Tidbits From The Web Tidbits From The Web...: February 2012

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Tidbits From The Web #95

Insight

CONFIDENCE


Confidence is hard to teach; confidence is only born of one thing: demonstrated ability. It is not born of anything else. You cannot dream up confidence. You cannot fabricate it. You cannot wish it. You have to accomplish it. I think that genuine confidence is what you really seek. That only comes from demonstrated ability.

Bill Parcells


Confidence is keeping your chin up; overconfidence is sticking your neck out.

Author unknown


Tyrannical clairvoyance...




Ron Paul vs. The Media Industrial Complex...










Map of Metal!   \m/
The secret life of books...
Underwater experiments...
Introducing local Monrovian dollmaker...Shannon Craven...
What a solar storm looks like...
Why you should be furious fast...
Was your state...
Impossible pool shots...
Wonderfully weird succulents...
Which veggies are better raw or cooked?
Why you're fat...isn't it ironic dontcha think?
Beware the Howler!
Fly the friendly skies...
The most evil company on the planet...
Cancer is a business model apparently...
Intersecting the world of reality TV...
Oh what webs they weave...
The beauty of pollination...
Crazy cocktail charting!    (hover over the pic)
The consciousness of plants and water...
Amazing 3-D sound game for kids (and adults)...
Steve Jobs was onto something...
Treat your booze right...
The bark side...
Dogs teach babies how to play ball...
Keep drinking that Kool-aid for an unhealthy heart...
Natural ice rinks...
The ultimate manwich...
8 ridiculous home amenities...
The Golden Ratio...
Commodities returns for the past 10 years...
Cows like dogs too...
The Great Recession affects illegal immigrants too...
Bunny's been banqueting bountiful bananas...
The ultimate dessert...
Keep drinking that Kool-aid for an unhealthy heart part II...
Wish I had this as a textbook when I was a kid...
Petrus Romanus...the final pope is here...
Financial tyranny by the cabals...defeating the greatest coverup of all time...
It's been a long day...


Conspiracy of Silence...




Iron Mountain Report...the elite's plans right in front of your eyes!




Changing warfare with drones and robots...




Today's Message

YOUR DREAM BEGINS TODAY
by Les Brown


What will your life be like when you’ve achieved your most deeply held dreams? Let’s take a look at how you can start living your dreams this very day.

Do you have a dream, a vision of the life you wish to live?
How specific is that dream?
How clear is that vision?
How do you intend to reach it?
What obstacles stand in your way?
Are your fears holding you back or are you using them to move you forward?

Your fears can actually lead you to success. Fear is an intense emotion. But that doesn’t mean it has to control you, or even stop you. Fear can prepare you and push you forward just as strongly as it can hold you back. Fear heightens your awareness and increases your physical strength. Fear brings your mind to sharp focus. With all that going for you, does it make sense to just run and hide? Of course not. Fear gets you in shape to take action!

Are you waiting for things to get better before moving ahead? If you’re serious about success, you need to start taking action today. If you’re waiting for things to be perfect, you’ll wait forever and nothing will ever get done.

The way to achieve is to bloom where you’re planted, to do what you can, where you are, with what you have. It’s easy to think up excuses for not taking action. “If only I had more hours in the day. If only I had a better job. If only I could meet the right person.” But excuses won’t bring you anything of value. You’ve got to change your “if only” into an “I will.” “I will make better use of my time. I will work on improving my career. I will create and nurture my relationships.”

Take a chance. Have faith in yourself. Your circumstances will improve when you make the effort to improve them. Start where you are right now. You have everything it takes to reach for whatever you desire. Stop wishing. Use your time, your energy, your thoughts and efforts to make it happen! You’ll be glad you did!


Knowledge
 
 The Surface of the Sun
 

Have you ever wondered about the surface of our Sun? Today's feature explains in detail the makeup of our star. The surface is not a glowing ball of gas, as was once reported, but consists of a rocky calcium ferrite underneath the photosphere, the "liquid-like" plasma layer made of neon, and the penumbral filaments that we see with our naked eye. The explanation is quite detailed with appropriate satellite images to support the theories of the scientists who have conducted research for over 100 years on this important aspect of our universe. Links to outside material give good backup to the overview presented on the home page. Here's an interesting way to see the strides that have been made in the field of heliosiesmology!



Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon

"The Lunar Orbiter program was one of the most successful mission series ever flown." Now the Internet surfer has access to the Lunar and Planetary Institute's Photographic Atlas of the Moon; originally published in 1971, this atlas that is 'considered the definitive reference manual to the global photographic coverage of the Moon.' The visitor can search the Atlas by feature name, alphabetically or by descending latitude and longitude, photo number or coordinate range. Who'd have ever thought that modern technology would allow mapping of the moon in a way that cartographers of old would never have imagined possible!


