Pro Tip: A tax refund is not a present from your government. When you receive a tax refund… you are simply getting paid back for a mandated interest-free loan. Often times, this money is not even paid back to the same person who was forced to loan it away in the first place. This process is more commonly referred to as “stealing”.
Category: Political
That Don’t Impress Me Much
Just a few weeks ago, President Obama used Yemen as the perfect example of success regarding his recent foreign policy decisions. Yemen now has no functioning government whatsoever and is currently being run by terrorists. I just can’t wait to see what kind of diplomatic successes that he has planned for us regarding Iran.
The Myopic Assessment Of Chris Kyle And The True Enemy Of The Iraqi People
Chris Kyle was the most lethal military sniper in the history of the United States. He became highly decorated after four tours of duty in Iraq while he recorded up to one hundred and sixty confirmed kills. A very popular movie was just released out of Hollywood depicting his life story. If you listen to some of the people on the far left, you quickly realize that they have a far different perception of Chris Kyle than the person portrayed in the movie. Film director Michael Moore implied that Chris Kyle is a coward and was the invader of another sovereign nation. Actor Seth Rogan compared the movie about Chris Kyle to a fictional piece of Nazi propaganda. Many on the left argue that the people of the United States military were unwelcome invaders during the start of the Iraq War in 2003. They laugh when looking back at Vice President Dick Cheney’s speculation that the people of the United States military “would be greeted as liberators”. They perceive Chris Kyle as an unwelcome invader in an unjustified war. This is an overly simplistic view of a very complex story.
In order to understand the complicated relationship between the United States and Iraq, one really has to go all the way back to 1982. Islamic extremists had already overthrown the Shah of Iran. Saddam Hussein feared that radical Islamic ideas would start spreading rapidly through his predominantly Shi’ite population. Hussein then invaded Iran and attempted to overthrow the new radical Islamic government. Two years into the Iraq-Iran War, Saddam Hussein was clearly losing. President Ronald Reagan was growing concerned about Iran’s repeated success on the battlefield. You have to remember that this was just two years after the Iranian hostage crisis. Iran was clearly our greater potential enemy during this period. America decided that Iraq would be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The United States began to supply the Iraqi military with communication and radar equipment. Saddam Hussein started receiving billions of dollars in aid from the United States. The U.S. military provided intelligence and advice to the Iraqi military including how to arm itself via third-party weapons dealers. The citizens of Iraq could see that the United States government was clearly in Saddam Hussein’s corner.
Did you ever see that old Frankenstein movie when the crazy doctor starts yelling, “It’s alive”? Well, that is pretty much what the United States government should have yelled after we propped up the President of Iraq. The United States created this monster and then completely lost control of it. Over the next eight years, Saddam Hussein would rule over his people with a ruthless iron fist. His citizens lived in constant fear of his wrath. He kept most of his nation’s wealth for himself as his people lived in abject poverty. During the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. It has been estimated that up to 182,000 people were killed in this genocide. The United States turned a blind eye to the plight of the Iraqi people during this time because it was not in our own country’s best interest. Now, let us all check in on our Frankenstein’s monster by fast-forwarding to 1990.
War has its costs, and for Saddam Hussein the cost of his prolonged war with Iran included a 30-billion-dollar debt to the tiny adjacent oil-rich country of Kuwait. Saddam asked Kuwait to forgive this debt, which Kuwait promptly refused. Saddam deeply resented this refusal considering his perception that Kuwait had historically always been a part of Iraq. Using the weaponry and power granted to him by the United States government, Saddam Hussein suddenly invaded and quickly took over Kuwait… much to the surprise of the international community. Within the course of just a few days, Saddam Hussein suddenly flipped in his role from a trusted ally to public enemy number one. The United States started encouraging the Iraqi people to rise up against their brutal dictator.
