Refresher for the blow-hards.......

% of Loss of Capital              

 

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

     45

50

60

65

% Gain Needed to Recover

5.3

11.1

17.6

25.0

33.3

42.9

53.8

66.7

81.8

100

122

150

Time to put a major bounty on these big snakes..........

IT SOUNDED like a joke when the news first broke in 2000: giant Burmese pythons were invading the Everglades. But scientists have measured the impact of the arrival of this voracious species and the news is troubling.
In areas where the pythons have established themselves, rabbits and foxes can no longer be found. Sightings of raccoons are down 99 per cent, opossums 98.9 per cent and white-tailed deer 94 per cent, according to a paper published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
''What if the stock market had declined that much? Think of the adjectives you'd use for that,'' said Gordon Rodda, an invasive-species specialist with the US Geological Survey, who published research in 2008 showing Burmese pythons could expand across the southern United States.

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Hunters helping big game populations...........

Hunters,

Lets help each other out and tell everyone where the wolves are so we can up our wolf harvest. Im hoping that we would all like to support this wolf locator map to help reduce the wolf population and hopefully restore the herds they have damaged.

The map is located on my website www.RidgelineOutdoors.com. For this to work ill need you all to let me know when (date) and where (specific location ) you have a sighting, tracks, harvest, wolf kill, whatever.... email this information to ridgelineoutdoors@hotmail.com and ill get it updated quickly.

Please forward this to your friends so we can get this started. Thanks for your help and go kill one!

Here is the map. These are only my personal experiences in the past few weeks so there are only a few. http://ridgelineoutdoors.com/wolf_map.html Lets get more on here, anywhere in the west.

Travis Brown 208.870.2599
www.RidgelineOutdoors.com

Could you hear the groan Mr. Obama?

Every High School administrator in the country probably came close to defecating in their pants tonight with the Teleprompter-in-Chief announcing that he wants all students to be required to stay in high school until they are 18 or until they graduate.

Imagine what the schools will have to do to oversee these "students' who don't want to be there, don't want to learn, have no ambition or work ethic and just want to remain disruptive to the students and teachers around them.    Go ahead, just put armed guards in every hall way (make sure they are all NEA members while you are at it) and keep these young thugs occupied with biology, economics, physics, history and higher or lower math.  Yea right.   Is it any wonder we fall further behind in the global rankings?    

Welcome Back DeepCapture.com

http://www.deepcapture.com/what-happened-to-deep-capture/

Remember "TRADING PLACES"?

Remember this part of the movie?  On the commodities trading floor at Four World Trade Center, the Dukes commit all their holdings (Randolph doing so against Mortimer's advice) to buying frozen concentrated orange-juice futures contracts; other traders follow their lead, inflating the price. Before the real crop report is declassified, Valentine and Winthorpe sell futures heavily at the increased price. After the forecast that the orange crop will be normal, the price of orange-juice futures plummets. Valentine and Winthorpe successfully cover their short sales, turning a profit of more than three hundred million American dollars. The Dukes fail to meet a margin call and are ruined, being left owing three hundred and ninety-four million American dollars for futures now worth a fraction of what they contracted to pay. Valentine and Winthorpe explain to the Dukes that they had made a wager on whether they could get rich while making the Dukes poor simultaneously. Valentine collects $1 from Winthorpe (who had believed their revenge plan would fail) while Randolph collapses holding his chest, a heart attack having seized him, and Mortimer shouts angrily at his brother about their failed plan.

Well as of today, Orange Juice has just hit an all time high price of $223.25 , and has returned a jaw-dropping 32.4% YTD, or 7,032% annualized. This is the biggest 4 day surge since October 2006, and for all intents and purposes, essentially the biggest ever. Needless to say, Randolph and Mortimer Capital LLC is back up and running, and has been forced to limit investor inflows due to unprecedented interest in this asset class, which, yes, you can eat (a little freeze drying may be required in advance). At this rate, bottle service of Dom Perignon will cost less than a small container of Tropicana!

Another Montana rancher who gets it!

Twisted Taco.......run, flee or stay hungry

I've been eating in restaurants for most of my life, well since I moved to San Diego about 33 years ago.  Outside of the three tiny reservation towns we lived in while I was in high school, (note, not a single one of them had a public restaurant) I can usually find a decent place to eat.

