final assault, were spared and allowed to return to their homes. The survivors also included Joe, the slave of William B. Travis. The best-known Alamo survivor, Susanna Dickinson, was sent to Gonzales by Santa Anna with a warning to the Texans that the same fate awaited them if they continued their revolt.”

[BONUS: The Americans who died at the Alamo weren’t defending liberty— they were protecting slavery.]

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EDISON INVENTED THE LIGHTBULB

No. It was invented a full 40 years earlier, in 1840, by British Astronomer and Chemist, Warren de la Rue.

Edison was actually a nasty and ruthless little fucker … a Bill Gates type. Edison did not invent many of the things attributed to him. He was very good at stealing, improving, and patenting many ideas before their original inventors were able to. He expended much effort discrediting other inventors in order to gain popularity for his own.

[BONUS: In 1862, at the age of 15, saved the life of a 3 year old boy playing on train tracks … right in the path of a runaway freight car. The boy’s father happened to be the station’s telegraph operator. He was so grateful to Edison that he took him under his wing, and trained him in telegraphy, sparking the inventor’s lifelong love affair with all things electric.]

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WITCHES WERE BURNED IN SALEM

Only in the movies. They were all hanged, except one, who died while being tortured. The wide-spread knowledge of the event is somewhat unusual considering how few died, only 20 (of about 150 who were tried) —- 14 women, and the oft forgotten 6 men.

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WALT DISNEY DREW MICKEY MOUSE

Actually, Walt was a rather poor artist. Mickey was the vision of Disney’s number one animator, Ub Iwerks. He single-handedly animated Mickey’s first short film, Plane Crazy (1928), in only two weeks … a remarkable 700 drawings a day … before computers. However. when sound films began later that year, Walt Disney played Mickey’s voice.

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MYTHS OUTSIDE OF AMERICA

LADY GODIVA RODE NAKED

Zero evidence for this. The myth is that Godiva pleaded with her husband, Leofric, to relieve the heavy burden of taxes he had imposed on the citizens of Coventry. Leofric said he would grant her request if she would ride naked through the town. She agreed but prior to her bare-assing he ordered the people to remain indoors with their windows and doors barred. Loosening her long hair to cover her as a cloak, she mounted her waiting horse. The people obeyed her command because of their respect for her. However, one man did not …. a man called llpoh …. just kidding … his name was ‘Tom’ …. who just couldn’t help peeking at her fine titties …. and, this is the origin of the term “Peeping Tom”.

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NERO FIDDLED WHILE ROME BURNED

Poor Nero … always getting blamed for shit he didn’t do. If anything, he played the lyre — as the violin needed another 1,000 years to be invented. According to Tacitus, upon hearing news of the fire, Nero rushed back to Rome to organize a relief effort, which he paid for from his own funds. After the fire, Nero opened his palaces to provide shelter for the homeless, and arranged for food supplies to be delivered in order to prevent starvation among the survivors. In the wake of the fire, he made a new urban development plan. This wasn’t the first time “Rome burned”. The old city was a perpetual fire hazard of extremely crowded housing build of wood. Houses after the fire were spaced out, built in brick, and faced by porticos on wide roads.

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GALILEO DROPPED OBJECTS OFF THE TOWER OF PISA

Universally discredited by historians. Scientists had been dropping shit from the Tower for as long as 50 years prior to Galileo. The source of this myth is easy to trace. Galileo’s biographer and pupil, Vincenzo Viviani, mentions the experiment in his account of the scientist’s life. The lie has been repeated ad nauseum ever since.

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MYTHS ABOUT VIKINGS

—– Vikings were a nation. No. The Old Norse word víkingr denoted not a nationality, but occupation: a Viking was anyone, from any nationality, who took part in an overseas expedition.

—– Vikings wore horned helmets. Totally false.

—– Vikings’ preferred weapon was a massive double axe. No double-headed axe has ever been found from early medieval Europe. Viking axes were light and used single-handed. The most common weapons found on Viking sites are spears

—– Viking armies were huge. Based on archeological evidence for the size of their boats … 50 or so men … Viking armies numbered in the hundreds, at most.

—– Vikings were exceptionally cruel and bloodthirsty. Vikings were sometimes very violent … BUT they were not substantially different from their contemporaries. For example, at Verden, Charlemagne, ordered the beheading of 4,500 Saxons. Furthermore, plunder was only one among many other goals of their overseas expeditions. Vikings peacefully colonized Iceland, Greenland and many smaller islands. As explorers they crossed the Atlantic and reached America 500 years before Columbus. As international merchants of their time, they also peacefully traded with almost every country of the then known world.

—– Vikings don’t know shit about football. True.

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VAN GOGH SLICED OFF HIS EAR

Partially correct. Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime. He only spent eight years of his life painting. He spent most of his life teaching and dealing art. Van Gough attempted a partnership with the post-impressionist Paul Gauguin. But Van Gogh had a mental breakdown which led to an incident where he threatened Gauguin with a razor blade. Later on that night, while brooding over the attack, van Gogh took the razor blade to his own ear …. but only a portion of his left lobe.

