U.S. National Debt - 1776 to 2015 - The How & Why

Milton Friedman, PhD Economist, Nobel Laurette (1912-2006)Our government spends, and spends, and spends, all of which is spent by borrowed money, created out of thin air, printed by the banks. All this debt is passed on to us, the people by way of our taxes, which do not even begin to pay the interest upon our national debt. This is all done by an unelected body of faceless bankers and investors that privately run the United States bureaucracy with no oversight and with impunity. 

Ever thought about why the Federal Reserve shouldn't be eliminated? 

Before you answer the question, understand the historical facts.

After researching the background facts involving the people within each of these historical events, parallel issues surfaced that evolved along with the chronology to explain why things happened when they did besides providing dry classroom rote answers for multiple question or true-false tests.  It is a fascinating glimpse into past events that deeply affect us right now and going into the future allow understanding a clearer picture of our journey toward a 2015 fiscal cliff with even higher taxes. Let’s start around the beginning of the United States in 1776.

In 1755, Alexander Hamilton was born to Rachael Fawcette Levine, named Alexander Levine, of Jewish lineage, in St. Croix, the West Indies. After changing his name from Levine to Hamilton and his geographical situs to the United States, on December 14, 1780 he married Elizabeth Schuyler and into the Rothschild family—the banking scions then and now.

In 1791, Alexander Hamilton had successfully convinced George Washington to sign a Bill for a twenty year charter for the First National Bank.  Over 70 percent of the central bank was owned by foreigners, and notes that Britain was the primary source of capital for the U.S during this era. Given that the U.S. relied on British capital, and British banks were dominated by the Rothschilds, it's safe to say the family had a substantial stake in the First National Bank.

In 1811, when United States Congress was voting over renewing the twenty year charter of First National Bank, it failed in a very close vote. Nathan Rothschilds issued a blistering ultimatum that either the charter is approved or the United States will enter War of 1812 with disastrous results. So, he then 'instructed' the British to “Teach these impudent Americans a lesson. Bring them back to Colonial status.”  Since the United States needed to get bank financing to fight in the war, it caused the debt to go up again. In that same year, in 1812, the Rothschilds supposedly legitimized their U.S. banking interests using Moses Taylor, another Rothschild agent, who founded the National City Bank of New York, as an extension of the Rothschild banking conglomerate. National City Bank would later become Citibank.

At the wars end, total public debt increased from $45.2 million on January 1, 1812, to $119.2 million as of September 30, 1815. 

In 1816, desperate to cover the debt, President James Madison authorized the creation of the Second National Bank of the United States. 

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the Rothschild brothers conducted important transactions on behalf of the governments of England, France, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Naples, Portugal, Brazil, various German states and smaller countries. They were the personal bankers of many of the crowned heads of Europe. They made large investments, through agents, in markets as distant as the United States, India, Cuba and Australia.

In 1819, the Panic of 1819 was the first major peacetime financial crisis in the United States followed by a general collapse of the American economy persisting through 1821. The fueled by the unrestrained issue of paper money from banks and business concerns. The Second Federal Bank itself was deeply enmeshed in these inflationary practice.

In 1910, the Federal Reserve Plan in U.S. banking and currency laws had been formulated in a secret meeting on Jekyll Island off the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia. Senator Nelson Aldrich, R - RI, and other well connected financiers attended it to essentially gave full control of this financial system to private bankers.  Woodrow Wilson, a Progressive Democrat and socialist, later became President (1913 -21), actively supported this legislation.

In 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, which gave its power to coin our nations money to a group of bankers. The record shows that there were no Democrats voting "Nay" in the Senate and only two in the House. Although the President nominates the Chairman of the FED, the banks themselves are not beholden to Congress, they have never been audited.

In 1929, Bankers by their own admission were responsible for the Stock Market Crash which led to the Great Depression.

One of the heads of these banking dynasties which control the Federal Reserve Bank was Mayer Amschel Rothschild (23 February 1744 – 19 September 1812) who was a German banker. He was the founder of the Rothschild family international banking dynasty that became the most successful business family in history and is ranked number seven in the world. Rothschild once said, “Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes it’s laws.”

