Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Priceless Expression...

Below is an exchange between Alaskan Rep. Don Young (R), and historian Douglas Brinkley. The exchange itself is a prime example of the conceit and sense of self-importance many of us 'little folk' feel our representatives have of themselves. The following statement by Rep. Young is illustrative...

"I can call you anything I want while you sit in that chair... you just be quiet."

Nothing particularly priceless about this exchange, except, perhaps, Dr. Brinkley's fearless return. What's TRULY priceless is the expression on the cute blonde behind the congressman.



Of course, Liberals are not the sole possessors of arrogance and conceit-- the name 'Obama' comes quickly to mind...

...but the woman's eyes? Priceless!

You go, Dr. Brinkley! He DOESN'T own you! We DO pay that man's salary! He DOES work for us!

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Now. To clarify my own position. I'm in agreement with Rep. Young. We SHOULD be drilling in ANWR. Dr. Brinkley, however, had every right to stand up to Rep. Young's treatment of him.

Here's a link to a longer edit of the exchange, for those interested in context.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Finally Smelling the Coffee



Obama's most ardent supporter trumpeting a conservative position on the anointed one? Is hell freezing over?


In Addition...

From The National Journal:

Former Democratic Pollsters:
Obama Should Abandon Run for Second Term

by Michael Catalini

President Obama should abandon his run for a second term and turn over the reins of the Democratic Party to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, two one-time Democratic pollsters wrote in Monday's Wall Street Journal, which appeared online Sunday.

Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen argued that just as Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson decided not to pursue additional runs though they could have, Obama should do the same.

“He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,”Caddell and Schoen wrote.

Caddell, who worked as a pollster for President Jimmy Carter, and Schoen, who was a pollster for President Bill Clinton, argue that Obama will inevitably have to run a negative campaign in order to win reelection, the negative consequences of which will make it difficult for him to govern effectively.

“One year ago in these pages, we warned that if President Obama continued down his overly partisan road, the nation would be ‘guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it.’ The result has been exactly as we predicted: stalemate in Washington, fights over the debt ceiling, an inability to tackle the debt and deficit, and paralysis exacerbating market turmoil and economic decline,” they write.

Caddell and Schoen say they write as “patriots and Democrats” who are concerned for their country, and they do not expect to play a direct role in any possible Clinton campaign.

This is not the first time Caddell and Schoen have made this argument. They wrote in November 2010 in The Washington Post that they “do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed.”


Tuesday, November 8, 2011

The Most Dangerous Woman in America

[Link to the full article is to your right]

I remember an episode of Family Affair wherein Jody was struggling with the "new math." I remember that time and had difficulty too. I also took economics in high school-- a mandatory course requirement then. But nothing of what I learned then, seemingly, is understood today. The Keynesian Model is fundamentally flawed, yet everyone with access to policy-makers in Washington, who accepts the Keynesian Model, is granted an imprimatur-ish status in the development of our national fiscal policy.

Bad as our economy now is, it didn't get where it is without the guidance of both parties. Washington DC is more than just a seat of our federal government, it is also the seat of power of the Washington establishment, which has nothing to do with parties and everything to do with keeping the wheels turning in Washington no matter who is in power-- parties rise and fall, but the establishment is eternal, so to speak. Control may pass from one party to another, but the policy wonks never leave, and Washington today, no matter who controls the reins, is decidedly bent toward Liberalism in all its quirks, misconceptions and flaws. And nowhere, today, are those flaws and misconceptions more pronounced than in the managing of our economy:
Because the Keynesian Model is both a sham and a failure.
Anyone wishing to understand the way economies really work-- if government could only take its hand out of the mix --and how capitalism... unrestrained capitalism... could fix the mess we're in need only read The Case For Legalizing Capitalism by Kel Kelly. It's so simple even a neolithic-minded Liberal cave-dweller can understand it... and it's a free download.

But to the most dangerous woman in America, Christina Romer. From the article referenced above:

In a recent New York Times editorial entitled, “Dear Ben: It’s Time for Your Volcker Moment,” Romer publicly tries to goad Ben Bernanke into doing MORE to fight the great contraction.

