Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

A Rose By Any Other Name February 26, 2015

The main lesson we learn from History is that we don’t learn from History.  The lack of historical perspective is, I believe, one of the major contributing factors in America’s current state.

People don’t realize that all of these novel fixes our collectivist leaders are shoving down our throats with regard to health care have been tried multiple times before.  Or that they have failed every time.

People don’t realize that preemptive imperial wars of aggression and suppression have been disguised as endless wars for peace since Sargon the Great marched out of Akkad to found the first known empire.

Running true to form most people, apparently including our national leaders both political and military and the news anchors for the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media, do not realize that ISIS is not an aberration in Islamic History.

Neither are the other forms of Islamic terrorist groups which have plagued the world since the late 1960s when Palestinian secular movements such as Al Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) began to target civilians outside the immediate arena of conflict.  These were self-proclaimed secular groups.  As pointed out by RAND’s Bruce Hoffman, in 1980 two out of 64 groups were categorized as largely religious in motivation; in 1995 almost half of the identified groups, 26 out of 56, were classified as religiously motivated; the majority of these espoused Islam as their guiding force.

Political versus Fundamentalist Islam

Political Islam, as opposed to fundamentalist or neo-fundamentalist Islam, posits a worldview that can deal with and selectively integrate modernity. In contrast, fundamentalist Islam calls for a return to an ontological form of Islam that rejects modernity; groups such as ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad are representative of fundamentalist Islam.

A Note on State Sponsors of Religious Terror Groups

Unlike the “secular” national, radical, anarchist terrorism which have been sponsored by states such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, and behind the scenes by the former Soviet camp, most of the religious Islamic terrorist groups have never been sponsored by states. Many Egyptian organizations emerged from the Egyptian domestic landscape. Algerian groups likewise were not sponsored by foreign states. Hezbollah certainly can be viewed as an Iranian surrogate, but other movements, while open to state assistance, remain operationally and ideologically independent.  ISIS is different in that it has declared itself to be a state.

This brings us to the willful disregard of easily accessible knowledge which brings all of our political and cultural leaders to constantly say:

• That the forces of ISIS and other Islamic terrorist organizations are not Islamic.
• That these groups have somehow hijacked Islam or that they are merely criminals hiding behind Islamic names and slogans.

For one thing who are we to judge another’s faith?  If someone says they are followers of Muhammed who are we to say they aren’t?  If someone says they are doing their best to live by their interpretation of the Koran who are we to say they aren’t?

This is one of the reasons it is so hard to get even the most “moderate” of Muslims to denounce ISIS and the other Islamic Terror organizations. Even if they personally disagree with their theology and their methods there is enough in their declarations of faith that align with traditional strains of Islam. It would be like a Catholic saying a Pentecostal isn’t a Christian because they have differing views of the actions of the Holy Spirit in the modern day.

This refusal to admit the Islamic nature of these groups disarms the West.  We cannot understand what they want, what they do, or why they have such a strong hold on the lives of so many.  Another aspect of our official blindness that prevents us from confronting this clash of civilizations appropriately is the oft repeated mantra that those Muslims who support the radicals is a tiny group, often mentioned at 1%.  We are also reminded often that 1.6 billion people make up the Muslim world.  If this second figure is correct the tiny minority of the first figure translates to 16 million people.

Sixteen million people willing to fight to the death, blow themselves up, or financially support them is larger than any army ever fielded by Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, or Stalin.  Obviously this is a threat that should be taken seriously.  It should not be dismissed by ignoring what they say about themselves.  Imagine if the leaders of the western democracies had bothered to read Hitler’s Mein Kampf and believe that he meant what he said.  They could have stopped him when he marched into the Rhineland with no trouble whatsoever.  Instead they ignored what he said and fifty million people paid with their lives.

Today we stand in a similar place.  We ignored Osama Bin Laden when he declared war on America in 1988 and 1996 with disastrous consequences.  Now we are ignoring the inherent attraction of those who claim the Islamic world as their own when we say they are not motivated by their religion.  It strips us of the ability to understand them, their objectives, their appeal, and their tactics.

Another disservice our leaders are foisting on us is the other mantra of their secular religion that Islam is a religion of peace.  This flies in the face of historical reality.  Islam did not initially spread as Christianity did by the power of its message and the blood of its martyrs.  Islam spread as a conquering religion.  Muhammed conquered Medina and Mecca, forced unity on the disparate Arab tribes before bursting forth from the Arabian Peninsula and spreading through military conquest and forcible conversions.

