Here's Your Proof.

One of my pet contentions about those holding federally elected office is that they are only competent in the art of campaigning. Whether it is a cause or an effect-probably cause and effect runs both ways- too many politicians have little interest in or talent for governing. This has always been, to some degree, an endemic problem in our nominally representative form of government, but my view is that this omnipresent nagging problem has intensified to the point that we now have this:

It does not help that many West Wing aides seem to relish an image of themselves as shrewd, brass-knuckled political types. In a Washington Post story this month, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, referring to most of Obama’s team, said, “We are all campaign hacks.”

Indeed. The acquisition of massive amounts of funds is now de rigueur for anyone considering running for federal office as campaigns that once lasted some number of months now last for several years. In a sense, this condition constitutes the ultimate victory for the owners of government, namely, the corporations. The winning strategy, the master stroke, employed by the business oligopoly, whether done so deliberately or by accident, involves keeping the politicians tied up in what amounts to a constant state of war. Can it be an accident that both the military and political professions employ the term campaign to describe their key activities?

Truly, what better way to bend government to one's will then to keep politicians focused on holding office to the exclusion of doing the jobs they were elected to do. How marvelous it must be for the owners of government to stand in (in the shadows) for elected officialdom merely by employing hordes of lobbyists to help set the agenda and craft the legislation, because what self respecting politician has the time to sort it out for themselves.

On a somewhat different note, it strikes me as more than a little interesting, and perversely fitting, that our political class, like the nation as a whole, now finds itself in a perpetual state of "war."

THE LAST STINKING STRAW!

I don't know about you, but I have been opposed to the U.S. military misadventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and various and sundry neighboring countries, from the word go. The ostensible raison d'etre for our seemingly endless military expeditions in the region is nothing less than the maniacally twisted "War on Terror", itself an obscene racket that, contrary to main stream media cant, is now, given the United States' desperate financial condition, likely little more than about procuring gargantuan profits from the enormous Afghan heroin trade.

Sorry if my calculus offends you, or if it's just too much to get your head around. Allow me to offer my apologies to any of you who subscribe to Hallmark card notions regarding the manner in which the United States, the world's only remaining military super power, operates on the world stage. U.S. soldiers aren't firing off their M-4s, and pilots aren't strafing the enemy from state of the art aircraft, for Democracy, baseball, motherhood, apple pie, or for any once glorious Detroit auto manufacturers now in receivership. We are doing it for purposes that have nothing to do with anything but the raw, naked, exercise of power, and our fear of losing it before sundown tomorrow.

The military con game is easily equivalent, if not greater in scope, than the scams enacted on behalf of AIG, the big banks, and one erstwhile investment bank in particular. If anything, U.S. war machine operations are worse, if for no other reason than they involve people dying horribly violent deaths on a regular basis. And where there isn't copious death, there is the only slightly less heart rending permanent maiming and wounding, physically and mentally, of young men and women in the full flush of youth. Bravo, America!

And now, as if this horrid state of affairs weren't enough, we have this to contend with. How dare you, you disgusting, pathetic, excuses for public servants, David Obey and Carl Levin, even suggest that we should pay to expand our ghastly, wrongheaded, monstrosity in Afghanistan. How dare you wrap yourself in sanctimonious appeals for sacrifice on behalf of this sham of a sham military operation. The logic from these cretinous mountebanks, "If we have to pay for the health care bill, we should pay for the war as well" is truly vomit inducing swill of the lowest order. Can anyone not see the problem, the lack of coherence- and that is being kind- in such a statement?

If not, let me help.

1.) BESIDES YOU, AND YOUR JACKDAW ILK, WHO ARE IMPOSING YOUR SCREWED UP "HEALTH CARE" SCHEME ON THE NATION, WHO SAID WE EVEN HAD TO HAVE THIS BILL, LET ALONE PAY FOR IT?

2.) DON'T YOU THINK THAT IT MIGHT MAKE A SMIDGEN MORE SENSE TO BRING OUR TROOPS HOME, THAN TO ADD SOME (PROSPECTIVELY FOUR OR FIVE DIGIT) NUMBER OF SOLDIERS-MANY OF WHOM WILL VERY LIKELY REQUIRE INORDINATE AMOUNTS OF CARE FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES- TO THE, AS YET CREATED, AND SURE TO BE OVER BURDENED, NEW HEALTH CARE SYSTEM?

WELL, DON'T YOU?

FOLKS, IT'S TIME TO RID OURSELVES OF THE FEDERAL LEGISLATURE BEFORE THEY DO US ALL IN! YES, I AM AFRAID IT HAS COME TO THAT! AND NO, I AM NOT JOKING!

