A Word To The Wise For Election 2012

With the elections getting ready to go into full swing soon, there will be a lot of Republican Candidates promising how well they will bring the economy back with their proposals by addressing medical insurance, jobs, fuel cost, cost of government, or costs in general.

I know it will be tempting to many citizens because sometimes we try too hard to get to the greener grass, and in the process, we end up in trouble...

But way too often this just leads to making things worse and when you find yourself in trouble and you're stuck in a situation that you can't get out of, THERE IS ONE THING YOU SHOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER……
Not everyone who shows up...Is there to help you!!!!

Who Was Going To Destroy Your Health Care?

Remember during the last election you saw the Teabaggers screaming red faces at town halls how with the health care bill, “Obama better not mess with their Medicare!!” They were going around sounding the warning of Death Panels and how the Democrats were going to destroy Medicare.

Well as we can now well see, it is the Ultra Radical Teabaggers demanding removing Medicare and just give the retired population, “Insurance Vouchers” and sending them off to find private health insurance. Well reality is this older demographic population is not the customers Private Health Insurance wants as at this age they will get sick and the “Insurance Vouchers” is grossly under funding the elderly population’s needs.

Do these Dumb Ass Teabagger’s even remember what they were shouting during the election only to see those they claim to have elected wanting to take away their health safety net!!

Yes, once again the Extremely Conservative Republicans are throwing the Average Working Stiff under the “Insurance Bus” and now the Teabagger Lemmings are sing their praises.

Prank Call Proves Billionaire David Koch Owns Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker And The GOP

A prank caller pretending to be billionaire conservative businessman David Koch was able to have a lengthy conversation with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker about his strategy to cripple public employee unions, the governor's office confirmed Wednesday.

On the call, Walker joked about bringing a baseball bat to a meeting with Democratic leaders, said it would "be outstanding" to be flown out to California by Koch for a good time after the battle is over, and said he expected the anti-union movement to spread across the country.

Audio was posted on the Buffalo Beast, a left-leaning website based in New York, and quickly spread across the Internet.

Democrats ripped Walker's comments on the call on the Assembly floor Wednesday morning, saying they had nothing to do with his assertion that legislation stripping public employees' collective bargaining rights is needed to help solve a looming budget deficit.
"That's why we must fight it! That is why people must come to the Capitol and fight this!" Rep. Jon Richards of Milwaukee yelled as thousands of protesters inside the rotunda roared in approval. "This isn't about balancing the budget, this is about a political war."

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie confirmed Walker took the call, which will only heighten widespread suspicions that brothers David and Charles Koch are pulling strings in Wisconsin's battle as part of a conservative agenda to limit the unions' power.
The governor's plan would take away the ability of state and local public employees to collectively bargain for working conditions, benefits, or any other than their base salaries. Unions could not collect mandatory dues and would face a vote of its members every year to stay in existence.

The plan has set off more than a week of demonstrations at the Capitol, and prompted Wisconsin Senate Democrats to flee the state to block its passage. Similar ideas are being pushed in some other states with Republican governors.
The man pretending to be Koch said, "You're the first domino."

Of course trying to stop the selling of his state to Kock is just too late. Gov. Scott Walker says he won't be distracted by a prank phone call made by a blogger posing as one of his campaign donors, and he'll push forward with a bill to limit the power of public employee unions.....because that is what he was paid to do!!!

Valentines Day Memo From Multinational Corpco.

Memo:
From MULTINATIONAL CORPCO Corp. Inc.

EFFECTIVE February 14, 2011

Subject:
NEW OFFICE POLICY FOR ALL EMPLOYEES

Dress Code:

1) You are advised to come to work dressed according to your salary.

2) If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we will assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a raise.

3) If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and therefore you do not need a raise.

4) If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.

Sick Days:

We will no longer accept a doctor's statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

Personal Days:
Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year. They are called Saturdays & Sundays.