After a few months of failed negotiations, the first Gulf War had begun. The United States military along with its allies moved in and quickly pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Within just a few days, allied tanks were blazing at full speed across southern Iraq while the so-called “elite Iraqi Republican Guard” were sent fleeing up north back to Baghdad. Many of the citizens across Iraq greeted the United States military as liberators. Citizens cheered in the streets as the allied tanks rolled past them. The Iraqi people started to do what the United States had encouraged them to do… they rose up against their brutal dictator. Trusting in the United States government would eventually prove to be a fatal error.
Iraqi military resistance was much lighter than almost anyone expected. Most of the Iraqi military would surrender almost immediately when encountered. It became obvious that Saddam Hussein would be quite easy to topple. At this point, President George Herbert Walker Bush had to make a quick choice. Would he want to push into Baghdad and remove the head from the snake? There was concern that a leadership vacuum in Iraq would quickly lead to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the region. The choice was suddenly made to withdraw our troops from Iraq and leave Saddam Hussein in power. The Iraqi citizens who rose up to join our fight against Saddam Hussein would later be slaughtered. The deaths of these brave Iraqi rebels would not soon be forgotten. Let us now jump ahead once again to 2003.
The World Trade Center has now fallen. Saddam Hussein has already initiated multiple failed assassination attempts on our current President’s father as an act of revenge for the previous Iraqi invasion. The United States military has already been at war for two years with terrorists in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Colin Powell sits before the United Nations Security Council giving the most famous speech of his life. He told the world that Saddam Hussein possessed extremely dangerous weapons of mass destruction that could be used for an imminent attack. In retrospect, it would seem that the evidence presented that day was likely falsified and presented to the CIA by an Iraqi citizen with a brilliantly devious plan to remove his brutal dictator from power.
Do I believe that President Bush and Secretary Powell believed everything that they were telling the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? I have never been given any reason not to believe them. But I do believe that President Bush was just looking for a reason to finish the job that his father admittedly failed to do. I think that President Bush was in a very vulnerable position to “take the bait”. Just recently, some new evidence has come to light indicating that there may indeed have been some actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, given the leadership vacuum and growth of radical Islamism created in the invasion’s wake… I do suspect that most historians will eventually agree that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a tactical mistake.
It is within the context of this history that you must view the current mindset of the average Iraqi citizen. The average Iraqi citizen does not fear the American military. The Iraqi people did not greet the American military as liberators the second time around because they justifiably did not trust the American government. Saddam Hussein had two male sons who had walked around the streets of Iraq absolutely terrorizing and repeatedly torturing them. When Saddam and his evil offspring were finally put to death, military commanders felt the need to broadcast these images throughout Iraq due to the understandable distrust of the American government. As the Iraq War dragged on, most of the opposition that our troops were facing was not from the Iraqi citizens… we were fighting Islamic extremists who were crossing the borders and engaging us from other countries like Iran and Syria.
There are three factors that should be considered when any country engages in a war: the military, the government, and the citizens. The United States military has always been our strongest and most admirable variable. It is not a soldier’s job to decide if we go to war or why we go to war. It is not the soldier’s responsibility to empathize with the people who are trying to kill him. Chris Kyle was not an enemy to the Iraqi people. He was a hero to the citizens in the United States and the citizens in Iraq. Most of the people of Iraq are just like many of us. They are afraid of Islamic extremism. They are highly educated and cultured. Many of them believe in Jesus Christ and pray to him regularly. Chris Kyle volunteered to go half way across the world to protect these people along with his fellow soldiers. Meanwhile, Michael Moore and many of the rest of us stayed over here to safely judge his actions from a distance.
The second factor that should be considered when a country engages in war is its government. Our government has repeatedly let down the people of Iraq. The only thing worse than not helping a group of people is when you only half-help them. You eventually set these people up for an even greater failure than if you never even got involved in the first place. Large numbers of peaceful citizens around the globe do not hate the United States because we are rich or because we are “freedom loving”… they hate us because our government constantly screws around with their country’s infrastructure and then abruptly abandons them. Our government often props up brutal dictators because it serves our own personal interest. Just recently, our government was led by President Obama in pulling completely out of Iraq and abandoning any of our previous commitments that we made to its people. Hard fought military gains were simply handed over to our enemy. This action was executed with very little protest from the American people. This leads me to the third and most important factor when dealing with a nation’s war: its citizens.
