anthony robbins where far out thou

for those who do not know, Anthony Robbins was a success guru . Anthony ran his seminar on paid programing late at night and early in the morning for a few years . the main idea was you would use your charge card to buy his course in success . it worked pretty good for ol'tony he is a wealthy man now .

this illustrates a reality we are all facing or will face . in 1974 when the government created IRA s . it spawned a host of other vehicles 401k , 403b, . to name a few and now our government wants to throw social security on the open market . where money magically grows .

what has really happened, a lot of people have been sinking their money into mutual funds for decades . and the money grew slowly but surely . than in 2001 it stopped growing . most people are just now back to where they were in their retirement portfolios . if you ask most people 50 and over if they can retire at 60 . many will shake their heads sadly and then smile and tell you how much the love their careers and do not even think of retiring .

the wall street smoothies have created a sales scheme over the past 30 years that George Orwell would have been proud of . we were told our money would be put in a market basket of stocks , where it would grow into a money tree that we could start harvesting when we reached 60.

these words describes a scene that is just as safe as being in your mothers arms , words that invoked feel good images , that were the complete opposite of how the stock market really works . the same with the housing market people have been seduced into buying homes they can not afford . on the assumption the value of it would rise and they could sell and buy a real castle instead of a starter castle .

this is where Anthony Robbins comes in . it is smoothies like him . who will tell you how great it is to work until your 72 , think how successful you will be by then , think how rich you will be by then , think how dead you will be by then .

the smoothies can turn any negative into a positive , make any situation a win-win situation , but it does not change the fact that everybody is tapped out and tired . everyone is tired of pretending that someday that their 401k will have a million bucks in it and they will be living in luxury , when that statement they get in the mail every quarter is telling them . " this is it "

this is the best you will ever live . the cruelest part of this is we are all living pretty good , but we have been made to believe it is not good enough . that is our fault , our fault alone we have not achieved the success we were promised .

the bad news is that the only way the smoothies can make all this work is to inflate the currency , which will make it possible to attract more suckers to the dream they have created for them . long live the Anthony Robbins maybe when we are all in our 80s and have one foot in the grave . he can tell us how to be a success by dying .

both a curse and a blessing /1962-1972

It always makes me chuckle. When the conservatives blame the hippies for the counter culture that has ruined American family values. The hippies were nothing but a straw man . Let us look at some of the events the hippies were not part of .

1. The assassination of JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy .

2. The race riots in American ghettos and forced busing

3. The war in Vietnam and draft riots .

The hippies were dope-smoking , tie-dye wearing , bead-trading Gypsies with no political power because they refused to vote. What was really going on?

1962-1972 was a blessing in the fact that the average American enjoyed a standard of living unparalleled in history. For me it was cars and music. There has never been such a diverse and creative period for cars and music . It was in this ten year period that so much great stuff happened. It also was the period of national tragedy, the country was coming apart at the seams. There was a real fear the government would collapse .

The military industrial complex was had just finished in Korea and was looking to keep the war machine going in Vietnam. Lyndon B Johnson like Geo. Bush Jr. was - committed to a war that could never be won for the same reason, so the military corporate machine could keep making record profits .

We gave away our electronics industry in the 1960s to the Japanese because the American electronic industry was and still is making so much money doing Dept. of Defense work .

Richard Nixon in 1974 abolished the draft which put a stop to the the military industrial complex creating wars and drafting young men to die for their profits and for his efforts at change he was impeached and disgraced.

Fast forward to Bill Clinton - he tried to cut defense spending, calling it the peace dividend. He wanted to spend the money to improve education and universal health . For his efforts, he was impeached and disgraced. Like rust - the military industrial complex never sleeps .

So 1962-1972 was at once a wonderful euphoric 10 years , but at the same time there were national tragedies occurring with a frightening speed and intensity . It is no surprise drugs were so popular .

Which brings us to Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. I know Republican conservatives hate Hillary Clinton with a passion that is beyond belief and I always wonder why . Hillary is so locked into the Washington power structure that she is not going to really change much. She is certainly not going to challenge the military industrial complex. Every president since Bobby Kennedy was assasinated has been a shill for the military industrial complex. They all knew which side of the bread the butter was on .

Barak Obama is a different story. He has a destiny that is undeniable. He wants to really change our bought and paid for form of government . I fear for Mr. Obama. If he elected the next president of the United States, will he share the same fate as the Kennedy's and Martin Luther King ?