Obamacare: Is It A Divide-And-Conquer Distraction?

In March of 2010, Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as “Obamacare”) into law amid a host of economic uncertainties and unwanted Federal Reserve bailouts. Two years before, Washington had confirmed the passage of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) measures that had already met with disapproval from, according to some polls, more than 80 percent of Americans. In the meantime, the Occupy Wall Street movement was gaining momentum, involving elements of both traditionally Republican and traditionally Democratic organizations. Self-proclaimed “conservatives” and “liberals” were beginning to find common ground on issues ranging from the overall fiscal system to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The consensus was clear: Government had grown corrupt, power-hungry, and ultimately destructive to every citizen regardless of his political affiliation.

However, certain hot-button issues always seem to flood government rhetoric and the mainstream media whenever the U.S. citizenry begins to unify, causing renewed rifts and luring Americans to fight among themselves while the cruise ship on which we are floating sinks into the abyss. Those on the left believe Obamacare is a genuine attempt to institute socialized medicine, and they love it. Those on the right believe Obamacare is a genuine attempt to institute socialized medicine, and they despise it. But what if Obamacare’s government-controlled healthcare plan is only a secondary pursuit, while cutting America down the middle is the first goal?

Consider this: The launch of Obamacare comes at a time when the official national debt of the United States is about $17 trillion and the national deficit is some $1 trillion per year. Keep in mind that when Obama was elected in 2008, the official national debt stood at only $10 trillion. That means the Obama Administration has added more than $7 trillion in debt in only five years, and I can barley fathom how much more damage he can do in the time he has left as president.

While mainstream talking heads with low IQs proclaim victory for the Obama camp because of a supposedly “shrinking” deficit, what they either fail to mention or are too stupid to understand is that the official reporting of the deficit DOES NOT account for real deficit expenditures each year. The official deficit does not include what government number crunchers call “unfunded liabilities,” like Social Security and Medicare, or off-book agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The average taxpayer suffers the costs of such expenditures yet they are never counted in official statistics. If one were to tally our true national debt, including “unfunded liabilities,” it would stand anywhere from $120 trillion to more than $200 trillion. The true deficit skyrockets to more than $5 trillion per year (and growing) when such programs are included.

It is hard to say whether Obamacare costs will be openly included in official debt numbers or hidden like most entitlement programs. The point is, the government has been lying for quite some time, under multiple Presidents, about the real state of the U.S. economy.

When the White House claims in its talking points that government-assisted healthcare will require a net payment of only $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years, what method of accounting is used? Is this the total cost or just the “official cost” minus off-book liabilities? Even if this ends up being the full and complete spending required, how can Washington afford to burn another $1.1 trillion on top of $5 trillion a year already in the red?

If our national debt continues to climb exponentially, as it has in the wake of the Administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, will we see another $7 trillion or more added to the “official” number in the next five years, and can our country sustain such debt levels without imploding in on itself like a fashion model?

According to The Washington Post, Obamacare is now a fact of life, even in the face of agovernment shutdown.

But is this claim really true, or is it just empty posturing? You may like Obamacare, or you may hate Obamacare; but the fact remains that we CANNOT AFFORD Obamacare at this time. So my first question to proponents of socialized medicine would be:

Where is the money going to come from?

More taxes? How can Obamacare be funded by increased taxes, when the average median household income has fallen every year for five years in a row.

How about more taxes for the super rich? Four hundred of America’s top earners brought in an average adjusted gross income of $202 million in 2009. If each of these people were taxed 100 percent of their annual taxable income in act of total criminal disregard for free markets, the resulting $80 billion in revenue would still not be enough to fund Obamacare, let alone our already existing massive debts.

If taxes won’t do the job, what about foreign treasury investment?

U.S. Treasury holdings by foreign creditors witnessed a record sell-off in June of this year, and subsequent purchases have not covered the loss in recent months.

