• Pages

  • Home
  • About

• Categories

  • Arrogance
  • Bureaucracy
  • Frauds
  • Idiocy
  • Language and Censorship
  • Liberty
  • Suggestions
  • Uncategorized
  • Waste
  • Wisdom
  • World News

• Recently Written

  • Did Glen Beck Help or Hurt the Tea Party Movement?
  • More Stealth Regulation
  • Is Terrorism an “Islamic Thing”?
  • Congress Hiding From Citizens
  • My Blog Belches Carbon

• RSS Links

  blogarama.com

• Blogroll

  • Climate-Skeptic - Intelligent criticism of Global Warming Hysteria
  • Coyote Blog - A High Class Libertarian Blog
  • EU Referendum - British views on politics and liberty
  • Goldwater State Blog - Lively Arizona Libertarian
  • Musings from the Chiefio - Intelligent & Idiosyncratic site - Worth Reading
  • Naked Capitalism - Good Solid Source
  • Real Government Insight - a little humor
  • The Unbroken Window - Good thoughts about liberty

• Archives

  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007

• Admin

  • Register
  • Login
  • Wordpress
  • XHTML

After reflecting for a while on Glen Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally I wonder what faction of American politics was helped, or perhaps harmed. It is obvious, based on the large number of participants, that the event is significant. The odd thing about it was the apparent marriage of Tea Party participants with an overtly religious message from Glen Beck.

On the one hand, the Tea Party crowd had clearly been listening to Glen Beck’s political message, otherwise they would probably not have attended. Within the Tea Party’s spirit there is support for the idea that the country’s founding principles include the idea that freedom and human rights are divinely granted. Tea Party opponents, the Obama Democrats, are thought to see human rights as government granted and supervised. But as one who has keenly observed and participated in the Tea Party movement, I believe that its main motivating force is the desire to protect liberty and establish fiscal sanity. Whatever spiritual undercurrents exist have, heretofore, been reserved to a philosophical background.

At this muted, philosophical level of significance I am comfortable with Tea Party references to the founders’ principles of “God given rights” and the ceremonial references such as “In God We trust.” Likewise, I think it wrong to deny the historical Christian underpinnings of this country’s founding. However, I’m quite sure that I am not alone being uncomfortable with overt religion, in the form of Christianity or Mormonism or any other religion, being welded into a political movement. Religiosity at this level commonly leads to zealotry and intolerance.

The Tea Party movement has been rightly focused on liberty, patriotism and fiscal responsibility. This focus has been its major source of strength. It has avoided taking on “social issues” such as abortion, morality, gay marriage and other disputes about which the government has no business being involved in the first place. This is good because it enables the movement to attract support from a wide swath of the political spectrum to focus on what needs to be done.

The question,then,is whether Glen Beck’s call to make “God” central to reforming American politics will help the Tea Party, or will it drive away those of us who strongly believe that organized religion should always be a discrete and private exercise with no more than a formal ceremonial role in public governance. If Beck’s motive is to push back against those who wish to strip all references to “God” from our traditions, then I can support him. But to make “God” a political figure is anathema to many Americans, and it would destroy the Tea Party movement.

Deep within the Health Care legislation was buried a provision to expand 1099 reporting to cover nearly all business transactions — a stealth move by congress. More stealth consisted of a government takeover of the student loan program — within the Health legislation. Within the Financial Reform bill are hidden regulations regarding racial diversity. The EPA has been used to implement back-door CO2 regulations far beyond the authority of the original legislation. And now, the Sun God’s minions want to use the EPA to clamp down on gun ownership by implementing an EPA ban on the use of lead in ammunition. This would make gun use much more expensive and would obviously make the EPA a mechanism for regulation of private weapons ownership. What about an EPA regulation concerning the fumes expelled from firearms, or some Consumer Protection laws regulating firearm design? It boggles my mind to imagine the design that the Consumer Protection Agency would come up with for a regulatory compliant revolver.

Once you start down this road of unlimited extensions to regulatory authorities, the possibilities are unlimited. There are a lot of things I don’t like that the regulators could put right with some new regulations, including chewing gum smacking (sprays spittle - a health hazard), farting in elevators (air pollution, EPA take note), loud music, especially rap from auto boom boxes (we might need a new agency for that), political robo-calls (attn. FCC), tatoos, especially on women, and piercings, especially on men (National Endowment of the Arts Alert!), most government regulations … oops, we’re getting carried away because I don’t know how to suppress them.

One of the problems with run-away government regulations is that they inevitably produce one or more unintended consequences. A prominent consequence is the development of a black market for regulated or banned products or services. There are instances where entire economies resort to a black market in order to survive in an over-regulated economic environment. The second unintended consequence is that the inevitable government attempts to suppress the black market result in crime. Criminals supply the goods or services that are in demand — torpedoes, laws,and police be damned.

