Foreign Policy Debate

Foreign policy debates are irrelevant.

The only foreign policy issue that the next president will need to deal with is which county to ask for gas to get our troops home. We are a broke nation that has exhausted our welcome throughout the world. We are no longer a superpower...we can no longer act like one. The United States is broke neither presidential candidate should be acting like we still have influence. Shit, the Pakistanis are shooting at our troops. We are done.

They need to end this multi-trillion dollar war that has lined the pockets of the military industrial complex and bring our troops home. These wars have broken not only the financial back of this nation but stripped us of any moral authority we might have had. Let Russia police the world we can no longer afford it. They have a balanced economy and can act with some degree of restraint when it comes to gluttony and greed. Maybe the Russians are better stewards of the worlds fate
than the United States.

Get off the foreign policy...how you gonna help us Americans. We can no longer dictate how the rest of the world behaves. Our greed destroyed our ability to govern the world.

Just a note...I listened to the debate did not watch. McCain started slurring his words and sounding slightly crazy about half way through the exchange. Not saying crazy things just his tone was odd. Anyone else notice this. Maybe he is tired Obama didn't waver...agree or disagree with him his tone did not waver. McCain had this strange false teeth whistle going try listening and not watching. Very different experience.

The Great Decline

This $700 billion dollar bailout will remove bad debt from the global banks investment sheets. It will help the global banks with liquidity. It will allow them to return to business as usual. It will allow them to start reinvesting...IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

This $700 billion dollar bailout will not fix the housing crisis...so no new housing loans. It will not bring jobs to the country...American's will not be buying. It will not decrease inflation...in fact it will increase inflation. It will not reduce the price of oil...in fact crude prices will increase greatly.

All this $700 billion dollar bailout does is protects the elite's investments. Without jobs and a fix to the housing crisis the American economy is still on exactly the same course. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THIS BILL TO HELP THE AMERICAN WORKERS.

Your housing values will continue to decline. Your 401k will continue to be plundered. Your standard of living will continue to decrease. All the bad things Bush dredged up in this "speech" last night will still happen.

This $700 billion dollar bailout was not designed to help the workers. It is there to unburden the elite and allow them to continue raping the workers of the world. If this was about helping the people congress would have forced the administration to allow bankruptcy judges to reevaluate mortgage contracts and helped those homeowners swindled by inflated property assessments.

Property values will never return to their fraudulent high point set a couple of years ago. There are no jobs coming into this country. Without high paying jobs property values will not increase, common sense. If this bill passes the government becomes your landlord, debt holder and slave master. You are completely under it's thumb, or rather under the thumb of the North American Union. After we have dropped to third world status and every penny is stripped The United States of America will be reborn, muted and stunted, as the North American Union embracing our brothers to the North and South.

America is in the Great Decline, a decline planned and driven by globalization and the greed of the elite. It is over.

Three Essential Survival Tools

Here are three items that should be in everyone's bug out bag.

BOLT CUTTERS - Ahead of the mob, you left just in time. At the first sign of trouble you grabbed your bug out bag, some water and loaded the family into the 4x4 to head out. It's dark, the roads are icy and some bad over steering landed the jeep on its side in a ditch. The winds are fierce and temperatures are quickly dropping. You spot a nearby highway maintenance shed...they should have heat. Pulling the bolt cutters from your BOB you open a gap in the chain link fence and cut the padlock from the sliding doors. You get the family inside and safe. The next morning you right the jeep and continue to your retreat.

SLIM JIM - The fire is racing up the canyon, it's time to go. The pets, family and as many survival supplies that will fit are loaded into the truck. You jump in the cab and turn the engine over, nothing not even a click. Frantic you realize that the lights had been left on...the battery is dead. You see the neighbor's car abandoned in front of their house, they bugged out yesterday. It would have a charged battery. You grab your slim jim from the bug out bag. Being a good neighbor you gently pop the lock rather than busting the window. You open the hood then run the battery back to your truck. Later as you drive down the road you make a mental note to replace the battery...if the cars not melted into the ground.

