As Sound as a Euro: China Becomes the New USA

 

You hear about the Dollar losing value all the time.  It’s depressing I know, but what are we actually talking about in terms of a decline?  We need a sense of proportion to make the effects of this insane Federal Reserve Devaluation of the Dollar policy come alive for us.

In the last year the Dollar has slipped 7.7% against the Euro

In the last year the Dollar has slipped 5.9% against the Japanese Yen

In the past year Oil Prices have doubled

In the past year Gold is up 44%

If you got a Certificate of Deposit for one year for $10,000, here in Pennsylvania, you would get an interest rate around 3.27%

Milk Prices up 26%

Egg prices up 40%

Pasta prices up 30%

Fruits and Vegetables up 20%

Wait about 6 months and see what happens to the price of EVERYTHING as this tidal wave of inflation works its way through the economy in earnest.  People will not be spending on anything but the essentials and that means unemployment will be spiking soon as employers cut back on labor costs, as their orders shrink.  Rising unemployment coupled with sharply rising prices for commodities and a currency that has already lost about 8% against the Euro this year.  This is going to be a disaster for our country and its going to change who we are and its going to increasingly destabilize a very dangerous world.

Even if you save money in the bank, you know, where it’s safe, you might get 3.27% interest. Compare that with our currency being devalued by 8% per year compared to the Euro and the doubling of oil costs and the increases in food costs.  How much of a raise do you think you will need from the boss to break even in this economic environment?  Do you think you have a chance of getting such a raise even if you worked up the courage to ask for it?  Is the boss saying that people are just lucky to have a job yet?  He will.

As our beloved Federal Reserve has done a hatchet job on the world’s reserve currency, ours, more and more people are concluding that you just don’t want to be in the dollar anymore. The place to invest in is China; and the currency to be vested in is the Euro.  Our monetary policy has become such a fiasco that investors are saying that commodities are less of a risk then the United States Dollar.  What’s wrong with this picture?  Even if you did it all right and saved a nice chunk for yourself you are seeing it lose value, big time, in the face of skyrocketing necessities such as gas, heating oil and food.  Check out this link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLr71mSZqOLI#

 

Now the credit card companies are beginning to roll back the spending limits of people’s credit cards and not allowing the balance transfers that once they did.  You can’t blame them really because they just don’t want to lend money to anyone in an economy like this.  Who can blame them?  All this time charging 19% on outstanding balances and having the responsible people pay that so they can fleece the irresponsible and now they are suddenly shy about letting anyone and his dog have a platinum card with an outrageous credit limit. Check out this link on how your credit score may be dropping without your knowledge: URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25419005/

Given the decline in Real Estate the banks are becoming increasingly reluctant to make home equity loans for people who want to go that way.  This is probably a good thing in terms of basic financial discipline for the typical homeowner but so many people are addicted to being able to tap that vanishing equity to put out fires in their personal finances.  Overnight that option may simply dry up and blow away if this economy continues to deteriorate.

How long is this going to go on?  In this time of craziness and with everyone tightening their belts is it possible to not have another crisis in the financial industry?  Oil is going through the roof and there is no end in sight.  What will our economy look like with $7.00 a gallon gas? Remember, oil and the dollar have this weird relationship: as the dollar drops the oil prices go up and if it goes on long enough there may be no stopping it.  Think of it as a sort of economic “China Syndrome” that will destroy the dollar if allowed to melt down like this.

This is a grim time.  This is a time to reorder your priorities in advance of the coming economic tsunami that will redefine life in America for generations if not forever.  We are about to go through the ringer.  It’s just not possible to avoid that conclusion if you honestly face the facts of the economy today.  It’s time to save your money, get out of debt, and prepare for all the mistakes our government will be making in the years to come; cloaked in nonsense about “helping” us. This whole mess started with the mortgage crisis and the rising foreclosure rate, what do you think our present circumstances to say nothing of the economic times in 6 months are going to do to the mortgage default rate?

Just like the people in the 1930’s we may see our economy go into the toilet for a long time. Our great grand parents discovered that they still had God, their families, each other. They still had the will to make it better, and they did.  May the same be said of us.  As Franklin Roosevelt said in the depression; “Our problems are limited, thank God, to only material things.”  This is the attitude to cultivate today because the times are going to be abruptly tougher, in the years to come, than at any time since the great depression.  It may well top the depression as the worst economic event to engulf our country. It’s going to take everything we’ve got to fix it, folks, but for the sake of future generations we need to get our house in order, come what may.

Prov 17:16

6 Of what use is money in the hand of a fool,

since he has no desire to get wisdom?

