U.S. Economy : The Philosopher's Stone

Originally posted by Fatality

This won't be the end of US , i am sure of it but i am almost sure it is the end of the ones in charge .

I wish I could be as optimistic as you sound here but I'm cannot, at least not now the way I see things playing out. It's like you said, people keep getting screwed over by the establishment and they just stand there and take it up the backside and they do it with a smile.

Voting is a sham! We vote one criminal out and vote an even bigger criminal in. People are so desperate for leadership that they will vote for anything or anyone that even remotely appears to be on their side. But that is how the establishment retains their grip on us. This economic crisis is only the beginning I fear, and the coming storm is the result of our complacency.

I think any investment in infrastructure at this point in time, would be ill advised though. It will end up being like the bailouts. As inflation kicks in, and costs start to rise, the states will need more and more money to keep things going. We're already seeing basic consumables going up. Next will be fuel cost.

My question is, what do the individual states have to put up as collateral for these loans for infrastructure improvements? I mean, just about every state has major budget shortfalls already. How do they plan on paying back that money with interest? What happens when they can't?

Originally posted by OrganizedChaos

I agree with that! I'd love to see us invest in Education.

But, there again, that requires us to borrow & spend MORE money! It's a vicious cycle.

Ultimately, the only way things will get better is when the Govt stops fiddling with the free market.

With the free-fall of the dollar lately: USDX Hyperinflation is right around the corner.

Lack of money in the education system is not the problem. Its mismanagement of the money the system gets, poor teachers, and poor parenting that is killing our education. Through the Dept of Education they pay advisers to advise advisers lol. Local governments blow the money too giving school board heads 6 figures and all the perks. Money needs to be managed better.

[edit on 17-12-2008 by mybigunit]

Originally posted by OrganizedChaos

My question is, what do the individual states have to put up as collateral for these loans for infrastructure improvements? I mean, just about every state has major budget shortfalls already. How do they plan on paying back that money with interest? What happens when they can't?

Some extreme views on that is that the Fed takes land, buildings, and whats left as collateral

Just another way for the Fed to get it's hand in your pocket.

So much for the middle class hello McDonalds

Originally posted by LiquidMirage

Originally posted by Fatality

This won't be the end of US , i am sure of it but i am almost sure it is the end of the ones in charge .

I wish I could be as optimistic as you sound here but I'm cannot, at least not now the way I see things playing out. It's like you said, people keep getting screwed over by the establishment and they just stand there and take it up the backside and they do it with a smile.

Voting is a sham! We vote one criminal out and vote an even bigger criminal in. People are so desperate for leadership that they will vote for anything or anyone that even remotely appears to be on their side. But that is how the establishment retains their grip on us. This economic crisis is only the beginning I fear, and the coming storm is the result of our complacency.

I am not at all optimistic because i know for a fact and i seen it myself that in order to recover our rights , money and liberty a huge price must be paid and that are lives. I am just stating that they will go down eventually and if a revolution is what it will take to wake us all up than shall be it. And from my own experience it needs to start just in one place , one spark and the fire will start. In the country i used to live in it began in one city and in matter of days it was all over the country people marching towards the capital to restore their rights and liberties.

I wish that won't be needed and that our next leader will do something about our needs and rights NOT take away even more because that will trigger something that cannot be stopped.

I believe that we have brilliant people in this country that can really make a difference but are seldom listened and promoted.

We must consume less and produce more that is our only way out.But around me everyone is consuming the same or even more even though sooner or later they either won't have what to consume anymore or they won't have the money to do so .

And about investing in education , i find the idea interesting but it would take ages to even start.Not to mention that it would need more spending , something we don't need to do right now.

One thing, to all of you spewing nonsense with regards to Obama having the power to fix this. I just would like to point out to you that the Reason I put him into the last portion of the video was to illustrate the fact that Your messiah is right on par with G.W.

Obama took in more donations from corporate financiers and Bankers than any other President in history. All he had to do was say "Yes we can" And people swallowed it. Way to go! The guy supported bailing out the banks. He voted for it, thats why I put his speech on the Senate floor in there. He is part of the group that stole your money, gave it to a bunch of billionaires, inflated your currency, which, in the very near future is going to cause inflation and make a loaf of bread go for about 8 bucks a loaf. Oh yeah! He's really all about the little guy! He's gonna starve the fricken poor to death in this country, but hey! Salvation for them is only a stimulous check away! Which of course will AGAIN cause more debt, more inflation, higher prices and destroy the middle class.