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NAPOLEON WAS A LITTLE SHIT

Napoleon was 5’7” …. actually taller than the average 18th century Froggie. True, Napoleon was called Le Petit Corporal (“The Little Corporal”), but that’s because early in his military career soldiers used it to mock his relatively low rank, not his stature.

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GANDHI LIBERATED INDIA

Partially true. Most historians agree that Indian independence was inevitable. Gandhi was just one of several independence leaders. The Indian National Congress was founded as early as 1885, when he was only 16. Many historians believe that India would have achieved independence sooner if they had focused on the more forceful methods that they had used 50 years earlier, rather than the slow process of Gandhi’s ancient ideals of ahimsa (non-violence.

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MISH MASH POTPOURRI

MAGELLAN CIRCUMNAVIGATED THE WORLD Nope. He only made it halfway. He was killed by natives in the Philippines. His second-in-command, Juan Sebastian Elcano, completed the circumnavigation

Helen of Troy was from Troy. No, she was actually a Spartan, who probably never set foot in Troy.

The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure that can be seen from space . No, it can’t.

Jesus spoke Hebrew. No record of that. The Bible specifically says he spoke Aramaic. Greek was the secondary language of the region, it was the language of the common version of the Bible used by the Jews at the time, and since the NT teaches that Jesus read from the OT … it is very likely Jesus also spoke Greek.

Amazon women cut off their titties. Hellanicus, some Greek dude, started this rumor. He incorrectly imagined Amazon was derived from the Greek prefix a- (“without”) and mazos, a variant of mastos (“breast”). That’s like saying the word ‘addict’ means a man without a dick …or, dictionary.

Slaves built the pyramids. The number of historians who still believe this is virtually zero. Excavated skeletons show that the pyramid builders were actually Egyptians who were most likely in the permanent employ of the pharaoh. No evidence of Joo builders, either.

Pythagoras discovered the theorem bearing his name. Nope. It was known to the Egyptians and the Babylonians long before he was born

Ancient Greece was a great nation: Ancient Greece is not the name of a nation – it is the name of the region in which up to 1,000 individual cultures lived and worked alongside each other. Each culture had its own rulers, its own armies, its own independence from the others

“Thumbs up” meant a gladiator would live. Quite the opposite … ‘thumb up’ meant kill him! There was no ‘thumb down’ signal. If the thumb was concealed in a fist it meant let him live.

Henry VIII had syphilis. Unlikely. 16th century standard treatment for syphilis was mercury. Lists of money spent on medicines for Henry VIII exist. Mercury is never listed.

Baseball is a true American sport: No. Baseball was derived from “Rounders,” a game played in Ireland since the 15th century, which contains most of the basic elements of modern baseball

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POPULAR SAYINGS NOT IN THE BIBLE
—— A fool and his money are soon parted
—— God helps those who help themselves
—— Cleanliness is next to godliness
—— God works in mysterious ways
—— Spare the rod, spoil the child
—— Money is the root of all evil
—— Moderation in all things
—— Pride goes before a fall
—— Charity begins at home
—— This too shall pass

EVE ATE THE APPLE

No! She ate from the “fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. That means it could have been any fruit whatsoever … or not a fruit at all, but more of an allegorical meaning. The most likely origin of the belief has to do with Latin …. the Latin ‘malum’ means BOTH apple or evil. [Apple Story Bonus: Newton was not hit by an apple. The story was first published in an essay by Voltaire, long after Newton’s death]

WIND BENEATH HER WINGS

My wife danced to this song with her father on our wedding day 23 years ago. He was the wind beneath her wings. He was her hero. He was the wind beneath the wings of nine children, over two dozen grandchildren, and a half dozen great grandchildren. He was a great man. There will forever be a hole in our hearts. We’ll miss you terribly. Farewell Pop.  

 

Did you ever know that you’re my hero,
and everything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings.

It might have appeared to go unnoticed,
but I’ve got it all here in my heart.
I want you to know I know the truth, of course I know it.
I would be nothing without you.

JC PENNEY FIRES 2,200 EMPLOYEES – FORGOT ONE

Ron Johnson is the gift that keeps on giving. One of his biggest stockholders – Vornado Realty – sold 10 million shares at a price 50% below when they purchased the shares. That sounds like a vote of confidence. Johnson is also being sued by Macy’s for signing an illegal agreement with Martha Stewart. If he loses, there will be tons of empty shelves in JC Penney stores across the land. Sales are still plummeting. Of course, there are still a couple of Wall Street shills telling you it’s the best time to buy. Now Johnson fires 2,200 dedicated employees as he still collects his multi-million dollar pay package and commutes by a company Jet from his home in San Francisco.

This douchebag has to go. There is only one employee that needed to be fired and his name is Ron Johnson. The Board of Directors of this company is a fucking joke. They hired this asshole and watched him destroy a 100 year old company in one year. This is nothing but a death rattle. Unless they fire this fucker in the next month, JC Penney will be declaring bankruptcy within 12 months.

Troubles pile on in rough week at J.C. Penney
Kyle Kurlick/The Commercial Appeal
Teresa Chavez gives a garment a critical look at a Penney’s store in Southaven, Miss. Investors know how she feels after looking critically at J.C. Penney’s remake.