The majority of all recent Treasury purchases by foreign investors are short-term bonds, meaning international faith in America’s ability to cover its debts has fallen considerably. Creditors now want only bonds that mature quickly, so that they can be liquidated at a moment’s notice. Foreign investment in the United States is currently either static or dropping, depending on the country, meaning no extra cash flow for Obamacare.

At bottom, Obamacare is doomed to failure. The money simply does not exist in order to cover the cost. The math does not add up. Period.

Now, I can understand hard-core socialists being too dim-witted to wrap their heads around this problem. After all, the average socialist thinks government funds will infinitely expand to meet the needs of infinite demand, as long as public wealth is “harmonized” in the process. Socialists are utterly unable to imagine that the money may run out one day, thus decimating the economy.

But what about the establishment? Are the central banking elite and their minions really unaware that Obamacare is unsustainable? I think not.

Government bureaucrats and central bankers carefully create our false economic reality on a daily basis. They receive hard financial data and then spin it to suit very particular needs. Each statistic is crafted and manipulated to elicit a specific public response.  Those who dominate the establishment hierarchy are exposed regularly to our dire fiscal position, hide the information and its consequences, yet, we are supposed to believe that they are “not aware” of the eventual result?  Obama and the elites who pull his strings are fully conscious that our economy is on the verge of complete collapse, and they are aware that Obamacare in its current form will never survive. So why continue with the charade if there is no mathematical possibility that the program will succeed?

Social division is the only plausible answer.

Universal healthcare has been a longtime pursuit of the left, and many Democrats are willing to forgo or completely ignore other dangerous political developments surrounding the White House as long as they finally attain socialized medicine. I have personally engaged in numerous debates with Obama supporters, pointing out his transgressions against the Constitution and the Mideast, his close relationships with the banking elite, and his willingness to throw aside his own promises. Amazingly, some of his supporters admit that Obama is monstrous in many respects, but they STILL defend him on the basis that “at least he’s going to give us free healthcare.”  Kill children in foreign lands, trample the Constitution, but fill their prescription for free, and they’ll call you Papa Obama!

In this way, the establishment has retained about 30 percent of the American population as political cannon fodder to be exploited at will by the Obama Administration. And if a government shutdown takes place over Obamacare measures, that percentage may climb as citizens are duped into believing that Tea Party Republicans and their “unwillingness to compromise” are to blame for the situation.  In fact, the entire thrust of the mainstream media’s approach to the government shutdown has been to point out the legitimate consequences in the wake of a default (to which there are many), then proceed to outline how all of these horrors will be the result of conservative “brinksmanship”.

If you understand that both major parties are nothing but two sides to the same globalist coin, then the idea of “brinksmanship” one way or the other becomes ridiculous.  The Republican leadership plays the role of the staunch limited spending watchdog, but usually rolls over because secretly they are just as fond of centralization and debt creation as the Democrats.  But what if this time, the script says they aren’t supposed to roll over?  What if this time, traditional conservatives are meant to take the blame for throwing the American economy into disrepute, all over Obamacare?

What the Liberty Movement needs to keep in mind during the chaos of the debt debate is that it may not ultimately be about Obamacare at all.  Instead, the debt debate may be about drawing artificial lines between the American people and letting us tear each others’ throats out.  In the meantime, fingers may point to OUR defining principles as the trigger to the madness.  Only time will tell, and the consensus holds that there is “no way” the Republicans will stand fast or that the debt ceiling will remain stationary.  But, questions need to be asked here.  Does the shutdown and the illusion of Obamacare serve a greater purpose?

The establishment knows that a financial crisis is upon us.  The establishment essentially engineered this crisis through artificially low interest rates and the deliberate spread of toxic derivatives.  But, it wants YOU to believe that the inevitable collapse was caused by something or someone else.  By “political gridlock,” foreign fiscal schemes or “conservative hubris.” It does not want members of the public to draw any connections between their suffering and the international banking elite behind the greater catastrophe. Obamacare is a red herring.  It’s smoke and mirrors.  It’s a distraction. And, while we battle over a program that will never find adequate funding anyway, the rest of the economic system crumbles.

