I wish this man was president.

It is inspiring to hear the truth.

Will Democrats Stand Up to Obama’s Bloated Military Budget?

by Jeremy Scahill, April 10, 2009

Much of the media attention this week on President Obama’s new military budget has put forward a false narrative wherein Obama is somehow taking his socialist/pacifist sledgehammer to the Pentagon’s war machine and blasting it to smithereens. Republicans have charged that Obama is endangering the country’s security, while the Democratic leadership has hailed it as the dawn of a new era in responsible spending priorities. Part of this narrative portrays Defense Secretary Robert Gates as standing up to the war industry, particularly military contractors.

The reality is that all of this is false.

Here is an undeniable fact: Obama is substantially increasing US military spending, by at least $21 billion from Bush-era levels, including a significant ratcheting up of Afghanistan war spending, as well as more money for unmanned attack drones, which are increasingly being used in attacks on Pakistan. (David Swanson over at AfterDowningStreet.org does a great job of breaking down some of the media coverage of this issue across the political spectrum).

Obama’s budget of $534 billion to the Department of Defense “represents roughly a 4-percent increase over the $513 billion allocated to the Pentagon in FY2009 under the Bush administration, and $6.7 billion more than the outgoing administration’s projections for FY 2010,” bragged Lawrence Korb, author of the Center for American Progress‘ report supporting Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan, in an article called, “Obama’s Defense Budget Is on Target.”

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Joyful Noise – Music Video: FLAME feat. Lecrae & John Reilly

There Will Be (Hyper)Inflation

by Thorstein Polleit

Increasing “Excess Reserves”

The demise of fiat-money regimes around the world has become unmistakable. They can only be kept alive by central banks creating ever greater amounts of base money and governments underwriting commercial banks’ liabilities.

The US Federal Reserve, for instance, increased the stock of the monetary base — which includes banks’ demand deposits held with the Fed, plus coins and notes in circulation — from $870.9 billion in August 2008 to $1735.3 billion in January 2009.

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Taking the Prince of Peace Seriously

by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Several years ago, Congressman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) told parishioners at Suncreek United Methodist Church in Allen, Texas, something he had said to President George W. Bush: “Syria is the problem. Syria is where those weapons of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on ’em and I’ll make one pass. We won’t have to worry about Syria anymore.”

Johnson later claimed he’d been joking. But the congregation wasn’t laughing – it was roaring with cheers and applause.

These were all Christians, you understand – you know, people who are supposed to be concerned about the wrongful taking of innocent human life.

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2-Liter Bottle Lights – No Electricity – Very Awesome

1934 Political Cartoon

If the plan goes as well as the last time it was implemented, we’re in for a really rough ride!

The Ghost of John Maynard Keynes

Yesterday as I was cleaning out old bookmarks I took a look at the website at crosswalk.com. I was surprised to find an article about Keynesian Economics. This article was written very well. Just thought i’d share it.

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The Ghost of John Maynard Keynes
Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson
Center for Vision & Values

The British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) turns out to have been something of a prophet. He once wrote that “practical men,” as opposed to theoreticians, “are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” Ironically, the defunct economist who is influencing Barack Obama, his advisers, and his supporters in Washington is Keynes himself.

Like a ghostly presence, Keynes’ ideas are hovering over us. The very notion of a government “stimulus” for the economy originated in Keynes’ 1936 book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. In it, Keynes spelled out his theory that government could offset the economic ups and downs of the business cycle with “contracyclical” policies—that is, by running surpluses when economic activity is vibrant and deficits during slowdowns.

Keynes’ theories lost some of their luster in the 1970s when the United States experienced “stagflation”—the simultaneous occurrence of high unemployment and high inflation—which wasn’t supposed to happen according to Keynesian theory. Today, though, desperate to justify massive deficit spending, policymakers are resurrecting Keynesian ideas. This represents a triumph of hope over experience. Let’s look at some history.

After the stock market crash in 1929, President Herbert Hoover—a virulent foe of free-market economics, contrary to popular myth—ramped up federal spending and ran large deficits in the hope of counteracting the economic downturn. The economy did not recover, so voters elected Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. FDR then proceeded to out-Hoover Hoover, running even larger deficits and jacking up federal spending even more. The depression persisted. Then Keynes’ General Theory appeared in the winter of 1935-36, and FDR was delighted that the already-famous economist prescribed deficit spending as the correct anti-depression policy. FDR then continued running high deficits for another five or six years, but the economy still did not recover. As FDR’s Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, put it in congressional testimony in May 1939, “We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … [A]fter eight years … we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot.”

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Dan Hannan confronts Gordon Brown

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