In the interview above, producer, director, and documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim becomes the latest in a long line of liberals to help sanitize President Obama's image, advancing a narrative that totally ignores his transgressions against civil liberties and expansion of executive power. Paid by the Obama campaign to produce what he calls a 17-minute documentary, but that is better termed a political commercial or piece of propaganda, Guggenheim goes so far as to aver that the biggest negative about Obama's first term is that he accomplished so many wonderful things it was difficult to fit them all into the allotted time.
This clip ought to be immortalized alongside John Hinderaker's now famous praise of our last leader: "It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter... who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile."
Of course, Guggenheim was paid to produce an uncritical appreciation of Obama. The same cannot be said for the left-leaning journalists who continue to publish highly incomplete retrospectives on the man they want reelected. His accomplishments are prominently touted, whereas the reader would never know that the president has violated his own rhetoric, campaign promises, and liberal values on issues including executive power, indefinite detention, the state-secrets privilege, the transparency of his administration, and the treatment of whistleblowers.
A journalist needn't be taken with any of the Republican candidates to acknowledge that, whether or not Obama is better than the competition, he is a flawed president. But as I've documented on multiple occasions, Obama boosters continue to write and speak about the president's first term as if his civil-liberties abuses and executive-power excesses never happened. They aren't explained or dismissed. They're just totally ignored; unmentioned; disappeared from the narrative. Yet another prominent example comes from the normally excellent Washington Monthly. Editor Paul Glastris, who deserves credit for much of what is great about that magazine, goes on for thousands of words about Obama's tenure so far, and how he'll be remembered as a great or near-great president. "That's not to say that his instincts and decisions have always been right," he notes near the end of the piece, and I thought, finally, he's going to at least mention his reversals on issues at the core of his 2008 campaign. Here what he actually wrote: "I cannot, for instance, find a good reason why he should not have at least threatened to use Fourteenth Amendment powers to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling to break the hostage standoff with the GOP last year." That's his biggest complaint?
Civil liberties and executive power were not marginal issues in 2008. President Obama's criticism of the Bush Administration was righteous and withering, and on numerous occasions he explicitly promised that if he was elevated to the presidency he'd wage the War on Terror in strict accordance with American values and the rule of law. As the ACLU subsequently pointed out in the comprehensive report it issued on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks:
Ten years ago, we could not have imagined our country would engage in systematic policies of torture and targeted killing, extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretaps, military commissions and indefinite detention, political surveillance and religious discrimination. Not only were these policies completely at odds with our values, but by engaging in them, we strained relations with our allies, handed a propaganda tool to our enemies, undermined the trust of communities whose cooperation is essential in the fight against terrorism, and diverted scarce law enforcement resources. Some of these policies have been stopped. Torture and extraordinary rendition are no longer officially condoned. But most other policies -- indefinite detention, targeted killing, trial by military commissions, warrantless surveillance, and racial profiling -- remain core elements of our national security strategy today.
These policies are now part of the bipartisan consensus. Every narrative rendering of Obama's presidency where they go unmentioned helps to normalize them further. The implicit message is that indefinite detention, extrajudicial assassinations, wars without Congressional approval, and all the rest aren't actually important enough to warrant scrutiny so long as the liberal agenda on health care, economic stimulus, education, and other domestic matters are being carried out.
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I thought this was a good article on gun ownership. It is one of my favorite parts of the Constitution.
The Case for the Non-Revolutionary Ownership of Guns
Written by Gary North on March 9, 2012
There are two main extremes in the debate over guns. The gun control people are basically worshippers of the state. They grovel before the image of the state. They believe in the state. They see the state as redemptive: an agency of healing. This agency must be armed, they say, in order to collect the money necessary to fund the state’s messianic claims and programs.
A state that can heal must be a state that can kill. The gun control crowd worships a state that can heal. So, they call for the abolition of private gun ownership. This is consistent.
At the other extreme is the private militia crowd. They think that the ownership of weapons is basic to conducting a new American Revolution. They think that that their ownership of weapons will in some way slow down the state. Some day, the People will take up arms against the state.
I reject both positions.
Here is reality. The ownership of guns is mostly symbolic most of the time. The gun as a symbol says this: the state is not God. The state is not finally sovereign. Citizens are sovereign under God, and they possess the right to bear arms as a mark of this sovereignty.
