« Hillary Clinton Fires The First Shot For 2012: "Rising National Debt Is A Threat To National Security" (VIDEO) »

http://tinyurl.com/235jsz8

Flashback clip for those who missed it the first time around.

Video: Hillary seems to call Obama a 'weak President' -- Aired Sep. 8, 2010

• "I think our rising debt levels pose a national security threat in 2 ways. It undermines our capacity to act in our own interest. And it does constrain us, where constraint may be undesirable. And it also sends a message of weakness internationally."

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Longer version of the clip above. Offers more detail.

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Video: Dick Morris says the comments were Hillary's opening salvo for 2012

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Fox News Video: Monica Crowley reacts to Hillary's comments

Is the national debt a threat to national security?

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Comment from SNK who blogs at Sonic Ninja Kitty

Furthermore, you should never offer to a recovering addict a sip of the toxin they once recklessly imbibed. Shame on you for offering, and shame on me for taking the bait, but I just cannot resist taking a swipe at the salacious pseudo feminism so vigorously proffered by the PUMAnistas. Dammit, SOMEBODY's got to do it!!

Here's the take: Hillary is a different rat. Still, she is a rat. Runner of the same damned freaking rat race. Same as it ever was.

The PUMAs are sheeple. At first glance they are fluffier and sweeter sheeple than the other sheeple, but they are sheeple all the same. They admire a chick with big brains and bigger balls, which Hillary certainly has. That woman could crush Sith Lloyd Blankfein before breakfast and finish off Bernanke, Geithner and Summers before mid morning snack time, if she really wanted. Dang, she is so good at what she does! SO GOOD!! {somebody slap me--3 deep breaths--get it together SNK!}

Problem is, when you challenge the PUMAs to scratch beyond the surface they will thwack you so hard your head will spin 6 ways till two weeks from next Sunday and then some. They give No Quarter (anyone here get that one? ha ha). They will absolutely REFUSE to examine her stances on sound money, the banker/politician cabal (oh, the irony of her firing her first shot in front of a CFR backdrop--nauseatingly creeptastic), and the debt-war cycle. Yet these are the things that are TRULY critical to ALL our futures. I'll tell you her stances: hates it, loves it, loves it. Disgusting.

Hillary will probably be our next president. She and her loyal PUMAs will lead us the rest of the way, skipping and throwing rose petals, into a collapsed currency, if we don't get to if before then. It may be a fluffier, sweeter collapse than we're all currently anticipating, but an unmitigated disaster nonetheless. They will then guide us into an even more 'caring' (argh--I cannot take all this 'caring'!), even larger and farther reaching 'because they are smarter and more wonderful than you stupid little people' government, depriving us of even MORE sovereignty and personal liberties than ever before, and plunging us further into debt slavery to our self anointed savior-criminals. Goodbye Thomas Jefferson, too bad you were a dude and not a chick:

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Is THAT what PUMAs want for our country? Guess so. PUMAs don't understand the real power and control mechanisms underlying our society. PUMAs ignore it because they are too busy feeling good about the fact their female leader has balls and brains. This makes me wonder. What the hell happened to these women that they are so blind and ignorant as to be satisfied with only those superficial qualities? Who destroyed their hearts so much so that they would settle for the smaller sphere of 'women's rights' over the larger and all inclusive sphere of LIBERTY FOR ALL?!? That is: F-O-R A-L-L. AAAALLLLLLLLLLLL. Pseudo feminism. Blech.

Any questions?

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« California Treasurer Spanks Legislature Over Junk Spending »

http://tinyurl.com/28d2e93

Video: California Treasurer Bill Lockyer eats his own kind...

A short flashback clip from last Fall that most of you haven't seen. This one gets excellent marks for truth-telling. Details and transcribed quotes inside.

California Treasurer, Democrat Bill Lockyer testifying (and attacking his own party) last Thursday at an informational hearing on state government reform. Lockyer is tired of the junk legislation and out of control spending coming from fellow Democrats and issues a stern warning about looming bankruptcy. Powerful stuff considering the source.

• "I'm sorry but 2/3's of the the bills that i see come out of the Assembly, if they never saw the light of day, God Bless It. Just stop it. JUST STOP IT! Just stop it. I mean they're junk, and they're consuming all your staff time, with junk. It's not a rule, it's cultural. Nancy Reagan is right. Just say NO!

• "It’s impossible for this legislature to reform the pension system, and if we don’t, we bankrupt the state. And I don’t think anybody can do it here, because of who elected you. … You’re just captive of the current environment — I don’t see any way out! By the way, Democrats have to call other Democrats on this problem."