 

Bernanke’s Folly and the Second Great Depression:

 

 

The unfortunate Benjamin  Bernanke, the historian and scholar of the great depression, has found to his chagrin, and our undoing, that he is to banking what Ehud Olmert is to Israeli war fighting.  He has, with his bail out of Bear Sterns, unleashed a title wave of inflation that is likely to wash away the world financial structures as we know them.  Bernanke acted to save banking and destroyed everything else ultimately including banking. I heard that Goldman Saks thinks we could have $200 oil yet this summer.  Five bucks a gallon is cheap compared to $7.50 a gallon for Christmas.  This insane inflation wave is about to bring spending around the world to a standstill and what banks are still standing are going to be very reluctant to lend anyone a dime.  My conclusion is that the financial meltdown started in the mortgage loan crisis, gave rise to the financial crisis resulting in Bernanke’s folly, the complete undermining of the dollar and complete destabilization of the oil market resulting in what is likely to be the next Great Depression.  

            There is no stopping oil going right through the roof and I would not be surprised to see $8.00 a gallon at the pump by New Years. As bad as the continuing rise in prices in gas is the unbelievable speed with which its occurring. It’s the speed that’s going to tank, and I mean TANK, the stock markets around the world.  It’s the speed of the rising prices that means consumers  and businesses have hit the breaks, big time, on any discretionary spending until we know what’s on the other side.  Unemployment is going to show a huge spike as people react to the massive oil increases being passed on to consumers in every sector of commerce.  Already there is reporting on companies closing stores and the tightening of belts. No one says anything like “It’s as sound as a dollar” anymore: If they have a functioning brain they seem to be saying, “It’s as sound as a barrel of crude oil”.  In the new normal that the unfortunate Mr. Bernanke has unleashed on us the value of oil has become the lifeboat of choice: forsaking and relegating the US Dollar to the dustbin of history.  Oil has no end in sight and we are simply a day late and about 9.5 trillion dollars short.

            Politically speaking this could not have happened at a worse time.  The Republicans and the distinctly unpopular George W. Bush are about to get the blame for real terror in American families that is due to hit just before the presidential election.  The result may well be the election of Obama, our first socialist president since we all know that Bill Clinton was the first Black President, and an overwhelming democrat majority in congress.  Imagine all those socialist democrats in office when an economic crisis of this magnitude unfolds: they will have the government controlling everything.  By this time three years from now you’re going to have high unemployment and it won’t be possible to tell the difference between America and Europe. The one lasting gift of the unfortunate Mr. Bernanke, to posterity, will be the end of America’s leadership of the world and the return of Europe to planetary leadership.  Yes, our “sophisticated” friends, the Europeans, will return to the leading role having hopefully learned from two world wars and soviet communism, to chart a less bloodthirsty role for itself. The political landscape in America is about to be permanently changed because the Federal Reserve once again made a fatal miscalculation. 

            The Bible makes it clear that the Europeans are in a leadership role in the end times.  The United States is not referred to in any clearly identifiable way.  I suspect that Pax-Americana is going to be the object of no small amount of nostalgia in the brave new world we are entering.  All things come to an end and history is repeat with mighty empires that were destroyed or as in the case of Ancient Rome and the USA, collapsed from their own complacency.  I’m afraid there are just three constants in human history to date:  Death, Taxes, and people like the Unfortunate Mr. Bernanke. 

            Check out this link for more on coming attractions:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/27/cnbarclays127.xml

How to Save America and Yourself: Get out of Debt, Stay out of Debt

 

I’ve added a link that tells you what our current national debt totals.  The number is staggering and nearly incomprehensible.  Don’t believe me?   Think about this, when I wrote this article the national debt was the better part of nine and one half trillion dollars.  What does that mean?  9.5 Trillion?  I have no real way to imagine that, do you?  I had to go looking for a way to comprehend a number that big.

 Consider this:  A million seconds ago is about 12 days ago.  A billion seconds ago is about 31 years ago.  A trillion seconds ago is about 31,688 years ago.

Our minds really don’t have a frame of reference for the size of our national debt.  I don’t think the USA is going to be wiped out militarily I think we are going to be wiped out economically.  Our economic implosion will set in motion a move to standardize national currencies into a world currency and global financial structure that will be most unpleasant for the USA. Our national debt is a death warrant that we ourselves have signed and, unless we stop living beyond our means ,we will, in time, be wiped out economically. 

What do we do about all this?  We need a new way of thinking about ourselves and our personal lives as well as our national life.  The solution is very clear.  Don’t spend more then you make.  We’ve heard it all before as Live within Your Means. It’s just as simple, and difficult, as that.  You can’t have everything you want.  You don’t deserve everything you want.  If you had no debt payments would you be hanging on with white knuckles right now as the price of gas threatens your world?  Is a new car, an alimony payment and that one certain house worth the lump in your chest as you consider the cuts you now must make?  What’s wrong?  What happened? 