Terrorism isn’t an “Islamic thing” say Muslim spokesmen. Besides, even if the terrorists du-jour are predominantly Muslim, the non-Muslim/Western world has committed greater violence says Imam Rauf, he of the Ground Zero Mosque. And a bunch of American liberals chime in saying that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, and even if a few Muslims flew airliners into buildings on 9/11/2001, this was an aberration, not a reflection of “true Islam.” How do these people know? Have they (with the exception of Rauf) read the Koran? Probably not.

I haven’t read the Koran either, but several undeniable facts and historical incidents are relevant to whether or not present day terrorism is an “Islamic thing” or not. These facts need to be clearly stated:

1) The people currently performing habitual acts of mass murder against civilians are Muslims. No other category of people fits this definition. And contrary to the accusations of racism often hurled at those who make this assertion, Islam is not a “race.” So what race are they protecting? Although a lot of Muslims are Arab, the largest Muslim communities are in Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan and others. Similarly, the Muslim Beslan schoolhouse murderers were Chechens from southern Russia. So what race are Muslims? It has nothing to do with race.

2) These mass murders are killing Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Non-Muslims are not terror bombing Muslim civilians anywhere in the world. It is not part of our culture to do this kind of thing. World wars, contrary to some terrorism apologists, are not an analogue for mass murders of peaceful civilians going about their normal business in otherwise peaceful countries. Now that communism has been somewhat whittled down to size after committing the world’s most horrific mass murders, the present day practitioners are all Muslims.

3) Muslim acts of mass murder span the globe to include the U.S, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Somalia, Russia, Kenya, and Sudan, among numerous others. But what they all have in common is that they are carried out in the name of Mohammad and Allah. Nobody is murdering people in the name of Jesus, YHWH, Buddha, or Hindu deities.

4) Ample evidence has been presented that the Koran preaches violence against infidels. If Muslim and liberal experts on Islam and the Koran believe otherwise, then they have a duty to clearly explain violent passages to non-Muslims, to denounce these aspects of Islamic teaching as obsolete and evil, and to vigorously promote a non-violent interpretation among their fellows. It is up to Muslims, themselves, to restrain or re-interpret these violent teachings in their Koran. Christians can’t do it for them, any more than Muslims can restrain and civilize the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” teachings in the Old Testament Bible. It is Christians and Jews who have successfully done that. Muslims should do it too.

5) We have been at war against Muslim terrorists in two predominantly Muslim countries, but we’re not fighting Muslims, we’re fighting terrorists who define themselves as Jihadis for Islam. Because our war enemies hide and shield themselves among civilian populations, including the skirts of women and among children, some of these hostage human shields lose their lives. We are good at fighting wars and try to avoid civilian casualties, but we do not perform deliberate mass murders of innocent civilians. If the Al-Qaeda and/or Taliban want to face our troops man-to-man then civilians won’t be endangered.

6) Most Americans think that stoning women, so-called honor killings of female family members, suppression of women’s freedom and education, amputation of hands and other quaint Islamic practices are ugly and vile. If confined to Muslim lands we could, and should probably ignore these Sharia practices. We could even ignore it when Muslims riot and kill each other over cartoons by Westerners. But when the insults from the Muslim world toward the West include the murder of Israeli school bus riders, the murder of U.S. soldiers in a civilian German cafe in peacetime, the Khobar Towers bombing, the murder of Theo Van Gough, a Dutch film maker, the Beslan schoolhouse massacre, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, the Lebanon Marine barracks massacre, the death fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie, the murder of over 100 people in the Bali bombings, the Mumbai attack against tourist hotels and a Jewish cultural center, the murders in the name of Allah of American soldiers by a Muslim-crazed American, Maj. Hasan, and not to forget the murder of 3,000 Americans in the World Trade Centers, just to name a few of those all-Muslim atrocities — these are worse than cartoons and insults that too many Muslims claim to be justification. These are acts of murder wrapped in Muslim notions of Jihad.

7) Curiously, those who point out the ugly atrocities committed in the name of Allah are accused by some of being Islamophobes. Since most of us critics are at least nominally Christians, and since all the people we’re complaining about are Muslim, why hasn’t this evolved into a religious war? Certainly the radical Muslims are trying to portray it as a holy war, “a revenge against the Crusaders,” as I’ve heard them say. So why haven’t we crusaders taken up battle axes and spears, put on chain armor and mounted our steeds to go to battle? Well, it’s quite simple, really. We are people of the 21st Century. The Muslims seem stuck in the 9th Century. Crusaders we’re not. Although we respect Israel’s right to self-defense, we could care less about “holy lands.” We are not “phobic” about Islam or anything else, because we are a strong civilization with a strong military. Those Americans who would prefer for us to be a weak/meek civilization are few and wrong.

