Barack Obama

Countering the smoke, mirrors and the manure.

23/January/2012 09:15 Filed in: Oikos Thoughts | Web News

If we alter the calendar for a day, so that the week begins last Saturday, this week may turn out to be one of history’s most widely spun times —the smoke, mirrors and plain old verbal manure should set a record. To counter this mountain of worthless rhetoric we offer four homework assignments to help you find a little terra firma amongst all the whatever.

Of course this week of ours begins in the USA with Newt Gingrich’s resounding defeat of establishment front runner Mitt Romney in South Carolina’s Republican political primary. So as we go forward, we have somewhat of a political horse race, out of a dozen or so potential Republican candidates, with numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8 still in the race, it comes down to numbers 5 and 6 really the choice that remains.

The real interesting statistic that I haven’t heard covered is that the proclaimed “conservatives” (Gingrich and Santorum) out distanced the “moderate” Romney better than two to one, 57 percent to 28 percent and that Romney has yet to get into the higher percentiles, except in New Hampshire, just up the street from his New England base.

Tomorrow evening of course the current president will give his State of the Union address to the American people, and most of the American people with cable television, a Netflix movie, or a Kindle or an iPod, may find something more productive to do with their time.

Finally in Europe we have The Davos World Economic Forum. Having skied in Davos way back when, if I had the opportunity, I would rather be in Davos too. The world’s economic outlook however is still focused upon Greece, the euro and other problems that make the probability of a global normalcy of deviance event more likely.

For your homework, we start with a short and somewhat humorous video, where we find out that the Justice Department’s lawsuit against a number of energy companies in the Midwest has been thrown out. If the government had won, we would have had to outlaw, dogs and cats, raccoons, windshields, hunting, climate change and eventually old age.

Then on the very serious side we get to the economic and jobs information that should be the center of the American political debate, but is the last thing none of the dinosaurs, behemoths and troglodytes want to deal with. We have used those ancient terms as relating to twentieth century business, finance and politics for some time, but we have yet to define those terms: dinosaurs = crony capitalism, behemoths = global finance, troglodytes = politicians and their lobbyists.

Some months ago, I think I heard a “journalist” say that in the 1980s and 90s the United States decided to no longer be the manufacturer of the world, but rather the financial center. I don’t remember that debate, I surely didn’t vote for it. I believe that George Bush 41, Alan Greenspan and Bill Clinton were in favor of it, and that really were the roots of the fruit of our current mess, but its time to cut down that bush and plant some new seedlings for the twenty-first century.

That will only occur by letting the economic climate change take place naturally so that the seeds of a twenty-first enterprise-financial-political order can be planted . That will come, one way or another and bring about the demise of the dinosaurs, the behemoths and troglodytes. The long Bill Moyers interview with David Stockman shows that there are a whole lot of things the majority of Americans can agree upon. Take the time to watch the whole episode, perhaps instead or in spite of the State of the Union; it will give you context for the rest of the week.

Steve Moore, Justice Department’s Complaint of Dead Birds —Dismissed, Wall Street Opinion Journal, January 20, 2012, 1 minute 34 seconds

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs, Business Week, July 1, 2010

Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work, The New York Times, January 21, 2012

Bill Moyers with David Stockman, On Crony Capitalism, January 20,2012, 57 minutes

Moyers & Company Show 102: On Crony Capitalism from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Tags: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Davos Economic Forum, Bill Moyers, David Stockman

Entrepreneurial Pioneers

11/January/2012 08:30 Filed in: Weekly Column

Volume 14, Issue 2

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If you want it done precisely your way, you better do it yourself!
— Ancient Chinese Proverb

Late last week I bought a new over the air TV antenna from Costco, no more cable or satellite television for me. Now just the twenty minutes of advertising per hour rather than paying around an additional hundred bucks a month for the privilege of watching hundreds of channels I care nothing about, and I suspect few supply much positive influence to change our nation or the world.

