Financial Advisors and Liberalism

In the book I am reading called How To Smell A Rat. The Five Signs of Financial Fraud (2009) by Ken Fisher, the author tells about one of the biggest red flags that your financial advisor could be a scam artist is that he has custody of your assets. In other words he has total control of your stocks, bonds, etc. You should control what you want to buy, sell or hold. It is just way too tempting for the advisor to be another Bernie Madoff.

What does this have to do with liberalism? Think about it. Take Social Security for example. The government has taken over saving for your retirement. It has not completely taken over for saving for you though. The money left over from your paycheck you can still save, but when it involuntarily takes a percentage out of your paycheck you have no idea what happens to that money. And no control of what the gov't does with it. The federal gov't is your financial advisor for your retirement. The same could be said about Medicare and Medicaid.  Doesn't that make you feel nice and warm? And if Obama and the Dems have it their way it will be the same for health care. Total control of that too. 

What are the other signs of financial fraud you may ask? One, if the returns are consistently great. Two, the investment strategy isn't understandable, is murky, flashy, or "too complicated" for him or her to describe so you easily understand. (That sound like ObamaCare to me!) The third sign, your advisor promotes benefits like exclusivity, which don't impact results. Finally, you didn't do your own due diligence, but a trusted intermediary did. In other words, let the buyer beware. Don't count on others doing the checking for you. Like gov't agencies. 

Just Say No

Imagine your are a passenger in a car. The driver is heading toward a cliff. You and the driver's death is eminent. What do you do? Say nothing and let the driver just drive off the cliff? Or do the common sense thing and yell, "Stop the car and turn around! You are driving off the cliff!" Of course, you could also jump out of the car and save yourself but for this thought experiment let's say you can't do that for whatever reasons. 

You could also grab the wheel and steer the car around after yelling to stop the car if the driver doesn't stop the car. The driver will of course get mad at you and accuse you with interfering with his driving. His anger will continue until he sees the cliff he was about to go over. 

If you substitute the car for America, Obama for the driver, and the Republicans or any congresspeople who are opposing Obama's agenda as the passenger then you have the situation in this country now. The Left accuse the Republicans of just saying no. I hope for this country they keep saying no to Obama as long as he is not looking out for the country's welfare. Someone has to say no. Someone has to yell, "Stop the car!" even if they get criticized and mocked for it.  The Right should come up with alternatives too. And they have. That's the "grabbing the wheel" part of my analogy.   If Obama is not going to look out for the country, someone in Congress better. That's their duty. Because the car is heading right for the cliff. 

To sum up, countrymen should not let their fellow countrymen destroy the country's economy or the founding principles of the country.

How World Leaders Can Lose Power

This is what I learned about how world leaders can lose their power when I took a Cultural Anthropology course in college:

1. Loss of prestige of established authority, often as a result of the failure of foreign policy, financial difficulties, dismissals of popular ministers, or alteration of popular policies.

2. Threat to recent economic improvement.

3. Indecisiveness of gov't, as exemplified by lack of consistent policy.

4. Loss of support of the intellectual class.

5. A leader or group of leaders with charisma enough to mobilize a substantial part of the population against the establishment.

In democratic countries like America if the citizens don't like the leader they can vote him out of office. If you examine the polls about Obama he looks like he has the first three conditions. Not sure about condition #4. If you mean college professors and the lame stream media he still has their support. But I don't think that really matters so much anymore. If the lame stream media doesn't support him anymore that could cause trouble for him. As for condition #5, I haven't seen a charismatic leader yet. Maybe Sarah Palin.

In autocratic countries like Iran, China, and Venezuela a revolution has to happen. Then the leader either gets exiled or gets killed.

Code Defends Against 'Stealthy' Computer Worms

From ScienceDaily.com (Feb. 4):

Self-propagating worms are malicious computer programs, which, after being released, can spread throughout networks without human control, stealing or erasing hard drive data, interfering with pre-installed programs and slowing, even crashing, home and work computers. Now a new code, or algorithm, created by Penn State researchers targets the "stealthiest" of these worms, containing them before an outbreak can occur.

"In 2001 the 'Code Red' worms caused $2 billion dollars worth of damage worldwide," said Yoon-Ho Choi, a postdoctoral fellow in information sciences and technology, Penn State. "Our algorithm can prevent a worm's propagation early in its propagation stage." [read more]

Interesting. Hope the code works.

Feds push for tracking cell phones

From news.cnet.com (February 11):

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls. [read more]

The article does not state why the Obama administration wants to track cell phone locations. For national security for instance? Who knows. It's good to see the ACLU concerned about this issue. At least they are being consistent.

