If you would like to add a comment to any of the threads here on AADB, registration with blogspot.com is not required. Simply click on the ‘comments’ link at the bottom of an essay, and either enter a nickname under ‘choose an identity’ or post your comment anonymously. Serious comments are always welcome.



REQUIEM

Below are the two final essays to be posted on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. The first one is written by a friend -- screen name 'Euro-American Scum' -- who, over the past four years, has been the most faithful essayist here. He has written about everything from his pilgrimage to Normandy in 2004 to take part in the 60th–year commemoration of the invasion, to his memories of his tour in Vietnam. His dedication to America’s founding principles ... and those who have sacrificed to preserve them over the past 200+ years ... is unequaled. Thank you, E-A-S. It has been a privilege to include your writing here, and it is a privilege to call you my friend.

The second essay is my own farewell. And with it I thank all of the many regular visitors, and those who may have only dropped in occasionally, for coming here. I hope you learned something. I hope a seed or two was planted. But, even if not, I thank you for stopping by ... 25 March, 2010

3/04/2009

Strangers in a Strange Land

Cheshire Cat.jpg

Thanks to many faithful readers for e-mailing and asking about the dearth of essays here on Allegiance and Duty Betrayed. I have no answer as to why the scarcity, other than the fact that I have had no desire to write about the state of our republic.

The main reasons being ...

(1) A sense of hopelessness and futility, even as regards the pen and the ballot box, to make a difference in the direction in which our republic is being steamrolled. Rampant ignorance and apathy brought us to the brink, and evil men in leadership positions are gleefully providing the final push.

(2) Where to begin even attempting to bring about activist solutions anymore? We daily awaken to new and incomprehensible affronts to our intellect and our sense of belonging. We are beginning to feel like strangers in a strange land. I have no use for my fellow Americans who voted for ‘change’ that was beautifully gift wrapped, but about whose contents they knew nothing. Nor do I anymore grant credence to those well-meaning but delusional patriots who are chanting ‘Sarah in 2012!’ and the like. They are living in a dream world in which they believe they can still work within a system whose foundations have putrefied, and whose rule-makers are corrupt to the bone

Not only those two segments of our society, but also the remnant of rational American patriots, are being led down the road to oblivion by a man whose qualifications to lead at all, and whose genuine accomplishments, are no more impressive than those we might read on the resumé of someone applying for a job as a junior executive. This junior executive wannabe, in office for fewer than six weeks, is ruling with an iron hand, steamrolling over, and demonizing, anyone who attempts to stand in his way.

Talk about surreal. The Cheshire Cat would envy our predicament.

And what are this junior executive’s qualifications for doing this to a nation that has prospered unlike any other in the history of mankind? A complete disregard for the United States Constitution and the American people, a puppet/puppet master relationship with the mainstream media, the support of powerful international moneymen and special interest groups, and a terrifying anti-American background that evolved through intimate association with mentors who despise the foundations of our republic.

This junior executive wannabe has allied himself with movers and shakers in Chicago, D.C., and God only knows what other anti-American enemies of liberty outside of America’s borders. He has implemented as his ultimate goals: (1) the destruction of (what remains of) America’s capitalist system, (2) the implementation of Marxist rule whereby (3) incrementally more ‘Americans’ (in name only) will seek and accept dependence on a nanny state for the necessities of life, and (4) the bastardizing of the concept of what it means to be an American.

In what now claims to be ‘leadership’ in Washington, all of what passes for governing in the best interest of the people of America now boils down to a carefully-studied mastering of the art of deceit, courtesy of the likes of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky.

Our ‘leadership’ claims to be concerned about the average American’s pocketbook, the average American’s peace of mind and economic well-being, the average American’s quality of life, and the average American’s ability to wake up in a country in which he feels secure and free.

Yet virtually everything that our ‘leadership’ is doing – and at record speed since January 20th – not only flies in the face of that pseudo-concern, but bespeaks quite the opposite.

Spending our republic into literal oblivion, on the pretext that not doing so, and not doing so immediately, would result in instant economic/societal catastrophe for us all … is a LIE.

We are spending ourselves into literal oblivion simply because the majority of the requisite spending is focused on the implementation of a Marxist agenda, and that the realization of that agenda will simply serve to accelerate our demise as a world economic power is of no concern to those at the helm. Not coincidentally, our current course will result in an enormous increase in the number of American citizens who must rely on the government for their very existence. And so enormous will that increase be that the opportunity to turn back the tide will vanish forever.

An American president and congress that are sincerely determined to cure what ails us would be hyper-focusing on those fiscal and monetary cancers that are eating away at our economic foundation, to the exclusion of other politically correct issues. The fact that they are not doing so, while still feigning concern about the economic cataclysm lurking over the horizon, renders their concern about America’s future a convenient masquerade.

Rather than muster all of their resources to confront the problem of our ailing economy, they are instead using that illness as an excuse to impose all manner of Marxist dictates – most of which will simply hasten our demise, and none of which will derail it. Their concern is bogus. Their duplicity is frighteningly real. They are like an adult child, having administered small doses of arsenic to his mother over a period of time, sitting by her bedside in the hospital, shoving a myriad of papers at her as she lay dying, and demanding that she sign over everything she owns to him, so that he can find her a better doctor.

