Freedom and Illusion

When I was a kid long, long ago, before time began, or anyone had thought of why time ought to begin, or what it might be good for, I lived in rural King George County, Virginia. The county bordered on the Potomac River and was mostly woods. Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground, on which my family lived, sloped down to Machodoc Creek, perhaps three-quarters of a mile wide.

Things were looser then. When I wanted to go shooting, I put my rifle, a nice .22 Marlin with a ten-power Weaver, on my shoulder and walked out the main gate. At the country store outside the gate I’d buy a couple of boxes of long rifles, no questions asked, and away my co-conspirator Rusty and I went to some field or swamp to murder beer cans.

Today if a kid of fifteen tried it, six squad cars and a SWAT team (in all likelihood literally) would show up with sirens yowling, the kid’s parents would be jailed, the store closed and its proprietors imprisoned, and the kid subjected to compulsory psychiatric examination. Times change.

Fred's reminiscence brought back some similar memories from our childhood - Fred and I are about the same age. It also points out the fact that by using a gradual but relentless approach, government has stolen much of our freedom and liberty in our lifetimes.

Nothing has Changed

Nothing of any importance has changed. The engine of Empire is lugging a bit as the load increases, but the Empire's army of high-caste technocrats are hard at work, securing their perquisites and fat paychecks by keeping the sprawling global machine running. 

Just as in the late stages of the Roman Empire, magical thinking abounds. This is America, the capital of can-do! We are audaciously hopeful because we always arise, newly envigorated by the unquenchable spring of American innovation, blah blah blah. 

Thus is truth silenced because it might be painful, and require actual change rather than highly glossed facsimiles.  

We are bogged down by restrictive rules and regulations. Our supposedly limited government has imposed unlimited and onerous roadblocks in the paths of "free" enterprise. The powerful will not acknowledge their failures - they only shift the blame and inflict a new gnarly set of rules to "correct" the problems which they created. As Don points out, the horses hitched to the coach are growing very weary pulling the oppressive load.

Mass Delusion - American Style

Based on all available evidence, it seems the American public wants to be misled. They have chosen ignorance over knowledge and understanding. They want to believe their corrupt leaders. They want to believe that things always work out in the long run. They want to believe that the economy is about to get better. They don’t want to think about unsustainable debt, unfunded liabilities, saving for retirement, or Simon Cowell leaving American Idol. Americans desperately want to be deluded into another bubble, but there are no evident bubbles left to blow. The existing American delusion is that the current fiscal path will not lead to the utter destruction of our once great Republic.

Our politicians are trying to convince us that everything is hunky-dory and they will lead us to prosperity if we'll just be patient. We suggest that they are leading us to economic disaster and it is not a time for patience but a time for mass rebellion against their policies.

Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'

We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened? 

We've arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican. 

Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely: 

Power and control begets the desire, nay, the lust for greater power and control. 

Magically Erasing Debts and Liabilities

[We] drooling lay persons are all too, too stupid to comprehend something that is actually simplicity itself: when the supply of money grows faster than the stock of goods and service. , the money will diffuse through the stock of goods and services with the result of higher prices for goods and services.

Seems simple to me! But then I am not a Federal Reserve hotshot with a PhD in economics from an “acceptable” university to wave in anyone’s face, and neither do I subscribe to the idiotic neo-Keynesian econometric crapola that fascinates the Federal Reserve and mainstream academia, a theoretical monstrosity which has resulted in the horrific economic mess we are in, and from which there is, alas, no escape.

"Party on, dudes" says the Fed. Do so at our peril says The Mogambo Guru.

Boiling Over

The American population is seething.
The Washington elite had better pay attention!
    "Do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down?," asks Peggy Noonan.  "They don't act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s, the growing gulf between the country's thought leaders, as they're called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.
   "But I've never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm"

   This piece by Peggy Noon appears in the Saturday print edition of the Wall Street Journal  She is right. The detachment of the politicos in Washington from the long-term worries of the average American has made citizens feel powerless.  "Inner pessimism and powerlessness," says she, "is a dangerous combination."  America At Risk of Boiling Over

 We spotted this tidbit on Wrisley today. Are you seething? Do you feel the political elite are detached from our reality? 

The Paradox of Stimulating Growth With Government Spending

They might have admitted their failure and promised to do better next time. Instead, they decided to rescue the debt-laded economy…yes, you guessed it…with more debt!

The project was so loony from the get-go, it made us laugh. But some of the biggest names in economics – Krugman, Stiglitz, et al – are still pushing for more debt-financed “stimulus.”

The trouble with it is obvious, theoretically. Practically, it is even more obvious. In order to get money to give to the private sector, the feds first have to take it from the private sector. Ha ha…

Geithner and crew are conjuring up potions and spells to impress us. We're not impressed nor are we buying their prestidigitatious bulls**t. But they will carry on - until they are stopped by stone cold sober reality or a civilian uprising.