Mike's Two Cents Worth

New photos of the 911 “attack” were just released, showing the dust cloud just after the collapse of one of the twin towers.  It prompted me to think again about something I don’t think about much anymore.  I don’t think about it, or discuss it because it frustrates and angers me every time I do.  The majority of Americans, including most of my friends and family, still buy the bullshit story that 911 was a terrorist attack.

Now take a look at these two photos.  The first is one of the newly released photos of New York City on 911.  The second is of the pyroclastic flow of a volcanic eruption.

The dust cloud on 911

You may be wondering “Okay… so what’s the point?”   The point is that this photo absolutely proves there were huge amounts of explosives involved in the collapse of the twin towers on 911.  But like any evidence it is only proof if it can be added to an understanding that leads to a conclusion.  One has to know that a dust cloud is not just a dust cloud.  There are differences.  The dust clouds in both of these photos are of the same kind.  They are pyroclastic flows.

Pyroclastic flow at Mayon Volcano

So what is a pyroclastic flow?

A pyroclastic flow (also known scientifically as a pyroclastic density current) is a common and devastating result of certain explosive volcanic eruptions. The flows are fast-moving currents of hot gas and rock (collectively known as tephra), which travel away from the volcano at speeds generally as great as 700 km/h (450 mi/h). The gas can reach temperatures of about 1,000 C (1,830 F). The flows normally hug the ground and travel downhill, or spread laterally under gravity. Their speed depends upon the density of the current, the volcanic output rate, and the gradient of the slope.

One of the identifying features of a pyroclastic flow is the distinct boundary between the cloud and the surrounding air.  A plain old dust cloud has a “fuzzy boundary” of dust particles and air mixing.  I’ve been in a dust storm in Iraq and seen the approaching wall of dust driven by the wind.  Fuzzy boundary.

The bottom line is that there was an enormous amount of heat energy in both of these dust clouds.  Much much more than could be generated by the relatively tiny amount of jet fuel in one jetliner.

You just can’t bring yourself to believe it… so you don’t.  And I’m tired of talking about it.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to vent my frustration when I’m reminded of it.  So I come here to my quiet corner of the web and blow off a bit of the lava that boils within my mind when I think of how the bastards got away with the most evil crime in the history of America so that once again its citizens would rally round the flag and defend their freedoms.

If they were only free to think for themselves.

This morning Tim Geithner helped the White House unveil a $3.8 trillion government budget for the coming fiscal year. If approved, the fiscal year 2011, which starts in October, will ring in a record $1.6 trillion deficit.

Has anyone pointed out that close to half of next year’s Federal budget is freakin’ borrowed?

And then consider this:

The U.S. Senate voted last week to raise the limit on how much the government can borrow to keep itself running, a move that while necessary has become highly political.  Senators voted 60-39 to increase the ceiling on the nation’s debt by $1.9 trillion, boosting the government’s borrowing power to a total $14.3 trillion, the highest in history.

But they really didn’t have a choice:

Speaking in favor of raising the debt limit, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said there was little choice: “The money has been spent and now it must be repaid.  We have gone to the restaurant, we have eaten the meal, and now the only question is whether we will pay the check. It is that simple.”

And billions of what they intend to borrow next year will be to create jobs.  Does it really make sense to borrow money to put the unemployed to work doing jobs that our economy says aren’t worth doing – because if they were worth doing there would be a demand for them and THEY WOULD ALREADY EXIST!  Why don’t we just do what the Soviets did and give everyone a job.  We’d have full employment then.  But wait.  That would be socialism.  And Americans are capitalists.  But capitalism is like… like… survival of the fittest – let the strong survive.  And recessions are really just corrections according to the rules of capitalism.  But what if you don’t let a correction correct?  Don’t you just make the ultimate correction worse?  Like the drunk who drinks more because he’s beginning to sober up and his head feels like it’s about to explode.