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The Stench of US Economic Decay: Russia and China Dump the US Dollar

On Thanksgiving eve the English language China Daily and People’s Daily Online reported that Russia and China have concluded an agreement to abandon the use of the US dollar in their bilateral trade and to use their own currencies in its place. The Russians and Chinese said that they had taken this step in order to insulate their economies from the risks that have undermined their confidence in the US dollar as a world reserve currency.

This is big news, especially for the news dead Thanksgiving holiday period, but I did not see it reported on Bloomberg, CNN, New York Times or anywhere in the US print or TV media. The ostrich’s head remains in the sand.

Previously, China concluded the same agreement with Brazil.

As China has a large and growing supply of dollars from trade surpluses with which to conduct trade, China is signaling that she prefers Russian rubles and Brazilian reals to more US dollars.

The American financial press finds solace in the episodes when sovereign debt scares in the EU send the dollar up against the euro and UK pound. But these currency movements are just measures of financial players shorting troubled EU-denominated debt. They are not a measure of dollar strength.

The dollar’s role as world reserve currency is one of the main instruments of American financial hegemony. We haven’t been told how much damage Wall Street fraud has inflicted on EU financial institutions, but the EU countries no longer need the US dollar for trade between themselves as they share a common currency. Once the OPEC countries cease to hold the dollars that they are paid for oil, dollar hegemony will have faded away.

Another instrument of American financial hegemony is the IMF. Whenever a country cannot make good on its debts and pay back the American banks, in steps the IMF with an austerity package that squeezes the country’s population with higher taxes and cuts in education, medical and income support programs until the bankers get their money back.

This is now happening to Ireland and is likely to spread to Portugal, Spain, and perhaps even to France. After the American-caused financial crisis, the IMF’s role as a tool of US imperialism is less and less acceptable. The point could come when governments can no longer sell out their people for the sake of the American banks.

There are other signs that some countries are tiring of America’s irresponsible use of power. Turkey’s civilian governments have long been under the thumb of the American influenced Turkish military. However, recently the civilian government moved against two top generals and an admiral suspected of involvement in planning a coup. The civilian government further asserted itself when the prime minister announced on Thanksgiving day that Turkey is prepared to react to any Israeli offensive against Lebanon. Here is an American NATO ally freeing itself from American suzerainty exercised through the Turkish military. Who knows, Germany could be next.

Meanwhile in America the sheeple remain content with, or blind to, their role as sheep to be slaughtered to feed the rich. The Obama administration has managed to come up with a Deficit Commission whose members want to pay for the multi-trillion dollar wars that are enriching the military/security complex and the multi-trillion dollar bailouts of the financial system by reducing annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security, raising the retirement age to 69, ending the mortgage interest deduction, ending the tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, imposing a 6.5% federal sales tax,
while cutting the top tax rate for the rich.

Even the Federal Reserve’s low interest rates are aimed at helping the banksters.

The low interest rates deprive retirees and those living on their savings of interest income. The low interest rates have also deprived corporate pensions of funding. To fill the gap corporations are issuing billions of dollars in corporate bonds in order to fund their pensions. Corporate debt is increasing, but not plant and equipment that would produce earnings to service the debt. As the economy worsens, servicing the additional debt will be a problem.

In addition, America’s elderly are finding that fewer and fewer doctors will accept them as patients as a 23% cut looms in the already low Medicare payments to doctors.

The American government only has resources for wars of aggression, police state intrusions, and bailouts of rich banksters. The American citizen has become a mere subject to be bled for the ruling oligarchies.

The police state attitude of the TSA toward airline travelers is a clear indication that Americans are no longer citizens with rights but subjects without rights. Perhaps the day will come when oppressed Americans will take to the streets like the French, the Greeks, the Irish, and the British.

France has Now Grabbed Their People's Pension Funds to Give to Banks and Their Debt - Joining Hungary and Ireland -

Seems all over the world countries are grabbing their People's Pension and Retirement accounts, they pass the laws very fast and spring the surprise on their people. France has just joined the fray of taking their people's retirement accounts to give to the banks and buy the countries bonds. They have taken 36 Billion of people's Pension and retirement accounts.

portion from above link:

Asset managers will have the chance to get billions of euros in mandates in the next few months for the €36bn Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR), the French reserve pension fund, after the French parliament last week passed a law to use its assets to pay off the debts of France’s welfare system.

I had posted last week about Hungary taking their people's pension funds.

Ireland too is talking about taking their people's pensions and giving it to the banks.

Portion from above link:

Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin attacked the intention to use the National Pension Reserve Fund to help provide a further €10 billion in further capital for the banks. In total, the banks could end up getting another €35 billion if their losses are bigger than expected.


So, does everyone see what is happening around the world?

The banks come before the people! The people's money of which they saved and worked all their lives for is being grabbed by the leaders of countries to give to the banks. Besides people having to pay more in taxes and get less in wages. In Ireland the people have to take a cut in the minimum wage for their "bailout".