Bereavement Leave:
This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend the funeral arrangements in your place. In rare cases where employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to allow you to work through your lunch hour and subsequently leave one hour early.

So in closing, on behalf of "Multinational Corpco. Corp. Inc.," we want to wish all employees a Happy Valentines Day….Now get you ass back to work!! You have already spent too much unproductive time reading this mandatory Memo.

A Trader To His Class

There is a best selling book titled, “Trader To His Class,” written by H. W. Bands. It is a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was born into the privileged life of wealth but is seen for a radical Presidency that transformed American government during the "Great Depression" with his "New Deal" legislation. The examples of developing the social safety net of Social Security and enacting and signing legislation passing rules and regulations that curbed Wall Street’s and Banking's finical abuse during the 1920’s. These laws served the U.S. Citizens’ well until they were started to be disassembled in the 1980’s during the Ronald Reagan’s administration.

With this thought, it came to light that maybe this book's title applied more to Ronald Reagan whom many are celibrating his 100th birthday today.

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in an apartment on the second floor of a commercial building in Tampico, Illinois on February 6, 1911, to John Edward Reagan and Nelle Reagan. Reagan's father was of poor Irish Catholic ancestry, and his mother of Scottish English ancestors.

In his youth, Ronny had a particularly strong faith in the goodness of people, which stemmed from the optimistic faith of his mother, Nelle, and the Disciples of Christ faith, which he was baptized into in 1922. For the time, Reagan was unusual in his opposition to racial discrimination, and recalled a time in the little town of Dixon when the local inn would not allow black people to stay there. Reagan brought them back to his house, where his mother invited them to stay the night and have breakfast the next morning.

Following the closure of the Pitney Store in late 1920, the Reagans moved to Dixon. He attended Dixon High School where he developed interests in acting, sports, and storytelling. His first job was as a lifeguard at the Rock River in Lowell Park, near Dixon, in 1926.

Reagan attended Eureka College, where he became a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and majored in economics and sociology. He developed a reputation as a jack of all trades, excelling in campus politics, sports and theater. He was a member of the football team, captain of the swim team and was elected student body president. As student president, Reagan notably led a student revolt against the college president after he tried to cut back the faculty.

After graduating from Eureka in 1932, Reagan drove himself to Iowa, where he auditioned for jobs at many small town radio stations.

Reagan did make his way to California where he took a screen test in 1937 that led to a seven year contract with Warner Brothers studios. He spent the first few years of his Hollywood career in the “B” film unit, where, as Reagan said himself, “the producers didn't want them good, they wanted them Thursday".

Reagan was first elected to the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild in 1941, serving as an alternate. Following World War II, he resumed service and became 3rd Vice president in 1946. The adoption of conflict of interest bylaws in 1947 led the SAG president and six board members to resign; Reagan was nominated in a special election for the position of president and subsequently elected. He would subsequently be chosen by the membership to seven additional one-terms, from 1947 to 1952 and in 1959. Reagan led SAG through eventful years that were marked by labor-management disputes, the Taft-Hartley Act.

Ronald Reagan Trader To His Class:

His betrayal to the working class started during the House Committee on Un-American activities (HUAC) hearings and the Hollywood Blacklist Era. Amid the “Red Scare” in the late 1940s, Reagan turned on his co-workers and provided the FBI with names of actors whom “HE BELIVED” (no proof provided to support his claims) to be communist sympathizers within the motion picture industry. Yes the “Union President Ronald Reagan” testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee on the subject as well throwing his Union Party Members and Co-workers to the “Hysterical Wolfs” of the McCarthy Era.

Reagan began his political career as a Liberal Democrat and admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and active supporter of New Deal policies, but in the early 1950s he shifted to the right and, while remaining a Democrat, endorsed the presidential candidacies of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 as well as Richard Nixon in the 1960 Nixon / Kennedy Presidential campaigns.

