The men in the White House are like grifters who inherited a great fortune and have unexpectedly come into clothes, cars, houses and jets without the slightest clue how they were earned. Not Downton but Chitown Abbey. Amazed at their good fortune they entertain hangers on, clowns and toadies at lavish parties; they dispense tawdry gifts to the favored and Obamaphones to anyone who shows up at the door.
The future isn’t going to be exactly like the past, but enough so that you shouldn’t delude yourself that high tech toys will stick around. Be ready to devolve. And not in a hippie commune tree hugging windmill powering the boom box playing a CD of bongos serenading unicorns kind of way but a nastier serfs starving amid Thirty Year Wars while dying of Plague kind of way.
Dane-Geld
A.D. 980-1016
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: --
"We invaded you last night-- we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: --
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"
Theo Spark: Money IN the Bank? Loser!......................from Rico...:
We have all been conned. hoodwinked, bamboozled into thinking that "money in the Bank" is a good thing.
It is not. - Remember Cyprus?
Money IN the Bank potentially makes YOU a loser.
The 'guidance' of the BIS, BoE, and FED re: the Cyprus situation was purposely vague, misleading, and overly 'technical' because to plainly cite the legal situation would send everyone running to their Bank with their hair on fire to immediately withdraw 'their' funds. [Read: Bank Runs]
In summary, this is exactly how "money IN the Bank" works:
- When you deposit YOUR money in the Bank, you transfer ownrship of that money To the Bank. It becomes THE BANK'S MONEY and as a 'depositor' you instantly become an unsecured creditor.
- You have a 'claim' on an equal sum of money and can ask for it back.
- If the Bank won't return an equal sum to you, it can be sued under tort law, so long as the Bank is solvent...providing you 'ask' for your money back.
- If the Bank is 'broke' then as an 'unsecured creditor' you wind up with pennies on the dollar or even zero since 'secured creditors' of the Bank get paid first.
This is the LAW. For reference, it was established under UK law in 1848 by 'Foley vs. Hill'...once a desposit has been made into a Bank, the Bank becomes a debtor and the depositor a creditor.
- The Bank has NO trusteeship or fiduciary duty to depositors, and cannot be prosecuted under criminal law (bet you're surprised that (a) Eric Holder was RIGHT on this point, and (b) not surprised that he did not cite the exact legal reason in his statement - Banks cannot be held liable to depositors for gambling [think 'OTC derivatives' and 'swaps'] or misusing [think risky loans, bad investments, sovereign bonds like Greece, or huge bonuses to themselves] with THEIR OWN MONEY).
Almost universally, depositors 'think' that money in the Bank is THEIRS. It is NOT. Almost no depositor thinks of themselves as a 'creditor'...much less an 'unsecured creditor.'
This is the 'scam' in plain sight. It's almost as funny as the saying 'sound as a dollar.'
In closing, with a respectful hat tip to Mr. Jim Sinclair, it's time to start getting out of the system.
- As Bank depositors learned in Cyprus, that 'money IN the Bank' isn't really there for them when things 'go South.' How many of them do you think now wish they had their assets outside the system before it blew itself up?
Lord, I reckon I'm not much just by myself,
I fail to do a lot of things I ought to do.
But Lord, when trails are steep and passes high,
Help me ride it straight the whole way through.
And when in the falling dusk I get that final call,
I do not care how many flowers they send,
Above all else, the happiest trail would be,
For You to say to me, "Let's ride, My Friend."
Amen
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positives forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state."
--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, 1787
In the midst of this flurry of media coverage a woman named Sandro Cano has quietly issued a media release on a Christian newswire service calling for the two Supreme Court cases to be overturned. This in itself might seem unremarkable, until you learn Cano’s other name: Mary Doe.
Yes, that Mary Doe.Good for her.
Meanwhile, another women, Norma McCorvey, briefly captured headlines during last year’s election cycle when she released a pro-life ad featuring graphic pictures of aborted children and accusing President Obama of “killing babies” by his support for abortion.Read the whole thing here.
Most won’t recognize McCorvey’s real name, but will instantly recognize her pseudonym: Jane Roe. Yes, that Jane Roe.
