Stating the Obvious

Capitalism Hits the Fan

Interesting Quotations

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the carrier of the plague..."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero 106 BC - 43 BC

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith - from spiritual faith to great courage - from courage to liberty - from liberty to abundance - from abundance to selfishness - from selfishness to complacency- from complacency to apathy- from apathy to dependency - from dependency back to bondage.

-- Alexander Fraser Tytler (1742-1813)

Original Link

Huh?!?

Could this be true?  The Russian news source 'Pravada' excoriating Marxism and extolling the value of individuality and personal freedom?

Read the article for yourself.

The interesting thesis of the article is that the American people are accepting the Marxist onslaught because they are lazy, stupid and ignorant--unlike the Russians who fought back and eventually booted out the Communist bastards.  Certainly, an incendary thesis.  But who can dispute the following points (and I quote from the article and follow each up):

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

Question dear "Citizen": How much is the U.S. taxpayer on the hook for given all of the recent banker/government measures?

Answer: If you think it is in the billions you are a sheeple (i.e., someone who does not take the duty of citizenship seriously).  Who said, "We gave you a Republic, if you can keep it"?  It's worse than this.  Most people think that politically the United States of America is a 'Democracy'.  It is decidedly not and this is was a major sticking point in the Constitutional Convention.  But who cares?...  A 'Democracy' just means you can vote right?  Wrong.

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

Question: If you think this is false can you please enumerate the rights that are supposedly guaranteed by the United States Constitution?  Can you explain the difference between a right and a privilege?  What is the basic substance of Plato's 'Republic'?  What is John Stuart Mill's argument for freedom of speech in 'On Liberty'?  Why weren't you taught this?  Was it better to memorize useless trivia and be judged accordingly?

One's mind is only as good as its ammo.  Put differently, knowledge is indeed power.  The power to understand oneself and one's environment.  Bereft of that others can construct your reality.  Have fun in DisneyLand (TM)!

"[T]heir faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers..."

So you go to Church and make your payments in the open and pray together.  Didn't Christ say something about giving alms in such a way that the "right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing?"  Hmmm... and what did he say about praying???  

None of this hypocrisy would exist if people actually read the "Good Book" and used it to lead their lives--but that would involve serious work.

Anyway, the article is a good one and ought to spur self-aware Americans to think long and hard about these issues if they have not.

Did you hear this in the mass-media?:

"Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride."

Nuff said.

Financial Times: If China Loses Faith, the Dollar Will Collapse

If China Loses Faith, the Dollar will Collapse

Excerpt:

The global environment is extremely negative for savers. The prices of property and shares are not yet good value and may decline further. Interest rates are near zero. The Fed is printing money, which will inflate away the value of dollar holdings. Other currencies are not safe havens either. As the Fed expands the money supply, it puts pressure on other currencies to appreciate. This will force other central banks to expand their own money supplies to depress their currencies. Hence major currencies may take turns devaluing. The end result is inflation and negative real interest rates everywhere. Central banks are punishing savers to redeem the sins of debtors and speculators. Unfortunately, ethnic Chinese are the biggest savers. Diluting Chinese savings to bail out failing US banks and bankrupt households will eventually destroy the dollar's status. Ethnic Chinese demand for it is waning already. China's bulging foreign exchange reserves reflect the lack of private demand for the US currency.

China Finally Does the Obvious

China has 'canceled US credit card'
It was just a matter of time. How could the world's largest industrial base keep extending credit to a country with an economy based on consumer spending predicated on debt-expansion and an artificially propped up currency by the end of a gun?

All the stars are aligned. Now it is just a matter of time for the chickens to come home to roost.

Kirk said he was the first member of Congress to tour the Bureau of Public Debt, which trades bonds, and was alarmed at how much debt was being bought by the US Federal Reserve due to absence of foreign investors.

"There will come a time where the lack of Chinese participation may have a significant impact," Kirk said.

"We should track that, because up until last month they were the number one provider of currency to the United States and now they're gone."

By the Balls...

401(k)s Hit by Withdrawal Freezes: Wall Street Journal

Out of work? At least you can liquidate your 401(k) to survive for a year or so, right? Yeah, you have to pay a 10% penalty to the government. And you have to pay taxes based on this income plus everything that you may have made up until now this year. But at least you can rest assured that this money that had voluntarily... and sometimes involuntarily (i.e., mandatory deduction) been taken from your paycheck is yours, right?

Guess again.

The American public has lost its balls. Here is a quote from a man in exactly the situation I mentioned from this article who has been informed that he cannot withdraw his cash:

"I hate to be whiny, but it is my money," Mr. Dursky said.

Whiny? Why not furious?

And it gets worse. The money isn't there because it was gambled.

So while the tax payer is being fleeced to the tune of trillions of dollars and generations of debt for no good reason, a hard working person trying to get a mere 12K out of her retirement account is left hanging.

Some investors have lost hope of recovering their money. Judith Sterner, a 69-year-old part-time nurse, had more than $12,000 in the fund when she tried to transfer that balance to a money market last fall. But her transfer was denied, and her stake has since declined to less than $10,000.

"This $12,000 represents a year of my retirement money that I don't have," said Ms. Sterner, of Morton Grove, Ill.

It is amazing that a population can get fleeced wholesale like this but they resort en-mass to wishful thinking, a defunct nationalism, cultural myths, etc. in order not to see the truth that is right around the corner.