Making Pretzels

I know I keep harping on American politics, when I try to maintain a global focus, seeing as how I live on the diametrically opposed side of the plant from the US.  But current events there necessitate a continued watch, since it appears as if the country is imploding and its cancerous tentacles in every aspect of global events means profound changes are ahead for everyone.

The left and right wings of the artificial dichotomy of US politics have solidified, with unprecedented vitriol spewing from both camps.  I perforce will focus on the left wing (Democrats), since they have been on the offensive recently.  However, the right wing (Republicans) are being forced to show their authoritarian leanings out of sheer desperation.

The left wing is currently the most fascinating.  In the past 100 years, it has marched continually towards moral relativism and most recently into something called "identity politics".  Having made a century-long argument that there is no objective right and wrong, it now finds itself in the position of having to accept any behavior from its members as valid, no matter how reprehensible or illegal.  In order to maintain logical consistency, such as it is, they must bed down with even the most puke-making ideologies in order to prove their arguments.

Take the feminists as a prime example.  Since the suffrage of the 1920s, they have continuously pushed the boundaries of propriety to the point that they have weaponized the basic human qualities of empathy and tolerance.  In so doing, they have now made common cause with Islamic shari'a to show how tolerant they are.

In other words, the feminists are arguing that submission to men, to the point of daily beatings and being forced to wear restrictive clothing and having their clitorises cut off is a feminist ideal.  Yes, even the hijab/jilbab have been fashionized in support of their Muslim sisters.

What?!

The feminists have successfully argued themselves into a full rhetorical and logical circle, managed to paint themselves into a corner in a round room, and then erected brick and steel walls to ensure they can't escape.  They have, in effect, stated that a woman must be subject to the most humiliating and degrading conditions in the name of tolerance!

In another example, a male US politician made degrading and sexist remarks about one of Trump's female aides at a public event.  Later, Nancy Pelosi, the "leader" of the Democrats in the US House of Representatives, was heard in an interview brushing the remarks aside while in the same breath lashing Trump for sexist remarks made in private ten years ago!  How in the hell does one untie such a relativistic knot of rhetoric?

There has been ample global coverage of the left wing violence during and since the election last year.  Here, the left wing finds it necessary to cause injury to life and limb, and destroy private and public property in the name of tolerance and respect.  Again, they have tied themselves into a morass of pretzel logic to make a point that their actions immediately and simultaneously undermines.

For a sufficiently high enough level, one could argue that these things are being purposely orchestrated in order to draw out the authoritarian tendencies of the right wing.  I can, and likely will, make a later argument that the left is trying to get the right to punch back, so that it can run crying to mommy that the mean, nasty right wingers are so violent.  It will probably work without Herculean restraint on the part of the right.

In any event, we are witnessing the dissolution of American culture and politics.  It is fascinating to watch, though I empathize with my family and friends in the midst of it - especially those caught up in the currents of illogic and extremism that is sweeping that society.

It is difficult to see how this mess can resolve without some great amount of pain.  Rhetorical and moral knots have a way of restricting blood flow to the body politic.

Are we seeing the collapse of empire?  Most likely.  It is similar in many ways to past events of similar scope and nature.

How long will it take?  Hard to say.  The Soviet empire collapsed almost overnight, though it is still being unwound.  The US empire is far more insinuated into the global structure and its collapse will take far longer and be far more painful to everyone on the planet.

Stand by...this is going to get a lot more interesting in the very near future.

The Masochism Tango

Few people seem to remember the comic genius that was Tom Lehrer, though many have probably heard his greatest hit, "National Brotherhood Week."  But today, we are inspired by one of his many laugh-out-loud tunes called "The Masochism Tango."

What brought it to mind was a pair of well-matched headlines.  One the one hand, the Philippines' president Duterte told Obama to keep his cotton-pickin' nose out of their internal business, and on the other, the US spooks are investigating Russia's perceived meddling in US elections.