Today, after a swim meet, we took in the Twisted Taco in Dunwoody, Georgia. 

Do not, I repeat, do not ever order the carne asada taco's in that place.    

Friday, the 20th..........

Silver jumped dramatically (up over 8% on the week) while Gold gently pushed higher (+1.7% matching USD's weakness on the week). Oil was the week's biggest loser (down 0.5%) as Copper clung to 3% gains on the week. Treasuries ended the week at their high yields (30Y +19bps).  The real kicker today is that today's volume is an incredible 27% below the January 2011 Option expiration volume.

With options expiring it's a new ball game on Monday.  Eat something good and may your favorite teams win!  I am pulling for the New England Patriots.

Images of my Dad

4 years of age

My Dad can do anything!

7 years of age

My Dad knows so much about everything!

12 years of age

Dad doesn’t really know everything.

14 years of age

My Dad?  He is so out of it.

21 years of age

Dad?  He is so old-fashioned, he doesn’t get it and isn’t that smart

25 years of age

Well, he knows some things pretty good

35 years of age

Before we make that decision let’s see what Dad has to say about it.  

(I can’t  believe how much Dad has learned in the last 9 years!)

50 years of age

I wonder what Dad would have thought about this.

Pete Shaw, the greatest NY Giant of them all........

Pete Shaw, a 7 year veteran of the NFL, played as the smallest safety in the league for the San Diego Chargers and New York Giants.  With a 28-inch waist the guy had speed, strength and a great attitude to knock somebody down.  Where ever you are Pete,  this weekend I know you will be toasting the Giants to victory!    As a graduate of the Big 10's Northwestern you were the quintessential Drexel Burnham Lambert salesman.  Those were the days my friend, can you still "get-a-hat"?

Dicks Sporting Goods, Mall of Georgia

I tried to call Doug Fowler twice today up there.  The first time I was on hold for over 5 minutes and was asked to call back as he was with a customer.  I tried later and the phone rang for over 4 minutes and nobody picked up the main line into the store.  As Clark Howard fondly calls it, definitely customer NO-SERVICE!

If anybody is there, say Doug Fowler or Meagan Eads please give me a call.  877-772-1621.

I was trying to spend some money in your store.   Edward Stack probably wants me to spend some  money there too.

Par for the course

I mean this news today is simply sad.   Corzine and crew at M.F. Global can't find, lost or evaporated  $1.2 BILLION of customers money;  real American investors and they want to throw this news out at the American public?   Come on.  Pooling information versus stealing 1.2 billion dollars of investors money?  As you could guess, Corzine will never, ever set foot in jail stripes.  That sucks.

Federal authorities arrested three people in New York and Boston early Wednesday and were expected to charge another, expanding an insider-trading investigation to directly involve some of Wall Street's most prominent money managers.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation in Boston arrested Todd Newman, a former portfolio manager with hedge-fund firm Diamondback Capital Management who oversaw technology investments, according to a law enforcement official.
The FBI separately arrested Jon Horvath, a technology analyst with Sigma Capital Management, an affiliate of giant hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, in Manhattan, an official said. Anthony Chiasson, a former hedge-fund manager at Level Global Investors LP, surrendered to the FBI in New York, and a fourth person was being sought.  Chiasson and Newman are accused of illegally trading ahead of computer maker Dell's earnings announcements for the first and second quarters of 2008, netting them profits, respectively, of $57 million and $3.8 million. Another defendant, Jon Horvath, is accused of making an illegal $1 million trade in Dell.  The charges Wednesday appear to hew to a pattern emerging in the government's insider-trading investigation, in which tight-knit circles of associates at different firms are accused of pooling their information for mutual benefit.

Do America a favor and sign this petition!

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

529 plans..........

Just looked at some of the plan results for 2011 of which I have invested in for my sons.

The results are dismal over all time frames.   More gimmicks for stock peddlers to engage in coming soon.

Excellent...........

“Send not your foolish and feeble, send me your strong and your sane.” - Robert Service, The Law of the Yukon.

You think Mitch has money in a Swiss account?

First Buffet, now Mitt Romney. Via Bloomberg:

• ROMNEY SAYS HIS EFFECTIVE TAX RATE CLOSER TO 15%
• ROMNEY SPEAKS TO REPORTERS IN FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA
• ROMNEY SAYS MUCH OF HIS INCOME COMES FROM INVESTMENTS

Take it to heart........

Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

GOLD on Monday

Although gold had its largest drop in the last 2 weeks on Friday, (-1.6%), it was 1.3% higher on the week and trading higher this morning.

American students, global students

"Hungry man, reach for the book: It is a weapon." B. Brecht

Dimon will double-down......

In an interview with Italian newspaper Milan Finanza, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that he could lose up to $5 billion from the firm's exposure to the PIIGS countries. As Reuters reports, "Dimon said the bank was exposed to the five countries (PIIGS) to the tune of around $15 billion. "We fear we could lose up to $5 billion ... We hope the worst won't happen, but even if it did happen, I wouldn't be pulling my hair out," he said. Dimon said Europe was the worst problem for the banking sector. "But the EU and euro are solid even if the states will have to be financially responsible and do all they can to develop common social policies," he said." While it is admirable of JPMorgan to disclose some of its dirty laundry, as this was a topic that received hardly any mention in the firm's prepared quarterly release, and is predicated surely by the fact that its Basel III Tier 1 Common of $122 billion dwarfs this possible impairment, there are some questions left open. Such as what happens if and when Greek CDS, now most likely before March 20, were triggered? And the logical follow up - what happens when Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy, and who knows who else (Hungary?) follow suit and decide that a coercive restructuring is actually not suicidal, even though it most certainly is once a given threshold is reached. In other words, how long can Europe tolerate the same two-tiered sovereign debt market that S&P warned about so explicitly yesterday?

Can you find the coyote?

Presented without comment

The University of Georgia, one of the oldest public universities in the U.S., has many noble, time-honored traditions.  This blog isn’t about one of them.   Instead, a report issued today concludes potential gold-diggers have made Athens their second most popular higher education destination.


Georgia State is No. 11, which seems odd considering many could easily date walk down the safe streets of Atlanta and find an employable North Avenue Trade School grad.


The results of the report will be featured on ABC News’ 20/20, says SeekingArrangement.com, a dating site that helps moneyed men hook up with cash-strapped women looking for little more than a proper education.  The number of ladies seeking a free ride grew in 2011.


“In 2011, we saw an explosion in the number of college students seeking Sugar Daddies to help pay their college tuition”, says website founder and MIT graduate Brandon Wade. “One in every two Sugar Babies who join our website today are college students, and college Sugar Babies now make up 40% of our Sugar Baby population, up from 33% in 2010.”  Perhaps this explains why the original name of Sugar Daddy, the candy, not the man writing checks, was Papa Sucker.


Here’s the Top 20 list for 2011, ranked according to the number of Sugar Babies silly enough to use their school email address when signing up. Penn State rolls in at No. 13, but I’ll let you write your own jokes.

1. New York University (NYU) — 185
2. University of Georgia — 155
3. University of Phoenix — 144
4. Tulane University — 129
5. Temple University — 113
6. Virginia Community College — 108
7. University of Southern Florida — 93
8. Arizona State University — 85
9. Michigan State — 81
10. Ivy Tech Community College — 78
11. Georgia State University — 74
12. University of Wisconsin — 73
13. Penn State University — 72
14. University of Central Florida — 67
15. Kent University — 65
16. Maricopa Community College — 63
17. Indiana University — 62
18. University of California, Berkeley — 61
19. The Art Institutes — 60
20. Florida International University — 59

Georgia Hunters

Two Georgia hunters got a pilot to fly them into the Canadian wilderness, where they managed to bag two big Bull Moose.  As they were loading the plane to return, the pilot said the plane could take only the hunters, their gear and one moose.

The hunters objected strongly saying, "Last year we shot two and the pilot let us take them both...and he had exactly the same airplane as yours." Reluctantly the pilot, not wanting to be outdone by another bush pilot, gave in and everything was loaded. However, even under full power the little plane couldn't handle the load and went down, crashing in the wooded wilderness. Somehow, surrounded by the moose, clothing and sleeping bags, Bubba and Bobby Joe survived the crash.

After climbing out of the wreckage, Bubba asked Bobby Joe, "Any idea where we are?"

Bobby Joe replied, "I think we're pretty close to where we crashed last year."

Feeling left out by Merrill Lynch? Welcome home!

