Peakah's Provocations...

Hymn by Jars of Clay

2011-10-23T10:23:00.000-07:00

After a sweet day of hiking with my kids around the beautiful Big Lake, AZ area- this song played on my way back home while my worn out kiddos were napping in the back of the Excursion. The song remained on my mind the rest of the evening and I just felt like posting it here for Sunday morning.

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37

2011-10-04T16:19:00.000-07:00

This morning I turned 37 years old. I got up and hit the path to Fool Hollow Lake and absorbed the cool mountain air and light rain to start my day. I donned a sweatshirt to maintain a normal body temp of 37 degrees. (That would be in Celsius)

My body felt 37 years old during the walk but thankfully there was a Pandora app on my phone to get my blood pumping. The "Zac Brown Band Channel" was the perfect prescription for the shin splints.

So there seems to be something different about today. Something different about 37. After my walk I arrived at a very quiet home. The kids were off to school and my wife still relaxing in the bedroom. I decided to grab my pliers, retractable razor, and tie wire and turned over my sofa and tightened up the sagging springs to firm up the seats. Then I turned over my loveseat with dual recliners and repacked one of the sagging foam seats with some eggshell foam that has been gathering dust in my pile of camping equipment.

37 is the first irregular prime number and my behavior was irregular indeed.

Ok, so now my inner Cliff Clavin now beginning to yap in my ear.

Immediately my inner voice is in a slightly buzzed higher pitched New England accent.

--Did you know that the Green Monstah in Fenway Pahk is 37 feet tall?

-There are 37 bars in the digits of a digital watch.

-Spam was invented by George A. Hormel in 1937.

-Abraham Lincoln was elected to the House of Representatives at the age of 37.

-The only American President to resign from office was President #37. ("I am not a crook")

-The reign of Caligula (Emporer Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) began in A.D. 37.

-There are 37 genes in the mitochondrial genome.

-The number of the beast is 666. (37 x 18)

-All American Express cards begin with the number 37.

-There are 37 points in a the "perfect" bridge hand.

-If a fertile man and woman have sex every day for a month, there is a 37% chance of pregnancy.

-37% of pregnancies resulting from in-vitro fertilization are multiple.

-Tiger Woods had a string of 37 consecutive holes without a bogey at the 1997 Masters. (This should not have anything to do with the pregnancy stats above.)

-The record for most men's basketball victories in a season is 37.

-When NY Yankees pitcher David Wells pitched a perfect game against Minnesota, he had retired 37 consecutive batters.

-The 37th Pillsbury Bake-Off was won by contestant #37.

...really!

Epic Ride through Northern AZ

2011-05-13T21:50:00.000-07:00

I've got a meeting in Las Vegas, NV on Tuesday morning. This presents the perfect opportunity to explore northern Arizona on the motorcycle (using I-40 as little as possible). Weather permitting, I plan on cruising through the Arizona hills taking pictures and adding them to the map below. Should be exciting! I sure hope my heiny can handle the 10 hour cruise!

View Scenic Route- Show Low, AZ to Las Vegas, NV in a larger map

Can you tell I'm looking forward to it?

"Diets and I" ...a Shakespearian Tragedy

2011-05-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

I remember coming home from swimming practice in high school and eating an entire 1 lb box of spaghetti covered in my mom's amazing meat sauce and then going out to do some mountain biking along Bailey's hill only to come home later and eat an entire box of ritz crackers topped with two cans of cheese whiz. On A Daily Basis! I was a whopping 2% body fat and barely cracking the century mark in lbs at 16.

20 years later I'm 36 and by only walking by the deli in the supermarket, I'll net a 4 lb gain. (Damn you samples!!) I now weigh over twice what I did at 16! Granted I'm not swimming 3000 yards and going on mountain bike excursions through the woods in the dark on a daily basis, but my how things change. The extent of my physical activity currently consists of manhandling a computer mouse and holding my big fat head up with my other arm on the desk, or expertly working a remote control. Ok, don't get the wrong idea; I'm not a behemoth or anything, but I do have that prototypical spare tire around the midsection and some gelatinous new life form existing under my chin. My wife and I have decided it's time to go on a diet... for real this time.

We've done diets before. Shoot, my store associates and I won a Biggest Loser competition that was held town-wide. I really didn't do a whole lot except eat less and move more and I dropped approximately 25 lbs in 3 months. However, that was a few years ago. I've discovered that the more time that goes by the harder dieting is at an exponential rate.

Well I'm one week in to a new diet hating the crap out of it. However I have lost a few lbs so I'm not giving up. I think I'm just in a psychological transition period from enjoying a carefree (lazy) 'eat whatever' mindset to a more disciplined approach. I've gone on the hCG Diet which includes drops to curb the attack of the appetite and a 500 calorie a day diet that truthfully has gotten pretty boring considering I cannot eat poultry. I am allergic to bird. It's a fat juicy ribeye for me on Thanksgiving day.

The hardest part is giving up the anticipation of the preparation. Let me explain. All week long I look forward to Saturday afternoon and Sunday as a day where we are all together as a family and the cooking showcase begins. It involves all 5 senses- The sounds of sizzling bacon, the wafting smells of lasagna in the oven, the giddy glee that goes into firing up a grill, the sight of seared meat over a fire, touching all the textures that make up various parts of the meal, and finally the Taste! Then there's the rewarding relaxation mode of everyone lying around and watching America's Funniest Home Videos and belly laughing with each other.

Ok, I'm sounding a bit apocalyptic by suggesting that these things are no longer going to occur while dieting. But the anticipation of the preparation has definitely disappeared. I can no longer eat those things I've been looking forward to all week! This Sunday's meal is "Apple Day" on the diet for crying out loud! What sick individual thought of this? How's that lasagna kids? Off the deep end I go.

So I'm trying to put things in perspective. Yeah, it'll be great to lose weight and I want to support my wife by doing the diet with her- I'm going to stick it out. We'll feel better as we continue, particularly when that gelatinous form under my chin goes back to whatever sick realm it emerged.

I'm going to look back upon this post and think, "OMG, what a crybaby!" and I'm ok with that. Writing this out has allowed me to expel that angst that is probably keeping the lbs holding on to my midsection in the first place.

So, let the revealing begin- (btw I'm 5' 11" tall)

April 29th 2010 I weighed in at 215.0 lbs.

Today is May 8th and I weighed in at 210.6 lbs

I'm going to stick with this diet for a few more weeks just to spite myself and prove that I do still have that same discipline that got me through the swim practices and mountain biking rides when I was 16... it's just so sad that we all can't eat like we did when we were that age!

Man I miss my bike...

2011-03-07T06:28:00.000-08:00

Broke my wrist a few weeks ago (throttle wrist even) and can't ride my new bike in this gorgeous weather. Here's a video I made a few months back going from Phoenix to Show Low, AZ. HURRY UP AND HEAL WRIST!

Veterans Demand Action Not Rhetoric From Obama

2011-02-21T22:09:00.000-08:00

(Guest Article by Timothy Elliot)

Over nine months ago President Obama ceremoniously declared that his new bill, the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act was a “major step forward in America’s commitment to families and caregivers who tend to our wounded warriors every day.” But every day, including the January 31st deadline for the program to be implemented, those wounded warriors and their caregivers have been left high and dry on their own. Instead the Department of Veterans Affairs has been struggling to handle the extremely complex, bureaucratic program.

The Department of Veterans Affairs demanded new benefits and funding for veterans because of the increasing number of disabled veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The program is supposed to help caregivers of wounded veterans provide support, particularly because of the influx of victims of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The program was meant to benefit soldiers with PTSD especially, as it has recently lead to an average of 950 veteran suicides a month. Because traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, both of which are among the most common afflictions ailing soldiers and veterans of the current wars, are difficult to diagnosis and treat the VA was hoping for a bill that effectively allowed caregivers to request benefits on behalf of their injured spouses or relatives to provide support for soldiers and veterans who were not receiving care. However, officials in the Department of Veterans Affairs have complained about the extremely bureaucratic nature of the bill, saying that it’s made it overly difficult to establish who qualifies for the new benefits.

One of the problems with the bill is that it is unclear whether it applies only to veterans of the two current wars or to all veterans, as the Department of Veteran Affairs had lobbied for. The VA wanted the bill to apply to all veterans because of the increasing numbers of veterans with mesothelioma. LikeTBI and PTSD, mesothelioma can be extremely difficult to diagnosis because the symptoms of mesothelioma are similar to other, less serious disease. Mesothelioma symptoms, including trouble breathing and a fluid build-up in the chest are diagnosed in nearly 1,000 veterans a year, and goes undiagnosed in many more. The VA fought hard for the bill to apply for veterans with it because although the mesothelioma life expectancy is only a year or two after diagnosis, the steadily increasing number of diagnoses is making it difficult for the VA to handle under current regulations. Unfortunately it’s still unclear whether the bill will apply to these veterans as well.

Three weeks after the deadline he set for his bill and nine months after his premature celebration Obama has yet to take a single step forward in his commitment to our wounded warriors and caregivers who tend to them. It’s time to demand that he move forward with action, instead of just with useless rhetoric.

--Timothy Elliot

Breaking News: FOX News hires Olbermann!

2011-01-23T11:49:00.000-08:00

Story Here!

Martial Law, Economic Meltdown, and Executive Orders

2010-10-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

Activist Post: Martial Law, Economic Meltdown, and Executive Orders

With the Federal Reserve actually suggesting that inflation might be the cure to the weak economy, massive unemployment numbers and a crashing dollar, one has to stop and ponder. The chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, was a child prodigy, scored a near perfect SAT score, focused his studies around the Great Depression and is a statistical genius. So why is he so willing to abuse the Dollar and essentially sign the death warrant for America?

Read on, this article hits it on the bullseye...

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-07T00:24:00.001-07:00

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

'Twas the night before elections

2010-08-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

And all through the town

Tempers were flaring

Emotions all up and down!

I, in my bathrobe

With a cat in my lap

Had cut off the TV

Tired of political crap.

When all of a sudden

There arose such a noise

I peered out of my window

Saw Obama and his boys

They had come for my wallet

They wanted my pay

To give to the others

Who had not worked a day!

He snatched up my money

And quick as a wink

Jumped back on his bandwagon

As I gagged from the stink

He then rallied his henchmen

Who were pulling his cart

I could tell they were out

To tear my country apart!

' On Fannie, on Freddie,

On Biden and Ayers!

On Acorn, On Pelosi'

He screamed at the pairs!

They took off for his cause

And as he flew out of sight

I heard him laugh at the nation

Who wouldn't stand up and fight!

So I leave you to think

On this one final note-

IF YOU DONT WANT SOCIALISM

GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!

Story Behind National Anthem

2010-07-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

Happy 234th Birthday America

2010-07-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

John Stossel's Special- "What's Great about America"

Link to video source here:
http://www.foxnewsinsider.com/2010/07/02/stossel-special-whats-great-about-america-2/

2010-05-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
-John Stuart Mill

Obama Marching Us Toward Martial Law - Building a Coalition of Forces Within the US

2010-05-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

Gov. Brewer: 'Mr. President, Secretary Napolitano - Do Your Job!'

2010-05-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

Gov. Brewer: 'Mr. President, Secretary Napolitano - Do Your Job!'

I Love Arizona

2010-05-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

The Yippity Yo Cooking Show

2010-04-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

Dossier

2010-02-19T19:53:00.001-08:00

Scott Brown Ad

2010-02-01T09:17:00.001-08:00

This ad will be the model for the 2010 elections in November...

And Tha Winnah Is...

2010-01-20T09:01:00.001-08:00

See ya in November 2010 Democrats.

Let the Voter Fraud Begin

2010-01-19T08:41:00.000-08:00

These machines are what we are depending on to elect our representatives... is it any wonder that they no longer represent us?

Easily Hacked Voting Systems to be Used in MA Special Election for the U.S. Senate

This movie clip was embedded in that article and if this doesn't make you cry like the volunteer, nothing will... kiss our democracy goodbye.

Wounded Warrior Project

2010-01-15T07:29:00.001-08:00

I'm participating in a Wounded Warrior Project in Spring of 2010 in Dallas, Texas. Please help me raise money to fund this outstanding program!

Contribute Here.

FRESH- The Movie

2010-01-14T22:32:00.000-08:00

America Rising: An Open Letter to Democrat Politicians

2010-01-04T07:04:00.001-08:00

From a Democrat voter who feels duped and is going to do something about it... Great Video!

Dave Barry's year in review: 2009

2009-12-30T07:42:00.000-08:00

Dave Barry's year in review: 2009

By Dave Barry

JACK OHMAN / TMS

It was a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of ``I feel hopeful!'' and later in the sense of ``I hope this year ends soon!''

It was also a year of Change, especially in Washington, where the tired old hacks of yesteryear finally yielded the reins of power to a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as Nancy Pelosi. As a result Washington, rejecting ``business as usual,'' finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at it.

To be sure, it was a year that saw plenty of bad news. But in almost every instance, there was offsetting good news:

BAD NEWS: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.

GOOD NEWS: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista.

BAD NEWS: The downward spiral of the newspaper industry continued, resulting in the firings of thousands of experienced reporters and an apparently permanent deterioration in the quality of American journalism.

GOOD NEWS: A lot more people were tweeting.

BAD NEWS: Ominous problems loomed abroad as -- among other difficulties -- the Afghanistan war went sour, and Iran threatened to plunge the Middle East and beyond into nuclear war.

GOOD NEWS: They finally got Roman Polanski.

In short, it was a year that we will be happy to put behind us. But before we do, let's swallow our anti-nausea medication and take one last look back, starting with. . . .

