A Redo: The Real Deal Exposed; Part 1

A day or two ago I looked back through a few old posts from the Real Deal, something that (believe it or not) I have never done before. I have always written and moved on, never looking back to see what I've said. I think that this approach is probably not a good one, considering the subject matter with which this blog deals. I actually enjoyed the review, though due to time constraints, I was only able to read three posts from the past. I plan to do so more often in the future, because it was fun. Anyway, in doing this, I thought it might be interesting to repeat two posts that were originally presented on November 27th and 28th of 2005. These posts dealt with my view of where our country was headed at that time. They are unchanged, the only editing I have done is to add this statement and to slightly change the title. I would be interested to hear what you guys think about where we really are as a nation and world in comparison to what was proposed nearly a year ago. I have my own beliefs about this, but will hold onto those for a while. My interest lies in what the rest of you think, so please comment when you can. I think for the issues to be placed in proper context, both posts must be read, and in the proper order. So, here they are, have fun.

Cyclone


November 27, 2005

Here is what we face, folks. Pure and simple, unvarnished, and what choices face us heading into the future. And, it's going to take a while, so stay with me. This will be a dialogue over several days. But, reality check time is here. We'll start with Option #1 that faces us, move to Option #2, and then build to some solutions. But problems are many, and solutions are few. So be prepared.

As anyone who has read my writings over the last couple of years knows, and especially over the last six months or so, I have nothing but the deepest respect for Patrick Fitzgerald. I believe that he has proven himself to be a legal genius, completely non-partisan and will not sell himself out under any conditions, to anyone. Period. But, Mr. Fitzgerald has the same problem as all attorney's, be they prosecutor's or defense attorney's. The problem is that he works on "attorney time," rather than "everybody else" time. That is not a criticism of the man, simply a fact. The American legal system is set up and functions solely on a basis of built in, unfettered delays. Due to the fact that the system is overburdened and filled with cases that should never have been filed, the backlog is staggering. All attorneys and judges know this, thus delays are merely a part of life. In fact, they become a way of life for those inside the system. This presents a problem.

In dealing with the current administration, we no longer have time for the inevitable delays that the legal system requires. If the Madman Boosh and his Jackass cronies are left in place for three more years, without immediate intervention from an outside influence, America as we know it is over. It is really that simple, and it is really that dire. There are really only two ways that we can go, outside of the legal realm, and neither option is pretty nor painless. So, here we go.

OPTION # 1----TOTAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE
The first way, and the most likely to occur if we "stay the course," in my view, is the total collapse of the American monetary system. What do I mean by total collapse? I mean that if you have $1.00 in your pocket you are as wealthy as someone with $100 million dollars. You are both broke. Your dollars are not worth the paper that they are printed on. And it could happen. In fact, we are not even in control of whether or not that happens. As much as we would like to think that it "can't happen here," I'm telling you that it can happen here, and will, if Boosh is left in power. Here's how.

The Chinese and the rest of the world own us, pure and simple. We owe staggering amounts of money to the Chinese, among others. They could call in those notes tomorrow, and POOF, we're gone. But that doesn't need to occur for us to fail economically. It can happen much easier than that. And, it goes to the very heart of how Boosh, Cheney and the cancer that surrounds them have driven us over the cliff in 5 short years. And, why they ALL must be removed, regardless of what it takes to do so. We cannot survive three more years of this madness. Now, stay with me here. This might take a while, but I will tie it into the economic picture eventually.

For all of my 50 years on this Earth, we have, for the most part, been the good guys. We were always the ones to lend a helping hand to third world countries, defenders of the oppressed against the oppressors, always holding the high Moral Ground, at least on the surface. We were always being compared to the world's other superpower, the USSR, and we were held in higher esteem than they by the vast majority of the world. Although the differences between us and the Soviet's were really not all that great, the perception of the difference was what mattered. This is what I mean. In the days of the Cold War, we always were able to use them as the example of how not to behave, and the world bought it. Now to the difference.

