Tag: Republicans

Three Card Monte

Guest Post by George Patton

I think everyone is familiar with the famous confidence trick that is called three card monte (also known as “find the lady”, the “three card trick” and the “shell game”). It’s been around since the 15th century and is a classic confidence game around the world.

For those who aren’t familiar with the game (and it’s variations with a cup and marble, or shells, the three-card Monte game itself is very simple.

The game works because the mark is concentrating on what the mark wants them to see, while the con is in reality doing what they really want.

We’re being played like marks right now over the shootings in Florida. Stop and think about that for a second before you read on. Think about all the discussions out there right now. Guns, muslims, gays, immigration, ISIS, you name it. And it’s all a game.

Don’t feel bad though, because our opponents in the liberal camp are being played too.

Neither side in the so-called war on guns really wants to accomplish their stated goals. It’s a con game to keep us distracted from what they are really doing.

The Republicans have had the White House and the Senate and the House and they have never passed real pro-gun legislation. Bought a full auto lately? Heck, have you priced a full auto lately?

The Democrats as recently as a few years ago had Obama and the Senate and the House. They didn’t pass gun confiscation legislation either.

It’s a game to keep us distracted. The Republicans get to scare us with threats of Democrat gun control and we send them money and vote them into office. For the Democrats, it keeps their rabid base energized to send the Democrats lots of money and get them voted into office.

Heck, even the famous NRA would go broke if real gun rights legislation ever passed into law.

So, how does this lead us to the shootings in Florida?

When things like this happen, I always implore the motto, “follow the money”. Who wins with a shooting of this type?

Obviously, the two political parties do. It’s unlikely that any real legislation will be introduced between now and the election. Republicans want to be reelected. Of course Republicans and the NRA are now pushing a “real” bill to keep guns out of the hands of the terrorists. The Democrats will whine and cry that it isn’t enough but will go along. Of course once it’s passed and folks want to exercise due process over being on the terrorist watch list, we’ll all be told that national security trumps any legal protections.

And both sides will continue their fund raising. Republicans to get into office to “fix the bill” (kind of like repealing Obamacare) and Democrats to keep control in place.

There will be much posturing by both parties regarding the shootings.

The Democrats will cry for more legislation, but of course they will beg for money and tell folks that they just need more of them to be voted into office.

The Republicans will cry for more members and reelection so that they can protect gun rights.

This is the con.

The real objective and what will happen while we’re concentrating on the guns is three fold.

First they will demand (and pass and fund) a larger surveillance state to combat terrorism at its root.

Second they will demand (and pass and fund) laws to root out domestic terrorists (sold in the law as going after foreigners that live here in America, but in reality use against Americans).

Finally, increase funding to “attack” ISIS overseas. This may or may not include actual American soldiers, but it will certainly include major funding to the neo-con crowd for the actual “fight”.

Neo-cons from both parties will pass these bills with high numbers. Some of us might actually fall for the con. We’ll think we are making us safer. We’ll feel so happy that we got to “keep” our gun rights.

A common belief is that the con may let the mark win a couple of bets to suck them in, but this is virtually never true. In a true Monte scam, the mark will never win a single bet.

Like every mark in the three card monte game, we’re going to lose to our Republican and Democrat con men.


THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA – 2011

Written in September 2011 when I still believed the country could be saved. My passion has dimmed considerably over the last five years. Libertarianism does not work during a Fourth Turning. Maybe after the death and destruction wrought by those in control, people will come to their senses. And maybe not.

 

 

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Though the Federal Reserve policy harms the average American, it benefits those in a position to take advantage of the cycles in monetary policy. The main beneficiaries are those who receive access to artificially inflated money and/or credit before the inflationary effects of the policy impact the entire economy. Federal Reserve policies also benefit big spending politicians who use the inflated currency created by the Fed to hide the true costs of the welfare-warfare state.” – Ron Paul

Ernest Hemingway and Ron Paul never met. Ron Paul was completing medical school in 1961 when Hemingway committed suicide at his home in Idaho. I think they would have hit it off. I stumbled across the quote from Hemingway above. Those words could have come directly out of the mouth of Ron Paul. Both men spent their whole lives seeking the truth and presenting their ideas in a blunt straightforward manner. Hemingway is one of the most renowned writers in American history, with classics such as A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises to his credit.