He wants to bailout Automakers, translation: He wants to give a couple guys that made 20 million a year running the American auto industry into the ground, a bunch of money and then he wants to give money to UAW so they can hold the USA hostage if they don't get 30 days paid time off.

Thats your guy? Thats was your canidate? Are you serious? You might as well have voted for Fat Albert, at least that fake persona was honest.

America wanted a savior becuase America needs saving, you know why they need it? Because not even half of the population knows how to take care of there own lives anymore. Thats why Obamatons say phrases like "we need leadership", "Obama is our last hope", "Obama's a real leader". You call him a leader and place your entire hope for your own future in his hands because you lost your way, and now you need someone to follow. Sad...

Trust me, the last fracken thing this country needs is leadership, we need REPRESENTATION. Get that through your head. Comprimising with These big Government schmucks was absolutly the most stupid, and Idiotic thing every generation has ever done. And hopefully when this is over, at least some part of the country will have routed every single one of these stupid vipers looking for a free handout.

Think you have a hard time paying the mortgage now? Wait until you have to pay everyone elses.

Obama, Congress, Bernanke, Bush, Mccain, whatever...... this country had it's chance, and this country blew it. For a fricken Celebrity canidate. Sleep tight, I'm sure your children will forgive you for turning them into debt slaves before they were even born.

Grow up.


[edit on 17-12-2008 by aravoth]

Originally posted by aravoth
One thing, to all of you spewing nonsense with regards to Obama having the power to fix this. I just would like to point out to you that the Reason I put him into the last portion of the video was to illustrate the fact that Your messiah is right on par with G.W.


Obama, Congress, Bernanke, Bush, Mccain, whatever...... this country had it's chance, and this country blew it. For a fricken Celebrity canidate. Sleep tight, I'm sure your children will forgive you for turning them into debt slaves before they were even born.

Grow up.

Meet the new boss same as the old boss. I’m sorry but this last election did nothing more than make Americans feel good. I hope I’m wrong about Obama but the truth of the matter is he is a politician and we all know what they are all about.


Link

reply to post by DrumJunkie

Bush the far right? He spent money like a welfare mother on check day.

LOL .. that's great..

Indeed, Bush is by far the biggest Liberal Conservative I have ever seen .. Bush might be "Far right" on SOCIAL "VALUES" .. but not at anything else.

Quite frankly, social "values" mean nothing in politics.

Ever see Congress debate Gay Marriage?

Social Conservative .. Socialist Corporatist.. = Fascist.

honestly, take away all the hyper social liberal BS, the Democratic Party is still the peoples Party, taken over by .. ahem .. uh "open minded" nut jobs.

now this "Bail out IE Nationalization" has cost more then the War in Iraq, hell it will eventually cost more then every major war in the past 100 years.

The PROBLEM is the American Mentality of SPEND SPEND SPEND... A country that depends on Consumer Consumption as a means of defining it's economic production??? THAT'S LAUGHABLE!.. Where does their money come from? The workers at the chain stores consuming the goods at their own chain store?

cognoscente

Well, what we really need is culture.

So true..

One thing anyone searching for the truth needs to know to be successful is human nature and psychology.....they play a big part in HOW far people are willing to go to be ignorant especially when the truth is hurtful or painful.........this is something that effects all most everyone just with different topics that sometimes suit individuals belief systems better.

wether it the parent of Casey anthony who won't imagine that there daughter MAY be a murderer , or wether it is the person not wanting to hear the one economist telling him that unless he makes dramatic changes in his porfolio he will lose at least half, because the economy is going to tank. In the later case the navie investor may even have a strong belief rationally that he is doing the right thing because all the cheerleaders on the MSM can't be "wrong", the one's that are telling him to buy and hold or the misleading statement no body can "time the market".

You can fool all the people some of the time. You can fool some of the peolpe all the time but you can't fool all the people all the time.

This election didn't make me feel good. During this election is when i began to notice that everything may not be as it seems. I'm sure i'm not the only one. I did not vote for either McCain or Obama. Voting for someone who voted for the first bailout and who publicly supported it is not someone i want to lead this country.