It has never ceased to amaze me that America, and by this I refer to both the political and cultural entities, can live with such a stark contrast in thought.  On the one hand, the country has never had a problem marching into and dictating to other nations, but on the other hand, they are constantly shocked when the favor is returned.  It is a classic case of "do as I say, not as I do."

As Joseph Farrell has pointed out many times, it takes two to tango.  The Americans are acting out of complete naivete and self-delusion if they think that their century-long effort to manipulate the world would not/could not come home to roost.  What is good for the goose will cook the gander.

I say self-delusion because for the most part Americans are thoroughly convinced that they are doing good by forcing the world to gag on its political, cultural and corporate hegemony.  Americans think it is quite OK to plaster McDonalds and Starbucks and KFC all over the world's rich tapestry of diversity, but gods forbid Russia or China want to clog US malls with their brands.

Just because the insane form of corporate personhood works for an enslaved and drone American populace doesn't mean the rest of the world wants predatory boards and executives chewing up their landscapes for illusory profits.

It's OK for America to think that 'democracy' is a good thing, and maybe it works for an uneducated and clueless mass, but shoving that brand of insanity down the rest of the world's throats is bound to lead to a violent and reactionary backlash.  Just because America likes lye soap doesn't mean the rest of the world wants to bathe in it.

I have experienced American-style exceptionalism first-hand around the world.  I have seen America's NGOs in action, its CIA puppeteering, its corporate raiders.  Trade treaties, such as the TTIP and TPP are not about improving trade, they are about changing all the rules to suit American interests.  America's exported 'democracy' is not about bringing rights to people, but about installing political systems that the US has become expert on manipulating.  American-style 'diversity' is not about celebrating the world's wonderful differences, but replacing real culture with America's Disney-style fantasies of what culture should be.

There are two ways to fight this kind of manipulation: one is to fight back in a way that destroys the manipulator, and most of the world with it (a la World Wars 1 and 2); or to fight fire with fire, by learning and using the same tactics against the usurper.

When I see articles spouting America's paranoia that Russia and/or China are manipulating US elections and infiltrating its institutions, I am reminded of the tactics used for decades by the American hegemon on those very same countries.

When I see Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, I am reminded of Sen. Thomas J. Walsh (Teapot Dome), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) and Woodward and Bernstein (Watergate).  Prying open dirty secrets is patriotism, not traitorous.

For decades, US propaganda media has buried the world in a marketing campaign from hell, making not only the country's own citizen believe the official line about "enemy" states, but duping the rest of the world too.  When RussiaToday turned that same manipulation back on the US, it infuriated the political hacks who had come to believe their own hogwash.

Finally, the US exported its financial system, arguably one of the most corrupt ever devised by Man, to the world, backed up by military strength and space assets.  As the world caught up, it was only a matter of time before Russia and China, along with the BRICSA bloc, would mount a separate-but-equal system to challenge it.  Once again, the US hegemon went into paroxysms of fear-mongering and anti-Russian hype to try to stem the tide, but it may well be too late.

Of the world's great religions, the Buddhist paradigm of kharma is one of the Great Truths that has objectively and overtly proved itself throughout history.  It was only a matter of time before the world got tired of one country doing its utter best to reshape the world in its own image.  It has been tried many times before and with similar results: eventually the world turns the table back on the empire and dines from the privileged setting.

The US is behaving exactly like the neighborhood bully.  After dominating the local kids for years and stealing their lunch money, one kid has stood up to the brute and used his own force against him.  Once challenged, and ultimately vanquished, the bully runs yelping to his mother, saying what unfair and ungrateful beasts those other kids are.

America doesn't need to save the world, it needs to save itself.  It should also be ready for the fact that those who have been bullied in the past will likely want revenge, and when it comes, America should be brave enough and honest enough to realize that its suffering is of its own making.

The world is littered with the graveyards of empires, and their deaths have never been quiet or dignified.    The world cannot expect America to suddenly realize the errors of its ways and contritely retract within its rightful domain.  It will fight and it will drag many down with it.  One does not easily give up the mansion for the cardboard box, no matter how well deserved.