LOCK PICK KIT - The neighbors left for the shelter several days back, no heat. You were smart enough to install a wood stove and put back plenty of food so the family should be OK. Unfortunately your kid is sick and needs something to bring down a fever. You stocked everything but forgot tylenol and ibuprofen. Grabbing your trusty lock pick kit you move door to door entering abandoned home from the back yard until you find a fully stocked med kit. You grab the meds, lock up the house and head home. Problem solved, kid feeling better.

Bail Yourself Out - I Won't

Does anybody still trust anything that comes out of George Bush's mouth. This evil administration is simply trying to secure wealth for the elite while locking the working classes into slavery for the next century. I don't expect anyone to bail me out of bad business decisions...it would be nice but I understand the risks involved and accept them. How dare this administration bail out the rich on the back of the workers we are broke as it is. There should be rioting in the streets. Any member on congress who supports this jump into fascism must be removed from office. The investment bankers made trillions off these financial schemes, let them fix their own problems.

NO COMPROMISE...NO DEAL

Everyone needs to prepare at this point. If this passes I feel that the citizens of this country have no moral obligation to support any company involved in this hijacking of capitalist principals. Stop paying your credit card bills, walk away from your mortgage. As I see it we have already paid them! NO MORE

If They Don't Listen - Bring Them Down

Massive resistance from working Americans and the continued sell off on Wall Street this morning may doom the Bush Administrations fascist agenda. Apparently the people of this country don't really like the idea of bailing out the elite on the backs of the working class. The question being asked is simple, why doesn't the American Government just give that trillion plus bailout to the American homeowners who could then pay their mortgages thus saving the system. But there would be no scam in that.

Remember most of these big investment firms and globalist banks are in large part owned by foreign investors who may not agree with the principals of democracy or capitalism...they just like making money on the backs of the workers. China and the Saudi royal family come to mind.

We are paying off the foreign elite, taking on the bad debt and still being asked to pay our bills on time. American taxpayers are being forced to pay three times over for bad corporate business decisions.

Here is my suggestion.

If the government moves forward with this obscene abuse of power and nationalizes the debt of these mismanaged companies we call for a general strike. Not a walk off the job strike...a walk away from your bills strike. If every American would stop paying their credit card bills for one month it would break the system and the government would sit up and pay attention to the will of the people...not the will of their corporate overseers. If the government still does not listen we don't pay for a second month and continue until they clean up their act and start working for the People of America.

The Achilles Heel of a government ran by greed is the greed itself. At this point voting is irrelevant both parties are fully bought. The people have the power to correct this gross imbalance and drive corrupt corporate interests out of government. Just stop paying the corporations.

These companies are sending our jobs overseas and wreaking our economy with our governments consent! Corporations lobby congress for legislative favors using lobbyists that we pay for. We enable a system actively working against our best interests. The global elite hold power because we feed their agenda, we pay for them to corrupt our government process, all we need to do is stop giving them money. Without money they loose power and go away.

This is the United States of America and our government works for the citizens of this country not global corporations. Don't boycott, Don't walk off the job, just stop paying your bills. Americans have been working backwards, we cannot vote out legislative members who take corporate handouts...they all take handouts. We can break the corporations that give handouts. If we could take down a Bank of America in a month the corporate money would leave Washington forever. This is the Peoples Nuclear Option!

I am not saying that you should stop paying all your bills. Credit card bills would give you the most bang for the buck, they are directly attached to the banking industry who is asking for this criminal bailout.

Think about it!

State Enforced Slavery

This is a dark day for every American Citizen dreaming of home ownership. Senator Charles Schumer has introduced legislation on the Senate floor today that will effectively turn any homeowner with a mortgage into an indentured slave to the government/banking complex.

The New York senator will propose offering banks a lifeline if they renegotiate mortgages for those people close to losing their homes.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Charles Schumer plans to offer a broad economic proposal for the government to offer a financial lifeline to those banks that are willing to renegotiate mortgages for those on the brink of losing their homes.

The New York Democrat is an outspoken advocate for the financial industry, since so many of those workers are in his home state. Aides said the senator plans to outline his plan on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon.

