The Myth that we are "Drowning in Debt"

There are certain myths which I guess, if you did a man on the street interview about you would find the average American amazingly ignorant of.  For instance most people don’t know that the federal deficit on only just over a third of what it was the final year of the Bush administration.  And if you asked them about the value of the American dollar they’d say it’s going down all the time with respect to other currencies.  Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.  The American dollar has risen steadily in value against other international currencies.  This gives American bonds and other debt instruments- - more of a “real yield” than they’d ever have in this country and creates a strong incentive for other foreign powers to finance us.  The average person may remember one agency lowered our bond rating once from triple A to double A plus or something, and panicked.  It was just weeks after this however that the value of debt instruments in this country rose.  Since more people were buying these debt instruments, the interest rates on them was cut further.  If you are a foreign power, once again, the increasing value of the dollar would increase the “Real” yields on these instruments.   I’ve at times wondered about how they compute these calculations saying the average American citizen owes over a hundred thousand or maybe it’s 65,000 on the national debt.  Is it on the taxes that you actually owe or your “legal share” or is it just the whole National Debt sliced and diced up into equal pieces.  Believe it or not, if this is the case the rich would really “Owe” more on that debt than the working class would.  But we as a people are programmed to panic.  We’ve been told that debt “monetization” would either bankrupt us or send us into out of control Wymar Republic style inflation spiral. (referring to post WW I Germany) Clearly even Glen Beck can see that this did not happen.  The average American citizen should know that when the stock market crashed in 1929 it was not in any way based on “debt”.   Judy is obsessed with “debt” - - other people’s debt, that is - - not her own, assuming she has any.  We need to get over this debt phobia.  After all public debt is really money we owe to ourselves and represents private savings, which ironically is a good thing.  Now private debt- - debt to “the man” be it a landlord or a banker, has no such silver lining and private debt far exceeds public debt in this country.  I bet you didn’t know that, either.

Mitt Romney is the first guy to jump out of the clown car.  We wondered in that “who will bite the bullet” conference in Utah, whether Jeb Bush or Mittens would get out of the race, and it turned out to be Mitt, and I believe it’s for the best, at least for the health of the Republican party.  Of course “God told Mitt he would be President” when he was a teenager, so Mittens is giving God the slip on this one.  Romney says in a phone call the reason why he withdrew is NOT because he didn’t think he could win, because he’s convinced that he could and can.   He says “It’s time for one of the other nominees who is just getting started- to emerge as the Presidential nominee.  Is that Scott Walker?  But it’s kind of a racket with these politicians.  Because nowadays being a candidate isn’t nine months of rail trips and staying at bad hotels and crapy food.  No, no.   How you get luxury suites in the finest hotels and raise a whole boatload of money that you get to keep even if you decide not to run.  Sarah Palin knows all about this political posturing. 

Now the caller is talking about “Eco-cide”, which is a new term just coined by the caller.  It could well be that we should stop ALL petrol drilling.  But at least let’s skip the trans-Canadian pipeline.   From the point of view of the earth, it would be if someone were pummeling you with their fists one after the other and the question is, “Do you want me to slow down or do you want me to stop”?  World Population was considered a major problem in 1968 and not to rain on your parade but if it was a major problem in 1968, what do you think it is now with the world's population nearly double what it was then?  It's just one of those facts people don't like to think about.  But some solutions present themselves.  Giving women of the world more power and away from things like Sheria Law which I imagine forbids taking birth control- - would go a long way towards women themselves choosing to have fewer children.  Switching from planes to trains in high population corridors is also logical.  Not to go Lisa Simpson on you, but if we were to wean outselves off of meats- - we would see an amazing drop in our energy needs since we invest an awful lot of land and energy both feeding not people- - but animals for those people to eat.  Taking up bike riding wouldn't be a bad idea either, and many are doing that.  I do not favor ripping our your grass lawns and putting in a rock garden.  Rocks conduct heat and would drive up your air conditioning bills something fierce.  An increase of ergonomic archetecture would help, too- - -  contouring the building for factors such as heat absorbson and choosing roofing substances and blending in with the land and not a glass "box", like a lot of our high rises are. 

Attempts to normalize relation with Cuba have hit a major snag as of today when the White House press secretary announced that we would NOT close Guantanamo Bay prison as a prerequisite to normalization of relations with Cuba.  I always thought it was primarily the Cubans who were pushing for this normalization rather than the United States.  Therefore the only question is ‘How badly do the Cubans want it?”  They are in economic dire straits, and we are here to offer help, but we don’t want it to be a case of biting the hand that’s feeding you.  We of course have our Naval Base on Guantanamo Bay, and we won’t be closing that down. 

Thom Hartman wants the facts well reviewed when it comes to Afghanistan.  As you will remember after 9 – 11 Afghanistan came to us and offered to deliver up Bin Laden to a third party state to be tried on whatever charges we had plausible evidence for.  And George Bush said, “No- - we’d rather bomb the hell out of the whole area”.   Apparently President Bush had surpressed the spending figures (that exceed the DNP of Afghanistan) on strengthening their military and police and still it’s been a disaster.  The American people can’t even know how much we have spent- - down a rat hole.  Meanwhile our goal in Iraq among other things- - perhaps Thee major goal- - was to destroy – not Saddam Hussein- - both the Bathist party government, because fifty percent of the Iraqi economy was “socialized” meaning the government controlled half of the economy.  There is no need of a fortune teller to tell you that if half the economy is wiped out- - and all of the infrastructure- - the country of Iraq as a whole will become a basket case.  Of course we disbanded the Republican Army, and I mean the one in the country of Iraq - - not in Iowa.  Thom Hartman continues to say that the term “Homeland” has racial implications as though it’s all in favor of a mother land, and a mother race, and that somehow there is an “American race” all the “good people” can identify with.  It’s a term that came out of Zionism, that strangely was picked up by the German people.  I think we need to make a new movie on the whole life of George Bush- - and it should run four or five hours with a break.  Even at that squeezing all the truly damning stuff about George W Bush will be a real challenge.  What’s Michael Moore been doing these days, anyhow?

Ralph Reid, long term Christian evangelist- - warns Republicans that they shouldn’t be so dominated by the wishes of the Koch Brothers as to lose sight of the social and cultural issues such as abortion and keeping marriages heterosexual.  In this he and I are in agreement.  But then again anything from my point of view, that instills fear and trepidation among the Republican ranks, I am all for.  I would run as a social conservative if I were president on matters of conscience alone.  I would be for freedom of expression of religion – ALL religion, and I would work against these assisted suicide laws- - and seek to get the federal courts completely OUT of the gay marriage question and leave that decision entirely in the hands of the states, and ditto for the abortion issue.  The people have expressed their voice rather emphatically in that they are against the widespread polliferation of gay marriages.  But apparently the Koch Brothers don’t really care about these “Larry Elder” type issues- - in other words, what used to be moral issues.

 Right now it’s a trip down memory lane with Democracy Now and the Black Panther Party.  Of course initially and perhaps for much of its carrier, it was an anti police brutality and abuse party.  Members of the Black Panther party would take advantage of California’s open gun carry laws back then to point guns at the police while they were arresting a subject, to insure that there was no misbehavior on the part of the cops.  The leader of the Chicago Black Panthers was shot in his bed while he slept in late 1969, and of course J Edger Hoover wanted to wipe the party out.  This has never been a secret.  I personally remember that issue with the free Mississippi delegation at the democratic convention and how Johnson – and probably Dick Daily - - maneuvered for the all white deligation to get sole power and many SNCC members were disillusioned.  Apparently it was right after this that Stokley Carmichal did the “Black Power” salute for the first time.

Based on astrological considerations, I have deemed it ill advised to say anything about either the Super Bowl or some of the other items I had it in mind to talk about today.  This computer is in precarious shape and it takes it forever to "warm up" and get up to speed.   My family situation is a big unknown these days and I won't speculate here.  Hopefully all of my dental work is behind me.  We had a residents council meeting around here today, and some of the things discussed, I'm puzzled as to just what the problem is.