http://youtu.be/HFmHhzwA-2Q

A free people doesn’t wait for permission from the state, signified by a colored electric light, to cross a damn street. I know, I know, traffic laws are necessary or we’d all get killed, but it’s inescapable that over the decades they have “trained” us in unthinking obedience.

As I previously commented here (and quote myself quoting, lol).

1 Sam 8

And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.

As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.

Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.”

Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king.

He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.

Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.

He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.

He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.

He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.

Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use.

He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.

When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us.

Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”

When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord.

The Lord answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.”

Then Samuel said to the Israelites, “Everyone go back to your own town.”

Same difference.

The country appears to be leaning toward the spiritual decendents of those same Israelites.

The result will, of course, be depressingly similar.

…he who does not read and understand history is doomed to …. etc., etc.

Sometimes you need to pay for your mistakes. Like if you build in a city that is below sea level, or on land that was created by an ancient hurricane.

Thanks for those links. I particularly liked this quote from the second one:

Since 2009, both the stock market and the broad U.S. economy have been dependent on perpetual support from massive federal deficits and unprecedented money creation. Meanwhile, Wall Street is content to ignore the extent of this support, and looks on every movement of the economy as a sign of intrinsic health — which is a lot like admiring the graceful flight of a dead parrot swinging by a string from the ceiling fan.

I’ve been thinking along those lines all week. It’s a load of fertilizer that the unlucky souls are “owed” a bailout by the rest of us: why should someone in Idaho pay for a stroke of bad luck in Coney Island? I mean, it’s a rotten break for the folks in the storm’s way, but why should their bad luck be privileged above all others?

If they do “owe” the New York/New Jerseyans $$ assistance, can Joe Blow of Boise expect it when the creek on his property floods his house?

Oh, I see: that’s “different.”

This is a fascinating and sobering account of that (ultimately world-splitting) catastrophe, including the hyperinflation of the German mark: from 4.2 marks to the dollar to 4.2 TRILLION marks to the dollar, in 1923. (That is not a typo.) Still, the Republic staggered on for another ten years, before You Know Who took power:

http://historymike.blogspot.com/2007/07/fall-of-weimar-republic.html

This historian (Dr. Michael Brooks, above) brings up several popular theories about the cause of the German collapse, and points out the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Sobering reading for us, now.

One of our instructors lost the roof of his house while he and his daughter were in it. (His wife was with my wife.) Mercifully, they were both alright. I do remember that most of the fatalities were people living in mobile homes on the east side of the road to Whiting. We resolved to never live in a mobile home, thinking that was a way to be safer. Hah, little did we know.

I suspected that we might have crossed paths at some point in our Navy days. Now we know.

John Xenakis (Generational Dynamics) recently updated his threat forecast for 2013 which might be worth viewing also.