Thoughts Aloud

…forty eight years ago:

From the 1961 Operation Coffee Cup Campaign against Socialized Medicine as proposed by the Democrats, then a private citizen Ronald Reagan Speaks out against socialized medicine.

Is there any wonder why we miss this guy? Those who say he was only an actor just don’t have a clue. This was twenty years before he became President when he was only 50-years-old. Don’t miss the last three minutes… ◄Dave►

Send them this link: END22.COM

FACING CRISIS WITH LEADERSHIP

During the last Great Crisis Franklin Delano Roosevelt led America out of the Great Depression and through World War II. Today, Barack Obama leads us through the worst Economic Crisis since the Great Depression and leads the War on Terror.

We are wise enough to choose our own leader and to decide how long that leader will serve.

Oh, I should have warned you not to follow it yourself. Try gargling with Scope to get the taste out of your mouth… ◄Dave►

“Honduras Defends Its Democracy - Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object.” – is the devastating title of a WSJ article by Mary Anastasia O’Grady, which is a must read:

Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

[...]

Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.

[...]

The OAS response is no surprise. Former Argentine Ambassador to the U.N. Emilio Cárdenas told me on Saturday that he was concerned that “the OAS under Insulza has not taken seriously the so-called ‘democratic charter.’ It seems to believe that only military ‘coups’ can challenge democracy. The truth is that democracy can be challenged from within, as the experiences of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and now Honduras, prove.” A less-kind interpretation of Mr. Insulza’s judgment is that he doesn’t mind the Chávez-style coup.

The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.

True colors, indeed! It looks like our hapless administration is on the wrong side yet again. Before one buys the notion that what just happened in Honduras was a “coup,” I recommend reading the whole article. Why can’t we have a Supreme Court that upholds the rule of law? ◄Dave►

In a tweet on twitter yesterday, Glenn Beck asks:

What part of this Iranian situation can we learn from? What part of US can we see there but blind to here? NOT THE GOV, but We the People?

Several points come to mind:

• Beck has only been on Twitter for two weeks and already over 50K people are “following” his remarks there. Were it not for Twitter itself, we wouldn’t know too much about what is happening in Iran.
• Even Fox News is lamenting that they cannot verify the “unfiltered” Twitter reports and cell phone camera YouTube videos coming out of Iran. Oh, the horrors… unfiltered news. Talk about allowing the viewer to decide…
• Most of the traffic is not meant for the West, but is for coordination between the protesters/revolutionaries within Iran.
• Put the above together and realize that if the Mullahs could stop the Tweeting and YouTubing they would! That they can’t is profound and worth pondering for our own upcoming revolution.

This classic picture of Iranian protesters:

…brings further points to mind:

• How tragic it is to be born as chattel into a collective thugocracy, where an individual has no value and can be beaten or killed by government henchmen on a whim.
• How inspirational – yet pathetic – it is to see grown men resorting to throwing rocks at oppressors with guns.
• Note to our own tormentors: Don’t even think about trying to disarm Americans – our dignity won’t permit it and our streets don’t have rocks.
• Hmmm… What percentage of Tea Party demonstrators have CCW permits?

I read Beck’s new book, “Common Sense,” yesterday. I found it a disappointing letdown, and had to keep reminding myself that I was not the audience; because there was nothing new for me. To awakening sheeple, who have never been exposed to the truths therein, It will be a valuable read and a road map to further study. More importantly, however, like Thomas Paine’s original, it is not just a well written case against an out of control government; it is a serious call to action.

With nearly a million copies already in print, it is still hard to find a copy in a book store. I had to drive 15 miles to find mine, as all the local stores were sold out. One hell of a lot of people are going to read this book as it gets passed around among friends and family. I suspect it will have the intended effect, of awakening even more Americans to our plight at the hands of the Progressives, and sending a lot more of us into the streets in protest. I sure hope we are ready for the consequences.

I don’t know if his repeated exhortation that the revolution he is calling for can be accomplished bloodlessly is naivete, wishful thinking, or just CYA; but it sure isn’t common sense. It has taken the Progressives over a hundred years to get to this glorious point in their agenda to squash individual liberty and install their collectivist utopia in America. To suggest that the Organizer in Chief’s ACORN thugs and Union organizing goons are going to just allow peaceful protests by awakening individualists to undo all their Obamessiah has achieved, is almost laughable.