The defenders of the messianic state go ballistic in the face of this claim. They do not accept popular sovereignty. They accept state sovereignty. They accept the fact that voters can elect masters, but they do not accept the fact that citizens have a right to exercise the mark of sovereignty: to defend themselves by force of arms. The statists want the state to possess a strict monopoly over life and death. They understand the meaning of the symbol of the gun. They want guns and badges linked judicially: no badge–no gun.
The weekend militia people are dangerous. Why? Because they have a romantic view of bloodshed. They think that the modern state can be successfully resisted by force of individual arms. This leads to a suicide mentality. The suicide mentality is the heart of the matter, not gun ownership.
The correct goal is to wait for the federal government to go bankrupt before it bankrupts us. It will go bankrupt. It is not God. It cannot afford to implement its programs of healing.
In the political vacuum that will appear in the aftermath of that national bankruptcy, armed citizens with economic assets and economic and political skills will be in a position to pick up the pieces. Local armed citizens will become the back-up of the local police, which local citizens will elect.
The main idea behind gun ownership is to maintain the right of every law-abiding resident to defend his life and property when the state cannot do it. We live in a time when the local agencies of law enforcement cannot secure the peace. This leaves citizens the task of defending their lawful zones of jurisdiction: in their cars, in their homes, and in their places of business.
The lone gunner who takes a stand against the authorities will wind up like David Koresh and his followers. It is better to live to fight politically. Suicide missions benefit the state.
As for armed students in public schools, there is a solution. Close the public schools. No one hears of bullied students who go on a shooting spree in private schools.
We should not worship the federal government. We should plan a peaceful revolution to overthrow the federal government. We should work toward the day when local governments replace 90% of the federal government.
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Most of you have heard this story by now, but I thought I would post it anyway. Goldman Sachs is the root of all evil in my opinion.
Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
By GREG SMITH
Published: March 14, 2012
TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
A Public Exit From Goldman Sachs Hits at a Wounded Wall Street (March 15, 2012)
To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.
But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.
I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.
When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.
Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.
How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.
It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.
It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.
These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.
When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.
My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.
I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.
Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
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Are rates finally on the rise? Yesterday's Treasury auction sure points that way. This is one thing I've been warning about. If the Fed isn't going to buy the bonds, who will?
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Here is Mike Krieger's letter for the week.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.
- Stephen Hawkings
Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death.
- John Gilmore
A man does what he must -- in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures.
- John Kennedy
They Have No Philosophy
The one area where I sometimes have a difference of opinion with friends of mine that are “awake” relates to my certainty that TPTB cannot win this battle. There are two main reasons I think they are completely doomed. The first one is the internet, which I have written in detail on before so I am not going to belabor on it here. Long story short, never in human history have we as a species been able to connect so efficiently and effectively with one another. This makes one of the key methods of control, “divide, conquer, war” much more difficult for them to implement. I have always felt that human disposition lies on a bell curve. So let’s say for the sake of argument that 1% is just extraordinarily wicked, selfish, mentally deranged so along the lines of a Stalin like character. Then let’s say the 1% on the other side is gentle, enlightened, and moral almost to a fault so a Gandhi like character. Then the masses in the middle are not of any extreme disposition in either way, but are easily malleable and generally just “go along to get along.” Well as far as recorded human history is concerned, the 1% of nasty, immoral parasites have dominated humanity through the various playbooks strategies that I and many others have outlined. The 1% on the other side have generally been silenced or ostracized systematically by the control freak “leaders” and if that fails to work, they are simply murdered. I mean even up until the 20th Century think about the kinds of guys that have been murdered. Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr. John Lennon. Oh and if we want to go back a couple thousand years there was Jesus. The list is endless. Guys that talk about a higher level of consciousness and love and actually make inroads in society are murdered. Yet no one ever seems to take a shot at the genocidal, sociopaths that run our lives through politics and banking (nor would I ever want that as I do not condone violence as a solution to a violent system). Interesting isn’t it? I think it is pretty obvious why this is the case. The 1% on the decent side of the bell curve aren’t murderers. The guys on the other side of it are.