8) So what should we do now? a) Recognize that this is a Muslim problem with roots deeply embedded in the Koran. b) Quit fooling ourselves that Islam is basically a peaceful, tolerant creed. Insist that Muslims prove to us and to their own followers that Islam is peaceful and tolerant, maybe by permitting a Church and a Synagogue in Mecca, for example. c) Wage merciless war against the terrorists wherever they hide. d) Recognize that political correctness, pandering and appeasement will get us nowhere with Muslim leaders. They’ll respect us better if we’re honest and forthright about our attitudes towards them, their Islamic faith and their tyrannical leaders. e) Have the guts to recognize that the main source of this puss filled ulcer is Saudi Arabia. Until we figure out how to deal with the Saudis as financiers and sponsors of radical Islam we’ll never see a resolution to this struggle.

9) To those Muslims living around the world and going about your business peacefully, why not recognize that there is a problem within your religion? Only you can really solve the problem, and to do so you must recognize the problem, raise up your voices, accuse and expel the radical elements and teachings that give your religion a bad reputation. The soft excuses and protestations of victim-hood by some of your present leaders are not credible or effective. The solution really is entirely up to you.

Ever wonder where your member of congress is during the breaks?

Here in Arizona’s District 4 we have a Congressman Pastor (who used to represent my district, but was somehow gerrymandered to another district 7 a few years ago). We never saw him or read anything about him except a few days before an election. The belief was that Rep. Pastor was actually dead, and the Democrats had to dig up his body for a photo-op prior to each election.

Oh-Well. This election there’s a reason other than death for why they’re hiding from their constituents. In my 7th Congressional district we have Congressman Raul Grijalva, whose idea of public service is to recommend that tourists and visitors avoid Arizona on account of the 1070 law. No town meetings for this cowardly dirt-bag either. When things got a little heated earlier this year he actually closed his local office and hid out in Washington until the fuss died down.

Grijalva has a credible challenger this year, but the ignorance of the voters who originally put him in office may be too strong to break through.

Click image left for an explanation courtesy of sweasel.com.

And for a mad cow update, click this image (lifted from the source -Recommended!. ): It’s great to see this madness coming to an end, but the author is right to warn that the worst consequences can often occur after the fact as politicians and regulators fail to grasp the reality that the panic was unjustified in the first place.

This insight comes from England. It’s nice to see some individualist activity on the other side of the pond. Based on the recent news from Europe and Britain one might have concluded that the socialists had taken over without a struggle. But there seem to be remnants of guerrilla forces still at large. Hope lives on for individual freedom.

Brian Riedl published a report for the Heritage Foundation entitled: New CBO Budget Baseline Shows that Soaring Spending—Not Falling Revenues—Risks Drowning America in Debt. The title might just as well have been “The President and Congress are Killing America.” See an abstract from the report below and click the link to read the rest.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has updated its 10-year budget baseline, and America’s fiscal outlook continues to worsen. The CBO projects $6.2 trillion in additional deficits over the next decade. This darkening budget forecast would have been even worse, were it not for the unrealistic assumptions that Congress requires the CBO to employ to make future budget deficits appear smaller.

With more realistic assumptions, the budget baseline shows that:
Even as war spending phases out and the economy recovers, the projected budget deficit never drops below $1 trillion, and reaches nearly $2 trillion by 2020;
The national debt held by the public is set to surpass 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020;[1]
By 2020, half of all income tax revenues will go toward paying interest on a $23 trillion national debt;
Federal spending per household, which has risen from $25,000 to nearly $30,000 over the past three years, would top $38,000 by 2020. The national debt per household, which was $52,000 before the recession, would approach $150,000 by 2020;[2] and
Even if all tax cuts are extended, revenues will still surpass the historical average—18 percent of GDP—by 2020. The reason the deficit will surge 6 percent of GDP above its average is because spending will surge to 6 percent of GDP above its average.

These spending and deficit trends are completely unsustainable. Yet President Obama and Congress continue to push spending and budget deficits even higher with endless failed “stimulus” spending that is now expected to continue into the middle of this decade. They have also enacted a massive new health care law that—far from reining in spiraling health care costs—increases spending (and likely deficits) even further. In short, Washington is digging this budget hole deeper.

The article clearly defines how the congress has instructed the Congressional Budget Office to use unrealistic assumptions to minimize the apparent scope of their folly. Read the article.

How anyone could simply wave off this ugly situation saying it doesn’t matter is beyond me. And how anyone can conclude that the behavior of the President and the Congress (both parties) is anything less than criminal baffles me.

