One has to wonder

Exactly what the next five years is going to bring. Will Obama truly save the nation's economy with his Stimulus? Will the Tea Party People prevail. It all hinges on the federal government's constitutional mandate to protect. At what point does the value of paper currency become worthless? The answer is something we could witness in our lifetime. It is worthless when no one will accept it as a storehouse of value. Indeed, will people at some point simply not pay state and local taxes? Hardly. Neighbors know who paid and they are, after all, neighbors. So the cheating will begin that goes beyond just making less that one made the year before. Cheating so you can survive. Cheating because of a feeling of entitlement. And so the demise of the economy will begin. Because of a feeling of "they owe me". The story of the have's and the have not's. The threat of class warfare will either be realized or the rich will abandon America for their own island countries. Time will tell, time that will soon be upon us. In the mean time, expect taxes to rise in proportion to the amount of cheating. It's called wealth transfer.

Rumsfeld's View of China

China has thousands of years of culture and society behind it. The Communist period of the past 50 years is a pimple on the ass of progress. Their free markets will open the country for a strong capitalist society. The only thing missing at this point is workers who want more than 80 cents and hour. When they finally figure that out, watch out. The U.S. is going to get steamrolled. Twenty years ago there was ONE skycraper in Shanghai - today there are 320!
The projections for China are that there will be 16 NEW cities the size of Shanghai built, from scratch in the next 30 Years. The U.S. has 9 cities the size of Shanghai today......

Observations of the world at large today

The battle lines were drawn 1400 years ago. In areas only in direct contention, there was war, the rest of the globe has been subject to colonization, trade, and proselytizing. Now that all areas of the globe are discovered, there is no more major conquests to be had. The RISK game played for the last 1400 years is over in a stalemate, what remains now that the mainstream of these religions are less aggressive are the fundamentalists on both sides, who are willing to be martyrs to wipe out the infidel. And spend time and money to get the mainstream members to adopt a more radical stance.

Who is winning? The non Abrahamic tradition people, that's who! Write a check, fill out a warranty card, handwrite anything important, someone in China is the person typing it into a computer. They made a boo-boo? Aw, just pick up the phone, The nice guy in India, who can pronounce "R" will be glad to help you.

Open your closet, read the tags. Find 2 next to each other from the same country, find 5 overall from the same country. I have 5 dress shirts in a row, from the same designer, from 5 different countries.

While we are hoping for a new Charles Martell before they get a new Saladin, the other 2/3 of the world might just produce a new George Washington, if we are lucky, or Adolph Hitler if we are not.