Comments

Episode-564- Listener Feedback 12-06-10 — 17 Comments

  1. Earlier this year I had a situation like this. Leaving work on a Friday afternoon, I stopped to get something to eat and my card was rejected. When I tried the ATM, it was rejected again. I called my bank and they told me that there were suspicious transactions on my account.

    After going over some of the items on my account, we found that there were some charges that I hadn’t authorized. So the bank froze my debit card and told me they would send me a new one. The problem, however, was that I had no cash in my wallet and because the bank was closed for the day, I couldn’t cash a check (my account was still open, just the debit card had been shut down).

    Fortunately, I had followed the advice that you had given me earlier in the year about having cash on hand. I had three hundred dollars tucked away in a fire box at home and so was able to survive through the weekend without needing to get to my account. Since that incident I’ve upgraded my emergency cash fund to a thousand dollars and try to always keep a little more cash in my wallet.

    Obviously my situation is not nearly as bad as what happened in Australia, but it was an amazing feeling when I realized that, had I not become a prepper at the beginning of the year, I would have been screwed for that weekend.

  2. I have to agree with you, your son is doing well. If he hasn’t already, I suggest he look on Craig’s List for furniture. He can stretch his money much further. Another option that stretched his storage capacity is Home Reserve Furniture. This is couch’s/chairs that you order online and assemble yourself. They have the added advantage of having built in storage.

  3. Jack,
    Great show. Really glad to hear about your son’s success. I think it’s very fulfilling to see our children secede in different endeavors.

  4. Hey Jack, love the show. It’s changed my life. But I have to disagree with you on something from today’s show. I think it’s naive to think that every nation does not spy on every other nation, friend or foe. That’s been standard state craft since the beginning of time and will be until the end of time. I’m a student WWII history. Even durning the war we spied on England and they spied on us. It sounds silly to ask, but I wonder how many Canadians are spying on the US right now.

  5. Hi Jack;
    I also applaud your sons success. I see I’m not the first to suggest a visit to Craigslist. You can often find people selling gently used furniture for great prices simply because they want something new. Just because you are thrifty doesn’t mean you can’t profit from those people who aren’t.
    I have young adult children that I’m trying to convince not to make the mistakes with credit I did when I was their age. I’m hoping I can keep them in the habit of paying cash for what they need. Now if I can just get them to spend their cash wisely, like not buying a $90 NFL jersey instead of fixing their car…

  6. On folks recommending Craig’s List, go to meet the party in a public place and go armed. My Bro in Law the cop says using CL to set up robberies has become a cottage industry, even with meetings in parking lots, etc.

    It is a good resource but use caution and he said it is being done on both ends, fake buyers and fake sellers.

  7. @Warren Puckett So it okay to spy on nations with zero potential for threat like Iceland? It is okay to manipulate them and try to keep them under world bank control? It is okay to spy on Greenland? Yes Greenland.

    If you think so you are entitled to your opinion, I don’t think we have any business spying on nations that have no ability to do us harm and no interest in doing so. The Brits well I can see some mutual snooping there, we are both large powerful nations.

    But Iceland? Really?

    More if you read the cables it isn’t so much the spying but the intent, the information sought and the attempt to leverage it.

    It is one thing to keep an eye on your friends and make sure they are not dealing from the bottom of the deck, but it is another to cheat them hand after hand just because you are bigger and stronger then they are.

    Note that none of the data released is how to build a bomb or where our operatives are working. It is all things our government has done, much they claim to have never done.

    Like I said I can see the need for some secrecy but now that the rabbit is out of the bag should we not hold the government accountable for illegal and immoral activity now that we have proof in black and white?

    There is a lot more to the leaks then spying on friends. The stuff on the Fed alone is downright criminal.

    Remember how mad people were about TARP (700 billion) what about the Fed loaning out TRILLONS of dollars of OUR MONEY in the form of OUR DEBT and hiding all of it, denying it was going on, etc.

  8. Jack,
    I really enjoyed the show.
    Please tell your son that I am so happy for him.
    Starting out like he is doing gives him such a head start in life’s race.
    Ben

  9. Jack, et al. On “spying”. I am in training now to be a military attache. I assure you, no matter what nation or entity (U.N.) you are assigned to, every single diplomatic passport holder working in an Embassy is a “spy” and is known to be so. Ill give you an example from my line of work specifically. Military members at embassies come in two flavors. The Attache is there to liason with the host nation military, for example coordinating overflight permission for AF 1 and other mil flights. They also gather intelligence on the capabilities of the host nation. The other flavor is the guys who “Advise and Assist”. These are guys we loan to the host nation military to help in training their military, or to train them to use new equipment we have managed to sell them. In the course of this work they, naturally, develop intelligence on the host nations military.

    All departments represented in an Embassy do this with their host nation counterparts. And, in turn, they do it to us.

    On a side note, the other departements hate the military in an embassy, because the DOD, and the Army in particular, give their embassy personnel better training, language training, and bigger budgets, than any other agency does. So, DOD personnel can speak the local language, have the money to get out and do first hand intelligence gathering, instead of sitting in the embassy and reading the English language version of local papers like most departments do.

