If there is one skill Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS +1.58% traders pride themselves on, it is the art of buying low and selling high.

But last year, anticipating new regulatory restrictions on proprietary trading and seeking to reduce the bank’s exposure to risky assets, Goldman loan traders unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars of leveraged loans at a loss, people familiar with the matter say. Making matters worse, many of those loans have since jumped in value.

Details of one trade in particular have recently caused a stir in the market. In November, Goldman sold about $85 million of loans in troubled newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises Inc.LEE 0.00% Goldman sold the debt at about 65 cents on the dollar, having bought it months before at around 80 cents, resulting in a loss of at least $13 million.

The buyer: a unit of Warren Buffett’sBerkshire Hathaway Inc., BRKB +0.24%according to several people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Buffett has since made a tidy paper profit on the loans, which are now worth about 82 cents on the dollar, the people said.

A Goldman spokesman declined to comment on the loan sales. Mr. Buffett didn’t return requests for comment.

CONTINUED at the Wall Street Journal.

Tuareg rebels assisted by Islamist fighters have swept across much of northern Mali since renegade soldiers staged a coup on March 22, saying they were fed up with the government’s handling of a Tuareg fight for an independent homeland.

But since the coup, the rebels have seized several towns, including Kidal and then Gao, the regional capital that had served as the army headquarters for the entire northern region.

Timbuktu – a fabled trading hub synonymous with exotic isolation – was the last major town in Mali’s north not to have fallen into rebel hands.

Announcing the “end of Malian occupation”, the MNLA (Azawad National Liberation Movement) said in a statement it would ensure “order and administration”.

CONTINUED at The Australian.

Ben Bernanke has decided that he needs to teach all of us why the Federal Reserve is good for America and about why the gold standard is bad.  On Tuesday, Bernanke delivered the first of four planned lectures to a group of students at George Washington University.  But that lecture was not just for the benefit of those students.  Officials at the Fed have long planned for this lecture series to be an opportunity for Bernanke to “educate” the American people about the Federal Reserve.  The classroom was absolutely packed with reporters and just about every major news organization is running a story about this first lecture.  So the Federal Reserve is definitely getting the publicity that it was hoping for.  You can see the slides from the presentation that Bernanke gave to the students right here.  It is pretty obvious that one of the primary goals of this first lecture was to attack those that have been critical of the Fed over the past few years.  In doing so, Bernanke “stretched” the truth on more than one occasion.

The entire event was staged to make Bernanke and the Federal Reserve look as good as possible.  Prior to his arrival, the students gathered for the lecture were actually instructed to applaud Bernanke….

The 30 undergraduates at George Washington University sent up a round of applause. It was, they’d been told beforehand, “appropriate, even encouraged, to politely applaud” Tuesday’s guest lecturer.

But as noted above, this lecture was not for the benefit of those students.  AUSA Today article even admitted that “addressing the public directly” was one of the real goals of this lecture….

For Bernanke, the GW lectures serve a dual function:

They give him a chance to reprise the role of professor he played for more than two decades, first at Stanford and then at Princeton, where he eventually chaired the economics department.

And they give him a way to expand his mission of demystifying the Fed. As part of that campaign, Bernanke became the first Fed chief to hold regular news conferences and conduct town-hall meetings.

In addressing the public directly, Bernanke has also sought to neutralize attacks on the Fed, some of them from Republican presidential candidates.

So what did Bernanke actually say during the lecture?

Well, you can read all of the slides right here, but the following are some of the highlights….

On page 6 of the presentation, Bernanke makes the following claim….

“A central bank is not an ordinary commercial bank, but a government agency.”

Well, that is quite interesting considering the fact that the Federal Reserve hasargued in court that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is not an agency of the federal government and that the various Federal Reserve banks around the country are private corporations with private funding.

So did the Federal Reserve lie to the court or is Ben Bernanke lying to us?

And what other “agency” of the federal government is owned by private banks?

It is even admitted that the individual member banks own shares of stock in the various Federal Reserve banks on the Federal Reserve website….

The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized much like private corporations–possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.

The Federal Reserve always talks about how it must be “independent” and “above politics”, but when they start getting criticized they always want to seek shelter under the wing of the federal government.

It really is disgusting.

On page 7 of the presentation, the following statement is made….

“All central banks strive for low and stable inflation; most also try to promote stable growth in output and employment.”

Well, on both counts the Federal Reserve has failed miserably.

Right now, if inflation was measured the same way that it was back in 1980, the annual rate of inflation would be more than 10 percent.

And when you take a longer view of things, the inflation that the Federal Reserve has manufactured has been absolutely horrific.

Even using the doctored inflation numbers that the Federal Reserve gives us, the U.S. dollar has still lost 83 percent of its value since 1970.

The truth is that inflation is a “hidden tax” that is constantly destroying the value of every single dollar that you and I hold.  Those that attempt to save money for the future or for retirement are deeply penalized under such a system.

As far as employment goes, the total number of workers that are “officially” unemployed in the United States is larger than the entire population of Portugal.

The average duration of unemployment is hovering near an all-time record high and almost every measure of government dependence is at an all-time record high.

So the Federal Reserve is failing at the exact things that Bernanke claims that it is supposed to be doing.

But instead of directly addressing many of the specific criticisms that have been leveled at the Fed, Bernanke instead chose to spend much of his lecture talking about the problems with adopting a gold standard.  The following are statements that were pulled directly off of the slides he used during his speech….

-”The gold standard sets the money supply and price level generally with limited central bank intervention.”

-”The strength of a gold standard is its greatest weakness too: Because the money supply is determined by the supply of gold, it cannot be adjusted in response to changing economic conditions.”

-”All countries on the gold standard are forced to maintain fixed exchange rates. As a result, the effects of bad policies in one country can be transmitted to other countries if both are on the gold standard.”

-”If not perfectly credible, a gold standard is subject to speculative attack and ultimate collapse as people try to exchange paper money for gold.”

-”The gold standard did not prevent frequent financial panics.”

-”Although the gold standard promoted price stability over the very long run, over the medium run it sometimes caused periods of inflation and deflation.”

-”In the second half of the 19th century, a global shortage of gold reduced the U.S. money supply and caused deflation (falling prices). Farmers were squeezed between declining prices for crops and the fixed dollar payments for their mortgages and other debts.”

Bernanke spent more time on the gold standard during his speech than on anything else.  At one point during the lecture, Bernanke made the following statement….

“To have a gold standard, you have to go to South Africa or someplace and dig up tons of gold and move  it to New York and put it in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and that’s a lot of effort and work”

Bernanke even blamed the gold standard for the Great Depression.  On a slide entitled “Monetary Policy in the Great Depression”, Bernanke made the following claims….