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

A View Over Bosporus

The heavy loaded cargo boats, passenger liners, cruise ships and plentiful ferries packed with tourists steam by the Maiden Tower rising from the black rock amid lucid waters; they gingerly make their way past the mountain-like mosques on the mainland into the Bosporus, this huge God-made river running between the Med and the Black Sea. The City, one of the greatest Capitals of Man of all time, has straddled Europe and Asia since the days of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who established this New Rome. It was the biggest city on earth a millennium ago, and it is still vast. Fifteen million people live in the City, twenty million visit it annually. Its greatness explains a strange vision of the heretic Russian historian Anatol Fomenko who claimed that Jerusalem, Rome, Babylon, Moscow and London are but misplaced images of this city, the original Empire.

Despite its size and history, the city is alert and vibrant in a peaceful, even demure way. It does not feel crowded – apart from the hotspots. The streets are clean, the greenery is neatly trimmed, the ugly street flea markets of recent years are gone; old buildings have been given a facelift, crumbling palaces have been repaired at no cost spared. The Bosporus has been cleaned up too, and sewage no longer flows into it – for the first time ever. Modern freeways encircle and cross its suburbs but do not intrude into the historical precincts.

The former seat of the Caliphate and home to an Islamist government, the City found a good balance between faith and modernity. Sufi schools are plentiful and learned men discuss theology, comparing Aquinas and Palamas with Ibn Arabi and Ibn Tufail. Muezzins’ harmonious calls to prayer do not disturb café customers sipping their drinks. Girls are free to wear headscarves or miniskirts and they do exercise both options.

More importantly, the government does not subscribe to unrestricted market economics and has thereby avoided the neoliberal excesses of its neighbours. There are many municipally-owned cafés, especially in the parks, where prices are quite affordable, even in the luxurious old imperial palaces, where no entrance fees are charged. They do not serve alcohol, and attract families with children. Downtown, the rents are kept low to allow bookshops to survive and flourish. The global squeeze is as apparent in Turkey as everywhere else, but here poor people receive tangible subsidies in kind, while the salaried classes are given generous loans to tide them over. Prices are kept under control, avoiding rapid increases; conspicuous consumption is discouraged. The rich are rich, and the poor are poor, but rich are not ostentatious and the poor are not desperate.

People are modest, helpful and inoffensive;- a far cry from the Turkey of theMidnight Express. They are rather honest and straightforward, and do not make a show of themselves. They are not very artistic, and their cuisine is comparable to the British one. If it is not a great compliment, it was not meant to be: they were Empire builders, and such nations usually are no great gourmands. The French ate too well, and their women were too appealing for their empire to last.

Istanbul is not the only oasis of prosperity in the country, as is often the case with capital cities outside of Europe. Now I have travelled the breadth of Turkey and all over I’ve witnessed the modernisation of the last ten years. Roads are smooth, houses are in good repair, markets are full, people are well-dressed, the cities are neither drab nor garish but quite up-to-date. This is a great achievement of the moderate Islamist government led by Prime Minister Erdogan.

Turkey is no longer the basket case it was in 1960s and 1970s. I’ve met a few Turkish immigrants in Germany, who said that their fathers made a hasty decision when they left home for Europe forty years ago. They would like to go back to Turkey, though it would not be easy to find work and to reconnect to a new environment, for they were reared in Western Europe. Anyway, there is no mass emigration out of Turkey; the nightmare of millions of Turks moving to Europe has dissipated. They would rather stay at home, for the Turks are very proud of their own country.

Erdogan is popular with the people. He is a real charismatic, people tell me. He defeated his adversaries, and his position at the helm is undisputed. And for good reasons: Turkey is doing nicely, thank you. The country prospers, incomes have doubled, and the GNP tripled (a very remarkable one trillion euro GNP is within reach). The Erdogan government can really congratulate itself on the fine job they’ve done in Turkey.