By MARIA HALKIAS

MARIA HALKIAS The Dallas Morning News

Staff Writer

[email protected]

Published: 06 March 2013 11:17 PM

Expect events of the last seven days to make it into academic case studies about J.C. Penney Co.’s attempt to become America’s favorite store.

And Penney employees found out Wednesday that things can get worse. About 2,200 people were laid off in stores and district offices.

Some bullish analysts changed their tunes Wednesday, and the stock price has lost 35 percent of its value in just the last five trading days. Former Penney chairman and CEO Allen Questrom said the board needs to act, adding that chief executive Ron Johnson should be replaced.

The third week of a trial over a contract dispute with competitor Macy’s over Martha Stewart merchandise continued in a reporter-packed New York courtroom. The trial may be adjourned until April because of scheduling conflicts.

The Plano-based department store chain’s new low points included Tuesday’s news that 10 million shares of stock were sold by a major shareholder who, oh yes, happens to be a board member.

Wednesday, Penney’s stock price fell 53 cents to hit a 52-week low of $14.43 a share.

All that follows last week’s news that Penney lost almost $1 billion and had a sales decline of a whopping $4 billion, falling to $13 billion in 2012.

Most of Wednesday’s staff cuts happened in about 100 stores that had significant sales declines last year, and the employee count will be reduced to match each location’s new level of business, said spokeswoman Daphne Avilla.

Administrative and back office jobs were cut across the chain of 1,100 stores and in 55 district offices.

In stores, department management duties are also being consolidated.

Staff cuts “will not impact the store experience,” Avilla said. “We’re not cutting folks on the floors. And our hope is to later be in a position to build back up our workforce.”

Penney’s stores, which range from under 65,000 square feet in small towns to more than 200,000 square feet in major malls, employ from 50 to 400 people per location.

Martha Stewart trial

Finally, on Friday, even if the trial isn’t over, New York Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Oing will decide what sheets and towels Penney can sell starting in May when the retailer plans to have new home departments ready for shoppers. Martha Stewart designed products in a few categories that were believed outside her agreement with Macy’s.

Last summer, the judge issued a temporary order that prohibited Penney from selling Martha Stewart-branded products in the key home categories of bed, bath, tabletop and cookware. Instead, Penney developed products in those categories with Stewart’s help under the Everyday brand.

On Friday, Oing will rule whether Martha Stewart Living’s involvement in designing that product violated the Macy’s contract.

Penney is developing alternate plans and will make a statement after the judge rules, Avilla said.

Questrom, who spent five years in the early 2000s at Penney pulling it out of years of missteps, is frustrated that the board hasn’t forced Johnson to take his ideas to Middle America more slowly and test new merchandise and pricing.

“All these people are worried about Johnson keeping his job. It’s crazy,” Questrom said in a phone interview Wednesday. “What about all these Penney employees?

“It’s an old company, and he’s putting the nails in the coffin if they don’t start making some changes. There’s no reason to wait another quarter.”

The board “has allowed this to go on too long,” Questrom said. “I have to believe they are looking for his replacement.”

Silence

Penney board chairman Tom Engibous, the retired chairman and CEO of Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc., didn’t respond to a request for comment. Other board members also declined to comment.

Johnson declined a request for an interview as well.

One could say that board member Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado Realty Trust, commented on Johnson’s performance and Penney’s prospects Tuesday when he sold 10 million shares of Penney stock. Roth and Pershing Square Capital founder William Ackman joined the board in 2011 after they amassed a 26 percent stake in Penney. Ackman has been Johnson’s most vocal supporter on the board but hasn’t commented this week.

On Wednesday, some analysts who had supported Johnson’s plans to turn Penney into a collection of mini shops within stores and adopt an everyday-low-prices strategy downgraded Penney.

Citi’s top retail analyst, Deborah Weinswig, visited Plano on Tuesday and met with Johnson and other top executives. She concluded that Penney will either continue limping along and spending money or the company will be sold and/or “senior leadership” will leave.

She downgraded Penney to a neutral rating from a buy and titled her report: “Wish I knew then what I know now.”

“We believe the potential for asset sales, a private takeover and senior leadership changes could support the shares and limit further downside from here,” Weinswig wrote.

Oppenheimer analyst Brian Nagel downgraded Penney stock after concluding that the company could go through all of its $900 million in cash this year and continue to post losses.

“The market is unlikely to afford JCP any benefit of the doubt until clear evidence of a turn emerges,” Nagel wrote in a report.

Johnson promised a year ago that Penney’s transformation would be self-funded, but asset sales were necessary last year and will likely continue, analysts said. JPMorgan analyst Matthew Ross said Penney will probably have to borrow money to keep building new shops.

TBP PARTNERING WITH FOX NEWS

You never know who is going to contact you. One day it’s the University of Phoenix, the next it’s Fox News. Here is the humorous (for me) dialogue between myself and the Senior Director of Media Relations for Fox Business News that happened last night and this morning.

INITIAL EMAIL:

Hi Jim

I hope this finds you well. I apologize in advance for reaching out to you via your work email. I came across your TBP blog and wanted to ask you a few questions about it. Are you free for a call today/tomorrow?

Thanks so much

MY RESPONSE:

I try to keep a low profile with my blog so it doesn’t interfere with my real job. I tend not to do interviews with the media.