12 Things Successful People Do Differently

Posted By Dr. Mercola | February 02 2012





People who are wildly successful – think Clint Eastwood and Warren Buffett – take steps to help them realize their full potential. Some of these things are strategies you can easily emulate to rise to success in your own life…
  1. Create and pursue S.M.A.R.T. goals -- S.M.A.R.T. goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
  2. Take decisive and immediate action – Knowledge and intelligence are both useless without action.
  3. Focus on being productive, not being busy – In other words, work smarter, not harder.
  4. Make logical, informed decisions – Think things through before making life-changing decisions.
  5. Avoid trying to make things perfect – The only way to get things done is to be imperfect 99% of the time.
  6. Work outside of your comfort zone – Embrace all moments of opportunity for personal growth and success.
  7. Keep things simple – Rather than evaluating every last detail of every possible option, choose something you think will work and give it a shot.
  8. Focus on making small, continuous improvements – Soon you'll find yourself on a spiral of changes – one building on the other.
  9. Measure and track your progress – Step back and assess your progress regularly so you know what needs to be done to excel and accelerate.
  10. Maintain a positive outlook as you learn from your mistakes – Look for the silver lining in every situation.
  11. Spend time with the right people – You are the sum of the people you spend the most time with.
  12. Maintain balance in your life – An imbalanced lifestyle will hold you back from reaching your full potential.






When the Economy Runs Aground
Debunking the Myth of the Great Recession
Bill Bonner
Bill Bonner
Reckoning today from Los Angeles, California...

There is a rumor — which we started ourselves — that Captain Francesco Schettino of the Costa Concordia has been invited to join the Federal Reserve.

Obviously, in view of the recently released minutes of its meetings in 2006, the Italian ship’s captain and the Fed are meant for each other. Both are prone to error, cowardice and confusion.

Ben Bernanke in 2006, just as the housing and finance bubble was reaching its zenith:

“I think it would take a very strong decline in the housing market to substantially derail the strong momentum for growth that we are currently seeing in the economy.”
“Capital markets are probably more profitable and more robust than they have perhaps ever been,” added fellow Fed governor Kevin Warsh.

A year later, the great ship hit the rock that was clearly visible to dear readers and to anyone else who cared to look — subprime mortgage debt.

Captain Schettino will probably never be asked to take command of another cruise ship. But Captain Bernanke and his crew are still at the controls of the US economy. Apparently, they still have no idea where they are...or where they are going.

They think we’re coming out of a recession. But the recovery is so slow and so hesitant, that the press has begun referring to it as a “Great Recession.”

Wrong on both counts, in our opinion. It’s not a recession. And certainly not a great one. It’s not a recession because it is not a temporary setback for an otherwise healthy economy. Instead, it is a turning point...a major turning point.

Besides, a ‘great recession’ is self-contradictory. It’s oxymoronic. Like “prudent banker” or “honest politician,” the words don’t go together.

If it were a recession, it might end soon, and then the economy could go back to what it was. But that can’t happen. Because the economy pre-2007 depended on a couple of myths and more than a few frauds.

The biggest myth was that housing would rise forever. This is what allowed households to go further and further into debt, confident that they were getting richer all the time. And it allowed Wall Street to package up mortgage debt, slice it, dice it, and spread it all over town. The combination of rising housing prices and financial engineering produced the biggest bubble in human history.

But once a bubble like that explodes, there is no question of going back...or recovering. It’s over. You might as well try to put a suicide bomber back together as to recover the bubble economy of 2006. You can’t go back. You have to go forward to something new.

What are we going forward to? That’s the big question. No one knows the answer.

Here’s the funny thing, dear reader; the people who are charged with guiding us to this new world are the same goofballs who got us into this mess...and then who didn’t see the fix they had gotten us into until it was too late.

But heck...that’s just the way it is...

We’re not going to hold out much hope that they figure it out and guide the economy safely into port. More than likely, they’ll soon run aground again.



THE ELEPHANT IN THE LIVING ROOM ...
... AT WAR WITH THE WORLD
by David Icke

Well, how blatant, how in our face, does it have to be before the elephant on the sofa is acknowledged for what it is? Rothschild Zionism is leading the world into yet another war and this time with the serious potential to explode into a third global conflict - what they have long sought to engineer.

