HISTORY is replete with the record of Barbarian killers. Whether they titled themselves as “Emperor”, “King”, “The Great Khan”, “Attila the Hun”, “President” or some other fancy title, they all have a record of filling the annals of time with the deaths of thousands, tens of thousands and often millions of innocent people just trying to live out their lives and care for their children.
Vladimir Putin is not the first, and, unfortunately will likely not be the last of these soulless killers of humanity.
I find myself laying awake at night, my mind haunted by a televised image of a sorrowful man sitting beside a table on which lays a dead child covered with a bloodstained sheet. The child was killed because of the ambition of Vladimir Putin. I grieve with this man and the people of the Ukraine and I am tormented with a desire to find a way to stop this kind of madness.
Like many others, I find myself praying that the barbarism and killing will stop.
Following World War I the League of Nations was formed with the intent of making sure another such war would never happen again. Adolph Hitler put that dream in the dust bin of history and is responsible for the death of seven million Jews and so many others. But, he is not alone in the reign of Barbarians. Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin and numerous others have caused the death and misery of millions upon millions of humans.
The United Nations was formed following World War II. It to, has failed in so many ways. The most it seems to do is issue “Non-Binding Resolutions” of condemnation. Like wagging your finger at a two year old for breaking his siblings toys with no other consequences.
It has been reported that the United States is sending Vice President Kamala Harris over to Europe. Maybe to give them another geography lesson on how the Ukraine is located right next to Russia and remind them that our President might need to go “toe to toe” with Putin again as he said he had done in a statement while on the campaign trail. I am sure this will be every bit as effective as the “Non-Binding Resolution” from the United Nations has been. With Vice President Harris in charge what could possibly go wrong?
Back in 2009 when one of our political parties was accusing the other party of “pulling the plug” on Grandma’s Heath Care, I wrote a satirical piece suggesting the United States would do well to “Pull the Plug” on the United Nations and ship it off to another country before dropping our membership. The message of the article was that the United Nations was no more than a Toothless Tiger which had become mostly a sounding board where other countries, after taking our Foreign Aid money voted against the U.S. whenever possible.
Different era, different tyrants and dictators. Same “Toothless” United Nations.
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PULL THE PLUG
September 2009
Bob Bandy
Drawing by Syl Mateo
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Dictator names and nations have changed but not the ineffectiveness of the United Nations. What a waste. Sad.
The following article reprinted from the Philadelphia Trumpet– March 2022 – by Joel Hilliker is one of the best Synopsis of exactly what America has done, and is doing to itself that I have read anywhere. It is both eye opening and a frightening piece of carefully documented concise, articulate commentary on the subject. Bob
Do you believe America is the strongest country in the world? It’s time to open your eyes: You are living in the post-American world.
The United States has enjoyed the world’s largest economy for about two lifetimes. But depending on the measurement, China has already surpassed it, or is about to. It is building a sprawling trading network that encompasses more than 140 nations. Recently, it signed an agreement with virtually every nation in Latin America and the Caribbean that helps it replace the United States as the region’s top trade partner. The plan covers almost all aspects of life, from learning Chinese to mining to exploring space, for more than 680 million people in 33 countries—and is plainly aimed at taking over America’s backyard.
Such are the deals China is securing that enable it to flood the world with inexpensive exports and thus amass mountains of cash. This wealth it reinvests in foreign countries, then uses this as leverage to gain control of their resources and infrastructure. China is building a global empire, quickly and relentlessly. Meanwhile America, opposed to tyrannies but war weary, relies on economic weapons, freezing regimes like Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Venezuela and Cuba out of diplomacy and trade. China, itself a tyrannical regime, is happy to welcome them as they rush into its arms. It just signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Iran that will flood the Islamist terrorist state with cash, as well as providing military training, weapons development and intelligence sharing that could upend the Middle East’s balance of power.