There is no rational connection between environmental extremism (i.e., ‘global warming/climate change’), the ‘need’ for universal healthcare, or the ‘need’ to nationalize private industry, and a cure for what ails us economically – other than the fact that the shackles that will unavoidably be placed on every American’s liberties as a result of the implementation of all three agendas will create additional and completely unnecessary economic hardship that will make today’s nightmare seem like a walk in the park. At the core of fascist doctrine is an economic model in which the state shackles what is left of private enterprise with monstrous bureaucratic handcuffs, and orders the utilization of privately held assets to realize public policy agendas.

Voilà!

Precisely when our president and his minions in congress should be spending every waking hour attempting to solve the looming economic catastrophe, they are instead choosing to arbitrarily throw money at it, so as to appear to be doing something, while simultaneously crafting all manner of tyrannical legislation aimed at suppressing our freedoms, redistributing wealth, destroying our economy, erasing our borders, and amassing unprecedented power for themselves.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in one of those smoke-filled rooms.

There are many things about the demise of America that speak to an evil so insidious as to be incomprehensible to most of us.

(1) The spark for the economic, and soon to be societal, destruction of America began decades ago, but it was purposefully fanned into a flame by the American left (see the Community Reinvestment Act and the Cloward Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis). The bursting of the home mortgage bubble, which served as the major catalyst for what we are enduring today, and which will eventually prove to have tentacles far beyond anything we imagine, is simply a carefully-manufactured crisis. It is a manufactured crisis that scoffs at and derides America’s work ethic and America’s concept of personal responsibility, and has succeeded in confiscating a good portion of the life savings of every hard-working American, as well as condemning the quality of life of his children and grandchildren to third world status.

None of those three considerations (work ethic, personal responsibility, thrift) are of any significance to our current leadership in Washington. And the value of all three is being premeditatedly eradicated in order to increase the power of the state and foster dependence on state largesse.

Yet our president, and his minions in congress, daily wring their hands and claim to feel our pain – while, behind the scenes, they are authoring all manner of Marxist legislation that will further trample on our liberties, increasingly rob us of the fruits of our labor, and incrementally install a brand of government tyranny that will have our children and grandchildren gratefully accepting the fact that they must ask government permission, and pay a tax, in order to breathe in and out, and put one foot in front of the other.

(2) The people who are purposefully crafting the demise of the most moral and most prosperous civilization in the history of mankind are actually the most base among us. They are bottom feeders.

I, and I believe most conservatives, believe that the measure of a man is his character, and that yardstick is especially important in our leadership.

Picture yourself in a foxhole somewhere in a war zone, or stranded on a deserted island. Who would you rather have in that foxhole, or on that island, with you in order to ensure your survival and obtain some peace of mind in a harrowing situation -- your neighbor across the street, or Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid?

One of the things that so maddens me about the through-the-looking-glass nature of this travesty is the fact that the people whom the Marxists in the highest positions in our government choose to demonize, demoralize, and criminalize are the same people who are willing and able to do the kinds of work that these Marxists are truly incapable of doing. Our 'leadership' is meticulously following Saul Alinsky's credo that, in order to seize increasing power, one must 'frame a villain'. In the eyes of our 'leadership' in Washington, the 'villain' of their creation is anyone who seeks to make a profit, anyone who seeks to benefit from the sweat of his own brow, anyone who believes that one is responsible for one's own actions, and anyone who wants to be free to determine the focus of his own charitable giving rather than sharing his wealth with those who choose not to create their own.

Faith, duty, honesty, industry, personal responsibility, and ingenuity made America what she was in her finest hour. Most real Americans still possess those traits. Our 'leadership' possesses none of them. They are simply schemers with connections – unqualified to shine the shoes of those they demean and degrade, and yet somehow delusional enough to believe that they are a part of a chosen elite whose destiny it is to dictate how, and whether, the rest of us should live -- and powerful enough to make that delusion a reality.

(3) Hundreds of thousands of Americans, from the last part of the eighteenth century through the first part of the twenty-first, have voluntarily laid down their lives in the name of liberty. I daresay that all of those hundreds of thousands of Americans placed more value on allegiance and duty than any of those now in leadership in Washington.

We know almost none of their names, and yet they purchased with their lives the freedoms that ensured that we transform, with a sense of historically unprecedented conviction, thirteen beleaguered colonies into Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill.

And now, fewer than six hundred self-serving scoundrels, incapable of comprehending the powerful measure of love and devotion that wells up within the heart of an American patriot, have succeeded in stealing that precious, hard-won inheritance and turning it into something black, dimensionless, and without a soul. And they are seeing to it that there will be no turning back. Expanding their base. Answering mightily to their special interests. Demonizing, even silencing, their opposition.

And we have no one but the American citizen to blame. His apathy. Ignorance. Self-centeredness. Ingratitude. Hedonism. The fewer than six hundred were placed into power by a band of adoring mental adolescents, who simply want to be allowed to go to the mall, download music/noise, and worship celebrity.