Reagan who once as a young man, "who was unusual in his opposition to racial discrimination, and brought back black people to his own home to stay because the local inn would not allow them to stay there;" was now opposed "Civil Rights" legislation in the 1960’s, saying "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so".

When legislation that would become Medicare (You now here the mindless Conservative Teabaggers shout that Obama better not touch their Medicare) was introduced in 1961, Reagan created a recording for the American Medical Association warning that such legislation would mean the end of freedom in America. Reagan said that if his listeners did not write letters to prevent it, "we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this, and if I don't do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free." (Boy Does This Sound Familiar Today!?!?)

Only a short time into his 1980 Presidential Administration, Federal Air Traffic Controllers went on strike. Declaring the situation an emergency as described in the 1947 Taft Hartley Act, this once Union President Reagan stated that if the air traffic controllers "do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated." Despite fear from some members of his cabinet over a potential political backlash, on August 5, Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored his order to return to work. This act started a national trend of union busting and the attacking for the next decades the downgrading quality of life for the “Working Middle Class” across the whole United States.

Quoting Charles Craver, a labor law professor at George Washington University Law School, the move gave Americans a new view of Reagan, who "sent a message to the private employer community that it would be all right to go up against the unions".

This position was in stark contrast to Reagan's past as a labor union president of the Screen Actor's Guild, as well as his support for the Polish labor union “Solidarity” in its fight against Soviet domination.

Ronald Reagan was now at this point not even practicing for his own country what he was preaching for others.

TRADER TO HIS OWN CLASS!!

The American Family

A Brief History

Every family has its ups and downs; the American family has booms and bust. Since the economic down-turn took hold in 2008, birth and marriage rates have fallen to all time lows, according to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This come after 4.3 million babies were born in 2007, the most ever. But while the recent ebb and flow of the American family has followed that of the stock market, the institution has been slowly and steadily evolving since the nation’s founding.

The American Family’s structure in the 1700’s was relatively egalitarian, as both husband and wife worked the farm and large numbers of children were needed to maintain agrarian productivity. The Industrial Revolution was workers begin to migrate to the urban areas, separating work from home for the first time. Children became economic burdens rather than contributors. Wages started rising, and the idea of the man as breadwinner took off.

In the 1930’s, the Great Depression triggered a drop in the birthrate, which picked up again with the onset of World War II. A long period of postwar prosperity resulted in the baby-boom generation, whose nine to five fathers and stay at home moms defined the 50’s. But the feminist movement of the 60’s and 70’s pushed for more women in the workplace and led to an increase in dual income, absent parent families.

Today the nuclear family has largely been nuked. With so many single parent households, gay couples adopting children and women either having fewer children or delaying childbirth, the modern family is all over the place. Recessions have remained the one consistent predictor of American family size, with dips in birth and marriage rates immediately following the 1981-82, 1990-91, and 2001 recessions as well a the current downturn,. But as in the past, a bust will invariably give birth to another boom.

"How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy."

Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse." Remember David Stockman? He was the “Financial Wonder Kid” that upon seeing the Reaganomics Plan, instantly call it, “Voodoo Economics!” Many may remember well when President Reagan took him aside to the preverbal “Woodshed” and scolded him for not playing along with the Reaganomics Plan.

I have decided to post this as this is exactly what I have been saying how MY REPUBLICAN PARTY has been taken over by CROOKS and CON MEN, WITH A FOLLOWING OF NON-THINKING LEMMINGS.

Get it? Not "destroying." The GOP has already "DESTROYED" the U.S. economy, setting up an "American Apocalypse."

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider, someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology and coined the phrase of President Regan’s, “Voodoo Economics,” says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics "holy war" is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

But why focus on Stockman's message? It's already lost in the 24/7 news cycle. Why? We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened?
We've arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.

Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Read Carefully:

Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation's public debt, will soon reach $18 trillion." It screams "out for austerity and sacrifice." But instead, the GOP insists "that the nation's wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase."