This is a time to revisit our national priorities, it really is, and it starts in our house with a budget that my wife and I agree on.  The budget is flexible, it’s unbelievably helpful, and it still allows us some goodies but we plan for them.  It allows for some personal spending money out of every paycheck.  It’s adjustable for crazy increases in gas and food and it covers all the bases.  If you need some help with a budget check out the Dave Ramsey Link in this Blog.  We have been working with Dave Ramsey’s Principles for years now and it’s made a huge difference in our life.  A Budget is simply a set of priorities for your spending.  You don’t go hungry; you don’t forgo clothing when you need it.  The budget will take the scales from your eyes and seeing your finances clearly, may be frightening, but it’s the first step in getting out of self imposed slavery to the almighty dollar and a self you can no longer afford.  That’s the state of far too many of us; we are enslaved by the dollar and dealing with how we think our lifestyle should be instead of dealing with how it actually is. 

A good life is one free of fear from all that debt.  A good life is one with good and loving relationships and a life dedicated to telling the truth about what’s really important.  It’s about loving people and God and striving to leave the world a little better then we found it.   Our credit cards and debt controls far too much of our life and it corrupts our instincts and makes us lesser people then we could be.  In the great depression of the 1930,s it was government that jumped in with all kinds of programs to save the day.  The government of today is in debt to the tune of 9.5 trillion bucks, how much help will they be in a financial crash?  Our politicians want to spend a trillion bucks on global warming and god knows how much on universal health care.  Why is it so hard for us as Americans to admit that we can’t afford the government we have today to say nothing of the one to come with universal health care and who knows what additional programs.  We don’t say “I can’t afford that” in our personal life so I guess it’s natural that we can’t say it as a nation either.  Is it pride?  Arrogance?  Stupidity?  What?

Even if you can’t have everything you want you can still have a wonderful life.  I think it was St. Augustine who said that “the consequences of our acts will be what they will be: why would we wish to be deceived?” Living within your means makes you more of a realist and it sharply reduces the stress in your life because the pretending is over.  The gains you begin to make in getting out of the money mess become a very empowering experience. To vanquish debt is worth 10 platinum Master Cards and you even get to sleep at night.  It’s a feeling like no other and it’s the best way to live well.

The price of gas and food are forcing people to wake up from the delusions and denial about how we live our lives today.  What is it going to take for the United States Congress to come to the same conclusion?  What will have to happen?  This is time to tighten our belts and prepare for a rocky road ahead and to” just say no”, to more spending, personal or national, unless we need something and can truly afford it.  It’s time to thank the Chinese for the loans, and pay them back, and to send our personal credit cards back to Visa and Master Card.  

Whatever the future holds for our country and ourselves it’s time to step up to the plate and live responsibly, as sober, clear eyed realists, in admittedly perilous times.  This time of financial trouble can be an opportunity to turn back to God and sound values, to say nothing of family, friends, and our communities.  Let’s try showing up for some of our problems and see if we get a better than if we wave a Discover card at our problems.  Who knows, we might end up much better off if we do.

The Federal Reserve’s Fire Sale: Selling America Short

 

For some time now the Federal Reserve has been devaluing the currency and practically giving away American dollars through incredibly cheap money policy.  We have just emerged from an era of one interest rate cut after another.  The mortgage loan crisis, and the failure of Bear Sterns, made the Fed an interest rate cutting machine of fate that drove the value of our dollar ever lower and the price of oil into the stratosphere. The big money investors were saved to fight another day by the actions of the Fed but now the rest of us are about to pick up the tab.  This is the calm before the storm. 

Up to now we’ve seen the price of gas at the pump escalate to between $4 and $5 dollars a gallon and we’ve seen increases in food prices.  In the coming few months we’re going to see the price of EVERYTHING go way up and that when the Fed’s chickens, as Jeremiah Wright might say, will be coming home to roost.  It takes about six months for the effects of that sharp a jump in oil prices to fully work through the economy. Production and transportation costs for everything will shortly have to be passed on to the consumer. 

Even now the travel industry has got to be feeling the pinch; in six months they will be in sorry shape indeed.  How are airlines supposed to keep flying with prices this high?  The days of cheap food, cheep gas, cheep travel, and cheep money is about to come to an abrupt end.  We are months away from the realization that our economic trajectory is going to change our way of life forever.   The world as we knew it is over and we are about to enter a new world in which we relearn the facts of life that our grandparents and great grandparents tried to pass on to us.

            The Federal Reserve is a profit making corporation owned by the big money of Europe and America.  (The Rockefellers,  JP Morgan, the Rothschild’s, etc.) They are not part of the US Government and they, NOT the US government, control our economy. It’s important to know that the people who OWN us are now selling us short, that is betting that we are going down in value.  The US Dollar has been the worlds reserve currency for some time now and those days are, in my opinion, about to end.  In the days before the Federal Reserve, in the days when we were on the gold standard, the dollar had value independent of the machinations of bankers.  In our times the dollar is backed by “the full faith and credit of the United States”.  We are now a debt based economy in which the Federal Reserve lends the government our own currency for interest, but it wasn’t always so. 

