BACK FROM BELGIUM

George Offerman

We are now back from Belgium, a trip for R&R as well as a beer festival and buying large amounts of chocolate to bring back. It seems the world has not fallen apart, and getting back into the swing of things has been a little challenging.

It was quite the adventure in that many of the young people in Belgium have a great interest in what goes on over here, and had plenty of questions about how we live in our country. The first point of conversation was usually how “violent’ our country is and how we deal with it. I had many good and hopefully informative conversations with theses young people about how it is not as bad as what they perceive and that it is not the gun owners committing the crimes, it is the ‘entitled’ sociopaths who do not obey any laws that are the cause of violence, and the lack of meaningful punishment to deter their behaviors.

These young people also wanted to discuss healthcare, and without exception, they aw the U.S. moving into mandated health care as a good thing. They were quite surprised when I expressed how I am against this, and cited many examples in Canada and England, in which people were denied care by being place on wait lists for treatment that resulted in their demise. I also discussed the many documented cases in which people have come from Canada to seek health care here. I also challenged them with the question “If health care is so good in Canada and England, why are U.S. citizens not sneaking over there for treatment?” They could not respond to this.

Overall, it was a very good trip, but I am glad to be back. It’s nice sometimes to be able to get away and get another perspective of how we live and how others perceive us. The people there were friendly and assisted us when we needed it, and the town of Brugge where we stayed for the week was beautiful. The food was delicious and the company wonderful. But it is good to sleep in my own bed and get back to the reality in which I was called to do.

We have a lot to do in the next several weeks. The Senate will now be dealing with the health care bill and this will need to be dealt with. We have the upcoming elections for the whole House of Representatives and one third of the Senate. We need to make it clear to these people that they need to be pro life, and actually vote in this fashion. We have the March on January 22 to plan, and continue to deal with the fallout from Notre Dame.

I am also posting a link from a story I found that supports the allegation that the U.S. sent ‘tainted’ gold to the now identified entity, China. It is hugely an understatement that they are ticked off to the highest hills, and I agree with Jim Willie, the author, that default in the metals market is a foregone conclusion, and you better load up on the precious metals if you haven’t already acted on this. I hope you read the article, but if you don’t, I will at least mention the highlight: supposedly over 1 million bars are gold plated tungsten, and have been in circulation for possibly as long as 10 years. China discovered this recently, and will most likely not accept any U.S. gold without first having it all tested, or melted down. China is not a force to be messed with, and I think the banksters finally have overplayed their hand. This winter and spring will be very interesting for the precious metals markets.

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/willie/2009/1118.html