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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Assassination at will or License to kill?

Not assassination of a particular Will in the sense of "Fire at Will!"..."Look out Will!"...but assassination when it is politcally expedient.

Not since the moment that I received the text message "If you're not watching TV turn it on" from Matt have I once rejoiced the murder of Osama bin Laden.  I do harbor wishes that his death (or the next election) will inspire the President use his omnipotence to bring the troops home and all that, but subconsciously, something has prevented me from celebrating the death of a person.  This is no claim to righteousness or piety, it is simply a testament of the major changes that I have undergone since being a 17 year old student ready to shoot and kill based on anger over the attacks on 9/11.

The Kupster has a facebook post that reads "There has only been one death that has ever created peace, and we celebrated it a week ago."  I can see the value in this perspective.  The idea behind the death to which he refers is, in fact, peace.  Now, with a country bursting at the seams with believers in God, how can we celebrate the death of this man for what appears to be similar reasons only a week after celebrating the sacrifice of our savior?

In Ron Paul's new book, Liberty Defined, he says "tyranny begins with the oppression of unpopular minorities".  (Caveat alert:  This in no way implies that bin Laden was opressed.)  By violating various of our own laws and assassinating a man [to whom Navy Seal team 6 was not fighting in self defense, on whom the United States Congress had not declared war, nor had he been tried in court and proven guilty,] the government of the United States of America, representing the cumulative, collective will of the people, which has an established set of laws and consequences, has taken a major, precedent setting step towards tyranny.

I find it odd that my last post was on February 3, 2010.  The date of the article posted below happens to be the same date.  But don't be fooled by randomness, it's just a coincidence.

My thought for the week is:  When will the rules change, at will, again?

Have a look at the article below and share your thoughts.

ABC News - License to Kill

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Protect us from that nasty ole Toyota

Would someone please explain to me how it’s possible that millions of Toyota vehicles have that accelerator problem? I thought the federal government was supposed to keep us safe from these sorts of things. Consider, for example, this page, which contains the “Federal Motor Vehicle Standards and Regulations” issued by the Office of Vehicle Safety Compliance, Safety Assurance section, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation.. It states: “These requirements are specified in such a manner ‘that the public is protected against unreasonable risk of crashes occurring as a result of the design, construction, or performance of motor vehicles and is also protected against unreasonable risk of death or injury in the event crashes do occur.’”

 - Jacob Hornberger


Does anyone not understand this?

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Federal Reserve

Let's play a game.  It's called "who is my daddy and what does he do"?  (Kindergarten Cop)

Who is the Fed and what does it do?

http://www.federalreserve.gov/

First of all, I find it odd that the web address extension is ".gov" since the Federal Reserve (the Fed) is owned by private banks, and not by the public.

Looks like the first lie so far.

Basically, the Fed is in charge of all the little federal reserve notes floating around this country in the form of computer code in the computer servers of the banks or in the form of "dollar bills".  The treasury prints the money, but only with the permission of the Fed.

Some days, a person, or group of people, in the treasury decides that we need more money to pay off government liabilites.  When this happens, the treasury creates treasury bills (this is a way of saying "the government promises to repay you with something of equal value plus interest") which are then purchased by the Fed.  These aren't purchased with money because the money doesn't exist at this point...remember, the whole point was to create new money in the first place.  The t-bills are purchased with purchasing power. This purchasing power doesn't actually exist either.  What happens is this:  the Fed assumes the purchasing power (pulls it out of thin air) and gives the treasury (a government entity) permision to print new money.  Then the treasury goes and hands out the money to people who produced no value in order to earn said money.

Please go look up the definition of "fiat".  It's a latin word.  I'm not talking about the car.

Now, I could be wrong on all this.  Maybe the Fed does actually own something or produce something that has value, but so far in my education of monetary policy I haven't found it.

Please enlighten me if anyone out there has the answer.


*This post does not even begin to consider the implications of such a fiat system.  I would venture to say that the entire economy is affected by cycles because of this.  Go check out http://atleastonewhy.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Man of the year...

So it looks like Time is about as clueless as the guys who have been giving out Nobel Prizes lately.

First we had Paul Krugman win the prize for economics.  If you don't know about how wrong he is, go listen to Peter Schiff on youtube or read this comic by Irwin Schiff (Peter's dad).

Then we had Obama get a deposit on his future accomplishments with the Nobel piece Prize.  Now Time magazine has decided that Ben Bernanke is the man of the year.

This is due to a lack of education.  Or at the very least, a lack of reflection on the lessons of history.  Probably the single most responsible person for this whole crisis lasting as long as it will is Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve...the man of the year.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Climategate...why haven't I heard about this?

Has anyone been following the biggest scandal of all time?  Climategate.

Supposedly, the existence of global warming is not supported by the data collected.  Anyone know much about this?  or have thoughts on it?  Why isn't the media making a big deal out of this?

Shouldn't people be very angry?  Please comment and share.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/11/24/john-lott-climate-change-emails-copenhagen/

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

a little piece of advice that's actually worth something in this dying economy...


Part 1:

Look up the definition of fiat money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_currency

You don't have to understand all of it, but you do need to understand two things:

1. The real purpose of money.

2. How fiat money is different from real money and what gives it value. (not the "value" of the dollar)

-----------------------------------------------------------
 
Part 2:
 
Find out who creates our money...our dollars.
 
 
Q:  Where does our money come from?  Is it a government entity? 
 
A:  The Federal Reserve (The Fed).  No it is not a government entity.  It is owned by its member banks - the banks to whom it freely gives money whenever it wants (cashing checks from company accounts to the owners with cash that didn't exist yesterday).
 
 
Q:  Who is in charge of the Fed?
 
A:  Congress sorta tells the Fed what its job is, but that's about it.  The Fed messes with the money supply whenever it wants to create short terms booms in the economy...at the expense of long term crashes.
 
 
Q:  Why does this matter to me?  I can still buy a gallon of milk for $4.99.
 
A:  It matters because the Fed creates/controls artificial inflation.  Yeah, $4.99 huh?  Well milk used to cost $1.00 a gallon.  No, it is not that much more expensive to produce milk.  The price is driven up by inflation (created only by the Fed).  The increase in the price of milk is not price inflation, per se.  The cause of the increase in the price of milk is inflation.
 
Any questions?