JANUARY

. . . during which history is made in Washington, D.C., where a crowd estimated by the Congressional Estimating Office at 217 billion people gathers to watch Barack Obama be inaugurated as the first American president ever to come after George W. Bush. There is a minor glitch in the ceremony when Chief Justice John Roberts, attempting to administer the oath of office, becomes confused and instead reads the side-effect warnings for his decongestant pills, causing the new president to swear that he will consult his physician if he experiences a sudden loss of sensation in his feet. President Obama then delivers an upbeat inaugural address, ushering in a new era of cooperation, civility and bipartisanship in a galaxy far, far away. Here on Earth everything stays much the same.

The No. 1 item on the agenda is fixing the economy, so the new administration immediately sets about the daunting task of trying to nominate somebody -- anybody -- to a high-level government post who actually remembered to pay his or her taxes. Among those who forgot this pesky chore is Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who sheepishly admits that he failed to pay $35,000 in federal self-employment taxes. He says that the error was a result of his using TurboTax, which he also blames for his involvement in an eight-state spree of bank robberies. He is confirmed after the Obama administration explains that it inherited the U.S. Tax Code from the Bush administration.

Elsewhere in politics, a team of specially trained wildlife agents equipped with nets and tranquilizer darts manages, after a six-hour struggle, to remove Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office. He is transported to an undisclosed swamp, where he is released into the wild and quickly bonds with the native ferret population.

On a more upbeat note, the nation finds a new hero in US Airways Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, who, in an astonishing feat of aviation, manages to land a US Airways flight safely in the Hudson River after it loses power shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia. Incredibly, all 155 people on board survive, although they are immediately taken hostage by Somali pirates.

In entertainment news, an unemployed California mother of six uses in-vitro fertilization to give birth to eight more children, an achievement that immediately catapults her to a celebrity status equivalent to that of a minor Kardashian sister. But even this joyous event is not enough to cheer up a nation worried about the worsening economy, which becomes so badin . . .

FEBRUARY

. . . that Congress passes, without reading it, and without actually finishing writing it, a stimulus package totaling $787 billion. The money is immediately turned over to American taxpayers so they can use it to stimulate the economy.

No! What a crazy idea THAT would be! The money is to be doled out over the next decade or so by members of Congress on projects deemed vital by members of Congress, such as constructing buildings that will be named after members of Congress. This will stimulate the economy by creating millions of jobs, according to estimates provided by the Congressional Estimating Office's Magical Estimating 8-Ball.

Despite this heroic effort, the economy continues to stumble. General Motors, which has sold only one car in the past year -- a Buick LaCrosse mistakenly purchased by an 87-year-old man who thought he was buying a power scooter -- announces a new four-part business plan, consisting of (1) dealership closings; (2) factory shutdowns;(3) worker layoffs; and (4) traveling backward through time to 1955.

The stock market hits its lowest level since 1997; this is hailed as a great investment opportunity by all the financial wizards who failed to let us know last year that the market was going to tank. California goes bankrupt and is forced to raise $800 million by pawning Angelina Jolie.

The Obama administration's confirmation woes continue as Tom Daschle is forced to withdraw as nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services following the disclosure that he, too, failed to pay all of his federal taxes. He blames this oversight on the fact that his tax returns were prepared by Treasury Secretary Geithner.

The Academy Awards are a triumph for Slumdog Millionaire, which wins eight Oscars, only to have them stolen by Somali pirates.

In sports, the Pittsburgh Steelers win the Super Bowl, defeating some team in a game that we have all completely forgotten. Michael Phelps is suspended from competitive swimming following publication of a photograph clearly showing that he has gills. Baseball star Alex Rodriguez admits that from 2001 through 2003 he used steroids, which he claims he got from Treasury Secretary Geithner.

And speaking of shocking disclosures, in . . .

MARCH

. . . an angry nation learns that the giant insurance company AIG, which received $170 billion in taxpayer bailouts and posted a $61 billion loss, is paying executive bonuses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. This news shocks and outrages President Obama and members of Congress, who happen to be the very people who passed the legislation that authorized both the bailouts and the bonuses, but of course they did that during a crisis and thus had no time to find out what the hell they were voting for.

To correct this situation, some congresspersons propose a 90 percent tax on the bonuses, followed by beheadings, followed by the passage of tough new financial legislation that nobody in Congress will read or understand.

In other economic news, the CEO of GM resigns under pressure from the White House, which notes that it inherited the automobile crisis from the Bush administration. GM is now essentially a subsidiary of the federal government, which promises to use its legendary business and marketing savvy to get the crippled auto giant back on its feet, starting with an exciting new lineup of cars such as the Chevrolet Consensus, a ``green'' car featuring a compressed-soybean chassis, the world's first engine powered entirely by dew, and a 14,500-page owner's manual, accompanied by nearly 6,000 pages of amendments.

Businessman Bernard Madoff pleads guilty to bilking investors out of $65 billion in a Ponzi scheme, forcing the Obama administration to withdraw his nomination for secretary of commerce.

The annual observance of Earth Hour is observed with one hour of symbolic energy conservation as hundreds of millions of non-essential lights and appliances are turned off. And that's just in Al Gore's house.

In sports and entertainment news, former NFL great Lawrence Taylor, appearing on Dancing With the Stars, accidentally rips off his partner's arms during the cha-cha competition. The judges award Taylor 453 points out of a possible 30, citing his ``energy'' and ``proximity.''

Abroad, North Korea, in what many observers view as a deliberate act of provocation, calls Domino's and, posing as the United States, orders 23 million pizzas delivered to Japan.

International problems continue to dominate in . . .

APRIL

. . . as leaders of the world's powers, looking for a way out of the worsening world economic crisis, gather in London for the G-20 summit, which ends abruptly in a violent argument over the bill for the welcoming dinner. A short while later, in what many economists see as a troubling development, the International Monetary Fund moves into a refrigerator carton.

In other international bad news, North Korea launches a test missile that experts say is capable of hitting Hawaii, based on the fact that it actually hits Hawaii. The United States swiftly pledges to issue a strongly worded condemnation containing ``even stronger words than last time.''

On the domestic front, the struggling Chrysler Corp. declares bankruptcy, but its CEO confidently predicts that the company will come back ``bigger, better and stronger than ever'' thanks to its 2010 product line, spearheaded by the all-new Dodge Despair.

The big health story in April is the rapid spread of swine flu, a dangerous new virus strain developed by the makers of Purell. Public anxiety over the flu increases when Vice President Joe Biden, demonstrating his gift for emitting statements, declares on the Today show that he would not recommend traveling by commercial airplane or subway. A short while later, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs assures reporters that he is ``not aware of any `Vice President Joe Biden.' ''

In another embarrassment for the White House, New York is temporarily thrown into a panic when Air Force One flies low over Manhattan for a publicity photo shoot. Responding to widespread criticism, Gibbs notes that President Obama inherited Air Force One from the Bush administration.

On a more positive note, an American ship captain is dramatically rescued from Somali pirates by a team of Navy SEAL sharpshooters, who are immediately hired by Dancing With the Stars to assist with the judging of Lawrence Taylor.

Speaking of drama, in . . .

MAY

. . . the finale of American Idol produces a shocking outcome that sends shock waves of shock reverberating around the planet when the winner turns out to be -- incredibly -- that guy singer, whatshisname, despite the fact that the overwhelming favorite was that OTHER guy singer. Congress vows to hold hearings after reports surface that, of the nearly 100 million votes, 73 million were phoned in by ACORN.

But the big political drama takes place in Washington, where David Souter announces that he is retiring from the Supreme Court because he is tired of getting noogies from Chief Justice Roberts. To replace Souter, President Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor, setting off the traditional Washington performance of Konfirmation Kabuki, in which the Democrats portray the nominee as basically a cross between Abraham Lincoln and the Virgin Mary, and the Republicans portray her more as Ursula the Sea Witch with a law degree. Sotomayor will eventually be confirmed, but only after undergoing the traditional Senate Judiciary Committee hazing ritual, during which she must talk for four straight days without expressing an opinion.

In crippled U.S. auto giant news, General Motors announces a new business plan under which it will fire everybody but Howie Long, who will continue to make what GM calls ``some of the most popular commercials on the market.'' Meanwhile Chrysler, looking to the future, invests $114 million in an Amway distributorship.

On the international-tension front, a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss possible sanctions against North Korea is forced to adjourn hastily when the council chamber is penetrated by a missile.

In sports, Helio Castroneves wins the Indianapolis 500, although his victory is somewhat tainted by the fact that all 32 of the other cars were hijacked by Somali pirates. Major League Baseball suspends Dodger slugger Manny Ramirez for 50 games after his urine sample explodes.

But all of these stories suddenly seem unimportant in . . .

JUNE

. . . when pop superstar Michael Jackson dies, setting off an orgy of frowny-face TV-newsperson fake somberness the likes of which has not been seen since the Princess Diana Grief-a-Palooza. At one point experts estimate that the major networks are using the word the word ``icon'' a combined total of 850 times per hour. Larry King devotes several weeks to in-depth coverage of this story, during which he conducts what is believed to be the first-ever in-casket interview; this triumph is marred only slightly by the fact that the venerable TV personality apparently believes he is talking to Bette Midler.

On the economic front, California is caught on videotape attempting to shoplift 17,000 taxpayers from Nevada. General Motors files for bankruptcy and announces a new sales strategy under which it will go around at night leaving cars in people's driveways, then sprinting away.

In political news, the Minnesota Supreme Court, clearly exhausted by months of legal wrangling, declares Al Franken the winner of American Idol. Meanwhile the governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, goes missing for six days; his spokesperson tells the press that the governor is ``hiking the Appalachian trail,'' which turns out to be a slang term meaning ``engaging in acts of an explicitly non-gubernatorial nature with a woman in Argentina.'' The state legislature ultimately considers impeaching Sanford, but changes its mind upon discovering that the lieutenant governor, who got into office through some slick legal maneuvering when nobody was paying attention, is Eliot Spitzer.

Political news continues to dominate in . . .

JULY

. . . when Sarah Palin unexpectedly announces that she will not complete her term as elected governor of Alaska, explaining, in a prepared statement, that she has a hair appointment. Asked by reporters if she plans to seek the Republican presidential nomination, she replies, ``You leave my personal life out of this.'' Elsewhere in state politics, the FBI arrests pretty much every elected official in New Jersey on suspicion of being New Jersey elected officials.

On Independence Day the nation takes a welcome break from its worries to celebrate in traditional fashion with barbecues, parades and -- as night falls -- spectacular aerial North Korean missile detonations.

In government news, top Washington thinkers, looking for a way to goose the economy along, come up with the ``Cash for Clunkers'' program, under which the federal government provides a financial inducement for people to take functional cars, which are mostly American-made, to car dealers, who deliberately destroy these cars and sell the people new replacement cars, which are mostly foreign-made. This program, which was budgeted for $1 billion, ends up costing $3 billion and is halted after a month. The administration declares that it has been a huge success, which everybody understands to mean that it will never, ever be repeated. With this mission accomplished, the top Washington thinkers are free to train all of their brainpower on the nation's health-care system.

President Obama becomes embroiled in controversy when, commenting on the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, he states that the police ``acted stupidly.'' This comment angers many in the law-enforcement community, as the president discovers the next day when his motorcade is cited for more than 3,000 moving violations. To resolve the situation, the president invites both Gates and Crowley to the White House for a ``beer summit,'' which is described later by White House spokesperson Gibbs as ``very amicable'' except for some ``minor tasering.''

Speaking of conflict, in . . .

AUGUST

. . . President Obama, in the first serious test of his presidency, announces that he will send U.S. troops to rescue Democratic members of Congress pinned down in town hall meetings by constituents firing hostile questions concerning the administration's health-care plan, which turns out not to be wildly popular outside of the immediate Capitol Hill area. The president dismisses concerns that his health-care agenda is in trouble, observing that ``there's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up.'' White House spokesperson Gibbs explains that the ``vast majority'' of the wee-wee was inherited from the Bush administration.

In foreign affairs, former president Bill Clinton goes to North Korea to secure the release of two detained American journalists who purely by coincidence happen to be women. Fidel Castro, after nearly a year out of the public eye, appears on the popular Cuban television show Bailando con Cadáveres (``Dancing With Corpses'').

California, in a move apparently intended to evade creditors, has its name legally changed to ``South Oregon.''

In an alarming technological development, hackers shut down Twitter, leaving a desperate and suddenly vulnerable America with no way to find out what the Kardashian sisters are having for lunch. The Federal Emergency Management Agency urges the nation to ``remain calm'' and ``use Facebook if you can.'' Twitter service is eventually restored, but most of the estimated 875 million thoughts that went untweeted during the outage will never be recovered, making it the nation's worst social-networking disaster ever.

Speaking of disruptions,in . . .

SEPTEMBER

. . . President Obama, speaking on health care before a joint session of Congress, is rudely interrupted by Kanye West, who grabs the microphone and declares that Beyoncé has a better health-care plan. No, wait, sorry: The president is rudely interrupted by Republican congressperson Joe Wilson, who shouts ``You lie!'' Wilson later apologizes for his breach of congressional etiquette, saying, ``I should have just mooned him.''

With public support for the administration's health-care plan continuing to slip, the president orders U.S. troops into Fox News, then goes on a media blitz, appearing, in a three-day span, on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Meet the Nation, Face the Press, Press Your Face Against the Nation, Letterman, Leno, Judge Judy, Iron Chef and Dog the Bounty Hunter. The president also delivers a back-to-school speech to the nation's students, telling them to work hard and get a good education. Fortunately, thanks to the vigilance of the talk-radio community, many parents realize that this is some kind of secret socialist code message and are able to prevent their children from being exposed to it.

In international news, Iran shocks the world by revealing the existence of a previously secret uranium enrichment facility. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists that the uranium will be used only for ``parties.'' United Nations nuclear inspectors note, however, that ``Mahmoud Ahmadinejad'' can be rearranged to spell ``Had Jammed a Humanoid'' and ``Hounded a Jihad Mamma.''