These bankers knew that if they controlled a nation's money supply, they controlled the nation. H. L. Birum Sr. once said, “The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they “create” the money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their “Federal Reserve Notes” and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc.”

FACTOID: As long as our nations currency was tied to gold, the FED could only print as much money as we had in gold to back it up. If you look over the course of our nation’s history, there were few periods of sustained inflation. These usually followed periods of war, but our country returned to normal after a short time afterwards.

In 1933, The U.S. money supply expanded and increased when FDR took us off the gold standard that gave the FED the green light to print as much money as they wish. A Democrat majority in both chambers of Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. It also gave Congress the ability to ask for unlimited amounts of money to fund projects, as they could borrow now, pay later with no regards as to how much gold there was to back up their spending.

Since then inflation has been on the rise, the price of gold has quadrupled, and the buying power of the dollar has steadily diminished.

Economics 101 Lesson: The monetary principle of "the Velocity of Money" is a simple concept, yet is an extremely convoluted and complicated process in practice. Economists call it “velocity,” or how quickly money cycles through the economy measured by the average frequency with which a unit of money is spent in a specific period of time and is often calculated as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) divided by the money supply - stay with me, it should be clearer after you see the example below.

So, for example, in a very small economy, a farmer and a mechanic, with just $50 between them, buy new goods and services from each other in just three transactions over the course of a year

• Farmer spends $50 on tractor repair from mechanic.
• Mechanic buys $40 of corn from farmer.
• Mechanic spends $10 on barn cats from farmer.

So, then $100 changed hands in the course of a year, even though there is only $50 in this little economy. That $100 level is possible because each dollar was spent on new goods and services an average of twice a year, which is to say that the "Velocity of Money" was 2/Yr.

Therefore, the "Velocity of Money" explains why printing money can lead to a virtual flood of currency in the marketplace to devalue the worth of the dollar. It spurs inflation that attacks everyone's pocketbooks with higher cost since it takes more bills to pay for goods and services - Congratulations, you just passed a Economics 101 test.  LOL!

Alan GreenspanIn 1987, Alan Greenspan stepped in as the Fed Chairman, 1987-2006, and had this to say about the gold standard, “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation." … "This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”

During Greenspan's tenure, however, deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions was championed by him as he worked voraciously for the banking interest to further reduce and eliminate government safeguards to banking rules devastating to the stability of markets according to him. His plans for banks self-policing themselves with billions of profits at stake, in retrospect, decidedly set up financial markets for future turmoil which Greenspan could have helped to avoid catastrophe for the taxpayers, but then again he is just another banker too.  

Fed Chairman Ben BernankeIn 2006, Alan Greenspan then stepped down as the new Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Ben Bernanke took office. Subsequently, Bernanke, as the Fed Chairman, he was instrumental in the infamous Fed Reserve taxpayer loans to U.S. banks for bail outs during the 2008 Wall Street financial crisis due to their real estate derivative market transactions. 

In 2008, George W. Bush signed off on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, the US Treasury which invested hundreds of billions of funds into financial institutions. Meanwhile, only $8.6bn were directed at the "troubled assets" of distressed homeowners, and some funds were abused; TARP's legacy was disturbing because it had nothing to do with indemnifying taxpayer losses instead was for bailing out financial institutions losses. 

This was another classic bureaucratic case of the Fed Reserve Bank bailing out the Washington politicians on both sides with taxpayer funds in the name of "horrible financial ruination for the country." They just don't say it's really their asses they saved for financial investment party donors, not we the people. Then again, the world banking market bought those derivatives too, which includes Europe, Greece, Egypt, Russia, et. al. who was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, IMF, who the United States funds the most as a member donor. Do you get the stark, dark picture here, you "stupid voter"? (A Gruber word)

"Derivatives" are the bundling of junk-rated, sub-prime, borrowers' house loans into investment packages. They are then sold to other financial institutions globally as viable, solid interest income generating loan instruments for bank asset portfolios. In turn, those portfolios can be sold again by banks to their customers for investments where more profit is "derived" from those real estate derivative packages.