At some point, long before Beck’s 912′ers reach critical mass and can rally around a central theme, there will be a deliberate provocation to cause exasperated Patriots to react violently. Everyone knows that there are plenty of loose cannons out there just itching to start shooting. Not all have the requisite discipline and they will be easy to provoke. Then, the Obamedia will kick in with a massive demonization job on the “Right Wing Hate Mongering Militia.” (Already I note that even Fox News is calling the Iranian mullah’s universally despised and bloodthirsty “Basij” their “militia.”)

The timid among the 912′ers will immediately disappear from the scene, so as not to be tarred with that ugly brush. Then, the progressives will pass new onerous gun control laws and probably try to disarm us. THAT will be the provocation that starts civil war in America, and all bets are off on how it will turn out. Then, we get to discover how many of our police and military respect our Constitution and their oath to preserve it. In any case, it won’t be pretty; but I just don’t see a way to avoid it. Glenn is fooling himself if he thinks he does. Just remember, it will be the Patriots on defense and the Progressives on offense, regardless how they try to spin it. Buckle up and be prepared. ◄Dave►

It doesn’t get any better than this from Robin of Berkeley in the American Thinker: Why Do Liberals Bleed?

I’ve been thinking about learning how to fire a gun, maybe even buying one. Now if you are a lifelong conservative, Red State dweller, and NRA member, you might be thinking, “Big yawn. What’s next? She’ll be telling us what she had for breakfast?”

So let me try to convey to you the enormousness, the Alice in Wonderland quality of my even posing the question, something I’ve never, ever considered in my life. No one I know owns a gun. I’ve never seen a gun (well on a holster of a police officer but I never wanted to get up close and personal with it). I have given lots of good money over the years for gun control. Learning to fire a gun seems as ludicrous as deciding to take up brain surgery.

But, I am rethinking absolutely everything. There is not a single thing that I believed, that I held absolute and holy, that is not up for grabs. My brain is in a tizzy 24/7 and I don’t know if up is down, or if east is west.

And the thought about a gun just came to me last week when I was listening to talk radio. A caller related how an armed citizen in the South stopped a take over robbery in a fast food restaurant. A light went on in my head. Suddenly I realized that the Red States may be on to something: the police are strongly supported, the citizens have guns, and, therefore, the gangsters may be a little reluctant to take over the local Burger King.

Contrast that to the Blue States where few liberals own guns and the police are being emasculated. You may have heard of the horrendous case in Oakland where four cops were killed by a known felon, on a parole violation for child rape. But the powers that be in Oakland sent out the message to the police to make nice and not scare the populace, so the officers never drew their guns when approaching this felon. (Anyone else notice how the Left is slowly but surely disarming the police and military, situation-by-situation?) When I expressed my heartfelt grief to a friend about the deaths of these brave officers, he said, “The man who shot them was a human being too.”

(I’d like to say that, as a psychotherapist, I responded in a sophisticated and psychologically crafty manner. No such luck. I almost blew a gasket, turned bright red, and said with barely contained anger, “He lost his claim to be human when he raped a child.” To the friend’s credit — and perhaps some fear on his part — he shut up.)

So what I realized during the talk show is that in places like Berkeley, only the criminals have the power. Not only do they have the power of guns, they are supported by several thousand brainwashed zombies who give the green light to criminals because they are the victims of someone else’s “privilege” and “supremacy” and “imperialism.” (Although I was a leftist until recently, I was the rare exception: I never excused crime because of the bad guy’s race, creed, age, sex, or daddy being a meanie.)

I recall vividly what a Berkeley police officer once told me:

“Berkeley is a city of victims. You try to understand the street people and the criminals and sit down and talk to them and then they hit you on the head and steal your purse. The police come and then you refuse to press charges. The criminals know this and prey on you.”

And he’s right: almost everyone I know has been a victim of some awful crime, from being in restaurants during takeover robberies (not uncommon here), to being robbed at gunpoint, to being assaulted for no other reason except a thrill for the assailants. A neighbor, who had lived all over the world, once said to me, “Berkeley is the most dangerous place I’ve ever lived.” Her husband was robbed at gunpoint as were almost all her friends. She couldn’t wait to get out of here.

I wish I could say I’m an exception to the victim rule. But several years ago I was coming out of a restaurant in a decent area and was mugged. As Gavin de Becker states in his seminal book, The Gift of Fear, (which I, unfortunately, read after the fact), victims generally sense when they’re about to be victimized but ignore the signs in order to be nice and not judgmental. This was my situation exactly. I could tell right away that the guy looked sinister. But it was a major street, at high noon, and I didn’t want to seem racist, so I turned the corner a few feet to reach my car, and a minute later, had my purse stolen as well as all my feelings of being safe in the world.