Behind the scenes of the Jihaddi-Mosque controversy, hidden from view by pictures of the Sun God bathing in the Gulf of Mexico, and the catastrophe in Pakistan, behind all of this is the ongoing frenetic activity of the Sun God’s leftist wrecking crew as they take crow bars and hammers to America’s natural resource industries. Thanks to the ever vigilant Michelle Malkin, we learn about Obama’s War on the West and now the Stealth Ocean Grab. These activities are designed to destroy oil & gas extraction on-shore and off-shore, killing thousands of jobs and raising the price of fossil fuel energy. These are goals of the so-called “environmental” or “green” lobbies for the expressed purpose of “ending America’s addiction to oil and reducing CO2″ plus the unstated but overriding purpose of destroying free market capitalism in the United States.

I highly recommend your exploration of the link, above. The subject is exhaustively covered and documented on Ms. Malkin’s site. Then join me in thinking about how in the world we can dismantle this web of toxic bureaucracies that is being assembled by the Obama Socialists. It won’t be easy.

Once again, the Obama political regime spares no opportunity to use a crisis for its political mileage.

In an interview with PBS’s Jim Lehrer yesterday, which focused mainly on the humanitarian and political dimensions of the Pakistan floods, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke made the spontaneous claim that Pakistan’s floods and Russia’s fires were caused by global warming. Here’s a quote from the transcript:

So, I need to underscore that, today, we’re doing what we’re doing for Pakistan out of pure humanitarian need. There’s one other point I would like to make which is extremely important, and it was made today by both the foreign minister, Qureshi, and Dr. Rajiv Shah, the head of AID, USAID, at the Asia Society Conference this morning of NGOs.

They both said that this was a manifestation of global warming, that the melt off the Himalayan glaciers they both thought it was possibly linked to the fires outside Moscow. And Dr. Shah said very clearly that he thinks the world should expect more of this kind of event.

I know that sounds almost like a science fiction movie, but I think it’s worth your viewers recognizing that we’re at the we’re we may be in the process of seeing a dangerous new trend. I’m not sure about that. Our focus tonight is emergency rescue and relief, but I thought that’s important to mention.

So what’s wrong with that? Why does he consider it “important to mention”?

First, these claims are made without any scientific backing whatsoever. Secondly, the IPCC claim that the Himalayan glaciers are rapidly melting has been proved to be absolutely fraudulent bunk. The IPCC admitted that error and apologized for including it in its reports. Holbrooke repeats the fallacy with a straight face. As to the Russian fires, that’s just plain fear mongering. Either he’s ignorant of the facts or he believes that those listening to the interview are ignorant fools. More charitably, he’s probably just saturated with the inane chatter of the Washington crowd to which he belongs.

More important is the fact that he volunteers a “global warming” cause for these catastrophes. This is proof of the Obama administration’s fixation on passing climate legislation such as Cap and Trade and defending the EPA’s new “carbon dioxide as a pollutant” regulations regardless of the truth, regardless of the science, regardless of devastating economic consequences. What’s the benefit then? It’s obvious that this gives government direct control over major sectors of the U.S. economy. Now who could be against that?

In an article describing the terror group Hamas’ endorsement for the ground zero mosque, the author goes on to report that:

Abdul Rauf raised eyebrows last week when he departed on a State Department-sponsored goodwill mission to the Middle East, despite concerns that the trip may be helping him with the mosque’s $100 million fund-raising goal.

The Obama administration insisted the trip, reportedly with stops in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar, was strictly to improve understanding about Muslim communities in the United States.

But a London-based Arabic-language newspaper that interviewed Abdul Rauf reported that he said he would also collect money from Muslim and Arab nations around the world — raising the possibility that the American government is helping him build contacts in oil-rich states.

Could this be true? Is the U.S. State Department sponsoring this radical Muslim imam’s fund raising efforts?

Please tell me it’s just a false rumor.

WeaselZippers.com published this piece in which Sheriff Dever of Cochise County Arizona describes how the U.S. Border Patrol is pulling back their efforts from proximity to the Mexican border on orders from their higher-ups. See:

Arizona Sheriff: Border Patrol Forced to Retreat From Parts of Border Because it’s “Too Dangerous,” Upper Management Afraid of “International Incident” if Shooting Breaks out…

What kind of unconditional surrender is this? What kind of cowards are we?

What do we have here? Have we ceded border territory to become a Cambodian sanctuary for the Viet Cong? Are we becoming a Waziristan sanctuary for the Taliban? No, we’re becoming a border sanctuary for the Mexican drug cartels! THAT’S COMPLETELY INSANE!

Our president, the Sun God, proclaims that he sees nothing wrong with Muslim radicals building a mosque at the “hallowed ground” site of the Muslim 911 terror attack. He maintains that this isn’t a judgment about the wisdom of allowing them to build this particular mosque at this particular site, but just an affirmation of his country’s principles of religious tolerance and freedom.

This detached bit of sophistry is like saying that because of our country’s principles of free speech and assembly, the Ku Klux Klan is free to burn a cross at the grave of Martin Luther King. In principle, of course. In practice it’s a local matter.

