I would have to say that this fiasco started when Cane killed his Brother Abel.  It has gone on, to a grater or lesser degree since.  The purpose of this letter is to connect good and evil with what we see going on in our own government today.  Folks, this website is subject to abruept change.  Some times I come across someone who is much better then I am at explaining things that trouble all of us.  This is one of those times.  The following article was written by Charles Krouthammer, Syndicated columnists #3

   "Here we go again.  An approaching crisis.  A looming deadline.  Nervous Markets.  And then, from the miasma of gridlock, rises our President.  calling upon those unruly congressional children to quit squabbling,  stop kicking the can down the road and get serious about debt.  This from the man who:* ignored the debt problem for two years by kicking the can to a commision. *Promptly ignored the Commision's 2010 report.  *delivered a state of the union address that didn't even mention the word 'debt' until 35 minutes in.   *Delivered in February a budget so embarrassing--it actually increased the deficit--that the democratic-controled senate rejected it 97-0.  *Took a mulligan with his April 13 debt-plan speech.   Asked in Congress how this new "budjet framework" would effect the actual federal budget, the federal budget office Directer, Doug Elmendorf replied with a devastating " we don't estimate speeches."  You can't assign numbers to air.   President Obama assailed the lesser mortals who inhabit Congress for not having seriously dealt with a problem he had not dealt with at all, then scolded Congress for being less responsable then his own children.  They apparently get their homework done on time.  My compliments.  But the Republican house did do its homework.  It's called a budget.  it passed the house on April 15th.  The democratic Senate has produced no budget.  Not just this year, but two years running.  As for the schoolmaster-in-Chief, he produced two 2012 budget facsimiles: the first (February) was a farce and the second (April) was empty, dismissed by the CBO as nothing but wordsuntethered to real numbers.  Obama has run disastrous annual deficits of around $1.5 trillion while insisting for months on a "clean" debt-cealing increase, i;e with no budget cuts at all.  yet suddenly he now rises to champion majorlong-term debt reduction, scorning any suggestions of a short-term debt-limiting deal as can-kicking.  The flip-flop is transparently political.  A short-term deal means another debt-cealing fight before election day, a date that would put Obama on the defensive and distract from the medicare campaign to which the Democrats are clinging to save them in 2012.   A clever strategy it is:  Do nothing (see above) invite the republicans to propose real debt reduction first; and when they do--voting for the Ryan budget and it's now infamous and courageous Medicare reform--demagogue them to death.  And then up the anteby demanding republican agreement to tax increases.  So: first you get the GOP to seize the left's third rail by daring to lay a finger on entitlements.  then you demand the GOP seize the right's third railby violating it's no tax pledge.  A full spectrum electrocution.  Brilliant.  And what have been Obama's own debt-reduction ideas?   In last weeks news conference, he railed against the tax break for corporate jet owners--six times.  I did the math, if you collect that tax for the next 5000 years --that is not a typo--it would equal the debt Obama racked up last year alone.  To put it another way, if we had levided that tax at the time of John The Baptist and collected it every year since--first in shekels, then in dollars--we would have 500 years to go before we could off-set HALF the debt addedby Obama last year alone.  Obama's other favorite debt-reduction refrain is canceling an oil-company tax break.  Well, if you collected that oil tax and the corporet jet tax for the next fifty years-- you will not have off-set Obama's deficit spending for February, 2011!  
  After his Thursday meeting with bipartisan Congressional leadership,Obama adopted yet another perssona: Cynic-in-chief became-compromiser-in-chief.  Highly placed leaks are portraying him heroricly prepared to offer Social Security and Medicare cuts.
   We shall see.  It's no mystery what is needed.  First, entitlement reform that changes the inflation measure, introduces means testing, then syncs the (lower) Medicare eligibilityage with Social Securities and indexes them both longevity.  And second, realtax reform, both corporate and individual, that eliminates myriad loopholes in return for lower tax rates for evertone.
    That's real debt reduction,  Yet even now. we don't know where the president stands on any of this.  Until we do I'll follow the Elemendorf Rule: We don't estimate leaks.  Let's see if Obama can suspend his 2012 electioneering long enough to keep the economy from going over the debt cliff."

Folks,  elsewhere on this site there is a link titled "Cloward/Piven Strategy".  Shoud this not be called "economic Terrorism"?  Duncan