We Are the Redcoats Now

We Are the Redcoats Now
by Mark Luedtke

The US government today is far more oppressive than King George III back in 1776. King George held zero political prisoners. He allowed the colonial press to operate freely. He allowed the colonists free elections. He imposed virtually no restrictions on trade. He imposed no restrictions on travel. American colonists were among the lightest taxed people in the world. But the key word is ‘allowed’. The Founding Fathers demanded freedom, not permission, and they fought and died to win that freedom.

Compare that to our oppressive government. American citizens can be imprisoned and held without trial. Paramilitary police routinely kick in doors and assault peaceful Americans. Our elections are rigged so that only members of one of the two parties can win. Every aspect of trade in the US is restricted by government. The government can block Americans from getting on an airplane without explaining why and without providing recourse to challenge their no-fly status. Combining federal, state and local taxes, we’re among the most heavily taxed people in the supposedly free world with some Americans paying up to 50 percent of their income in taxes. The Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves if they saw how we’ve submitted to our oppressive rulers.

And the US government is not just worse than King George in domestic policy. The US has troops in 135 countries. The US has nearly 1,000 military bases in foreign countries. King George couldn’t dream of projecting military power on that scale.

Which brings us to Afghanistan. Does anybody remember who attacked us on 9/11? The left did a wonderful job of reminding Americans that Saddam Hussein didn’t attack on 9/11, but they’ve done a terrible job of reminding us it wasn’t the Taliban either. The Taliban wouldn’t be our enemy except we’ve been killing them and their civilian neighbors for nine years.

The press never reports there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. We defeated al Qaeda in Afghanistan in early 2002, yet as of January of 2009, there were 55,000 NATO troops killing Afghans in Afghanistan. That was before President Obama sent 30,000 more Americans to kill more. Clearly they’re not fighting our real enemy. They are not fighting for American security. They are fighting for Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. Like King George’s redcoats, they’re fighting a colonial war for treasure.

In fact these wars make us less safe. Nidal Malik Hasan was a loyal American Army psychiatrist until years of US aggression against Muslims pushed him over the edge and he murdered his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Homegrown terrorists didn’t just wake up one day and decide to kill their fellow Americans. They have been pushed and pushed and pushed to the breaking point by government’s policy of aggression against middle-eastern Muslims. The US government has been toppling governments and funding wars in the middle-east for 60 years, pushing many Muslims to the point of responding to US aggression with violence of their own. We’re creating terrorists faster than we can overcome them. We cannot win the war on terror with bombs and bullets. We’ll win it by respecting mainstream middle-eastern Muslims’ right to self-determination and engaging them in a system of mutually beneficial voluntary exchange that rewards freedom and independent thought instead of fear and submission.

I get a good laugh when conservatives correctly proclaim that American central planners can never succeed at central planning the US at the point of the government’s gun but then foolishly claim American central planners can centrally plan foreign countries (nation building) at the point of the government’s gun. Holding both these positions is irrational. I also laugh when conservatives complain about irresponsible government spending then support spending billions of dollars every month on wars of aggression. That’s equally irrational.

Wars of aggression are the ultimate conclusion of socialist oppression, and oppression can only exist in darkness. It’s the responsibility of the free press to shine a light on oppression, to shine a light on government aggression and violence so the people can stop it. Unfortunately the media in the US long ago ceased performing that function. The accomplice press, both right and left, are mere propaganda arms for the two parties of government, and both parties support colonial wars. There is no anti-war left, only an anti-Republican war left that is deathly silent now that Obama owns the war in Afghanistan.

So I applaud Julian Assange for publishing tens of thousands of documents highlighting the aggression of the US government in Afghanistan. These documents show that our troops are not fighting for the security of Americans. They’re fighting a civil war on behalf of rival gangs in Afghanistan so that politically connected US groups can reap the rewards from extracting Afghanistan’s mineral wealth without having to compete for it. For this, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange fears for his life from American agents.

I feel sorry for Americans who have been misled into thinking our troops fight and die in Afghanistan to protect Americans. I get frustrated when I hear people say they support the troops in one breath and say they support sending them into harm’s way in Afghanistan the next. Robert Gibbs claims, “We believe that this has the potential to put troops, those that cooperate with our efforts, into harm's way.” Bush, Obama and their aristocrat allies are responsible for the risks and the casualties, not Wikileaks.

But mostly I feel sorry for our troops and their families. I hope supporters of the war read the documents and discover the real reason Americans are dying there. I hope that understanding helps bring the troops home before more are killed. End King Obama's war.

Free kibbles

ECONOMY:

15 economic indicators that show our economy continues to tank.

TAX AND SPEND:

The Social Security scam. You would wildly better off if you were free to invest that money yourself.

Obama steals money from us and give it to homeowners with underwater mortgages. I was torn on whether this will happen or not. On the one hand, it would be a terrible political move for Obama. He could buy a million votes, but he'd probably lose 10 times that number. On the other hand, all of Obama's policies are terrible politically because they're designed to destroy our economy, and they've been very successful at that. That's why his poll numbers are tanking. Now we know he chose to take the political hit to do more damage to the economy.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Peter Schiff explains why the dollar is tanking and what to expect.

"But the oil market holds far more near-term significance. On Monday, oil busted through the $80 price ceiling that had held since May. Any additional breaks to the upside would be extremely significant and could potentially send crude up to the mid-$90s before another correction takes hold. The danger for the dollar is that rising oil prices could be considered one of the unforeseen “negative shocks” of which Fed President Bullard warns, triggering a new round of inflation.

If the government fears the “recovery” will be derailed by higher energy prices, then look for quantitative easing to become the driving force of our economic policy. The Fed will perversely argue that rising oil prices are deflationary, as they will cause cash-strapped consumers to reduce spending on other goods. In reality, higher oil prices are merely evidence of the inflation the Fed itself has been creating. Instead of solving our problems, quantitative easing could tip the dollar into a death spiral."

Bernanke is helping Obama destroy America.

EDUCATION:

How the Dept. of Education intentionally dumbed-down schools and Americans. This is also why it wages war on Catholic schools - they don't follow the program.