The weak link here is when the under-qualified, sub-prime borrower defaults on their loans that they become worthless. That is why the push from President Clinton to sign in 1999 into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which further stripped down loan restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac federally guaranteed bank loans for risky borrowers was dubious from the start as it pushed unqualified buyers into houses they could ill-afford. However, it was a way to buy more votes with a huge segment of the U.S. population that is an influential voting block--minorities and low-income home buyers. The truth is that both the Clinton and later the Bush administration did nothing by further enforcing reduced lending standards to stop this housing bubble to burst.

In 2014, Janet Yellen succeeded Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve. Yellen, who was chairwoman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, was previously vice chairwoman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Her liberal policies continue on with more self-serving Fed Reserve Bank administration of our politicians and governmental decisions. 

The publication below began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily newspaper. The Jewish Daily Forward has had a long standing in the Jewish community in New York as an outlet of liberal policy analysis. It reports on various leaders, events and news items. It proudly declares Janet Yellen as the first woman to lead the Fed Reserve Bank since its inception a century ago. This article certainly is a testament to our country's diversity in leaders whether it's their sex, religion or political beliefs. 

It’s worth remembering that there is a concept in Jewish thought called chazakah: When something happens three times like Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen it can be considered permanent. Applied to the Federal Reserve, it would suggest an impossibly firm grasp on a degree of power the likes of which the Jewish people have never known--only time will tell.

Remember the Frank Sinatra Jr. Kidnapping?

"[On December 8, 1963], five decades ago, just days after the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a group of amateur criminals hoping to strike it rich engineered one of the most infamous kidnappings in American history: The kidnapping of Frank Sinatra jr."

At the time, I had lived in Westwood Hills, CA while growing up. It was an upscaleLife Magazine - August 23, 1963 area of Los Angeles where U.C.L.A. college is located and that shared with many of the nearby communities like Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills and Brentwood all the celebrities and entertainment figures of the day and still continues on today. I knew of Frank Sinatra Jr. in 1958 when I attended Emerson Jr. High, but he was a little older than me by about a year which put him in a higher grade level. I saw his dad, Frank Sinatra Sr., during a father-son night there too. 

I frequented a true neighborhood meeting place where neighbors met at the gas station and I ran into many notable people; after all, everyone needs gasoline. Roger Curtis and Max Ross were the Texaco station owners and had been running their filling station for over the past twenty years by then. 

In 1963, I, myself, was a college freshman with a vintage 1951 Chevy sedan that guzzled gas and with an always hungry gas tank. My class schedule was set on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I was racing to school for my first class at 8:00 am that morning. That day was on an early Wednesday morning for a fill-up during the middle of the week, which was thankfully not busy since it was not on Monday or Friday with the beginning or end of the week traffic. I pulled into the station at 7:15 am and saw two school buses parked at the side of the station next to the restroom doors as it was the only area large enough to accommodate parking them there. The local school bus drivers picked them up and left their own cars parked there until their shifts were over.

As usual Roger came out of his office to pump my gas and collect my cash. However, since I was in a rush, I told Roger to skip washing my windshield. Back then, service stations were just that when you pulled in for gasoline. They filled the gas tank, checked the oil, tires, battery and cleaned your windshields.

I left never seeing anything amiss around the service station while not knowing the suitcase with the $240,000 ransom was only thirty feet away from me stuck between those two parked buses that morning. That station also had been out in the open and would have been hard to hide any agents without being seen by any drive-by casual observer looking for any surveillance. This was way before any of today's tracking electronic devices. 

I laughed later about it when I found out from Rodger Curtis about the F.B.I. staking out the suitcase of ransom stash and wondered if I had used the station restroom that morning I would have walked into the F.B.I. agents hiding in a toilet stall peering out the bathroom door transom window. Or would I have noticed the suitcase and walked over to pick it up? I guess I would be just getting out of prison about now. LOL! If you are too young to remember the Sinatra kidnapping ransom or even who Frank Sinatra, the singer, was read the F.B.I. write-up on what had transpired below.   