II

The Turks have overcome the huge trauma of the Transfer, as the mass deportations and expulsions of 1920s are called. Though the Greeks of the City weren’t expelled, almost all other Christian communities of Turkey were sent to Greece, while the Muslims of Greece were deported to Turkey: a violent and painful divorce of two closely knit communities. As in many a divorce, the separated partners – the clever wife and the strong husband – spent years adjusting to their new position.

The Greeks suffered the most. They were spread all over the Empire and occupied central positions. Some Turkish historians prefer to call the Ottoman rule “The Turko-Greek Empire”. The Greeks were Great Viziers of the Empire; they ruled and managed the Med from Alexandria to Damascus to Istanbul; they traded and wrote poems in the days of the Second Rome just as they did under the sceptre of First Rome. Suddenly, they were corralled into a small and parochial Greece where they hardly could find their place. The Alexandrian poet Kavafy strongly felt that little Athens could never substitute for the loss of the great seaboard cities. Today’s Greek crisis can’t be understood without this bit of history.

The Turks suffered as well. Traditionally, they had served in the military and worked the soil; without the Greeks, trades and crafts declined, militarisation went unchecked, food shortages were common, life was drab and brutish, as if their culture had sailed overseas with the Greeks. Only now, many years later, the Turks have managed to recover, and recover they did.

Erdogan’s government is good to the Christian communities. The previous Kemalist governments of the Turkish Republic were viciously anti-Christian, even more than they were nationalistic and anti-Islamic. They deported even Caramanli Turks, for they were Christians. They forbade the remaining churches to be repaired; the priests could not be brought from abroad. Now, church properties are being restored, funds returned, priests are allowed to come, stay and acquire Turkish citizenship.

The Islamist government allowed the Greeks and Armenians who had left the country after the riots and pogroms of 1950s to come back, reclaim their property and settle again in Turkey. Previously unimaginable, an idea of a union with Greece began to be pondered again.

The Turks are not the only suitors of the beautiful Hellas: the Russians also would like to take her, their sister-in-Christ, ditched by the West, into the embrace of their Eurasian Union. So declared Sergey Glaziev, the coordinator of the union (including now Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan) at the recent Rhodes Forum, a top-crème gathering of Russians, Asians and dissident Westerners. The offers are not mutually exclusive: one can imagine their ménage-a-trois, a new Byzantine Empire Resurrected. The moderately Muslim and Turkic Kazakhstan is an old friend to Turkey, so such an alliance is plausible. Another turn of the screw by Frau Merkel, and it is may happen.

In Greece, re-evaluation of the Empire is also going on. There are voices calling for the reassessment of the past, for recognition of the advantages to both sides, and for proceeding cautiously. Dimitri Kitsikis is one such voice, and I’ve heard more of them while visiting Athens. The interaction is not limited to practicalities, either. Last Sunday, I went to a modest Greek Church in a suburb of Istanbul, and there I met a young Greek priest, a recent arrival from Greece who had already mastered Turkish, and even more surprisingly, I met a few ethnic Turks who had embraced Orthodox Christianity and were attending the service. The participants benevolently and indulgently smiled while they recited the Lord’s Prayer in Turkish.

III

And all these wonderful achievements they intend to destroy, squander and let go down the drain. I refer to the Turkish government’s plotting against Syria. It would be bad enough if they were to send their legions to Damascus. It would be wrong but comprehensible, for Damascus and Aleppo are as much parts of their past for Turks, as Kiev and Riga are for Russians, or Vienna and Tirol are for Germans. But what they are doing instead is much worse.

The Turks are about to replay the Afghan scenario as it was played by Pakistan: they bring together from all over the Muslim world the most fanatical militants, supply them with arms, and infiltrate them over the Syrian border under their artillery cover.

There are reports that the jihadists of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were flownfrom North Waziristan in Pakistan to the Turkish border with Syria, for instance on a Turkish Air Airbus flight No. 709 on September 10, under auspices of the Turkish intelligence agency, via the Karachi-Istanbul flight route. The

93 militants were originally from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and included a group of Arabs residing in Waziristan. This report could not be independently checked, but there are many reports of foreign jihadists who made their way to Syria via Turkey.

