Clown Party USA

No joke as clown is Brazil's most voted congressman

2010-10-05T15:04:00.000-07:00

news.yahoo.com Reuters

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Voters the world over complain about having clowns for politicians, but Brazilians embraced the idea on Sunday by sending a real one to Congress with more votes than any other candidate.

Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, better known by his clown name Tiririca, received more than 1.3 million votes in Sao Paulo state in Brazil's presidential and congressional elections. That was more than double the votes of the second-placed candidate in Brazil's most populous state.

Tiririca caught the attention of disillusioned voters by asking for their support with the humorous slogan: "It can't get any worse" and a promise to do nothing more in Congress than report back to them on how politicians spend their time.

"What does a congressman do? The truth is I don't know, but vote for me and I'll tell you," the 45-year-old said in his campaign advertisements.

The clown, whose stage name means "grumpy," usually appears in public wearing a blond wig, a red hat and a garish outfit. He survived a last-minute attempt by public prosecutors to bar him from running because of evidence that he is illiterate.

His candidacy may not have been as spontaneous or innocent as it might appear.

Tiririca's well-financed campaign will help elect other politicians because under Brazil's election rules he can pass his substantial excess votes on to other candidates in his coalition, which includes the ruling Workers' Party.

(Reporting by Stuart Grudgings; Editing by Terry Wade)

Call for Civil Disobedience - A Worldwide Strike by the Oppressed Clowns.

2010-03-20T14:10:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Call for Civil Disobedience - a worldwide strike by the oppressed
The blogosphere and meeting places have been alight with anger, outrage, frustration. And questions about how to defeat our tyrannical 'masters' that make our lives a living hell.

Gandhi found non-compliance to be an effective tool to defeat his masters. And he was just one man.

Imagine what we could achieve, if we made a concerted effort, for a given number of days.

The fact is, the corporations want our money. The government needs our money. The 'mainstream' media are the mouthpieces of these monsters. And all of them are the cause of our misery.

If we starve them of it for a spell, how would that affect them?

We've lost the ability to think for ourselves because we've been programmed not to. If we cease to tune into their propaganda and instead, explore the alternative media, we see a different picture from the one they want us to see. We think for ourselves and join up the dots.

We have been little short of terrorised by their scare stories, their unwarranted use of and threat of force, their fines, their toxic products, their lies - to do their dirty bidding. They enrich themselves at our expense. Every time.

The Greeks and the Icelanders have woken up and taken action. The tyranny we face is on a par with theirs, if not greater, and yet we do bugger all about it. Our MPs don't give a jot - they're not listening to us. They're listening to their party whips, as they eye that juicy job within their grasp if they ignore us. So they do.

So let's learn from the Greeks, the Icelanders, Gandhi - and make our 'strike' international. After all, the entire civilised world is facing tyranny simultaneously.

And as Old Holborn says, we outnumber them. They cannot afford non-compliance on such a massive scale. Success frequently starts from small beginnings, as American patriots will tell you. As Gandhi demonstrated.

You have to wonder why our police are becoming militarised - all over the world - why the UN frequently deploys its 'peace-keeping' troops. Yes, troops - against civilians. Foreign troops who care nothing for those civilians - they're "just following orders". A government should never do that to its people. That is tyranny, as the Chinese knew only too well. They were expendable. Mere ants to be crushed underfoot.

Gandhi didn't set out to be a leader; he set out to make a point. He was earnest and determined and he got attention. People chose to follow his lead because he led from the front.

That is what our 'masters' fear. That is why they discourage us from congregating. That is why they attempt to set us against each other.

So we must do the opposite of what they want. Civilly. Lawfully. United.

What am I suggesting, then?

Karen Quinn-Tostado has a plan - and I hope we can gather enough support around the world to follow her lead and act simultaneously. She has the answer. We send them all her aptly put message (somewhat Anglicised and embellished, here):

We show them that they can't control us for four days. We're going to do what we want, we're going to think what we want and we're going to think about what's really important.

We've forgotten that all we need is clean air, clean water, healthy food, self-sufficient communities - and integrity. We don't need the government for those things.

"We the people", are not responsible for repayment of speculative banking scams. We will not allow our children to be used as collateral for foreign debt.

Our constitution is ignored, our rights are violated, we are taxed without representation. As long as we go about our lives as usual, they win and we pay.

We the people say NO MORE.

Here's what we do from 15th April to 18th April:

1) No work, no school. Our future depends on restoring our rights. Plan ahead, ask for time off, use holiday days or whatever it takes. Get school assignments for your children, who will then be able to learn about our rights [Ed: with the help of You've been Cromwelled, Old Holborn, Captain Ranty, Lawful Rebellion, and many others (let's have your suggestions)]. If you feel you must go to work, then go! Participate in the other steps. Do what you can! Learn about our true rights.

The British Constitution Group

It's a money game - they want ours. Time to change the rules.

2) No shopping - don't buy. Buy nothing from large corporations, fast food places, online stores, etc. Again, plan ahead for medications, petrol/diesel and food. If you have to shop, then go to local grocers and small family shops! If everyone keeps his money for 4 consecutive days, global bankers will notice.

3) Don't comply, take your £££s and savings out of large, corporate banks, leaving only what you need to cover monthly bills. Work at getting off the grid and forming co-ops within communities. We need each other and it will be our networking energy, as one, which will ensure success.

4) Ask Why. This is essential. Why are we allowing our constitution to be ignored? Why do our children have to sacrifice for banking scams? Why are we supporting policies that don't support us?

Then call your MPs and let them know you're participating in this strike and ask questions you feel are important. Then they will notice.

Imagine if citizens around the world joined Karen Quinn-Tostado's strike. Every one of us can dream that big when we remember that we've all been scammed and lied to by a criminal, dominant minority, who set us against each other, in war, in setting communities, races and sexes against each other, in neighbourhood spying, in so many ways.

