THE REASON FOR OUR LACK OF FREEDOM

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Catherine Austin Fitts on Chris Martenson's blog. It would be well worth your time to go over and read it.

"The federal financial model is institutional and its ultimate governance is outside of the government.

The choice of candidates impacts the quality of the political appointees, which factions get the large portion of the benefits of controlling the flow of contracts and pork, numerous incremental policies as well as the tone of the Administration.

However, the federal government lacks sovereignty. It lacks financial sovereignty - it is financially dependent on the banks that control its depository and slush funds, create the currency through the Federal Reserve and manage the accumulated capital of the same syndicates outside the government. It lacks information sovereignty as its data, information and payments systems are controlled and operated by private corporations, primarily defense contractors. If we could dig out the true ownership of both banks and defense contractors, my guess is that it would look identical. Finally, the members of the Administration have no way of guaranteeing their safety and the safety of their families if they defy orders of those who have the weaponry and power to enforce their will by any means necessary.

This means that essentially there is no government as many of us think of it. It also means that the governmental mechanism is quite fractured with many competing interests that lack an organizing mission. They simply share an organizing imperative to control and concentrate credit and cash flow and to enforce the liquidity of currency and credit that makes the system go."

SNOW WAY OUT

I haven't posted anything today because I've been preparing for... SNOWMAGEDDON!!!

It looks as thought we'll be getting at least an inch, maybe more of ice and then 6-12 inches, or more, of snow on top of it. What this really means is that we'll lose power up here on top of the mountain and we won't get it back for a long, long time. The last big winter ice storm in 2006 had us out for 3 or 4 days, and that didn't have snow in the mix so I'm guessing this will be longer.

It also means that for all intents and purposes we'll be trapped up here for at least a few days. The roads out here might get plowed, sometimes, under the best of circumstances and maybe some cinders will get tossed on top. But with a bunch of ice and snow and temps going down around zero at night the reality is that the roads that lead to our semi-paved road could be ice packed for weeks. Really, weeks. No four wheel drive, no go.

So I've spent the day making sure we've got plenty of wood for the stove and fuel for the generator. The blade's on the four wheeler and the salt is all up where I can get to it. My neighbor and I have to make sure that at least our road is passable because the hill leading up here is mighty steep. Steep enough that if we don't stay on top of it and keep it sort of clear it can become impossible to get to our houses or leave them, four wheel drive or not. And that includes emergency vehicles, too.

This is the time when the prep pays off. We try to stay prepared for the collapse that I believe is coming. But a great side benefit of this is that means we're also prepared for going without power for a significant period of time in the heart of the winter. There's adjustments to be made and things won't be as comfy as usual but we'll have heat, food all the other necessities that we need to get by.

And that's important because 4 or more days without power when the temps are around zero in an isolated place in the country could get pretty ugly if we aren't ready for it.

It sounds like all this will be starting tomorrow sometime with the really nasty stuff kicking in tomorrow night or Tuesday morning. I really hope we don't lose power but the chances are we will. So if I don't get a chance to talk to you over the next week or so I'll be back when the lights come on again. In the mean time my wife and I will be hunkered down by the woodstove, reading by lantern light and watching the snow fly.

I so can't wait for spring.

From my wife's blog, Moving Onto The Past:

"This storm will make history," the meteorologist said, combining the 1982 worst snow storm (around 2 ft) with the 2006 worst ice storm (several inches) that shut down the city with over 500,000 without power for days. The Missouri National Guard has been put on alert. AmerenUE, the power company, has made arrangements to bring in out of town crews.

According to NOAA weather:
THE GREATEST THREAT OF DAMAGING ICE ACCUMULATION AND POWER OUTAGES ALONG AND SOUTH OF INTERSTATE 44 IN MISSOURI (our place). ACCUMULATIONS...ICE ACCUMULATION BETWEEN ONE QUARTER AND ONE HALF INCH ARE POSSIBLE. SLEET AND SNOW ACCUMULATION OF 6 TO 12 INCHES ARE ALSO POSSIBLE.


UPDATE:
Ice: 1 inch of ice or more.
Snow: 1-2 feet depending on where you are
Winds: 30-40 mph
Trees: the last time we heard trees breaking and falling all over our property.

The Pieta Prayer Book has a Blessing Against Storms that I like. Perhaps combined with our four corner packets we'll keep our power this time!

Jesus Christ a King of Glory has come in Peace. † God became man, † and the Word was made flesh. † Christ was born of a Virgin. † Christ suffered. † Christ was crucified. † Christ died. † Christ rose from the dead. † Christ ascended into Heaven. † Christ conquers. † Christ reigns. † Christ orders. † May Christ protect us from all storms and lightning † Christ went through their midst in Peace, † and the word was made flesh. † Christ is with us with Mary. † Flee you enemy spirits because the Lion of the Generation of Judah, the Root David, has won. † Holy God! † Holy Powerful God! † Holy Immortal God! † Have mercy on us. Amen!
allwayscatholic.com

I think I will go pick a bit of that greenery, from yesterday's post, and place it in some water. It might be a nice to see in a day or two!

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that we face the possibility of thunderstorms combined with freezing rain. THUNDER ICE!! This is going to be interesting!

FOOD IS HYPERINFALTING - WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?

You absolutely must face the truth about the cost of food in the coming year. This isn't some crazy prediction, it's happening, right now. You either begin to take steps to protect yourself, staring today, or you WILL have problems feeding yourself sometime this year, unless of course you're just plain old rich, but even that won't help you if the shelves go bare because no one can afford to produce at these prices.

"Wheat futures for March delivery rose 18.25 cents, or 2.2 percent, to close at $8.565 a bushel at 1:15 p.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade, capping a seven-day advance of 11 percent. Earlier, the price reached $8.6125, the highest for a most- active contract since Aug. 6. The grain has jumped 73 percent in the past 12 months."
Bloomberg

"“US Crop Stock Forecasts Deepen Fears of Food Crisis” read a recent Financial Times headline. The US government cut its estimate for key crops. This came only a week after the UN warned the world faces “food price shock.” Corn and soybean prices jumped and now sit at 30-month highs. Inventories are very tight. Corn is up 94% since June!"
Daily Reckoning

"Food prices hit a record level last month, according to United Nations statistics, and are forecast to grow by more than 30 per cent this year. In a worst-case situation of critical shortages sketched by Citigroup Inc. analysts, prices could skyrocket by as much as 75
percent."
The Globe and Mail

H/T Economic Collpase Blog

WIKILEAKS FANS THE FLAMES IN EGYPT

Well, at least this clears the air about the true intentions of Assange. He's not a journalist and he's not concerned about the truth. He's an anarchist with one goal, chaos. Why else would he release information that is timed not to enlighten but to inflame?

SEE YOU NEXT YEAR

THIS IS TERRIFYING - WHY?

People are shot dead every single day yet this is the first time I've seen a statement like this at Business Insider. Is it terrifying because they just saw the writing on the wall? For a variety of reasons I expect to see bankers and traders become some of the first targets of those that are actively trying to destroy our world. They make for easy scapegoats when the goal is to get people all wound up and focused on the ones that caused this, whether that's true or not.

Buckle up and pray. By the way, I doubt that any of the big boys in the banking and finance industry will get caught up in this. I'm sure they've got their way out all set up. Let the lower level guys take the hit. Why do I say that? Because that's essentially what they've done to the American people with the bailouts. They take the profits, we pay for the losses.

How hard do you think it'll be to make them targets?

WAR ON COPS?

"Authorities are worried a recent wave of police officer shootings may not be a coincidence.

In just 24 hours, at least 11 cops were shot around the country.

The most recent incident at a fugitive's house in St. Petersburg, Fla., left two officers dead and a U.S. marshal wounded Monday. Hours earlier, an Oregon officer was critically wounded after being shot multiple times during a traffic stop.

Monday's violence followed a bloody Sunday that left an officer in Indianapolis critically wounded during a traffic stop shooting, four officers in Indianapolis wounded after a gunman opened fire in a precinct and two more officers in Washington wounded in a shootout in a Walmart parking lot.

"It's not a fluke," Richard Roberts, a spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, told MSNBC.com. "There's a perception among officers in the field that there’s a war on cops going on."
Fox News

We'll have to see where this goes. War on cops? Who knows. Maybe though, if you happen to have the chance to talk to one of your local officers you might want to let them know that we're on their side. Lines are being drawn now, in all areas of society. I think we're starting to see the beginning of a winnowing, a separation of the good and the evil. We want the law on our side and most cops will naturally see things the same way that most Americans do. So let 'em know that we're there for them. Because I fear that this story may not be far off the mark.

