"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken
Dear All,
Mencken's observation is particularly apt in the wake of the collectivist exploitation of the Newtown tragedy as gun-control opportunists seize on the brutal massacre of schoolchildren as justification for more anti-gun legislation. Slow learners, Americans.
In a fog of grieving hysteria and media prodding, boobus americanus (a term coined by Mencken as well) is pressuring the political class for the easy, quick fix. Heaven forbid the populace might engage in a national examination of its psyche, lest it reveal the unique depravity that glorifies violence in virtually every aspect of its culture -- short of, say -- an actual slaughter of white schoolchildren. Perhaps it might also pay more attention to this common denominator to school violence. Lanza by the way was taking the anti-psychotic drug, Fanapt,
Boobus' inability to recognize the futility of attempting to prohibit people from having the things they want and/or feel they need has a long history. Between the passage of the Constitution's 18th amendment in 1919 and its repeal under the 21st amendment 14 years later a large criminal element was borne to service the demand for alcohol. As illustrated here, decades of exponentially rising costs in the prohibition and war on drugs have been similarly futile in curbing U.S. drug use and dependency, yet that inane effort continues having engendered a criminal class to serve that market so large and entrenched that its gargantuan cash flow has now ensnared the U.S. banking system in a liquidity addiction of its own. With nearly half of all U.S. households possessing at least one firearm, promoting the passage of more laws to control gun ownership belongs in the same fraternity of idiocy which advocates the building of a 3,000 mile border fence to keep out illegal immigrants. Why is it that Americans continue to put their faith in legislators and government to protect them when the black market always has the last word?
Enter gun-control lynch mobs demanding more legislation which would prove to be at best, a minor inconvenience to members of the psychopathic homicidal community, who it can be safely assumed -- when on the cusp of undertaking a suicidal slaughter mission, do not pause to consider the penalties for possession of illegally obtained firearms. So as the country is sidetracked by political grandstanding (featuring a president who shamelessly kicked off his campaign for this state power grab with an unconvincing display of contrived weeping) you may wish to familiarize yourself with the highly sanitized and clinical manner in which President Obama has executed many more innocent children in Pakistani drone strikes than were murdered by the now deceased Mr. Lanza in Connecticut.
Mainstream media and its consumers are drawn to the gruesome at home and to sex scandals but not the 'collateral' murder of innocents with peculiar sounding names dished out by their president in callous sophisctication via drone video screens. An army general caught with his pants down creates a media frenzy but death delivered to children by drone half a world away is of little interest. Unfortunately you will have to read the details of these attacks in the foreign press as the U.S. media now effectively operates as a state vessel: DER SPIEGEL: The Woes of an American Drone Operator
"Did we just kill a kid?" he asked the man sitting next to him.
"Yeah, I guess that was a kid," the pilot replied.
"Was that a kid?" they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.'
You may also wish to read these thoughtful pieces on your way to recognizing the seemingly counterintuitive reality that the more restrictions that are placed on the gun possession rights of private citizens the more dangerous a country becomes. It is why in every budding authoritarian dictatorship the first order of business is to disarm the citizenry and it is why the content of the U.S. Constitution's second Amendment found its way into that document's Bill of Rights and not subsequent modification. This is not dogma -- it is history. Everywhere and always, whatever entrenches the state' is the enemy of the people:
Business Week: A Post-Newtown Guide to the Gun Control Policy Debate
Gun Control? No, Drone Control
How to Spot a Hypocrite in the Gun Debate and Other Reflections on Newtown
The swelling mass that has taken up permanent residence on public payrolls (which occupancy their unions like to refer to as "public service") increasingly resembles those of failed southern European states where the securing of a lifetime government job had come to be thought of as a right. Bloomberg shines some light on the taxpayer rip-off': $822,000 Worker Shows California Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway
"Today merely four US banks have derivative exposure equal to 3.3 times world Gross Domestic Product. When I was a US Treasury official, such a possibility would have been considered beyond science fiction."
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse...The upshot here is that Social Security recipients are going to be additionally ripped-off as are other recipients of COLA adjustments (holders of U.S. Treasury TIPS -- be forewarned). President Obama is proposing a new calculus for measuring inflation that is intended to further understate the already drastically understated Consumer Price Index. If gasoline prices increase to a point that you can no longer afford to drive your car -- forcing you to walk instead -- the cost of living is deemed to have dropped under this absurd metric (which is actually already in use under current CPI methodology). Note the article's fabricated comment that "some critics" claim the government overstates inflation. I'd like names. It is not remotely possible that anyone could be suggesting such a thing other than a deranged economist. Never mind, long list. Obama proposing new inflation measure
"But some critics say the government is overstating inflation. In reality, when prices rise, consumers turn to alternatives instead of paying more. So for example, if prices rise significantly on beef, they may buy chicken instead."
The man who understands the methodology behind phony government statistics better than anyone, Shadowstats' John Williams was interviewed by Gregg Hunter on the state of the economy and the Fed's role in monetizing anything not nailed down.
As repeated here frequently, drug cartels are the single largest source of bank liquidity other than central banks: NYTimes: HSBC to Pay $1.92 Billion to Settle Charges of Money Laundering. With the U.S. Department of Justice now a wholly owned subsidiary of the banking complex, GATA's Chris Powell provides perspective on the matter of the selective administration of justice and targeted prosecutions: SS boots Liberty Dollars off eBay but no prosecution of HSBC money launderers
It has now been a year since President Obama signed into law the authority of U.S. Presidents to indefinitely detain and torture American citizens without charge or trial. Where do Americans stand on this? They are oblivious. Largely the product of state-run schools, they were indoctrinated to view government as a benevolent force, have no meaningful familiarity with history and are otherwise incapable of broad critical thought -- believing that such dictatorial discretion is acceptable in order to protect the country from terrorists and other bogeymen. So, one year later there is this: Wired: Attorney General Secretly Granted Gov. Ability to Develop and Store Dossiers on Innocent Americans.
Gold and silver...
"Central bank officials," the confidential report says, "indicated that they considered information on gold loans and swaps to be highly market-sensitive, in view of the limited number of participants in such transactions. Thus, they considered that the Special Data Dissemination Standard reserves template should not require the separate disclosure of such information but should instead treat all monetary gold assets, including gold on loan or subject to swap agreements, as a single data item."