Support Wounded Warrior Project, My Book Has Arrived!

Foreign cartoons.  They seem to get it better than our own New York Times!

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My book just arrived.  If you wish a copy please let me know.

Half the proceeds from the sale of my modestly priced book goes to The Wounded Warrior Project!

Dick Berkowitz, has written a booklet entitled:"A Conservative Capitalist Offers: Eleven Lessons and a Bonus Lesson for Raising America's Youth Born and Yet To Be Born."

By Dick Berkowitz - Non Expert

Dick wrote this booklet because he believes a strong country must rest on a solid family unit and that Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" has morphed into "A Confused, Dependent and Compromised Generation."

He  hopes this booklet will provide a guide to alter this trend.

You can now order a .pdf version from www.brokerberko.com/book that you can download and read on your computer, or print out if you want. Cost is $5.99

In several weeks the book will be available in soft cover format at a cost of $10.99. 

Booklet illustrations were by his oldest granddaughter, Emma Darvick, who lives and works in New York.

Testimonials:

Dick, I read your book this weekend.  I hardly know where to start.  You did an excellent job of putting into one short book a compendium of the virtues which only a relatively short time ago all Americans believed.  It’s a measure of how far we have fallen that many Americans, perhaps a majority of Americans, no longer believe in what we once considered truisms.  I think your father would have agreed with every word, but the party he supported no longer has such beliefs.

  

I would like to buy multiple copies of your booklet..

You did a great job.  I know your parents would have been proud and that your family today is proud.

Mike

You wrote a great book.  The brevity is one of its strong points and I know it was hard to include that in and still keep it brief.  Your father in haste once wrote an overly long letter to our client, then said in the last sentence, “I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

"Dick, I indeed marvel at how much wisdom you have been able to share with so few words.  Not too unlike the experience in reading the Bible. I feel that with each read of "A Conservative Capitalist Offers:…." one will gain additional knowledge and new insights…

Regards, Larry"

Dick , 
Your book is outstanding! Due to illness, I've been unable to read it in entirety until today .Your background is often very similar to mine (e.g. Halliburton's influence was very important in my life), and your thoughts reflect very closely the the teachings that I received from my parents and granddad. I will write a more detailed statement in the near future!
All the best,  Bob

Regarding your booklet, I have begun to read it and look forward to finishing it this weekend.  Congrats on getting it published and on the great reviews.  I know how much this booklet means to you and how important getting this message out to the public is.

P------

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Time for a little old fashioned,clever humor.  (See 1 below.)
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I have been engaged with a few people who have clout and access to the Romney people so I have been passing along thoughts about what Romney and Ryan should use in their debates. I just sent about four 'zingers' for Romney for Monday.

The purpose of our effort was based on our concern, as I noted in a previous memo, Romney and his advisers were flying at 40,000 feet when they needed to be closer to the ground where us common folk live.

I believe we have had some success but am not at liberty to go into details.

I still believe Romney wins and that Obama loses and deservedly so. Obama is finally being exposed, has a record which is difficult to defend and many foreign policy pigeons are coming home to roost.

I have been fortunate in my life in knowing some outstanding, self-made people who have been generous to me and continue to be so. They have enriched my life.
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I asked a dear, long standing friend and fellow memo reader for his thoughts regarding the
election. Here they are. (See 2 below.)
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What we have and could lose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7M-7LkvcVw
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Fiscal demons still out there and another  U.S debt downgrade still a strong possibility..  (See 3 below.)
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This one is really well done and very funny. We have 2 Bozo's running the Country hopefully only until Nov 6th. oOOP s ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUh6_koE7z8 ---