On the international-finance front, leaders of the world's economic powers gather for the G-20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh, where, in a rare display of unity, they vote unanimously to fire whoever is responsible for selecting their meeting sites.

Speaking of questionable site selection, in . . .

OCTOBER

. . . the International Olympic Committee meets in Copenhagen to choose whether Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo or Madrid will host the 2016 summer games. Chicago is considered a strong candidate, but despite personal appeals for the city from President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Mayor Richard Daley, Oprah Winfrey and the late Al Capone, the committee -- in an unexpected decision -- votes to hold the games in Pyongyang, North Korea. The head of the IOC insists that the decision was ``made freely and without coercion,'' adding, ``for the love of God please abort the launch.''

On a happier note for the White House, President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize, narrowly edging out Beyoncé.

In the Middle East, hopes for peace soar when Iran announces that it will allow U.N. inspectors to visit its nuclear-enrichment facility. Hopes plunge soon after when the inspectors report that they were taken to what appears to be a hastily abandoned kebab stand with a hand-painted sign that says ``NUCLEAR ENRICHMENT,'' as well as what the inspectors describe as ``numerous health-code violations.''

In Afghanistan, U.N. investigators raise questions about the recent national election, noting that a third of the votes cast for President Hamid Karzai came from Palm Beach County.

On the celebrity front, a remorseful David Letterman confesses to his stunned audience that he has been hiking the Appalachian Trail with female staff members.

But the big story in October, the story that grips the nation the way a dog grips a rancid squirrel, is the mesmerizing drama of a silver balloon racing through the blue skies above central Colorado, desperately pursued by police, aviation and rescue personnel who have been led to believe that the balloon contains O.J. Simpson.

No, that would have been great, but the authorities in fact have been led to believe that the balloon contains 6-year-old Falcon Heene, the son of exactly the kind of parents you would expect to name a child ``Falcon.'' It quickly becomes clear that the boy is not in the balloon, and the whole thing is a hoax perpetrated by attention-seeking reality-show-wannabe idiots. In other words, nothing really happened, so naturally the media go into a weeklong Category 5 frenzy so intensive that Larry King is forced to temporarily interrupt his ongoing postmortem coverage of the Michael Jackson funeral.

Speaking of attention-seeking reality-show-wannabe idiots,in . . .

NOVEMBER

. . . a Washington couple, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, penetrate heavy security and enter the White House, a feat that Joe Biden has yet to manage. As details of the incident emerge, an embarrassed Secret Service is forced to admit that not only did the couple crash a state dinner, but they also met and shook hands with the president, and they ``may have served briefly in the cabinet.''

In other White House news, the president, in a much-debated post-Thanksgiving decision, announces that he is sending U.S. troops into the electronics departments of 1,400 Best Buy stores to prevent Black Friday shoppers from killing each other over flat-screen TVs. Hours later the president withdraws the troops, calling the situation ``hopeless.'' Press Secretary Gibbs notes that the president inherited Black Friday from the Bush administration.

Attorney General Eric Holder announces that, to maintain the principle of due legal process, alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in federal court in New York City, but as a precaution, ``he will be executed first.''

In sports, the New York Yankees, after an eight-year drought, purchase the World Series. But the month's big sports story involves Tiger Woods, who, plagued by tabloid reports that he has been hiking the Appalachian trail with a nightclub hostess, is injured in a bizarre late-night incident near his Florida home when his SUV is attacked by golf-club-wielding Somali pirates.

In science news:

• The Large Hadron Collider is restarted after a 14-month delay caused by squirrels stealing the particles.

• Elated NASA scientists announce that they have discovered ice on the moon, although their excitement fades when they calculate that getting it back to Earth will cost $185 million per cube.

• Researchers from MIT and Harvard announce that they have sequenced the genome of a horse. They are arrested when police discover that ``sequencing the genome'' is the scientific slang equivalent of ``hiking the Appalachian trail.''

In a troubling economic development, the U.S. dollar, for the first time in history, falls below the lentil.

Speaking of troubling, in . . .

DECEMBER

. . . President Obama, after weeks of pondering what to do about the pesky war situation he inherited, announces a decision -- widely viewed as a compromise -- in which he will send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but will name their mission ``Operation Gentle Butterfly.''

On the economic front, the nation's unemployment rate remains stubbornly high as it becomes clear that the $787 billion stimulus package has created a total of only eight jobs, all in the field of highway-construction flagperson. Looking for solutions, the president hosts a White House ``jobs summit'' attended by political, business and labor leaders, as well as 23 Portuguese tourists who got lost while trying to visit the Washington Monument and somehow penetrated White House security. Meanwhile, in what is believed to be the largest Craigslist transaction ever, California sells San Diego to Mexico.

On the environmental front, Copenhagen hosts a massive international conference aimed at halting manmade global warming, attended by thousands of delegates who flew to Denmark on magical carbon-free unicorns.

In the Middle East, U.N. nuclear inspectors become suspicious when Iran attempts to ship to Israel, via UPS, a large crate labeled ``HARMLESS ITEMS -- DELIVER BEFORE TIMER REACHES 00:00.''

There are other troubling year-end developments:

• In a setback for U.S. interests in Central America, voters in Honduras elect, as their new president, Rod Blagojevich.

• The International Space Station is taken over by Somali pirates.

• In sports, roughly 40 percent of the U.S. bimbo population announces that it has at one time or another hiked the Appalachian Trail with Tiger Woods.

Also, as the year draws to a close, the Centers for Disease Control releases an urgent bulletin warning of a new, fast-spreading epidemic consisting of severe, and in some cases life-threatening, arm infections caused by ``people constantly sneezing into their elbow pits.''

But despite all the gloomy news, the holiday season brings at least temporary relief to a troubled nation -- especially the children, millions of whom go to sleep on Christmas Eve with visions of Santa in his reindeer-powered sleigh flying high overhead, spreading joy around the world.

With a North Korean missile flying right behind.

Try not to think about it. And happy New Year.

Detroit in RUINS! (Crowder goes Ghetto)

2009-12-21T20:09:00.001-08:00

The future of America...

Hanging around for the Christmas Holiday...

2009-12-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

"Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down. First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard."

Golden Eagle vs Red Fox

2009-12-10T22:12:00.001-08:00

Sent to me by email by my cousin who claims these are pictures taken by a camera phone by a hunter in Montana... Unreal scene!!

Obama & Jintao Press Conference

2009-11-22T18:41:00.001-08:00

You know things are bad when SNL feels it appropriate to bust on a Socialist President... This is a classic for sure, unfortunately to be as funny as it is, it must be based in Truth.

Swine Flu Propaganda 1976

2009-11-21T07:05:00.000-08:00

Some things never change...

How Pumpkin Pies are Made:

2009-11-20T09:26:00.001-08:00

Meteor over Utah Lights Up Sky

2009-11-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

Great video shots of a meteor brilliantly lighting up the Utah morning sky.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Is Facebook blocking photos it doesn't like?

2009-11-19T21:09:00.000-08:00

I posted an album of pictures I knew my family would enjoy on Facebook but wondered when there were zero comments on the album.

I asked my wife if she saw the album and she told me that it doesn't show up in my album list when she goes to my photo albums uploaded to Facebook. Is Facebook blocking the viewing of innocuous photos such as these?

Would the album name "Shooting is Fun" be enough to ban a photo album?

Unreal... this is the world we are transitioning to.

I'll post the photos here and link this to Facebook and see how long it lasts.

Sunday December 6, 2009- A day of fasting and prayer for America

2009-11-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

We, my wife and I, are firmly convinced that our elected politicians are incapable of representing the will of the American people – and incapable of adhering to the Constitution of the United States of America which they took a solemn oath to uphold and defend.

We are among the millions of U.S. Citizens who are at our wits end sending e-mails, faxes, telephoning, meeting with elected officials, demonstrating, rallying – and hoping – that those representatives will do the will of the people. They have failed. Have we, as well?

The United States of America is a choice land, a nation that was founded by our forefathers who were divinely inspired by God the Father Almighty.

This choice nation has been the defender of freedom throughout its relatively short history. We have led in the fight for freedom against many tyrants and dictators who have plundered and pilfered their citizens and have subjected them to great sufferings through blood and horror.

The people of those nations who suffered these great injustices knew that they could always depend upon the goodness, power and righteousness of the United States of America to extract them from their plights, and it was done – many times over. It was not done without expense – the expense of the blood and sacrifice of the members of our armed forces – and the suffering of their families.

As the year 2009 soon comes to a close, we the citizens of the United States of America find ourselves facing many of the challenges – which those nations suffered at the hands of their political leaders. We are being attacked from within!

Who do we turn to? To which great nation can we turn to help us keep and maintain our freedom? We do not have the same hope of those nations to whom we were benefactors.

We MUST turn to our Savior. If we are a righteous people, we will be deserving of, and receive of His blessings as He has promised. He suffered and died for us – He atoned for our sins; each one of us - individually.

We know that - as a nation – we can once again be the choicest of lands. However, we cannot achieve that blessing without our willingness to please our Lord and Savior.

We are asking that all who read this message that have faith in Christ designate Sunday December 6, 2009 as a day of fasting and prayer for America .

You do not have to march on the nation’s Capitol nor go to a tea bag rally. From the comfort of your home, you can get on bended knee and with a broken heart and contrite spirit, petition the Lord to bless this nation generously according to His will. Then, keep the fast for that day. Make that Christ-like commitment to our Heavenly Father. He will listen, He will answer. That has been promised.

“And whatsoever he shall ask the father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you.” (3 Nephi 18-20) “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” (Matthew 21:22)

Joe and Janice Hagen, St. George, UT.

--

Mr. and Mrs. Hagen, we will be joining you in this fast and prayer and be spreading this message- The McPeaks.

The Salute

2009-11-15T14:21:00.000-08:00

Leading the fight is U S Marine Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt, known as 'Iron Mike' or just 'Gunny'. He is on his third tour in Iraq . He had become a legend in the bomb disposal world after winning the Bronze Star for disabling 64 IEDs and destroying 1,548 pieces of ordnance during his second tour.

Then, on September 19, he got blown up. He had arrived at a chaotic scene after a bomb had killed four US Marines. He chose not to wear the bulky bomb protection suit. 'You can't react to any sniper fire and you get tunnel-vision,' he explains. So, protected by just a helmet and standard-issue flak jacket, he began what bomb disposal officers term 'the longest walk', stepping gingerly into a 5 foot deep and 8 foot wide crater.

The earth shifted slightly and he saw a Senao base station with a wire leading from it. He cut the wire and used his 7 inch knife to probe the ground. 'I found a piece of red detonating cord between my legs,' he says. 'That's when I knew I was screwed.' Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, Sgt Burghardt, 35, yelled at everyone to stay back. At that moment, an insurgent, probably watching through binoculars, pressed a button on his mobile phone to detonate the secondary device below the sergeant's feet 'A chill went up the back of my neck and then the bomb exploded,' he recalls. 'As I was in the air I remember thinking, 'I don't believe they got me...' I was just ticked off they were able to do it. Then I was lying on the road, not able to feel anything from the waist down.'

His fellow Marines cut off his trousers to see how badly he was hurt. None could believe his legs were still there 'My dad's a Vietnam vet who's paralyzed from the waist down,' says Sgt Burghardt. 'I was lying there thinking I didn't want to be in a wheelchair next to my dad and for him to see me like that. They started to cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling down. Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, 'Good, I'm in business.' As a stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in. 'I decided to walk to the helicopter. I wasn't going to let my team-mates see me being carried away on a stretcher.' He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a one-fingered salute. 'I flipped them one.. It was like, 'OK, I lost that round but I'll be back next week.'

Copies of a photograph depicting his defiance, taken by Jeff Bundy for the Omaha World-Herald, adorn the walls of homes across America and that of Col John Gronski, the brigade commander in Ramadi, who has hailed the image as an exemplar of the warrior spirit.

Sgt Burghardt's injuries - burns and wounds to his legs and buttocks - kept him off duty for nearly a month and could have earned him a ticket home. But, like his father - who was awarded a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action in Vietnam - he stayed in Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents who are forever coming up with more ingenious ways of killing Americans.

GOD Bless our Troops and GOD Bless America!

Fall of The Republic- The Presidency of Barack Obama

2009-11-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

America will never be the same, the Oligarchs have achieved their goals... God Save Us.

Is the Federal Reserve a Secret Society?

2009-10-08T08:31:00.000-07:00

by Sharon Hughes

While the White House claims an urgency to pass healthcare reform, and while Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, tries to convince the American people that the $787 billion stimulus plan is working by siting things such as the $25 a week increase in unemployment checks the now 9.4% unemployed in our country are getting, the facts prove otherwise.

Holding something like this up as proof that the stimulus plan is working is, to put it mildly, unbelievable. Especially when you look at just how much of the 'stimulus' is actually 'stimulating' the economy, and how much (almost half of the $787 billion) is going for 'appropriations', aka pork, as seen in the chart put together by Senator Ben Nelson. (See chart here.) And, by the way, please note that Congress included in the 'stimulus' package an increase of $20 million for its own budget to cover the salaries and expenses of 'temporary staff'. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or economic wonk to see that this kind of 'Congressional oversight' is a foreshadow of what can be expected in the oversight of the proposed government-run healthcare system. But I digress.

What has really happened to our economy? Why did it plummet just before the 2008 election? What other forces were at play besides the initially sited culprits, Fannie and Freddie? Many Americans are still asking these questions.

Let me ask you a question: How much do you know about the Federal Reserve, the all-powerful, privately owned, non-federal government-run, national bank that wields tremendous economic power over our nation? We talked about this on our show recently, including a segment of an interview I did with Paul Walter, about the book his publishing company reprinted, The Coming Battle, written in 1899 outlining how the banking money power gained control of America. (Hear that interview online here.)

