Straining at Gnats, Swallowing Camels

If you see me walking around cussing under my breath and arguing with myself, it’s likely you’ve caught me considering political matters. I’ve become so disgusted with the two major parties and their advocates, Democrats and Republicans, that the mere mention of the words leaves me spitting convulsively to cleanse the filth from my mouth. It’d take not one book, but a whole goddamned library to list the grievances I have with these folks.

There’s no way I can call all of this up at one time, but being year’s end I feel remiss if I didn’t bring up a few salient points. To begin, the Fed: (spit, shit, cough, hack, go through a few epileptic convulsions, spew green vomit). Now, where was I. Oh yeah the Fed. And it’s leader, Ben Bernanke, appointed by George W. Bush, a Republican (spit, shit, cough…) and reappointed by Barack Hussein Obama, a Democrat (cussing, convulsions, a few self inflicted blows to the head, green blood laced vomit with big chunks spewing out mouth and nostrils…)

In order to feel good about going out and working for a buck, a citizen must feel there’s some sort of fairness in the way people are compensated for their efforts. Like it or not, we get compensated with dollars. Since Nixon, dollars have not been as good as gold, but at least there was some sort of mirage in place to make us believe that they were limited in supply, created under oversight of our elected representatives and had real value. The mirage melted before our eyes this year, revealing a stark and ugly truth.

A corrupt class of elite assholes have stolen the wealth of citizens around the world for the last 30 years. The bastards became so unhappy over time that there was so little to steal that they created ways to steal future earnings as well. The Fed, major banks and politicians became their enablers. The fed makes dollars out of thin air and gives them to whomever they damn well please, Americans and otherwise, in unlimited supplies, if need be, to keep the people in charge, in charge. Unlimited means unlimited.

When details of these scams began to ooze through the protective barriers of bought public relations propaganda machines, collectively referred to as mainstream media, both Democrats and Republicans began pointing fingers at each other, like kids caught in the act of stealing from the candy jar, both hands full, mouths so loaded they can hardly get out the he did it firsts. And they have continued to lie ever since.

Around these parts, it’s all the nigger’s fault. You know: Barack HUSSEIN Obama, that foreign born Muslim terrorist when he’s not working at his second job—the Antichrist. While true that Obama has overseen the largest bailout of thieves and scumbags in the history of this nation, must I remind you that the Republican candidate in the last election, Mr. John McCain (alias War Hero), suspended his campaign and marched hand in hand with Mr. Obama to the White House to sign the first TARP bailout at the beckon and call of none other than George W. Bush, while over 90% of the American public voiced dissent on the issue.

After my favorite candidates all got shot down in the primaries (Gravel, Paul and Kucinich, in that order), I was left with this miserable choice. I am now ashamed to say I voted for Mr. Obama (cough, spit, hack…). I didn’t do so thinking he was a good guy, I just hoped that as the political machine swung back and forth a few of the lies and liars in the Bush administration would be exposed. You know what I’m talking about.

I am now painfully aware that Obama is one of them. I feel like the kid that watched two professional wrestlers cussing and beating hell out of each other, and after the fight, caught them eating and drinking at the same table, dividing the money of the suckers of which I was one.

Did Obama prosecute anyone for the lies we were told that sent us to war(s)? Did he legalize marijuana and expose the fraud we call the war on drugs? Do pharmaceutical and insurance companies continue to make money drugging the people for any and all ills while the world’s largest prison population continues to grow, most of which happens to be people caught looking for a bit of dope? Did he address the consequences of peak oil and climate change honestly and straightforwardly? Did those that committed the biggest heist in the history of the United States get exposed and go to jail?

No.