We citizens should not be at war with each other. We should be at war with the corporate plunderers, the despots who believe they lead us, and the craven media who hide the truth from us and brainwash us with their lies. They are the enemy of the people.

We must empower ourselves, not ask for someone to save us.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed.
The part which is wrong will be discontented,
in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet
under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the
forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what
country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from
time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right
as to the facts, pardon and pacify them.
What signify a few lives lost in a century
or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time, with the blood of patriots and
tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson

Our masters want a one world government. Let's give them a one world - but of citizens, united, proud, with a shared vision of liberty.

When I despair, I remember that all through history
the ways of truth and love have always won. There have
been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem
invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it -always.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Taxes in Texas

2010-03-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

BRZEZINSKI’S LAMENT ‘JEWISH LOBBY CONTROLS OBAMA CLOWNS

2010-03-01T08:44:00.001-08:00

SEEKING A GLOBAL SHOWDOWN with Russia and China, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is recognized and feared by Zionist Jews as Obama’s foreign policy adviser, is intent on bringing Iran back into the Western orbit. In Brzezinski’s world view, Iran could be a valuable US asset to be played against Russia and China.

Even with his protege at Defense, Robert Gates, and his reputation as a global strategist, Brzezinski has all but admitted that he simply does not possess the influence to override the power the Jewish lobby wields over Obama’s decision-making in foreign affairs.

This has recently come to light in Brzezinski’s latest article for the Council of Foreign Relations, “From Hope To Audacity.”

Beginning his treatise with the premise that the US should not be at war with Islam, Brzezinski proceeds to take on the “Second Echelon” in Obama’s administration which includes Zionist Jews Dennis Ross, Special Adviser on Iran, Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff, and Zionist shill Hilary Clinton at State. Ross, who enjoys close ties to Israel and a history of pushing hardline policies toward Iran, was recently promoted as a Senior Director of the National Security Council.

Opening himself in his article to further accusations of being an “Anti-Semite,” (Alan Dershowitz initiated the lie), Brzezinski challenges the Zionist status quo and adds insult to injury to his already stated position that Obama should negotiate with Hamas:

“It is not fashionable to say this, but much of the current hostility toward the US in the Middle East has been generated by the bloodshed and suffering produced by the prolonged Israeli-Arab conflict. Israel’s refusal to negotiate with the Palestinians in good faith compounds the problem.” View Entire Story Here.

Moving on in his essay to the “stalemate” in Obama’s policy regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Brzezinski goes toe to toe with the Jewish “insiders” at the White House:

“Obama’s two special advisers, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, participate in significant decision-making. Both of them sat in on the president’s critical September meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As a result, Obama’s redefinition of US foreign policy is vulnerable to dilution by these upper-level officials who tend to yield to pressures from domestic interest groups.

This fosters a reluctance to plan for a firm follow-through on bold presidential initiatives should they encounter a foreign rebuff reinforced by powerful domestic lobbies. Netanyahu’s rejection of Obama’s demand that Israel halt the construction of settlements is a case in point.” View Entire Story Here.

In his concluding theme, “Domestic Impediments,” Brzezinski exposes the Jewish Lobby and their total control of Obama’s foreign policy decisions:

“Special interest lobbies have become overly influential in US politics. Thanks to their access to Congress, a variety of lobbies — some financially well endowed, some backed by foreign interests — have been promoting, to an unprecedented degree, legislative intervention in foreign-policy making.

Promoted by lobbies, Congress not only actively opposes foreign policy decisions but even imposes some on the president. The pending legislation on sanctions against Iran is but one example. Such congressional intervention makes it more difficult to ensure that US — not foreign — interests are the point of departure.” View Entire Story Here.

Congress JOINS Jewish Lobby
In Anti-Iran Workshop

EVER SINCE CONGRESS CONDEMNED GOLDSTONE’S GAZA REPORT last winter, demanding by a 344-36 vote that Obama “refuse to endorse” Goldstone’s findings of Israeli war crimes, Congress has joined with the Jewish Lobby in its efforts to crank up hysteria regarding Iran’s nuclear energy program.

On January 17, 2009, The Israel Project and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington (and more than twenty similar Jewish Lobby groups of which there is NO end), hosted an anti-Iran workshop billed as, Israel Advocacy Training Institute: Spotlight Iran.

The event, held at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in DC, focused on the “Iran threat,” emphasizing the “danger posed” by the country’s “aggressive pursuit of nuclear arms.” (Thus far, however, the world is only aware of Iran’s nuclear energy ambitions, but NO EVIDENCE of Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear arms” has emerged. So much for Jewish hysteria-hyping.)

Joining lead speaker Rabbi Jonah Layman, participants included not only the foreign government of Israel’s embassy ambassador, Dan Arbell, Deputy Chief of the Embassy of Israel in Washington DC, but a group of “Congressional legislative assistants” as well.

These Congressional staffers, led by Sarah Farhadian, Legislative Assistant for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, played a significant role in the workshop’s Congressional and Legislative Advocacy Session.

Farhadian, who has been the recipient of “private” Jewish money on at least two occasions in 2009, is known for her “partnership” with Chabad House, an ultra-religious/pro-Israel Jewish group. View Invitation, Schedule, & Pics Here & Here.

BRZEZINSKI & GATES
CHALLENGE ZIONIST LINE ON IRAN

IN A RECENT ESSAY FOR CFR, entitled: “Iran: Time for a New Approach,” Brzezinski and co-author Robert Gates argue against the tenor of the Jewish-induced hysteria toward Iran, now being vomited by the Zionist screech owl, Elie Wiesel.