America is in retreat, pulling out of Europe and deserting the Middle East. Last summer it evacuated Afghanistan in the most humiliating fashion conceivable, reinstating the very terrorist organization we went there to defeat, betraying foreign allies and abandoning our own people. Russia, by stark contrast, is reconstructing the Soviet empire bit by bit through intimidation and outright invasion. It is building a potent energy weapon against Eastern Europe, reigniting conflict in the Balkans, deploying troops in Kazakhstan, warring against Ukraine, and fatally undermining nato. China is annexing the South China Sea, crushing its Uyghur population, and snuffing out freedom in Hong Kong. It is isolating Taiwan and preparing to invade; one wonders who would stop it if it chose to do so. America certainly has no stomach for war over some remote island in East Asia. Though Americans vociferously decry the evils of American oppression and imperialism, they are oddly mute about the expansionist neocolonialism of dictators Xi and Putin.
America is in a leadership crisis. Half the leaders have come to believe a demonic ideology: radical policies, economic madness, hatred of tradition, unrestrained amorality. They encourage lawlessness on the street while weaponizing law to destroy their political foes. They lie, cheat, steal, even kill to serve the “greater good” of attaining and clinging to power. The other half of the leaders are too irresolute and weak, too compromised, to stop them from destroying the country. And they all spend an inordinate amount of their time seeking reelection and finding ways to appeal to self-interested, ignorant voters. The paramount leaders of Russia and China don’t bother with elections, debates with legislators, term limits or any other checks on their power. What they say is what is done, whether it’s installing an Orwellian surveillance state, laying tens of thousands of miles of high-speed rail, colonizing the moon, or expanding and modernizing their nuclear arsenal.
America shackles its industry and economy with regulations and restrictions to appease special interests and foreign environmentalists. China scorns climate change protocols with impunity. It is too busy dominating the global 5G rollout, strengthening its automotive sector, developing the digital yuan, erecting skyscrapers in new megacities, modernizing, militarizing and colonizing to concern itself with carbon emissions. While the standard of living in China has been rising rapidly for more than four decades, America’s infrastructure is decaying, our cities are filling with homeless, drug abuse is mushrooming, inflation and personal debt are rising, incomes are falling, and our population is swelling by some 2 million illegal immigrants a year who disregard our laws and culture. Americans might denounce repression ofspeech, censorship and punishment of dissent in nations like Russia and China, but we have allowed our own freedom of speech to be denied by Big Tech and leftist politicians. Our Bill of Rights doesn’t protect political differences, church attendance and religious belief—it safeguards smut and filth, and the right of men to compete in women’s sports.
China’s education system is churning out engineers and scientists. It is preparing its next generation for world dominance. The next generation of Americans are learning that math is white-supremacist, grammar is unnecessary, and advanced placement classes are discriminatory. History classes fixate on the nation’s supposed sins rather than the nobility of our founding principles. Instead of reading and writing, schools encourage elementary-age children to explore gender fluidity.
America is far along a steep civilizational decline, and has been overtaken by foreign powers on a very different trajectory. Surely history will judge us harshly for being so self-absorbed, so distracted by virus variants, so preoccupied with pronoun preference and race reparations, so naïve in assuming our own invincibility, so heedless, so blind—while China moved into Cuba, Russia singlehandedly dismantled the Atlantic alliance, and Iran became a nuclear-armed state. The era of the United States is over. Historically speaking, the fall of such a great power is a dangerous time. In fact, the Bible prophesies what comes next: “the times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24; Revelation 11:2). It won’t be pretty. America let it happen. And it is about to be blindsided by it.
WHENEVER the efforts of our politicians fail to produce the results of their campaign promises, and their schemes and plans just produce more debt and inflation, they seem to always fall back on a demand for “Equity”; defined by them as “Equal Outcomes” for all citizens. Or, in their dreams, everybody has the same amount of “stuff”. They compound their rhetoric most often by claiming that anything less than full “Equity” is somehow “unfair”, “racist”, “unjust” or pick a similar negative term. It seems their goal is to make us all equally poor, except for them, the ruling class.
Congress has a congenital habit of exempting themselves from the legislation they impose on we lowly tax payers. Example: The “Affordable Care Act”. It did not apply to Congress or their staff.
Under our Constitution it is clear that what the goal for American’s is, and should be, “Equal Opportunity”.