Of course, Tom Lehrer put it much more succinctly:

It's here that I must be.
My heart entreats,
Just hear those savage beats,
And go put on your cleats
And come and trample me.
Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany,
That's why I'm in such exquisite agony.
My soul is on fire,
It's aflame with desire,
Which is why I perspire
When we tango.

Of Bombs And Bullies

Lately there has been a marked increase in the number of hand-wringing articles on the subject of Americans leaving the US and the jump in those renouncing their citizenship in the past year.  As one of my acquaintances back home noted, "Hell, even the wetbacks are swimming back!"

The answer is both simple and obvious.  The same reason that many Germans left Fascist Germany - they don't agree with the politics and can't stand the culture.

One prime example of why Americans are bugging out is the Syria fiasco.  The US has for many years started wars for no better reasons than commerce and hand-picking successor regimes.  If other nations pulled half the crap that the US does in foreign countries, the people would be up in arms.  Yet, they can't fathom why the world increasingly hates America, and why so many folks are getting the hell out.

Americans are so steeped in propaganda from the age of 1 that they just can't imagine why anyone would want to leave the country.  They can't conceive of people not wanting government shoved into every orifice of their being around the clock.  It doesn't compute that folks would disagree with a belligerent foreign policy.  And surely no one would disagree with a centuries-long habit of killing large numbers of brown people.

Americans think that America is the greatest country on Earth.  They can't separate the brilliant founding ideals of the nation from the actual practice.  They think, "Hey, we invented the light bulb, the telephone and the automobile, not to mention landing on the Moon!"  Doesn't occur to most of them that the last great achievement the nation had was almost 50 years ago.

Hello, America...wake up.  G. W. Schrub made Edison's lamp illegal in favor of Frenchman Alexandre Edmond Becquerel's fluorescent lamps.  Swedish and Japanese companies make the most popular telephones today.  Detroit has declared bankruptcy and American cars are hardly made in the US anymore.  And NASA no longer has a manned space program.  The handful of astronauts it sends to the space station hitch rides with Russia - who could pull the plug on US manned access to space because of Syria.  Furthermore, the US hasn't returned a man to the Moon since the early 70s.

Add to the severe economic decline of America its moral and ethical decay over the past 60 years.  The US has gone from a position of moral and economic authority immediately following WW2 to a third-rate bully that ignores international law, violates the national sovereignty of nearly every other nation on Earth, and treats its own citizenry like criminals with an a priori assumption of guilt.

America no longer has anything to offer a person of conscience.  The various levels of government in the US systematically violates every aspect of the individual's dignity and security.  The citizen carries a massive tax burden to pay for unauthorized debt and unconstitutional wars.  The police have gotten out of hand in addition to now being just one of a dozen agencies that all feel at liberty to violate human rights at will and with impunity.  Finally, any attempt to redress grievances with the government are treated with derision and disdain by said government.

So, what exactly are the selling points for life in the US?  Because from where I stand, there are none at all.

In fact, the current saber-rattling in Syria makes me all the more certain that I made the right choice to leave the US.  I can not in any way support the military adventurism and the economic interventionism practiced by the US government.  I can not abide the way that nation destroys families through an educational system and meddlesome agencies whose purposes are to undermine parental authority and transfer family loyalty to the state.  Finally, I vehemently disagree with Washington's on-going policy of military interventionism on the flimsiest of justifications as a means of boosting profits for favored corporations.

The fact that Americans are asking such silly questions as, "Why Are Americans Leaving The US" shows the willful ignorance of the American populace.  I say willful because the internet offers dozens on alternatives to the propaganda outlets at home.  That they prefer CNN and Fox to real information shows the depth of the ignorance and/or the support that so many profess to their government.

Americans also display their corruption and complicity through repeated election of the same corrupt politicians, despite all evidence of the depravity of said politicians, based solely on being bought off by government pork projects.  If this is not the ultimate cynical act of people who worship their own corruption, then nothing is.