Instead we got a bullshit health bill that forces us to buy insurance from for-profit shysters, under penalty of law if we decline. We get cap and trade, where ass-holes like Al Gore get rich by taking money from producers of vital goods and give it to people that produce nothing—of which, by the way, Al Gore is a part—a massive pay-to-pollute scam. Wars of empire continue unabated; new wars appear on the horizon, should those of the previous administration lose their luster. Hillary travels the world lavishing anti-drug dollars on corrupt murderous third world leaders. We continue to march forward blindly, totally dependent on a just-in-time supply network of diesel powered trucks and equipment to produce and distribute food and vital goods, we’ve bailed out car manufacturers for which there will be an ever diminishing supply of fuel and the speed at which viable alternatives are being built staggers the imagination (not). We continue marching toward a global conflict of unseen proportions and scale with weapons that stagger the mind to be fought over a diminishing supply of natural resources. Rather than curtail invasions of privacy lost under the previous administration, the most instrusive and elaborate systems of spying on citizens ever devised continues to grow; civil liberties and rights continue to be sacrificed in the name of security.

I don’t have answers for all of this, but at least I can be bothered to ask the right questions.

What the in the fuck are we doing?

After watching big corporations and banks steal all the money, robbing pensioners, retirees, mortgage holders and working class citizens, the vocal left jumps up and demands what? More taxes on the citizens. Well that sets accounts straight….

And all these Rush Limbaughers tell me they have a solution. That we can expose the lies and set the record straight...

By electing Rick Perry or Sarah Palin in 2012.

Fuck me to tears.

There will be blood

Monday, December 27, 2010. It’s 3 AM and I’m awake, already having survived not one but two rounds of Christmas cheer in order to accommodate family members that had to work over the holidays. I’m not much into the lights, trees, decorations and festive song traditions demanded by most in this country, but it was nice to see and share a meal with all the various family members from my wife’s family and mine, four generations worth in both cases.

Talk inevitably turned to politics and economic matters at some point during our conversations. I try to avoid spending much time on the computer when family is around, but I did check my email and a couple of favorite sites briefly. While at the Agonist, I came across a couple of articles written by cyber-friends concerning additional taxation with which I vehemently disagree. Both my dad and my sons discussed this matter, considering we will probably soon be targets of such legislation.

While I dislike the fact that the rich are getting richer and the middle class disintegrates into the ranks of the poor, I think the medicine of additional taxation is exactly the opposite of what is required for a cure, because this punishes not only those that gain wealth by corrupt means, but also the best and the brightest among us: people that actually earn what they have and provide employment for and see to the needs of many others within their domain of influence. Believe it or not, those people do exist.

Among the arguments of those that favor more draconian taxation schemes is the implied notion that all recipients of family fortunes are undeserving winners of a genetic lottery of sorts, ignoring the possibility of family owned and operated businesses where children grow up not only as inheritors of wealth, but also as participants and creators of family wealth for which they have already been taxed on a yearly basis.

We must not ignore the hidden tax rarely mentioned in this debate, the hidden tax of inflation/currency debasement. If I don’t miss my guess, we might soon all be millionaires and subject to State confiscation of privately owned property and wealth. If I own a thousand acres of land bought for a million dollars and it becomes worth ten million dollars, I still own only a thousand acres of land. The land will produce no more than it ever did; it’s the decrease in the value of money that caused the reported gain in wealth.

Fair points are made about the debts that we as citizens owe this country. Entrepreneurs could not do what they do without the use of shared natural resources, the infrastructure tax money provides, and the myriad benefits we all share from social programs. A reasonable estate tax is to be expected and accepted, but some of the calls I hear go beyond reason, and like I mention above, punish all that have acquired wealth as though guilty of a crime.

An honest look at how most acquire great fortunes in the United States reveals a new form of inheritance, not passed directly from a father to son or daughter, but instead through nepotism of another sort, immune to any kind of taxation. I call it joining the club.

The club might be Yale University’s Skull and Bones Club, of which the two Bushes and John Kerry emerged, or the Harvard School of Law that brought us the likes of Barack Obama. Or then again, closer to home, it might be good old Texas A&M gig ‘em Aggies and their ilk from which the favors flow. Or perhaps it’s that open door to the hallowed Street of Wall and the Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanly, JP Morgan fountain from which you drink, all funded, no less, by tax money confiscated from the real producers of wealth in this country and the greater world at large.

