The Warsters Revert To Type

Have you heard that it was WWII that ended the "great" depression?

Have you heard that climate change will lead to world war? Or that invading a sovereign nation to bring them "democracy" is a good thang?

Or even that nukes really are not off the table because their use can save lives?

That crazy talk is everywhere just like "the housing market will continue to grow and values will continue to increase" was sorta recently.

You can always tell people who are spouting such nonsense, but you can't tell them much. They know it all.

And once their fallacies are so exposed and so naked (like now) they will act as if they never said what they said for all those years and years.

Bottom line, these warsters are wrong to begin now to generate the propaganda that the only way out is world war.

Like I said before, the real solution is for us to invade ourselves.

Holy Right Marries Big Brother

The marriage of Holy Right to Big Brother eventually gave birth to their daughter Scandal and their son Character Assassination.

The purpose and function of Holy Right is to raise the concept of good behavior way up to a holy level above mere mortals.

There is a distinct reason that the bar must be very, very high. Fishermen of men know that the net must be wide if one is to prosper.

Yes, a very distinct reason it must be raised to an unattainable height that can only be imaginatively inhabited by the Robe Wearers (Holy Right's family, Big Brother's inlaws).

The social script handed down betimes ends up being a movie where everyone is to pretend that it is an attainable realm.

A realm fitly inhabited by good people floating above the realm of bad people. Like Springsteen said, everybody has a hungry heart, so you lay down your money and you play your part.

The Robe Wearers not only proclaim the divine creation of the realm, but they proclaim the path to inhabiting it as well.

The purpose and function of Big Brother is to use the power of government for spying, illegal wire taps, other illegal surveillance, and rogue segments of the various departments of justice to gather food for the children Scandal and Character Assassination.

Once the populace is fully conditioned to the notion of "good behavior" by Holy Right, the information gathered by Big Brother is handed off to the children Scandal and Character Assassination as the toys for their delightful play.

Those two children play a serious game of taking people out of power or even out of consideration for power by the vehicles of scandal and character assassination.

Their sandbox where they play with their toys is called "The Press" or "The Media".

So long as the Holy Right can successfully define what is "good", Big Brother can use the spy mechanisms to find behavior that is "bad".

Then the children can use their toys in the sandbox to keep certain people out of power and certain other people in power.

It is the Hour of Power, so are you a Muslim, conspiracy theorist, lefty, tax avoider, liberal, atheist, peacenik, or are you a good person instead?

7286 Wall Street - 8.8 Main Street

The competition is fierce.

The DOW is straining to hit its 1997 closing low of 7286.

The unemployment rate is straining to hit 8.8% this year.

Meanwhile, bankruptcy filings and Tax Court petitions are going through the roof.

The notes of the Central Bankers of the fed from its last meeting state the following:

All participants anticipated that unemployment would remain substantially above its longer-run sustainable rate at the end of 2011, even absent further economic shocks; a few indicated that more than five to six years would be needed for the economy to converge to a longer-run path characterized by sustainable rates of output growth and unemployment and by an appropriate rate of inflation.

(NY Times, italics added). The current economy is not fundamentally sound in any way, shape, nor form.

This is not quite like the first months of the Bush II presidency in 2001 where there was a $230 billion dollar surplus that had to be wasted fast.

Clinton left tiny, tiny foreclosure rates. Property values increasing. Code black, code black!

No, now there is an economy that has to be resuscitated quickly. Code red, code red!

Did I mention stratospheric foreclosure rates and plunging property values?

Change we can't deny.

Shall we invade ourselves as a stimulus?

UPDATES:

Can you believe it? One trading day later, they did it. And it may get into the 6,000 range this week.

And the DOW dropped below 7,000 on Monday March 2, 2009.

Care Is The Loneliest Number

We were appalled at the hardness of heart of some city kids.

Now we are appalled at the hardness of heart of banks who are charging unemployed Americans fees which are beyond the pale.

These robber barons are getting billions of dollars from the public dole but are not too proud to gouge into fellow Americans.

