How on earth can anyone take the daily input…. this gloom and doom?

Levity and altered universes are defense mechanisms…we love our Poodle and Donkey…we sleep with two eyes open concerning about five white coated posters..taking personal and pollitical beatings are our stick!

Moderate us will lead to shutting down your favorite,precious righty kooks and disturbed loons….

Of course, we cannot do that!

Ok. I’ll defer to your insider knowledge of corporate scum. I hope none of their scumminess rubbed off on you. From your vitriol, I take it didn’t so good for you.

There’s no denying that there are corporate scum out to make a buck by hook or crook and they don’t care who they screw to get it. My problem (and I suspect yours also) with that ilk is when they screw the taxpayers via corrupt politicians on the take for the sake of profits. That’s the biggest problem we taxpayers face at both the federal and state level.

For what it’s worth: I’m a long time investor and in my humble opinion, all stock brokers are scum and I have yet to find an exception. They’re all as crooked as a trombone. I have more respect for maggots than a lot of the individuals I’ve encountered in the investment industry.

I believe the Mr Greenhut accurately describes the situation where the “State” and its many minions, believe that they may usurp the authority of God and Fellow Man, and that rights, priviledges, and pursuit of happiness flow from them to the fellow man, such as the European Monarch’s believed, until the citizen’s restored the natural order. I am hopeful that a gradual shift back toward the proper “Constitution of Government” may be effected without strife and chaos as has been the historical method of resolution, but am not overly optimistic.

Unfortunately this site’s comments have digressed into a plethora of namecalling and hate bating against those who disagree with others clearly for the sake of disagreement. The contribitors provide useful information which is then ignored, or the posters make illiterate comments, or engage in personal attacks against the other posters with whom they disagree. How pathetic!

The comment section clearly begs for a moderator, and a set of basic guidelines of behavior for posting…perhaps that should be on Cal Watchdog’s Christmas List!

You all may enjoy this, it is simply, well, ah, ….yes, beautiful!

XVII. MEDITATION.

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.