I think we're being pushed into something, some sort of collapse or internal war that will benefit some in power at the expense of the majority of us. I can't prove it but I can feel it. And this may be the first outward manifestation of real evil working among us.

We'll see.

THE BANKS WIN AGAIN

"A state House subcommittee voted Monday to effectively kill legislation that would have slowed the pace of home mortgage foreclosures in Virginia that is among the fastest in the nation.

With one dissent on an unrecorded show-of-hands vote as the powerful banking lobby looked on, a Commerce and Labor subcommittee sent the bills for more study by an obscure gubernatorial task force.

The action included all House bills addressing what Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, calls "drive-by foreclosures."

Delegate Bob Marshall's bill, which was before the 11-member panel, would have extended the foreclosure notice requirement from 14 days to 45. It would also require that loan and property records be recorded in local courthouses.

"What you saw in there was government of the banks, by the banks and for the banks," Marshall, R-Prince William, said afterward...

...The finance and insurance sector last year gave more than $1.7 million to candidates for statewide office. Of that, a little more than one-third, about $660,000, came from the banking industry."
USA Today

Right now, if your mortgage has been put into the MERS system it's entirely possible that even if you pay the mortgage off you may never be able to get a clear title or be assured that no one else can file for foreclosure against you. The bankers have created a system in MERS designed to lessen their cost and facilitate the sale of your mortgage into the Mortgage Backed Securities investment system that so many mutual funds are a part of. In doing this, the banks and brokers have created a massive stream of wealth directed straight to their pockets while hopelessly clouding the titles of millions and millions of homeowners.

This legislation in Virginia was meant to address this and to place the burden on the banks to prove that they actually, legally held the title to the property they are trying to foreclose on. And it looks as though the banks win again, at the expense of the people, you know, the ones that have, through their representatives, pledged the wealth of future generations to bail out the banks after all their scheming soured.

One of the primary purposes of government is to see that justice is served, that everyone gets what is due them. What justice is there in the banks screwing everybody from both sides and still walking away with the money? Sure, a lot of the properties that the banks are foreclosing on should be foreclosed on. But it should be done according to the law, not the financial desires of the banks. And the fact is, many of these properties would have never had mortgages attached to them if the bankers hadn't lied to get the people that bought the properties qualified. And why did they lie? Because they knew they could make money on the fees and the sale of the note into the MERS system and the packaging of bad loans into mutual funds via mortgage backed securities. From the banks standpoint, this was all gain with no risk of loss. And they want to keep it that way.

So they're using their power wherever they have to, making sure that bills like this one in Virginia never see the light of day.

THE DAY AFTER THE DOLLAR CRASHES

Just one more possible future. I suspect that this or something rather close to it is about how it'll go. But then, there's no figurin' chaos.

WHAT IF THEY TRIED TO KILL A GOVERNOR AND NOBODY CARED?

I checked our local paper, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, to see how this story was covered. To be honest, I live in Missouri and I'm a news junkie and I don't remember hearing a thing about this. So here is the full extent of the coverage from one of Missouri's top papers, and a major supporter of all political causes on the left, The St. Louis Post Dispatch:

"A 22-year-old Kansas City area man is charged with stabbing a community college dean in a building where Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was to hold a news conference.

Albert Dimmitt, dean of instruction at Penn Valley Community College, was slashed in the neck Tuesday morning. He was in stable condition following surgery. Later Tuesday, the Jackson County prosecutor charged Casey Brezik of Raytown with two counts each of first-degree assault and armed criminal action.

One of the charges alleges that Brezik also injured Mark James, chancellor of the Metropolitan Community Colleges system, as James came to Dimmitt's aid. Witnesses said a mumbling man entered the room where the news conference was to be held, bolted back out and stabbed Dimmitt in a hallway. Witnesses subdued the attacker, who police said was wearing a bulletproof vest.

Nixon's news conference at the college was canceled."

That's it! I searched the website of the Post using Casey Brezik's name and this one story is all that comes up. I have to think that if there were any other stories about this they would include the guy's name so the search engine should find them.

But no. An assassination attempt was made on our Governor and this is all we got. I went back to their site and searched for stories about the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords in Arizona and got tired of counting all the links.

I don't know why the coverage is so massive on the shooting in Arizona and nearly nonexistent on the attempted assassination of our Governor. I can understand it at the national level but not the local. So, what's going on?

Was it because The Post and the papers in Kansas City are reliable supporters of the Democrat Party and all things to the left and the fact that the guy that tried to cut our Governors throat is an avowed anarchist and communist sympathizer that recently seems to have converted to Islam just a bit uncomfortable for them? You can read about all this here.

Something's fishy here but it'll blow over because outside of the blogosphere and Beck, this story won't get legs. It will continue to be suppressed. Because it doesn't fit the narrative the left is trying to build.

UPDATE

If you feel the need to support poor Casey, pop on over to the Anarchist News website to get his address at the jail so you can send him a postcard. And while you're there, marvel at the complete stupidity that abounds.

And we all know that it was the TEA Party that was behind the shooting in Arizona because the media, the same group that won't even talk about this loon because it hits too close to their homes, says so. Whatever!

FEWER THAN HALF OF WORKING AGE AMERICANS HAVE FULL TIME JOBS

There is nothing that is reported in the main stream media anymore about our economy that isn't manipulated and massaged. Every number and law is being designed to benefit bankers and their friends in government. What we are watching is the last efforts of a dying empire to carry on long enough to insure the maximum transfer of its dwindling resources to the few that pull the strings in the background.

If you still believe that what you hear on NBC (owned by GE which at this point is about as wrapped up with our government as a company can be) or any other media outlet, yes, including the conservative Fox News, you , my friend, are out of your mind. Somehow, someway the powers that be have managed to corrupt damned near everything in traditional media. The internet is the only place left that we can still get the truth and that won't be available much longer what with the FCC being granted regulatory powers over it.

But, in the end it may not matter. If nearly half the work force in America is not fully employed, and based on personal and anecdotal experience I suspect this is fairly accurate, then this can't go on much longer. If most people have dome the things my family have to adjust to this new reality then I can tell you that about the only spending going on right now is the spending that can't be avoided. And in a country with an economy that is built around consumer spending, to the tune of 70% of GDP, this means that slowdown doesn't even come close to describing what's really going on. And as fuel prices rise and the cost of getting to that lower paying job begins to eat into the paycheck along with the cost of heating and cooling the house and the price increases in everything due to the increased transportation costs start to roll through the system, well, we ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to a slowdown in discretionary consumer spending, the kind of debt driven buying of useless crap that has been the earmark and foundation of our economy for the last 30 years.

No more expensive latte machines are even expensive latte's at Starbucks. No more new cars. No more new clothes just to keep up with fashion. Fix it instead of throwing it out. It used to be that a car that lasted 100,000 miles was something of an outlier. Not anymore. With proper maintenance modern cars can last well over 200,000. So now people will take better care of them and make 'em last. New houses are about done with. There's plenty of used ones on the market at cheap prices and the baby boomers, the ones that drove this house building orgy over the last thirty years, are getting old and downsizing, not to mention facing the new reality that most won't be able to retire with a big portfolio but instead will have to scrape by with whatever their old bodies can tolerate to make some money.

You take cars and houses out of the picture and the few remaining middle class blue collar jobs left that paid a decent wage go by the wayside. That's millions of more consumers done spending. Add in the young coming along needing jobs and the oldsters still having to work and the future holds a bleak picture for all of us. Too many workers and too few jobs means low wages for those that can find any work at all. And don't think this just means for the blue collar guys, either. This will trickle over to the white collar world, too. Look at how many college graduates are coming through the doors with no real prospects for good jobs. They'll be competing with the rest of the white collar workers, working cheaper and with fewer benefits, bringing down paychecks at an office near you soon.

So don't believe these smiley face happy-happy, joy-joy reports of economic growth that the media is shoving down our throats. Common sense tells me that they can't be true and there is enough evidence on the net from those that look at the numbers honestly to confirm my opinion.

Buckle up, pray and prepare for our new reality. We've got a lot of tough years ahead of us and the sooner we all quit pretending like it could never happen here the sooner we can get real solutions and make the changes needed to weather the coming storm.



Just a few highlights:

"To summarize: 108.616 million people in America are either unemployed, underemployed or "Not in the labor force". This represents 45.5% of working age Americans.