These clubs are increasingly international in nature and if the truth is known, own and operate the governments of the world.

I find it troubling that members of such clubs are beyond immune to taxation—they have become the recipients of tax money instead—even after having foisted great crimes upon this nation. These motherfuckers couldn’t even wait until the money was collected to steal it; instead they designed ways to steal it in advance, bankrupting the whole country in the process.And now they cry for more.

Kiss the ring and enter the hall, young friend. Never want again….

I find it equally troubling that the true princes among us, benevolent, hard working natural born leaders, are left out of the decision making process, marginalized and predated upon by mediocre, small-minded, mean-spirited bureaucrats that move back and forth from government positions to the private sector, enabling their own and punishing the rest, thriving in an incestuous pool of vipers and vermin.

During the savings and loan scandal of the early 80’s a few financial fraudsters went to jail, but now, while financial crimes have grown by orders of magnitude, our “Justice Department” (talk about an oxymoron) can’t be bothered to investigate financial and war crimes (often one and the same), much less to prosecute those that committed these crimes.

Beyond that, our “Justice Department” persecutes those that try to expose these criminals and their crimes. A case in point: the recent persecution of Julian Assange from Wikileaks.

The State has become the enabler of criminal activity. Additional taxation supports a predatory class of parasites, our oppressors, not true public servants.

Put criminals in jail. Allow honest hard working men to prosper.

Excessive, unfair taxation is theft. Stealing, sanctioned by the State. Our Revolutionary War was fought over similar matters, and contrary to popular history, so was the war we call Civil.

Calls for 90% tax rates or even 55% inheritance taxes will not be well received in this country. Never have been, never will be.

A word of warning: I know my own. I suspect that if such tactics are employed, blood will flow over the matter.

Dismiss my words at your own peril. It could be your blood that flows and it could be mine.

Jesus wasn't a Christian

A few thoughts on this Christmas day:

Abraham wasn't a Jew.

Mohammed wasn't Muslim.

And Jesus wasn't a Christian.

Mish Shedlock thinks Kucinich end the fed bill lunacy

Fatally Flawed "End the Fed" Proposal from Rep. Kucinich would Allow Congress to Print Money into Existence for Essentially Anything

Once again, I'm not the economist here. But this gives rise to a few questions I have for Mish Shedlock.

Tell me why it's better that a privately owned, secret organization now has the power to create money out of thin air and give it to whomever they damn well choose, behind closed doors with no oversight, than it is to give that same power to a body of representatives, elected by the people, responsible for the people and accountable to the people, requiring also that this be done in broad daylight?

Kucinich's bill to abolish the fed

Via Karl Denninger's site I came across this bill submitted by Dennis Kunich.

NEED_ACT

Do what?

Being a touch ignorant when it comes to economic matters (there’s a difference between being ignorant and being stupid), I have a hard time relating to news like this:

Fed doles out $12.3 trillion dollars in backdoor bailouts.

Millions, I understand. Billions are a bit foreign. And trillions, well, that’s outerspace for me.

So to whittle this down to a bite that makes sense, I write out the numbers.

$12,300,000,000,000.

Let’s see. There’s around 300 million American citizens.

So, $12,300,000,000,000 divided by 300,000,000 equals...

$41,000.

$41,000?

$41,000 per man woman and child created out of thin fucking air and given to a handful of insolvent banks--who then used some of the money to pay off their taxpayer bailouts with grand fanfare and publicity so they could escape any sort of regulatory oversight and are now paying their executives the largest bonuses in history for a job well done while the rest of the country goes down the shitter.

Now that is something a country boy can understand.

No words suffice for the contempt I hold for these people.

None.

But if you meet me in person, you're liable to hear me give it a try.

You fucking worthless goddamned....

Wikileaks

Of late all the news about wikileaks focuses on Julian Assange, diverting attention from the real stories. The Guardian is publishing a day to day summary of leaks as they are made public. I find some of the leaks quite interesting.

