^^^ Constitutionalism and limited government is XXXTREEEME! 10 Years Later, The Real Story Behind Columbine
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 A Better Grade of Sand The economy took a big dip in March after a relatively good report for February. Retail sales dropped sharply reflecting month after month of crippling job losses. Wholesale prices took an unexpected downturn which raises fears that deflation is taking a grip on the economy. President Obama gave a long speech on the economy today that demonstrated he's been reading his briefing book but not that he really understands it. He is focused on the bringing the banks back on line because he thinks that banks create a "multiplier effect". He's been told that "a dollar of capital in a bank creates eight or ten dollars in new lending". That's true Mr. President, but only because the Federal Reserve will in turn loan banks ten to one new money that they, the Federal Reserve, created out of thin air. That's how we got in this mess. Sad to say he doesn't get it or he is not sharing with us the knowledge if he has it. He did say that having 40% of corporate profits coming from trading derivatives and other instruments of no real value was no way to run an economy. He's got that right, but he doesn't seem to realize that corporations began doing this with the blessing of the Federal Reserve as well as the Bush Adm. They did this in order to postpone the current Great Depression. For the past year; the Fed along with Congress and Bush and now Obama have been propping everything up by creating trillions and trillions of new money. This is unsustainable and Obama is giving no indication that he understands what to do about this. Obama threw in the Bible verse about not building your house on a pile of sand. That's great but he isn't offering any actual rocks. He wants to fix the banking system, rather the Treasury Dept. should charter new banks and the Justice Dept. round up people who ran the old ones. He wants more education so that we can compete better in the World, ask Ireland how that works. They have the most educated work force in Europe and have no jobs, all the corporations abandoned Ireland for cheaper labor. He wants health care reform, that's great and it would help the economy some, but you can't build an economy on taking each other's temperature. He says we have to save more and borrow less; people have been borrowing because it was Fed policy to have easy credit to offset low wages. Obama says we need to consume less and export more; but that's what really poor third world countries do instead of having their own industrial base and they have no middle class. With Wall Street discredited and no plans to increase consumer spending, that means business will have to drive the recovery but with no export market and no domestic market how exactly will that work? We're just moving up to a better grade of sand.
Legalize it, bitches! [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_l7WkFlr8c]YouTube - Ron Paul on CNN American Morning 4/15/09: Legalizing Marijuana[/ame]
To be honest, I'm pretty offended. Only your government could phrase the name of a bill like that and still have SOME citizens buy that bullshit.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 A chicken in every pot, if you raise it in the backyard The low income tax protesters must realize how they don't pay that much tax but they have been brain washed into thinking that they are low income because the rich are being overtaxed. If corporations didn't have to pay any taxes their wages would be higher. The reality of course is that few corporations pay any taxes and some even make a net gain from the public trough. They also believe that someday they might be rich, not grasping the reality that they have half the chance of upward mobility of somebody born in socialist Sweden. They also believe that the rich would invest more if they didn't have to pay any taxes. The really rich only pay an average of 17% income tax and no fica taxes. These morons are paying more on every dollar than the super rich now. They should be protesting, they have every right to be angry. The protesters just don't have a clue who they really are. They think that they are the upper class that is being repressed by the liberals in government. If the liberals would just go away then they would have the income they deserve. And now the bad news: March economic numbers indicate that Deflation is here with the first year to year drop in consumer prices since 1955. Some of this can be attributed to cheaper gas but this has not inspired Americans to drive more and they aren't spending the gas savings with retail sales dropping sharply. Manufacturing output fell in the first quarter by 20% with the factories that still remain in the US now operating at 69% of capacity. This is the worst number since the government started keeping track in the sixties. Increasingly companies are making no secret of the fact that they have no plans to bring back the jobs they are eliminating in the US. The Federal Reserve Beige Book Report tried valiantly to paint a rosy picture of things but the best they could come up with was that home sales were up slightly in a few cities. Foreclosures are picking up dramatically with the end of the moratoriums that some of the large mortgage companies had in place. Farm equipment manufactures that were a bright spot in the economy are laying off large numbers of workers with the flattening out of farm prices. Exports of farm equipment are drying up as the major US companies bring large factories on line in Brazil. Brazil is putting millions of acres into production that will replace US farm exports to China. A massive highway and bridge building project across Peru will allow Brazil to move a truck load of grain to Pacific ports every 17 seconds. The only thing that everybody agrees on is that things will get worse before they get better, but nobody is really talking about the things that must be done to make things better. I saw an ad for a prefab chicken coop that you can put up in your back yard. It's disguised to look like a cluster of garbage cans so that the neighbors won't notice that you have something to eat.