•The Fed’s tight monetary policy led to sharply falling prices and steep declines in output and employment.
•The effects of policy errors here and abroad were transmitted globally through the gold standard.
•The Fed kept money tight in part because it wanted to preserve the gold standard. When FDR abandoned the gold standard in 1933, monetary policy became less tight and deflation stopped.

Bernanke seems to want to frame the debate over monetary policy is such a way that the American people are given only two alternative systems to consider: the Federal Reserve and a gold standard.

But the truth is that there are a vast array of both “hard money” and “soft money” systems that would not include a central bank or a gold standard at all.

So the truth is that the American people would have many different systems to choose from if they wanted to shut down the Federal Reserve and set up something new.

In the past the U.S. government has issued debt-free money and it could certainly do so again.

But in his lecture, Bernanke did not even mention how the Federal Reserve creates money or how whenever new money is created more debt is created.

Under the Federal Reserve system, the money supply is designed to continually increase, and whenever more money is created more debt is also created.

In a previous article I discussed how more money is created on the federal level….

For example, whenever the U.S. government wants to spend more money than it takes in (which happens constantly), it has to go ask the Federal Reserve for it.  The federal government gives U.S. Treasury bonds to the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve gives the U.S. government “Federal Reserve Notes” in return.  Usually this is just done electronically.

So where does the Federal Reserve get the Federal Reserve Notes?

It just creates them out of thin air.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to create money out of thin air?

Instead of issuing money directly, the U.S. government lets the Federal Reserve create it out of thin air and then the U.S. government borrows it.

Talk about stupid.

The designers of the Federal Reserve system intended to trap the U.S. government in a debt spiral that would expand perpetually.

So has their design worked?

Well, just look at the chart below….

Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.

So I guess you could say that the results have been spectacular.

The Federal Reserve system also greatly favors the big Wall Street banks that it is designed to serve.

When those big banks get into trouble, the Federal Reserve snaps into action.

According to a limited GAO audit of Fed transactions during the last financial crisis, $16.1 trillion in secret loans were made by the Federal Reserve to the big Wall Street banks between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010.

The following list is taken directly from page 131 of the GAO audit report and it shows which banks received money from the Fed….

Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC - $868 billion
Bear Sterns - $853 billion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
UBS - $287 billion
Credit Suisse - $262 billion
Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
BNP Paribas - $175 billion
Wells Fargo - $159 billion
Dexia - $159 billion
Wachovia - $142 billion
Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
Societe Generale - $124 billion
“All Other Borrowers” - $2.639 trillion

What about all the rest of us?

Did we get bailed out?

No, we were told that if Wall Street was rescued that the benefits would trickle down to the rest of us.

Unfortunately, that has not exactly worked out.  In article, after article, afterarticle I have detailed the horrible economic suffering that the American people are still going through.

But what Bernanke and the Fed have done is create inflation in commodities such as oil which is affecting the household finances of nearly everyone in America.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is now up to $3.87.  That is an all-time record high for the month of March.

So far in 2012, the price of gasoline in the United States has risen by 17 percent.

Thanks Bernanke.

Over the past several decades, every time there has been a major spike in gasoline prices in the United States, a recession has always followed.  If you doubt this, just check out this amazing chart.

So will we soon see another recession?

If we are lucky.  Hopefully the next downturn will not be a full-blown depression.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve does not help us avoid booms and busts.  Rather, it creates them.  The Fed was at the heart of the housing bubble which helped bring on the last financial crisis when it crashed, and the current ultra-low interest rate policies of the Fed are creating more bubbles which will have devastating long-term consequences.

So Bernanke does not have anything to be proud of, and his track record has been absolutely nightmarish.

Hopefully the American people will not believe the propaganda and will take an honest look at the Federal Reserve.

When you take an honest look at the Federal Reserve, there is only one rational conclusion: Congress should shut it down, lock the doors and throw away the key.

Source: The Economic Collapse.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Super Tuesday came and it went and we really aren’t any better off because of it. Going into the big day, the delegate count was as follows: 207 for Romney, 86 for Santorum, 46 for Paul and 39 for Gingrich. After Super Tuesday, the delegate count swelled to 429 for Romney, 169 for Santorum, 118 for Gingrich and a dismal 67 for Ron Paul. Out of the ten states, Romney walked away with six wins, Santorum with three and Gingrich with a win in his home state of Georgia. Ron Paul didn’t win a single state and is the only candidate left in this race that hasn’t gotten a first place victory, at least officially – considering he was screwed out of Maine. At this stage of the race, Dr. Paul is 0 for 23 in winning over states. I don’t think I am being pessimistic or disloyal here when I point out the fact that Paul’s efforts to win this primary have been seemingly all for naught. Then again, his message has reached more people than it ever has before – in that, there is a very solid victory.

Mathematically, Ron Paul is still technically in this thing but he’d have to string together about two dozen miracles over the next month or so to eclipse Mitt Romney in the delegate department. Hell even that piss midget Rick Santorum is way ahead of Dr. Paul now. Gingrich who fell to fourth place behind Paul last week, is now back up in third and after his Georgia win, is now ahead of Paul pretty significantly. Now the Paul campaign keeps telling us that the delegates that the media is reporting on don’t matter and that it really comes down to the amount of “secured” delegates. While they continue to claim that they are incredibly successful in the secured delegates department, I don’t know if their numbers are skewed or if it’s just a pile of giant bullshit. I don’t want to call out the Paul camp for misleading their supporters but all these mystical revelations and inspiring speeches can’t discount reality and reality is that the Paul campaign is suffering horribly.

I’m not going to sit here and type away telling the Paul camp to walk away. Hell, I want to see this thing through to the end, no matter what the outcome is. However, ignoring the fact that this is certainly not working out in Dr. Paul’s favor really needs to be addressed. It needs to be touched on because the strategy, as good as it is at throwing rallies and raising money, somehow cannot turn that passionate support into votes. Where it really counts, this amazingly run campaign is falling flat. I don’t know if there is a way to turn this thing around. The most logical way of doing so would be to continue to educate the fickle and fair-weather Romneycons, Gingrichers and Santorumites. However, these people seem to greatly outnumber the Paul supporters and their brains are nothing more than a thick pile of coosh suffering from decades of indoctrinated neocon rhetoric from soulless bastards pontificating from boutique soap boxes wrapped in soft Corinthian leather stitched with golden thread paid for by Goldman Sachs campaign contributions.