Mark my word: The mall/noise/celebrity fountain will continue to pour forth, while the nuts and bolts of a free society, the sanctity of individual liberty, the concept of personal responsibility, and the belief in reward for thrift, ingenuity and hard work, are breathing their last breaths.

So who is to blame for our current crisis, scheduled to transform into a full-blown global cataclysm?

(1) leftist politicians who bullied/extorted banks into making loans that the banks knew full well were bad business,

(2) Fannie and Freddie criminals who contributed mightily to those same leftist politicians and then cavalierly sucked tens of millions from the engine before the wreck occurred, and

(3) bankers who were too lazy to take a close enough look at the sub-prime-backed securities they bought up.

The above three groups, perhaps the most powerful forces in the history of our republic, combined greed, incompetence and ignorance all into one neat package that has destroyed the savings of tens of millions of the people they claim to represent, and that threatens to bring America to her knees, as our ideological enemies wait in the wings to wrest the ‘super power’ banner from our hands. When that final insult occurs, this planet will prove uninhabitable for moral, honest people.

Avarice and ambition would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other ... A Constitution of government, once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever ... John Adams

The Patriotic Resistance

God bless you all. It has been a genuine privilege to cross paths with so many modern American patriots!

~ joanie

68 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the heads up Joanie and welcome back!

I can't disagree with anything you wrote. It's depressing.

Have you heard that Clinton has promised $300 million to Hamas and $600 million to the Palestinian Authority? Just another reason to be fearful.

Thank you for assuring me again that I am not alone the way I feel about the criminals in Washington.

Anonymous said...

Rather than muster all of their resources to confront the problem of our ailing economy, they are instead using that illness as an excuse to impose all manner of Marxist dictates – most of which will simply hasten our demise, and none of which will derail it. Their concern is bogus. Their duplicity is frighteningly real. They are like an adult child, having administered small doses of arsenic to his mother over a period of time, sitting by her bedside in the hospital, shoving a myriad of papers at her as she lay dying, and demanding that she sign over everything she owns to him, so that he can find her a better doctor.

Excellent analogy.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the very welcome email Joanie.

I've said it before: You need to run for national office or publish a syndicated column.

I hope there won't be 3 months between columns again.

Stay well friend, and write more!

Anonymous said...

Good work here, as always.

Keep the faith. God is still in control.

Anonymous said...

It's too bad 1 in 10 Americans know all of this.

Very informative, Joanie. Thank you for taking the time to put it all down, as horrifying as the picture turns out to be.

Anonymous said...

Nor do I anymore grant credence to those well-meaning but delusional patriots who are chanting ‘Sarah in 2012!’ and the like.

You're right. I prefer that "Joanie in 2012!" cry. :-)

Good job girl.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad to see you back, Joanie.

As usual, your analysis of where we are is right on the money, sad to say.

Thank you for letting me know that you're back. I'll be stopping by here more often again. ;)

God bless!

Anonymous said...

Brilliant!

Thank you for the level-headed summation of our plight. It doesn't make it any easier, just clearer.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone else feel like the U.S. is an airliner that has just been hijacked by terrorists and is about to be flown into a building?

Welcome back, Joanie!

Anonymous said...

NOT junior executive , but
junior high school student.


The KEY to the "economic" insanity is

GOLDMAN SACHS.

ROBERT RUBIN (Clinton's Treasury Secretary---and then CITIBANK executive) is a GOLDMAN SACHS alumni.

PAULSON (Bush's Treasury Secretary) is a GOLDMAN SACHS alumni.

TIMOTHY GEITHNER, Obama's Tax-cheat Treasury Secretary, is a GOLDMAN SACHS alumni.

GOLDMAN SACHS alumni Paulson waited until most of GOLDMAN SACH'S biggest competitors went extinct and then bailed out GOLDMAN SACHS.

Meanwhile GOLDMAN SACHS has a heavy investment in insurance giant AIG and would be badly hurt if AIG went under.

So the GOLDMAN SACHS alumni operating as US Treasury Secretaries bail out and bail out and bail out and bail out [count them--FOUR TIMES] AIG in order to protect GOLDMAN SACHS.

Anonymous said...

Gail, your assertions about Goldman Sachs alumni are accurate and fair, but we need to be careful about being too narrow-sighted. All of this deviousness is a part of a much bigger picture that involves hundreds of big money players, the most prominent of which is George Soros, and the many underlings he employs to achieve his end game.

But even focusing on Soros is too short-sighted. This disaster has been decades in the making and is oiled by a machine that most people don't even know exists.

Nice work, JKF.

Anonymous said...

A tax cheat is writing the tax laws. A tax cheat is enforcing the tax laws. A novelist would never get this past an editor, because the suspension of reality-orientation would be too great.

Anonymous said...

Yes,

A tax cheat in charge of the IRS.

Change you can believe in.

Anonymous said...

Bravo Joanie! Simply outstanding!

joanie said...

Thanks for the kind words, Rob.