The F.B.I. Report

"For several weeks, two 23-year-old former [University] high school classmates from Los Angeles, Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler had been following a 19-year-old singer from city to city, waiting to make their move. Their target: none other than Frank Sinatra, Jr., son of one of the most famous singers in the world, “Old Blue Eyes” himself."

"Their plan was bold but simple…snatch the young Sinatra and demand a hefty ransom from his wealthy father. The pair decided to strike on the evening of December 8, 1963. Sinatra, Jr., just beginning his career in music, was performing at Harrah’s Club Lodge in Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada. Around 9 p.m. he was resting in his dressing room with a friend when Keenan knocked on the door, pretending to be delivering a package. Keenan and Amsler entered, tied up Sinatra’s friend with tape, and blindfolded their victim. They took him out a side door to their waiting car."

Barry KeenanJoe Amsler

"The singer’s friend quickly freed himself and notified authorities. Roadblocks were set up, and the kidnappers were actually stopped by police...but they bluffed their way through and drove on to their hideout in a suburb of Los Angeles. By 9:40, the FBI office in Reno was brought in on the case. Agents met with young Sinatra’s father in Reno and his mother in Bel Air, California. The motive was presumed to be money. The FBI recommended that Sinatra wait for a ransom demand, pay it, and then allow the Bureau to track the money and find the kidnappers."

"The following evening, Keenan called a third conspirator, John Irwin, who was to be theJohn Irwin ransom contact. Irwin called the elder Sinatra and told him to await the kidnappers’ instructions. On December 10, he passed along the demand for $240,000 in ransom. Sinatra, Sr. gathered the money and gave it to the FBI, which photographed it all and made the drop per Keenan’s instructions between two school buses [at the Curtis & Ross Texaco gasoline station on Sepulveda Blvd, Westwood Hills, California] during the early morning hours of December 11, 1963."

"While Keenan and Amsler picked up the money, Irwin had gotten nervous and decided to free the victim [on the Mulhulland Drive overpass of the San Diego Freeway, Interstate 405]. Sinatra, Jr. was found in Bel Air after walking a few miles and alerting a security guard. To avoid the press, he was put in the trunk of the guard’s patrol car and taken to his mother Nancy’s home."

"Young Sinatra described what he knew to FBI agents, but he had barely seen two of the kidnappers and only heard the voice of the third conspirator. Still, the Bureau tracked the clues back to the house where Sinatra had been held in Canoga Park and gathered even more evidence there."

"Meanwhile, with the FBI’s progress being recounted in the press, the criminals felt the noose tightening. Irwin broke first, spilling the beans to his brother, who called the FBI office in San Diego. Hours later, Keenan and Amsler were captured, and nearly all of the ransom was recovered."

"Although the defense tried to argue that Frank Sinatra, Jr. had engineered the kidnapping as a publicity stunt, the FBI had strong evidence to the contrary. The clincher was a confession letter written earlier by Keenan and left in a safe-deposit box. In the end, Keenan, Amsler, and Irwin were all convicted."

The final outcome since that F.B.I. report: The case had many twists and turns including connections to singers Jan and Dean. Jan Berry was in the same car club, The Barons in West Los Angeles, at University High School with Keenan and Amsler. [my old high school alma mater] Dean Torrance was friends with Keenan who Dean loaned money in order to finance the kidnapping scheme and later in the trial perjured that he did not know of the deal and later bragged he did. No complicity or perjury charges were ever filed.

There were more inconsistencies proven too about questionable publicity gains furthering the career of young Sinatra's public persona in the State's evidence on appeal in the case which fell apart even further resulting in the defendants Joe Amsler and John Irwin who ended up serving a tiny fraction of their original sentences.

Barry Keenan, the alleged drug-addled mastermind, who served his reduced sentence of four years regained his right mind to became a millionaire real estate developer. All men were released as full sentences served, no probation.