The truth is, that it is the young generation that is getting Dr. Paul’s message and it will ultimately be up to them to turn things around. The true positive of all this is that the old guard is decaying, albeit slowly. It may take years for them to all keel over and die but their message and their rhetoric doesn’t seem to be penetrating the minds of most of the conservative and libertarian people under the age of thirty. The unrelenting truth however, is that even though this message is spreading like wildfire, by the time that this young generation grows, has children and goes on to educate them and teach them these principles, it might be too late. However, a little anarchy and total collapse may be what’s necessary at this point. Maybe the country needs to fall like Rome so we can wash our hands with it and build up something more solid and sustainable. Maybe that’s what needs to happen for these neocons and progressives to finally accept the fact that they’re sick and that their disease has killed a once great nation. Then again, we all know that they’ll just continue to point the finger, divide the masses and pimp out their consistently disastrous formula that they refuse to see as economically genocidal. We have a choice however, we don’t have to listen to them.

I know, this article really isn’t about Super Tuesday, it is about trying to find a shred of hope and promise after living through another dark day in American history. We have to accept the fact that Ron Paul is not going to win this election and he also isn’t going to return to his seat in Congress. We only have a few months left with this man in office fighting for us. So what’s going to happen when he takes a step back and hands the reigns of liberty over? Will Rand Paul or Justin Amash take them and lead us towards the promised land that those of us that understand the mechanics of this twisted game are trying to find? Or does this movement and this mindset die with this election? I am trying to stay motivated and positive and continue the fight for all that’s right from a journalistic standpoint but it is incredibly hard. I know you all feel my pain and my dissatisfaction but we need to turn these negative emotions into fuel. Yes we are all tired, we are all at our wits end and every time Ol’ Mittens or that bag of dicks Mr. Santorum give us another victory speech we want to smash our television sets with our passionate and loud voices. This is why we can’t give up, this is why we have to push forward through thick and thin, this is why our voices MUST BE LOUDER!

We don’t need to look for someone to lead us. We are the leaders! We are the revolution and the resurgence that this country needs. No, I don’t have all the answers and I can’t tell you what must be done next but if we are vigilant, never let up and march forward, the ideas and the action will come. Mankind is smart enough to fix their own problems and to take responsibility for itself, contrary to governmental rhetoric, as they would rather see us dependent on them – remaining zombified and subservient to no end. That’s all bullshit. We are human beings, which is the greatest force this universe has ever created! We have what it takes to lead ourselves again and to defeat this two-headed mastodon. We’ve done it before and we WILL do it again! There really isn’t any other option, is there? We have to want it, we can’t settle for less, we have to see the evil bastards for what they are and not take their lies and deceit at face value. Where is the rage in America? Where is that pure and refined anger that we used to aim at those who tried to oppress us on every level? When did we become such big pussies, afraid of our own goddamned shadows? We’ve become a nation of obedient toddlers that can’t change their own diapers. The cure to this statist addiction is to quit it. There is no rehab, we must quit cold turkey or there isn’t a chance for us. We have to face the fact that there’s no better time to make this shift than now!

Often times, positivity is created by staring into the face of negativity and committing oneself towards making a change.

So the question I asked was, “Who is going to take the reigns from Dr. Paul?” Well, we are.. ALL of us!

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Introduction:

I don’t hate Mitt Romney but I am certainly not a fan, which should be obvious at this point. I do hate the goddamned media for giving him an unfair advantage over the other candidates but truthfully, that isn’t his fault. Romney isn’t the absolute worst presidential choice out there, which many of my colleagues and readers may disagree with vehemently, but he is still a progressive statist bastard that is hellbent on controlling the lives of all of us in an effort to keep the giant wheel of the establishment machine rolling. I have been nasty to the guy many times in my countless diatribes about the 2012 election but my distaste and malcontent has been for a very good reason. Point being, I know that Romney can’t save this country and I feel that this is painstakingly obvious even though I find myself completely befuddled over the fanfare and support that this guy gets, not just form the media – their support is understandable, but from the conservative voting public who are all pretty much in unison behind this guy’s idea of smaller government, less taxes and squashing the budding police state. This guy will not solve any of those problems. In fact, he will only magnify them and dig our giant pit of legislative bullshit deeper and deeper. Hell, the pit is practically bottomless at this point but electing Mitt Romney will only solidify that fact even further.

I’m certainly not saying that Obama is a better choice out of the two. Realistically, I don’t think there is much difference between one or the other. This is a prime example of there being just one big government party with two wings: one that wears blue shirts with donkeys on them and one that wears red shirts with elephants on them. The worst part about this is that most “conservatives” are following Romney, as well as Gingrich and Santorum, believing in the hypocritical rhetoric that they’ve got a small government guy on their side who will fight for them. Realistically, those who support these guys are ignorant in economics and foreign policy. It is incredibly unfortunate but as Ron Paul said in a recent debate, “Conservatives have lost their way.”

Now I can’t completely cover every negative thing on Romney’s record, as there is a lot, but I am going to talk about a few points. In the end, it is really your decision as to where you want to put your vote but you really need to think this through and ask yourself where you want to be in four years. Do you want to be climbing out of the hole or do you want to be yelling at the guys that are still digging and digging?

Smaller Government:

The first thing worth getting into is definitely the issue of Mitt claiming that he’ll work towards making government smaller. Mitt Romney, who has preached for this over the course of all these debates, has a really shitty record of practicing what he’s been preaching. In reality, Mitt has been feeding into the desires of the voter base and has been stringing them along with his version of the popular rhetoric of the day. The sad thing is that many of the people who support this douchenugget are taking all this bullshit at face value and not looking at reality. Truthfully, maybe Romney actually believes his empty words and his supporters might not be adept enough to see through the Orwellian doublespeak. Let me rundown his track record of big government bullshit by ripping the fucking band-aid off: exposing the man’s economic sores.

I could write a whole damn article about the monstrosity that is Romneycare but I won’t bore you or myself with the details that have already been recycled a million times and beaten into the ground with Thor’s hammer by every critic for several years now. I’m over the Romneycare issue personally. I don’t like it, I think it’s shit, it was the blueprint for what became Obamacare but it was done at the state level, not the federal level and most Bay Staters still approve of it, so that is their economic cross to bear.

One thing that many Romney supporters don’t know or just choose to ignore is the fact that he significantly raised taxes in Massachusetts while he was governor. While preaching fiscal conservatism and pimping himself out as friendly to business, Governor Romney increased the tax bill on businesses by $300 million! He and his cronies also approved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of higher fees and fines on businesses in just four years! Many business owners were incredibly dissatisfied with Romney as governor. Essentially, corporate taxes under Romney almost doubled in just his one term.

I guess the tax hikes were necessary though, as Romney drastically increased spending in Massachusetts. In 2006, Ol’ Mittens increased spending in just that year by 7.6 percent. In 2007, he increased spending again, this time all the way up to 10.2 percent. During just his four years in office, he increased state spending by a total of 20.7 percent! That’s a lot of debt thrown on the taxpayer but at least those hefty tax hikes on corporations absorbed some of the burden. Maybe this tax burden accounts for the fact that Mitt Romney managed the 47th ranked state, out of 50, in the realm of job creation. That brings me to my next point.