HEALTH CARE:

Comparison cost of a birth in the Philippines.

"My son was born in Maasin City, Philippines, in 2004. It was a difficult birth and he was born not breathing. We ended up staying in the hospital for 6 days/5 nights. My boy Kinley was in intensive care for 24 hours and then closely monitored for the next few days. Now Kinley is a solidly built 6-yr old, speaks 3 languages interchangeably, and is quick witted…in other words he turned out just fine. Total cost was about $360, including medications. The funny thing is that my father-in-law was upset that they overcharged me because I was American."

That's what government regulations do to prices.

Is the cholesterol myth just a marketing gimmick by big pharma?

"Eight of the nine doctors on the panel that developed the new cholesterol guidelines had been making money from the drug companies that manufacture statin cholesterol-lowering drugs."

That's quite the conflict of interest.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

This is an interesting question: Is Al Gore sane enough to stand trial? I think he is. I think he's evil, not insane. He knows darn good and well that the CO2 man produces has a negligible effect on climate. He's just using this cause to rob people blind and try and obtain a high position in the one world government.

"I’d have to guess that most people believe that Al Gore is merely using his knowledge of political corruption for profit; and getting an extra kick from screwing his old political foes. But it seems to me that a slick politician, with all his marbles in the right place, wouldn’t go over the top too much for fear of looking like a loony."

Al Gore will quit looking like a loon as soon as it's no longer profitable for him, and no sooner, unless his lawyer tells him to so support an insanity defense. It's a scam.

"A lying politician? Perhaps so. But for years he’s been begging us to believe that he believes. A cry for help? Maybe that’s true too. If he is indicted, I’m not betting against an order for a psychological evaluation. The test is whether he can distinguish right from wrong. I’ve never seen any evidence that he can."

That's an interesting point. Maybe he thinks destroying America and getting revenge on his enemies is the right thing to do. I've always said leftist ideology was insane because it believes that destroying people's lives is good for them. It believes disarming people so they can't defend themselves is good for them. It believes stealing from them until they're destitute is good for them. That's insanity. The problem for Gore is that people seeking revenge are never found insane. I think the reason Gore appears more and more unhinged is he realizes his house of lies is collapsing on him, and he knows he's subject to criminal prosecution.

"Now we learn that a U.S. funded agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become mired in a new scandal involving numbers for the Great Lakes region that misrepresent average temperatures there. The latest word as of Wednesday, August 11, is that NOAA has removed an entire NOAA-16 satellite data set from its website – leading some to wonder if a decade’s worth of North American data will be discredited.

In sum, do not trust NOAA and most definitely, do not trust the Environmental Protection Agency that is desperately trying to get authorization to regulate carbon dioxide on the grounds that it is causing global warming. This isn’t just a rogue agency. The EPA has the look of a criminal enterprise bent on destroying the U.S. economy."

Of course it does. Look who ultimately runs it.

Government weather prediction, like all government services, is corrupt.

Yet another study smacks down Mann's absurd hockey stick.

POLICE STATE:

Judges are just as corrupt as prosecutors and police.

"A federal judge conspired with the Bush Department of Justice to plan the largest immigration raid ever in the United States, and then presided over the trial of the plant’s manager, eventually sentencing him beyond even prosecutors’ recommendation.

New documents show Linda Reade, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, was involved in the planning of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raid on the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant at least six months before it occurred in May 2008. She asked for briefings from law enforcement and went as far as to ensure the raid was conducted around her vacation schedule.

But the judge never said a word of this to the defense lawyers for Sholom Rubashkin, the Agriprocessors manager, when she presided over his trial on bank fraud. She didn’t recuse herself from the case, either."

They all obtain their salary by theft, so what would you expect?

Police cars now equipped with license-plate readers that can read and verify 5,000 license plates per eight hour shift. While on the surface this may seem innocuous or a good thing, it allows police departments to build up a huge database of the movements of individuals.

How linking RFID tags and personal info can be used to monitor every aspect of people's lives which will be accessed by government.

WAR:

The reason for blowback is simple.

"Last week the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report on the effect of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq that confirmed what critics of our foreign policy have been saying for years: the killing of civilians, although unintentional, angers other civilians and prompts them to seek revenge. This should be self-evident."

"According to Former General Stanley McChrystal’s so-called insurgent math, for every insurgent killed, 10 more insurgents are created by the collateral damage to civilians. Every coalition attack leads to 6 retaliatory attacks against our troops within the following six weeks, according to the NBER report."

This is why we can never win the war on terror with bullets and bombs. We have to re-embrace America's founding principles to win this war.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Because welfare to dictators, often called foreign aid, is so destructive to the people of foreign countries, Africa is the textbook case, we should end it.

MISC:

10 ways retiring abroad can keep you young.

The blood diamond hoax.

How to keep some of your assets in a foreign country.

Here's a great line from Codevilla's Ruling Class essay:

"The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century's Northerners and Southerners -- nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, "prayed to the same God." By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God "who created and doth sustain us," our ruling class prays to itself as "saviors of the planet" and improvers of humanity."

The ruling class prays to itself. I love when I read something that conveys such a powerful point in such elegant fashion. That one line is worth reading the whole essay.

"Today, few speak well of the ruling class. Not only has it burgeoned in size and pretense, but it also has undertaken wars it has not won, presided over a declining economy and mushrooming debt, made life more expensive, raised taxes, and talked down to the American people. Americans' conviction that the ruling class is as hostile as it is incompetent has solidified. The polls tell us that only about a fifth of Americans trust the government to do the right thing. The rest expect that it will do more harm than good and are no longer afraid to say so."

The libertarian streak that runs through the vast majority of Americans is coming to the fore.

"Professional prominence or position will not secure a place in the [ruling] class any more than mere money. In fact, it is possible to be an official of a major corporation or a member of the U.S. Supreme Court (just ask Justice Clarence Thomas), or even president (Ronald Reagan), and not be taken seriously by the ruling class. Like a fraternity, this class requires above all comity -- being in with the right people, giving the required signs that one is on the right side, and joining in despising the Outs. Once an official or professional shows that he shares the manners, the tastes, the interests of the class, gives lip service to its ideals and shibboleths, and is willing to accommodate the interests of its senior members, he can move profitably among our establishment's parts."

