man, i really wish he had a standing chance. maybe next time around....
Dear Friends:
The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.
We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.
Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.
Still, at least a few observations are necessary.
The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?
We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.
Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).
Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."
Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?
Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.
It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.
The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.
F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:
Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.
To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.
The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.
The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?
Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.
The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.
I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.
H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
In liberty,
Ron Paul
Friday, September 26, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
British Shorthair?
i TOTALLLLLLLLY want this kitten. i wish it were real so i could pull it out of the picture and have it as my baby. ha! i tried to figure out what kind of cat breed it is...i think it might be british shorthair? anyway....tally ho - it's the weekend! enjoy it!
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Reflections
it's weather like this that makes me want to be anywhere but this concrete jungle. the weather is beautiful, but the environment is all wrong.
if i could be anywhere right at this moment, i would be standing right here....feeling the cool breeze off the water and taking in all the beauty of mother nature.
ashley mountain @ lake o' the pines...east, texas. (photo by butterfly)
Friday, September 12, 2008
R.E.M.
it's no secret that R.E.M. is definitely one of my top favorite bands. although i have to admit that i haven't really listened to anything new from them since "monster" that was released in 1994. i wasn't all impressed with that album much. i've heard bits and pieces of all the other albums released after that, and again...wasn't too impressed. i have heard through the grapevine though that this new cd, "accelerate" is very good. i am going to have to check it out. but EVERYTHING....and i mean everything R.E.M. put out from "automatic for the people" and prior, i LOVE.
i threw in "automatic for the people" this morning on my way to work and fell in love with it all over again. for me, it's easy to do with R.E.M.
i wanted to post 2 songs today. the first i would have to say ranks up in my top 5 songs of ALL time. the second song i just adore. they both take me away to a magical place.
happy friday all ~
i threw in "automatic for the people" this morning on my way to work and fell in love with it all over again. for me, it's easy to do with R.E.M.
i wanted to post 2 songs today. the first i would have to say ranks up in my top 5 songs of ALL time. the second song i just adore. they both take me away to a magical place.
happy friday all ~
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Hurricane Ike / 911 / "Security Check Points"
um...so i got in today infuriated at what i witnessed this morning driving out of my community. i was going to blog about it, but have not had time, and in all actuality i don't have time for this even. long story short, there were roughly 30 constable cars in a 100 ft radius doing a security check point. it literally looked like there was a mass murder that had just taken place. i was a little concerned as i pulled out onto the street, i rolled down my passenger window and inquired to one of the 8 constables that were standing in this one area if everything was ok. they all just stared at me wordless, and shoo'd me on. wtf?! then once i crossed another intersection, i saw what was going on. there were 10 tow trucks lined up from 1 tow trucking company. bastards were setting up a trap. i will write more about it later. anyway....
just a quick word about the 7th anniversary of 9/11. regardless of what any of us believe was the cause of this, it is a fact that massive amounts of people died that day. keep them in your thoughts today and maybe throw out a little prayer here or there if you go that route.
i'm actually getting a little nervous about hurricane ike. i just read this on bloomberg :
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Ike tripled in size in the central Gulf of Mexico as it churned on a weekend collision course with the 5.6 million residents of the Houston area, where coastal communities prepared to evacuate.
The system's strongest winds extend as far as 115 miles (185 kilometers) from the eye, up from 35 miles yesterday, the Miami- based National Hurricane Center said today. Ike's wind field is now larger than that of Katrina, the storm that devastated New Orleans in 2005, said Jeff Masters, the director of meteorology at private forecaster Weather Underground Inc.
``The total amount of energy is more powerful than Katrina, so we could be seeing a storm surge that could rival Katrina,'' Masters said. The storm is so large ``the location doesn't matter much; it is going to inundate a huge part of the Texas coast.''
Galveston, parts of southern Houston and areas south of the city and near the Texas coast were under a mandatory evacuation order starting at noon today, local officials said at a press conference. The coast may see a storm surge of as much as 20 feet (6 meters). Ike is following a track similar to the 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed 8,000 people.
um....folks...this isn't good. i've been to galveston many many times in my life and when you go and see the photos and read the stories or even HEAR the stories of the 1900 hurricane, devastation takes over your entire being. granted, we are much more technologically advanced in this day and age, but we certainly still can't stand up to mother nature. i've also been hearing talk that even as far north as we are, dallas is still going to be hit hard - predicting worst storms here in 20 years...and possibly still considered a "tropical storm" by the time it reaches us. um.
depending on the outcome of this, me and several of my friends are already talking about making a slumber party out of the situation. hopefully it won't be as bad as they are predicting, but i gotta say, i'm a little worried.
keep texas in your thoughts over the weekend and send us good vibes. we're gonna need it!
