A Comparison

Robert Bartos over at Shrapnel has some interesting comparisons between Bush and Putin:

Remember Putin has been effectively in power since 1999. He has a 70 per cent approval rate by the Russian people. In that time he has paid off a 200 billion national debt; has insured an economic growth at roughly 7 per cent per year; began major rebuilding of his armed forces[budget 70 billion]; and kept his country out of war. The Russian ruble has increased in value and stabilized on the world currency market. Putin has strengthened his political party...

Contrast that to GW Bush's less than 30 per cent approval rate by the American people. Bush has created trillions of dollars of national debt; created two wars; after strategic warning, stood by as his country was attacked on 9/11; watched as US ground forces became stressed; he is losing the wars he started, unable to disengage. The US dollar continues to dive to the lowest historical level. GW Bush wrecked the Republican Party. Under these comparisons, Russian corruption appears more productive for its citizens than the US variety for Americans.

Hilarious.

What Else Are They doing With Our money?

To protect and serve:

Robin Garrison, an off-duty 42-year-old firefighter, was walking in Berliner Park in Columbus, Ohio, in May when he saw a woman sunbathing topless under a tree.

He approached her and they started talking and getting comfortable, the woman smiling and resting her foot on his shoulder at one point.

Eventually, she asked to see Garrison's penis; he unzipped his pants and complied.

Seconds later, undercover police officers pulled up in a van and arrested Garrison; he was later charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor.

While topless sunbathing is legal in the city's parks, exposing more than that is against the law.

A police "officer", topless in a public park, convincing some poor old schmuck to flash his package.

This is law enforcement?

Not Unexpected

This from the NYT:

American consumers, uneasy about the economy and unimpressed by the merchandise in stores, delivered the bleak holiday shopping season retailers had expected, if not feared, according to one early but influential projection.

Spending between Thanksgiving and Christmas rose just 3.6 percent over last year, the weakest performance in at least four years, according to MasterCard Advisors, a division of the credit card company. By comparison, sales grew 6.6 percent in 2006, and 8 percent in 2005.

"Unimpressed by the merchandise".

A few days ago, we went to the local Mall to see what was available for gifts. We found - for the most part - three kinds of merchandise:

1)- Cheap, poor quality junk that could only impress a two-year-old,

2)- Expensive, poor quality junk trying to get sold using a "big" name brand, and

3)- Expensive, but useless crap that nobody would find any purpose for.

And guess what? Just about everything had a "made in china" label on it.

"Unimpressed by the merchandise".

We are starting to learn that just because it looks all new and shiny, it doesn't mean that it will last out the week. And that is most of China's products available to us in a nutshell... pretty and shiny, but made of inferior everything. I am positive China can -and does- make high-quality products... we just don't get any of them. We get all the junk.

Americans are starting to realize that - no matter how inexpensive or costly or pretty - crap is still crap - and not worth dragging into your home, or any of your friends.

We ended up buying food stuffs for everybody on the gift list. Things like Hickory Farms, Harry and David, gift items from the See's candy Kiosk, places like that.

Everybody loved it. Lesson learned:

Give yummy holiday food items designed for the season. You'll be heroes. And your family and friends won't have the chore of tossing out all that cheap and possibly toxic crap your local retailers are trying to dump on you.

The Crisis Man Cometh

Wow, this headline is really good news for the upcoming year:

CRISIS MAY MAKE 1929 LOOK A 'WALK IN THE PARK'

As central banks continue to splash their cash over the system, so far to little effect, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues things are rapidly spiralling out of their control

Twenty billion dollars here, $20bn there, and a lush half-trillion from the European Central Bank at give-away rates for Christmas. Buckets of liquidity are being splashed over the North Atlantic banking system, so far with meagre or fleeting effects.

"Rapidly spirialling out of control". When you step back and look at the entire picture, It becomes obvious that the big money boys have just about destroyed the very thing that has made them prosperous beyond imagination. When you see CEO's getting seventy million dollar bonuses for just showing up for a year, you know how out-of-control things really are.

Maybe they think they have almost enough and want to squeeze out that last little drop before they slither away offshore and live the life of luxury forever. Maybe they think the gravy train will never stop. Maybe they are just so greedy they cannot see the approaching brick wall.

Most likely they indeed do have enough and don't care about the coming crash that will obliterate the American economy. Yes, get that last billion of so before the roof caves in....

Who knows?

One thing for certain, if you have all your assets in paper holdings, you're going down with the ship. And it's not waist deep water this time, or even neck deep... we're about to join the Titanic.

Second Time Around

And who is surprised about this?