Yes, I've heard about Clinton's promise of $600 millions t the Palestinian Authority. It's billed as 'humanitarian aid', and we all know just how 'humanitarian' the PA is. The U.N. is scheduled to distribute the money. How fitting.

~ joanie

joanie said...

Thanks, Minuteman. Not a chance for either of your scenarios to occur, but thanks for the kind words. :)

~ joanie

joanie said...

Anonymous, Max Shapiro, Dave Burkett,

Thanks for the very kind words. :)

~ joanie

joanie said...

Kathy, Blackie, Stonemason, John Galt,

Thanks for the kind words, and for heading back this way. :)

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

The Five Stages of Collapse

From observing the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dmitry Orlov outlines the stages: (1) financial collapse; (2) commercial collapse; (3) political collapse; (4) social collapse; (5) cultural collapse (Energy Bulletin 11/01/08).

Orlov notes that "a shrinking economy cannot sustain an ever-expanding level of debt." The loss of the ability to finance oil imports will be a tipping point. He believes that the U.S. has not yet experienced any of the major, earth-shattering realizations "the ones that look preposterous immediately before and completely obvious immediately after they occur."

Social collapse is guaranteed to happen, he writes, whenever society is utterly dependent on finance, commerce, or government. The responses needed to stave off the unthinkable include: (1) learning to live without much money; (2) providing for basic needs; (3) local self- government; (4) cohesive community with mutual responsibility; and (5) classical human virtues.

As Ludwig von Mises noted, "there is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion." The choices are sooner, from voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later, as a final catastrophic destruction of the currency.

Benchmarks

* Interest: $1 billion/day; U.S. govt borrowing to pay it.

* Unofficial national debt ("financing gap"): > $50 trillion.

* U.S. foreign debt, Dec 2007: $13.427 trillion

* U.S. GDP: about $17 trillion.

* Foreign debt/GDP > 60%: risk of major monetary crisis.

* Percentage of adult men with jobs: lowest since 1948.

Anonymous said...

Μολὼν λάβε!

Anonymous said...

May Divine Provedence steel our hearts to do what must be done to preserve this last best hope of mankind.

Anonymous said...

Geithner's choice for deputy withdraws from consideration

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090305/geithner_choice_withdraws.html?.v=1

Perhaps such actions show that these people know more than they are saying about what a disaster the new administration is.

Anonymous said...

Plato wrote, "Folly is a mental disease, and of folly there are two kinds, madness and stupidity." We have both kinds in spades nowadays, madness (insanity) in our leaders, and stupidity in their followers. Nothing good can come of this development.

I'm also reminded of a saying of Solon, "The citizens in their wildness are bent on the destruction of their fair city [the city-state, Athens], and money is the compulsive cause."

What has been happening over the past six weeks or so looks like a near-total breakdown of the moral center of our society. If this is so, then things are going to have to get a whole lot worse before they can ever get better again.

Thanks so much for writing, joanie! Keep the faith, and pray to God that He will continue to bless America.

Anonymous said...

And a happy UN-birthday to you too...
The Mad Hatter is a Halfrican Jug eared Clodhopper..
The rabbit is late, for a very important date...
With the Queen of Hearts who is now the Sec of State.

Anonymous said...

Letter to the IRS:

I am sorry to inform you that I will not be able to pay taxes owed April 15, but all is not lost.

I have paid these taxes: accounts receivable tax, building permit tax, CDL tax, cigarette tax, corporate income tax, dog license tax, federal income tax, unemployment tax, gasoline tax, hunting license tax, fishing license tax, waterfowl stamp tax, inheritance tax, inventory tax, liquor tax, luxury tax, Medicare tax, city, school and county property tax (up 33 percent last 4 years), real estate tax, social security tax, road usage tax, toll road tax, state and city sales tax, recreational vehicle tax, state franchise tax, state unemployment tax, telephone federal excise tax, telephone federal, state and local surcharge tax, telephone minimum usage surcharge tax, telephone state and local tax, utility tax, vehicle license registration tax, capitol gains tax, lease severance tax, oil and gas assessment tax, Alabama property tax, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada sales tax, and many more that I can't recall but I have run out of space and money.

When you do not receive my check April 15, just know that it is an honest mistake. Please treat me the same way you treated Congressmen Charles Rangel, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and ex-Congressman Tom Daschle and, of course, your boss Timothy Geithner. No penalties and no interest.

P.S. I will make at least a partial payment as soon as I get my stimulus check.

Very Respectfully,
CBEN

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the great read Joanie, and I'm SO glad to see you back!

Anonymous said...

As perceptive a piece as you'll read in any major newspaper.

Anonymous said...

We missed your insightful commentaries. This is one of your best! We pray you do not stay away.

At one time, the doses were small. No longer. The pot is boiling and the frog is almost cooked. By the time this “president” is finished, so will the frog.

“They” want us in a constant “State of Fear” so “they” can “solve” the problems “they” create with more government.

“They” demonize Rush to take the focus off themselves and the sheeple follow to the slaughterhouse.

Anonymous said...

Obama Favors and Unholy Alliance Between Marxism and Islam

Anonymous said...