If Americans had a real desire to change things, they could.  There are 300 million citizens versus a few thousand minions.  The only excuse for not changing things is willful participation in the moral decay of the nation, with the possible addition of laziness and greed as additional motives.

The exodus of citizens from America highlights the hopelessness of having ethics and integrity in a nation of ignorance and degeneracy.  About the only position with a future in America is gang member, as recent reports demonstrate.  Additionally, the only prop left under the American economy is invading, killing and destroying other nations.  That is no basis for a healthy and viable future.

The intellectuals and business people who left Germany with the rise of Fascism were the only ones left to rebuild that country after the entire Earth massed to destroy it.  Likewise, those folks bailing out of America today may end up being the only hope for rebuilding that country once the rest of the world has tired of its hubris.  And that day may be coming soon.

The pretension of a gas attack in Syria as a way to justify (on the loosest of grounds) American military interventionism in yet another country may be the last straw.  The world has grown weary of America's regime changes and death for democracy campaigns.  The dominoes are decidedly lined up against the US should it decide to strike Syria.  The first casualty in the war against the resurrection of Fascism will likely be Israel.  The world is little fooled, at least any more, by the antics of the Zionists whose habit is to break a stick over its neighbors' heads, then run to hide behind Uncle Sugar.

The bully always gets his comeuppance and the US is no exception.  The American people would do well to read the tea leaves of history to see what the future holds.  A mass exodus of citizens is only one of many signs now visible.

Seventy years ago, it nearly destroyed our civilization to put one regime in a country the size of Texas back in its place.  What will it take to contain the ambitions and decadence and the US?

A Whiff Of Adolf

What to make of the news?  NATO claims to be encircling Tripoli and is moving in for the kill.  The 'rebels' have announced the capture of Qaddafi's son and heir-apparent.  We are told that it's just hours now before Libya falls and Qaddafi is in the hands of the banksters.

I worked long enough in news to develop a sort of 'news nose'.  I can usually smell BS a mile and a half away, and I'm catching the strong whiff of it right now.

The part that has me sitting on the fence that this is a huge gamble, even for folks so used to lying they don't know truth when they trip over it.  To go out on a limb and claim victory when it ain't even close is a pretty big risk.

But then I flash back to GW Shrub standing on the carrier flight deck in his nifty jumper, that he was too drunk to wear in real combat, as he declares "Mission Accomplished" a few months after invading Iraq.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we still there 10 years later?  TEN YEARS?!  Half a generation?  For a victory already accomplished?

I just have this feeling that something ain't kosher in the mosque.  If in fact, NATO and their mercenaries have truly made it to Tripoli and are in the process of taking the capitol, then my gut says that Qaddafi has a welcome gift for them somewhere in the city.

What all this really gets me to pondering are the similarities to Hitler and the Third Reich.  When he marched into Poland in '39, Europe and really the rest of the world adopted an appeasement policy towards Germany. After all, commies were Hitler's Arab terrorists.  He used them to invade Europe and Russia, as well as blaming the Reichstag fire on them.  He also claimed parts of Poland as ancestoral German homeland that needed reclaiming.

Fast-forward 3/4s of a century, and all this Mid East stuff just smacks of 'replay'.  One must remember that in the early days, the US and UK were big supporters of Hitler.  The Bush family (of US presidential infamy) were even convicted by Congress of giving 'aid and comfort'.  Certainly, the queen's daddy and FDR and even Churchill were pretty much hands-off.  Hitler had free run, until his Big Mistake.

I know what your thinking (holocaust, Russian winter, etc.), but no.  He decided to create a debt-free money system, based on labor/output of the German people.  In other words, he stopped dancing with those what brung him.  The only reason Hitler felt able to march into Russia was the real wealth his monetary policies were creating, and because the Allies were putting up little more than wrist-slap opposition...until the money thing.

Libya has/had an extemely high standard of living, with a monetary system completely cut-off from the banksters.  On top of that, it sits on some of the lightest, sweetest crude in the world.  Oh, and Qaddafi was selling an awful lot of it to China.