^^^^^ They use CPI when oil goes down and the Core Rate when oil goes up... why do you think that is? Core Rate inflation (excluding oil & food) has risen 1.2% in the past 12 months, .2% for the last 3 months. But otherwise yes, most of the morons at those tea parties don't understand the argument that founded the movement.
They will never understand unless they smoke pot and do acid! Seriously though, no matter what if they think it sounds good, they will follow it. Simply a sheeple.
Mugabe Abandons Worthless Currency Note: Mugabe studied economics at the London School of Economics, just as Paul Volcker and Paul Krugman did.
April 15, 2009 1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today. The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels. "The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago," Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine "Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well." Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress. In another village nearby, Beturam Sahu, who owned two acres of land was among those who committed suicide. His crop is yet to be harvested, but his son Lakhnu left to take up a job as a manual labourer. His family must repay a debt of £400 and the crop this year is poor. "The crop is so bad this year that we will not even be able to save any seeds," said Lakhnu's friend Santosh. "There were no rains at all." "That's why Lakhnu left even before harvesting the crop. There is nothing left to harvest in his land this time. He is worried how he will repay these loans." Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: "Farmers' suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death." Mr Prakash added that the government ought to take up the cause of the poor farmers just as they fight for a strong economy. "Development should be for all. The government blames us for being against development. Forest area is depleting and dams are constructed without proper planning. All this contributes to dipping water levels. Farmers should be taken into consideration when planning policies," he said. This article is from The Belfast Telegraph 1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India - Asia, World - The Independent
Exercise your 4th amendment rights??? This is what happens. Pastor got beat down/ 11 stitches + tazed mulitple times. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUzd7G875Hc&eurl]YouTube - Baptist pastor beaten + tazed by Border patrol - 11 stitches[/ame]
Thursday, April 16, 2009 Layoffs dipped last week but there is little comfort in this as the number is still at a level that seems good only compared to recent weeks. Worse still; the total number of unemployed continued to climb; setting an all time record. Foreclosure numbers have skyrocketed and we are yet to get into the big numbers as the ARM resets expected from the glut of really bad sub prime mortgages from two years ago start to kick in. Add to this the millions of people who have lost their middle class jobs and are coming to terms with having burned through their savings and have no real prospect for a decent paying job. President Obama should have a good understanding about the cause of this mess; as a community organizer before going to law school he worked to find jobs and retraining for people laid off because of the outsourcing of the US steel industry. Most of those people he went to bat for have been retrained four or five times since then as job after job is sent offshore or they have settled for a service sector job at a fraction of their former wages. Their prospects for retirement gone, health care iffy at best, savings and pensions gone. If they managed to hang on to their homes they may now find them worth less than they owe on them. In short, the people whose plight inspired Obama to go to law school so that he could fight for them are much worse off now than they were then. This is because the outsourcing didn't stop with industries like steel the way the conservative Democrats and Republicans assured us it would. But President Obama has surrounded himself with economic advisors that still maintain "free trade" is ultimately good for American workers. Obama says he wants better trained workers; there would be more slots open in trade schools if workers weren't constantly being retrained for jobs that won't last as long as the training. The conservatives have always said America needs to be run like a business and that philosophy would fix everything. China is winning big time while we lose because they run their business like a country. Business in China serves the nation and more or less serves the people. In America the nation and its people serve business and we are being consumed by it. Obama needs to find advisors who have figured this out while there is still time. Prairie2 News
man.. that's scary shit! i guess this took place near Yuma which is considered a "Constitution Free Zone" about 2/3 of the US population lives within that 100 mile border
Volkswagen introduces world’s most economical car While we don’t have a great deal of information available at this stage, we do know that Volkswagen is set to reveal the world’s most economical non-hybrid car to shareholders attending the 42nd annual general meeting of Volkswagen AG in Hamburg.
