mweiss

This matter has plagued me for a while. I cannot even afford to move across state. My house is not legally saleable (in ground fuel tanks, garbage dump, non-approved septic, never had a C of O in 47 years, makeshift, self-built house, land is now under the wetlands laws, so could not be built upon today, and $102K in back taxes and interest/liens on it. I'm pretty badly encumbered. Then there's the horror of moving my massive sound system, electronics laboratory, etc. I made less than $3K this past year (the worst of my declining business in the Obama years) and we're buying food on credit cards now, with no hope of paying them off. Moving has become a non-option. Too poor to move. Too far behind in taxes for them to let us stay. As for American citizenship, you renounce, else the IRS has dominion over you wherever you live. Imagine having to file in two countries? Definitely, I would renounce.

Ann Barnhardt stated in the last part of her video that there is NO PLACE that will be safe, once the US goes down. The Dark Ages will reemerge like wildfire without the USA there to police the world and moderate events. Maybe it's better to stay here and fight, rather than leave with nothing but the shirts on our backs, and starve to death in some airport.

I'm not advocating a traditional military coup. This is more of an emergency police action, to remove a president who has been found to be committing treason. If you're on a jetliner, and the pilot has decided to put the plane into a suicide dive, do you wait until landing to have him court-marshaled (can't happen if everyone dies in the crash), or do you grab the controls and restrain the pilot? Perhaps most here are not of the opinion that the situation is that dire. I hope it's not, but if Dinesh D'Souza's analysis is correct, then the situation is FAR worse than we have contemplated.

My wife and I watched this documentary tonight. Some things struck me: The man is damaged goods, in the mental area. He's emotionally damaged (abandonment by his father) and he's doing what he's doing to fulfill a personal psychological need, rather than because it's what he feels is right for America. Second item: when he's caught off mike talking to Vladimir Putin, he speaks as if the results of the election upcoming were already decided! "I'll have more flexibility in my second term".. Here's what I wrote to a Liberal friend of mine: Barack Obama draws a lot of his ideology from his father. Psychologically, Obama is a man in pain. The abandonment by his paternal father, coupled with his desire to connect with that father, makes him a blind follower of his father’s strong anti-colonial roots. Everything Barack is doing—from preventing the oil pipeline for America, to offshore drilling for America, whilst funding offshore drilling for south American countries, to destroying our economy with unlimited debt, to cutting back our nuclear inventory—is all in payback to those nations that ‘suffered’ in his view, under colonialism. His desire to unite with the Muslims is toward a goal (which is is well along in achieving) of a united states of Islam in the Middle East. Iran will have their nuclear weapon. Israel will be destroyed, left to fend for itself. The middle east will revert to pre-Reagan era debauchery and war. This president is not about making things better for America. He is about payback for the countries that were under the rule of colonialism. He will do this by weakening our nation, both militarily, politically and economically. He will destroy our currency, destroy the wealth of not just the rich, but America’s middle class—and the poor—because in Barack’s mind, our poor are rich compared to the people in Kenya. This man is very clever, but he is damaged goods. He carries emotional baggage that no sitting president should bring into his job. In his mind, the only way to right the ‘injustices’ he sees are to bring down America, as in the immortal words of Jeremiah Wright, “Goddamn America!”. His brother, George, doesn’t agree with him. That is why Barack leaves him to fend for himself. You would think a successful man like Barack would help and uplift his brother. But he is afraid of his brother’s ideas, because they expose Barack’s flawed view of the world. Barack is a psychopath, and such people are very clever at fooling large numbers of people. The complicity of the media worked to cover up his mistakes, while selectively hammering the opposing candidate. Even the moderator of the debates was biased in favor of Obama, acting more like his coach and secretary, than a moderator who should be unbiased. And the public at-large, we have reached a tipping point, where the Free Stuff Army has outnumbered the producers. This is something the rest of us did not contemplate happening so soon. It is over for America. Pretty soon, the Soviets will invade us, once Barack has reduced our nuclear arsenal to 300, while the Soviets have 1500. His off-camera comments to Vladimir Putin “I will have more flexibility in my next term” are a clue to what’s in store for us. Wake up and shake yourself free of this cult illusion you are under! This man is a CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER to the US, and by extention, the world, because when the US goes down, there will be no check on the middle east and the savage and vicious wars to come. I think we have a serious threat to national security here. He needs to be removed from office and quick! The problem is, Dems have the Senate under their control, so impeachment is impossible. Nothing like this has ever happened before, where we need to remove a sitting president but the houses are ignorant. The only other thing I can think of is some sort of military intervention. If what Dinesh D'Souza presents is true and correct, then we're in for possible handover to the Soviets, and maybe even nuclear attack. I can't sleep. I don't know what to do. This situation may be FAR worse than I ever imagined, if this documentary is factually correct. There is not time for a grass roots educational effort. There needs to be a military action to remove this person from office in the next couple of weeks before he signs any treaties. He's moving fast so far with several dangerous orders and I think he knows he may be ousted and is rushing to complete his intended goals. What do we do?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113824/ I think this film embodies the positive sense of life that Ayn Rand admired. Hard work, goal orientation, creative problem-solving and all in a gorgeous setting of those wonderful Hayao Miyazaki scenes.