Another well-communicated observation.

"If, for example, you are Laurence Tribe in 1984, Harvard professor of law, leftist pillar of the establishment, you can "write" your magnum opus by using the products of your student assistant, Ron Klain. A decade later, after Klain admits to having written some parts of the book, and the other parts are found to be verbatim or paraphrases of a book published in 1974, you can claim (perhaps correctly) that your plagiarism was "inadvertent," and you can count on the Law School's dean, Elena Kagan, to appoint a committee including former and future Harvard president Derek Bok that issues a secret report that "closes" the incident. Incidentally, Kagan ends up a justice of the Supreme Court. Not one of these people did their jobs: the professor did not write the book himself, the assistant plagiarized instead of researching, the dean and the committee did not hold the professor accountable, and all ended up rewarded. By contrast, for example, learned papers and distinguished careers in climatology at MIT (Richard Lindzen) or UVA (S. Fred Singer) are not enough for their questions about "global warming" to be taken seriously. For our ruling class, identity always trumps."

I have no doubt there are hundreds if not thousands of stories like this every year.

"And it is an open secret that "the best" colleges require the least work and give out the highest grade point averages. No, our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in. The most successful neither write books and papers that stand up to criticism nor release their academic records. Thus does our ruling class stunt itself through negative selection. But the more it has dumbed itself down, the more it has defined itself by the presumption of intellectual superiority."

So much had been made of this essay before I began to read it, I was skeptical that it would live up to the hype, but so far it has.

"Even more significantly, these and other products of Democratic and Republican administrations and Congresses empower countless boards and commissions arbitrarily to protect some persons and companies, while ruining others. Thus in 2008 the Republican administration first bailed out Bear Stearns, then let Lehman Brothers sink in the ensuing panic, but then rescued Goldman Sachs by infusing cash into its principal debtor, AIG. Then, its Democratic successor used similarly naked discretionary power (and money appropriated for another purpose) to give major stakes in the auto industry to labor unions that support it. Nowadays, the members of our ruling class admit that they do not read the laws. They don't have to. Because modern laws are primarily grants of discretion, all anybody has to know about them is whom they empower."

And we know that without reading.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Park police order visitors to the Lincoln Memorial to stop singing the national anthem.

"An NBC news report informs us that a group of young conservatives, standing before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, spontaneously began singing the national anthem.  They were immediately confronted by the Park Police and told to stop singing.  (To their credit, the group ignored the order and kept singing!)  What was of greater interest, however, was the statement by the Park Police that such a spontaneous performance amounted to a demonstration in a setting that was required to be “completely content neutral.”"

Our government is getting more insanely oppressive by the day.

ECONOMY:

Skepticism regarding China's growth miracle.

A job is not a right. You have to provide a service that's valuable enough for an employer to pay for to get a job.

Somebody in the mainstream media writes about "The Conspiracy Against Economic Growth". Exactly. They're harming us on purpose. They don't want economic growth. They want to punish us for perceived slights and make us all poorer.

The Wall Street Journal is concerned we might suffer another stock market crash. One reason:

"The jobs picture is much worse than they’re telling you. Forget the “official” unemployment rate of 9.5%. Alternative measures? Try this: Just 61% of the adult population, age 20 or over, has any kind of job right now. That’s the lowest since the early 1980s — when many women stayed at home through choice, driving the numbers down. Among men today, it’s 66.9%. Back in the ’50s, incidentally, that figure was around 85%, though allowances should be made for the higher number of elderly people alive today. And many of those still working right now can only find part-time work, so just 59% of men age 20 or over currently have a full-time job. This is bullish?"

Government lies.

TAX AND SPEND:

I know I just linked this the other day, but it bears repeating. Parasitic government jobs pay nearly twice as much as the productive private sector jobs that pay for them. We're the stupidest people in the world.

Fantastic chart shows how Obama is targeting America's most productive people with taxes to bring down our economy.

Real or fake government programs funded by Obama's stimulus program. You know the answers before you even watch the video.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Michael Barone writes an essay on how "smart people" got so much wrong based on the Fed downgrading economic growth, but his essay completely misses the real points. It fails to mention that central planning is always doomed to fail. It fails to mention that Keynesian economics is a sham. It fails mention that government exists for the promotion of government aristocrats and bureaucrats, not the people, and therefore government lies constantly. It fails to mention that Obama doesn't want the economy to recover. He wants to keep us trapped in an extended state of economic crisis so he can continue stealing power from us and amassing it to himself. He told us he wanted to model his presidency on FDR's and Lincoln's, the two presidents who inflicted more damage on America than any others in history.

Stossel rips Alan Greenspan for his government-loving ways. Greenspan has called for letting the Bush tax cuts expire.

EDUCATION:

In another shining example of the failure of government schools, new study finds that 70 percent of middle school children don't understand the equal sign. I'm not making that up.

HEALTH CARE:

Because government dominates our health care industry, it costs $16,000 to have a baby in America.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

British companies suffering from green taxes and fines.

In the everything the government tells you can't be a lie department, the FDA reports two articles today. The first reports record yields for corn, soybeans and wheat and the second claiming that global warming is devastating crops.

Governments are severely underestimating the future market for energy, leading to foolish policy decisions.

"Inadequate projections of latent demand for energy are leading to poor decisions now and are muddying the debate about both climate change and energy policy for the rest of the century.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the United Nations both project global consumption of energy at 680 and 703 quads respectively by the period 2030-2035 (a ‘quad’ is one quadrillion btus, roughly the energy you could liberate from 36 million tons of coal).

However, consumption trends, if extended, are far higher–they could reach 2,100 quads by 2030, if adequate energy was available consistently and at decent prices. This is because of the confluence of several important demographic trends."

Government should have no role in these decisions. A free market is far and away the best allocator of scare resources including resources to produce energy. This is why Arab countries are developing nuclear power. They're smarter than our government.