HER RESPONSE:

Hi Jim

Thanks for the quick response. I am actually not reaching out for a television appearance if it matters. I wanted to see if you’d be interested in receiving any news/videos from FOX Business. I’ve seen you post some on the blog and thought I could be of help. I also wanted to ask about the frequency of the blog and partnerships you have. I noticed you have reposted ZeroHedge in the past so just curious what other outlets you work with. Let me know if that changes anything.

MY BLUNT HONEST RESPONSE:

My blog is an anti-government, anti-mainstream media, anti-Wall Street site where I regularly scorn and ridicule Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, along with CNBC, MSNBC and the rest of the propaganda spewing media. I don’t think a partnership is in the cards. Zero Hedge publishes all of my main articles, along with a few other truth telling websites. My libertarian Ron Paul views do not fit with Fox.

Thanks for your interest and no offense from my above comments, but I’m not looking to make money from my blog. I’m looking to provide the truth to people who want it.

 

SHOCKINGLY, I HAVEN’T RECEIVED A FOLLOW-UP EMAIL.

RAND PAUL FILIBUSTERING DIRTBAG JOHN BRENNAN

 Rand is making his pop and Jimmy Stewart proud. John Brennan is a scumbag who will murder Americans with drones when ordered to do so. FUCK HIM!!!

Rand Paul begins talking filibuster against John Brennan

By Ed O’Keefe , Updated:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) began speaking just before noon Wednesday on the Senate floor in opposition to the nomination of John Brennan to lead the CIA, saying that he planned to speak “for the next few hours” in a rare talking filibuster.

Watch live video from the Senate floor below:

Paul, who strongly opposes the Brennan nomination and the Obama administration’s use of unmanned aerial drones, becomes the first senator to make use of the procedural tactic in more than two years and the first to do so since the Senate approved a bipartisan rules reform package in January.

“I will speak until I can no longer speak,” Paul said. “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

Paul began his filibuster at 11:47 a.m. Eastern time. Around the one-hour mark, he acknowledged “I can’t talk forever” and said his throat was getting dry.

At the start if the 1 p.m. hour, Paul was the only senator on the floor. Just 30 people watched from the Senate gallery above while a few security guards, stenographers and Senate pages held their appointed spots on the floor. In the rafters, a man responsible for operating the Senate television cameras was seen reading a newspaper.

At 2:57 p.m., after Paul had been talking for more than three hours, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) joined the filibuster and gave Paul a break. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joined at 3:08 p.m. The three senators are now taking turns talking, with Lee and Cruz alternately asking Paul questions.

Paul’s comments from the Senate floor come as he’s raised objections in recent weeks. Paul first threatened to filibuster the Brennan nomination in late February, when he sent a letter to administration officials asking whether the U.S. government would ever use a drone strike to kill an American on U.S. soil.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. responded to Paul’s inquiry Monday, saying the administration has “no intention” of carrying out drone strikes on suspected terrorists in the United States, but could use them in response to “an extraordinary circumstance” such as a major terrorist attack.

Paul called Holder’s refusal to rule out drone strikes within the United States “more than frightening.”

On Wednesday, Paul elaborated on his concerns: “When I asked the president, can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer. It’s an easy question. It should have been a resounding, an unequivocal, ‘No.’ The president’s response? He hasn’t killed anyone yet. We’re supposed to be comforted by that.”

Paul noted that he has voted for Obama’s previous Cabinet nominees, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and suggested his cause was not partisan.

“I have allowed the president to pick his political appointees,” Paul said. “But I will not sit quietly and let him shred the Constitution. I cannot sit at my desk quietly and let the president say that he will kill Americans on American soil who are not actively attacking a country.

“I would be here if it were a Republican president doing this. Really the great irony of this is that President Obama’s opinion on this is an extension of George Bush’s opinion.”

Paul also said that he was “alarmed” at the lack of definition over who can be targeted by drone strikes. He suggested that many college campuses in the 1960s were full of people who might have been considered enemies of the state.

“Are you going to drop … a Hellfire missile on Jane Fonda?” Paul asked.

By the 2 p.m. hour, Paul said he would continue to speak as long as he can, but he admitted: “Ultimately, I can’t win. There’s not enough votes.”

Brennan has gained the support of some Republican senators, even as others want to hold up his nomination in hopes of getting more answers from the White House on the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. His nomination easily cleared the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, suggesting he would have the 60 votes required to end Paul’s filibuster and bring the nomination to a vote.

Any senator can opt to hold the floor to speak on any matter, but the practice of speaking for hours on end is rare, especially in the modern-day Senate where the chamber’s rules are used more often to block legislation or to hold show votes on trivial matters.

Paul’s talking filibuster is the first conducted by a senator since December 2010, when Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) held the Senate floor for more than eight hours in opposition to Obama’s proposed tax-cut plan.

The longest filibuster in the Senate was Sen. Strom Thurmond’s (D-S.C.) 24-hour filibuster against the 1957 Civil Rights Act (Thurmond later became a Republican). Two other senators — Sens. Alphonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and Wayne Morse (I-Ore.) — have also filibustered for more than 20 hours.

Americans Spend Less and Less on Groceries Each Year. So Why Are We Broke?