Technology has been a savior of our society, no doubt. But economically, besides the fact that a big screen TV costs about the same as a week's worth of groceries, all the living standard maintenance or increases are due to BOTH members of the household holding down full time jobs. Gone are the days when a family could live comfortably on one income of a blue-collar job. Try living in an average house today, with property taxes approaching the price of a compact new car, and electricity costs that dwarf the mortgage payments from the 1980s. In 1972, I filled up my in ground oil tank for less than $500. Today it costs $8000 to fill it up. In 1966, my electric bill was $6/month. Now, with efficient LED lighting, it's $470/month. Taxes have increased 20,000% since 1966. Used to be one weeks' net pay. Now it's a whole year's gross pay from my videography business and doesn't get paid as a result that I need to eat and keep the electricity from being turned off. In terms of the number of hours worked, back in 1939, supporting the government was a minor blip. Today it's most of your waking day spent working to pay the taxes and cost of government. No wonder all family members have to have jobs just to scrape by! Sometimes I wonder if all the computers, internet, PDAs, smart phones, etc., have made us less locally connected and more isolated from our physical neighbors. Nobody talks to anyone these days. We're all strangers living on the same street. Kids don't play outdoors. They play computer games. (Predicting a massive surge in cardiac illness for the coming sedentary generation.) The internet is a huge time sink. How many of us spend countless hours each week in internet forums arguing about philosophy, politics, etc? Medical is a mixed bag. Yes, advances are helping, but who can afford the cost? It's all great, but someone ELSE benefits because I cannot afford it. I realize that the productive folks are busy doing productive work and hence are not likely to be aware of the massive homeless problem that is sweeping the nation out of the mortgage crisis. No longer winos and bums on the streets, but whole middle class families who've lost their jobs and were kicked out by the banks. Or by the tax collectors. 50 years ago, this was unheard of. Jobs were for life, and as long as you did your work, you could retire eventually. Nowadays, every day could be your last day on the job. Corporate management has become so corrupt that it turned to outright irrational greed, the sort of greed that gives rational self interest a bad name, to the point where it's become a contest of raising the bar for CEO salaries and seeing how many staff they can lay off to maximize stock value. That's just too much. Now we have the Surveillance State. We are being watched, on cameras, at city streets, airports, bus stations, police roadside checks, the internet itself is being snooped. Now we have the NDAA and other atrocious laws that dissolve the Constitution entirely. It's a downright dangerous world. Today, if you don't like someone, you can phone in an anonymous tip to the police about that person and in some jurisdictions, the police will act on it in a most violent manner (Ogden, UT?). Fifty years ago, that would not happen. We didn't have a 'war on drugs' then. Returning to the main topic, It's either Santorum or Obama, because the rest don't stand a chance with the media machine, and Santorum isn't going to fly with his religious views unless he hides them to get the votes. Obama gets another four years. Heck, he gets to ride the ship down to the bottom of the sea. He'll probably be the last US president. Diebold, the infamous fraudulent vote counting machine maker, is counting the votes on this election. The outcome is probably already chosen.

I've seen no massive booms following recessions, at least since the 1970s. What I've seen was a slow decline in living standards for most except those fortunate either by circumstances, personal relationships (connections) or by having the right idea at the right time. Yes, we have 'viable' options, but that doesn't make them 'good' options. I don't have to prove who I am. I am who I am. Either accept me, or don't.

I was being facetious about wanting to be one of them. Don't be like some so-called "Objectivists" who are dense and stupid. Try to use a little common sense. Things have been bad for a long time. The 1950s were the good times. It all went downhill in the '60s and '70s. Since I have a modest income, I've felt the economic 'boot' of government to a greater degree than a lot of folks, especially rich real estate tycoons who make their living off of tax sales. When you have a pretty much limited and fixed and faltering income, the tax demand keeps rising and you start to feel the squeeze--really feel it. The burden of government has risen exponentially since WWII. A pay stub from 1939 provides a startling contrast to a pay stub from today, in terms of percentage stolen in taxes. And my property tax bill went from a week's salary to more than a year's gross pay over the last 47 years. That says a lot right there.