The citizens of the United States are our country’s “weakest link”. Our enemies fear our government and they most certainly fear our military… but our enemy understands that the true weakness of the United States lies within the civilian population. They know that we don’t have the stomach for a prolonged fight. They realize that we lack the same intestinal fortitude that they do over the long haul. They know that we are intellectually lazy and easily distracted. We allow our government to run amok and we tend to mindlessly defend our political leaders. Our enemies will prolong conflicts instead of simply trying to win them because they know that American citizens will eventually lose their resolve over time. Our government attempts to mitigate this risk by not showing us the body bags or the flag draped coffins on our televisions.
The citizens of the United States do not want to constantly hear about the war overseas because it makes them feel badly in general.
We have become distracted and uninformed as a nation.
We have become hesitant in supporting the act of doing the right thing in the world simply because it is right.
We are blurring the previously distinct lines between good and evil.
We are becoming more godless as a people.
I have met the true enemy of the Iraqi people and it is not Chris Kyle nor any members of the United States military.
I have met the true enemy of the Iraqi people… and the enemy is us.
Eight Letters of Self-Reliance?
Eight people who recently wrote letters to President Obama detailing personal stories about their own lives have reportedly been invited to sit with the First Lady tonight during the State of the Union address. President Obama plans to address these stories individually during his speech. Hmmm… I wonder if any of these literary scholars wrote inspiring tales of self-reliance in which they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps without any assistance from the Federal government? I guess we will have to tune in tonight to know for sure… but I am just DYING to find out!
Recessions Are Like Medicine And The Fed Isn’t Mary Poppins
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. This was a delightful little song that many of us learned during our childhood years. Mary Poppins taught us in the movies that by simply planning ahead of time, one could easily circumvent bad experiences. She taught us that bad things don’t have to be bad if you mix them with something good.
I sometimes wonder to myself if this was former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s favorite song while growing up. I picture him running around his house as a small child singing this Mary Poppins classic to himself. I can’t explain it, but I also picture this child version of Ben Bernanke as having classic male-pattern baldness and an impressively stylish beard. My imagination does have its limits.
Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve spent the past seven years trying to help our economic medicine go down… and in the most delightful way. Except their huge-ass spoonful of sugar has a funny name called “quantitative easing”. You see… recessions are like the medicine for our economy. Recessions can taste very unpleasant and make us feel terrible… but underneath the surface, this medicine is actually ridding the body of what ails us. Antibiotics can rid the human body of bacteria and other types of infection. Recessions can rid the economy of terrible loans, overleveraged banks, bad politicians, and irresponsible consumer debt.
In 2008, the United States of America went in for a routine check up and received the worst diagnosis possible. We found out that we did not just need some medicine… we needed chemotherapy. The biopsy report came back as “Stage III Adenosubprimeloaninoma”. Surgical extraction and long-term chemotherapy would be required in order to avoid metastasis.
But then something happened… our modern-day Mary Poppins at the Federal Reserve stepped in and told us that recessions are something that must be avoided at all costs. He warned us that this prescribed chemotherapy would be severe and that it would make us feel awful for the foreseeable future. He cancelled our chemotherapy completely and told us that all we really needed was a spoonful of sugar. When we failed to get better, he gave us another spoonful of sugar… and then another. Then he told us that we should be on an intravenous infusion of sugar until we started feeling better. Now we feel fat and bloated with serum blood sugars over six hundred and we have a large mass near our liver… we wonder to ourselves why we still feel bad… and then we come to the sudden realization… Ben Bernanke is not a doctor and he sure as hell ain’t Mary Poppins.
The Era of Pseudo-capitalism and The Day That America Blinked
Pure capitalism is a beautiful thing when working as designed. Capitalism works as a catalyst for invention. The money one strives for through capitalism is the perpetually hanging carrot on a stick. It motivates people to give extra effort going forward with the expectation of additional rewards in the future. Capitalism allows the choice for people to live extraordinary lives rather that just ordinary ones should they desire.