The real issue with all this war crap, besides naked empire-building, is trying to choke off China before it can get too out of hand.  China, for all it's economic dynamism, is resource-poor.  Heck, a good chunk of the country is Gobi desert.  In order to feed itself, it must import almost everything.

China draws it's energy from Indonesian coal, Libyan and South American oil and raw materials from most of the "Third World," which it turns into gee-gaws and re-sells it to the world.  Furthermore, it has been targeting markets the West has soundly ignored.  Sure, the US is a major market for it's products, but they pay in Boobie Bux.  So, China turns around and distributes it to the huge but grossly under-served global markets.

In this way, China provides a valuable service to the West, but its success is allowing it to slowly cut off the bankster network and go freelance.  It has the firepower and manpower to hold the rest of the world at bay.  That's what frightens the banksters.  They don't like competition.  The only way they have to control China is energy.  Cut off the energy and you can put the tiger back in the bag.

For this reason, China's border allies like Pakistan are under constant, but very quiet attack.  Libya is under constant and rather noisy attack (though much of it I don't believe).  Chavez is trying to circle his wagons, because he's next.  He's pulled his gold out of the UK, nationalized all the Big Oil properties and pretty much pulled in his toys.

It's only a matter of time before there's an all-out war on the US southern border.  When the floodgates open, nothing between Brownsville and Tierra del Fuego are going to be safe.

The US is hemorrhaging money, not to save the economy, but to buy off its allies and gain new ones.  From Europe to Asia, they're all lining up, hat in hand, saying they'll be happy to stick around, and oh, could you throw 10 or 15 billion into our markets?  We love you, man.  The US is selling its very soul to puff up it's sphere of influence, but the engine of its growth has begun taking on a life of its own.  Nixon created a Frankenstein's Monster.

It's a race against time.  Can the banksters choke off the power supply before China achieves complete independence.  The big problem is, China owns 9% of the US and has all the manufacturing.  Furthermore, they have pretty much all of Asia in their back pocket.

The US, and by extension NATO, must declare victory and bug the hell out of Libya to jump over to Syria.  They've got to lock down the Mid East power conduit to China, before China calls in the debt.  It's economic brinkmanship, just like the Cold War, but fought with paper rather than nukes.

If one stipulates the ability to control weather and geology, just for argument's sake, then Fukushima could be seen as a strategic blow to China's food supply, since a great amount of its protein comes from the sea...in that area.  Certainly, behind closed doors, I could hear Biden saying:

"Listen, you should really be concerned about Three-Gorges Dam.  I mean, one good earthquake and..."

Of course, felling cocky, Biden would hoot and yell, "Hu's yer daddy?  Hahahahaha!"

That's just how it all smells over here on the Far Side.  The games with markets, debt deals, bail outs, gold prices, oil wars...it's just all too, what's the word, convenient.


And from the looks of things, the banksters are whipping up some war between Israel and Egypt.

There's no doubt the West is trying to push China off balance, so it can attack directly.  The problem is that the West has never fully understood the Asian mind.  The Chinese are both ruthless and inscrutable.  I've sat across the negotiating table from them, I know whereof I speak.  They love strategy games and are disciplined thinkers.  It stands to reason they have already thought out many moves ahead and have answers for them.  And the West certainly doesn't know every card up China's sleeve.  I feel quite sure about that.

Qaddafi is a survivor.  He has outlasted a lot of BS.  The propaganda is trying to convince us that the people there want him hout, though if you had a really good standard of living, free education and health care, the best roads and infrastructure in Africa, and a yearly stipend, would you revolt?  Especially if it meant jerks like NATO coming in and blowing up the schools, hostipals, TeeVee stations, road, and airports?  Honestly, which would you pick?  FDR didn't get elected to four terms because everyone was starving to death and living in squalor.

I've just whipped up a fresh batch of popcorn, and now I'm going to watch this show.  Will the bankster BS get its trousers pulled down before they can drag Qaddafi's corpse through the town square?