In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: "Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too."
No more. Today there's a "new catechism" that's "little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes" making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in "serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy." Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.

Stockman's indictment warns that the Republican Party's "new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:"

Stage 1. Nixon irresponsible, dumps gold, U.S starts spending binge.
Richard Nixon's gold policies get Stockman's first assault, for defaulting "on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world." So for the past 40 years, America's been living "beyond our means as a nation" on "borrowed prosperity on an epic scale ... an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves."
Remember Friedman: "Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct." Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately "once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors."
And without discipline America was also encouraging "global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve." Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist's advice.

Stage 2. Crushing debts from domestic excesses, war mongering.
Stockman says "the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970." Who's to blame? Not big-spending Democrats, says Stockman, but "from the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Back "in 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts," but Stockman makes clear, they had to be "matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration's hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces, the welfare state and the warfare state, that drive the federal spending machine."

OK, stop a minute. As you absorb Stockman's indictment of how his Republican party has "destroyed the U.S. economy," you're probably asking yourself why anyone should believe a traitor to the Reagan legacy. I believe party affiliation is irrelevant here. This is a crucial subject that must be explored because it further exposes a dangerous historical trend where politics is so partisan it's having huge negative consequences.
Yes, the GOP does have a welfare-warfare state: Stockman says "the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending, exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans' fiscal religion."

When Fed chief Paul Volcker "crushed inflation" in the '80s we got a "solid economic rebound." But then "the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts." By 2009, they "reduced federal revenues to 15% of gross domestic product," lowest since the 1940s. Still today they're irrationally demanding an extension of those "unaffordable Bush tax cuts that would amount to a bankruptcy filing."

Recently Bush made matters far worse by "rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures." Bush also gave in "on domestic spending cuts, signing into law $420 billion in nondefense appropriations, a 65% percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy." Takes two to tango.

Stage 3. Wall Street's deadly “vast, unproductive expansion.”Stockman continues pounding away: "The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector." He warns that "Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation." Wrong, not oblivious. Self-interested Republican loyalists like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner knew exactly what they were doing.

They wanted the economy, markets and the government to be under the absolute control of Wall Street's too-greedy-to-fail banks. They conned Congress and the Fed into bailing out an estimated $23.7 trillion debt. Worse, they have since destroyed meaningful financial reforms. So Wall Street is now back to business as usual blowing another bigger bubble/bust cycle that will culminate in the coming "American Apocalypse."

Stockman refers to Wall Street's surviving banks as "wards of the state." Wrong, the opposite is true. Wall Street now controls Washington, and its "unproductive" trading is "extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives." Wall Street banks like Goldman were virtually bankrupt, would have never survived without government-guaranteed deposits and "virtually free money from the Fed's discount window to cover their bad bets."

Stage 4. New American Revolution class-warfare coming soon.
Finally, thanks to Republican policies that let us "live beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore," while at home "high-value jobs in goods production ... trade, transportation, information technology and the professions shrunk by 12% to 68 million from 77 million."
As the apocalypse draws near, Stockman sees a class-rebellion, a new revolution, a war against greed and the wealthy and soon. The trigger will be the growing gap between economic classes: No wonder "that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1% of Americans, paid mainly from the Wall Street casino, received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90%, mainly dependent on Main Street's shrinking economy, got only 12%. This growing wealth gap is not the market's fault. It's the decaying fruit of bad economic policy."

Get it? The decaying fruit of the GOP's bad economic policies is destroying our economy.

Warning: this black swan won't be pretty, will shock, soon
His bottom line: "The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing, it's a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach, balanced budgets, and sound money and financial discipline is needed more than ever."

Wrong: There are far bigger things to "pity."
First, that most Americans, 300 million, are helpless, will do nothing, sit in the bleachers passively watching this deadly partisan game like it's just another TV reality show.

Second, that, unfortunately, politicians are “so deep in the pockets” of the Wall Street conspiracy that controls Washington they are helpless and blind.