Now for some cool jazz by Kathleen Stewart: It Ain't Your Money to Spend!

Anonymous said...

I feel like I'm witnessing a death watch from the moment I wake up in the morning until I go to bed at night.

Obama ain't no friend of big pharma, but Prozac must be doing a bang-up business these days.

It's good to see you back, lass. Stay longer this time!

Luis said...

Welcome back Joanie !

I am also someone who has been uninspired to write anything much of late.

However the absence of your posts has surely been a loss to all your readers.

I therefore welcome your post despite the depressing but true conclusions you reach.

Best wishes to you and yours !

Luis

Anonymous said...

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved. ---Ludwig Von Mises

Anonymous said...

Great site! I'll be back often. I sent this column to a lot of my friends.

Anonymous said...

From the Patriot Post:

Could it be ... that Obama's policies actually have much less to do with economic recovery than with, to use his own words, "the fundamental transformation of the United States of America" into a socialist republic?

Bull's eye!

joanie said...

John,

A beautiful post.

Orlov (and von Mises, as always) have intelligence, knowledge and history on their side.

America’s ‘leadership’ knows none of the three, and are so blinded by greed (for power and influence) that they are selling us all to the highest bidder -- be that bidder American the myriad of left-wing domestic special interest groups, or foreign ideological enemies.

And the fact that our president’s popularity has not taken a major hit shows just how clueless, myopic and self-absorbed the majority of our countrymen are.

~ joanie

joanie said...

tet68 said, May Divine Provedence steel our hearts to do what must be done to preserve this last best hope of mankind.

Amen.

joanie said...

betty boop said, 'What has been happening over the past six weeks or so looks like a near-total breakdown of the moral center of our society. If this is so, then things are going to have to get a whole lot worse before they can ever get better again.'

Thank you for your always insightful comments, betty. You are a patriot through and through.

Every time I hear our new president talking about how, in the midst of this major economic crisis, we must immediately tackle the 'problem' of healthcare in America, my blood pressure rises fifty points.

Here is a man who adheres to a political philosophy that, for the past few decades, has done everything within its power to see to it that healthcare costs skyrocket -- by placing burdensome requirements and restrictions on the health insurance industry, by demonizing drug companies, and by allowing tort lawyers free rein to file all manner of frivolous medical malpractice/drug suits.

And now these same leftists are using the results of their manipulations to decry the high cost of medical care and to assert that the only reasonable solution is to allow them to call all of the healthcare shots.

Listening to his compassionate tone regarding the need to overhaul our healthcare system, one would assume that this president is overflowing with concern regarding the financial straits in which the American citizen now finds himself. Yet this man played a major role in the purposeful disintegration an enormous portion of many Americans' hard-earned retirement funds.

You and I, and most of our countrymen, worked a lifetime to prepare for our retirements, and the savings that resulted from that lifetime of work have been declared irrelevant and dispensable, because the confiscation of the fruits of our labor is perceived as a necessary evil in the realization of our president's political agenda.

I know that you see that the emperor is wearing no clothes, but, so far, the majority of your countrymen still believe he is a political Beau Brummell.

~ joanie

joanie said...

hosepipe said:

'And a happy UN-birthday to you too...
The Mad Hatter is a Halfrican Jug eared Clodhopper..
The rabbit is late, for a very important date...
With the Queen of Hearts who is now the Sec of State.


Thanks for the much-needed laugh. :)

~ joanie

joanie said...

no_way_a_liberal said, “They” demonize Rush to take the focus off themselves and the sheeple follow to the slaughterhouse.

I am not a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh, but I believe part of the demonization motive is to set him up as the epitome of the conservative movement, pounce on every foot-in-mouth comment he makes over the next few months, and then use that ammunition as foddier for the passage of the fairness doctrine. It's going to happen, with or without their ability to use Rush as a scapegoat.

joanie said...

Thanks for the kind words, proudpodunknative. :)

~ joanie

joanie said...

Thanks for the kind words, Luis.

I have missed your writing as well, both here and on your blog.

It would seem that we've both been slacking of late. :)

I hope your recent travels have been productive and enjoyable, and that you are enjoying some much-needed 'down time' at home!

Continued best to you and K and N in these troubling times ...

~ joanie

joanie said...

Cal Brindisi,

Von Mises was nothing short of a genius.

Some call him one of the most brilliant economists and social philosophers of our time. I believe his vision, and the accuracy of it, encompasses far beyond 'our time'.

I often post opinions on a stock message board, and debate both investment decisions, and politics, with several other members of that board.

Others on the forum will sometimes intervene and ask us to 'take the politics elsewhere' because political talk has no place on an investment website.

I generally respond with von Mises' observation (especially true in these cataclysmic times) that politics' (especially as it concerns economics) tentacles reach into every aspect of society; it should concern everyone and be the 'main and proper' study of all citizens.

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

A letter to the editor in the Patriot Post:

Thomas Jefferson asserted, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” I am in complete agreement with that statement, and agree with my fellow Patriots around the country who sense that the time for “refreshment” may be drawing near.