During my weekend BusinessWeek reading (the only periodical worth receiving in print still IMO), I came across this chart of household grocery spending over the past few decades which I found intriguing.  It shows that as a percent of annual post-tax income, Americans continue to spend increasingly less each year.  Less than ANY OTHER COUNTRY in fact.  Half as much as those in France and 1/4 of those in India.  Yet we’re broke.  First, take a look at the chart to see where we’re getting more “value” or basically just spending less, then some thoughts:

See an infographic that doesn’t suck for once and consider why we’re broke when we spend less on groceries each year.

QUOTES OF THE DAY

Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.

That’s a great plan, Walter. That’s f*ckin’ ingenious, if I understand it correctly. It’s a Swiss fuckin’ watch.

F*ck sympathy! I don’t need your f*ckin’ sympathy, man, I need my f*cking johnson!

That rug really tied the room together.

Yeah, well. The Dude abides.

This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, a lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head. Fortunately, I’m adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug regimen to keep my mind, you know, uh, limber.

Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not “Mr. Lebowski”. You’re Mr. Lebowski. I’m the Dude. So that’s what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

I do mind, the Dude minds. This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.

The Dude – The Big Lebowski

 

 Donny, you’re out of your element!

Shut the fuck up, Donny!

Well, it was parked in the handicapped zone. Perhaps they towed it.

Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax. You’re goddamn right I’m living in the fucking past!

 I mean, say what you want about the tenants of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.

You want a toe? I can get ya a toe. Believe me there are ways dude, you don’t even wanna know about em believe me. Hell I can get ya a toe by three o’clock this afternoon, with nail polish.

 [pulls out a gun] Smokey, my friend, you are entering a world of pain.

This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!

Has the whole world gone CRAZY? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules? You think I’m fuckin’ around, MARK IT ZERO!

You know, Dude, I myself dabbled in pacifism once. Not in Nam, of course.

Walter – The Big Lebowski

CITIES WITH HIGHEST & LOWEST TAXES

I hate finishing in 2nd place. Maybe Philadelphia can finish 1st next year if Mayor Nutter can just jack up those real estate taxes a little more. There sure does seem to be a number of Democratically run urban shitholes on the list of highest tax cities. According to liberal ideology, higher taxes should be more beneficial to a community. Higher taxes allows government to pay union teachers and union policemen more money to make our kids smarter and cities safer. How is that working out in Detroit, Philly, Chicago, Newark and Baltimore?

American Cities with the Highest (and Lowest) Taxes

February 25, 2013 by Michael B. Sauter, Alexander E.M. Hess, Samuel Weigley

Philadelphia

Tax season is here and, according to a recent report, American families in the nation’s largest cities will be shelling out 15% or more of their income, and that doesn’t even include federal taxes.

The report, released by the Office of Revenue Analysis of the Government of Washington, D.C., reviewed the estimated property, sales, auto and income taxes a family paid in 2011 in the largest city in each state. The differences were stark. A family of three earning $75,000 in Cheyenne, Wy., paid just $2,808, or 3.7% of its income. In Bridgeport, Conn., that same family would have paid $16,105, or 21.5% of its income. Again, this is excluding federal taxes.

Click here to see the cities with the highest taxes

Click here to see the cities with the lowest taxes

One of the biggest factors in how much a family can expect to pay is the state and local tax rates affecting their city. In Bridgeport, Conn., the effective property tax rate, or how much people pay per $100 of property, is among the highest of the large cities reviewed, and property values are higher, meaning a family earning $100,000 per year can expect to spend $11,299 in property taxes alone.

According to Edward Wyatt, fiscal analyst for the Office of Revenue Analysis, while tax rates are certainly a factor in the tax burden on families, it is more the existence of certain kinds of taxes that determines whether families pay through the nose or barely at all come mid-April.

Personal income tax is one of the key factors. Seven states have no income tax, and six of the 10 cities with the lowest tax burdens are in these states. Two more cities in the bottom 10 — Memphis, N.H., and Manchester, Tenn. — only tax nonwage income, such as dividends and interest. None of the cities with high tax burdens are in income tax-exempt states.

The cities with the highest tax burdens tend to be much larger ones, like New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, while the low tax burden cities are smaller and in more rural areas, including Fargo, Anchorage and Cheyenne. Wyatt suggested this may have to do with the cost of running these larger cities, as they have to spend less per capita on programs like social services.

Another interesting trend was that cities with higher tax burdens tended to have higher unemployment, while lower-taxed cities tended to have among the lowest unemployment. While this is often a product of the state economy, in some cases, the city’s rate is much higher than the state. Bridgeport, the city with the highest tax burden among the 51 cities studied, also had the highest unemployment rate, at 11.7% in December. The state of Connecticut’s rate that month was just 8.6%.

Also read: The States with the Strongest and Weakest Unions

Based on the local government report: Tax Rates and Tax Burdens in the District of Columbia — A Nationwide Comparison, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the cities where a family of three in different income brackets would spend the largest and smallest percentages of their income on state and local taxes. In order to reflect the respective rank in all income levels measured by the report, we considered all of them for the purposes of the ranking. The report covers the largest city in each state, as well as Washington, D.C. All estimates are for the 2011 fiscal year. 24/7 Wall St. also reviewed data for these cities from the U.S. Census Bureau, including the occupational breakdown of the city’s workforce, and income, poverty and home value data, all for 2011. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we reviewed the unemployment rates for these cities as of December 2012.