OPPORTUNITY AND EQUITY ARE NOT THE SAME
Opportunity is a noble goal and we should all strive for that. Among human beings, Equity of outcome is not possible and, I would argue, neither a reasonable nor a desirable target.
OPPORTUNITY CREATES WEALTH
EQUITY CREATES POVERTY
Some eight years ago, back in February of 2014 I wrote an article, somewhat “tongue in cheek”, on this subject. It is reprinted below:
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FIXING INCOME INEQUALITY
The government says it wants to “fix” the problem of unequal pay and income. They say too few are paid too much (the evil rich) while too many are not paid enough (victims of the rich). The goal of the government is to equalize pay for all citizens.
Based on the governments track record of “fixing” things like the War on Poverty, our Public Education System, the Postal Service, Amtrak, and the growing National Debt, I am not sure we want them to try to “fix” income equality. Or anything else.
I have a vision of what a likely government “fix” will look like.
First they will establish what is a reasonable amount for everyone to be paid. For sake of this discussion lets say they decide on $60,000 a year. That would be $5,000 a month.
Here is a plan that I am sure would appeal to every bureaucrats heart. All residents of the United States of working age (18?) would receive a “salary” of $5,000 per month from the government who would function as the payroll department for all employers. A “single payer” system under complete control of the government and IRS. We could all become cogs in the wheel of the Proletariat masses.
Don’t worry, if you like your current job, you can keep it. That’s a promise.
Your education does not matter. Your age does not matter. Race, religion, political party, type of work, skill level, work ethic, level of responsibility, or experience. None of these matter. Unions could be eliminated, you wouldn’t need them. No merit or performance pay, everybody gets paid the same. Movie stars, Presidents, Barbers, Plumbers, Soldiers, Dog Catchers, Burger Flippers, Brain Surgeons, etc.
Visualize a Baseball Team under this system. The owners, the managers, star players, beginning players, bat boys, groundskeepers, peanut vendors, everybody gets exactly the same pay.
As desirable as this sounds in providing equal pay for all of us it would have the added benefit that the IRS could withhold their “fair share” before we see our paycheck with no need for us to ever file an annual return. Who could possibly object to such a fair and equitable solution? Consider this, we would all get paid the same no matter how lousy a job we do. Just like members of Congress.
If every citizen received the same amount of pay every month, do you think we would all have the same bank account at the end of the year? Or would some have a fat bank account, another a new car and still another a giant hangover?
Perhaps governments next task is to require equal outcomes for all of us? It should be easy. A plan to devolve all of us to the lowest common denominator. Call it government approved cookie cutter equality.
An American melting pot filled with glassy eyed, average room temperature IQ automatons.
I am reprinting here excerpts from a very well written article by Katy Grimes of the California Globe – January 20th edition. This in depth article is very informative and a worthwhile read. The complete article can be seen at the following link:
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced this week the city has been awarded a $23.9 million state Homekey grant to convert a downtown hotel into housing for homelessness vagrants.
$23 million is quadruple the annual budget of many effective local programs helping homeless turn their lives around.
The City and the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency announced plans to turn a Best Western hotel into a 92-unit homeless apartment complex. The apartments will have bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchenettes.
In effect, the city is in competition with known successful private programs actually changing lives. The chance for a pretty new apartment at no cost to a guy living in a tent on the sidewalk is a more attractive carrot than a program to help him get off meth and straighten his life out.
This is the third hotel being converted by the city to “permanent supportive housing” using Homekey funds. The words sound impressive, but are they?
This latest apartment complex is not going to be completed until Fall 2022 – 9 to 10 months from now.
What could possibly go wrong moving mentally-ill, drug-addicted, and former convict homeless vagrants into newly renovated apartments?
Sacramento has more than 11,000 homeless mentally-ill, drug-addicted, convicted criminals living on the streets of Sacramento as of 2020’s homeless count. It’s likely higher as of 2022.
