Nobody Remembers The Silvershirts…Yet February 29, 2008
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John McCain is what my Father would have dead-on pegged as a silvershirt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_shirts
The difference is that it is not the 1930’s, it’s 2008. There’s no Nazi Germany to inspire McCain’s militarism.
However, he and his ilk find an outlet in an all-out support for the American Empire — overseas and at home — whatever it takes to suffocate our civil liberties in the name of “security.” And that includes American men and women crippled for life and dying in Iraq for 100 years. That, says McCain, “would be fine with me”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFknKVjuyNk.
Think about it. How was Nazi Germany different, except in degree? We have Gitmo now. How long will it be before we have domestic Gitmos? (Possibly we do — who would know?)
All it takes is a few more regulations to give some TSA agent the power to decide that because you don’t look right to him or her you need to be “detained.”
New Look, RSS Feed Added February 16, 2008
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I changed the template to one that has a button for RSS feeds. Sign up and you will be notified whenever a new posting appears.
A Monster In The White House February 14, 2008
Posted by papersource in good books!.Tags: assassination, billy sol estes, bobby baker, conspiracy, kennedy, LBJ, lyndon johnson, mac wallace, presidency, president johnson
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I just finished “Blood, Money and Power” by Barr McClellan (the father of former Bush press sec. Scott McClellan). He is a lawyer who spent 14 years as a member of the law firm handling all of the legal, personal and professional business transactions for Lyndon Johnson. It’s a fascinating look at how utterly corrupt LBJ was.
He breaks the attorney-client privilege and goes into great detail on a wide variety of backroom deals and schemes, including threats, blackmail and murder, that took LBJ from a poor hick in rural Texas to congressman, senator, Senate majority leader, vice-president and finally president. Only someone who was deeply on the inside, whom LBJ thought could never reveal what he knows, could tell this story. The detail he provides, the countless names, dates and situations he describes, are a gold mine for anyone interested in how power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
He could have stopped halfway through and it would still be one of the best “tell-all” presidential books. But it’s in the second half of the book that he detonates a nuclear bomb.
He claims that Mac Wallace was one of the three men who assassinated JFK. Wallace was allegedly LBJ’s chief thug. He establishes this through a litany of names, dates, places, conversations — and fingerprint evidence taken from the 6th floor sniper’s nest of the Texas School Book Depository.
Who wants to believe that the vice-president of the United States could possibly order the death of the president? Yet that attitude has caused many to simply reject the idea as impossible and thus refuse to even consider the evidence. It not only is possible, it may very well be true. Once you are willing to entertain the possibility, McClellan’s case becomes at least plausible. And that fingerprint evidence is compelling (the Publisher’s Weekly review at amazon.com is factually wrong and demonstrates bias in its casual dismissal).
McClellan says that the problem with the Kennedy conspiracy books, some of which he compliments, is that they all fall short in three areas: 1) they don’t have the facts he has, particularly those thought by the conspirators to be covered by attorney-client privilege; 2) they are unable to follow the money trail, and 3) they don’t want to believe that LBJ could have done such a monstrous act.
Even if you don’t buy the assassination claim, the book is a fascinating trip through the career of a man who is the #1 contender as the most evil person to ever occupy the White House.
An Increasing Flood Of Cheaper Properties February 12, 2008
Posted by papersource in investments.add a comment
Here’s an account that may sound painfully familiar to you (from www.dowtheoryletters.com):
“In January 2006 I had an offer from a buyer using a sub-prime loan on a Vallejo, CA
condo for $285,000. I negotiated with him since I knew a condo about 60 feet from
me had sold for $365,000. The deal fell through and I decided to improve the
premises to get an even higher price. In February 2007 I placed the property on the
market and had four offers in days – at $240,000 – not one of them closed as not one
of the buyers could get “100% no-doc loans”. I sold the unit this week for $129,500
with credits of $4,000. Net price – $125,000!
“Building costs in Vallejo are $225 per square foot (sf). To this you must add land costs -
$100,000 to $120,000 per lot of about 6,000 sf or say $20 per sf. Total costs $245 per sf.
Carrying costs while the building is being constructed may be another $20+ making a
final total of $265 per sf.
“On any day you can buy a property in Vallejo in foreclosure for $125 per sf, and
$150 per sf would be a high price – and that includes the land and building.
What surprises me is why there is ANY building of residential buildings when you
can buy at $150 versus build at $265 – and the delta is getting bigger, not smaller.
“A typical day in the foreclosure arena involves 30 sales with almost all the
properties being taken by the banks. 30/day is 150 per week, or 600 per month
- or each month twice or three times the number of homes actually sold – 239 -
and the sales pace is slowing.