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress shall have the power to coin (create) money and regulate the value thereof.

In 1935 the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot delegate its power to another group.

But things have changed. Today it is the Federal Reserve that controls and regulates the U.S. dollar.

Interestingly, Congress refused to audit the Federal Reserve after bills co-sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul and more than half of the House (Federal Reserve Transparency Act, HR 1207), and in the Senate (S 604) co-sponsored by Sens. Jim DeMint, Mike Crapo and David Vitter, were stopped before even being introduced on the floor on "procedural grounds." Why would they do that?

Writing in his recent article, "A Force of One: the Federal Reserve," Chuck Norris makes the claim that the FED is a secret society, "I agree with Judge Andrew Napolitano, who said last week, 'We know more about the CIA than we do about the Federal Reserve.' The Federal Reserve is the Freemasonry of government agencies. It is a virtual secret society unto themselves - a group of unelected brokers who hold the value of our dollar in the palms of their hands. This one agency, with its power to raise and lower interest rates, has exercised more control over the economy than any other government body."

Norris continues, "Could it really be a mere coincidence that the bill to audit the Federal Reserve was refused from even being introduced and that this agency remains the "quick convenience store-house of money" for the Obama administration's borrowing and bailout monies? Again, as Judge Napolitano said, "The Obama administration not only doesn't want the Federal Reserve audited, it now wants to put the power to regulate all banks, insurance companies, brokerage houses – into the hands of this super secret bank. What are they afraid we might see if we get a chance to look at their books?" (Read his article here.)

So, how did the Federal Reserve become the money manager of the United States?

The Federal Reserve came into being with the stroke of the pen of President Woodrow Wilson, establishing a centralized banking system, that "balanced the competing interests of private banks and populist sentiment." (sound familiar?) He appointed seven members of the Board with twelve regional banks, which are located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas and San Francisco.

Today's current (five) board members of the Federal Reserve are Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman, Donald L. Kohn, Vice Chairman, Kevin M. Warsh, Elizabeth A. Duke and Daniel K. Tarullo.

Henry Ford once said, 'It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.'"

Did Ford know something we don't?

Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild said, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws." He also said, "It (the Central Bank ) gives the National Bank almost complete control of national finance. The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class... The great body of the people, mentally incapable of comprehending, will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical (contrary) to their interests."

John D. Rockefeller wrote in his book Memoirs, "For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents, such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

But, this information doesn't answer Chuck Norris' claim that the Federal Reserve is a secret society.

Perhaps a speech given by John F. Kennedy to the American Newspaper Publishers Association sheds some light? In it he talks to the press about secret societies:
"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it." (Hear speech here.)

John F. Kennedy wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve. On November 22, 1963 he was assassinated as his motorcade took an unscheduled route in Dallas.

More than give detailed information about the Federal Reserve I wanted to provoke questions that would cause you to research for yourself. For in so doing you will learn more than any one article can tell.

Is the FED a secret society? You tell me.

Federal Reserve website

See the creation of the Federal Reserve

© Sharon Hughes 2009

Sharon Hughes is Founder and President of The Center for Changing Worldviews and a radio talk show host on KDIA in San Francisco, and online at Salem Web Network’s Oneplace.com. Her articles appear in many recognized news sites and publications, including FRONTPAGEMAG. She also writes for NewsBusters.org, a division of The Media Research Center, and has appeared on FOX News and other national radio programs. For further information and other radio networks she is on visit her Websites www.changingworldviews.com, WOMANTalk.us, and Blog http://changingworldviews.blogspot.com. Facebook http://www.facebook.com/cwsharon, Twitter http://twitter.com/sharonhughes_ Or Contact: sharon@changingworldviews.com

The future of the H1N1 panic?

2009-09-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

Tim Hawkins - The Government Can

2009-09-13T16:15:00.001-07:00

Rock on Tim.

Never Forget

2009-09-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

Raw footage from only a couple of blocks away.

Leave your story of where you were when it happened in the comments...

Taking the A-Train

2009-08-30T19:28:00.000-07:00

...out of Sunday and into Monday...

Founding Sense

2009-08-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

...revealed in modern daylight can be an ugly thing...

Why, those old crackers were just busy getting drunk on whiskey and political power eh?

What could they possibly know?

Therefore it only can follow that the following words uttered by some old crazy slave owner must be hereby declared HATE SPEECH.

The writer of this post shall be ushered off to a work camp where she can learn to involve herself more fully in "Community Activities" subsequently becoming a leader in her hometown rather than a member of the Angry Mob of Evildoers!! (Regardless of how Well Dressed she may be)

Cathy at Sunday Morning Coffee is Guilty for the dissemination of HATE SPEECH:

Our Founding Fathers thought of everything. The Federalist Papers were written to assure the people of the colonies that forming a Republic would not infringe upon individual or states rights. James Madison one of the authors of the Federalist Papers and of course one of our Founding Fathers most assuredly is vomiting in his own grave...

Gooooooooooooooooooal!!!

2009-08-18T14:56:00.001-07:00

First game of the year so it's a swarm of new cleats all over the ball... the last 30 seconds of this video is where it's at... Tha Wease gets'er done.

(Dylan is #7 on the dark blue team, Haley is #6)

The Gratitude Campaign

2009-08-13T20:29:00.001-07:00

Kathy Castor Town Hall Erupts in Tampa Florida, August 6th, 2009

2009-08-06T23:35:00.001-07:00

Small waves from the soon to come uprising...

Pot meet Kettle

2009-07-28T01:58:00.000-07:00

This is what some feared from the Bush Administration... what is not realized is that a much more dangerous precedent has just been set.

Insolublog is all over it. This was found there...

Here is the reason I will never again live in California.

2009-07-25T18:21:00.000-07:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Socialized Healthcare

2009-07-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

Preview of what's coming to a clinic near you should the socialists have their way...

Democrats Block Audit of Federal Reserve

2009-07-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

So much for Transparency in Government.

From Zeal for Truth:

Take a look at these two videos to see Washington DC hypocrisy at its best.

This first one is of Senator Jim DeMint (R) attempting to get a vote on S 604, the Senate companion to Ron Paul’s HR 1207 bill auditing the Federal Reserve. DeMint outlines why the bill is important, highlights its bipartisan support and explains why the American people are interested in an audit of the Federal Reserve:

At this point, Senator Ben Nelson (who suddenly has an interest in helping out Ben Bernanke and Co.) recites with an almost practised clarity that the amendment violates “Rule 16″ - a rule that attempts to prevent legislation being attached to an appropriations bill. The Senate president hastily agreed and shot the bill down in one sentence.

I would like to consider the surgical nature of this exchange. It is not my intent to suggest that politicians aren’t smart people - but I am shocked that all of this happened so quickly. It seemed more like a play, with actors taking cues from one another in order to read their lines than it did honest and open debate Senate of the supposedly most “free” nation on the planet.

Then, and this is the comical part, DeMint went through and read several other portions of the bill - audits identical to the one which S 604 requests that did not get the ire of Senator Nelson or the Senate president. DeMint goes one step further and asks the Senate president to confirm that these audits also violate Rule 16 - which she grudgingly does.

He then, and this next move is pure genius, highlights a $200,000 earmark that that Senator Nelson has put into the bill for a Museum in Durham Nebraska. The Senate president admits this also violates Rule 16 and is legislative - granted this strike by DeMint seems to hit a little close to home and the president attempts to defend the earmark by arguing it is “germane” to the language of the bill.

See the rest of the exchange here:

I’m not one to give any credit to conspiracy theories, but this all strikes me as one giant game played the Democrats (and others, I’m sure) in order to block a Federal Reserve Audit. Kudos to DeMint for exposing the myth of fairness and integrity in Washington.

With only a few honest and good Senators left, blocking any righteous legislation that would actually benefit the American people is a piece of cake... Sad.

Fourth of July Jammin'

2009-07-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

It doesn't get much more honky than this...

Independence Day

2009-07-04T15:22:00.001-07:00

The Great American Bubble Machine

2009-07-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

This is one of the greatest articles I've ever read exposing the 'hidden hand' in modern day American economics. Perhaps the most shocking fact is that it is published in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Considering the condemning nature of this article this link may not be around long.

Much respect to the article's author Matt Taibbi.

I'm going to post some highlights of the article here before it gets buried.

(Oh and for the record, I came across the existence of this article on Michael Savage's radio show, The Savage Nation.)

Intro:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

Regarding the 90's internet stock market bubble:

The basic scam in the Internet Age is pretty easy even for the financially illiterate to grasp. Companies that weren't much more than pot-fueled ideas scrawled on napkins by up-too-late bong-smokers were taken public via IPOs, hyped in the media and sold to the public for megamillions. It was as if banks like Goldman were wrapping ribbons around watermelons, tossing them out 50-story windows and opening the phones for bids. In this game you were a winner only if you took your money out before the melon hit the pavement.

On the Housing Market Bubble:

Goldman's role in the sweeping global disaster that was the housing bubble is not hard to trace. Here again, the basic trick was a decline in underwriting standards, although in this case the standards weren't in IPOs but in mortgages. By now almost everyone knows that for decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.

Recent Oil Price Fluctuations:

And what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously Goldman had help — there were other players in the physical-commodities market — but the root cause had almost everything to do with the behavior of a few powerful actors determined to turn the once-solid market into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures — agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date. The push transformed oil from a physical commodity, rigidly subject to supply and demand, into something to bet on, like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.

Who is Goldman Anyway?

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

Goldman's Next Victim, the Taxpayer.

It began in September of last year, when then-Treasury secretary Paulson made a momentous series of decisions. Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. ("Goldman's superhero status was left intact," says market analyst Eric Salzman, "and an investment-banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.") The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.

Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson announced his federal bailout for the financial industry, a $700 billion plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the funds. In order to qualify for bailout monies, Goldman announced that it would convert from an investment bank to a bank-holding company, a move that allows it access not only to $10 billion in TARP funds, but to a whole galaxy of less conspicuous, publicly backed funding — most notably, lending from the discount window of the Federal Reserve. By the end of March, the Fed will have lent or guaranteed at least $8.7 trillion under a series of new bailout programs — and thanks to an obscure law allowing the Fed to block most congressional audits, both the amounts and the recipients of the monies remain almost entirely secret.

The New Scam on the Scene:

Fast-forward to today. It's early June in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, a popular young politician whose leading private campaign donor was an investment bank called Goldman Sachs — its employees paid some $981,000 to his campaign — sits in the White House. Having seamlessly navigated the political minefield of the bailout era, Goldman is once again back to its old business, scouting out loopholes in a new government-created market with the aid of a new set of alumni occupying key government jobs.

Gone are Hank Paulson and Neel Kashkari; in their place are Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson and CFTC chief Gary Gensler, both former Goldmanites. (Gensler was the firm's co-head of finance.) And instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Before we look at someone's political party as an indicator of their way of thought, let us realize that those in charge of manipulating the modern day American economy transcend party philosophies and in fact use those philosophies to blind us to their thievery. While we argue mundane issues they're counting our money and laughing all the way to the bank...

Read the whole article HERE while it lasts for surely it'll be buried by the flood of developing Michael Jackson death updates.

In case you were wondering... MJ is still dead... for now.

A Father Indeed

2009-06-19T12:36:00.001-07:00

For all the Dads out there this weekend, especially mine. Happy Father's Day!

Pirate Party wins Parliment Seat in Europe

2009-06-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

Obama helps sweep conservatives and even a "Pirate Party" member from Sweden into the European parliment. The news anchor does not seem very enchanted but then again he has to be the geekiest pirate that has ever lived.

Remembering Castaneda

2009-06-06T17:24:00.000-07:00

My father's bookcase was one of the magical portals that allowed me to escape to almost anywhere with the wide range of topics contained within it. When I was a kid growing up in Upstate NY there was a set of book covers that fascinated me the most... Particularly this one:

Doing deliveries on the Whiteriver Apache tribal grounds this morning I drove by a garage sale with a rack of books. I wondered what that rack contained when I slowed down, put the truck in reverse (dousing the neighborhood with the annoying reverse alarm shattering the sound of wind in the ponderosa pine trees) and parked on the side of the road in front of the house having the garage sale.

Normally, my parking in front of a home with my box truck is a bad omen to the house I pulled in front of, particularly when I'm visiting accounts that are severely past due.

I received a few glares but I strode directly to the rack to see what was available. Nothing like book shopping at garage sales, definitely one of my favorite activities.

I noticed the book with the cover above and secured it in my palm. It would be coming home with me for surely I had enough in my pocket to cover the cost of a garage sale book. Besides, my sister had 'adopted' the book many years ago so here was my chance to reclaim it.

I scanned the other books and picked up a great TIME picture book of authentic photos of WWII with many excerpts written by Winston Churchill himself and the complete works of Homer in a book way overdue from the Pinetop public library.

When the homeowner requested a quarter per book, I put 2 one dollar bills in his hand and told him to have a nice weekend.

Later on, after the kid's little league game, I plopped down on the couch and opened the Castaneda book that I have read so many times before that I could recite the words before my eyes reached them. I also relived the sensations of the first time I read those words so many years ago.

His stories always amazed and reminded me of the possibility of worlds beyond imagination that exist right in front of our apparently primitive eyes. If only we could SEE. His books were an expose' of those worlds as described by the Yaqui shaman Don Juan.

The stories contained an amazing psychological journey (especially my favorite volume, Journey to Ixtlan) that took me down different roads to reality each time I reread them.

Anyway, with the Apache Tribe holding its annual Pow Wow in the Pines only a few blocks from the garage sale that I rediscovered one of my favorite books, it was hard not to notice the obvious connections that were happening in front of my very eyes. The Spirit works in mysterious ways. Not to mention the fact that I now live very near the area these books were supposedly written in, and about.

No folks, there are no coincidences.