I hope Obama can fix things...but i know he can't. You can't stop debt by increasing it. It doesn't matter if his intentions are good or not....his answers to the problems are not the solutions that we need.

As much as it is easy to point fingers at people for not voting for someone like Ron Paul, who i think is a great man, is it really their fault? If someone like Ron Paul is not getting attention in the media, he will never have a chance.

The media has led us to where we are. The average person will not notice it. I didn't notice it before either. It wasn't because i was being ignorant. It was because i was dealing with things in my own life. We'll all been taught to live our lives a certain way. Waking someone out of this slumber is not an easy thing to do.

It takes desperation. It takes survival. This is what will wake up most people.

It's going to get much worse. I've never been a doom and gloom guy but i find myself sounding more like one each day. Is this completely unfounded? I don't believe so.

I never used to care about politics or government in general. Most people are this way. They are just living out their lives and raising their families in the environment they were born and raised in.

When this way of life is truly threatened and a vast amount of people are sufferering, then and only then, will true awakening and change come to pass.

reply to post by aravoth


That is absolutely one of the best posts ever. You are exactly right, but also one must remember that sheep need a Shepard. Most of the people in this country does not possess the intellect to even understand what you've said, so I imagine their response will be something along the lines of "your just a racist" or "Give the guy a chance."

Unfortunately we had someone who was trying to tell us the truth and even more unfortunately, most people don't want to know the truth. They just figure that someone will push the magic button they got at Staples and everything will be ok. On top of that, I doubt they are even concerned with their children's future.

What have we become?

[edit on 12/17/2008 by DarrylGalasso]

Id say star and flag but I dont know how to put a star on it.

By the way I hate the vids.

I almost wish I had never discovered this site but deep down inside I feel a fire burning like never before. I am a family man, I married my high school sweet heart and we have 2 beautiful kids. I run a some what successful business and am (well actually was) comfortable with life. I have made some tough sacrifices to get where I am at and honestly dont think that any measure of depression, government oppression, deflation, socialism would be able to keep me down.

I am now constantly thinking of how I can initiate a change that would make for a better future for my kids than what is currently on the plate and the troubling part is I find myself slipping further and further from the emotional rope I am tethered to. The concern for what could happen to my family if I did start a revolution has now been replaced with the concern for what could happen if I do not.

I am thoroughly infuriated, a flaming smiley would not do justice here so Ill stop before I smash the monitor.

I hope you guys are ready.

I am not standing around for this crap. Im making preps and I'll see you in hell.

I'm going to expound on this. These videos set me off. I had no idea this was foreseen so long ago. Are none of you this upset? what are you gonna do? Nothing? You know you have to and if you dont then you dont deserve the freedoms that others shed their blood for and you damn sure dont deserve mine.


If you are, help me out. I need to know what info you have that brought you to this conclusion. I know a few thick blooded Americans who may just need to know what you know in order to become brazen enough.

If its more appropriate I'll start a new thread. Are you willing to let your kids live under this kind of rule or is it you just done give a damn? Look at it this way, either you go out as an un named soldier for freedom or you go out as a victim of some elitist groups failed scheme and your grand kids can say "well I guess they didnt know what to do". Better yet why not write a diary explaining how it all came at once and you would have done something if you had known well enough in advance.

I hope you at least think about it. Me, I almost cant think any more, I feel like I have to do something.

Originally posted by budro
I'm going to expound on this. These videos set me off. I had no idea this was foreseen so long ago. Are none of you this upset? what are you gonna do? Nothing? You know you have to and if you dont then you dont deserve the freedoms that others shed their blood for and you damn sure dont deserve mine.


If you are, help me out. I need to know what info you have that brought you to this conclusion. I know a few thick blooded Americans who may just need to know what you know in order to become brazen enough.

If its more appropriate I'll start a new thread. Are you willing to let your kids live under this kind of rule or is it you just done give a damn? Look at it this way, either you go out as an un named soldier for freedom or you go out as a victim of some elitist groups failed scheme and your grand kids can say "well I guess they didnt know what to do". Better yet why not write a diary explaining how it all came at once and you would have done something if you had known well enough in advance.

I hope you at least think about it. Me, I almost cant think any more, I feel like I have to do something.

