The Philosophy of Ambiguity

FOR THOSE WHO LOVE THE PHILOSOPHY OF AMBIGUITY, AS WELL AS THE IDIOSYNCRASIES OF ENGLISH

1. DON'T SWEAT THE PETTY THINGS AND DON'T PET THE SWEATY THINGS

2. ONE TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR

3. ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION

4. IF MAN EVOLVED FROM MONKEYS AND APES, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE MONKEYS AND APES?

5. CAN AN ATHEIST GET INSURANCE AGAINST ACTS OF GOD ?

6. I WENT TO A BOOKSTORE AND ASKED THE SALESWOMAN, "WHERE'S THE SELF- HELP SECTION?" SHE SAID IF SHE TOLD ME, IT WOULD DEFEAT THE PURPOSE.

7. WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?

8. IF A DEAF CHILD SIGNS SWEAR WORDS, DOES HIS MOTHER WASH HIS HANDS WITH SOAP?

9. IF YOU SPIN AN ORIENTAL PERSON IN A CIRCLE THREE TIMES, DO THEY BECOME DISORIENTED?

10. IS THERE ANOTHER WORD FOR SYNONYM?

11. WHERE DO FOREST RANGERS GO TO "GET AWAY FROM IT ALL?"

12. WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU SEE AN ENDANGERED ANIMAL EATING AN ENDANGERED PLANT?

13. IF A PARSLEY FARMER IS SUED, CAN THEY GARNISH HIS WAGES?

14. WOULD A FLY WITHOUT WINGS BE CALLED A WALK?

15. WHY DO THEY LOCK GAS STATION BATHROOMS? ARE THEY AFRAID SOMEONE WILL CLEAN THEM?

16. IF A TURTLE DOESN'T HAVE A SHELL, IS HE HOMELESS OR NAKED?

17. CAN VEGETARIANS EAT ANIMAL CRACKERS?

18. IF THE POLICE ARREST A MIME, DO THEY TELL HIM HE HAS THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT?

19. WHY DO THEY PUT BRAILLE ON THE DRIVE-THROUGH BANK MACHINES?

20. HOW DO THEY GET DEER TO CROSS THE ROAD ONLY AT THOSE YELLOW ROAD SIGNS?

21. WHAT WAS THE BEST THING BEFORE SLICED BREAD?

22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT EGOTISTS: THEY DON'T TALK ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE.

23. DOES THE LITTLE MERMAID WEAR AN ALGEBRA?

24. WHY DO DOCTORS CALL WHAT THEY DO FOR A LIVING, THEIR PRACTICE?

25. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR?

26. IF ONE SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMER DROWNS, DO THE REST DROWN TOO?

27. IF YOU ATE BOTH PASTA AND ANTIPASTO, WOULD YOU STILL BE HUNGRY?

28. IF YOU TRY TO FAIL, AND SUCCEED, WHICH HAVE YOU DONE?

29. WHOSE CRUEL IDEA WAS IT FOR THE WORD 'LISP' TO HAVE 'S' IN IT?

30. WHY ARE HEMORRHOIDS CALLED "HEMORRHOIDS" INSTEAD OF "ASSTEROIDS"?

31. WHY IS IT CALLED TOURIST SEASON IF WE CAN'T SHOOT AT THEM?

32. WHY IS THERE AN EXPIRATION DATE ON SOUR CREAM?

33. IF YOU SAY TO ME "LET ME BE HONEST WITH YOU", DOES THAT MEAN THAT YOU'RE LYING TO ME THE OTHER TIMES?

34. WHAT HAPPENS TO SOMEONE IF THEY ARE SCARED HALF TO DEATH, TWO TIMES?

DR. BERNANKE GETS A PHONE CALL

Zhou Xiaochuan is the Governor of the People's Bank ofChina. Imagine that the following phone call were to takeplace.
Zhou: Hello. Dr. Bernanke?
Bernanke: Yes.
Zhou: I wanted to let you know about the decision that ourboard has taken, after consulting with the Premier and thePolitburo's Standing Committee. We hope you are sittingdown.
Bernanke: I get it. A little Oriental humor.
Zhou: You could say that.
Bernakne: What can I do for you?
Zhou: You can abandon your plan to purchase $600 billion ofTreasury bonds.
Bernanke: The Federal Open Market Committee voted ten to 1for this policy. I cannot change it now.
Zhou: We think it is an unwise policy. It will lower thevalue of the dollar. Americans will then buy fewer goodsfrom China.
Bernanke: That is not how we see it. We think the policyis required to put Americans back to work. They will buymore goods from China and everywhere else when they areonce again working.
Zhou: You will increase the supply of dollars, which willlower the dollar's price internationally. Imported goodswill cost Americans more. An increased supply of dollarswill mean a lower price for dollars. It's supply anddemand.
Bernanke: That is the old economics. That is the logic ofAdam Smith and Milton Friedman and those kooks from Vienna.We are committed to the new economics.
Zhou: Who teaches it? Where?
Bernanke: I taught it for years at Princeton.
Zhou: Where Paul Krugman also teaches?Bernanke: Yes.
Zhou: We see it differently here. We prefer the oldereconomics.
Bernanke: Adam Smith's economics?
Zhou: No, even older.
Bernanke: Mercantilism?
Zhou: That is what you call it. We call it the export-driven Asian miracle.
Bernanke: But mercantilist governments wanted to hoardgold. Your nation does not hoard gold. Your bank holdsU.S. Treasury debt.
Zhou: That is the purpose of my call. Bernanke: Gold?
Zhou: No. U.S. Treasury debt.Bernanke: What about it?
Zhou: There is too much of it.
Bernanke: You sound like Ron Paul.
Zhou: Ah, yes. Congressman Paul. I understand that he islikely to be the next chairman of the Monetary Policy Subcommittee. You and he should have some interesting discussions.
Bernanke: I prefer to talk about Treasury debt.
Zhou: We have determined that an increase of $600 billionin your purchases of Treasury debt will lower the rate of interest on the debt.
Bernanke: That is our thought, too.
Zhou: We hold almost $1 trillion in Treasury debt.
Bernanke: You ought to buy more.
Zhou: We will be losing money on our holdings if ratesfall.
Bernanke: You ought to buy more.
Zhou: The value of the dollar will fall. That will lowerthe value of our holdings.
Bernanke: Nevertheless, you ought to buy more.
Zhou: We have decided to own less.
Bernanke: How much less?
Zhou: $600 billion less.
Bernanke:
Zhou: Dr. Bernanke?
Bernanke:
Zhou: Are you still there?
Bernanke: I am still here.
Zhou: We have decided that every time the Federal Reservepurchases its monthly total of $75 billion, we will sell $75 billion.
Bernanke: Are you serious?
Zhou: You sound like Nancy Pelosi.
Bernanke: But that would raise interest rates on Treasurydebt.
Zhou: That is our conclusion, too. But remember: we own lots of Treasury debt. We could use a better rate of return.
Bernanke: But higher rates might cause a recession in theUnited States.
Zhou: That is our conclusion, too.
Bernanke: But that will mean fewer imports from China.
Zhou: We think it will mean more bankrupt manufacturingfacilities in the United States. Then Americans will comeback to our manufacturers.
Bernanke: But this could cause unemployment in China if youare wrong.
Zhou: We are willing to risk that.
Bernanke: That is a big risk on your part.
Zhou: No bigger than the risk on your part by inflating themonetary base by 30%. That could raise prices in the United States.
Bernanke: We don't think so.
Zhou: Why not?
Bernanke: Because our bankers are so frightened of recession in 2011 that they are not lending. They just turn the money over to the FED.
Zhou: Then you do not expect inflation?
Bernanke: Only a little. Maybe 2% to 3%.
Zhou: You sound like Milton Friedman.
Bernanke: Around here, we say, "Better 2% inflation than 9.6% unemployment."
Zhou: We think it is better for us not to hold onto Treasury debt that cannot be paid off.
Bernanke. Don't worry. We owe it to ourselves.
Zhou: On the contrary, you owe it to us.
Bernanke: It's only a figure of speech.
Zhou: We can figure. We are going to be left holding thebag, as you say. All we have is a pile of IOUs.
Bernanke: They're as good as gold.
Zhou: Since they pay zero interest, we think gold isbetter.
Bernanke: It's only a figure of speech.
Zhou: We can figure. Gold is over $1,350 an ounce. The dollar has been falling. We think the older mercantilism was right. We want to own more gold.
Bernanke: You can't eat gold!
Zhou: We can't eat T-bonds, either.
Bernanke: But if you sell dollars, their price will fall.
Zhou: Why?
Bernanke: It's supply and demand.
Zhou: Gotcha!
Bernanke: You speak English very well.
Zhou: You see, I was educated in your country at UCRA.
Bernanke: Really?
Zhou: Not really. But I love those old Richard Loo World War II movies. He made a great Japanese officer.
Bernanke: But if you sell Treasury debt, that could start afire sale. Central banks all over the world might startselling T-bonds.
Zhou: That is a possibility.
Bernanke: But that would make your holdings worth evenless.
Zhou: That is true. So, if Japan starts selling, we will dump all of our holdings in one shot. We might as well get out before the rush.
Bernanke: But that could crash the dollar!
Zhou: That is a possibility.
Bernanke: You're bluffing!
Zhou: That is a possibility.
Bernanke: But this is not the way that central banks operate.
Zhou: How do they operate?
Bernanke: They inflate.
Zhou: Always?
Bernanke: Of course always. That is the only policy tool we have.
Zhou: You could deflate.
Bernanke: Are you serious?
Zhou: You really have Nancy Pelosi down pat.
Bernanke: There is no way we can deflate.
Zhou: What about your exit strategy? That is deflation.
Bernanke: In theory, yes. But we don't intend to executeit.
Zhou: That is not what you told Congress. You told Congress you have an exit strategy. Several, in fact.
Bernanke: We do have them. We just don't intend to implement them.
Zhou: Do you think you can fool Congress?
: Are you serious? Congress doesn't know horseapples from apple butter.
Zhou: You mistake Barney Frank for Ron Paul. You will now have to deal with Ron Paul.
Berrnanke:
Zhou: Hello.
Bernanke:
Zhou: Are you still there?
Bernanke: Yes, I'm still here.
Zhou: We are not asking you to deflate. We are asking younot to inflate.
Bernanke: But we must inflate.
Zhou: Why?
Bernanke: Because we have 9.6% unemployment.
Zhou: What has that got to do with your decision toinflate?
Bernanke: We must lower interest rates.
Zhou: For Treasury bonds.
Bernanke: Yes.
Zhou: What does that have to do with unemployment?
Bernanke: When mid-term rates are lower, businesses will start new projects and hire people.
Zhou: Mid-maturity T-bond interest rates are the lowest ever since what you call the Great Depression and what we call the old normal.
Bernanke: You can never have low enough T-bond rates.
Zhou: But, as Treasury bond investors, we don't like lowrates. We like high rates. We hold lots of T-bonds. If we get very low rates, we might as well own gold.
Bernanke: But you will like all that increased demand for made-in-China goods when all those unemployed Americans go back to work.
Zhou: But rates are lower than they have been in 80 years. You still have 9.6% unemployment.
Bernanke: But if the 10-year T-bond rate goes from 2.6% to1%, American businessmen will hire millions of workers.
Zhou: Do you have evidence for this in one of those dozen Federal Reserve bank monthly bulletins? Or maybe in the"Federal Reserve Bulletin"?
Barnanke: Not really. But it's the thought that counts.
Zhou: I don't think we are getting anywhere. So, just to remind you. We will sell enough Treasury debt each monthto match any net increase in the amount you buy.Bernanke: Dollar for dollar?
Zhou: Dollar for dollar. But, I'll tell you what. Buy them from us, and we'll give you a discount for volume purchases.
Bernanke: You guys never miss a trick, do you?
Zhou: We're really not inscrutable. We just offer discounts for volume purchases.
Bernanke: I will discuss this with the FOMC.
Zhou: Do that. Shalom!
Bernanke: That's my middle name.
Zhou: You Americans have a saying for everything.
Bernanke: No. I mean it. That really is my middle name.
Zhou: If you start buying Treasury debt, you'll have an honorary middle name over here.
Bernanke: What's that?
Zhou: Paper Tiger.

