Featured Article:
Gold, Money Creation, and the Monetization of Debt
Jerry Bowyer explains how money creation and the prospect of monetization have driven gold to new heights.
Tonight's Crazy Story:
Maine Department Of Transportation Ad Making Fun Of Local Residents Accidentally Runs In Newspaper
A fake ad, promising that DOT officials will listen "with fake sympathy" because they are "just curious about these island folk" accidentally ran in a Bangor, Maine newspaper.
Topic One: ObamaCare
Ken Blackwell asks if ObamaCare making us citizens or subjects? "But under ObamaCare, government not only tells us, it Mandates. We have seen a great controversy over the first Mandate from HHS . This first HHS Mandate would require religious hospitals, schools, colleges, and institutions provide drugs that can cause abortions, and orders them to further violate their consciences by covering sterilizations and contraceptives. This is only the first of many Mandates that are coming under ObamaCare. There are literally hundreds of places in this ill-conceived legislation where “the Secretary” determines what is mandated. Life and death decisions for millions will be mandated by an unelected government bureaucrat in a distant city."
ObamaCare in my mailbox: "All of these preventative measures are laudable in a perfect world, but it is striking the extent of coverage afforded exclusively to the distaff population. Free "well-women visits"? My "well-man visit," i.e., my annual physical, cost me a $25 copay and around $500 for routine blood tests, on top of my family's monthly insurance payment of $1,535. Do men get free HIV counseling and HPV testing too? Of course, to ask these questions is to take a trip into Obamaville, where every citizen demands the maximum amount of stuff he or she can get from the federal government stash. Not to worry however. DHHS has mandated that "insurance issuers will need to cover these services without member cost sharing." Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."
Is liberalism done with the Supreme Court? "This may not be the end of liberalism's march through American culture. But it may be the end of its using the Supreme Court as its greatest and most unaccountable tool. Liberalism has now officially overplayed its hand and it is likely to pay a heavy price in the days ahead. The worst possible scenario for the movement is emerging, namely that liberalism will be seen as exactly what it is, an extreme minority view in both American jurisprudence and in the culture at large, one worthy of widespread repudiation."
Time for a Laugh:
"This week in Ireland an elephant escaped from a circus and ended up at a mall. Fortunately, the elephant didn’t hurt anyone — but he did sit in one of those Brookstone massage chairs with no intention of buying it."
-Jimmy Fallon
Topic Two: Media Malpractice
There have been several examples of the media destroying the truth in their stories recently. Carol Brown points out how one Reuters story on Israel got every sentence wrong. However, none could be worse than what the media did on the Trayvon Martin case this week.
"In the NBC segment, Zimmerman says: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black."
The full version, though, unfolds like this:
Zimmerman: "This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about."
911 operator: "Okay. And this guy, is he white black or Hispanic?"
Zimmerman: "He looks black."
After playing both versions, Hannity said: "They forgot the dispatcher's question! How could NBC, in good conscience, do that?"
Selective editing of a clip can yield whatever result the media wants. In this case, it makes it sound as if Zimmerman was calling Trayvon a "criminal" because he was black instead of simply responding to a question. In other cases, they can make a governor look racist instead of concerned about the economy.
Debt Watch:
$15,582,078,681,188.69
(
As of Friday, March 30, 2012
)
Change: +$2,225,734,731
Your share as a citizen: $49,872.03
Share per household: $136,402.53
Debt since Obama inauguration: $4,955,201,632,276
Topic Three: Iran
Iran's war goals: "In his Alef article, Ali Reza Forqani, an ally of Iran’s Supreme Leader, goes further. After justifying a war against Israel, Ali Reza Forqani delves into how Iran should conduct its war: "Israel must come under heavy military strikes from the first blows until the last. The first step of the first stage of Iran’s military attack on Israel must lead to the annihilation of ground zero points in Israel. Iran can use its long-range missiles to accomplish this task. The distance from Iran’s eastern most point to western most point of Israel is about 2,600 kilometers. The Israeli targets deep inside Israeli territory are well within the reach of Iran’s conventional missiles."