However, I am a family man with small children who depend on me to provide for them. My heart is torn in that it says it would gladly give itself in mind and body to the causes which may unfold, but at the same time my heart says its must be there to provide for my children until they are old enough to make choices and provide for themselves.

That said, if it meant that my children would live as wards of the state with me at their side, or as a free people with me as a loving memory in their hearts and minds, I would gladly take the latter, for if it were the former I could not bear to look them in the eye and say that I did nothing.

Anonymous said...

The men at Powerline have really nailed the economic situation in which America finds itself. A Counterpoint, From Jeremiah. (I'm not sure if they're speaking of the Biblical Jeremiah, or somebody else.)
~~~~~
The current recession has a number of features that seem to me to make it considerably more worrisome than those in the past. As your second chart shows, it is, albeit by only a slight margin, the most significant contraction in GDP in over 50 years. But that is only the beginning. The Dow has lost 53% of its value in just 18 months, wiping out trillions in wealth -- indeed, wiping out every bit of investors' gains for over the last 12 years. This is at precisely the time when those investors -- probably mostly people in their fifties, although I have no way of proving that -- are trying to figure out how to fund their retirement. The drastic reduction of the value of their holdings, and the consequent scaling back or elimination of stock dividends, has made it increasingly likely that these people will be thrown on the mercy of the government. But one way or another, the recession's effect on stocks and stock dividends (and to a lesser though significant extent on the value of housing) has beaten down personal wealth to an extent unknown in my lifetime.

Yet more worrisome is the qualitative effect of the recession. Lehman Brothers collapsed months ago. Wachovia followed suit. Citi and Bank of America are on life support. GE, GM and Alcoa -- all industry giants -- are in imminent danger of bankruptcy. There is a realistic question whether the financial system as we have known it will survive at all. That was not the case in other post-War recessions. It was only the case during the Great Depression.

Our ability to recover is also open to question in ways different and more troubling than in the post-War past. Post-War America had a degree of toughness that has since been lost at the mall and in the spa. It knew privation and could live with it. As a relative matter, it believed in saving rather than borrowing. It believed in producing rather than consuming. It was not a nation of the "You deserve a break today," victim-centered, bail-me-out culture that dominates now. In other words, it was a nation far better prepared to tolerate the painful steps necessary to long term recovery, as opposed to the next (and the next and the next) stimulus check paid for with money we don't have and will never have, all to produce a fleeting and mostly illusory stop to the pain.

Finally, our ability to bail our way out of this recession is extremely limited, because, even if they worked and could be paid for, bailouts, and government spending generally, fail to address the fundamental problem at the heart of our difficulties. The fundamental problem is not liquidity or even solvency. It is trust -- or more correctly, the lack of trust -- that has spawned the breakdown in the credit markets. The lack of trust cannot be remedied with money. It can only remedied with that which creates trust, to wit, honesty. But honesty is an obsolete and orphaned virtue in today's landscape.
~~~~~
The above quote is by Bill Otis, to which Powerline adds:
~~~~~
"But the destruction of trillions of dollars in wealth that we have witnessed over the last six months is unique in modern history. It isn't just the bursting of a bubble like the dot com collapse of 2000. It is a sort of neutron bomb effect, in which the physical means of production--buildings, fields, factories--are still standing, but the living heart of the economy, confidence in the future, has been wounded if not killed. I don't think that confidence (or, as Bill says, trust) will return any time soon."
~~~~~
To which I would add: This situation will be infinitely complicated by China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran - all of which want to see America destroyed.

Anonymous said...

It was good to see you back Joanie. This is powerful stuff and powerfully written.

I am reminded of the Indian in the anti-littering commercials a few years back. He is standing alone and crying because of what he sees happening to his land/country.

Many of us feel much like that Indian. It often feels like we are standing slump-shouldered and alone in the wilderness and all we can do is cry when we see what is happening to our country.

Your essays are important because they precisely target the villains in this play and state unequivocally the evil they are perpetrating, but also because they remind us that we are not alone in the wilderness. There are other patriots among us if only we will seek them out.

I have 5 grandchildren, three of whom are old enough that I am confident they will be fine American patriots. The oldest is a sophomore in college on a full ROTC scholarship and I could not be more proud of him.

For all of their video games and me first because you owe it to me attitudes, many of them are fine young ladies and gentlemen to whom we can trust the future of this wonderful country.

You said, "Mark my word: The mall/noise/celebrity fountain will continue to pour forth, while the nuts and bolts of a free society, the sanctity of individual liberty, the concept of personal responsibility, and the belief in reward for thrift, ingenuity and hard work, are breathing their last breaths."

God, I hope you are wrong about that and I believe there is yet time albeit precious little.

I will close by saying that I hope your brief hiatus has refreshed you sufficiently that you will continue to sound the clarion call.

We need you to keep reminding us that we are not alone if nothing else.

I hope this doesn't sound like overblown rhetoric but your country needs you.

joanie said...

John,

Your Powerline post is brilliant.

