Full Speed Ahead on Obama’s Titanic
A helium currency is increasingly what we’re being paid in, too. Value? It now costs $12 to get back and forth across the George Washington Bridge. Untold thousands of cars do that every day, producing incredible revenues, yet the tab keeps rising every few years. Are costs rising or is the money shrinking or both? Whenever grim reality (a stock meltdown, a new rise in foreclosures or unemployment) raises its ugly head, the Fed obliges with a wink, an acceleration of the presses, a “twist,” a nod. Our intrepid Fed chief has said he’d “drop money from helicopters” if that’s what continued suspension of disbelief requires. And he was probably chosen for the job for precisely that reason, given that the outlines of this country’s looming fiscal berg (the boomers’ retirement) were clearly visible years ago. Right now, the Fed itself is the largest buyer of Uncle Sam’s debt. That’s right; one part of the government is supporting the rest with its magic printing press. How’s that for a “confidence builder”?
Reality for the Titanic was that it shouldn’t have been hurtling at high speed through an inky sea of icebergs; reality for us, as has been amply shown in Europe, is that the lack of productivity that is the hallmark of leftonomics eventually causes it to sink of its own weight. Through the International Monetary Fund and the Fed, we’re desperately trying to bail out Europe now; who’ll be there for us?
Still, the captain’s on the bridge, and he’s got a confident, almost cocky, grin on his face. His order to the sociopolitical engineers: “Full speed ahead!”
The thermometer is going lower, more than it went higher before
Time there was warmth and plenty, but that cup soon runneth no more
Though we could not caution all, we still might warn a few
Dont lend your hand to raise no flag atop no Ship of Obama Fools
Ship of Obama Fools on a cold cruel sea
Ship of Obama Fools sail away from we
It was later than we thought, when we still might have had some hope as you
Now we can no longer share your delusions, Ship of Obama Fools
Jeff, great analogies.
To be sure, with a narcissist at the helm, (believing/reveling in his own omnipotence)it is not a stretch to compare him to a captain who PURPOSEFULLY rams his ship, expecting/anticipating said drowning!
Couple such psycho pathology with years of dreaming (and acting towards) of the US becoming a facsimile of socialist leaning Europe, via fiscal policy, in tandem with a Marxist/Communist polity, to replace the greatest bastion of freedom the world has ever seen.
To wit, the only sensible conclusion to draw (based upon ALL his actions….forgetting about his syrupy words)is, if left to his own devices, for another 4 yrs, there will NO longer be a USA, at least one recognizable in any shape or form. That’s how monumental the next election is, as such, how truly transforming it will be.
I know which way I will be voting, as I exercise my overseas ballot! Many other Americans living here feel the same.They too know the stakes.
You seem to have got it in one. ~BUT but,what are the responsibilities of the other officers on the bridge? The Captain may be head honcho but the officers of the crew also have responsibilities to assure the safety of the ship, its cargo and any passengers..
What efforts do they take given that one supposes them as astute as the commentators on PJ Media and elsewhere? Do they, i.e Congress and Judiciary – Separation of Powers responsibilities and duties – stop this Captain Obama manouevring the Ship of State into the shoals with actions directly contrary to accepted “naval” proceduress and in some respects actually unlawful . What’s with them.
AND what are the passengers, i.e. the citizens on the SS USA doing. In this ship THEY, contrary to ordinary ships, are the ultimate, ABOVE THE CAPTAIN in authority. Just waiting for the ship to go down as if they have no say in its direction OR port of final call?
It is obvious to many, citizens and public servants alike, that there is something seriously wrong with this chief executive and his cabinet/internal staff. It seems that the only recourse at the moment is to decry his and his First Officers / Tsars actions. And that’s it.
IS THAT IT? No Caine Mutiny?