To celebrate I decided to watch the Saturday evening Republican Debates. This was debate number 15, or so I was told. They all seemed like decent, somewhat committed guys, but I didn’t see a national messiah amongst the crew. But just like the current incarnation of our president, it seems that they all still believe that the federal government is the source of the solutions to our current woes.

Over the past three years we have learned that Barack Obama was not the national messiah either. But in the first real job he ever had, it seems that he was amazed, just as much as most of his supporters, that achieving nirvana in this world was not an easy task. Falling back to a more realistic desire shown in Machiavelli’s The Prince, he also seems not to have either the talent, the ambition, or the constitutional ability to achieve that desire either.

When you look around the world, even though there seems currently a little temporary stability coming to the United States, we still seem incapable of even dealing with our universe of ever expanding debt; solutions are just as far away as they were a year ago; yet the current plight remains a juggernaut to a stable future.

What all this means is things are going to get worse, possibly much worse before they get significantly and sustainabiy better. In the context of last week’s article on The Normalcy of Deviance, this climax may probably come about not through a slow demise of prosperity but rather a global stupendous collapse. Could it be the Mayan’s got it right, long ago, for reasons they could not understand?

Our Happy-Merry Holiday Season

21/December/2011 07:17 Filed in: Weekly Column

Volume 13, Issue 51

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Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, “ This is what the LORD has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all people I will be glorified,’” And Aaron held his peace.
— Leviticus: 10:1-3 English Standard Version

Today is the first day of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. According to the Jewish calendar on the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the first of eight candles were lit, just after sundown Tuesday evening. The celebration marks the rededication of the Second Temple during the Maccabean Revolt in the second century BCE, as well as the miracle of a small jar of consecrated oil, which burned for eight days in the Temple’s menorah, when the quantity was only sufficient for one day. The New Testament says in John 10: 22 that Jesus celebrated the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah).

On December 9, 2011 President Obama had a “Hanukkah Party” in the White House. As a Christian I find the President’s party pretty much in line with the “strange-profane-unauthorized fire in the Leviticus quotation above. I also realize that many historic White House Hanukkah celebrations would not be considered kosher in the Jewish sense, but for some reason I find this date and the whole lack of any sort of sanctification or glory given to God, to fit the party occasion properly. I also read a number of writers who thought that the President would not treat a Muslim religious observance with such inaptitude.

The great thing that separates we humans from all of the lower animals is that we are inventors, or creators if you will, and with our mental and physical inventive creations we are able to innovatively construct cultures. This week we will look at our totally unique human attribute, which drives our whole world’s economic engine this time of year. That creation is religion.

The Jobs Conundrum and Startups

21/September/2011 11:37 Filed in: Weekly Column

Volume 13, Issue 39

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For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'
— Jesus, Luke 14:28-30, ESV

Why would anyone currently want to begin a startup enterprise that will create new jobs in the United States of America?

The president would say, “If Congress would pass the Jobs Act now!” that would be a reason.

Congressional Republicans would say, “If we would just cut taxes to give small businesses incentives to hire people!” that would be a reason.

Again, why would anyone currently want to begin a startup enterprise that will create new jobs in the United States of America?

Then there is the Federal Reserve and the Treasury that seem to believe as long the “world financial markets” have access to various faux-fiat-money instruments and that interest rates remain near zero for the indefinite future, the trader’s computer programs, will bring prosperity to those, dare we say Ponzi” schemes, and that will allow their at least monthly potential manipulations thereof, to trickle down to the folks and the entrepreneurs in a positive way.

For example, on Monday, Obama announced another progressive income tax adjustment of $1.5 trillion, to make sure any chance of Voodoo economics’ trickle down will be processed through the ever expanding, cancerous, bureaucratic, Federal dinosaur. Later today it is expected the FED Chairman Bernanke will offer, “Let’s twist again, like we did a half century ago.”

All this means that traditional historic banking, as practiced for centuries, no longer has a means to service their traditional customers; but that is just one of a number of intended consequence of readjusting Babylon to the wishes of the Babylonian elite.