To state the obvious, this is an Armageddon, with supplies soaring, demand
falling and yes, prices collapsing. Yet the available statistics say prices are down
only 12% in Solano Co. — nonsense!
The banks hold the foreclosed homes and drop prices only slowly. Yet in the
last few weeks more and more of them are dropping bids at the auctions.
An example today: $235,000 owed, opening bid $112,000 – and this was one
of seventeen dropped bids. No one bid!
t is my understanding that banks are limited by law in what they can retain,
so how long will it be before they crack and slash prices of what they
already own?
Far from the situation being at a bottom, the database I keep of these
auctions is accelerating in speed of size increase. Where a year ago the
30-day moving average of new auction sales for all seven Bay Area Counties
was 30/day, reaching 60/day a few months ago, it is now 100/day.
I see an increasing flood of properties increasingly being dropped in price.”
Whither Republicans? (or perhaps, Wither Republicans?) February 9, 2008
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It’s deja vu all over again. 1968: Ronald Reagan, the conservative candidate for President (his campaign never got off the ground), loses the nomination to the “moderate” Republican Richard Nixon. Nixon wins, conservatives in Congress are effectively silenced. Nixon rightly figures, “where will they go?” and moves left. It takes conservatives 12 years to regroup within the GOP. Many who voted for Nixon on the lesser of two evils theory bitterly regret it when they realize how they have been sandbagged.
2008: Conservatives are faced with the lesser of two evils argument once again. Vote for McCain because he’s better on some issues than the Democrat? “Throw away” your vote on a third party candidate? Stay home? Some are even threatening to vote for the Democrat, either Clinton or Obama, figuring that 1) we’re entering a recession and the president will be blamed, so better them than us, and 2) four years of crazy liberalism will energize conservatives and the country and the next election will be a conservative GOP landslide.
This also reminds me of 1976 (when I worked full-time for Ronald Reagan). We lost the nomination to the more liberal Jerry Ford, who lost the election to Jimmy Carter. Four years later the country was so fed up with Carter, and the conservative movement had grown so strong, that Reagan won in a landslide. Should conservative Republicans take 1976 as their model? Yes, they should.
Either that, or form a new party. Conservatives have to stop thinking that conservatism and the GOP are joined at the hip.
Super Tuesday February 7, 2008
Posted by papersource in politics.1 comment so far
Observations based on a life in politics and working in the U.S. Congress:
Huckabee has known for a long time that he can’t win the nomination. He’s staying in it to wield his delegates at the convention to bargain McCain into the VP spot, or, if he can’t, some juicy cabinet post. Remember, Huckabee is unemployed. He needs a job.
By staying in before Super Tuesday, Huckabee has made it clear that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the future of the Republican Party or of constitutional government, for that matter (McDole, sorry, McCain, will destroy both). If he did, he would have dropped out before Super Tuesday and endorsed Romney. Instead, he stayed in, knowing he would draw off votes from Romney, killing his candidacy. Two perceived conservatives against one “moderate,” given the GOP primary vote, means the “moderate” wins. By continuing his candidacy, the Huckster killed off Romney while sucking up to McCain in a patently obvious ploy to be VP.
What he fails to realize is that McCain won’t pick him as VP. Two reasons:
First, he brings nothing substantial to the ticket. He’s McCain’s clone on the key domestic issues of immigration, taxes and spending and on foreign policy, which is, keep spending gazillions of taxpayers’ money on the various wars and in Empire Building.
Second, the vice-presidency, in the words of one who held the office (Cactus Jack Garner) “ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit.” That goes for the VP candidate as well. One of the most seductive political siren songs to presidential nominees is that whom you choose as your running mate means something. You have to “balance the ticket.”
Baloney. History spanks that approach every time. The fact is, nobody casts their vote based on who the vice presidential candidate is. If McCain picks The Huckster, thinking he’s going to get conservative support, he’s picking somebody who agrees with him on almost all the issues conservatives hate McCain for.
Whenever I Need A Laugh, I Just Play This February 7, 2008
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Hard Money Lending February 7, 2008
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Is a disaster. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’ve heard lately from hard money lenders. Defaults, foreclosures, losses up the wazoo.
Stay away, stay far away, from doing hard money lending or buying the paper right now.
Free Money February 4, 2008
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I went to www.missingmoney.com and looked up my name to see if I had any unclaimed assets. I didn’t. I looked up some friends and, amazingly, about half of them did (I let them know, of course).
It’s a free service sponsored by state governments or something. Try it — bet you never expected to make money just reading a blog posting.