Stay turned...

TSA - Tacit Sexual Abuse

You see, here's where it's all screwed up...

If you homeschool your child and don't shove piles of poison down his throat just because some bloated drug-abuser in a white coat says so, then the SWAT teams raid your house and throw you in jail.  But!  If you wear a yellow shirt and act like some official lackey slime, then you can feel up children and grope other men's wives, and no one does a thing about it.

First They came... - Pastor Martin Niemoller
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

This is the way it always works in the end.  This is the way empires always collapse.  It starts with busy-bodies getting all up in other people's business.  They holler and complain that someone isn't behaving the way they want.  They push and push until some government agency is created to ensure that you do exactly what they want you to do.

Then the agency grows and sucks in more budget and takes more powers.  Then it becomes the very thing it was designed to fight.  This process is repeated a hundred times over, until the country goes broke eating itself alive.

It's like 'Child Protective Services.'  Pardon me while I gag.  It's populated by a bunch of do-goodie numbnuts with Social Work degrees (whatever the hell those are), who don't have kids of their own, and who want to tell you how to raise yours because they read it in a book.  Vile scum is what they are.

Or how about 'Transportation Safety Administration?'  So far they have done absolutely nothing to make anyone safer, but they hire a bunch of brainless thugs to grope and feel their way through your family.

How about the 'Internal Revenue Service?'  A bunch of mafia knuckle-busters who are used to go out and steal your money at gun-point to pay off a debt to a foreign corporation that you didn't authorize.

The list goes on: Secret Service, Central Intelligence (LOL!) Agency, Environmental Protection (hahaha!) Agency.  They're all a bunch of useless idiots who couldn't get real jobs, so they signed on for the nice pay and great bennies, courtesy of your pocket and labor.  Each one targets some group in society and preys on them until there is nothing left.  The part they never think about is that eventually everyone is in jail and they are all left investigating each other.  It's an endless, no-win scenario.

They problem is, they do absolutely nothing to the real criminals.  Instead, they go after the regular folks who can't afford to hire a 'Dream Team.'  Everyone reads about it in the papers, or watches the 30-second blips on TeeVee, and feels all justified that somehow society is getting cleaned up.

Then it happens to you.  You go about your business and don't think about the fact that the thugs are running low on real perps and you are next.  Did you EVER take a questionable deduction on your taxes?  Did you EVER exceed the speed limit?  Did you EVER take a hit off a joint in college?  Did you EVER spank you child?

You scum.  You should be in jail.  When you're rotting in Sing-Sing, then I can feel justified that my tax dollars are being effectively used to clean up America.  After all, they'll NEVER come for me.  My crimes are so small and piddling compared to YOURS.  We're busy watching each other and trying to catch each other committing little nothing crimes, that the real perps are getting away with murder...literally.

It's like the cow that used to live next to me in the States.  She was always watching out for parents doing something with their children she didn't like.  If you so much as cast a shadow over the line, she would drop a nickel on you with CPS.  Yet, her son was known as the best pot dealer in the neighborhood and her daughter was a teen-aged Matahari.  Word has it someone finally repaid her good deeds and she got bit by the same vile creatures she was always turning loose on others.

Here's a thought.  CPS allows anonymous tips, because all vile and filthy vermin do that.  So, start calling CPS, everywhere and all day, and report the TSA yellow shirts.  Won't that be great fun?  We can all sit back and watch as two groups of Nazi scum go after each other.

In fact, that's a great idea!  Start calling various agencies and reporting agents from other agencies.  Keep those useless scum running around in circles investigating each other.  While you're at it, throw in your local congresscritter.  After all, the most egregious violators of the law usually hide behind masks of law-makers.  Just paedophiles like to get positions of trust and authority over children (hmmm...maybe TSA agents?).  Just like child abusers becoming foster parents so that the vile CPS vermin hand them victims, under shadow of law.

It's all so...filthy.