These two excerpts, especially, are more frightening, and more true, than any of us like to admit:

Post-War America had a degree of toughness that has since been lost at the mall and in the spa. It knew privation and could live with it. As a relative matter, it believed in saving rather than borrowing. It believed in producing rather than consuming. It was not a nation of the "You deserve a break today," victim-centered, bail-me-out culture that dominates now.

The lack of trust cannot be remedied with money. It can only remedied with that which creates trust, to wit, honesty. But honesty is an obsolete and orphaned virtue in today's landscape.


The most maddening aspect of all of this insanity and destruction, to my mind, is the fact that most of it was purposefully engineered by those who are now in charge of its 'solution'.

Thanks for the great post.

~ joanie

joanie said...

Barry,

Thanks for the very kind comments. They are doubly appreciated, considering that they were authored by a modern American patriot.

I especially appreciate your comments about your grandchildren. It would be much easier to deal with what the scoundrels are doing to our beloved republic, if it weren't for our concern for our children, and their children. It sounds as though your grandchildren have their heads on straight -- a blessing beyond measure!

Our mutual friend, B, visited us yesterday. During the course of our conversation, he described several events that involved the wonderful men of his generation, and the character traits they possessed that are growing more rare with each passing day. Hearing his stories was fascinating, and yet it brought home the fact that the character of each succeeding generation seems to dilute, which explains, in large part, why we find ourselves where we are today.

God bless you, Barry. It's a privilege to call you our friend.

~ joanie

James said...

I know you have heard it a hundred times, but, "I'm glad you're back" safe and sound. I'll give you a good laugh. I was thinking, you've seen all the questions being asked about where is Obama's birth certificate? Well remember, 2000 years ago the Son of God was born in a manger via a virgin. Wasn't his father David? Well, today here will have a almost total stranger come out of nowhere become pres. Who is he, where did he come from? You see, no birth certiticate. Da ju vue.

Anonymous said...

James, but the difference between Jesus Christ and Barack Obama is that Jesus Christ could build a good cabinet.

Anonymous said...