Unfettered capitalism has allowed for much of the innovation that the rest of the world has enjoyed over this past century. Just image what the world would look like today without capitalism. Much of the technology we use today would look like witchcraft in that parallel universe. Capitalism makes all of our lives easier over the long run whether we realize it or not.
There is also a very important downside to capitalism that is often overlooked. True capitalism punishes bad decisions. It quickly separates the fools from their money. Private enterprise is supposed to act as the unforgiving graveyard where bad ideas go off to die. Well functioning capitalism works like a giant reset button that periodically levels the playing field for intelligent young go-getters on the bottom rung of the economy. When true capitalism is working as designed, it is supposed to eventually weed out the idiots and the bad apples.
A few years ago, the rules of capitalism in the United States were changed forever. The origin of this change is rooted in the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. This law had been in place ever since the Great Depression. This law allowed for banks to take deposits and make loans and it also allowed for investment brokers to underwrite and sell securities. However, this law restricted ONE single entity from performing BOTH tasks at the same time due to an inherent conflict of interest. After repeated lobbying from big banks, Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican Phil Gramm worked together to successfully repeal Glass-Steagall in 1999… and capitalism as previously known in the United States would NEVER be the same. This was an exercise in bipartisan stupidity.
A few years after being unshackled by Glass-Steagall, investment banks on Wall Street started making a series of ridiculously bad bets on the subprime mortgage industry. They were granting large mortgage loans to the poorest among us and were even being encouraged to do so by our government. They leveraged themselves beyond idiocy. Investment bankers with small penises and large egos got into a pissing contest with other people’s money. They started making bets that low-income people with no savings would be able to continue making enormous mortgage payments in perpetuity. Were these poor fools with no money and large mortgages partially to blame for this problem? You bet they were! But these investment bankers did not even seem to care if the whole system was rigged… because they were getting rich. Bankers would bundle these bad loans into small packages and then sell them to third parties. They would basically create these steaming investment turds, light them on fire, and then leave them at someone else’s doorstep.
Eventually, this house of cards came crashing down. The collapse of Lehman Brothers was the canary in the coal mine. Other investment banks and insurance companies soon came crashing down as well. The whole economic system started to look like it was about to go under. Credit markets became frozen and global panic quickly set in.
Goldman Sachs was the Wall Street investment bank that almost had this whole thing figured out… almost. Goldman Sachs saw much of this subprime mortgage disaster coming and attempted to invest in such a way to profit handsomely from it. They purchased a high volume of “credit default swaps” from the insurance company AIG that insured against a subprime mortgage meltdown. This is like you buying insurance just in case your neighbor’s house burns down. This is not insurance designed to protect you from individual loss. Credit default swaps are basically a means of placing bets on an external market… and in this analogy it even ENCOURAGES you to go burn your neighbor’s house down in order to get paid. Goldman Sachs made very large bets via credit default swaps that the subprime mortgage market would collapse and when they made the correct bet… they wanted their bookie named AIG to pay up!
There was one glaring problem with Goldman Sachs and their brilliant strategy. AIG was about to go “belly up” and assume room temperature along with Lehman Brothers. It appeared that there would be no giant insurance company remaining in the near future to reward Goldman Sachs for their wise investment move. These capitalist masterminds had lined themselves up like a row of dominos and they were all about to knock each other down.
There would be one man to save them all. His name was Hank Paulson. He was the Secretary of the Treasury and the top economic advisor to President Bush. In an instant, he became the “Chicken Little” of the President’s cabinet. Hank Paulson approached the President and told him that our economic sky was falling. Hank Paulson joined forces with the Federal Reserve to establish a plan of action in order to prop up the banking system. Hank Paulson literally got down on his hands and knees and begged the Speaker of the House to pass a trillion-dollar stimulus package to save the banking industry. Oh by the way, you DO know what Hank Paulson did for a living before becoming the Secretary of the Treasury right? If not, you are going to absolutely LOVE this! Before becoming a top advisor to the President of the United States… Hank Paulson was the CEO of Goldman Sachs! Small world, right?