I wish I were one of them, because then I would have all the money I need and wouldn't be eight years behind on my property taxes due to the low income I get "doing what I enjoy and do best while waiting for the money to come." I've pitched this argument to a friend who worked in government at one time. His answer, paraphrased, was that the individuals have compartmentalized jobs--they can't see the whole picture--so they don't know what they're up to. They just perform the tasks they're given and the result is part of a composite of many workers' output which, when taken together, realize an organized plan. The folks that really know what the overall plan is number less than the fingers of one hand. That's why it's easy to keep this secret. Since there are no candidates worth electing, with the exception of maybe Gary Johnson, who doesn't have a chance, I see no option but the Atlas Shrugged ending. Only difference is that in reality, the slobs that caused this mess will still be around to 'rebuild' again.

Let me play the Devil's Advocate for a moment: How do we know what the real deficit is? How do we know what's really going on in our government? Do we believe what the news media reports? How is it that they get the real facts from the powers that be? Agreed on the general cause of this, but what are the concrete facts? Is George Soros hoping that 6.9B people will die in the coming century? Does Obama really want internment camps and indefinite detention of Americans? I think none of us can say for sure, unless we hold top secret government clearance or are directly involved in architecting the New World Order. And in such case, that person would not divulge anything. We're shut out. We don't know anything. We only see rising prices, higher taxes and more police on the streets and more hassles with getting on a plane. But we really don't know what's really being said behind closed doors in Washington.

While I tend to give Alex Jones "9/11 was an inside job!!!!!" a grain of salt on most things, lately, he's been making a number of valid points. But again, we don't know because we're not privy to private memos and conversations moving about the halls of our government. We can only speculate. We see rising prices on the things we buy. Some of us run into complex new regulations and reporting requirements. The rest is what we see on the news and read in blogs. It might be entirely possible that all of (and I mean ALL of) the bad things we are reading on the internet are the result of doomsayers who are speculating on their own because in fact, unless they work IN government, they don't have a damned clue what's going on IN government, other than what the media reports. So it all boils down to what we believe. But that is not necessarily consistent with reality. So all the gloom and doom may be unfounded, yes. But if we are to take what we read in financial journals like Gleason Report and Tickerforums as 'informed' and reasonably accurate, then we, as a nation, are in huge trouble. The theory of how democracy fails is no secret. It's historical record. When the masses figure out that they can vote themselves a handout, that's the turning point where everything goes downhill until the weight of the welfare state crushes that particular civilization. It happens in cycles. The rise and fall of civilizations. And nothing much changes because few bother to read history. So they repeat the same mistakes. What makes America so special? What makes us immune to the laws of causality? We're going down, because of the general depravity of our culture. I can talk Objectivism to my neighbors and fellow shoppers at Home Depot till I'm blue in the face, but it changes nothing. Most folks I know are still voting for Obama in 2012.