Freed Entrepreneurs: The Quality — Quantity Issue

14/September/2011 06:00 Filed in: Weekly Column

Volume 13, Issue 38

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“Our present and future challenge is to provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to create sustainable new wealth within a climax economic ecosystem.”
— Jerry Bannon, Founder; The Wonder Springs Chronicle

Over the last couple of weeks we have entertained two Republican presidential debates and one American Jobs Act speech and the followup ideas on how to pay for it from president Obama. Before the first Republican debate Mitt Romney issued his Believe in America plan, which we will tackle shortly. In Europe the questions about the Euro and Greece and other sovereign debt continue to change with each passing day.

What we are really dealing with is an endgame of the twentieth century’s debt-leverage supercycle and a short term political future in which all leaders appear to be troglodytes attempting to resuscitate this past age of economic behemoths, dinosaurs and leviathans. However in the context of the two ages, their diversity could best be described as: Our Quantity of Life contrasted with Our Quality thereof. The goal of this week’s article is to frame the current twentieth century quantity of life concepts, within some potential quality of life solutions of the future.

To illustrate this contrast we shall thus begin with Mitt Romney’s Believe in America:

Pythagorean theorem: 24 words
Lord’s prayer: 66 words
Archimedes’ Principle: 67 words
Ten Commandments: 179 words
Gettysburg address: 286 words
US Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words
US Constitution with all 27 Amendments: 7,818 words
EU regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words

(Thanks Cyril through Grant Williams)

Grizzly USA Plan: 398 words — two copies on one piece of paper
Mitt Romney’s Believe in America: 39,176 words — 160 pages (88 in PDF)

(Using the same word counting software)

What would the futuristic Grizzly USA Plan do that Believe in America would not?

Climax Entrepreneurs & Entrepreneurial Pioneer Areas (EPA)

07/September/2011 05:00 Filed in: Weekly Column

Volume 13, Issue 37

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“If you don’t fundamentally change structure and culture, you are doomed to repeat history.”
— Diane Vaughn, Columbia University; Author: The Challenger Launch Decision

Humans sure are religious creations. We all believe in something, or someone, even if some people say they believe in nothing; nothing must have its corporate headquarters in Nowhere.

I bring this up because here on the west coast, late tomorrow afternoon, president Obama is finally giving his speech on saving the continuing to tank economy — just before the kickoff of the NFL season. I’m sure, just another teleprompter speech will be the talk around the water coolers and the coffee pots, as those who have real jobs, bolster up their courage to meet the hassles of the daily commute home. So remember to set your DVRs!

It has to be some religious issue for Barack Obama, like someway his words are going to recreate reality. Most leaders would leak a 5, 7, or 10, or 12 point plan with all sorts of backup data and then make a few well chosen remarks about the high points, and let the analysts and the pundits have their way with the details. But not this president, this speech has been hyped for a month; at least it seems that way. The “Hallelujah, Thank you Barack!” seems to have lost its revivalist luster.

Adding some economic context, everyone pretty much knows that the speech will be essentially about the New-New Deal Keynesian stimulus, which will not be called stimulus, that will provide a mechanism to rebuild twentieth century infrastructure, and to provide prevailing wage union jobs to bring it about, once all the regulatory hurdles are jumped and moats are crossed. But wait, that moat must be a wetland; so one could foresee a decade of moat crossing regulations that will need to be fill or fulfilled, before. . . — Wasn’t this supposed to be about creating jobs?

Rick Perry, the Republican party frontrunner, says and writes that he is FED UP! with the size of the Federal Government. Since growing federalism has been around for 150 years, and has become more “progressive” as time has elapsed, that sounds a whole lot like “hope in change” with just a slightly different religious spin.

Personally it seems that, “How’s that Hopey-Changey Thing Workin’ Out for Ya?” appears to be, “That same-ol’, same ol’ isn’t workin’ either!”

The Wonder Springs Chronicle - A Biblical Creation Worldview