Third, there's a depressing sense that Stockman will be dismissed as a traitor, his message lost in the 24/7 news cycle until the final apocalyptic event, an unpredictable black swan triggers another, bigger global meltdown, followed by a long Great Depression II and a historic class war.

So be prepared, it will hit soon, when you least expect it!!

I intend for my next posting to be on John Law, the Scotsman who handled the budget of France based on a Ponzi Scheme that when it crashed……It started the French Revolution. History Repeats Itself!!!

In 2001 George W. Bush Squanders Budget Surplus

The Cause and Effects of the George W. Bush Squandering the Budget Surplus that the Bill Clinton administration left him with.

In 2001 the George W. Bush pushed through one of the largest tax cuts in U.S. history. Bush argued that unspent government funds should be returned to taxpayers, saying "the surplus is not the government’s money. The surplus is the people’s money." With reports of the threat of recession from the Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, Bush argued that such a tax cut would stimulate the economy and create jobs. Others, including the Treasury Secretary at the time Paul O’Neill, were opposed to some of the tax cuts on the basis that they would contribute to budget deficits and undermine Social Security. (What a great prediction that came true. Who Knew?!?!?)

Below is Engineer of Knowledge’s 2010 evaluation of this action.

George W. Bush’s “Economic Stimulus” Plan

Q. What was an “Economic Stimulus” payment?
A. It is money that the federal government sent to taxpayers.

Q. Where did the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.

Q. So the George W. Bush government gave back your own money?
A. Only a smidgen of it, Vice President Dick Cheney got the rest.

Q. What was the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan was for you to use the money to purchase a high definition TV sets, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn't that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up Smart Ass.

Below was the George W. Bush’s helpful advice on how to best help the U.S. economy by spending the stimulus check wisely:

* If you spent the stimulus money at Wal-Mart, the money went to China or Sri Lanka .
* If you spent it on gasoline, your money went to the Arabs.
* If you purchased a computer, it went to India , Taiwan or China .
* If you purchased fruit and vegetables, it went to Mexico , Honduras and Guatemala .
* If you bought an efficient car, it went to Japan or Korea .
* If you purchased useless stuff, it went to Taiwan .
* If you paid your credit cards off, or bought stock, it went to management bonuses where they would just hide it offshore.

Instead, you could have kept the money in America by:
1) Spending it at yard sales.
2) Going to ball games, preferably the Texas Rangers
3) Spending it on prostitutes like Bush did in his drunken, cocaine youth.
4) Beer….Lots and Lots of Beer like Bush did as a drunk!!
5) Tattoos
(These are the only American businesses still operating in the U.S.)

Conclusion:
If you went to a ball game with a tattooed prostitute that you met at a yard sale and drank beer all day, you were a True Patriotic American….Just like President George W. Bush!

The Berlin Airlift of 1948

After WWII the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under their control. This was the first major international crises of the now Cold War and the first of many later such crisis. Their aim was to force the Western Powers to allow the Soviet Zone to start supplying Berlin with food and fuel, thereby giving the Soviets practical control over the entire city. As the Russian General Molotov noted, "What happens to Berlin, happens to Germany; what happens to Germany, happens to Europe.”


President Truman called a meeting of his staff to see how we could keep West Berlin, a total of two million people needed to be feed and fuel to be supplied for heat so the German people would not to freeze to death. All the General’s and military experts on President Truman’s staff said that to fly in supplies could not be done. We only had a total of 37 DC-3’s or C-47’s in Germany and the amount need to supply the population of West Berlin was physically impossible. President Truman just sat there listening to all of his experts without saying a word. After all had presented their case with the negative news that it could not be done, President Truman asked for a vote with a show of hands and again it was a unanimous vote that what was being proposed was just not feasible.

At this point President Truman stood up, faced everyone at the meeting and simply said, “DO IT,” and adjourned the meeting walking out.

