When Uncle Sam fought WWII, Hollywood backed him with patriotic movies and war bond drives and moral boosting celebrity appearances. When Uncle Sam fought Communists, Hollywood was a mixed bag. His GIs in Korea got support. His GIs in Vietnam, not so much, as some damned his war with movies of faint praise that depicted Imperialist aggression by ugly Americans against peoples who just wanted be free from capitalist exploitation.

Hollywood on Uncle Sam’s terrorism fight? Don’t even ask

But now that it’s Uncle Obama on the warpath against the most diabolical villain in the populist panoply, Hollywood is back to showing its anti-Axis resolve against this most indefensible of enemies.

The November 3rd elections were a turning point, swiftly reached.

The inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama was followed by Tea Parties around the nation that aggregated into the huge September 12 rally in Washington, D.C. And barely two months later, the election of Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey. In Maine, the voters repealed the authorization of same-sex marriage, an anathema as morally debased as abortion.

My mind went back to Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention in 1964. “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

The visits had a ritual quality. Three times a year, a coalition of Chicago community groups met with the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators to warn about the growing prevalence of abusive mortgage lending.

They began to present research in 1999 showing that large banking companies including Wells Fargo and Citigroup had created subprime businesses wholly focused on making loans at high interest rates, largely in the black and Hispanic neighborhoods to the south and west of downtown Chicago.
The groups pleaded for regulators to act.

The evidence eventually led Illinois to file suit against Wells Fargo in July for discrimination and other abuses. But during the years of the housing boom, the pleas failed to move the Fed, the sole federal regulator with authority over the businesses.

In the early 1980s, I was working in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., doing research for my trilogy called “Lebensraum“, narrating my family’s flight from the Ukraine in 1943 under the protection of the retreating German forces.  There, I came upon an article describing the last major World War II battle between the German Wehrmacht and the Russians that took place, as I remembered it in fragments, in the vicinity of Berlin.

I was caught in its midst  as an eight-year-old child when it happened.

November 3rd, 2009 - Interest rates. The Fed does not need slinky women in plunging necklines to peddle money. All it needs is low interest rates. When rates are pushed lower than the rate of inflation, the Fed provides a subsidy for borrowing. This is not as hard to grasp as it sounds. If I offered to give you $1.00 for very 90 cents you gave me in return, you would buy as many dollars from me as you could. The Fed operates the same way. It generates market activity by creating incentives for borrowing. Borrowing leads to speculation, and speculation leads to steadily rising asset prices. This is how the game is played. The Fed is not an unbiased observer of free market activity. The Fed drives the market. It fuels speculation and controls behavior by fixing interest rates.

A SHORTAGE OF AMMUNITION: Demand is up despite drop in crime rate

November 3, 2009 – In a year of job losses, foreclosures and bag lunches, Americans have spent record-breaking amounts of money on guns and ammunition. The most obvious sign of their demand: empty ammunition shelves.

At points during the past year, bullets have been selling faster than factories could make them.

Gun owners have bought about 12 billion rounds of ammunition in the past year, industry officials estimate. That’s up from 7 billion to 10 billion in a normal year.

It has happened, oddly, at a time when the two concerns that usually make people buy guns and bullets — crime and increased gun control — seem less threatening than usual.

Investors are bidding up stocks, gold, and oil to dizzying heights. It’s déja vu all over again.

For the past several months, investors have been acting like it’s 1999, the first year when the Dow crossed 10,000, and stocks took off in complete disregard for reality. Yet the atmosphere then and now couldn’t be more different. Back then, stocks were frothier than real businesses, no doubt. But today, American job prospects are the worst in a generation, many state governments are near bankruptcy, consumer credit has all but dried up in the developed world–and global investors see all this as a good sign?

Happy Birthday United States Marine Corps.

This November 10th, we will be celebrating 234 years of honorable, tenacious, service, to the United States of America, but in this Socialist climate, I’m hoping that we can last through 235 years.

Let’s face facts, the capitulation over this war that we are engaged in over in Afghanistan, is needlessly costing American treasure.

The negligent, and deleterious rules of engagement spell suicide for American troops while reinforcements acting under these same witless rules, will only spill more American blood.

In the movie, “Groundhog Day”, the main character wakes up day after day, trapped in the same events, desperately looking for a way out of that living nightmare. It’s a very good metaphor for the Middle East.

Here are some quotes from a book whose title I will reveal in a moment:

“The only truly transcendent law in the Middle East is that of unintended consequences.”

“Nation-building and the redressing of historic wrongs were in the air…”