The official party line

After hearing time and time again that my friends and colleagues were being forbidden to talk to me any longer, I've decided to publish the "official" party line.

Repeat after me:

“Everything is fine. The bailout will work. Buy lots of stocks. Do NOT store food, fuel, clothing, ammo, or gold. Go back to watching TV. These are NOT the droids you’re looking for…”

Keep chanting that until you believe it.

The Fate of Paper Money

As time goes by, the past becomes clearer than it was when it was still the future. What I am seeing now is that the government is not going to allow Social Security to go broke, nor will they allow lines of credit to close – instead, our government has decided that they have NO spending limits. So if I were you, I wouldn’t worry about losing Social Security benefits nor your house – there appears to be no need nor benefit to pay off any debts early – in fact, it looks like there is a real possibility that the government will start paying off people’s mortgages and credit cards. Clearly, our government has decided that there’s no limit on their spending; if Ronald Reagan broke the bank with $8 billion for the S&L crisis, then what did George Bush Jr. do with $800 billion for the banking crisis? And Obama seems to be just getting warmed up as he blows through his first trillion dollars in his first month. With our runaway spending I can only see two potential outcomes three or four years down the road:

Option 1. Hyperinflation ala post-WWI Germany where the mark shot up from 4 marks to US$1 to 4 trillion marks to US$1, which makes all of our life savings, IRA’s, 401k’s, stocks, and bonds worth less than a slice of bread. In that eventuality only our year’s supply will have any value.

Or… Option 2. The government corrects their mistake by taking all of our money out of our accounts, like Argentina did back in 2001 – I remember it well since I was working with a semi-retired Argentine man on our Nicaragua project when it happened. The Argentine government had been cut off from too much credit by the World Bank and so resorted to printing money with no backing (like Germany did post-WWI or like the US is going to do later this year.) But Argentina didn’t want to go into hyper inflation, like Germany had, so they froze everyone’s bank accounts mid-week and no one could use the bank, write a check, tap their ATM, or anything until the next Monday morning. In the meantime the government divided everyone’s bank balance by the amount that the country was overdrawn (I don’t remember if it was by 10 or 20 or what – I should look that up.) So, a semi-retired man like my buddy Aldo, with whom I was working in Nicaragua, might have enough money to retire on in the bank one day, and then suddenly wake up the next day with a tenth or twentieth of that amount.

One of those two options seems to me to be the only possible outcome of our unrestrained spending. Unless, of course, George Bush and Obama are correct and there really is unlimited money for the US government to spend.

And just for fun, I’m attaching a photo of my Argentine buddy, Aldo, on the left, along with my other colleague and friend, Daniel, on the right, from NM. We got one day off during one of my stints in Nicaragua and so rented a car for the day and drove down the coast and found a little local seaside resort where we played in the surf for a while and then enjoyed a lovely lunch of fresh lobster.

Anyway, so what am I going to do? My plan is that I’m going to temporarily suspend my 401k contributions. That frees up $16,000/year to put toward a new house, new cars, more years’ supply items, and my kids’ college education. Then, when we have things in stock that we’d need in the case of either outcomes 1 or 2 above, then if things still haven’t come clear apart, then I’ll return to my regularly scheduled budget of maxing out my 401k and investing in the stock market. But for now my overarching strategy is to ask myself: “If all of my electronic assets suddenly became worthless, what will I wish I had bought when I still had money?”

So, for what it’s worth, that’s what I’m doing. I’m not recommending my strategy, but it’s what I think will work for me.

Whites need not apply

I guess it’s official now – I have lost all hope for the future of America: it is obvious that white people are no longer welcome here now that we have a black president. Obama and his minions exposed their divisiveness and belied their promises of unity and hope. See the video from the inauguration yesterday here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRf4tOP05fA. I knew that these people were flaming racist fascist socialists, but I didn’t think their ideologies would be so flagrant in the inauguration bacchanal – I had expected that they would ease their way into their party line. I assume that this means that they don’t need or want my tax dollars, because I’m guilty of being white and can see no solution to my transgression.

But wait, there's more: this administration just keeps getting better and better – at this rate we’ll only have to tolerate them for four (very long) years – this great and Obama-nable farce keeps rolling along, stream roller-ing everyone who is not a minority. I was shocked and appalled, but not surprised, to hear Obama’s chief economic advisor say out loud and for the CSPAN cameras (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opxuUj6vFa4) that he doesn’t want skilled, white, male construction workers building any of the bridges or power lines in Obama’s infrastructure stimulus plan – he wants those projects to be built only by the unskilled, chronically unemployed. Boy, that’s what I want – to drive my family across bridges built by people who never wanted to work a day in their lives. I hope they label them clearly so we can make an informed decision before driving our car across them. At least this is likely to stimulate the ferry industry in our county – we’ll have to hire some ferry experts from Bangladesh, where they also don’t have bridges. Bangladesh also doesn’t have electricity for large spans of time each day – something else to which we can look forward – I’m glad I had a few years living in Bangladesh to get used to that, because that’s our future.

Hobgoblin, again

Saturday, January 17th, was an all day 4-wheeler excursion to the “Hobgoblin” down in Nevada. We’d been there once before in December of 2006 (see: http://powerletters.blogspot.com/2006/12/trip-to-hobgoblin.html.) It was fun; it was a gorgeous sunny day, with temperatures ranging somewhere between 60 and 70F all day. All together we were 13 people on nine 4-wheelers. Our 4-wheeler ride started out at “Whitney Pockets” in Nevada, about 30 miles from Mesquite on a barely paved road; one of our new riding buddies was the grandson of the rancher who settled all of that land. We found many of the trails that we’d taken a little over two years ago now blocked off by the BLM which claims to be restoring the land. I’ve attached a photo of the group of us on a rock formation.