We’ve all had personal recessions.  Like when you’ve still got month left over at the end of the money.  It means you’ll spend the next few days in a recession, eating peanut butter and jelly samiches, until you get paid again.  You could borrow some money, but hey guess what… you’re just borrowing from another paycheck.  And if you do it too often you could get behind two paychecks… or three… or if you’re the U.S. Government… a whole freakin’ three year’s worth of paychecks.

Yep… they raised the debt ceiling to 14.3 trillion dollars.  And coincidentally, the projected GDP for 2010 is the same amount – 14.3 trillion!  Which isn’t really like Uncle Sam’s annual “paycheck”, but rather every goddamn dollar’s worth of total goods and services produced in the U.S. in a single year.  The paycheck would be more on the order of… well… the 3.8 trillion dollar budget they announced this morning.

So what that means in terms we can understand is that they’ve borrowed… let me do the math here… 14.3 divided by 3.8 equals… holy crap!  That’s 3.76 years worth of paychecks!  I think that might be financially irresponsible.  Or more like out of control.

Maybe I’m wrong but it seems like America’s problem is debt.  They’ve spent too much time on the midway.  Just look at this chart.  If you turn it upside down you’ll see American’s are falling off a cliff, but guess who lands on the rocks below.  Our children (if you’re my age) and grandchildren. 

So if debt is the problem does it make sense to rack up another trillion dollars worth?  And even if it was the answer, would it make sense to let the morons in Washington decide where to spend it.  For example they’ve budgeted $734 million to install 1,000 new full body scanners at airports.  Why?

Because some nutjob stuffed his panties full of pentaerythritol tetranitrate and got past those geniuses at airport security.  Personally I don’t think he could have brought down an airplane.  I mean seriously… look at the photo.  There is, however, little doubt that he could have done irreparable  damage to his dick.

But hey… thanks to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab they are now hiring at the body scanner factory.

In my experience very few people understand money.  Judging by my bank account you’d have to say I’m one of them… but I’m not talking about how to hang on to it.  I’m talking about what exactly IS money.  They think it’s the Federal Reserve Notes (or their electronic equivalent) in their purse, pocket or bank account.  I’m here to tell you that ain’t money!

I read – and it makes sense to me – that money serves these three functions.

1. A means of exchange.
2. A store of value.
3. A way to measure the relative value of things.

I’ll contend that those “notes” in your pocket only serve purpose number one, and they fail miserably for 2 & 3.  The reason you can’t store value, or measure the value of things with dollars is INFLATION!  I’ll give you a couple of examples and you’ll soon see what I’m talking about.

I bought my first house in 1967 for $11,000.00.  It was an average two bedroom bungalow in Wichita Kansas.  Let’s suppose that on the same day I bought that house I’d put $11,000.00 worth of gold and 11,000 cash dollars in a cigar box and buried it.  Now let’s suppose I dug up that cigar box yesterday.  Which one would still buy that same house today – the gold or the dollars?  The dollars probably wouldn’t be worth enough to replace the kitchen cabinets.  But the relationship between gold and houses would not have changed all that much.

By the way, in 1967 those dollars were called Silver Certificates and were still redeemable for REAL money… steada just another Federal Reserve Note.  Back then you could go to the bank and ask the teller for a real dollar and she’d hand you a coin made out of silver.  Hand her a twenty and you’d get twenty of them.  Hand a teller a twenty nowadays and she’ll ask you if you want fives or tens.

What happened to the “value” that was stored in that cigar box?  Nothing happened to the value of the real money.  The counterfeit money lost about 90% of its value, and it’s not hard to understand how if you know anything about the boogers that created it, controlling the value of it, namely the Federal Reserve Bank.   Inflation is not like gravity.  People have come to believe that there is something immutable in the laws of finance that say prices on the stuff they buy has to go up from year to year, like the laws of nature.  But in nature the weights and measures don’t change.

Suppose I whipped out a tape measure and slapped it down on your dining room table and said “Your table is 48 inches long”.  You’d nod your head and say “Okie doke.”  But what if I came back a year later and re-measured that same table and announced that it had grown and now measured 50 inches long.  You’d probably tell me there was something wrong with my tape measure… that it wasn’t the same one I’d used the year before.  Why?  Because any fool knows that tables don’t get bigger.  They don’t grow.