The officers and crew will stick with the Captain so long as there is something in it for them. Then it will be man the lifeboats, women and children first, every man for themselves! (Right after the officers and crew get away of course!) They can’t admit they are wrong, they would be lynched if it got out exactly how badly they’ve run things. They have to keep the con going as long as they can.
It is becoming clearer with each passing day that what we need is a president that likes to fire people.
Only one candidate for the presidency has ever been perfectly candid about where America stands:
What a pity he’s only a fictional character.
I didn’t read the book. I assume that he was declared insane by the mainstream media and lost the general election in a massive landslide.
What is so interesting about broke European countries like Greece is that not only are they still broke, but they have absolutely no intention of paying any of their loans back. None at all. Not only has Greece technically defaulted on all its loans (only able to “pay back” 25% to their creditors, making them take a 75% “haircut” on the loans), but they have no ability to pay back any of the billions of dollars in new loans it has been given to get them by this crisis. Greece’s economy is in ruins, their few rich people are leaving Greece with their money, the Government is frantically cutting all sorts of pensions and social services, and there are few jobs to be had in Greece today. Given that situation, plus the fact that Greece’s economy is not going to get better for many years to come, how do they expect to pay back the loans the IMF, the ECB, and the Germans have piling on to them?
The answer is, they can’t. All the Greeks did was kick the can down the road for a few months, maybe even a year, before they will have to go back to the IMF or the ECB for even more money. Because that’s the way socialist countries operate. Once they start going broke, there is no stopping them unless you take even more money from the people. But when the people are broke, too, then where do they get the money from? The answer is, they keep borrowing more and more of it, digging their financial hole even deeper. THAT is why countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland have nowhere to go but down. They have literally run out of spending other people’s money, as Margaret Thatcher once said.
And this is the path Obama wants us to follow. Like all socialists and Marxists, Obama thinks we will never run out of other people’s money. The sad fact of the matter is, we are, and quickly, too. And if we didn’t have our printing presses printing more money, we’d already BE broke. It’s only a matter of time before it happens to us. The first way to stop this from happening is to prevent Obama from having a second term in office. Then maybe, just maybe, we can stop this country from crashing into that financial iceberg.
All excellent points — the main vindicator of leftonomics now stands revealed as Gutenberg, not Marx. But when I remind my “progressive” friends that Greece has cut its minimum wage by 20% or so, they cover their ears. After all, it’s impossible — minimum-wage rates only move up, not down! In fact, here in the blue paradise of New York the socialists in the legislature, goaded on by their union paymasters, are trying to raise the minimum wage yet again (and babbling about a “living wage” in NYC). Full speed ahead toward social justice!
In my view, Greece has the sovereign right to be an economic catastrophe if it so chooses.
What has clearly failed is the European Union with its common currency, the euro. It has put the E.U. in the position of carrying parasitic nations like Greece, no matter the cost to reasonably stable nations like Germany.
And the Greeks know they can continue to play this game. They don’t have to change, because the Europeans won’t do the obvious thing and expel Greece from the E.U. for nonperformance. Europeans remain wedded to this fantasy of an eventual “United States of Europe.” And they’ll just keep bailing out Greece with more loans and more austerity concessions.
Given this
Given that situation, plus the fact that Greece’s economy is not going to get better for many years to come, how do they expect to pay back the loans the IMF, the ECB, and the Germans have piling on to them?
has anyone in Greece thought about getting back the money Germany stripped them of, during the Second World War, to finance its war effort?
This arrived anonymously on my desktop, so can’t give credit where it’s due, except it sounds like it’s from the UK:
Anthem for the Age of Dystopia:
…The Age of the CAN’T society…
You can’t do that
You can’t do this
You can’t go there
You can’t park here
You can’t walk there
You can’t do anything because others don’t want to do anything at all.
You can’t Survive
You can’t Prosper
You can’t pay your bills
You can’t get a job
You can’t retire at 65
You can’t do stuff at all
But Hey, You Racist Bigot, You Must Pay Your Taxes
I’ve said this before;
Christians should be Ashamed in the presence of Leftists.
