Black  and White (Under age 40? You won't understand.) You  could hardly see for all the snow, Spread the rabbit ears as  far as they go. Pull a chair up to the TV set, 'Good Night, David.  Good Night, Chet.'  My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread Mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on  the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.  Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.  The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail  cell, and a pager was the school PA system. We all took gym, not PE ... And risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors.  I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now. Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention. We  must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything. I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.  Oh yeah ... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of  the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like  iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.  Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.  I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house.   Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.  To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?  We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes. We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive? LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA; AND TO  ALL WHO DIDN'T, SORRY FOR WHAT YOU MISSED. I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR  ANYTHING! Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.  

I like this idea … lawmakers should not be above the laws and policies they create!   Subject: 28th amendment   No one has been able to explain to me why young men and women serve in the U.S. Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get 50% of their pay. While Politicians hold their political positions in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men and women, and receive full pay retirement after serving one term. It just does not make any sense. Monday on Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?  35 States file lawsuit against the Federal Government  Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.  This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.  This is an idea that we should address.  For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress.  Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever.. The self-serving must stop.  If each person that receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.  Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ." You are one of my 20+ "If you choose not to decide ~ you still have made a choice 

The Perceptions Game in Israel, Iran and the U.S. | STRATFOR

The Perceptions Game in Israel, Iran and the U.S. | STRATFOR

With Elections Over, Putin Focuses on Perceptions | STRATFOR

With Elections Over, Putin Focuses on Perceptions | STRATFOR

Hamas Rules Out Fighting for Iran | STRATFOR

Hamas Rules Out Fighting for Iran | STRATFOR

The FUTURE According to Obama and Politicians

Why David Stockman isn't buying it Email this Story Mar 2, 2:29 PM (ET) By BERNARD CONDON   (AP) In this Feb. 23, 2012 photo, David Stockman, wunderkind of the Reagan administration and a key... Full Image NEW YORK (AP) - He was an architect of one of the biggest tax cuts in U.S. history. He spent much of his career after politics using borrowed money to take over companies. He targeted the riskiest ones that most investors shunned - car-parts makers, textile mills. That is one image of David Stockman, the former White House budget director who, after resigning in protest over deficit spending, made a fortune in corporate buyouts. But spend time with him and you discover this former wunderkind of the Reagan revolution is many other things now - an advocate for higher taxes, a critic of the work that made him rich and a scared investor who doesn't own a single stock for fear of another financial crisis. Stockman suggests you'd be a fool to hold anything but cash now, and maybe a few bars of gold. He thinks the Federal Reserve's efforts to ease the pain from the collapse of our "national leveraged buyout" - his term for decades of reckless, debt-fueled spending by government, families and companies - is pumping stock and bond markets to dangerous heights. Known for his grasp of budgetary minutiae, first as a Michigan congressman and then as Reagan's budget director, Stockman still dazzles with his command of numbers. Ask him about jobs, and he'll spit out government estimates for non-farm payrolls down to the tenth of a decimal point. Prod him again and, as from a grim pinata, more figures spill out: personal consumption expenditures, credit market debt and the clunky sounding but all-important non-residential fixed investment. Stockman may seem as exciting as an insurance actuary, but he knows how to tell a good story. And the punch line to this one is gripping. He says the numbers for the U.S. don't add up to anything but a painful, slow-growing future. Now 65 and gray, but still wearing his trademark owlish glasses, Stockman took time from writing his book about the financial collapse, "The Triumph of Crony Capitalism," to talk to The Associated Press at his book-lined home in Greenwich, Conn. Within reach was Dickens'"Hard Times" - two copies. Below are excerpts, edited for clarity. --- Q: Why are you so down on the U.S. economy? A: It's become super-saturated with debt. Typically the private and public sectors would borrow $1.50 or $1.60 each year for every $1 of GDP growth. That was the golden constant. It had been at that ratio for 100 years save for some minor squiggles during the bottom of the Depression. By the time we got to the mid-'90s, we were borrowing $3 for every $1 of GDP growth. And by the time we got to the peak in 2006 or 2007, we were actually taking on $6 of new debt to grind out $1 of new GDP. People were taking $25,000, $50,000 out of their home for the fourth refinancing. That's what was keeping the economy going, creating jobs in restaurants, creating jobs in retail, creating jobs as gardeners, creating jobs as Pilates instructors that were not supportable with organic earnings and income. It wasn't sustainable. It wasn't real consumption or real income. It was bubble economics. So even the 1.6 percent (annual GDP growth in the past decade) is overstating what's really going on in our economy. Q: How fast can the U.S. economy grow? A: People would say the standard is 3, 3.5 percent. I don't even know if we could grow at 1 or 2 percent. When you have to stop borrowing at these tremendous rates, the rate of GDP expansion stops as well. Q: But the unemployment rate is falling and companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 are making more money than ever. A: That's very short-term. Look at the data that really counts. The 131.7 million (jobs in November) was first achieved in February 2000. That number has gone nowhere for 12 years. Another measure is the rate of investment in new plant and equipment. There is no sustained net investment in our economy. The rate of growth since 2000 (in what the Commerce Department calls non-residential fixed investment) has been 0.8 percent - hardly