He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. He constructed a new literary style characterized by lean, hard, sparse dialogue. He influenced literature and young authors for decades. As a teenager I was immediately drawn to his gritty realistic novels. There was no nonsense to his novels. They always involved man’s struggle against death and hardship. Most of his best work was done in the 1920s and 1930s, but he produced one of his finest works in 1951 towards the end of his life. Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for his story about an epic battle between an old man and a great marlin.

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MASS EXODUS FROM DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN PA.

Guest Post by Colin Deppen | [email protected]

‘Ditch and switch’: Trump may be behind mass Democratic party exodus in Pa., experts say

 Donald Trump

Nearly 46,000 Pennsylvania Democrats have gone Republican since the start of 2016, twice as many as have shifted the other way, as a wild primary fight continues to upend the business of politics as usual and challenge the status quo.

Needless to say, much of this movement is being attributed to the rise of Donald Trump and the so-called “Ditch and Switch” movement, which leans on lifelong Democrats to abandon the party, register Republican and help ensure Trump’s place in the November general election.

A website launched by two North Carolina sisters calling on Democrats to switch political parties and embrace Trump says, “For many years the Democratic Party has promoted agendas that most Americans did not agree with. Our country is deeply divided, and the silent majority has been bullied into silence by political posturing and underhanded agendas that favor the few while excluding the majority.”

Continue reading “MASS EXODUS FROM DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN PA.”

FOURTH TURNING: CRISIS OF TRUST – PART 3

In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I pondered possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy. In Part 3 I will focus on the economic channel of distress which is likely to be the primary driving force in the next phase of this Crisis.

There are very few people left on this earth who lived through the last Fourth Turning (1929 – 1946). The passing of older generations is a key component in the recurring cycles which propel the world through the seemingly chaotic episodes that paint portraits on the canvas of history. The current alignment of generations is driving this Crisis and will continue to give impetus to the future direction of this Fourth Turning. The alignment during a Fourth Turning is always the same: Old Artists (Silent) die, Prophets (Boomers) enter elderhood, Nomads (Gen X) enter midlife, Heroes (Millennials) enter young adulthood—and a new generation of child Artists (Gen Y) is born. This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival.

For those who understand the theory, there is the potential for impatience and anticipating dire circumstances before the mood of the country turns in response to the 2nd or 3rd perilous incident after the initial catalyst. Neil Howe anticipates the climax of this Crisis arriving in the 2022 to 2025 time frame, with the final resolution happening between 2026 and 2029. Any acceleration in these time frames would likely be catastrophic, bloody, and possibly tragic for mankind. As presented by Strauss and Howe, this Crisis will continue to be driven by the core elements of debt, civic decay, and global disorder, with the volcanic eruption traveling along channels of distress and aggravating problems ignored, neglected, or denied for the last thirty years. Let’s examine the channels of distress which will surely sway the direction of this Crisis.

Channels of Distress

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability –  problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

Continue reading “FOURTH TURNING: CRISIS OF TRUST – PART 3”

Obamacare’s Best Allies: The Courts and the Republicans

Guest Post by Ron Paul
undefinedBy ruling for the government in the case of King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court once again tied itself into rhetorical and logical knots to defend Obamacare. In King, the court disregarded Obamacare’s clear language regarding eligibility for federal health care subsides, on the grounds that enforcing the statute as written would cause havoc in the marketplace. The court found that Congress could not have intended this result and that the court needed to uphold Congress’s mythical intention and ignore Obamacare’s actual language.

While Obamacare may be safe from court challenges, its future is far from assured. As Obamacare forces more Americans to pay higher insurance premiums while causing others to lose their insurance or lose access to the physicians of their choice, opposition to Obamacare will grow. Additional Americans will turn against Obamacare as their employers reduce their hours, along with their paychecks, because of Obamacare’s mandates.

As dissatisfaction with Obamacare grows, there will be renewed efforts to pass a single-payer health care system. Single-payer advocates will point to Obamacare’s corporatist features as being responsible for its failures and claim the only solution is to get the private sector completely out of health care.

Continue reading “Obamacare’s Best Allies: The Courts and the Republicans”

Is It Really All Our Fault?

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

Is It Really All Our Fault?

As Middle America rises in rage against “fast track” and the mammoth Obamatrade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, The Wall Street Journal has located the source of the malady.

Last Monday’s lead editorial began:

“Here we go again. In the 1990s Pat Buchanan launched a civil war within the Republican Party on a platform targeting immigration and trade. Some claimed Pitchfork Pat was the future of the GOP, though in the end he mainly contributed to its presidential defeats.”

But, woe is us, “the GOP’s Buchanan wing is making a comeback.”

