Who Remembers "Guns and Butter"? (We're caught in a black hole)
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: Who Remembers "Guns and Butter"? (We're caught in a black
hole)
Date: Feb 16, 2009 5:40 AM
There is no way out. Obama realizes this
now. What would happen if we brought all those
trained gunmen home to the Worst Great Depression?
There is no way out of the financial collapse because
the only place the money for the Stimulus will come is
from the printing presses.
It cannot be that the Bigs have any other plan for
America than War-For-Resources and/or Hired-World-Police
or the Destruction of the United States.
It's gravity. Momentum. We're stuck in a vortex.
Now, the only thing to do is for the Governors of the
States to tell their people to feed themselves.
Local farms, local energy production, local employment,
local, local, local. The Town Fathers will have to
get on the stick and take charge.
Think that will happen?
The Town Fathers don't even know they're the Town
Fathers. Even the State-Employee-Town-Fathers don't
see that they're the OWNERS of the society. They're
always looking for some new thing to get free from
the State- the rest of us.
Aren't nearly a quarter of the employed populace
government employees?
Okay, the real number is 23%.
I exaggerated.
A quarter are on Dot Guv Welfare.
A quarter are unemployed.
A quarter work in the defense industry.
And the rest work in the medical fields,
"finance," insurance, pleasure, hotels,
bars, restaurants, legal, and automobiles.
And 100% are greedy morons who think somebody
owes them something. (And Sundays are for ball
games end of discussion.)
Go ahead and *TRY* to talk to the Town Fathers.
Any idea that won't benefit their own little
personal businesses - but that would benefit
the town's independence in these food and
energy matters - meets with a lung-ectomy.
*Try* it.
The entire country is mentally ill, which means
"their brains are broken" and can't be repaired.
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
================
http://vdare.com/roberts/090215_remembers.htm
February 15, 2009
Who Remembers "Guns and Butter"?
By Paul Craig Roberts
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of Great Society spending and
Vietnam War is credited with the rising American inflation that
persisted until checked by President Reagan’s supply-side policy.
In Johnson’s time the American economy and the US dollar were strong,
and there was no current account deficit. Yet, LBJ’s policy of guns
and butter did long-term harm.
The Bush/Obama 21st century policy of guns and butter makes LBJ look
like a piker.
The 2009 and 2010 federal budget deficits will be monstrous even
without guns. But Obama is exiting (apparently) the Iraq War in order
to start two, possibly three, more wars.
Obama has announced a doubling of US troops in Afghanistan. Widening
that war will require the US to occupy, or attempt to occupy, parts of
Pakistan. The disrespect for Pakistan’s sovereignty will further
radicalize that large, nuclear-armed country and bring Pakistan, or at
least parts of it, into armed conflict with the US.
As if this isn’t enough new war, President Obama (and the incoming CIA
director, Leon Panetta), accused Iran of developing a nuclear weapon,
an uninformed accusation that stands in conflict with the National
Intelligence Estimate, [PDF] which concludes that Iran halted all work
on a nuclear weapon years ago.
Shades of "weapons of mass destruction" and "al Qaeda connections!"
The Bush Regime and the complicit US media persisted in accusing
Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction, weapons that
the prime minister of Britain, Tony Blair, otherwise known as Bush’s
poodle, said could be employed in "45 minutes." National security
adviser Condi Rice and VP Cheney warned of "mushroom clouds" going up
over American cities.
All of these lies were told in the face of the documented evidence
from weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq that no weapons of mass
destruction existed.
Now Obama is employing the same tactic, creating fear over nonexistent
Iranian nuclear weapons.
Even without the massive expense of the bailout and stimulus programs,
the US has no capability of fighting wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
and Iran. Conflict with Iran would likely bring Iraq, now in the
hands of Shi’ites allied with Iran, into the conflict. The entire
Middle East would likely explode. Considering that the US had to end
the war in Iraq by paying the Sunni insurgents not to fight and by
agreeing to a withdrawal agreement dictated by the Shi’ite government,
there are no prospects for US success in such an extensive new war.
Before Obama overcommits the US both financially and militarily, he
needs to find some competent advisors. Overreach is heading for new
levels that will bring America to its knees.
Obama has only been in office a couple of weeks, and he is already
proving to be even more reckless than Bush. Bush’s largest guns and
butter deficit was $455 billion. Obama’s 2009 budget deficit will be
at least $2 trillion, a five-fold increase in one year, to be followed
by another monster deficit in 2010.
The US has never had such near-term massive financing requirements,
much less at a time when the rest of the world is in economic turmoil
and very displeased with the US.
Obama needs a reality check and an escape from Washington hubris. If
the US cannot finance its monster deficits except by printing money,
it will mean the end of the dollar as reserve currency and the end of
American power.
Mr. President, as you said in your first press conference on February
9, the party really is over.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments,
including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and
International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research
Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the
Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the
author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of
Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and
Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with
Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How
Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name
of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview
with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.