Date Archives → January 2014

Question & Thought for the last day of January 2014!

Question & Thought for the last day of January 2014!
Good Friday Morning! I’ve had enough of snow and being cooped up! But, I’ve read stuff I never knew – like this!
1. Question – Do you believe FDR was looking for a fight?
2. Thought – Though the realization gradually dawned on Roosevelt and his minions that no amount of constitutionally questionable New Deal programs and Machiavellian presidential scheming could end the Depression, Roosevelt kept his programs going full steam ahead. Near the end of Roosevelt’s second term, Secretary of Treasury Henry Morganthau, a key New Deal architect, penned this startling confession regarding the administration’s failure: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot.”
As nations on nearly every continent emerged from the economic cataclysm, U.S. unemployment skyrocketed back up to nine million workers in 1939 – 12 million if counting Americans employed at taxpayer-funded “make-work” jobs – a total nearly that of when Roosevelt first won the presidency, and after oceans of New Deal spending.
As the 1930s wound down, Roosevelt’s resolve not to take his hand off the tiller steering America’s economic course was creating the unemployment that would help impel him to push America into another world war and another face-off with Lindbergh.
In September 1939 when Germany and Russia invaded Poland, precipitating WW II, Roosevelt saw his chance to eliminate U.S. unemployment. Amity Schlaes opined in her Depression chronicle The Forgotten Man: “A war … would hand to Roosevelt the thing he always lacked – a chance, quite literally, to provide jobs to the remaining unemployed. On the junket down the Potomac, for example, he could count 6,000 men at work at Langley field; 12,000 at Portsmouth Navy Yard, where there had been 7,600; and new employment in the military or the prospect of it, for Americans elsewhere. Roosevelt hadn’t known what to do with the extra people in 1938, but now (1940) he did: he could make them soldiers.” Never mind that the private-sector unemployment problem was exacerbated by the economic drag caused by his costly Big Government programs – or that going to war would make government even more expensive.
Roosevelt’s only problem was convincing Americans of the necessity to fight – no easy chore. The American public was disgusted with Europe after it had torn itself to shreds for no legitimate reason in the “Great War,” dragging the United States into the fray to win the fight, then reneged on billions of dollars in war repayments while pillaring the United States as a villainous creditor called “Uncle Shylock” – not to mention America’s 460,000 deaths resulting from that war. The American public had no interest in saving England’s rapacious empire again, or in dealing with European geopolitics.
Roosevelt, again contrary to promises to the electorate, schemed and crafted plans to involve the United States in Europe’s latest war, while Lindbergh worked assiduously to keep America out of the war. (FDR vs. Lindbergh: Setting the Record Straight, by John J. Dwyer from The New American, January 2014 issue)
​Have a Great Super Bowl Weekend! ​Don’t text and drive and do drink H2O! Please encourage reading. We have people deciding to put the Marijuana Bowl in New Jersey in the middle of winter. We also have people deciding to put the Security Games in Sochi. We need more smart people everywhere.
Mark Remick

Question & Thought & ANDs…

Question & Thought for 30 January 2014!!!

Question & Thought for 30 January 2014!!!
Good Thursday Morning! Super Bowl coming up!
1. Question – What coaching call has been called the most audacious in Super Bowl history?
2. Thought – The Steelers recovered an onside kick at the Dallas 42 with 1:48 left and then tried three unsuccessful running plays, with the Cowboys calling a timeout after each one. On fourth and 9, backup quarterback Terry Hanratty went to the sidelines to confer with coach Chuck Noll, the assumption being that the Steelers would call on 37-year-old punter Bobby Walden to pin Staubach deep in the Dallas end of the field. There was 1:28 left and the Cowboys were out of timeouts.
Pittsburgh line coach George Perles said he wanted the Steelers to punt, so the defense would have more room, “and then I wouldn’t have the monkey on my back.” Perles recalled that Noll told him, “If we don’t stop them, we don’t deserve to win.”
Hanratty rejoined the huddle.
“I’m looking at him and saying, ‘What is it? What is it?'” running back Rocky Bleier recalled. “He shook his head but didn’t say anything. He says, ‘All right, guys, here it is: 84 Trap, on 2.’ I couldn’t even concentrate on the play because I thought it was so ridiculous.” Bleier plunged for 2, the clock stopped for change of possession, and Dallas had 1:22 to travel 61 yards for a winning touchdown. Bleier said, “We all walked off the field shaking our heads, thinking, ‘What kind of play was that?’ It was the stupidest play ever, ever called in history.”
Noll offered an explanation years later: “If they had needed a field goal, then it would of been different. But we had them in a must pass situation, and I like for my defense to have a team in that kind of spot. Our defense did just what we thought it would do. They came up with a pass interception. I would prefer to turn a situation like that over to the defense instead of taking a chance on getting a punt blocked.”
It has been called the most audacious coaching decision in Super Bowl history. In effect, Noll was telling Staubach, “You’re good, but my defense is better” – and, as it turned out, it was. (The Ultimate Super Bowl Book by Bob McGinn)
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We just may see something similar this Sunday in the Marijuana Bowl!
Mark Remick