I'm not wanting to start an argument with you but seriously, where have you been? I find it hard to believe you didn't notice years ago that things weren't quite right.

I live in Florida. After 9/11 I watched as Real Estate went nuts, prices doubling and tripling.I watched people buying overpriced gas hog vehicles & big screen TVs. People were buying swampy 1/4 acre lots in the middle of nowhere for $300K+ and building million dollar houses on them. Ordinary people were becoming speculators in Real Estate and driving up the prices. People didn't worry about the consequences, they just wanted to have more.

Simple common sense told me this can't last. One of my employees who made $30K a year bought a $400K house! All the while, Bush was throwing money at the 'War On Terror', and you could get an "Interest Only Quicken Loan"!

When I tried to convince friends and family to slow down, stop spending so much because this can't last, I was laughed at and ridiculed. You're crazy with all the doom and gloom they said.

I hit the streets campaigning for Ron Paul before the election. People didn't want to hear it. You realize this guy has been telling everyone that this was going to happen for OVER 20 years?

So, I consolidated my finances, liquidated my stock portfolio, paid off my cars and started living on less. This was over 3 years ago.

I still have friends that refuse to believe that things will get worse, go figure! They say, aww it'll turn around.

My point of my diatribe is that yes I am very upset that things are this bad. I'm upset that fellow Americans were this gullible. But ultimately, nobody wants to believe it or hear it. I am tired of fighting with the close minded people who refuse to use common sense and pay attention to what is going on around them. The information has been out there, all you had to do is look. I did my part & got raked over the coals for it.

Americans are a different breed now from what we used to be. Most are reactionary instead of proactive. Most bought into the BS told to them by the MSM and the smooth talking politicians. The only time people will want to do something about their situation is when they have no job or home. Then IMHO, it's too late.

Hyperinflation is coming, along with widespread rioting and theft. The people involved in these are going to be the ones who refused to see past their noses and realize we've been had. They'll be expecting the Govt to step in and GIVE them something to help them.

Look, you can call it a conspiracy or say it's the NWO. Ultimately, WE DID IT. Nobody twisted your arm and said "you have to buy this". People could have exercised a little restraint. People didn't have to vote for who they did.

My advice is to lay low. Take care of you & yours, and prepare for the worst.

reply to post by OrganizedChaos


After 9/11 I was just another brain washed war on terror supporter. Having not been raised with a knowledge of politics or the economy it wasn't until 9/11 that I really started to pay attention and develop an opinion on my own instead of going along with MSM.

To a degree I knew things had to change and that it was going to get rough but I had no idea that Ron Paul and others were aware in 2002 of the magnitude of the problems we faced.

I guess I was actually fully awakened last night that indeed our government is nothing more than an elitist group and our plight is none of their concern. The pieces were slowly coming together for me and I like many others didn't want to believe it was all that bad.

reply to post by budro


Ron Paul was warning of the spending and Big Govt consequences back in the 80's!

I was sitting in the waiting room of a Dr's office watching their TV when 9/11 happened. I was just as ticked off as everyone else, you're not alone there!

The things that transpired afterwards though got me thinking. The more I paid attention, the more I realized that something fishy was afoot.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I partially bought into the deal also. Just like all the other Patriotic Americans did. They painted a believable picture. Reading between the lines, though, enlightened me. I made, and spent, stupid money due to the dot com bubble. Fortunately, I got smart before it got real bad.

See, people in the US rank their self worth by what they have. Everybody wanted the illusion of prosperity and here we are!

reply to post by DarrylGalasso
I happen to agree with you. And look what happened when the vote came up to bailout Wall Street. The American People contacted their representatives and senators in RECORD numbers, objecting to the bailout. And what happened. The majority of those who "represent" us said "f$*k you and the horse you rode in on."
If this country survives the next four years, I think we should demand that ALL candidates be heard in All debates.

With all these financial shenanigans going on, does anyone get the impression we've been here before? I came across the following piece last night while reading a long list of stories from as far back as the 1920's / 1930's. In fact all the items on this page are worth a read. Many I have seen before but there is a lot of stuff I wasn't aware of.

Here's a link to the page in question, followed by the relevant piece:

www.mtwsfh.blogspot.com...