It’s not enough that Mr. Bernanke has expanded the money supply by an amount never before seen in the history of the world. It’s not enough that he’s nearly exhausted every policy tool at his disposal. It’s not enough that global confidence in the dollar is fading rapidly.

Romer wants Bernanke to take things to the next level.
Say one thing for the Keynesian deranged, they are consistent... consistently wrong.. and unable to fight the urge to double down. If it were Christina's own money and livelihood I'd say let her hit rock bottom, then she can seek help from a gambler anonymous support group. But it's our livelihood she and the rest of her liberal 'cadre of the deranged' are playing with.

In her editorial, Romer draws comparisons to past economic difficulties and expresses admiration for those who employed extreme tactics to deal with them. She praises FDR for abandoning the gold standard and allowing the dollar to depreciate.

She also erroneously recounts economic history, suggesting that Roosevelt’s actions led to “the most impressive [economic] swing the country has ever seen from horrible contraction to rapid growth.”

Swing? That’s a bit revisionist. The Great Depression languished for years. And years. Perhaps if we’re speaking in terms of a geological timeline in which millions of years are a drop in the bucket, the recovery could be characterized as a rapid ‘swing’.
Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty understands that the Great Depression lasted as long as it did BECAUSE of FDR and government interference in the economy. Now history is in the process of repeating, unrecognized by the those who esteem themselves as the best and the brightest, and now advising the Obama administration on how best to solve our debt crisis. In effect, doubling down on stupid.

In Romer’s world, paper is wealth. And hey, why should she believe anything else? She’s been in academia and politics for her entire life. She’s never actually had to DO anything and has been free to live inside a consequence-free Keynesian bubble throughout her entire career.

The scary thing, though, is that this woman has VIP access to the halls of power in Washington DC. She advises the decision makers who set policies affecting hundreds of millions… even billions of people. And she has no clue how the world actually works. This is incredibly destructive for the rest of us.
This blog has, from the very beginning been an attempt to fight, as meagerly as we knew how, what we knew was coming from the moment we learned Obama had won the White House. But I've come to learn a thing or two in the last three years... specifically, that people tend more often to cling to their tropes and paradigms than allow them to be modified or altogether cast aside in favor of clearer, truer understandings. If anything, they double down on stupid. And when it's Washington that does it, we all suffer.

You can only blame your predecessor for so long. You can only continue down a failing path for so long before the economy wrecks peoples lives and those people begin to get resentful.

I honestly don't see how Obama could possibly get reelected, but stranger things have happened and, I've come to understand, people tend to get the kind of leaders they deserve. Now, as to what that says about the American people, I'll leave that to someone else. Suffice it to say, however, that the longer we allow the genuinely uneducated and 'ignorant-to-real-world-truths' individuals decide economic policy (among other things) we deserve whatever they cram down our throats.

After all, we allowed them to wipe their collective asses with the Constitution, so we shouldn't be surprised that our country is now in a world of hurt; the kind from which there is no real avoiding the coming shit-storm of consequences. It won't matter if a Republican wins next November, that shit-storm is coming regardless-- the only caveat being, how long that storm will last compared to the policies currently administered by the Obama White House.


Friday, November 4, 2011

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November...

Sovereign Man
Notes from the Field

Date: November 4, 2011
Reporting From: Taipei, Taiwan


Late in the evening on November 4, 1605, an English soldier named Guy Fawkes took up his position deep in the cellars beneath the House of Lords in London's Westminster Palace. He was armed with 36 barrels of gunpowder and intended to blow up the building, taking King James and most Members of Parliament with it.

Fawkes was discovered hours later, just after midnight on the 5th. He was captured, interrogated, and tortured, ultimately revealing details of his co-conspirators in what became known as the Gunpowder Plot.

History never let it go. To this day, the 5th of November is still commemorated, officially as a celebration of the government's triumph over its domestic enemies.

[As an etymological note, the word 'guy' is actually derived from Guy Fawkes; it was originally intended as a term of derision but by the 20th century evolved to its current meaning of any male.]

As you can imagine, the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot was anything but comfortable in England. The country became an all-out police state-- arrests, interrogations, and inquisitions were all commonplace as the government attempted to smoke out its enemies.

Four centuries later, not much has changed.