As Wall Street got down on its knees and begged Congress for its forgiveness… America was at a crossroads. Our society was staring down into the dark uncharted abyss that was the downside of capitalism. I was frantically writing letters to my representatives begging them not to pass this trillion-dollar stimulus package for the banking industry. I recommended that any and all stimulus money should go to help provide a backstop for FDIC insurance so that most individuals could at least recuperate some of their savings in a few months. Fate had its hand firmly planted over capitalism’s large reset button. The idiots and the bad apples were about to be weeded out. The intelligent young go-getters were about to get their chance in this land of opportunity to start the process of rebuilding our economy from the ground up.
But in an instant… America blinked. Capitalism looked too frightening from so high up with no safe place to land. Our leaders allowed for almost a trillion dollars of taxpayer stimulus money to be distributed among all of the losers on Wall Street. We were told that these institutions were “too big to fail”. AIG was given over 182 billion dollars, much of which was then repaid to Goldman Sachs. Within the span of just a few days, capitalism in the United States was officially dead. What is now left in its place is some bastardized form of “pseudo-capitalism” in which a few undeserving investment bankers on Wall Street gather up the last remaining “hanging carrots of motivation” while the intelligent young go-getters spend their time looking for jobs on the internet while living in their parent’s basement. These brilliant investment bankers now know that they are too big too fail which makes crushing their opposition even easier.
Nowadays when I complain about the current state of capitalism and Wall Street in the United States, some people look at me like I’m some kind of communist. There are other people like many in the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd who tend to vilify rich people simply because they are rich and uninformed onlookers tend to lump people like me in together with them. I would like to announce to everyone that I am not an “Occupy Wall Street” guy. I am not a fan of “pseudo-capitalism” but I have absolutely no problem with rich people. In fact, I have always aspired to join the ranks of the rich. I will still chase an occasional hanging carrot on a stick on the rare occasion that I can actually find one. I would also like to state for the record that I was raised to believe in the American dream and I still love the concept of capitalism… I just don’t see it anywhere. Real capitalism in the United States apparently died a few years ago when it was somehow caught in the careless crossfire between unfettered greed and unfathomable stupidity.
The Attack Of The Falling Gas Prices And The Secret War For Your Money
Pop quiz, hot shot… What country is currently the largest oil producer in the world? Saudi Arabia? Russia, perhaps? Oh, please… those guesses are so 2008.
The International Energy Agency announced in June of 2014 that the United States of America is currently the single biggest producer of both crude oil and natural gas in the world. Oil extraction in the United States is now soaring at shale formations in places like North Dakota and Texas, ever since the recent development of the process of hydraulic fracturing of rocks using high-pressured liquid. This process is more commonly referred to as “fracking”.
A few months ago, Saudi Arabia and their partners in OPEC decided to declare war on the United States. They did not do this by wagging their fingers at the United States or by pounding their chests. Saudi Arabia silently declared war on the United States through inaction.
Normally when oil prices start to fall, OPEC will cut back on oil production and prop these oil prices back up. Much to everyone’s surprise, Saudi Arabia did nothing to intervene last year when oil prices started to plummet. Saudi Arabia has intentionally flooded the global market with cheap oil over the past few months.
What the hell is Saudi Arabia thinking? Their plan is actually quite solid and would actually make big corporations like Wal-Mart very proud. The Saudi government is the big business bully in this global scenario. They believe that they are positioned to absorb these self-inflicted financial losses over the long-term. Saudi Arabia has even built up massive foreign-exchange reserves to finance their deficits. The Saudi Arabian government has declared a financial war with the private oil enterprise of the United States. As with the case in any war, the ultimate goal of Saudi Arabia is to completely destroy the other side.