As the US economy melts down in the months to come I suspect that Europe is going to come through smelling like a rose and the Euro will take the place of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Given the political climate and the likelihood that Obama and the Democrats are likely to win big over McCain and the feckless Republicans, when the “crisis” comes: it’s going to be used as an excuse to socialize the country.  As things get worse, the image of FDR is going to be evoked and we will descend into new-dealism that will be an endless slide into an economic coma.

            Just as the Federal Reserve passed out truck loads of dollars to the banks to deal with the “credit crisis” so they will now be forced to tighten up money to deal with the “evils of inflation”.  I don’t have much confidence in that plan!  I think we have reached a tipping point where our dollar will continue to lose value and where credit will be abruptly tightened up at the same time. The result will be an economy where prices continue to rise while the dollar continues to lose value. Money for investment will dry up and the government will start taking over large chunks of the economy, nationalizing whole industries, for the common good, and to keep the economy from going belly up. 

Naturally the government will have to expand to fulfill this new role and, naturally, taxes will have to go up such that we will pay more and more in taxes.  In ten years, we face the possibility of waking up one morning and being surf’s in our own country. Previously the richest country in the world, we will get up one morning and look around, with a blank stare,  at a  crumbling country.  Perhaps we should join the spotted owl and the polar bear on the endangered species list because if we don’t get a handle on the money and this economy, the way of life we now enjoy will be extinct long before the spotted owl.

Proverbs 22:7

7 The rich rule over the poor,

and the borrower is servant to the lender.

NIV

We should have known better. 

An Orgy of Outrage: The Joy of Being Offended in America

 

I never cease to be amazed at the number of people who think, because a truth is offensive, it must therefore not be true.  What ever happen to “the truth hurts” being a good thing?  I well remember checking out the Clinton Impeachment hearings on TV and how Maxine Waters would be taking offence at every other word that came out of the mouth of Henry Hyde.  It was like a kid’s game.  It still is.

Islamic Fanatics are responsible for the 911 attacks.

Medicare and Social Security are financially unsound and bankrupt.

Women in America have the “right” to kill their babies when they are the inconvenient product of consensual sex and the mother does not wish to be troubled with them.

When Bill Clinton offended Obama in the North Carolina Primary it started a trend of more and more blacks voting for Obama and more and more whites voting for Hillary.

Illegal immigrants to the USA are criminals and, under the law, should be deported.

Being offended is not a crime in North America.

Now I would be willing to bet that someone would find one or more of the above statements offensive. But how many of us would find the above statements to be true?  Let me ask you this: if a statement is both offensive and true should it be suppressed?  Or should we be a country in which a true statement should never be condemned or suppressed just because someone could be offended?  Which country are we now living in?

When I was a poor, innocent, baby boom kid, growing up in the Midwest, I was hooked on a show called Star Trek.  It was pure escapism, and it was great fun, that humans could always figure out and act on the right thing to do in lots of exotic circumstances.  Humans looked really good and that sure appealed to me.  I even read, don’t tell anyone, Star Trek Books, and now stop rolling your eyes!  The point is that in one of the books, I think it was The Vulcan Academy Murders; there is a priceless truth that we desperately need in our society today.  Here it is:  THERE IS NO OFFENCE WHERE NONE IS TAKEN.  It just goes to show that Science Fiction can be a good thing.  What a statement. 

Would we rather live in a world of gotcha politics with Obama and Hillary trying to convince us of who should get the most powerful job in the world based on who can pretend to be the biggest victim?  Or would we like to live in a world in which people simply refuse to take offence so easily and never when the truth is present?

Both points of view are ultimately value statements.  I have the right to take offence and demand apologies and reparations and advantages or I have the grace to overlook and offence and refuse to add to the strife and misery of our PC world.  Which is the greater good? 

The Politicians with identity politics want us to be offended because the moment we are, we can be grouped, and largely controlled, by disingenuous policy proposals and our votes harvested through corruption.  The corruption starts within the offended and the demand for redress and satisfaction, its amplified by politicians who simply want power, and its price is paid by each of us by suspicion, stereotyping, and avoiding “them”. It would be great to blame it all on the politicians and the media’s endless quest for ratings but don’t be fooled:  we play our part in corruption when we engage in PC wars. 

By the way, the statement above that I believe to be false is the last one: The idea that it’s not a crime to be offended in North America.  Given the Hate Crimes legislation out there and the Canadians prosecuting Christians for observing that the bible declares homosexuality to be a sin: it is fast becoming a crime to offend someone in North America!  I must be behind the times or a discredit to my baby boom peers in thinking that freedom of speech is more important, to say nothing of freedom of religion, then a homosexuals right not to be reminded that the bible considers homosexuality a sin.  But the truth is that all societies make such decisions, and offensive as it may be to me, they sometimes, foolishly, chose political correctness over the truth. Go figure!

