THE FRUITS OF LIBERALISM – LONDON BRIDGES FALLING DOWN

Posted on August 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Burning busses, overturned cars, smashed windows and spoiled upper class youths joining in with grown up feral children gone wild. Jolly Old England may still be old but the Brits have lost their jollies. Socrates would have you answer the question, why? The UK Daily Mail responds:

Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters.

And that’s just the headline. If I were still a headline editor, I would have changed brutalized to brutalizing. The paper went on to suggest:

Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. They do not watch royal weddings or notice Test matches or take pride in being Londoners or Scousers or Brummies. Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present.

A wee bit of translation is in order for American readers. Brummies are people from the city of Brumfield or its environs. The definition of a Scouser is less obvious. A Scouser is someone from Liverpool; from either side of the river Mersey qualifies. These are middle class areas known for the fierce pride of their citizens.

People who are proud of their accomplishments do not seek to destroy the source of their pride. Youths who are proud of their nation and neighborhood are not given to trashing them. Liberal dogma in Britain has created a welfare state and a world without these prides.

How many of the rioters vote is an open question. But there can be little question about which party they would support.

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DON’T BUY GOLD

Posted on August 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Now is the time to buy ____________ (fill in the blank). Everyone is buying it. Big profits are being made. The prices just keep rising. It’s a hard asset, not a paper security. There is a limited supply.

Four years ago you would have filled in the blank with real estate. Today the word is gold. If you want to gamble, go ahead. Gold is a better bet than Las Vegas. In the casinos, mathematical geniuses design the game so that you will lose. It’s called a “handle” and the handle is limited by law. There is no such machination in the gold market. But there is a broadly overlooked cost. It’s called the spread. Before you buy, ask the dealer how much he will pay to buy the gold you already have. Only then, ask the price you will be required to pay if you buy.

Now you know the spread – for today, — and provided the dealer gave an honest quote. When the market gets weak, the spread widens. When the market gets really bad the gap becomes a chasm.

There are just two reasons for investing in anything, current income or price increase. In the stock market, company shares pay dividends. In real estate there is rent to collect. These are sources of current income. How much income does a coin or bar of gold pay? None. With gold there is no current income. That leaves only price increase. The price of gold is set by fear. How do you predict if fear will be higher or lower when it’s time to sell? The amount of gold that goes into jewelry and industrial use is but a pitiful pittance of the total ounces of gold that trade every day. Gold is strictly a speculator’s commodity.

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DEMOCRAT’S REMORSE

Posted on August 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

Garden variety Democrats are beginning to say in public what they have privately felt for quite some time. Barack Obama is failing as president. The thought that Hillary would have been a better choice is widespread. I wonder.

Hillary certainly outshines Obama on foreign policy matters but the plummeting of Obama’s star is tied to issues here at home. His bumbling abroad was of concern to conservatives but mostly taken in stride by Democrats. The two candidate’s agendas at home were much the same – government run health care, Cap & Trade, Card Check, more industry regulation and enhanced “entitlements”.

Nancy Pelosi would still have been running the house and Harry Reid would still be running the Senate. Instead of a president experienced in the application of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, we would have a president who wrote her doctoral thesis on the author and the teachings outlined in his book. There is a difference, but does it matter? The 60’s radicals would still be in control of all three of the branches of government that run the show.

And then there is the big question; would Hillary have been elected? Obama won handily and always held the lead, but a month or so before election day, the pollsters reported the race was getting close. It’s a safe assumption to say there was greater passion to elect the first black man to the presidency than the first woman. And Hillary didn’t have the slogan Hope and Change. The power of that theme cannot be underestimated. Intentionally vague, it was a blank check for fulfillment of your hopes and dreams whatever they may be.

Blaming the leader and not the system is as routine an act for the Left as breakfast in the morning. Eventually a point is reached where blaming the opposition is just not credible. The only reason Communism didn’t work in Russia was that Lenin and Stalin were corrupt and ineffective. Socialism works. It just has to be done right. That’s the unshakable belief.

Barack Obama did not initiate the decline of America that is taking place. But he is presiding over the culmination. Sometimes a disease has to get really serious before we will submit to the cure. In that sense, Obama may have done the country a service.

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DOWN WITH TESTING IN SCHOOLS

Posted on August 11, 2011 | Leave a comment
Arne Duncan during Chicago Public Schools.

Image via Wikipedia

No Child Left Behind was designed to improve the quality of education by allocating greater funds to schools that teach than to those that do not.  That statement is not as much of an over characterization of failing schools as one might think.

Giving support to schools that teach successfully enables the better schools to maintain and enhance standards and systems that are working.  Substandard schools are incented to improve.  Pouring more money into schools that are failing to educate their students benefits no one other than the incompetent school administrations.

To know where the money should go you need to know which schools are graduating educated students and which ones are just passing children through the system.  This is not a difficult assignment.  Test the students.

However:

(AP) – State and local education officials have been begging the federal government for relief from student testing mandates in the federal No Child Left Behind law, but school starts soon and Congress still hasn’t answered the call.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he will announce a new waiver system Monday to give schools a break.

Set a standard for improvement – then waive it.  Welcome to your government at work.  Secretary Duncan says the waivers will be granted to all 50 states.  No Child Left Behind is a program that was set up by the Bush administration and is now being undermined by the Obama administration.  Remember that the next time you hear a Democrat say the program is not working.