(click here for full view)
just a quick word about the 7th anniversary of 9/11. regardless of what any of us believe was the cause of this, it is a fact that massive amounts of people died that day. keep them in your thoughts today and maybe throw out a little prayer here or there if you go that route.
i'm actually getting a little nervous about hurricane ike. i just read this on bloomberg :
Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Ike tripled in size in the central Gulf of Mexico as it churned on a weekend collision course with the 5.6 million residents of the Houston area, where coastal communities prepared to evacuate.
The system's strongest winds extend as far as 115 miles (185 kilometers) from the eye, up from 35 miles yesterday, the Miami- based National Hurricane Center said today. Ike's wind field is now larger than that of Katrina, the storm that devastated New Orleans in 2005, said Jeff Masters, the director of meteorology at private forecaster Weather Underground Inc.
``The total amount of energy is more powerful than Katrina, so we could be seeing a storm surge that could rival Katrina,'' Masters said. The storm is so large ``the location doesn't matter much; it is going to inundate a huge part of the Texas coast.''
Galveston, parts of southern Houston and areas south of the city and near the Texas coast were under a mandatory evacuation order starting at noon today, local officials said at a press conference. The coast may see a storm surge of as much as 20 feet (6 meters). Ike is following a track similar to the 1900 Galveston hurricane that killed 8,000 people.
um....folks...this isn't good. i've been to galveston many many times in my life and when you go and see the photos and read the stories or even HEAR the stories of the 1900 hurricane, devastation takes over your entire being. granted, we are much more technologically advanced in this day and age, but we certainly still can't stand up to mother nature. i've also been hearing talk that even as far north as we are, dallas is still going to be hit hard - predicting worst storms here in 20 years...and possibly still considered a "tropical storm" by the time it reaches us. um.
depending on the outcome of this, me and several of my friends are already talking about making a slumber party out of the situation. hopefully it won't be as bad as they are predicting, but i gotta say, i'm a little worried.
keep texas in your thoughts over the weekend and send us good vibes. we're gonna need it!
(click here for full view)
Monday, September 08, 2008
Thursday, September 04, 2008
PALIN = failin'
ok i am going to go ahead and put a disclaimer up here now that if you don't want to hear what i have to say about the republican party (because this is about to be quite ugly), then PLEASE stop reading now. as it is my blog and i am allowed to express my own opinions.
ok...if you are still reading, don't say i didn't warn ya.
--------------------
i am literally disgusted this morning. after my soccer game, i decided that i was going to go home and try (the operative word here) to force myself to watch some of this republidump convention. and since the newly elected vp for mc-chumpalay's campaign has been selected and no one knows who the frack she is...i figured i would go ahead and try and educate myself by listening to HER speak, aside from what i've been learning via the lovely internet these past few days. yah...not impressed.
i made it through 2 hours - off and on. barely. and painfully.
first romney, then huckleberry (whom i don't mind all too much), then some ma'am-sir (yes, she looked like a man), whom i'm assuming is the mayor of hawaii because that's all she kept talking about was the population of hawaii and comparing it to the population of alaska. barf. then googliani. ugh...that guy. don't even get me started.
side note : how cute was it that palin's 17 yr old pregger daughter had her self-professed "fuckin redneck" "mr. classy" baby daddy there sitting beside her holding her hand the whole time. awwwwwwwww. (GAH!)
up until the point that palin took the stage, this convention has been a complete snoozefest.
the only thing i will give her is she did get the crowd riled up and motivated. but your enthusiasm only goes so far once you look past it and listen to what she really is saying.
what did she say? what did I, personally get out of that speech? uh....i'm at a loss. i actually had to choke her speech down, literally as i was trying to eat my dinner. mary kay said absolutely nothing about anything that MEANT anything. yes, she was personable and introduced herself in her own terms...but all she did was defend her *cough*lack of *cough* experience and tell us that her lovely 19 year old son is going to be deployed to iraq soon and she couldn't be more proud of him and how she got into this as a hockey mom (is that similar to a soccer mom?) and joined the pta. awww...how very sweet. and poked jabs at obama (which of course is fair - she was pretty tasteful for the most part in that aspect), and WAR WAR WAR - we are close to a "victory" in iraq...and said something about stirring up the whitehouse. about how a mccain/palin ticket would STIR UP THE WHITEHOUSE and how mccain's many actions would promote the change this country needs.