I refer to Zionism as 'Rothschild Zionism' to constantly expose who created this expression of undiluted evil and who controls it to this day - the House of Rothschild. The secret society called Zionism was not created for the benefit of Jewish people, but to use them as a cover to pursue the merciless annexation of Planet Earth. Many and increasing numbers of Jewish people can now see this. They have been 'had' on a monumental scale. The first Rothschild Zionist Congress was in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897, but not many realise that it was originally due to take place in Munich, Germany.

It had to be relocated because of opposition from Jewish people in Germany who did not want to be shipped off to Palestine, as per Rothschild Zionist agenda. They were doing fine, thanks, so go away and take your silly idea with you. But little more than 30 years later the Rothschild-engineered and Rockefeller-Harriman-Bush-funded Nazi Party came to power in Germany and began to target the German Jewish population and those in other countries. Vast numbers of Jewish people left Germany and Europe in general as a result of this abomination and headed for the United States and ... Palestine.

Thanks to the Nazis, the Rothschild Zionist leadership got its way. Coincidence? Not a chance ...

... Once the State of Israel had been bombed and terrorised into existence a long list of Rothschild Zionists were relocated to especially the United States so their children would be born as American citizens. These children are the Rothschild Zionists that dominate the American government and its agencies today. Among them is Rahm Emanuel, Obama's White House Chief of Staff in the crucial years after his election, and now Mayor of Chicago. Emanuel's father openly boasts that he was a member of Irgun, the Rothschild Zionist terrorist organisation, before he headed to the US to produce his offspring.

Rothschild Zionism now controls the United States government and Congress in general via front organisations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a massive lobby group representing a foreign power and widely known as AIPAC. This is why Obama said in his State of the Union address of pure fantasy this week: 'Our iron-clad commitment to Israel's security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history'.
Read: 'We do whatever they say.'



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whiskey and Gunpowder
by Jeffrey Tucker

January 30, 2012
Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A.

The Transformation of Banking

There is a scene in the Parable of the Talents in which the returned master berates the shabbiest of his three servants. Discovering that he had buried his seed capital in the ground, the master says: "You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest." The servant is then thrown outside "into the darkness," where he faces "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

In today's world, burying that money might have been the better idea. Otherwise, the servant would have paid fees for depositing, withdrawing and transferring and would have earned no interest at all, and the money would have depreciated in value the whole while. It's enough to cause you to weep and gnash your teeth.

That parable has had a long life because earning interest on deposits is a universal feature of the human experience in any finance economy. Until now. The Fed has announced that it will work to keep interest rates at zero for the next several years, all with the supposed goal of refurbishing the economy. Or so Bernanke tells us at great length.

But here's the problem: This very strategy of driving interest rates to zero has been a feature of the period in which the Fed has managed the post-meltdown world. The result has been what The Wall Street Journal accurately described as a five years of missing economic progress: The economy today is barely larger than it was at the end of 2007, despite a rising population and a gigantic explosion in technology. Household income is still sinking, and an entire generation has readjusted its expectations for the future.

What has the Fed done? It has moved to create and guarantee some $13 trillion in phony assets to prettify the balance sheets of financial institutions that would have otherwise gone belly up. Those fake assets have served as substitutes for real reserves to create the illusion of balanced books. It has made its own discount rate vanish as a way of opening up its own reserves to the banking system to keep it floating. Finally, it has made it clear that it stands ready to be the lender of last resort for just about everything, removing the risk premium that would normally be attached to longer-term loans.
Altogether, this strategy has nearly abolished the banking system's capacity to function, in effect turning banks into public utilities to serve themselves and governments, instead of depositors and lenders. Private industry seeks funding outside the official banking system, investors are scrambling for some other option and banks themselves have turned to other pursuits, like interest rate arbitraging and lending to other financial institutions, hedge funds, insurance companies and real estate.
During the 1930s, New Deal policies tried to revive agriculture and economic activity generally by telling farmers to plough under their crops and kill their livestock. Today, Fed policies are trying to revive real estate, banking and economic activity generally by undermining the capacity of the loan markets to function with any degree of normalcy.

Michael Hudson insightfully explains the problem:
"People used to know what banks did. Bankers took deposits and lent them out, paying short-term depositors less than they charged for risky or less-liquid loans. The risk was borne by bankers, not depositors or the government...Banking has moved so far away from funding industrial growth and economic development that it now benefits primarily at the economy's expense in a predatory and extractive way, not by making productive loans."
Even if Bernanke were telling the truth that this is all about inspiring recovery, there is no hope that it can work. The real estate markets are still an amazing mess, with one-quarter of the existing mortgages contracts marked above their market value. It fights against gravity to keep trying to lift up what wants to go down the instant that artificial stimulus recedes. And it should be obvious by now that ever lower rates don't stimulate lending in this environment, but rather the reverse.

