The price of gold and other precious metals jumped Friday, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear that he expects to take further action to try to boost the economy.
The Fed can try to prop up the economy by buying government bonds, lowering interest rates and other measures. Those moves can lead to inflation. And when investors believe inflation is coming, they often buy gold and other precious metals because they believe they are protections against inflation.
[Bernanke] stopped short of committing the Fed to any specific move. But he said that the central bank will do more, because unemployment is so high and the economic recovery “far from satisfactory.???
And the Paul Ryans, the near psychotic fans of Ludwig von Mises, the really nuts but wealthy members of the GOP, and the average suckers who pay attention to Glenn Beck recoiled and drove prices up.
Thomas Frank’s Pity the Billionaire abounds with examples of Tea Party patriots making up American history and concocting stories and beliefs which have zero connection with the real world. In fact, they often go so far as to be the diametric opposite of what is common experience.
Example:
There is no better instance of this erasure than the enormous rally held in West Virginia on Labor Day 2009 for the express purpose of announcing the solidarity between coal miners and the coal mine operators … The get together feature the protest favorites Sean Hannity and Ted Nugent and was presided over by Don Blankenship, the CEO of Massey Energy, a pollution-spewing strike-breaking mogul of the old school. Dressed in American flag clothing and boasting that the gathering had cost him “a million dollars or so” Blankenship took the stage and declared he was there to “defend American labor because no one else will” … Eight months after that rally, 29 workers in Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine were dead from a huge underground explosion … Now when we find a mine operator claiming that his own struggles against regulation are actually the struggles of mine workers — workers who are then killed because mine regulations are not properly observed .. we have stumbled upon a near perfect example of what the sociologists call “complete horseshit.” The man’s ideas are so contrary to reality …
DD blog briefly wrote about this “Labor Day” celebration, called Coalstock, here.
The country is a mess because of the perverted deceptions of socialism that are founded in Marx, Lenin and communists like the left’s hero, Saul Alinsky, not because of our Founding Fathers, who believed in freedom and liberty …
“The less government control over individuals and our businesses, the more individuals and America prospers,” Nugent adds.
It is not Wall Street and financial gambling that created the economic collapse of 2008 and the subsequent ongoing depression, oh no. It is the American followers of Marx, Lenin, and some guy Ted Nugent had never heard of until Glenn Beck told his tv audience that the alleged teachings of the man were behind vast anti-American conspiracies.
Ted Nugent at Don Blankenship’s Coalstock Labor Day party.
“Blankenship was forced to retire after the 2010 explosion that killed 29 workers at a Massey mine in West Virginia,” reads a brief news story in 2011 on an attempt to get back into the coal industry. “The United Mine Workers of America calls his formation of a new coal company ‘a travesty’ … The union says Blankenship belongs in jail.”
Looking inside the numbers, Obama continues to lead Romney among key parts of his political base, including African Americans (94 percent to 0 percent) … That’s right: according to this poll, Romney has zero percent support among African Americans.
The African Americans trotted out by the GOP at their conventions — the Powells, the Wests, etc — statistically non-existent.
“The poll should not be taken to mean that Romney has no African American supporters at all,” it continues. “However, at the very most, he has far fewer than Obama.”
The beliefs of the white South dominate Republican thinking. As the white share of the U.S. population shrinks and the Latino share rises, Republicans have passed draconian anti-immigrant laws and opposed legislation enabling immigrants brought here as children to gain legal status. They also exploit racist resentments …
The ghosts of Dixie — of the Scopes Trial and the underfunding of public education — also pop up in Republicans’ willful resistance to science and, more broadly, simple empiricism. Global warming? Evolution? Homosexuality’s causation? How babies get made? Find a robust scientific conclusion and you can find a significant number of Republicans — adducing pseudo-science and faith — who oppose it.
Even the most stupid among us get it. The only question remaining: Are there enough paranoid southern white bigots, or those like them, to elect Mitt Romney?
That thing of no bowels is he. (Paraphrased from Troilus and Cressida.)
Robert Vickers, Patriot News: In light of Congressman Akin’s comments, is there any situation that you think a woman should have access to an abortion?
Tom Smith: My stance is on record and it’s very simplistic: I’m pro-life, period. And what that Congressman said, I do not agree with at all. He should have never said anything like that.
Vickers: So in cases of incest or rape…
Laura Olson, Post-Gazette: No exceptions?
Smith: No exceptions.
Smith isn’t like Todd Akin except when he is like Todd Akin. It gets worse as he tries to backpedal in front of the reporters, one of whom was from The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown.
There is no dealing with the Republican Party and only one rule to follow for a rational country:
Representative Todd Akin, he of “legitimate rape??? infamy, even said earlier this month that the federal government should stop financing the National School Lunch Program altogether. That man is just a font of humanity.
I vow that I will use our freedom to get these dirty c**k s**kers out of the White House. The president is a bad man. The vice president is a bad man. They’re all bad people. If you don’t get that, you’re a dead mo**erf**ker. If you don’t get that, get out of Texas. Move to Illinois.
This is an illegal Gibson guitar, the game warden told me it was illegal. They’re soulless p**sies. Those spineless, soulless pieces of sh*t from the Wildlife Agency should take me down now, because all of my Gibsons are made of dangerous species. This one is made of platypus! My audience will beat them within an inch of their lives. Is that illegal?
And I can’t wait for the man’s annual Labor Day column cursing labor at the WaTimes next weekend.
One remarkable line, retrieved by an Internet search of (one assumes, because it’s unspecified) American southern white Christian theocratic groups, conducted by a Texas State University professor of health education.