In my regalia I decided to do a video search of the author to see what was new in Castaneda's world and I came across an in depth BBC documentary from the "Tales from the Jungle" series that got to the nitty gritty of Castaneda's physical world.

While some of the details of the end of his life were quite disappointing and even very creepy- considering the ethereal promises of his book's philosophies, it still did not take away from the magic that it had been instilled deep within me as a young man. My good friends know of the journals I kept of the writings that fascinated me the most.

The video I found is an hour long so I don't expect anyone other than those familiar with Castaneda to spend the time to watch it but it was no doubt interesting if not anti-climatic.

Anyway, that was my day in a nutshell... now it's time to pack up the fishing pole and see if I can focus my INTENT to attract fish to my hook. If not, no big deal because the magic of the manipulation of Intent will always live in my heart... and secretly I will always desire to be a Nagual.

Timeless Quote seemingly written for Today's Events-

2009-06-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.

And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.

And where would the ordinary simple folk - the common people, as they like to call them in America - where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip?

Winston Churchill, The First Conservative Election Broadcast, June 4, 1945.

Red Sox vs Pirates May 30 2008

2009-05-31T10:22:00.001-07:00

Tyler's first start as pitcher. 3 pitches, 3 strikes, 1 out. Nice way to start your pitching career bud!

Red Sox vs Rangers May 28 2009

2009-05-28T23:49:00.001-07:00

That's my boy!

Memorial Day

2009-05-23T01:23:00.000-07:00

Isaiah chapter 3

2009-05-23T01:04:00.000-07:00

Sure seems to apply to today's events.

4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable.
9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
12 As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.

It's time to dust off The Rock of Ages people.

Political Cartoons

2009-05-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

Red Sox vs Yankees 09 little league game

2009-05-17T12:55:00.001-07:00

As always, high drama between these teams!

Heh, I love little league!

(narrated by Sarge)

Taking a rip...

2009-05-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

Straighten that one out and it's bye bye!

THE SAVAGE DREAM

2009-05-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

Michael Savage's essay regarding the travel ban by Britain:

I have a dream. I have a dream that one day free men and women will be judged not on the correctness of their political views, but on the content of their character. I have a dream that all the mindless mandarins that plague the body politick in all nations will be driven out of all their little cubicles in all massive faceless government buildings around the world. I have a dream that they will be made to answer for all the vile petty judgments that they have placed on others. That they will be called to account for all the careers and livelihoods that they have taken away. That they will reap the just rewards of all the suicidal insanity that they have sown.

I have a dream that one day, all the people of the world will rise up and throw off the shackles that small-minded malcontents have placed on them, and that they will be free to enjoy the fruits of their own labor and their own ideas in a way they best see fit. I have a dream that one day I will sail a ship filled with such men and women, those with free and open minds, on the same route over the Atlantic Ocean taken by American convoys as they went to resupply the British in World War Two and fortify them against the Nazi menace.

I have a dream that this ship will land in England, dock in England, and I will set foot on British soil, and say, “Tear down this wall that you have placed before me. Tear down this wall against freedom of speech.” And I have a dream that then the people of England, inspired by the glory of their fathers before them, will stand up, tear down the wall of ignorance which has stood against them for so long, and declare with one voice “This is the land of Winston Churchill once more.”

The cure for shaken baby syndrome

2009-05-10T12:34:00.001-07:00

This is too funny not to post...

Happy Mothers Day!

Grip it and Rip it my man!

2009-05-09T19:28:00.001-07:00

Little League Pitchers beware:

The Wease is ready to go yard!

Mother of the Year Award

2009-05-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Rhonda McPeak- Mother of 5 has been named Mother of the Year!

Congrats Baby!

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith vs. Michael Savage

2009-05-05T21:34:00.000-07:00

This lady picked on the wrong American...

Real News Part 1

2009-05-01T09:54:00.001-07:00

Lil bro is at it again...

Memo: Feds Knew NYC Flyover Would Cause Panic- Your Cost $328K

2009-04-29T15:42:00.001-07:00

Guess this genius has never heard of Photo Shop...

...are you news anchors that freaking stupid?

My guess is that it was some cocky political hack testing the limits of his authority as he demanded a personal flight around NYC just for kicks.

Or maybe it was one of Obama's large Middle Eastern donors who wanted to survey the damage they caused on 9-11 themselves...

Who knows...

100 DAYS, 100 MISTAKES

2009-04-28T23:33:00.000-07:00

Analysis of Obama's first 100 days.

1. "Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of 'earmarks,' urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them, some that members of his own staff shoved in last year when they were still members of Congress. 'Let there be no doubt, this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability,' Obama said." -- McClatchy, 3/11

2. "There is no doubt that we've been living beyond our means and we're going to have to make some adjustments." -- Obama during the campaign.

MORE: Obama's First 100 Days in Photos

3. This year's budget deficit: $1.5 trillion.

4. Asks his Cabinet to cut costs in their departments by $100 million -- a whopping .0027%!

5. "The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties." -- ABC News, 4/15

6. "Mr. Obama is an accomplished orator but is becoming known in America as the 'teleprompt president' over his reliance on the machine when he gives a speech." -- Sky News, 3/18

7. In early February, the 2010 census was moved out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House, politicizing how federal aid is distributed and electoral districts are drawn.

8. Obama taps Nancy Killefer for a new administration job, First Chief Performance Officer -- to police government spending. But it surfaces that Killefer had performance issues of her own -- a tax lien was slapped on her DC home in 2005 for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help. She withdrew.

9. Turkey tried to block the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as new NATO secretary general because he didn't properly punish the Danish cartoonist who caricatured Mohammed. France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel were outraged; Obama said he supported Turkey's induction into the European Union.

10. . . . and he never mentioned the Armenian genocide.

11. The picture of Obama and Hugo Chavez shaking hands.

12. Hugo Chavez gave him the anti-American screed "The Open Veins of Latin America." Obama didn't remark upon it. At least it wasn't DVDs.

13. Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega went on a 50-minute anti-American rant, calling Obama "president of an empire." Obama didn't leave the room. "I thought it was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought," he said.

14. Executives at AIG get $165 million in bonuses, despite receiving an $173 billion taxpayer bailout.

15. "For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back." -- Associated Press, 3/18

16. "After pushing Congress for weeks to hurry up and pass the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, President Obama promptly took off for a three-day holiday getaway." -- New York Post, 2/15

17. MEGHAN CLYNE ON: "I WON" AND THE DEATH OF BIPARTISANSHIP

"Obama soared to victory on the hopeful promise of a new era of bipartisanship. During his inaugural address he even promised an 'end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.'

"Too bad it took all of three days for the promise to ring hollow.

"Start with Obama's big meeting with top congressional leaders on his signature legislation -- the stimulus -- on the Friday after his inauguration. Listening to Republican concerns about overspending was a nice gesture -- until he shut down any hopes of real dialogue by crassly telling Republican leaders: 'I won.' Even the White House's leaking of the comment was a slap at the Republican leadership, who'd expected Obama to adhere to the custom of keeping private meetings with congressional leadership, well, private.

"It's only gone downhill from there. The stimulus included zero Republican recommendations, and failed to get a single House Republican vote.

"It's not just the tactic of using Republicans for bipartisan photo-ops, and then cutting them loose before partisan decisions, that irks Obama's opponents. The new president wasted no time rushing forward with policies and legislation guaranteed to drive Republicans nuts. The first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- a partisan hot-button that drew all of eight Republican supporters in the entire Congress. Then there was the swift reversal of Bush policies on abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research -- issues dear to the Republican base.

"And when Obama and the Democrats in Congress took up SCHIP -- the children's health-insurance bill that Republicans say vastly expands government's role in health care -- they had an easy chance for real bipartisanship. After all, the bill had been hashed out in the previous Congress, and a bipartisan accord was reached before President Bush responded with a veto. Did the Obama team push for the compromise version in the 111th Congress? Nope. They went back to the drawing board, ramming through the Democrats' dream version.

"Of course, the lack of bipartisanship isn't limited to Capitol Hill. Obama has taken gratuitous swipes at the Republicans who recently decamped Washington, blaming President Bush for everything from the economy and the war to the lack of sufficient puppies and rainbows. And who could forget the Rush Limbaugh flap -- in which Obama's top advisers, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, orchestrated a public relations campaign meant to undermine the Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, by framing talk-radio personality Limbaugh as the real head of the Republican Party.

"For now, Obama's back-pedal on the bipartisanship promise just makes him look insincere. But the real consequences of the mistake will be felt soon enough. As Presidents Bush and Clinton could tell him, congressional majorities do change -- and at some point, Obama will need Republicans on his side. He'd be smart to spend his second 100 days making up for the serious snubs of his first."

-- Meghan Clyne is a DC-based writer.

18. "The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today." -- Department of Homeland Security intelligence report

19. Nixes a "buy American" provision in the stimulus bill.

20. "Yes, Canada is not Mexico, it doesn't have a drug war going on. Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there." -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The 9/11 hijackers did not come across the Canada border

21. "The Obama administration is signaling to Congress that the president could support taxing some employee health benefits, as several influential lawmakers and many economists favor, to help pay for overhauling the health care system. The proposal is politically problematic for President Obama, however, since it is similar to one he denounced in the presidential campaign as 'the largest middle-class tax increase in history.' " -- New York Times, 3/14

22. JOE SCARBOROUGH ON: PROMOTING FEAR

"During his historic inaugural speech, Barack Obama promised to usher in a transformational age where hope would replace fear, unity would overtake partisanship, and change would sweep aside the status quo. But early in President Obama's first 100 days it is obvious that the only thing that is changing is the Candidate of Change, himself.

"The same politician who proclaimed during his inauguration that 'on this day we have chosen hope over fear' soon warned Americans that the US economy would be forever destroyed if the stimulus bill was voted down.

"Why was it that same man who promised to put Americans' interests ahead of his own political ambitions chose instead to use the suffering of citizens to advance his agenda?

"Maybe he was following the guidance of Rahm Emanuel, who famously said, 'You never want to waste a good crisis.'

"They didn't.

"The White House's warnings were so over-the-top that Bill Clinton felt compelled to warn the new president against making such grim pronouncements. Americans would quickly warn that the White House would not channel FDR's eternal optimism but rather embrace the gloomy worldview of Edgar Allen Poe.

"The Candidate of Hope also quickly adopted the Nixonian worldview that Americans voted their fears rather than their hopes. Over Mr. Obama's first 100 days, that cynical calculation paid off politically for a White House that seemed most interested in appeasing the most liberal members of his Democratic Party.

"I expected more from Barack Obama. For the sake of my country, I hope I get it from the new president over the next 100 days."

-- Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and author of "The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise"

23. Sanjay Gupta was in discussions to become Surgeon General, but the TV personality withdrew after he was criticized for his flimsy political record.

24. Rasmussen finds 58% of Americans believe the Obama administration's release of CIA memos endangers the national security of the United States.

25. Only 28% think the Obama administration should do any further investigating of how the Bush administration treated terrorism suspects.

26. "Obama thanked CIA employees for their work and said they're invaluable to national security. He explained his decision to release the memos, then told everyone not to feel bad because he was now acknowledging potential mistakes. Theirs, not his. 'That's how we learn,' Obama said, as though soothing a room full of fourth-graders." -- The Oklahoman, 4/23

27. By releasing the torture memos, Obama opened American citizens up to international tribunals. A UN lawyer said the US is obliged to prosecute lawyers who drafted the memos or else violate the Geneva Conventions.

28. In their first meeting, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave Obama a carved ornamental penholder from the timbers of the anti-slavery ship HMS Gannet. Obama gave him 25 DVDs that don't work in Europe.

29. TIM CARNEY ON: PICKING BILL RICHARDSON AS SECRETARY OF COMMERCE

"Richardson's value in Obama's Cabinet had everything to do with appearances. First, he was the Hispanic pick. Second, because Richardson had run against Obama for President, tapping him for the Cabinet helped the media write the Obama-Lincoln comparisons by burnishing the 'Team of Rivals' image.

"But Richardson withdrew before Obama was even inaugurated when news came out about a criminal investigation involving David Rubin, president of a firm named Chambers, Dunhill, Rubin & Co. (although there was no Chambers or Dunhill), who had donated at least $110,000 to Richardson's campaign committees and had also profited from $1.5 million in contracts from the state government.

"This was an early warning sign about Obama's vetting process (various tax problems and the Daschle problem would reveal this as a theme), but picking Richardson to run Commerce also highlighted that Obama and Richardson's promise of 'public-private partnerships' -- such as Detroit bailouts, Wall Street bailouts, and green energy--was an open door for corruption and was at odds with Obama's promise to diminish the influence of lobbyists.

"The Richardson mistake was one of Obama's first, and it was emblematic. Richardson embodied Obama's attention to self-image and the problems inherent in his vision of an intimate business-government connection."

-- Tim Carney is a Washington Examiner columnist

30. Timothy Geithner nomination as Secretary of Treasury was almost torpedoed when it was discovered he had failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes. He also employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper. He was confirmed anyway.

31. . . . Not so lucky, Annette Nazareth, who was nominated for Deputy Treasury Secretary. She withdrew her name for undisclosed "personal reasons" after a monthlong probe into her taxes . . .

32. . . . or Caroline Atkinson, who withdrew as nominee for Undersecretary of International Affairs in Treasury Department, with a source blaming the long vetting process. Geithner still has a skeleton crew at Treasury, with no one qualified -- or willing -- to take jobs there.

