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!
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
2010/10/31
2010/10/28
Erik Scott Update
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...
2010/10/10
Housing Meltdown: Panic Time
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...)
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...)
2010/09/22
Letter to NSSF
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...
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...
2010/09/20
Vocabulary Word of the Day
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.
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.
2010/09/19
Obama's Vacations
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.
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.
2010/09/18
Succeeding, Where the Soviet Union Failed
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.
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.
2010/09/11
Burning the Koran: The Sequel
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.
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.
2010/08/21
More Mencken
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
2010/04/26
US Constitution, Round Two
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???
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???
2010/04/23
Extraordinary Liberal Delusions
"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...
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...
2010/04/16
Amazing Police Corruption Website
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
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
2010/04/08
By The Way...
"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
2010/03/30
Mencken on Liberty
"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
2010/03/29
Icing on the Cake: A Plague!
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
This was all over the news this morning, but I found a particularly good article at the Wall Street Journal:
Grasshopper Plague
2010/03/27
Keyes: RINOs and the end of American freedom
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.
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.
2010/03/16
Since I Just Brought Up Health Care...
...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.
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!
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!
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!
2010/03/10
Taxes
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.
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
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.
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.
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