2008 GWB vs. 2015 BHO Impeachment Actions

It will not be surprising that there will not be a peep or whisper from any mainstream media liberals that President Obama has ever committed any impeachable offenses, much less than ever going forward with a loud brouhaha about any signed articles of impeachment against Obama like what was passed in the House against President George W. Bush. The so-called charges detailed in the G.W. Bush impeachment resolution had indicated an unprecedented abuse of his executive power to sell the war in Iraq to the American people. So after all of the screaming in the end-game scenario for G.W. Bush as a shameless lame duck President, he left public office rendering those impeachment efforts moot. The public spectacles, however, were created.

President B.H. Obama also leaves as lame duck President, but with no such taint of impeachment resolutions about his Presidential Order on immigration or loud media uproar about his shamelessness since the liberal congress will do nothing and the silent press were complicit with President Obama. The public spectacular lies, however, will be created. 

Background Info: Jonathan Turley in 2007 was a frequent on-air legal analyst contributor to the uber-liberal Keith Oberman host on his 'Countdown' show on the left-wing Air-America channel. Both the 'Countdown' show which is now defunct and the Air-America channel struggled due to low viewer ratings which went off the air in January 2010. 

Bio: Professor Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. He has written over three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals at Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, University of Chicago, and other schools.

Jonathan Turley has historically picked upon the liberal vanguards of societal injustice, progressive political causes and ideas to champion. However, many of his personal views align with the ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, which further enable political debate on whether those views really value our core basic Constitutional principles or open them up to Supreme Court Judicial review to revise the Constitutional Laws as written. It is this revisionist interpretation that is undermining our Republic today while turning over power to the Federal government instead of the people.

An interesting and informative 'rear-view mirror' glance back to the Jonathan Turley blog site in an October 2007 visitor question has an eye-opening response from Jonathan Turley.

________________

Blog Site Question: 

On 1, October 16, 2007 at 10:19 pm             James B. Roth

Dear Mr. Turley,

PLEASE help me!!

Knowing the Constitution and Bill of Rights as well as you do, would you say that Bush and/or Cheney have violated the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights enough to be impeached?

My congressman, Robert Wexler, (D-FL U.S. Rep.) says no. If he is mistaken, I would like to give him a list of impeachable offenses if I could. Please help me to compile such a list.

Respectfully,
JBR

Blog Site Reponse:

on 1, October 17, 2007 at 11:55 pm                  

Dear Mr. Roth,

In my view, President Bush clearly committed an impeachable offense in ordering the domestic surveillance program which is a federal crime.

The Democrats, however, allowed the law to be extended in one of the most bizarre decisions in decades. The White House immediately claimed that the move established its legality. There are a variety of alleged violations of law but little serious effort in Congress to force disclosure of the information. Years ago, Democratic leadership promised not to allow impeachment investigations let alone proceedings.

Jonathan Turley

_____________

Ex Post Facto Info: 

On June 10, 2008 U.S. Rep. Wexler co-sponsored and signed Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment for George W. Bush. He referred to the Congressional Oath of Office saying it was the duty of Congress to act, and stated: "President Bush deliberately created a massive propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq to the American people and the charges detailed in this impeachment resolution indicate an unprecedented abuse of executive power."

The House voted 251 to 166 to refer the impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee on July 25, 2008, where no further action was taken on it. Bush's presidency ended on January 20, 2009, with the completion of his second term in office, rendering impeachment efforts moot.  

Where did the Ebola "Quarantine" come from?

Did you know the 40-Day period that gave "Quarantine" its name may have had Biblical sources?

"The Ebola scare is thrusting some epidemiological lingo into the headlines. Take “quarantine,” the period during which a person is isolated to prevent the spread of an infectious disease.

NBC chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman is all too familiar with the word, having been widely criticized for violating a 21-day quarantine after a cameraman hired to work with her team contracted the Ebola virus. (The voluntary quarantine was changed to a mandatory one after Dr. Snyderman was reportedly spotted waiting for a takeout order at a restaurant near her home in Princeton, N.J.)

The original quarantine, dating back to the medieval era, actually lasted 40 days, and that history is embedded in the word itself. It comes to English from Old Italian “quarantina,” originally from “quadraginta,” the Latin word for the number 40.

In the 14th century, as the bubonic plague ravaged Europe, cities took extreme measures to limit the epidemic. The Venetian colony of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik in Croatia) passed a law in 1377 establishing a 30-day isolation period, or “trentino,” for travelers from plague-ridden areas. But the length of time soon extended to 40 days as similar laws were passed in Italian port towns like Venice, Pisa and Genoa.

The 1665 "Plague Doctors" had black hats, coats and boots while wearing gloves and beaks filled with herbs and spices to ward off bad spirits as they carried wood sticks to beat away infected patients. [They eerily look a lot like our 2014 Doctors in protective suits.]

Historians are unsure why 40 days became the standard European length for a quarantine, giving it its name. While the rationale was tied to observations for how long it took for infected people to die from the plague, it may have had more religious underpinnings.

Forty-day periods show up throughout the Old and New Testaments: from the length of the Great Flood, to Moses’ stay on Mount Sinai, to the time that Jesus spent fasting in the desert. The latter is commemorated in the 40 days of Lent, and the same time period has been used for other expressions of penance and asceticism.

In fact, the first known appearance of “quarantine” in English (from around 1470, according to the Oxford English Dictionary) refers to the place where Jesus is believed to have fasted. In the 16th century, it could mean the 40 days in which a widow was allowed to reside in her late husband’s house.

The use of “quarantine” for infectious diseases made it into English parlance by the time of the Great Plague of London in 1665. By the end of that London plague, over 100K died, 20% of London's population. In 2014, African nations have many "Voo-Doo" Witch Doctors practicing 17th century cures in defiance to modern scientific medicine which are tragically producing mortality outcomes like the 1665 Plague Doctors. Did you know that many African families are now paying medical workers to leave their dead relative's ebola-ridden body alone? So why? It's so that no one knows they died from ebola when health workers remove sealed shrouded corpses and the family is publicly shunned. Will that spread deadly ebola microorganisms even further too?

View the 4 minute video below on the 1665 Black Plague to compare it to the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

Time: 03:59

More recently, the term has come to refer to other kinds of isolation, such as the political isolation of a country by cutting off trade. That is how it was used in the run-up to World War II when Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to punish the Axis powers, and then again by John F. Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

These days, a “quarantine” can also mean the isolation of computer data to keep it virus-free. But at least until the Ebola outbreak is contained, the old-fashioned medical meaning of the word is the one that will prevail." 

Obama's Fickle Finger of Fate

Isn't history more fun when you know something about it? 

The History of the Middle Finger:    Well, now......here's something you never knew before, and now you can send it on to your friends in the hope that they, too, will feel edified. 

In Latin, the middle finger was the digitus impudicus, meaning the "shameless, indecent or offensive finger." In the 1st century AD, Persius  the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty of Danaans, was the first of the heroes of Greek mythology who had superstitious female relatives concoct a charm with the "infamous finger" (digitus infamis).

The Greek philosopher Diogenes, 420 BC, is said to have stuck out his middle finger and exclaimed "This, for you, is the demagogue of the Athenians."

Baseball pitcher Old Hoss Radbourn giving the finger to cameraman, 1886. (Back row, far left). First known photo.

Linguist Jesse Sheidlower traces the gesture's development in the United States to the 1890s. According to anthropologist Desmond Morris, the gesture probably came to the United States via Italian immigrants. The first documented appearance of the finger in the United States was in 1886 when Old Hoss Radbourn, a baseball pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters, was photographed giving it to a member of the rival New York Giants.

True Story:  Former Obama W.H. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago Mayor, as a teen he cut off his finger in a meat slicer.

You could now say that Rahm could not get it up; however, his famously foul-mouth "F" words never ceased during any of his White House meetings. So, what he couldn't "sign" he could "say" - LOL!​

...And yew thought yew knew every "plucking" thing! 

His Fickle Finger of Fate: And some politicians don't know anything about anything when they show what they are thinking about you without thinking! - Saay whaat??