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments at an alarming rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double-digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of worse to come.

An Associated Press analysis of financial data from the country's largest card issuers also found that the greatest rise was among accounts more than 90 days in arrears.

Experts say these signs of the deterioration of finances of many households are partly a byproduct of the subprime mortgage crisis and could spell more trouble ahead for an already sputtering economy.

"Debt eventually leaks into other areas, whether it starts with the mortgage and goes to the credit card or vice versa," said Cliff Tan, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and an expert on credit risk. "We're starting to see leaks now."

I said it several years ago...

Everybody had maxed out their credit cards. So they got a second on the house and paid off all those cards. Then they started using those cards again for anything and everything - although they had promised themselves they wouldn't - and now the cards are once again getting maxed out. But this time, no chance of a second mortgage to pay them off.


The guy is starting to "see leaks"? It's gonna be a flood any day now.

Crunch time again, and this time... No way out.

Isreal could survive Nuclear War?

Pollyanna is alive and well:

If a nuclear war between Israel and Iran were to break out 16-20 million Iranians would lose their lives - as opposed to 200,000-800,000 Israelis, according to a report recently published by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is headed by Anthony H. Cordesman, formerly an analyst for the US Department of Defense. The document, which is largely theoretical due to the lack of verified knowledge in some areas - specifically in terms of Israel's nuclear capability - paints various scenarios and attempts to predict the strategies of regional powers, as well as the US.

Who the hell are they trying to kid? A place as small as Israel would take less than a half-dozen nukes to remove it from the face of the earth. And on top of that, all those "holy" places would end up glowing for several thousand years and be totally unapproachable without full body rad suits.

Witless fools who theorize that any nation could survive an out-and-out full bore nuclear exchange(which it would quickly become in a matter of hours) have their heads of their asses and have no concept of the consequences of such an action.

To even consider the possibly is beyond rash. Bottom line...there is no problem anywhere in the world that a nuclear exchange would solve.

Maybe the Iranians figured that out- several years ago - when they quit their nuclear weapons program. Now it's time for the Jews to figure it out also, or see the realization of Hitler's "final solution" come to pass.

Israel, with it's 300 nukes and it's supposed Godly destiny, is probably the most dangerous nation in the history of the world. Countless scenarios studying a projected limited nuclear exchange between Israel and anybody has always shown an escalation to total world war.

Should the Jews start lobbing nukes around, more people will die than in all the previous wars in our entire history.

Merry Christmas.

Lieberman goes For Bomb-Bomb

Bomb, bomb, bomb... bomb, bomb Iran McCain has picked up an endorsement from Israel's Senator-In-Residence, Joseph Lieberman.

No surprises here... Lieberman will support any candidate that favors fighting Israel's many wars for them using American lives and money, and McCain is so desperate he'll take endorsements from just about anybody, as we can all see.

Why does stuff like this get publicity?

How's That Again?

Can you believe this?

ORANGEBURG, South Carolina (CNN) –Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that the first thing his wife Hillary will do when she reaches the White House is dispatch him and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation by the current president — Bush's son, George W. Bush.

Let's see now... a dude that gets blow jobs in the White House and a ninety-year-old that jumps out of airplanes are going to improve our worldwide image.

Can someone explain to me just how that's going to work?

Paint Shop Pro

Alan Blacklock, a photographer with the New Zealand Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, was certainly surprised when he looked into the afternoon sky from his home in the capital city, Wellington.
A photograph of a cirrus cloud, taken on December 2

'It was Sunday afternoon and my attention was drawn to this cloud,' he said.


'It wasn't a great leap of the imagination to see a reindeer.'

He may be a good photogrqpher, but he appears to be a much better computer user.

How Much Did You Get?

According to the congressional budget Office's latest report, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by $465,700 each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.

Earlier reports, based on tax returns, showed that in 2005 the top 10 percent, top 1 percent and fractions of the top 1 percent enjoyed their greatest share of income since 1928 and 1929.

Fascinating. 1928 and 1929. Wasn't that just before a lot of those Wall Street "investors" started jumping out of windows?

Will history repeat itself? Will we learn anything from it? Probably yes, and definitely no.

Money Does Grow On Trees, For a "Chosen" Few

The CEO of Goldman Sachs is receiving a 70 million dollar Christmas bonus this year, an all-time world record that truly exposes the thievery these big corporations practice on a daily basis. Last year this corporate elite got a 53 million dollar bonus for a total of 123 million dollars of bonus in a little over twelve months.