Typical alarmism from the media about the normal calving of a huge glacier.

Graph looks back at Jim Hansen's, climate fraud leader, prediction of warming based on CO2. Needless to say, we've produced more CO2 than his worst-case scenario, yet temperatures are far lower than his best case scenario. That should be enough evidence to have him convicted of fraud.

FOREIGN POLICY:

Iran set to activate first civilian power plant.

Sanctions like those against the people of Iran create poverty and weaken the people the people who resist the regime, effectively strengthening the regime they were ostensibly meant to weaken.

"Despite a multitude of poor political decisions — including price-fixing schemes that have created shortages in the targeted markets — Ahmadinejad's regime maintains popularity through social-spending programs. As such, in a country where people's accumulated wealth is threatened by trade restrictions, government aid may be the only recourse left. Ahmadinejad's government is likely more than happy to win people over by aiding those harmed by American trade sanctions. Furthermore, the Tehran government is probably thrilled to use American-led trade sanctions to vilify the West and legitimize its own power."

History bears this out. Never in modern history have trade sanctions succeeded in producing the results intended. Think Cuba. Think North Korea.

POLICE STATE:

This is an amazing video. A fan runs onto a soccer field and security guards tackle him. Four security guards sitting on him, controlling him, but they continue to beat him including beating him with a nightstick. Other fans in the stands get fed up with the beating and jump on the field and defend the guy from the abuse of the security guards. I don't want to see anybody hurt, but it's promising to see the people respond against the violence of government.

Police officer brutally attacks man who is simply talking on phone. This video is amazing. I've complained about the security cameras all over the place, but they are performing a valuable service. They're showing that most violent crimes, the only real crimes, in America are committed by police.

POLITICS:

British press lists 10 reasons for President Obama's stunning decline. I'm not stunned. I predicted it.

Codevilla follows up ruling class versus political class essay with book on the same subject and claims he modeled the essay after Thomas Paine.

MEDIA:

D.C. reporter suspended for reporting the facts about BP's contributions to Barack Obama. The Obama propaganda machine will not tolerate facts about Obama.

MISC:

Rupert Murdoch claims to own the Sky in Skype. Only government, through phony intellectual property laws, could make such a ridiculous claim possible.

Here's another beautiful example of how government is the enemy of progress - Oracle sues Google claiming violation of Java patents in Android.

How ignoring the IP system has enabled Alzheimer's researchers to make tremendous progress. Every human endeavor could see that same kind of progress if not for IP laws.

Obama planning to seize large tracts of western land and remove them from potential development. If you haven't recognized that Obama entire agenda is about dragging America into poverty and destitution, you're willingly blind. Every action he takes is consistent with that goal.

I doubt we're very close to the end of the line for chip miniaturization, but the size of atoms creates a hard lower limit. It'll be interesting as that limit approaches. Right now, far and away the easiest solution for better performance is to shrink the chip, so differentiation by architectural performance is a relatively minor issue. That's why the low-performance x86 architecture is a standard. But soon it will become pretty much the only way to increase performance, and different architectures designed for different applications will proliferate.

Roads are safer without all the signs. That's because without them, people take care of themselves, but with them, the signs distract and lead people into a false sense of security.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is an attempt to push the US IP fascism all over the world.

As much as I love Tori Amos, Kate Bush blows her away, as she blows everybody away, in this duet. I can't believe I never heard this before.

Free kibbles

TAX AND SPEND:

UK village government takes three years and spends £8,000 to change two streetlights.

Democrats pass another $26 billion bailout for teacher's unions.

This is a good way of putting it: all the money ever collected from Social Security taxes is gone. This Ponzi scheme is broke, and if anybody but government was running it, they would be in jail for the rest of their lives.

GLOBAL WARMING:

I've posted a number of articles about how NOAA temperature data is corrupted to make it appear warmer than it actually is, but the claims of fraud in this article seem exaggerated.

POLICE STATE:

ISP owner partially freed from FBI gag order regarding national security letter after six years.

"Despite the fact that the FBI later dropped its demand for the records, Merrill was prohibited from telling his fiancée, friends or family members that he had received the letter or that he was embroiled in a lawsuit challenging its legitimacy. He occasionally showed up for court hearings about the case, but sat silently in the audience with other court observers. In 2007, he was prevented from publicly accepting an award for his courage from the American Civil Liberties Union, because he was not allowed to identify himself as the plaintiff in the case."

That's nuts. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

POLITICS:

The key to a Republican victory is running against big-government not on the culture wars.

LOCAL:

Because our energy supply system is a fascist institution, controlled by aristocrats for aristocrats, government is asking people to conserve energy during the heat wave. Only government could be that heartless and cruel. If the private sector provided energy, there would be plenty available during heat waves, it would just cost a little more because of the higher demand, just as it would cost less during periods of lower demand. Nobody would suffer or die from lack of energy like we see every year from government dominated energy suppliers.

MISC:

Human-like robot to assist astronauts on space station.

Free kibbles

FREEDOM OF SPEECH:

Obama pressures multiple countries to pursue criminal charges against Wikileaks head Julian Assange and block him from traveling.

Tony Blankley exposes himself in the even more dangerous way than you might think, calling for surrendering civil rights, the death of investigative journalists (like any exist) and the trial and punishment (including death) of Wikileaks leader Julian Assange. This is a powerful reminder that government aristocrats are serial killers as well as looters. How date Assange expose the criminality of our war in Afghanistan.

TAX AND SPEND:

The typical government worker, who works in a parasitic job, sucking wealth from the American people for personal gain, earned twice as much as the typical private sector worker who pays his salary by creating wealth for everybody.

People lined up for housing vouchers turn unruly in Atlanta.

"People began lining up two days ago, and by Wednesday morning the crowd had grown to around 30,000 people. East Point police, some wearing riot helmets, were patrolling the area. Firefighters and EMTs were attending to people who were overheating in the sun. Police from College Park, Hapeville, Fulton County and MARTA assisted in crowd control."