Rejecting Wiesel’s line that Iran is a threat to America’s security, Brzezinski and Gates contend that US interests would be better served by “selective engagement” with Tehran. The following are excerpts from the essay and recent interviews with Brzezinski:

The use of military force against Iran would be extremely problematic given the dispersal of Iran’s nuclear sites throughout the country and their proximity to urban centers. Since the US would be blamed for any Israeli strike, we should make it clear to Israel that American interests would be adversely affected by such a move.

Kremlin strategists would surely relish the thought of a US deeply bogged down in a war with Iran, which would trigger a dramatic spike in the price of oil, a commodity in plentiful supply in Russia.

Involving the Iranians in a military conflict would make our task in Afghanistan absolutely impossible. It would probably reignite the conflict in Iraq, would set the Persian Gulf ablaze, would increase the price of oil twofold, threefold, fourfold, and Americans will be paying five, six dollars a gallon at the gas stations. Europe will become even more dependent on Russia for energy. So what is the benefit to us?

It will be a disaster for America in the short run and a fundamental disaster for Israel in the long run. If we are forced out of the region due to some sort of dynamic hatred that develops—and have no illusions about it, the conflict spreads—we’re going to be alone. The Russians are not going to be with us. They’re not suckers. Europe is not going to be with us either.

If we are finally driven out, how much would you bet on the survival of Israel for more than five to ten years after all that has happened? Some criticize my straightforward stance calling me an ‘anti-Semite.’ Well, they’re entitled to their demagogy. But it will all end up as a geopolitical disaster for both America and Israel.

Rather than pursuing the current policy of confrontation and threats, Washington should work with Tehran to capitalize on both Iran’s potential economic influence due to its large endowment of energy resources and its unique position to advance the stability of its neighbors.

What is the alternative to negotiating? To go to war? – Is that a better solution? Those who are making these arguments, the neo-conservatives, are doing it for their foreign patrons. They are afraid that we might negotiate with Iran peacefully whereas they would prefer us to go to war. View Entire Story Here, Here, Here Here & Here.

BOTTOM LINE FOR BRZEZINSKI & ALL AMERICANS: Not only is the White House and Capitol Hill owned by the Jews but the nations’ politicians have betrayed the will of their constituents by joining with and affirming the will of a tiny minority.

Who hijacked the democratic process in America? Zionist Jews—whose influence calculated in billions of dollars have penetrated the offices, suites, and checking accounts of their treasonous puppets in Washington DC…

source http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=483

Hey Joe Clown. (Lyrics)

2010-02-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

Hey Joe Clown.. (Lyrics)

Hey Joe Clown.. I think your suicide notes a fake?
Thats what you get when you work for the National Security snakes

Hey Joe Clown.. It seems your client list was the war machine.
You worked for the man, you should have known that they would screw up your dreams.

Didn't you know they would tighten the fear in our guts?.. Was it really you who crashed the plane pretending to be nutz?
------------------------------------------------------------
From each according to his ability to each according to his need.
From each according to his gullibility to each according to his greed.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Hey Joe Clown.. Have they found any of your DNA?
I would never trust a lab with that inside the U.S.A.

If there was no genetic evidence, it might effect the taxes.
I suspect it's just false flag op coming to us from Texas.

Hey Joe Clown.. I notice you didn't mention Israel.. Not one peep to the sheep to suggest why you belong in Hell.

They used you well. They used you well. They used you well.
---------------------------------------------------------------
From each according to his ability to each according to his need.
From each according to his gullibility to each according to his greed.

GORDON DUFF: AFGHAN CLOWNS CALL SURGE, “IMBECILIC AND TRAGIC”

2010-02-15T14:24:00.001-08:00

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

“We have millions of young men coming of age, America doesn’t realize this. Each one will become a fighter with one purpose in life, to free their country and drive out foreign invaders. Each child you see will be a trained soldier with a Kalashnikov. We will fight for a century if we have to. Ask Britain, ask Russia, they know. Why did America have to come here, join with criminal elements, brutal drug lords, mass murderers, people whose only history is brutality toward their own, why was America so stupid as to think we would respect them when they and their stooges rain bombs down on our children?”

Last year a number of contractors were thrown out of Afghanistan over the infamous “butT-crack” video showing nude imbeciles involved in an unsanitary ceremony. Little did we know that these must have been the people who planned the American “Surge” meant to stabilize Afghanistan, supplied the intelligence for General McChrystal, may actually have written his report. Top leaders of the Afghan people weighed in on our operation in Helmand province with American Marines and British troops. They call it “imbecilic” and “tragic,” faulting nearly every aspect as uninformed, misinformed or simply wrong.

Tribal “Jirgas” (councils) of the real government of Afghanistan, the actual rulers of that fractured state are behind one thing now, getting America out of Afghanistan and getting rid of Karzai, who they see is, not only an American puppet but one of the most useless human beings ever born. Why mince words. Actually, I am, their real words are much worse than anything that could be printed, their rage, their words and their tears.

A MASSIVE BLUNDER

Word has been pouring out of Afghanistan. Every move America makes is hitting blogs around the world through a network of Afghani ex-patriots who are in continual communication. The word is out: Our “invasion” that combined Afghani forces with American and British has not gone after Taliban strongholds at all but rather attacked areas controlled by Karzai opponents who were ready to negotiate a legitimate government.

To the people of Afghanistan, the Karzai government was put in place out of utter idiocy in the first place, a failure of the Bush administration to understand that Afghanistan was not going to be ruled by brutal warlords from the “Northern Alliance” who are the ethnic enemies of the majority of the population of Afghanistan. Placing weakling Mohammed Karzai in as president and supporting him thru a rigged election has only made things worse.

USING “COUNTER-INSURGENCY” TO RECRUIT TERRORSTS

American, Britain and the “Afghani Army” simply aren’t very good at many things, Afghanistan has proven this. We don’t seem to be able to tell a poppy plant from wheat, we can’t find Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, and we don’t know the Taliban from our own “butt-crack.” Reports on operations are clear. We are managing to frighten, brutalize and anger hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing to do with the Taliban, not before anyway.