Americans who are out of work in substantial part because of the indiscretions of these banksters in the first place.

Share the shame of these banksters with others.

When The Cost Is Admission

The new head of all things spooky has never been a spook.

At this point in our history and hysteria that is probably a good thing.

Vice President Biden paid the price of admission during the process of administering the oath of office.

The oath Leon Panetta took as a prerequisite to becoming the new CIA director.

Biden laid out some non-revisionist history during the ceremony:

Biden said [Obama's presidential orders have] reversed "policies that, in my view and the view of many in this agency, caused America to fall short of its founding principles and which gave Al-Qaeda a powerful recruiting tool."

"We expect you to be able to look around corners occasionally, to imagine the unexpected. We expect you to provide independent analysis and not engage in group-think," Biden said.

"And we expect you to tell us the facts as you know them, wherever they may lead, not what you think we want to hear," he added.

(Raw Story, italics added). Various and sundry blogs have pointed out the mad cow disease that has infected spookdom these past 8 years.

Chief spook Panetta gave some of the flavor he expected:

Panetta said he was committed to providing "the very best intelligence, independent judgments not influenced by the politics of the situation, but truly real, objective information that can be presented to the president and the policymakers of this country so that they can protect the American people."

The remarks alluded to charges that the administration of former president George W. Bush "cherry-picked" intelligence on Al-Qaeda's supposed links to Iraq's Saddam Hussein to justify the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq.

(ibid). The fact is that big brother hijacked spookiness some years back, and white ops lost out to black ops. Lawlessness was an agent of decay.

The admission is the price of moving on, but after paying that price the moving on is not automatic. It takes actual moving on.

And that takes accountability.

Without accountability for violations of the law, the vehicle of intelligence has no gas in it and it won't go where we need it to go.

It will still be stuck in big brother's muddled "intelligence" and will continue to bring Americans down into the banana republic ideology our ancestors rejected.

Fighting Terrorism For 200 Years

The robber barons wanted his soul but they could only steal his bones.

It is a college frat prank to them, but it is a crime to the rest of us.

Geronimo's descendants are reminding us once again of such indignities by filing a lawsuit in federal court to retrieve his remains from the frat freaks.

They have been fighting terrorism for 200 years.

An article at Huffington Post details the indecent behavior of the air heads who delight to engage in various indecencies as a matter of course.

Robber barons and warsters are expected to behave that terrorist way I suppose.

They even supported King George during the American Revolution and wanted to continue slavery a century later.

Bastards.

The next post in this series is here.

Property Value - A Verdict Of The People

In Tarrant County, Texas a three person jury determines the value of real property if the home owner challenges the value assessed by the County Tax Appraiser.

Citizens serve on that type of jury like they serve on other types of juries. The county sends various citizens a notice to serve based upon the number of valuation challenges for that particular year.

Why can't that concept be expanded upon and used to stabilize real property values in the commerce of land, homes, and commercial property?

Remember that our current economic catastrophe is a function of the fluctuation of home prices up and then down to the point of disaster. That is anything but stability.

Using the values set by a jury system, price fluctuations will be moderated and localized. If the locals stabilize property values they benefit, if they allow prices to get out of whack they suffer. Locally.

The entire nation would not have to pay a tragic price for the mistakes of a few.

As it stands now, we are all paying a heavy price for mistakes of the few, the bad, the banksters.

The concept should even apply to granting or denying building permits. Overbuilding caused our current catastrophic home price plunges.

Too many houses with too few buyers means everyone loses equity.

People on the jury would be given statistics, facts, value history, and would be given warnings and argument from both sides.

If they make mistakes the penalty is to their area only.

We have already pointed out that the American jury system is not designed to bring perfection, it is designed to stop the wide-spread oppression of government. It works quite well.

In effect when the government takes your home value (through bad policies or lack of regulation) when you have done nothing to deserve that taking, it is a form of oppression. It is a form of eminent domain by stealth .

A jury system would limit fluctuations to local areas and stop massive economic oppression we suffer under current conditions. And as jury expertise and experience grew over time it would bring much more stability than we have now.

