Locals angered by the Obamas golf weekend

Last weekend, the first couple flew to spend the weekend at an exclusive golf community in Key Largo, Florida.

Not everyone, it seems, was happy to have them.

"President Obama has done nothing but degrade and punish the 'one percent' of Americans who have done the most for this country," according to an email to Ocean Reef Club board members. KeysNews.com reports the letter was signed by two residents.

"To have a man here who hates us, who has divided America along racial lines, hates people who have been successful in life by hard work and determination is an affront to the membership," the email reportedly stated.

Seems some Americans are tired of the president's self-centered luxury lifestyle, one that needlessly tramples on the rights and comfort of others.

Rewriting the rules of full-time employment

Some jobs are done better when an employee's not watching the clock, and has a degree of say in exercising his/her discretion in setting a daily schedule. Many employees are happier when they're allowed more control of their workday and projects.

Obama wants to take that away.

From the New York Times:

On Thursday, the president will direct the Labor Department to revamp its regulations to require overtime pay for several million additional fast-food managers, loan officers, computer technicians and others whom many businesses currently classify as “executive or professional” employees to avoid paying them overtime, according to White House officials briefed on the announcement.

No surprise really, since Obama clearly embraces government central planning, and regards most Americans as too stupid to responsibly handle most routine life tasks.

Prediction: This may mean some workers benefit from overtime short-term. Long term, it means employers will once again look at splitting full-time jobs into part-time to escape mandatory overtime thresholds.

Owning a gun in Connecticut

Via YouTube:
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I'd add something, but the little cartoon seems to say it all.

Common Core's a flop

So Connecticut's governor forms a task force for political cover.

Let me guess.

2014 continues to unfold in ways Dannel Malloy never imagined.

By the way, Republicans are just as bad as Democrats in weaseling through with Common Core.

Here in Georgia, lawmakers are dealing with the debacle much the same way: A swift and steady can-kick couched in more study.

How bad could it get...

Imagine what economic collapse would look like if it came to America. Imagine the societal upheaval if such an event wasn't just a blip, but a full scale hard-stop.

If you're thinking Great Depression, or even something comparable to ravaged south toward the end of the American Civil War, you may be underestimating the potential.

Don Dickinson sent me a a few off the cuff thoughts he had over the weekend:

I was thinking about collapse Sunday morning. 

U.S. Government photo/Library of Congress

When a one or two story building collapses, it is not a very spectacular or deadly event compared to something like the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. The reason is simple physics. A few thousand pounds falling a few tens of feet compared to millions of tons falling hundreds of feet. 

The mid 19th Century collapse of the white ruled Haitian government or the late 20th Century collapse of the white ruled Rhodesian government were analogous to a one or two story building collapse. The surviving whites were many and went off somewhere else to resume their lives. The natives mostly returned to the squalor to which they were already accustomed. 

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in Rome in the mid-5th Century was a collapse from the highest level that had been attained up until that time and it lead to an 800-1000 year dark age. Millions of people died, whole cities, including Rome, and regions were depopulated and even the place names of significant towns were lost to history. 

The situation in contemporary America is vastly different from all those examples. The height that has been attained by the lowest and middle classes in America, not to mention the upper crust, is orders of magnitude higher than anything previously attained in history. Therefore, if my analogy holds, once the collapse begins after all the fire and smoke, the velocity and violence will be beyond human comprehension and self-reinforcing in intensity. It will make the collapse of the Roman Empire look like a middling event. 

When low height societies collapse, most of the people already know how to function in a minimalist, survival situation. Thus after the Haitian earthquake, the survivors immediately began rebuilding their hovels and knew how to forage for water and food until the norteamercanos arrived with help. When the sky scraping American society collapses, only 1-3% of the population (outdoors men, farmers, and preppers; a lot of overlap in these classes) will have any idea in hell how to take care of themselves and there will be zero help forthcoming from any source.

Agree - or disagree?  Don's analogy and the prospects for long, hard crash will be part our webcast discussion Friday. We'll also look at growing signs of an American decline - and other possible outcomes short of the full-out crash. Our program each Friday on BlogTalkRadio is always open to live callers and chat between 1:00 and 3:00 pm EDT. If you feel inclined, please join us.

Related post

Food for thought...

Via Twitter (May take a second or two to load):

#FullCommunism CC: @JAMyerson #SOSVenezuela pic.twitter.com/woFt7RAG4b
— Bill O'Keefe (@DefendWallSt) March 11, 2014

There's no wait lines for food in Venezuela. Nope. Not at all. (taken today on someone's drive to work) pic.twitter.com/BSXkhatdbC

— Bill O'Keefe (@DefendWallSt) March 10, 2014

More tales of unsustainability

You don't have to seek out Black Swans or exotic circumstances to understand why America's in economic peril.

Too much load piled on insufficient carriage should tell you a train wreck's a comin'.

Looking at the nation's underfunded pensions are sign enough of a potential crash around every bend.

Firearms activist arrested and jailed

James Kaleda is reportedly being held in Pennsylvania awaiting extradition to New Jersey.