Earlier this week, the federal government arrested a quartet of elderly men as old as 73 on terrorism charges. Like Fawkes, they are charged with plotting attacks on politicians and government buildings.

US Attorney Sally Quillan Yates said that the case is a reminder that "we must also remain vigilant in protecting our country from citizens within our own borders who threaten our safety and security."

In a COMPLETELY UNRELATED MATTER (naturally), major hotel chains in the United States began rolling out the 'If you see something, say something' Homeland Security ads across all of their properties.

As of yesterday, US-based Marriott, Sheraton, Holiday Inn, and Hilton hotels will subject their guests to short videos on the hotel welcome monitors. In this particular video, Johnny DoGood calls the police because he sees... wait for it... a man standing next to a taxi.

Meanwhile, Tennessee recently became the first to implement Homeland Security's VIPR program statewide, essentially placing ass-grabbing TSA agents at various checkpoints along the state's freeways.

And in just two-months' time, you can look forward to the FBI rolling out a nationwide facial recognition program. This, after FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that the bureau would make greater use of rules which allow agents to surveil Americans, even if they have absolutely no ties to terrorism.

This police state is the ultimate slippery slope. Once you start fondling people at airports, you might as well take over the train stations... at which point you might as well do the bus stations too. And highways. Shopping malls. Sports stadiums. Grocery stores. And of course, schools... can't forget the kids.

This only gets worse with time. Soon, any semblance of civil liberty has succumbed to Lingchi, the Chinese torture of 'death by a thousand cuts'.

It's understandable that people are angry and demanding change. Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators thought they could change the system through violence. They were wrong.

And even if violent revolution does create change, it usually works out poorly. Russia got Lenin and Stalin after their revolution, France got Robespierre's Reign of Terror... followed by Napoleon's military dictatorship.

Others are deluded into thinking they can change the system in the voting booth... and with one year to go until the 2012 showdown, there are certainly a lot of people pinning their hopes on this idea. Most forget how surprised they are when, in election after election, their guy turns out to be just as bad as the old guy.

George Carlin once said, "When I hear a person talking about political solutions, I know I am not listening to a serious person." He was right. Politics creates problems, not solutions.

In fact, as Rousseau outlined in his Social Contract, the very nature of government requires that people sacrifice some personal freedoms in exchange for certain conveniences. But more and more, the costs in freedom are rising, and the conveniences become rather... inconvenient.

Truthfully, elections are simply clever parlor tricks anyhow, designed to make people think they are in control. They're not. The only thing we can actually control is what we do ourselves.

Governments are like primitive cannibals feasting on a great treasure trove of sheeple. You can't force them out, and you can't vote them out. But you can sure as hell starve them out. When enough people pick up and leave, essentially voting with their feet, it accelerates the system crash.

This is the only way to truly change the system.






Simon Black
Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com

-----------------


An interesting perspective. But if elections are merely shams... why bother going to polls?

I think you all know that answer to that one. But the point is we ARE, more and more each day, evolving into a police state. And anyone who says it's for the better, is sadly deluded.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Received In Email: Populism as a Negative

I receive in email every few days or so articles from the Patriot Post. This one, I believe, is a must read, and so I've posted it here in full, including the pictures. You can find the original here, and subscribe yourself. The original article has numerous links which I did not add here. Check out the original if you're interested.

One particular comment at the site is posted below this article, and it speaks to what a lot of us on the right are thinking... "why bother?"




Populist Socialism on the Rise
The "99 Percent" are really the "35 Percent" but their cadres are growing

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."
--John Adams, 1787

The populist message of the Occupy Movement, the agelessly adolescent class warriors who make up Barack Hussein Obama's Red October Uprising, now has the support of some 35 percent of Americans, mostly urbanites.

The Occupiers have now infested cities from coast to coast, including Oakland, Seattle, Denver, Austin, Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, New York, and Boston. Their mantra is simple (by necessity): "We are the 99 Percent, and we're all victims of the 1 Percent." By any objective standard, the 99 Percent are not the brightest bunch, and they really represent the roughly 20 percent of Americans who are irrevocably dependent upon government subsides, and pay no income tax. Thus, this 20 percent has no vested interest in the cost of government and is predisposed to vote for the redistribution of others' incomes rather than work for their own. The underlying assumption is that it's easier to confiscate wealth than create it.