Deciphering the News: Extracting Truth from Politically Correct News Reporting

 

            Baby Boom Professors introduced political correctness in their classrooms which, in turn, gave them license to create “agents of social change”, instead of educated, competent, critically thinking graduates. Nowhere is this corruption of speech and the intellect more destructive than in the field of journalism. It is sad but true that the journalists of today have forgotten whom they serve.  It used to be the case that journalists served the truth and understood their duty to bring the truth, the news of the day, to our media outlets in an undistorted form. This encouraged the reader to exercise his intellect in interpreting and judging the meaning and import of the new facts presented. It also allowed the consumer, not the journalist, to determine his response to the material presented.  Some readers may have found cause to hate the civil resistors during the civil rights movement while some may have been inspired to join their cause: but it would have been their decision. 

News today is written with the ethical and moral import designed into the coverage and it’s meant to produce a specific opinion on behalf of the reader.  Today’s journalist ignores the fact that the reader should grapple, critically, with the news of the day, and wrestle with the ethical dilemmas contained in it, and this is as necessary to being an informed citizen as the facts of the story being reported. To contend that journalists know how we should react morally and ethically to the news of the day, is to remove the educational process from news reporting, in favor of craven manipulation and arrogance on behalf of the journalist.  People need to struggle and find meaning in the material themselves, no one can legitimately do it for them, and the fact that the readers might make a mistake, does not justify “massaging” the news to fit into a politically correct template. It goes well beyond persuading someone of the wisdom of your point of view into manipulating them by redefining words, and imposing a status on protected groups that they don’t deserve.

For example, instead of writing that an Arab terrorist cut off the head of an American Fortune 500 executive for defiling Islamic lands in the mid east; the journalist of today, an agent of social change, would see it as:  An freedom fighting Asian fatally dealt with an Exploitive Corporate Executive engaged in Cultural and Religious Insensitivity Against Islam. Here are those two headlines side by side for easier comparison:

Arab Terrorist Beheads American Executive for Occupying Islamic Lands

Asian Freedom Fighter Defends Islam from Capitalist Greed and the Illegal Occupation of Palestine

            Now, to be charitable, we can posit that both headlines honestly represent the writer’s point of view on the relevant facts: it’s just that one headline is wrong and the other is right. Its not half right or partly right, its not culturaly sensitive, it’s not helping society its just wrong.  If you are writing for an American News Outlet, serving the information needs of the American People, then we need to know that the guy was an Arab Terrorist. Not making that fact explicit is immoral and manipulative and very poor reporting.

Here is where the fun begins.  The corrupt politically correct baby boom editor will insist that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.  There is a certain truth to that assertion but it’s ridiculously out of context. In the point of view of the Americans, whose paper is doing the reporting, the guy is a terrorist.  The fact that his comrades would see him as a freedom fighter is true, patently obvious, but entirely irrelevant. As a reader I want the facts of the news story and I don’t care who it offends as long as it’s true. 

The news media wants to be “sensitive” to other cultures and project the superiority of their world view while crafting the “truth” for those who may otherwise misinterpret it.  This culturally sensitive shaping of the news gives the media outlet in question a rosy view of how it has become an agent of social change and is fighting unfair stereotypes by enlightened reporting.  It also give the media a level of power that it does not deserve and should not possess.

As the American reader I just feel lied to, manipulated, and otherwise jerked around by some media reporter trying to pass off his or her political baggage as news.  I am the audience not the guy in Riyadh Saudi Arabia: I just want the facts because I don’t have time to sit through how the editor or the writer gets a big boost to his elitist self image by pretending that offending the Arabs is more important than discharging their duty to inform the American Public. How the media feels about the story is something I dont care about: Just get the facts right. This is not rocket science folks.  This is how political correctness has corrupted American Journalism and why the news reporting of the day often falls short of the mark.  This is why people are looking for other ways to be informed. 

I leave you with this from the bible.  Peace be with you.

Zech 8:16-17

16 But this is what you must do: Tell the truth to each other. Render verdicts in your courts that are just and that lead to peace. 17 Do not make evil plots to harm each other. And stop this habit of swearing to things that are false. I hate all these things, says the LORD.”

NLT

Nigerian Oil Pipeline Attacked: How Much will this Add to the Cost of a Gallon of Gas?