If the Soviets wanted something that others had, they simply went and took it, by force. People did not like being conquered and burglarized, but, unless we intervened, other smaller countries were powerless to stop them. The Soviet's were the ultimate military industrial complex in the world. We did intervene on occasion, but only when WE had something to gain from it. Now to us. If another country had something that we wanted, we did not invade them and steal it, but we talked them out of it. The USA, the great protectors, and the greatest con artists in the world. We would talk people out of their resources and make them like it. We would toss in some cash, a few promises that we would keep, get what we wanted, and everyone left happy. In comparison to the Soviet method, ours proved to be much more palatable to the world. As long as we had the Soviet model to be compared with, we always came out looking like the "good guys." Then a strange thing happened. The USSR collapsed from within, and suddenly we were left alone as the world's only superpower. Everyone in America breathed a sigh of relief, no longer had to worry about the "Rooskies" blowing us up, or starting WWIII. A good thing, right? Well, as it turns out, that was the worst thing that could have happened to us. Without evil to compare good to, how does good really look? Without that evil buffer, our emporor lost her clothes. Like the Great Oz, the curtain was pulled back and we were exposed for what we really were.

For me, this realization struck back during the Iranian Hostage crisis. If you recall, the Iranian's had 400 some odd American citizens and held them for a long time. President Carter tried every avenue of negotiation that he knew of to gain their safe release. He eventually succeeded, although not before he had lost the election to Ronald Reagan. To rub salt in Carter's wound, the Iranian's decided to wait until Reagan was sworn in to actually release our people. That fact is irrelevent to my point here, but another fact is not. President Carter had made some promises to the Iranians in exchange for the release of the hostages. After their release, President Reagan, on behalf of the American people, then essentially told the Iranians to go screw themselves, that we were not keeping our end of the deal. Many Americans agreed with this, after all, the Iranians were certainly in the wrong for holding our people. But, they ignored the bigger picture. They ignored the fact that we are/were supposed to be the "good guys," and that our word was once our bond. In my view, it has been all downhill from that moment to today. The fall of the Soviet Union has only exacerbated our downfall. Now we must move to the Nuclear Power/Superpower deal.

Since the fall of the Soviets, ESPECIALLY SINCE BOOSH HAS BEEN IN OFFICE, we have been obsessive about keeping other countries from producing or acquiring Nuclear Weapons. The standard argument has been nothing short of exploitation of the fear factor, we simply don't want another country to fire nuclear weapons at us. You know, the safety thing. Bullshit, that doesn't even pass the smell test. Oh sure, some rogue madman like Saddam Hussein could conceivably get control of one and maybe, just maybe, try to use it on us. The "mushroom cloud" crap that Boosh spoke of during the leadup to the current Iraq war. Anyone with an IQ in double digits can see through the fallacy of this thinking. No country, I repeat, NO COUNTRY, would dare fire a nuke in our direction. It would be instant and sure suicide for the entire citizenry of the country who dared do so. That is a given, we would obliterate them in a heartbeat. We have thousands of nukes, and could take out the entire population of the world if we chose to. And, if any rogue nation like Syria or Iran thought about trying it, we would certainly have the intelligence in place to know that it was going to occur before it happened. If we didn't have the intelligence on the ground, we would simply buy the information with our fiat dollars. No, the real reason that we fight so hard to keep other countries from having nuclear weapons is far less about them using them against us, but about what we began discussing originally, the US economy. See, I promised you we would get back here eventually.

The Chinese, in combination with Europe and the rest of the world, could collapse our economy overnight if they wished to. You could go to bed a millionaire tonight and wake up peniless in the morning. Sound far fetched? It's not. This is the real reason that we want to be the only nation in the world with nuclear weapons.

We have always managed to keep the American Dollar afloat and viable as an accepted currency worldwide by maintainging two very simple concepts. We have nearly completely abobanded concept number one, and are rapidly approaching the end of concept number two. In short, we are in trouble, serious trouble.

The first concept comes from what I mentioned above, the Moral High ground that we used to enjoy. When we were thought of as the "good guys," willing to help less fortunate countries and back up our word with deeds, things went rather well for us. However, over the last two or three decades, our "word is our bond" way of life has fallen by the wayside. Because of this, countries that used to hold us in high esteem no longer do so. George Boosh and his policies have done more damage to our world standing in 5 years than any damage the rest of the Presidents, combined, have managed to inflict in over 200 years. By promising aid and not delivering it, no one trusts us any more. Fifteen Billion Dollars in funding pledged for the global fight against AIDS is one example. This pledge was made well over one year ago, and to date we have delivered 15 Million Dollars. That is a lot of missing zero's. Yet Boosh will tell you today of the 15 Billion in AIDS money that we are giving. Well, there is a lot of difference in pledging a certain amount, and then after the fact attaching unreasonable strings to the money before doling it out. Strings that, by the way, make certain that the money would not be wisely spent. Sounds great in press releases, saying that we are giving XXXX Billions of Dollars, but he never mentions that the money isn't sent. The rest of the world, unlike the blind sheep that make up the vast majority of Americans, know that the money has not been delivered. They are catching on to the game. That is but one of countless examples of unkept promises made by this administration. One closer to home that might ring a bell is NO Child Left Behind, mandated but unfunded. It is irrelevant to this discussion, in the sense that he is only fooling American's, but you get the idea. The rest of the world doesn't like being lied to by a country that was once thought of as one that could be counted on to help the downtrodden. The smokescreen has been lifted. We have lost the Moral Highground.