33. "Barack Obama has been embroiled in a cronyism row after reports that he intends to make Louis Susman, one of his biggest fundraisers, the new US ambassador in London. The selection of Mr. Susman, a lawyer and banker from the president's hometown of Chicago, rather than an experienced diplomat, raises new questions about Mr Obama's commitment to the special relationship with Britain." -- Telegraph, 2/22

34. Obama's doom-and-gloom comments and budget bill push the Dow below 7,000, from which it's only recently recovered.

35. "You're sitting here. And you're -- you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, 'I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money--' How do you deal with -- I mean: Explain. Are you punch-drunk?" -- Steve Kroft, "60 Minutes," 3/22

36. "We have begun to modernize 75% of all federal building space, which has the potential to reduce long-term energy costs by billions of dollars on behalf of taxpayers. We are providing grants to states to help weatherize hundreds of thousands of homes, which will save the families that benefit about $350 each year. That's like a $350 tax cut." -- Obama, describing something that doesn't cut taxes.

37. "The Obama administration has directed defense officials to sign a pledge stating they will not share 2010 budget data with individuals outside the federal government." -- Defense News, 2/19

38. Backtracking on a campaign promise he made to black farmers, Obama significantly lowered the amount of money they could claim in a discrimination settlement against the Agricultural Department. "I can't figure out for the life of me why the president wouldn't want to implement a bill that he fought for as a US senator," said John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association.

39. "I've been practicing bowling. I bowled a 129. It was like the Special Olympics or something." -- Obama on "The Tonight Show"

40. Obama lifts travel and remittance restrictions on Cuba.

41. Obama considers dropping the embargo on Cuba.

42. After warming signs from Raul Castro, Fidel Castro says Obama "misinterpreted" his brother's words, and that Cuba would not be willing to negotiate about human rights.

43. Obama is considering dropping a key demand to Iran, allowing it to keep nuclear facilities open during negotiations.

44. In a letter to Dmitri Medvedev, Obama offered to drop plans for a missile shield in Europe in exchange for Russia's help in resolving the nuclear weapons issue in Iran.

45. Medvedev said he would not "haggle" on Iran and the missile shield.

46. Obama asked Congress for an extra $83.4 billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a special funding measure of the kind he opposed while in the senate. As a candidate, Obama promised to cut the cost of military operations.

47. After trying to woo Europe as the "anti-Bush," Obama made an impassioned plea for more troops in Afghanistan. "Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone," he said. "This is a joint problem it requires a joint effort." Only the UK offered substantial help, most others refused.

48. "While the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama's campaign in 2008." -- Washington Post, 3/27

49. Obama bows to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at a G-20 meeting in London.

50. "It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah." -- An Obama aide

51. DANA PERINO ON: REMAINING IN CAMPAIGN MODE

"Has it really only been 100 days? In many ways it feels like a lot longer.

"That's partly because the new administration remains in campaign mode most of the time. Now that's not in itself a bad thing if you can do that and accomplish your agenda. But what's happened is that a popular new president has laid out a very bold agenda in the midst of an economic crisis, and I don't think Congress is going to get a lot of work done on those big ticket items this year. They'll eke out a couple of small wins on issues like healthcare and maybe energy, but the Democrats will hail them as big victories. The Republicans have been working like a cohesive and loyal opposition party, and they need to continue to outline positive new ideas like the recent one to help grow American's savings.

"The early stumbles on the administration's high profile nominations -- Daschle and Richardson for just to examples -- acted like weights around their ankles. In addition, the partisan shots from the White House were unbecoming and I don't think we'll see more of that. Our allies and our enemies -- heck, even we ourselves -- are trying to understand the new foreign policy direction, which in some ways seems to be change just for the sake of change. The next moves by the leaders of other countries -- like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela -- probably will prove that really not much will change just because America has a new president.

"In many ways, it's the next 100 days that will tell us more about our new president and what he'll be able to accomplish than we can forecast based on the first 100 days."

-- Dana Perino was White House press secretary in the Bush Administration

52. "We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary." -- Obama, describing the stimulus bill

53. Three candidates for ambassador to the Vatican -- including Caroline Kennedy -- were turned down by the Holy See because they supported abortion, according to reports.

54. After saying he wouldn't have lobbyists in his administration, Obama made 17 exceptions in the first two weeks in office.

55. . . . including Tom Daschle, who worked as a top lobbyist yet was going to be appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services -- until his failure to pay income taxes derailed his nomination.

56. For an April 14 speech at Georgetown, the administration asked the university to cover up all signs and symbols -- including the letters "IHS" in gold, a symbol for Jesus.

57. Samantha Power, who resigned from the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster," was hired to a position on the National Security Council.

58. "Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama's victory celebration in Grant Park -- despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions." -- Chicago Sun-Times, 2/20

59. Firing Rick Wagoner as president of GM.

60. Threatening to fire Vikram Pandit as CEO of Citigroup.

61. Threatening to fire anyone the administration doesn't like from any company.

62. Not adopting a dog from a shelter.

63. "The GAO study asserts that officials from most of the states surveyed 'expressed concerns regarding the lack of Recovery Act funding provided for accountability and oversight. Due to fiscal constraints, many states reported significant declines in the number of oversight staff -- limiting their ability to ensure proper implementation and management of Recovery Act funds.' " -- ABC News, 4/23

64. "The National Newspaper Publishers Association named Obama 'Newsmaker of the Year.' The president is to receive the award from the federation of black community newspapers in a White House ceremony this afternoon. The Obama White House has closed the press award ceremony to the press." -- Los Angeles Times, 3/20

65. "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." -- Attorney General Eric Holder

66. "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances." -- Obama, on consulting with only "living" presidents

67. Obama quietly announced that he would not press for new labor and environmental regulations in the North American Free Trade Agreement, going back on a campaign promise.

68. NICOLE GELINAS ON: MISSPENT STIMULUS

"One of Obama's most poignant missed opportunities was in not using the historic $787 million stimulus package to reorder state and local government's spending priorities. As states and cities continue to spend ceaselessly and without results on education and healthcare, they're crowding out investments in the physical infrastructure that the private sector needs to rebuild the economy.

"In the stimulus, of the more than $200 billion that went directly to states and cities, nearly 70% went to education and healthcare spending. Only 24% went to infrastructure spending.

"But the states and cities in the most trouble already spend way too much on education and healthcare, pushing taxes up and sending private industry away. They don't spend nearly enough on infrastructure, which attracts the private sector and builds the real economy.

"As David Walker, former comptroller general of the US, said at the Regional Plan Association's annual meeting a week ago, nationwide, we are the 'highest in the world' on education. We are 'the highest in the world' on healthcare. 'Nobody comes even close.' On infrastructure, by contrast, we are 'below average' in both critical new investments and in much-needed maintenance spending.

"And, as Democratic governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell said at the same conference, when President Dwight Eisenhower left office, infrastructure spending was about 12.5% of non-military domestic spending. Today, it's about 2.5%.

"This shortfall is obvious to anyone who's ridden on an "express train" to the outer boroughs or driven on the Cross Bronx Expressway recently. But in New York, as elsewhere, the stimulus money has just allowed the state to ramp up spending on its wasteful, inhumane Medicaid program and its nosebleed public-school spending.

"Meanwhile, the subways are about to crumble into oblivion -- taking the economy with them. The same is true of decaying infrastructure in California and in aging states across the nation.

"The stimulus was a once-in-a-generation chance to change this. Instead, it made the situation worse."

-- Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to City Journal

69. "The Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to overrule Michigan v. Jackson, the 1986 Supreme Court decision that held that if police may not interrogate a defendant after the right to counsel has attached, if the defendant has a lawyer or has requested a lawyer. This isn't the first time the Justice Department, under President Obama, has sought to limit defendants' rights." -- TalkLeft blog

70. "By any measure, my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster." -- Obama

71. "Ahh, see. I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here." -- Brushing off questions from the White House press corps

72. On Earth Day, Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One to get to Iowa, burning more than 9,000 gallons of fuel.

73. "President Obama's plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs for the treatment of troops injured in service has infuriated veterans groups who say the government is morally obligated to pay for service-related medical care." -- Fox News, 3/17

74. "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it." -- Obama during his first State Of The Union address. A German invented the automobile

75. RALPH PETERS ON: FUMBLING IN AFGHANISTAN, FAKING IT IN PAKISTAN

"We're squandering blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Instead of concentrating fiercely on the vital task of destroying al Qaeda and its friends, the Obama administration's determined to erect a modern nation where no nation exists. Afghanistan isn't a country. It's a dysfunctional reservation inhabited by tribes that hate each other. There's no 'Afghan' identity. And even if our blind-to-reality efforts succeeded perfectly, the result would be meaningless.

"Except as a target range where we can gun down terrorists, Afghanistan doesn't matter. Next door, Pakistan matters immensely. But we don't know what to do about it. With 170 million anti-American Muslims descending into chaos as Pashtuns, Baluchis, Punjabis, Sindhis and others claw each other over the country's shabby remains, Pakistan's corrupt president shrugs, its military cowers, its loathsome intelligence services collude with Islamist extremists, and the safety of its nuclear weapons grows doubtful.

"Pakistan may be this generation's chamber of horrors.

"The Obama administration's response? Drill more wells in the Afghan countryside. Dramatically reinforce our troops in Afghanistan, sticking them with an impossible mission of modernizing a pre-medieval landscape while exposing them at the end of an insecure 1,500-mile supply line through, of all places, Pakistan.

"As for Pakistan itself, the Obama administration wants to send billions of dollars to a thieving government that makes Nigeria's look like a Quaker meeting and to hand Pakistan's military more arms -- weapons that might soon be used against us.

"Pakistan was a bad idea when it was created in 1947. It's a worse one now. Afghanistan wasn't even an idea, just an accident of where other borders ended. We can't 'save' either one -- because neither wants to be saved on our terms.

"Obama said the right things -- that Afghanistan isn't Iraq and that our goal should be the destruction of al Qaeda. But his policies just regurgitate our Iraq strategy (one he opposed) in a profoundly different context, while ambitious generals echo Vietnam-era calls for more forces.

"Our troops will do whatever we ask, to the best of their magnificent abilities. But we should ask them to do things that make sense. We need creative strategic thought, but we're succumbing to sheer inertia. And the president's supporters who howled that we should abandon Iraq to concentrate on their candidate's 'good war' don't seem to be volunteering to do any fighting. Menwhle, our presient's trpped himself inside his own campaign promiseing, Vietnam!"

-- Ralph Peters is the author of "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a BeW"

77. "President Obama failed to consult Congress, as promised, before carving out exceptions to the omnibus spending bill he signed into law -- breaking his own signing-statement rules two days after issuing them -- and raised questions among lawmakers and committees who say the president's objections are unclear at best and a power grab at worst." -- Washington Times, 3/24

78. Adolfo Carrion was confirmed as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, but is serving under a cloud after allegations that he accepted thousands of dollars in cash from developers whose projects he approved.

79. KYLE SMITH ON: GOING AFTER RUSH LIMBAUGH

"Every so often an unfocused athlete forgets about the field of play and climbs into the stands. Ty Cobb did it. Ron Artest did it. Maybe no one did it with more sick flir than the greasy, furious Hanson Brothers who, in 'Slap Shot,' climbed into the stands to give a beatdown to a fan.

"In March, Barack Obama sent his own personal Hanson Brothers, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and spokesman Robert Gibbs, out to attack a non-politician -- Rush Limbaugh -- who was sitting innocently in the stands jeering the action. Limbaugh didn't even throw a cup of beer.

"Senior White House staffers, who have already fallen into the classic trap of paying more attention to polls than fixing the country's problems, had become obsessed with surveys showing that Limbaugh was an unpopular figure with swing voters. Pretty soon Emanuel and Gibbs developed Limbaugh Tourette's. To paraphrase Joe Biden's witty putdown of Rudy Giuliani, for a few days every sentence they uttered contained three things: a subject, a verb and Rush Limbaugh.

"El Rushbo, chuckling over his cigar as his ratings skyrocketed, could not have been more pleased if a picture had emerged of Obama wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and burning the American flag on Harvard Square. Even that portion of the public that doesn't like Rush squirmed at the embarrassing spectacle of the president's men going all Mean Girls on an entertainer. George W. Bush's spokesmen maintained a dignified silence about Michael Moore. Picture them fanning out over the Sunday talk shows to denounce, and drive up the box-office receipts of, 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Wouldn't you have loved that, Michael?"

-- Kyle Smith is a Post columnist

80. Forced banks that didn't want TARP money to take it, then added on stipulations about pay and government control after the fact. Secretly forced Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, then allowed the bank to be criticized for overpaying.

81. "More than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States," Obama said in Mexico, yet factcheck.org says, "The figure represents only the percentage of crime guns that have been submitted by Mexican officials and traced by U.S. officials. We can find no hard data on the total number of guns actually 'recovered in Mexico,' but US and Mexican officials both say that Mexico recovers more guns that it submits for tracing. Therefore, the percentage of guns 'recovered' and traced to US sources necessarily is less than 90%."

82. Obama: "[Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar, Inc.], said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off." Jim Owens: "I think realistically no. The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again."

83. "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." -- Obama in Strasbourg, France

84. Joe Biden: "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, if we stand up there and we really make the tough decisions, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong."

85. Joe Biden: "You all worked for change. You wanted to see change. Well, that wasn't a hard thing to try to communicate to the American people. Obviously, obviously, we needed a change almost no matter who was running."

86. Joe Biden: "You know, I'm embarrassed. Do you know the Web site number? I should have it in front of me and I don't. I'm actually embarrassed."

87. "There are more than 6.5 million trucks in the United States. The program Congress terminated allowed 97 Mexican trucks to roam among them. Ninety-seven! Shutting them out not only undermines NAFTA. It caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade coming out of 40 states." -- Charles Krauthammer, 3/20

88. DAVID M. DRUCKER ON: BOWING TO CONGRESS

"Although the president possesses enormous political capital -- both because of high approval ratings and because his administration is still in its infancy -- he has generally declined to exercise it with Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, including when it comes to crafting legislation key to moving his agenda forward.