I’ll spare you (and me) the horrible details, but the incident ended with my having a broken nose and two black eyes, and needing surgery for the nose several days later. People wrote bad checks and stole rental cars in my name for a year afterwards. I developed a fear not only of people, but of the phone and the mail, as every day was another reminder of what happened.

Witness the response of a left wing friend, Judy, when I told her I was mugged. She said, and I quote, “I don’t think what you went through was so bad. And anyway he was a victim too.” (Maybe it’s a good thing I wasn’t armed back then.)

So I’m asking myself whether I should become armed, and I’m also wondering why so many “educated” people (I might have just answered my own question) put up with crime infested streets? Why are the biggest protests against the cops? Why are the innocent viewed as guilty, and the guilty innocent? Why is no one up in arms about liberals literally bleeding?

Then it occurred to me: Stockholm Syndrome, the same brainwashing that turned Berkeley resident Patty Hearst into Tania the bank robber. She was tortured, sexually abused, and kept in isolation by the far left group, the Symbionese Liberation Army (kissing cousins of Bill and Bernadine’s Weather Underground). Successfully brainwashed, she joined their twisted and sick “army.”

In the real Stockholm, the hostages were locked in a vault for days, came to “love” their captors in that perverted way that an abused woman loves her husband, and refused to testify against them in court. One even became engaged to her captor.

SS (good acronym, huh?) is rooted in a basic, primordial instinct for self protection in the wake of extraordinary trauma and terror. To survive, the victim identifies with the captors and merges psychologically with them. But SS takes on a life of its own when victims stop seeing their own humanity and want only to serve the abuser.

Living in places like Berkeley, being force fed propaganda, with police afraid to protect you, your friends unsympathetic, and no one armed, SS can spread like a virus. What starts out as compassion morphs into complicity. Occasionally there may be someone, like me, who snaps out of the trance they’ve been in for decades. After all, Tania woke up and became Patty Hearst again and, interestingly, married her bodyguard. (I bet that they own a whole lot of weapons.) But she had to leave Berkeley for a leafy, sheltered life elsewhere to do this.

But then again, I never bought into the notion of collective guilt, that groups of people are guilty because of the color of their skin, and individuals are exonerated because of some protected victim status. I’m the rare bird. In Berkeley, most people are so over identified with their ideology, that their logical, questioning minds have flown the coop along with a God-given knowledge, possessed by every 5 year old, of right and wrong.

As a good, loyal liberal, I always expected others to take care of me. If I gave my unqualified loyalty to the system, I could sleep well at night. But now, with victims left bleeding, a dangerously naive government, and sheep like masses, I see the absurdity of my thinking.

I heard a philosopher once say that one of the biggest existential tasks of life is giving up the fantasy of the ultimate rescuer. Liberalism reinforced this fantasy for me, as it does for so many others. Now I see the truth: We come into this world alone, and we will leave it alone. When we live our lives in the back seat of the car expecting Daddy to drive us, we only have a child’s view of the world.

On that very dark day in November years ago when I became an object of someone’s evil and inhumanity, I glimpsed a truth I never wanted to see: that there really is no protection, not in the way I had always thought, not by other flawed humans. I didn’t know what to do with this insight until 1 1/2 years ago when I discovered that there were others out there like me, that there was something called conservatism, and now slowly but surely the pieces are coming together for me, one by one.

As I continue on the path to independence and personal responsibility, perhaps looking to myself for protection is another step on my journey.

What is the old cliché… a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged? I think she is on to something. To the Progressive sheeple, the Obamessiah is their “ultimate rescuer.” They are desperate to be rescued from the terrifying specter of adulthood and personal responsibility. Welcome to sanity, Robin… buy the gun… while you still can. ◄Dave►

This profound letter is about to go viral; so I may as well help with the effort:

I’m a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you’re willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?

Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:

One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I’m not a racist. This isn’t to be confused with legal immigration.

Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.

Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.

Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.

Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don’t you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!

Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don’t you start there.

Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don’t trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.

Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why ‑‑ what do you have against shareholders making a profit?

Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.

Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we’ll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band‑Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.

Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let’s have it. Let’s say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try ‑‑ please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.

Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.

Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let’s just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I’m busy. I’m busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.

From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don’t want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we’re morons.

We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we’re so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn’t ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when hewill rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.

Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don’t care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

Janet Contreras

Now if a few more would awaken, we might have a chance… ◄Dave►

Today is Flag Day. I haven’t even turned the TV on today, so I have no idea whether any Americans are celebrating it. Increasingly these days, I don’t much care. Watching my country disintegrate all around me is depressing and there is a nagging component that keeps reminding me that the sheeple in this country are getting exactly what they deserve.