I think it would be great theater if CPS started getting thousands of calls reporting TSA for child abuse.  If they don't investigate the reports, then why should anyone take them seriously?  After all, isn't that what they are supposed to do?  Protect children?  Hahahaha!  It would kill two agencies with one stone.

Why, it's just like the BATF killing 80 men, women and children in a church using every kind of modern weaponry, all because those folks supposedly had guns.  Or how about the DEA boys who are running drugs across the Mexican border and protecting drug lords?  Better yet!  How about the unlawful guy sitting in the White House dusting his Nobel Peace Prize while killing hundreds of thousands of people in four different wars?

And all because you willingly and fearfully hand over your money and follow anyone with a color-coded shirt and a piece of metal in their pocket with pretty designs all over it.

And people wonder how the German people could go along with the death and destruction that Hitler brought to Europe.  And all those people paid their taxes and went along with it because they were afraid of being a target.  Thus millions of people were easily controlled by hundreds of vile creatures.

It's really amazing, when you think about it.

There was an experiment a few years back, where volunteers were told that a switch in front of them was hooked to wires that would cause great pain to someone in another room.  The volunteer was to ask a series of questions, and if the other person got an answer wrong, they were to flip the switch.  All because someone in a lab coat told them to.  And they did.  Even when they thought they were inflicting severe pain on a complete stranger.  In almost every case.

It's just like a friend of mine, trundling down the six-lane interstate in his massive Ford pick-em-up full of eletric and electronic equipment, sipping on his 'fair trade' coffee that was flown in from Columbia via half a dozen middlemen, grousing about how people live resource-intensive lifestyles, on his way to make a documentary on global warming.  He honestly didn't see the irony of it.  He was doing the right thing, just like Algore in his personal Boeing 737.

Anyone that comes up to you and says you ought to be doing things their way should be immediately arrested and taken to Gitmo.  They're the ones who are supporting the Empire.  The problem is, they won't see the error of their ways until the goon-sqad comes to their door.  Until then, they are just self-righteous do-gooders who think they are being oh-so-helpful by changing the world to suit their tastes.  It never occurs to them that maybe other people like things different.

You see, the minute you want to use government force to change me, then you have created empire, and that empire will come back to eat you and everyone around you, because empires can not be constrained.  They will grow and swell until they have consumed everything around them.  Then they turn inward and start eating their own guts.

It's happened over and over and over.  And yet, we keep building more empires, because you can't stand the fact that maybe I want to live differently from you.  It's the whole fallacy of forced integration.  Why should I have to live with a bunch of people who want to mow their lawn, when I like mine a little more natural?  Then when you create a police force to make sure my lawn is just like yours, you have destroyed my world to make you happy.

The only problem with the collapse of empires is they tend to take just about everything else with them.  It's the hallmark of cowards to make others suffer their fate with them.

But certainly, the world is much better off without them.

American Idle

It's official. America is now bankrupt. There can be no equivocation or hem-haws about it. The country now owes its entire annual output of all goods and services from all people and machines and factories to the banksters.

On top of that, Obama has the audasity to submit a $3.6 TRILLION federal budget for the coming year, beginning in September. Hey BUDDY! There probably won't be a country to run come September!

Let's see here...300 million people, divided into 3.6 trillion dollars, comes out to $12,000 per person, working or not, or just sucking up resources as a government employee. In other words, Banny wants HALF of the average working American's annual income to run the federal government for ONE FREAKIN' YEAR!

Quick! Run to the kitchen, grab a glass and fill it with sodium fluoride sludge and slam it! Because any red-blooded, thinking, non-pacified human being would be outraged, not to mention scared to death, just about now.

Over on the US Debt Clock, which is a sobering site to see, we notice that the entire unfunded liabilities of the US federal government is over $112 TRILLION! Let that sink in for a minute. According to their calculations, which on a bad day are bound to be better than my best days, the average American is on the hook for over ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

According to the Census Bureau, the average American (that works) can expect to earn a little over $1 million in their LIFETIME.