 

               The suddenly precarious nature of the world’s oil markets continues to underscore the danger posed by terrorists bent on either getting the attention of the host government, in this case Nigeria, or in shaking the very foundations of the world economy. Nigeria is not a country I spend a lot of time worrying about, but all that has changed abruptly today when I learned that a terror attack has successfully shut down about 120,000 barrels a day from the world’s oil supply.  Is that some earth shaking sum?  Would anyone have noticed such a small reduction a year or two ago?  I doubt it.  But given the nature of the oil fiasco the US finds itself in: It’s pretty clear that you and I will be paying more in gas by this Friday!  It also underscores a dangerous trend for the worlds terrorist groups that threats and attacks against oil fields and production facilities have a definite impact on the world economy.

            Consider what would happen if other disaffected groups were to follow the example of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.  I lived in San Diego from about 2001-2005 and I learned more than I care to know about groups like MS-13,( a brutal Hispanic Gang) and La Rassa, (A Fascist Hispanic Group called “ The Race”) just to name a few.  Consider this offering I found on U tube from dear old la rassa. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYnN4JCEaBc

            Not to put too fine a point on all this but if the drug cartels and gangs who are more powerful on the southern border then either Mexico or the United States, decided to turn their considerable criminal infrastructure against the Mexican oil fields, unless we lighten up on immigration or drug enforcement, what do you suppose our brave Congress would do? If a couple of groups like this could make a credible threat against the oil fields and production in Mexico or even South America is there anything the US wouldn’t do to keep the oil flowing?  We already send gobs of money to the Islamic countries who are not exactly best buddies with us and if it kept the oil flowing how could groups like this, and there are plenty more, exploit a credible threat to Oil exporting countries closer to home?

            Now the fact remains that we can’t take on security tasks in Nigeria and we can’t or won’t control the border with Mexico, (Why do you suppose that is, by the way?) so we can only talk a good game with the people who control the recourse. What if control of the Mexican Oil Fields is all that makes the USA of today possible?  Now if we consider threats to Canadian Oil Recourses and the surge of Islamic Immigration that Canada has seen in later years, your have the means for a small bunch of fanatics to bring down the west. We keep thinking that the Jihadists will smuggle a nuke across the Mexican border but what if they just blew up the Mexican oil industry?  I guess the question I am asking myself, and the Politicians in Washington is this:  Is it the case that our way of life depends of the valor and integrity of the Mexican Federal Police?  Does our existence as a county depend on the politically correct Royal Canadian Mounted Police and its “sensitivity” to the Islamists in their midst?

            Where are the people in our government who are going to deal with this issue as it is? How long do we have to lose before some group or another crashes the world economy because we trusted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Mexican Federal Police, and Greenpeace to secure the lifeblood of our economy?

            Here are some links about the situation in Nigeria:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7467331.stm

http://www.newsmax.com/international/nigeria_oil_unrest/2008/06/21/106475.html

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2008/06/21/Nigerian_militants_attack_Chevron_pipeline/UPI-63801214081679/

 

            We need people in Congress and the White House who can get a handle on this mess we’re in.  What we need right now is another Solomon who can see the path through our own folly.  Just for fun consider the following a short Brush Up on the sort of leaders we should always be looking for.  Does this sound like McCain or Obama?

Peace be with you.

1 Kings 3:4-94

The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. 5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.” 6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day. 7 “Now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

NIV

Israel Practicing Attack Runs on Iran: Wars and rumors of wars?

                I just wonder if an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is actually in the offing this time.  As of January 20^th 2009 George W. Bush will no longer be President, and if I were the Israelis and knew I had to do this: I would rather have the American response framed by President Bush rather than President Obama.  Consider the fact that Iran has dispersed their facilities all over the country unlike the Iraqis under Saddam who created just one big easy target.  The Iranians knew what happened to Saddam so a lot of their key assets for bomb making are deep underground, making them difficult to wipe out, unless Israel were to use a tactical nuke or two. I have seen reports on this eventuality in the past and it would seem certain to ratchet up the game in the Middle East. There has been any number of saber rattling stunts, by both sides in recent days ,but with the clock ticking on the end of the Bush administration and the prospect of a hostile Obama Administration ,I think the Israelis are getting ready to act soon.

On the front page of the Jerusalem Post they have a story about the practice bombing runs, in addition to a story about the Russians warning Israel not to attack Iran.  It never ceases to amaze me that the Bible predicted an alliance in the last days between Iran and Russia thousands of years ago.  This must be just a coincidence right? Maybe the prophet Ezekiel was having a bad day when he talked about a nation to the uttermost north (Russia) of Israel who would lead a confederation of Mideast Muslim nation in a terrible war against Israel. Not that the Russians or the Chinese would have any great concerns over all that Oil in the Mideast.  This must be just another coincidence right? 

It is becoming increasingly apparent in the last few months that if someone really wants to take on the US and the western democracies of Europe then threatening the Mid East Oil supply, to say nothing of attacking them, could destroy the free world’s economy over night.  Not that oil fields and facilities would be a tempting target or anything. 