April 17, 2009 Sarkozy Snipes at 'dim' Spanish PM and 'weak' Barack Obama (Jason Reed/Reuters) Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama Charles Bremner in Paris The US President is weak, the Spanish leader is dim, the German Chancellor is clinging on to France's coat-tails and the head of the European Commission is irrelevant. That, at any rate, is the world according to President Sarkozy, who has spent the week airing his unvarnished opinions of Barack Obama and an array of international politicians - abruptly ending France's honeymoon with the US and needling Washington on several strategic issues. In the latest in a stream of accounts from the Élysée Palace, Mr Sarkozy was quoted yesterday as telling an all-party group of MPs that Mr Obama was inexperienced and indecisive. “Obama has a subtle mind, very clever and very charismatic,†the French President said. “But he was elected two months ago and had never run a ministry. There are a certain number of things on which he has no position. And he is not always up to standard on decision-making and efficiency.†The US President had underperformed on climate change when they met, Mr Sarkozy said, according to an account of the MP's session in the newspaper Libération. “I told him, ‘I don't think that you have quite understood what we are doing on carbon dioxide'.†Mr Sarkozy was apparently irked by media reports that Mr Obama had saved the day in London by persuading President Hu of China to reach a compromise with France over tax havens. Mr Sarkozy's version is that he shamed Mr Obama into action, telling him: “You were elected to build a new world. Tax havens are the embodiment of the old world.†Mr Sarkozy was also reported yesterday to have cracked a dubious joke about Europe's “Obamamaniaâ€. According to L'Express news magazine, he mentioned Mr Obama's planned visit to Normandy for the D-day anniversary in June, saying: “I am going to ask him to walk on the Channel, and he'll do it.†This jaundiced view of Mr Obama may have been prompted by the US President's heartfelt welcome at the G20, Nato and EU summits. “The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naivety and the herd mentality of the media,†wrote Claude Askolovitch, a commentator close to the Élysée Palace. The end of the short-lived Franco-American honeymoon also reflects a decision to swing France back towards its traditional role as counterbalance to US power, a shift that began with tension over the London economic summit. In the Élysée account Mr Sarkozy played the pivotal role as upholder of principle in the face of ineffectual US leadership. He had telephoned Gordon Brown on the eve of the summit and threatened not to turn up at all if the leaders refused his demand to name and shame tax havens, according to the leaks. Although Mr Sarkozy has taken France back into full membership of the Nato alliance, over the past week he has picked various quarrels with Washington, demanding, for instance, a separate headquarters for a new European defence force - an idea opposed by Britain and the US. He has criticised Mr Obama for calling for Turkish membership of the EU. Mr Sarkozy also turned his guns on his fellow Europeans. He told the assembled MPs that Spain's Socialist Government had decided to stop advertising on state television - a year after he did the same for France. “You know who they cited as the example?†Mr Sarkozy asked. When a Socialist MP interjected: “You can say a lot of things about [José Luis Rodriguez] Zapatero . . .†Mr Sarkozy retorted: “Perhaps he's not very clever - but I know people who were very clever and who did not make the second round of the presidential election.†That was a reference to Lionel Jospin, the former French Socialist leader who was knocked out by Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 race. Mr Sarkozy said that Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had come round to his side on the economy at the G20 summit only when she realised that the German economy was in trouble. She “did not have any other choice but to rally to my positionâ€, he said. José Manuel Barroso, the Portuguese President of the Commission, was described as “totally absent†from the G20 discussions. He did, however, go on to extol the virtues of his favourite fellow leader. “The important thing in democracy is to be re-elected. Look at Berlusconi. He has been re-elected three times,†Mr Sarkozy said. He also seems to have adopted Mr Berlusconi's idea of tact. The Italian Prime Minister, who referred to Mr Obama as “suntannedâ€, used the same adjective while touring a makeshift school in L'Aquila yesterday. He said to a black priest: “My compliments, you are very suntanned,†and told a black boy: “I wish I had as much time to lie in the sun as you do.†Sarkozy snipes at 'dim' Spanish PM and 'weak' Barack Obama - Times Online [Ha ha ha... Ya gotta love those French folks. Well I guess it's back to condoms for those two.]