Merrill Lynch is run by Bank of America executives who were never stockbrokers.  Merrill  Lynch now penalizes Advisers for opening up accounts less than $250,000. The payout  the stockbrokers gets is lower.  If you are a serious investor in Alpharetta or Milton,  Georgia we welcome your inquiry.

“We manage hard-earned money. We are fiercely independent and pride ourselves on hard work and unbiased critical thinking. I find it disturbing that every broker, banker or insurance agent with a pie-chart calls themselves a financial planner.  We don’t do taxes, we don’t pitch insurance, and we are not estate planners.  Our clients hire full-time accountants and attorneys when they need specific help.”

“One aspect of our success has nothing to do with money. The bottom line shouldn’t be measured just in dollars and cents. We never forget where we came from. We could never tell a prospective client we have a minimum account size.  Why would Dean Parisian, raised in the poorest county in America, tell someone they’re too small to get world-class investment help?”

 From a Chippewa Partners seminar in Rancho Santa Fe, CA

“The economic role of a client for a brokerage firm is to enrich the brokers.  Brokers are trained to sell investments that generate huge fees and commissions and typically have an agenda other than your financial welfare. The interests of Wall Street and the media are not aligned with those of investors. The NASD makes it very clear; investors should never let their guard down with brokers who have a sales agenda.  Do you really want to trust your portfolio and retirement to a broker-salesman?” 

 “As an arbitrator for the New York Stock Exchange I censured many stockbrokers and know that investors often confuse a sales pitch with impartial investment advice.  Do you think Tiger Woods and Bill Gates use stockbrokers to increase their net worth and protect their assets?  Not a chance.  The simple answer is they have competent, unbiased investment managers. They hire investment management professionals to manage their assets.  So should you.”

From a Chippewa Partners Atlanta Athletic Club seminar.

“Trading in IPO’s are not part of our methodology. Their problems stem from the deliberate overpricing of new shares, which creates a huge wealth transfer from a newly public company to the major customers of an investment bank.  Shareholders are much better off in the long run with a higher net worth than with an artificial and temporarily high stock price. IPO’s are allocated to clients who pay big commissions. Those responsible for completion of an IPO are the lead underwriters.   If brokers were held liable for the tremendous carnage inflicted on early buyers of IPO’s the mispricings would end.  Those responsible for a company are the directors.   If directors were held liable for the eradication of corporate assets, the mispricings would end.  We don’t play the game by paying big commissions for syndicate allocations of initial public offerings.”

Dean T. Parisian, Chairman, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal 

 

 

Nothing but butt ugly.......

I neither twitter or tweet.  Not for me and probably not for you.  Bill Gross of PIMCO and stamp collecting fame sent out a line today that bears repeating for it's hilarity and truth.

Here it is:   Bill Gross:  Putrid long bond auction shows that the only investor that wants 30-yr Treasuries is the Fed.

It may not end well but it sure is going to be entertaining.

Charles Hugh Smith wrote this...........

Dear U.S.A.--your overdraft protection is about to be pulled.

Dear United States of America: We regret to inform you that your withdrawals exceeded your deposits last year by $1,600,000,000,000 ($1.6 trillion), including your "supplemental appropriations" spending.

Your account does have an overdraft protection, and so bonds were sold to cover your $1.6 trillion overdraft. While we value your business, we feel obligated to remind you that this is the third year that your overdraft protection exceeded 10% of your gross national product (GDP), and it seems your account is on course to register yet another $1.6 trillion overdraft in fiscal year 2012.

Currently, your overdraft account exceeds your GDP of $15 trillion.

Quite frankly, we are worried that you have become dependent on extensive overdraft protection--a feature designed to tide the account holder over for a short period of time in near-term expectation of higher deposits or lower withdrawals--and that relying on large-scale overdraft borrowing to cover your basic expenses is now your standard operating procedure.

This violates the intent of the overdraft feature, and as a result we must seriously consider modifying the terms of the overdraft protection on your account. Current conditions enable us to provide this overdraft, but the feature was not designed to be permanent nor on this scale.

In order to give you sufficient time to bring your deposits and withdrawals back into alignment, we will maintain the current low-interest overdraft protection on your account through fiscal year 2012. Beyond that, however, please be aware that to maintain the integrity of the system, we will have to raise the rate of interest on your overdraft and scale back the size of the overdraft line of credit.

We regret informing you of these modifications, but the overdraft protection was not intended to be permanent nor near-infinite in scale.