measurable. (Non-residential fixed investment is the money put into office buildings, factories, software and other equipment.) We're stalled, stuck. Q: What will 10-year Treasurys yield in a year or five years? A: I have no guess, but I do know where it is now (a yield of about 2 percent) is totally artificial. It's the result of massive purchases by not only the Fed but all of the other central banks of the world. Q: What's wrong with that? A: It doesn't come out of savings. It's made up money. It's printing press money. When the Fed buys $5 billion worth of bonds this morning, which it's doing periodically, it simply deposits $5 billion in the bank accounts of the eight dealers they buy the bonds from. Q: And what are the consequences of that? A: The consequences are horrendous. If you could make the world rich by having all the central banks print unlimited money, then we have been making a mistake for the last several thousand years of human history. Q: How does it end? A: At some point confidence is lost, and people don't want to own the (Treasury) paper. I mean why in the world, when the inflation rate has been 2.5 percent for the last 15 years, would you want to own a five-year note today at 80 basis points (0.8 percent)? If the central banks ever stop buying, or actually begin to reduce their totally bloated, abnormal, freakishly large balance sheets, all of these speculators are going to sell their bonds in a heartbeat. That's what happened in Greece. Here's the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a (former Fed Chairman) Paul Volcker running the Fed today - utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week - you wouldn't have half, you wouldn't have 95 percent, of the speculative positions today. Q: You sound as if we're facing a financial crisis like the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. A: Oh, far worse than Lehman. When the real margin call in the great beyond arrives, the carnage will be unimaginable. Q: How do investors protect themselves? What about the stock market? A: I wouldn't touch the stock market with a 100-foot pole. It's a dangerous place. It's not safe for men, women or children. Q: Do you own any shares? A: No. Q: But the stock market is trading cheap by some measures. It's valued at 12.5 times expected earnings this year. The typical multiple is 15 times. A: The typical multiple is based on a historic period when the economy could grow at a standard rate. The idea that you can capitalize this market at a rate that was safe to capitalize it in 1990 or 1970 or 1955 is a large mistake. It's a Wall Street sales pitch. Q: Are you in short-term Treasurys? A: I'm just in short-term, yeah. Call it cash. I have some gold. I'm not going to take any risk. Q: Municipal bonds? A: No. Q: No munis, no stocks. Wow. You're not making any money. A: Capital preservation is what your first, second and third priority ought to be in a system that is so jerry-built, so fragile, so exposed to major breakdown that it's not worth what you think you might be able to earn over six months or two years or three years if they can keep the bailing wire and bubble gum holding the system together, OK? It's not worth it. Q: Give me your prescription to fix the economy. A: We have to eat our broccoli for a good period of time. And that means our taxes are going to go up on everybody, not just the rich. It means that we have to stop subsidizing debt by getting a sane set of people back in charge of the Fed, getting interest rates back to some kind of level that reflects the risk of holding debt over time. I think the federal funds rate ought to be 3 percent or 4 percent. (It is zero to 0.25 percent.) I mean, that's normal in an economy with inflation at 2 percent or 3 percent. Q: Social Security? A: It has to be means-tested. And Medicare needs to be means-tested. If you're a more affluent retiree, you should have your benefits cut back, pay a higher premium for Medicare. Q: Taxes? A: Let the Bush tax cuts expire. Let the capital gains go back to the same rate as ordinary income. (Capital gains are taxed at 15 percent, while ordinary income is taxed at marginal rates up to 35 percent.) Q: Why? A: Why not? I mean, is return on capital any more virtuous than some guy who's driving a bus all day and working hard and trying to support his family? You know, with capital gains, they give you this mythology. You're going to encourage a bunch of more jobs to appear. No, most of capital gains goes to speculators in real estate and other assets who basically lever up companies, lever up buildings, use the current income to pay the interest and after a holding period then sell the residual, the equity, and get it taxed at 15 percent. What's so brilliant about that? Q: You worked for Blackstone, a financial services firm that focuses on leveraged buyouts and whose gains are taxed at 15 percent, then started your own buyout fund. Now you're saying there's too much debt. You were part of that debt explosion, weren't you? A: Well, yeah, and maybe you can learn something from what happens over time. I was against the debt explosion in the Reagan era. I tried to fight the deficit, but I couldn't. When I was in the private sector, I was in the leveraged buyout business. I finally learned a heck of a lot about the dangers of debt. I'm a libertarian. If someone wants to do leveraged buyouts, more power to them. If they want to have a brothel, let them run a brothel. But it doesn't mean that public policy ought to be biased dramatically to encourage one kind of business arrangement over another. And right now public policy and taxes and free money from the Fed are encouraging way too much debt, way too much speculation and not enough productive real investment and growth. Q: Why are you writing a book? A: I got so outraged by the bailouts of Wall Street in September 2008. I believed that Bush and (former Treasury Secretary Hank) Paulson were totally trashing the Reagan legacy, whatever was left, which did at least begin to resuscitate the idea of free markets and a free economy. And these characters came in and panicked and basically gave capitalism a smelly name and they made it impossible to have fiscal discipline going forward. If you're going to bail out Wall Street, what aren't you going to bail out? So that started my re-engagement, let's say, in the policy debate. Q: Are you hopeful? A: No.

    For all my sports- minded friends - - - - read carefully please A football question: Last year after the Packers/ Bills game, Buffalo released quarterback Trent Edwards. During the Packers / Eagles game, the Packers injured Philadelphia quarterback Kevin Kolb. Philadelphia then had to play backup quarterback Michael Vick. During a playoff game against the Eagles, the Packers injured Michael Vick and another backup was needed. After the Packers / Cowboys game, Dallas fired Wade Phillips and most of his staff. After the Packers/ Vikings game, Minnesota fired Brad Childress and most of his staff. Four weeks after losing to the Packers, the 49er's coach Mike Singletary and most of his staff were fired and replaced. During the Bears playoff game, the Packers injured Jay Cutler and backup Todd Collins forcing the Bears to go with 3rd string quarterbackCaleb Hanie. Question: Is it just me, or did the Packers create more jobs than Obama last year?