If you count the "Part time employed for non-economic reasons", you get 126.8 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, working part time or "Not in the labor force". That represents 53% of working age Americans.

So only 47% of working age Americans have full time jobs. While the official unemployment rate is 9.4%. Something's missing somewhere....


...You just have to love this one: at the stroke of a pen, it has become impossible for the Federal Reserve to incur losses. They're all simply written down as "liabilities to the Treasury". Yes, that would be you! And the Fed can keep on buying any and all toxic paper they can lay their hands on. They can accept as collateral "assets" from Wall Street that are not worth the paper they're written on (and there's a lot of that) and stick you with the bill by pressing a key.

It's time to seriously start wondering why the US still holds elections. Given that Congress can be bypassed this way through a sort of accounting that if it isn't yet illegal certainly should be, and which will burden Americans with trillions of dollars in additional debt, we might as well let Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest organize Indecision 2012...

...Yes, I know, solving Fannie and Freddie is a Herculean task. Nobody wants to shake the housing market any more than it already has been. That is, of course, nobody except for potential homebuyers. And yes, dissolving Fannie and Freddie will greatly increase the "official" US debt. It will also mean the end of the major Wall Street banks.

But if the only alternative is to give those banks, who would long be broke and live on only as zombies and even that only because of accounting tricks, the ability to hand out loans and invest in securities (and potentially other derivatives) backed by a 100% US government guarantee (how thick can you lay on moral hazard?), you will be directly responsible for destroying your grandchildren's America."

PRO ABORTS SHUT DOWN BY PRAYER

This is a beautiful thing!

Something I have to point out here is the nature of the pro abort protest. Look at the sign. The lettering is all in red and it screams REVOLUTION!! Look at the protesters. They dressed up just like the protesters at all the anarchist protests we see when the world's bankers get together. This protest looks less like anything I normally see at an abortion dust up and more like something attached to a labor march or May Day celebration. Che Guevara would feel right at home.

I'm pointing this out because, and I have no facts to back this up, this protest is being run by somebody someplace that isn't in it for any sort of pro abort reason. Whoever is behind this thing is part of the bigger picture. The people behind this, I'd be willing to bet, are tied in with the other Progressive/Marxist groups trying to stir up a fight and spark their "revolution".

I just went back to look at the video more closely and saw a web address at the bottom of the banner carried by the pro aborts. It was for REVCOM.US. By golly, that turns out to be the website for The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Who would'a thunk it?

Thank God the peaceful protesters on the pro life side remained so and used the power of prayer against the power of darkness. These people are just looking for the good guys to take a swing. If we don't give them what they want we can frustrate their plans. But if we ever lash out we'll call all the demons from hell down on our heads.

Keep up the good work!

WHERE HAS THE MORALITY GONE?

The Watcher, over at The Observatorium , asked a simple question:

"What do you believe is the greatest contributing factor to the perceived moral decline in the United States?"

He's asking for opinions so I'm sure he'd appreciate people hopping on over to give theirs. Mine, well, got just a bit too wordy. Hard to believe, eh? So I thought that I'd post it here and link him back to it.

I think that our fall from morality began with the Reformation. Yes, I know that this pivotal point in history pre-dates our country but since this is a question of morality I think it makes sense.

Stay with me on this before starting to scream.

The Reformation created Protestantism which is founded on the rather strange notion that there is no objective truth. Sure, most Protestants will say that the Bible is the foundation upon which their faith is built but that begs the question of whose interpretation one is to believe, Luther's, Wesley's or Zwingli's and on and on? Of course, most Protestants will say that the Spirit speaks to them directly, which may be true, but that still doesn't explain how one faith can believe baptism at birth is necessary and the next that it is completely useless. If this idea of each person standing as their own infallible interpreter of truth were plausible then there would be no disagreement on any issue of faith in the Protestant world. But we know there is because in the Protestant world there is no objective truth. The truth is a rather slippery thing.

I'm not trying to bash Protestants here but just looking to the roots of our moral decline. America is a Protestant country and because of this we cannot say there is an American religion, just a loose confederation of quasi-Christian beliefs. Yes, we were founded loosely on some Christian moral principles but we were founded just as surely on the humanist principles of the enlightenment.

I would say that the morality that existed or exists in this country at any given time is not because of anything special about our religious belief because that is too scattered and unstructured. We can't chalk it up to Baptists, Presbyterians or Pentecostals; none have ever dominated at any more than a regional level.

And the Catholic Church hasn't had anymore ability to affect the conversation than the rest; just another voice in the crowd.

Our founders were no more religious than most of the people of their time. In some cases they were less. Many seem to have a Masonic understanding of faith; there is a creator but his nature isn't that important as long as we recognize his existence and the rules he established, if they can be agreed upon. I've read an awful lot about the founders in my life and I've seldom found any that claim a real connection to a particular faith beyond social and family considerations. I get the feeling that they're about average in their faith compared to most at the time and not much better than many today.

I don't think that in terms of morality or faith America is much different than the rest of the Western world. We just run a little behind.

We were wilderness long after Europe was settled and fairly sophisticated. The wilderness experience breeds faith because people must have it to survive. Urbanity seems to destroy faith because people in cities begin to believe that man can provide for himself without so much help from God. The wolf is not, quite literally, so often at the door.

Europe lost it's moral footing years ago, at the time of the Reformation, rejecting objective truth with the notion of self government in moral affairs, a notion which carried over into our founders ideas of secular government, dooming us from the beginning. Europe saw slow and steady decline from that point onward, reaching it's crescendo in the violence surrounding the rejection of God and truth known as the French Revolution, which ironically was partially sparked by the revolution here in America.

Now we're finally catching up. I think that our loss of morality goes hand in hand with our Protestant and rationalist roots, urbanization and material wealth.

And Europe is about to fall. We'll follow right behind them. This story repeats itself all through history, Rome being the most glaring example. When the going gets easy we push God aside and since He has given us free will He'll do as we ask. We'll be humbled soon and then watch the morality return.

This isn't an American problem, it's a human problem. When we deny objective truth we open the door to believing anything. This was the effect of the Reformation and it is still haunting us today.

I would have to say that any morality we posses we posses because of our roots in the past. For most Christian's it is because sometime, long ago in Europe and Asia your forefathers were Catholic. And long ago all governments in Christendom were Catholic. Everything true that we know about our faith and the spiritual reality that surrounds us comes from Catholicism, whether Eastern or Western. This is a cold and hard historic fact.

The Reformation rendered this ages old reliance on the Church moot, casting the people and their governments adrift on the seas of individual rights and ideas, fostering the Enlightenment and all the errors that followed.

I would have to say that the world is suffering moral decline directly proportional to its distance from the truth and that truth is found in the Roman Catholic Church. Until we return to her and accept her teachings we will flounder in this humanist world we have created, descending ever deeper into sin and closer to our destruction.

CHINESE PIANIST PISSES IN THE ROSE GARDEN

And not a word will be said by Dear Leader or anybody else in the administration for fear of upsetting our bankers. This is the clearest sign yet of our standing in the brave new world. Pax Americana is over!

"Lang Lang the pianist says he chose it. Chairman Hu Jintao recognized it as soon as he heard it. Patriotic Chinese Internet users were delighted as soon as they saw the videos online. Early morning TV viewers in China knew it would be played an hour or two beforehand. At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.”

The film depicts a group of “People’s Volunteer Army” soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military “jackals.” "
The Epoch Times

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT SULEYMAN?

"IN EGYPT, an extraordinarily important fatwa has been issued by Dr. Imad Mustafa, of al-Azhar University, the world’s most important Islamic university.

He began by stating the well-known doctrine of “defensive jihad,” that is Muslims must go to war against infidels who attack them. Of course, the word “attack” is often spread rather thinly to justify aggression.

But now Mustafa has publicly and explicitly come up with a new concept, one that up until now was supposedly restricted to groups like al-Qaida: “Then there is another type of fighting against the non- Muslims known as offensive jihad... which is to pursue the infidels into their own land without any aggression [on their part]...

“Two schools [of Islamic jurisprudence] have ruled that offensive jihad is permissible in order to secure Islam’s border, to extend God’s religion to people in cases where the governments do not allow it, such as the Pharaoh did with the children of Israel, and to remove every religion but Islam from the Arabian peninsula.”

What does it mean about extending “God’s religion,” i.e., Islam? On the surface, “where the governments do not allow it” and the reference to Pharaoh seem to imply the complete prohibition of Islam.