Now, “they” are rethinking this. This is the message being received around the world.

Tribal leaders are saying:

We have millions of young men coming of age, America doesn’t realize this. Each one will become a fighter with one purpose in life, to free their country and drive out foreign invaders. Each child you see will be a trained soldier with a Kalashnikov. We will fight for a century if we have to. Ask Britain, ask Russia, they know.

Why did America have to come here, join with criminal elements, brutal drug lords, mass murderers, people whose only history is brutality toward their own, why was America so stupid as to think we would respect them when they and their stooges rain bombs down on our children?

THE FAILED SURGE IN IRAQ, THE REAL TRUTH

America calls it “the surge” or the “Sunni awakening.” Either way, it was all a con. General Petraeus paid millions in bribes to war lords, mostly Sunni and put the militia members who were fighting the United States on the payroll. The fighting died down, most American troops withdrew to safe areas and we claimed a victory. What did we really accomplish?

Well, years later, we are still there and Iraq is becoming less stable every day. The “leaders” we paid rebuilt the old Baathist party, now, without Saddam to lead it, it is simply a massive crime organization involved in daily murders, kidnappings and racketeering. We created a country plagued by a Mafia we built, now nobody is asking us to leave anymore, everyone is scared to death.

Thank you General Petraeus. As with General Westmoreland in Vietnam, we “managed the news” and “stayed on message” but our strategy was a sham, it was simply a way to admit failure and lie about it. We are planning the exact same thing in Afghanistan but it simply didn’t need to be that way.

WHAT A COMPETENT AND WELL INFORMED MILITARY LEADER MIGHT HAVE DONE

Sitting in Kabul or Washington, surrounded by drug dealers and thieves, even worse people in Kabul, it is hard to get good information and make good decisions. Everyone you talk to has an agenda, everyone is lying. Who are our advisors? Well, first of all, the entire world knows that Karzai’s family is helping run the largest drug cartel in the world. In fact, the biggest civil project America has done in Afghanistan was to repair a dam producing electricity for Kandahar, a dam that also provides irrigation for most of Afghanistan’s opium crop, one Americans are dying to keep secure today.

“Don’t worry, no poppy plants will be injured in the making of this picture.”

America had the chance to sit down with Pakistan and other regional powers, some that we don’t talk to and come up with an economic solution that could provide lasting stability for the tribal regions which are primarily inside Pakistan. We failed to realize that 25 million Pashtuns live just the other side of the border in Pakistan. With the right help for Pakistan, the right economic programs and leadership, both countries could be helped and lives, perhaps millions, could be saved without pouring billions of useless dollars into the pockets of defense contractors infesting the halls of Congress, some with the arrogance and blatant insensibility of our actual elected leaders.

IMRAN KHAN OF PAKISTAN, THE REGION’S ONLY RESPECTED LEADER

Combine Michael Jordan, Antonio Banderas and John F. Kennedy and you have Imran Khan, or that is how many in Afghanistan and Pakistan see him. Cricket is “the” sport in Pakistan and he is the most famous player in the historyof that game. He is also a political leader, outspoken, charismatic and in a country where most other leaders are Punjabi or Sindhi, Khan is a Pashtun.

Khan is known for his outspoken commentaries warning the west of Islamic extremism and advocating economic development over military solutions that Khan says only fuel terrorism. Khan says:

My Generation grew up at a time when colonial hang up was at its peak. Our older generation had been slaves and had a huge inferiority complex of the British. The school I went to was a similar to all elite schools in Pakistan, despite becoming independent, they were, and still are, producing replicas of public school boys rather than Pakistanis. I read Shakespeare which was fine, but no Alama Iqbal.

The Islamic class was not considered to be serious, and when I left the school I was considered amongst the elite of the country because I could speak English and wore western clothes. Despite periodically shouting Pakistan Zindabad at school functions, I considered my own culture backward and Islam an outdated religion.

Amongst our group if any one talked about religion, prayed or kept a beard he was immediately branded a Mullah. Because of the power of the Western Media, all our heroes were western movie or pop stars.

In University not just Islam but all religions were considered anachronism. Science had replaced religion and if something couldn’t be logically proved it did not exist. All supernatural stuff was confined to the movies…Moreover, the European history had an awful experience with religion, The horrors committed by the Christian clergy in the name of God during the Inquisition had left a powerful impact on the western mind.

To understand why the west is so keen on secularism, one should go to places like Cordoba in Spain and see torture apparatus used during Spanish Inquisition. Also the persecution of scientists as heretics by the clergy and convinced the Europeans that all religions are regressive.

However, the biggest factor that drove people like me away from religion was the selective Islam practised by most of its preachers. In other words, there was a huge difference between what they practised and what they preached. Also, rather than explaining the philosophy behind the religion, there was an over emphasis on rituals.

I feel that humans are different; to animals whereas the latter can be drilled, humans need to be intellectually convinced. That is why the Quran constantly appeals to reason. The worst of course, was the exploitation of Islam for political gains by various individuals or groups.

Hence, it was a miracle I did not become an atheist. The only reason why I did not was the powerful religious influence wielded by my mother on me since my childhood. It was not so much out of conviction but love for her that I stayed a Muslim.

Firstly, the inferiority complex that my generation had inherited, gradually went as I developed into a world class athlete. Secondly, I had the unique position of living between two cultures. I began to see the advantages and the disadvantages of both the societies.

In western societies, institutions were strong while they were collapsing in our country. However, there was an area where we were and still are superior, and that is our family life. I used to notice the loneliness of the old-age pensioners at Hove Cricket ground (during my Sussex years). Imagine sending your parents to Old Peoples’ Homes!