appreciating small things

I remember in the movie "The Castaway" with Tom Hanks, the scene where he had been forced to live for weeks, maybe months, and only eating raw fish because he had no fire. He struggled and struggled rubbing sticks together to try and make his own fire. Failure after failure. And then on one effort he finally got some smoke. He puffed on it and puffed on it and added some grass and "Poof!" He had fire! It was so funny to see him all alone on the island that night having a celebration all by himself over his achievement. I remember him standing there on the beach with the fire blazing and beating his chest and loudly proclaiming "I HAVE FIRE! I HAVE FIRE!" It was, in fact, a very great achievement, and one which cavemen must have celebrated in the same way many years ago. But today something so simple as fire, is taken for granted by myself and everyone else I know. It's just a pack of matches or a click-your-bic away.

In the past year I've had my own challenges. Though nothing at all to compare with being stranded alone on a remote Pacific island? But challenges just the same. And though very difficult to work through, it has given me a hundred or more opportunities to appreciate many things that I've taken for granted all of my life.

There's a quote of mine on the side of the blog here that says a man's life is not measured by the things he has, but by the things he has chosen sacrifice and to live without. Henry David Thoreau moved out to the woods at Walden Pond and lived in a cabin with a table and two chairs and a bed. He wanted to make his life as simple as possible. He wanted to spend his time at Walden focusing on life and not on "stuff". I have found my own Walden here in West Texas. Perhaps not by choice, but a place of quietness and solitude and "aloneliness" just the same. (And there is a big difference in "aloneliness" and "loneliness".)

A few months ago, after making 1500 miles trips every ten days, from West Texas back to Missouri, I decided to just move out here. I had taken over a business from a failed partnership, that needed a lot of time and attention. As Machiavelli said in The Prince, to the young ruler "if you want to possess a city, go and live in it". That advice has a lot of meaning and implication beyond just ruling. I took it to also be wisdom for my business. That is . .If I wanted to turn this oil and gas business around and make it profitable again, I just needed to move here and live here and immerse myself in it.

It has been a struggle since the beginning. I inherited a business situation after my partners decided to let me have it all. Of course that meant me also getting all of the bills and liabilities and not just the assets. And there were nearly $100,000.00 of bills to be paid, not to mention $800,000.00 in bank debt. The sum of it all seemed, at times, to be staggering. However, as the chinese philosopher once said, "the journey of a thousand miles, begins with just one step". And that's what I did. I got here and took the steps that I could take. Each day I awoke and chose to do whatever I could do, and did not focus on the tasks I could not do.

I had very little in the way of money. No excess unless I would choose to pay myself before I chose to pay my creditors. I came to town and rented a small store front here on main street. I needed an office and a place to sleep both. The store front is simple but functional. And it's cheap. But it had no hot water and no bath tub or shower. Only a plain and small bathroom with toilet and sink and running cold water.

I've been here for over two months now and just been trying to survive and build my business back up and "make do" with what I have. And it's been a time of spiritual and character building for me too. In many ways. I have been . . in times past . . happy with much. And in the past year, I have learned to be happy and content with little in the way of material goods. I have, in my owns words, chosen to "live without" a lot of things that in years gone by I took for granted. I have had no hot water to shave with. And no hot water to shower with. But worse, I have not even had a indoor shower. I have had to adapt and "make do" with what things I did have. And to my great joy and surprise, I have learned to be content with whatever state I have found myself in. I have found another way to take a shower outside for this time. And I've discovered that you if you put the shaving cream on your face and let it sit for two minutes, that a cold shave will work just fine if you do it VERY SLOWLY.

