How the Bitters communicate fits Ronald Inglehart’s thesis from the early 1970s about post-materialist young people. Inglehart wrote that when children grow up in abundance, like many suburban evangelical kids, they are more concerned as young adults with “self-expression” than they are hard work and survival—the concerns of those who grew up struggling with scarcity.
via WORLDmag.com | Community | Blog Archive | Evangelicalism’s bitter 20-somethings.
Well, that’s about to change.
An abortion doctor who catered to minorities, immigrants and poor women was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to visit or inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them, District Attorney Seth Williams said.
Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.
Williams said patients were subjected to squalid and barbaric conditions at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society.
The woman who died was identified as 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, who died in November, 2009.
Authorities went to investigate drug-related complaints at the clinic last year and stumbled on what Williams called a “house of horrors.”
“There were bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses were scattered throughout the building,” Williams said. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”
via DA: West Philadelphia abortion doctor killed 7 babies with scissors | 6abc.com.
Ideally neither.
But if you ever face the choice, you need to regard credit card companies and other such institutions as a way the state outsources mastery over you.
It is nothing less than that.
The state makes unsecured debt possible and the state smashes the economy so that you can’t make budget. And the hold that the outsourced tyrants hold over you is far more severe.
Your only danger in welfare is permanent dependency. You can work to improve your income and reduce expenses.
But once you are in debt, you have to improve your income or reduce your expenses much more to pay off the debt and the interest.
In my opinion, it is a no-brainer.
Don’t have time to do the links I would like, but I have to note how crazy it is to see all the hysteria about the children of illegal aliens. Our immigration laws come straight from the so-called “progressive era.” In other words, they are from the same people who gave us Planned Parenthod and the myth of overpopulation. It is insane that we now find this to be a mantra for so-called “conservatives.”
And that era has produced an impending economic implosion due to failing demographics. For the first time in world history the old will outnumber the young. Is there a immigration crisis? Yes, there is. We aren’t going to get enough of them. The evidence is that latin America demographics will decline and immigration to our country will decline with it. And we need those immigrants to barely make a replacement number of babies.
I hate the welfare state as much as anyone. But immigrants have no reason to be more immune to its charms than the natives among us.
I share the concern about voting, of course; but that’s hardly as much an issue when people grow up here as citizens.
Again, why are conservatives marching in step with Margaret Sanger? We are making trouble for ourselves and robbing the future of our country of an asset at a time when it will need them.
Catching Every Rally Is Easy
Catching every rally is actually easy. All you have to do is buy a basket of index funds and hold them. Of course doing so will occasionally result in losses of 40% or greater as happened in 2008.
Had you bought the S&P 500 10 years ago and held on for dear life, you would have caught every rally and over those 10 years you would be about even. Had you done that in the Nasdaq, you would be down 40% still.
Of course, had you put everything on gold, silver, and energy and walked away you would have been a huge winner. However, that is not the way general funds invest or should invest. Secondly, that may have been a quite reasonable thing to do a few years back, it is much tougher to make the same case now.
Diversification No Savior
Diversification did not help in 2008. Given similar market correlations, it is highly unlikely that diversification in a basket of US and foreign stocks will do much better on the next move lower.
via Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis: An Awful Time to Invest; Reflections on “Lost Opportunities”.
As it happens I recently dipped into a book arguing for index funds over mutual funds. It was conveniently published in 2006 I think. It makes the above quotation jump out at me because it is what has been tormenting me lately.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Dave Ramsey lately (his radio show is from 2-4am so I get him coming back on a couple of my night shifts). Ramsey’s case for getting out of debt due to the huge negatives that are involved in that way of life is totally convincing. Ramsey’s case for investing and saving and building a fortune beyond cash accumulation sounds as unconvincing and stupid as his other argument is convincing. I’m glad he got the mutual funds on the bubble. I’m glad he got into real estate when it was going up and did so without leverage. But that artificial economy is over.
So what is left?
The Fed has destroyed interest rates. One might as well keep cash in a pillow case as use a savings account. Playing the stock exchange mirage is the only possible way to even hope to beat inflation, let alone compound your money. And that game is now over.
So what do you do? I have no idea. As far as I can tell, frugality and thrift, while still better than the opposite, are nowhere near as rewarding. The possibility of real wealth building seems to be over.
A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers by Lawrence G. McDonald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
1. If you are a member of a group, that group counts as one and only one adviser. If you want many advisers, they can’t be members of the same team. It doesn’t work. You get groupthink and exile of naysayers.
2. “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc” is the eternal financial fallacy. X has never happened so we don’t need to worry about it happening. In this case, real estate has never fallen more than a small percentage so it never will. Regarding the status quo as self-explanatory is the road to perdition.
3. Wall Streeters are mostly amazing idiots. We are led and run by morons. Their decisions are driven by all sorts of personal issues (ambition, rivalries) that have nothing to do with making rational decisions.
4. Money really does make people drunk.
5. There is a twin dynamic to a bubble. The attractiveness of the “investment” and the failure to find anything else to do to make one’s money grow.
6. Greenspan is revealed as the ultimate cause with real estate and subprime mortgages just being the most convenient fire pit in which to burn all the money. Greenspan’s lowering interest rates not only attracted people to where the new money was appearing as profit, but it destroyed the incentive for conventional savings. The mattress gave as good a return as the savings account.
7. The person who destroys himself with the most hubris (Fuld of Lehman Brothers) can be a convenient scapegoat, but the lead bull in a stampede is not the source of all the damage.
8. The Fed Reserve does not create price inflation by itself. It requires the cooperation of other players in the economy–the banking system. But when the bubble pops it destroys their willingness to “do their part.” Thus Bernake’s frustration trying to make something happen with QE series and not seeing any real results.
9. We’ve had our massive inflation and now suddenly perhaps $70 trillion has vaporized. Bernanke can’t fill the black hole no matter how much QE he does. It seems much more likely that deflation is ahead.
YouTube – Are Libertarians and Conservatives Natural Allies? John Payne, David Stokes debate.
I’m watching it now. My first question is “What is a conservative?” As far as I can tell it is what is left after you can prove you are not a liberal, libertarian, or a moderate.
Hat tip: The Show-Me Institute
Beverly Gossage, Research Fellow for Show-Me Institute and founder of HSA Benefits Consulting wondered which insurance companies rejected the most claims. She found her answer in the AMA’s own 2008 National Health Insurer Report Card. The chart below appears on page 5 of the 16-page report.
…
Of the eight insurers listed, Medicare is most likely to reject a claim, sending away 6.85% of requests. This is more than any private insurer and double that of the private insurers’ average!
In short, the AMA is endorsing a plan whose closest existing example is the most frequent denier of claims. How the public option exemplifies “delivering care to patients” is unclear.
via » AMA Endorses Largest Denier of Health Care Claims – Big Government.
Here is the Show-Me Institute’s website.
Thanksgiving has all sorts of nasty origins in American civil religion. But it is a great example of how Christian society (and there is still Christian society in North America–for which we should all [yes that’s a pluralistic “all”] be grateful) can redeem and properly orient things tainted with idolatry.
So I pray that you are all able to thank the living God for your blessings and trust Him for many more in the coming year.
While in his wisdom He also gives us trials, Jesus is always the most generous world king, and one personally engaged in all His subjects’ lives!
“For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'”
God bless each and every one of you–including the gift of a heart to recognize and give thanks for such blessings!
YouTube – My Life Behind the Brick Wall (book promo).
Sadly, I don’t have an e-reader yet, but I may have to order it for my computer…