But in the current context, this means that it is permissible to wage jihad against a country if anything “necessary” to Islam according to (hard-line) clerics’ interpretations is blocked (polygamy, child marriage, special privileges at work places, building mosques anywhere, permitting the wearing of head scarves or burkas).

In practice, according to this doctrine, then, any non-Muslim can be attacked anywhere. Thus, mainstream, powerful clerics are now calling for a seventhcentury- style jihad against non-Muslim lands even if the victims cannot be accused of attacking Muslimruled lands. Merely to “extend God’s religion” to others is a sufficient motive. Mustafa says that two of Islam’s main schools have always endorsed offensive jihad, but I doubt if he would have made that argument ten or 20 years ago."
Jerusalem Post

One of the books that I'm reading is called Defenders of the Faith by James Reston, Jr. It's one of those history books that draws me along, more like reading a novel than the normal mind numbing fair I've become accustomed to. Anyway, it's about Suleyman the Great, Charles V, the Catholic Church and her Popes, Martin Luther and the great clash between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. The crazy thing is that it reads almost like it was pulled from todays headlines.

The above article, which was linked to by James Mace on Facebook, tells us that a justification for total war against the West has just been issued by a major Islamic University. It codifies the historic Muslim belief that Islam has the right to conquer the world to spread its beliefs. This is the justification for war used by the Ottoman Empire as it swept through Europe and nearly destroyed the Church in the 16th century. Of course, for Suleyman, like any ruler, it wasn't purely a religious undertaking. It was as much about power and revenge as anything else.

Just like today.

And just like today all the West had to offer in defense of this unified Islamic assault was a splintered belief system racked by internal strife and leadership so badly compromised by political infighting that it couldn't focus on the true threat. It was weak and Islam was strong.

All that we're waiting for right now is that one leader to emerge in the Muslim world, the next Suleyman, the one that can take this latest fatwa and run with it. If someone can pull together under one command all these disparate Islamic groups, or at least the majority of them (the Sunni/Shia split was a problem for Suleyman,too), Europe and by extension, the Western world as a whole, is in great danger. The Church will be reduced to a shell and the world will be plunged back to the dark ages.

All it takes is that one leader to stand against Christendom and bring it down. The foundation has been laid, the justification established. The Christian people, for the most part, are weak and unchurched. If enough pressure is brought to bear by another Suleyman they will capitulate quickly rather than face decades of warfare. Only a belief in absolute, objective truth can cause people to fight a force as strong as the new Ottoman Empire. And it doesn't hurt the Islamic cause that the Muslims have become such a force to be reckoned with inside the boundaries of most European states already. When you think about it, the troops are in place, ready to attack from the inside when the Islamic armies are at the gates.

We are faced with the potential rise of a powerful and determined anti-Christ. The two questions that remain are whether he will be THE anti-Christ or just one of the many and when he will show his face. Only time will tell.

THE RUPTURE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

From Ioannes at Commentarius de Prognosticis:

"As has been repeatedly pointed out here, we serve in the best interests of the political, economic and social order when we as individual Christians take up our responsibility to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, care for the sick, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, shelter the homeless and welcome the alien (Matthew 25:31-46). Everytime we abdicate our responsibility and evade our accountability as stewards of God's creation and as children in His Kingdom, on the one hand we elect politicians to produce a nanny government that in turn enslaves us to Caesar (the logical outcome of left's point of view), or we enable the growth of an unlimited market that would sell human flesh at any price (the logical outcome of the right's point of view). The Church's responsibility is to save souls, and we are members thereof. Let our light then shine by our good works. If we do that, then we obviate the need for either an unlimited nanny government or an unlimited laize faire market place. The Church has NO mission in the political, economic or social order."

I would just add, to drive home the point, the greatest periods of turmoil for the Church have always accompanied her direct involvement in the political world. The primary mission of the Church is to bring people to Christ, no more and no less. It has the secondary responsibility, which is still completely tied to its primary mission, to spread truth and the Gospel message around the world. Part of this duty does involve the Church in the political world because the political world is part of mans world. That being said, the role of the Church is one of consigliere, advising governments and political leaders in their roles as part of the body. The Church has a lot to say about the nature of the state and its proper function but it is not to involve itself directly in the state by means of assuming political positions or supporting political parties.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the American Bishops, through their group USCCB, which by the way is not an officially sanctioned church body, from becoming a wholly owned political action committee of the Democrat Party. And this has allowed Democrat Party politics to overcome and crush the truth inside the American Church.

If the Bishops would only listen to their own Church teachings and the truth what a difference it would make! But I suppose then they wouldn't get to hob-knob with the Kennedy's and Giuliani's of the world. They'd be stuck hanging out with a poor carpenter from Nazareth instead.

IS SOCIAL JUSTICE A DIRTY PHRASE?

One of the writers over at POWIP had an article today about Social Justice. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. The writer at POWIP had this to say:

"I loathe that term. It has a bad connotation that I just cannot shake. You see when I hear the term “social justice” I automatically think government intervention. I think of welfare. I think of redistribution of wealth. “Social justice” to me says that because I work hard to make a living for my family, and because there are poor out there who don’t, I should be forced by the government to give up my hard earned money so that others can have healthcare, a place to live, a cell phone, a government check, etc. I don’t think that’s fair even though it may come from a good place."

This is my reply to her article which I posted at POWIP. Since I really can't think of anything else to write today I thought that I'd put it up here, too.

I suppose that it all depends on how you define social justice. Unbridled Capitalism is nearly as unjust as Marxism. Both remove God from the equation and focus on the material world, each working to concentrate the means of production in the hands of a few. The Capitalist would have us become slaves to the banks and corporations while the Marxist would chain us to the state.

The Progressives have redefined social justice to suit their Marxist goals. They believe that it's a one way street, with benefits flowing to the individual from the state when in reality justice must go both ways. Of course this is all a canard. They use social justice just like the drug dealer uses free samples. It's all fun and games until you can't stop.

The Capitalist, on the other hand, denies the very existence of social justice because he fears the power of the state, at least until that power can be used to his benefit by working with government to pass laws that benefit his company or to be bailed out at the expense of the citizens when his business flounders. He wants the people kept away from the public treasury because he wants them dependent and subservient to him.

From The Catholic Encyclopedia:

"Individual justice is distinguished from social, for not only individuals have claims in justice against other individuals but a subject has claims against the society to which he belongs, as society has claims against him. Justice requires that all should have what belongs to them, and so the just man will render to the society, or State, of which he is a member, what is due to it. The justice which prescribes this is called legal justice. On the other hand, the individual subject has claims against the State. It is the function of the State to protect its subjects in their rights and to govern the whole body for the common good. Authority for this purpose is given to the State by nature and by God, the Author of man's social nature."

One thing that I think needs to be addressed in the paragraph above is the fact that the State derives its power from God and possesses this power as part of its nature. The Founding Fathers were wrong in their belief that government derives its power from the governed as is thus subordinate to them. The state exists apart from man and further, it was created for man and man was created for it. Neither can exist apart from the other.

Both man and the state have rights and responsibilities that are intertwined. We owe each other justice, just as individuals do. And this is the proper definition of social justice. Again, from The Catholic Dictionary, the definition of justice: "It is a moral quality or habit which perfects the will and inclines it to render to each and to all what belongs to them."

Social justice, properly understood, is nothing more than making sure that the state exercises its lawful and moral (yes, you can legislate morality; if not, what are laws?) responsibility towards its citizens and that the citizens do the same in return.

Social justice, properly understood and exercised is a moral good. This Christian will proudly stand in support of it.

WHAT FREE MARKET?

I'm getting tired of these "free market" acolytes that seem to be all to willing to defend markets that aren't free. Judge Napolitano is right when he says that the root of the problem is our indebtedness and if we hadn't allowed ourselves to get into this shape than we wouldn't have a problem. But that doesn't change the reality that we aren't insisting that China compete with us on a just and moral basis, in a truly free market.

And other "free market" heroes like Trump are no better. The interview that Cavuto refers to in this video occurred earlier in the show when Trump insisted that we tax Chinese goods to make the playing field even while also admitting that he buys the majority of his building materials from China because of price.

The reality is that we cannot compete against slave labor without becoming slaves ourselves. The free market does not function by it's own set of Darwinian rules, the cheapest or most ruthless besting all the others, though thats what the "free market" apologists that we always see trotted out on TV and radio would have us believe. To function properly the actors in a free market must be free. How does slave labor fit into that?

The thing we call the "free market" today is anything but. The means of production are held in the hands of the few, whether they be states, banks or corporations. This "free market" is divided into two parts, capital and labor. Capital reaps the profits while labor serves the purpose of powering the machinery of the "free market", living on the scraps from the table and using those meager earnings to feed the debt machine created by those that control the capital and the means of production.