So, to sum up a bit, the US National Debt is now equal to the sum total output of the nation's economy in one year, PLUS folks are on the hook for another million or so to fund Social Security, Welfare, Medicare/Medicaid, etc.

As far as I can tell, and I'm no economist, but it looks like there is absolutely no wealth left in America. It's all officially debt, and you and I don't have a gnat's ass of a chance to get out of hock, at least through the end of our kids' lifetimes.

Do you feel an Egyptian night out coming on yet? No? Then let's keep going shall we?

About a dozen states are on the ropes, financially. Forclosures are running at record highs with more and more folks getting upside-down on their mortgages. Jobs are vanishing and the Bone-heads in CONgress hear from the Fed Chairman that they won't be coming back, at least any time soon. Food and energy prices are soaring with nothing but more bad news on that front. And there's a couple of wars, with more in the wings, to pay for, as well.

There is no way this is sustainable. You can stick your head in the ground. You can deny and obfuscate. You can rant and rave about 'America, love it of leave it.' You can't change the debt. Piles, mounds, scads, and oodles of debt.

The only way to pay it off is to print more money, which since that's controlled by a private corporation, the money would have to be borrowed to pay the debt, which is akin to getting a new credit card to roll over your old ones. And that's all fine and good for some amount of time (granted it's gone on for YEARS now), but at some point, debt must be paid of repudiated. When that time comes, there will be hell to pay, one way or another.

It will either cause massive inflation, as in Zimbabwe or Argentina, or it will cause depression, the likes of which would make the former Great Depression look like fun. The only other option is that every man, woman and child work for one year without pay, so that the debt can be brought down to something more reasonable, which is unreasonable.

Sure, you can say, "It can't happen here! This is America!" Yeah, they said that in Rome, they said it just before the fall of the Byzantine Empire, they said it before the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It all goes away at some point. Empires are unsustainable.

Eventually, all empires must expend so many resorces, to project power to maintain the level of fear necessary to hold empires together, that they crumble under the weight of their own glory. What normally happens is that empires face challenges on multiple fronts, and so must split their energy. This process leaves the core unprotected and vulnerable. It then only takes the flick of a finger and the whole thing collapes overnight.

Citizens of the USSR went to bed one night in one country, and woke up the next day in another. It's that fast. The Visigoths and Vandals sacked Rome in a week. Oh sure, people spoke Latin for another 1,750 years, but the empire was long gone by the time the language died. Egypt changed in 18 days. Tunisia took even less time to crumble.

It's going to happen to America. I know that's really hard to comprehend, but the empire will die and something else will replace it. It will happen, whether you like it or not. The writing is on the wall, or at least on the balance sheet. The country has dug itself a massive grave in the ground of debt. ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD.

There's no way out of it.

Already, the Vandals are at the gate (Chinese). America's bonds are losing their investment grade status, while countries like Indonesia are about to gain that status. The vultures are circling waiting to pick up the juicy bits before the carcass gets full of maggots.

Can't happen, you say? It already is.

A $3.5 trillion federal budget is a dream. It can't happen. You are looking at the end of empire in that one bill. Lopping off a hundred billion here and there, as the Tea Partiers are singing about doesn't even begin to solve the problem. There's no wealth left. There's nothing to pay for it. Even Ron Paul can't pull this crate out of its death spin.

I could be wrong, but I'm usually not. I've read enough history, studied enough economics and pondered the trends to great length. Short of discovering an asteroid made of gold and bringing it home tomorrow, there's no solution but to dissolve the federal government, repudiate the debt and let the States fend for themselves.

The odds favor the prepared mind. The time for preparing is fast fading in the rearview mirror.

To borrow another metaphor, the king is in check and there's only one move left. But after that move, it's checkmate. From out here, we can see the whole board, and it looks pretty grim. From what I can see, the only move remaining is to seceed from the Union, and the free States form a new order of things. It won't solve the problems, but it will sure slow the impact a little.

And thos corporations that are going transnational? They're just the rats jumping ship. The wise boater will follow them while there's still lifevests available.