Dick
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FOR WHO REMEMBERS... Hollywood Squares: These great questions and answers are from the days when the Hollywood Squares game show responses were spontaneous, not scripted. Peter Marshall was the host asking the questions, of course.   Q. Paul, what is a good reason for pounding meat? A. Paul Lynde:   Loneliness!          (The audience laughed so long and so hard it took up almost 15 minutes of the show!) Q. Do female frogs croak? A. Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water long enough. Q. If you're going to make a parachute jump, at least how high should you be? A. Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it. Q. True or False, a pea can last as long as 5,000 years. A. George Gobel: Boy, it sure seems that way sometimes. Q. You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman? A.  Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake. Q. According to Cosmopolitan, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think that he is attractive, is it okay to come out and ask him if he's married? A. Rose Marie: No wait until morning. Q. Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older? A. Charley Weaver: My sense of decency. Q. In Hawaiian, does it take more than three words to say 'I Love You'? A. Vincent Price: No, you can say it with a pineapple and a twenty. Q. What are 'Do It,' 'I Can Help,' and 'I Can't Get Enough'? A. George Gobel: I don't know, but it's coming from the next apartment. Q. As you grow older, do you tend to gesture more or less with your hands while talking? A.  Rose Marie: You ask me one more growing old question Peter, and I'll give you a gesture you'll never forget.   Q. Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather? A. Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily. Q. Charley, you've just decided to grow strawberries. Are you going to get any during  the first year? A... Charley Weaver: Of course not, I'm too busy growing strawberries. Q. In bowling, what's a perfect score? A.  Rose Marie: Ralph, the pin boy. Q. It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps. One is politics, what is the other? A. Paul Lynde: Tape measures. Q. During a tornado, are you safer in the bedroom or in the closet? A. Rose Marie: Unfortunately Peter, I'm always safe in the bedroom. Q. Can boys join the Camp Fire Girls? A. Marty Allen: Only after lights out. Q. When you pat a dog on its head he will wag his tail. What will a goose do? A. Paul Lynde: Make him bark? Q. If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to? A. Paul Lynde: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark. Q. According to Ann Landers, is there anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people? A. Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army. Q. It is the most abused and neglected part of your body, what is it? A. Paul  Lynde: Mine may be abused, but it certainly isn't neglected.. Q. Back in the old days, when Great Grandpa put horseradish on his head, what was he  trying to do? A. George Gobel: Get it in his mouth. Q. Who stays pregnant for a longer period of time, your wife or your elephant? A.  Paul Lynde: Who told you about my elephant? Q. When a couple have a baby, who is responsible for its sex? A. Charley Weaver: I'll lend him the car, the rest is up to him Q. Jackie Gleason recently revealed that he firmly believes in them and has actually seen them on at least two occasions. What are  they? A.  Charley Weaver: His feet. Q. According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed? A. Paul Lynde: Point and laugh  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2)You asked for my take on the election.  Overall, I think it is positive that people are finally getting that "nagging voice" in the back of their heads that sort of tells them that things are wrong.  But let's face it -- people of our generation and younger did not study junior high school civics or the Constitution they way that people born in the 40s did.  And that kind of study was already being phased out in the 20s and 30s and 40s because of the work of Dewey.  So very few people really understand why it is important to have limited government.  Most people believe that if there is a problem, we should fix it.  They don't care what process we use to fix the problem.  And they don't care about the rights of others at all, much less the due process around property rights.   But process is important, and that leads to that nagging voice.  It is not based on fairness, but on the golden rule -- do I really think that I have the right to take other people's money to solve problems that I see?  Most people don't even acknowledge that question as legitimate.   So, as I said, I think it is positive that people are coming back to study that issue once more.  And maybe we've got a slim majority of the likely votes around the country.  But you and I know that we do not have a majority of the registered voters, and even less of a percentage of the adult population.  We are simply too far gone.  Can we come back?  Sure.  But it will take 60 years of good civics education in junior high school and a new reverence for the Constitution.  We are not a generation that knows how to be reverent for anything.   Coming down to earth, the election is really not an election of the overall population, but 50 state elections.  Obama is pretty likely to take 10 states with about 210 electoral college votes.  