The people have lost their value to society because they've lost the means and the skills to produce. Unless one has a trade or profession that allows them to take raw materials from nature and produce something with inherent value they have no true productive capacity. And they become interchangeable and replaceable, held captive by the whims of the state or the corporation.

And this is the condition in which America finds itself as country. We decided to become an economy built on financial and service industries, creating nothing, hoping to be able to just sit back and skim our cut off the productive capacity of the Third World. Now, look what's happened to us. The Third World has produced and manufactured its way into the First while we've serviced our way into a quick stop in the Second World on our way to the bottom.

The fact is that we either have to grow it, mine it or drill it and then produce something needed from the materials we get from nature to create real wealth. Anything beyond that is just moving money around creating wealth that is an illusion. And it's because, as a country, America refuses to accept this simple truth that we find ourselves headed towards collapse as we beg the Third World to lend us just a bit more money, real money generated from productive activity, not the illusory kind that the Fed is creating as fast as it can.

But all the guys on Fox Business and at the Wall Street Journal would disagree. Of course, they make their money from non-productive activity, shuffling numbers on spreadsheets and demanding a percentage for their "work".

And as far as a tariff on goods produced in China, I say bring it on. Make them compete on a level field with no benefit from their slave labor and poison materials and every other evil they're more than happy to indulge in to gain the upper hand. Maybe then we'll see producers return to America. And maybe we'll see all the restrictions against productive activities such as mining and drilling be relaxed enough that we can remain safe but still be able to exploit the resources that God has given us to use. Maybe we can reopen the steel mills, lumber mills and refineries and along with that create real jobs based on real productive activity creating real wealth.

And maybe while we're relaxing those regulations we could do away with all the laws and regulations that have been passed over the years to benefit the big corporations at the expense of the little guy. The laws that have made it nearly impossible for the guy in his garage with the great idea to get his product to market. Maybe we could get rid of the collusive activities between corporations and government that insure that the means of production remain in the hands of the few. Maybe we can go back to the ideals of free enterprise and creativity that made this such a great and productive country a long time ago.

And then maybe we'll have a truly free market to compete in.

PIECES AND PARTS

"Donated corneas from the young girl killed in the Arizona mass shooting have saved the eyesight of two children, the girl's father told The Associated Press on Monday.

John Green said the Donor Network of Arizona told him and his wife about the successful transplants."
AP

OK, I'm going to go out on a limb and say something that I'll bet others are thinking. It's great that the body of the little girl that was killed in Tucson is able to be used to help others but I don't need a daily update as she's parted out.

Let's show a bit of class here.

THE FOOD CRISIS HAS BEGUN

THE SHOW GOES ON

OK, so we all know that the House is going to vote to repeal the Health Care Bill. Why are they wasting their time and ours? Between the Reid controlled Senate and the President they aren't going to repeal anything. This is just theater to allow the Republicans to say that they followed through on a campaign promise to the TEA Party members. In the mean time the precious few weeks we have until the debt limit is reached are dwindling away.

In these remaining weeks the Republicans could show us they are more than just the other wing of the oligarchy that rules from Washington and come up with a plan to avoid increasing the debt ceiling without defaulting on our obligations. I know there's a way to do it. It's just going to be a really tough thing to do and it WILL cause pain all across this country.

So instead of living up to their oaths, acting like adults and making the tough choices that are required they play games with the Health Care Bill and run down the clock and get us into emergency mode so that they can say that we need to increase our credit limit, "Just one more time!" This provides them cover for not doing their job.

The Health care Bill is easy to handle; don't fund it. That is the power the House has and it's the power they can exercise. But they won't. That, too, would be politically risky and would anger some of their constituents and their friends in the insurance industry, at least the insurers that are part of the program and stand to reap the profits.

So once again, even after the whole TEA Party uprising, nothing changes in Washington. The curtain is about to go up on potentially the last Congress this nation ever convenes if they don't take care of business because America is going to default, one way or another. And it's going to happen soon. And these panty waist politicians will get the blame no matter what. Of course, I suppose that maybe with just a little more time they can set themselves and their families up to get out'a Dodge before the SHTF. And maybe that explains why we're spending so much time watching the show and not making the hard choices.

It wouldn't surprise me at all.

THE LAST MOONSHINER

I've really got nothing to write about but this caught my eye. I've seen interviews with Popcorn Sutton on the History Channel. He's lived the life I'd like to live, spending my time in the woods with no body to tell me what to do, working at what I enjoy and making something that people want to buy. Sounds like the way life's supposed to be lived to me.

One of the first acts of the American government after its creation was to clamp down on the Scots-Irish in Western Pennsylvania when they refused to pay excise tax on the whiskey that they produced, in an uprising known as the Whiskey Rebellion. Whiskey was a valuable commodity that greatly increased the value of the grains grown in the area. The excise tax on distilled spirits was the first national tax imposed by the new government and it still haunts us today. This is the first time but not the last that the government used military force against its citizens.

Popcorn Sutton was probably just about the last moonshiner still making whiskey the old way and he paid dearly for it after making this video. The government decided to make an example of him and he was convicted and sentenced to prison. Instead of turning himself in he committed suicide.

All this because the government can't abide by its citizens living free and making their own way in the world without Uncle Sam calling the tune.

"A scrawny, long-bearded mountain man with a foul mouth and a passing acquaintance with copper tubing and kettles, Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton seemed the embodiment of moonshiners of yore.

Brought up in rural Cocke County, Tenn., identified as one of four "moonshine capitals of the world" in the corn-whiskey history "Mountain Spirits," Mr. Sutton learned the family trade from his father. The practice goes back to the Scots-Irish, who brought it to the New World, and it wasn't illegal until after the Civil War, says Dan Pierce, chairman of the history department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

"This is something that legitimately is an expression of the culture of this region," Mr. Pierce says.

Like his forebears, Mr. Sutton had brushes with the law, and was first convicted of selling untaxed liquor in the early 1970s. He mostly kept out of trouble after that, though friends say his nickname came from an unfortunate encounter with a balky barroom popcorn machine. But he was well known as a distiller around his native Parrottsville.

He was a familiar figure at the Misty Mountain Ranch Bed & Breakfast in nearby Maggie Valley, N.C., wearing faded overalls and with a back stooped, he said, from decades of humping bags of sugar into the hills. He picked the banjo and serenaded guests on the inn's porch. He helped decorate the $155-a-night Moonshiner suite at the inn with some still hardware.

Mr. Sutton put a modern spin on his vocation, appearing in documentaries and even penning an autobiography, "Me and My Likker." Souvenir shops in Maggie Valley sold his video, "The Last Run of Likker I'll Ever Make," and even clocks with his image on them.

Other moonshiners have gone legit and cashed in; a former Nascar driver and moonshiner now offers Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon in Southern liquor stores. But Mr. Sutton insisted on earning a living the old-fashioned way, and in 2007, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives busted him with 850 gallons of moonshine, stored in an old school bus on his property.

Notable deaths from the business world and entertainment industry from Tributes.com
He was convicted in 2008 and was due to report to prison Friday, his widow, Pam Sutton, told the Associated Press. Instead, facing the verdict and ill health, he was found dead by Ms. Sutton at the age of 62 on Monday, and authorities suspect carbon-monoxide poisoning, according to the AP. The Cocke County district attorney's office said it is investigating the death.

Although Tennessee was once a hotbed of moonshine and federal "revenuers" pursued bootleggers through the hills, an attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee in Greeneville says he couldn't remember the last federal prosecution of a moonshiner.

"Modern-day moonshining is the manufacture of methamphetamine," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregg L. Sullivan says. "Tennessee is in the top five states nationally."

Ms. Sutton discovered her husband in his green Ford Fairlane. "He called it his three-jug car," she told the AP, "because he gave three jugs of liquor for it."
Wall Street journal

$140 OIL AND $5 GAS

Our economy won't survive this. Get ready, if these prices come true, and I believe they will, for Phase II of the Greatest Depression. What we've seen to this point has only been the opening act.

HYPERINFLATION AND SHORTAGES COMING TO A GROCERY STORE NEAR YOU

I hate to sound like a broken record but, have you started buying some extra food and storing it away yet? Have you got some seeds? This is going to be a tough year if the reports are right and there's no reason that you can't plan for it. But you must start now. Time is getting short.