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THERE IS A GOOD REASON WHY THE DEBT CEILING FIGHT WAS SO FIERCE

Posted on August 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

It was a bitter fight.  Thank God for the fight!  For without it the Democrats would have ratcheted the national debt even higher.

The reason the nation’s credit rating was reduced is because the federal government overspends and is deeply, very deeply,  in debt.  In defiance of all reason, the Democrats fought hard to increase spending and increase the level of debt.  Rick Santelli got it right when he said if it had not been for the Tea Party the nation’s credit rating would be BBB.  Thank God for the Tea Party!

Santelli may have been engaging in a bit of hyperbole, but then he may not.  What rating would you give to a family with an 80,000 annual income that is 501,000 dollars in debt?  Would you trust them more if they promised to cut a little spending, perhaps to 124,000  sometime in the near future,  but only if you agree to increase their line of credit immediately so they can spend more now?

The numbers in the table below are real. They were not pulled out of a hat.   See this prior post for an explanation of the family equivalent table.  Click on the table to enlarge it.


As long as Democrats control the Senate and the presidency the choice will be bitter word fights in Washington or deadly riots elsewhere as the money for “entitlements” runs out.  Thank God for the word fights.

P.S.
We are back.  The vacation was great.  Look for new posts.

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SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND HAS NO RESERVES

Posted on August 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

W.C. Fields was on a long train ride one day and found himself sitting in the smoking car at the losing end of a few hands of poker. His chips had run out. His credit had reached the limit of trust his new found debtors were willing to extend. W.C. leaned back in the plush velvet parlor car chair and said, “I am going to do for you something I rarely do for a stranger. I am going to give you my IOU.”

In the case of Social Security the government takes your money, takes an equal amount from your employer and puts the sum of them both in a cookie jar called “The Trust Fund”. Then they take all the money out of the cookie  and spend it on such things as they see fit. Some of it is paid out to those already in retirement, some of it goes to building needed highways, some of it goes for earmarks that buy votes for favored politicians or as barter for the passage of bills. None of it stays in the cookie jar.

But the powers that be, lean back in their plush leather chairs and tell us not to worry. They have given us their IOU. They tell you it’s in a Trust Fund and invested in safe government securities. Imagine for a moment that you are concerned about the financial stability of a bank that was holding the assets upon which you are relying for retirement. Now I ask this question. What would be your reaction be if the bank president wrote a letter to you – not to worry, the bank has used the money to expand its business but your account is safely protected by IOUs from the bank? That is Social Security.

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CENTRAL PLANNING GONE WILD

Posted on August 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

When a private enterprise operates with the same efficiency as the government, the private enterprise runs out of money and declares bankruptcy.  When a government runs the government as governments do, and runs out of money, the government does not declare bankruptcy; it raises taxes.

Nothing is more inefficient than a central planning government.  Ask Adam Smith.  Many people believe President Reagan ended the Cold War.  That may be, but he had help from central planning, not ours, but theirs.  The economic system in the U.S.S.R. was Socialism about as pure as it gets.  The government planned everything.  Eighty years of central planning left the Soviet empire financially destitute.  Reagan held all the cards.  All he had to do was play them.

That’s history, now to the present.  China is the dominant Communist country today.  China’s Socialism is less pure, but still heavily imbued with central planning.  The Australian video China’s Ghost Cities and Malls is an eye popping revelation of what can happen when central planning goes wild.

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REAGAN TELLS ONE TO THE CHOIR

Posted on August 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Obviously not new, but worthy of a repeat. We need a little levity once in a while.

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DOO WOP “JITTERBUG MARY DOES THE ROCK AND ROLL” by the DEL VIKINGS

Posted on August 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

This is for the youngsters out there, those under 50.  Before Rap, there was Doo Wop. Here’s a sample. It will make the youngster’s laugh and the oldsters smile.

Click on the radio to play the video. Beware, the quality of the picture is pre-technology.

CLICK ON THE RADIO IMAGE TO PLAY THE VIDEO

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COL. WEST – IT’S IN THE KORAN

Posted on August 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

Don’t be misled by the title frame image. Col. West is far from asleep. The Colonel, now Rep. Allen West (R FL), explains all you need to know about Islam in less than two minutes.  At the moment we have bigger fish to fry within the country but we must not forget the enemy without.

The Bible teaches Christians to compare scripture with scripture. Clarification, expansion and depth of understanding are to be gained by studying the Bible in its entirety. Muslims have the Koran and and also have the Hadith. Both must be studied for a proper understanding of Islam.

The Hadith are the supplementary recorded teachings by early Muslim holy men that give practical guidance to believers. The guidance is based on many sayings attributed to Mohamed and on the authors own interpretations of the Koran.  The Koran is divided into 114 chapter called Sura.  Because the Sura are written in a pleasing poetic style they are sometimes referred to as poems. The terms Hadith and Sura are used as both plural and singular nouns.

Col West, was elected to Congress in 2010.

In addition to the Hadith and the Sura, Col. West refers to the Battle of Tours in France in the year 732AD. It was at Tours that French General Charles Martel turned back the Muslim invasion that had been destined to occupy and control all of Europe.

Possibly the most significant battle in all of history, The Battle of Tours determined the destiny of Europe.

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