Rod Dreher in the American Conservative has done a masterful job of asking two important questions, “Is ISIS Islamic? How would we know?”   Much of what follows is excerpted from his penetrating analysis.

To take one example: In September, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s chief spokesman, called on Muslims in Western countries such as France and Canada to find an infidel and “smash his head with a rock,” poison him, run him over with a car, or “destroy his crops.” To Western ears, the biblical-sounding punishments—the stoning and crop destruction—juxtaposed strangely with his more modern-sounding call to vehicular homicide.  As if to show that he could terrorize by imagery alone, Adnani also referred to Secretary of State John Kerry as an “uncircumcised geezer.”

Adnani was not merely talking trash. His speech was laced with theological and legal discussion. His exhortation to attack crops directly echoed orders from Muhammad to leave well water and crops alone—unless the armies of Islam were in a defensive position, in which case Muslims in the lands of Kuffar, or infidels, should be unmerciful, and poison away.

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic.  Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.

Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel contends that the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor.  Of partial Lebanese descent, Haykel grew up in Lebanon and the United States.  Haykel regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous and sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said.  According to Professor Haykel, “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State. “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else” Haykel continued.

In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. “Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day” says Haykel.

According to one thought passed along by Rod Dreher what we call “Islamic fundamentalism” or “Islamic extremism” is so hard to defeat because it is so clearly rooted in Islamic history and Scripture. To tell the followers of ISIS that they are “un-Islamic” in their practices when they are doing, or trying to do, exactly as the Prophet and his early followers did, is a hard sell to fellow Muslims.  It is also the kind of self-imposed blindness that stops us from effectively knowing what we are dealing with.

If we ignore what we know due to political correctness how will it ever be possible to do what needs to be done?  If we refuse to name something does that mean it isn’t what it claims to be?  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and an Islamic Fundamentalist is a follower of Muhammad no matter what we say or how we say it.  There are none so blind as those who will not see, and when the blind follow the blind they both end up in the ditch.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2015 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

We Need More of Moore February 19, 2015

The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution states that, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

This past Sunday Chris Wallace interviewed Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.  Chief Justice Moore is once again in the news for standing up for the rule of law, limited government, and the viability of the Constitution as a meaningful document as opposed to a Living Document that means whatever the nine black robed oligarchs say it means.

This happened once before.  Back in 2000 he was elected to the position as Alabama’s top jurist on the promise that he would restore the moral foundations of the law in Alabama.  Several months later he made good on that promise when he set a Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.  He was promptly sued in federal district court by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State who complained that the Chief Justice’s actions were an unconstitutional “establishment of religion.”

The lawyers had charged the Chief Justice with illegally establishing “religion.”   But what religion was he trying to establish?  That remained a mystery since these aggrieved lawyers also argued that the court should not define the term “religion.” The federal district court judge, Myron Thompson, agreed with their argument refusing to render a definition of “religion.” Judge Thompson nevertheless found the Chief Justice guilty of establishing that which he himself could not define and ordered the monument removed.

The Chief Justice refused to comply with this order.  Chief Justice Moore said, “The entire judicial system of the State of Alabama is established in the Alabama constitution invoking the favor and guidance of almighty God. The 10th amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits federal courts from interfering with that power to establish a judicial system. They have no power, no authority no jurisdiction to tell the State of Alabama that we cannot acknowledge God as the source of our law.”

At least in Alabama the Chief Justice did not stand alone.  Another man elected by the voters of the State, Governor Bob Riley said, “I have a deep and abiding belief that there is nothing wrong or unconstitutional about the public display of the Ten Commandments and disagree with the court’s mandate to remove them.”

And yet this representative of the people of Alabama was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court in November 2003. A state ethics panel unanimously decided to remove him from the bench owing to his refusal to follow judicial rulings.

That was then.  This is now.

In 2015 the courageous Chief Justice Moore (he was re-elected in 2012) has ordered probate judges in his state to ignore a Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriages to go forward over the state’s constitutional ban.  Once again the Chief Justice is standing up for State sovereignty against a judicial system that believes they can make law.  This time the battle is over gay marriage.  The Alabama Constitution as amended in 2006 by Amendment 774, the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, makes it unconstitutional for the state to recognize or perform same-sex marriages or civil unions.  This amendment was approved by 81% of the voters.  On January 23, 2015, Chief Judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, Callie V. Grenade, issued a ruling striking down Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage as violations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection and due process.

This brings us to the aforementioned interview of Chief Justice Moore by Chris Wallace on his Sunday Fox television program.