Question & Thought & ANDs…

Question & Thought for January 29th, 2014!

Question & Thought for January 29th, 2014!
Good Wednesday Morning! Today’s my dad’s birthday. I am very fortunate!
1. Question – What’s being taught in our classrooms after the President addresses the nation?
2. Thought – Let’s start off with a few quotations, then a question. In reference to the president’s State of the Union: “Sounds a lot like the things Adolf Hitler used to say.” “Bush is threatening the whole planet.” “[The] U.S. wants to keep the world divided.” Then the speaker asks, “Who is probably the most violent nation on the planet?” and shouts “The United States!”
What’s the source of these statements?
During this class session, Mr. Bennish peppered his 10th-grad geography class with other statements like: The U.S. has engaged in “7,000 terrorist attacks against Cuba.” In his discussion of capitalism, he told his students, “Capitalism is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion and at odds with human rights.”
Regardless of whether you’re pro-Bush or anti-Bush, pro-American or anti-American, I’d like to know whether there’s anyone who believes that the teacher’s remarks were appropriate for any classroom setting, much less a high school geography class.
Public education propaganda is often a precursor for what youngsters might encounter in college. UCLA’s Bruin Standard newspaper documents propaganda. Mary Corey, UCLA history professor, instructed her class, “Capitalism isn’t a lie on purpose. It’s just a lie,” she continued, “[Capitalists] are swine….They’re bastard people.” Professor Andrew Hewitt, chairman of UCLA’s Department of Germanic Languages, told his class, “Bush is a moron, a simpleton, and an idiot.” His opinion of the rest of us: “American consumerism is a very unique thing; I don’t think anyone else lusts after money in such a greedy fashion.” Rod Swanson, economics professor, told his class, “The United States of America, backed by facts, is the greediest and most selfish country in the world.” Terri Anderson, a sociology professor, assigned her class to go out cross-dressed in a public setting for four hours. Photos or videotape were required as proof of having completed the assignment. (Wednesday, February 22, 2006 editorial from Liberty Verses the Tyranny of Socialism by Walter E. Williams)
Read so you can connect the dots!
Mark Remick

Question & Thought & ANDs…

Question & Thought for January 28th, 2014!

Question & Thought for January 28th, 2014!
Good Tuesday Morning!
1. Question – Are the people we define as middle class getting richer, poorer, or just running in place?
2. Question – A reasonable answer – though by no means the “right” answer – would be to calculate the change in per capita income in the United States over the course of a generation, which is roughly 30 years. Per capita income is a simple average: total income divided by the size of the population. By that measure, average income in the United States climbed from $7,787 in 1980 to $26,487 in 2010 (the latest year for which the government has data). Voila! Congratulations to us.
There is just one problem. My quick calculation is technically correct and yet totally wrong in terms of the question I set out to answer. To begin with, the figures above are not adjusted for inflation. (A per capita income of $7,787 in 1980 is equal to about $19,600 when converted to 2010 dollars.) That’s a relatively quick fix. The bigger problem is that the average income in America is not equal to the income of the average American. Let’s unpack that clever little phrase.
Per capita income merely takes all the income earned in the country and divides by the number of people, which tells us absolutely nothing about who is earning how much of that income – in 1980 or in 2010. As the Occupy Wall Street folks would point out, explosive growth in the incomes of the top 1 percent can raise per capita income significantly without putting any more money in the pockets of the other 99 percent. (naked statistics by charles wheelan)
State of the Union tonite!
Mark Remick

Question & Thought & ANDs…