One day I was complaining to myself about taking a shower with my neighbor's water hose outside in the dark. And . . to be frank . . I was grumbling to God. The next day I felt so bad, that . . in my own act of contrition and penance, at the end of the day . . I took my bar of soap out to the edge of town and stripped down and waded into the shallow waters of the Brazos river and took my "bath". It was not the most refreshing experience in the world. And on the way back, I came to appreciate more the fact that I did at least have clean water at my home to rinse myself with, even if it was not hot and even if it came from a water hose. I was grateful for what I had, rather than resenting what I didn't have. It was an epiphany for me.

But yesterday I received a BIG blessing. I had been saving the money for two months and finally got a shower and hot water heater installed. And this morning, I litterally jumped out of bed at 5 a.m. and was so excited to know that I was going to take a hot shower and have a shave with hot water. It's probably a good thing that no one else lives downtown on this one block of main street. Because at 5:15 this morning anyone within a block of where I call home would have heard the sound of what probably sounded like a cave man yelling at the top of my lungs while I showered:

I HAVE HOT WATER! I HAVE A SHOWER!
I HAVE HOT WATER! I HAVE A SHOWER!

Life is great. God is Great. And time marches on.

The Chile Well and American Exceptionalism

While many may not believe in American exceptionalism anymore, there's a whole lot of people in Chile who do. Regarding that mine rescue, did you know:

The guy that designed the rescue module was a NASA Engineer?
The drill was made by Schramm, Inc. of Pennsylvania.
The drill bits were made by Center Rock, Inc. located in Berlin,
Pennsylvania.
The lead driller, Jeff Hart, and his team are from Denver, Colorado.
They are on loan from the U.S. Military in Afghanistan where they are
drilling water wells for our Forward Operating Bases.

Jeff spent 33 days on his feet, operating the drill that finally provided a way out Saturday for 33 trapped miners. "You have to feel through your feet what the drill is doing; it's a vibration you get so that you know what's happening," explained Hart. Hart was called in from Afghanistan, "simply because he's the best" at drilling larger holes with the T130's wide-diameter drill bits.

Standing before the levers, pressure meters, and gauges on the T130's control panel, Hart and the rest of the team faced many challenges in drilling the shaft. At one point, the drill struck a metal support beam in the poorly mapped mine, shattering its hammers. Fresh equipment had to be flown in from the United States, and progress was delayed for days as powerful magnets were lowered to pull out the
pieces.

The mine's veins of gold and copper ran through quartzite with a high level of abrasive silica, rock so tough that it took all their expertise to keep the drill's hammers from curving off in unwanted directions. "It was horrible," said Center Rock President Brandon Fisher, exhausted after limited sleep throughout the effort. Hart
called it the most difficult hole they had ever drilled, because of the lives at stake.

"If you're drilling for oil and you lose the hole, it's different. This time there's people down below. We ruined some bits, worked through the problems as a team, and broke through," Hart said. "I'm very happy now."

Miners' relatives crowded around Hart on Saturday, hugging and posing for pictures with him as he walked down from the rescue operation into the tent camp where families had anxiously followed his work. "He's become the hero of the day," said Dayana Olivares, whose friend, Carlos Bugueno, was one of the miners stuck below.

In a different day and age, Jeff Hart would be the most famous American in our country right now. He would be honored at the White House. Schoolchildren would learn of his skill and heroism. But because Jeff Hart works in an industry currently being demonized by (insert name for the clowns currently running our country) more people in Chile will celebrate this symbol of American greatness than America itself.

A History Lesson

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960..

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.


Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Lincoln was shot at the theatre named 'Ford'.
Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln' made by 'Ford'.

Lincoln was shot in a theatre and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theatre.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

Where have all the Negroes Gone

By Dr. James David Manning
A Negro Pastor in New York City's Harlem neighborhood



I grew up watching the great rivalry between the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers. The competition between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson was classic.

Perhaps the most magnificent truth between Blacks and Whites in America can be found in the history of that rivalry. I also grew up at the close of the greatest period of Black or Negro accomplishments in the history of the planet. I am delighted to acknowledge the building of great schools for Negroes like Howard University, Morehouse College, Tuskegee Institute and Fisk University. During this period Negro churches flourished as the moral and religious gathering ground for community and national development. Small businesses owned by Negroes prospered from the small but stable incomes of a fully employed Negro community.

My generation, The Negro Generation was in full agreement and acknowledged the Holy Bible as truth; and Jesus as the most color blind loving friend my mother ever knew. She would quote Jesus, an alleged White only Saviour with a trust that I dare not tread upon. While we were a monolithic Christian community with no mixture of Islam, the second religion of my generation was education, education, education.

There was a sense that we were in competition with White America. Not a malice fed rivalry, but we were about the business of building a great society of Negroes who respected White accomplishments.

The Larry Bird, Magic Johnson rivalry existed as a mascot for the integrity of Negro youth and the fights between Joe Louis and Max Schmeling was the same for Negro men.

It was the golden age of Negro men and their unprecedented fatherhood. The Negro man and Joe Louis taught the Negro boys how to intellectually and confidently compete for financial success and to honor the Negro woman with hard won victories.

The Negro communities were full of Negro men, who ran small businesses with humble White customers. The churches were filled with Negro deacons. One out of every four teachers in the segregated schools was a Negro man.

My generation had a Negro father snoring in every home at night and a two-tone Ford in every garage.

The Negro man was a strong protector of his daughters and a defender of Jesus. Indeed, the competition in the boxing ring was a release for the unspoken competition economically and morally between the races. Every time Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson or Joe Louis won, they won one for the Negro people, but when they lost, no riots occurred, just acceptance and planning for the next contest.

This was the age of your father's after shave lotion. Every Negro home had a father in the bedroom at night, and a strong smelling after shave on the dresser.

All of a sudden, things changed. A violent war was declared between the races. The sports arenas were abandoned as the venue for competition between the races, and riots broke out in ghettos all over America as a form of political dissent by The Black Man. In what is still an unexplained phenomena the sons of former business men began to rob and pulverize their own people, and the Negro and the smell of the after shave fragrance was replaced by the smell of heroin cooking in the bathrooms.

Shortly thereafter I heard a Black Muslim say Jesus was a blue-eyed devil and that all White men were devils.

Up until that announcement we, the Negro people were winning. We were not seeking to overthrow America, but to grow America. We had problems with some Whites, but respect for America and all White people was the order of the day for Negroes, but not for the Black man.

Then things began to fall apart. The age of the Black Muslims and Black Panthers were like watching your best friend die as these groups were born. I asked my father, "Why Cassius Clay was refusing to go into the army." I also asked my father, "Why did Cassius Clay want to be called Muhammad Ali." I did not like that name Muhammad, it seemed barbaric. My father never answered. In one of a very few rare moments, my father, a Christian and a Negro never answered.

Once when Floyd Patterson was fighting during the Friday Night Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, my father accidentally hit me with a left hook trying to imitate Floyd Patterson. With the advent of Muhammad Ali, for the first time in my life my father was not excited by a Negro boxer, who denounced both Negro and Christianity.

I knew something was wrong when my father stop watching Muhammad Ali, but I didn't know how wrong things had gone, nor could I ever have imagined that one day two of the most famous names on the planet would be Muslims names, Osama and Obama.

A few weeks ago I asked Jesus if Muhammad Ali's debilitating sickness is a curse or punishment for his support of Islam and abandonment of Christianity; Jesus never answered.

Many if not all of the Negro businesses are gone now. In Harlem,(now Atlah) the world's most famous Black community, only 3% of the businesses are owned by African Americans, who were once The Black People, who were once Negroes. Pride in the Negro schools is now replaced with rap music and metal detectors. In one of Harlem's most celebrated high schools, Frederick Douglass High, gang members and drug dealing are more visible than basketball. The Negro father, provider and nurturer,is as rare as Aqua Velva in most Negro homes today.

This absence of the Negro father, provider, and business man occurred shortly after the rise of Muhammad Ali and the acceptance of Islam; when the birth of The Black Man was the death of the Negro father. Indeed, the Negro father disappeared in the catastrophic polemic of changing the Negro from being Negro, to being Black. One day I looked up and the most famous men of my hue were no longer Negroes but Black men; Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, and Elijah Muhammad. I still remember hearing the chants; the most well-known man on the planet is Muhammad Ali.