This is similar to the liberal left’s attitude toward flag burning and desecration as a form of free speech. Yes,in principle this is free speech, but in practice it can and should be taken as an insult. So the guy who smacks the flag burner in the chops is fully justified in doing so. That’s my opinion.

The same goes for the Ku Kluxers burning crosses and the Muslim radicals building their “Cordoba Center” at ground zero. They won’t even reveal where the $100 million cost is coming from. One reasonably suspects that it’s from Saudi Arabia, from whence came the 911 Muslim jihadist perpetrators.

It has been pointed out that New York City hosts over 100 mosques already. Saudi Arabia hosts no Christian churches and no synagogues. Practitioners of those faiths can and are routinely stoned to death or beheaded in peaceful, tolerant Muslim countries. So with a dose of proportionality I can’t see anything wrong with telling the backers of the Cordoba Center to build elsewhere.

We are a free and tolerant people, but we need not be meek fools.

Congressman Pence takes issue with Democrat politicians who demean the Tea Party participants.

It’s Summer and I’m just back from a vacation trip to Maine, the home of Olympia Snow and Susan Collins. But I tried to think about sailing and cool breezes instead of politics, so it was very pleasant, indeed. In fact, blissful ignorance of things political and economic would be easy to fall into.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a very good and old friend, a retired school teacher. He thinks I’m being completely alarmist about the future, saying we always muddle through. But I judge the immediate future to be one of economic misery and probably a hyper-inflation. I told him he’s completely ill-informed.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the Tea Party movement if and when (next year) the Bush tax cuts expire and government printing presses start pumping out dollars to cover payments on this mountain of debt and future obligations — when people’s savings suddenly evaporate and the cost of living skyrockets. I sincerely hope it won’t turn violent, but I would not be surprised if it did.

My friend says, “This is not Argentina.” I respond that it begins to look more like Venezuela. In either case, fixing the mess requires both discipline and sacrifice, both qualities quite lacking in a large part of the U.S. population, and universally absent in the political class.

But stranger things have happened. Germany, in contrast to most of Europe and certainly America, is pursuing an austerity program that seems to be bearing fruit. We Americans are resourceful when we need to be, so after throwing out the leftist bums in Washington and the state houses, perhaps a catastrophe can be avoided. Let’s hope so.

Are you sick and tired of the leftist charges of racism against the Tea Party movement? Watch this and show it to your doubting Thomas friends.

Isn’t UTube Wonderful!!!

How’s this for healthcare hope and change?

Oh SUN GOD, we worship you!

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal (July 27th) reminded us of some statistics that should be kept at hand next time someone uses the U.S. experience in Vietnam as an example of an unjust or unjustified war.

From WikiLeaks to the Killing Fields

All in all, America’s withdrawal from Southeast Asia resulted in the killing of an estimated 165,000 South Vietnamese in so-called re-education camps; the mass exodus of one million boat people, a quarter of whom died at sea; the mass murder, estimated at 100,000, of Laos’s Hmong people; and the killing of somewhere between one million and two million Cambodians.

We should remember that this butchery was committed by our communist enemies against their own people. And we should remember that this occurred after the U.S. hastily retreated from a war it was reluctant to actually win.

I really do wish I could write more about good things. It gets tiresome railing about the destruction of our country, but too much of the news is bad.

Finally, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal (July 30, 2010, pg. A4) entitled “Obama Defends Teacher Policy.” He says he’s in favor of merit based evaluation of teachers, including merit pay, charter schools, and maybe even vouchers. Did I go too far? Whatever the actual extent of the President’s commitment, he deserves congratulations for standing up against the teachers’ unions, liberal pressure groups, and fellow Democrats.

Now if this meritocratic thinking would only extend to reducing the role of federal money and bureaucracy in eduction — but now I’m dreaming.

Anyway, Mr. Obama, you said something true and right. My Compliments to you for that.

Yet more stealth legislation from the Sun God regime: (from Politico)

Deep inside the massive overhaul bill, Congress gives the federal government authority to terminate contracts with any financial firm that fails to ensure the “fair inclusion” of women and minorities, forcing every kind of company from a Wall Street giant to a mom-and-pop law office to account for the composition of its work force.

There are reported to be 20 new boards and commissions provided for in the so called “Finance Reform” legislation tasked to promoting or forcing racial and sex diversity. “The 1,261-word section authored by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) barely registered during the legislative debate.”

Presidential candidate Obama convinced a lot of people that he would be a “post-racial” president. The truth is that this administration and this congress have become a racially inflammatory force. Those who paid attention to Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a guide to Mr. Obama’s future attitude had it right.

Let’s face the fact that forcing “diversity” does not necessarily promote tolerance nor understanding. Instead, it promotes resentment and victimology. If I don’t like dogs, you can’t force me to like or even respect them by locking me up in a cage with a mutt.

