CLAPPER’S CLAPTRAP
The fact that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, was a lieutenant general in the Air Force makes me think the Air Force needs to re-examine its promotion policies. "The term Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella term for a variety of movements," Mr. Clapper told Congress Feb. 11, 2011. "In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam." An intelligence officer who says that is either a liar or a fool. Then again, he may be both, and here's why.
WE’RE FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND WE’RE HERE TO SCREW YOU
Hello. We're from the government. You think we're here to help you? Ha-ha, very funny. We're here to take lots of your money -- about twice as much as we took in 1985 -- and to boss you around. We say you can't build on your own property without our permission. You must buy health insurance if we tell you to. Federal spending has risen 23 percent since the recession began, median household income has fallen. We're richer. You're poorer. But to pamper ourselves at lavish conferences, give bonuses to IRS executives who harass conservatives, and pay for the president's vacations, we must have more. More - always more. Government programs rarely deliver what we promised, cost more than we said, you whine? So what? You better think carefully before you complain about how we do things. Each day we collect 1.7 billion electronic records on you and other Americans. We could be reading your emails, monitoring your telephone calls and tracking your credit card purchases. We didn't want you to find out about this. But since that little jerk Snowden has let the cat out of the bag, we want you to know we do it only for your protection.
CHINA’S CREDIT BUBBLE IS A MINSKY MOMENT
Beijing. China's shadow banking system is out of control and under mounting stress as borrowers struggle to roll over short-term debts, Fitch Ratings has warned. The agency said the scale of credit was so extreme that the country would find it very hard to grow its way out of the excesses as in past episodes, implying tougher times ahead. In an interview with Charlene Chu, Fitch's senior director in Beijing, she explained to me: "The credit-driven growth model is clearly falling apart. This could feed into a massive over-capacity problem, and potentially into a Japanese-style deflation. There is no transparency in the shadow banking system, and systemic risk is rising. We have no idea who the borrowers are, who the lenders are, and what the quality of assets is, and this undermines signaling." "There is no way they can grow out of their asset problems as they did in the past," she continued. "We think this will be very different from the banking crisis in the late 1990s. With credit at 200% of GDP, the numerator is growing twice as fast as the denominator. You can't grow out of that." We may be seeing the arrival of a "Minsky Moment" for China, when the debt pyramid collapses under its own weight.
THE SCAM OF THE SCOURGE AT THE G-8
There is an all-too-common tendency for humans (particularly members of the political class) to blame or scapegoat others when they bungle their jobs. We are now being treated to the meeting of the Group of Eight that ended today (6/18) in Northern Ireland - where the "leaders" of eight major countries are looking for excuses for why they have made such a mess of their own economies. Rather than acknowledge that the reason for such poor performance is excessive government spending, taxation and regulation, members of the G-8 are blaming their ills on lower-tax jurisdictions, which they pejoratively label "tax havens," and "the scourge of tax evasion." If the G-8 had responsible leaders, the group's summit would have as an agenda item, "Ways to downsize government." Instead, their agenda includes how to increase tax revenue by going after jurisdictions with low tax rates. They disguise this scam by using the phrases "increasing tax-base harmonization," "tax information sharing," and "tax transparency."
WHY I AM A REPUBLICAN
Note: Elbert Guillory is a State Senator in the legislature of Louisiana. A graduate of Rutgers Law School, he has been a practicing attorney in Opelousas for many years, and turned to politics in his 60s - elected as a State Representative in 2007, then State Senator in 2009 as a Democrat. Opelousas is heavily black and Democrat. On May 31, he formally switched his party affiliation to the Republican Party, becoming the first black Republican in the Louisiana Senate since Reconstruction in the 1870s. He is widely considered now to be a formidable candidate for Lt. Governor in 2015. Guillory calls himself a "Frederick Douglass Republican." Here is his explanation. It brought tears to my eyes, and it may well to yours. - Jack Wheeler {youtube}n_YQ8560E1w{/youtube}
HALF-FULL REPORT 06/14/13
Fifty-one years after her death, Marilyn Monroe still remains the most iconic movie star of all time. Last Sunday (6/09), the London Daily Mail ran a story with the headline, "I Listened to Marilyn Die." The daughter of a famous Hollywood private detective, Fred Otash (1922-1992), recently found eleven boxes of her father's files and notes in a storage unit. The files reveal that Otash had been hired by Howard Hughes to bug the home of Marilyn Monroe. Otash's notes say that on August 5, 1962, she had a violent argument with Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford (Bobby's brother-in-law), yelling that she had been "passed around like a piece of meat" by the Kennedy brothers (Bobby, Teddy, and JFK). The notes continued: "She was really screaming and they were trying to quiet her down. She's in the bedroom and Bobby gets the pillow and he muffles her on the bed to keep the neighbors from hearing. She finally quieted down and then he was looking to get out of there." That is followed by the note: "I listened to Marilyn Monroe die." The tape has never been found. Marilyn Monroe died on August 5, 1962. Otash never talked or wrote anything published about this. His private notes seem to confirm what many have suspected over the years: That Bobby Kennedy killed Marilyn Monroe.
WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A TEAM
[Note from Jack Wheeler: TTP would like to congratulate Joel and his team, the Santa Barbara Masters (Joel's the goalie) for winning the Silver Medal in the National Water Polo Masters Championships (50 and over, Joel's an old guy) held in Riverside CA last Sunday, June 9!] Brand New Mastering Happiness Audio Course! See below! I've played water polo for most of my life, and still do. I've had the privilege of playing on some excellent teams, and I've also played on some, well... not so excellent teams. I've also been involved with some psychology groups who thought they knew how to be part of a team, or to build teams. I was always surprised at the lack of understanding among them. Today I want to talk about some of the things I've found over the years that make for an excellent team - and a not so excellent team, whether it's for work, play, family or marriage. This is by no means exhaustive. There is so much that goes into team building that it would be more than I could put into an article. But I want to focus mostly on doing away with one great big flawed cliché: "There is no I in team." That's baloney. 
WHICH SIDE ARE CONSERVATIVES ON?
Are conservatives on the side of freedom or of fascism? You'd think that would be a no-brainer, that of course they're on the side of freedom. Yet in the last few days, a number of prominent conservative thinkers and leaders have had such a strong emotional reaction over Edward Snowden that they've allowed their amygdala to seize control of their prefrontal cortex. It's a temporary condition, and they'll soon be thinking rationally again. Yet as TTP is "The Oasis for Rational Conservatives," let's assist them in doing so. First, some examples of conservatives rushing to defend Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrat Party from Snowden's whistleblowing. Then we'll ask, What conservatives haven't drunk this Kool-aid? (Hint: Rushbo is one.) Then we'll get to the bottom line: Rather than condemning Snowden, we should be celebrating him. He has not done the slightest bit of damage to our real actual national security. In fact, he has enormously enhanced it, and in two enormously important ways.
SHOULD IT BE CRIMINAL TO EXPOSE THE CRIMES OF THE STATE?
What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience. As a Whistleblower like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution. I feel a kinship with Snowden: he is essentially the equivalent of me. He saw the surveillance state from within and saw how far it's gone. The government has a pathological incentive to collect more and more and more; they just can't help themselves - they have an insatiable hoarding complex. Since the government unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11, it has been eating our democracy alive from the inside out. There's no room in a democracy for this kind of secrecy: it's anathema to our form of a constitutional republic, which was born out of the struggle to free ourselves from the abuse of such powers, which led to the American Revolution. That is what's at stake here: to an NSA with these unwarranted powers, we're all potentially guilty; we're all potential suspects until we prove otherwise. That is what happens when the government has all the data.
IS THE NSA SCANDAL OBAMA’S KATRINA?
Were the leaks about the government's collection of data on our telephone calls, credit card transactions, and emails orchestrated by Obama aides to distract attention from other scandals? More than a few seasoned political observers suspect this. Snooping by the National Security Agency can at least partly be blamed on former President George W. Bush, and the furor has pushed the Benghazi and IRS scandals off the front page, they say. True. But I doubt any of his aides think the president benefits by having comedian Stephen Colbert describe Mr. Obama as "a tyrannical despot who ignores all the rules," and the New York Times declare he's lost all credibility. "We wanted a president that listens to all Americans -- now we have one," joked comedian Jay Leno. But few liberals are laughing. Dismaying his base is a high price for the president to pay for distraction that will only be temporary. The NSA Prism scandal could be Obama's Katrina.