This social change was extremely difficult and brutal for Dr. Martin Luther King. The master of social change would not stop using the word Negro in his speeches; and many called him an Uncle Tom for not making the transition. The Negro was gone and the Black man had arrived, "Houston, The Buzzard Has Landed." The Christian allegiance was gone and the Muslim faith was a better fit for The New Black Man. It seemed only Negroes remained Christian in those days and The Black Man became Bolshevik and Muslim.

Now you need to know the word Negro and Black are one and the same in definition, except Negro has a Latin root and Black has an English root meaning, yet the preferred word Black, empowered a segment of our society with the opportunity to display their hatred for White Americans. Indeed, to speak the juggernaut differences between the two people. The social identity of Black was, we are in your face Whitey, we be Black, you be White. When Smokin' Joe Frazier knocked Muhammad Ali on his jack-ass, I thought to myself; #1. There is the classic battle between Christianity and Islam; and #2. The answer that my father never gave me came from the right hook of Joe Frazier, Jesus kicked Muhammad's butt.

With even more death and destruction on the horizon; Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, and James Baldwin all became Bolsheviks, Marxists, and Socialists; while Islam and Pan-Africanism swept the ghettos like a hotel maid.

Rapidly the Negro schools and colleges died, and young Black men, the sons of former Negroes began to rob and burglarize the Negro communities. The Negro school teacher and scout leader was replaced by Black drug dealers and pimps. The Negro family fell apart and Black prison population rose like a fourth of July firecracker rocket.

The Negro turned in his lunch bucket for a welfare check, all in the name of his new Black whore, The New Black Woman.

The White counterpart also turned to Marxism. They did not abandon their great schools, but rather took over the anti-Black pro-Negro media, and turned it into an anti-Negro pro-Black spring board.

The pro-Islamic Marxist media loved Muhammad Ali, for the billions he generated in ad revenues. When Smokin' Joe won the title they hardly even acknowledged it. He was just a dumb Negro caught in an Uncle Tom nightmare. Sadly as Dr. King was challenging this new Black Bolsheviks/Socialist Movement, many accused him of being funded by the Communist. The celebrated leadership of The New Black Man scorned Dr. King and claimed he was holding the Black man down, and leading dumb Negroes to trust a White Jesus and let the blue-eyed devil White man slap both sides of his face.

Even more sadly is the liberal socialist media chose to support The New Black Man and began to marginalize and shut out the voices of the disciples of Booker T. Washington, Jesus, and my father.

Now, if you look very carefully you can see that we are reaping the bitter harvest of the influence of The New Black man, The Marxist/ Socialist, The Islamic and Liberal White ideas all spawn in the period of the death of the Negro.

Barack Hussein (The Long Legged Mack Daddy) Obama is the sum total product of this movement that got started a generation ago by both Blacks and Whites. This is their hour; they are in charge of government, business, education, religion, and media. Where will we go from here?

Truth in Advertising

This commercial is a great example of honesty and truth in advertising. But I sure would not want to go back to this guy later and be asking for a refund because I wasn't satisfied. (grinning)

Cloward-Piven from Columbia University 1966

Cloward-Piven is a strategy for forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The strategy was first proposed in 1966 by Columbia University political scientists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven as a plan to bankrupt the welfare system and produce radical change. Sometimes known as the "crisis strategy" or the the "flood-the-rolls, bankrupt-the-cities strategy," the Cloward-Piven approach called for swamping the welfare rolls with new applicants - more than the system could bear. It was hoped that the resulting economic collapse would lead to political turmoil and ultimately socialism.

The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), founded by African-American militant George Alvin Wiley, put the Cloward-Piven strategy to work in the streets. Its activities led directly to the welfare crisis that bankrupted New York City in 1975.

Veterans of NWRO went on to found the Living Wage Movement and the Voting Rights Movement, both of which rely on the Cloward-Piven strategy and both of which are spear-headed by the radical cult ACORN.

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute.

On August 11, 1965, the black district of Watts in Los Angeles exploded into violence, after police used batons to subdue a man suspected of drunk driving. Riots raged for six days, spilling over into other parts of the city, and leaving 34 dead. Two Columbia University sociologists, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were inspired by the riots to develop a new strategy for social change. In November 1965 - barely three months after the fires of Watts had subsided - Cloward and Piven began privately circulating copies of an article they had written called "Mobilizing the Poor: How it Could Be Done." Six months later (on May 2, 1966), it was published in The Nation, under the title, "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty."

The article electrified the Left. Following its May 2, 1966 publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

Richard A. Cloward was then a professor of social work at Columbia University. He died in 2001. His co-author Frances Fox Piven was a research associate at Columbia's School of Social Work. She now holds a Distinguished Professorship of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor. By providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Cloward and Piven wanted to fan those flames. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system. The collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation. Poor people would rise in revolt. Only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands. So wrote Cloward and Piven in 1966.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. This Cloward and Piven proposed to do, in classic Alinsky fashion, by forcing welfare bureaucrats to live up to their own book of rules.

The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare - about 8 million, at the time - probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls." Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces… for major economic reform at the national level."

Their article called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of a "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all; working and non-working people alike. Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act.

The Cloward-Piven strategy never achieved its goal of system breakdown and a Marxist utopia. But it provided a blueprint for some of the Left's most destructive campaigns of the next three decades. It will likely haunt America for years to come since George Soros' Shadow Party has now adopted the strategy, honing it into a far more efficient weapon than any of its Sixties-era promoters could have foreseen.

Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. For more information on Wiley and his welfare rights movement. In the summer of 1967, Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), with headquarters in Washington, DC. Wiley's tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the nation - often violently - bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.

Regarding Wiley's tactics, The New York Times commented on September 27, 1970, "There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests - and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones."

These methods proved effective. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," writes Sol Stern in the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. "From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy."

As a direct result of its reckless welfare spending, New York City - the financial capital of the world - was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. Leftist agitators swooned in triumph. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.

The Backlash

The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York's welfare crisis horrified the nation, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in "the end of welfare as we know it" -- the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements. Both Cloward and Piven attended the White House signing of the bill as guests of President Clinton.

Most Americans to this day have never heard of Cloward and Piven. But Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to expose them in the late 1990's. As his drive for welfare reform heated up, Giuliani accused the militant scholars by name, citing their 1966 manifesto as evidence that they had engaged in deliberate economic sabotage. "This wasn't an accident," Giuliani charged in a 1997 speech. "It wasn't an atmospheric thing, it wasn't supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare."

Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. They learned to cover their tracks. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

The Cloward-Piven strategy - first proposed in 1966 - seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. Application of this strategy contributed greatly to the turmoil of the late Sixties. Cloward-Piven failed to usher in socialism, but it succeeded in generating an economic crisis and in escalating the level of political violence in America - two cherished goals of hard-Left strategists.

Radical organizers today continue tinkering with variations on the Cloward-Piven theme, in the perennial hope of reproducing '60s-style chaos. The thuggish behavior of leftwing unions such as SEIU and of certain elements of George Soros' Shadow Party can be traced, in a direct line of descent, from the early practitioners of Cloward-Piven.

Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his "1989" book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every jot and tittle of every law and statute; every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet; and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

In its earliest form, the Cloward-Piven strategy applied Alinsky's principle to the specific area of welfare entitlements. It counseled activists to create what might be called Trojan Horse movements - mass movements whose outward purpose seemed to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real purpose was to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers.

The specific function of these Trojan Horse movements was to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown - providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That, at least, was the theory behind the Cloward-Piven strategy.

In 1982, partisans of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new "voting rights movement," which purported to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Like ACORN, the organization that spear-headed this campaign, the new "voting rights" movement was led by veterans of George Wiley's welfare rights crusade. Its flagship organizations were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with a former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.

All three of these organizations - ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE - set to work lobbying energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which Bill Clinton ultimately signed in 1993. The Motor-Voter bill is widely blamed today for swamping the voter rolls with "dead wood" - invalid registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people - thus opening the door to the unprecedented levels of voter fraud and "voter disenfranchisement" claims that followed in subsequent elections.