The federal bureaucracy now has in place the mechanism for enforcing wage controls, hiring and firing, lending, health care, banking, mortgages, student loans, and the monitoring of all financial transactions large and small, all in the first year of the Sun God’s reign. The Obama regime deigns to enforce whatever laws it chooses and to ignore those it doesn’t like, see the New Black Panther voter intimidation case. An attempt to crush free political speech failed, but don’t hold your breath. The courts can be used to do that (reference Arizona court intervention) when legislation fails.

A country doesn’t necessarily get tyranny all at once. It can creep up through the weakening of the institutions the country relies on for justice and stability. In the present tense we’re seeing too many huge new laws salted with repressive and tyrannical measures.

That doesn’t add up to a good future outcome. And it’s clearly not Bushes fault!

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has a clever web based campaign called You Cut. The idea is that citizens should suggest wasteful government programs then vote on the ones they consider most deserving of cutting or elimination. The winning program-cut would then be introduced as legislation and the votes of congressmen would be recorded for all to see.

For example, this last week the winning cut was a $100 Million subsidy for sleeping car services on AMTRAK. That’s a lot of money to subsidize first class treatment including private compartments, turning down the bed, first-class food service, and complementary entertainment. The service costs AMTRAK $396 more per passenger than it collects in fares. The difference is made up by a subsidy from the U.S. Treasury, i.e., taxes.

Now who could be against elimination of this subsidy? It’s obviously a blatant waste of taxpayer’s funds. Rep. Cantor brought this proposed cut to the house floor and of course it was voted down by the usual suspects. It makes great theater, maybe good politics, too. But does it solve the real problem? No.

Mr. Cantor’s $100 million cut proposal ignores the fact that Amtrak costs the government $1.3 Billion per year (last estimate I could find). The real problem isn’t the first class subsidy, which appeals to the class envy of the voters. The real problem is the total subsidy. Why should the government run a railroad at all?

The answer to that is quite obvious when one investigates a little legislative history. In the last Amtrak authorization bill (part of the $787 Billion stimulus bill) Amtrak was instructed to improve commuter services between Washington, DC and New York, and between Washington, DC and Boston. Guess who benefits from fast subsidized train services between these cities?

In 2007 an amendment (S 257) to the Amtrak reauthorization bill was introduced in the Senate that:

-Prohibits Federal funds from being used for the operation of Amtrak train routes that have per passenger subsidies of over $200 during the first fiscal year after the date of enactment and over $100 after the fifth fiscal year of enactment.

-Requires Inspector General to submit a report that lists the new subsidy levels and states that Amtrak will terminate train routes that have per passenger subsidies above the set limits.

Of course the amendment was struck down on a party line (28-66) vote. Interestingly a few senators ducked the vote, including: Clinton (D-NY), Dodd (D-CT), Feinstein (D-CA), Kennedy (D-MA), McCain (R-AZ), and (surprise!) Obama (D-IL).

Rep. Cantor’s You Cut program is clever political theater, and it may even embarrass some Democrats and a few big-spender Republicans as well. I can’t criticize people who participate in the belief that they’re doing some good. Maybe they are. But the truth is that trimming around the edges completely misses the point that the federal government has grown so big, so intrusive, and so expensive that only a major reorientation of its major programs will fix it. Don’t just trim Amtrak, eliminate it. Don’t just trim Social Security, privatize it. Don’t just re-organize the departments of education, commerce, labor, agriculture, and energy, eliminate them and a host of unconstitutional others. The politicians are happy to have us do the edge trimming while they blithely water the greens.

I left a comment to the effect of the above paragraph on Cantor’s site, but it was tossed. Oh, well. That just proves my point. No guts, no real progress.

“(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration is backing legislation that includes regulations requiring U.S. businesses to provide to the government data about employee pay as it relates to the sex, race and national origin of employees.” They call it the “Paycheck Fairness Act.”

Along with their other oppressive new regulations on bank transactions, 1099’s for all commercial transactions over $600, monitoring of health records (the fat patrol), now the Obama maniacs want to collect information on paychecks by sex, race and national origin. (Guess they forgot about their usual fixation on homosexual, transgender and trans-sexual categories.) Of course, this is packaged as a “fairness” issue. But it really is just another tightening of the government noose around the necks of business people. How many new IRS agents, in addition to the 11,000 new gestapo authorized to enforce the health care mandate, will be needed to enforce wage regulations nationwide? How many lawyers will be able to their living mugging businesses over their wage decisions? Why don’t they just admit that they’re a bunch of communists and nationalize the whole damn U.S. economy?

Brick by brick the Obama team is building a jail cell for the country to live in, with a death row especially reserved for businesses, especially the smaller ones that don’t make big political contributions to their masters.

Preservation of our liberty requires stopping them right now.