On a side note, your cell phone can still be tracked even when it is off.

Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included

From Wired.com (February 5):

The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.” [read more]

This sounds like a SyFy movie script. I hope that "kill switch" doesn't fail. Any complex weapon or even tool should be an open system. That is the user should be able to control it. Or else you could possibly have a nightmare scenario. Think Frankenstein.

British intel: Breast implants may hide bombs

From Freep.com (Feb. 5):

WASHINGTON, DC -- British intelligence agencies have reportedly monitored terrorist communications bragging that women suicide bombers have already undergone surgery to hide explosive bombs in their breast implants.

"You could certainly put a liquid of any kind in a saline device, and a gel implant theoretically could be opened and replaced with a different type of gel," said Maryland plastic surgeon Dr. Craig Person.

"I believe that any liquid in a breast implant, or any gel with a silicone-type of implant would be hard to detect with a body scanner," Person told 9NewsNow. [read more]

Actually, that is pretty clever of the terrorists. Who would think of checking the breasts for explosives? And if the scanning devices don't detect the explosives then what? What will be next explosives in women's buttocks?

I just hope the terrorists keep failing in their homicide bombing attempts. But hope is not enough. All it takes is just one successful attack.

Since militant Jihadists don't respect woman they would have a woman explode rather than a man anyway.

Democrat Questions to Republicans

Here are the questions that Democrat senate candidates are supposed to ask their Republican opponents. If a Republican answers "no" to any of the questions then the Dem is to make his or her "primary opponent or conservative activists know it." My answers follow the questions.

• Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen? Yes, of course. Any conservative that believes he isn't is just giving ammo to the Dems and Obama. Republicans should stick the issues and Obama's ideology. Don't take your eye of the ball, guys. Obama has enough baggage that you don't have to bring his citizenship up.

  
  

• Do you think the 10th Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum health care coverage standards? The 10th Amendment basically says whatever law is not in the Constitution is left up to the states or the people. Health care is not in the Constitution. Does that answer the question? What would be helpful is to pass a law that says people can shop for health insurance across state lines like you do for other insurances.

  
  

• Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place? Yes, on both accounts. Let's see now. Social Security is where you take from the young and give to the old. Isn't that wealth redistribution ie socialism? I know you get part of your money back when you withdraw money from Social Security (well, all those born after 1964 do. Everyone else is screwed. You see, Social Security is nothing but IOUs from the government.) In my opinion, it was created because FDR thought people did not know how to save money. In other words, they are stupid. Most progressives like FDR think like that. And like all progressive government programs they are mandatory. After all parents (the progressive lawmakers) cannot let their children (taxpayers) make hard decisions for themselves. They are not just mature enough. And they never will be.

  
  

• Do you think President Obama is a socialist? Hmmm. During a speech he said in so many words he wanted to "radically transform this country." He mentioned in one of this books he likes to hang out with Marxist's professors during college days. He's hired during his presidency people from the far-left. His administration has taken over GM and the banks. Oh, yea. He's mentioned he wants a universal health care system. Is his ideology on the far-left? Probably. Is a socialist? Not totally, but he has socialistic tendencies.

  
  

• Do you think America should return to a gold standard? Probably not. What we need is accountability and transparency in the Federal Reserve. They yield a lot of power. They control not just the interest rates, but the discount rate and the federal funds rate. The Federal Reserve also controls the required reserve ratio. In an old Heritage.org lecture (March 1, 1987), Heller, H. Robert thinks the world should explore the use of a "commodity price index" for price stability.

I am surprised the Dems are not asking "Do you listen to the Rush Limbaugh radio show?" since they got Rush on their minds a lot. Or "Do you listen/watch to Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck?" Or "Have you ever attended a Tea Party event?" Or even "Do you think Sarah Palin is intelligent?"

All these questions are meant to be gotcha questions.

Al-Qaeda Remains Intent on WMD Strike Against U.S., Report Says

From NTI.org (Jan. 26):

The terrorist organization al-Qaeda continues to work to acquire weapons of mass destruction to use in a large-scale terror attack on the United States, according to a report released yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 20).

"Their WMD procurement efforts have been managed at the most senior levels, under rules of strict compartmentalization from lower levels of the organization, and with central control over possible targets and timing of prospective attacks," according to former high-level CIA official Rolf Mowatt-Larssen (Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Harvard University Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs report, Jan. 25).

The report came even as a congressionally mandated panel issued a "report card" saying the federal government has not done nearly enough to prepare the United States for an act of biological terrorism (see related GSN story, today). [read more]

If America keeps treating terrorists as common criminals, and not doing enhanced interrogation then another attack could happen. God forbid that ever happens.