Epic Global Warming Scandal!

It would be hard to overestimate the effects of this breaking story, which suggest an immediate unmitigated catastrophe for proponents of Global Warming. This is particularly the case for the Global Warming crowd's claims that man is primarily responsible for climate effects, since those effects are now revealed to have been concocted on the back of faked data.

Some of the profound ramifications of this major, breaking, brouhaha will undoubtedly be quite welcome, like the sundering of cap and trade legislation, a horridly corrupt scheme which should now be dead on arrival. Others, like the recrudescence of initiatives to build more nuclear power plants, will be, at least to my mind, less so. And then, of course, there will simply be scores of morons who will feel justified purchasing another (or new) Escalade or Hummer, convinced that endless happy motoring in a gas guzzling mini-tank is as harmless to the environment as expectorating onto the sidewalk. Two words for you folks, Peak Oil. The only data fudging there is coming from those who deny and obfuscate this inevitability.

Worse than the prospect of the monster SUV brigade's feeling that they now have a new lease on life will be the government's tendency, especially in our present economically enfeebled state, to offer them a tax break, thereby enabling super sized SUV yahoos to indulge themselves that much more easily. And all of what I have just mentioned will amount to just the tip of the (apparently melting far less dramatically than was heretofore claimed, and not due to anthropogenic causes in any event) iceberg.

To Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

Dear Secretary Geithner,

Yesterday, or perhaps it was the day before yesterday, it really doesn't matter, you were under the harsh glare of some members of Congress who rather sternly, but less than ably, took you and The Obama Administration to task for your role in the nation's present economic woes. As is your wont, Mr. Geithner, you resorted to a defense that was a mixture of "we inherited this mess" and "things would be so much worse if we hadn't taken the steps we've taken to date."

Well, as Ross Perot used to say, with respect to your excuse that we inherited this mess, "That dog won't hunt". President Obama has held office for almost a year now, and in that time his administration has taken a number of actions that effectively leave you with ownership of the present situation. With that in mind, in a very real sense, with respect to banking reform, one of your biggest initiatives in the past year has been to take no new initiative at all. To wit: Your basic premise, encapsulated, Mr. Geithner, is the same as that of your predecessor, Hank Paulson. Namely, it is, had we not bailed out the banks, we would now be in far worse shape as a nation.

No. I am afraid that is a monstrous lie, and all the evidence points to a very different and inescapable truth, which is that firms such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, and JPM, are nothing but criminally disposed hoarders of capital, vampire firms that add nothing, nothing, to the general economy, but rather, as is the propensity of such malevolent creatures, suck the life from it. Goldman isn't even, upon cursory examination, a bank; it is a HEDGE FUND, bankrolled entirely by the U.S. Taxpayer. The nation not only can get along fine without this particularly vile neighborhood larcenist, it would almost certainly see its functioning vastly improve after a relatively short period of adjustment.

I could go on for hours, Mr. Giethner, providing reams of sordid evidence of such criminality that it would likely make Bernie Madoff blanche. Even better, were the regulatory framework of the government not totally compromised by these same vampire firms, I could display proof of the corruption I allude to. However, in the absence of such a condition where proof might be, with a herculean effort, attainable, let alone become available with simply a modest effort, I will end this discussion by asserting that you, personally, have done nothing but enabled a bloated, predatory, industry, one more akin to a Mafia operation than anything else, to thrive at the expense of the rest of the nation. You, sir, and such fellow travelers as Barney Frank, Mel Watt, and Christopher Dodd, to name a few, are, to my mind, nothing but the property of a coven of blood sucking, financial death merchants.

The Grand Wobble! Part 2.1

• It has occurred to me that putting my recent post on hyper-inflation in some sort of context would be useful. There is a method to all the madness of (what may be characterized in general terms as) "money destruction". Here is my brief, but I hope not overly reductive analysis of what is happening and why.

The Fed and Wall Street Banks, who are puppeteering D.C.'s sickening charade from behind what amounts to a sheer curtain, are engaged in a time honored practice known in military circles as "The Pincer Movement".

There are two sides to the pincer movement. In this appalling example, one side of the pincer involves the entire alphabet soup of banker bailout rip-off programs, while the other side of the pincer involves some modicum of stealth, and focuses on the debasement of the U.S. currency. Both sides of the pincer serve the banker's ends, which are to eradicate their indebtedness at our expense. Their success depends on the complicity of the political class, maintained through well documented carrot and stick actions, MSM misinformation and propaganda, and last, but certainly not least, (drum roll, please) ignorance and cowardice on the part of "We The People."

The already enacted side of the pincer (TARP, TALF, etc. etc.) amounts to a particularly thuggish robbery perpetrated on the public in broad daylight, while the other side of the pincer movement might be likened to the sort of villainy engaged in by a skimming criminal accountant/money manager against a too trusting client who wakes up one day, only to find that, where their assets are concerned, there is no there there.

Why are they doing this? Well, let's start with the most obvious answer-but not necessarily a wrong answer for being so obvious- "they" are sociopaths, all genuine gangsters-and if they are anything, Wall Street bank(st)ers are that-are sociopaths to a greater or lesser degree. And so, being without a sufficient helping of conscience or empathy, these public predators have no compunction about ruining tens of millions of lives. The second answer to the question posed, which follows on from the "sociopath thesis", is that they are doing it, because they can.

Sarah Palin: Whore of Babylon Watch.

Thank you, Newsweek, for forcing Americans to have to consider Sarah Palin, The Whore of Babylon, once more. Thank you, for giving the world's most abominable scarlet hussy a cover feature story, even if only to suggest that TWOB is biblically bad news. Most Americans already know this, and we can only hope that they don't somehow become terminally confused between now and the next Presidential election and engage in a reconsideration of their well justified distaste for you know who.

The Grand Wobble! Part 2

We are getting closer to the point when another Black Swan event, perhaps The Black Swan event in our ongoing period of extraordinary financial and economic distress, comes to the fore. Specifically, I have in mind a very large, flapping, black bird that stirs up a commotion so great as to cause a Weimar like currency cascade. The idea that such a collapse could occur at all, let alone imminently, is not exactly on the vast majority's radar. Would that it were, since the nation's GDP, its marginal capacity of debt, as well as the all important issue of confidence, at least where a fiat currency like the dollar is concerned, are in a most precarious position. Last but not least, the dollar's reserve currency status, perhaps the strongest force heretofore working against a currency collapse, is clearly being dislodged, and none too delicately or slowly, from its pride of place.

My how the times can change, and quickly too, as history shows.

The mendacious head of The Federal Reserve, in front of legislators for his regularly scheduled period of restrained questioning and (non) answering, has asserted that he supports a strong dollar policy. Unfortunately, no one in our august legislative body, including the well meaning but feckless Ron Paul, managed to take Mr. Bernanke to task for his brazen dishonesty. However, the market will not fail to call The Fed Chairman's bluff, even as lawmakers don't, and do not be surprised if the merciless and enormous forex market does so in a spectacularly swift and frightening fashion as befitting a Black Swan of Black Swans.

After all, what, besides paying lip service to a strong dollar, has Bernanke, or anyone else in a position to effect the situation, done? The silence from Helicopter Ben's quarter were he compelled to answer such a question, would, by necessity, be as deafening as it was revealing. In truth, Ben, and our Legislative and Executive branches, under both The Shrub and The Anointed One, have done absolutely nothing but sow the seeds for a total destruction in the purchasing power of the dollar. And, as we are getting perilously close to technical levels in the dollar that equate to a Do or Die situation for the greenback, one must be vigilant for the onslaught of a free fall that gathers steam as the realization that, not only is Quantitative Easing here to stay, but is apt to be expanded with gusto.

A Bit of Humor For You, Brothers and Sisters.

May your holiday season be one where that diabolical credit card stays in your wallet as much as is humanly possible. Hallelujah!

The Grand Wobble! Part 1.

Things are getting more and more bizarre here in Freedom's Land. In fact, I dare say that things are getting so bizarre that I fear the onset of another bout of unspecified collapse. I really don't know where to begin with the following survey of strangeness, so I will start with a discussion of a traditional icon of American life, the stock market. I would like to assert my view that the stock market, at least as many of us once knew it for many years, is dead.

If you are one of those who have always thought of the share market as nothing but a casino, I must offer to you that whatever casino like atmosphere existed before, oh, say, 2007, is as nothing compared to now. One reason for this is that the present stock market is the province of an even smaller coterie of powerful players than before, players who are being bankrolled almost exclusively by you and me. What's more, the house money that this group of players have been handed for free is being deployed into the stock market based on factors that have absolutely nothing to do with the real economy. Short to intermediate term ebbs and flows in the stock market have always been dictated, to a greater or lesser extent, by liquidity flows, but now, as the unofficial government policy towards the dollar is to manage it into a controlled oblivion, a gambit that I believe is destined to fail spectacularly, the stock market now functions as nothing more than a kind of inverse dollar commodity fund.

Who can be surprised as the U.S. economy is on government induced life support that is barely keeping the patient from experiencing a total collapse. As a result, despite the smoke and mirrors engaged in by cretinous Wall Street cheerleading oufits like CNBC, forward operating earnings, are a fiction, and will not come close to justifying present prices. Worse still, the appalling mark to market accounting fantasy that the banks, and many others, have availed themselves of, allows for ever more absurd acts of share levitation.