Romney has been touting his job creation success while working at Bain Capital. He proudly boasts about creating corporations like Staples, Sports Authority and Steel Dynamics, all of which have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. However, as governor, unemployment was a real problem in Massachusetts. Sure, he did great in the private sector and as Romney himself has said, “Jobs are created in the private sector.” However, all of his job creation skills didn’t translate to success when he reached office. So what makes the public think that this job magician’s magic wand will suddenly work this time? Yes he is a self-professed business master but he couldn’t tap into that while running Massachusetts so essentially his trial run at it was a failure. On the issue of Romney’s job creation woes, Boston Herald business reporter Bret Arends wrote:

During the four years Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, it had the second worst jobs record of any state in America…it wasn’t a regional issue. The rest of New England created nearly 200,000 jobs.

The question no one ever seems to ask Governor Romney is how many jobs were destroyed in an effort to build his monstrous corporations. Now I am not attacking him for building giant successful businesses, as that is the nature of the beast – good or bad. I am just trying to point out how skewed these sorts of statistical claims are because if you created say 300,000 jobs but your new businesses eliminated the jobs of say 250,000 people whose businesses you closed down through competition, well then you’ve only really created 50,000 jobs. This is a simple ballpark example but it should show you how some statistical claims can be made when you only tell one side of the story. Hell, government has been using these sorts of statistical tactics for years when releasing inaccurate numbers to sway public opinion for a candidate, a bill or whatever else they have needed public approval on.

Another issue that shows how non-small government this ass clown is, is the TARP bailouts. Mittens hates when people bring the subject up and has gone as far as lying and completely denying that he ever supported it but there is tons and tons of evidence that says otherwise. In fact, Romney was incredibly passionate about poorly run banks getting a massive taxpayer funded bonus for sucking at business. On CNN, a few years back during the bailouts, Romney said:

I think there is a need for economic stimulus. Americans have lost about $11 trillion dollars in net worth. That translates into about $400 billion dollars a year less spending that they’ll be doing, and that’s net of additional government programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance. And government can help make that up in a very difficult time. And that’s one of the reasons why I think a stimulus program is needed.

Sounds like small government to me! So why would he be so pro-big bank? Well, let’s look at his top campaign contributors from a recent list. His top contributor is Goldman Sachs who gave $354,700. Next up is Credit Suisse Group at $195,250 and Morgan Stanley at $185,800. Every other contributor in the six figures is also in the banking industry. You’ve got HIG Capital, Barclays, Kirkland & Ellis, Bank of America, PricewaterhouseCoopers, EMC Corp. & JPMorgan Chase. His top ten contributors are all fucking banks! Occupying Wall Street should start on Mitt’s front lawn! This shows a sharp contrast from Ron Paul whose top three campaign contributors are the Air Force, the Army and the Navy. Paul’s biggest contributor is also a lot less than six figures. So who really understands the plight of the average person? Romney is so far up on the Wall Street crony capitalist ladder than he can’t remember how to get down – not that he wants to.

People that call Barack Obama the Wall Street president haven’t seen anything yet. On campaign contributions from the big banks, Obama has made significantly less than Romney. Goldman Sachs gave Obama $49,124, Morgan Stanley coughed up $28,225, Bank of America gave $46,699, JPMorgan Chase came in at $38,038 and Citigroup was at $36,887. You do the math but it is obvious who the bailed out banking industry supports.

Another thing worth noting is that Romney has gotten more money from lobbyists than all other Republican candidates combined. I guess you need all that special interest money to work towards smaller government. Damn it! That Mitt Romney doublethink is taking over my brain!

The fact of the matter is, love it or hate it, Mitt Romney has a proven track record of being nothing less than one of the heads on the big government hydra. He is an economic nightmare but because people take him at his word and don’t look at his record, he can continue to dupe the masses into thinking that he’s on their side.

Mitt Romney will say anything to get elected.

Continued in Part II: Foreign Entanglements..

The recent bankruptcy of financial stalwart and Wall Street casino failureMF Global in the US, has claimed a new and unlikely victim. Following the company’s glorious collapse, Trends Research founder Gerald Celente had his own six figure gold investment account completely looted by chapter 11 trustees, and he is fighting to get it back.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

1. Introduction:

This isn’t an attack on Herman Cain. I’m not going to be a complete dickhead to Mr. Cain as I was with Rick Perry in my article “American Psycho: The Ballad of Rick Perry“. However, as Herman Cain is leading in many polls and could legitimately win the Republican nomination if the primaries were held today, I do have to rip apart his platform and expose why this guy is not who we need running this country. Most of the reasons as to why you shouldn’t vote for Herman Cain should be blatantly obvious but yet, many of you still insist that he is the best choice out there. While he would be better than our current president Barack Obama and current Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, Mr. Cain still isn’t worthy of the American throne and would ultimately perpetuate many of the problems we have right now.

Now I have met Herman Cain and have gotten to talk to him, albeit briefly. At that time I didn’t know much about him but there were rumors of him running for president so I felt that if he was in my neck of the woods, I’d have to go down to the event, shake his hand, get a picture with him and try to pick his brain on some things. As there was a large crowd lined up to kiss ass and praise this unproven potential candidate, I didn’t feel that it was the best time or place to air my grievances with the government in an effort to hear his solutions and ideas. I’d really need more time with him to fully discuss these things and I didn’t want to put him on the spot like that in front of hundreds of people. Knowing what I know about him now, I’d have no problem with it today. In fact, I’d have a camera with me.

Anyway, at the time, I did know that he was a staunch FairTax supporter and that alone had me initially interested in his campaign but then again so was Marco Rubio but he abandoned the issue once he got elected (I wrote about that in “Tea Flavored Kool-Aid, Part II: The Fall of Marco Rubio“). I left the event feeling like Herman was genuinely a good guy that cares for this country and I still believe this. However, I wasn’t aware of his association with the Federal Reserve at the time. If I was, my brief meet and greet with Mr. Cain would’ve been different. In fact, in his eyes, I would’ve just been one of those “ignorant” Paulites asking him “stupid” questions.

2. The Federal Reserve:

Now in regards to the Federal Reserve, Herman Cain has been a defender of their horrible and certifiably insane fiscal policies. Well, he has come out and talked some smack here and there about Ben Bernanke but truth is, if he were to give Bernanke props, he’d get booed off the stage and he knows this. Everyone hates Bernanke on the right. Now don’t get shit twisted, they don’t hate him because of Ron Paul taking him to school and spending a lot of his time trying to educate the masses on the tyranny of the Fed. Nope, people on the right hate Bernanke because Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly hate Bernanke. Many righties don’t understand why they hate him, they just know that they’re supposed to.

However, before Ben Bernanke, there was another just as tyrannical monetary dictator. That man was Alan Greenspan. Greenspan was Herman Cain’s boss when Mr. Cain worked for the Federal Reserve branch in Kansas City back in the 90′s. Recently when Cain was asked which past Fed chairman he would use as a model for a replacement for Bernanke, Cain without hesitation said, “Alan Greenspan”. Really homie? I guess the warning signs and economic lessons of history must’ve just passed this Super CEO by. Maybe Cain doesn’t realize that Bernanke is just the hellspawn of Greenspan. Maybe Cain doesn’t understand inflation. Then again, maybe Greenspan was one hell of a mentor and this Fed insider is going to bring about a Greenspan-style fiscal policy. No thanks bro, you can keep your Greenspan bullshit for your pizza parlor.

For those not educated on the horrendous shit that fucknut Greenspan gave us, here are a few examples. First, Greenspan was directly responsible for the housing bubble due to adjusting interest rates down to historic lows. He also contributed to the recession we’ve been dipping in and out of over the last few years. He recently dodged the bullet of responsibility on this when he blamed the recession on the Cold War. Yes, the fucking Cold War! Didn’t that end like over 20 years ago? Another thing that Greenspan gave us was trade deficits and bad economic policies that contributed to companies leaving the United States. Alan Greenspan was also the king of inflation. But yeah, this is who Herman Cain would use as a model for a new Federal Reserve chairman. This is who he selected without even putting any thought to the question. I guess those guys from the Federal Reserve have some sort of blood oath they all swear to. Suck my dick and I’ll suck yours.

Apart from just the Alan Greenspan issue, Cain has been overprotective about the Federal Reserve and has shown some pretty thin skin whenever the tyrannical and unconstitutional institution is criticized. First of all, I implore all of you to read “The Creature From Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin if you haven’t yet; especially if you are going to vote for Herman Cain. You need to know the history of the Federal Reserve and how and why it was founded. For Cain to have been a part of it should raise some damn eyebrows and for him to defend it should raise those eyebrows even more. What is he trying to hide by continuously downplaying the issue and trying to divert everyone’s eyes elsewhere?

You see, Cain has criticized those who criticize the Fed, especially Ron Paul supporters. He refers to them as “ignorant” and their questioning him about it as “stupid”. He has been pretty vocal about his distaste for us crazy Paulites, as he calls us. He said that we would find nothing if we were to audit the Federal Reserve. Funny, because not too long after he made that statement we were able to get a partial audit. In that partial audit we discovered a lot of tyranny and some pretty questionable acts. For instance, the audit this past July revealed that the Fed gave out over $16 trillion dollars in secret bailouts! That’s pretty fucking profound and that’s just scratching the surface! Yet, Mr. Cain said we wouldn’t find anything. Well Mr. Fed Insider, here is a breakdown of the secret bailouts which can be found on page 131 of the GAO (Government Accountability Office) Audit:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many more including banks in Belgium

Herman Cain says the Federal Reserve has nothing to hide. As my Aunt Rita used to say when one of us kids was lying, “Mmmhmm.” If anything, this just proves that a full audit of the Federal Reserve is absolutely necessary. Abolishment of the Fed would be even better.

Herman Cain also believes the Federal Reserve to be constitutional. On the Rusty Humphries radio show he said:

First of all, it’s not unconstitutional. What happened was, in 1913 the Congress of the United States designated the authority of the Federal Reserve to be created. So how can that be unconstitutional? Congress has to pass the law, Congress has to pass the authority to do things and that is what they did. So it is not unconstitutional number one.

Really dude? So with that logic, we should just accept all laws created by Congress whether tyrannical or not. So really, based off of your own point-of-view, you should shut the fuck up about Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and your confusing stance on abortion among many other issues. Cain is like a character from an Orwell novel.

3. TARP:

All this brings me to my next issue, which is the fact that Herman Cain supported the TARP bailouts. Yeah, that sounds like something a Fed insider would do. In fact he said that he supported it but didn’t know how they were going to implement it. M’kay, so to me, that sounds completely ignorant. He supported it without knowing the whole picture. Then after it turned to shit, which was obvious, even back then, to those who understand free market economics, he says he didn’t like it. So Herman Cain is essentially and unknowingly admitting that he is not only not a free market guy, as he has claimed, but that he doesn’t have the foresight to recognize the disastrous effects of this sort of fiscal policy. But hey! Now he’s got some economic advisors to guide him! If only Herman Cain would’ve absorbed Milton Friedman’s prophetic wisdom in his “Free To Choose” series. Hell, dude could’ve read anything from the heavyweights of the Austrian School and learned that this sort of policy would only lead us down a path of fiscal insanity.

However, I believe Cain knew what he was supporting. In fact, here’s a quote from an article he himself wrote in 2008 when supporting the big bank bailouts:

Earth to taxpayers! Owning stocks in banks is not nationalization of the banking industry. It’s trying to solve a problem…

Wake up people! Owning a part of the major banks in America is not a bad thing. We could make a profit while solving a problem…

The ownership by the taxpayers is going to be relatively small and nowhere near the amount needed to be called nationalization. So what’s the problem?

Now don’t tell Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but if this works, and I believe it will, the Bush Administration will have gotten this one right.”

*rolls eyes. Here’s some more:

..the free market purists want you to believe that this is the end of Capitalism that we know it.

..the treasury has changed tactics and will buy equity positions called preferred stocks, which gives us taxpayers an ownership stake in their success for a limited period of time.

Preferred stock means that we get paid a dividend before any other stockholders…when they make a profit. You got a problem with that?

The free market purists objection to this is that it smacks at government control of banking industry, which is called nationalization. They are correct.

He recognized that it was nationalization of the banking industry, yet he still supported it. He recently came out in a debate and owned up to it, not that he could hide from it. Looking at it objectively though, being that he is a Republican presidential candidate and knowing that his voter base hated the bailouts, wouldn’t he come out and talk smack about them now? Where I sit, this is a bigger issue than all the Romneycare bullshit that sucks up so much debate time and hatred from the righties.

By the way, while on the subject of Romneycare, Herman Cain supported Mitt Romney for president last round in 2008. So does that make Cain cool with Romneycare? Well, he had to have been down with it at some point, right?

4. The 999 Plan and the FairTax:

Herman Cain got a lot of notoriety and Tea Party love due to his very passionate and very vocal support of the FairTax. He was one of the loudest voices championing in probably the best form of tax reform this country could ever have. In fact, when the debates started, he was front and center pimping out the FairTax every chance he could get. Somewhere along the line that shifted and he no longer mentioned the FairTax. Now he was talking about his 999 Plan, which was another style of tax reform that he claims simplifies every thing. It calls for 9% corporate tax, 9% income tax and 9% national sales tax (which doesn’t exclude state and local sales taxes added on top).

The 9% national sales tax is basically the FairTax (which by itself would be roughly 23%). The big difference here is that the FairTax calls for a repeal of the 16th Amendment, which would kill the income tax because the FairTax would be its replacement. The 999 Plan does not call for a repeal of the 16th Amendment.

Now many Cain supporters that are also FairTax supporters still seem to be on this guy’s dick, which puzzles me. He’s abandoned their pet issue in favor of his own plan. Many of these people consider 999 to be a stepping stone to get to the FairTax, including nationally syndicated radio talk show host, ‘The FairTax Book’ author and Cain’s BFF Neal Boortz. I think this assessment by Cain Brains is complete bullshit for several reasons.

The fact that the 999 Plan doesn’t call for a repeal of the 16th Amendment is completely careless and horrible. Not to be a negative Nancy here but say 999 is implemented and the 16th Amendment is not repealed, we would be stuck with the current tax code on top of this new 999 Plan. So we would have the current income tax, corporate tax and all other taxes on top of a 9% flat tax, a 9% corporate tax and a 9% national sales tax also on top of all local and state taxes. How could this plan even be developed without taking this into consideration? If Cain understands the FairTax, which he has proven that he does, how could he be so careless with his 999 Plan?

The FairTax and Flat Tax movements have always been somewhat at odds as the FairTaxers know that the Flat Tax will just lead us back to this point economically. You see, we already have a flat tax, it was implemented in the Reagan era. However, after decades of congressional meddling, we now have an out of control insane income tax system. You see, the flat tax can be tweaked and modified to the point that its whole existence is damn near pointless. Cain knows this, yet he includes it as one-third of his plan. It has proven to be a failure long-term. People just ignore history or just don’t know that we’ve been down this road already. To include a flat tax and essentially the FairTax (sales or consumption tax) in the same tax reform plan is fucking ridiculous.

Now one issue that everyone criticizing this plan brings up, is that what is to prevent 9-9-9 from becoming 15-15-15 or 23-23-23? The answer is “nothing”. There is nothing in the plan that will prevent congressional meddling and as we all know, as history has always proven, some people are just going to toy with it and we will be stuck up shit’s creek without not just a paddle but no boat as well. The fact of the matter is, trading a giant leviathan for three baby leviathans is never a good deal. The village may be safe from destruction for a little while but eventually the beasts will grow and the damage will be catastrophic!

Now the whole idea of this being a stepping stone is laughable. The reality of the situation is that Cain has abandoned the FairTax issue. I know that none of you FairTaxers out there want to believe it, especially since you’ve sent this guy a check already but that’s the truth. We’ve got ourselves another Marco Rubio here. The passion of the average FairTax supporter is dangerous because earning the love of the movement can bring a candidate to the dance. This is just another case of that. There is no way that 999 is a stepping stone. When has a stepping stone ever worked in Washington? Not only that, but both the 999 Plan and the FairTax are HUGE tax reforms. Does Cain think he will be able to accomplish two huge tax reforms in his presidency? That’s beyond fucking absurd.

First of all, most people already hate this 999 Plan to begin with, so good luck with that. But even if he were to pass it, he’d then have to convince everyone that the FairTax is better. Dude, no one is going to believe you at that point because you gave us a plan that you weren’t confident with and obviously weren’t even sold on. And if he is sold on the 999 Plan, then he’s not going to give us the FairTax. It’s a pretty easy assessment if you ask me. To think it is a stepping stone doesn’t make a lick of sense! Truth be told, if you really are looking for the FairTax candidate, get the fuck off of the Cain Train and get on the Gary Johnson Cruise Ship. He’s the only true FairTax supporter in this race now.

5. Misuse of Campaign Funds:

One fucked up thing Herman Cain has done is misused campaign funds. In fact, he has used funds to enrich himself and his associates. The biggest example of this is that he used over $100,000 of donated money to buy copies of a booklet from a corporation called T.H.E. New Voice, Inc. Problem is, Herman Cain owns T.H.E. New Voice, Inc.! Essentially, he is spending campaign money to buy campaign materials from a company that he owns and profits from. Sorry homies but this is just shady as fuck. When criticized about the issue, Herman Cain said:

If they know Herman Cain, they wouldn’t even make such an assertion. How’s that for political correctness!

What a dick. The more this guy talks, the more it is pretty obvious that he is his own biggest fan. Sorry Herman, we DON’T know you because you jumped on the scene a few months ago and have no political track record other than a failed attempt at a senate run in 2004 and your tenure as Director of the Federal Reserve’s Kansas City branch which is wrapped in secrecy.

Cain has been using every campaign stop to sell and promote his new book “This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House”. What a title! He’s pretty full of himself already thinking he’s a shoe-in for the American throne. But anyway, one has to question if he is in this to truly become president or to make a profit. If it is to be president, then he needs to stop setting up shop to collect a profit from his Cain Brains at his campaign events. He should be focused on putting all that money towards the campaign itself. Then again, he’s just using that to make a profit off of as well. Either way, Super CEO Mr. Cain has this whole money making scheme figured out.

Apart from his fancy literature, Cain has also profited a lot from speaking engagements while he has been on the campaign trail. This year alone, Herman Cain has already banked $250,000 from making personal appearances. Between this and all the other campaign abuse shenanigans, the Daily Mail points out:

Political pundits have compared the situation to that of Sarah Palin, who lost her vice presidential bid but made hefty pay checks afterwards due to speaking fees, book sales, and television rights.

The other, more sinister, comparison is to Jim Wright, the former Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives in the late 1980s who resigned in the wake of an ethics investigation looking into the connection between bulk purchases of his book and gifts from supporting groups.

Granted other candidates throughout history have been guilty of similar self-promotional bullshit but that doesn’t excuse it and there should at least be an investigation into it. Wouldn’t Mr. Cain be all over Barack Obama if the roles were reversed? Hell, any of the candidates on the Republican stage would be pointing the finger.

6. The Police State, the PATRIOT Act & War Powers:

If Herman Cain had his way, he’d be standing on the bridge of a Super Star Destroyer while his Imperial Stormtroopers pillaged Hoth in an effort to thwart those homegrown terrorists. Why would I make such a correlation between Mr. Cain and Darth Vader? Well, let me explain.