Now it is true that, while Nixon and Reagan won 49-state landslides and gave the GOP five victories in six presidential contests, the party has fallen upon hard times. Only once since 1988 has a Republican presidential nominee won the popular vote.

But was this caused by following this writer’s counsel? Or by the GOP listening to the deceptions of its Davos-Doha-Journal wing?

In the 1990s, this writer and allies in both parties fought NAFTA, GATT and MFN for China. The Journal and GOP establishment ran with Bill and Hillary and globalization. And the fruits of their victory?

Between 2000 and 2010, 55,000 U.S. factories closed and 5 million to 6 million manufacturing jobs disappeared. Columnist Terry Jeffrey writes that, since 1979, the year of maximum U.S. manufacturing employment, “The number of jobs in manufacturing has declined by 7,231,000 — or 37 percent.”

Does the Journal regard this gutting of the greatest industrial base the world had ever seen, which gave America an independence no republic had ever known, an acceptable price of its New World Order?

Continue reading “Is It Really All Our Fault?”

Obama’s Republican Collaborators

Obama’s Republican Collaborators

Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan

The GOP swept to victory in November by declaring that this imperial presidency must be brought to heel, and President Obama’s illicit seizures of Congressional power must end.

That was then. Now is now.

This week, Congress takes up legislation to cede His Majesty full authority to negotiate the largest trade deal in history, the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, and to surrender Congress’ right to amend any TPP that Obama might bring home.

Why the capitulation? Why would Republicans line up to kiss the royal ring? Is Middle America clamoring for “fast track”? Are blue-collar workers marching in the streets to have Congress grant “Trade Promotion Authority Now!” to Barack Obama?

No. Pressure for fast track is coming from two sources.

First, the editorial pages of papers like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post that truckle to the transnational corporations that provide the advertising revenue stream keeping them alive.

Second, Obama is relying on Congressional Republicans who, for all their bravado about defying his usurpations, know on which side their bread is buttered. It’s the Wall Street-K Street side.

Fast track is the GOP payoff to its bundlers and big donors.

And so, we must hear again all the tired talking points about free trade, soaring exports, jobs created, etc.

But what is reality of the last quarter century of “free trade”?

The economic independence that enabled us to stay out of two world wars — until we chose to go in and help win them swiftly — is history.

We are a dependent nation now. We rely on imports for the necessities of our national life and the vital components of our weapons systems. Hamilton must be turning over in his grave.

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THE REAL REASON THE AMERICAN DREAM IS UNRAVELING

Marketwatch posted an article this week titled Why the American Dream is Unraveling, in 4 charts. As usual, the MSM journalist and the liberal Harvard academic can create charts that reveal a huge problem, but they completely misdiagnose the causes and offer the typical wrong solution of taking more money from producers and handing it to the poor, with no strings attached. This has been the standard operating procedure since LBJ began his War on Poverty 50 years ago. Do these control freaks ever step back and assess how that war is going?

The poverty rate had plunged from 34% in 1950 to below 20% before LBJ ever declared war. It continued down to 15% just as the welfare programs began to be implemented. The percentage of people living in poverty hasn’t budged from the 15% range since the war began. This war has been just as successful as the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Any time a politician declares war on something, expect a huge price tag and more of the “problem” they are declaring war upon.

The Federal government runs over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Over 100 million Americans received benefits from at least one of these programs. Federal and state governments spent $943 billion in 2013 on these programs at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient (not including Social Security & Medicare). That is 27% of the total Federal budget. Welfare spending as a percentage of the Federal budget was less than 2% prior to the launch of the War on Poverty.

In the 50 years since this war started, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. In terms of LBJ’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has utterly failed. In fact, a large proportion of the population is now completely dependent upon government handouts, incapable of self-sufficiency, and enslaved in a welfare mentality that has destroyed their communities.

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A NATION OF BLITHERING IDIOTS

In separate polls, 75% of Americans think the sun goes around the earth, 85% don’t know who is buried in Grant’s tomb, 62% don’t know the name of the Vice President, and 98% plan on purchasing Kim Kardashian’s selfie book of ass shots.

If you asked the very same people who think we should send young men to the Middle East to fight a phantom terrorist organization that we created and armed to fight Assad what ISIS stands for, their expression would look like this:

 

These morons can’t even find Iraq on a map, and they want to send troops to die defending America from this existential threat of 20,000 Muslims with machetes and pickup trucks.