Government handouts corrupt everything they touch and inevitably lead to violence. The bigger government gets, the more corrupt it gets, and the more violent it becomes and the more violence it inspires. Greek-style riots are in our near future.

REGULATION:

One of my favorite musicians, Joe Jackson, attacks nanny state cigarette bans. Good for him.

EDUCATION:

Boortz reports: "[T]otal education spending grew by 32% percent between 1999 and 2009, while K-12 enrollment has grown by less that 1% each year over the same time period." The central government seized more control over government schools, and the result is lower quality education. Money is not the problem. Government is the problem.

WAR:

NATO reaches goal of training 240,000 Afghans for military and police duties. Then bring our troops home. The State Department doesn't include the Taliban in its list of terrorist organizations. And it shouldn't. The Taliban are fighting a civil war and should no more be called terrorists than the Afghan gang they're fighting against.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

About five percent of children in the US are children of illegal immigrants. That's crazy.

POLITICS:

Incumbents were the big winners yesterday.

"If you are banking on the voters taking out their frustrations on incumbents in the Congress this year, you were disappointed again on Tuesday, as every single incumbent on the ballot in four states was victorious."

But were they Republicans or Democrats? I would expect Democrat incumbents to win their primaries. It's Republican incumbents who are likely to be evicted by the tea partiers. You know, it should be easy to find this out, but I haven't found it in 15 minutes of searching. News organizations suck. As far as I can tell, the only national incumbent who won was Democrat Bennett in Colorado.

LOCAL:

Our good Republican mayor supports a "temporary" tax hike because the Dayton aristocrats don't want to cut spending. There's no such thing as good government or a good politician.

Here's a nice government school stupidity story: Government schools in Huber Heights started today, Aug. 11, the hottest part of the year in Ohio, but since 6 of 10 schools don't have air conditioning, they let school out two hours early.

MISC:

The Europeans no longer hate us. Now they just pity us. Pity the fool, as Mr. T would say. Man I hope we re-embrace freedom and traditional America values, restore America to a trajectory of greatness that won't be overcome for 100 years and then we can stick our tongues out at them and wag our fingers in our ears.

Hayek criticizes legal tender laws. The Constitution is silent on legal tender laws, so ours are unconstitutional.

After shooting off his mouth and starting a bench-clearing brawl, Brandon Phillips went 3 of 18 and led his team to four straight home losses to the division leader rival St. Louise Cardinals. I hope somebody on the Reds makes it clear to Phillips his behavior won't be tolerated again. I especially hope that Baker or Jocketty does it by suspending him and taking food out of his running mouth. Shut up and play you loudmouth jerk. But it will never happen. I predict the Reds' season is over because this loudmouth asshole flapped his gums, dragged this team down and nobody in the Reds' organization will be willing to instill the discipline necessary to win.

Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac request and additional $3.3 billion bailout. We did this to ourselves. We're the stupidest people on the planet.

ECONOMY:

Some businesses claim they can't find qualified workers. I guess if you set the qualifications too high, that'll happen in any economy.

Here's the reality of Keynesian policy:

"Japan has tried every stimulus trick in the book — in addition to holding rates at zero — and still its economy has been in a funk for two decades. But firing a worker in Japan is virtually forbidden and don't get the idea that consumer prices have fallen through the floor. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), last year saw the biggest drop in consumer prices at 1.13%, after prices rose 1.4% the year before. The chart of Japan's inflation rate is essentially flat. Not exactly the deadly deflationary spiral it's made out to be."

Two lost decades, but things won't be that good for us unless we take our power back from government. Japan has been buoyed by Chinese growth, to a lesser extent US growth, and to an even lesser extent, European growth over those two decades. But nobody can lift up the US economy.

TAX AND SPEND:

The EU is pushing for direct taxation of citizens of member states including Britain. Don't do it! Your countries will lose all autonomy if you fall for this. The weaker economies will loot the stronger economies until all collapse.

In Washington state, it took 410 thousand stimulus dollars on average to create or save one job.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Loose monetary policy leads to the creation of stupid businesses like this one. That's the malinvestment that must be liquidated in the bust.

EDUCATION:

The Sec. of Education says we have to educate our way to a better economy like we want to sit around for a generation waiting for better educated students to solve our economic problems. The aristocrat freaks are moronic, sound-byte machines.

HEALTH CARE:

Medicare actuary blasts Obamacare and issues most dire warning about Medicare ever, but Obama pretends it's good news.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

China's central planners to close 2,000 factories because they are energy inefficient. But are they profitable? The central planners probably don't know, so they can't make an intelligent decision.

New study off past 500 million years of climate shows no relationship between CO2 and temperature. In the past, CO2 was significantly higher while temperatures were relatively similar.

POLICE STATE:

Cops investigated for faking mental illness to get disability benefits even while they were carrying guns. And you thought the police were the good guys. The sooner conservatives get over that delusion, the better.

WAR:

I don't trust the UN, but it seems obvious to me that the civilian death toll in Afghanistan is soaring.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

Illegal immigrants aren't like people who sneak into basketball games without paying.

POLITICS:

Obama's four socialist pillars.

I don't know why people are concerned about Republicans not having an agenda. The Democrats had no agenda in 2006 and 2008 and won the presidency and huge majorities in both houses. When the party in power is as bad as the Republicans were, and Democrats are worse, it makes political sense just to be against them to get back in power and continue looting the people.

MISC:

This tiny article reports the swine flu pandemic is over. You don't say. Funny how the phony alarmism was a huge story but the lack of a pandemic is not.

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ECONOMY:

Prediction of much higher food prices in the near future.

TAX AND SPEND:

Democrat lies about taxes and the facts to refute them.

What planet has this guy been living on?

"Politicians are reviving the notion that intervening in individual industries and companies can drive growth and create jobs (see article)."

Reviving? When did politicians ever think otherwise? This idea that something fundamental has changed in politics is embarrassingly wrong and harmful. Politics has always been about looting the people. It's always been about using the government's gun to intervene in the economy to legitimize stealing money to benefit politicians and their cronies at the expense of everybody else. Stop acting like this is something new.

Entitlement mentality is the major road-block to cutting government spending. Tell me something I don't know. This is a better article on the subject.

Paul Krugman blames lack of government funding, not the looting of the people by government, for roads disintegrating and street lights going out. Have you ever seen a disintegrating toll road? Of course not. Do you really think free people would allow their streets to disintegrate and street lights to go out? Of course not. Only government could create such problems, especially why continuing to pay fat cat salaries to bureaucrats who do no work.

REGULATION:

The blood diamond scam created to prevent competition for diamond suppliers and to insure people in poor African countries don't receive full value for their work.

Government regulation of our food already makes our food more expensive and less safe by taking the responsibility for food safety from the producers, setting low-ball standards, and having politically connected producers manipulate and ignore those standards to they can avoid making a safe product, but the federal government is not satisfied with doing that much harm to our food supply. They want to harm it more with even more regulations in the name of national security.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The Fed is finally ready to admit the economy is not recovering like they told us it was. We know that. This is just an admission the so-called experts at the Fed were either wrong or lying once again.

The government has killed the American dream of amassing wealth and passing it on to your children so they don't have to work as hard as you.

POLICE STATE:

This is why the most dangerous situation nearly every American will ever endure is a run-in with a cop.

"Victor Steen, a 17-year-old high school senior from West Pensacola, Florida, was murdered while riding a bicycle home from a post-Homecoming Game party last October 3rd.  His murderer, Jerald Ard, ran him down in an automobile. According to eyewitnesses, Ard dragged the victim a considerable distance, nearly severing his body in half.

Ard had endangered other drivers and pedestrians as he veered into the wrong lane and even drove onto a sidewalk in pursuit of Victor, repeatedly attempting to shoot the teenager with a lethal weapon. After he ran down the youngster, Ard tried to cover up his crime by planting a gun on the victim.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ard is a police officer. Nor should it be considered unusual that he will suffer no significant punishment for his act of vehicular homicide: After it was established last April that Ard’s actions had exposed Victor “to unreasonable risk of harm and injury” — gee, ya think? — Capt. Jay Worley suspended Ard for two weeks without pay."

Cops are above the law. They can and often do kill with impunity. They kill with the backing of their fellow cops, their management, prosecutors, judges, politicians and the people. We've created a monster, and it is killing us.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

60,000 children are born to illegal immigrants in Texas each year, becoming anchor babies. That's yet another great reminder that our government is worse than worthless. The American people would control our borders by evicting trespassers if government hadn't stolen that right from them.

POLITICS:

I don't need Victor Davis Hansen to tell me that Obama could salvage his presidency like Clinton did if he abandoned his agenda and triangulated like Clinton did but that he won't because he's a dangerous ideologue while Clinton was just a self-serving pervert. Apparently I'm quite the know-it-all tonight and don't need to read this crap.

Beware Democrats in the lame duck session.

MEDIA:

The liberal propaganda media refused to report on the case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers.

MISC:

Study shows that personality changes little after first grade which explains why everybody I run into acts like a child. I wonder how come I'm the exception.

Walter Williams blames the problems on blacks squarely on the shoulders of their own bad behavior with only a passing mention to the race leaders who profit from excusing and even encouraging that bad behavior, but I think this essay fails because it doesn't bring up how government policy - the war on drugs, welfare, the minimum wage, and every other law on the books because laws by definition limit options for people, enforcing the status quo - traps blacks in poverty and promotes that bad behavior.

Stephen Hawking declares man must move into space within a century or go extinct. This is a powerful reminder that even the smartest of people are prone to fits of silly alarmism.

100 years after the fact, conservatives have just realized that the income tax, the Federal Reserve and the popular election of senators is a bad thing. They didn't think these were bad things when Bush was in office. They're only bad because Obama is in office. If a Republican wins the White House conservatives will think these are good things again. Welcome to the centralized power of government is bad camp if only a century late and temporarily.

An android may be the next huge singing idol in Japan. Idoru was the William Gibson book on the subject.

Suddenly conservatives recognize the broken window fallacy which they never seem to grasp when Republicans are in power.

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TAX AND SPEND:

Chart shows that US debt versus GDP is at a record high.

Britain's government plans to make cuts deeper than during Thatcher's tenure. That would be wonderful for the Brits. Too bad we're suffering bigger government.

"Britain’s former Labour government had also become highly intrusive over its 13-year rule. Critics charges Britain under Labour was sometimes verging on a police state. One of Cameron’s first acts was to order tens of thousands of street cameras spying on Britons removed and to put an end to many repressive security and police programs."

I'm jealous, but I'm not so sure making the House of Lords an elective body is a good idea. We know what happened in the US when Senators won the opportunity to pander to special interests.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Peter Schiff reports the Fed has finally publicly adopted the policy of destroying the dollar as he and many Austrians predicted.

"Inspired by comments this week from St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, it is now widely accepted that the continued domestic weakness will cause the Fed to significantly expand stimulus efforts through so-called “quantitative easing.” The printing of trillions of dollars to purchase of government debt will put serious pressure on the value of the dollar.

With the monetary cards now so clearly on the table, currency traders have placed their bets, and the smart money is quickly running away from the Greenback. The falling dollar is reigniting the commodities market. On Monday oil busted through the $80 price ceiling that had held since May. Any additional breaks to the upside may be considered one of the unforeseen “negative shocks” of which Fed President Bullard warns. If the government fears the “recovery” will be further impinged by higher energy prices then look for “quantitative easing” to become both the driving force of our economic policy and poison that finally kills the dollar."

This is scary. Apparently even the bankers fear sudden, as in appearing in weeks, hyperinflation.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Four important lessons from the BP oil spill. Scientists lobby Congress to receive some of the stolen funds for their research.

Global hurricane activity at 30 year low.

POLICE STATE:

Another case of outrageous police brutality caught on video, this time by the police car camera. You know these cops are going to say they were just following their training the same way the Nazis said they were just following orders.