Jesus admonished the Christian to have the Faith of a Mustard Seed. Just that little bit.
Yet Christians will struggle constantly with attaining even that level of Faith.
Leftist, however, will demonstrate on a regular basis the Faith of an Avocado Pit. And that is how in the face of the European Meltdown, Leftists in the US can continue to Have Faith that if it’s just done right…
When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave her inaugural address as speaker of the House in 2007, she vowed there would be “no new deficit spending.” Since that day, the national debt has increased by $5 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0CUcnRPSeg
To continue on the ship analogy, imagine you’re on the bridge of a massively loaded supertanker. You’re cruising along at your normal speed (say 10 knots) and everything seems fine. At the edge of your radar’s detection range, you find an obstacle directly in your path, say 40 nautical miles away). You’re 4 hours from collision. If you change your course by as little as 1 degree, you’ll miss the collision by a considerable distance. All you have to do is make a slight course change. Instead, you do nothing. The ship keeps getting closer to the threat. As it gets closer, the amount of course change you have to make to avoid collision keeps getting larger. Finally, you get to the point where you can’t chang course enough to avoid collision. Foolishness and procrastination have doomed you.
That’s where we are with the national debt. It has been increasing for years. Relatively small changes could’ve brought it under control without much pain, but the political class refused to give up buying votes with borrowed money. Instead, for the past several years, they’ve doubled down by ordering full throttle and screaming “ramming speed” like in “Animal House.” As a result, we’re at a point where any solution big enough to avoid a collision with economic reality would be practically impossible (at least politically).
Right — the intersection of “range” and “bearing.” Bill Gross of PIMCO funds wrote a great piece on that subject a couple years ago. It was about a near miss he witnessed while serving in the Navy. The range was distant, so no one in command paid any attention to the bearing. I think at this point the bearing is clear but the range isn’t.
Or as in the case of the original Titanic you could give your obervers up in that cold cold crows nest a pair of binoculars so they could see beyond the bow of the boat by more than ten feet.
In our own situation that would be called vision. Not much of that around these days so I guess if we don’t get some we’re going to hit that black iceberg again. History is just one damned thing after another and then it repeats.
From what I recall, they accidentally left the binoculars at their last port when Titanic sailed. It was normal practice to use binoculars because they greatly increased the lookout’s visibility.
In aviation, they talk about the chain of events that leads to an accident. It’s almost never any one thing that causes a serious accident but a series of events strung together. Break any one of those events and the accident doesn’t happen. In the case of Titanic, leaving behind the binoculars was one of those events. Likewise, had they hit the iceberg straight-on instead of trying to miss it, it’s likely the ship would not have sank. It was designed to stay afloat even if the first 4 watertight compartments was flooded. Conversely, I wonder if they could’ve reversed the port engine to help the ship turn more sharply. From what I recall, the ship’s rudder was probably too small to turn fast enough to miss the iceberg at the close range. The night was moonless and clear, the ocean was very calm, and about the only way the lookouts saw the iceberg was to notice a blockage in the stars. By then, it was too late.
I’ve been watching too many shows about the Titanic lately.
Night isn’t really as dark as people who are inexperienced with doing things at night think it is so long as the sky is clear. Nacht und nebel is another matter altogether! Even on a moonless night, you can see quite well if you don’t have any background light or other lights to distract you or damage your night vision and have some training in “seeing in the dark,” which is basically keep your head moving so you’re seeing things from your peripheral vision which invokes the more sensitive of the rods or cones, can’t remember which, in your retina. I’ve been in pitch-black night with bergy bits around in Icy Straits near the Glacier Bay National Park, and the ice shines at you even in starlight. Hubris killed the Titanic and that hubris pervaded the crew as well as the officers and the company. They really thought she was invulnerable, so they weren’t much worried about things like icebergs.
Oh, and on a moving vessel, binoculars ain’t all they’re cracked up to be and high powered binoculars are just about useless as even the slightest motion is so greatly amplified. The best present The Admirable ever bought me was a pair of Canon gyro-stabilized binoculars; spendy as Hell, but you can actually hold them on something from a moving boat. The Mk. I A1 eyeball is the primary piece of safety equipment on any vessel.
Ah, but the Titanic dealt with a different problem- a quiet night. There were no waves lapping up against the iceberg to distinguish the iceberg from the ocean behind it.
There are binoculars with high magnification and there are those designed to gather a lot of light. The first kind wouldn’t be very useful at night on a ship for the reasons you named but the second type might’ve been a big help. Under the conditions they were experiencing (no moon, calm seas, no waves), the lookouts on the Titanic didn’t see the iceberg until they were 1/2 mile away. That’s pretty remarkable under the conditions but it wasn’t enough for a big ship moving at speed. I wonder if all the lighting on the ship further reduced their night vision or if they were high enough to not be affected.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has introduced a new FY 2013 budget. Unlike his last effort, which cut exclusively — though deeply — from discretionary spending in order to show much could be cut without touching entitlements, this one includes some entitlement reforms. Paul claims his budget: Reduces federal spending by $11 trillion relative to President Obama’s budget Balances in five years, within the balanced budget amendment window supported by all 47 Senate Republicans Achieves a $111 billion surplus in FY 2017 Eliminates four Cabinet-level departments (Energy, Education, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development) while privatizing the TSA Freezes foreign aid at $5 billion a year Reduces most discretionary spending to 2008 levels Rand Paul Unveils Latest Budget Proposal By W. JAMES ANTLE, III on 3.8.12 @ 2:22PM
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/03/08/rand-paul-unveils-latest-budge
If we just eliminate the partying and make the government use GOTOMEETING.com to have it’s meetings, we can cut a bunch without anyone noticing. Well except for the GSA.
It’s not the governments responsibility to fund the tourist industry in Las Vegas.
Sigh.
And part of the European model is weak military forces subject to Nato/UN control.
And look at what the social welfare mentality has done to European self sufficiency. The Greek people are unable to innovate or react as individuals to the abandonment by the state. Their entrepreunurial capability has been eaten away by the education system. They can’t help themselves. They are destined to wallow into poverty.
The French will be joining them shortly as they turn hard left and accelerate into the iceburg.
The scale of the foolish behavior the welfare state creates is an awesome thing to encounter. Our Country is just behind Europe in the evolution into a hopeless anti free enterprise shell of its former self. If we don’t pull back hard from our descent and overspending we will be unable to recover. It may already be too late.
How fitting: the President hosts a fund raising event on April 18th at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn where The Titanic Exhibit just opened.
Americans used to be an independant peoples. The Democrats and Obama has turned this nation into a European style welfare state where everyone is dependant. Every one of the people in the senate and congress who support his anti-American legislation, regulations, and polocies need to be impeached. They know what his actions are doing to our people and our nation, and yet they keep supporting him.
If a man commits treason, and you support him, you are also guilty of treason.
Great story! Imagine that! Obama didn’t promise our women alone that made him our President exactly a “Socialist” government, but a “MARXIST” government through a “FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION OF GOVERNMENT.” That will be I’m sure in Obama’s “Mao” fashion, which calls for an economic crash, somebody to blame(Let me guess? Obama, no strike that, I meant RICH WHITE MEN, RIGHT?) and a HOLOCAUST! Wouldn’t “MAO” be SO PROUD of you, BARAK? However, the two-witnesses are coming to “RAIN ON YOUR PARADE.” Yes, YOU will be able to kill them after 3 1/2 years of witnessing against you, but they WILL STAND-UP ALIVE AGAIN in 3 1/2 days later and then; it’s FINALLY YOUR TURN AGAIN BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA! No? WATCH!