Yours truly,

The Global Bond Market

January is nearly half over............

It's been a "more-of-the-same" start to the trading year.  Watching paint dry might be more exciting.

I think the trend in gold has reversed and the miners should participate.  We'll see.  The bots trading against bots is nothing the SEC or NYSE want to address in an election year and there's too much money involved to do anything for the American public.   Watching all the zombies on CNBC talk about earnings, sovereign countries, Fed policy, tax structure, fundamentals, market share, revenue growth,  this was important stuff once upon a time but no longer, not with over 80% of trades being bot trades. Prices and volume are being manipulated by bots. Just fire all the humans on CNBC and flash computer code across the screen all day. The equity markets are dead. The sad reality is that our SEC has no interest in touching this problem.   Let the last algo turn itself off when the ponzi is done.

Reading about the implosion of so many hedge funds is getting old.  It's funny how many funds call themselves hedge funds when there isn't hedging but rather a single leveraged punt. 

I have a very busy weekend ahead of me and hope you do to.  Living in America we have so much to be thankful for and so many to help.  I thought I would share this video so that you may share it.  

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU

I don't know Stella Paul but I like how she thinks

The Top 5 Reasons Obama Must Be Removed as Commander-in-Chief

By Stella Paul
Obama recently signed a mysterious new law that proclaims all American soil is a "battleground," thereby allowing the president to indefinitely detain any American citizen without charges. Critics fear Obama will use his fun new unconstitutional powers to make his political enemies disappear, but that may not be necessary.

The way things are going, most patriotic Americans will soon be six feet under, felled by apoplectic strokes brought on by reading the latest outrage committed by our "Commander in Chief." He may not have a limit to what he'll inflict; but our collective blood pressure may have a limit to what we can bear.

With each passing hour, the question becomes not if America can survive a second term, but whether we can survive another day. It's not just the $15 trillion in debt, the Muslim Brotherhood in the catbird seat, and our bleeding open border. It's the never-ending deliberate assaults against our safety and security laughingly committed by the cold-eyed man with the nuclear code.

Here are the top 5 reasons Obama must be removed as Commander-in-Chief. Please read them while seated.

ONE - LightSquared: If we had an actual media, you should be able to wake up an average fourth grader at 3 AM and ask, "Who's General William Shelton?" and the fourth grader would chirpily recite: "He's the Air Force Commander who was pressured by the White House to change his testimony about LightSquared."

The facts are not in dispute. A four-star general has testified to Congress that he was pressured by the White House to alter his testimony to make it friendlier to a broadband company backed by a major Democratic donor.

The problem with LightSquared's new wireless project is that it could disrupt all military communications and GPS. But what worth has the entire capacity of the military's communication system against the pleadings of LightSquared's biggest investor, Philip Falcone, who shovels cash to Obama?

TWO - Fast and Furious: No matter how many times you hear the facts they never get less sickening or bizarre. The United States Department of Justice deliberately ran thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels, which then used them to commit at least 11 violent crimes in the US and 200 violent crimes in Mexico. A Fast and Furious gun was used to murder U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and possibly U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata.

ATF Agent Vince Cefalu was fired for whistle blowing about this surreal horror show. Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself to Congress, pretending he knew nothing about it. And newly released emails confirm that the motivation for supplying weapons to Mexico's most violent criminals was to use the ensuing chaos to enact stricter gun control laws here.

Not content to unleash murder and mayhem, the Department of Justice also went into the money-laundering racket, washing clean millions of dollars for Mexico's drug cartels. Your tax dollars at work! And while this evil madness was raging, Obama conducted a hysterical campaign against Sarah Palin for using an image of a target on her website.

THREE - Giving Top-Secret Technology to Our Enemies: Last week brought word that Obama is planning to share U.S. missile defense secrets with Russia, over the strenuous objections of security officials who say it could devastate the effectiveness of our entire defense system. They also fear Russia will share our secrets with China, Iran and North Korea.

Remember how Obama's Mommy and Daddy met in Russian class? If only they could see their little boy now.

Obama also gave a freebie of our most classified intelligence to Iran, refusing all three options to destroy a downed U.S. drone. Instead, he let the mullahs paw their way through our most sensitive high-tech secrets. Not to worry -- he did politely ask them to give it back.