1933: UNITED STATES. For a year, a commission established by the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs has supposedly been investigating the causes of the Wall Street Crash. Initially, the investigation" is little more than a whitewash. The first two commission counsels are fired and the third resigns in protest because there is no power to subpoena witnesses, which makes the whole exercise a bit of a farce. But things take a remarkable turn when a remarkable man, New York City prosecutor, Ferdinand J. Pecora, accepts the position of Chief Counsel to the commission.

In February, Pecora begins a real investigation of what Franklin Roosevelt called "the ruthless manipulation of professional gamblers and the corporate system" which caused the Great Crash of 1929 and led to the Depression.

By the time Pecora begins calling the boys in the back room to account, forty percent of all U.S. banks have gone belly up taking the savings of nine million Americans with them. Millions of Americans have lost everything on stock market and "investment" scams. Homes, farms and businesses are being repossessed by the thousands. Seventeen million Americans are unemployed. And, through it all, through all the misery and hunger and despair, some people, already unimaginably wealthy, are getting richer and richer.

As the hearings unfold, America's leading financiers and industrialists, the "cream" of American society, the ruling class, are shown to have engaged, yet again, in an almost endless series of ruthless conspiracies against the people of the United States.

Charles Mitchell, President and Chairman of the Board of the Rockefellers' National City Bank (Citicorp) and a director of the American branch of the Nazi cartel, IG Farben, is the first Wall Street tycoon called to testify and his grilling by the courageous Pecora sets the tone for the rest of the hearings.

Pecora uncovers the fact that National City Bank is really little more than an enormous criminal conspiracy dedicated to swindling small investors out of their savings. For years, the bank has been, via a subsidiary, the world's leading shill for what, in the biz, are called "securities", a direct violation of U.S. law which forbids banks to trade in "securities".

Mitchell tells the Committee that he "did not see it as a problem." Of course for National City Bank, it wasn't a problem. His very good friend, Andrew Mellon of Gulf Oil, Mellon Bank and Alcoa had been essentially running the country for the benefit of the ruling class via the presidencies of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover since 1921.

Mitchell is forced to admit to evading his personal income tax by way of imaginary interest payments on an imaginary loan of $2,800,000 from the National City Company. Mitchell was receiving about one and a half million dollars a year a time when the average industrial wage in the U.S. was about fifty cents an hour.

Mitchell is forced to confess that a series of unsecured and unpaid loans for millions of dollars was made to National City insiders to cover their stock market losses. The beneficiaries of this theft from the bank's small stockholders include Percy Rockefeller and Mitchell himself. Mitchell admits to conspiring with the U.S. puppet dictator of Cuba, Gerardo "The Butcher" Machado, to dump $31 million worth of useless Cuban sugar loans on the unsuspecting small stockholders of a National City affiliate.

Pecora uncovers the fact that, in 1927 and 1928, National City Bank dumped $90 million of worthless Peruvian government bonds on customers in the U.S. Pecora forces to Mitchell to concede that millions of dollars were made on insider trading and manipulations of Anaconda Copper subsidiaries by National City Bank insiders including Percy Rockefeller, James Stillman Jr., Mitchell himself and Anaconda President John D. Ryan. The bank and Anaconda conspired to defraud the public through massive manipulation of Anaconda stock, fueling a speculative mania which pushed the stock to record highs far beyond its true value.

Mitchell is forced to confess to a series of National City/Anaconda conspiracies which were the greatest frauds in the history of American banking up until the time of the hearings. It is revealed that Mitchell, Rockefeller and Ryan set up a "joint account" of nearly a million and a half shares of Anaconda stock, at no cost to themselves, which was repackaged and aggressively marketed to the public through a National City affiliate. The "joint account" was manipulated by Mitchell and Ryan who ran the share price up, from $40 in December 1928, to $128 in March of 1929. The trio then dumped their stock. This single scam netted Mitchell, Rockefeller and Ryan at least $150 million. By the time of hearings, Anaconda stock had collapsed to $4 a share.

Scheduled to follow Mitchell for a further uncovering of the Rockefeller-Mitchell-Ryan conspiracies is National City Bank director and Anaconda Copper chairman John D. Ryan. Conveniently, Ryan dies under mysterious circumstances three days before the hearings are scheduled to start and takes his secrets to the grave.