That extreme Left Winger Adolph Hitler and his Political Party the National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party (AKA NAZI’s) had a dream for a post war Europe. It was to be a Socialist Assembly of unelected Bureaucrats dominated by Germany. And that’s the EU in a nutshell.
Socialism did not go away with the defeat of Communist Russia just like Muslims they play the long game and seek to win by INFILTRATION and brainwashing of the pliable,naive, gullible youth in our Universities and Colleges. Its no accident that virtually every Western College and University is staffed by extreme left wing proselytizing Professors and has an active Jew hating Muslim Society.
It does not need a genius to work out that if the contributors are squeezed so much that they have no more to give and they have become outnumbered by the ‘Benefit Entitlement Junkies’ who contribute NOTHING, then the gravy train will hit the buffers. OK it can be sustained for a while by printing money and borrowing and devaluing your currency but that does nothing to stop the train wreck it merely postpones it and makes it even worse than it would have been. That is the situation that all this Political Correctness, Left Wing moonbattery and Multi Culturalism have brought Western Civilization to.
About france voting tomorrow for a socialist President; I must point ou that we had a so-called conservative (RINO) President ( Jacques Chirac)from 1995 until 2007 who did absolutely nothing of the pledege of a more liberal economic policy.He governed in a typical left wing manner hiring more civil servants in useless jobs.He kept on receiving 200,000 foreigners per year from poor north african countries who burdened the already crumbling labor market.Chirac was such a dellusion that he was nicknamed by his own constituency ” Roi Faineant ” ( lazy king ).So we voted a young energetic, promising, liberal candidate Sarkozy and 5 years have passed and the same left wing policy was the true agenda.Of course it was a failure, unemployement went up and the voters are voting a Socialist just to punish a Conservative (in name only) of not having delivered what he promised.The remedy will be worse than the curse but it seems there is nothing else than to say ” C’ est la vie ” or ” Plus ça change et moins ça change “.
Thanks for the comment, Philippe. I assume “liberal” in the French context means “classically liberal,” i.e., a proponent of freedom and free markets, right? In this country, “liberal” is synonymous with “left-leaning.”
Liberal – all over Europe GB Germany Italy Scandinavia ..- means a center right politician promoting free market economy – Some liberals have rather left leaning opinions concerning the private rights -civil matters like marriage, divorce, abortion,etc..- ans some are rather conservatives.The proble all over Europe is total lack of democracy in the European Union System: a very big source of legislation ( like 50% of all texts ) applied inside the State members of the Union.Since the European parliament has no right to repeal the executive arm ( European Commission in Brussels ) , we citizens are defenseless against a rampant and powerful bureaucracy.
The Europeans have sold themselves and their children’s futures for a pack of cheap, false promises. But we’re in the process of doing the same thing ourselves. Very sad.
I feel Romney has a good chance to kick out BHO IF he really attacks BHO on its results and on the fact that those results are the fruit of an anti- american and anti-western personality.No gloves , just a bare-hands knucle fight can unseat the pope of politically correct
This coming week, Congress is set to take up another so-called “cybersecurity” bill, H.R. 3523, the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011″ (CISPA). And this time, many of those who joined us to stop SOPA and PIPA are supporting this legislation.
http://www.house.gov/representatives/
April 20, 2012 Official Ron Paul Campaign blogger Jack Hunter joins Robert with an update on the campaign, the continued media blackout on the huge crowds at the campaign rallies and the future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=r4mAGljqpgQ
Pardon my tardiness, but isn’t it even worse than you describe?
“Right now, the Fed itself is the largest buyer of Uncle Sam’s debt. That’s right; one part of the government is supporting the rest with its magic printing press.”
After all, the Federal Reserve Bank isn’t part of our government, rather it is a privately owned monopoly of international banksters. Congress shirked their responsibility to only coin money as per USC and delegated to the Fed.
What happens when even the Fed won’t print money to enslave us further? There must be a threshold that tips the balance?