In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own. Alexis de Tocqueville Critical thinking is the study of clear, reasoned thinking. All things are considered. We no longer employ critical thinking nor do most folks understand what that is. They simply react favorably to a situation that benefits them or unfavorably- if they find themselves on the losing team. That is as deep as most folks get. I believe this is because critical thinking takes effort and investigation. It takes research, reading, comprehension skills, and time. It takes reasoning and good judgment. All speech is purposeful and critical thinkers understand that concept. In a fat, lazy, country- people don't want to exert any additional physical energy. They want a pill to make them skinny. It's no different with their intellectual energy. Rather than do any indepe...

Sometimes you don't need a road map to see where things are going. I snipped this paragraph from a CNN piece on the Swiss National Bank's decision to let it's currency trade freely after imposing a peg on it some 3 years ago. The snip: However, in an effort to ensure investors don't get too excited about swapping euros or dollars for francs, the central bank also slashed interest rates to -0.75%, down from -0.25%. "It's like a tax on people holding money in Swiss francs," said Simon Smith, the chief economist at FxPro in London. Instant haircut for swiss savers. You want real currency price discovery? There it is. The shit is so worthless, we are going to charge you three quarters of a point just to hold it. Think about how outrageous that is. Swiss currency is trash. They want people to remove money from the bank. Two months ago, I noted that silver traded down to 14.12. I bought nearly 100 ounces which averaged my overall holdings price down t...

Today I am going to beat myself up a little bit. If you are uncomfortable with grown men telling on themselves- then you will probably not want to read on. Having gotten that piece of business out of the way, let's start here... Growing up in Montana meant spending my entire life surrounded by guns and hunting. I think I can safely say that as a young man, I was obsessed with hunting and shooting. In my spare time, that's all I did. I can't even begin to estimate how many rounds I've put down range. So I've spent a lot of time around guns. In my early 20's, I simply gave up on hunting. Honestly, I was tired of dealing with posted land, hordes of hunters, and cleaning things I never ate. When I entered law enforcement school in the early 80's, shooting handguns became a regularly scheduled event. Police officers shoot a lot.  I think as I look back, the worst year of my life was probably 1987. Everything went wrong that year. A friend of mine said my ...