Now we see just how vulnerable and utterly dependant we have become on Arab oil and we see just how totally an enemy could destroy us because of our utter stupidity in not having developed our own oil reserves.  What a way to learn this lesson, and are enemies are learning it right along with us.  What is the point of saving the spotted owl and the polar bear if our stupidity means we all end up glowing in the dark, dead as a post, anyway? 

Consider this very interesting story from the perspective of Fox News, The Jerusalem Post, and the Debka File and see if you detect a pattern emerging.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,369465,00.html

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5362

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1213794287750&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

And don’t worry about the price of gas the day after the attack on Iran:  I’m sure Barak Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed can handle it.  Maybe Obama will talk Iran out of those nasty nukes, after all Senator Obama is well known for his silver tongue and soaring rhetoric: so if anyone could talk the Muslims and the Israelis from fighting, surly Barak Obama would lead the pack.

The Cult of Environmentalism and the Destruction of America

 

              The very worst problems come from believing your own nonsense.  At the end of the day, the truth is the truth, it is what it is, and there is no avoiding the truth forever. The truth is that so much of baby boom liberalism has become the default religion of America. The High Priests of Political Correctness have made a sacrament of any green activity like planting trees, blocking the building of any refineries, not drilling for oil, and for not recycling. So now the Chinese can drill for oil with the Cubans 90 miles off our shore but we can’t because that would be a sin.  A sin against nature and the baby booms new world order, and we can’t have that can we?

               Pick an issue. Baby Boomers have made an uncompromising mockery of it.  The solution to the energy and oil crisis is to block any progress anywhere and pat themselves on the back for being like spoiled children throwing a tantrum. No Drilling, No Nuclear Energy, No Coal,  No Compromise, No Way:  Lets burn up the food supply and create as big a crisis in food prices as we did in oil prices! Plane childish obstinacy and immaturity has mistaken a thirty year sulk about oil and created a twenty-first century nightmare that has the power to destabilize if not destroy civilization: that is  if the adults among us don’t step up and disempower the childlike baby boomers. Throwing a thirty year tantrum is not an oil Policy, its irresponsibility and dangerous.

               What have our green laws accomplished for us? We have exported our industrial base abroad, we have dealt our national security a serious blow, we’ve made improving and maintaining our infrastructure  impossible, we’ve empowered legal thugs who brandish environmental law like a gun. We’ve done all this at the expense of our security and stability, and we’ve bred a race of perpetual children who think they are God and can save the Earth. It might be fun to imagine that we are the saviors of our world but we can’t even save our self if the gas prices get much more out of hand.

We have a lot more “green” technology and we would be the safest bet to do offshore drilling but because of our environmental religion we don’t use our know-how preferring, instead, to rely on the legendary environmentalism of Chinese companies to safely produce the oil off our shores. We have the ability, like no other country on earth, to drill in the arctic and do no real environmental harm but its against our religion.  If we don’t the Russians will and they don’t have the touching regard our baby boomers have for the polar bear and the spotted owl.

               I know its heresy for the new green religion of our day to suggest that man was created by God and that we have a right to live on the earth, without apology, and to use its recourses in the spirit of being good stewards and to have our civilization as best we can.  We make mistake, we learn, and we correct the mistakes.  The idea that we might make an environmental mistake and because that is possible we should not use our recourses is the most arrogant, stupid and childlike reasoning I’ve ever heard. We are dependent on the mid east for our oil and they just don’t like us very much.  Hugo Chaves down in Venezuela doesn’t like us much either.  Of course our friends the Russians would never want to see anything bad happen to us, right?  After all we’re still the big kid on the block, aren’t we? 

               The breakdown of ours and the world’s economy and civilization is nothing to be playing games with and we need to get a whole lot more realistic and responsible right now.  Wars may well be fought to get the last of the oil and if we have the ability to buy time and space to solve this thing in the long term we need to get too it.  We need our oil companies drilling and we need to take care of business like adults who have a responsibility to the forthcoming generations.  The law of unintended consequences does not take kindly to adults who never grew up and the world can be a very unforgiving place.  For the sake of our kids and our country and our planet we need to bring in the era of enlightened stewardship. We may already be out of time.

1 Cor 13:9-12

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child , I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

NIV

Hard Times Ahead: How Oil Prices, Inflation, and the Falling Dollar will Produce a Global Depression.

 

                              We live in a time when the USA owes trillions of dollars to other countries.  All the Social Security money and Medicare money has been spent, instead of saved and invested, and the Baby Boomers are now starting to retire.  We’ve been in denial about our energy sources, and our energy production all these years and now oil is spinning out of control and taking the world’s economy with it.  Because we’ve been in denial about credit, from credit cards and personal debt, to mortgage lending, to all the crazy financial instruments of today, we’ve been forced to devalue our own currency,  at an alarming rate. About three months ago during the Bear Sterns fiasco we hit what I think will be the trigger point for the next Great Depression which I fully expect within three months from now.