As the Austrian tradition has long explained, the basis of future prosperity is capital accumulation and deferred consumption in the form of real savings. These policies punish both. Worse: They make conventional savings nearly impossible. These policies encourage ever more consumption and debt accumulation and do nothing to address the core problem that brought about the artificial boom and the resulting bust.

But is Bernanke really telling the truth? No. In the balance between restoring growth and saving the banking system from the consequences of its own irresponsible policies, the Fed has chosen the latter. This is the unavoidable conclusion.

Otherwise, we would have to believe that the Fed is utterly blind to the recently proven results of its own policies. It is not managing the Fed in the public interest, but in the interests of the banks and the governments that are in hock to them. That you can't earn a reward from saving money anymore is a microeconomic indication of a much-larger problem.
Consider the opportunity costs of these policies. We are living in a time of unprecedented innovation, thanks to digital media, the Internet and daily improvements in the production, management and distribution of information. Vast swaths of the commodifiable world have left the realm of scarcity to enter the sector in which infinite reproducibility is not only possible, but a regular feature of daily life.

With a healthy economic foundation, society should be getting get wealthier and wealthier at a pace that exceeds even that of the Gilded Age, when 10% and 15% growth was common and the human population began to thrive as never before. The digital age has given us economizing technologies that make all that have come before look like mere warm-ups. Instead, we are being denied those benefits and that growth, thanks to catastrophic policies of governments backed by central banks and dependent financial institutions.

What is the scenario under which normalcy returns? From Bernanke's point of view, there is no end to this. It means ongoing stagnation for no good reason. For this reason, there has never been a more urgent time to abolish the Fed, institute a free market system and let a new monetary system emerge on a sound foundation. At the same time, the Fed has never faced more reason to keep alive the system that is killing future prosperity.

If the Parable of the Talents could be retold today, it would need a different ending, with a different gang of thieves thrown into the darkness to face weeping and gnashing of teeth.


Whiskey & Gunpowder
by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin

February 2, 2012
Originally published in Empire of Debt 

The Revolution of 1913

Readers will scarcely have given any thought to the fact that they have never lived in the system of government argued for by Madison, Jay, and Hamilton in the Federalist Papers.
"It may come as a shock ..." wrote John Flynn, "to be told that[you] have never experienced that kind of society which [our] ancestors knew as the American Republic ..." Flynn, the editor of the popular weekly the Saturday Evening Post, had already come to this conclusion in 1955. In his book The Decline of the American Republic, Flynn observed that Americans needlessly "live in the war-torn, debt-ridden, tax-harried wreckage of a once imposing edif ice of the free society which arose out of the American Revolution on the foundation of the U.S. Constitution."

An empire needs a source of income suff icient to fund its military campaigns, regulatory regimes, and domestic schemes. It also needs a strong central authority to direct its ambitious new programs. In one short 12-month span, a year the writer Frank Chodorov calls the "Revolution of 1913," the empire got the tools it needed. That year—the same year European countries abandoned the gold standard in preparation for World War I—the old Republic ceased to exist.

WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM
America's current system of income tax is a twentieth-century invention. Previous attempts at creating a national tax had failed or had been thrown out because they violated tenets of the Constitution deemed essential by the founders. In its f irst 100 years, the United States supported its federal government with a series of what we would call "sin taxes" today, on whiskey, tobacco, and sugar. By 1817, all internal taxes were abolished by Congress, leaving only tariffs on imported goods as a means for supporting the government.

The first income tax that citizens of the young Republic were forced to endure came about because Congress had been asked to fund the War between the States. In 1862, a tax on incomes between $600 and $10,000 was assessed at the rate of 3 percent, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was created. The war was costing $1.75 million per day.2 The government sold off land, borrowed heavily, enacted various fees, and increased excise taxes, but it simply wasn't enough. The income tax seemed like the only way to finance the war and service the country's then-staggering $505 million debt. That tax was promoted as a temporary wartime measure. Temporary it was. In 1872, after servicing the Reconstruction, Congress yanked the "temporary" tax.