With a population of 500,000, neighborhoods within the City of Sacramento have been ravaged by homeless vagrants allowed to live on the streets, in “safe spaces,” parking lots, in RVs, campers vans and cars, and in city parks, rather than move them into an organized large campus facility to address their needs and get treatment.
Last summer, Steinberg proposed to open homeless shelters, tiny homes and tent encampments in 20 residential neighborhoods and locations around the city. That did not go over well.
Steinberg also approved tiny apartments in a renovated old downtown hotel, which cost more than $445,000 per unit for about 250 square feet of living space, as the Globe reported.
The Mayor says 15 of the proposed apartment units in the Best Western will be funded by the Mental Health Services Act, the millionaire’s tax authored by Steinberg when he served in the State Assembly. Sacramento County will provide mental health treatment to those residents directly… i.e. Government mental health services.
“Residents in the remainder of the units will receive supportive services from LifeSTEPS, which serves more than 80,000 residents in 250 projects statewide,” the Mayor said.
What is LifeSTEPS? Never heard of them?
According to the Executive Director of LifeSTEPS, Beth Southorn, she “has propelled LifeSTEPS to its current status as one of the premier social services providers in affordable housing, now serving over 36,000 homes representing over 100,000 residents throughout the entire state of California.”
This number is significant if 100,000 homeless residents of the state are now housed. But LifeSTEPS does not say how many years this covers, or how hands-on they will be with the 77 remaining residents.
Calling the state’s homeless vagrant population “unhoused” has justified spending billions of taxpayer dollars on housing for the homeless in lovely new apartments, renovated hotels, and tiny homes.
Just look at what the City of Sacramento says: “The City and the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency will work with Danco Communities, the project developer, to turn the Best Western Sutter House at 1100 H Street into 92 units with bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchenettes,” the City says on its website.
Remember, the amount of this project is $23 million.
What could that $23 million grant do for the city’s 11,000 homeless walking the streets at night, and sleeping on them during the day?
San Antonio’s Haven For Hope Transformational Campus and Courtyard had a $20 million annual budget in 2018. Haven for Hope coordinates and delivers an efficient system of care for the homelessness in San Antonio, Texas. They have been a nationwide model for effectiveness. At the 22-acre campus, they serve 1,700 people daily in-residence on the campus, and another 700 in a low-barrier emergency shelter.
They bring multiple service providers to their campus to treat those in residential care with substance abuse and mental-health treatment, and partner with 140 organizations to provide 300 different services to the homeless including employment counseling, education, life-skills training, legal services, childcare, and many other necessary services and programs.
And they do this annually for what Mayor Steinberg wants to spend on remodeling one more hotel into 92 apartments.
Despite spending millions on futile “solutions” like tiny homes, FEMA trailers, and renovated hotel rooms for the city’s growing homeless population, Sacramento’s 11,000 transients are not receiving the treatments offered at Haven for Hope.
Nor are they receiving the residential care offered at 9-month program at the Union Gospel Mission Sacramento, which the Globe recently featured. “We feed 8,500 to 9,000 meals a month to the homeless, and even continued during COVID lockdowns,” Pastor Tim Lane told the Globe. Union Gospel Mission offers a Bible-based Twelve Step Course and Heart of Addiction program, an Anger Management Course, Weekly Counseling with their Chaplains, Assigned duties to serve the homeless community and Aftercare with attaining jobs, schooling, finances, reconciliations, transportation, and housing.
And they do this annually for about one-fifth of the cost of Mayor Steinberg’s one-time hotel renovation.
Union Gospel Mission and Haven for Hope have proven track records because at the root of their programs aren’t fancy apartments or kitsch tiny homes, but life-changing mental health and drug addiction treatment and faith-based and other programs focused on the individuals.
The governor and these big-city mayors are way out of line with these wasteful schemes spending mountains of taxpayer dollars. Do they even care about the broken people living on the streets, or is handing out money obligatory, or even too intoxicating?
Reminds me of the line from Top Gun: “Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.
Katy Grimes, the Editor of the California Globe, is a long-time Investigative Journalist covering the California State Capitol
I have over the years posted some two hundred plus articles on this site. while I appreciate all comments, both pro and con, time and space does not allow comments on all articles and I simply do not have time to read every comment. I try to speed read as many as possible and the short pithy ones get most of my reading attention.
My articles and website is much shared on the web, thank you, and I get thousands of comments on those articles where comments are allowed. I cannot begin to publish all of them. I say this because some articles elicit more comments than others.
The two articles I have received the most comments on are “Boiling the Frog”, which was my signature article for my book, and “Momma Tried” which I first published in August, 2019. Since publication “Momma Tried” has received many thousands and thousands of comments and it is still one of the most shared and commented on articles from this site. Some days I have received, and still receive, more than fifty comments on “Momma Tried”.
I am republishing it here because the message is still appropriate and our Civic Leaders don’t seem to have learned anything in the last two years. Sacramento, California for example recently voted an 800 Million Dollar plan to deal with the homeless. A major part of this plan includes relocating them to “new”, currently uncontaminated areas of the city, including residential areas and suburbs. Other major cities continue with the same “brain-dead” plans they have tried before.
Hope you enjoy it and share it with your friends if you do.
Bob
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MOMMA TRIED
Recently while watching a documentary on prisons and prisoners, I saw a prisoner with “MOMMA TRIED” tattooed across his chest.
It got me to thinking. And, no I am not talking about the unfortunate homeless living on the streets.
I am talking about the City Administrators of these cities, like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland and, yes, sadly Sacramento and too many others.
Yesterday, I heard on the news that San Francisco was going to provide elevator operators in buildings because the “homeless” have been using elevators as public toilets.
I am ashamed to admit that in a moment of anger I would like to take these so-called “Administrators” and “Guardians” of their citizenry, and have “MOMMA TRIED” tattooed across their foreheads.
Their first duty is to provide the citizens of their city with safety in a clean, healthy environment – not hold meetings and talk about grandiose plans which will cost a gazillion more taxpayer dollars and in the end not produce the desired result. I have heard on the news that the State of Washington has spent a Billion (with a “B”) Dollars on homeless plans and the situation on the streets of Seattle are, if anything, worse.
Here is a two step plan to clean the streets:
First, provide Charter Buses to relocate these poor, miserable people living in filth and degradation to new, clean and prosperous locales. May I suggest places like Marin County (home of Nancy Pelosi), Malibu, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Hollywood and other places filled with those smart, politically connected folks who believe they have all the answers for all problems. Be sure they arrive with a nice box lunch, map of the area of their new “home” and a crisp new $100 bill.
Second, using scrapers, loaders and dump trucks, remove the debris and trash from the streets. Then Fire Hose the remaining human waste and filth into a containment location (similar to the ones required on construction sites) and have it “sucked” up and disposed of in a sanitation facility. Preferably one in Marin County etc..
After completing these steps put up signs (in multiple languages) that henceforth the streets will be water-blasted on a regular basis for public health and safety reasons on an unannounced basis as needed. Then do it.
Problem solved at far less cost than all those “solutions” provided by those “Administrator” meetings.
Sorry about the “MOMMA TRIED” tattoo crack. Most of those Administrators foreheads are probably too narrow for it anyway.
The news tells us that our Government is spending more and more dollars it does not have and uses phrases like “Don’t worry it’s all paid for” and we are going to “Tax the rich to pay for it”. This is all just lies and propaganda and anyone with an I.Q. above room temperature knows its a lie and that even if they did tax the so called rich at 100% you could not finance all this spending for more than a month or two and then what?
Here’s what. Our government has run up so much debt that it cannot afford to pay even the approximate 1% interest it is now paying on Government “Treasuries” (Debt Bonds) and there are not enough stupid investors that want to buy a $10,000 Government Bond paying 1% interest with inflation rates topping 5 1/2%. Bonds with negative earnings potential after inflation used to be called “Junk Bonds”.
Even if we accept the lie that inflation is “only” 5 1/2%, a $10,000 Bond is worth only $9,450 post inflation value at the end of a year. If you add back in the 1% interest the bond pays ($100) you end up with $9,550.