The federal government is tightening surveillance of your bank account, spending and borrowing (see: Liberty and Democrats through new financial monitoring provisions of (oddly) the health care law. Now we learn that the stimulus bill signed last year contains detailed requirements for medical record keeping as described in a CNSNews.com article “Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS”.

The fat patrol is, presumably, to be headed by Regina Benjamin, Mr. Obama’s new Surgeon General appointee.

Provisions of this law which mandate electronic record-keeping appear to also provide for government access to and monitoring of these records. The article says:

The law also requires that these electronic health records be available–with appropriate security measures–on a national exchange.

Do you find it as creepy as I do that not only have our law makers sneaked in additional provisions in unrelated bills to monitor our finances, but they now want to monitor our bodies as well? Does it bother you that these surveillance provisions are salted into crevices and cracks of unrelated legislation? Who’s coordinating this growing web of Cuban/North Korean style monitoring that is being assembled behind our backs?

“Hello, Mr. Jones. This is Butch from the Office of Federal Fat Control. We’ve been notified that at your last weigh-in you gained 10 pounds. You are now five pounds over the mandated maximum weight for your height category. Accordingly, you are ordered to report to Health Clinic Number 2,397 for liposuction or shortening, or both not later than February 25th. Failure to comply will result in revocation of your food authorization coupons and invalidation of your medical card.”

It would be funny if it were not potentially so real.

The Washington Times in its article “Finance bill favors intersts of unions, activists” points out some of the blatent paybacks and race bias that characterize Democrat mega-legistlation (2,400 page) being blindly jammed down the country’s throats. It’s just what we need, 20 more offices of minority and women inclusion.

The bill would create more than 20 “offices of minority and women inclusion” at the Treasury, Federal Reserve and other government agencies, to ensure they employ more women and minorities and grant more federal contracts to more women- and minority-owned businesses.

The agencies also would apply “fair employment tests” to the banks and other financial institutions they regulate, though their hiring and contracting practices had little or nothing to do with the 2008 financial crisis.

“The interjection of racial and gender preferences into America’s financial sector deserves greater media exposure” before Congress debates and passes the massive 2,400-page bill, said Kevin Mooney, a contributing editor for Americans for Limited Government’s daily newsletter.

This is just one more of the many reasons why the current congress and executive need to be booted out and replaced. They’ve gone completely wild with their power. Under the guise of financial reform they’re creating new bureaucracies and carving out preferences to reward favored constituencies, including racial preferences. They’re passing inane and insane laws that may stay on the books for decades to come unless the situation is corrected. But how?

If ever we’re able to elect a sane, disciplined set of representatives, they’ll have a huge job wiping out this and other liberty destroying monstrosities. It would be a better procedure to pass a one-page bill that would force a 2-year sunset for ALL legislation passed in the last 25 years and further specify that no replacement bill may contain any part of the sunsetted legislation, no replacement may cover more than a single subject, and that any replacement must fit into 20 typed pages or less. Furthermore, congress shall have no more than 90 days to replace a bill, after which it will expire forever.

Then, to prevent this regulation through mega-legislation from ever re-appearing, we should have a constitutional amendment establishing a “House of Repeal,” whose elected representatives would be charged with repealing already passed legislation. A two-thirds vote of both houses of congress could override the repeal, but the President could veto the congressional over-ride.

The Legislative Shredder, what an idea!

No surprise here. The Sun God, without needing congressional confirmation, has used a recess appointment to name Donald Berwick, by all evidence a socialist who believes in bureaucratic rationing and redistribution of wealth, as the administrator for his new “Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services” bureaucracy.

(thanks to EyeBlast.tv)

What do you think about this guy having authority over $800 Billion of national government resources and the health care of all Americans?

It’s no surprise if you’ve been paying attention.

REPEAL the Health Care Law!

The Sun God has decreed that NASA’s primary mission should be to make Muslims feel good about their contributions (900 or so years ago) to science and engineering. See below an interview with Charles Bolden, recently appointed to head up NASA.

Routinely ridiculing President Obama and his administration has become so easy that it’s boring. But the bottom line is that NASA has outlived its usefulness. It was created as a propaganda play during the cold war. It has spent billions of dollars performing space stunts and bragging about its contributions to science and technology. It has spent more billions being involved in projects from automotive engineering to agriculture, none of it non-space related , cost effective, useful or even original. And now, spending billions more to enhance Muslim self-esteem is the ultimate absurdity.

It’s past time to pull the plug on NASA.

The big bold headline on Drudge Report today reads BIG SIS BLOCKS WEBSITES WITH ‘CONTROVERSIAL OPINIONS’. Now that’s an article that a free speech attack dog can’t resist reading.