The second reason that the dollar has remained relevant is the real reason that we wish to be the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons. Other countries in the world have known that if they tried to do anything to crash our economy, we could simply blow them off the face of the earth. Our being the Superpower that we were, and I do mean were, was a real incentive for them to play along with our game. Our military might alone was enough to keep them in line, but that was okay because we were the "good guys" that were always ready to help when help was desparately needed. That is no longer the case, our word can no longer be taken seriously.

We are becoming increasingly suspect in being able to properly defend ourselves as well, and the world is starting to recognize that. They see the same things that we see, our military stretched to the limit attempting to fight two wars simultaneously, recruitment bottomed out with no incentive large enough to reach goals, and we are increasingly looking vulnerable. Combine that with the loss of the Moral Highground, and the world is suddenly wondering whether they really need us anymore. If we can't be depended on to give aid when needed, if we show that we will invade a soverign country under some trumped up pretenses, such as "national security," what is the point in helping us? Our word is no good, we might invade any of them who has something that we want (think OIL), so is our downfall really a bad thing for the rest of the world? These are conclusions that they are starting to come to on their own, and the conclusions point toward their deciding that they no longer need our ball to play with anymore. What are we going to do, blow up the rest of the world?

How could the rest of the world crash our economy overnight? Very simple. Decide, en masse, to base their economies on Euros or some other form of currency instead of American Dollars. In conjunction with this, they pull all of the foreign money out of our stock market and convert it to whatever currency they choose to use. Our stock market crashes in the grandest of styles. Should that once unthinkable act occur, and China calls in it's loans to us, it's over. Just like that. Our dollars are no longer accepted as good currency by anyone in the world except us. So, what happens then?

We do not have the ability nor the resources to manufacture goods or grow food in this country anymore. Certainly not to the extent necessary to take care of 300,000,000 people. Our dependence on foreign goods is such that we could not survive for long, once our dollars are no longer accepted as payment for those goods by the other countries. We'd be lucky to keep the State of Kansas alive for a decade, much less the rest of the country. If the dollars that you earn at work were worth nothing, unspendable, would you continue to show up at your job every day? Maybe for a day or two, a week at most, while you tried to figure out what was going on. What happens when the clerk at the gas station decides not to show? How do you get gas? And when the Supermarket runs out of food, is the driver that supplies them going to continue to drive to resupply the store without compensation? No, I don't think so. Or Walmart runs out of goods? Or the pharmacy, or anywhere? How long do you think it would take for this country to look like a scene from Escape from New York? Not long, I imagine. And, where would you escape to? Los Angeles? What would be different there? Nothing. There would be nowhere to go. It would be the 1800's all over again, only this time there would be 300,000,000 people, many with automatic weapons, running wild in the streets of America. Chaos. Utter, mass chaos would ensue. Farfetched? Not really. In fact, if we stay the course, I would surmise that this is one of only two options available to us.

Without intervention, that is. Don't worry, we'll get to the intervention avenues a little later. But before then, we need to understand that the trouble that we are in is very real. And, just so you'll know, we do not have until the 2008 election to wait for the intervention. We simply will not survive that long. That is why I mentioned Patrick Fitzgerald at the very beginning. Mr. Fitzgerald, you must get on "everybody else" time. Staying on "attorney time" will finish us. Give us what you've got, Mr. Fitzgerald, and give it to us quickly. If what you have is not enough, we need to look to further intervention. It is in place, but someone has to sound the alarm.

This is the price that we pay when we, as a nation, become moral lepers. When the rest of the world finally has had enough.

So, there is a cliff notes version of Option #1. Tomorrow or the next day, we'll look at option #2. I believe that Option #2 is what the Neocons have planned for us, and it must be stopped. Anything, aside from the above worst case scenario, would be preferred, over Option #2.

Cyclone