Under Schumer's model, the government would give capital infusions or loans to banks in return for an equity stake, similar to the deal struck with insurance giant American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500) earlier this week.

In return, the banks would lift objections to legislation allowing loan modification for homeowners in bankruptcy. Currently, a person in bankruptcy cannot renegotiate the terms of their mortgage, unlike other kinds of debt.

Schumer's plan is an alternative to another proposal in Congress to create a federal agency to buy up bank debt, shifting potential losses onto U.S. taxpayers. It would be similar to the Resolution Trust Corp., which lawmakers established during the 1980's savings and loan crisis.

After the first few thousand defaults under the new plan the Government/Banking partnership will enact legislation mirroring the Guaranteed Student Loan Program. Student loans can never be defaulted on. It eliminates bankruptcy protection. The homeowner under this model is stuck in their overvalued home and unless they can sell will never be able to get out from under the debt. The Government will pursue you relentlessly garnishing wages and freezing assets. You literally become a debt slave to the state, locked into your home and forced to work whatever job they throw at you.

This has been the plan all along folks, long before they nationalized Freddie and Fannie. Dump the house, buy a trailer and plant your own beans...before you are forced to plant for someone else.

Question About Banking Crisis

Today the Fed and central banks around the world pumped 180 billion dollars into the banking system to increase liquidity. I understand that this move lets the banks continue cashing your paychecks but how does this fix the underlying problem with the banking industry which is associated with defaults on overvalued assets.

If I am not mistaken (I could easily be) the problem with the banks is that they bought those pooled mortgages that have now lost most of their value. If you loan someone $100,000 you should have that much in collateral, right. So if they bought these $100,000 loans and the value of the collateral dropped to $50,000 they have lost $50,000 if the home owner defaults. Not to mention all the profit they were counting on from the pool. Quite frankly if my home's value dropped from $100,000 to $50,000 I would be handing the keys happily over to the bank, which apparently is the problem.

If the banks would not have overvalued the homes in the first place to increase their profit this would not be an issue. This is a common sense versus greed situation. I am a taxpayer who was smart enough to realize that a house that was worth $100,000 two years ago simply is not worth $500,000 today, again common sense, and stayed out of the obviously rigged housing market. I am angered that I will be paying to bail out the greedy bankers who made massive profits while perpetuating this fraud. Let them fail...I don't get bailed out when my greed overtakes my common sense.

But back to the point. How does injecting cash into the system help the banks. They are still holding lethal amounts of bad debt. Unless the housing market does a massive rebound into fraud territory again this bad debt still exists and will only get worse. Thus the problem cannot be solved without letting the greedy money handlers fail, which again I have no problem with. Or have the government use working class taxes and print more money to assume the responsibility for all the overvalued debt and bail out the elite bastards who got us into this mess. I really do have a problem with that.

Three other points.

First - Home values don't magically increase just cause the banker says it's so. A rise in home values must be associated with a tangible catalyst of some sort that increases demand. These can include a major industry locating nearby increasing the working pool or possibly a military base housing some number of returning troops. Look at the flip side. When a major manufacturing facility closes in a city home values plummet. See the rust belt as an example. If home values are rising without an associated increase in salaries or number of jobs something is wrong.

Second - This is just the beginning, the big "stable" players, Citi and Bank of America, will see their problems start when consumers run out of money and start defaulting in bulk on those high risk credit cards those banks like to issue.

Third - Funny how the government is willing to nationalize any corrupt industry to protect the profits of the elite, but ask them to nationalize the health care system, a move that would vastly help the working classes, and they scream Socialism.

Winter Warmth WoodStove

Winter is now here, last night the temperature dropped down into the mid 30'. It was overcast with low cloud cover and I seriously thought it was going to snow. The trees started changing several weeks back and I have seen a huge number black squirrels running around. This summer was very cold with just a handful of days in the 90's and pretty sure we didn't break 100 once. It is going to be a very cold, very dark winter. I hate winter.