So now on to the point of this piece. These guys are done for. Finished. I have never been more sure of this in my life. When I first started really writing on these subjects four or five years ago there was a certain percent of humanity I felt had to awaken to actually be able to transition from this ponzi scheme global economic system of oppression and death into something demonstrably better. We have now exceeded the number I thought was necessary by 2 or 3 times. At least. We must understand that all political and economic systems that are to survive must have some degree of belief in the system on behalf of the population. In short there must be an attractive philosophy. While it was clearly an evil philosophy rooted in hatred and xenophobia, the Nazis did indeed have a philosophy that they successfully sold to an economically destitute and downtrodden populace. The USA has had its own philosophy since WW2 and it had also been successfully sold to the population. This was a philosophy of “doing good” and being a “city on a hill” as a shining representative for the rest of the world. While there is no doubt that the United Stated had been a wonderful place to live and do business for much of the last 60 years, as our power grew we became an increasingly destructive force in the world. A force of oppression rather than freedom and the truly sick 1% of the bell curve has gradually taken over all of the levers of power in the nation. Particularly in politics, banking and big business. Our very own axis of evil.
Well here is where the parasitic 1% have their problem. What they have “sold” the American public as the spirit of the nation is now in direct opposition to reality. In fact, it has become so obviously untrue that the population is waking in drove to the truth and the truth is that we have a utterly corrupt, sociopathic minority running the nation like a giant criminal syndicate for their own power and money. Therein lies their weakness however. They have no philosophy. These guys are actually so twisted that all they think about is how can they keep growing their money and power. Furthermore, they are operating under an exposed playbook of control. Just take a look at Obama’s approval ratings. They are plunging. They are plunging despite fabricated economic numbers and biblical stock market rigging to make things look good. They are plunging because people are waking up and seeing all of this for what it is. A gigantic scam. All the signs I see point to increasing desperation on their part and exponential awakening on the part of the meat of the bell curve. These guys are toast and what we should now be focusing most of our attention on is what kind of society we want when this one collapses. Hopefully the other side of the bell curve can influence the debate for the first times in five thousand years. That is my hope and my vision of the future.
Greg Smith’s Op Ed
I want to salute Mr. Greg Smith today. Here is a guy that was an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has resigned from the firm and today is his last day. In leaving, he has penned a powerful Op Ed for the New York Times. You can read it here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&smid=fb-share. Now of course to pretty much every on this list this is nothing shocking. We all know the guys that run these firms are complete raging psychopaths that can’t see anything beyond their own paycheck. That said, this demonstrates bravery. Many people may resign and then they don’t speak up about it. They are fearful they might be blackballed or worse. Fear is the most useless emotion on the planet. There is nothing to ever be afraid of. We are on this planet to learn and have an impact. Whether your impact is positive or negative is the beauty of being a human being and it is this exercise of free will that can distinguish us from a pig in a pen. I have no doubt whatsoever that the universe deals with bad karma in its own way. That is not our individual responsibility. We are responsible only for our choices and our impact. As Gandhi said “be the change you want to see in the world.”
Mr. Smith ends his Op Ed with the following. “I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.” While this is a noble rallying cry I would say there is a 0% chance of this ever happening. The system is now unsalvageable. It is a total ponzi economy rooted in very few real productive activities and in which crony capitalists and their political minions control everything. This thing has no chance of survival and so the only thing we need to focus on is not allowing the mentally sick 1% determine the next system (oh and to clarify I don’t mean 1% in terms of monetary wealth. Even though the nastiest elements of society do tend to gather the most wealth in this system since they have zero hang ups about murder, theft and corruption, the nasty 1% are all over the socio economic spectrum. Notice how the most ruthless gang leader gets to the top in a ghetto. Same concept in the larger ghetto that is modern America).
Humanity is Rising
To the pessimists out there I want to remind you of a very simple and sad truth. The maniacal 1% already own this thing. They are fully in political and economic control as they have been for thousands of years. So let’s say they kill billions in WW3 and then they keep control. Well guess what? That is no different from what they have been doing forever. It’s not as if we as a species are going to “lose” much. We have been losing for centuries. The bigger point is to take a step back and recognize the moment. We have the tools at our fingertips and the awakening happening to change the paradigm. So get off the mat and do your part. Just like Greg Smith. The choice is yours.
Peace and wisdom,
Mike
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Obamacare! It's only going to cost $820,000,000,000 more than we thought over the next 10 years.
According to today's Commerce Department report, the current account deficit in the U.S. widened more than forecast in the fourth quarter to $124.1 billion. And with the current administration in power, we don't see that deficit shrinking anytime soon. Consider this, the Congressional Budget Office today announced Obama's national health care law (Obamacare) will cost $1.76 trillion over the next 10 years. That's up from Obama's $940 billion estimate when it was signed into law.
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This is one of my favorite weekends of the year. Good luck to everyone who has filled out a bracket. Unless you're in one of the pools with me...
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