Does he deserve it? Of course not. What has he done to earn 123 million dollars in twelve months? Did he entertain millions of Americans all year long, like a sports hero of movie star? Did he invent a form of transportation that does not pollute? Did he develop a medicine that had eliminated all cancer? No, none of that. What he did do is preside over a corporation that spends every waking second trying to chisel even more money out of our pockets.

This man is invisible to most Americans and prefers it that way. Publicity is very bad for these modern three-piece-suit bandits. The only people who benefit from his activities - other than himself - are a few stockholders/owners/investors who rake in millions and millions on an endless gravy train powered by avarice and greed.

Are you paying almost three dollars/gallon for gas? Who gets all that extra profit from a product that cost a dollar/gallon just a few short months ago? Do you actually believe that production costs have risen over 200%? It has not. Only the prise has risen, and cretins like this Goldman Sachs CEO are on the receiving end.

We are on the other end of this gravy train. While millions of Americans struggle daily to pay their mortgage or the monthly utility bill, these humanoid monuments to greed are shoveling in the dollars/Euro/whatever as fast as they possibly can.

Rampant loss of purchase power by the dollar, massive(but unadmitted) inflation, huge losses in jobs and salaries, a tidal wave of cheap imported junk in every store, millions of illegal aliens plundering our national treasury, federal government spending gone mad, an insane president destroying America's credibility and stature worldwide.... All of this affects us, but not those CEO's and majority stockholders. They are people for whom we must redefine the concept of greed.

But hey! what the hell! Americans still haven't maxed out all our credit cards yet, so let the party continue!

Get yours while you can... before the dollar is finally driven to it's inevitable collapse. Or do like the rich and elite are doing, get a European bank account and convert to Euros or Swiss Franks.

Addendum:

A 70 million dollar bonus breaks down to $33,653.85 for each and every hour he worked, assuming he put in a forty-hour week for 52 weeks.

How would you like a bonus of $33,653.85 every hour, or $1,346,154.00 for each and every week you worked last year? That's bonus, my friend, just bonus.

The Sky Is Falling.. Or Not

Congress has been brought to a grinding halt by hardening Democratic and Republican stances on taxes and spending just days before lawmakers begin leaving Washington for Christmas and New Year’s. This threatens to shut down the entire federal government.

The federal government shut down! The big spending, warmongering, lying federal government shut down! That batch of liars, pedophiles, homosexuals, lesbians, cheaters, con artists and traitors shut down for the duration!

Whatever will we do?

Because She's White, That's Why

Look of the photograph of this woman. Her name is Sarah Kreager. She has two broken bones in her left eye socket. She has damaged eye muscles. She has deep lacerations on the top of her head and another above her neck. Her face will never be the same.


This young white woman boarded a bus in Baltimore and tried to sit down. But nine blacks, including three girls, all ages 14 to 15, tell her she can't.

When she does finally sit down, those nine blacks viciously attack her, and end up throwing her off the bus. She is transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, according to a police report, having sustained "serious injuries".

If you want to read the whole dismal story, go read Fred's latest.

At the end, Fred says:

I wonder how long things can go on as they are. Nothing gets better. The murderous stewing hatred remains and given a chance will beat more women senseless or, sooner or later, burn another city. Winding this spring is not a good idea. If the worm ever turns, Katie bar the door.

Like it or not, Fred is totally on the mark. I have felt for years that one day - perhaps soon - something like this disgusting incident will repeat itself, and without warning, the worm will turn, and overnight a million blacks will die across this nation.

I have always hoped not to see that day. But I am not optimistic about that anymore.

Those Grateful Israelis

Israeli Minister Yitzhak Cohen of Shas said during a security cabinet meeting Sunday morning:

The manner in which the Americans relate to the intelligence report on Iran is similar to the way in which they viewed those reports they received during the Holocaust on railways transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death at Auschwitz...

Gotta give those Israelis high marks for propaganda, and this is one of the best.

Since it is starting to look like the U.S. won't be attacking another of Israel's personal enemies - Iran - out comes the mud slinging against their only friend and ally on this entire planet.

This kind of vicious ingratitude may be typical of a spoiled brat, but not of a people we have spent untold billions on and spilled vast amounts of American blood to protect.

Like they say... who needs enemies when you have friends like that?

Fever? No. Warm Spell? Yes

Al gore was again on the news just a few minutes ago basking in the attention as he received his Nobel "Peace" prize. During this cozy little ceremony he made that statement that "The earth has a fever, and it's rising". That type of comment projects the idea that the earth is like an infant with a dangerous fever that is rising, and must be reduced... NOW.

The fact is that earth is in a warming spell that it has gone through numerous times before without the assistance of man. These warm spells are in the geological record that provides ample evidence and proof to those who care to look.