Capitalism made luxury hard work by making everything cheap. Suddenly it wasn't enough to just lie in bed and order the butler to bring you exotic pomegranates from the Orient and champagne from the vineyards of France. Those things could be found in any supermarket courtesy of the jet plane. Status stopped being a lazy man or woman's game and became a frenzied rat race. Fat was out and hyperactive workouts were in. Anyone could afford good art, so those with discerning taste chose bad art. Anyone could vacation abroad, so they bought old farm houses, restored them and painted bad art while trying to grow their own food.
Yep. I have no idea what to do about it, except gird your loins, but there is another look at the same phenomenon.
America has become a nation of adolescents The real loser in this election was adulthood: Maturity. Responsibility. The understanding that liberty must be accompanied by self-restraint. Obama is a spoiled child, and the behavior and language of his followers and their advertisements throughout the campaign makes it clear how many of them are, as well. Romney is a grown-up. Romney should have won. Those of us who expected him to win assumed that voters would act like grownups. Because if we were a nation of grownups, he would have won.
Some of my libertarian friends think that a financial or societal collapse will lead to a better understanding of the importance of freedom, and that a new flowering of liberty will bloom in the aftermath.
That’s a foolish and stupid idea.
What will actually happen is what happened when Rome fell: a period of barbarism and tyranny and darkness will sweep over us at worst, or at best, people will demand that a man on a white horse punish the appropriate scapegoats and make the trains run on time again. Sure, I hope I’m wrong, but history is on the side of pessimism. As nearly as I can tell, all we can do is hold on tight, because we’re getting ready to ride this puppy down in flames....
But, maybe, in 500 years or so, a confident, adventurous people will once again step onto the surface of the moon. No doubt they will be amazed to learn that the mythical figures of Buzz Aldrin, Alan Shepard, and their companions actually did exist, and set foot there once upon a time, and left behind six beautiful, red-striped banners, spangled with white stars on a field of blue.
I like Sir Mottram's words so much, I'll appropriate them and say it myself: We’re all f***ed. I’m f***ed. You’re f***ed. The wholeI appreciate the sterling if pitiful efforts of my comrades to clutch at straws these last few hours, but, on this grim morning after, I fear the most salient analysis comes from Sir Richard Mottram, Her Britannic Majesty’s former Permanent Secretary for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, albeit speaking in another context:“We’re all f***ed. I’m f***ed. You’re f***ed. The whole department’s f***ed. It’s been the biggest c**k-up ever and we’re all completely f***ed.”Words to ponder.
While American diplomats and personnel fought the terrorists for seven hours, Obama's crack national-security team and the U.S. military simply watched and listened. U.S. fighters could have been on the scene in an hour offering support, and U.S. commandos within 3 hours, but no orders were given. A military-loathing, anti-American commander in chief sat on his hands while U.S. territory was attacked, a U.S. ambassador assassinated, and three other Americans murdered, and team Obama then devised a phony story to cover up for the disaster.I say deliberately, because I have to believe that in the absence of orders to the contrary, there is someone in the US military chain of command in Africa or Europe that has the authority to make the call to go in and secure the facility and save the embattled US personnel.
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
Nils Pratley at the Guardian is impressed. “Bailouts in the eurozone used to generate relief rallies that lasted at least a week. The Spanish version couldn’t even manage a full morning.”
The yield on 10-year Spanish government debt, which had fallen to 6% soon after the start of trading, ended the day at 6.5% – an astonishing turnaround. Worse, Italian bonds followed the same pattern, closing a whisker above 6%, the highest since January. Far from calming nerves, the grant of €100bn (£81bn) or so of cheap loans for Spanish banks seems only to have hardened investors’ analysis that the eurozone debt crisis is getting worse....
The bitter truth is that the European collapse is simply the consequence of Leftist fantasy politics. It is what happens when people realize that the ‘paradise’ they’ve been building is nothing but a deconstructed, demographically collapsing, hollowed-out and bankrupt shell of lies.
The idea that the office on the corner will always be able to dispense Government Cheese does not reflect the normal historical experience. Rather it reflects that peculiar period of stability and prosperity which followed the end of the Second World War: the Pax Americana, which the Left hates. Our civilizational attitudes have been formed on the basis of the exception, not the rule.We in the first world have been on a global vacation from history since the 1960's. I fear its time to get back to work.
"Who killed the 20-30 million Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago -- big government or big business? ... Who deliberately caused 75 million Chinese to starve to death -- big government or big business? ... Would there have been a Holocaust without the huge Nazi state? Whatever bad big corporations have done is dwarfed by the monstrous crimes ... committed by big governments." --radio talk-show host Dennis Prager