FOUR - Waging War Against Libya Without Congressional Approval: Obama's handlers dreamed up a catchy new doctrine called Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and they were itching to try it out. So Obama gave them a nice, peppy little war to conduct in Libya. Why not take out the mad transvestite, Qadaffi? Nobody likes him, anyway.

Flagrantly flouting the War Powers Resolution, Obama spent a billion dollars to wage an unconstitutional war. The grand result is Al Qaeda's flag waving over Benghazi and 20,000 anti-aircraft missiles missing, which will probably wind up blasting towards us.

FIVE - Hollowing Out Our Military: This week we learn that Obama is slashing the defense budget, planning to lay off 14% off our troops, reduce our nuclear arsenal, shelve key weapon systems and explicitly cripple our ability to wage ground wars. What hath Saul Alinsky wrought!

Already, Obama has strait-jacketed the military in political correctness, forbidding discussion of the nature of radical Islam and sanitizing the jihad-crazed murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood into "workplace violence." But that was not enough for our Commander-in-Chief.

Our troops are so heroic that even in straitjackets, they can win. And if there's one thing Obama will not tolerate it's American victory.

From George Washington to Barack Obama - it's been quite a ride.

Write Stella Paul at Stellapundit@aol.com.

Here's some math America!!

"The Obama administration will be asking Congress to raise the debt limit in the coming days, White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Tuesday. "I'm confident it will be executed in a matter of days, not weeks," he told reporters. The notification by the administration — which had been scheduled for last month — was delayed because Congress has been holding only pro forma sessions. The White House will be asking Congress to raise the U.S. borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion. The move would mark the third and final increase from the debt-ceiling deal reached last year by Congress." Of course, the optics of yet another debt-ceiling increase, even a preapproved one, are simply horrible during campaign season. But such is life. Here is the kicker though: the US has preapproval for $1.2 trillion in debt issuance, as per the August 2011 agreement. So far so good. The problem is that since then the US has issued $900 billion in debt in five short months! In other words, somehow the remaining buffer of just $300 billion, or a final debt ceiling of $15.5 trillion, is supposed to last the US until after the presidential election, because this topic flaring up just before Obama is due to hit the debate circuit will be reelection suicide. So our question is: how will the US, which has a gross debt issuance rate of over $100 billion per month on average, last for a year with just $300 billion in dry powder?

2 coyotes I caught last week

Trading this volatility?

It's now 4 days in row without a change of more than 0.1 %!

Hawking up some taxpayer funded nonsense!

Brits should be fuming over this crapola.  We aren't going interplanetary anytime soon.  Trust me.

In his recorded speech, Hawking pleaded for interplanetary travel, arguing that humans faced a grim future unless they spread out from their terrestrial home. "I don't think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet," he said.

As a matter of fact.............

Obama has proven to everyone that you really can say anything to get elected and then you just do whatever the puppetmasters told you to.

Facts on Dividends

Dividends accounted for 20% of the 7.2% annualized total return to US stocks since 1950, 40% of the 1.6% average total return during the past decade, and 100% of the total return last year, (2011).

North Georgia in Winter

The wealth pillagers in Washington, D.C.

Our government indebtedness in America has a new record.

Our nation's debt on 12/31/2011 was at an all time record $15,222,940,045,451.09.

That works out to about $124,000 for every single American.

 But hey, it's only debt.

 Look deep into the eyes of our children and just tell it like it is.

Ron Paul

Submitted to ZeroHedge.com by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds

The Ministry Of Propaganda Declares Ron Paul "Unelectable"

The Ministry of Propaganda has chosen to suppress the only dangerous-to-the-Power Elites candidate by declaring him "unelectable."

The Status Quo's Ministry of Propaganda has a single political task for 2012: eliminate the sole threat to the Status Quo (Ron Paul) from the running, leaving voters with a "choice" of clueless stooges for the Power Elite.

That roster includes President Obama and the daytime-TV/soap-opera field of Republicrat contenders.

The Ministry of Propaganda has settled on a ludicrous strategy to eliminate Ron Paul: declare Paul "unelectable."

As with all propaganda, the basic idea is that if it is repeated often enough on officially sanctioned stages, it will eventually be accepted as "true."