Percy Rockefeller, although apparently not too ill to engage in vast criminal conspiracies with Mitchell and Ryan, is allegedly "too ill" to appear before the Committee to answer Pecora's questions.

When asked by Pecora if he paid any income tax in 1930, J.P. Morgan Jr. replies, "I cannot remember." Neither could Morgan remember if he had paid any income tax in 1931 or 1932. In fact, of course, he had paid not one red cent. Question after question was answered with "I cannot remember." Pecora reveals that all of the Morgan family and their partners in their vast financial empire had paid a total of only $5000 in income taxes in the previous five years on hundreds of millions of dollars of income. And, it was all thanks to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon who had crafted U.S. income tax law so that the very wealthy, himself notably included, seldom paid any taxes at all.

During the Pecora Hearings, the financial gangsters who had brought ruin to so many came to be known as "banksters". One of the slickest banksters to be summoned before the hearings was Clarence Dillon (nee Lapowski) of the "financial house" of Dillon, Read, by the time of the hearings heavily involved in financing the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany.

Nazi public relations specialist Ivy Lee is hired to "prepare" Dillon for his appearance before the Committee. Among Lee's other esteemed clients are Nazi fuel supplier, William Farish of Standard Oil and the Rockefellers' partner in crimes against humanity, IG Farben.

Clarence Dillon and his son C. Douglas had been directors of United States and International Securities, a massive speculative pyramid scam which swindled Americans out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Miraculously, Dillon, Read insiders cashed in their chips just before the Crash, walking away with $6,844,000 for stock which had cost them $24,110, a return of 28,000%. Ain't "free enterprise" wonderful?

Pecora uncovers the fact that Albert Wiggin, Chairman of the Board of the Rockefellers' Chase National Bank, had surreptitiously sold short 42,000 shares of Chase stock just prior to the Crash through a series of front companies. Other senior executives did the same thing, driving stock prices down and then making millions as share prices collapsed.

It goes without saying that no one named Rockefeller, Mitchell, Morgan, Wiggins, Dillon or even Lapowski ever goes to jail for their crimes and the pinstriped gangsters unmasked by Pecora were no exception. Only a single minion of the ruling class, Richard Whitney, a long time associate of the Morgans and president of the New York Stock Exchange at the time of the Crash, ends up behind bars. But his crime was very serious, stealing from the ruling class.

The misguided Whitney pilfered $800,000 from his father-in-law's estate and then also stole from the New York Stock Exchange Gratuity Fund and, gasp, from the New York Yacht Club, all in order to prop up his liquor business.

Stealing from your clubmates just isn't done, old boy, and Whitney is sentenced to ten years in the slammer for his breach of ruling class etiquette. Of course, he only does three years and is then given a nice little place in the country by his Wall Street buddies, where he lives a quiet and peaceful life until his death in 1974.

The Pecora hearings lasted over a year and provoked outrage among Americans. The stupefying greed and criminality of the ruling class so clearly exposed by Pecora, led to the Crash of 1929 and plunged the U.S. and much of the world into the Great Depression, causing untold hardship and misery for hundreds of millions of people. But like so much of American history, the findings of the Pecora hearings and even the fact that they were held, are virtually unknown in the United States.

More below....

...and the final paragraph:

Following the Pecora hearings, a wave of regulatory legislation attempts to keep America's corporate criminals under control, although "short selling", one of the financial games most beloved of experienced Wall Street swindlers, was not outlawed. Almost all of the protective legislation would vanish or be diluted in the 1990s by William "Wet Willy" Clinton, leaving the savings of Americans once again completely at the mercy of financial racketeers with entirely predictable results.

Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker's stoutest allies. Ferdinand Pecora

Put everyone to work ramping up the military and storing food stocks. Arm every man to the teeth and prepare.

Rebuilding highways and infra structure to create jobs is ok, but not if we can't protect them from the invading forces from the east.

I hear their are jobs in the tent making industry. Can't afford our homes, have to live in tents.

An idea for vacant land owners that are not farming it----tent villages for Americans. Who ever thought it would come to this?

Thanks George. Spend trillions beating up a nation that actually served to stabilize the middle east and what good did it do when we are more hated than ever, have lost our rights, live in fear, lost our wealth, and over 4,000 of our soldiers, as well as many citizens. Our credibility is hammered.

I pray Obama's dream team can get us back on track. But it might be too late.