The CIA's lesson learned from Iraq: "One C.I.A. analyst who had helped develop some of the intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction had a breakdown months after the Iraq war began; he had participated in the post-invasion hunt there that found the weapons did not exist. When he eventually was given a new assignment assessing Iran’s nuclear program, he confided a fear to colleagues: that the intelligence community might get it wrong again. “He felt enormous guilt that he had gotten us into the war,” said one former official who worked with the analyst. “He was afraid it was going to be déjà vu all over again.” Today, analysts and others at the C.I.A. who are struggling to understand the nuclear ambitions of Iran are keenly aware that the agency’s credibility is again on the line, amid threats of new military interventions."
Tweet of the Day:
Paul Combs (@PAC43):
I’m tired of illegal aliens being called “undocumented workers,” especially the ones who aren’t working, but are living on welfare or crime
Topic Four: The Election
With the race quickly coming down to Romney vs. Obama, both candidates are honing their message for the general election campaign. Romney's strategy: "Romney's speech Friday also included an interesting new depiction of the president. In multiple passages in the speech, he described Obama as a preening, power-hungry narcissist and unqualified empty suit -- a personality-cult leader surrounded by yes-men. "President Obama ... actually thinks he's doing a great job. An historically great job," Romney said. "According to the president, only Lincoln, FDR and Lyndon Johnson have accomplished more." (Obama said, in an interview last year, that he would "put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president" besides those three.) The president, Romney implied, is so fixated on his stature as a historical figure that he "doesn't grasp" what's really going on. "This is a president who was elected not on the strength of a compelling record but a compelling personality and story," Romney said. "There was much about the campaign of Barack Obama that appealed to many Americans. And though the reality has failed the hope and change he promised, he remains surrounded by true believers who attack anyone who challenges their power. And, as we see each day, they will fight even more fiercely to hold on to that power."
Obama's message: "We've gone through a tough three years, this country – as tough as any in our lifetime. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The economic aftermath that left millions without work. A collapsed housing market. It's hard to remember sometimes how perilous things were when I was sworn in. The month I was sworn into office, we lost 800,000 jobs in that month alone. We had lost almost 4 million in the months before I took office. And then we would just keep on shedding jobs for the first few months that I was sworn in. The banks were locked up, so even blue-chip companies couldn't get credit. People, I think, genuinely thought that you might see a world financial meltdown. And nobody exactly knew where the bottom was. The stock market, by the way, was about half of what it is today. And that meant we had to move fast to save the auto industry, to get the banks lending again, to make sure that state governments and local governments didn't have to lay off even more teachers and first responders and others that were providing vital services but, frankly, the states and local governments were having trouble being able to afford. And we moved so fast that in some ways, people didn't fully appreciate the scope and magnitude of what got done in those first six months, that first year."
As Ben Domenech wrote in today's Transom: "Get used to it, they know how to stay on script."
Food for Thought - A Quote from our Founders
"Illustrious examples are displayed to our view, that we may imitate as well as admire. Before we can be distinguished by the same honors, we must be distinguished by the same virtues. What are those virtues? They are chiefly the same virtues, which we have already seen to be descriptive of the American character — the love of liberty, and the love of law."
-James Wilson
Topic Five: The Future Monetization of Debt
Jerry Bowyer on the prospect of monetization: "It seems that gold investors are not just concerned about how much money the Fed has created, nor are they principally concerned about how much money the Fed-wannabes around the world have created; they are worried about something else, and they might have good reason to be. What they are worried about, and what seems to be driving current gold prices, is that public debt levels have risen to the point where the debt will be paid off in highly debased currency. In other words, they’re afraid of what is called ‘debt monetization’."
"Debts are monetized when governments decide to use their monetary authorities (in the U.S. context, that is the Fed) to create new money which is then lent to the government. This tends to happen when the government has borrowed up to its capacity and decides to continue borrowing above its credit capacity. When that happens, private lenders are no longer willing to take the chance of lending to an over-indebted government. At that point, governments often attempt to verbally intimidate private lenders, especially banks which are subject to very high levels of government oversight."
Tomorrow in History
April 3, 1973
-
The first handheld mobile phone call is made between Martin Cooper of Motorola and Joel Engel of Bell Labs.
Grab Bag - Interesting and Important Stories to Conclude Your Evening:
Ayers on ending capitalism
FCC looking into San Francisco's cell phone jamming policy
Panetta blasts defense cuts
Restoring American individualism
Doubling down on radicalism
20 fringe benefits for liberals
Don't they ever get tired of repeating this?
In search of tolerance
Obama says government made America great
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