Cities with the Lowest Tax Burdens

10. Las Vegas, Nev.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,027 (24th highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $6,305 (3rd lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 10.2% (9th highest)

Las Vegas had no state or local income tax in 2011, which saved a hypothetical family of three earning $25,000 a year $266 over the average city, and a family earning $150,000 per year an estimated $6,835. Also, the city’s effective residential property tax rate was just $1.15 per $100 of assessed value, a rate lower than most of the cities reviewed. Although the city had an especially high 7.75% sales tax, it also had one of the nation’s lowest sales tax burdens. Among the reasons why, in Nevada only 37.4% of goods are taxed at sale, and food and other consumer goods are exempted. Currently state and local sales tax payments are also tax deductible in Nevada.

9. Manchester, N.H.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,357 (4th lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $6,582 (7th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 6.0% (16th lowest)

Manchester was one of just five cities reviewed with no state or local sales tax. Additionally, neither the city nor state had an income tax on personal wages, with state income taxes limited to sources such as interest and dividend payments, inheritance and business profits. However, the city is heavily dependent on property taxes, which its website describes as “the principal tax of the City.” In 2011, for a hypothetical family of three, Manchester’s property tax burden was among the highest for all cities observed at all levels of income. Property taxes also comprised the majority of any family’s state and local tax burden: A Manchester family earning $75,000 would have paid $5,134 in state and local taxes in 2011. Of this, $4,645 would have been property taxes.

Also Read: The Six States (and D.C.) with the Highest Gas Prices

8. Sioux Falls, S.D.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,565 (7th lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $7,127 (8th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 4.2% (4th lowest)

Sioux Falls residents benefit from lower than average taxes. Helping to significantly alleviate the total tax burden, Sioux Falls is one of just a few cities where residents are not required to pay any income taxes. In addition, auto taxes are among the lowest of all cities. The one downside for taxpayers is the sales tax burden, which is among the top third of all cities measured. The unemployment rate of 4.2% as of December 2012 was the fourth lowest of all cities measures. The surplus in the city’s 2013 budget is expected to be about $1.7 million.

7. Memphis, Tenn.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,941 (23rd lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $6,450 (5th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 9.8% (11th highest)

Memphis charged no city-level personal income tax in 2011. Neither did the state of Tennessee, where only income from dividends or interest payments, as well as corporate income, are taxed. However, residents did pay a total of 9.25 cents per dollar in sales taxes, higher than all but three other cities. All of these cities have higher incomes than Memphis, where more than 27% of the population lives below the poverty level, compared with 15.9% nationwide. Partly because of sales taxes, a hypothetical family earning $25,000 paid 11.8% of its income in state and local taxes, while a family earning $150,000 paid just 4.3%.

6. Billings, Mont.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,223 (the lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $11,036 (14th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 4.1% (3rd lowest)

In 2011, residents of Billings did not have to pay any sales tax, either to the city or their state. Sales taxes cost a family of three earning $25,000 a year $728 and a family earning $150,000 a year $2,194. Additionally, Montana is a low income tax state. At all income levels, Billings had a lower income tax burden than all observed cities where such a tax was in effect. However, not all taxes in Billings were low; gas taxes were more than four cents per gallon higher than the nationwide average in 2011. The state also provides oil and gas companies with a controversial tax holiday, which allows production at new wells to be taxed at a rate of less than 1% during their first 12 to 18 months of operations.

5. Jacksonville, Fla.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,956 (26th lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $6,429 (4th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 7.7% (21st highest)

As residents of Florida, individuals and families living in Jacksonville pay neither a state nor local income tax. Partly because of this, the tax burden for wealthier families remained low in 2011. A typical family of three with two sources of income, earning $150,000 per year, would have paid 4.3% of its income on state and local taxes — less than all but four other cities. However, a family earning just $25,000 per year would have had to pay 11.8% of its annual income in taxes. Florida’s 6% sales tax accounts for the majority of the state’s tax revenue.

4. Fargo, N.D.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,228 (2nd lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $7,908 (10th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 3.2% (the lowest)

Fargo has a very low tax burden compared to most large cities, especially for families who make little money. For a family of three making just $25,000, the tax burden was just $2,280 in 2011, the second lowest of all cities. Although both the city and the state do not collect as much in total tax revenue from households, the 3.2% unemployment rate means that more people are likely to own homes, spend more money when shopping, and purchase cars, driving up tax payments in those categories. In addition, North Dakota collects revenue through various oil and gas taxes, such as the oil gross production tax, the gas gross production tax and the oil extraction tax.

Also Read: States Where People Cannot Get a Mortgage

3. Houston, Tex.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,709 (14th lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $6,571 (6th lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 6.1% (17th lowest)

Houston is one of just eight cities in which a family of three earning $150,000 a year paid less than 5% of its annual income in taxes in 2011. One major reason is the absence of any state income or local income tax, which cost a similar family an average of $6,835 in the cities where income taxes are levied. However, residents did pay one of the nation’s highest sales taxes, at 8.25%. This cost a family earning $150,000 in Houston almost $2,500 in sales taxes — higher than in two-thirds of cities surveyed. Additionally, the city had one of the nation’s highest property tax rates, at $2.53 per $100 of assessed property value.