Future Presidents will be required to show Birth Certificate if Florida Republican Congressman has his way
~~~~~
Congressman Bill Posey, a freshman Rep. from Central Florida, has introduced a bill requiring that future Presidents present their Birth Certificates to the voters prior to running for office. The following is a summary:

H.R. 1503. A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the Office of President under the Constitution; to the Committee on House Administration.

Anonymous said...

John Cooper said...

Future Presidents will be required to show Birth Certificate if Florida Republican Congressman has his way


Apparently the current so-called "president" is an exception to this.

Anonymous said...

Not only those two segments of our society, but also the remnant of rational American patriots, are being led down the road to oblivion by a man whose qualifications to lead at all, and whose genuine accomplishments, are no more impressive than those we might read on the resumé of someone applying for a job as a junior executive.

You can say that again.

What's going on in Washington is like having a Cub Scout heading up a Fortune 500 Company. The only difference is that most Cub Scouts have scruples.

Anonymous said...

Welcome back, Joanie! I was afraid that you, like Christopher Columbus, fell off the edge of the world.

Now that it looks like AADB is once again open for business, looks like I'll warm up my laptop and send you something you might find of interest.

Lots of water over the gate since December, to paraphrase Richard Nixon.

Welcome back. You were sorely missed.

E. A. Scum

Anonymous said...

Can you tell that you've been missed, lass? Don't stay away this long again, you hear?

Anonymous said...

E-A-S: You've been missed, too!

joanie said...

DantheMan,

The letter you transcribed from the Patriot Post gave me a serious lump in my throat. The author is a modern American patriot. God bless him!

~ joanie

joanie said...

James,

Thanks for the very kind words, and for the good laugh. We can all use frequent doses of both these days. :)

~ joanie

joanie said...

E-A-S,

Thanks for the very kind words, friend. Please do warm up your laptop. Your wisdom and eloquence are always welcome here.

Prayers continuing ...

~ joanie

joanie said...

Thanks to 'Barry up the Road' for this:

Electing a Child to be President

The last time America elected a young President it was John F. Kennedy, age 44 when he took office.

The result was the Bay of Pigs fiasco involving an ill-fated invasion of Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro and the decision to step in for the defeated French in Vietnam. Other comparable decisions were cut short by his assassination. We remember him mostly for his stirring inaugural speech, but his choice of Lyndon Johnson as his Vice President gave us the escalation of the Vietnam War and Great Society social spending that proved to be a waste of billions.

Now we have a President who is 47, a very young age to be running the greatest economic and military power in the world. He had, on taking office, already written two autobiographical memoirs, but people are slowly becoming aware of the fact that there is virtually no paper trail by which to measure him. His birth certificate and legal standing to be President are in dispute. Records from his college days are hidden from view.

His record as a one-term Illinois legislator is replete with "present" votes that revealed little about his political positions. He did not even wait to complete a full term as a U.S. Senator before almost immediately beginning to run for the highest office in the land.

In terms of political leadership, he is a child among grownups and a petulant one at that.

His first months in office have demonstrated an astonishing lack of judgment regarding those who he appointed to office, many of whom were revealed to be tax cheats and others who have since demonstrated a distinct lack of competence or preparation for positions of critical importance. Why, for example, would he appoint a longtime political operative like Leon Panetta to be the Director of the CIA?

His initial policy decisions and statements panicked Wall Street and were it not for grownups like Ben Bernacke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the steps taken by President Bush prior to his taking office, the economy might have suffered even greater damage. His decisions in office, however, are widely decried as a repetition of all the errors made by the FDR administration that prolonged the Great Depression.

While babbling endlessly about "energy independence" he has again banned any offshore exploration and drilling for oil and natural gas. His preferences for solar and wind energy ignore the fact that, while heavily subsidized by taxpayer funding, these two "clean" energies provide barely one percent of the electricity the nation requires and are the two least efficient and impractical means of generating power.

While deploring "earmarks" he signed an "imperfect" stimulus bill that contained nine thousand of them.

Foreign policy under President Obama has been characterized by ignoring the human rights and security needs of nations like Poland, Tibet, and Israel. Despite more than a half century of resisting the communist domination of Cuba, he has softened that and is likely to abandon it.

He has insisted on a swift withdrawal of troops from Iraq despite the obvious need to provide vital protection against the forces that would undermine its newly minted democracy. He insists on transferring troops to Afghanistan in a war that few regard as anything other than a prolonged insurgency with little prospect of a successful outcome.

Obama may be our first President with Attention Deficit Disorder. He went from declaring we faced an economic "catastrophe" to saying the economy was still strong in just over a month. Maybe that accounts for his dependence on the TelePrompter which, we're told, goes everywhere he does.

We're watching an already long list of fatally flawed decisions and I suggest that we are looking at a combination of his socialist ideology, his youth and inexperience, and a narcissism that cannot tolerate criticism no matter its source.

His greatest support comes from a younger generation of Americans with virtually no knowledge of the nation's history, no grasp of the economic issues affecting it, and no more political insight than to rely on "hope and change" without understanding that these are not, nor ever were sufficient to the task of being in charge of a great nation with great challenges.

Politically, emotionally, and intellectually, Barack Hussein Obama is a child. This has become increasingly evident with every passing day.

It is not too soon to demand those hidden documents. It is not too soon for the Democrats in Congress to realize that supporting his policies represents a grave danger to the nation and their reelection. It is not too soon to begin working to neutralize him by electing a Republican controlled Congress in 2010.

The military's meritocracy is based on experience that comes with age and proven leadership. We require that our police act in a disciplined and mature way when dealing with law-breakers. We don't put children in charge of our schools.

Anonymous said...

"It is not too soon for the Democrats in Congress to realize that supporting his policies represents a grave danger to the nation and their reelection."

The Democrats in Congress don't care what happens to this country if they can change government in such a way that government has more control over the people and the economy. If the country is in grave danger that is "a good crisis" to take advantage of.

joanie said...

No Way a Liberal Said:

The Democrats in Congress don't care what happens to this country if they can change government in such a way that government has more control over the people and the economy. If the country is in grave danger that is "a good crisis" to take advantage of.

Ninety percent of our problem, in a nut shell!

~ joanie

Anonymous said...

This is a VERY informative blog. I wish you had more access to public view. Thank you for your contribution to educating the people of this country. They just don't seem to care.

Roy Nagle
Memphis, TN

Anonymous said...

The Obama administration economic credo:

There are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets.

joanie said...

From Doug Giles at Townhall.com (He started my morning with a belly laugh):

... if I buy a small car it will be because I want to buy a small car. I bought my wife a beautiful Mini CooperS, not because some green jackass shamed us into it but because it is a screaming little high-quality ride, a veritable street legal go cart that she can park in a mailbox, which is important in a place like Miami (not to mention she looks smoking hot in it, as well).

However, now that we, the slaves of Obamaland, are being humiliated by “them” to get a Thumbelina car that goes at a top speed of 20mph and runs on Balinese spider monkey urine, I’ve decided to sell the Mini and get the Ford F-1150 Global Warmer with the Middle Finger Package that visibly melts the polar ice caps and turns the sky black when you crank it up. Matter of fact, I think I’ll get two: one for her to drive and one just to start and let run in my driveway.

Anonymous said...

Joanie, you need to write something about all the specifics in these earmakrs. So few of us know about all the "favors" that are being handed out by the BILLIONS!

Anonymous said...

The fed will not give up without a fight but as Keyes himself once admitted in response to how his economic philosophy would work long-term, he said; 'In the long run we are all dead.'

Long-term you are correct in what you say in your blog. In the short term lots of things can happen, like 20% stock market rally's. Or the USA can look pretty good on the outside because every other country may look worse off.

Unlike the Bible, I believe our constitution does have some flaws. Never-the-less it is still a great document to Govern a country by and we ignore it at our own risk. But if we seek him and stay true to God then he will protect us, (like Ruth).

My hope in the short-term is that the public wakes up to who they voted in and perhaps repent for a while, (like the people of Israel did from time to time).

The dye may be cast for the down fall of our democracy, (it does not have to be, but most likely is). In the mean time I try to follow the advice we find in 2 Timothy 2:4 "No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier".