Hey Buddy, if you choose this, can you give the book to Mare?

Plop Plop
Fizz Fizz
No More Republicans

Hi Thom,
OSU Federal Credit Union is fantastic. A few months ago I'd gotten tired of irreversable fee's at Wells Fargo during some hard economic times, and after threatening to do it many times before, I finally got furious and closed my personal and business accounts immediately and opened an account at OSU. On the day of opening, they even offerred me a loan to consolidate my high interest credit cards - from over 30% down to 5.5%. They also contribute to the community here and have been recognized as one of the best, or the best credit union in the nation (? not sure the exact stats). Good luck!

Thom,

Eliot Spitzer was on The Ed Show last week advocating for people moving their banking from the TARP recipients to local community banks. (I'll post the website he cited in my next post.) Video:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/34693921#34693921

Thom - if you want a good bank in Oregon, why not try one or more credit unions?

* Depositor-owned = ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY!
* Depositors get the profits = better rates than any bank!

Try https://www.oregoncommunitycu.org/
Or maybe https://www.onpointcu.com/page.php?page=2

And of course:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS346US347&q=credit+uni...

New iPhone App: "iMscrewed"

Unemployed Americans, and those soon to be unemployed, can now download an iPhone App to help them cope with having their jobs shipped overseas, their tax dollars given to the bankers running our economy and their very lives sold to billionaires in nice suits.

Based on Thom Hartmann's award-winning manual "SCREWED! The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class" "iMscrewed" uses GPS technology to locate:

Where in the world your job went or is going;
Which corporate jet, limosine or whorehouse was paid for with your tax money;
Which highway overpasses currently have space available for you to sleep under.

Remember, protecting jobs in America is PROTECTIONISM, which could lead to economic problems that could cost you your job. But, while you are no doubt better off for having your job eliminated, you may want a little help coping with life as an underemployed warning to those few who still have a paycheck.

iMscrewed will enable you to

Download picture of the vacations enjoyed by the people who eliminated your job
Take a virtual tour of the Goldman, Sachs headquarters paid for with your tax dollars
Chart the explosion in the derivatives market that is not only unregulated, but vastly larger than the entire economy of our planet: just like in 1929!

Has the American Dream collapsed for you? Are you feeling a little bit down, now that you will be unable to pass on to your children a living standard comparable to that which your parents gave to you? When you were young, one parent could earn enough to put kids through college, enjoy vacations and have a decent retirement; but now, you'll be living with your kids while holding down three minimum-wage jobs ... if you're lucky!

All this could get you feeling hopeless, but don't worry! iMscrewed has a host of games to bring back your dreams.

iHistory: This app furnishes frequent reminders that we've had it just as bad before and overcome them by working together to push our politicians. (Note: this application works very slowly; you may want to quit in dispair too soon)

iBribe: This app provides the campaign money that every politician needs to get into office or stay in office. The best part of this app is that politicians who refuse to play along get swept out in the next election; the worst part is that you must have $1 million or more to use this app effectively.

iMhuman: A new problem today is that our economy, and therefore our politics, are controlled by non-human corporations. Powerful servants but dangerous masters, this new form of life uses people to front amoral and reckless actions in service of a single purpose: their growth upon our blood. They must be brought under control: the humans must rise up!

Are you working harder and taking home less pay? Are your health insurance premiums rising faster than your rage and anxiety? Do you feel that the American Dream is slipping away?

Get help! Get iMscrewed!

It is easy to see how micro economics in many ways mirrors the macro, except that it is a bit less uncomplicated to see how a breakdown can occur. A person earns a certain modest wage, and if his or her needs are satisfied by, say, watching television, listening to records, reading books, going to a restaurant once a week, attending a movie once a month, and taking a vacation to Florida once a year, one can easily live within their means without too much trouble. But in a world where electronic gadgets, personal computers, the internet and cell phones opens up whole new vistas of desires, you might crave things that are a sign of “sophistication”—digitized toys that can turn that rat and roach infested closet you live in into a self-contained entertainment and learning center, The early Macintosh computers wetted your appetite (before you tired of their “secrecy” about upcoming products that didn’t allow you to make intelligent purchasing decisions on their already over-priced product). Then there was digital media “revolution”: CDs, Laser Disc (you can’t even find a machine to play those anymore, but they do make fascinating house ornaments) and DVDs. There are a lot of titles for the dedicated videophile, but you just don’t have the cash to buy them all with.

But once in college long ago, some bank sent you an application for a piece of plastic called a Visa card, an when it arrived you really didn’t know what to do with it (maybe even a little scared to use), but once you take the leap, you realize it’s like “free” money and you don’t even have to pay all of the balance at the end of the month. Who would spend almost a month’s pay on the first portable DVD player (don’t ask)? You might do it because you always have that “free” money as a fall-back plan. And then you apply for another, and another card. Unfortunately, your income has only risen marginally; but no matter, as long as you pay the minimums, you figure that eventually you’ll have everything you’ll ever want soon enough, and you won’t want anything else, and everything will come until control, in time. But the market doesn’t aid you in this endeavor. For example, it wasn’t that long ago that a PC with a 486 Intel processor and 8 MB of RAM at $2,000 was considered “top of the line.” Now you can’t even run the latest Windows without at least 2 GB of RAM. Yesterday, it was DVDs; today its Blu-Ray. Tomorrow it will be something else (like 3D-HD).

But then one day your job becomes an artifact of history, and the funds you were depending upon to plug-up the dike is swept out to sea. It’s only for a short time, but you’ve been living on the edge for quite some time now. You still have access to “free” money for awhile, which you may use to pay for essentials and the minimums with. But even this fantasy world must come to an end; the bubble bursts, and your financial situation collapses like the house of toothpicks it was destined to become once you began to use “free” money to buy things that either depreciated in value, or had no value to anyone but yourself.

Faced with economic calamity, you could just pay a bankruptcy attorney to make the problem go away, or observe that banks and whole countries default on everything all the time, so no one will notice if I do (right?). But you decide you want to do the “right” thing—if only out of “habit” and you don’t like change—so you contact a debt consolidation operator; after a period of haggling where you are forced to do all the fighting with the credit card companies (like threatening to default if they don’t stop with the late and over-limit charges), you are obliged to accept a payment plan that cancels your cards and forces you to make a lump sum payment per month that is larger than the original combined minimum payment. The effect of this is that you have to pay for everything you buy in cash, just like you used to do before you got yourself into this mess. But now that $500, which in the very beginning was wholly used to buy things that others were employed to make or provide services for, is now completely at the service of financial institutions, keeping them profitable while not doing a damned thing for economic activity.

That’s the way it is. People have to have money to buy things to keep the economy going. But instead of raising wages, businesses in league with banking institutions schemed to keep wages low and offer consumers “free” money with high interest rates to build a bubble economy and cover the bankers’ bottom line if things went south—but only for a time. As Ravi Batra intimated last week, only so much debt can be accumulated before access to “free” money will eventually run out too—and what is to show for it? For financial gambling institutions, it didn’t even “buy” anything to begin with, except to fill the pockets of a few multi-millionaire and billionaire executives while it was still available (especially when you have friends in the Fed). It was the middle to low-income consumer who was given the burden of making the economy work, without legitimate means to do so.

Theodore J Marcott,

Obama proudly refers to himself as a pragmatist. A rose by any other name...

I called the White House yesterday to tell Obama that he had the choice to help the corporations or help the American people. He made the wrong choice --- to help the corporations. Then I left Ravi Batra's website URL and a dare to Obama to read Dr. Batra's books.

Maybe if enough of us send similar messages, the "pattern" will become noticeable.

White House Comment Line:

(202) 456-1111

Written comments:

www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Are Americans willing to trade their freedoms for a false sense of security?
http://www.freemeninstitute.com/adam-murdock-md-americans-want-to-be-sla...
This is the crucial question that must be answered before a successful struggle for liberty can be fought and won. If it is shown that the majority of Americans will readily trade their freedoms for a fake carnal security then the cause has already been lost.

Let us just examine a few of the events of the last two months to see where America sits on the major issues of our day.

Recently, we were made aware of the attempt to bring down a transatlantic flight by the ‘underwear bomber’. While the facts remain unclear about the events surrounding the attempted bombing, what is clear is the attempt to use the event as a catalyst for further draconian security measures. This includes proposals for and in some cases imposition of mandatory body scanning for all passengers. In fact, the Netherlands announced that they will body scan all passengers as a result of the incident. In the US, the cry from neo-con Republicans has been to adopt just such a policy here. In addition, the TSA seized the opportunity to try to turn the airplane into a virtual prison camp.

What is most troubling about the whole event is the seeming willingness of Americans to accept the official story without questioning and to submit themselves to any measure deemed necessary by our “benevolent” government. Now that President Obama is in power, the civil liberties fire that once was burning bright among some on the left has now smoldered, leaving few to oppose the new liberal/Neo-con fascism.