This "entitled" 20 percent combines with the 10 percent of American labor who are collectivists and another 5 percent who are perpetual malcontents to thus form Barack Hussein Obama's entrenched socialist constituency of Useful Idiots.

The intellectually challenged Occupy morons have built their movement around the errant assertion that if the assets of the 1 Percent were entirely redistributed, everyone would live happily ever after. Unfortunately, what the 35 Percenters really want, "redistributive justice" as Obama calls it, would require the redistribution of income from the other 65 percent of Americans families who live on earned income, so that everyone could be equally impoverished.

Of course, there's a problem with liquidating the assets of the 1 percent (comprised of more celebs and pro athletes than Wall Street bankers), or even the top 25 percent of the so-called rich: Most of their assets are on paper, and the rest of that "wealth" is in the form of small businesses and real property that support the jobs of tens of millions of Americans who actually work for a living -- and take pride in their occupations.

Thus, liquidation would result in the collapse of the entire economy, leaving everyone under the same statist tyranny as Obama's 35 Percenters -- equally miserable, equally dependent upon the government, and that much closer to Obama's mandate to implement Democratic Socialism.

Fact is, socialist economies always fail. In the inimitable words of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, "Socialist governments ... always run out of other people's money. They then start to nationalize everything."

Of course, socialists never let reality intrude upon their classist fantasies of universal equality and happiness. Nineteenth-century historian Alexis de Tocqueville once observed, "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

If you have any doubt about the socialist motives of the Occupy Movement, consider this proclamation from my daily American Communist Party communiqué (yes, I subscribe to certain leftist publications, so, yes, I know my enemy): "We Are the 99%! The AFL-CIO has taken another step to embrace the Occupy Movement by creating their own We Are the 99% website. Also, CPUSA Chair Sam Webb has an article on the movement at the People's World: 'Occupy: embrace the new, build the movement.'"

Next, I suggest you review the official list of Occupy supporters, including Marxists, Nationalists, Fascists and even Islamists. What a sorry lot for a supporting cast.

Given all this, it's not surprising that the Occupiers' highest-profile support emanates from Obama himself, who says, "People are frustrated and the [Occupy] protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works. ... I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel. ... The American people understand that not everybody's been following the rules. These days, a lot of folks doing the right thing are not rewarded. A lot of folks who are not doing the right thing are rewarded."

As to the Occupy Movement's momentum, Obama says their agenda "will express itself until 2012 and beyond until people feel they are getting back to old-fashioned American values. That's going to express itself politically in 2012 and beyond."

By "old-fashioned" we suspect he's merely re-warming some propaganda from one of the most notable of 20th-century socialists, that inheritance welfare liberal Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was FDR, after all, who channeled Karl Marx when he proclaimed, "Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle."

Roosevelt issued a collectivist "bill of rights" in which he said that the government should ensure "the right to a useful and remunerative job ... the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation ... the right of every family to a decent home ... the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health ... the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age ... the right to a good education."

For his part, Obama has been clear in his collectivist rhetoric: "[T]he wealthiest Americans have made out like bandits. ... It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Our nation is at a critical juncture, and the adversaries of Liberty are well funded. However, a great national debate about the proper role of government is underway. The Patriot Post, since its inception, has been plowing the fields and sowing the seed for this Great Awakening. Our goal is to ensure that the movement remains, first and foremost, about the restoration of constitutional integrity, and to support its momentum.

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In Comments, from SubVet....

Who is John Galt?
Hopefully, there are many of us in the "Contributing Class" who are making preparations to simply walk away from this expanding nonsense.
The idea of a simple life up in the mountains somewhere is becoming more appealing as each day goes by. Why should I bother to work so hard to earn fiat currency that the government takes most of to redistribute to those that choose to do nothing?
Besides, the coming collapse is inevitable at this point and why not start learning how to exist comfortably in what, as the many dystopian novels of the near-future are depicting, is nearly certain to be realized?

Why not indeed?

Because despite what the Left wants us to believe, you can't have your cake and eat it too.




Wednesday, November 2, 2011

A Question to Consider


What right does a leech have to the life blood of another creature?