I always remember Flag Day because it is also the day I got out of the US Army 43 years ago. It is interesting that now I harbor some pride in my service; but at the time, 14 June 1966 was the happiest day of my life. Three years on a voluntary enlistment was more than enough to convince me that I wasn’t cut out to unquestioningly follow orders given by mental midgets. One sees old veterans decked out in their uniforms on patriotic occasions. All I kept was my field jacket. Perhaps it was the times; but Vietnam era veterans were seldom respected for our service, much less thanked for it. The esprit de corps was cool; they made a man out of me; and I did my duty; but I learned I preferred to give sensible orders to following foolish ones.

I now have a new reason to remember this supposedly patriotic day that is rather sad, when one contemplates it. I got up at 0230 this morning for a mission I generally steadfastly refuse. In my mind, everything from Ventura to San Diego is “LA.” To me, it is a vast urban wasteland sans intelligent life. I eschew all attempts to get me to travel south of Santa Barbara, but I agreed on this morning to take my partner to LAX to catch a plane bound for India. We are exploring a joint venture with an Indian company in the process of franchising Montessori schools there.

She is providing a Montessori Teacher Training Course for them this summer and will be gone at least two months and perhaps twice that. It is somewhat exciting to be able to assist folks seriously interested in a real education for their children, which is not just a government provided Marxist indoctrination. One would think that with California about to go bankrupt, they might reconsider their decision to add universal preschool to their budget, which is devastating the private preschool business here. It is also intriguing to notice that India is growing and modernizing, not crumbling and dying like America. After reading Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” a few years ago, I have had a very different perspective of India.

Thus, I asked her to investigate and look seriously into the idea of emigrating to India to get the hell away from these Progressive fools, who are choking the life out of my country. I have lived in eight countries, and as patriotic as I am about my own, I am always amused by the American mindset that we live in the best place on earth. While I agree that the average American generally has a better lifestyle than the average citizen anywhere else, there is much to be said for being in the aristocracy of a third world country.

An educated entrepreneurial American living abroad has a much better lifestyle than is generally available here. The pinnacle of my life was my time in the Seychelles Islands at the age of 22, literally making more money than could be spent there. My five bedroom mansion on a 30 acre coconut plantation cost me $300 a month. Servants were $10 a month each, so I had five of them. The manager groveled every time I walked in the bank. They put “Esquire” after my name on my bank statements, because nobody could have that much money without a title. I was automatically invited to all the Governor’s diplomatic cocktail parties. The police tipped their hats and said, “Good Morning, Sir” as they stepped aside when I walked down the street. Life has been downhill every since.

I doubt that I will move to India, but the very idea that I am considering it at this age says a lot about my assessment of the prospects of the future of America. It is dim and growing dimmer by the day… and that is indeed sad. ◄Dave►

Forty-eight years later the message is more important than ever; but the GOP long ago abandoned defending capitalism, much less logic and reason. ◄Dave►

“Benefit spending soars to new high“:

The recession is driving the safety net of government benefits to a historic high, as one of every six dollars of Americans’ income is now coming in the form of a federal or state check or voucher.

Benefits, such as Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance and health care, accounted for 16.2% of personal income in the first quarter of 2009, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That’s the highest percentage since the government began compiling records in 1929.

In all, government spending on benefits will top $2 trillion in 2009 — an average of $17,000 provided to each U.S. household, federal data show. Benefits rose at a 19% annual rate in the first quarter compared to the last three months of 2008.

I can remember when $17K in annual income put a family into the uppermost tier of the middle class. Then, back then $17K would purchase 485 ounces of gold – do the math.

The safety net is working, advocates say.

“We’re not seeing the hunger we saw in the 1930s because the food stamp program is doing what it’s supposed to do,” says Florida food stamp director Jennifer Lange.
…
• Food stamps. Enrollment hit a record 33.2 million people in March, up 5.2 million from last year. The stimulus law boosted the size of the benefit. Average March benefit: $114 per person.

That is 11% of our population on food stamps! What happens when price increases catch up with the obscene currency inflation and $114 won’t buy a loaf of bread? And $114 per loaf would be cheap by Weimar standards – it couldn’t buy a crumb in Zimbabwe.

Adam Lerrick, economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says the benefits’ explosion will eventually lead to an economic crisis.

“We’ve seen this movie before in many countries. It always has the same ending,” he says.

Natch… one definition of insanity is repeating something that has already been tried and expecting a different result. ◄Dave►