Is this true? Sort of. A few days ago, I got one of those emails that says everybody is going to have to pay a 3.8 percent sales tax on their homes after Dec. 31. As it turns out, the tax really only applies to the rich. I think what pisses me off the most about it- is that it was part of that Obamacare debacle. Since when does the sales tax on a home have anything to do with healthcare?? Pulling that kind of sneaky shit is typical of this whole administration.  The other problem is the beach head problem. Government loves to establish a beach head, a safe tax targeting a subclass like the rich. The majority of people don't care because it doesn't affect them. Then slowly, over time, the government expands the sales tax to include everyone because it's no longer "fair" to just tax the rich. Here's fact check on the home sales- sales tax. http://www.factcheck.org/2010/04/a-38-percent-sales-tax-on-your-home/    

I am amazed when a story hits the media declaring health care in this country a catastrophe. It is far worse than that. A great run on sentence follows here: Mix capitalism, pharmaceutical price fixing and 20 year monopolies on new drugs, greed, unlimited litigation and awards, greed, ridiculous premiums on malpractice insurance, greed, hospital administrators making 7 figs, hospitals charging virtually anything they can get away with, fraud, greed, ridiculous and unneeded charges and tests, patent protection and gouging on new devices, soaring insurance premiums and third party billing designed to eliminate input from patients on excessive charges, and then a compulsory new tax called Obamacare which will add another 40 million people and expenses with pent up medical demands and VOILA! F.U.B.A.R. http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/05/13689103-us-health-care-its-officially-a-mess-institute-says?lite

Wow, what a morning. After a crazy night with a friend at the hospital, I got up around 930 am to see the great market rally. Knowing that the unemployment report for August is not due out until tomorrow- I scanned the headlines for the reason behind this 250 point rally. Underwhelmed. Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank's Ben Bernanke, said that the ECB was prepared to issue bonds for all of those mounting debts of Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Greece, and a few other countries to be named in a year or two. This is the new normal. Insanity. The cure for worldwide debt is to simply issue more debt. With interest. Then have a big short covering rally as once again- bankers manipulate markets. Morons like me, who have never seen a better shorting possibility ever, get creamed again. If you are on the short side- you have to be getting tired of having your ass kicked by the world banking cabal. Indeed, the cure is worse than the disease. More debt. It has to be a banker...

Very often, as a former poker player, I used to run into situations where all of the marks or pigeons in a game had gone broke and had been forced to leave the table. Generally this meant that the remaining players were all equally matched and winning money now- was hard and very often- simply a matter of luck. Not to mention that the game gets boring. Without a significant and proven edge, in any game, you cannot win over time. Often, the losers don't want to come to grips with why they lost. They simply leave and they don't come back. If I had to play in a poker game with a bunch of people like me- I wouldn't play. Imagine a casino that offers all kinds of games. Roulette, blackjack, craps, pai gow. One day the casino informs it's customers that they will no longer offer all of these other games any longer. "We can't make enormous profits on those games like we used to because of the overhead and because all of our customers have turned into misers and ...

The difference between genius and stupidity is, genius has it's limits. Over the weekend, I saw another news report of the impending California economic implosion- you know- the one Meredith Whitney predicted a year and a half ago... It hasn't happened yet- but it will. Meredith Whitney made the same mistake that I always made when shorting markets. Always early. http://archive.mises.org/19120/meredith-whitneys-dream-coming-true/ Never underestimate the willingness of your adversaries to keep an ugly truth from becoming a hideous reality. They will hide, conceal, mislead, inject capital, raise taxes, borrow from any source, employ crooked auditors, fudge numbers, do anything imaginable to keep the truth from becoming truth. Because when they do, two things happen. Ultimately they get exposed as frauds. Secondly, the whole scheme comes crashing down ala Bernie Madoff. And Bernie Madoff is a perfectly good example of a fraud that should have been uncovered 10 years before...

I was scanning the blogosphere tonight and stumbled onto an excellent piece via the Canadian Free Press. It's about the nanny state. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/49229?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#.UESLBCy3jgA.twitter I want to say one think bout Obama's economic strategy. There is no doubt in my mind...none...that Obama is clearly trying to destroy our Republic via the Cloward Piven strategy of putting everybody on welfare. Here's the proof. http://www.leftcoastrebel.com/2012/08/four-years-later-america-is-not-better.html Obama's not stupid. He does what he does... on purpose.