These recent actions of Saudi Arabia have already caused the entire Russian economy to implode. It may only be a matter of time before private fracking companies in the United States go “belly up” due to these falling oil prices. The last time oil prices fell this far and this fast was in 2008 when the entire United States economy went “belly up” as well. Saudi Arabia plans to bring down everyone around them in an effort to eventually be the “last man standing”. If they ever gain majority control over the oil market once again, you can bet that oil prices will quickly go back above $115 dollars per barrel.
Just remember, the next time you smile at the sight of the unbelievably low prices at your nearest gas pump… what you are really cheering for is a secret war initiated by Saudi Arabia to once again make the United States their oil-dependent little bitch. I hope you enjoy your cheap gas for now… because it will come at an incredibly steep price.
Je Ne Suis Pas Baga (I Am Not Baga)
The second deadliest terrorist attack in the past thirteen years has already occurred in the year 2015. Was this the recent attack in Paris, France? That would be a great guess based on all of the recent news reports. However, that guess would be an incorrect one.
Over 2000 people were recently rounded up and slaughtered by Islamic militants in the town and surrounding area of Baga. Where else can over 2000 innocent people be slaughtered and it barely even make the news? Of course, we must be talking about the tribal areas of Africa.
This massacre was committed by the infamous Islamic terrorist group known as Boko Haram. These are the same charming individuals who kidnapped the school girls last year and redirected them into sex slavery.
Have we now become so desensitized to terrorism that the murder of 2000 people barely even makes our news? Perhaps these victims were not white enough to deserve our attention? Why do we often treat the deaths of our African neighbors with the same level of concern that we would grant towards the unexpected death of some random barnyard animals?
These victims did not get any catchy slogans of support like “Je Suis Charle”. They did not get any protest marches with millions of people coming out in a show of unity. They hardly even got a mention on our network news broadcasts.
Perhaps the producers of the movie “Hotel Rwanda” can make a sequel about this recent mass killing a few years from now, so that we can once again spend a few hours feeling guilty while reminiscing about our past indifference. I already have a recommended working title for this movie: Je Ne Suis Pas Baga.
We Are Not Afraid (Some Restrictions May Apply)
The world is looking for answers. People around the globe are now asking for an explanation.
A highly publicized political rally took place in France over the weekend in response to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. Over one million people filled the streets of this large city to send a simple message to terrorist groups everywhere: “We are not afraid”.
This rally included leaders from all over the world. The President of France walked defiantly down the street. He was joined by the leaders of Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and Turkey. This march even included the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
One country’s leader was conspicuously absent. President Obama did not join this historic rally over the weekend. He did not even bother to send the Vice President. He only offered the U.S. Ambassador of France to participate in this public march.
The President’s press secretary was bombarded with questions earlier today as to why our President did not join our allies in this public display of solidarity. His explanation noted the very short notice to prepare for this rally. Our press secretary pointed out that this rally was being held outdoors around many large buildings. The President’s personal security at this rally could not be absolutely guaranteed.
In summary, the President of the United States could not join our allies in this public display to the world that we were not afraid because… we were afraid.
The Warm and Fuzzy Guide to Making Sure That Everyone Likes You
1) Don’t be confrontational. You don’t want to make anyone mad. If someone says something factually incorrect or even bigoted, it is best if you stay quiet. It also helps to offer a polite laugh and nod slightly in agreement.
2) Don’t be judgemental. It is recommended that you view everyone on a morally equal playing field. Don’t call people out if you think their behavior is morally wrong or unacceptable.
3) Don’t draw too much attention to yourself. It is almost impossible for someone to dislike you if they don’t even know you exist.
4) Always take the side of the majority. You don’t ever want to be in the vocal minority. This can turn large groups of uninformed people against you very quickly.
5) Do NOT share your political views. If you stay silent about how you really feel, then friends and loved ones can naturally assume that you agree with them about various issues. Sharing your political views may alienate people who are close to you.
I hope this helps you in your goal of making sure that everyone likes you. Oh, and good luck actually making a difference in this world.