Read it here.

Hat tip Chickadee.

We all gotta go

Monday morning, December 13, 2010

It’s freezing and still outside my door this morning. All the summer grasses are now dormant, the grass above ground scorched, bleached and kindle dry. We’ve had almost no rain for three months. Yesterday I felt something in the wind that reminded me of droughts past. We’re not yet there, but it feels like that’s where we’re headed.

We’ve begun feeding hay to the cows. Standing grass serves as filler for the cows’ bellies, but has little in the way of food value. The accepted practice in these parts is to force them to eat this grass and then to supplement them with protein, usually in the form of molasses based liquids or blocks. I don’t like the idea of buying feed, so I put out hay instead, hay that has been fertilized with manure from our chicken growing operation and therefore is quite high in protein.

On another ranch we’ve turned the cattle in an oat field, once again fertilized with manure. Despite the dry weather, this field has maintained a bit of moisture as it lies alongside the San Marcos River. In wet years, the river covers much of the ground and tends to drown out crops. In dry years that same land out-produces anything we have. These cows should thrive with the green grass the oats provide. I should have planted oats here at the Belmont farm as well, but didn’t.

So far, every time I declare pecan harvest over I find more native trees with nuts. More nuts means more work for a few men that would otherwise sit at home unemployed. The native trees are so tall and big, some with trunks up to six feet in diameter, that it’s difficult to shake the pecans loose even with a tractor mounted device made for that express purpose. Most of the pecans fall when the wind blows; feral hogs, deer, wild turkeys, squirrels, raccoons, possums, crows, armadillos and a perhaps a few more creatures that don’t come to mind at the moment clean them up in short order. I figure we do well to harvest about 20% of what the trees produce. But the wildlife needs to eat also.

Most of the plants in my winter garden have been scorched by freezes but continue to grow. Small cabbage heads have begun to form; broccoli should soon follow. Winter onions and shallots are ready to eat and spring onions are well established and growing. Turnips are producing greens, but the bulbs have not yet filled out. Beets, spinach and Swiss chard are growing but not yet big enough to eat either. I have a poor stand of carrots, but should have some come spring. I’ll probably try to replant the gaps. I tried growing English peas over the winter. The plants have survived, but the freezes seem to have sucked most of the life out of them. I doubt they’ll produce anything, unless they make it to spring. Nothing would have survived without irrigation this year. Not a single plant.

Outside of where I’ve planted and watered, the ground has been cleared and plowed but there’s little moisture in the soil. I should have applied chicken litter as soon as the summer harvest was over so I could get it worked into the ground but, once again, I didn’t. I suppose I could add some now, but the ground is so dry tilling it would raise clouds of dust. The truth is that the garden doesn’t get as much attention as perhaps it should.

Our new batch of yard chickens have figured out the routine of coming and going from the roost. It’s nice to see chickens get to be chickens. For whatever reason, there’s one chicken that runs around and can’t find her way back to the coop. I catch her and put her in every night when I go out to shut in the rest of the chickens. The first couple of nights she ran from me and squawked a bit when I caught her. Now she knows the routine, stops and allows me to pick her up. Who’d have thought that individual chickens have personalities? Leah sells eggs at a pottery studio she attends. Apparently demand has now exceeded supply as there’s a waiting list to get them. Real free range eggs are quite a bit better than anything you can buy from a store.

The goats continue to be a nuisance. Every time I open a door, including the door to my pickup, they jam in looking for a stray morsel of food. All but two are females, and therefore will be spared a date with the dinner table, but there’s one young male in the bunch. I sometimes feel sorry for the little guy, knowing what is likely to be his fate.

But in the end, we all gotta go. Sooner or later, we all gotta go.

I suppose it’s more important how we live than how long we live. And I also suppose it's better that when don't know when that final day will arrive.

More on the fed--crime of the century

The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve’s Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?

by David Degraw at Public Record. Hat tip to Raja.