The new "voting rights" coalition combines mass voter registration drives - typically featuring high levels of fraud - with systematic intimidation of election officials in the form of frivolous lawsuits, bogus charges of "racism" and "disenfranchisement" and "direct action" (street protests, violent or otherwise). Just as they swamped America's welfare offices in the 1960s, the Cloward-Piven team now seeks to overwhelm the nation's understaffed and poorly policed electoral system. Their antics set the stage for the Florida recount crisis of 2000, and have introduced a level of fear, tension and foreboding to U.S. elections heretofore encountered mainly in Third World countries. For more information on the Voting Rights Movement, see the entry for "Project Vote."

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute. It is largely thanks to money from Soros that the Cloward-Piven strategy continues even now to eat away at America's political and economic infrastructure.

Steve Wynn finds China a more stable Government

This is a very interesting interview with Steve Wynn, the founder and entreprenueral spirit behind Treasure Island, The Mirage, The Bellagio, and Wynn casinos in Las Vegas. To say that the man is a visionary and outstanding businessman is an understatement.

In this interview with CNBC he talks about the mess we're in, in America and goes on to explain why he is splitting his corporate headquarters and moving to China. He finds it to be a more stable government than the United States? Wow! His is a compelling argument. And unfortunately a sad indictment of the state of affairs that Washington has gotten us into.

Click here for a very thought provoking interview.

Mind Food

I enjoy this intellectual stimulation I receive from Christopher Hitchens. I agree with him some, disagree with some. Vehemently disagree often. Hate some. Love some. But always am stimulated to reconsider the status quo. Perhaps some of you (or all) might enjoy an evening of listening to the man. Again, whether I agree or disagree with him, he's probably one of the foremost intellectuals and "thinkers" in the world today.

Interview with Asylum Part 1

Interview with Asylum Part 2

Interview with Asylum Part 3

Happy Hour and Jungle Juice in Africa

This is a real video from a French documentary about Africa ... It's narrated in French, but don't worry about whether can understand it or not, the video is funny. There are trees (Marula tree) that grow in Africa which, once a year, produce very juicy fruits that contain a large percentage of alcohol. The tree is known as the "Elephant Tree," because elephants have a fondness for the fruit. Because there is a shortage of water, as soon as the fruits are ripe, animals come there to 'drink' and help protect themselves from the heat. What happens next, you can watch for yourselves. You can easily tell who over indulged!... PS - You can buy a great liqueur named "Amarula," which is made with Marula fruit and cream.

Breakfast at Ginger's

Very funny way to start the day off.
It's a dog-day morning around Ginger's House

valley girls

Reposted cuz it's just so darn funny. You have to love those Los Angeles valley girls!

Don't get hit by a tusk!

Click here for an animal science and clothing manufacturing lesson.

Social Security milestone this year

The day of reckoning has arrived. The safety net is shreadding and falling apart.

This year payouts will exceeds receipts.

Click here for story. Congress has emptied the coffers. Anyone that has been sitting around thinking their social security taxes have been sitting somewhere collecting interest, belongs in a loonie farm.

The system is broke.

Sorry to inform all the young people of the world, but you're going to have to pay in more and more and more to get less and less and less.

Congress is a bunch of thieves and hoodlums and crooks.

Throw them all out. Dems and Repubs. Not a dimes worth of difference in the two.

I sat there in the Dnipro Hotel in Kiev in the fall of 2004. It was so cold outside but I sat there in the warmth of the lobby having champagne and enjoying the chamber music quartet. Outside were demonstrators in sub zero temperatures, demanding that the election of their new president be thrown out since he was a holdover former Communist tyrant. Finally after days of protesting the United States and other Western governments stepped in and forced a new election. In that election a very pro-Western and democratically inspired and free-market leader (with an American wife), Viktor Yushchenko was placed in office. And the people of Ukraine were promised great democratic reforms. My partners and I contributed a significant amount of money to this man's election in the hope that some real change would come to the way power was administered in the Ukraine and that with increased international commerce exchange, the people would see their life styles improved and the economy better. What happened next and over the next four years is a disgrace. First the US abandoned the new leader and any support. And then the new leader Yushchenko just became another power hungry politician trying to maintain his own position in light of the fact that since conditions had not improved he had lost the Orange Revolution support.
So who was the loser in the presidential elections in Ukraine? On the surface, it is the prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, who finished at least 3pс behind the opposition leader Viktor Yanukovich. However, the well-informed internet resource Ukrainska Pravda takes a more nuanced view of the situation.
Tymoshenko lost a battle, but did not lose a war. As the prime minister, she still controls the government and thus the country's economy. Her loyalist Yuri Lutsenko, fired as interior minister, refused to let go of his control of the country's police. Tymoshenko herself refused to concede her defeat, using the same language she used in 2004, during the so-called Orange revolution.
At the time, the Western media, from Vancouver to Warsaw, just loved that language, believing every word of it. Tymoshenko was elevated to the status of Ukrainian Joan of Arch and Yanukovich was vilified as a "Kremlin's stooge".
Now Tymoshenko's conduct is an embarrassment, since this election was recognised as fair by the EU, the US and just about every possible monitoring organisation. An obvious questions sneaks into one's mind: what if in 2004 her motives were the same as now: trivial lust for power and not a mixture of democratic principle and idealistic nationalism, as the West believed in 2004-2005?
As the situation develops, this version appears to be closer to the truth, thus revealing the true losers of 2010 elections – Western experts and politicians, who believed Tymoshenko in 2004-2005.
The disastrous economic consequences of the Western-backed Orange governments in Ukraine are indisputable and recognised even by such former zealots of Orange revolution as the New York Times and Newsweek. One figure is telling enough: Ukrainian exports to the United States dropped by 90pc in the five years of Orange rule.
The usual objection to Tymoshenko's critics – "But now they have democracy!" – under closer inspection doesn't hold either. "Democracy without democrats" – a formula once applied to Weimar Germany – is even more applicable to Ukraine.
Indeed, one cannot call either former president Viktor Yushchenko nor Yulia Tymoshenko democrats. Democrats are ready to concede defeat and respect the rules of the game. This rarely happened with Yushchenko and Tymoshenko. In every situation they used every tool at their disposal to hold on to power.
These tools included dissolving a democratically elected parliament, making a mockery of justice and arranging sleazy media attacks against each other.
In this situation, Yanukovich's coming to power seems preferable for democracy, since nationalist opposition will remain stubborn and real, while Yanukovich's supporters might be scared away by Tymoshenko's vengeful authoritarianism.
The blank check which the West gave to Yushchenko and his Orange team in 2004-2005 did a terrible disservice to the Ukrainian nation. Instead of concentrating on joint movement towards Europe (which does not necessarily mean away from Russia), the Orange politicians polarised the nation, discredited democratic institutions, badly damaged their own economy and the economy of other European countries, disrupting supplies of Russian energy to the EU.
Isn't this a bit too high a price to pay for prejudice against Russia which lay at the core of Western support for the Orange revolution?
"In our enthusiasm to find others who appear to share our goals, we have allowed ourselves to be fooled into believing that anybody we dislike is by necessity illegitimate, that our enemy's enemy is our friend," writes professor Paul Robinson in Ottawa Citizen.
My old friend Ivan, the doorman at the Dnipro Hotel is probably not smiling today. His wages of $65.00 per month have probably not changed. And he probably still lives in the two bedroom apartment with his other 7 family members. One could only add that consequences could be especially bad if the perceived "enemy" (in the case of the Orange revolution, "imperialistic Russia") is not actually an enemy at all. Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia) Dmitry Babich is an RIA Novosti commentator

My new grand daughter Vivi.

Vivian "Vivi" Eleanor
Born March 13, at 3:15 pm.
9 pounds and 5 ounces and 20 inches tall.
Sweet as can be and her big sister is thrilled
for her arrival.