Even the children there never had the sort of love and warmth that we grew up with here. They completely miss out on the security blanket that a joint family system provides. However, I began to realise that the biggest loss to the western society and that in trying to free itself from the oppression of the clergy, they had removed both God and religion from their lives.

KHAN’S ROLE

With civil government in Pakistan collapsed under scandal and the Afghani government in Kabul ruling little of the country and mistrusted by the vast majority of its citizens, and NATO, led by the United States fearful of terrorism and Islamic extremism, Khan is the only well known individual with the trust and respect of Islam and the United States yet known for his outspoken independence. Khan has not been a friend to the United States, quite the opposite. He has been one of America’s greatest critics at a time known for America’s greatest failures.

His tough role of standing up to the west and to corrupt forces in his own country and his strong ties to Afghanistan make him the vital key to ending the cycle of terrorism and extremism in the region, a region whose potentials for conflict can be far more threatening than the current war in Afghanistan.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have been increasing daily with each accusing the other sponsoring terrorist group. Terror attacks, shootings, bombings, occur daily in Pakistan and India and are on the increase. The two regional nucear powers, both allies of the United States, are on a continual “war readiness” footing.

FINDING THE RIGHT ENEMY

Currently, no respected leader in Afghanistan will talk to any American, military leader or diplomat under any circumstances. America believes it is negotiating with the Taliban and is moving foward with a “plan” but is operating under a series of misconceptions. No non-Islamic forces will ever be allowed to operate in Afghanistan. They will only cause tribal uprisings, creating terrorism, not ending it. Why leaders like General McChrystal who knows this very well would purposefully ignore this fact is strange indeed.

The border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan are areas of lawlessness that can provide safe harbor foreign terrorists and have, in limited numbers, how limited, we will never know. The same region is also home to millions of people who can be armed insurgents and radicalized “Jihadists” or live in relative peace, largely depending on factors now controlled by the United States.

LIVING WITH THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST

In the 80s, when the pro-Soviet government in Kabul called for Russian help against tribal opposition, America weighed in, arming Mujahideen insurgents, the exact same people we are fighting today, same people, same leaders, same beliefs, only a generation later. When we had the chance to come into Afghanistan as a friend after the withdrawal of Russian forces and build a new economy there for pennies, we didn’t care. The Soviet Union had collapsed and we lost interest. We are now paying for those mistakes.

Usama bin Laden, Gullbadin Hiktymar and Mullah Omar were our heroes, hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and sophisticated weapons moved their way. Pakistan was used to manage our war with Russia using what we now call “the Taliban,” the same people we are fighting much as we had used our Marines in Vietnam. The “Cold War” had become a game played out across the world, dictators like Saddam and the Shah, only two of dozens along with drug lords, revolutonaries, anyone who would act for America and against the perceived menace of communism.

Now the Viet Cong make our tennis shoes and we rain bombs on the Taliban, our former allies against Russia. And so it goes….

source http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/02/14/gordon-duff-afghan-leaders-call-surge-imbecilic-and-tragic/

The New 9-11 Photos Show Clowns Are Not Guilty of 9-11

2010-02-14T11:17:00.000-08:00

Christopher Bollyn
February 11, 2009

Eight and a half years after 9-11, we are finally able to view the photos taken by a photographer in a New York City Police Department helicopter hovering over the scene of the crime. Why has it taken so long for these photos of the crime of the century to be released? What do these newly released photos tell us?

There is certainly a great deal of evidence contained in these hundreds of photographs, which will take some time to analyze, but one thing is very clear. The Twin Towers were turned into dust. The concrete and steel frame towers were reduced to immense clouds of dust and this was not caused by the potential energy of the buildings being released as they fell. The towers were pulverized through the use of many tons of super-thermite, which was discovered in the dust by Professor Steven E. Jones. Looking at these photos, one can see that the towers were exploded and turned into dust in the same instant. The photos validate the thesis, now proven, that the Twin Towers - and the lives within them - were destroyed by demolition charges and tons of super-thermite which had been applied to the concrete floors, probably on the undersides of the floor pans.

Go to http://www.bollyn.com/what-the-newly-released-9-11-photos-show
to see some of these photos

Links to my articles on the evidence of super-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center are found at the bottom of this post.

Sources and Recommended Reading:

Facing the Evidence of Super-Thermite - Letters to the NY Times, CNN (Time Warner) and a Member of Congress, April 21, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/an-open-letter-to-the-new-york-times

Super-Thermite Demolished Twin Towers on 9-11: Game Over for Criminals and Cover Up, April 14, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/super-thermite-demolished-twin-towers-on-9-11-game-over-for-criminals-and-cover-up

Super-Thermite Found in World Trade Center Dust, April 5, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/super-thermite-found-in-world-trade-center-dust

Who Put Super-Thermite in the Twin Towers?, July 20, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/who-put-super-thermite-in-the-twin-towers

Game Over: Evidence of Super-Thermite in the Rubble (Chapter XIV, Solving 9-11), April 20, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/game-over-evidence-of-super-thermite-in-the-rubble

Israel's Super-Thermite Lab, August 26, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/the-top-secret-lab-where-the-super-thermite-of-9-11-was-made

Recipe for Making Super Thermite, August 5, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/recipe-for-making-super-thermite

Obama on the Run: U.S. VP Biden Flees Question on Super-Thermite, May 20, 2009
http://www.bollyn.com/vp-joe-biden-asked-about-9-11-super-thermite-question-in-la

545 Clowns

2010-02-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.

They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits...

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way. There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees...

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

source http://rense.com/general89/545.htm

_____

At last: expert Sir David King expertly reveals true identity of Clowngate 'hackers'

2010-02-02T15:23:00.000-08:00

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: February 1st, 2010

Sir David King, the totally sane, not remotely hysterical, and non-aluminium-foil-hat-wearing former advisor to much-loved and respected former Prime Minister Tony Blair, has spoken out on the Climategate emails.