Put another way, one year later it will take $10,550 inflated dollars to buy what $10,000 would buy you a year earlier. Think of these bonds as financial quicksand.
Even though our Nations Capitol is obviously well stocked with unindicted Fiscally Criminal Legislators, Only a moron would invest in a Ponzi scheme like this and these folks are not stupid enough to invest in their own legislative malfeasance. So, what’s a government to do?
Here is what your government is doing. Using a shadow term like “Quantitative Easing” the government continues to issue debt bonds under cloak of darkness which are being purchased with a lot of “smoke and mirrors” by the Federal Reserve system who is simply printing the money and putting it into circulation to “pay” for all the government spending. This of course creates more and more inflation. As time goes by you end up with an inflation spiral that makes all those dollars you worked so hard to save worth less and less. In post WWI Germany it got to the point it took a wheelbarrow full of virtually worthless currency to buy a loaf of bread. In Venezuela the citizenry are forced to eat their pets or starve.
Sort of makes you want to invest your life savings in Government Junk Bonds that lose a net of 4 1/2% in value each year doesn’t it?
Inflation caused by governments monetary incompetence, if not criminal misconduct, has the effect of a cruel tax on the poor and the elderly who have to buy the more expensive groceries, gasoline Etc. Etc. Etc.
Governments in history have long used inflation to cover their fiscal lack of discipline. Governments don’t file Bankruptcy, they just create fiat money that is worth less and less and less. From Rome to post WWI Germany to Venezuela. The result is always the same. Those with fixed incomes or savings get hurt the most. Poverty and misery run rampant. Government does a lot of finger pointing and grandiose speeches but lacks the courage to do what is needed. Fiscal discipline.
The following excerpt is from a piece I wrote in April of 2011 under the title of:
THIRD GRADE MATH PARTY
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… I am thinking of starting a new Political Party which I would simply call the Math Party. To become a member of the Math Party you would only have to believe in the simple laws of mathematics. If you wanted to run for elective office representing the Math Party you would have to demonstrate that you can get at least a ‘B’ on a Third Grade Math quiz. And, if you wanted to run for President under the Math Party Banner you would have to show us your Third Grade Diploma. The real one.
You see, I have become absolutely convinced that no political party now representing us in Washington D.C. (or for that matter Sacramento, California) can do Third Grade Math. They sure can’t add or subtract. In fact, they act more like a teenage boy with the keys to dad and moms new car, a bottle of Jack Daniels Old No. 7 Brand and a credit card. When asked to solve a relatively straight forward math problem like, say, doing a budget for the country that does not involve spending money we don’t have, they instead come up with a plan to “reduce the deficit 12 to 16 years “down the road” (when they are no longer in office).
So what do you think? Would a political party that believes in the simple laws of mathematics have a chance? Or, have we all become addicted to believing in the Tooth Fairy and just want to hope that Uncle Sugar in Washington has a bottomless checkbook?
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Today I have lost all hope of there ever being any fiscal responsibility in government and am putting my efforts into figuring out ways to survive the coming monetary collapse and chaos.
This site contains 190+ articles/essays written over a period of about twelve years.
In full disclosure I am neither a Democrat or Republican. I am registered as “not affiliated” with any party. Mostly, I would like government to leave me alone and stay out of my wallet.
I am against racism in any of its forms, oppose violence, abhor hypocrisy and especially despise being lied to. Maybe that is why so many of my “rants” are directed at the folks in the “Halls of Power”!
For a bit more about me, my values and a little history of my early life in California just type Journey into the “Search” box on the left side of this page and hit enter on your keyboard.
These articles are a kind of diary of my thoughts and views of happenings in our culture at the time of their writing.
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ABOUT YOUR COMMENTS
Comments are only open on a limited number of articles. Even so, the sheer number of comments submitted are simply impossible for me to read though I do try to scan them and approve as many as possible. All comments with embedded websites either have the website address removed or are not allowed. I just don’t have the time to “proof” unknown websites to allow or remove the ones I deem unfit for my site. I get literally thousands of comments per month and there are just not enough hours available to read each one. Thank you for your understanding. Bob
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Bob Bandy
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