The 2015 Untrustworthies Report——Why Social Security Could Be Bankrupt In 12 Years, by David Stockman

Do I really have to continue to pay into this? I can’t retire till I am 70 – which is more than 20 years away!

“Except that is not what the report really says. On a cash basis, the OASDI (retirement and disability) funds spent $859 billion during 2014 but took in only $786 billion in taxes, thereby generating $73 billion in red ink. And by the trustees’ own reckoning, the OASDI funds will spew a cumulative cash deficit of $1.6 trillion during the 12-years covering 2015-2026.

So measured by the only thing that matters—-hard cash income and outgo—-the social security system has already gone bust. What’s more, even under the White House’s rosy scenario budget forecasts, general fund outlays will exceed general revenues ex-payroll taxes by $8 trillion over the next twelve years.

Needless to say, this means there will be no general fund surplus to pay the OASDI shortfall. Uncle Sam will finance the entire $1.6 trillion cash deficit by adding to the public debt. That is, Washington plans to make social security ends meet by burying unborn taxpayers even deeper in national debt in order to fund unaffordable entitlements for the current generation of retirees.”

STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

David Stockman does a superlative job analyzing the accounts of the social security system, and skewering a recent report that says the system will remain solvent until 2034. From Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

The so-called “trustees” of the social security system issued their annual report last week and the stenographers of the financial press dutifully reported that the day of reckoning when the trust funds run dry has been put off another year—-until 2034.

So take a breath and kick the can. That’s five Presidential elections away!

Except that is not what the report really says. On a cash basis, the OASDI (retirement and disability) funds spent $859 billion during 2014 but took in only $786 billion in taxes, thereby generating $73 billion in red ink. And by the trustees’ own reckoning, the OASDI funds will spew a cumulative cash deficit of $1.6 trillion during the 12-years covering 2015-2026.

So measured…

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Training Priorities: Which Classes Should I Take?

I struggle with this
My issues are more financial than desire and knowledge

MountainGuerrilla

One question I get asked frequently—at least weekly—is “John, what classes should I take?”

Really, the answer to that question is so fraught with variables that any generalized, universal answer is rendered almost useless from the start. Your personal training experience, your personal, objective life experiences, your level of dedication and drive, and the perceptions you hold, regarding the state-of-affairs in the world today and tomorrow, all play a role in that particular decision-making matrix. Nevertheless, in the interest of answering such a common question, let’s use some of the practical lessons we’ve learned in the Mountain Guerrilla experience, to try and determine some semblance of a relevant answer.

METT-TC Matters

Really, it does. It underlies our entire Estimate of the Situation, in determining where we are, and where we need to be. Until we know those two things, figuring out how to get from here to there is going…

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Donald Trump — The Great Uniter, by Monty Pelerin

“Our national version of the Bloods and Crips — Democrats and Republicans — are joining forces against their common enemy, Donald Trump. Prior to his foray into politics, few would think of Trump as a great uniter. He doesn’t act like one, nor does he care to. However, he is a common threat to the plunder and pillage that both political parties have inflicted on the country. In that sense, they will unite against him. The media is also a major player in this game with interests in siding against Trump. David Limbaugh describes the current state of affairs:

Make no mistake about this. Regardless of what you may feel about The Donald, he scares the hell out of anyone who wants to maintain the status quo.”

STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

Donald Trump is causing extreme discomfort among the purveyors of politics as usual. From Monty Pelerin on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

A Common Enemy

Nothing unites enemies more than a common foe who threatens harm to both. The Bloods and Crips are street gangs at war with each other, literally to the death. Merely being a member of the rival gang is reason enough to have your actuarial table altered. Even they unite when their joint existence is threatened. The most recent case was in Baltimore, although there are numerous other examples in other cities.

Our national version of the Bloods and Crips — Democrats and Republicans — are joining forces against their common enemy, Donald Trump. Prior to his foray into politics, few would think of Trump as a great uniter. He doesn’t act like one, nor does he care to. However, he is a common threat to…

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Why Empires Fall

America’s road
“Everywhere I go and everyone I speak with knows America is losing its edge, sliding down a Progressive rat hole into an over-regulated shabby future in the dustbin of History. At the same time everywhere I go and everyone I speak to says, “At least it won’t happen in my day but I feel sorry for the generations coming after me.”
Why do empires fall? Because they think they won’t.”

Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

Although the generalization is usually applied to republics, according to Sir John Glubb, a British author and lecturer, most empires don’t last longer than 250 years.

Or as Sir John said in summation:

As numerous points of interest have arisen in the course of this essay, I close with a brief summary, to refresh the reader’s mind.

• We do not learn from history because
  our studies are brief and prejudiced.
  (b) In a surprising manner, 250 years
  emerges as the average length of national

  (c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years.
  Does it represent ten generations?
  (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great
  nations seem to be:
  The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
  The Age of Conquests
  The Age of Commerce
  The Age of Affluence
  The Age of Intellect
  The Age of Decadence.
  (e) Decadence is marked by:
  Defensiveness
  Pessimism
  Materialism
  Frivolity
  An influx of foreigners

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It Said That? 7/21/15

Backed by FDIC means little!

STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

From The Wall Street Journal, “Fed Tells Big Banks To Shrink Or Else,” 7/21/15:

Washington—The Federal Reserve sent a message to the largest U.S. financial firms: Staying big is going to cost you.