But that was not the end of it. The income tax appealed to empire builders because it alone offered enough cash to finance the enterprise. But it had another appeal—to the larceny and envy in the hearts of ordinary citizens. Following a banking panic in 1893, Senator William Peffer of Kansas, supported the progressive income tax in this way:
Wealth is accumulated in New York, and not because those men are more industrious than we are, not because they are wiser and better, but because they trade, because they buy and sell, because they deal in usury, because they reap in what they have never earned, because they take in and live off what other men earn... . The West and the South have made you people rich.
That sentiment was puffed up by Nebraska's bellicose worldimprover William Jennings Bryan, who argued against the "equal taxation" requirement in the Constitution, in favor of the current progressive one:
If New York and Massachusetts pay more tax under this law than other states, it will be because they have more taxable incomes within their borders. And why should not those sections pay most which enjoy most?
This logic is simple. People who are more productive should be forced to pay a bigger share of their common expenses. But this kind of logic had no place in a free republic where all men were supposedly created equal; if they were equal they could each carry their own share of the burden of central government. Under this new regime, men were no longer equal, but given differing loads to carry based on the whims of elected hacks.
With considerable foresight, one member of the House of Representatives predicted:
The imposition of the [income] tax will corrupt the people. It will bring in its train the spy and the informer. It will necessitate a swarm of off icials with inquisitorial powers. It will be a step toward centralization.
... It breaks another canon of taxation in that it is expensive in its collection and cannot be fairly imposed ... and, finally, it is contrary to the traditions and principles of republican government.
When the tax was again introduced in 1894, a challenge went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1895, even among the cacophony of appeals in Congress to "soak the rich," the Supreme Court declared the bill unconstitutional in a 5-to-4 ruling. In writing the majority opinion, Justice Stephen J. Field quoted another case to support his conclusion:
As stated by counsel: "There is no such thing in the theory of our national government as unlimited power of taxation in congress. There are limitations, as he justly observes, of its powers arising out of the essential nature of all free governments; there are reservations of individual rights, without which society could not exist, and which are respected by every government. The right of taxation is subject to these limitations."
But when the winds of empire blew, the old yellowed paper of the U.S. Constitution went f lying. Following The Panic of 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt sided with a faction in the Democratic Party that wanted to amend the Constitution to allow a national income tax. In 1909, President Taft stated that he had "become convinced that a great majority of the people of this country are in favor of vesting the National Government with power to levy an income tax."

Of course, politicians are always able and willing to argue that "the people" want a government to have more power. If the voters see a free lunch in the deal, they're for it. By 1913, just in time for Wilson's emergence on the world stage, the Sixteenth Amendment had been ratified by enough states to put the income tax into law. The Amendment states:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

It wasn't long before Congress exercised its new powers. Wilson even convened a special session of Congress to rush through the f irst tax law under the Sixteenth Amendment, in which earnings above $3,000 were subject to a 1 percent tax, gradually moving up to 7 percent on higher income levels.

With its rather modest rates, the original income tax was viewed as a benign inconvenience. As early as 1916, however, the top rate was more than doubled from 7 percent up to 15 percent. Then as cash was needed to send Pershing to France, the rate was hiked to a staggering 67 percent in 1917 and 77 percent by 1918. Even the low rates were raised. From their microscopic origin of only 1 percent, the rate settled into a "modest" 23 percent by the end of World War II. But by that time, the people of the old republic had grown to accept an income tax as a necessary evil. Now that the nation was an empire, it needed the money.

In our present era, the complexity of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) has created an army of specialized lawyers and accountants. Even attempts at reform are out of control. A "technical corrections" bill exceeds 900 pages of adjustments. In fact, by the beginning of the twentyfirst century, the tax codes exceeded 7 million words, about nine times longer than the Bible; and the IRS was sending out about 8 billion pages of forms and instructions every year—at the cost of about 300,000 trees! All this effort translates to about 5.4 billion hours spent every year by Americans just complying with the tax rules.

From 1913 to 2005, the income tax has enabled, entitled, empowered, and engorged the federal government, states, and local governments, private enterprises, and millions of private citizens. Spending has grown by more than 13,592 percent.

The income tax gives the federal government a blank check to spend money, even money it does not yet have. The federal government lays a claim on all future economic activity of its citizens; its massive debts are a lien on the earnings of people who have not yet even drawn their first breaths. What's more, the income tax could be used as both an economic tool and as a political weapon. Tax rates could be manipulated, for example, to punish or reward favored political groups.

When the Constitution was ratified in 1789, the colonists in the New World believed they had won for themselves a measure of freedom and independence. "A republic, if you can keep it," Benjamin Franklin warned.

But by the end of 1913, a scant 124 years later, Americans were happy to lose their republic; an empire was what they wanted.


Peace, love and happiness...until next time...








Quote of the Day

What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have.
- Ralph Marston