“This theory goes back to our forefathers, who believed that in order for our foremothers to conceive, ‘the womb must be in a state of delight,’ ” Collins writes.
The toast could still land butter side down. The Psychopath Vote guarantees Der Heevahava could still be Senator.
Here’s a woman-in-the-store interview piece from a DC-centric publication that makes an attempt to dig deeper. And fails. It does not ask other equally relevant questions: How many of the women are tuned into Fox daily?
Wal-Mart is only the vat in which we, the story’s subjects, collect. And it’s a non-specific vat in a very down economy where most people are affected.
What’s the voting split of Wal-Mart shoppers, or for that matter, Target, which serves my area in Pasadena?
Pretty wide, I’d guess. I shop there. But I’d also guess the views go wide by color of skin, and other factors outside of shopping location, too.
ASHBURN, Va.—It’s a scary time to be a woman,??? says “Jenni,??? the young star of one of President Obama’s television ads airing in Virginia and other swing states. “We need to attack our problems, not a woman’s choice.??? To hear Democrats tell it, the Republican Party is waging a “war on women??? in which abortion rights, birth control, and Planned Parenthood services are under siege.
Republicans counter that the only “war??? being waged is by the Obama economy. “Poverty, unemployment, fading hopes …”
The real war on women is for their votes.
In Virginia and other battleground states, the most open-minded and coveted sliver of the electorate skews female …
Still, the photo caption reads: Walmart mom: The GOP’s attempts to limit abortion rights rankled Miller.
It’s not partisan or biased to lampoon odious reptiles. It’s not my fault old white Christian panty-sniffers and extremists are the base of the Republican Party.
Inspiration taken from David Allan Coe’s “Don’t Bite the Dick,” many places on YouTube, shown earlier in the week.
C’mon. I know I had you laughin’ at “You can’t say that!”
From the Yahoo news blog, a man-in-the-street account of people solicited for their stories on becoming poor and not being able to afford food in the failed state:
Here’s a taste of Tom Servo’s bare-bones grocery list: A few bags of dried beans. Breakfast cereal of some kind — usually whatever’s on sale. A large canister of dried oats. Lots of bananas — typically a few pounds. A bag of apples. Other miscellaneous fresh fruits and veggies — whatever’s in season and on sale.
The 29-year-old college student in Tampa, Fla., says his grocery list is written for nutrition, not taste. He sticks to bare essentials and buys in bulk. But two weeks of groceries used to cost him $50; now it’s almost $100.
For example: “I used to pay 99 cents for one pound of dried black beans; now they cost $1.49 or more. Two years ago I paid $2.39 for a 16-ounce jar of generic peanut butter; now the same peanut butter costs $3.99.”
“For the first time in my life, I’ve recently had to make a choice between groceries or some other expense,” he writes.
College student illustrates the problem with asking for personal stories tossed in over e-mail transom. Maybe “Tom Servo’s” story is true. And maybe he just wanted to see the name in print, a laff riot at the dorm.
It does not impeach the story — one that’s dire — but it doesn’t help. And just because a lot of people might not know “Tom Servo” …
“Generics and store brands have replaced Tillamook cheese, Boar’s Head meats and Laura Scudder’s peanut butter,” writes the Yahoo journalist, on an upper middle class person’s shopping list, now that they’re on foodstamps.
It is, perhaps, not the way most would or could have phrased it.
The pictures of the disgruntled in their new jungle homes are worth thousands of words. The destination is Nicaragua, which not so long ago, geologically speaking, was a place of dangerous commies for these ex-voters. There, it is said by two, it will be possible to ride out a thermonuclear holocaust.
While the numbers of people are not particularly impressive, the mindset is now deadeningly familiar.
“Although Nicaragua hasn’t had good relationships with the US over the last three decades, it is a popular destination for US citizens,” it reads.
“I made it to Nicaragua … I don’t want to live in the US anymore … Obama ruins the country …Now I have my monkey, Cindy,” she says to NBC news.
“I earned good money in the US — $400,000 a year — I was a retail broker and I saw the crisis coming … We wanted to leave, we don’t like the politics of the US … Here is a safe place, safe for a nuclear war.”
“I don’t like the politics in the US and the cost of living is very high.”
As if the negative political ads aren’t enough, now a county judge in Lubbock, Texas, predicts possible “civil war” if President Obama is re-elected.
Judge Tom Head was on a local TV news show making his case for a tax increase, when he said hiring extra sheriff’s deputies would especially be needed if Obama wins in November …
“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N., and what is going to happen when that happens?,” Head asked.
Readers again notice the mania of the John Bircher/Tea Party conspiracy belief that the UN will stage a takeover of the United States. Those who are not in the heevahava demographic know the UN is much like the old League of Nations, powerless except everyone can be in it.
“And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy,” says the man from Texas.
Later, after the expected furor, he insisted it had been all taken out of context.
The presidency of Barack Obama has meant boom years for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
An influx started, the Reuters piece explains, during the Iraq war and before economic failure, when there was no great enthusiasm for getting maimed or blown up by IEDs and the Army had to relax its standards so they would be more forgiving to miscellaneous dirtbags. The story emphasizes, historically, that this is not particularly new.
“White supremacists, neo-Nazis and skinhead groups encourage followers to enlist in the Army and Marine Corps to acquire the skills to overthrow what some call the ZOG – the Zionist Occupation Government,” it reads. “Get in, get trained and get out to brace for the coming race war.”
The recent healing balm that is Ted Nugent:
Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.
When they [the UN] talk about reducing unnecessary violence by eliminating small arms in the hands of citizens around the world, they’re talking about the same thing that Hitler talked about: Disarm the populace so you can control them at your every whim.