Frankly, none of us REALLY know what's going on behind closed doors in Washington or Wall St, but we get little fragments and clues from various persons who are close to the action and from that, we must draw our own conclusions. Take Gerald Celente, for instance, he seems to be close to the markets and may have a pretty good view of what's really going on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVzmqkJMbLQ&feature=g-u&context=G264feeaFUAAAAAAAAAA The reason I'm not terribly optimistic is because many smart, educated people don't believe that government is to blame, or that TOO MUCH government is to blame. On the contrary, the believe TOO LITTLE government is at fault. I was having a debate with a friend who is of the left persuasion in politics. We were talking about Obama's failures and this is what he wrote: Where to start? Maybe with how about $700 billion of that debt increase was TARP, which was initiated under Bush and the Republicans in Congress. And then it was discovered that TARP would end up only costing us $25 billion, not $700. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112905453.html) Maybe I could add in how health insurance rates increased more than 100% from when Bush came in to when he left. (http://www.kff.org/insurance/upload/7670_02.pdf), so insurance rates have basically risen at about the same rate they've been climbing for over 15 years now. As far as debt, number of people on food stamps, and people in poverty, do I need to remind you all AGAIN that he came into office in the midst of a total world financial crisis that no one has manged to pull out from yet? Tax revenues are down because incomes are down across the board, but we've had two wars that had to be either wound down (Iraq) or stepped up (Afghanistan), so those still had to be paid for. And this time they were actually on the budget and not hidden from the general debt tab by means of emergency spending bills. Poverty is up because unemployment remains high, which means people need government services (Namely food stamps and unemployment insurance) more than ever, which drives debt higher. And unemployment remains high because firms see a lack of demand and don't hire. It's not because there's higher taxes, because tax rates have been lowered across the board since Obama took office in an effort to stimulate growth. Of course, lower taxes drive the debt higher. As for whose fault it is, I can lay the blame pretty much all around. Obama and the congressional Democrats sabotaged their own stimulus plan by allocating 40% of it to ineffective tax cuts to win Republican support that never materialized. Many economists knew that it was too small at the time, but it was the best they thought they could do at the time. The whole theory of stimulus is to break the cycle of unemployment by having the government be the employer of last resort, giving people incomes that would let them have money to spend, thus creating demand, thus encouraging the private sector to hire more to increase production. All that happened with the weak-sauce stimulus plan was to mainly preserve public sector jobs that otherwise would have been lost and create some new jobs. In the end, it saved or created 3.3 million jobs (according to the CBO http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-25/obama-s-economic-stimulus-program-created-up-to-3-3-million-jobs-cbo-says.html) But it's been a stunning tag team between Republicans in Congress dedicated to stopping any recovery and Wall Street refusing to do anything to endanger its fat profits that are the chief culprits in my book. Republicans made their intentions clear to never cooperate or compromise on anything, and so even the simplest government operations have become a nightmare quagmire. Remember the credit downgrade for the US? It was not due to the debt ceiling being raised. S&P said quite clearly in their press release that it was due to the 11th hour foot-dragging in Congress that brought us to the brink of default. In other words, it was because the Republicans intentionally tried to make us default as a political stunt. The downgrade happened because half the government has declared war on the other half, and S&P determined that we're so screwed up that we're a bigger credit risk now. As for Wall Street, it encouraged a culture of betting for profit, then demanding a public bailout, lest they take down the entire world financial system with them. And what did they do with the bailout? You know, the money that was supposedly to open up frozen credit and encourage lending? Why, they borrowed the money at 0% interest and then bought government bonds that paid 2% interest, rather than using the money for its intended purpose. They then paid themselves handsome bonuses, clapped themselves on the back for (once again) screwing over the public at large, and then made sure to lobby hard to prevent any form of oversight that could stop them from doing this again in the future. As Jon Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show, this means that the US government is the world's most incompetent loan shark. So, lots of people at fault here, but mainly it's due to a large segment of the US financial and government elite being absolutely determined to make certain that there be no recovery, because they think it's politically advantageous. This is from an educated, intelligent individual, and he makes pretty good arguments that a lot of people believe. I think he's half correct about a lot of this stuff, too. But then there is the rest of the country, the dumb, average worker whose main concerns in life are beer, sex and sports scores. They're not going to care until it's too late and they are being carried off to FEMA camps with their dumbfounded tongues hanging out in surprise. The powers that be aren't going to give up their hedgemony. Corruption begets more corruption. Because it's the 'easy' path, it's the more likely path to be followed. Consider this: The Left controls the school system. School is compulsory. The Left controls the majority of the politics in government. The Left is in control of the banking system and the monetary agencies of the US. The Left controls the economy, and the creation of government agencies to oversee government agencies, ad nauseum. Few options are left this late in the game. A Get Out of Our House program of ousting every senator and congressman seems like the best plan, but that's also doomed, because only a microscopic minority are actively pushing that plan. The majority are stupid. It's just the law of averages. Stupid people vote. Thus in any nation where Democracy runs the show, you're doomed from the start. History shows a boom and bust cycle. We have the illustrious opportunity to be alive during the fall of one of the great civilizations in recorded history. What's on the other side, I can't speculate, but it will be LOT different than what we're used to.

Who said anything about a conspiracy? It's just "human nature" to abuse power, and the bankers have had this power since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. It's just that the irrational greed is uncontrollable by the majority of people because, as you say, it's bad philosophy that they hold. But now that they have this power, they use it to influence lawmakers and POTUS to get us into wars (which are very profitable for the bankers) and to make everyone a statutory criminal, so the prison industry becomes a huge and profitable money machine. It takes a lot of cooperation between individuals to make this happen. And it happens because the majority of the populace is lazy, disengaged, disenfranchised and will vote for more government largess. As long as this remains the case (and I don't see it changing), then there is no hope for America other than a sudden and utterly devastating collapse.

The emerging reality seems to be that the candidates who can 'win' the election are the ones the world banksters will place at the forefront. Ron Paul won't win. Voting for him is the Ross Perot Effect. Unfortunately, the Republican candidates are all pre-selected by the shadow government banking cartels, so all of them are on that agenda. No matter whom you vote for, no matter who wins, the end result is the same: the steady march toward totalitarian collectivism. It won't stop until the entire system collapses in a disorderly and chaotic fashion. It will be armageddon when it happens. Only then, should the world bankers be somehow eliminated, can honest men have a shot at rebuilding America. Not terribly likely though. Dark Ages lie ahead and there is little we can do in a Democracy where 90% of the people are just plain ignorant, with the heads in the sand. Revolution won't happen until these 90% have lost their comforts and are on the verge of starving. Once they are starving, they will be no more effective at freedom fighting than North Korea's population. At that point, it's really over, as far as civilization. Maybe you can find it in pockets in a foreign land, or maybe in well concealed colonies in the middle of nowhere, but for the most part, the US experiment is over. The chess pieces have not yet been put back in the box yet, and inertia and existing capital keeps things going, but not for long.

It's the old "Do as I say, not as I do" rule of the men with the guns make all the rules.