The Arc of Intolerance:

America is confronting what I call the Arc of Intolerance. The arc is defined as that swath of land beginning in Pakistan and arching west and north to end in Beirut. Here is found the principle set of groups that violently oppose not just America but rather all western thought. These include most of the current strongholds of Islamic Fundamentalism. Make no mistake; with Islamic Fundamentalism there can be no compromise.

Of course the same thing can be said of Jewish fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism. Essentially all fanatics don’t just think they are right; they know they are right. It is that “knowing” that gives them there appeal and their strength. By knowing a thing as part of an “act of faith” you simply have to reject all reasoning counter thoughts. It is a very strong form of self hypnosis. Some might even say it’s a form of self deception.

Where America comes into the equation is that we are not just the best customers of some of these regional governments we are also the target for their hatred. I have to laugh when I hear America condemned as the Great Devil the same week that OPEC puts up the price of a barrel of crude oil. So my fellow Americans it is not just fundamentalists that border on insanity it is all of us.

The war between liberal thought and conservative thought has been going on continuously for the past 500+ years in the west. There could of course be no awareness of thoughts of the Native peoples living in the new world prior to 1492, simply because Europe had no awareness of these people. In 1517 some 25 years after Columbus sailed to what was to become America Martin Luther attempted to reform what he perceived as errors in the basic thinking on redemption. At issue was what redeems a man’s soul; good works or a personal relationship with Christ. The need for such redemption was of course not considered. Well not at least until Thomas Jefferson and his band of cohorts.

The next greatest document since the Martin Luther document was nailed on the church door in 1517 began as the Deceleration of Independence and grew to become the Bill of Rights to the American Constitution. Many of the intellectuals that conceived the method of governance which America was to use were strongly religious. The sole exception was of course Thomas Jefferson. I have always suspected that Aaron Burr was also what one might call a heretic. Burr had none of the redeeming traits of Jefferson and after the dual in which he shot Alexander Hamilton dead Burr fell out of favor. The deal reached with Jefferson was ignored and Burr never served as co-president. For those of you that think smoke filled back rooms are new to American politics let me assure you that such is not the case.

What America did add that was totally new to the human experience was that government of America could not sponsor or actively support any religion. This is actually the sticking point with not only Islamic fundamentalism but it is a bone of contention with both the Church at Rome and the fundamental Christian Right. In a way we can tell that American government is working when everyone is angry. Dissention is not new to democracy. Indeed the whole process of democracy is a careful balancing of opposing forces and thoughts. Democracy fails when one side or the other becomes too powerful. Elections for the House of Representatives every two years insure that a readjustment of power can be accomplished every two years.

Today comes the news that the cycle of carbon dependence may be broken. To say that another way OPEC may be toast. See:

Laser Energy

Usury and Market Forces:

Let us first define what we mean by the term usury. Laws regulating the maximum rate of interest that could be charged by a person or agency making a loan did exist in America until relatively recently. These usury laws served to control the avarice of banks and individuals. As part of the mantra of market forces the congress was convinced to repeal these laws. When this happened rates increased rapidly. Another thing increased almost as rapidly. The number of words in the contract between the loan maker and the individual borrowing the money was increased by many fold. All those words were not there to protect the borrower. Far from it in fact he had no rights to refuse to accept the changes.

Any first year law student can tell you that contracts that are unilaterally changed are essentially broken. But if you read the contract closely you will see that part of the wording grants that right to the bank. In fact the credit card contract has become so complex that no one knows what it means. Of one thing we can be sure; all that verbiage is not there to protect the person that is seeking to charge a purchase. Simple math can show you that it will take decades to pay off a credit card balance of $3,000. Yet most credit card holder’s card balance is well in excess of this amount.

So let’s see where this leaves us. You have a credit card company that is affiliated with a bank charging outlandish fees to use a line of credit and remitting a portion of those fees to one of many banks. Now let’s consider the other side of the equation. For you see banks not only loan money they also serve as a repository for funds in the form of CDs and passbook savings accounts. Let’s examine these by doing a Google search of CD rates:


Google Search


Today that looks like an APY of between 2.8% and 1.90%. This at the same time that many of these same banks are charging between 12.0% and 32.5% on credit card debt, clearly there is a discrepancy. Why should there be a spread of 10 to 30 percentage points you might ask. The answer is quite simple that has happened because there was no one regulating the loan industry. In fact if someone tried to sell food as badly tainted as these loan products they would be put in jail. What is true of credit cards is doubly true of mortgage loans. In fact by the banks own words these loans have been deemed “toxic”. What and who made them toxic is the question you have to ask. The answer is painfully simple; the banks made them toxic because the pay off was so onerous than many people simply walked away from their homes. They simply owed more than they could pay.

Now comes the truly scary part. Our government is giving these same people tax dollars in the hope that the crooks running the banks will change their ways. Do they truly think this will happen. Let’s see what has in fact happened. The number for foreclosures has increased. The loans to businesses that need credit to keep the doors of American industry open have dried up. The rate charged to tax payers by these same banks on credit card debt has been increased all the while availing themselves of massive amounts of public money from the government.

All of this is happening right before our eyes and all the while we are told that debt holders and American labor must make sacrifices. Enough is enough. Throw these scallywags out and do not give them a single penny more until and unless they increase their rate on passbook savings or lower their credit card rate until the “spread” is returned to historic norms.

Newspapers:

I have been watching what many bemoan as the death of the American Newspaper and heard many differing opinions on this ongoing event. American Newspapers have a long as interesting history. But once again Americans seem to confuse the thing with what the thing represents. Newspapers do not guarantee truth or freedom. Recall that the leading news publication in Communist Russia was Pravda (Truth in Russian) yet many times that hardly was what those pages contained. Even in America stories in newspapers have been proven to be false and yellow sheet journalism has at times been the norm not the exception. Yet we go on bemoaning the untimely demise of newspapers when we should be doing all in our power to see that what the media tells us is in fact a true reflection of reality. In point of fact it matters little where we as citizens get our information from so long as that information truly represents what is going on in our world.

We must stop confusing issues and opinions with facts that inform us of what is really happening. Americans like to think their press is free to publish the truth. Sadly many times such is not the case. During every major conflict America has been involved in the reporting of that conflict was less than accurate in every case. Truth seems to be the first victim of war - Google Search . In our own time this includes photographs of the dead on the beaches of Normandy being censored to the latest series of sensational reporting about the poor in Washington DC and reports of the enemy dead in the View Nam war. Of course the electronic news media has its own set of problems. I am always struck by the term Eyewitness News. Any lawyer or police detective worth his pay can tell you how unreliable eye witness testimony in fact is. Human memory can often deceive even the person doing the remembering.

Lastly I shall only advise that even when we look at something repeatedly we fail to notice the true essence of the story. Consider slavery in Egypt. No here I am not talking about 2009. I am speaking of slavery that occurred some 3,000+ years ago. The story of Moses and the people he led to what was to become the Kingdom of Israel. This is one of the first “freedom stories” yet many have never viewed it that way. I expect that will not change for we often see what we wish to see and not what is right before our very eyes.