"Corn and soybean prices skyrocketed after the government lowered this year’s production forecasts. As demand for already tight supplies for both crops grows, coupled with greater global demand, one international organization has warned of possible “social an political instability.”

Corn and soybeans rose about 4 percent Wednesday to the highest they’ve been since July 2008. Analysts expect the gains to continue to until there is a clearer picture of how global crops for both will fare this year.

There also is speculation that the price gains will translate into higher food costs for consumers and raw materials costs for businesses, such as livestock owners and ethanol producers...

...That concern is not just unique to the U.S. A report from The World Economic Forum released this week cited rising demand for water, food, and energy as a risk facing the world, reports the WSJ.

A growing global population and greater prosperity “are putting unsustainable pressures on resources,” the report said. It also raised the issue of shortages, which could “cause social and political instability, geopolitical conflict, and irreparable environmental damage.”
The Blaze

PROGRESSIVES - SARAH PALIN MUST DIE

Right off the bat; this video contains lots and lots of foul language so hide the kids. I saw this over at Gateway Pundit. It's a video that has been pulled from YouTube of Tweets about Sarah Palin after the Tucson shooting. I think that it fairly represents many on the Progressive side and their absolute hatred of Palin and their propensity to violence. These are the same people that are the first to demand the restriction or elimination of speech that they consider hateful. I see this same kind of vitriol all the time on Facebook and other social networking sites so I do believe this is an accurate snapshot of the Progressive mindset.

These are the people that run our government now. Hate and violence are their stock in trade and it is the first weapon they turn to. That's why they see it in everything and everyone that opposes them. Just as the guy that cheats on his wife is always the most jealous, we tend to transfer our own views and actions to others and expect them to behave as we do. That's also the reason that the normal, peaceful American can't even begin to understand that people that believe as these people do exist.

I never post anything with language this offensive so again, be warned. That being said, for those that aren't normally exposed to the levels of hate that those of us that argue with Progressives everyday have come to expect, it's important to understand just what the enemy has at his disposal. The people that tweeted these comments are the tools of destruction. They're the soldiers in an army of evil. They'll do as they're told to do and turn out in the streets to supply the fuel to the fires that the Progressives need to bring our country down. Don't play into their game!

Palin Death Wish Tweets Re Tucson Shooting from Legal Insurrection on Vimeo.

THE NATURAL LAW AND PARKING ON SNOWY STREETS

"Big snow storms and limited parking is a combination that can lead to a whole lot of neighborhood feuds.

Now, in Darby Township, if you feel you have the right to reserve your parking spot, you could face a fine for hundreds of dollars.

You can’t lay claim to a parking spot on a public street in Darby Township. If you do, you could hear from police.

“The law prohibits doing that,” said Darby Township Police Chief Robert Thompson.
Putting in the work to dig out your car after a snow storm and then reserving that spot is a long standing tradition throughout the Philadelphia area."
CBS Philly

This isn't just a tradition in Philadelphia. We've got the same thing in the City of St. Louis. There's something that seems just about the whole thing. If a person spends all kinds of time to get a spot in front of their house clean so they can park there, shouldn't they be able to reserve it? If you say no then I wonder how you would view the person that waits patiently up the street for the spot to be cleared, watching the homeowner labor away, and then swoops in as soon as the homeowner drives off. Does that seem right to you?

There is a natural law theory that applies in this situation:

"The labor theory of property or labor theory of appropriation or labor theory of ownership is a natural law theory that holds that property originally comes about by the exertion of labor upon natural resources. It is also called the principle of first appropriation or the homestead principle.

In his Second Treatise on Government, the philosopher John Locke asked by what right an individual can claim to own one part of the world, when, according to the Bible, God gave the world to all humanity in common. He answered that persons own themselves and therefore their own labor. When a person works, that labor enters into the object. Thus, the object becomes the property of that person."
Wikipedia

Do you remember in the western movies how the guy that staked his claim in the gold fields was always required to "work it" to establish ownership? The labor theory of property is the reason why. So my question is how does working public grounds in a gold field differ materially from working public grounds in a city? If I apply my labor to cleaning the snow from the parking space in front of my house doesn't that establish my right to use that space while the snow is still on the ground?

I would argue it does and I would point to the natural law and the sense of injustice it would generate if we watched that lazy interloper take the space created by the labor of another after that other leaves.

Once again politicians are interfering where they're not needed. Let the people sort this out among themselves and if the police are called let the natural law win the day and arrest the scum that tries to profit from the labor of another. Because doing that in damned near any other instance would be theft.

MAJOR DICK WINTERS - RIP

I don't know how I missed this in the news. I saw it on the sidebar at Redneck Reflections:

"Major Dick Winters, who died on January 2 aged 92, was one of the US Army’s most revered servicemen of the Second World War; his exploits were later chronicled in the book and television series Band of Brothers."

Click here to read the entire obituary at The Telegraph. The WWII generation is fast slipping away and Major Winters was one of the giants. Thanks to Stephen Ambrose for writing Band of Brothers and to HBO for producing it. We need heroes like Major Winters to hold up as examples to the young. I wonder if any of the schools even teach the kids about men like him? Probably not. It might make America and her people look good and we wouldn't want that.

NIA ECONOMIC NEWS UPDATE

National Inflation Association

WORKING YOUR WAY TO THE POORHOUSE

"In California, former auto worker Maria Gregg was out of work five months last year before landing a new job—at a nearly 20% pay cut.

In Massachusetts, Kevin Cronan, who lost his $150,000-a-year job as a money manager in early 2009, is now frothing cappuccinos at a Starbucks for $8.85 an hour.

In Wisconsin, Dale Szabo, a former manufacturing manager with two master's degrees, has been searching years for a job comparable to the one he lost in 2003. He's now a school janitor.

They are among the lucky. There are 14.5 million people on the unemployment rolls, including 6.4 million who have been jobless for more than six months.

But the decline in their fortunes points to a signature outcome of the long downturn in the labor market. Even at times of high unemployment in the past, wages have been very slow to fall; economists describe them as "sticky." To an extent rarely seen in recessions since the Great Depression, wages for a swath of the labor force this time have taken a sharp and swift fall."
Wall Street Journal

Welcome to the new normal.

It's great that we aren't giving up. It's laudable that many Americans will work at just about anything rather than go on the dole. I'm one of them. I'll take whatever comes along, as long as I can make some money at it, and I've never collected any kind of assistance.

The problem is, can I or a whole bunch of others make any money with low paying jobs? And if not, why work?

This is the ugly reality for me and many others. The cost of being employed is in many cases higher than the wages being paid. Most of us live the way we do because we built our lives around certain expectations, one of them being that we could find work at a certain rate of pay. I've been in the construction business most of my life, just as my dad was before me. I know the up and down nature of my chosen way of life and live accordingly. I've been fortunate to have the skills to always stay working, either as a carpenter or in management and also as a business owner. I've never gotten rich but I usually made a decent living.

Unfortunately, the business I've worked in all my life is pretty much destroyed here in the St. Louis area. Realistically, it ain't ever coming back, either. Not in my lifetime or probably even beyond. The math pretty much spells that out.

OK, so I'll move on. But to what?

Like most people my age (52) I'm married and I own a house. My wife has a good job with a great company so that's saved us so far. But still, my options for employment are limited. We live in a rural area, far from town. This wasn't a problem when things were good because in my business you're going to travel a fair distance to work no matter where you live so living out really didn't add much cost. But now, with wages collapsing it's an issue.

But what can I do? I can't sell my house now, at least for what I've got in it. And I sure don't want to walk away. Like most that own homes, the great American dream, I'm anchored in place by the house I live in.

So if I take a job at say $10 an hour and have to drive 20 miles to get there, what are the chances that I'll end up paying more to work than I earn?

Most retail jobs don't even pay $10 an hour, at least not around here, and manufacturing jobs don't pay much better. And the ones I've applied at are upfront about the fact that the hours are a bit scattered; a couple hours one day, maybe eight the next and four the following. So let's say I have to drive 40 miles round trip. I drive a 3/4 ton Dodge truck with a diesel engine. I'm a carpenter so I need a vehicle like this. On the positive side, I don't owe any money on it. And no, I can't afford to buy an economy vehicle. I'm not working, remember?

The IRS allows .50 cents a mile for business use. Is this accurate? I don't know but it's a benchmark anyway. As the cost of diesel climbs and if it gets back to the $4.50 a gallon it was in 2008 that .50 cents ain't even close.