Government agents are so enamored with taking high radiation nude photos of Americans to enjoy in their leisure time, they want portable scanners to take with them everywhere. It belong before these end in schools with the perverts taking nude pics of school children. We won't have to worry about finding the child molesters. They'll be running the scanners.

WAR:

Ron Paul on the crazy bloating of our intelligence services.

One of the revelations in the wikileaks document dump on Afghanistan is the US knows where bin Laden is.

"The Guardian provides a helpful interactive map, in which you click on a location and read the “incident report.” Of course, you’re reading a selection of what the Guardianeditors consider important, but it looks to me like their news judgment isn’t bad at all, because the first one I clicked on was an intelligence report detailing meetings of the Taliban with Osama bin Laden in Quetta, Pakistan, and in villages on the border with Afghanistan. So, bin Laden is not only alive, but they know where he is. I guess when Hillary was hectoring the Pakistanis about the whereabouts of bin Laden, the subtext was: “If we know, then you must know, too!”"

Why haven't we captured or killed him?

"Now that our eyes are being opened to the cover-up of countless civilian casualties, the truth about our “allies,” and the mystery behind the continued ability of bin Laden to “elude” us, let us decide if this is truly a just war, a war worth fighting – and going bankrupt over."

I think we already know it's not.

POLITICS:

I'd like to see an honest analysis of what taxpayers paid for in Michelle Obama's vacation to Spain and compare it to previous First Lady vacations. If she really packed up a boatload of friends and put rooms on the taxpayer's tab other than for her security, Obama should be impeached.

Obama just wanted to play. Screw everybody else. This guy just wants to be a celebrity and hang with the big boys. It's all about him.

MISC:

Genetically modified canola spreading to wild plants as always happens with genetically modified plants.

Camile Paglia explains how gay activists have foolishly driven a wedge between heterosexuals and gays by trying to co-opt the tradition of marriage which has always been about a man and women following their biological drive to get together to have kids, whether they ended up having kids or not. You'd be hard pressed to find a heterosexual who would not support equality in civil affairs for gay partners, but the activists aren't satisfied with that. They want to corrupt the meaning of the term marriage to include gay relationships that are not the product or our biological drive for procreation. Marriage is not merely a cultural, religious tradition. It's more fundamental than that. It's the reflection of the biological drive to procreate.

"I think [gay marriage] is a flash point for antigay backlash…. That’s the problem: calling it a marriage. If you ask the working class guy on the street, ‘Do you believe in gay marriages?’ it makes him absolutely have a convulsion of revulsion. Marriage was traditionally meant for male and female. It was a bond for the raising of children, so it always had a procreative meaning too, and it has a long sacred tradition behind it. I hate any time that gay causes get mixed up with seeming to profane other people’s sacred tradition. The gay activist leadership has been totally clumsy about that. Rather than treating it in a serious way and saying ‘We respect the tradition of marriage,’ gay activism is associated with throwing balloons of blood at the steps of St. Patrick’s."

But I disagree with this part from Justin Ramondo (the Paglia quote was quoted by him):

"This is where the propaganda of the right-wing anti-gay marriage movement goes completely off the rails: the alleged “threat” represented to marriage as an institution by the prospect of gay unions ranges from nil to nonexistent. The idea that gay people, given the opportunity, are going to rush to get married is a fantasy shared by both sides in this debate. But what about states where sexual infidelity is grounds for divorce? Lots of factors no one’s even considered will lead to the big fizzle of “gay marriage.”"

This is only true if government has no role in defining marriage. If government defines marriage to include gay marriage, and children are brainwashed in government schools day after day that gay marriage is equal to heterosexual marriage despite the evidence of their eyes and 600 million years of evolution to the contrary, subsequent generations of children will develop a warped view of the institution which will have unforeseeable consequences. I have no doubt the gay activists hope it will create more gays, but the consequences won't be that simple or painless.

"In yet another irony, it looks like the gay “liberation” movement has turned into its opposite. Instead of rebelling against the bourgeois social order, and asserting and celebrating their “liberation” from legalistic and moral norms, gay activists seek to reinforce those norms by “broadening” them. What started out as a movement for “gay liberation” has turned into a campaign to make gay society as restrictive of sexuality (particularly male sexuality) as the straight world – and even more boring."

Wow. What a great point. Gays are fighting to be just as oppressed as straights who marry and put themselves under the thumb of the government. That makes no sense, which supports my position that only a small number of militant gays really cared about this issue at first, but they've made it into a cause celebre and now it's a litmus test for everybody.

"Is nothing sacred anymore? It used to be that the American State had invaded every other aspect of American life: there was hardly a nook or a cranny left unoccupied by our army of bureaucrats, lawyers, judges, and elected politicians. The gay subculture was once largely outside of this system, and therefore homosexuals enjoyed enormous freedom and flexibility in their personal lives, a happy condition that marriage – and any form of state intervention—invariably ends. Which is precisely why gay marriage will prove to be just as unpopular in the gay male community as it is in the heart of the Bible belt, albeit for wildly different reasons."

This begs the question: is growing government involvement in marriage the reason we suffer so many broken marriages? I hadn't ever thought of it before, probably because I've never been married, but it has to be a factor. Government poisons everything it touches. If we take away the government's power over marriage, which is my position, the institution of marriage and many individual marriages will surely benefit. I think this is the most intelligent article about gay marriage I have ever read.

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GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Yet another data set refutes the hockey stick. Duh. The hockey stick is a fraud.

Remember when Pensacola was going to be wiped out by the Gulf oil spill? A little dose of reality:

"The warm, white sand stretches for miles as clean and flat as a freshly laundered bed sheet. 

The turquoise sea is so clear that I can see silvery fish playing around my toes as I take a cooling paddle."

If you believed what the government propaganda arm called the mainstream media told you, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Thank goodness the British media is telling the truth because we damn sure won't get it from the US propaganda department.

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ECONOMY:

Obama economists pretend to be shocked that unemployment is going up, as if it wasn't by their design.

Housing prices set to fall again.

TAX AND SPEND:

Obama to steal more money from us and bailout underwater homeowners in the biggest vote-buying scheme in history. Congress has made itself so irrelevant that Obama does anything he wants and forces Congress to try and stop him, but there's not enough votes for that.