2. Anchorage, Alaska
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,236 (3rd lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $5,095 (2nd lowest)
> Unemployment rate: 5.2% (tied for 10th lowest)

Anchorage has a tax rate lower than all but one major city in the United States. The low taxes are even better given that the city’s median household income of $72,813 in 2011 was higher than all other cities. Anchorage’s one weak spot is its property tax burden, which is generally among the top quarter of all cities measured. The city is just one of a handful where residents are not required to pay any sales taxes. In addition, the auto tax burden is among the lowest of all cities. This week, the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce will host a debate on the pros and cons of changing the state’s oil tax law.

1. Cheyenne, Wyo.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,424 (5th lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $4,702 (2nd lowest)
> Median household income:
> Unemployment rate: 5.2% (tied for 10th lowest)

No city measured has a lower burden on families than Cheyenne. A family of three earning $25,000 would have had a 9.7% tax burden in 2011, the fifth lowest of all cities. The tax burden becomes even lighter as someone moves up the income ladder. A family of three earning $150,000 had a tax burden of just 3.1%, lower than any other city. For a family of three making $75,000 to $150,000, the city has the second lowest property tax burden behind Birmingham, Alabama.

Cities with the Highest Tax Burdens

10. Baltimore, Md.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,703 (13th lowest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $17,134 (6th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 9.9% (10th highest)

Baltimore has one of the highest income tax burdens of all the cities. In 2011, a family of three earning $50,000 would have paid $1,818 in income taxes, the ninth highest burden of all largest cities. For a family earning $100,000, the income tax burden was $5,511, the sixth highest. In addition, property taxes in the city were higher than most other largest cities, especially for higher-income families. It is also the largest property tax in the state. According to The Baltimore Sun, mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has expressed interest in lowering the city’s property tax rate to make it more competitive.

9. Detroit, Mich.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,270 (17th highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $15,522 (10th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 18.2% (the highest)

Detroit residents have among the highest tax burdens of all cities, but it is especially high for those with higher incomes. For families of three earning over $75,000, Detroit’s income taxes are among the top five of all the cities reviewed. The high tax burden on its residents has not translated into a healthy economy — Detroit’s finances are still in havoc. A state review found that the city has more than $14 billion in long-term liabilities and a budget deficit of at least $327 million annually. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will decide in the coming weeks whether to have the state intervene to help rebuild the city, with options including Chapter 9 bankruptcy on the table.

Also Read: Cities Where People Can’t Find Work

8. Los Angeles, Calif.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,425 ( highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $15,764 (9th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 11.3% (4th highest)

For all levels of income, Los Angeles has one of the highest property tax burdens on its residents among the largest cities. This is despite the city’s low effective property tax rate, which at $1.13 per $100 was one of the lowest for all cities. In 2011, Los Angeles had the highest assumed home value — used to calculate property tax payments — for each income bracket between $50,000 and $150,000. In addition to high property taxes, Angelenos also pay one of the highest total sales tax rates, at 8.75 cents on the dollar — more than two cents over the average city sales tax.

7. New York, N.Y.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,273 (16th highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $18,8111 (3rd highest)
> Unemployment rate: 8.8% (16th highest)

Among the cities measured, only New York City had graduated state and local income tax rates as of 2011. This means that the income tax rate rises as individuals’ earnings rise. In 2011, a family of three with two working parents earning $25,000 a year paid no income tax while a similar family earning $150,000 per year paid $12,464 in income tax — more than such a family would pay in any other city reviewed. No other city measured had a higher city-level sales tax than New York City’s 4.5%. This contributes to an effective sales tax rate of 8.875%, among the nation’s highest. According to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, in the fiscal year 2009-2010 New York City residents paid about $4.1 billion more in taxes than they received in government services.

6. Newark, N.J.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,999 (25th highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $16,032 (8th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 7.6% (23rd highest)

Newark residents can expect to pay a substantial share of their income to the government. Not all taxes are high in the city. Newark residents do not pay state or local income tax. Newark also has either the lowest or second lowest auto taxes of all cities measured, depending on a family’s income, and is also in the lower half of cities in terms of sales tax. However, Newark residents are hammered through property taxes — for families making more than $50,000 a year in 2011, property taxes were the second-highest among all cities measured.

5. Chicago, Ill.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,898 (4th highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $14,814 (14th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 9.7% (12th highest)

As of 2011, Chicago residents paid the highest effective sales tax rate of any city studied, at 9.75%. This increased the tax burden for lower-income earners, who paid a higher percentage of their income in sales taxes. Partly because of the city’s sales tax, a Chicago family earning $25,000 had a state and local tax burden equal to 15.6% of their income, while for a family earning $150,000, the figure was just 9.9%. Poorer residents are also burdened by the state-level flat income tax, which was raised from 3% to 5% in 2011.