Chris Wallace seemed baffled by Chief Justice Moore’s arguments as if he had never heard such things before.  When he questioned how anyone could dispute a ruling of a Federal Judge, Chief Justice Moore replied, “When federal courts start changing our Constitution by defining words that are not even there, like marriage, they’re going to do the same thing with family in the future,” Moore declared.  The Chief Justice went on to say, “When a word’s not in the Constitution, clearly the powers of the Supreme Court do not allow them to redefine words and seize power. Powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. This power over marriage which came from god under our organic law is not to be redefined by the United States Supreme Court or any federal court.”

The look on Mr. Wallace’s face was one of bewilderment.

To support his argument that the words of Federal Judges are final Mr. Wallace appealed to President Obama who stated in an interview with Buzzfeed News about this controversy saying, “When federal law is in conflict with state law, federal law wins out.”

The Chief Justice answered, “I’d like to tell President Obama that he’s entirely correct, federal law does trump state law,” Moore said. “But what this Harvard professor who is president of the United States does not understand, is that a trial court’s decision on the constitutionality of a federal question is just that — it’s an opinion. It may be law of the case before her. It is not overturning the Alabama constitution. Federal law is not made by judges.”

Mr. Wallace looked at the Chief Justice as if he were speaking a foreign language.  I believe that the reason for this disconnect is not merely Mr. Wallace’s.  It is shared by many who have had the benefit of America’s progressive education.   It has been drummed into generations of Americans that the opinion of judges about the meaning of the Constitution, and not the Constitution itself, is the law of the land. For them, whether conservative or liberal they have an allegiance to the judiciary rather than to the Constitution and the laws enacted pursuant to it.

A still apparently amazed Wallace then accused Moore of being “a little fuzzy” on whether state judges would have to adhere by a SCOTUS ruling in favor of allowing same-sex marriage.

To which Chief Justice Moore replied, “State courts are bound by the ruling of the Supreme Court,” Moore replied. “But when a strict interpretation of the Constitution…is abandoned in the theoretical opinion of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we have no longer a Constitution. We’re under the government of individual men who for the time being declared what the Constitution is according to their own views.”

As if saying something is the same as proving something Mr. Wallace replied, When Mr. Wallace stated that, “When the Supreme Court Rules, It Rules.”

However, there is a fundamental principle of constitutional law that most Americans have never been taught.  According to the Constitution Congress, and Congress alone, has the power to make law.  According to the Constitution Federal Courts have the power only to apply law in particular cases and controversies. Yet in the face of the clear language of the Constitution, most Americans who have been progressively indoctrinated over several generations blindly repeat the platitude as if it is common knowledge that courts make law.

An error that flows from this false view that courts have the power to make law is the belief that the law is not what the Constitution says but rather what judges say about the Constitution. Through a distortion of the common law principles of precedent and stare decisis, a court’s holding in a particular case is converted into a law binding on all persons within the court’s jurisdiction and all inferior courts. The proper use of the principles of precedent and stare decisis is that holdings in past court decisions serve as a compelling guide in subsequent proceedings, but they do not bind unless they are themselves consistent with the law.

We have come to the place where the Progressives want to ignore the clear language of the Constitution as in the Second Amendment protection of citizens to own and carry guns.  At the same time these same big government statists demand that citizens submit to decisions carrying the weight of law based on the partisan interpretations of words which are found nowhere in the document such as Privacy and Marriage.

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution states that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

With a vision of State Sovereignty, individual liberty, personal freedom and economic opportunity framed by the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution. Looking at the current crop of right and left wing Progressives and the coming crop of potential right and left wing Progressives my only reaction is, “We need more of Moore.”

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2015 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

Huge Hoax Holds Humanity Hostage February 12, 2015

Wow! The Man-made Global Warming Hoax is a Hoax. Who saw this coming except anyone investing five minutes examining the scientific evidence from both sides? Or anyone remembering this is the same crowd of alarmists  who warned of a new ice age in the 1970s. Let’s see, they wouldn’t buy the Brooklyn Bridge but they’re willing to mortgage the farm for the Golden Gate. Now people are beginning to say that the Global Warming Hoax is the biggest scientific scandal ever.

When you challenge someone’s religion be prepared for a spirited reaction. Those who realized Man-made Global Warming was a hoax have long recognized this is a faith-based movement. They also realized the agenda of the hipper-than-thou high priests of this movement has always been something other than a cool world. Science is advanced by hypothesis, experimentation, and analysis not by consensus. Consensus is a political term, a political concept and a clue that the Man-made Global Warming agenda is a political agenda.   The only credible science these scam artists are using is Political Science.