The Coming Great war of Shites and Sunnis

I love reading Byron King's projections and forecast. His brilliance has often times been a great source of inspiration for me to do research of my own on issues and events that he examines through his lens and keyboard. To be added to his mail list, go to: http://dailyreckoning.com/whitelist-daily-reckoning/.   Below
are his ideas and mine.    In the future, they will be reality to every single living person on the face of the earth, whether they believe events in the Middle East affect them or not.    The world's political landscape is going to change in soon-coming future from a war involving millions of combatants.

Byron King who is a Resource Expert for The Daily Reckoning wrote this past week:
. . . about a war 1,354 Years in the making. He calls it The "NEW" War and theorized that it could rocket prices of oil past $220 Before 2011.

I've followed these two fighting sides for a long time. And I have believed since 1979 that this was a war that would ultimately become the "mother of all wars". And yet, as the two sides have continued to align themselves against each other, no one in the press or Washington ever mentions the battle that is . . and will be . . taking place.

Mr. King asks the question: What could be eight times bigger than the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan — and lethal enough to at least DOUBLE the price of gas and oil next few years? Brace yourself for the "new" and bloody war nobody saw coming. Nobody in the Pentagon will talk openly about it. Nobody in the White House knows what to do.
This war will be be the deadliest surprise threat to world politics and the global economy of the coming years. And you should see there's not much new about it at all — the pressure's been building behind this for the last 1,354 years!

He imagines a volcano of blood. When it blows, we could see many people's savings get SLAMMED... the dollar thrown into a TAILSPIN... and, here's what will stun the still-recovering world economy, gas and oil prices doubling or even tripling by sometime in the soon-coming years. It's the last thing most people expect, from market pros to our stupid bumbling, act-smart-know-nothing-bumbling D.C. bureaucrats... but if nothing changes ... this is a page in future history books that's already writing itself. I hope that I am wrong. I suspect that I'm not. And the reason I believe I'm right is because even if the politcians and generals did admit to this war that is developing, they would have to admit that there is nothing in the world they can do to stop it from coming to a bloodbath. Eight key Islamic countries are hurtling headlong toward a bloody "new" war — with each other.

This could begin as early as the next 12 to 18 months. Or perhaps a few years from now.  But IT WILL COME.   IT IS A CERTAINTY.   And it will affect every person on the face of the earth.  And with no less than 66% of the world's key energy reserves right in the middle of the entire battlefield. It may sound impossible. But it's not. Even if I'm only half right, and we get an oil-state stalemate unlike anything the world has ever seen — oil could easily soar past the old high of $147.30 per barrel, well on its way to as much as $220... with gasoline bucking against a ceiling of $8 per gallon.

Long before $147 oil... before the war over 9/11 or the war in Afghanistan... before either war in Iraq, the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, or even the oil crisis of 1973. All the way back to a lamb dinner, served up one evening in the year 629 AD. There was a murder that night that has been changing the world every since, and is about to change it in a major way. Nobody could have known that the dinner they were about to eat would one day change history. Some say it was goat. Others say it was lamb. Either way, it was poisoned. And the guest of honor was Mohammed, the controversial founder of Islam.

It was just one bite, that's all it took. He tasted the poison and immediately spit it out. But it was too late. He would soon die, sparking a bitter and deadly divide. Because, when Mohammed died nobody could agree on who should take over. And his followers and descendents have been killing each other as a result ever since. For more information on this rivalry, click the link below on Muslim Sunni Shiite history.

On the one side, you've got the Sunni Muslims. They're the ones that run Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and many of the other countries in the Middle East. They used to also run Iraq thru Saddam Hussein. On the other, you've got the Shia Muslims. It's the Shia that run Iran. And now, thanks to the brilliance of our own US government, they run Iraq, as well as Lebanon and Syria. Most people call them Shiites.

Think Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland... Serbs vs. Croats in Bosnia... or even the religious Thirty Years War that ripped apart Europe in the 16th century. For a excellent description of the differences between the two and their origins, I encourage you to read an article done by the History Network:

Click here for article on Sunni and Shiite Muslim differences.

This Sunni-Shia split has built up pressure now for the last 1,354 years. But it has especially come to full force since the end of the first world war when Western European culture began "infecting" Muslim culture in Egypt and other middle eastern countries. After World War 1 when the British came into the middle east after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, they brought with them every form imaginable of western decadence. The Shiites believe that the Sunni's are responsible for the defilement of their holy land.

But it's only now that this pressure has found its ultimate release — with Iran driving a new Shia uprising smack dab in the middle of the most dangerous place on Earth — the oil-soaked Middle East. And guess which radical Sunni muslim is sitting right next door to Iran? If you guessed Osama bin Laden you were right.

What's different is that too many in the West... right up to the White House and the Pentagon... don't "get" just how deep this Islam divide could go or how far it could run. The idea in Washington is to just make them all democratic countries and they will naturally just be a peace because they are free.

Unfortunately for the free world, most of the Shiites are in the area of the strongest concentration of the oil. And even if this fact is lost on most politicians and generals, it is not lost on bin Laden and his other Sunni extremist. This is a war for not just their faith, but their economic futures as well. And one terrorist with a grudge can do a lot of damage. Imagine what a 140 million of them could do when pushed too far?

Iran, all by itself, could even be a deadly force. But can you imagine what millions of Shiites with a 1,354-year old ax to grind could do? Perhaps it will be named The 162-Million-Man March?

Nobody knows exactly how many Shia there are right now in the Middle East. That's because in all but four Middle Eastern countries, Sunni leaders don't bother to count.

Sunni schools teach that Shiites aren't real Muslims. In most countries, Shias don't get a seat in government. They can't become judges or even testify in high courts. In Sunni-run Saudi Arabia, Shias and Sunni can't even marry. Oh by the way . . .thank you US for installing now a Shite controlled government in Iraq. Let me try for a minute to think of anything else you could do to make Bin Laden and his other Sunni-crazies even more angry at us?

For centuries, the Shia have been the underclass.

But now, for the first time in history, they see this as their chance to turn the tide. And how big a tide is it? Hands down, saber-rattling Iran has the most — 70 million Shia. But then you've got the "liberated" Shia of Iraq — 22 million. Plus as many as 2 million Shia in Iran-backed Lebanon. And up to 4 million Shia in Iran's top ally, Syria. Then you've got another 700,000 Shia in Kuwait... up to 500,000 Shia in Bahrain... up to 400,000 Shia in the United Arab Emirates... 300,000 Shia in Oman... and around 100,000 Shia in Qatar, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington. On top of that, as many as 10 million Shia in Yemen... another 7 million Shia in Azerbaijan... and 11 million Shia in Turkey... not to mention the combined 30 million Shia in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Not all Shia want a revolution. In fact most don't. Most want a peaceful, but "undefiled" land to live in. But out of between the 147 million to 162 million Shia spread from Pakistan to Lebanon and Azerbaijan to Yemen, enough do that this is the river of "Secret Revenge" and common blood running through the entire Middle East.

The Sunnis are worried. Especially in Sunni-run Saudi Arabia. And especially now.

You must remember that Iran used to be Persia. At one point Persia was the biggest and most powerful empire in history! Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt — even Israel — the Persians controlled them all. Along with all of Afghanistan and Pakistan and most of the oil-rich coast of the Caspian. For 300 years, Persian armies held off the Roman Empire. Their scholars walked with Aristotle and Plato. And influenced Greek art.

It was the Persians who invented chess. And the windmill. Not to mention bricks, algebra, trigonometry, and wine. The bottom line is... no Empire forgets its past glory. The Iranians resent losing theirs. But now they see a chance to get it back.

The nuclear bomb? Tehran's crackpot leaders don't just want it to scare Israel. They want it so they can throw a dark shadow over their Sunni Arab neighbors, too!

With total control of the Hormuz "oil chokepoint" in the Persian Gulf
and new power in "liberated" Iraq, the Iranians have a brand new foothold
for kicking off the long-awaited "Shia Revolution."

It is important to notice two things about the "battlefield".

First, you'll see how Iran's Shia influence has spilled across the border into southern Iraq. Southern Iraq is where you'll find six of Iraq's eight "Supergiant" oil fields. It's also where you'll find a key border with Shia Islam's mortal enemy — Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is Sunni controlled by Sunni aristocracy.

For eight years back in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia helped Iraq wage a bloody war against Iran. Along with other Sunni governments, the Saudis even gave Saddam over $47 billion to launch missiles and nerve gas attacks over the Iranian border. Also, Sadam was a Sunni. That's one reason the United States helped fund him in his battle with Iraq because we wanted the Shiites in Iran knocked down. Of course . . go figure this one out . . . the United States is the one (under Jimmy-sell-our-allies-down-the-river-Carter) who tore down the Shah of Iran and helped install the present Shiite government that we are now so feverently trying to destroy?

Iran hasn't forgotten or forgiven that we tried to help Saddam destroy their country.

(Imagine if Canada or Mexico had given money to Japan to help them bomb Pearl Harbor. Iran has waited to make the Saudis pay — and now they have their chance.)

"Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the Gulf front." — Gen. David Petraeus, Jan. 31, 2010

It is also important to see and know that Iran has almost total control over the Strait of Hormuz. Hormuz is the tight waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. Over 17 million barrels of oil have to pass through Hormuz every day. That's 40% of all the oil shipped in the world. And 90% of all the daily oil shipments from the entire Middle East. With Hormuz alone, Iran could cripple the world overnight.

Today, Iran backs Shia militants in Iraq. They give them money and guns. They've even helped Shia politicians take over the Iraqi government. Why? Because gaining control in Iraq takes the Iranians one step closer in their twisted plot for geographical superiority from Iran, through Iraq thru Saudi Arabia to Yemen.

This might help to explain the sudden importance of Yemen and why it is in the news almost every day. The recent attempted plane terrorism during Christmas 2009 invloved an Al Quida trained terrorist who came from Bin Laden's new training ground . . .Yemen.

Hence the decision by The Pentagon to triple its budget on Yemen. Our top U.S. General Patraeus just had a not-so-secret meeting with Yemen's president. And our own State Department calls Yemen a “threat... to global stability.” Even ABC News just called Yemen the next "top target" in the terror war and a "near-perfect haven for terrorists." Obama just sent Yemen our troops, ships, and weapons. Yemen's on/off Shia revolution gives and "Gate of Tears" oil chokepoint
could soon give Iran a strategic "backdoor" attack point into Saudi Arabia

Yemen might be a failed country... with a collapsing government, a shrinking oil supply, an exploding population and not much of anything else but lawlessness and chaos. Estimates are that their own oil production will cease in less than 10 years. But in that same time their population will grow 20%. But what Yemen does have is position. It sits just on the tip of the Arab peninsula... south of another key Saudi border and on the coast of another key oil strait called Bab-el-Mandeb. That name means the "Gate of Tears."

"Nature," goes the old saying, "abhors a vacuum."

For instance, when a failed assassin's bullet burst a blood vessel in Vladimir Lenin's brain in 1922... madman Josef Stalin quickly stepped in to fill the void. Likewise when the Weimar Republic collapsed in 1933... and Hitler stepped into power. Today there's a new void about to be filled — in the ravaged Middle East — and the lethal force that's stepping up to fill it could plunge the entire region into a "new" Islamic war. If that happens, nearly 66% of the world's oil supply will get caught in the crosshairs. And like Hormuz, most oil states on the Red Sea can't get a drop of oil out without shipping it through the Bab-el-Mandeb. Over 3.3 million barrels go through every day. Many energy experts agree that blocking this chokepoint alone could slap a $30 "political premium" on the price of every barrel of oil... but there's an even bigger threat taking shape.

For the last six years, Yemen has fought a vicious and bloody war with Shia rebels. These rebels are poor. There's no way, says a Yemen general, these rebels "could fund and fight this war with pomegranates and grapes... no doubt there is Iranian support."

Iran loves to buy loyalty. Take the $1 billion Tehran now "donates" every year to Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Or the billions they gave Syria's Shia president to build cement factories, car factories, power plants, and storage silos. In return, Iran gets Hezbollah's Arabic-speaking terrorists to run militant Shia training camps in Iraq. And gets Syria to distribute Iran's money and weapons to others in the Shia network.

The secret money Iran sends to Shia rebels in Yemen could soon have a payoff too — by opening up another route for "backdoor" Shia access into Saudi Arabia. Yemen's rebels have already hit towns across the Saudi border. And the Saudis have hit back, losing dozens of troops in the process. We’re just in the first innings of this one.

How bad is it now? So far, 50 Saudi schools along the border have had to close. Another 240 border towns have already been evacuated. And Saudi jets have already dropped bombs in Yemen.

What exactly has the Saudis running scared? It is that they know that the ultimate prize in this middle eastern war is not religious but economic goals. Everybody in the world . . . and above all else Iran . . .wants to dominate and control and rule Saudi Arabia.

It may seem like a silly analogy. But it's true. In the game of Risk where players play for world domination, I have never seen anyone win, who did not first gain control of the Middle East.

I don't think for a minute that Iran's plot can actually succeed. Their greatest threat is not the United States or some silly blockade that the US threatens to throw up. The fact is we have to have their oil. We're not going to cut off their source of income. However the tiny mouse that will not sit still is our little ally of Israel. (Note: That's the same little ally that our current president is not being such a strong ally too). Israel is NOT going to let Iran get a nuclear bomb. And they have just been sitting idly by waiting on the US and Western Europe to "negotiate" away the bomb. And while we try and negotiate, the Iranians go on building and researching and developing. In the end . . I believe, the negotiations and blockades will fail. And Israel will quite simply, quickly, calmly, and efficiently go in and bomb most of what is now Iran off the face of the globe.

But the threat alone of Iran trying to take over Saudi Arabia from the south, could be enough to kick oil much higher. But it's hard for me to imagine how high oil might go if Israel bombs Iran. $300.00? $400.00?

When could this happen?

Our CIA, Britain's M16, and other top spy agencies say Iran could have a working nuclear bomb as soon as April 2011. The Times of London uncovered a confidential document that says Iran already has a "neutron initiator" ready to test. That's the part you need to trigger a warhead. And Der Spiegel, the German magazine, says Iran may even have the tech and material to build a simple nuclear bomb before the end of THIS year. But the Bomb is just a beginning.

Even if the go ahead to build a nuke never comes from Iran's top cleric, the more immediate danger is a wildfire of Shia-Sunni unrest... starting in Iran's new hotbeds of Shia support... and spreading across the rest of the Sunni-run oil states... with the richest oil fields in the world's richest oil nation as the final battleground.

Iran has a Shia network that reaches from Afghanistan to Lebanon once again... more connections building along the Persian Gulf... Yemeni Shias to the south... and Shia connections along the oil rich Caspian Sea. You could see this spread to the nearly two million Shia that live and work on Saudi Arabia's oil fields very soon. Even though that's exactly what the Saudis — and our own Pentagon — hope will never happen. Very soon I believe, Iran will have its mortal enemy, Saudi Arabia, surrounded — by millions of Shia.

Right now, big and small Gulf states are piling up weapons, stocking anti-missile batteries, and sandbagging their oil terminals, ports, and water desalinization plants. Abu Dhabi alone has already bought $17 billion worth of U.S. anti-missile hardware. And the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia just splurged on weapons, to the tune of $25 billion.

Our own F-16 fighter jets, Patriot missile systems, giant cruisers and up to 20,000 more U.S. troops are quietly digging in for an epic fight... that could spread past Iraq and Yemen... and even into Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. All to get ready for what could be the fight of a lifetime.

But no matter how it starts, Saudi Arabia is where it's most likely to end up. Not only is Saudi Arabia home to Mecca, Islam's holiest place... but it's also home to the corrupt and U.S.-allied Royal House of Saud, considered an insult to all Islam. In a country where they'll cut off your hand for stealing and whip you for holding a glass of whiskey... Saudi princes gorge on cocaine and prostitutes, gambling, palaces, and more.

All while the vast Saudi underclass starves on just $6,000 per year and 30% unemployment. And as many as two million of that underclass is Shia. With a 1,354-year-old ax to grind and billions of dollars in oil revenues as the prize.