I have no doubt there will be demonstrations in the European countries regarding what the governments are doing there.

But I will say again, it is simply a matter of time before the U.S. government passes a bill that allows them to take everyone's Private IRA/Pension and 401Ks. They have had committee meetings on it already, it has been discussed many times. Remember Federal and State Government Pension funds all over the U.S., are under water right now. If you think the government will not over reach their powers by stealing everyone's private retirement accounts, then you have not been paying attention to what has been happening with crazy laws being passed or about to be voted on.


I am including the S 510 "Safe Food Bill" which has enough support to pass the Senate and House - which then effectively makes growing your own vegetables illegal and forget being able to purchase food/vegetables at a farmers market - as those will be wiped out and made illegal also. Completely Crazy and Outrageous. But it seems they are intent on passing the bill, even though people have been calling their elected officials, saying "don't pass it" they are standing by the bill. This will then give Monsanto control of all of our food and seeds. In fact under the S 510 bill, it will be illegal to save your own seeds.


We are living in bizarre times and as you think it can't get more outrageous, it does.


So, look around, pay attention and if you want to be assured you have your own retirement account to use as you want, I would advise talking to an accountant, find out all the penalties of liquidating your Private IRA/pension/401K and do what makes sense to you. Is it better to take a "tax" hit now and save your retirement money or leave it where it is and let the government possibly grab it for debt and the banks? When they do/if make the grab, it will be fast with no fore warning, IMO, just as the other countries have done. People have not had the time to get their money out, once the decisions have been made around the world to take the Pension funds. So you make the decision to what feels right to yourself, just pay attention and wake up to the desperation of countries.


When/if it does happen in the U.S. - it will be... one moment, you have your own private retirement account to invest as you want and the next it will be under government control for the banks and debt due to giving Trillions to the banks.


Ask the French now, Hungarians, Irish, Argentinians, if they expected this to happen to them - in that their government swooped in and took their retirement accounts for their banks and debt of the countries. I would bet it came as a complete surprise.


An Idea ..... for the December 7th - bank run - it should also be a Private retirement account run too and put the money into metals - which has been the best investment of the year so far anyway. The tax of liquidating retirement funds, compared to the increase of metals for the year so far..... which is more?....... considering silver is up over 46% for the year.... you make that decision!

« Comparing Federal Deficits: Bush Vs. Obama »

Source: CBO -- More detail inside.

In the first independent analysis, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that President Obama's budget will rack up massive deficits even after the economy recovers, forcing the nation to borrow $9.3 trillion over the next decade.

Graphic courtesy of the Washington Post.

Two short comments: the numbers have already worsened since this graphic was produced in March, and the Obama administration is on the same prescription meds as AIG execs. Take a look at 2013-2019. Holy rosy scenario.

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Cutting the Deficit: Sacrificing Workers to Save the Rich

“There’s class warfare, all right, but its my class, the rich class that’s making war and we’re winning” Warren Buffet

The most important and popular social and tax programs in the United States are threatened by a self-styled “Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform”. Appointed by President Obama on February 18, 2010, co-chaired by two longstanding champions of Wall Street: ex Senator Simpson (R, WY) and former Clintonite White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. The Commission Report issued November 10 proposes to slash social security payments, reducing recipients to poverty, raise the retirement age to 69 ensuring that millions of workers will die before they can retire, or enter retirement in ill health; reduce or freeze cost of living increases through inflation indexes which understate by half the rises in food, gas, hospital and education. The Commission proposes deep cuts in Medicare, increased Medicaid co-pays and slashing $54 billion from graduate medical education. The Commission proposes to eliminate tax breaks including deductions for home mortgage interest payments while taxing employer provided medical insurance.

The same Commission Report proposes to reduce capital gains and income taxes for the rich by up to 24%.

President Obama and the Republican leadership praised the Commission and wants “to give them space to work on it”.

The so-called crisis of Social Security is a result of the Republican and Democratic governments siphoning off payments into the general fund. The forthcoming shortfall (2030) can be easily remedied by lifting the payroll tax ceiling, for the rich, taxing all earned income.

Medical costs can be reduced by 50% by replacing the for profit corporate health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations with a non-profit national health system, similar to successful programs in Europe and Canada.

Both Medical plans and Social Security can be easily funded by imposing a 1% sales tax on the sale of stocks and bonds.

The deficit proposals put forth by Obama’s Bipartisan Commission threaten to push the one-third of retirees who depend mainly on their social security payments into the food kitchens or destitution. The added cost and reductions in health care will increase the mortality rate among working families. The increase in retirement age will result in “work until you die”, with no time for leisure, travel or grandchildren. It is time to send a message to Washington: cut Social Security and Medicare and home interest deductions and you will visit Washington on your own time.