Apparently, he has told the Independent, they weren’t leaked (as pretty much every other person who has been following the story now thinks). They were hacked. Probably by US “anti-climate-change lobbyists” or, possibly, by evil foreign intelligence services.

Sir David said, however, that it was not possible to dismiss the possibility of Russia’s involvement. “If it was a job done on behalf of a government, then I suppose there is the possibility that it could be the Russian intelligence agency,” he said.

Sir David – who, like Osama Bin Laden, believes strongly in man-made global warming – has had a bit of a problem with the Russkies ever since they made him look ridiculous at an international climate seminar in Moscow in July 2004 chaired by Putin’s chief economic adviser Alexander Illarionov.

According to Christopher Booker’s The Real Global Warming Disaster, Sir David was horrified to find so many sceptical scientists at the conference and tried, unsuccessfully to have them censored. The final straw came during a speech by Professor Paul Reiter, one of the first IPCC contributors to point up the flaws in the IPCC process: the 2001 report had utterly misrepresented his expert views on insect-borne diseases in order to make it seem as if the incidence of malaria would increase with “global warming.”

As Booker recounts:

“When King himself then put forward the now familiar claim that global warming was responsible for the melting of the ice on summit of Kilimanjaro, Reiter challenged him by referring to various studies showing that the melting had been taking place since the 1880s. It was due not to global warming, these had concluded, but to deforestation causing a sharp drop in local precipitation. Apparently unable to answer Reiter’s point, King broke off in mid-sentence and led his delegation out of the room.”

Illarianov was appalled by the behaviour of Sir David and his delegation, he wrote afterwards:

“It is not for us to give an assessment to what happened but in our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government and the reputation of the title “Sir” has sustained heavy damage.”

I’m touched that the Independent continues to do the charitable work of making Sir David feel better about himself by still taking him seriously. But I’m not sure I can promise to carry on this tradition when I take over as Environment Editor.

Problem is, I’m with Illarionov. I believe, as he does, that the eco-fascist ideology and warped science underpinning the AGW scam are like something out of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

As Illarionov wrote:

That ideological base can be juxtaposed and compared with man-hating totalitarian ideology with which we had the bad fortune to deal during the twentieth century, such as National Socialism, Marxism, Eugenics, Lysenkovism and so on. All methods of distorting information existing in the world have been committed to prove the alleged validity of these theories. Misinformation, falsification, fabrication, mythology, propaganda.

Clowns Moon The Corporate World.

2010-02-02T15:08:00.000-08:00

CIA moonlights in corporate world
By: Eamon Javers
February 1, 2010 12:57 AM EST

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.

* This article is adapted from the author's forthcoming book, 'Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage.'

But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.

A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency.

“If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety,” CIA spokesman George Little told POLITICO.

There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined to provide additional details.

Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines, that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of Government Ethics.

“In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and that the employee have written approval before taking on the work.

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

BIA has employed active-duty CIA officers in the past, although BIA president Cheryl Cook said that has “not been the case with BIA for some time.”

But the ties between BIA and the intelligence world run deep. The name itself was chosen as a play off CIA. And the presence of so many former CIA personnel on the payroll at BIA causes confusion as to whether the intelligence firm is actually an extension of the agency itself. As a result, BIA places a disclaimer in some of its corporate materials to clarify that it is not, in fact, controlled by Langley.

BIA’s clients can put the company on a retainer for as much as $400,000 to $800,000 a year. And in return, they receive access to a variety of services, from deception detection to other programs that feature the CIA intelligence techniques.

In one presentation in 2006, BIA personnel promised to teach managers at a leading hedge fund some of the CIA’s own foolproof techniques.

The presenters that day at SAC Capital Advisors in Stamford, Conn., included two women with backgrounds in intelligence. One spent 20 years with the CIA, specializing in polygraph, interviewing, and deception detection. The other had more than 25 years of interrogation experience.

In their intensity, they reminded one person in the room of Clarice Starling, the no-nonsense FBI agent played by Jodie Foster in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs”: “You could tell they knew exactly what they were doing.”

The tactics that BIA officials such as these teach hedge fund clients are based in a program it calls “Tactical Behavior Assessment.”.

Unlike polygraph machines, the TBA technique allows examiners to work without hooking up their subject to a series of wires. The subject never knows he’s being scrutinized.

Polygraph machines work by measuring a person’s physical responses, such as heart rate, that indicate stress. Analysts using the machine need to sit with their subject for a long time. They have to establish a person’s physiological baseline, so they begin with a “control” conversation about neutral topics, before they can begin grilling the subject. Conducting an interview and doing a thorough analysis of polygraph results can take hours.

TBA focuses on the verbal and nonverbal cues that people convey when they aren’t telling the truth. Psychologists familiar with the method say it works because human beings just aren’t hard-wired to lie well. Holding two opposing ideas in your brain at the same time — as you have to do in order to tell a lie — causes a phenomenon they term “cognitive dissonance,” which creates actual physical discomfort. And when people are uncomfortable, they squirm. They fidget ever so slightly, they pick lint off their clothes, they shift their bodily positions.

Agents look for the physical indicators of lying. They watch for a person shifting anchor points. If the person is leaning forward on one elbow, does he switch to the other one? Interrogators watch for grooming gestures such as adjusting clothes, hair or eyeglasses. They look to see if the person picks at his fingernails or scratches himself. They watch for the person to clean his surroundings — does he straighten the paper clips on the table or line up the pens? If he does, he could be lying.

To obtain verbal clues, agents listen for several kinds of statements. They’ll listen for qualifying answers, phrases that begin with words like “honestly,” “frankly” or “basically.” The agents will be listening for detour phrases like “as I said before ...” They’ll want to hear if the person invokes religion — “I swear to God” — or attacks the questioner: “How dare you ask me something like that?”

Other red flags: Complaints —“How long is this going to take?” Selective memory —“To the best of my knowledge.” Overly courteous responses —“Yes, sir.”

BIA doesn’t just offer training, though. For a fee, its officers do the analysis themselves.

Often, BIA deploys its CIA-trained operatives to analyze quarterly corporate-earnings calls. Those conference calls are an important Wall Street ritual that serves as a direct line from the corporate boardroom to the trading floor.

Companies use the calls to put the best spin on the events of the quarter and give investors a sense of the way ahead. Analysts for top-of-the-line investment houses use them to ask probing questions of senior management.

And BIA uses them to figure out if the company may not be disclosing the truth — all with the help of the CIA-trained analysts.

In one particular instance in August 2005, Hong Liang Lu, the chairman and CEO of a company called UTStarcom, walked through the numbers with a telephone audience of Wall Street investment bankers. With his slicked-back hair, rimless glasses and wide smile, Lu projected an image of intelligence and competence.

And as he began the call, Lu couldn’t know that it also was being patched into a room thousands of miles away where interrogators trained in CIA-style techniques would analyze each inflection in Lu’s voice. The analysts were human lie detectors, working for BIA. They were trying to find out whether Lu was telling the whole truth about UTStarcom’s financial health.

When they came to their conclusion, they’d report it to BIA’s client, an enormous hedge fund. The secret intelligence they produced would help the hedge fund decide whether to buy or sell UTStarcom stock. If the intelligence analysts did their jobs, the hedge fund would be far ahead of the rest of the market.

The information they gleaned from this phone call could be worth millions of dollars.

The company Hong Liang Lu ran sells broadband, wireless and hand-held Internet equipment and technology around the world. It had generated more than $700 million in revenue that quarter, and although it was still losing money, that performance was good enough to bring it close to profitability. The company thought the results were positive, and the CEO seemed optimistic.

Investment analysts from Bank of America, Smith Barney, Deutsche Bank and other Wall Street powerhouses were the official participants in UTStarcom’s call. The analysts prepared their best questions to help them figure out the answer to one big question: Would UTStarcom emerge as a hot stock in the third quarter?

After some opening remarks, Lu threw open the session to questions from the Wall Streeters. One of them, Mike Ounjian, a keen-eyed analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston, asked about potential problems he’d spotted with how the company’s income was being counted in the books, a process known as revenue recognition.

There seemed to be a backlog in the recording, and Ounjian wanted to know why. If the problems were serious, they could affect the company’s financial results in the next quarter and might cause the stock price to dip.

“Are there any issues related to recognizing revenues on these?” Ounjian asked.

The voice of Michael Sophie, then the company’s interim chief financial officer, came over the phone line: “Yes, with the backlog, the vast majority of the wireless backlog is clearly PAS [an acronym for one of the company’s products, Personal Access System]. I think you saw the announcement at the end of June where we announced on the PAS infrastructure orders in China. And again, it’s just the timing of deployment and achieving final acceptance, we’ve also got some CDMA [an acronym for a type of mobile phone standard] to a lesser extent in the backlog. ... But Q3 is clearly a little more handset-oriented than we would typically run.”

After analyzing the call, BIA’s employees supplied a 27-page confidential report to their client, and they singled out Sophie’s response to the question about revenue recognition for particular attention. They noted that Sophie qualified his response and referred back to another announcement from the end of June.

BIA called that kind of conversational reference a “detour statement,” and its analysts were convinced that Sophie was trying to minimize the delays. “Mr. Sophie avoids commenting on any issues related to revenue recognition, and his overall behavior indicates that revenue recognition problems cannot be ruled out.”

Overall, BIA’s team rated the second-quarter conference call as a “medium high level of concern”— the same rating they’d given UTStarcom’s call the quarter before. This time, though, the BIA team found more problems, which they listed in a box on the first page of their report: “Lacks Confidence,” “Underlying Concern,” “Avoids Providing Information.”

In their conclusion, the BIA team said they’d found that the executives were worried about the timing of the company’s profitability date and the issue of revenue recognition. The report says: “Management’s behavior indicates that they will post poor third-quarter results, and it is also highly unlikely they will achieve profitability in the fourth quarter.”

It might not seem like much, one take on whether the company will do well in the next six months. But to hedge-fund investors — who are looking for ways to make money off of falling stocks by selling short — that is valuable information indeed.

BIA’s client had no way of telling whether the deception analysis report was accurate or not. It was the client’s job to take the report, combine it with other information known about UTStarcom and make a bet for or against the company. And there’s no evidence that UTStarcom officials weren’t being truthful during the call.

With the benefit of hindsight, though, it’s possible to go back and check the record to find out what did happen to UTStarcom stock in the weeks after the call.

It turns out that any investor who shorted UTStarcom at the time BIA submitted its report would have been in a position to reap substantial gains.

Over the next month or so after the call of Aug. 2, UTStarcom’s stock price lost about $1 per share, a nice win for any short seller. But on Oct. 6, 2005, the company released its third-quarter results, shocking Nasdaq traders with numbers that were below the guidance executives had offered during the conference call. In October, UTStarcom said it expected total revenues of between $620 million and $640 million, compared with its previous target of $660 million to $680 million. The next morning, investors frantically sold their shares: more than 23 million transactions took place on Oct. 7, 2005.

A day after the third-quarter results were released, the stock was down roughly an additional $2, closing at $5.64. It had been at $8.54 when the BIA team listened in on the conference call in August and flagged the potential problems with revenue recognition.

And what reason did UTStarcom give for its poor third-quarter performance? It disclosed difficulties with revenue recognition.

What all Clowns must know about the bankruptcy of the United States

2010-02-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

From Porter Stansberry in the Clown Digest:

Nobody likes bad news.

A few years ago, I got in hot water by insisting General Motors was bankrupt. Supporters of the company (whether investors or unionized employees) got mad at me and said I was exaggerating. They rightly pointed out GM was still servicing its debts and was still owned by its equity holders. Thus, technically at least, GM wasn't bankrupt.

In order to avoid any unnecessary litigiousness, I began to write in parody, pretending to be the chairman of General Motors and warning of the company's impending bankruptcy. One of the few ways you can still speak unpleasant truths in America is by using - or pretending to use - humor. That's why, for example, Chris Rock and Bill Cosby are our most poignant commentators on race relations and why John Stewart is perhaps our most insightful news commentator.

Meanwhile, the bankruptcy of General Motors was far from a laughing matter.

GM had no conceivable way to repay its debts. It was even borrowing money to pay for the interest expense on its existing debts.

Monitoring the company closely between 2006 and 2009 taught me quite a bit about willful self-deception. Here are the three key traits I look for now in companies facing major financial stress...

No. 1. There's never any real tally of the total amount owed. GM used byzantine accounting to hide the truth of its deteriorating fiscal condition for nearly 20 years. It was impossible for any outside analyst to get an accurate, consolidated account of GM's total debt.

No. 2. None of the company's "turnaround" plans include any efforts to actually repay principal amounts owed.

No. 3. The company's spending is out of control. In GM's case, it was also rife with fraud and absurdity - like, for example, its jobs bank where people were paid not to work.

If you don't know how much you owe, if you make no attempt to ever repay your debts, and if your spending is out of control, there's no way to avoid bankruptcy. In retrospect, these facts seem so plain and obvious. But who else was warning about GM? No one.

I bring this up to you today because the exact same things are now true about the United States of America.

We don't know how much we owe. We don't have any plan to repay our debt. And our spending is still completely out of control...

OBAMA! has sent a new budget to Congress. It contains several provisions that will make people unhappy. Taxes are going up on the rich. They're going up on private-equity firms and hedge funds. They're going up on oil and gas companies. And they're going up on multinational companies.

These new taxes are what you'll see people arguing about. They are what the politicians will complain and campaign about. Nobody wants to pay the costs of government, so that's the easy sell. But the taxes aren't the real problem with OBAMA!'s budget...

The real problem is that government spending is literally out of control.

The government is going to reduce its so-called "discretionary" spending by a grand total of $200 billion. Only about $1.4 trillion of the government's $3.8 trillion budget is discretionary. The rest is legally required, thanks to unfunded entitlement programs, like Medicare. So right now, far less than half of the government's annual budget can legally be restrained.

Meanwhile, there's no accurate tally of the government's debt. Supposedly, we owe around $12 trillion. This number is so large that it is meaningless. What does it really mean? According to the IRS, almost 143 million people filed tax returns in 2007 (the most recently reported year).

Of these people, roughly 96 million paid something in taxes - even one penny. Thus, technically, you could say there are basically 100 million taxpayers in the United States. Dividing the total debt ($12 trillion) by the number of taxpayers, you can see our total debt is actually $120,000 per taxpayer. How many people do you know can afford an additional $120,000 in debt?

And the truth is, the $12 trillion figure is only a down payment on our actual debts.

For example, nobody really knows how much more money Fannie and Freddie will require. (My bet is $500 billion each - or $1 trillion.) On Christmas Eve, when no one was looking, Congress approved unlimited funding for the two national mortgage banks.

And that's far from the only "off-budget" item. We have committed to fighting two civil wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan. The costs are likely to be $50 billion or so next year alone. How much over the next 10 years? Maybe $1 trillion? Or maybe more. And there's a new "jobs package" that's estimated to cost $76 billion next year with another $25 billion to bail out cash-strapped state governments.

Even if you only looked at the dollar amounts that have been budgeted today and you ignored all of the rest of the growth of future entitlement spending, you'll discover that we actually owe something around $20 trillion right now.

And if $20 trillion is the real number, then the amount owed by taxpayers is actually $200,000 each. Of course, that's if you're counting all of the taxpayers. Most people, though, pay almost nothing in taxes. Unless you're earning more than $50,000 per year, you're not really contributing to the tax receipts. Roughly 50 million folks are in this category. These people pay less than 10% of all income tax receipts. So you shouldn't count on them to repay much, if any, of these debts - they can't.

What's the real per-capita number? My best estimate - just on the money we actually owe today - is $400,000 per taxpayer. At a reasonable (6%) rate of interest that's $24,000 each - just to pay the interest on these debts each year. How many people do you know that could afford $24,000 a year in higher taxes? How many people can afford additional debts of $400,000?

My point? Our government is bankrupt - right now, today. Sure, it might still have access to the credit markets. And yes, since it owes dollars, it can always simply print more. I realize the government can't go bankrupt they way GM did. Our bondholders won't end up getting title to our national parks and the strategic petroleum reserve. No, that's not going to happen.

What will happen?

I can't say for certain. But here's what I know: It's not a good idea for the world's largest debtor and the world's strongest military power to go broke. Bad things happen in democracies when the government goes broke. At the very least, our creditors will demand much higher interest rates and abandon the use of our currency. That's going to devastate our standard of living.

These facts and figures should cause you to wake up and think about what you're doing with your savings. Here's a hint: Don't save dollars. And don't count on whatever the government has promised to you, whether it is a retirement or medical care. The government is bankrupt. It won't be able to deliver.

source = http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/3989/Porter_Stansberry

The Dog Shit Blues

2010-01-31T22:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9rj3Y05wfU

Join the clown party U.S.A. All you need is makeup.

2010-01-31T21:00:00.000-08:00