These warming trends are part of a normal warming/cooling cycle earth has experienced since before the dawn of man, something we - as a technological civilization - are just beginning to learn of and understand. What need to do now is fully understand this cycle, how it will affect us, and react accordingly.

What that means is we need to place the footprints of our civilization, our cites, our roads, our industries, in places where the possibility of rising sea water or flooding rivers will not destroy them.

Understand that we are already in a warming cycle that caused the ocean levels to rise over two hundred feet. Evidence of this fact is everywhere. This started long before we came along to watch the show and earth is now close to the peak of that cycle. When the downturn starts, polar ice will once again spread, eventually sucking up that extra two hundred plus feet of ocean water.

How long will all this take no one knows for certain. But the geological record shows it has happened time and again on earth. We need to adjust our lifestyles and civilization to sidestep these naturally occurring weather cycles.

What we don't need to do is give out medals to politicians like Al Gore who are misrepresenting this natural occurrence for personal gain.

It is a shame that the Nobel prize is now nothing more than a political tool, given to those who have no business whatever to receive it.

More Cheap Imported Junk

Last year about this time, we bought ten strings of those icicle style Christmas lights to decorate the house. Mrs. Bobert liked the blue ones, and they did look really neat after installation.

I just got through putting them back up for this season, and guess what? About a third of the lights are now white. turns out the bulbs were painted with a blue tint that is just plain falling off.

So now we have blue/white icicle decorations. The really neat effect of solid deep blue lighting is totally toasted. I could try repainting each bulb by hand, but I don"t have that much time left.

Thank you China, for your cheap crap.

A Federal Judge... Imagine That!

Maybe there are a few Federal judges that have brains:

PHOENIX (AP) - A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to block a new Arizona law that prohibits people from hiring illegal immigrants and requires businesses to verify whether applicants are eligible for employment.

The law takes effect Jan. 1.

De judge say there is no evidence that anyone has been harmed by the new law. What the hell that has to do with anything is beyond me. Requiring proof of citizenship is not an issue of harm.

However:

Julie Pace, an attorney for the business groups, said her clients were meeting Saturday to determine whether to appeal the ruling or file a separate lawsuit against the county prosecutors. She said the business groups could pursue both avenues.

These would be American businessmen wanting to profit by getting money from Americans... right? Probably not. Arizona has a LOT of businesses run by incredibly racist Mexican/Americans who make a point of hiring their illegal brethren and wouldn't hire a "f*cking gringo" in a million years.

Alfredo Gutierrez, a spokesman for immigrant rights groups, said they plan to refile the lawsuit after Jan. 1, when they might be able to show damages caused by the law.

Damages to who? The American worker this law is attempting to protect? Not a chance. Having lived in New Mexico for thirty years, I have a pretty good handle on where this Alfredo dude is coming from... he wants only his very brown version of justice... for his relatives and buddies. Us non-Mexican f*cking gringos can go to hell.

If you think I'm exaggerating, go live in Santa Fe for awhile. Your education will be fast and startling. For instant illumination, try living in Espanola.

Confusion

Oprah has come out supporting Obama. Well duh... No surprise there. But it got me to thinking...

If Bill Clinton was our first "black" president, what would Obama be?

Our first black-black president?
Our first true-blue black president?
Our first African-American black president?
Our first really truly black president and we can just forget that red-neck pretender to the throne?

Or our second black president?

The mind boggles...

Intelligence, But Not The Bush Kind

What have we here?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence has determined that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 but believes it is continuing to develop technical capabilities that could be used to build a bomb, a government report said on Monday.

Well now. That's not the Bush kind of propagandistic babble he claims to be intelligence, as in the Iraqi WND case, but a genuine report on Iran and their activities.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) also said Iran would likely be capable of producing enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon "sometime during the 2010-2015 time-frame."

"Capable of producing". That says nothing about being able to actually use the stuff to make a real, workable weapon. It's like having dry powder, but no cartridge to put it in, no projectile or percussion cap, all those things required to make a bullet, and then having no gun to fire it off in.

The Chinese had gunpowder for centuries and never had a clue how to use it for cannon. It took the Europeans to do that. The Iranians may have their "powder" sometime in the next few years, but they're still a long ways away from having anything usable as a weapon. Don't forget that the Korean attempt to pop off their first nuke was a giant failure.

The report contains a number of differences from findings two years ago in which U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iran was

...determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure.

It all depends on who you listen to. If you listen to Bush, Rice and the gaggle of neocons presently leading us down the path it's all war, war, war . But if you actually pay attention to what the intelligence says, it's as different as night and day.