"Rather he has allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) to craft legislation as they see fit -- even though the very bills in question were proposed by the president and involve key planks in his agenda. Among them were Obama's signature $787 billion economic stimulus bill, his first major piece of legislation that was signed into law in February; and now health care reform, currently being negotiated on Capitol Hill with minimal input from the White House.

"This soft-pedal style of leadership runs the risk of forcing Obama to embrace legislation constructed for narrow partisan interests rather than in a manner capable of garnering broad bipartisan support. Over time, the public might come to see Obama's deference to Pelosi and Reid as a weakness of leadership not befitting a president in tough times."

-- David M. Drucker is a staff writer for Roll Call

89. "It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me." -- Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who became the second failed Commerce Secretary nominee

90. In the third sentence of his first speech as president, Obama said, "44 Americans have now taken the presidential oath." The correct number is 43, as Grover Cleveland served twice.

91. The $49 million inauguration -- triple what taxpayers spent at Bush's first inauguration.

92. Giving the Queen of England an iPod full of his own speeches.

93. Three prime-time briefings in his first 100 days, eating into television revenues and this Wednesday pre-empting "American Idol."

94. "The United States government has no interest in running GM. Your [GM] warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been, because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warranty." -- Obama

95. GM is given $15.4 billion in loans from the government.

96. The Obama Administration is trying to scuttle a lawsuit filed in federal court against Iran by former US embassy hostages. The lawsuit alleges that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-takers who interrogated the captives.

97. GLENN BECK ON: BAD ECONOMIC PREDICTIONS

"Ten days before his inauguration, the President's chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Rohmer, released a report describing what to expect economically during the first 100 days and beyond. It presented two starkly different scenarios: one good (if the stimulus were to be passed), and one terrifyingly bad (if we did nothing). Amazingly, the report estimated that if the stimulus package were to pass, the unemployment rate would not go above 8% at any time until at least 2014.

"It's already at 8.5%.

"In fact, while there is an acknowledged level of uncertainty, the projections estimated that the unemployment rate would be lower today if we had done nothing at all. This suggests one of two things: either the administration misjudged the seriousness of our economic problems, or the stimulus plan is actually making things worse. I suspect it's a little of both.

"Remember, when the President's budget was released, he was roundly criticized for his never ending deficits, even under his own optimistic scenarios for growth. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected deficits that were even uglier. But, if the President and his economic planners were this far off, this soon, how much worse does the future look now?

"The election was supposed to bring 'change,' but I was hoping for more than the letter after the President's name, the positivity of the media coverage, and the hypoallergenic qualities of the White House puppy. President Obama didn't get us into this situation, but so far he's doubling down on the same spending philosophy that did. Common sense tells us that new debt is not the cure for old debt. No matter what the slogans say, that won't change in 100 days or 100 years."

-- Glenn Beck is the host of the "Glenn Beck" show, weekdays at 5 p.m. on Fox News.

98. "Education Secretary Arne Duncan has decided not to admit any new students to the D.C. voucher program, which allows low-income children to attend private schools ... For all the talk about putting children first, it's clear that the special interests that have long opposed vouchers are getting their way." -- Washington Post, 4/11

99. Obama enrolled his daughters in a DC private school.

100. "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." -- Obama to Rep. Peter DeFazio, after the Democratic congressman voted against the stimulus bill.

Chicago Tribune Political Cartoon from 1934

2009-04-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

What an appropriate town to have this cartoon published, and what an appropriate time for it to reemerge.

Some things never change.

Stephen Hawking Seriously Ill

2009-04-20T23:26:00.001-07:00

Let's hope he pulls through... something tells me he's not finished refining Einstein's principals...

Eric Holder, and kissin' Reno

2009-04-18T20:11:00.001-07:00

NEVER WANNA LET YOU GO...
I WANT TO HOLD YOU IN MY ARMS FOREVER...

I'M GONNA TRY TO MAKE UP FOR THE TIME,
I HURT YOU SOOOOooooo.

DARLIN'

NEVER GONNA LET YOU GO!!!!

Match made in Heaven.

The Award Goes To:

2009-04-17T00:04:00.001-07:00

*DRUMROLL*

What a Week!

2009-04-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

The bones and muscles are sore but my Spirit has been renewed... just walking the grounds of Capitol Hill can do that.

Finally... I can relax in the warmth of home after several days in the dreary weathered Washington DC area. Having had a Manager's Meeting coincide with Tax Day only made life that much more mysterious.

Unfortunately I did not get any chance at all to involve myself in any tax day festivities due to a busy work itinerary. So, I did not attend any of the DC tea parties. However, I intend to post as much info as my hands can handle regarding a very important and relevant groundswell occurring among the silent majority.

...because there is so much significance to this.

If you have a tax day tea party story, or know of one, by all means LET ME KNOW! This is fascinating to me for many reasons. Let me know of sites breaking ground with this event so I can read up for I've had little research time lately.

Some think this whole idea is despicable... that tells you where THEY'RE coming from...

This Video tells quite the story.

Some of the snide comments I remember from various TV coverage, what coverage I was able to absorb in the hotel and airport during that busy day, I found amusing. Unlike the glowing coverage of the Hispanics in the streets waving flags as they encouraged their kids to skip school a couple of years ago.

My assumption is that yesterday's national protest was as large if not larger than that. Not to mention, remarkably more diverse... not to mention more conscious of litter laws and public decency laws... see what happened to Senator Tancredo this week?

Something tells me that this issue is going to be much more powerful than any immigration protestation in the nearby future...

It's apparently large enough for a state to flex some muscle... Something Texans are known to do...

Oh, speaking of Texans... I did get to meet and have a few words with one of my favorite Texans: Marcus Luttrell. Even got a nice photo with him...

Anyway, it's late... got a lot of catching up to do at my store... and will be updating things as I can consolidate them...

Send me your stories and/or links because I want to archive this moment in American History if for nothing else, my children... who are going to bear the greater part of this growing debt's burden.

...

My man Glen sent me this, the tea party he attended in Jersey.

Insolublog has this fascinating video... "wait for it... wait for it... FREEEEEDOOOOOMMM!!!! (Braveheart Style baby!) Nice.

Kenneth Cope- Broken

2009-04-12T08:54:00.001-07:00

Happy Easter as we celebrate renewal.

Pink Floyd Easter

2009-04-09T22:37:00.001-07:00

Easter story to epic Pink Floyd jam... written by Glen Beck a few years ago.

...not sure if it's sanctioned by the Church but, spending 15 minutes in Christ's final moments to Floyd jammage...

it is what it is...

(give the link a sec to launch your media player)

Tha Maestro!

2009-04-07T23:21:00.000-07:00

Islamberg - Home of the Real Domestic Terrorists?

2009-03-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

I wonder if this group falls under the radar of a possible domestic terrorist rather than those who fly the "Don't Tread On Me Flag"?

Quiet Muslim-Only Town in N.Y. Founded by Alleged Terrorist

Islamberg was founded in 1980 by Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, a Pakistani cleric who purchased a 70-acre plot and invited followers, mostly Muslim converts living in New York City, to settle there.

The town has its own mosque, grocery store and schoolhouse. It also reportedly has a firing range where residents take regular target practice. Gilani established similar rural enclaves across the country — at least six, including the Red House community in southern Virginia — though some believe there are dozens of them, all operating under the umbrella of the "Muslims of the Americas" group founded by Gilani.

Federal authorities say Gilani was also one of the founders of Jamaat al-Fuqra, a terrorist organization believed responsible for dozens of bombings and murders across the U.S. and abroad. The group was linked to the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and 10 years earlier a member was arrested and later convicted for bombing a hotel in Portland, Ore.

Shoe bomber Richard Reid has been linked to the group, along with convicted D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad. But it is Sheikh Gilani who creates the most controversy and concern.

Gilani has told his followers that "Zionist plotters" plan to rule the world, and he encourates them to leave America's cities and avoid the "decadence of a godless society." Gilani is the man American reporter Daniel Pearl was trying to interview in Pakistan when he was kidnapped and beheaded. The Sheikh was taken into custody and later released by Pakistani authorities; he denies any involvement in Pearl's murder.

Finally getting some national exposure, but I've been posting about this group over three years ago...

Alerting all Pentagon Lawyers

CP's Crusade

Gilani Feeling the Heat

Shedding Some Light?

Exposing Roots of Terrorism in USA?

Let's hope that the new administration places emphasis on tracking groups such as these rather than those who drive around with political bumper stickers, or fly patriotic flags...

American Bald Eagle on the Hunt with a Wing man

2009-03-23T22:48:00.001-07:00

Not sure who gets credit for these photos but wow, they're AWESOME! Here are a series of photos of an American Bald Eagle doing some hunting over a residential pond where I'm assuming is somewhere in the North West USA.

The little duck watches as the Eagle speeds straight at him at about 40 mph.

With perfect timing, the duck always dove and escaped with a mighty splash! Then he'd pop to the surface as soon as the Eagle flew past. This was repeated over and over for several minutes.

Circling the vulnerable prey...

Both Eagles attack at the same instant and fly into each other!! What an amazing photo!

Escape from the lake with soaked wings... a concerned wing man circles.

Not looking very happy, but it's going to dry out and probably get back home.

One Proud and amazing animal... no wonder it's our Country's mascot!

Let us hope we have the same resiliency!

Domestic Terrorist Quiz

2009-03-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

Here are 33 questions you can ask yourself.

Beware however:
Should you have committed one of these thought crimes...
well, we'll get to that later...

Just ask yourself... have you now or have you ever- had one of these thoughts cross your mind...

...the rest will take care of itself.

1. Do you believe in a global dictatorship?

...or in other words, do you believe that a "New World Order" is being set up?
well, isn't that obvious by now? Do you really need to be a domestic terrorist to see the obvious?

2. Do you believe there are United Nations (and/or foreign) troops in the US in support of a NWO?

Wouldn't their blue helmets kind of stick out? I haven't seen one lately, I would have remembered how hard I laughed at them.

3. Do you believe Jews control the monetary system and media?

Heh, those crazy joooooooss. I really don't see why any race would desire to lay claim to either of those disasters. Have you seen what's on primetime lately? Or late night? Ahh, that's why BO was on Leno...

4. Did you ever make a move to prepare to the Y2K scare?

You know it! Had a 3 month old just out of the NICU and his twin brother still admitted! Yeah, I admit to having a plan should Brayden be in a hospital that had lost electricity. When I noticed that things went down over Japan ok, I decided not to park in the hospital parking lot. Is that considered a "move to prepare"?

5. Do you believe the Obama administration wants more Gun Control?

DUH...

6. Do you fear Obama will enact firearm confiscation?

DUH...

7. Have you ever been in chat rooms on the internet?

No, not ever... what a silly question.

8. Have you ever been seen in public doing community service work?

Does picking up after the schmucks who drop their garbage on the sidewalk in front of the China Wok Chinese buffet right next door to my store count? Then, You Know It dawg!

9. Have you ever supported a third party in politics?

Uhh where's the second party? Uh, I mean, yeah... guilty as charged. Does third party include the Green Party by chance? Just wonderin, cuz those folks are nutty... they need to be watched!

10. Do you have the Gadsden (Don’t Tread on Me) flag?

No, but looking for one, know where I can get an authentic one? Let me know! I'll fly it proudly!

11. Do you have cartoons or bumper stickers of political nature?

Umm, "Don't Steal, The Government Hates Competition" is still sadly clinging for dear life since the day I bought it in a small trucker stop on a Hwy going through Parumph, NV approximately 8 years ago. Then there's this... I'm sure it'll be outlawed soon too.

12. Are you angered by the Federal Reserve or any tax agency (IRS for example)

Yeah it pisses me off... Can't we just eliminate a major expenditure of this country's budget and close down the IRS? Let's just have everyone pay 15% of whatever they make? If a consumption tax is required in addition, I would be game for that as well. Much more fair than telling the wealth creators of our culture- "uhh, give us most of your money dude." I bet that we'd be much more prosperous that way.

13. Are you concerned about the Ammunition Accountability Act?

Whoa, that link is creepy...

14. Are you worried about the collapse of the U.S. due to economic failure?

Who isn't?? Having our country's financial future in the hands of rich bankers should scare the hell out of all of us!! Considered me worried.

15. Are you worried a Con Con (Constitutional Convention) will take away your first and second amendment rights?

Con Con? This sounds more like a dance than a Constitutional event... or am I missing something?

16. Are you against/believe in Obama’s Civil Service Corps?

Whoa... I remember wondering when I turned 18 what would happen if I didn't register with THE selective service. I can see that data base becoming very handy all of a sudden.

17. Are you against RFID human implementation?

I'm too tired from the previous questions to even worry about this one. Just make sure I'm tricked into getting any kind of implementation cuz I'm naturally wired against any type of whatever the hell they're thinking of poking me with.

18. Are you against current abortion policy in any way?

Uhhh yeah... In many ways. And especially against future policies this administration is going to put forth. Not going to post this link... don't look here please... your heart will fall.

19. Are you against Federal Income Taxes because you realize they are Unconstitutional?

I made my stand on this issue already.

20. Have you ever participated in a protest?

Does protesting the shortage of ammo in local firearms shops count? Shoot, even Walmart is out lately...

21. Do you have a short wave radio?

Not yet, but looking forward to becoming licensed soon.

22. Have you ever been to a gun show?

Love 'em. Wish there were more of them!

23. Have you ever been on a social media site?

Are you kidding me? What is this, a question from 1993?

24. Have you ever met in an informal group?

Alright, this is more a personal ad rather than a questionnaire determining the status of one's patriotism isn't it?

25. Have you ever done community service work?

Answered that one earlier too.

26. Are you on the list for a first responder with the local law enforcement?

I would think that the more people on that list the better... but currently? No.