So if I drive 40 miles round trip my cost is $20 just for transportation. This doesn't include clothing and the other little costs of having a job. So if I get called into work for a couple hours, after the government gets done and the work comp gets taken out I'll end up losing $4 or so for my efforts. Does it make sense to even take a job if this is the case?

And that's the problem with all these types of jobs. Most of us take what we can find because we need the work but we don't think about the cost of being employed for the employee. Most of the time, unless you're a kid in high school, you'll go broke working low wage jobs. It's the little stuff that kills you.

Let's say I'm driving to work at my low paying job and I drive over something in the road that destroys a tire. I've done it before. The tires on my truck cost about $250. I just had them replaced so I know this is the case. Because I have four wheel drive I can't just replace one, I have to replace both on the same axle. Suddenly I've got a $500 dollar repair in front of me. After taxes that wipes out a week and a half of working. Did it really make sense to take that job?

I've been down this road before so I know what I'm talking about. I've taken jobs that paid very little on the pretense that it's better to keep working, regardless of pay because it may open a door that wouldn't have been opened otherwise. And I've found this to be true. But what I've also found to be true is that while I was working that low paying job, looking for that door, I went so deeply into debt trying to pay the cost of working cheap that it sometimes took years of working at a decent job to dig myself out of the hole.

This is something that a bunch of people that haven't ever had to work cheap as adults are about to find out. And this portends terrible, terrible troubles for them and our country in the years ahead. Nothing will ever be as it was again, at least not in my lifetime.

BUY STOCK IN GLOCK

"Greg Wolff, the owner of two Arizona gun shops, told his manager to get ready for a stampede of new customers after a Glock-wielding gunman killed six people at a Tucson shopping center on Jan. 8.

Wolff was right. Instead of hurting sales, the massacre had the $499 semi-automatic pistols -- popular with police, sport shooters and gangsters -- flying out the doors of his Glockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix.

“We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,” Wolff said two days after the shooting spree that also left 14 wounded, including Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in critical condition.

A national debate over weaknesses in state and federal gun laws stirred by the shooting has stoked fears among gun buyers that stiffer restrictions may be coming from Congress, gun dealers say. The result is that a deadly demonstration of the weapon’s effectiveness has also fired up sales of handguns in Arizona and other states, according to federal law enforcement data.

“When something like this happens people get worried that the government is going to ban stuff,” Wolff said."
Bloomberg

Any surprises here?

Most Americans LOVE guns. It's built into our DNA. Even most that don't own and have never shot one (where have they been?) still have a warm spot in their hearts for the great equalizer. Because that's what guns are. At their most basic level guns put the poorest and the wealthiest, the strongest and the weakest on the same playing field. Everything else being equal the cripple in a wheelchair with a .22 and decent skills will scare the hell out of the attacker that's threatening him. Legs aren't anywhere near as deadly as a round between the eyes.

A gun is like sugar. Let any little kid get his first taste of candy and watch the smile break out on his face. It's no different the first time a kid shoots a gun. My granddaughter was five years old the first time she squeezed the trigger on my little .22 plinker, with help and some older helping hands, of course. As the can bounced across the grass she smiled and laughed, pride in her accomplishment beaming on her face and said, "Let's do it again, Pops!". Her mother was no different when she started shooting at about the same age.

I love guns. I love to shoot with family and friends. There's not much that can equal a Sunday afternoon in the fall, hanging out around the fire, drinking a couple beers and competing with my buddies shooting at cans with pistols and rifles or tossing some clay birds and smoking 'em with my trusty 12 gauge. A little meat on the fire, preferably backstraps, some music on the truck stereo and life is good. Who am I hurting? How am I a danger? The kids are there and they get to learn responsibility. They feel a little grown up because they know we trust them. Safety is first and the rules need to be followed so no one gets hurt. Not a bad life lesson for the young ones.

Yet, to hear the news or the politicians you'd think that I was committing the most heinous of crimes, leading children down the road to perdition, polluting young minds and creating future killers, when in reality I'm helping kids to develop habits and responsibility that will serve them well in later life. Kids need danger. Yes, it needs to be managed and controlled but the chance of death is good for kids. It helps them to mature, to see that life is full of choices, that just because something is dangerous doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It just means you should exercise caution and use your intelligence.

Honestly, I'd rather that kids use real guns with real bullets that can cause real death than play all these video games that allow them to shoot with no consequence. The real gun teaches them respect and responsibility while the game just teaches them to kill. Yet the politicians don't spend any time at all complaining about the game. Because the game is a tool of control useful to the powerful while the gun is a tool of resistance useful to the people.

So is it any surprise that the sale of Glocks jumped after the shooting in Tucson? The usual suspects immediately jumped on the gun control stage, screaming about magazine capacity (of course, they said clip capacity because these experts have no idea what they're talking about) and opining how no one needs that many rounds for hunting. Hunting? What the hell does a 9mm have to do with hunting? The pistol used by the shooter is primarily a defensive weapon as are most other handguns. They aren't meant for hunting, though some can be used for that purpose. Handguns are designed to save lives by taking lives. And when it comes down to defending your life, how can you possibly have too many rounds?

Besides, the whole high capacity magazine thing is a distraction. My .45 only has seven rounds in the magazine but so what? I can drop the spent magazine and have another inserted in a matter of seconds. You say that this is the reason that we should do away with semi-autos and detachable magazines altogether. I say that before detachable magazines we had revolvers with with speed loaders and before that we had revolvers with extra cylinders. And when all that wasn't enough we had the Missouri guerrillas during the Civil War carrying six or more revolvers at a time to gain the advantage in fire power over Union troops.

So you say the only real answer, the only way to guarantee safety for the people is to ban guns altogether, except in the hands of the government. And I say this is what you wanted all along. You just aren't honest enough to say it.

GUNS KILL - THAT'S WHY THEY'RE SO USEFUL

While the media and Washington work overtime trying to use the shooting in Tucson to justify suspension of our natural law right to self defense and the means to exercise that right I thought that I'd post this as a reminder of why guns are not only a good thing but in most cases the only thing that will allow a victim the force multiplication needed to fend off an attack by stronger opponents.

What do you think would have happened to this lady if she had to rely on her fists and the police to get her out of this situation?

WHY SHOULD ANYONE CARE ABOUT THE TUCSON SHOOTINGS?

I turned on the TV this morning and was immediately informed that America is in mourning over the tragedy in Tucson. Really? Are average Americans, as they get up and make their coffee in the morning thinking much at all about the shooting of the Congresswoman and the others? Are they wearing black or attending memorial services? Outside of the media and Washington, does anybody really care all that much? I doubt it. Why should we?

"St. Louis police are investigating a multiple shooting in North St. Louis. It happened around 6:00 Saturday night on Highland Street. Three victims were shot while sitting in a car. Two victims are hospitalized in stable condition and one woman is in critical but stable condition."
Fox 2

"On Jan. 7, 2010, Timothy Hendron, 51, of Webster Groves, entered the transformers plant around 6:30 a.m. wielding an assault rifle and a handgun. Hendron shot eight people, killing three, before fatally shooting himself."
Biz Journals


"Police sources say a deadly shooting outside a midtown funeral home might have been the result of an argument between mourners. Two victims were dead, one was in critical condition and police say they were unable to locate a fourth person who witnesses said was shot in the leg."
Fox 2

I understand that we're talking about a congresswoman and a judge but besides that how does this shooting differ from those posted above? Did they get wall to wall coverage at the national level? Hell no! They didn't even get much coverage at the local level. Why do you think that is?

It's simple. With the shooting in Tucson comes the opportunity for political advantage and all the media plays along. The guy that did the shooting in Tucson is no more dangerous than the guys that did the shootings above. He may even be less so because he's crazy, at least that's the assumption. The guys doing the shootings in the city probably aren't. They're just evil and they're still out there someplace fixin' to kill somebody else.

So here's another opportunity for my wife to tell me I'm just an insensitive ***hole but I have to be honest. I just don't care that a bunch of people got shot in Tucson, government officials or not. At least I don't care about it anymore than I care about the people that got shot in North St. Louis. I'm certainly not in mourning for any of them.

And you know what? Truth be told, outside of family and friends of the victims and a few overly sensitive cry babies, neither is anybody else. For 99% of the people in this country, after learning of the shooting, their thoughts went something like this: "Damn, that's a shame. Sucks to be them. I wonder what's for supper?"

I'm tired of this overly emotional crap coverage of the news by all the major media outlets because it isn't sincere. It's being done to support an agenda. Whether it's anti-gun or pro ratings numbers the media does this because it's, at least in their minds, good theater.