               Here is how the song is sung, sing along with me, wont you?  First we gave mortgages to every clown out there with no regard to credit worthiness.  Next, we got into big trouble when major financial firms were suspected of being unsound so we rapidly expanded credit while debasing our  US Dollar. With the dollar in the basement, the oil speculators went wild, figuring that oil is the place to be when you can’t trust a dollar anymore.  The oil prices are off the charts and this in turn exacerbates the problem of the falling dollar, while also causing gas, food, and shortly the price of EVERYTHING ELSE TO SPIKE. Our creditors look at us with disbelief while we refuse to develop and drill our own oil and our politicians preach that we “Cant drill our way out of this”.  We lower interest rates to support our exploding debt while the bill for our “entitlements” come due without a rational policy for entitlements.  It usually takes about six months for a disaster to express itself in the economy.  I think Bear Sterns started the clock.

               Now we  know what an alcoholic feels like because we, like the alcoholic, have lived in denial all this time about basic matter concerns with our survival.  Money needs to be worth something.  We need to live within our means.  We only grant credit to people who are credits worthy. Building oil refinery’s so we always have plenty of capacity, drilling our own oil, while doing our best to minimize the ecological impact, is not optional: WE MUST DO IT. We need to place logic and reason ahead of our self image and desire to be environmentally hip.

We have so many years of poisonous class rhetoric and “identity politics” that we can’t avoid racial and class violence during what is sure to be a major social upheaval. In the Great Depression of the thirty’s, crime actually went down.  They had social workers interview people and ask them why they didn’t turn to crime when facing destitution and Respondents mostly always said: “Because that would have been wrong.”  People don’t act that way anymore. This time around there is going to be violence.

               When I was a kid, I used to be amused at all those little pamphlets that the religious nuts would hand out to anyone that would take them.  It was always titled something dramatic like “Beware the Mark of the Beast” or “Don’t Take the Mark of the Beast!” The idea of all the governments of the world coming together to create a one world economic system was absurd.  Give unto me, a break, I would think, and shake my head ,while pondering the prospect of all the different governments cooperating on anything! For crying out loud: Our own government can’t agree that we should drill for oil and deport illegal aliens!  In my wildest dreams I could not imagine anything that could produce such an event.  I can now.

               If I’m right then we’re on the cusp of a real live depression, at a time when we are about to elect a real live socialist, Barak Obama. How would a dyed in the wool socialist get us out of a world curency crash?  Eh?  I suspect that the world’s central banks will band together to create a super currency, or at least regional currencies, like the Euro and the coming Amero.  I think banking, and currency will be stabilized in order to stabilize the oil prices.  I suspect that while all this is going on we are going to have massive inflation to essentially reduce, to manageable levels, the amount owed to the Baby Boomers for their Social Security and Medicare. Given all the security concerns, and the massive illegal immigration going on, in both Europe and America; we’ll need tamper proof ID’s that will probably have biometric properties. This would also be a good way to tackle identity theft and government pension plan controls and even medical records that are tamper proof. 

               The bible puts it this way:

Ezek 7:10-13

10 “The day is here! It has come! Doom has burst forth, the rod has budded, arrogance has blossomed! 11 Violence has grown into a rod to punish wickedness; none of the people will be left, none of that crowd — no wealth, nothing of value. 12 The time has come, the day has arrived. Let not the buyer rejoice nor the seller grieve, for wrath is upon the whole crowd. 13

               It sure looks to me like we are on the cusp of a global crisis that is likely to usher in the first of our global solutions and global institutions to defend the “common good”.  It’s strange how so much of it just happens to line up so close to those goofy pamphlets the religious nuts handed out long ago.  And they got it from a book by lots of different authors written over thousands of years that seems to have so much to say about today’s headlines!   Must just be a coincidence huh? I leave you with the following thought from the New Testament.  Peace be with you.

Rom 13:8-14

8 Pay all your debts, except the debt of love for others. You can never finish paying that! If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill all the requirements of God’s law. 9 For the commandments against adultery and murder and stealing and coveting — and any other commandment — are all summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”   10 Love does no wrong to anyone, so love satisfies all of God’s requirements. 11 Another reason for right living is that you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for the coming of our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is almost gone; the day of salvation will soon be here. So don’t live in darkness. Get rid of your evil deeds. Shed them like dirty clothes. Clothe yourselves with the armor of right living, as those who live in the light. 13 We should be decent and true in everything we do, so that everyone can approve of our behavior. Don’t participate in wild parties and getting drunk, or in adultery and immoral living, or in fighting and jealousy. 14 But let the Lord Jesus Christ take control of you, and don’t think of ways to indulge your evil desires.

NLT