But you’ll believe that $11,000.00 house I bought in 1967 is now worth $158,000.00.  It’s still the same house, and it’s not located in a particularly hot piece of property, like some sunny beach, or mountain view.  It’s an older house, and 43 years closer to falling apart.  Probably would have fallen apart by now except for the annual upkeep and new paint necessary to keep it livable.

The point is this… functions number 2 and 3 can not be served by anything that is constantly shrinking in it’s value relative to the goods and services of an economy.

In 1913 our illustrious representatives in Washington gave the franchise to create money out of thin air and loan it to the U.S. Treasury at interests to some private bankers.  They turned over a perfectly good dollar, then redeemable in gold and silver, and today that dollar is worth less than three cents.

The bastards, try as they might to control the value of gold for the past thirty years, still could not reach into that cigar box and tamper with the value of the gold.  It didn’t lose it’s value.  That 11 grand would have bought 314 ounces of gold, which at today’s price of just over $1,000 per ounce means you could probably buy two or three of those Wichita bungalows with the gold.

Bankers have pulled the paper money switcheroo many times throughout history, and every time… every single solitary time… they’ve inflated the value of the money to worthlessness.  And every time there has been a return to the only thing that has ever been portable enough, rare enough, and unchanging enough to serve all three functions of money – gold and silver.

Climb aboard a time machine and take a one ounce gold coin with you back in time… say 2,000 years to ancient Rome.  It wouldn’t matter that the Romans couldn’t understand the words U.S. Eagle or Krugerrand on the face of your coin.  They’d know it was gold and they’d be able to weigh it, and they’d give you plenty for it.  And I have to think that if you turned the knob on that time machine toward the future and went 2,000 years in the other direction you’d find the same thing was true.  Your money would have maintained it’s purchasing power.

Take Federal Reserve Notes with you instead and I think you’d go hungry.  And I don’t think you’d have to go that far into the future for those notes to be worthless pieces of paper.  Set that dial for 2015 and you’ll be lucky if a pocket full of twenties will buy you a coke.

Roeder admitted he stalked and shot to death Dr. George Tiller, 67, on May 31 last year as Tiller attended church in Wichita, Kansas. He argued in court his actions were necessary to protect unborn babies.  “Abortions were being done every day,” Roeder testified. “My honest belief was that if I didn’t do something they would continue to die.”

This guy Roeder killed an abortion doctor last May in the town I was raised in – Wichita, Kansas.  That’s where I was thoroughly indoctrinated in one of the more fundamental Christian dogmas while attending the First Church of the Nazarene on East Kellogg Street.  Part of what I was taught was that if a child dies before it reaches the age of accountability it goes to heaven.  Yep.  Straight to paradise, bypassing all the crap the rest of us have had to live through.

Holy shit!  Do you know what that means? Think about it.

It means that this guy Roeder – and I’d bet my free pass through the pearly gates he’s of the Christian persuasion, though I don’t know which flavor – didn’t save any babies at all.  Instead he has condemned them to a life on Earth!  Now instead of being ushered straight into paradise they’ll be born, where more than likely they’ll grow up and suffer through school, dating, marriage, a job they can’t stand, disease, and for the majority of them, die and go to hell.

The majority you ask?  Sure.  Just ask the next Christian you meet what percentage of adult Americans are going to go to heaven.   The last one I asked (though it’s been many years ago) said she thought it would only be 10%.  That means 90% of us had better start packing our asbestos skivvies!

So from an orthodox Christian perspective who was protecting babies, Tiller or his murderer Roeder?  Tiller had a 100% salvation rate.  And I know that’s better than Billy Graham’s or even Jimmy Swaggart’s.

All this kinda makes me wish I’d been aborted.  Cuz if I had been I’d be in heaven now instead of… well I think you all know where I’m headed.