That means he only needs 60 more, which he can easily get from some combination of Pennsylvania, Ohio, maybe Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Minnesota, etc.  For Romney to win, he needs to pick up pretty much everything that is on the table right now, and be competitive in every state.  Ohio may be trending Romney, but he needs a lot of dollars on the ground to win.  Florida may be more easily for Romney, but the Florida Party was here a couple of weeks ago looking for 100 lawyers to be in Florida on election night.   And that's just Ohio and Florida.  Romney really needs a lot of dollars to run the ground game in Virginia and Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan and Minnesota.  He really needs to make Wisconsin competitive (a Republican governor, with a recently fought recall election, but still trending Obama!), and may need to defend Arizona.  The ground game looks very challenging.   It will come down to money and whether Romney is willing to put another $50MM in his campaign to offset the illegal foreign money that is flowing into Obama's campaign in donations of under $199 (probably Chinese, as with Clinton).  And it's probably too late.  Obama outraised Romney again in September, and while there are lots of people who want to help the campaign with time, the campaign seems to be very insular.  So I will probably volunteer some time in Florida.  Still, Republicans are pretty good at understanding how to govern with a light touch, but they are lousy at running the ground game.   It probably will all come down to voter fraud.  My guess is that it will be close enough in four or five states to bring litigation over absentee ballots, or provisional voting, or something like that.  I heard an official in Florida tell me that Florida had solved its voting problems.  That is wishful thinking.  We are in a country where we can't even pass a law requiring voter ID at the polls -- how are we going to get courts to enforce a law that requires a process around the signing of an absentee ballot?  Again, my guess -- but I think that the election will be won on absentee ballots.   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)Pimco: US Will Be Downgraded Again Amid Fiscal ‘Theater' The U.S.’s sovereign credit rating will be cut as “fiscal theater” plays out in the world’s biggest economy, according to Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond  fund. “The U.S. will get downgraded, it’s a question of when,” Scott Mather, Pimco’s head of global portfolio management, said at a briefing in Wellington, New Zealand. “It depends on what the end of the year looks like, but it could be fairly soon after that.” The Congressional Budget Office has warned the U.S. economy will fall into recession if $600 billion of government spending cuts and tax increases occur at the start of 2013. Financial markets are complacent about whether the White House and Congress will reach agreement on deferring the so-called fiscal drag on the economy until later next year, Mather said. In a “base case” of Barack Obama being re-elected and Congress becoming more Republican, there is a high likelihood an agreement “doesn’t happen in a nice way, and we have disruption in the marketplace,” he said. Policy makers probably will agree on cutbacks that would lower economic growth by about 1.5 percentage points next year, Mather said. They may roil markets by discussing scenarios that would lead to a 4.5 percentage-point fiscal drag, he said. Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. credit rating to AA+ from AAA on Aug. 5, 2011. Since that time, benchmark Treasury yields have dropped to record lows. CDS Dropping Credit-default swaps tied to U.S. debt, which typically fall as investors’ perceptions of creditworthiness rise and increase as they deteriorate, have dropped to 31.4 basis points from 55.4 basis points on the day of S&P’s downgrade and a record 100 in February 2009, according to data provider CMA. The firm is owned by McGraw-Hill Cos. and compiles prices quoted by dealers in the privately negotiated market. S&P last week cut Spain’s debt rating to BBB-, the lowest investment grade, and placed it on negative outlook. “Almost all sovereigns with poor debt dynamics are going to get downgraded, we’re just talking about the pace,” Mather said. Credit rating companies “have been slow in downgrading some sovereigns, but we think the pace probably picks up in the year ahead.” Pimco forecasts global growth of 1.75 percent in the year through September 2013, weighed down by a eurozone recession and a slowing pace of expansion in China. ‘Dismal Outlook’ “It’s a pretty dismal world growth outlook,” Mather said, adding that it will be difficult to return to former levels of growth in many of the world’s biggest economies because of the levels of debt, structural changes in the labor market and slower growth in the working age population. Those changes mean that a 2 percent expansion in the U.S. may in the future be seen as good growth, not the 3 percent that investors have been used to, he said. It is difficult to see China’s growth continuing at a 7 percent pace, considering demographic changes and the challenge of maintaining expansion as the economy moves to a domestic consumption model from one based on exports, he said. China’s economy probably expanded 7.4 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, slowing for a seventh quarter, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------