WTF do these people think troops on the ground will accomplish? Can you tell a friendly ragheaded Muslim from a terrorist ragheaded Muslim? Do idiot Americans think we won the Iraq or Afghanistan wars? It’s now been 13 years and Iraq and Afghanistan are more fucked up than ever. They are crawling with enemies now. There were no terrorists in Iraq in 2002. Now it has become a never ending quagmire of violence, terrorism, war and destruction. And it’s our fault.

And the blithering idiots in this country actually think we can defeat ISIS by sending more young men to die. And note which party truly loves war. I can’t wait for the next Republican President so we can go to war with even more countries.

According to a poll from YouGov, just over half of the American public would support a deployment of ground troops to fight ISIS. Democrats are divided on the question of ground troops while Republicans overwhelmingly support it. One of the primary reasons 53 percent of Americans support sending ground troops is that there are few alternatives.

Even though air strikes have stalled the momentum of ISIS militants in Iraq, less than one in four Americans believe the group can be defeated through air power alone. However, some good news has emerged from Northern Iraq over the past few days with news that government troops have forced ISIS combatants to flee Tikrit. A confident Iraqi military gaining momentum may well provide the American public with another alternative in the fight against ISIS.

Infographic: Most Americans Support Sending Ground Troops To Fight ISIS | Statista

You will find more statistics at Statista


FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART TWO

In Part One of this article I laid the groundwork of the Fourth Turning generational theory. I refuted President Obama’s claim that the shadow of crisis has passed. The shadow grows ever larger and will engulf the world in darkness in the coming years. The Crisis will be fueled by the worsening debt, civic decay and global disorder. I will address these issues in this article.

Debt, Civic Decay & Global Disorder

The core elements propelling this Crisis – debt, civic decay, and global disorder – were obvious over a decade before the financial meltdown catalyst sparked this ongoing two decade long Crisis. With the following issues unresolved, the shadow of this crisis has only grown larger and more ominous:

Debt

  • The national debt has risen by $7 trillion (64%) to $18.1 trillion since 2009 and continues to accelerate by $2.3 billion per day, on track to surpass $20 trillion before Obama leaves office and $25 trillion by 2019.

  • The national debt as a percentage of GDP is currently 103% (it would be 106% if the BEA hadn’t decided to positively “adjust” GDP up by $500 billion last year). It is on course to reach 120% by 2019. Rogoff and Reinhart have documented the fact countries that surpass 90% experience economic turmoil, decline, and ultimately currency collapse and debt default.
  • Despite the housing collapse and hundreds of billions in mortgage, credit card, auto, and corporate debt being written off, dumped on the backs of taxpayers and hidden on the Federal Reserve balance sheet, total credit market debt has reached a new high of $58 trillion.

  • Harvard professor Laurence Kotlikoff has been a lone voice telling the truth about the true level of unfunded promises hidden in the CBO numbers. The unfunded social welfare liabilities in excess of $200 trillion for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare are nothing but a massive future tax increase on younger and unborn generations. Kotlikoff explains what would be required to pay these obligations:

“To honor these obligations we could (a) raise all federal taxes, immediately and permanently, by 57%, (b) cut all federal spending, apart from interest on the debt, by 37%, immediately and permanently, or (c) do some combination of (a) and (b).”

The level of taxation and/or Federal Reserve created inflation necessary to honor these politician promises is too large to be considered feasible. Therefore, these promises, made to get corrupt political hacks elected to public office, will be defaulted upon.

Continue reading “FOURTH TURNING – THE SHADOW OF CRISIS HAS NOT PASSED – PART TWO”

RAND PAUL REINTRODUCES BILL TO AUDIT THE FED

  • The “Audit The Fed Bill” was passed in the House of Representatives with overwhelming bi-partisan support with a vote of 333-92 in September 2014.
  • Senator Rand Paul’s Bill has 30 cosponsors including Ted Cruz (R- Texas), Mark Rubio (R- Florida), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), and Richard Shelby (R-Alabama).
  • If passed it would likely be vetoed by President Obama who this week proposed a $4 trillion budget for fiscal year 2016.
  • Since the 2008 Financial Crisis solutions of Quantitative Easing and ZIRP, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has expanded to over $4 trillion.
  • The Federal Reserved paid an all time record high profit of $98.7 billion to the United States Treasury for fiscal year 2014.
  • The first ever partial audit of the Federal Reserve in 2011 by the Government Accountability Office revealed the Federal Reserve secretly gave $16 trillion to domestic and foreign banks between December 2007-June 2010:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

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