Second Amendment advocates following developments say this seems to suspiciously smack of retribution for Kaleda's pro-gun activism in the so-called Garden State.

Kaleda gained notoriety last year when he was forcibly removed from a New Jersey senate hearing last year after speaking in opposition to a gun control bill.

Spring 2013:
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Sharyl Attkisson quits CBS

The reporter who played a key role in bringing Operation Fast and Furious and the Benghazi scandal much of what MSM coverage they received has resigned from CBS.

Via Twitter:

I have resigned from CBS.
— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) March 10, 2014

Politico reports it happened after months of negotiation between Atkisson and the network, but prior the  scheduled end of her contract.

I left a comment below the Politico article.

I'm old enough to remember when the media prided itself as being a public watchdog. Now, it's seems no more than a lapdog, groveling for the exclusive with the POTUS or FLOTUS. Sharyl Attkission is an old school reporter who fearlessly followed wherever the story led. It's a shame America's MSM was too afraid to follow her lead on stories like Fast and Furious or Benghazi. 

While leaving my comment, I noticed this from Matt Bracken:

Sharyl had no place at CBS, a media arm of Obama's Gangster Govt Inc. She dared to report on Operation Fast and Furious and Benghazi, so she was a pariah there. American Pravda = ABCNNBCBS, the NYT, WP and LAT etc. Their motto is, "It's not a scandal if we don't report it." They spent 100 times more minutes covering "Bridgegate" than Fast and Furious (300+ Mexicans murdered on purpose) and Benghazi combined. Sharyl didn't play "team ball" and was reduced to tweeting out her scoops, CBS would not give her ten seconds of airtime.

I hope we see Sharyl resurface soon on a platform where she's appreciated. And encouraged to follow the story - wherever it leads.

Update: More reaction via Twitchy

No such thing as too big to fail

It's a lesson oft repeated in history.

From the March 25, 1885 edition of Puck, a magazine of the era::

Illustration shows Julius Caesar or a Roman centurion, in the background, tumbling off a pillar of stones labeled "Rome, Etruria, Britain, Asia, [and] Africa", and in the middle distance, on a bit of land labeled "France", Napoleon I tumbling off a pillar of stones labeled "Egypt, Italy, Spain, Holland, Austria, Prussia, [and] Russia" and falling toward a rocky island labeled "St. Helena". In the foreground, John Bull is standing atop a pillar of stones labeled "Scotland, Ireland, Malta, Gibraltar, India, Australia, Cyprus, Egypt, [and] Soudan [sic]" on a bit of land labeled "England"; the stones are propped up by various types of weapons, with the top two stones supported by a steamship, though the top stone "Soudan" appears about to fall off.
- Description and illustration courtesy Library of Congress

Vacation, all I ever wanted...

Obama may be fresh from another weekend vacation, but many Americans lone summer vacation money is already spent on over-budget winter utility bills.

More voices chime in on America's economic decline

Lots of gloom and doom in my Monday morning reading. Actually, I'm delighted. It's increasingly obvious that we're living in an age of economic decline. I'm glad more voices reflect the new reality.

Here's an interesting premise: As America unravels, its stock markets may remain a safe haven.

So suggests Larry Edelson at Weiss Research's Money and Markets:

Yes, I know, it makes no sense. If America is on the decline, how can stocks go higher? Well, it’s actually simple. Most companies in America are in better financial shape than our own government.

While Edelson makes the argument that stock holdings are largely seen as non-confiscatable, he sidesteps the possibility of government seizure of corporate assets in a major economic emergency. Still, I'm intrigued by his hypothesis for the short and intermediate term. Worth a read.

Jim Kunstler is also heavy on American gloom and doom in his blog offering today. I often disagree with his politics and parts of his peak-energy hypothesis, but the last paragraph in today's essay likely has a lot of short term validity for today's huddled masses:

If you travel around the upper Hudson Valley, north of Albany, where I live, you would see towns and landscapes every bit as desolate as a former Soviet republic. In fact, our towns look infinitely worse than the street-views of Ukraine’s population centers. Ours were built of glue and vinyl, with most of the work completed thirty years ago so that it’s all delaminating under a yellow-gray patina of auto emissions. Inside these miserable structures, American citizens with no prospects and no hope huddle around electric space heaters. They have no idea how they’re going to pay the bill for that come April. They already spent the money on tattoos and heroin.

We had a $500 utility bill last month (just one month) as we dealt with record cold. We can handle it (short term). But  many who live paycheck to paycheck are being hammered hard this winter; especially in areas that have had back to back months of snow and ice. They'll have to incur more debt, nix those summer vacation plans, or make cuts elsewhere to cover the gap.

Don Dickinson shared some unique thoughts on economic decline and collapse with me over the weekend. I want to digest them further before blogging under a separate heading.

I expect this week's Don and Doug webcast will be heavy on digesting some of these latest thoughts and data points that steer toward steep decline.

Stay tuned.

Follow-up post is here