The Rant Institute

There are people who worry that "climate change" is really just an attempt by Democrats to charge higher taxes and expand government on the one hand, and supported by scientists who are chiefly concerned with winning ever bigger research grants on the other. The possibility that climate change is real, that and humanity could be facing catastrophe if we don't do something about it, seems less important to them.  Of course, as 2008 demonstrated, this complaint is just as applicable to our financial markets. After all, the financial markets were supported by Republicans (and Democrats) who sought to reduce regulations on the one hand, and like those greedy scientists, those financial experts wanted to cover their losses with bail outs. In the 1950s, cigarette companies did use scientists to call for more research, only they had them call for more research because, dating back to the 1920s, the research that had already been done proved that cigarettes caused cancer. ...

I recently watched Robert Redford's new movie, "Truth." I liked it. But then again, I like most anything with Cate Blanchett in it.Yet some people did not, and for different reasons.Some thought the content was inaccurate or even deceptive, while others just disliked the way the movie was written or directed; or both.  The film is about the 60 Minute report done by Dan Rather in 2004 that claimed then President and presidential candidate, George W. Bush, was lying about his military service in the National Guard and his desire to fight in Vietnam. At the center of the film are two competing perspectives, which are framed by the film overall as a contest between determining which one of those perspectives is more important. For Mary Mapes, the producer of 60 minutes at the time, the view that was the most important was whether Bush, in fact, lied. (And if he did, and since Mapes had been working on this same report prior to the 2000 election, before Bush had "won...

  I read the book The Big Short , a few years back, by Michael Lewis. It explains why, as the money manager known for shorting securitized subprime home mortgages , Steve Eisman, put it in Aug 2008, "If the entire US financial system seems like a circular Ponzi scheme, that's because it is."   In other words, when CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lord Blankfein, says “the system is extremely complex,” he means if he explains how it works, people would realize the whole thing was set up by guys like Bernie Madoff. To understand how our financial systems actually work - and indeed continue to work even today - I highly recommend reading the last chapter of Lewis's book, Chapter 10, and especially the Epilogue. One of the main characters in the book is Michael Burry, a trader who saw the approaching collapse long before anyone else, and who was scorned by others for his having such foresight. In an interview about the movie based on the book Burry warns that “another...

I do not think a belief in something like Christianity is necessarily intrinsically evil - although I am willing to consider, as Nietzsche did, that it might be. A belief is simply an interpretation of reality, after all, but it is not “real." Or, that is to say, it is only as "real" as we choose to make it. The problem comes when we start wanting others to accept that our beliefs are "real" and "true" while theirs are not.  Generally, a belief can be good, bad, or neutral; but sometimes it is hard to tell the difference, and sometimes even a "good belief" can be believed in so strongly it actually becomes a "bad belief." And one of the ways this happens is when that "good" belief is held so strongly that it can be used to cover up any number of evils.  For example, even if the Christian "belief" was proven to be perfectly true and intrinsically "good," it was still people's blind devoti...

If you are like me, and you watch all of the documentaries and movies on this list, you will never see the world the same way again. Instead, you'll begin to see the very matrix we are born into, and even get a glimpse of who created it, how, and why. To peek behind this curtain is to see the common thread of power, money, lies, and control, that all work together like a well oiled machine - much of it designed as war for profit - that runs virtually everything.  As explained by Smedley Darlington Butler, the United States Marine Corps major general, which was the highest rank authorized at that time and who was, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history: "War is a racket," and  "is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious" means of making money humanity has ever come up with. "It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the l...