Iran is ready to assert its place in the world. Think Japan or Germany in the 1930s. The threat is there, it's large, and it's not going away anytime soon.

Have no illusions — any military response, on any front — could only accelerate the spike in oil prices. So the first thing you're going to want to do is simply get out of the way.

But you're also going to make defensive moves with your money. So what do you want to have your money invested in? GM or Citibank or Savings Bonds or Oil? MMMMMMMMMM? Let me think about that?

the next revolution?

The Patsy Revolt of 2010

Bill Bonner writing from Mumbai, India, wrote: "Masked youths...attacked the head of Greece's largest trade union, who was addressing the crowd, and hurled stones at the police. GSEE union boss Yiannis Panagopoulos traded blows with the rioters before being whisked away, bloodied and with torn clothes."

The Daily Mail account put the blame for these disturbances on Germany's finance minister, who warned the Greeks that "the German government does not intend to give a cent." At least Bild, a popular German newspaper, was trying to be helpful. It suggested that Greece sell Corfu...and that Greeks get up earlier and work harder.

Meanwhile, from Iceland comes news that every voter with an IQ above air temperature has cast his ballot against a bailout plan. The Icelanders were slated to make good $5.3 billion in bank losses. But why shackle common voters to the banks' losses? The plan was so outrageous and so unpopular that Iceland's normally compliant Prime Minister called for a referendum. Given a chance to vote on it, 93% said no. The other 7% probably read it wrong.

Insurrection is in the air. A revolution in this overspending, mismanaged countries is brewing. In England, government employees are preparing the biggest strike since the '80s. In America, dissatisfaction with Congress is at record highs; four out of five of those polled say, "Nothing can be accomplished in Washington." And yet here we are in watching and waiting, and I suspect we will see 90% or more of the current House of Representatives incumbents re-elected in the fall.

Herewith, an attempt to deconstruct the rebel yell. By way of preview, it's not the principle of the thing, we conclude; it's the money.

There are more clowns in economics than in the circus. They invented an economic model that has been very popular for more than 50 years - particularly in the US and Britain. It began with a bogus insight; John Maynard Keynes thought consumer spending was the key to prosperity; he saw savings as a threat. He had it backwards. Consumer spending is made possible by savings, investment and hard work - not the other way around. Then, William Phillips thought he saw a cause and effect relationship between inflation and employment; increase prices and you increase employment too, he said. But I believe he was wrong too.

Jacques Rueff had already explained that the Phillips Curve was just a flimflam. Inflation surreptitiously reduced wages. It was lower wages that made it easier to hire people, not enlightened central bank management. But the scam proved attractive. The economy has been biased towards inflation ever since.

Economists enjoyed the illusion of competence; they could hold their heads up at cocktail parties and pretend to know what they were talking about. Now they were movers and shakers, not just observers. The new theories seemed to give everyone what they most wanted. Politicians could spend even more money that didn't belong to them. Consumers could enjoy a standard of living they couldn't afford. And the financial industry could earn huge fees by selling debt to people who couldn't pay it back.

Never before had so many people been so happily engaged in acts of reckless larceny and legerdemain. But as the system aged, its promises increased. Beginning in the '30s, the government took it upon itself to guarantee the essentials in life - retirement, employment, and to some extent, health care. These were expanded over the years to include minimum salary levels, unemployment compensation, disability payments, free drugs, food stamps and so forth. Households no longer needed to save.

As time wore on, more and more people lived at someone else's expense. Lobbying and lawyering became lucrative professions. Bucket shops and banks neared respectability. Every imperfection was a call for legislation. Every traffic accident was an opportunity for wealth redistribution. And every trend was fully leveraged.

If there was anyone still solvent in America or Britain in the 21st century, it was not the fault of the banks. They invented subprime loans and securitizations to profit from segments of the market that had theretofore been spared. By 2005 even jobless people could get themselves into debt. Then, the bankers found ways to hide debt...and ways to allow the public sector to borrow more heavily. Goldman Sachs did for Greece essentially what it had done for the subprime borrowers in the private sector - it helped them to go broke.

As long as people thought they were getting something for nothing, this economic model enjoyed wide support. But now that they are getting nothing for something, the masses are unhappy. Half the US states are insolvent. Nearly all of them are preparing to increase taxes. In Europe too, taxes are going up. Services are going down. And taxpayers are being asked to pay for the banks' losses...and pay interest on money spent years ago. Until now, they were borrowing money that would have to be repaid sometime in the future. But today is the tomorrow they didn't worry about yesterday. So, the patsies are in revolt.

Several countries are already past the point of no return. Even if America taxed 100% of all household wealth, it would not be enough to put its balance sheet in the black. And Professors Rogoff and Reinhart show that when external debt passes 73% of GDP or 239% of exports, the result is default, hyperinflation, or both. IMF data show the US already too far gone on both scores, with external debt at 96% of GDP and 748% of exports.

The rioters can go home, in other words. The system we have taken for granted for so long should . . . and will collapse on its own.

Cash for Clunkers and Government Health Care

A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year. A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a year. So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year. They claim 700,000 vehicles so that's 224 million gallons saved per year.

That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption. More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million. We spent $8.57 for every dollar we saved.

I'm pretty sure they will do a great job with our health care, though? I wonder if they will be as efficient as the Postal Service (now about to cut out Saturday mail) and Amtrak. If costs get too out of control with government managed health care, Congress could always pass a bill prohibiting people from getting sick on weekends I guess? For more on government efficiency at managing things see the Argentina posting that follows this.

Cry for Us Argentina

In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world.
While Great Britain's maritime power and its far-flung empire had propelled it to a dominant position among the world's industrialized nations, only the United States challenged Argentina for the position of the world's second-most powerful economy.


It was blessed with abundant agriculture, vast swaths of rich farmland laced with navigable rivers and an accessible port system. It's level of industrialization was higher than many European countries: railroads, automobiles and telephones were commonplace.


In 1916, a new president was elected. Hipólito Irigoyen, formed a party called 'The Radicals' under the banner of "fundamental change" with an appeal to the middle class.


Among Irigoyen's changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance, and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy. Put simply, the state assumed economic control of a vast portion of the country's operations and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts.


With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers' contributions.



The death knell for the Argentine economy, however, came with the election of Juan Perón. Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric and attacks at the nation's rich.



This targeted group was swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied
middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated.


Under Perón, the size of government exploded through massive programs of social spending and by encouraging the growth of labor unions.


High taxes and economic chaos took their inevitable toll even after Perón had been driven from office. But his populist rhetoric and "contempt for economic realities" lived on. Argentina's federal government continued to spend far beyond its means.


Hyper Inflation exploded in 1989, and ended in the final stage of a process the government described as "industrial protectionism, redistribution of income based on increased wages, and a needed growing state intervention in the economy..."

The Argentine government practice of printing money to pay off its public debts, crushed the economy. Inflation hit 3000%, reminiscent of the Weimar Republic. Food riots were rampant; stores were looted; the country descended into chaos.


And by 1994, Argentina 's public pensions - - the equivalent of Social Security - had imploded. The payroll tax had increased from 5% to 26%, but it wasn't enough. In addition, Argentina had implemented a value-added tax (VAT), new income taxes, a personal tax on wealth, and additional revenues based upon the sale of public enterprises. These crushed the private sector, further damaging the economy. A government-controlled "privatization" effort to rescue seniors' pensions was attempted. INSTEAD, by 2001, those funds had also been raided by the government, the monies replaced by Argentina's defaulted government bonds.


By 2002, government fiscal irresponsibility induced a national economic crisis as severe as America 's Great Depression."


For those that will listen, history shouts over and over that we cannot sustain the wild spending and government takeover of business, banking, health care, and continue to inflate unfunded entitlement programs! Like history tells us, it will be an utter and complete disaster!


Today's politicians are enslaving future generations to poverty and misery. And they will be long gone when it all implodes. They will be as cold and dead as Juan Perón when my children and grand children must ultimately pay .

The Nots Prayer

44 Good reasons to carry a camera