The world's falling apart around us. The shooting may be a symptom of this but that's all. Cover it adequately and move on. I'd say with about the same amount of attention that was paid to all the other multiple victim shootings that have happened around the country in the last month. Until they do, I'm done listening.

A CONGRESSWOMAN IS SHOT - SO WHAT?

Why do I find myself really not caring about the shooting of a Congresswoman (person, man, thing? I'm never sure anymore)? Really-I just don't care. I said a prayer for her and for the souls of those that died and I meant it but beyond that...

This will be used for political advantage. The anti-gunners will say that it's because of easy access to guns. It's not. The left will say it's the right and the right will say it's the left. It's not. Everyone that's in the business of politics will make it their goal to pass more laws and create more restrictions on our freedom but that won't do anything to stop the next shooting, bombing or stabbing.

Assassins seem to fall into two basic categories; hired killers or true believers. The guns for hire will always be with us and that's purely a law enforcement problem. Good luck on that because luck and hard work will get some of them before they kill and some will still get the job done. At least they have to be part of a network or organization because somebody pays them and that leaves a trail.

The true believers are a different thing entirely. They may be part of an organization (Weather Underground, Ku Klux Klan) or they might just belong to the little club they've created in their own head. The ones that have their own little club, with it's own little beliefs, are going to be damned hard to get a handle on. I suspect this weekends shooter falls into that category.

With modern social networking these guys should be starting to get a bit easier to recognize, that is if anyone is paying attention. But then, we all know someone that's a bit off the reservation. Hell, I'd guess that a bunch of people would put me in that category. What makes the true believer different than people like me and other bloggers and malcontents and how do we recognize it? How were Booth, Czolgosz and Oswald different in their day to day lives? Could the people that knew them, even tangentially, see something, anything that should have set off alarms?

American history is full of loners, eccentrics and oddballs. Some go on to do great things and some pass through life unnoticed. And just a few do evil. Is it possible to know one from the other?

My guess is that, for the most part, in a free society, the chance of violence is the price we pay for the freedom we allow the oddball on the off chance that he'll do something great. And to the extent that anyone uses this latest shooting to try to push new legislation restricting the freedoms of the vast majority to protect against the very, very few that are truly crazy, we'll all suffer.

So I guess that's why I just don't care much about the shooting this past weekend. It's no different in most ways than a train wreck or airplane crash. The risk can be managed, but only to a certain point. Beyond that we are left to fate and the chance of harm that we all accept as a price of our freedom. To eliminate the threat would be to suspend freedom and that I find unacceptable.

So I say tend to the wounded, bury the dead, punish the guilty and move on. This shooting changes nothing. I only wish that the opportunists, political and otherwise, would see it the same way.

WHEN THE WELL RUNS DRY AND THE MONEY STOPS FLOWING II

Take a look at these photos of Detroit that are published in The Guardian. Having spent a lot of time in abandoned and damaged buildings in my life the thing that strikes me is how they look more like buildings do after a sudden disaster rather than buildings that have been abandoned. Especially the libraries. It looks as though something sudden happened and everyone was forced to leave without removing the contents. I suppose that the checks stopped coming and so did the people that worked there.

Is this our future as we lose the financial ability to support all the public services we've created over the last hundred years?

BANG-BANG MAXWELL'S SILVER HAMMER

H/T The Observatorium

TELL ME AGAIN, MAMA

“Tell me again, Mama.” she said snuggling down into the old quilts her great grandma had made so many years ago. “What it was like when you were a little girl? I want to hear it again” she pleaded.

“I only remember a little bit of it, darling, I was a little girl just like you when everything changed but I recall it being wonderful, at least for awhile. We lived in a little apartment, barely big enough for two small bedrooms and a place for the sofa but it was ours and we loved it. I had my own room where I kept books, toys and all the dolls that I would dress in pretty clothes. We were never cold. It had a heater that we could set to whatever temperature we wanted, as hot as we could stand, all without having to put wood in the fireplace. And lights, we had them too, all the time- even after the sun went down. All we had to do was flip a switch on the wall and it was just like daylight. Sometimes we kept them on all night long and they never ran out.” she explained...

To read more go to Moving Onto The Past.

JUST SAY NO - TO STUPID DRUG LAWS

"Marijuana fans are calling it the Mutiny in Montana.

It all began last Thursday, when a group of prospective jurors in Missoula were seated for a two-day trial of a repeat offender by the name of Teuray Cornell, whom the local police had arrested and charged with selling marijuana, a felony, and possession of a small amount of the drug, a misdemeanor.

To seat a 12-person jury, Judge Robert L. Deschamps III of Missoula County District Court had called a passel of Montanans to serve, and 27 had arrived at court on Dec. 16. So far, so good.

But after the charges were read, one of the jurors raised a hand.

“She said, ‘I’ve got a real problem with these marijuana cases,’ ” Judge Deschamps recalled on Wednesday. “And after she got through, a couple more raised their hands.” All told, five jurors raised questions about marijuana prosecution.

And so it was that Mr. Cornell soon became the lucky recipient of a case of almost-a-jury nullification, as prosecutors soon found themselves cutting a deal to dismiss the misdemeanor possession charge out of fear that they would not be able to find 12 jurors in this marijuana-friendly state to convict."
New York Times

I think smoking dope should be legal. Treat it like alcohol and move on. I think some other drugs, such as meth, should have the death penalty attached to them for the sale and manufacture and the county farm and years of hard labor for use. Inconsistent? I don't think so.

We've all got brains so let's apply them to the situation. Smoking dope, as almost everyone born from 1950 on knows, really doesn't do any more damage than drinking does, in an adult population. Lots and lots of people have smoked it for years with little or no affect on their day to day lives. Some small percentage may have problems with it but then this is true of alcohol, too. There seems to be a normal and I would argue healthy human desire to catch a buzz every once in awhile to relax and relieve stress. As long as you aren't abusing it, no harm, no foul.

However, drugs such as meth and a few others are so dangerous that they transcend this normal desire to relax. The use of these drugs is so destructive in such a short period of time to the vast majority of the people that use them and the families and communities they are a part of that society cannot allow their use to be condoned. The use of these drugs nearly always result in destruction of the value of human life if not the life itself. And it's not just a matter of personal choice, either. Living in what was one of the largest meth producing counties in one of the largest meth producing states has left me with no illusions about how this drug effects everyone that it touches. We don't have a choice when the meth cooker robs and steals to support his business or when the meth user robs and steals to support his habit. We don't have a choice when the neighbors house explodes or when the renter uses our property to cook and contaminates it so badly that for all intents and purpose it needs to be completely stripped down and rebuilt. There's nothing we can do when the guy driving next to us is high as hell or when a minor argument turns into a shooting because some crack head loses his mind and pulls a gun over a bump in a parking lot.

So, for drugs like meth, and I'd put crack cocaine in this category,too, the solution is tough laws designed to make sure few will risk the penalty for the meager reward. Not politician tough, real tough. As I said above, I would make the manufacture and sale of these drugs punishable by death. And I'd have the penalty carried out in the square at the county courthouse for all the men, women and children to see. Make sure that there is no doubt about the serious intent of the people to rid themselves of this scourge.

For the user of these drugs I'd be more lenient. We all make mistakes. So dry 'em out and to the county farm they go. We need to go back to the system of county farms like we used to have, places where the inmates grow their own food and support their own lives and imprisonment through labor, hard physical labor. But no worse than what many of us that do hard physical jobs, like farmers and construction workers, do everyday. I want to see them on the sides of the roads in their orange suits, trimming and digging and picking up trash. But more importantly, I want the kids to see them doing it. I want the kids to understand that there are consequences to their actions. And I want the people that use these drugs to see them.

We need to be honest about drugs if we want to end the "drug problem".

The other thing I want to point out about the story above is a simple fact that we all seem to overlook. If we don't like the system, if we don't like the law, if we just want a change, all we have to do most of the time is just say no. Look what those jurors did by simply refusing to cooperate in the prosecution, by just questioning the premise of the prosecution. So many times in life we just go along and we get screwed and pissed and feel powerless when all we really had to do was just be honest and refuse. Whether drugs or traffic laws or just about anything else we have power in this country to gum up the works anytime we want to if enough people just say no.

We need to keep this in mind.

UNIONS REPRESENT THE PARTY - NOT THE WORKERS

All you guys paying dues every week, is this what you want your money to be used for? Do you want to send your hard earned wages to the union so it can turn around and support groups that are working to destroy America. Because that's who Trumka's talking about.

It's a damned shame that this is what it's come to.

Take your unions back!