Also Read: The States with the Most Homes in Foreclosure

4. Louisville, Ky.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,594 (8th highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $18,008 (5th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 7.9% (20th highest)

For a family of three that earned between $100,000 and $150,000, the average tax burden was 12%, higher than all but four other cities reviewed. The tax burden for people earning $25,000 to $50,000, although higher at 14.4%, is less of jump compared to most of the cities on this list. The 14.4% tax burden is the eighth highest out of all the cities measured. The biggest tax burden comes from income taxes. Depending on a family’s income, Louisville has either the second or third highest income tax among all cities measured.

3. Columbus, Ohio
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,369 (12th highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $18,241 (4th highest)
> Unemployment rate: 6.5% (23rd lowest)

Columbus residents are hit by the one-two punch of sales and property taxes that are higher than most. For instance, a family of three earning $50,000 in 2011 had to fork over $2,116.50 in income taxes and had to pay an additional $4,025 in property taxes. The income tax burden was higher than all but four cities, while the property tax burden was higher than all but five. Not all is bad, though. The sales tax and auto tax burden across all incomes were in the lower half of cities reviewed.

2. Philadelphia, Penn.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $4,513 (2nd highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $19,951 (2nd highest)
> Unemployment rate: 10.6% (7th highest)

A family of three that made just $25,000 a year in 2011 would have been stuck with a tax burden worth a whopping 18.1% of their income, tied with Birmingham, Ala., for the highest of all cities. Taxes did ease a bit as one moved down the sliding scale, although burdens were still near the top. For a family of three making $150,000 in 2011, the total tax burden was 13.3% — the second highest of all cities measured by the report.

1. Bridgeport, Conn.
> Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,708 (5th highest)
> Taxes for family earning $150,000: $23,501 (the highest)
> Unemployment rate: 11.7% (3rd highest)

No city taxed its residents more heavily than Bridgeport in 2011. In 2011, its effective residential property tax rate was $2.77 per every $100 in assessed home value — the sixth highest in the nation. Citizens are also paying more in property taxes, due to the high value of homes in the area, at over $434,000 for a person earning $150,000 a year. In defending his city to the Connecticut Post, Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch noted the average resident paid only $6,431 in taxes a year and notes that the city’s residents are “of modest means” and that residents’ tax rates are also affected by the close proximity of far wealthier cities. The median household income in Bridgeport is just $35,379, more than $15,000 below than the national median.

Stop eating Tuna …. Unless you like flirting with death

Fukushima. Such old news. Yesterday’s news. From a place far away. Fuckem. Everything is under control. We have enough shit to worry about. Why am I such a doom and gloomer?

Research I’ve done and found today. I think Fukushima is still a problem. Judge for yourself.

We often/usually buy in large quantities when items are on sale. So, a few months ago we bought 20+ cans of tuna for about a buck a can. I have since, even before this latest finding, thrown them all away. I won’t be eating tuna again in my lifetime. Seriously. Or, sushi. And I’ll be checking if the rice I buy comes from Japan, and if so, no sale.

You might consider likewise. That’s why I’m posting this.

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1) — 38,000 children under the age of 18 in the Fukushima prefecture have been examined.

2) — An unheard of 36% have thyroid nodules, cysts and nodules ………. doctors say thyroid nodules in children are as rare as hen’s teeth … doctors there state they have never seen thyroid lesions such as they are seeing

3) — theta pollen in Fukushima was so full of cesium it was almost unbelievable ….. and it’s everywhere … a month ago some dust was found in a 10th floor apartment in Tokyo …. dangerous levels of cesium 137, 134, uranium 238, and 235 …….. did I mention 10th floor?

4) — the food is radioactive …. much of the rice grown in Japan is grown in the Fukushima prefectures ….. it is being harvested with cesium ………. It is being mixed with non-radioactive rice

6) — spinach and mushrooms are full of cesium and other isotopes ……… but they’re only just measuring cesium

7) — 63% of the fish caught within 60 miles from Fukushima have cesium in them

8) — tuna caught off the coast of California is carrying cesium from Fukushima

9) — Yes, the cesium is quite dilute ……. but it doesn’t fucking matter ……… if you eat tuna with some cesium in it, the cesium goes to one of your muscles or into your brain. …… “cesium is the potassium analogue, so it’s like potassium and our bodily cells are reaching for potassium” ….. so you ONLY NEED A SINGLE MUTATION IN A SINGLE CELL induced by a very small amount of cesium to induce cancer ……… the incubation time is around 5 -17 years ……. so one day you get these terrible headaches and the doctor says you have a cerebral tumor …. and you won’t remember the tuna you ate 15 years ago.

10) — building 4 is still very delicate and damaged ….. on top of it is a cooling pool of spent fuel rods over a hundred tons ……. if there’s an earthquake greater than 7.0 Building Four will collapse … down will come the cooling pool ……… the zirconium clouding of the fuel rods will burst into flames reacting with air at very high temperatures ……… TEN TIMES more cesium and radioactivity will be released from that cooling pool than from Chernobyl …. Tokyo will be toast ….. a good portion of the northern hemisphere will be contaminated.

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CONCLUSION: Everything is A-OK!!! The EPA has stopped testing your air and food. “Trust us, you’ll be fine.”

No thanks! NEVER trust our government …. in ANYTHING. Take matters in your own hands. Do your own research. And act accordingly.