This is exactly what Pakistan did under the US guidance in 1980s. Then, Afghanistan had a secular government, women worked as teachers, universities were full, factories were being built, and opium was unheard of; Pakistan was in a good shape, too. A few years later, Afghanistan imploded in civil war (under the guise of “fighting the godless communists”), and Pakistan followed it to perdition. After undoing Afghanistan, the warriors began to terrorise their Pakistani host. Now Pakistan is one of the most miserable countries in the world. It was eaten up by the disease they nourished and exported, by mindless jihadism.

This ideological disease is akin to biological warfare. You may hope your neighbours will be infected with the pest you have delivered, but you may be sure your population will eventually get it, too. For this reason nobody has tried biological warfare on a large scale. It is suicidal. And that is the equivalent of what the Turkish government is doing now. They bring jihadists to Syria, but it is only a question of time when the jihadists will turn on Turkey.

I respect the Islamic feelings of the Turks. I see them in the mosques; I know their Sufi orders and their mass appeal. So many Turks gather in Konya, where they venerate the memory of the great Sufi poet Rumi, who is loved from California to Teheran. The Islamic government was a real success in Turkey. So why do they now want to follow Pakistan’s way to perdition?

An essay written by Ahmet Davutoglu, Foreign Minister and chief promoter of Turkish intervention in Syria, answers this question. He wrote it as a university student, over 20 years ago, and an acquaintance who studied with him, remembers it well. We can and we should make a deal with Satan if necessary, the young Davutoglu had written.

In his view, Sunni Islam of the type  practiced in the Empire under Sultan Selim the Grim and his successors (that postulates an unbridgeable schism between the Creator and Creation) is not just the only true faith; it is an iron-clad guarantee of good results. A state guided by it can’t do wrong. Even evil deeds by such a state will be turned by the Almighty into good results. For this reason, he wrote, the Empire managed to survive and rule for 600 years.

That’s why, wrote the young Davutoglu, Islamist Turkey may build alliances with powerful partners, and it is irrelevant whether these powers are bad or good. This means, that we may even make a Faustian pact with the devil himself, for we shall triumph by our beliefs and with the Almighty’s help. America is a Satan for Davutoglu, as it is for many Muslims, but armed with his dubious philosophy, he is prepared to join with Satan for the further glory of Turkey.

Could this very unorthodox reading of Islam be influenced by his contacts with Yezidis, whose attitude to Devil is at best ambiguous, or, more probably, with the Dönmeh, followers of Sabbatai Zevi who believed that everything is permitted, and a sin is the best way to salvation? People of more orthodox beliefs know that whoever deals with Satan will eventually come to grief, for no spoon is long enough to sup with him.

Then came the moment when his dubious theology was transformed into dubious policy. The US asked him to bring militants to Syria, and so he did.

My Turkish friends stressed that Erdogan personally does not subscribe to these theological beliefs, but is guided by practical considerations. The question of an alliance with the US and NATO caused a rift between Erdogan and his erstwhile teacher Necmettin Erbakan. Erbakan was against it; Erdogan considered it as a given. Erdogan carried a day; a majority of Erbakan’s followers went with Erdogan, formed the reformist AK Party, came to power ten years ago and have been generally successful. The minority formed the hardline (or even ‘revolutionary Islamist’) Saadet Party, which was not successful at the polls, though it retains a certain influence.

Unexpectedly for an outsider, it is the hardline Saadet Party that strongly objects to the Syrian adventure of Erdogan and Davutoglu. Though the intervention in Syria is often described as “Islamic help to slaughtered Muslims”, the Saadet leaders perceive it as an American plot against Syria and Turkey. The Saadet led strong demonstrations against the intervention.

Perhaps this is the right time for Prime Minister Erdogan to listen to his old comrades, disavow the devil-supping policy regarding Syria, and to stop the war machine before it destroys all of the achievements he can so rightly be proud of. The dream of bringing Syria into a closer union with Turkey still can be realised, but not through unleashing the dogs of war.