Recently, in an interview with The Atlantic,  Darth Cain came out and said that he had no problem with warrantless wiretaps on American citizens if it was being done for counter-terrorism. He also said that he supports the biggest tyranical monstrosity of all-time, the PATRIOT Act. Cain in defense of the PATRIOT Act said:

If 90 percent of a counter-terrorism law is sound we shouldn’t worry about the other ten percent.

Wow! Really? That’s pretty fucked up. Nope, no need to worry about this 10 percent of tyrannical bullshit because this other 90 percent seems okay! When asked about the domestic side of counter-terrorism, he said:

I’m a little troubled by police officers being able to go into a home without a warrant or a court order… But that being said, I would rather error on the side of detection.. ..I also believe that we’ve got to give our intelligence agencies the leeway in order to be able to protect us.

It was Ben Franklin who said:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Herman Cain must’ve never read that quote, which doesn’t surprise me considering he has continually misquoted the Declaration of Independence as the Constitution.

Cain also doesn’t necessarily disagree with the tyrannical TSA he just feels that they “lack common sense”. For the record, Cain also said that harsher drug laws were needed. Apparently Cain is not educated on prohibition, Constitutional law, individual rights, property rights or common sense. Sorry folks but Cain has adopted the views of a neocon on these issues.

When asked about what he thought on Obama and the use of war powers in regards to the Libyan situation, Cain said:

My thoughts are less on whether he has the authority to do what he’s doing than why is he doing what he’s doing. Clarity of what he’s doing and why is more important than whether or not he has the authority to do it.

M’kay, that’s just fucking scary! Cain doesn’t care what the law is! All that matters is “what’s the motivation”. These two sentences sum this guy up pretty well across the board. This pro-Constitution Tea Party conservative really could give two shits about the law. We don’t need another king that thinks he’s above the law that just acts on his gut.

7. The Super CEO & Lack of Experience:

People keep touting how great of a business man Herman Cain is and that he is this political outsider that is going to take Washington by storm, clean up the girdlock and make our country as fiscally efficient as America’s 9th largest pizza chain. That all sounds great but Cain Brains are overlooking reality and are just accepting Herman Cain’s business prowess at face value.

To start, you can’t say that the man has no political experience, he does. Whenever Cain says that he is a Washington outsider, he’s full of shit. To be a director of a branch of the Federal Reserve one has to play the political game. That is not a position for drones. Granted he had a boss in Alan Greenspan but he still had to work within the political system and have a pretty solid understanding of it to be able to effectively hold that job. To think that this is a non-political position is asinine. Also, he did run for senate and has had some political experience in that aspect. This is not his first campaign, he is not going into this blindly.

However, lets entertain the idea that Cain is an inexperienced outsider, as he claims that he truly is. Why would any of us want that? One of his famous overused catchphrases when asked about his lack of experience against experienced candidates is:

Well, all the people in Washington D.C. have held public office before. How’s that working out for ya?

Typically the Cain Brains cheer when they hear this catchphrase; I cringe. Does not having experience against those who do, who have been shitty with it, somehow make you a better choice? Besides, not everyone in D.C. with experience is bad. The people that rally behind this are just easily swayed by catchphrases and slogans and can’t separate reality from Cain’s charismatic schtick. It’s like the Bachmann Bunch cheering every time Michele rambles incoherently and then adds, “Let’s make Barack Obama a One! Term! President!”

Herman Cain professing that his lack of experience is why we should vote for him is like a blind guy telling us that he should drive the bus because the last few drivers who could see got us into a few accidents. But then again, Cain’s been working and lobbying in D.C. for decades. His staff just can’t come up with a good one-liner to express the truth effectively.

As for being this great CEO, a lot of information has come out as of late that makes these claims seem somewhat overinflated. Yes he did work for several big companies and helped turn some of them around and on paper that makes him look like a business genius. Regardless of if he was the genius or if he just had good people around him is a moot point, as being the CEO he gets the credit. Well, he also gets the credit for some of the questionable things that have risen to the surface in regards to his potentially shoddy management style.

Recently, the Atlanta Post and Mother Jones Magazine, ran articles that talked about how Cain, as well as his board of directors, were being sued by the employees of Aquila, an energy company in the Midwest. Mother Jones describes Cain’s tenure at Aquila:

..scrubbed from Cain’s official story is his long tenure as a director at a Midwest energy corporation named Aquila that, like the infamous Enron Corporation, recklessly dove into the wild west of energy trading and speculation—and ultimately screwed its employees out of tens of millions of dollars.

In 1992, Cain along with Aquila’s board of directors allegedly steered employees to take money out of their retirement funds and to move it into company stock. Granted they didn’t put a gun to the heads of their employees but this was still the product of these unethical schemers worried about their own personal bottom lines. After doing this, the company left its conservative business model behind and became more aggressive by carelessly engaging in risky energy trading. Money was lost and the employees who dumped their money into company stock were super pissed. Their lawsuit claims that Cain and the Aquila board of directors violated a 37-year-old federal law that states that employers must responsibly manage employees retirement programs. Cain has been asked about this, not by conservative pundits mind you, but he and his campaign refuse to comment on the issue.

You see, between his desire to keep the Federal Reserve shrouded in secrecy on top of his questionable business actions and his verbal distaste of us “free market purists”, Mr. Cain is apparently a practitioner of corporatism not capitalism. Herman Cain is the living embodiment of what the Occupy Wall Street protestors are angry about, at least the smart ones who know why they are down there. This is why Herman Cain is so critical of the OWS protestors. After admitting that he didn’t have “all the facts” but suspected that the protests were orchestrated to distract from Obama policies, he told the protestors that if they aren’t rich, to “blame themselves”. While it can be said that there is some truth to that, you’re not going to gain any votes taking cheap shots at a whole movement.

You could blame Cain’s harsh words on his supposed inexperience but I really just think he has a hard time not putting his foot in his mouth. Cain needs to think before he speaks and that statement alone just alienated a huge segment of the country that he could’ve worked towards getting as supporters. What Cain should’ve done is gone down there like presidential candidate Gary Johnson did. Talk to the people, break some bread and discuss how we can come up with a solution. I mean, homie is a self-proclaimed “problem solver” or is that just another catchphrase?

Despite the conservative media’s claims, there are people down there with real concerns who want answers to real issues plaguing them. You can’t discredit an entire movement based off of an influx of idiots that have showed up to take the spotlight in interviews. Besides, it’s not like the media isn’t looking for idiots to showcase. Essentially, Fox News and other conservative media outlets are hypocrites that are doing exactly what they bitched about when the liberal media was looking for every excuse to discredit the Tea Party. But whatever, two wrongs make ratings.

8. Religious Intolerance:

One issue that irritates me about Herman Cain is that he has no respect for individual rights. Then again he probably thinks he does but his religious intolerance blinds him to reality. One example of this is when he said:

I believe that homosexuality is a sin because I am a Bible believing Christian. I know it’s a sin but I know that some people make that choice. It’s their choice. ..I believe it is a choice.