Once perfected it would add to the prosperity of all of us.

The Ascent of Criminal Aspiration

Like most of my fellow citizens, friends, and relatives, I have a wide spread and very ordinary and very fundamental belief in the people.

I learned it from many American ancestors who are common to all Americans.

They had ideas common to all free people and people who want to be free.

Criminality is anathema to those ideals and realities.

One of the fundamental machinations of criminality is to deceive anyone and everyone about the criminal's real persona. Look normal. Look legit. Do not draw attention to your criminal self.

The photo attached to this thread shows a teacher teaching criminals about business. Legitimate business.

It comes from a BBC News Article entitled "Turning crack dealers into chief executives".

But as we have pointed out here, since the spirit of the corporate business world is about deceit, about putting up a false front, we all know that we have too much of falseness already.

It is the spirit and soul of crime. To hide. To smoke screen.

And the people of America now realize, emphasized by the Bush II regime, that the soul of crime has ascended to the highest elevations of American power.

And it has brought us down.

So it is time for the honest people to get into the saddle of American government.

We have way too many criminals there at the moment. They keep trying to look honest but we see through them.

When honesty rules the people prosper.

Department of Just Us

It is no secret to many that the Bush II regime turned the old Department of Justice into The Department of Just Us.

Through Monica Goodling only bushies were sought to be hired or appointed as Attorney Generals, US Attorneys, and career employees.

Many employees she sought to hire were trained at a church sponsored school of law that does not have a national reputation for the type of excellence traditionally used for the department.

The effects of these indiscretions went far and wide, even reaching to The IRS, and to the rationalization of torture.

Now reports are coming out of a concerted cover up to hide the evidence through specific delays.

"Justice delayed is justice denied" someone once said.

General Madoff

We have talked about the Bush II regime losing standard weapons, losing WMD, and now we are hearing of that regime "losing" lots of cash:

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.

(A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff, italics added). The Iraq war was initially touted by Bush II staff and cabinet as a money making war. It was, but not like they portrayed it. It made money for the warsters but hurt the economy. They are not satisfied with the largest expenditures, but are only satisfied with more?

We were informed that the Iraqi oil would pay for the Iraq war, that it would take 90 days, and that it would be sweet.

Sweet democracy in Iraq? Sour grapes in America!

Pop-a-Cap For Jesus

A minister who was shot in the back in church immediately after a sermon does not want worshippers carrying guns in church.

Another church goer and leader in a movement which advocates carrying concealed firearms does want worshippers carrying guns in church.

So, are we heading for a First Amendment church-state conflict because the state is going to try to tell churches what to do, thereby usurping freedom of religion?

Or is it going to be a Second Amendment individual right-to-bear arms conflict because some churches don't want the pews scratched up by worshippers "packing heat" or worshippers "packing weight" as the case may be?

No telling, but read this interesting bit of Arkansas ebb and flow and see if you do have an idea how it will go.

Impoverishment As A Form of Group-Think

We are learning the value of individual visionary honesty from World Savings whistle blower Paul Bishop. We are learning the lack of value in blind faith from the infamous Bernie Madoff and Texan Allen Stanford.

Now lets learn that current American impoverishment is in significant part a function of dishonesty, blind faith, and group-think.

Some of that dishonesty has been in the form of economic propaganda directing us toward group-think:

Yet until very recently Americans believed they were getting richer, because they received statements saying that their houses and stock portfolios were appreciating in value faster than their debts were increasing. And if the belief of many Americans that they could count on capital gains forever sounds naïve, it’s worth remembering just how many influential voices — notably in right-leaning publications like The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and National Review — promoted that belief, and ridiculed those who worried about low savings and high levels of debt.

(Economist Paul Krugman, italics added). Group-think was promoted a la Big Brother, and that led to group-think sized problems.