That night we got home just in the nick of time to change out of our dusty clothes, shower, get dressed, and dash up to Desert Hills H.S. to watch Kat play in the County-wide Honors Orchestra. She said that it was way fun to play in an orchestra that was really good.

Christmas trip to New Orleans LA

Our plan WAS to go to New Orleans for the Christmas – New Year holiday week. We reserved our plane tickets way back in September, using our remaining frequent flier miles that we earned when we were flying around the world fairly regularly. We reserved our hotel rooms at the Frenchman in the French Quarter back in October. We had a great itinerary all worked out:

Dec 25 – fly from Las Vegas to New Orleans in the afternoon.
Dec 26 – Explore the French Quarter, including the Cathedral, and then go over to Algiers Point to see Mardi Gras World.
Dec 27 – Explore the Warehouse District and check out a bunch of the cool museums there, like the Confederate Museum.
Dec 28 – Explore the Garden District in the morning (we had lunch reservations at Commander’s Palace) and then the Museum of Art in the afternoon (they had a traveling exhibit of the Impressionists.)
Dec 29 – We had a rental car reserved so we could drive out to see several old plantations and their mansions, including the plantation where the Uncle Remus stories were documented.
Dec 30 – Finish up the French Quarter, including the neat old above-ground cemetery and the Historic Voodoo Museum.
Dec 31 – Do some shopping in the French Quarter in the morning and fly back to Las Vegas in the evening, and spend New Years Eve in Las Vegas.

So, we got all packed up and ready to go on the 24th. On Christmas morning, after we chatted with Colin Jr. in Bulgaria, had breakfast, opened presents, and cleaned up a bit, we loaded up the car and headed toward the airport in Las Vegas to catch our plane to New Orleans. As we were backing out of the driveway I noticed that the battery and brake lights came on in the dashboard of the car – that was troubling – but I knew that we’d recently replaced the entire brake system (front and back) and that the battery was pretty new (maybe one year old, at most) and the car seemed to be running just fine, so we headed off anyway. There was a little voice inside my head telling me to switch over to the 4-Runner, but it wasn’t topped off with gasoline, so I decided to head off anyway. As we drove down the freeway the car seemed to handle OK, but I kept thinking through who I could call on my cell phone if we were actually to break down. Just as we passed the last exit to Mesquite several other lights came on my dashboard and I decided that we were in trouble. The next exit from the freeway was about ten miles away and I was hoping that we’d make it so I could drive back at least to Mesquite, but we didn’t. Just a mile or two short of the exit, the car completely quit and I coasted to a stop off the shoulder of the freeway, right between several hills where we couldn’t get any cell phone service. I got out and looked under the hood of the car, hoping to find a loose battery cable or something, but didn’t find anything out of place. So we got back in the car and Leslie offered a little prayer. Then I was able to start the car and we made it to the next freeway exit; I drove under the freeway and headed back towards Mesquite, but the car didn’t make it onto the freeway – we were dead dead dead – I looked under the hood again, but there was still nothing obviously wrong. Fortunately we had cellphone service at this second location and I was able to phone a friend from work who lives in Littlefield, Arizona, just twenty miles or so back up the freeway. He offered to come get us and we accepted. So we played with our new Christmas game, Catchphrase, and amused ourselves until he arrived. He brought a large pickup truck, with room for all of us to ride inside, and a flatbed trailer big enough to carry our dead car. Then he drove us back home to St. George, where I dropped off Les and the girls, and then we took the car to the shop to leave it for the next business day (that day still being Christmas.) I called American Airlines and they told me that all the flights to New Orleans were booked solid for the next few days, so then we called and canceled our hotel, rental car, and restaurant reservations and then we unpacked our bags. Sigh. Maybe we can make New Orleans at Spring Break.

Why Guns? A Refresher

I fear that the writing is on the wall and we are past the day when having a gun is purely for sport. I honestly never expected this day to come in my lifetime. I hope I’m mistaken about the signs of the times - I guess time will tell. In the meantime, here is a brief refresher course about why America MUST have an armed populace:

FIREARMS REFRESHER COURSE

1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
3. Colt: The original point and click interface.
4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelling.
7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.
9. Those who trade liberty for security will have neither. --Ben Franklin
10. The United States Constitution (c)1791. All Rights Reserved.
11. What part of "shall not be infringed" do you not understand?
12. The Second Amendment is for when the politicians ignore the others.
13. 164,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians.
15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.
16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.
18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.
19. Criminals love gun control; it makes their job easier and safer.
20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.
21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.
22. Only corrupt government is afraid of its citizens.
23. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.
24. Try enforcing the laws we ALREADY have; don't make more gun control.
24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.
26. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.
27. Austria wouldn't be a free state with gun control.
28. Israel would not exist with gun control.
29. "To enslave a nation you must first confiscate their firearms." --Adolph Hitler, circa 1936
30. "Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not." --Thomas Jefferson

The photo is of my 15-year-old daughter Kat, practicing her pistol marksmanship at Thanksgiving. You'll appreciate that she's already knocked down two of the silhouette targets with her six shooter.