But those are but mere tactics, albeit obscene ones, employed by The Powers That Be for the purpose of obfuscation. The real reason that reality will not, at least for now, be allowed to intrude, is because the stock market is perhaps the key prop employed by The Powers That Be to bamboozle the American Public into thinking that the U.S. Economy has "recovered," and that all will be as it was before the annus horribilus of 2008 cut the value of most people's equity portfolios in half. Even as the PTB have set in motion forces that guarantee a future where our purchasing power erodes faster than a seawall in a Category 4 Hurricane, they will try, at least for a time, to make those with Roth IRAs and 401Ks feel better about their prospects. In the meantime, the stock market has become a kind capital market manic depressive, down approximately 66% percent from its all time (nominal) highs from October '07 to March '09, and up almost the same amount in percentage terms in the eight months from this year's late winter lows.

This is Your Government Part II

As a follow up to the first part of This is Your Government, I offer the following, which provides more insight into exactly who some of are culture's monsters are, where they come from, and more lurid details on what they've been up to. I present to you the goats that stare at men.

This Is Your Government!

You won't find this story discussed, let alone featured, in any main stream media outlet. However, if, by some miracle, you do, by all means let me know as I shall be surprised and somewhat chastened. Here is credible testimony asserting that U.S. Government "security agencies" have engaged in the most depraved and cruel acts imaginable. I have long felt that the so called "War on Terror," the ostensible raison d'etre behind the vile acts recounted by Mr. Murray, has been, and will always be, a monstrous fraud, and that those who give succor to it are either dupes and/or criminals.

Many years ago, while trying to make sense of the unfathomable monstrosities perpetrated by The Nazis during The Third Reich, Hannah Arendt made a key insight about the darker side of human nature that was encapsulated in the phrase, "The banality of evil." One wonders who, in our time, are the mediocre functionaries sanctioning and directing all the unspeakable acts referenced by Mr. Murray? Who are the individuals who most resemble, in some way, shape, or form, the infamous bureaucrat, Adolph Eichmann?

If we didn't already suspect their whereabouts, we now have excellent evidence to support the thesis that these sinister characters are in the employ of our equally nefarious defense and intelligence agencies. Some number of these, as yet unnamed, and probably never to be named, pallid monsters are in full possession of the most detailed information relating to each and every rape, burning, boiling, electrocution, dismemberment, shooting, hanging, water boarding, etc. etc. committed by U.S. forces, either in person or through factors.

On some level, ascertaining exactly who these shadowy characters are is beside the point, (that statement should not be construed by anyone as me advocating against the full weight of justice being served to the execrable perpetrators) because each and every one of us who call ourselves U.S. citizens are, to a greater or lesser extent, complicit in the myriad villainies described by the aforementioned British diplomat.

I now offer the caveat that what I am about to say may shock some readers and offend others. The United States is mired in wickedness, and steeped in evil to such a degree that we can barely detect how morally askew our behavior has become. And I will further offer that I believe the ghastly domestic events of yesterday and today have some deep connection, though I can not say with any certainty what the connection is, with the "atrocities of war" already described.

Given all that has come down the pike that we citizens must ultimately take, as they say, ownership of, it is well nigh impossible, at least from where I stand, to take the position that anything less than wholesale change, authentic change, is essential to restoring this nation to a country where Enlightenment ideals are not simply used as cover for profoundly venal acts, but truly inform who we are and how we live. It is often asserted that in order to maintain a society such as the one we aspire to, voting is the least citizens can or should do. I agree, but would add that Americans must realize that voting for either party is no longer the least we can do, it is the wrong thing to do.

Sarah Palin/ Whore of Babylon Watch.

She's at it again. The future's potentially most dangerous political actor- I use that term advisedly- is raising her visibility by becoming involved in this year's political silly season. The erstwhile Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, has, not so subtly, inserted herself into gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, no doubt sucking some untold number of sleepwalking American voters into the bogus Democrat versus Republican swirling vortex. Why any fellow politician would want TWOB to weigh in on their side is beyond me. Equally, why any voter would listen to such an obviously phony, grifting, unintelligent sack of twaddle as The ImPalinator is unfathomable, but then, as the estimable H.L. Mencken pointed out many generations ago, this nation is full of nincompoops.

I don't know how to say this any other way. Sarah Palin must be stopped. But it may not be possible, especially when one considers that TWOB's numerous supremely embarrassing performances have not already driven the requisite large wooden stake through the black, beating heart of Palin's monstrous political career. Pray for a meteorite to hit at the proper time and place.