Cruise Ship Vacation Wisdom

I have taken a number of cruise ship vacations. The last one was about a year and half ago. I learned a lot about cruise ships and what factors should go into decisions about selecting a specific cruise ship that I want to share with you. By now, of course, you have heard and seen a lot about the disaster of the Carnival Line’s Costa Concordia off the Italian shore where a number of people died and thousands went through an awful time trying to escape and survive the heavily tilted and partially submerged modern, huge cruise ship. What should never have happened, happened. That, sadly, is the way of the world. You can and must learn from this disaster. Size matters. Smaller is better.

The most important thing I learned over time was that I would never, ever want to go on one of the new monumentally huge “floating city” cruise ships that carry three thousand or more passengers. Frankly, I have been amazed that so many people have succumbed to the marketing and advertising for such ships, as if bigger is better. Of course, they all look incredibly top heavy, with a large number of decks stacked very high on the ship. As a former engineering professor, they have always looked to me as inherently unstable and prone to tilting over in various conditions, such as very rough seas, with the potential for capsizing and sinking. Indeed, such modern humongous ships have had more problems than generally recognized.

But more to the point, when it comes to comfort, enjoyment and time well spent on a cruise ship, everyone should understand that the bigger the ship and the greater the number of passengers, the more time you will inevitably waste trying to get around, access shipboard amenities and restaurants, and deal with leaving and returning to the ship when it comes to shore excursions. On such gigantic ships you cannot escape dealing with multitudes of people that are bound to raise your stress level at a time when you are supposed to be on a totally relaxing vacation.

Thus, let me crystal clear about my choice for my last cruise vacation which was absolutely wonderful and perhaps the most enjoyable vacation of any type I ever had. I chose a Regent Seven Seas Cruise. All their ships are top of the line luxury and, most important, carry only about 800 passengers. Some other genuine luxury cruise lines have even smaller ships. In other words, in the world of cruise ships the very best are relatively small. The result is terrific: You never waste any time dealing with crowds or waiting on long lines trying to enjoy various places and activities. It is akin to being on a billionaire’s private yacht, while going on the new generation of huge cruise ships is like shopping at a Wal-Mart on one of the busiest Christmas-period shopping days or going to Disney World on a very busy day.

Now to my second big piece of advice. You want to choose a cruise ship that includes almost everything in the basic price of the vacation. If not, you will get sucked into a vacation where you find yourself shelling out more money all the time. On the Regent and similar luxury cruise lines they are all-inclusive, meaning that all the alcoholic drinks you want are part of the basic price. You can go to a multitude of bars and other venues and have all the high quality beers, wines of hard liquor drinks you want without paying anything or tipping. Ditto for room service. Oh yes, all the tips for all the service providers are also part of the basic cruise price. Similarly, there are a large number of shore excursions that you do not have to pay additional fees for. Same is true for all the high-end restaurants.

Trust me, if you choose the more prevalent cruise vacations you will end up paying money all the time that will jack up the cost of your vacation by a large amount. You may even have to pay for soft drinks! And every day you will lose many minutes and perhaps a few hours because of all the crowds you must cope with.

What all the advertising and sales pitches fail to really reveal are these ugly truths about ordinary cruise lines, even though they may use words like luxury. And now you have seen with the incredible Concordia disaster what a penalty you pay if something serious goes wrong on a cruise vacation when there are THOUSANDS of passengers all trying to save their lives under the most awful conditions. The analogy with some truth is thinking about the World Trade Center skyscrapers that collapsed on 9/11 2001. In terms of personal risk management you want to avoid putting yourself in any situation with an incredibly large number of floors and people when a low probability disaster actually happens. You can get trapped in a gigantic cruise ship just like you could in a skyscraper.

Sure, a cruise vacation can be wonderful. But do not get fooled by sophisticated and deceptive marketing, especially the use of the term luxury. You can only get luxury on a relatively small cruise ship. Learn how to make a good decision.