Wow dude, really? This is that typical Republican Evangelical bullshit that keeps the GOP in the stone-age and allows the Democrats to justifiably gain the support of gays, lesbians and other groups affected by this sort of bigoted intolerance. Herman Cain believes that homosexuality is a choice. Blind faith in such idiocy that has no scientific evidence to support it is well.. never mind, he is a faith driven man who disregards science. That’s not a shot at Christianity, it’s just a shot at this sort of right-wing stupidity.

If Cain believed in individual rights, he wouldn’t care about someone’s sexual orientation. What they do is no one else’s business and they are free to live in this society in any way they want, as long as what they do doesn’t infringe upon the rights of anyone else. Then again, people with Cain’s mindset feel that seeing two dudes holding hands in a park is an attack on them personally. How dare they infringe on his rights by being happy in front of him! On social issues Cain is no different than a guy like Rick Santorum or Pat Buchanan.

Cain also shows his intolerance with his incredible fear of Islam growing in the United States. Yes, we do not need Sharia Law in the U.S. but guys like Cain are so paranoid of it that they would have you believing that we are on the cusp of an Islamic revolution here in the United States. This sort of fear mongering breeds more hatred, more racism and more intolerance. Those truly affected by it are the Muslims that don’t practice the very rare extreme form of their religion. In effect, their religious freedom is hindered and criticized. Somehow the biggest offenders of this intolerance are Christians who disregard the fact that their religion also has an incredibly violent history that forced people to change wherever it staked its cross in the ground.

On the issue of abortion, Cain is all over the fucking place. He says he is “pro-life from conception.” When asked if he thinks that some form of abortion should be legal, he says “government shouldn’t be involved.” Then he says that “people shouldn’t be free to abort because if we don’t protect the sanctity of life from conception we will also start to play God relative to life at the end of life.” Uh huh.. what? Where does Cain stand on the death penalty? Well, he officially has no stance which means that he doesn’t believe his own words about playing God “at the end of life”. Cain says he is “pro-life period!” When asked if a woman is raped should she be allowed to abort the baby, Cain says, “That’s her choice. That is not government’s choice.” So then he is asked if abortion should be legal and Cain snaps back with “No!” WTF?! Anyone else confused?

9. Conclusion:

Now there are other issues with Cain besides all of this but this article is already pretty massive. The point is, after knowing all this, how could you vote for Herman Cain? He’s a pretty shitty candidate at the end of the day and he will only give us more of the same. Sure, he’d probably be better than Obama but that is not a reason to vote for him because frankly, he is not the best choice.

Truth is, if you have read this and still want to vote for him and want to continue to make excuses for all of these points, you are a part of the bigger problem. You shouldn’t vote for a candidate you have to make excuses for. No one is perfect but Cain is further away from perfect than some of the other choices out there. He is NOT going to pass the FairTax and hell, his 999 Plan is dead in the water right now. In fact, it is the sales tax part that has everyone up in arms. He’s considering changing the 9% sales tax to 9% of something else. The sales tax part is the FairTax part! If he omits it for something else or is even considering it, which he is, then he’s not really trying to bring the FairTax to the table. He’s sticking to his 999 Plan because it is a fucking catchphrase, nothing more.

When pressed by EVERYONE on how shitty the plan is, he can’t defend it. He gets visibly irritated and just says to go to his website and re-read it. This guy doesn’t have the confidence or the understanding to defend his magic plan and on top of that, his skin seems to be getting thinner and thinner on the subject. On a side note, the 999 Plan was created by his economic advisor who works for Wells Fargo and looks like a bald Ben Linus from ‘Lost’. Do you really want to trust a bald Ben Linus?

You see, Herman Cain is just charisma and catchphrases with little to no real substance. Voting for Herman Cain would be like voting for the WWE Intercontinental Champion. A few flashy words to fire up a crowd isn’t going to change the world let alone get us out of our current economic peril. Cain is a professional politician, contrary to what he claims, because he knows how to play the people, which is what he is doing. It has gotten to the point that I almost find it offensive. Unfortunately, too many people just can’t see beyond all of the colorful rhetoric. It kind of parallels Obama in a way.

All I’m saying is that you probably need to make a wiser decision. This “inexperienced” guy holding office is a scary thought. If you want more crony capitalism and a guy that admits he isn’t knowledgeable repeatedly and always turns to some secret advisor, then vote for Cain. Frankly, he is not presidential material; he is motivational speaker material. The problem is, too many have been duped by his over the top presence and are taken in with his message. The reality of the situation is that the message just isn’t clear and with Cain’s track record, could easily shift or change. You can’t rely on a guy that relies on his advisors to shape his gut reaction. Not that having advisors is a bad thing, but Cain’s let it be no secret, albeit inadvertently, that they are calling the shots. In the end, I think Cain just sees this as the start of a long-term business plan and that is unfortunate. This time next year he’ll probably be a co-host on ‘The Five’.

My Two Cents: Do I need to point out the obvious? End Two Cents.

*Taken from the American Dream.

We are never going to restore legitimacy to our political system until we get the money out of politics.  Typically, in federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time.  In 2008, Barack Obama raised almost twice as much money as John McCain did.  3 of the top 7 donors to Obama’s campaign were big Wall Street banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup).  Now Wall Street is doing it again.  The big Wall Street banks are already trying to buy the 2012 election.  So who do they want to win in 2012?  Based on contribution patterns so far, the overwhelming favorite of the Wall Street banks to win in 2012 is Mitt Romney.  The big Wall Street banks have given to Romney as pile of money that is more than 4 times larger than they have given to anyone else.  Even though most Republicans really don’t want him, if history is any indication this means that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012.

Posted below are numbers from a recent analysis done by the Center for Responsive Politics.  These numbers reflect monetary donations to presidential candidates by employees of these big Wall Street banks (and their wives) between January and September 2011.

As you can see, somehow Mitt Romney is at the top of each list by a wide margin.  Clearly there is a “consensus” (some would call it a conspiracy) among the Wall Street elite that Romney is the man for the job.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo.

Instead of demanding Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and the conspirators at Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve be arrested for financial crimes against humanity, the OWS socialists will march on the homes of a handful of wealthy people in New York and demand the state not repeal a 2 percent tax and the rich pay a “fair share” of taxes.

Between 400 and 800 OWS marchers will hold oversize checks they claim demonstrate how much less the wealthy will pay when the law expires. The march is scheduled to begin at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue about 12:30pm then continue to the Upper East Side, according toFox News.

The march was organized by Working Families Party, New York Communities for Change, Strong Economy for All and United NY, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

CONTINUED..