Our Christmas-New Year's week of family visits took us to homes where the television is on all the time, and as a result I was exposed to the Ministry of Propaganda's preferred media, TV "news." Regardless of the channel or program, the message was the same: "The presidential race will between Obama and either Romney or Gingrich."

Despite the polls that find Paul and Romney with equal levels of support in Iowa, Romney has been declared the front-runner and Paul written off as "unelectable."

In other words, the voters don't even need to check in; the Ministry of Propaganda's army of toadies, lackeys and media apparatchiks have their marching orders: repeat that Ron Paul is unelectable at every opportunity, either explicitly or implicitly via leaving him off the list of "frontrunners."

The Ministry of Propaganda's campaign is easily revealed by two simple thought experiments. How would the corporate media characterize Newt Gingrich's "electability" if he was running neck-and-neck with Romney? Answer: the media toadies would be falling over each other to declare Gingrich "electable."

Now repeat the experiment with Rick Santorum or Michelle Bachmann. The answer is the same: since these candidates are on the list of Power-Elites approved stooges, a showing equal to Ron Paul's would instantly win them veritable tsunamis of media coverage, all focused on their eminent "electability."

Here is the second thought experiment: does anyone seriously think any of the Republicrat candidates are even remotely qualified to deal with the crises brewing on the horizon? What exactly makes them "electable"?

Let's consider them one at a time, scrubbed of spin, PR and propaganda:

Mitt Romney: the perfect player for a remake of "The Stepford Wives" entitled "The Stepford Politicos." Romney is the personification of the telegenic, wealthy empty suit, devoid of any ideas beyond retreads of Status Quo tweaks that leave the Power Elite--of which he is a member--safely in charge.

Romney's "electability" rests on the hopes that the hard drives from his time as governor stay safely erased and that zombified voters conclude that having a family and membership in a church are sufficient qualifications for President.

His handlers have carefully studied the political satire The Candidate and have not yet formulated an answer to the question, "What do we do now?" should the wealthy pawn of the Power Elite improbably win the presidency.

Michelle Bachmann: Imagine her wearing a witch's hat, it isn't hard to do; Bachmann is the ideal Wicked Witch of the West, but without the charisma. She does have a host of frightful winged monkeys, though--her handlers.

Newt Gingrich: Gingrich has a number of redeeming characteristics, starting with his famously unsavory "baggage" that reveals an appealingly flawed core. He is also the only Republicrat candidate that wouldn't bore you to despair within a few minutes, i.e. he actually strays from the canned scripts approved by the Ministry of Propaganda. Third, on occasion he actually reveals glimmers of awareness that the next 10 years will not be like the previous decade, and that America is at a critical crossroads.

Unfortunately, his canned ideology-as-"solution" ideas expired a decade ago and he has no coherent vision of a future that isn't just a slightly modified version of the Power-Elite dominated one that is now hurtling toward instability.

He has shown a remarkable ability, however, to hide his horns and forked tail.

Rick Perry: Another telegenic empty suit who hoped that having a family and membership in a church qualified him for the presidency.

Rick Santorum: Rick's ruthlessness has its charm, starting with his long and painful campaign to establish a simulacrum of intellectual "seriousness." Like all the other stooges, his version of "the vision thing" is a tepid edit of the Status Quo. Like all the stooges other than the refreshingly flawed Gingrich, he hopes membership in a church qualifies him for the presidency.

What all the candidates but Ron Paul dare not acknowledge because it isn't on the approved Ministry of Propaganda script is that the Status Quo is heading off a cliff at the direct behest of the nation's Power Elite. The only candidate that has "the vision thing" and that clearly enunciates exactly how the Power Elite's policies have led the nation off a cliff of insolvency and Imperial hubris is Ron Paul.

For this sin against the Status Quo and its Power Elite, Paul has been excommunicated, and the (pardon my language) smarmy army of corporate media whores cannot declare him "unelectable" often enough.

That is proof that he is highly electable, for otherwise the Ministry of Propaganda wouldn't be running a campaign of such transparent desperation.

The Top 10 Wealth Pillagers in America today.........

https://www.judicialwatch.org/corrupt-politicians-lists/washingtons-ten-most-wanted-corrupt-politicians-for-2011/

January 1, 2012

There was nary a car on the roads in Alpharetta this morning at 6 a.m.      Even McDonalds was closed for business.   My traps were open for business and this is what New Years Day morning brought.    I love the look of that black coyote don't you?