HUH?!?!?!
tell me, avon lady, what exactly is going to change in the whitehouse if you and mcdouchebag actually win this presidency? spell it out with me. n-o-t-h-i-n-g.
nada.
zilch.
THEN, on top of all this i heard about how "they", as is the repubs, are treating ron paul...whom is still out there fighting for this nomination (god love the guy - i really do support what he's about - and i would totally vote for him if i thought he had any sort of chance in winning this election). "they" would let paul speak ONLY if he went by THEIR restrictions. i'm sorry - isn't this a free country? i'm sorry...isn't this what all of this debating and rah -rah shit is for? to speak your mind and to say what you believe in? i'm sorry, does being a republican AUTOMATICALLY make you PRO-FUCKING-WAR? just because ron paul disagrees with this pointless war, doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to participate in his own party's convention. that is enough reason for me right there to despise what this party stands for period. as if i didn't already. ron paul needs to move away from the republicans and claim himself as an independent again. i would be ashamed to be considered a republican. truly. but good for him, as he held his own rally at a smaller stadium down the street and had already sold 10k tickets. you go, ron.
alright. i feel better now. i believe my rant is coming to a close.
we are 2 months away from the presidential election of november '08. with that said, i'm probably going to be talking a lot more about it as it is CRITICAL that we make a change in the whitehouse this time around. truly. i urge all of you out there to do your research and to please please make an educated decision. as long as it's EDUCATED, please go vote!!!!!
ok...if you are still reading, don't say i didn't warn ya.
--------------------
i am literally disgusted this morning. after my soccer game, i decided that i was going to go home and try (the operative word here) to force myself to watch some of this republidump convention. and since the newly elected vp for mc-chumpalay's campaign has been selected and no one knows who the frack she is...i figured i would go ahead and try and educate myself by listening to HER speak, aside from what i've been learning via the lovely internet these past few days. yah...not impressed.
i made it through 2 hours - off and on. barely. and painfully.
first romney, then huckleberry (whom i don't mind all too much), then some ma'am-sir (yes, she looked like a man), whom i'm assuming is the mayor of hawaii because that's all she kept talking about was the population of hawaii and comparing it to the population of alaska. barf. then googliani. ugh...that guy. don't even get me started.
side note : how cute was it that palin's 17 yr old pregger daughter had her self-professed "fuckin redneck" "mr. classy" baby daddy there sitting beside her holding her hand the whole time. awwwwwwwww. (GAH!)
up until the point that palin took the stage, this convention has been a complete snoozefest.
the only thing i will give her is she did get the crowd riled up and motivated. but your enthusiasm only goes so far once you look past it and listen to what she really is saying.
what did she say? what did I, personally get out of that speech? uh....i'm at a loss. i actually had to choke her speech down, literally as i was trying to eat my dinner. mary kay said absolutely nothing about anything that MEANT anything. yes, she was personable and introduced herself in her own terms...but all she did was defend her *cough*lack of *cough* experience and tell us that her lovely 19 year old son is going to be deployed to iraq soon and she couldn't be more proud of him and how she got into this as a hockey mom (is that similar to a soccer mom?) and joined the pta. awww...how very sweet. and poked jabs at obama (which of course is fair - she was pretty tasteful for the most part in that aspect), and WAR WAR WAR - we are close to a "victory" in iraq...and said something about stirring up the whitehouse. about how a mccain/palin ticket would STIR UP THE WHITEHOUSE and how mccain's many actions would promote the change this country needs.
HUH?!?!?!
tell me, avon lady, what exactly is going to change in the whitehouse if you and mcdouchebag actually win this presidency? spell it out with me. n-o-t-h-i-n-g.
nada.
zilch.