So cocksuckers...

Here's some of the people you're protecting when you go after Assange and other truth tellers. Yeah, you Hillary. Barack. Mike Huckabee. And the rest (you know who you are).

A bunch of goddamned ass-raping pedophiles, for one.

WikiLeaks: Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys To Stoned Afghan Cops.

Protecting our freedoms, you say?

The shameful attacks on Julian Assange

The Atlantic

Excerpt:

Julian Assange and Pfc Bradley Manning have done a huge public service by making hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents available on Wikileaks -- and, predictably, no one is grateful. Manning, a former army intelligence analyst in Iraq, faces up to 52 years in prison. He is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military base in Quantico, Virginia, where he is not allowed to see his parents or other outside visitors.


Assange, the organizing brain of Wikileaks, enjoys a higher degree of freedom living as a hunted man in England under the close surveillance of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies -- but probably not for long. Not since President Richard Nixon directed his minions to go after Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan - "a vicious antiwar type," an enraged Nixon called him on the Watergate tapes -- has a working journalist and his source been subjected to the kind of official intimidation and threats that have been directed at Assange and Manning by high-ranking members of the Obama Administration.

read the rest at the link

PS.

And another:

Truth in Chains by Chris Floyd

Currency debasement

Sunday morning, December 5, 2010. The Sabbath came. I wrote nothing because I had nothing to say. Or perhaps I was too tired or lazy to force the issue.

Every week I expect to finish harvesting pecans; every week I find more we’ve missed. What we’re doing is more gleaning than full on harvesting, but to date we’ve managed to pick enough pecans to pay the laborers involved, not to make money, but to pay laborers. Pecans have not only maintained a higher price than in years past; the price has gone up as the season progressed. I sold small native pecans for $1.45 a pound in quantity, a previously unheard of number, to a broker that will sell them for more to someone else.

Corn, wheat, cotton, oil and other commodities have also gone up in price. I still sit on my corn, waiting for the local glut to be erased, and it should be soon, considering all the poultry and livestock feeding businesses in these parts consume more corn than we grow. About ten to one I’m guessing.

Fuel costs are going up; diesel has once again broached $3/gallon and gas is right there as well, but there seems to be a lag in the price of food compared to the cost of basic staples necessary to produce food. Expect higher prices, soon. Anything containing cotton fiber, and that’d include jeans, t-shirts, socks and underwear should, by necessity, go up in value soon as well.

Precious metals are becoming more expensive, almost by the day. Actual physical silver is getting hard to come by, both locally and over the Internet, or so I am told. I suspect physical gold is a bit easier to find as the price of gold at $1,400/ounce is already cost prohibitive for the average working class (or unemployed) American strapped with ass-loads of debt.

Some respected economists continue to say that deflation will rule the day. To be sure, the fed’s efforts seem designed to fight deflation. But last week, news began to appear about one of the fed’s backdoor lending programs (notice I said one, as if this isn’t the only one). Seems the fed lent $9,000,000,000,000 (nine trillion dollars, or if you prefer enough money to make 9 million totally broke Americans millionaires), through the overnight window at just above zero percent interest rates over the last couple of years.

Many say this does nothing but increase public debt and I’m sure it does. These also say bad debts remain hidden on balance sheets, and I am sure some do. But I am also sure that some bad debts are being cured, as representatives of the fed/big bank duo purchase delinquent loans with what amounts to money created with the wave of a wand, in essence repossessing valuable assets around the land with an unlimited supply of paper and digital notes.

These same deflationists say this trend can’t continue, that the rest of the world will not allow the fed to continue creating more dollars out of thin air.

My question: Who is going to stop them, and how?

Yeah, Ryan Bingham

I gave Ryan a rash of shit, anticipating that fame and success would have or had ruined the man. Apparently, Ryan hasn't forgotten his roots. First, an apology. Second, a blessing, for what it's worth.

Ryan Bingham helps homeless kids with show.

May you be blessed.