Al Gore, the world’s self-proclaimed leading Man-made Global Warming expert and lobbyist and by sheer coincidence one of the world’s largest Green Entrepreneurs has garnered a Nobel Peace Prize, an Oscar and millions of dollars by scaring the wits out of people who believe the cherry-picked data he and others present as evidence. As a college professor I would be shocked if any freshman submitted a paper with the flimsy sources of his transparently fictitious movie. The unattributed scenes from the Hollywood movie Day After Tomorrow presented as unattributed evidence would’ve earned him an “F” for plagiarism.

Calling the Man-made Global Warming crusade a hoax isn’t fair to hoaxes. This is and always has been a scam perpetrated by the evil upon the naïve. It isn’t about the environment it’s about power. Have you ever noticed how the apostles of Man-made Global Warming use private jets and limos going to paved-over acres of paved-over rain-forest to hold self-promoting conferences?   These are hypocrites masquerading as humanitarians holding humanity hostage with a huge hoax.

Notwithstanding beheadings, burning people alive and conquering a large swath of the Mideast our President at a meeting with his Global Warming co-religionists boldly says that “There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.” Then he doubled down in his State of the Union talking points, “That’s why, over the past six years, we’ve done more than ever before to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy, to the way we use it. That’s why we’ve set aside more public lands and waters than any administration in history. And that’s why I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts.”

The recent and on-going revelations of collusion, deception and fraud between government-funded scientists, research universities, bureaucrats, green corporations, the Media and the Man-made Global Warming Illuminati should open the eyes of even the willfully blind. Remember, when you challenge someone’s religion you should expect a spirited reaction. There’s no disappointment in that regard. Now that the curtain has been pulled away and everyone can see grifters are manipulating levers behind the great and munificent High Priest Gore all the stops have been pulled out.

The Man-made Global Warming Lobby presses day and night to ensnare the United States in an international treaty in which the West confesses guilt for causing Man-made Global Warming as unrealistically as the Treaty of Versailles forced the Germans to accept 100% of the blame for World War I. The Copenhagen monstrosity also imposes wealth-transfer payments upon the U. S. potentially as destructive as the reparations demanded of a defeated Germany by the victorious Allies.

After the fall of Communism in America vast numbers of uninformed voters, the easily frightened and the purely partisan proved sufficient to rescue radical Liberalism from its well-deserved place in the dustbin of history. Using the cover of an unpopular war and the ineptness of co-opted politicians pretending to be conservatives the radical liberals won an unstoppable majority in Congress and the White House. Now they’re advancing a legislative agenda aimed at central-planning while preparing to surrender our sovereignty through international treaties.

The fact that Man-made Global Warming has been exposed as the greatest swindle ever attempted will not phase the ideologues and statists who’ve gained a stranglehold on power in America. They’re going to force an economy killing Cap-N-Trade boondoggle and the Copenhagen Capitulation down our throats before the voters get a chance to speak as loudly as the Tea Party Patriots and the honest scientists have spoken already. Before We the People get an opportunity in 2010 to right the ship of state this collection of demagogues are attempting to seal our fate.

Hordes of voters awaken from a media-induced trance and realize the change they can believe in was really bait-and-switch. In the hearts of many buyer’s remorse replaces the mesmerizing effects of a manufactured messiah than rising up in their righteous indignation they elect him again.

The euphoria of “GM is alive and Osama Bin Laden is dead” wore off quickly and by 2014 the GOP rolled up the biggest majorities they’ve had since the 1940s.

Knowing they have all the power needed to accomplish their goal of downsizing America and seeing a voter’s revolt on the horizon the statists push forward the hoax of Man-made Global Warming. They have several generations of Americans brainwashed into believing the sky is falling. Talk to anyone under 25 and tell me you don’t feel like Chicken Little is in the room. It’s all they’ve ever heard even if there hasn’t been any global warming since before they started school. Tell them anything different and you will be accused of be a Climate Denier which is now as bad a s wearing a hood and burning a cross. If the government Global warming pied pipers have their way they may yet turn this science fiction into the reality of a Man-caused Disaster.

I’m not saying the climate doesn’t change. After two days of raking leaves I can truthfully testify that it does about every three months. The planet tilts, wobbles and moves in its orbit and there’s a thermonuclear ball of heat and light out there called the Sun which I believe has more to do with global warming and cooling than anything man has ever or will ever do. Once the hokum is out of the hoax if the shamans of the First Church of Man-Made Global Warming can change the climate I’ll take 72-76º, rain at night and sunny all day.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2015 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens

Don’t Tell Someone Else February 5, 2015

I’m thinking about changing my economic strategy. My parents were raised in the Roosevelt Depression and they taught me to work hard, save money, and pay for what I wanted. I was a deficit hawk when being a deficit hawk wasn’t cool’ Now that it isn’t even an option why should I stay at the party when there’s no one left to dance with?

In our new Omerica I think I’ll join the winning side and try spending more than I make every day for the rest of my life and see how that works out. If I can just manage to get to where I owe so much that I’m too big to fail I can start really living large on federal handouts, excuse me bailouts, excuse me stimulus. Won’t that be sweet? I’ll hold seminars on “How to Borrow Your Way to Wealth,” or “If You’ll Take a Check I’ll Take Two Please.” What a great racket, excuse me scheme, excuse me program. And technically it’s not a shell game if you don’t use shells.

According to a USA Today study back in 2009 at the beginning of the present Imperial Presidency American taxpayers assumed an additional $55,000 per household for federal spending and promises in the just the last 12 months of the Bush Debacle. That represents a 12% increase in the deficient just in George II’s final year in office and the media tells us he’s a conservative. Of course he’s the kind of conservative who can also use modern double-speak. I think this one should be above the door to his multi-million dollar presidential library down in Dallas, “”I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” This spending spree raised the per household federal debt to $546,668 which is four times the average personal debt for all mortgages, car loans, credit cards combined. Instead of “Don’t Tread on ME” perhaps we should have flags that proclaim, “Send Me the Stuff And Send the Bill to Someone Else”

Don’t tell Someone Else but this means our runaway government assumed a staggering $6.8 trillion in new obligations during the government created crash of 2008 alone. Then along came Obama. His explosion of excess when added to the creatively hidden realities of the federal entitlement programs brings poor old Someone Else’s debt load (including unfunded liabilities) to the incomprehensible total of $187 trillion.

Some might say, “Wait a minute! This guy is way over board! Our national debt is only $18 trillion.” I wish I could convince myself it was only $18 trillion that would help me sleep at night. However, government books are so over-cooked they make Enron and WorldCom look as honest as the day is long. The real number doesn’t just cover what we’ve borrowed so far but what we’ve promised to pay in the future minus what we might conceivably raise to offset future borrowing. When you lump that all together you end up with the $187 trillion or some other such ridiculous number.

At least we can tell Someone Else that all this national shopaholicism isn’t being wasted buying $7,000 toilet seats and $800 hammers its buying things we really need. Remember the stimulus, the one that ended the Great Recession? It paid for such needed items as: $97 million for a program that was already cancelled at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the interests of national defense our government decided to replace old nuclear warheads with new ones. The rocket-scientists in the planning department said they needed two new buildings to produce the necessary plutonium components. Then the program was cancelled.

Never fear government is here and when has the lack of common sense ever gotten in the way of a good boondoggle? Along came our earmark-free stimulus and the $97 Million enters stage-left. Now that the money was there of course we had to spend it otherwise who would get stimulated. So the construction continued for buildings that were no longer needed. At least all these shovel-ready jobs have the economy purring along like a well-oiled machine even if they weren’t as shovel-ready as our Dear Leader thought.

Remember the GM Bailout? Now there was a deal that just couldn’t lose.   It inspired the following joke.

A man walks into a bank to open a checking account the teller says, “I have good news and bad news.” The man asks, “What’s the good news?” The teller says, “When you open an account with us you can have either a new toaster or 1000 shares of GM stock.” “What’s the bad news?” “We’re all out of toasters.” No one would buy GM stock which is why it fell to the 1$ range and our Glorious Leader decided to spend money that was authorized under TARP to buy up toxic assets to instead buy GM. So out comes Uncle Sugar’s checkbook and out goes billions of Someone Else’s money to buy the majority share in a company that was estimated to turn a profit when?

How could this ever fail? It turned out after all the celebrations of success that Someone Else lost $11.2 billion on that deal. And how is the resurrected auto giant? In 2014 GM recalled more cars than they made and while they are closing plants in America they are building them overseas.

What dolts we were working and saving when all you have to do is want something, charge it to Someone Else and shazam you get the stuff and Someone Else gets the bill. That Someone Else sure is a generous person aren’t they? There’s only one problem with this perpetual-motion money machine. When you look in the mirror Someone Else is looking back.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2015 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens