InvertebrateNation

Betsey Markey and Other Traitors

2010-10-31T18:20:00.000-07:00

Traitors. Yep. that's the word...

by TL Davis at Washington Reb

"It seems that all of the representatives who threw their weight behind the passage of Obamacare in the last few days are staring defeat square in the face. As one of the people who walked the halls of Congress on that week, trying desperately to communicate with my representative Betsey Markey to encourage her that my business would be wrecked by the economic uncertainty of the bill, I couldn’t be happier. Had I not pleaded with her staff time and time again to let me impart the pleas I had personally; had I not visited her office three times in two days; had I not intreated her to save the jobs of the four or five people I had left working for me, I might be kinder, but I can’t.

There is a difference between passing legislation and transforming a nation from one thing to another. I submit that when the representatives of the people gather and in contravention of public opinion seek to effectively destroy the nation as it exists and endeavor to replace it with something of another form, what else could it be called but treason? Where there was a moment when the impact and import of the legislation had not been known, it could be understandable that one might support a bill offered by one’s political party, but when that legislation and the impact of it to society is known and still supported, there is no understanding.

The people had come to understand the law as moving the nation from an ostensibly capitalistic republic with some democratic methods toward an openly socialistic nation and they rejected it. There could have been no mistake that the people were not ready to give up the nation as founded. There could have been no mistake that the answer to this transformation was a resounding NO.

With this knowledge the representatives had a decision to make: would they support the legislation and move the nation into open socialism, or would they oppose the legislation and retain the government as founded? That answer was given to us on March 25, 2010 and people like Betsey Markey decided to thwart the efforts of people like me and to thwart the opinions and demands of the American people to establish for themselves the mantle of transformer. Now, today, the rest of the story can be told. Despite their efforts to put us under the yoke, they themselves face the same unemployment they have caused to spread throughout the land with their improvident actions.

These few, who knew what their votes would mean, what it would do to the nation as constructed and to the people who expected honest representation, committed nothing short of treason. It was, in effect, a coup that failed and now the conspirators must suffer the penalty of those Valkyrie conspirators of the last century. I believe that the whole of the supporters of Obamacare should be removed from office and cast defenseless to the people. Instead, I and others, have allowed for the orderly dictates of our republic to do the work with less upheaval, but this is a limited-time offer and is largely dependent upon the actions of the newly minted representatives we will send in the places of the conspirators.

Long live the republic!"

And my comment: Great post. I’m linking it at my blog. I’m in Colorado too. We may rid ourselves of one Betsey Markey, but barring a stunning upset we’re about to get another for governor. I’m preparing my escape while it’s still legal to leave.

I DO remember what the law was, back before everyone EXCEPT the criminals was a criminal. The Founders tried. They gave us the law of the land, our Constitutional Republic.

Knowing that law could always be twisted and abused, they gave us free speech.

Knowing that speech wouldn’t always hold sway, they gave us the ballot box.

Knowing that voting didn’t work infallibly either, they gave us nullification.

Knowing that even nullification might fail, they gave us the Second Amendment, and informed us of our right and duty to alter or abolish OUR OWN government, should it come to abuse us.

JFK said “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” This must be exactly what they wanted, because they’ve toiled diligently to bring us here.

So be it. Every mind ruined in public school, every name on a list, every moment under camera surveillance, every checkpoint, every warrantless search, every e-mail intercepted, every phone call recorded, every gun registered, every lie told, every dollar printed, every effort taxed, every citizen beaten, framed or killed by a cop, every shred of ludicrous propaganda, every plane into a building, every body scanner, every asset seized – none of these indignities will suffice to repress the American spirit when it is deprived of essential Liberty just one minute too long.

And time’s up.

Again we’ve patiently suffered through a long string of abuses, and this election is our 1773. Again, it’s business as usual for the ruling class. Again they take no heed, because again, we do not matter.

We all know what’s next. Pray we avert it, work to avert it, but make your decisions now. Be ready.

And many thanks to Western Rifle Shooters Association, where I spotted this!

Must Watch NIA Video: "End of Liberty"

2010-10-31T08:38:00.000-07:00

The best video yet, from an organization that gets it. Do you???

Erik Scott Update

2010-10-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

Bill Scott has posted a flurry of entries at the Erik Scott Memorial Blog. I particularly liked "Erik's Testimony: First Installment". There are some interesting developments - check them out...

The Bell Tolls for Benoit Mandelbrot

2010-10-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

Larger than life mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away. He died last Thursday at age 85, of pancreatic cancer. Perhaps best known for his pioneering work on fractal geometry (he coined the term "fractal" and wrote the original book) Mandelbrot was also a significant intellectual force in the field of finance. His book "The (Mis)behavior of Markets - a Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward" was a best seller and won the financial book of the year award. Mandelbrot was the beloved mentor of Nassim Taleb who authored "The Black Swan". He and Taleb made frequent joint appearances on financial news shows as the present economic crisis unfolded.

I loved his wry, gentle manner of presentation, which was quite accessible to the layman. (He reminded me of physicist Al Bartlett in that respect, who can also tell us we're screwed, with a smile, and keep the audience chuckling.) Another giant of science, one of the most important mathematicians of the post WWII era, gone...

Camel's Back, Two Straws...

2010-10-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

My dire prediction for the housing market is based on two recent developments. First is B of A's nationwide suspension of foreclosures. Expect this to spread until all foreclosures are halted for some indeterminate period. At issue is documentation, and whether anyone attempting to seize a house actually has the secured interest needed to legally foreclose.

This impacts not only pending and future foreclosures, but completed foreclosures. Also hit hard are past and pending purchases of foreclosed homes. If you bought a foreclosed home in the last couple of years, it's quite possible that the foreclosure wasn't properly documented, and title may now be in question. Among other things, this will develop into a title insurance crisis that could take years to resolve.

The second big development is the Countrywide Mortgage class action lawsuit. Among the many claims, plaintiffs have asserted that Countrywide and various retail lenders who wrote Countrywide paper deliberately shopped for high appraisals in order to overvalue properties. This will be easy to prove, as everyone familiar with this mess knows that "optimistic" appraisals have been used industry wide for at least the last decade.

That's called fraud. Every real estate transaction in America over the last 10-15 years is now in question, tainted by this universal practice. Many homes have changed hands two or three times in this time period, and every buyer has paid too much. They've been defrauded.

There's no statute of limitations on fraud, nor can such liabilities be discharged in a bankruptcy.

It's easy to demonize and marginalize subprime borrowers who can't pay their mortgage. But, how do you dismiss someone who did everything right, paid his loan on time every month but who was overcharged for his house? When those people realizes what happened, they'll sue. And they're sympathetic victims. Virtually every realtor, every appraiser, every mortgage broker and every bank in the country participated in this fraud, many knowingly and the rest looking hard in the opposite direction.

As this sinks in, the next realization is that the government was a willing participant. Government regulators looked the other way as taxes poured in from the incomes and purchases of contractors, realtors, appraisers, mortgage brokers and bankers, and from capital gains. Our government knowingly caused the mess, and was on the take from day one.

I expect a total loss of faith to follow on the heels of these revelations, and I doubt they can keep a lid on this until the election.

Republican Women vs. Democrat Women

2010-10-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

Housing Meltdown: Panic Time

2010-10-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

The bailouts to date went largely to financial houses for a reason - they were attempts to cover up the massive housing market fraud by filling the equity chasm with taxpayer dollars. Said attempts were blessed by politicians of both parties - all puppets of the very bankers who were in trouble. Nary a thought has been given to merely acknowledging, let alone finding a remedy for the staggering underlying fraud. I'm relieved that those days seem, at last, to be coming to a close.

As more lenders suspend foreclosures, more state attorneys general look into this mess and as more class action lawsuits are filed, it finally appears that this is coming to a head. At issue now is whether there remains any semblance of civil and criminal justice in America, or whether the bankers have corrupted even that.

Bad as they were, the housing/mortgage related problems we've seen up to now have merely been the warm-up. The real show starts soon. For a short and not at all sweet look at where we're at, read Ezra Klein Interviews Janet Tavakoli from the Washington Post. As Janet says in the interview, "this is the biggest fraud in the history of the capital markets"

A massive writedown is in the offing, and trillions of dollars of paper wealth will simply disappear when that happens. As this plays out, it will devastate the financial markets. Markets that have already priced Quantitative Easing II into the equation. Markets that are poised at recent highs, entirely unsupported by fundamentals. It's time to take a VERY defensive basic position with your investments. Food, gold and silver, household supplies, fuel and guns/ammo come to mind. (Anything Bernanke can't ruin.) Then cash, in hand, sufficient to pay at least half a year's payments. Only after that level of self-sufficiency is achieved should any money be at play in any market, and I'm at a loss to discern where such money might be safe through what's coming.

(Dang. I'm going to have to dust off my Jubilee article and re-post it...)

An Open Letter to Ted Nugent - "The Day I'll Join the NRA"

2010-10-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

from Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

Dear Ted:

First, I personally thank you for the valuable work you have done, and are doing, for the Second Amendment. You have used your talent, success, wit, and celebrity to fight for our freedoms.

Additionally, you are a member of the Board of Directors of the NRA. So this letter is directed to you in strictly that capacity. Why? Because I believe that you will listen. And you have the standing and respect within the NRA to actually do something regarding the issues I’d like to bring to your attention.

We at JPFO recently received a letter from an angry and very articulate fellow who took the vast majority of gun owners to task for not being NRA members. He rightly points out that there are more than eighty million gun owners and only five million members of any pro-gun organization, the NRA obviously being the largest.

I read this fellow’s letter a couple of times, and could not fault him on his spirit or personal philosophy. What bothered me was that he was asking me to join the NRA.

Ted, the day I’ll join the NRA is…

1. When the NRA announces, from the rooftops, that the police have NO LEGAL DUTY to protect the average American citizen. Time after time, our courts have upheld this. If every American understood this, we would see gun ownership, and Second Amendment awareness, burgeon across our nation. The tide would resolutely turn in our favor.

One of JPFO’s finest projects was the book “Dial 911 and Die”. It is meticulously documented with actual court cites. Why didn’t the NRA, years ago, publish this material in a reader friendly format for nationwide distribution?

♦ Why didn’t the NRA, years ago, publish this material in a reader friendly format for nationwide distribution?

NEXT: I’ll join the NRA…

2. When the NRA aggressively presses to abolish all concealed carry permit laws. How has an unalienable right to self defense been demoted to a revocable government granted privilege? Unregistered concealed carry has been no big issue in both Alaska and Vermont for decades. Arizona just passed unregistered concealed legislation. It’s time for the NRA to start swimming strongly with this tide. Yes, it’s a victory for gun owners when a State like Minnesota finally allows registered carry, but we must see it for what it still is: an un-Constitutional infringement on our G-d* given right to self defense, see: "The Ten Commandments of Self Defense". It is also an obvious way to add more gun owner names to a list and database. (*Out of respect, observant Jews do not write out the name of the Almighty in secular texts.)

♦ How has an unalienable right to self defense been demoted to a revocable government granted privilege?

NEXT: I’ll join the NRA…

3. When the NRA calls for the complete and unconditional disbanding of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE). Gun owners should be appalled at the NRA leadership’s incestuous “good cop/bad cop” dance with the BATFE. For decades there has been a symbiotic, and liberty threatening, “good ole’ boy” relationship between NRA and BATFE. They should instead be mortal enemies.

♦ They should instead be mortal enemies.

The BATFE’s abuses are legion and despicable. These criminal acts crested like a bloody wave with the horrific deceit and treachery the agency displayed at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and then at Waco, Texas.

JPFO has produced a documentary about the BATFE called “The Gang” for which you kindly donated footage, showing you teaching teenagers how to use firearms safely. As you know, “The Gang” is not specifically about Ruby Ridge or Waco, it’s about how, with deliberate regularity, the BATFE criminally harasses honest gun owners.

Did you know that, back during the Administration of Ronald Reagan, President Reagan actually wanted to dismantle the then “BATF”? Who stopped him? The NRA! See this Time Magazine article that reports this hypocrisy.

The NRA has publicly stated that it wants to “work with” BATFE to punish the criminal use of guns, see: copy of NRA response letter. We don’t need these bucket headed, jack booted paramilitary goons playing cops in our lives. Let the local police, county sheriff, State police, or the FBI, do what they were assigned and sworn to do in the first place.

♦ We don’t need these bucket headed, jack booted paramilitary goons playing cops in our lives.

On top of that, tobacco is a drug. Alcohol is a drug. Give that authority to the FDA. Explosives? Wasn’t that an FBI specialty already?

And then there’s the firearms. This means “gun control”, and every single threat to our freedom that comes along with it.

NEXT: I’ll join the NRA…

4. When the NRA soundly condemns, and works tirelessly to abolish, the “Gun Control Act of 1968”. NRA lawyers actually helped to write this piece of totalitarian legislation. JPFO was the first to expose “GCA ‘68” for what it was: a near carbon copy of the Nazi German gun laws of the 1930s. See: "Gun Control" Gateway to Tyranny.

The NRA needs to “man up” and confess that it made a terrible mistake here. It needs to go on an Obama style apology tour of every State, and personally confess this sin to American gun owners. And then repent.

Gun registration (brought to you by GCA ’68) is intolerable in a free society. In Nazi Germany, Jews were forced to identify themselves with a yellow star. In America, our citizens are forced to identify their ownership of firearms with a form called a “4473” and concealed weapon permits.

♦ In Nazi Germany, Jews were forced to identify themselves with a yellow star.

Now, with the computer age fully entrenched in our society, a centralized database of all gun owners and their firearms’ serial numbers is just a mouse click away. The BATFE claims it would never do this. But they are already doing it with their phony 'eTrace' program. They actually share information about American gun owners with foreign governments! This could have ominous repercussions.

Let’s analyze why “GCA ‘68” even passed. It was because of the political assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. Without those three murders, the American people would have scoffed at the idea of national “gun control”. The highly emotionalized loss of the lives of three public figures, tragic though it was, created enough manipulated hysteria in this nation to essentially throw the Second Amendment out the window.

But what about the hundreds of thousands of brave Americans who have died fighting, generation after generation, to protect our Bill of Rights? Instead of standing firm in the face of this 1968 “gun control” travesty, when a far more conservative America could have been effectively rallied, the NRA got in bed with the gun prohibitionists and actually helped pen the legislation. See: "NRA Supported the National Firearms Act of 1934"and GCA68.

NEXT: I’ll join the NRA…

5. When the NRA quits kowtowing to authoritarian police bureaucrats and takes a no compromise stand against the increasing paramilitarization of our local and State law enforcement agencies.

It’s time to quit building a standing army in America, masquerading as local SWAT teams and hooded “tactical units”. Federal money is lavishly splashed at these local law enforcement agencies. And, as we all know, payback day cannot be far away.

When push comes to shove, can we depend on local cops who have been suckling at the Federal teat, and attending Federal brainwashing seminars?

The NRA has to get in the face of all local police and ask them, point blank: “Will you ever assist in the disarming of the American citizenry?” Any cop who answers in the affirmative must be drummed out of the ranks.

♦ Any cop who answers in the affirmative must be drummed out of the ranks.

“To Protect and Serve” does not mean “To Disarm and Enslave”.

NEXT: I’ll join the NRA…

6. When the NRA assertively speaks to our active duty military personnel and respectfully (but emphatically) reminds them that any disarming of innocent Americans is a blatant and evil breach of their oath to uphold and protect our Constitution. The NRA needs to follow the lead of Oath Keepers in reaching out to both soldiers and cops.

That disgusting “czarette” Janet Napolitano, of Homeland Security, actually had the gall to imply that homecoming soldiers posed a threat because they could be “recruited” by “extremist” groups. The NRA should be at the top of that list of so-called “extremist” groups!

These hard line Leftists have to understand one thing: If forced to, we are unwilling to give them any quarter to protect our freedom. And every freedom loving American should expect that active duty soldiers, who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic, will stand, gun in hand, by the side of The People if push ever comes to shove.

♦ These hard line Leftists have to understand one thing: If forced to, we are unwilling to give them any quarter to protect our freedom.

NEXT: I’ll join the NRA…

7. When the NRA forcefully and persistently brings up the uncontestable fact that every major genocide of the 20th Century was preceded by “gun control” policies. Disarmed millions became the victims of government sponsored or condoned mass murder.

What far too many American gun owners are so hesitant to face is that the greatest criminals in history have not been common street thugs. By a huge, huge factor, the greatest criminal element in modern history has been government-gone-bad.

The Founders didn’t pen the Second Amendment to protect us from muggers and rapists or burglars. That’s actually a secondary benefit. They penned the Second Amendment to protect us from our own government! See: "2A Today for The USA".

At one time in America, this somber ideal was actually taught in public schools. Now a kid can’t even draw a picture of a gun or take a “Goody Gun” cookie to school for lunch. The insane poison of political correctness runs amok in our nation today. Ted, you don’t put up with the p.c. garbage, why does the NRA?

♦ The Founders didn’t pen the Second Amendment to protect us from muggers and rapists or burglars.

NEXT: I’ll join the NRA…

8. When the NRA honestly and accurately “grades” politicians for their real position on the Second Amendment. Hillary Clinton’s and Charlie Schumer’s pet protégé Kirsten Gillibrand got an “A” rating from the NRA. This is insane.

Gillibrand is now on the band wagon for a reinstated “assault weapons” ban. The NRA: Suckered and betrayed once again.

Ted Nugent running for office gets an “A+” grade from the NRA. That’s the standard they must start with. We cannot grade on a bell curve when it comes to our freedom.

Our politicians must not simply be “pro gun”, they must be fervently pro Second Amendment. It is now time for zero tolerance for any form of “gun control”. Far too often, American gun owners have seen “A” graded politicians waffle and cave on gun law after gun law. If the NRA has to step away from any candidate to uphold our rights, so be it.

♦ Ted Nugent running for office gets an “A+” grade from the NRA. That’s the standard they must start with.

Millions of American gun owners will reject any candidate who betrays our G-d given right to defend our lives.

The time for any sort of compromise is over. We must now retrieve ground that has been lost to past retreats. It is time for the NRA to really start “walking the walk”. Radically downgrade every single politician who has betrayed us in any way in the past.

Ted, you have the clout and celebrity status to bring any or all of these issues directly to the NRA’s Board of Directors. You can also, through your website and fan base, expose countless younger Americans to these critical matters.

♦ You can also, through your website and fan base, expose countless younger Americans to these critical matters.

It’s time to give the American people a very loud wake up call regarding their freedom. No one can say you are shy, Ted. Please, make some of that trademarked Nugent Noise over these crucial issues.

Sincerely, and Yours in Freedom,

Aaron Zelman, Founder and Director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

Copyright 2010 Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

Obama Plan: Flee to India After Mid Term Election

2010-10-08T23:27:00.001-07:00

Just can't wait to get outta here...

Regrettably, it's a round trip.

Slow Learners

2010-10-07T10:27:00.000-07:00

Bloomberg reports a new form of subprime security: "asset-backed auto debt linked to loans to consumers with credit considered subprime"...

And investors, liking the high yields, are snapping them up.

Words aren't necessary...

2010-10-04T20:15:00.000-07:00

...because a picture's worth a thousand of them.

h/t to WRSA...

I Smell a (liberal) Rat...

2010-10-04T20:08:00.000-07:00

So the black-robed legislature is back in session, and newly minted Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is recusing herself from fully HALF of the cases on the court's docket.

I suspect that if I had the time to research those cases, I'd know why.

Erik Scott Inquest Results

2010-10-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

During a long conversation with an out of state friend last night, I was asked why I hadn't followed through on the Erik Scott inquest. I didn't want to get sidetracked, so I promised to catch up on the story in print. Bottom line is, I have to admit to not having the stomach to follow the entire inquest into Erik's murder by Las Vegas police.

I understood that by any rational standard the process would be a joke. What I wasn't prepared for was the fury I experienced as the family sat helplessly through the proceedings. And fury is what it was - by the end of the second day, I could feel my blood pressure! The Scott family's attorney was present, but he was NOT allowed to speak. No cross examination, no objections, nothing. He was allowed to submit written questions(!) but the inquest wasn't required to show the questions to the "jury" - let alone read them out loud during the proceeding in a timely fashion. The whole proceeding looked like what you would expect to see in a corrupt third world hell hole, which is apparently just what Las Vegas is.

So it was that I only managed to watch the first two days of one-sided testimony. It was damning testimony, as expected, but if you were paying attention various details presented ranged from implausible to contradictory. Since the inquest ended, I've caught up on the low points (there were no high ones) from the third day on by way of print media.

Needless to say, the cops looked at themselves in their own mirror and liked the image they saw. In the kangaroo court that is a Clark County inquest, government marsupials painted a picture of Erik that was almost comically one-sided - as contrived and simplistic as an old western, with the good guys (cops) dressed in white and the bad guy (Erik) dressed in black. The farce ended with the jury ruling that the three cops who shot Erik seven times (five times in the back) were justified in killing him. (Right. Try shooting someone five times in the back and see if the cops let YOU get away with calling it justified...)

This isn't over. In fact, for those interested in the truth, it's just getting underway. From here on out, the Scott family will be able to speak. In court. They'll be allowed to present witnesses who contradict the "official" story, and to cross examine government witnesses. They'll also enjoy the power of the subpoena, which should lead to some very interesting revelations. And, thank God, the Scotts won't be compelled to sit silently while government thugs slander their son, which means I'll be able to watch again.

I hold out the hope that the truth will come out someday, by way of civil court or perhaps a federal civil rights case. Perhaps at that time the powers that be will have no choice but to prosecute the killer cops criminally. I also pray that something like the Innocence Project, which has secured the release of a large number of innocent people through DNA testing, will spring up to shine the light on all police misconduct. By freeing innocent people, the Innocence Project has had the delightful side-effect of killing the careers of a few dishonest cops and dishonest prosecutors. (See? The law of unintended consequences works just fine when you start out seeking the truth!) And, who knows? Perhaps the seeds of just such an effort are here: Amazing Police Corruption Website

Those close to me know my alarm and disgust at the transition of American cops from "peace officers" to "law enforcement officers" - a transition that pretty much took place during my lifetime. We commonly call this the militarization of the police, and it's an apt term. By temperament, armament and near-total immunity they constitute a domestic standing army, which the founders would have found intolerable.

One is now best off to avoid all contact with the police. It is unwise to call them, regardless of the circumstances, and even less advisable to talk to them - particularly if you are innocent. Which leads me to ask - again - what the hell's wrong with us??? Why do we put up with this? If you ask me, we are again shirking our birthright as Americans, and the large part of the answer is to be found here: Are Cops Constitutional?

Surprisingly, many of my fellow conservatives (liberty oriented people, supposedly) are so blindly pro-cop that over the last several years of speaking out on this mess, I've taken serious abuse and even lost friends for my position that America is descending into a police state. Well, I'll take it, and continue to protest, for whatever it's worth. Increasingly, I'm just saddened that this denial remains so pervasive that public opinion perpetuates abuse by cop, and that my countrymen must continue to awake to this problem through the needless beatings and deaths of family members.

Teach Your Children Well

2010-10-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Joe Sobran's untimely death prompted some re-reading of his work - or at least the small portion of it that resides in my library. Herewith one of my all-time favorites, penned in 1999:

"Because I write about politics, people are forever asking me the best way to teach children how our system of government works. I tell them that they can give their own children a basic civics course right in their own homes.

In my own experience as a father, I have discovered several simple devices that can illustrate to a child's mind the principles on which the modern state deals with its citizens. You may find them helpful, too.

For example, I used to play the simple card game WAR with my son. After a while, when he thoroughly understood that the higher ranking cards beat the lower ranking ones, I created a new game I called GOVERNMENT. In this game, I was Government, and I won every trick, regardless of who had the better card. My boy soon lost interest in my new game, but I like to think it taught him a valuable lesson for later in life.

When your child is a little older, you can teach him about our tax system in a way that is easy to grasp. Offer him, say, $10 to mow the lawn. When he has mowed it and asks to be paid, withhold $5 and explain that this is income tax. Give $1 to his younger brother, and tell him that this is "fair". Also, explain that you need the other $4 yourself to cover the administrative costs of dividing the money. When he cries, tell him he is being "selfish" and "greedy". Later in life he will thank you.

Make as many rules as possible. Leave the reasons for them obscure. Enforce them arbitrarily. Accuse your child of breaking rules you have never told him about. Keep him anxious that he may be violating commands you haven't yet issued. Instill in him the feeling that rules are utterly irrational. This will prepare him for living under democratic government.

When your child has matured sufficiently to understand how the judicial system works, set a bedtime for him and then send him to bed an hour early. When he tearfully accuses you of breaking the rules, explain that you made the rules and you can interpret them in any way that seems appropriate to you, according to changing conditions. This will prepare him for the Supreme Court's concept of the U.S. Constitution as a "living document".

Promise often to take him to the movies or the zoo, and then, at the appointed hour, recline in an easy chair with a newspaper and tell him you have changed your plans. When he screams, "But you promised!", explain to him that it was a campaign promise.

Every now and then, without warning, slap your child. Then explain that this is defense. Tell him that you must be vigilant at all times to stop any potential enemy before he gets big enough to hurt you. This, too, your child will appreciate, not right at that moment, maybe, but later in life.

At times your child will naturally express discontent with your methods. He may even give voice to a petulant wish that he lived with another family. To forestall and minimize this reaction, tell him how lucky he is to be with you the most loving and indulgent parent in the world, and recount lurid stories of the cruelties of other parents. This will make him loyal to you and, later, receptive to schoolroom claims that the America of the postmodern welfare state is still the best and freest country on Earth.

This brings me to the most important child-rearing technique of all: lying. Lie to your child constantly. Teach him that words mean nothing--or rather that the meanings of words are continually "evolving", and may be tomorrow the opposite of what they are today.

Some readers may object that this is a poor way to raise a child. A few may even call it child abuse. But that's the whole point: Child abuse is the best preparation for adult life under our form of government."

Originally written for http://mises.org

The Bell Tolls for Joe Sobran

2010-09-30T22:41:00.000-07:00

The irreverent Joe Sobran, one of America's great conservative writers, has succumbed to complications of diabetes. He was just 64.

After years of stellar service at National Review, Sobran's opposition to the first Iraq war cost him his job, at the hands of CIA man William F. Buckley. It was Buckley who called him an anti-Semite, which prompted me to track down these entries from Joe's Dictionary:

anti-Semite: a person who’s hated by Jews

association, freedom of: discrimination

bigot: one who practices sociology without a license

bribe: an irregular transaction through which the citizen may get his
money’s worth of service from the government

civil rights: government power used in behalf of large groups

guilt: the deepest vested interest

isolationist: an American who thinks America should behave like other
countries

opinion polls: clever devices to make the hostages think they control
their captors

political correctness: the felt pressure of enlightened public
opinion, under which we sense that certain thoughts, though
technically legal now, are already destined to become taboo.

psychoanalysis: a form of aggression for humorless people

public opinion: what everyone thinks everyone else thinks

rich: politicians’ nickname for “other people” (as in “tax the rich”)

rights: authorizations for new areas of government control

rogue nation: a country that behaves like America

voting: trying to say something with a gag in your mouth

A big H/T to Joe, for contributing decades of principled articulate wit to the discussion.

Thank you, Sir, and Rest Peacefully...

End of an Era

2010-09-28T13:05:00.000-07:00

Just saw an interesting statistic that drives home how far America has fallen as a manufacturing power: 2010 manufacturing employment is under 12 million. Last time manufacturing employment was this low was in 1941, before America ramped up production for WWII.

How will there ever be a real recovery, let alone a lasting recovery if we don't produce?

Housing Market: Fecal Matter, Meet the Whirly Thingie

2010-09-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that the summer months are the best months for residential real estate sales. So how did it go this year, in the summer of recovery?

2010 summer period: (June, July, August) 82,000 new homes sold (not seasonally adjusted). The worst summer sales period since record keeping began in 1963.

And how was August? Those numbers are just in, too:

2010: the worst August on record since 1963: 25,000 new homes sold (not seasonally adjusted). 1981 was the second worst August with 34,000 sales.

Yet the Dow is soaring(!). Perhaps the index should be loaded up with homebuilder stocks, so it could reflect reality...

Erik Scott Inquest Update

2010-09-23T09:29:00.000-07:00

Well, results from the first day of the inquest are in.

LVPD is indeed going the character assassination route. They're going decades into Erik's past alleging drug use, although no illegal drugs were found in his system. These arguments have no legal validity, but when you don't have a real case you run with emotion.

The medical examiner admitted that Erik was shot five times in the back. His death was ruled a homicide, for whatever that's worth.

The medical examiner spent a long time on his tox results, with the help of giant charts. She made much of the fact that Erik had five times the lethal level of morphine in his blood when he was shot. (Apparently he was dead the whole time he was in the store.) If only the family attorney could have cross examined that bimbo on her lethal dose BS - but cross examination is not allowed in this marsupial court.

Once yesterday, the Scott family attorney lost all self control and dared to object to something out loud. He was scolded for being out of order, but I'm sure the cops wanted to shoot him for behaving erratically.

LVPD produced an eyewitness, a Costco employee, who testified that Erik drew his gun and aimed it at a cop. She swears that she was eight feet away and saw the whole incident clearly. Yet, she saw only one cop (??!?!?) and failed in several other ways to corroborate earlier police testimony. Again, we need cross examination...

The Scotts fully expect to lose at the inquest.

Stay tuned. (Or, if you wish to watch something less staged, I recommend Survivor, American Idol and Lady Gaga videos.)

A Few Statistics On That Pesky Recovery

2010-09-22T23:47:00.000-07:00

1) (850 KOA Radio News) The unemployment rate here in Colorado rose three tenths of a percent in the last month.

2) (Federal Reserve) Americans lost $1.5 Trillion in household net worth in Q2 2010, which is the most recent data available.

3) (CNN) One in seven mortgages in America is at least delinquent if not in foreclosure.

4) (various) The residential foreclosure rate in August 2010 was 25% higher than in August 2009

5) (FDIC) Through August 2010, the annual bank failure rate is nearly 50% higher than it was in 2009 through August.

6) (AP) 2009 saw the highest increase in the poverty rate in America in the 50 years that the statistic has been tracked.

7) (US Gov) The number of Americans on food stamps has risen more than 50% in the last three years, to 41 million.

8) (NAR) There are 4 million homes currently listed for sale - a 12.5 month inventory.

9) (Moody's) Another 2 million homes will be seized by lenders between now and the end of 2011.

10) (Me) Boomers reaching retirement age at the rate of 4 million per year starting in 2011 will seek to downsize and simplify, adding far more high-end homes to inventory. That is, they will if they can get their damn kids to move out.

11) (Morgan Stanley) Nearly 8 million bank owned and foreclosure bound homes have yet to hit the market.

12) (Bloomberg) As of July 2010, sales of new and existing homes fell to the level on record.

13) (Me) The massive student loan debt of recent college grads, combined with limited job prospects, will prevent marriages, families and home purchases for years to come.

14) (Various) The problems in commercial real estate are far from over.

15) (Shedlock) There is little reason to hang onto an underwater home, and no reason at all to buy one right now.

16) (Me) Retiring boomers will begin to liquidate the stock that remains in their qualified plans, putting significant downward pressure on markets.

17) (Me) With younger Americans drowning in debt, the likely buyers for those stocks are furriners - Chinese and Arabs saddled with trillions of our declining dollars. Most American companies that aren't already foreign owned will be within 10 years.

18) (Me) Expect downward pressure on employment, wages, home prices, stocks and consumer spending for years - with luck a decade, much longer without.

19) (Me) Expect rising food/commodity prices and taxes during the same period.

20) (Me) There will be no recovery. Never. The burden of government debt guarantees that. You'll never again live in a period remotely resembling the last two decades of economic activity.

21) (Me) For those finding hope and change to be of low caloric value, I suggest stocking up on food, seeds, precious metals and ammo - pronto. This mess is just unfolding, and I suspect our only way out is forward through a collapse.

Letter to NSSF

2010-09-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a letter I just fired off to NSSF president Steve Sanetti regarding the Erik Scott murder by LVPD. I'll post developments as they happen.

Dear Steve,

I am writing out of anger over the murder of Erik Scott by LVPD, and in concern that the next SHOT show is to be held in a city where such a thing could take place. If you are not familiar with this case, here are the basics:

Erik Scott was a West Point grad, an honorably discharged veteran, a Duke MBA grad and a medical service rep who made house calls to service defibrillators and pacemakers. He was shot outside a Las Vegas Costco store where he was shopping with his girlfriend. Scott was carrying concealed, with a valid permit. A Costco employee saw the gun when Scott knelt down and his jacket rode up, and set this mess in motion. LVPD cops were happy to join in, shooting Scott seven times just outside the store. Two rounds in front, one in the armpit and four in the back. No exit wounds. By the credible accounts (which do not include LVPD) Scott's gun never left the holster, nor was there ANY indication it would. He wasn't shot for anything more than the joy of shooting someone, by cops who have shot several others.

The department that killed him is the same department that issued his permit.

The shooting took place on July 10, but the inquest is just getting underway this morning. There is a massive cover-up underway, and LVPD has decided on the course of character assassination of the victim rather than accountability. This is part of a much larger problem in America - the militarization and corruption of the police - and all the bad actors in this drama know they have the full support of the Obama/Holder justice department, thanks to the undeclared but obvious federal war on gun owners.

FYI, I am 51 years old. I've been shooting since I was 11. At two times in my life I have been an NRA certified instructor, and have taught handgun classes for concealed weapon permit applicants. I am also an entrepreneur. In this economy and in our present national circumstances, I have been seriously considering starting a preparedness store and had planned to attend SHOT in 2011.

But now, I will not be coming to Las Vegas. Not for SHOT, nor for anything else. Never again. Clark county Nevada is not a safe place for gun owners.

This decision is reversible, but not without cleaning out the sewer that is the Clark County government.

The cops are shooting your industry's customers, on the sidewalks of the city where you're holding your next trade show. So, you have a role in this, whether you like it or not. If you think the "SHOT" industry is sustainable on government contracts, well, feel free to hold the show anywhere you please. But if you want to maintain the level of consumer support you presently enjoy, you will need to get the NSSF on the right side of this mess, pronto.

I've no doubt that venues for shows the size of SHOT are booked half a decade to a decade in advance. I don't expect you to move the show. But, I do expect you to let the hotels know that the cops they control (and they do control them) have gone too far, and that attendance may suffer to the point where their relationship with NSSF is in jeopardy. This situation needs to be dialed back, a lot, and the cops and the current bosses need to go. As in, to prison. Economic pressure will be more effective than moral pressure. (This is true everywhere these days, but it's particularly powerful in Las Vegas.) You can exert the same pressure on the Clark County commissioners, and I expect you to. Every correspondence should remind these clowns how much money SHOT brings to Vegas.

NSSF should address this on its website, and soon. There is a groundswell starting, and you would look good to be ahead of it rather than lagging behind. I think it would be a grand idea to set up a virtual SHOT show for people who are boycotting Las Vegas. People could browse a virtual show, presentations could be streamed live and archived, and company reps could devote a day or two to web conferences after the live show closed, with the same incentives and promotions they offered at the show. I would happily pay for access to such a thing, and just might proceed with my business idea under those circumstances. Your press release could start "Obviously, NSSF wants everyone to attend SHOT. That's what makes the show a success, and success of the show means success for the industry. But we understand that a lot of gun owners are boycotting Las Vegas in the wake of the repugnant killing of Erik Scott. We appreciate that position, and have set up a virtual SHOT show so those people can attend SHOT without patronizing Clark County, Nevada."

Under the circumstances, it's a shame that SHOT will be held in Vegas next year. By then, this is going to be a gigantic scandal. Erik Scott's dad Bill is an honest to God test pilot and an acclaimed aviation journalist, with years at Aviation Week and several published books. The LVPD thugs don't begin to grasp the connections this guy has, and is digging it's grave as you read this.

I'm sure you're aware of the rising disgust with the NRA. I hope the NSSF doesn't operate by a similar philosophy. I intend to find out, starting with this letter. It will be easy to organize a boycott of Las Vegas over this incident, and such is already underway. I'm helping with that, and, pending your response, I plan to contact every SHOT exhibitor as well. I will do everything I can to make this mess as big as possible, because this crap has to stop before America is completely lost to corruption and thuggery. I am not alone. That subset of gun owners that is highly attuned to liberty issues will be all over this long before your show opens. It is my hope that this subset of your market matters to you, but I understand the economic reality that the cops who shoot at us may represent more revenue to your manufacturers than we do, and that NSSF may be just that pragmatic. Time will tell.

My contact info:

omitted
omitted
omitted
omitted

My blog entry: http://invertebratenation.blogspot.com/2010/09/warm-blooded-murder-of-erik-scott.html

Bill Scott's blog: erikbscottmemorialblog.blogspot.com/

Thank you for your attention to this, and my apologies if the pungent nature of my words offends. Fact is, Americans have neglected the source of their liberty for a long time, and that neglect is now coming home to roost, with interest. I'm pretty angry, and expect to remain so for some time. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Regards,

omitted

UPDATE: Had a nice reply from Steve Sanetti in my e-mail tonight. Prompt. Thoughtful. Not a form letter. As of now, NSSF is verifying the info...

The Warm Blooded Murder of Erik Scott

2010-09-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

Warm blooded murder?

Yep.

In the Las Vegas desert sun, even the reptilian cops have warm blood.

On July 10, 2010 Erik B. Scott, West Point grad, honorably discharged veteran, Duke MBA grad and medical service rep, was executed by Las Vegas police for the crime of shopping at Costco with his girlfriend. You see, Scott was in possession of a permitted concealed weapon, which permit was issued by the department that killed him.

This is part of a much larger problem in America - the militarization of the police. That militarization isn't helped by the fact that tens of thousands of departments use a version of IQ testing to deliberately hire people who are slightly BELOW average to average. Whether this is an outgrowth of affirmative action or a result of departments simply not wanting smart people looking at them from the inside, this is an intolerable practice. Then there's the fact that power corrupts, and the corollary fact that the police have far too much power these days.

I know this will anger many LEO's and .gov types, but the situation is completely out of hand. Cops have been getting away with executing people for years, aided and abetted by compliant coroners, prosecutors and judges. I would hope people's patriotism will eventually overrule their blind support of law enforcement and bring a halt to these murders.

The majority of police shootings I've studied are tainted, at best. Up till now, it has been all too easy to marginalize those they executed, and get away with the crimes. It's been obvious to anyone watching this that they would eventually screw up and kill a really good guy, and they did just that when they shot Erik Scott. He comes from an intact family. Father William Scott is an Honest to God test pilot and acclaimed aerospace journalist, with years at Aviation Week. This guy has contacts all over. Powerful contacts. He's giving them a chance to fess up to his son's murder, but sooner or later, his patience will run out.

Erik, from his bio, was an exemplary man. To reiterate: West Point grad. Honorable service. Graduate degree (Duke MBA) while working full time. The only blotch on his life was two failed marriages (not at all difficult to understand in a military man's life) and allegations of threats and violence, made during divorce proceedings by an ex, later dropped and subsequently sealed by the judge(!).

Sealed, that is, until the untouchables need to get away with his murder.

Lots of people carry guns. The ones who bother to get a permit are, by definition, the good guys. Costco apparently has a policy against carrying guns in their stores, which they don't post anywhere. (Dang. How many of us have carried into a Costco, not knowing our peril??) The Costco employee who set this mess in motion only saw Erik's gun because his jacket rode up when he bent down. He wasn't waving it around, and he wasn't acting erratically. He was SHOPPING with his girlfriend.

Did the employee ask him to leave? Don't know. We do know that Erik Scott informed the employee that he had a permit, that he was carrying legally, and that he then went back to his shopping. From there, the only thing we know for sure is that the employee called a manager.

Did the manager ask Erik to leave? Don't know. It's essentially a certainty that Scott told the manager he had a permit. We do know the manager called a security guard, who called the police. Now, I belong to Costco (did, anyway. Mine expired two weeks ago, and pending resolution of this case I have not renewed) and I know how they operate. Managers carry radios. That's how they communicate. I was in a Costco office once, too, talking with a manager about a special order. I saw where the security camera monitor sat, and it was not monitored by a live human being. In fact, there was a stack of paperwork on that chair. The security guard, wherever he was, has a radio too. It's pretty likely (obvious, actually) that the security guard who called 911 was at best acting on radio transmitted hearsay, and more likely was engaged in his own speculation (spelled L Y I N G) when he said Erik was acting erratically and that he might be on drugs. That's called false reporting, and when someone dies as a result, Costco is complicit in the death.

Is it possible that Erik Scott was asked to leave and refused? Yes. But we don't know, and Costco likely would have been trumpeting that long before now if it was true, as a CYA/PR measure. I'm guessing he wasn't asked to leave. Erik was a smart guy, and he was with his girlfriend. The only plausible response would have been for him to say "sure - I'll take my business elsewhere, and I'll leave just as soon as you refund my membership fee". That's exactly what I would have done.

Then there's the trigger happy cops. They screwed up big time on this one. They should have shot a Mexican or a black man, preferably one with a long criminal history. (And simmer down. I'm being cynical, not racist.) Anyway, how do you explain shooting a guy like Erik?

The answer is you don't explain it. You CAN'T explain it. You just don't kill West Point grads for shopping at Costco with their girlfriends. And here's where this turns truly disgusting. The cops are trying to smear Erik Scott in order to get away with it. They have managed to unseal the allegations made by his ex, and are trying to make hay of the fact that he was on painkillers, implying addiction, but conveniently ignoring the back injuries he sustained jumping out of military aircraft in service of his country.

A smart crime family, one that has gotten away with murder hundreds of times, takes their lumps when they finally get caught. Cops, though, aren't anywhere near that smart. They're untouchable, so they're smearing an outstanding man instead of fessing up. A man they killed in cold blood, entirely without cause. And, they've had plenty of time to figure out who the father is, and that he's not a man to trifle with. Yet on they go, digging their own grave...

The inquest, long delayed, will supposedly be broadcast live for the next three days on mynews3.com starting at 10 AM PST tomorrow - and it's a kangaroo court if there ever was one. The family and their counsel are not allowed to cross examine anyone, and only evidence deemed acceptable by the County marsupials will be allowed.

This isn't over, and I predict it will blow up big time. (Sure hope so.) Conservatives, who usually rationalize police violence because they support "law and order" will have a tough time swallowing this one. A really tough time. A lot of us are already choking, and the word is still spreading. And conservatives are the support base of law enforcement, at least as far as the public is concerned. Because of who the victim was, and who his father is, this case has the potential to blow the lid off this sordid aspect of police corruption nationwide, and I hope and pray it does. Killings by the police shouldn't be routinely swept under the rug in a free society, no matter what kind of people they kill. It's gone on long enough.

ETA: Eric Scott's father, William Scott, has a blog going about this. Here.

Vocabulary Word of the Day

2010-09-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

OK, so I do one of these about six times a year. But, I've been ruminating on political correctness, which has it's origins in Marxism, so here you go: The word is Zampoliti

Zampoliti were Red Army political/cultural officers. One was assigned to (infllicted on) every unit, and was responsible for the maintenance of ideological purity. Zampoliti monitored all speech and thought, and set errant Soviets back on the straight and narrow when they drifted from unquestioning admiration of all things Commie. Can't have those conscripts poking fun at socialism, after all. Why, they might get all cynical and pretend to work or something.

Zampoliti were the thought police, and Orwell would have been proud...

Most of the time, their mere presence was all that was required to stifle independent or critical thought. However, the unit Zampolit could and did rat people out to Moscow, and ruined many a career.

This relates to modern PC in a rather sick way: Today, Zampoliti are alive, well and entirely homegrown. They're our own children. We pay dearly to have them transformed into political officers by our "educational" system. PC indoctrination begins at an early age in America, and reaches its apogee in college, with disastrous results for society. PC is censorship, censorship which works by instilling fear of the truth in people otherwise capable of apprehending it. PC prohibits the telling of many truths about our predicament. Of course, our predicament is dire, and these truths need telling.

I ran across this excellent video on the origins of PC by way of Billy Beck's blog two--four. It chronicles the entire sordid history of this form of censorship.

Watch it. Forward it. Do something to stem the tide.

Obama's Vacations

2010-09-19T10:45:00.000-07:00

Martha's Vineyard. Chicago. Yellowstone. The Grand Canyon (do ya suppose he realized how we feel, peering into an abyss?) Send the wife to Spain. Take the family to Hawaii for 11 days.

Much is made of these vacations, which are certainly a perk of the office. All presidents do it, and the only thing that changes is which side is doing the complaining.

Enough. Far as I'm concerned, people should quit objecting and thank God the boy king only works part time.

Succeeding, Where the Soviet Union Failed

2010-09-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

It happened gradually. Few noticed. Fewer complained. But here we are, on the cusp of totalitarianism. What's left of America is all about appearances.

The illusion of press freedom persists, but in reality the press speaks little truth, and much propaganda. The press isn't exactly controlled by the government, but the press and the government are in the same hands.

The illusion of democracy remains, too, but no recent election has offered a meaningful choice. Would things have been meaningfully different under President McCain? After all, he suspended his campaign to vote for the bailout, and campaigned for socialized medicine. Sure, there'd be a few more black Marxists stranded in academia, but what would really be different?

Then there's the facade of an independent judiciary looking out for our rights. Sure. What is the court, really, besides the mechanism by which the ruling class thwarts the public will? The court acts as a ministry of culture, imposing transformative laws like abortion, the elimination of gun rights and corporate control of vast areas of life that could never pass by an honest vote.

We have "democracy" that circumvents the will of the people, a "free" press in which only certain things are said, "education" wholly divorced from learning, a state war on religion, etc., etc., etc. We have handily demonstrated that if the masses of people have even vaguely comfortable lives, they will care about nothing else.

This vague comfort will soon be the only difference between the old USSR and the present USA. Pathetic, isn't it? But for the fact that the Soviets never quite managed the comfort part, we're damn near the same. We're succeeding, where the Soviet Union failed.

Flags

2010-09-14T21:03:00.000-07:00

Bought a nice Gadsden flag from a Craigslist advertiser today. Noticed it's made in China. Checked, and found my US flag was made in China as well.

Apparently the only flags we still make here are the false ones.

Burning the Koran: The Sequel

2010-09-11T18:20:00.000-07:00

Pastor Terry Jones' apparently never planned to burn any copies of the Koran. At least, that's what he says. He says the purpose of the entire stunt was to expose the dangerous aspect of Islam. In this respect, I regard his ploy as brilliant.

By way of the worldwide reaction he "facilitated" it's clear that Islam is indeed a serious threat. From the Islamic world's fury to the State Department's worldwide travel advisory, from the threats against the pastor himself to Gen. Petraeus' plea to abstain - this was brilliant all the way. For the last few days, everyone has been forced to acknowledege the violent nature of Muslims - this, even as many engaged in the conversation continued to delude themselves that there's a moderate wing of Islam to be found somewhere out there.

There isn't.

Many people cling to the gentler aspects of Islam, stated earlier in the Koran, while ignoring the Koran's clear instruction that with any contradictory aspect of the Koran, the passages found later in the text will be decisive. It's the only religious text in the world to supersede early peaceable statements with later violent ones as a matter of law.

And the matter of law is no small thing in Islam. I have written that religion and government are joint tenants in Islam, and that is precisely the case. Expanding on that analogy, I would add that government is the husband and religion is the obedient wife. It is obligatory for all Muslims to impose Sharia law - Islamic government - wherever they go. They are not to rest until it has spread worldwide. In this way, it is as expansionist a doctrine as communism, and just as brutally totalitarian.

Islamic law states unequivocally that all governments instituted by and for man must be abolished. Free speech does NOT exist, even conceptually. In fact, dissent with the Koran carries the death penalty. Obviously, freedom of religion does not exist either, nor do any of the other rights that distinguish us from slaves.

Under Sharia, homosexuals must be killed, thieves must have a hand cut off and men are to beat women. Honor killings are sanctioned, and such killings have already occurred in America.

All this spreads globally under sanctioned deceit. It is well known that the Koran sanctions lies to infidels (non Muslims) for the purpose of spreading Islam. In fact the Koran does more than sanction dishonesty - it mandates it. Thus, Muslims will stand there and lie to us for the purpose of defeating us. The fact that they lie as a matter of course is nowhere near as upsetting as the fact that so many westerners insist upon taking them at their word.

It's obvious that all Muslims must follow these tenets, or at the very least not speak out against them and act in support of those who do follow them to the letter. Philosophically, there are no moderate Muslims - Islam is a study in extremism, and it's simply not possible to follow the rules and be a moderate. When your leader and his written instructions are radical, so is your government/religion - period.

It's just as obvious that Islam is by definition at war with the entire non-Muslim world, and must remain so until our defeat or their extermination. And I didn't say this - they did!

Liberty is fragile. We've proven that here in America, without any help from Muslims. Now, they're at full throttle, assaulting our liberty right along with the best of our domestic enemies. That has led to a curious alliance between leftists and Muslims, despite the havoc Islamic law yearns to wreak on the behavior of the left. This is why I often call them Dhimmicrats.

I know that our government has long alliances with Al Qaida and other elements of Islam, and that those alliances are most unsavory. I know that our alliances are with the Sunni and that this is a big reason we are at loggerheads with Shiite Iran. It's a twisted web. And, I know that the Shia and the Sunni are at war with each other. It's on their own that I hope Iran uses their nascent nukes, and, who knows - they may oblige me. Regardless, the 1350 year track record of Islam supersedes those alliances and conflicts, and demands that we take Islam seriously as a threat in and of itself.

It strikes me that the rules of epidemiology should be applied to Islam. Wherever Islam takes root, the result is the same. They demand to be exempted from the law of the land, and to impose Sharia. Muslims multiply rapidly and recruit rabidly. (They have the shortest generational cycle on earth and they recruit at gunpoint.) Since it spreads virally, the appropriate response is to quarantine and disinfect, and all should take heed that antibiotics are useless against a virus once it has taken hold. The key is obviously prevention.

It is in no way an affront to our religious freedom to disallow the practice of Islam in America. In fact, a ban on Islam is the ONLY means of assuring that our First Amendment rights survive. It's a simple equation: they are free to practice their exclusive, all conquering, death dealing totalitarian "religion" elsewhere, so long as they leave us alone, and we remain free to practice our relatively benign melange of religions here.

Or we can surrender and convert.

Or we can kill them before they kill us, which is what it may come to anyway.

I don't see any other choices.

Anyone else have a feeling of "suspended animation"???

2010-09-11T16:01:00.000-07:00

The still fall air brings not merely a portent of seasonal change, but of unease - of something ominous looming around the corner. I can't shake it, yet there's no movement - like that cartoon where you've stepped off the cliff but gravity hasn't kicked in yet.

The election looms, but with the suspicion that the Republican version of hope and change won't be much different than the one we're already living. And in a way, I dread the confirmation of that thesis even more than I dread the status quo. If I'm right, that's one more door closed behind us, and no new door open in front. So, the days crawl...

Work is strange, as customers and suppliers both seem to be waiting for some defining event that tells them what to do next. The seasonal aspect of my business should be picking up, but much seems to be on hold. So we go through the motions.

I expect a false flag event any day, but nothing, thankfully, has happened yet.

When I read a book, it's prep stuff or doomer fiction. It's what's relevant. We go to dinner at a non-prepper friends house, expecting a break from it all, and now they're worried. They repeatedly steer the conversation to preps. I gave them simple ways to start, and they actually wrote them down. I'm sure that's why we were invited.

I look at the financial news, but with a dark fascination - expecting to see the Dow plummet, or that Greece or California has imploded. Inflation is rearing it's head, particularly in food and household goods. Recent talk of more stimulus puts paid to all Washington's hot air about a recovery. It wouldn't surprise me at all to wake up, turn on the 'puter and find that the Arabs will only sell oil for gold from now on. Yet, here, too, a relative stasis.

So here I sit. It's right in front of me, yet it's strangely remote - like watching a movie of people waiting for the bad news, news that everyone knows is coming, but which never arrives.

Do you feel like you're just going through the motions, just waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Burning the Koran

2010-09-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

No doubt all have heard of the little book burning scheduled for next Saturday, September 11th. Of course, at the heart of this is the pastor of a little church seeking his 15 minutes, which have been granted. One hopes he'll not be killed for his grandstanding.

What interests me most, though, is the reaction of the Islamists, who are hard at work revealing themselves for what they really are. I wish them Godspeed in this endeavor.

Obama's Pals: Kill 25 Million Americans

2010-08-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

take a moment and see what an infiltrator of Obama's bosom buddy Ayers "Weather Underground" says of their plans for when they overthrew America and reflect on your own preparations...

This kind of thinking is alive and well on the left today. Get it? They plan to kill you. Prepare accordingly.

Sarah Palin's Odd Connection to Scientology

2010-08-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

I've made no secret of the fact that I do not trust Sarah Palin. She is clearly a player in the machine, and likely the next pied piper of the right, poised to lead the Tea Partyers back into the Republican corral come 2012. She's always a bit too cheerful for the subject at hand, in which way reminiscent of Frances McDormand's dissonant character Marge in "Fargo".

Now I hear of a bizarre connection to Scientology. Seems her friend/adviser John Coale, who just happens to be Greta van Susteren's hubby, is a high level Scientologist. So, too, is van Susteren, if you care.

Nominally a Dhimmicrat, Coale jumped to Palin's side when Hillary lost the primary and has been there ever since. A quick Google search provided plenty of corroboration of this -

Thoughts on the "Ground Zero" Mosque

2010-08-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

What follows is a comment I attempted to post HERE. I'm not sure it will appear, because it was, in this form, longer than blogger would accept. When I pared it down and resubmitted, I got a strange error message along with the standard notice that it had been saved for moderation. We'll see if it appears, and if not I'll try again. Meanwhile, here you go: "If Islam were merely another religion, there would be little debate over the proposed mosque. Sadly, Islam is far from being just another faith. Religion and government are joint tenants in Islam, and in practice, Islam is a system of government first - a brutal, militaristic, totalitarian system of government - and a religion - a government religion - second. Wherever it goes it insists on observing it's own law, and Islamic law runs contrary to the entire concept of individual liberty - including religious freedom - that we hold dear. Islam is the leading practitioner of slavery in the world today - first and foremost by intellectually enslaving all its followers, second by physically enslaving half its own (women) and third by physically enslaving all the subjugated in conquered lands. It is not just intolerant of all opposing views, it has a track record of brutally lethal violence against those views.

Just call them Dhimmicrats: in an expedience borne of mental illness, the left manifests a bizarre ease with radical Islam. The left's enemy is America, obviously, and the enemy of their enemy is their friend, right? Never mind what Islam has to say and do about leftist sacred cows such as aberrant sexual partnerships or women's rights. No worries there. As with all historical alliances with evil, this arrangement will work fine for them right up until it doesn't. Then, long past the point of no return, what they've known all along will be undeniable: with Islam, you're either at the table or you're on the menu. Of course, there's no room for others at the Islam's table, and Quisling makes a fine entree...

The argument that approximately 60% of Muslims are "lukewarm" is of little comfort, if one bothers with the obvious math: the remaining (approximate) 40% - the acknowledged fanatics and their ardent supporters - number somewhere north of 400 million. Beyond that, 600 million lukewarm followers (consent) are far more dangerous than 600 million standing united against the oppression (dissent). Western civilization cannot, as claimed above, prevail against 400 million enemy fanatics by "leading an exemplary life, as a true follower of Christ." It is at best naive to think that any group of humans can lead an exemplary life anyway. (We had a better chance at this than most, and look what we've done with it.) Then comes the obvious truth that there are times when such passivity is not just inappropriate, but immoral. As His crucifixion drew near, Christ himself admonished his disciples to buy swords, even if it meant selling their clothes. This is just such a time. Turning the other cheek accomplishes nothing beyond exposing the jugular. Christianity is not a suicide pact with evil, regardless of perverse insinuations to the contrary.

The Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact either. It's actually quite the opposite. Only a jackass can claim to be honoring the First Amendment by welcoming practitioners of an enemy doctrine that spawns precisely the oppression it was written to prevent. It is not in any way contrary to the First Amendment to deny an oppressive state religion a foothold in America.

This is the difference between being legalistic, which we see everywhere these days, and being moral, which we hardly see at all. Any nation can write laws (they all do) but very few have ever produced a legitimately moral code. We did, and that's what once set us apart. America was built on that moral code, by the controlled immigration of people who wanted to actively live by that code and enjoy the freedom it produced. Quotas were set, and the importation of our enemies was once recognized for the madness it is. Such people came here, of course, but if they hated the place or couldn't make it, they mostly went back home. If they stayed, it meant they had found some measure of success and had succumbed to societal pressure to become part of things. No more. The notion that immigrants should assimilate has been replaced by a cowardly willingness to let them annihilate. Now we not only import the hostile, we look the other way as millions more sneak in. Once here, we educate them, subsidize them, build them foot baths at our airports and pretend it's OK that they impose themselves and their dark ways at any place and in every place, including ground zero.

It's not OK. Not at all.

Islam is not our greatest threat. Legalistic acceptance of the oppression it represents is what frightens me. I dread what's coming in America. With all the legalistic thinkers among us, embracing one form of oppression or another, we're gonna need real blind luck to avoid ushering in another police state after the current one collapses.

III

FPG"

More Mencken

2010-08-21T20:49:00.000-07:00

A two sentence explanation of why we elected the boy king when we could have had Ron Paul: "The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars. The men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." H.L. Mencken

Definitions

2010-08-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

A liberal is a socialist in denial.

A communist is a socialist in a hurry.

A 'progressive' is a communist masquerading as a liberal.

New, Highly Resistant Superbug Gene

2010-08-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

A dangerous new gene has surfaced, called NDM-1, that makes bacteria highly resistant to antibiotics. It's spreading from India, and there are now confirmed cases in America. More worrisome is that these weren't business travelers or regular tourists - they were health tourists who had traveled to India specifically for medical treatment.

Many westerners travel to India and Pakistan for cheap cosmetic surgery and other treatment, then bring the gene home with them. The Lancet has documented cases in the UK as well.

In what sounds like a work of bio-war fiction, this gene mixes with existing bacteria, causing essentially complete immunity to antibiotics.

Here's the link:

ABC News Article

Meditations On Inflation

2010-08-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

"What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar."
-- Thomas Riley Marshall (VP of the USA 1913-1921)

"There are plenty of good five cent cigars in this country. The problem is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five cent nickel."
-- W.C. Fields response to above quote

Missouri Mandate

2010-08-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

In any election, a high percentage win is called a mandate. 71% of Missourians have voted against Obamacare, just now, in a state where McCain eked out a pathetic 51% in the last presidential election.

Now THAT's a mandate, but don't hold your breath waiting for TPTB to acknowledge this fact!

Cat's Out of the Bag, PIIGS in a Poke, The Next Shoe to Drop, etc.

2010-08-04T09:43:00.000-07:00

The next act in the Global Ponzi screenplay is the municipal insolvency crisis, bubbling ever closer to the surface of mainstream (un)conscoiusness. Watch for how shocked they will be at the "revelations"...

"beyod expectations..."

"surprising depth..."

"unanticipated sums..."

"startling revelations..."

Is my job at CNBC open yet?

Just a Number

2010-08-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader turns 49 today. At least, chronologically.

Bet he wishes that was his approval number.

Pavlov's Bears?

2010-08-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

We heard, of course, of the recent bear adventures in Montana. Topping that, our local honey brown wandered through again last week. As youth, our generation was aware that bears were dangerous. They might eat you, and you did not encourage them with food. This wisdom was lost along the way, to the extent that Jeff Cooper felt compelled to state and re-state the Gunsite Bear Rules. Apparently it is again time:

"Bears of all kinds are a great ornament to the wilderness, but you do not want them in your lap.

1. Be alert.
2. Remember that bears are not cuddly.
3. Never enter bear country without a powerful firearm and the skill to use it well.
4. Never camp on a bear thoroughfare.
5. Be alert."

To this warning I would add the text of a delightful sign posted, in a rare fit of humor and honesty, in a park up in socialist Canada:

Due to the frequency of human-bear encounters, the B.C. Fish and Wildlife Branch is advising hikers, hunters, fishermen and any persons that use the out of doors in a recreational or work related function to take extra precautions while in the field.

We advise the outdoorsman to wear little noisy bells on clothing so as to give advanced warning to any bears that might be close by so you don’t take them by surprise.

We also advise anyone using the out-of-doors to carry “Pepper Spray” with him is case of an encounter with a bear.

Outdoorsmen should also be on the watch for fresh bear activity, and be able to tell the difference between black bear feces and grizzly bear feces. Black bear feces is smaller and contains lots of berries and squirrel fur. Grizzly bear shit has bells in it and smells like pepper.

Are Cops Constitutional?

2010-07-29T19:48:00.000-07:00

I didn't start out thinking this way, but over the years I have become an ardent critic of American law enforcement. As Acton observed, power corrupts, and it is no longer debatable that our cops have too much power. Over the years the ranks of all departments have swollen, and it is clear - crystal clear - that police forces have become highly militarized.

By numbers and disposition, the police now constitute a standing army.

I've no doubt the Founders would share my alarm and moral outrage at these developments. I've done what I can, largely with anecdotes, to wake people up. Now comes a fascinating and scholarly examination of law enforcement at the time of the Founding. Turns out that this was another thing the people did for themselves, and, as usual, did quite well. Much better, in fact, than it's done today, and with far more checks and balances. The notion of government paid cops was quite simply unthinkable at the time, as it should be today.

Here's the abstract: "Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ "textualist" and "originalist" methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the growth of modern policing has substantially empowered the state in a way the Framers would regard as abhorrent to their foremost principles."

And an excerpt: "Law enforcement in the Founders' time was a duty of every citizen.32 Citizens were expected to be armed and equipped to chase suspects on foot, on horse, or with wagon whenever summoned. And when called upon to enforce the laws of the state, citizens were to respond "not faintly and with lagging steps, but honestly and bravely and with whatever implements and facilities [were] convenient and at hand."33 Any person could act in the capacity of a constable without being one,34 and when summoned by a law enforcement officer, a private person became a temporary member of the police department.35 The law also presumed that any person acting in his public capacity as an officer was rightfully appointed.36

Laws in virtually every state still require citizens to aid in capturing escaped prisoners, arresting criminal suspects, and executing legal process. The duty of citizens to enforce the law was and is a constitutional one. Many early state constitutions purported to bind citizens into a universal obligation to perform law enforcement functions, yet evinced no mention of any state power to carry out those same functions.37 But the law enforcement duties of the citizenry are now a long-forgotten remnant of the Framers' era. By the 1960s, only twelve percent of the public claimed to have ever personally acted to combat crime.38

The Founders could not have envisioned 'police' officers as we know them today. The term "police" had a slightly different meaning at the time of the Founding.39 It was generally used as a verb and meant to watch over or monitor the public health and safety.40 In Louisiana, "police juries" were local governing bodies similar to county boards in other states.41 Only in the mid-nineteenth century did the term 'police' begin to take on the persona of a uniformed state law enforcer.42 The term first crept into Supreme Court jurisprudence even later.43

Prior to the 1850s, rugged individualism and self-reliance were the touchstones of American law, culture, and industry. Although a puritan cultural and legal ethic pervaded their society, Americans had great toleration for victimless misconduct.44 Traffic disputes were resolved through personal negotiation and common law tort principles, rather than driver licenses and armed police patrol.45 Agents of the state did not exist for the protection of the individual citizen. The night watch of early American cities concerned itself primarily with the danger of fire, and watchmen were often afraid to enter some of the most notorious neighborhoods of cities like Boston.46

At the time of Tocqueville's observations (in the 1830s), "the means available to the authorities for the discovery of crimes and arrest of criminals [were] few,"47 yet Tocqueville doubted "whether in any other country crime so seldom escapes punishment."48 Citizens handled most crimes informally, forming committees to catch criminals and hand them over to the courts.49 Private mobs in early America dealt with larger threats to public safety and welfare, such as houses of ill fame.50 Nothing struck a European traveler in America, wrote Tocqueville, more than the absence of government in the streets"

I debated editing out those annoying footnote numbers, but decided to leave them in to show how well the author documented this work. This is the kind of research it will take to force cops back into a respectable place in society, if it's possible at this late date. Here's the whole thing, well worth reading and passing around: Are Cops Constitutional?

H/T to Pete at WRSA, linked in my blogroll.

I just don't make their kind of money...

2010-07-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

This fun little gadget allows you to compare your writing style with the more prominent published authors. Such clever things we do on the net!

Several of my posts brought this comparison:

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

A few produced this result:

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Doctorow is a blogger with, disappointingly, leftist leanings.

A couple yielded this:

I write like
Arthur Conan Doyle

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

One of these:

I write like
Edgar Allan Poe

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

And one of these:

I write like
George Orwell

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I often re-read books, actually. That is the mark of writers I truly enjoy. Of all the authors named, only Orwell is one I re-read, and I try to read Animal Farm or 1984 roughly once a year. They were prescient the first time around, and just get fatter and fatter as the years pass. As writers go, I suppose Orwell's pretty good company, but he's certainly a small part of my reading list.

I took in a smattering of Poe(try) along the way, and there is actually a collection of Poe's work somewhere in my boxes of books. I read Doyle as a kid, of course, and Brown more recently. I wouldn't re-read Brown and haven't felt any inspiration to re-read Doyle, although I just might if the world would calm down a bit.

Many, probably the majority, yielded this:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Interestingly, Richard Mitchell's Underground Grammarian text a few posts down produced this same outcome, as did (with consistency) a few pieces penned by Jeff Cooper that I fed into the beastie. I've only heard the name - never read a thing Lovecraft wrote. It's intriguing that Mitchell, Cooper and I would test the same, since in both topic and style they rank among my favorite writers. This is getting interesting. So, I copied parts of letters I wrote 30 years ago, which consistently brought up Lovecraft's name as well.

That was long before any of Mitchell's works (and most of Cooper's, including all of his books) were published. If asked before today, I would have guessed that my own style might have been influenced by them. It now appears that just the opposite is true: Our style is our own, if we're genuine, and we're simply most attracted to the writers who think and express themselves the same way we do, regardless of the topic.

Makes sense!

Mitchell, Cooper, Fireplaceguy and now Lovecraft. That's another author I need to read, and he's now high on my used bookstore shopping list to infinity and beyond, at least until I satisfy my curiosity.

Running my words through this wringer was an interesting exercise. You never know what you'll find! Try it, a few times, for yourself, along with the words of a couple of your favorite authors...

Hasta la vista, baby...

2010-07-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

...and if you'll allow me one more, will Ahnold become a REAL Austrian (of the von Mises kind) in this, his final role?

Yes, Kali-fornia belatedly declared a state of emergency over their finances.

Yawn.

After decades of advance billing, it's here: "Terminator 9: Fiat Money" Now playing everywhere. It's the only show in town, and the last picture they'll ever make.

You vill vatch it, und you vill liff it.

Along the laugh cynically/cry/scream/commit suicide continuum, I generally favor laughter. This recipe (with a bit of a scream folded in here and there) keeps the blood pressure down and the blood not spilled, which only they want. The cynicism topping is my fuel-saving shortcut to the truth.

Hence, and with a sardonic grin, I'm of a mind to start a pool: Will it be force (farce?) majeure/default? A bailout? Bankruptcy? Perhaps, if God feels any mercy for the rest of us, a 9.8 earthquake???

Pick your poison(s) and a date, prize to be determined...

Me? I vote for all of the above, in that order, commencing as soon as possible. I really didn't need that label on my new pry bar telling me that it contains something known to you Carnacs of the Environment to cause cancer, as if I was going to chew on the damn thing or stir my soup with it. And then there was the inoperable nozzle on the last gas can I bought. That was the last straw. I could shove it up your a** (wanted to, at the time) and it still wouldn't spill a drop. And maybe that's the point. You've converted it into an environmentally friendly safe-sex toy, one that closely mirrors what you did to your oil industry and, come to that, your entire state. Now you can't even self-immolate, which would certainly be the honorable thing.

Somewhere along the way, your imported/minority vote robots will turn on you, and they're smarter than you think. Hell, they're clever enough to unscrew that nozzle, and they'll burn your lesbian gay bisexual transgendered worker's welfare paradise to the ground for lying to them all these years and then betraying them in "the hour of their need". You'll also see the faces of a lot of your public employees in that madding crowd, and I'm sure you'll be sincerely shocked that your cannibal class turned on you...

Not me. I'll probably have to break down and buy a new flat screen and subscribe to cable, just to see the show. You, the kleptocratic screwers, will become the screwees, reaping what you've sown for lo, these many decades. Act surprised all you want, but being as foreseeable as tomorrow's sunrise, the popcorn will be ready at my house.

Economic oblivion couldn't happen to a nicer bunch. I do resent my forced participation, but at least I get to watch you stop twitching first. Since I'm prepared, I'll be watching from a comfortable vantage point, laughing on a full stomach.

One final question - will the last one of you turn off the lights or will Arizona have to do even that for you feckless girly-men?

Hasta la vista, you little babies. You did it to yourselves. And no, you won't be back. You're too well-marbled for that.

Sold Out

2010-07-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

In yet another demonstration of the FACT that no branch of government cares what the law is or what the people desire, key provisions of the Arizona law attempting to stem the tide of illegal immigrants (invaders, if you're honest) were just struck down.

Further comment is unnecessary.

Oh, Shit...

2010-07-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

Fox News reports that the Mayor of Newark, NJ has ordered he city to stop purchasing toilet paper. We don't know how much that will save, but toilet paper must be a fairly significant budget item for something as full of crap as a municipal government.

They can always wipe with muni's, which were headed in that general direction anyway...

Vocabulary Word of the Millenium: Innumeracy

2010-07-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

Innumeracy is to math what illiteracy is to reading. John Paulos wrote the book by that name, and yes, it's in my library.

While perhaps 15% of our population is functionally illiterate - a term indicating the inability to navigate through the basic paperwork of life - something approaching half of our population is innumerate.

This is no accident. The illiterate and the innumerate are the effluent of the public school system. One of the consequences of innumeracy is rampant liberalism - a condition which suits modern government just fine. Anyone conversant with math understands that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that lunch stolen from a third party isn't free at all either. Underlying this moral precept is mathematical law, and I would argue that mathematics and morality are in fact inseparable.

Innumeracy figures in many of the posts I'm working on, so read up...

A Note of Appreciation from the Rich

2010-07-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.

On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it — you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!

As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.

Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us — and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.

Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!

You also probably don't have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you're also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to "break out of the mold."

Naturally, we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged, unionized against non-unionized, Black against White, male against female, American workers against Japanese against Mexican against.... We continually push your wages down by invoking "foreign competition," "the law of supply and demand," "national security," or "the bloated federal deficit." We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as "elections." Happily, you haven't a clue as to what's really happening — instead, you blame "Aliens," "Tree-hugging Environmentalists," "Niggers," "Jews," Welfare Queens," and countless others for your troubled situation.

We're also very pleased that many of you still embrace the "work ethic," even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don't know much about work, but we're sure glad you do!

Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don't know that. In fact, you can't even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that's probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system — robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself.

So we'd truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for "knowing your place" — without even knowing it!

FPG's note: Full credit, and my thanks go out to the folks at Scroogle Scraper for this humorous bit. It's one of a number of fun things that appear on their home page. For those who aren't familiar with Scroogle, they allow you to search Google without having your searches permanently recorded in Google's archives. I highly recommend them.

Scroogle Scraper

Truth

2010-07-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.” —Ayn Rand

A Brilliant Analysis of Islam

2010-07-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

It would be interesting to tally the death toll rung up by Marxist/socialist governments and Islamic governments over the last century, and compare that figure with the century's total dead by other than natural causes. I haven't undertaken the exercise, but am confident that such an accounting would shed much light on where humanity's real problems lie.

I regard left-liberalism and radical Islam as the two greatest philosophical threats to civilized society. The word Islam literally means submission, and Islamic doctrine divides the world into Dar al-Islam (House of Submission) and Dar al-Harb (House of War). Clearly, Islam's adherents always saw themselves at war with the rest of the world, and 14 centuries of bad behavior are there to clear up any remaining doubt.

Lately, I've been comparing the psychology of modern left-liberalism with that of Islam. The parallels are surprising - particularly in the areas of intolerance of competing views and the subjugation of non-believers. Like Muslims, leftists play for keeps. They're uninterested in reasoned debate, preferring to destroy competing views in much the same way Islam is commanded to subjugate, convert or kill infidels. Both are violent expansionist doctrines, and dhimmitude is rather difficult to distinguish from forced participation in Obamacare when you get right down to it.

I would note that despite the delusional BS of cowardly politicians, there can be no such thing as a peace loving Islamist any more than there can be peace loving Marxists/socialists. In both doctrines, adherents are commanded by their radical god to conquer and subjugate.

When your god is a violent radical, you have no choice in the matter. This fully explains the conspicuous lack of criticism of the barbaric acts of either leftists or Islamists by any followers of either.

I was delighted to discover a blog focused exclusively on the critical examination of radical Islam. It's called Citizen Warrior, and the link takes you directly to an older article that is outstanding work.

Enjoy!

The Other "Boxes of Liberty"

2010-07-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Just below, I commented on the ballot box - one of the four "boxes of liberty" - and made the case that it is no longer of use. It's high time Americans stop to reflect on the other three "boxes of liberty" and which of these boxes - if any - have remaining utility at this late hour.

The soap box (the First Amendment) is not one to be dismissed under any circumstance, but it's usefulness pales when, as now, the government simply doesn't listen.

The jury box might still be reclaimed, if Americans would just wake to their power to judge not only the guilt of the accused but the validity of the law itself. Jury Nullification is really just another arrow in our voting quiver, enabling us to vote against any law we don't like even if our representatives have acted against our own best interests in passing it. Clearly, the Founders intended this as another safeguard against the breakdown of representation over time - a most prescient concern. Nullification would be useful, if we knew it was there.

The box of last resort is the cartridge box. This looks more and more like the only box that might be useful to fix things, if we have the will left to fix them.

Our right to revolution is expressed in the Declaration of Independence itself. The Declaration notes the self evident truth that man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life itself and liberty. (In the legal sense, alienable means salable or transferable, so unalienable literally means not transferable. An unalienable right is one that cannot be taken away. Under the doctrine of self defense, we're justified in fighting whenever someone tries to taker these rights!)

After establishing that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental rights, the Founders state "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (Then we shot all the slow learners and threw rest of the bastards out at gunpoint. The Revolutionary War was so named for a good reason...)

Shortly after the war came the drafting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. While flawed (another subject entirely!) it remains the most radical blueprint for the government of a nation in history, in that (if followed) it severely limits the scope and powers of government while guaranteeing widespread rights for the people. The Founders deliberately inserted several means of essentially perpetual revolution: Free speech. Unhindered assembly. A free press. Petition. Elections. Jury nullification. (The only peril they could not guard against was our own apathy, which is precisely where the train went off the tracks. More on that in a bit.)

The cartridge box - the guarantee of our right to revolution - was enshrined in law as the Second Amendment. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." These words, taken with their meanings at the time (original intent) establish (no surprise here) a philosophy of complete rebelliousness. A militia is the people, well regulated meant well trained and a free State was just that - a State that was not under the thumb of the newly created Federal government and could potentially go to war against other states or the Feds. The right itself was expressed after the philosophy was stated - the right of the people (a phrase used repeatedly in the bill of rights, totally clear in meaning) to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms (guns) shall not be infringed.

Only the profoundly dishonest could "miss" the clarity of these words.

Although Acton's warning wasn't penned until a century later, the Founders understood all too well the tendency of even a small amount of power to corrupt men. They weren't shy about using guns against their oppressors, either. They wanted us armed because they believed we'd be smart enough to shoot 'em all before things got this bad!

Of course, human nature prevailed. Softened by the blessings of Liberty, we the people became apathetic - if not altogether blind - to the usurpation of our natural rights, and to the ever growing (and illegal) Federal power assumed through deception and lies.

Too many of us came to feed at the resulting government trough, and I'm not just talking about welfare/entitlement recipients. We have millions and millions of government workers at the Federal, state, county, city and special district levels. Then there are the contractors, and the mercenaries. The grant recipients. The schools. Many businesses and all professions are likewise beneficiaries of government power, shaping and using regulations to maximize revenue and/or to minimize competition. Also, too many good people looked the other way as we were colonized with a new kind of immigrant that came, often illegally, intending only to feed at that trough.

Now, when matters come to a vote, it is quite likely that these various groups of feeders form the majority. Obviously, such an "election" is an exercise in foregone conclusion, and the rights of the minority (us) have been handily eliminated. Our votes, and our rights, are meaningless.

de Juvenal observed that "a nation of sheep must, in time, beget a government of wolves" and that, deservedly, is what we have today. The miserable burden of socialism weighs on every aspect of American life today, and the weight will only grow till we're crushed.

We've come nearly full circle in the Fatal Sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to courage;
From courage to freedom;
From freedom to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to fear;
From fear to dependency;
From dependency back into bondage.

Courage has all but disappeared, but we see the apathetic, the fearful and the dependent everywhere. People are waking up, but it's too little, too late. All that's left to us is the descent from dependency back into bondage, and I don't think it can be a controlled landing. It's just too late.

I doubt that the Repubs would repeal anything Obama enacted, and even if they did it would be a pyrrhic victory. The interest on our trillions of free lunches has finally come due. That interest cannot be paid with what we have left to offer, which is more free lunches. The rest of the world is in no better shape. Our only path out of this mess is forward through a collapse. We fiddled while Rome burned, and now the last resort has become our only option.

If we have the courage, this next fight will be a rude combination of the two major domestic wars we've already fought - a revolution and a parallel civil war. If we fight, we will fight not just FOR liberty but also AGAINST slavery - that second fight being as much against our own countrymen as against the king.

It's high time time you ask yourself - which side are you really on? Do you just talk a good show, or do you walk the talk? Are you a senior citizen unwilling to acknowledge the unconstitutionality of Social Security and Medicare? (The fact that these programs are mathematically doomed is irrelevant. They're morally wrong, and that's all you should need!) Are you an accountant, doctor or lawyer who owes his nice income to government regulation/government created monopolies? Are you a government bureaucrat, or do you owe your job to government even though you work in private industry? Are you on welfare? Are you a high tech/internet player, an investor, stockbroker, Realtor, contractor or mortgage broker who took their cut of the fiat money bubbles? Did you use your house as an ATM, or did you buy one you couldn't afford with an interest only mortgage? Do you vote for your own gain or do you hold out for the good of the nation? Or, are you a leftist who simply votes against the nation, irrationally seeking to burn down the house you live in?

The answers to these questions matter, and even many so called conservatives have some real soul searching to do. And quickly. That soul searching, no matter the outcome, still beats the predicament of today's liberals, who have nothing left to claim but shame.

Insanity. Our sheeplike apathy has produced dependence on a government of wolves, whose only interest in us is as a source of labor and revenue. Now it's harvest time, and we're the crop.

So, back to into the bondage we clamored for. We've become the Eloi, and we've begged the Morelocks to take "care" of us. Are we so diminished a people that we will settle for this bloody slavery? Or, deep down, do we yet have the will for the slightly less bloody fight to retake that precious gift we let slip with so little thought?

I wish I knew the answer...

Insanity

2010-07-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

A fine definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.

Like voting...

The Repubs, who have betrayed our trust over and over, are about to be given another chance at power - a chance they have not earned and do not deserve. It's like the Peanuts cartoon - the Republicans are Lucy and the conservative voters are Charlie Brown. That football will be yanked away again, just the moment we vote for them. I guarantee it.

Admittedly, we have a distinct left and right wing in politics, but can't everyone see these wings are attached to the same bird? Vote for the Left wing - get a big government police state. Vote for the Right wing - get a big government police state. Sure, the Dhimmicrats gave us Hillary Clinton where the Repubs gave us Condi Rice, but beyond the aesthetic there are no meaningful choices.

And for God's sake, can't everyone see the obvious power behind the throne by now?

Even if such weren't the case, the ballot box is so compromised as to be useless. Both parties squabble for power that means something to them, but nothing to us. They fight to align districts to invalidate elections. Blatant manipulation, intimidation and outright vote fraud goes not just unpunished, but largely unnoticed. The arrogance of Barry and the Dhimmicrats goes beyond his personal narcissism and their vast power - it stems as well from their intent to pass "comprehensive immigration reform" and thus never face an honest election again.

There's an old bumper sticker that said "don't vote - it just encourages them" and there's a lot of truth in this. Regardless of who we vote for, the act of voting ratifies the fraud. Participation is a form of consent, after all. A low single digit voter turnout is precisely the lack of consent our political system deserves, and robs the machine of any claim of legitimacy.

A Good Crisis...

2010-07-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

"You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid."

Although the crisis ploy has been around for decades, one might, in observance of Rahm's now famous words, be tempted to call this the Emmanuel Doctrine...

The Deepwater Horizon incident is the perfect illustration of not letting a good crisis go to waste, sort of. Sort of, in that the hoped for results could not all be readily produced. There's no doubt that the Obama-ites did everything they could to magnify the environmental damage of the catastrophe. They paid as little attention to the whole incident as possible, while behind the scenes they delayed and denied every proposed mitigation. When that charade began to really unravel, the boy king made a speech about looking for an ass to kick and they got busy with a shakedown of BP.

They are now on their second attempt to halt drilling in the Gulf. We'll see if it plays any better than the first attempt, but is is useful in that it exposes the underlying agenda: with a crisis for cover, deprive America of it's own energy production and keep America dependent on enemy states for oil. In other words, weaken America in every situation, regardless of how tortured the "logic".

Destroy America. It's the Prime Directive of the left...

This brings me to an uncomfortable thought that is weighing heavier and heavier on my mind: When the government of the day has the oppression of its citizens and the destruction of the country as it's main goal, and when capitalization on crisis is the main tool they use to advance the agenda, what will they do when they need a crisis and don't have one handy?

If you don't believe this is how they think, here's a recent example: "The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership," says Rob Shapiro (former Clinton official and Obama supporter) "He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that." (Such words, coming from the mouth of a former Clinton operative, bring back memories of reports that Clinton was jealous that 9/11 happened on Bush's watch, since it was such a great opportunity to appear "presidential"...)

Google the term "false flag" and read up on the long history of contrived crises and subsequent power grabs by their perpetrators. Be very suspicious of the origin of any "crisis" between here and the election, and during the lame duck legislative session that follows. (For that matter, be suspicious of any crisis at any time.) After all, the Reichstag Fire wasn't patented, and anyone can use the ploy.

Reason and Logic

2010-07-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

I've long held that committed leftists are inaccessible by way of reason and logic. Yet, being reasoning and logical people, most conservative arguments including my own remain rooted in reason and logic. From there, it's easy for us to end up on the defensive against emotional arguments.

It's time to change the conversation...

The most effective change we can make is to take a page out of the left's own playbook, and start asking questions like:

"Why do you hate freedom?"

"Why are you ruining the economy?"

"Why are you depriving America of oil?"

"Why are you ignoring the law?"

"Why are you bankrupting us?"

The point is to cut to the chase and identify their end game in our questions. Don't just complain that they're doing it - ask why! Everyone knows what's going on here, and it's high time to acknowledge it with questions that put THEM on the defensive!

Totalitarian Utopia, Version 2.0: Purificationism

2010-06-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a great treatise on the mindset behind the left's unquestioning acceptance of the "change we can believe in" folks. This explains the comfort the left has with radical Islam, and you'll not like the reasons why. At least you'll understand how socialists, radical environmentalists and Islamofascists make such good bedfellows these days...

Know your enemies.

This is one of the most important articles I've seen this year - please read it all.

A big hat tip to Mike at Sipsey Street, linked here.

Housing Market HAS NOT Bottomed Yet...

2010-06-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Who was it who said "there are lies, damned lies and statistics"???

For April 2010, the Commerce Department claimed 42,000 new single-family home sales. That's an annual rate of 504,000… and a 15% increase over March levels. In May, it counted only 25,000 new home sales. In addition, they revised the April numbers down to 37,000 and revised March's numbers down by 4,000 to 32,000 after people backed out of their agreements.

What matters is that May 2010 was the worst month for new home sales in America since record keeping began in the early 60's.

The Commerce Department says the average sales price for these new homes was $200,900 - that's a new seven-year low, down 10% from a year ago, and 22% from the all-time high in June 2006.

Thirty-year "A" paper fixed mortgage rates dropped to 4.69% last week, yet applications fell to the lowest levels seen since 1997.

As icing on the cake, a Realtor friend who has sold a few of these "tax rebate homes" suspects that at least half of these recent buyers will end up defaulting, just adding to the foreclosure mess. She says most of these buyers don't fit the profile of someone who can weather an economic storm. (As anecdotal support for that hypothesis, one in ten mortgages in America experienced at least one late payment in Q1 2010.)

It's not over, and there's nothing we can do but watch. It must feel rather similar to live in Oklahoma without a tornado shelter, with a storm approaching...

Astounding...

2010-06-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

in my blog list I refer to Wm. Grigg's blog, but this article needed to be permanently linked.

It's later than you think in America

Acton was spot on.

Batten Down the Hatches!

2010-06-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

I often complain that we have our own PIIGS, and that not enough attention is paid to them. California is our Greece, at least in that it will probably be the first to fall. (How you screw up a state blessed with the economic output of Silicon Valley, Hollywood and miles of agricultural paradise would be incomprehensible had it not already been accomplished!) Illinois isn't far behind, and could still pull out a win in these last laps. Our Portugal is probably Michigan, there being a strong parallel in the loss of industrial base. You get the picture...

Our saving grace thus far is the reserve currency status of the dollar, which makes us king of the fiat hill. In the long view, that's not much of a hill to be king of, and all signs now point to mid-1931.

Here are the "thoughts" of the economic rapist pulling the levers:

Oh, shit.

In the (paraphrased) words of the Mogambo Guru - "forget gold - I'm going long on canned goods and ammo"

Setting Things Straight: Who Owns Who...

2010-06-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

"A man may have to die for his country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country.

He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself."

-- C. S. Lewis

Lenin, on Inflation and Taxes...

2010-05-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

After viewing the video just below, ponder this juicy Vladimir Lenin quote: "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."

Does anyone still believe this is just one long string of unhappy coincidences???

Meltup

2010-05-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

Behold the latest work of the National Inflation Association, entitled "Meltup" in a clever play on inflationary meltdown.

It's a dire warning of looming hyperinflation and national bankruptcy. Well researched and documented, showing a lot of the details of the mess and blasting well deserved holes in government statistics. It'll make you angry, and it should:

Necessity

2010-05-02T20:30:00.000-07:00

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.

It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

~ William Pitt the younger, 1759-1806

US Constitution, Round Two

2010-04-26T16:39:00.000-07:00

As a nation, we're at a crossroads. Do we continue down our present path and destroy the country? Is it still possible to save the Republic?

Personally, I think the Republic is dead. In my fantasies, I see a practical way to save it, although not without a convulsion. My fantasy involves the Old Testament concept of Jubliee along with a rewrite of the Constitution

Every 50 years was Jubilee - slaves were freed, debts canceled and property returned to it's owners. Notes were actually calculated based on how many years remained till the next Jubilee.

The idea of a modern day Jubilee needs further development. Some thoughts I have are: It needs to be a one time event, and not just all debt, but the bankers themselves need to be thrown out in the process. The income tax, IRS and >95% of the Federal government goes as well. All federally owned land will be returned to the states. The states may keep such parks as could pay their own way, privatized, via tourism and donations. All other state owned land will be given to the people under the old homesteading laws.

We return to coining money, as the Constitution required. We abolish not only the central bank, but fractional reserve banking. (The one aspect of Islam I find appealing is their banking laws. It wouldn't hurt to model our laws after theirs.)

The interstate commerce clause needs to be tightened up if not eliminated altogether, and a good part of the Constitution needs to be made inviolable, as in no amendment or constitutional convention can ever deprive us of certain rights, or expand many government powers. On that list would be no federal or state income tax, ever. No VAT, ever. No property taxes, ever. No government debt, ever. No central banking, ever. No government involvement in schools, ever. As to regulation, government would be free to set standards but not enforce them. A company could voluntarily comply with the standards, if they and consumers found the standards appealing. The federal government could not directly regulate any industry - this would be left to the states. (I suspect that very little regulation would work far better than too much regulation has, and such is the most logical approach to try next.)

At any level of government, no new law passed can be more than three 8 1/2 x 11 pages long, one side only, and in standard 12 point type. Two existing laws must be repealed in order to pass each new one. No unrelated spending of any kind can be attached to another bill - every penny spent on pork must be voted on separately. Any legislator who cannot score at least 70% on the implications of a law he voted for may be executed on the spot, no bag limit. Legislators who vote for a program are individually and jointly liable for any of the program's cost overruns, which will be considered fraud under the law. Legislators serve without pay, and may not accept gifts. (Hmmm... Apparently Pelosi saying we need to pass health care in order to find out what's in the bill was the last straw for me!)

No fine can be collected without a jury trial, and charges must be dismissed if a fair and speedy trial cannot be provided. Fines cannot be used by any level or branch of government as revenue, and all fines will be donated to a church or charity chosen by the payor. No asset forfeiture, no eminent domain, no drug laws. No government run welfare programs will be allowed. No fees of any kind can be imposed by any level of government. State and local governments must run on sales tax alone, and the total sales tax that any American must pay cannot exceed 3%, including special districts of any kind.

I haven't fully considered how to deal with the federal crime mess, but I'd certainly eliminate most of the federal statutes and federal courts as a start. We could eliminate the SEC, for example, which has failed dismally at consumer protection. (The slight loss of revenue to the porn industry is a small price to pay!) Crimes can be dealt with by the states.

I would make a limited number of exceptions to this such as a fuel tax for roads, but not a cent of it would go to the Feds. It would all go to the states, or even directly to the counties. I'm not sure we need incorporated cities at all, for anything. The county can do it. All city facilities could be turned over to the counties and a lot of redundancy could be eliminated.

The one thing I can't figure out is what to do with millions of low-functioning humans who will be released from our welfare rolls and government jobs all at once. That just mystifies me. Best idea I have so far is to give them all some seed and make them stay home and grow gardens. Since they won't have a mortgage or taxes to pay, that would probably work out well enough. If they wished to relocate to a utopia such as Cuba where things already run according to their fantasies, they'd be welcome to leave. (Funny thing is, they'd be planting a subsistence garden when they got there!)

The truly needy - those with disabilities and handicaps who really need a hand would be well served by voluntary charity, as has always been the case in America. We're the most charitable nation on earth as it is, and this would just get better when citizens weren't being fleeced six ways from Sunday by government.

In our current climate, none of this is likely, even plausible. Sadly, barring a Jubilee type event followed by an immediate return to honest money and radically limited government I do think our only way out is forward through a collapse.

Thoughts???

Extraordinary Liberal Delusions

2010-04-23T16:57:00.000-07:00

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Today's shrill climate should be no surprise, given that Bastiat penned that gem of a warning in 1848. Those who presently endeavor to live at the expense of everyone else are living quite a lie, and must become more and more shrill in defense of their fantasy as time goes on. It's a natural law.

The left has been engaged in a futile yet revealing smear of the Tea Party for months now, which slander reached crescendo as the April 19th rallies in Washington DC finally took place.

Most revealing of all is the left's attempt to misconstrue the significance of the date. When you have over six billion people on a planet and only 365 days in the year, any date will end up the anniversary of something significant. All the same, and somewhat remarkably, a number of history's most profound events have taken place on April 19th. The one that matters most to this essay is the shot heard 'round the world, fired in 1775 when the American Revolutionary War started in earnest at Lexington and Concord. April 19th is traditionally called Patriots' Day in honor of this history, and is still a state holiday in Massachusetts. Paul Revere's ride and the battles of Lexington and Concord are re-enacted annually. This is the history the left studiously ignores in all their smearing of the Tea Party movement, and listening to them one might never learn of our history.

Our history.

American history.

But how about April 19th in the years before and since? To anyone with a more than passing interest in Liberty, it's a fascinating study. In 1529, at the Second Diet of Speyer, a group of Protestant Furcht und Reichsstadt (loosely: leaders and cities) united against the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms, thereby launching the Protestant reformation into high gear. This came just 12 years after Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door - the intellectual spark of the Reformation. It was this unity in 1529 which fanned that spark into a flame and assured that the nascent Reformation would flourish. (Note that the term "Protestant" is rooted in the word protest.) This event set the stage for much of subsequent western history.

In 1861, the initial bloodshed of the (First) Civil War took place in the Pratt Street Riots in Baltimore on April 19th.

In 1943, that same date marked the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - an episode that any student of oppression (and particularly gun control) should become well acquainted with.

In 1956, two vestiges (perhaps the last two) of the ancien regime united when Grace Kelly married Prince Ranier in Monaco. (Not of the greatest import, but the passing of this kind of class and style is a noteworthy factor in our decline.)

In 1993, Janet Reno's troops picked the date to incinerate 82 Branch Davidians at the Mt. Carmel complex outside of Waco, TX, which had been under siege for nearly two months. Coincidence?

Two years later on the very same day came the OKC bombing, allegedly carried out by Tim McVeigh in retribution for the Waco conflagration two years earlier.

This last event is what the left desperately hopes to link to the Tea Party in people's minds. It's a far fetched ploy, that no honest person could embrace - unless they were historically illiterate. The Tea Party name very obviously derives from the action of the Colonists in 1773, an event significant because of the transition from talk to action. The present Tea Party philosophy is reflective of that same pungent attitude.

As with the Colonists in 1773, the Tea Partyers of today don't wish to be taxed excessively or without representation, and are just as concerned with the oppressive course of government today as their intellectual predecessors were then.

That concern is not universal. The left is quite pleased with the course of government these days, and the Tea Party movement is an unexpected and alarming challenge to the left's hope and change socialist nirvana, finally within reach.

Implicit in the sentiment behind these protests is potential for action, once again. Action that spells defeat for an increasingly unpopular agenda, to which the left remains totally committed. Their sympathetic media cronies understate attendance at Tea Party events, and diligently advance the base teabagger reference and every other desperate smear at every opportunity.

Underneath their condescending facade, the left knows that for every Tea Party event attendee there are hundreds of mainstream Americans who share the protester's alarm at our out-of-control government. An alarm that is founded in rather reasonable concerns, such as the impossibility of any nation successfully spending trillions of dollars that it doesn't have as a path to prosperity, or the ability (of a government that has failed conspicuously at every large program ever undertaken) to make any aspect of health care safer, more accessible or less expensive.

The left has no answers for those concerns. If they did, we'd have heard them before now. When the best you can bring against a reasonable and informed opponent is insults, innuendo and slander, you reveal more about yourself than you understand, and the revelations are less becoming than you would ever know.

The result for me, personally, is a new and vivid insight into the frightful nature of these enemies of freedom. These folks are delusional, and utterly passionate about their delusions. They actually do live in a fantasy world - one which they're willing to maintain/enforce at any cost - any cost to us, that is. They're profoundly dangerous, highly organized and intent on victory regardless of consequence.

We're talking civil war, and it's well underway. Think about it, and prepare...

Amazing Police Corruption Website

2010-04-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on this site last night, and fell asleep grieving (yet again) for America. I knew that police corruption was rampant, but this researcher has driven home just how bad it actually is out there. Nobody is safe, and we need to be outraged.

This guy is doing yeoman work documenting police corruption, and deserves our support. As in, financial support. It appears that his work is being ripped off by others, without accreditation let alone compensation.

Tell everyone. Broadcast the link. Send money. Thanks!

Injustice Everywhere

Atlas Shrugged, in 8 Minutes!

2010-04-13T23:51:00.000-07:00

If you're a leftist, this may be incomprehensible. (Just sayin')

By The Way...

2010-04-08T10:29:00.000-07:00

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials." — George Mason, Virginia Convention Debates on Ratification of the US Constitution

A Recovering Liberal Looks at Obama, Not Liking the Picture...

2010-04-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

WOW!!!

Good one. Thanks, Mike.

Reality Check

2010-04-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

OK, it's good to do a reality check now and then, just to be sure you rinse off all the media Kool Aid stains. (A quarterly review can't hurt anyone, can it?)

So, a few questions:

Are we done with the layoffs?

Are the decent jobs coming back?

Has the wave of foreclosures stopped?

Have home values really bottomed?

Is no-one upside down in their mortgage anymore?

Is the mortgage delinquency rate falling?

Is the shadow inventory of homes cleared?

Is the bankruptcy rate falling?

Are private pensions solvent?

How about public pensions?

Are the states solvent?

How about municipalities?

Are the toxic debts off the FED's books?

Are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of the woods?

How about the FDIC?

And, is the wave of bank failures behind us?

Are the US automakers OK?

How about the bond market?

Is Medicare in the black?

How about Social Security?

Are banks back to lending?

Is the retail sector OK?

Is the energy picture good?

Are farmers/ranchers in the black?

Is the dollar sound?

Are the EU countries stable?

China?

Russia?

The middle east?

Heck - how about America - are WE stable?

Is wall street suddenly honest?

Is the government suddenly honest?

Is the government even under control?

Are the unfunded liabilities gone?

Are federal deficits back to a "reasonable" size?

Will Obamacare save money?

Is the media telling us the truth about anything (besides last night's low temp)?

Sorry. You know the answers. The DOW may be at 11,000 but I see no valid reason for it. If you like gambling, have at it, but I just don't see the value. The market is (allegedly) forward looking, so where's the acknowledgment of our predicament? If we're honest, America really looks like some kind of sick amalgam of Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe, with a little Soviet bureaucracy thrown in for good measure.

I've probably mentioned this book before, and if you haven't read it it's high time: "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds." It's the first book any investor should read. Otherwise, your odds may be better in Vegas. I can suggest a few good chapters for the next revision of that classic: Union defined benefit pensions. Social Security. Tech stocks. The US Housing market and subprime lending. The Federal Reserve.

As Hitler observed: "What luck for the rulers that men do not think."

RFID Chips in Health Care Legislation

2010-04-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

"This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read."
-- Sir Winston Churchill

Can't say they didn't try for that, but people have been reading anyway. Along about page 1000 comes this fantastic news:

Sec. 2521, Pg. 1000 – The government will establish a National Medical Device Registry. What does this mean, in English?

From H.R. 3200, pages 1001-1008: "(g)(1) The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the ‘registry’) to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes data on each device that— "(A) is or has been used in or on a patient; ‘(B)and is— (i) a class III device; or (ii) a class II device that is implantable, life-supporting, or life-sustaining."

On page 1004 it describes what the term "data" means in paragraph 1, section B:
"(B) In this paragraph, the term ‘data’ refers to information respecting a device described in paragraph (1), including claims data, patient survey data, standardized analytic files that allow for the pooling and analysis of data from disparate data environments, electronic health records, and any other data deemed appropriate by the Secretary"

What exactly is a class II device that is implantable? Approved by the FDA, a class II implantable device is an "implantable radio frequency transponder system for patient identification and health information." The purpose of a class II device is to collect data in medical patients such as “claims data, patient survey data, standardized analytic files that allow for the pooling and analysis of data from disparate data environments, electronic health records, and any other data deemed appropriate by the Secretary.

See it with your own eyes: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Medical.../ucm072191.pdf

This new law – when fully implemented – provides the framework for making the United States the first nation in the world to require each and every one of its citizens to have implanted in them a radio-frequency identification (RFID) microchip for the purpose of controlling who is, or isn’t, allowed medical care in their country.

Healthcare Bill H.R. 3200: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/...CA09001xml.pdf

Pages 1001-1008 “National Medical Device Registry” section, page 1006 “to be enacted within 36 months upon passage”

Also page 503 “… medical device surveillance”

Welcome to the brave new world, kids.

Airhead Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death

2010-04-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

From the ecoEnquirer - the Onion of environmental news: "(Punta Arenas, Chile) Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing", recounted the pilot, Jimmy Dolittle. "There were two snowmobiles with cargo sleds, a tent, and a bright orange rope that had been laid out on the ice, forming the words, 'HELP-COLD'".

One friend of Prof. Schneider told ecoEnquirer that he had been planning a trip to an ice sheet to film the devastation brought on by global warming. His wife, Linda, said that she had heard him discussing the trip with his environmental activist friends, but she assumed that he was talking about the Greenland ice sheet, a much smaller ice sheet than Antarctica.

"He kept talking about when they 'get down to chili', and I thought they were talking about the order in which they would consume their food supplies", Mrs. Schneider recounted. "I had no idea they were talking about Chile, the country from which you usually fly or sail in order to reach Antarctica".

Apparently, while all of Prof. Schneider's friends were assuming that the July trek would be to Greenland, during Northern Hemisphere summer, his plans were actually to snowmobile to the South Pole - which, in July, is in the dead of winter.

Mr. Dolittle related how some people do not realize that, even if there has been warming in Antarctica, the average temperature at the South Pole in July still runs about 70 degrees F below zero. "Some people think that July is warm everywhere on Earth."

"And I was surprised to see how close they got to South Pole Station. They ran through all of their gas supplies for the snowmobiles", explained Doolittle. "They had cold weather gear and clothes, but during this time of year you just don't go outside unless it is an emergency."

"At least James died for something he believed in", said Mrs. Schneider. "He died while trying to raise awareness of the enormous toll that global warming is taking on the Earth."

Words

2010-03-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

"I halve a spelling checker,
It came with my pea see.
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I dew knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait aweigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the era rite
It's rarely ever wrong.
I've scent this massage threw it,
And I'm shore your pleased too no
It's letter prefect in every weigh
My checker tolled me sew."

I just saw this amusing doggerel again (it's been floating around the web for years) and this is as good an excuse as any to bring up the topic of spell checking, and particularly my amusement at the fact that the words "Barack" and "Obama" still trigger the spell checker every time! Kinda cool that I'm not the only one who finds these words illegitimate.

More on the February Deficit

2010-03-31T12:01:00.000-07:00

"It took 169 long years — from 1776 to 1945 — and seven major wars for Washington to rack up a cumulative deficit as large as the Obama administration created in just 28 short days in February." - Martin Weiss

Mencken on Liberty

2010-03-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

"The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. He can imagine and even esteem, in his way, certain false forms of liberty - for example, the right to choose between two political mountebanks, and to yell for the more obviously dishonest - but the reality is incomprehensible to him. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. More, he must be able to endure it - an even more arduous business. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without." - H.L. Mencken

Icing on the Cake: A Plague!

2010-03-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

A real live plague - of grasshoppers. (Gee - could God be angry?) Seems there's just no end to the bad news. According to the grasshopper gestapo, this summer will bring a far higher concentration of grasshoppers here in the West than last year, which was bad enough. A rancher friend of mine in Wyoming lost even more that the guy mentioned in the article, as he has a much larger operation. He was lucky, too, as we had lots of rain and very good hay crops here in Colorado, so he was able to cut plenty on his land down here. Trucking costs were bad, and he lost the revenue from sellng it. At least he didn't have to buy it outright like others...

This was all over the news this morning, but I found a particularly good article at the Wall Street Journal:

Grasshopper Plague

An Earlier Take on Muslims

2010-03-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

- - Winston Churchill, 1899

(Let's see them issue a fatwa against Churchill!)

The Boy King Does Afghanistan...

2010-03-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

...and we can't wait to hear the after action report of him running across the tarmac dodging sniper fire.

Perhaps the most repellent aspect of the entire charade was the Republican fawning and praise for the trip. If they were worth a damn as opposition they would have taken the opportunity to point out what a lousy job Obama did supporting the troops on the ground, or pointing out that the date of our surrender shouldn't have been broadcast in advance.

Nice cover, too, to be on the other side of the planet just in case the Feds created another Waco with their little raids over the weekend. (Hundreds of troops with air support seems pretty eager to me...)

It's really swell to be represented by the likes of Barry and Hillary - those are brave dudes!

Keyes: RINOs and the end of American freedom

2010-03-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

From Alan Keyes Loyal to Liberty blog, linked here.

Home to roost: RINOs and the end of American freedom

March 27, 2010 Article link.

The headline screams “Obama’s health insurance rule it was a GOP idea.”

Republicans were for President Barack Obama’s requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it. The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that’s been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach.

Mitt Romney, weighing another run for the GOP presidential nomination, signed such a requirement into law at the state level as Massachusetts governor in 2006. At the time, Romney defended it as “a personal responsibility principle” and Massachusetts’ newest GOP senator, Scott Brown, backed it. Romney now says Obama’s plan is a federal takeover that bears little resemblance to what he did as governor and should be repealed.”

Anyone still in the GOP who claims to support the U.S. Constitution should read that paragraph from the AP propaganda meisters and realize how thoroughly they’ve been set up. They’ve been had; Punked; Played for fools; Taken down the garden path. For years RINO, pro-abortion forces have conned conservatives into aiding and abetting creeping socialism in America. With patter about “Big Tent” pragmatism, they’ve promoted an ideologically neutered culture of political relativism in the GOP. This requires pretending that from open pro-gay marriage pro-aborts like Rudy Giuliani; to pro-life, ‘big-government conservative’ oxymorons like Mike Huckabee they are all equally good guys; any one of them a great choice for America, just as long as they claim a Republican label. Taken individually, each represents a position that abandons or contradicts either the principles or the logic or the rational policy consequences of coherent conservatism. Taken together, they utterly destroy its consistency. But only candidates like them are viable, we are told. No others have any chance of winning.

By others, of course, they mean principled, coherent conservatives who advocate policies consistent with the principal goal of conservatism, which is to preserve, protect and defend liberty and the constitutional form of government that implements it. Behind the smoke screen of “Big Tent” rhetoric, they won’t punch your Republican ticket for admission until and unless you embrace at least one position that accepts, in principle or consequence, the assumption that socialism is inevitable and liberty is doomed. In the 2008 Republican primaries every one of the candidates touted as “viable”, and therefore worthy to be heard, paid the price of admission. Even an arguably consistent conservative like Ron Paul sounded suspiciously like Obama when he spoke about national security and foreign policy issues.

This insistence on political relativism deprives grassroots conservatives of a true and effective champion. It applies the conservative label to a self-contradictory mishmash that ends up seeming like something contrived to mask heartless selfishness, greed and imperialist ambition. In other words, it plays right into the caricature the left has developed to discredit conservatism. More importantly, it allows the elite forces of the left liberally to seed the GOP with double agents. As elected officials, these double agents emerge at key moments to sour the prospects for adopting and implement conservative legislation and policies (as John McCain so infamously has done.) As purported spokesmen for the “conservative” GOP they emerge in the media to validate and legitimize key elements of the leftist agenda. “How can anyone accuse so and so of being a left wing extremist when this or that Republican takes the same position?” As a result of this set up, the coherent, persuasive conservative cause can be banished as intolerant and inflexible. It’s logical and rational policy consequences can be stigmatized as extreme. And the governing conservative plurality of the electorate, that would otherwise coalesce to determine most American elections, can be prevented from rallying ’round what would be its unifying and therefore ultimately victorious standard.

Until now the RINO strategy could have been mistaken for nothing more than a shrewd way of eliminating competitors, and assuring that no true conservative could again achieve anything like Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy. But it was always more sinister than that. We have come to the moment that reveals its potentially decisive role in overturning the liberty of the American people, and the preeminent world position liberty has secured for them. A radical consolidation of power is taking place, putting it firmly in the hands of the elite few. The health sector takeover is a decisive aspect of that consolidation. Once it is entrenched, the overtly or covertly socialist minority will have become the exclusive gatekeepers of access to the promise of life and death. The demise of the old communist empire proved that controlling money and the means of production is not enough to prevent the uprising of liberty. Neither is external propaganda that indirectly manipulates the mind by controlling perception. The root of liberty lies in a psychological reality beyond the reach of such indirect methods. People are ultimately not controlled by what they see, but by what they worship, for that determines how they understand and react to what they see.

For decades the moral aim of the elite enemies of liberty has been to replace the worship of the invisible, essentially non-material Creator God of Biblical tradition with worship of the body, the idol of living flesh. Sensual comfort and pleasure dictate the rites of worship. But it is the preoccupation with physical death that ultimately assures submission to its will. “When you have your health, you have just about everything” the commercial whispers. There is a fearful corollary: if you lose your health, you lose everything. The stage is set to orchestrate the trial of hope and fear by which a free people will be condemned to lose their liberty.

The health care takeover is the final step before sentence is carried out. On the excuse that it’s needed to assure physical health, the principle of despotism is being introduced, as it has always been, under the guise of benevolence. Rights, which America’s founding principles defined in terms consistent with liberty, are offered instead as the product of benevolent coercion. Americans, until now challenged to live as responsible adults, are to be reduced again to the traditional role historically reserved for the masses-that of children ever under the watchful control and tutelage of their betters, the elite dictators for good, who will treat them as caring parents would.

But many Americans have not lost the prudent common among that characterized the founders of the American republic. If people are no better than children, who cannot be trusted to do themselves any good, then people entrusted with unchecked government power are children armed to do others the utmost harm. All of human history, including the depraved saga of communist people’s and soviet socialist republics, reiterates and proves the point. Unchecked elite power leads to unbridled repression, ending ultimately in massive slaughter and human misery. The American elite will be no exception. In fact, among them the triumph of moral relativism couples with habits of arrogant sensual indulgence that shrugs off all natural limits. Impatient of any boundaries, they are likely to explore frontiers of inhumanity that will make twentieth century totalitarians seem like poorly outfitted tyros. And like the computer hackers who occasionally wreak massive havoc upon the innocent enterprise of others (just to prove they can), they will take pride and pleasure in their handiwork.

No people in their right mind would consent to be the guinea pigs for this renewed experiment with elite despotism; especially not the American people. Therefore, they must be conned and punked and shammed into it. Right now the keys to a successful con are RINOs like Mitt Romney and Scott Brown, and the supporting cast that gives them credibility. Against the seemingly innocuous backdrop of American politics as usual, they represent the decisive sleight of hand, the culminating focus for distraction and confusion. In the midst of it, the elite enemies of decent freedom will lock in place the machinery of coercion and manipulation that completes the fences of the soul, the shackles of mind and heart that will first mollify and then subdue, and finally extinguish the ‘genius of the American people.’

If you are looking for hope in the face of this thus far entirely successful subversion of the American republic, think hard about what we have said: People are ultimately controlled not by what they see, but by what they worship. It is not for nothing that the elite subversives seek to banish the God of the Bible and of Jesus the Christ. For only if we restore America’s faith, will we have just about everything we need to restore and preserve America’s freedom.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy

2010-03-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

More housekeeping: Ever since starting this blog I've been meaning to write about the Cloward-Piven Strategy - a destructive tactic developed by two Marxist Columbia University professors decades ago. Obama's entire existence has revolved around implementation of this strategy of contrived crisis in order to fundamentally transform America into a totalitarian socialist state.

This is the strategy used by ACORN to force banks to lend to unworthy home buyers - one of the seeds of our economic cesspool. Back in the day, it was a young Barack Obama (ACORN's lawyer) who sued Citigroup to set things in motion.

This link takes you to a fabulous video on the subject: Apathetic USA

Peak oil. Economics. Societal upheaval. Collapse. Read all about it!

2010-03-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

As I keep warning people, it's later than we think. Much later. This Financial Sense guest editorial sums up our predicament fairly well. (And a h/t to "peak oil john" for forwarding this weeks ago. My failure to post it in a timely manner in no way reflects on the importance of the info herein.)

Here's the link.

Absolved

2010-03-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

In light of passage of the health care takeover/police state legislation: "Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience." - John Locke

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

2010-03-20T05:47:00.000-07:00

Various versions of this are floating around the web:

Let me get this straight......we're trying to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president that also is exempt from it and hasn't read it and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke.

What the hell could possibly go wrong?

(h/t to tacmotusn @ survivalmonkey)

The (Housing) Ides of March

2010-03-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

9.47% of all residential mortgages are delinquent. Another 4.58% are in foreclosure. That's over 14% of all residential real estate in distress right now.

Add in two more bad players: 1) The coming option ARM meltdown, and 2) The Fed no longer buying mortgage backed securities as of this month, which subtracts $70 billion a month of capital from the mortgage industry. Capital that will be difficult to find elsewhere at such low rates, due to the risk.

As always, to understand what happened you simply follow the money. The powers that be used borrowed, taxed and printed money to prop up the real estate market. Who benefits? Only the government and the bankers, who just charged US to shore up THEIR assets. What we got is sky high debt, a dysfunctional economy and an unnecessarily high cost of living - all to keep the banksters solvent. As a bonus, we look into a highly insecure future in which collapse is more - far more - plausible than recovery.

This whole mess should have been allowed to crash. That would have been painful, but a real recovery would be well underway by now. We had the choice: a brief sharp pain, felt mostly by the bankers, or... ...intergenerational suffering for us, while the bankers cash more bonus checks!

What suckers we've been.

Since I Just Brought Up Health Care...

2010-03-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

...I keep forgetting to point out that the Republican "alternative" spells certain doom for private health care too.

They propose allowing people to buy their health insurance across state lines, in order to get the best price. That won't work. If your doctor is in Manhattan, he's paying a lot more for everything - taxes, space, staff, supplies, etc., etc., etc. The doc has to pass those costs along (if he wants to eat!) to the patient, and that's why insurance in New York costs more than insurance in Arkansas or Wyoming!

Then there's the issue of state mandates, which vary from state to state. If your state is heavy on unfunded mandates, you'll pay more. (A feel good legislature is an expensive legislature.) States with large populations tend to be high cost in both areas - operating expenses AND mandates.

Then there's the specter of indigent care. That ain't free either - the cost is just shifted to the insured and the taxpayer. We don't need to Californicate the entire industry here, folks!

Furthermore, the insurance industry is the last major industry NOT regulated by the feds. Your state insurance commissioner is the highest authority, and it should stay that way.

If the feds dictate that anyone can buy a health plan from anywhere, all rates will rise to the highest level found anywhere. That'll screw all the people smart enough to not live in Manhattan or San Fransicko in the first place.

Same goes for the proposal to eliminate exclusions of pre-existing conditions. Here's an analogy: If you buy full coverage for your car, they want to know what damage already exists. If the car isn't brand new off the lot, they want pictures. Any such damage is a pre-existing condition. If you want to be able to go without insurance, wreck your car and buy coverage the next morning, that would be known as a social program. It sure as hell isn't insurance! If you eliminate those exclusions, that means insurers won't be able to underwrite for risk. Premiums will skyrocket, and they (the Demo/Publicans) know it. They can't wait for the day the feds can come in and take over.

First they wreck it, then they take it over. That's the formula, and it works over and over and over. These power grabs have been going on for more than a century. If you want to know what's really happening here, read the history of the regulation and taxation of railroads. Then read about the federal bailout of Penn Central. You may not have heard of that line, but it's still running today, with a huge and growing taxpayer subsidy. These days it's called Amtrak.

At the end of the day, the Republican fix is not a fix at all, unless you change the meaning of the word. As in, the "fix" is in. They ALL want to destroy the industry, in order to lay claim to it's reserves. Just like your social security money. Just like your 401k.

Things are so far gone that the government is reduced to one-time acts of economic cannibalism just to buy a few more months in control.

To the feds/banksters, this is just another harvest. Don't be the crop.

Firearms Freedom Act, Take Five!

2010-03-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

South Dakota joins Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Tennessee in signing a firearms freedom law into effect. If you don't know what this is, these laws are on the leading edge of retaking state's rights under the Tenth Amendment. Specifically, they state that the manufacture and sale of firearms within the state is exempt from any and all Federal control. Hence, outside the purview of the BATFE.

As with Wyoming's newly enacted statute, the South Dakota law includes specific fines and jail sentences for errant feds (and what other kind is there?) who interfere in state business.

This is the EXACT argument that states will use to get out from under the federal takeover of health care. We need to do two things:

1) Pay attention, and support all such efforts.

2) Educate. This is the teachable moment of our time. Dissatisfaction with federal power grabs is at an all time high. Teach everyone you know about the Tenth Amendment. Show them how the gun argument and the health care argument are one and the same, and that the feds have no business in either! Then, pick your next favorite federal encroachment and show how it fits as well. Each one teach one. Now!

More on the Deficit

2010-03-11T10:30:00.000-08:00

OK - I just bitched about the astonishing February deficit of $220.9 Billion. Here are more disturbing numbers:

Feb. Entitlements: $164 Billion
Feb. Expenditures: $328 Billion

Feb. Revenue: $107 Billion

Entitlements are half of expenditures, and boomers haven't even retired yet.

Subtract entitlements, and they still can't pay for the rest.

Scary.

One wonders how this house of cards could still be standing. This brings us to interest rates, which remain artificially low to prop things up. Typically, the more a borrower owes, the greater the risk of lending to him. Higher risk means higher interest rates. Of course, with the cozy owner/slave relationship between the Fed and the US Government, that rule has been suspended and interest on government debt figures minimally in the equation.

Or does it?

You see, high interest rates are just one way to collect. There's another - namely inflation. If you're a central banker, you can simply print the interest, thereby taking it from the people in a way that they can't even understand, much less fight. But the interest will be paid!

So, look for published interest rates to stay low ("facade maintenance") while the cost of living soars. Not the government figure either - the real one that includes fuel and food.

Annual Deficit: $2.65 Trillion?

2010-03-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

Despite being a short month, February's federal deficit came in at $220.9 Billion. That's $2.65 Trillion a year.

Words fail me.

Taxes

2010-03-10T15:47:00.000-08:00

Tax his land,
Tax his bed,
Tax the table
At which he's fed.

Tax his tractor,
Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
Are the rule.

Tax his work,
Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts
Anyway!

Tax his cow,
Tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
Tax his coat.

Tax his ties,
Tax his shirt,
Tax his shoes,
Tax his dirt.

Tax his tobacco,
Tax his drink,
Tax him if he
Tries to think.

Tax his burgers,
Tax his beers,
If he cries
Tax his tears.

Tax his car,
Tax his gas,
Find some ways
To tax his ass.

Tax all he has
Then let him know
That you won't be done
Till he has no dough.

When he hollers;
Tax him some more,
Tax him till
He's good and sore.

Then tax his coffin,
Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in
Which he's laid.

Put these words
Upon his tomb,
Taxes drove me
to my doom...'

When he's gone,
Do not relax,
Its time to apply
The inheritance tax.

More on the Police State

2010-03-10T14:09:00.000-08:00

We've all grown weary of the old saw that America has 5% of the world's population but uses 25% of the world's energy.

But how about this: America has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's prisoners!

Lying cops. Fabricated evidence. Asinine drug laws. Unreliable witnesses. Blackmailing prosecutors. Mandatory sentences. Corrupt judges. Wrongful convictions.

A must read from Paul Craig Roberts via Lew Rockwell.

Picking the Meat From the Bones

2010-03-10T13:49:00.000-08:00

Contempt, greed from police union boss:

Roughing us up on the streets is no longer enough

" They are like leeches, sucking the taxpayers dry, and that's an insult to leeches. At least leeches know when to let go."

Via Wm. Grigg at Pro Libertate

Letter to NASCAR

2010-03-10T13:22:00.000-08:00

Sent just now, by e-mail:

To whom it SHOULD concern:

I just watched the replay of the Atlanta race and the Carl Edwards incident on Speed. Based on your "boys, have at it" policy it's likely this is the last NASCAR race I'll ever watch.

If NASCAR is going to descend to an NBA level of thuggery, you should spell it "boyz" just to be honest. Seriously. Perhaps you could change your name to Cirque du NASCAR or (if that's too elitist) simply ASSCAR.

I'm 51 years old, and have been a racing fan since age 9. I have personally raced everything from motorcycles to go-karts to cars. I've also crewed and spent plenty of time in hot pits at levels as high as Champcar. I cannot recall an example of such dangerous behavior that went not just unpunished but was, upon consideration, encouraged with a wink. I've watched and participated in examples of both highly gracious sportsmanship and adrenaline fueled red mist. Bad behavior comes with the territory, but it cannot be encouraged. Ever.

When, not if, a spectator, driver, crewman or NASCAR employee is injured or killed by this sanctioned dumbassery you will be sued. It's your policy to allow behavior that goes beyond dangerous to stupid, which voids any waiver of any kind. You've sanctioned reckless endangerment, and the result is foreseeable. You'll lose in court, and you deserve to. I hope it costs you tens of millions, and no one their life. (Should someone actually die as a result of this quest for viewers, it wouldn't disappoint me to see you charged criminally as well. Sad? Yes. Disappointed? No.)

This is more free legal advice than you deserve. If you don't have an attorney on staff, it's time to hire one. If you DO have an attorney, it's still time to hire one. I'd be fascinated to hear back from Mike Helton on this. Do you have the guts to show him this letter??

In utter disgust,

----

PS - It's never too late to admit a mistake and do the right thing. A lot of folks are watching, and not all of us are stupid...

Edit: A reply! "First and foremost, we want to thank you for your interest in NASCAR. You can be assured that we take your feedback seriously. Everyone at NASCAR understands that the success of our sport depends on the support of the fans.

We read every e-mail we receive from our fans and respond to as many as possible. Thanks again, and we hope you enjoy the rest of the season."

Government

2010-03-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

"if it moves tax it, if it keeps moving regulate it, if it stops moving subsidize it" - Ronald Reagan

Back when he said this, it was funny.

The Boy King and His Electric TelePrompTer

2010-03-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

Either yesterday or today I caught a bit of the 4,388th or 4,389th Obama speech on matters economic. Whatever. Same speech, different day. Or same speech, same day. I have it - same speech every day. (Whew!) In the brief time it took to pick up the remote and turn the volume down, it hit me:

The reason Obama does so poorly without the TelePrompTer is that nothing he's saying comes from the heart. Nothing. He needs a script because he has to PRETEND he likes America. When that little screen goes blank, he's panicked. The reason for that panic is simple - he actually hates this country and wishes to destroy it. Every policy, every action is intended to do maximum harm to the very concept of America.

We've known that he hated America since before he was elected, but I just put two and two together regarding his consistent and abrupt descent from slick demagogue to babbling idiot whenever someone trips over the cord. He stumbles and stutters without his scrolling script because every word he utters in public must, by definition, be a carefully crafted lie. A big lie.

This is the guy who for twenty years sat in church and soaked in the rabid sermons about aids being a plot against blacks, with fanatical screams of "God Damn America" echoing in his otherwise vacant skull. It's not just that he doesn't care - it's that he's so far gone in loathing us that he can't even fake any caring on his own. He needs a script!

He's the destroyer, and he's hard at work. He's bankrupting us, financially, morally and physically, domestically and internationally. He's reducing America to true third-world status, and positioning us as an acquisition target for the new world order. Everyone who predicted that America would brought down from within is being proven right. Right here, right now, and right in front of us.

Turn up the volume, and pay attention!

The Thrill of Discovery

2010-03-07T09:06:00.000-08:00

I was poking around on the web this morning and discovered Pro Libertate - the blog of William Norman Grigg, who wields a mighty keyboard. I have some reading to do! Pro Libertate is now linked from here.

A taste of recent gems, to whet the appetite:

"The desire for power frequently begets petty hypocrisy, which is among the world's most tragically abundant resources."

"The following year, Sitting Bull and his allies annihilated Custer's force at the Battle of Greasy Grass, an engagement the losers refer to as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. That Sioux triumph is the last victory won by any Americans in an armed struggle for freedom prior to the Branch Davidians' successful defense of their home against the ATF's criminal assault in February 1993. Alas, both of those triumphs proved to be tragically reversible."

"In fact, when former federal judge Andrew Napolitano observed that state legislatures have the authority to enact health freedom measures intended to nullify Obama's proposed "health care" legislation, Neiwert's reflexive response was to traduce the judge as a proto-Klansman, rather than to engage his argument in the fashion of a practicing adult. (In a moderated debate with Judge Napolitano, Neiwert would be whipped more thoroughly than a pint of heavy cream in a French pastry shop.)"

BEWARE!!!

2010-03-06T18:11:00.000-08:00

This video has been around for a while, but today marks the second time in a week that a well-meaning acquaintance forwarded the link and suggested I join. Not in this lifetime!

Behind this slick faux patriot facade lurks Hollywood leftist Norman Lear. Yes, THAT Norman Lear - founder of People for the American Way, the rabid gay rights/anti-Christian group. Lear's PFAW is managed by Hollywood lefties such as Kathleen Turner and Alec Baldwin.

From Wikipedia: "Located in Washington, D.C., People For the American Way monitors what it characterizes as "right-wing" activities, conducting rapid response, political lobbying, and volunteer mobilization. In addition, the organization's affiliated foundation (People For the American Way Foundation) runs programs designed for voter education and politically progressive infrastructure building. People For Foundation programs include Young People For, which identifies, trains, and supports future progressive leaders; the Young Elected Officials Network, which identifies and supports progressive elected officials from around the country who are under the age of 35; and African American Religious Affairs, which mobilizes and supports progressive activism in African American congregations and communities."

Lear also birthed Declare Yourself - a progressive non-profit that is focused on registering young left-wing voters. They'll register you to vote online, and they'll even text you to remind you to vote! (What passes for citizenship is so easy these days!) Declare Yourself partners with theyoungestcandidate.com which encourages 18 year-olds to run for office. Really. From Declare Yourself, you can click on a link and get your own free download of "The Youngest Candidate's Guide to Becoming a Community Organizer!"

(Who needs Ipecac syrup when we have terms like progressive and community organizer???)

And, get this: BornAgainAmerican.org was launched in Washington DC at the Obama inauguration.

This is no spontaneous grassroots effort. This is well orchestrated propaganda. It's how they play us. Knowing our love of country, they plan to suck us in to the latest front organization of their notorious leftist group, where our time, energy and money will be wasted. This is aimed primarily at young people, who know dang well something is terribly wrong in America, but lack the life experience to figure out who's to blame.

Imagine what it would take for a bunch of leftists to write and produce a Patriotic Gospel music video (Sure...) On the surface, the song has a nice sentiment. (Of course it does. Sentiment is their stock in trade.) Note the sophisticated production, and think about the money spent to film at all those locations. Note the studio quality equipment at every location - multiple mikes and all.

These are not our friends. We live in an age where all the paved roads lead back to slavery. If you want to be free, you'll have to blaze your own trail. Watch, but only to understand their slick tactics.

Question:

2010-03-06T11:26:00.000-08:00

Q: What's the difference between Barack Obama's cabinet and a penitentiary?

A: One is filled with tax evaders, blackmailers and threats to society.
The other is for housing prisoners.

Jesus Plus Nothing = Global Theocracy

2010-03-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

It's hard to know where to start on this one. You just have to read it for yourself.

An unsettling article from Harper's

Going Postal

2010-03-05T11:31:00.000-08:00

Hardly anything happens by mail anymore. With e-mail, cell phones, texting, Facebook, voice mail, Twitter and electronic banking the post office is struggling to make ends meet on much lower mail volumes. Plans are afoot to halt Saturday mail deliveries, to help with the Post Office budget shortfall/deficit/screwup.

I think this is a bad idea. Instead, they should continue to deliver mail 6 days a week but assign each carrier two routes - one gets deliveries Mon, Wed, Fri and the other gets deliveries Tue, Thu, Sat.

Nobody would wait more than one mail day longer than under the current scheme, and mail volume is down so much that two days worth of mail won't be a much of a burden for the carriers.

The postal service could lay off half the carriers and get rid of half its fleet, yielding a budget surplus big enough to justify cutting the price of postage. That might just put them back in the game!

(Funny - I sent this idea to them five years ago, and haven't heard a thing. Next time, I'll use e-mail...)

While you're waiting for them to do something brilliant you might stock up on a few forever stamps as a hedge against the reality of the situation.

Earthqake Survival

2010-03-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

This is a forward of a forward of a forward and I don't have the author's name - from comments I believe it was penned by a relief worker in Haiti.

TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Most everyone who simply 'ducks and covers' WHEN BUILDINGS COLLAPSE are crushed to death. People who get UNDER objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.

2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. You can survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, large chair or other large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created.. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.

5) Most everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!

6) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different 'moment of frequency' (they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads - horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs.. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

7) Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings Or Outside Of Them If Possible - It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

8) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and sitting or lying next to their vehicles. Everyone killed would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.

9) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

Spread the word and save someone's life... The Entire world is
experiencing natural calamities so be prepared!

Letter Home from a Farm Kid

2010-03-04T13:27:00.001-08:00

A tip of the hat to Dave for forwarding this gem:

Dear Ma and Pa,

I am well. Hope you are.

Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps
beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before
all of the places are filled.

I was restless at first because you got to stay in
bed till nearly 6 AM. but I am getting so I like to sleep late.

Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is
smooth your cot, and shine some things.

No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to
split, fire to lay.

Practically nothing.

Men got to shave but it is not so bad,there's warm water.

Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice,
cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak,
fried eggplant, pie and other regular food,

But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the
two city boys that live on coffee.

Their food plus yours holds you till noon when you
get fed again.

It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much. We go on 'route marches,'
which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us.

If he thinks so, it's not my place to tell him
different.

A 'route march' is about as far as to our mailbox at home.

Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks.

This will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep
getting medals for shooting. I don't know why.

The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and it
don't even move, and it ain't shooting at you like the Higgett boys at home. All
you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don't even load
your own cartridges. They come in boxes.

Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat
training. You get to wrestle with them city boys.

I have to be careful though, they break real
easy.

It ain't like fighting with that ole bull at home

I'm about the best they got in this except for that
Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake.

I only beat him once.

He joined up the same time as me, but I'm only 5'6'
and 130 pounds and he's 6'8' and near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join
before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Carol

Tourist Info

2010-03-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

If gas prices aren't too high this summer, here's an idea for a family trip:

InvertebrateNation

Betsey Markey and Other Traitors

Must Watch NIA Video: "End of Liberty"

Erik Scott Update

The Bell Tolls for Benoit Mandelbrot

Camel's Back, Two Straws...

Republican Women vs. Democrat Women

Housing Meltdown: Panic Time

An Open Letter to Ted Nugent - "The Day I'll Join the NRA"

Obama Plan: Flee to India After Mid Term Election

Slow Learners

Words aren't necessary...

I Smell a (liberal) Rat...

Erik Scott Inquest Results

Teach Your Children Well

The Bell Tolls for Joe Sobran

End of an Era

Housing Market: Fecal Matter, Meet the Whirly Thingie

Erik Scott Inquest Update

A Few Statistics On That Pesky Recovery

Letter to NSSF

The Warm Blooded Murder of Erik Scott

Vocabulary Word of the Day

Obama's Vacations

Succeeding, Where the Soviet Union Failed

Flags

Burning the Koran: The Sequel

Anyone else have a feeling of "suspended animation"???

Burning the Koran

Obama's Pals: Kill 25 Million Americans

Sarah Palin's Odd Connection to Scientology

Thoughts on the "Ground Zero" Mosque

More Mencken

Definitions

New, Highly Resistant Superbug Gene

Meditations On Inflation

Missouri Mandate

Cat's Out of the Bag, PIIGS in a Poke, The Next Shoe to Drop, etc.

Just a Number

Pavlov's Bears?

Are Cops Constitutional?

I just don't make their kind of money...

Hasta la vista, baby...

Sold Out

Recommended Reading

Oh, Shit...

Vocabulary Word of the Millenium: Innumeracy

A Note of Appreciation from the Rich

Truth

A Brilliant Analysis of Islam

The Other "Boxes of Liberty"

Insanity

A Good Crisis...

Reason and Logic

Totalitarian Utopia, Version 2.0: Purificationism

Housing Market HAS NOT Bottomed Yet...

Astounding...

Batten Down the Hatches!

Setting Things Straight: Who Owns Who...

Lenin, on Inflation and Taxes...

Meltup

Necessity

US Constitution, Round Two

Extraordinary Liberal Delusions

Amazing Police Corruption Website

Atlas Shrugged, in 8 Minutes!

By The Way...

A Recovering Liberal Looks at Obama, Not Liking the Picture...

Reality Check

RFID Chips in Health Care Legislation

Airhead Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death

Words

More on the February Deficit

Mencken on Liberty

Icing on the Cake: A Plague!

An Earlier Take on Muslims

The Boy King Does Afghanistan...

Keyes: RINOs and the end of American freedom

The Cloward-Piven Strategy

Peak oil. Economics. Societal upheaval. Collapse. Read all about it!