The Fed’s warning, articulated in a pair of rules it finalized Monday, is among the central bank’s starkest postcrisis regulatory moves pressing Wall Street banks to reconsider their size and appetite for risk.

If the Federal Reserve is wary of large, risky institutions, how about the world’s largest and riskiest institution: the US government? It keeps going deeper in debt, it supports millions of unproductive people, makes it increasingly difficult for the shrinking productive population to produce, and picks foolish and expensive fights around the world. It is directly on the hook for over $18 trillion, has between $100 trillion and $225 trillion of unfunded medical and pension liabilities, and is contingently liability for trillions more.  The…

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New Search Engine Filters Out CIA’s Mainstream Media

New Search Engine Filters Out CIA’s Mainstream Media.

He Said That? 7/14/15

Reblogging as a reminder to myself 🙂

STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

It is difficult to select just two quotes from William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style. This classic should be one of the first books on writing assigned to students. It should be reread regularly by anyone who takes writing seriously. The Internet is larded with bad to awful writing and fighting the trend is a fool’s errand, but SLL has never shied away from fools’ errands. To ask that writers on the Internet, and elsewhere, observe all those yucky rules and things is a plea doomed to failure.  SLL instead offers the following quotes as suggestions only, which bloggers and other Internet scribes might consider before they begin pounding their keyboards, because it is clear that if they are acquainted with these quotes, they have not taken them to heart.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for…

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Obama saves the world

God be with us 😦

Eatgrueldog

After hard negotiation, historic Iran nuclear deal reached

“VIENNA (AP) — World powers and Iran have formally announced a comprehensive nuclear accord.

Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, says, “Today is an historic day.” She said it was a great honor “for us to announce that we have reached an agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue.”

http://news.yahoo.com/formal-nuclear-deal-reached-iran-063643162–politics.html#

What could possibly go wrong?

After ten years Iran will be completely unchained with it’s nuke program

During the ten, they will be allowed no closer that 1 year from having a bomb

The gamble is that after ten years Iran will have reformed and will no longer want a weapons program

It also assumes that a now powerful Iran will not want to expand it’s regional power

Right now greedy investors world wide are rubbing their hands together as production facilities start humming to life in South Korea, France and…

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As We Approach The Last Battle Of The Second American Civil War…

“Woodrow Wilson was the first to openly state the Progressive agenda was to ‘fundamentally transform’ America into a democratic dictatorship modeled after Communist Russia. …
Now, instead of trying to overthrow America according to the usual Communist formula, they were working to change it from within. They switched from revolutionary tactics to that of cultural warfare. They had our schools and universities since the time of Wilson. They had been working for decades to take over from within our government bureaucracies and social institutions by infiltrating them. They had the media: news, TV, movies and the music industry. And they had the majority of our elected positions. Now they started to use their positions to openly ‘transform’ the nation by undermining the Constitution and working to re-shape the public opinions about the founding principles upon which the nation was built. Now, today, we see the result of their work in the banning of the Confederate Battle flag while championing the symbol of moral degeneracy, the rainbow flag. We have prominent people who are white insisting they are black; and others claiming that blacks cannot be black unless they act in lock-step with whatever they say it is to be black. Moral relativism permeates our society, and a vast majority of citizens now hate their own nation. Worse yet, we have flung open our borders to an invasion of illegal aliens who we then pay to come here and even give them a right to vote. And we import still other people who belong to a religious nation whose sworn duty is to destroy not only the nation as it was founded, but the Progressives who are bringing them here to help them destroy the nation. In short, insanity and chaos now rule the land that brought the rule of law to the world. Folks, if this is not a Civil War being fought in terms of culture, then I do not know what else to call it.”

The Oil for Your Lamp

As we approach the last battle of the Second American Civil War, I find myself wondering whether or not America will wake up in time to even take the field?

No, I’m not kidding about this: we have been fighting the Second American Civil War for several decades now, but the only side that knows it is the side that has been seeking to destroy this nation.  Now that they have all but succeeded and the last battle is in sight, they have come out of hiding and are operating in the clear — and America still does not see the threat!  So I have to ask my question one more time: will America wake up in time to take the field of battle before this nation is swept away by a tide of hatred and a lust to rule the world?

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Why Donald Trump Surged in the Polls (And Why It Matters), by Robert Merry

And yet I will still keep pulling for him — I am well aware of his idiosyncrasies and past but I am FURIOUS with the Established Republicans — I am FORCED to voting Republican year after year because a 3rd party is NOT going to win in this 2party nation GOP will not CAST MY vote in 2016!

“Donald Trump is not a pleasant man. He is egotistical, vain, bombastic, often mean-spirited. He revels in his financial superiority, which he conflates with human goodness.”

STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

By now, it is conventional wisdom that the Republicans must embrace some sort of immigration reform to raise their percentage with the expanding Hispanic population. However, Ann Coulter’s anti-immigration Adios America is finding a wide audience, and Donald Trump drew attention, condemnation, and enough Republican support to now rank one or two in various polls with his anti-immigration stance. Here’s a conundrum for Republicans. Shoot down Trump and nominate Jeb Bush or any other pro-reform Republican, and for every Hispanic vote you might pick up, you will probably lose a Trump vote. Those who are either supporting or are sympathetic to Trump’s point of view are motivated not just by hostility to illegal immigration, but to the Republican establishment itself, which is very clearly trying to jam Bush down their throats. Sure, as this article states, Trump will probably crash and burn, but the immigration issue is not going away. The anti-establishment…

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