The Environmental Impact Of War

IMAGES OF DEVASTATED battlefields are all too familiar. A German officer in 1918 described ‘dumb, black stumps of shattered trees which still stick up where there used to be villages. Flayed by splinters of bursting shells, they stand like corpses upright. Not a blade of grass anywhere. Just miles of flat, empty, broken and tumbled stone.’ The ploughs in Flanders fields still turn up human bones every year.

But twentieth century technology, busily applied to the practice of war, has ensured a more lethal harvest. For example, landmines: planted in millions in war-torn countries across the world, killing and maiming long after wars are over, and denying agricultural use of the land in which they lurk. A Khmer Rouge general called them ‘the perfect soldier’: cheap, efficient, expendable, never hungry, never needing sleep. But eighty percent of landmine victims are civilians, not soldiers; and nearly a quarter of those are children.

Clearing mines is laborious, dangerous, and 30 times the cost of the weapon itself. So is clearing unexploded ordnance of all kinds (including worldwide munitions dumps which leak toxic wastes). The most severe UXO contamination in the world is in Laos. Bomb disposal teams have no records to work from. ‘It was America’s secret war and we can’t get the information,’ says a team leader. ‘All you can do is teach people to live with the bomb.’

But it’s the testing and manufacture of the nuclear bomb which has been responsible for some of the most profound and persistent environmental damage to life on earth. “The complex mixture of contaminants found on many military sites is dynamically moving through the environment,’ says a medical expert. Radiation problems affect people near nuclear plants in every country that has them. Repair and maintenance of many installations and equipment are dangerously inadequate.

Nuclear waste is a global problem that won’t go away, threatening environmental disaster on a vast scale: its poison, and toxic chemicals which accompany all weapon production, have travelled round the globe in the atmosphere and ocean currents; as well as water and air, they harm earth, plants that grow in it, and subsistent livestock and wildlife. Human exposure to nuclear and chemical tests and factories, or via the food chain, results in miscarriages, malformed foetuses, high infant mortality and congenital disorders, leukaemia and other cancers, tumours, thyroid disorders, and complex debilitating and life-shortening syndromes. The number of reports of such harmful effects on health, habitat and culture – always at risk in war – continues to grow.


Because war disrupts social structures, ecostructures are neglected and abused, with lasting and costly consequences.

All along the coast of Somalia huge sand dunes, 20 miles across, have crept from the sea towards the main coastal highway. ‘When the dunes hit the road, a new road will need to be built,’ says a Red Cross agronomist. ‘There used to be government plans to stop them. Now there’s nothing. The communication breakdown will be a social disaster.’ The ICRC, encouraging self-sufficiency and seawater fish in the conservative Somali diet, provided boats, nets, hooks and training – only to discover another of war’s ecological chain effects: the coastal waters off Somalia had become a free-for-all, all protocols for international fishing rights ignored. Resources are being fished unsustainably – ‘almost a mining operation,’ says a UN observer. Illegal fishermen now go armed, to protect what they perceive as their property rights.

It’s widely agreed that Sudan’s 1988 famine was caused by its protracted civil war. Southern Sudan has some of the most productive land in Africa; its people are hardworking farmers and herdsmen. If fighting stopped, they’d manage to survive. Instead, thousands have been forced out of their homes, thousands have died, and their land is uncared-for.

‘Most disasters are like this: a mess of war, displacement, hunger and ignorance,’ says Africa specialist John Ryle. ‘To feed the hungry and treat the sick in such circumstances is to become part of the war economy. Part of what aid workers do involves clearing up the chaos left by the global arms trade. They say they are saving lives – but for what? To be lost in endless wars that feed on aid?’

Meanwhile the worst outbreak of sleeping sickness this century has been spreading through the south-west; disease follows war everywhere.

The earth’s environment is battered by war, its preparation, practice and aftermath. It is destroyed as an act of war; it is used as a weapon of war; and its destruction is expensive and sometimes irreversible. Its integral involvement with war is often secret, widely ignored, and easily forgotten – until now.

Now, some people are beginning to talk and listen. Some people are beginning to act. There is a treaty to ban landmines now. There are moves towards tackling the problems of nuclear waste and weapon stockpiles. There is a growing global awareness – with charters to prove it – that war has created consequences which cross boundaries and ignore territories. Natural disasters are costly enough; the cost of war damage is much higher. Even if politics don’t achieve change, economics might.

It’s the natural tendency of governments to suppress or talk down bad news. So it’s the duty of the rest of us – to uncover and publicise it wherever possible. Without the facts, there can’t be informed public opinion, nor a corporate will to deal with the disasters that war creates – dangerous not only for combatants but for civilians, not only for the duration of the war but far into the future, not for warring countries alone but for the whole world.

In one way or another, everyone is already affected. In one way or another, the still-quickening rush to even greater disasters must be stopped.

And the first thing to go must be war