27. Have you ever belonged to a “Committee of Safety"

Does the neighborhood watch count? Does a belonging actually need to be official to care about your neighborhood? Or is it that it needs to be registered with the "officials" that makes it safer... just wondering...

28. Have you ever said or wrote “Molon Labe” (translation, if you have ever uttered the words "They'll take my gun out of my cold dead hands") or displayed it?

I've said worse...

29. Have you ever flown the United States Flag, the Nine Stripes of the Son’s of Liberty, or the First Navy Jack flag?

I fly as many flags that I love as possible.

30. Have you read / watched: Zeitgeist, America: Freedom to Fascism, or the Turner Diaries?

I don't remember, not popping into my memory at the moment... what if I did?

31. Do you Believe in an attempt to create a North American Union?

Isn't that just about official yet? Oh and by the way, if you hit the link contained in the question, you just violated question #30... busted.

32. Do you oppose open borders?

What's the purpose of property lines then?

33. Do you own Gold?

Not enough!!

According to this report, practically EVERYONE is a Domestic Terrorist/ Violent Militia Member.

War has been declared on the American People.

...no wonder we're out of ammo.

American Tea Party Anthem by Lloyd Marcus

2009-03-22T20:14:00.001-07:00

Let's Jam Y'all!

We The People Stimulus Package

2009-03-18T08:15:00.001-07:00

I'm going to reread one of the bests revolutionary works of all time- Thomas Paine's Common Sense. This guy is his reincarnation.

Wake up People... we need to get term limits implemented because we have LOST Washington...

11 Years and Rocking!

2009-03-13T23:58:00.000-07:00

Nothing compares to my sweetheart and that day we had 11 years ago...

Born Again American!

2009-03-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

I love this song!

I’m a Born Again American conceived in liberty
My Bible and The Bill Of Rights
My creed’s equality
A Born Again American, my country ‘tis of me
And everyone who shares the dream from sea to shining sea

HR 45

2009-03-05T20:25:00.001-08:00

A very disturbing piece of legislation that is always making the rounds of Congress in one form or another, particularly in a very left wing controlled Congress, is a gun control bill of one form or another.

The latest and perhaps one of the most blatantly anti Second Amendment of them all is one that was introduced a full month and a half ago but I missed it in the normal rush of everyday life. It's HR 45.

My friends at Stop the ACLU were all over this... (oh and I schnagged this sweet picture from there too, I need to get one of these flags!)

This irks people all over the political scale (read this awesome article on INFOWARS) but I fear that the numbskulls on Capitol Hill are way too out of touch to fully understand how much more quickly they've hastened the next American Revolution...

duh, what did you think the purpose of this legislation actually was? *slapping forehead*

But do they really want to piss this guy off?? (warning: video link contains an individual who uses very harsh language)

I'm just sayin, there's going to be some crazy crap coming down the line and we're barely through the first quarter of the first year of this administration's hold on Capitol Hill! It's almost as if they know they only have until 2010 to get 'er done because the American people aren't as easily fooled anymore... or am I kidding myself.

I'll find out a week from tomorrow when I host Glen Beck's "We Surround Them" campaign in my store. Why not, I have a large bank of big screen TVs, cable TV, and lots of couches! Sounds like we're already half way to a party!

Time to link up with my local conservative minded members of my community before Capitol Hill decides what's best for us!

OBAMA

2009-03-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

One Big Ass Mistake America

Long Live John Wayne.

2009-03-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

My father in law is one of my heros. His ability to captivate while telling a story is like no other. While text does not convey the bass of his voice, nor the childlike chuckle that sneaks between the pregnant pauses, it does convey the strength of character that is conveyed each and every day he walks the Earth.

This is a recent email that reminds me to watch for those cubic centimeters of chance that open right before our eyes that can have eternal effects.

I have been in and out of more airports than I care to remember, sometimes going to a city or just changing planes for my final destination. The ones I dislike the most are LaGuardia, Chicago and Newark because they not only strike me as rundown and dirty, but that they also seem to represent the poeple you see coming and going.

I remember the days when you went on a plane somewhere you dressed up a bit but now its like the Trailways bus people from Nogales have discovered air travel. They come dressed and sometimes un-dressed in clothing more at home at a rock concert or hippy reunion iin Golden Gate park. What set me over the edge last night in Chicago wasn't so much the way a young girl was dressed, it was her language.

I was at the gate and talking to a young mother who had a five year old girl and a grandma who was helping a toddler to walk with the assistance of patient hands and bent back, when a girl of about 20 sat down across the isle. She got on her phone and even with my diminneshed hearing ability, I could hear every word and the profanity that came from her was simply shocking. She would have put my old army drill intructor to shame with her obsene commentary and filthy descriptions. After several minutes I just couldn't take it anymore, especially with the looks on the faces of those sitting around who hadn't yet found a place to move away.

So I stood up and yelled at her "Enough" and told her we would not sit here and have her obcene and filthy mouth continue to contaminate our airspace. I told her if she didn't stop immediately, I would find a Chicago Police officer to take her away and explain the laws of public decency. Peggy has always told me my voice carries a long way and I suddenly noticed that the terminal was very quiet, even the arrival/departure announcements had stopped and everyone was looking at me standing there shaking my finger at this girl. She got up very redfaced and left the gate area, almost at a dead run and the area erupted into applause. I think that even made her run faster. The lady with the little girl got up and came over and put her hand on my cheek and thanked me for doing something she wanted to do but didn't have the courage. Other people also made similar comments and I told them I had raised six kids and although they were as different from each other as could be, none of them would even think of using that kind of language in private, much less in public. When I see young people like that girl, I wonder just where they come from and then I thank God just one more time for mine.

Divorce Agreement

2009-03-03T20:24:00.000-08:00

This is so incredibly well put, I can hardly believe it's written by a young person... A student even! Go figure...

Whatever he runs for... I'll vote for him!

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al: We have stuck together since the late 1950's, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let's just end it on friendly terms.

We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell...

...You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them...

We'll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks. We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security. We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values...

You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N.. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We'll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and over-sized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.

We'll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute Imagine, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We'll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this?

If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots... and if you do NOT agree, just go away.

In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.

This is who I want representing me...

2009-02-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

It's what's for Breakfast...

2009-02-26T21:27:00.000-08:00

Here, have a heaping pile o'crap for breakfast...

My growing boys are making me have to stop at the grocery store a couple of nights a week for boxes of cereal on my way home from a long day at work... Oh if only I could buy one of these!

McPeakMama is Back!

2009-02-21T16:47:00.000-08:00

McPeakMama on Octomom...

It is no ones business how many kids i want to have, how many bedrooms are available, what my income is, etc. Unless it can be proven, and I'm saying really undeniably obvious that these kids are being treated badly and they are being mistreated. Are we now going to regulate how many children are acceptable? It's bad enough there are those rallying and fighting with all their might to kill unborn babies. Like that is normal.

That's my girl!

Facebook Hilarity

2009-02-14T20:28:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder why I try...
excerpt from recent Facebook activity...

Status Change:
Ray is looking at some fascists on toilet paper and thinking that a dirty ass is still too good a place for Sean Hannity.

Joshua at 11:12am February 13
How about some Pelosi paper, refusing to allow the public to see the stimulus sounds pretty fascist to me...

Ray at 11:41am February 13
Woah....supporters of Bush have ceded their right to criticize government transparency!

Regardless, how is simply "refusing to allow the public to see the stimulus," in and of itself, and act of fascism? A lack of transparency in government certainly isn't unique to fascism. So, what's the underlying purpose that makes it fascist?

Are you maybe suggesting that she and the Dems are deliberately hiding some backroom deals that benefit corporate America and the power elite? You know, those same corporations and wealthy people that Republicans criticize that socialist Pelosi for trying to regulate? If that's the case, how can she be a socialist and a fascist at the same time? You need to enlighten me on how that's possible, Josh.

Joshua at 4:33pm February 13
That makes as much sense as calling Hannity a fascist... so relax Ray. And despite the fact that I was not a Bush supporter in regards to his horrendous fiscal policy, I will always maintain my right to criticize government transparency regardless of who I may have 'supported'. Oh and socialism and fascism are not mutually exclusive... so I think you can answer your own question.

Ray at 5:23pm February 13
HaHaHa...that's some funny stuff right there. I'd love to read your definition of fascism to better understand how polar ideologies like socialism and fascism can be anything other than mutually exclusive. Oh and not only is Pelosi not a socialist, its completely impossible for her - or anybody else - to be a fascist socialist. It makes no sense.

Joshua at 9:48pm February 13
via: http://www.merriam-webster.com/
Main Entry: fas·cism
1often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

Main Entry: so·cial·ism
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

Ray, surely you understand that socialism can easily lead to fascism in only a generation or two... an individual doesn't necessarily need to be both socialist and fascist at the same time for there to be a political evolution from socialist to fascist.

But come on, you know there are many many subdivisions of each of these political philosophies that muddy the water... outta room...

Giancarlo at 8:03pm February 14
Dear Sir,
If that's the best definition you may provide, I truly hope you never went to college and if you did my best guess is that you never took a course in social or political theory. If you did, you should ask for a refund from your college prof!
I bid you peace

Joshua at 9:07pm February 14
You bid me peace after insulting me? Sorry I can't appease your snotty ass attitude. I'll leave it to you idiots to negotiate with those who aim to take away your free agency... while I develop my survival skills. Schmuck.

There I go again... angry white guy who is apparently a total idiot...

Ever find yourself wondering why you engage yourself in this sometimes?

Stimulate this suckah.

2009-02-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

Yeah, this is making the rounds on the email, but it's too funny to not put up...

"This year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers and others who don't pay Income Tax.

Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. Only a smidgen.

Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China ?
A. Shut up.

Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending your stimulus check wisely:

If you spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China .
If you spend it on gasoline it will go to the Arabs.
If you purchase a computer it will go to India .
If you purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico , Honduras , and Guatemala (unless you buy organic).
If you buy a car it will go to Japan .
If you purchase useless crap it will go to Taiwan .

And none of it will help the American economy.
We need to keep that money here in America . You can keep the money in America by spending it at yard sales, going to a baseball game, or spend it on prostitutes, beer and wine (domestic ONLY), or tattoos, since those are the only businesses still in the US .

The Financial Downward Spiral has only just begun

2009-02-06T23:58:00.000-08:00

It is now confirmed, let the financial dark age begin... err, continue full steam ahead...

The new "stimulus" package is evidence of our new President's utter disregard for the care of critical financial truths... (as evidenced by the recent apocalyptic prophesies should the Senate not spend the money we don't have as fast as freaking possible.)

I read an article today that I think NAILS it. I'm no financial expert, but even I can see the writing on the wall and there's a Harvard Business School Prof who agrees with me... and does not agree with his fellow Harvard grad.

It began as a subprime surprise, became a credit crunch and then a global financial crisis. At last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Russia and China blamed America, everyone blamed the bankers, and the bankers blamed you and me. From where I sat, the majority of the attendees were stuck in the Great Repression: deeply anxious but fundamentally in denial about the nature and magnitude of the problem.

Soon those of us who dare speak of such silliness shall be shushed...

What really is the magnitude of the problem you may be asking yourself?

They need to grow up and face the harsh reality: The Western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness. Governments, corporations and households are groaning under unprecedented debt burdens. Average household debt has reached 141% of disposable income in the United States and 177% in Britain. Worst of all are the banks. Some of the best-known names in American and European finance have liabilities 40, 60 or even 100 times the amount of their capital.

The delusion that a crisis of excess debt can be solved by creating more debt is at the heart of the Great Repression. Yet that is precisely what most governments propose to do.

Meanwhile we're told to nod smile and shut the hell up, those in DC know more than you do about this, so don't worry about it, watch your TV shows idiot...

If, say, Argentina had an excessively large domestic debt, denominated in Argentine currency, it could be inflated away -- Argentina just printed more money. If it were an external debt, the government defaulted and forced the creditors to accept less.

Today, America is Argentina. Europe is Argentina. Former investment banks and ordinary households are Argentina. But it will not be so easy for us to inflate away our debts. The deflationary pressures unleashed by the financial crisis are too strong.

Instead of attacking this problem with the freshness of thought that an Obama administration promised to bring, we're going to experience the full assault of his inexperience and arrogance in a way that will change the course of American and World history forever... favoring the crowd who believes that centralized control of all things monetary is the way to go...

It was nice knowing you Mr. Washington, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams, Mr. Monroe... in only a few generations from now, you will have been completely erased from the public record. Nice knowing ya.

So what can we do? First, banks that are de facto insolvent need to be restructured, not nationalized.(The last thing the U.S. needs is to have all of its banks run like Amtrak or, worse, the IRS.) Bank shareholders will have to face that they have lost their money. Too bad; they should have kept a more vigilant eye on the people running their banks. Government will take control in return for a substantial recapitalization, but only after losses have been meaningfully written down.

Some actual short term fixes would be...

One solution would be for the government-controlled mortgage lenders and guarantors, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to offer all borrowers -- including those with fixed rates -- the same deal. Permanently lower monthly payments for a majority of U.S. households almost certainly would do more to stimulate consumer confidence than all the provisions of the stimulus package, including tax cuts.

No doubt those who lost by such measures would not suffer in silence. But the benefits would surely outweigh the costs to bank shareholders, bank bondholders and the owners of mortgage-backed securities.

Americans, Winston Churchill once remarked, will always do the right thing -- after they have exhausted all other alternatives.

Those of you who are as fascinated by all this as I am, this author will keep ya busy...

2009-01-27T13:09:00.001-08:00

The Dream and the 44th

2009-01-25T21:58:00.001-08:00

Knock it outta the park dawg... Insol and Katey know what I'm talkin about!

Change I can believe in.

2009-01-25T20:45:00.001-08:00

So what have we learned in 2 millennia?

2009-01-01T08:35:00.000-08:00

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." Cicero - 55 B.C.