    Technically, “spies” are those people who are either us in disguise i.e. not travelling on a diplo passport, or those we pay, who provide targeted intelligence we dont want to be seen gathering for political reasons. Yes, we do it to EVERYBODY because we cant afford to trust anyone and they have never trusted us.

    I hate to sound so cynical, but its real-politic and has been since well before Machiavelli. Its also a hell of a lot of fun to be in the Great Game. And yea, from my perspective, it can be very counterproductive at times.

  10. Jack I really need to take exception with one thing in todays show. Super Size Me is a total hack of a movie. It’s filled with bogus info. Please watch Fat Head it rebuts all the crap that was pumped out in Super Size Me. Available That being said I do agree that the fast food industry does use fillers, GMO, and way to many chemicals.

    Beef, butter, and trans fats are not the problem with american diet.

  11. Jack i think what you have said before using New Jersey as reference tricking out your shotgun and making it look tactical just may get you in trouble.Just think what that judge would have done to him for that.

  12. Your son is fantastic. I don’t know anyone his age, (my age 42) that would think about anything but paying this much down and this much a month. Tell him good job from a guy that had to learn from the school of hard knocks. Good job on raising him right.

  13. Congratulations to your son.

    I don’t agree with compulsory immunizations for healthcare workers but I understand the rationale. Contrary to your suggestion that patients be immunized, some cannot for health reasons. The majority of people undergoing chemotherapy, people with immunodeficiency syndromes (inherited or aquired, like HIV) as well as some people receiving treatment for autoimmune problems cannot be vaccinated with the flu-vax. This is a live attenuated vaccine that risks causing problems if their immune system is not able to contain it. This population group also pose a big burden on healthcare providers (they are in and out of hospital a lot) and so the recommendation that healthcare workers at risk of contact with them (EMTs, etc) be vaccinated exists. Needlesstosay, transmission of the flu from medical staff to patient could be fatal in this patient group.

    Like many healthcare dilemmas, this pits a persons rights with their professional obligations to “do no harm”.

  14. Coming out of the supply closet-

    I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life as a practicing Pagan. I’ve been called a Devil Worshipper. I’ve been told that I’m going to Hell. I’ve even had good friends refuse to talk to me. But, I’m out of the “broom closet,” as other Pagans put it. Being honest with myself and other people has lifted my spirits and allowed me to be free.

    When people bring ignorant arguments to me, trying to change my mind about my religious choice, I always correct their inaccurate facts. “I don’t worship the Devil. The Devil is part of Christian beliefs, and I’m not a Christian.”

    I have had friends for most of my life whom are homosexual. At one point or another, they all come out of the closet. Yes, it makes their lives harder in the short term. They get called names, they lose friends and family members. But, in the long term, they become happier people. Why? Because they aren’t afraid anymore. They don’t have to keep secrets. Eventually friends and family come back. Friends that leave, aren’t friends. Family will come back because they love you, and you’re still the same person you were before coming out.

    So preppers/ survivalist/ freedom-lovers, come out of the supply closet. Show your neighbor that you aren’t a threat to their safety. If anything, you help them be more safe. Don’t let media outlets label you because of some other nut job. Be a positive example, and show others the way.

    You don’t have to tell people how many guns you have, or how much food you have stored. But, you can teach others how to grow a garden, how to fish, how to set up solar panels.

    “Be the change you want to see in the world.” -Ghandi

  15. People need to see what soldier Ethan McCord says, as a participant on the ground in Iraq in events that ended up released by Wikileaks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kelmEZe8whI&feature=player_embedded&has_verified=1

    Heroes are often the soldiers that tell their commander “hell no.” Haven’t heard if Oathkeepers has defended Wikileaks or not, but I would hope/imagine so.

    And you’re right about Amazon too, you can’t expect corporations to fight the state for you. Big ones *never* will. That’s why the government supports big ones.

  16. Concerning, as Jack puts it, “a lesson in being prepared, or the lack thereof”, I don’t know if anybody here heard about it but last week there were heavy snowfalls in some regions of France. And on Wednesday particularly “l’ile de France” was hit, meaning roughly Paris and its suburbs. The snowstorm lasted only a few hours, but of course the temperatures being around 0°C the snow remained on the ground.
    What happened then is so typical of the state of unpreparedness of us French people: some people stayed at their work place for the night and that was ok, but others were stranded between work and home and either spent the night in their car without food or water or left their car where it was and were rounded in sports halls or municipal buildings where they were given food and hot drinks and blankets because they had nothing.
    When it was over (it lasted only half a day and a night) everybody was outraged and started blaming everybody for what had happened! The media blamed the government and the administration, the government blamed the people in charge of weather forecast, etc… But for god’s sake, this is December! What do people expect? Spring weather?
    Unfortunately French people (especially city people) are completely, utterly, hopelessly unprepared for anything out of the ordinary…
    What happened on Wednesday is another reason for me to speed up my prepping.
    Thank you, Jack, for all the good ideas and everything, but most of all for infusing me with the awareness that things may happen…