Lord Geithner claims that raising taxes is necessary for the economy to recover. There isn't one instance in history when raising taxes boosted the economy. And Geithner and Obama know this. They're intentionally damaging us.

Social Security will pay out more than it takes in this year - much sooner than predicted.

All Senate Democrats vote to raise taxes on individuals and small businesses.

"By defeating DeMint’s amendments today, Democrats approved tax increases on all marginal tax brackets that will rise significantly on individuals, families, and small business to their pre-2001 levels, which were five tax rates of 15%, 28%, 31%, 36%, and 39.6%."

Don't fall for that baloney that these are just taxes on the rich. These are taxes on everybody who pays taxes.

Harry Reid defends spending stimulus money on research of cocaine in monkey brains. Researchers need jobs too.

Food stamp use hits record high.

It costs government $5,525 per customer to provide broadband.

REGULATION:

Oregon government shuts down seven year old's lemonade stand, citing public safety because she didn't have a license.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The IMF pushes for a global central bank and one world currency.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

More on the blacklist of man-made global warming skeptics.

Crews find ship lost in 1853 far north of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest passage. So contrary to all the baloney about the unprecedented loss of arctic sea ice, the north pole had similar sea ice in 1853.

Video documents how President Obama blocked efforts to clean up the Gulf oil spill.

POLICE STATE:

This is a fundamental reason behind the rise of our police state:

"I must admit that I am at the point in my life where I expect the police, prosecutors, and judges to break the law, and to give the rest of us the middle finger.

There are many reasons for this lawlessness, but it seems to me that immunity that the courts and legislatures have conferred on police, prosecutors, judges, and others in the "justice" system is the root cause of the problem. People who know they can lie, break the law, fabricate false evidence, and not have to face legal sanctions are not going to feel constrained to act in a trustworthy manner. (What the courts and legislatures are saying, ironically, is that police, prosecutors, and judges should not be subject to the same legal procedures that are imposed upon the rest of us. As in Orwell’s Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.)"

Power corrupts.

American police continue to transform into a military force operating against American citizens.

WAR:

Pat Buchanan rips Republicans for supporting an Israeli strike on Iran.

Ron Paul rips the undeclared war in Pakistan.

"We are not at war with Pakistan. Congress has made no declaration of war. (Actually, we made no declaration of war on Iraq or Afghanistan either, but that is another matter.) Yet we have troops in Pakistan engaging in hostile activities, conducting drone attacks and killing people. We sometimes manage to kill someone who has been identified as an enemy, yet we also kill about 10 civilians for every 1 of those. Pakistani civilians are angered by this, yet their leadership is mollified by our billions in bribe money. We just passed an appropriations bill that will send another $7.5 billion to Pakistan. One wonders how much of this money will end up helping the Taliban. This whole operation is clearly counterproductive, inappropriate, immoral and every American who values the rule of law should be outraged. Yet these activities are being done so quietly that most Americans, as well as most members of the House, don’t even know about them."

We cannot win the war on terror with bombs and bullets.

POLITICS:

What's the matter with Democrats using tea parties to defeat Republicans? Running candidates to split votes is  a time honored tradition that reminds us that both parties care about nothing but power.

MISC:

State takes kids from parents who named them after famous Nazis. As abominable as those parents are, I imagine foster care is worse.

Of course doctors are trying to profit from the rise in cosmetic surgery. People want the service. Doctors want to provide and get well compensated for it. Everybody wins.

New car runs on human waste.

Women are attracted to men who wear red.

More on the Obama-Rangel plan to force Americans to be slaves to the government for two years.

State governments ban collecting rain water on your own property.

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SOCIALISM:

GM is investing $500 million of our tax dollars in a new plant in Mexico. The government is robbing us blind on the one hand and driving jobs out of the country on the other.

ECONOMY:

I can't help but laugh at Lord Geithner's claims about the economic recovery. What a joke.

TAX AND SPEND:

We keep falling deeper and deeper into the theater of the absurd as Snooki (who the hell is Snooki?) points out that Obama's tax on tanning beds is a tax on white people. Why do we care who it's a tax on? It's a tax, therefore it's evil. Who is taxed is unimportant.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

BP plugs oil leak with top-kill method. That should be cause for celebration, but not for the enviro-Marxists. They're only happy during disasters.

WAR ON DRUGS:

The top 5 federal criminal districts are on the Mexican border. Duh. If the feds banned Maine lobster instead of marijuana and cocaine, Maine would be the top criminal district. All it tells us is our laws are stupid and oppressive.


WAR:


Chinese developing superfast missile to sink US carriers. Certainly a mach 10 missile would be a credible threat, but I find it hard to believe that the navy can't develop technology and techniques to counter it. Point defense lasers come to mind.

POLITICS:

This is an excellent definition of politics:

"[A] strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage."

That's exactly right.

Cato claims Obama administration won't admit it's failing. Baloney. They're not failing. They're succeeding at destroying America faster than they had dared hope. Quit falling for the rhetoric. Obama and his allies are Marxists hell-bent on collapsing the US and sparking a Marxist revolution. Don't you know what the code word "fundamental change" means? Obama envisions himself as America's Lenin, and fools like Rahn who refuse to see him for who he is are making it easier for him to destroy our country.

Liberals sure don't like owning up to being liberal.

Only a select few historians who can be counted on to love power-hungry, law-breaking presidents get chosen to rank presidents.

LOCAL:

Republican congressman Mike Turner reminds everybody in the country that neither he nor Republicans support property rights or limited government when he asks President Obama to block the sale and probable demolition of the Moraine ex-GM plant. I guess he thinks the president has the power and the wisdom to determine what should be done with property, not the supposed property owners.

MISC:

The Constitution does not mention marriage, therefore the federal government has no power over marriage.

Every man has a right to govern his own life but no man, nor any number of men, have a right to govern the lives of others.

Because the people don't elect the members of the Senate to obey the Constitution, they confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court despite her acknowledgement she doesn't give a damn about the Constitution.