THEN, on top of all this i heard about how "they", as is the repubs, are treating ron paul...whom is still out there fighting for this nomination (god love the guy - i really do support what he's about - and i would totally vote for him if i thought he had any sort of chance in winning this election). "they" would let paul speak ONLY if he went by THEIR restrictions. i'm sorry - isn't this a free country? i'm sorry...isn't this what all of this debating and rah -rah shit is for? to speak your mind and to say what you believe in? i'm sorry, does being a republican AUTOMATICALLY make you PRO-FUCKING-WAR? just because ron paul disagrees with this pointless war, doesn't mean he doesn't have a right to participate in his own party's convention. that is enough reason for me right there to despise what this party stands for period. as if i didn't already. ron paul needs to move away from the republicans and claim himself as an independent again. i would be ashamed to be considered a republican. truly. but good for him, as he held his own rally at a smaller stadium down the street and had already sold 10k tickets. you go, ron.
alright. i feel better now. i believe my rant is coming to a close.
we are 2 months away from the presidential election of november '08. with that said, i'm probably going to be talking a lot more about it as it is CRITICAL that we make a change in the whitehouse this time around. truly. i urge all of you out there to do your research and to please please make an educated decision. as long as it's EDUCATED, please go vote!!!!!
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Introducing : Sisterhood of the Traveling Winos
logo created by josi*
2 of my bestest girlfriends in the whole world (crack monkey and josi) and i have formed an alliance for ourselves by the name of "sisterhood of the traveling winos".
we have BIG plans. of course we may be dreaming a little bigger than what's affordable, but we already have plans in the works for a few destinations.
biggest and #1 focus : italy and greece in october of 09. crack monkey's sister has lived in rome for 10 years now and is getting married next october, so we are making a trip out of this one.
there's also talk of a vacation to forks, wa - i don't even need to explain why.
there's also portland, or and san fran, ca and new orleans, la
and a mineral bath, therapeutic weekend in hot springs, ar (which is much closer to home)
i'm sure we will be creating a blog shortly with some of our adventures along with photos, so stay tuned for that.ciao bellos and bellas!
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Maybe There Is Hope!
so i was listening to NPR this morning on the way to work and heard the big news about palin's 17 year old daughter being "about" 5 months pregnant, but "plans" to marry the father. (and of course with the rumor's that sarah's 4 month old, trig, being her daughter's baby as well...whew boy)
whoa.
i don't want to say too much on the subject as i don't want to create too much hoopla on my blog, but i gotta say that even though i have been rooting for obama to win and stating that i will move out of this country if mccain wins the presidency...i honestly believed that it would be a close race, but due to so many circumstances that i could list out here by the hundreds, this hope for change wouldn't be enough and mccain would win in the end.
but NOW....
i think this might have been the biggest mistake of mccain's campaign and may actually push obama into the presidency. (we can only hope).
these right wing conservative republicans and evangelicals are NOT going to go for this.
suck it mccain. HA!
---------------------------------
copied from a thread on metafilter :
Can someone explain why this might disqualify Palin for VP? Not being snarky (nor supportive, for that matter), I'd just like to know and I can't think of a good reason.
It doesn't. Being incompetent and possibly abusing her office disqualifies her for VP. This just points out that she's a goddamn hypocrite who wants the federal government to monitor other women's vaginas but already has surrogates feeding media cycles with rhetoric that it's outrageous- outrageous- for anyone to question the morals or motives of her own family life.
If anything, it raised yet another major question about McCain's judgment. GOP reps are now saying McCain knew of this, and yet for some reason he actually thought that this might not actually be an issue.
The man is losing his mind.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:55 AM on September 1
whoa.
i don't want to say too much on the subject as i don't want to create too much hoopla on my blog, but i gotta say that even though i have been rooting for obama to win and stating that i will move out of this country if mccain wins the presidency...i honestly believed that it would be a close race, but due to so many circumstances that i could list out here by the hundreds, this hope for change wouldn't be enough and mccain would win in the end.
but NOW....
i think this might have been the biggest mistake of mccain's campaign and may actually push obama into the presidency. (we can only hope).
these right wing conservative republicans and evangelicals are NOT going to go for this.
suck it mccain. HA!
---------------------------------
copied from a thread on metafilter :
Can someone explain why this might disqualify Palin for VP? Not being snarky (nor supportive, for that matter), I'd just like to know and I can't think of a good reason.
It doesn't. Being incompetent and possibly abusing her office disqualifies her for VP. This just points out that she's a goddamn hypocrite who wants the federal government to monitor other women's vaginas but already has surrogates feeding media cycles with rhetoric that it's outrageous- outrageous- for anyone to question the morals or motives of her own family life.
If anything, it raised yet another major question about McCain's judgment. GOP reps are now saying McCain knew of this, and yet for some reason he actually thought that this might not actually be an issue.
The man is losing his mind.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:55 AM on September 1
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