In response, the Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift to carry supplies to the people in West Berlin. The British Air Commodore Reginald Waite calculated the resources required to support the entire city. His calculations indicated that they would need to supply seventeen hundred calories per person per day, giving a grand total of 646 tons of flour and wheat, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, five tons of whole milk for children, three tons of fresh yeast for baking, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and ten tons of cheese. In total, 1,534 tons were needed daily to keep the over two million people alive. Additionally, the city needed to be kept heated and powered, which would require another 3,475 tons of coal and gasoline.

Of course it took a revolutionary change and advancement in aviation at this time. The best airports in the U.S. at this time like LaGuardia or O’Hare needed 20 minutes between landings and takeoffs on commercial flights. To make the Berlin Airlift to work the cargo planes carrying the supplies landed and took off with these same DC-3’s and C-47’s every 45 seconds!!


By the spring of 1949, the effort was clearly succeeding, and by April the airlift was delivering more cargo than had previously flowed into the city by rail. The United States Air Force, Royal Air Force, and other Commonwealth nations flew over 200,000 flights providing 13,000 tons of food daily to Berlin in an operation lasting almost a year.

The success of the Airlift was humiliating to the Soviets, who had repeatedly claimed it could never work. When it became clear that it did work, the blockade was lifted in May. One lasting legacy of the Airlift is the three airports in the former western zones of the city, which served as the primary gateways to Berlin for another fifty years.

Now where I am going with this history lesson that can be applied currently is today when President Obama meets with the Whining Republicans in Congress on the Health Care Reform, President Obama is going to hear a unanimous vote of what is being proposed is just not feasible and cannot be done. My advice to President Obama is to emulate President Truman in 1948 and simply say in no uncertain terms, “DO IT!!", adjourn the meeting and walk out.

What’s Ya Smokin, Grandma?

More Older Americans Report Smoking Marijuana

I had to pass on this story from a local news paper out of Delaware that did a story today that reported of an 88 year old Grandma who has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine, a crisp copy of The New York Times, some classic music from her time period, and every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana.

Long a fixture among young people, use of the country’s most popular illicit drug is now growing among the AARP set, as the baby boomers who came of age in the 1960’s and 70’s grow older.

The number of people 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the prior year went up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent from 2002 to 2008, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The rise was most dramatic among 55 to 59 year olds, whose reported marijuana use more than tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent.

Observers expect further increases as 78 million boomers born between 1945 and 1064 age. For many boomers, the drug never held the stigma it did for previous generations, and they tried it decades ago.

Some have used it ever since, while others are revisiting the habit in retirement, either for recreation or as a way to cope with the aches and pains of aging.

One 88 year old grandmother walks with a cane and has arthritis in her back and legs told the reporter that she finds marijuana has helped her sleep better than pills ever did.

The political advocates for legalizing marijuana say the number of older users could represent an important shift in their decades-long push to change the laws. “For the longest time, our political opponents were older Americans who were not familiar with marijuana and had lived through the “Reefer Madness” mentality and they considered marijuana a very dangerous drug,” said Keith Stroup, the founder and lawyer of NORMAL, a marijuana advocacy group. “Now, whether they resume the habit of smoking or whether they simply understand that it’s no big deal and that it shouldn’t be a crime, in large numbers they are on our side of the issue.”

The drug is credited with relieving many problems and aging: aches and pains, glaucoma, macular degeneration, and so on. Patients in 14 states enjoy medical marijuana laws, but those elsewhere buy or grown the drug illegally to ease their conditions.

Among them is Perry Parks, 67, of Rockingham, N.C., a retired Army pilot who suffered crippling pain from degenerative disc disease and arthritis. He had tried all sorts of drugs, but found little success. About two years ago he turned to marijuana, which he first had tried in college, and was amazed how well it worked for the pain. He said, “I realized I could get by without the narcotics,” referring to prescription painkillers. “I am essentially pain free!”