What evidence do we have that any of these measures will actually make us safer? Indeed, this supposed terrorist had no passport and was on the terrorist watch list. While a simple passport check would have stopped this individual, now the rights of the rest of us will be sacrificed to a needless bureaucracy, which will prove to be just as inept. It may be that Americans will be forced into “clothes-free” airport zones where government workers will examine every crook, crevice, and orifice of your body. How long Americans will suffer this indecency is unknown. What is known is that these measures will not make us safer.

While the “underwear bomber” event was used to stroke our fears about external threats, two other recent issues of much greater significance are meant to play on our fear about the intrinsic weakness of mankind.

The first revolves around the insecurity all of us have over the health of our bodies. Some would claim the government can somehow guarantee you carnal or rather physical security from your own body. What is true, however, is that we will all decay and die whether we like it or not. No power on earth can prevent this from happening. Yet, what has been proposed with the health care reform measures now before congress and the senate is that government should become our health stewards by providing universal healthcare. The implied rationale is that these measures will somehow address our health security. Unfortunately, the truth is that these measures will only guarantee you the opportunity to stand in lines and in most cases will be detrimental to your health and hence your health security. Services that once could be readily obtained through the free market system will be removed in lieu of budgetary restraints. Americans will be turned into hapless and powerless sheep, begging for any ounce of health mercy that a faceless bureaucracy will see fit to grant them. The right to healthcare gained by a few will come at the expense of the right to healthcare for the rest.

There is no greater example of the fallacy of this socialist healthcare utopia than the death of the actress Natasha Richardson in Quebec, Canada last year. She likely died because of the socialized healthcare system in Canada. The government of Quebec had decided that medical helicopters were too expensive. As a result, instead of being transported by helicopter, Natasha was driven by ambulance to the nearest hospital a couple hours away. This wasted time was enough to seal her fate.

Despite the ample evidence of the dystopian healthcare provided by socialized healthcare systems, Americans seem more and more willing to buy into the media hype about the supposed greatness of healthcare in Cuba, Canada, and Europe. Never before have the forces of socialist America been so close to realizing their dream of converting America into a suburb of western Europe.

The final and most nefarious onslaught on our liberty has arisen with the attempt to transfer our national sovereignty to a world government over the issue of carbon emissions. Indeed, our very breath has been turned into a toxin needing to be regulated in order to save the planet. The more breaths, the more toxin. Not surprisingly, this has led to calls for world population control from some in China, Europe, and Canada.

The fake science used to justify the man-made global warming agenda was recently revealed as a concoction of climate change scientists to serve their own self interest. Yet, Americans continue to believe more in gloss and glamour than in science and common sense. Unfortunately, the result will be that the American sense of compassion will be turned on its own head. The third world will be starved into carbon compliance and American ingenuity will be turned into funding industrial de-industrialization.

More and more Americans are convincing themselves that they are vermin and need to be exterminated. They will happily put GPS carbon trackers on their vehicles, smart carbon-limiting power meters in the their homes, LCD light-bulbs in their reading rooms, bikes in their garages, and government camera carbon monitoring systems in their homes just so that they can be ‘cool’ and feel like they are doing something for Al Gore and the movement. Nobody seems to care about the substance anymore; it is the image that counts.

What these examples reveal is that America has become more and more a country filled with cowardly yes-men, rather than people with courage to stand up for conviction. They have lost the fire of freedom and substituted the frost of a fake consensus. Unfortunately, the American ideal has faded in the minds of many. Many no longer know what they are throwing away. It is only when it is gone that they will wake up and realize that the noose is already too tight for escape.

It behooveth those that have been warned to warn their neighbors. My prayer is that we may have the courage to become active purveyors of truth.
http://www.freemeninstitute.com/adam-murdock-md-americans-want-to-be-sla...

Dick Cheney says that Obama is weak on terrorism.

I have observed Obama following the same policies and practices as Bush II and Cheney.

My guess is that no president learns since Reagan was in office.

Here is an article that says we cannot afford the new healthcare bill.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=103667

But, we can afford the bailout of financial institutions and corporation with $14 trillion; we can afford to fight a thirty year war in the Middle East and in Central Asia with $15 trillion; and we can affrod to reconstruct our massive destructions in these countries for another $10 trillion. That adds up to staggering sum of $39 trillion. We are willing to be in this area for thirty years of war and another thirty years of reconstrucion but we have no money to help Americans.