And it can lead to even greater problems according to Krugman. As we try to correct the problems which group-think got us into, we can't use group-think any more:

And as the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out in the 1930s, the things people and companies do when they realize they have too much debt tend to be self-defeating when everyone tries to do them at the same time. Attempts to sell assets and pay off debt deepen the plunge in asset prices, further reducing net worth. Attempts to save more translate into a collapse of consumer demand, deepening the economic slump

(ibid, italics added). So how do we shake ourselves free from yet another curse of the deceit business using the current economic stimuli now being administered?

Individualism triumphing over group-think of course.

Hey, Americans should be able to do that because we claim to have individual freedom.

Civil rights and all that jazz. Individualism has saved our bacon many times before.

If we don't individualize we will have to suffer until we do.

American constitutional individualism comes in the form of state's rights, municipal rights, and the supreme rights of the people.

Those are some, but not all, of the forms of anti group-think national wisdom handed down from our forefathers and foremothers who knew for sure what they were talking about.

History of Malfunction Plagues Q400's

The reason for the crash of Flight 3407 is far from being proved.

Severe icing is far from being proved even though some icing is suspected. A little bit of almost everything is suspected.

In a typical investigation the NTSB will look at the history of the aircraft itself and the history of its type or model.

In that regard there are some reports over the past few years that Q400's were having mechanical problems:

Scandinavian Airlines announced Sunday that it would abandon a fleet of 27 planes made by Bombardier of Canada that have been involved in crash landings.

The unusual step by SAS came after one of its Dash 8 Q400 commuter planes crash-landed on Saturday because of landing-gear failure, the third such incident involving the airline in the last two months.

(Airline Stops Flying Q400 Turboprops). The Q400 line is evidently a newer type of aircraft:

The Q400 entered service in 2000 and can seat 68 to 78 passengers. It is the latest in a series of turboprops designed mainly for regional aircraft use that were first developed by de Havilland Canada, owned by Boeing before being acquired by Bombardier.

(About 60 Bombardier Planes Grounded After Crash Landings). The main problem had to do with the landing gear, but there was talk of broader problems:

Both Transport Canada and Bombardier rejected suggestions that the series of crash landings could be a sign of broader problems with the aircraft, which is typically used on short flights and for service to airports with noise restrictions.

(Airline Ends Use of Turboprops After 3rd Crash Landing, italics added). A suspicion of possible "broader problems" was poo pooed by interested parties.

Perhaps the NTSB will pick up on that since the icing issue is not yet a slam dunk?

If one landing gear failed to come down, that would put more resistance on one side of the aircraft. Or if one or more would not come back up when they tried to increase speed that would be an impairment.

Even in non-severe icing and just normal icing the plane is somewhat impaired by the ice, so the combination of gear problems at that time could be more of a factor than it would be at other times.

Add that to the fact of a new pilot to that aircraft type (since he had only flown that type for about a month, since December) it could lead to a situation where only an instant was available for a corrective action.

Reacting to a specific aircraft need in an instant is a function of a lot of experience.

It will be a long slog to unravel all these potentially contributing factors.

Another President's Day

This is one of the more unusual President's Days.

But it is another one where the country is in peril.

Another one where we brought it on ourselves. Or a president brought it upon us I should say.

Leaders can be a good thing or a bad thing, and that seems to be a function of the eye of the beholder in most cases.

The historical position and popularity ranking of presidents morphs up and down as time goes on.

Much of that is due to the PR and even the propaganda efforts of a president, his staff, or historians long after the president leaves office.

Open Thread

Tell it like it is.

Investigative Word-Factory Daze

A while back we had a thread about the US losing guns, roses, bombs, money, computers, and who knows what else.

Now daze we seem to be blossoming into investigations. Investigations about losing money, sense of justice, sense of who we are, and on and on.

There are gonna be a lot of books and reports. Lotsa southern comfort. That is what investigations are designed to do. Deceive the public into thinking the government will handle it.

The government hasn't yet received the memo that since Katrina in the post Bush II world the investigative word game factory is less popular than the chastity belt.

The public knows we have lost our virginity already. Knows we have been screwed badly for years.

The public would like to see some real results, like crooks and liars in jail. Enough of this "where does it hurt" BS.

These investigative word factories are just polluting the air waves with toxic pabulum we don't need or want.