With fuel oil, natural gas and propane at records highs we will all need to look for various ways to cut back on our heating costs. The concept is simple, turn the thermostat down to fifty five, put on a big sweater and grit you teeth. Now this is good in theory but the reality is a cold and miserable existence during the black winter months. This fifty five degree nonsense works fine in the middle of the night burrowed under about five layers of blankets, but during the day I want to be able to move around the house without seeing my breath.

I want to comfortably wear shorts. I want to sweat while eating my oatmeal. I want the decadent pleasure of opening a window to cool the house down. When there is several feet of snow outside and the wind is blowing fifty miles an hour there is no greater cure for the blues than basking in the artificial radiance of a ninety degree living room while watching Resident Evil Apocalypse.

Unfortunately the small wood stove that currently sits in the cabin is grossly inadequate for heating a large moderately insulated somewhat holey self built cabin. It's gets a good fire but cannot be dampered down at night and needs loading every hour and 45 minutes...exactly...I set my alarm clock. Plus the design allows most of the heat to go up the flu.

So since I will be permanently moving down in January (yes, I had to move the date back again...need more money. I will write about that later) a very cold month, I really would like to have a big, hot wood stove. But how do I go about getting one?

There are two options when purchasing a wood stove. Easy and elegant or hard and dirty. As always I picked hard and dirty but it is a personal choice.

Now the Easy and Elegant method is nice. You simply go to a web site and pick out a stove you like. They deliver and unload it to your fine and clean garage then someone else comes along and installs the massive thing with the proper fittings, pipe and cutting equipment. No fuss, no muss...the problem is that this is somewhat expensive...between two and three thousand to start then up and up and up. But it may be worth it.

The hard and dirty method is considerably cheaper, and I mean considerably. You find a wood stove, this means Craigs List, yard sales and junk yards. The big old stoves are good for a hundred years. It will run between one and six hundred for the stove. It needs to be a massive old thing. You don't want cute and you don't want small...even if you have a relatively little place to heat. The stove needs to burn through the night and produce much more heat than the space requires. Trust me, burns through the night and a lot of heat.

You then load, move, unload and install this massive thing. WOOD STOVES ARE VERY VERY HEAVY. Get the clearance correct, if you don't know then use three feet from any flammable surface. You can use metal and brick to reduce the clearance but do some research. Most of these beasts heat best when placed in the middle of the house. Remember don't think cute, think heat.

Next comes the stove and chimney pipe. You run black single walled stove pipe from the stove top to the pass through on the ceiling. This pass through is a special square box that protects the house from the considerable heat of the stove pipe. From there up you use chimney pipe. This is that double or triple walled stuff specifically designed to not melt quickly during a chimney fire.

For the house fire paranoid another option is to run chimney pipe all the way up from the wood stove. You will lose a considerable amount of heat radiated from the stove pipe but you will feel more secure.

It is critical that you use the proper pipe in the proper place. You will burn your house down if you don't.

FLASHBACK

When I put my stove in I asked my local HomeDepot associate where to get double walled chimney pipe for a wood stove. He pointed at some silver pipe and said this will work. I asked him if it was chimney pipe to use with a wood stove he assured me the stuff would work. I asked him a second time and got the same response. So I bought the stuff and installed it. Unfortunately this was doubled pipe designed for natural gas heating systems.

I hacked a hole in the roof with a semi sharp bread knife (not recommended) and put the pipe through. After a couple of burnings the pipe started to melt down in the middle of the night. Smoke filled the place I got the dogs and Ryan out then stuck the nozzle to the fire extinguisher in the stove and emptied it. The next day we pulled the stack and found out that the inner pipe had melted and blocked the chimney. I was literally seconds from the pipe burning through and catching the house on fire. A double walled chimney pipe is rated at 2200 degrees the little gas pipe was rated at 700 degrees. So don't be stupid...use the correct pipe. The chimney pipe is expensive but necessary.

After I installed the correct chimney the wood stove has been wonderful...not a great heater but very nice.

The picture above is a Fisher Wood Stove, can't place the model (Mama, Papa or Baby) but it is what I am looking for. Today I found a big old Schrader stove about twenty miles from here for a hundred bucks with stove pipe but didn't get there quick enough.

Stay Warm