The short article describes an internal TSA email sent out to employees describing a net-nanny system to block access to “five categories of websites that have been deemed ‘inappropriate for government access’.” Among these are sites containing “Controversial opinion.” The categories are:

• Chat/Messaging
• Controversial opinion
• Criminal activity
• Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content
• Gaming

I guess pornography is OK.

What comes to mind here is that someone in TSA must have detected a lot of employee activity in these categories. Chat/Messaging and Gaming I can understand as consumers of employee paid time. Criminal activity is interesting, along with “Extreme violence”, so the TSA bureaucrats don’t get so worked up that they Go Postal.

As to “Controversial opinion” one has to ask, who decides which opinions are controversial enough to block? I hope OddCitizen.com is controversial enough to merit this award.

And finally, what nitwit bureaucrat working for Janet Napolitano thinks the agency’s employees are so juvenile that they need child-proofing software on their computers? Should such people even have computers in the first place? Who thinks that the TSA’s resources should be spent cataloging web sites to be banned by the blocking system? If the employees have so much spare time on their hands that they can surf around the web during working hours then they are redundant and should be fired.

Today’s Headlines: 21 killed in Mexican gang shootout near Arizona border and Gunfire hitting City Hall prompts Texas AG to ask for more troops on border

For anyone who considers Mexican border enforcement to be a minor concern and Arizonans to be racial alarmists, the above headlines speak for themselves. We citizens of Arizona, and by inference of the United States of America, are entitled to protection from this growing violence on the Mexican side of the border.

Although Mr. Obama cites evidence that crime on the U.S. side of the border decreased from 2008 to 2009, it is plain to see that on the Mexican side, right up against the border, thousands of people are being killed in gun battles between police and army fighting drug gangs and between drug gangs fighting one another.

These gangs are involved in trafficing drugs across the border into the U.S. That is the reason the drug gangs exist. To think that these beasts will suddenly acquire good manners when operating on our side of the border is patent nonsense. In fact, due to the drug trade, Phoenix has become the kidnapping capital of the U.S. Tucson, my home, by hosting numerous drug warehouses, has become one of the major hubs for drug distribution throughout the U.S. The people running these criminal enterprises are not nice people, and they are not welcome here.

I admit that even the most competent border security won’t completely shut down the drug smuggling operations. But it may make life safer for those of us living very close to the border.

Maybe it’s time to consider Odd Citizen’s solution to the drug problem: Winning the Drug War in 2 Years or Less

We can also solve the problem of border crossing for the non-criminal element, so they can enter the country legally and won’t have to cross the hazardous desert on foot. See: Illegal Immigration — A Sensible, Workable Solution

Americans for Tax Reform has compiled a summary of upcoming tax increases: Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History(pdf) It reads like a horror novel. Income tax rates all rise, low bracket to 15%, highest bracket to 39.6%. Return of the Death Tax: 55% of estates over $1.0 Million — nearly everyone who owns a home or a business. No reform of the incentive killing Alternative Minimum Tax. Increasing Capital Gains Tax rate from 15% to 20%. A slew of new taxes associated with Obamacare (there are 20 in all). And dozens of other new and increased, economy killing taxes.

We know from history two facts. Decreasing tax rates enhances and incentivizes private economic activity. Increasing tax rates causes the private economy to stagnate. Whatever anemic growth we’ve seen in 2010, in spite of the insane government spending binge, has to some extent been incentivized by the knowledge that 2011 will be a disaster. The tax tsunami of 2011 guarantees utter economic collapse. It has been clear from the outset that the Obama Democrats and their allies don’t think that the private sector economy matters. All of their economic efforts have gone into rescuing public sector jobs and budgets — and even this has failed. There is virtually no one in the Obama administration who has any experience in or appreciation of how the private sector works. These bureaucrats, academics and leftist ideologues view the private sector simply as cows to be milked for taxes to support worthy public “investments” and “beneficial public programs.”

So 2011 triggers a series of events as follows:

1) The public sector deficit and the debt at all levels (local, state and federal) are overwhelming. Just servicing the interest on this debt will consume a huge proportion of any current tax revenue.

2) Government programs and commitments have grown so large that they can’t be paid for out of current tax revenues. Some state and local governments will face bankruptcy or will be bailed out by the Feds using borrowed money. It will be necessary to “bend” some laws and constitutional principles to make this possible.

3) Government will continue to borrow money, but the credit card interest rate will skyrocket as investors realize that the U.S. Federal Government is no better credit risk than the government of Greece.

4) The politicians will take the easy way out on taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts, including the income tax rates, Death Tax, AMT, and a host of others expire. They will rationalized that, “We need the money.”

5) The economy will reel under the weight of these new taxes. The politicians will conclude that: “It’s time to face reality. What we need is more revenue, a big new tax. The Europeans have a VAT, why shouldn’t we have one too?” The VAT will further depress the economy and tax collections will fall even further behind spending.

6) There will be rumblings such as “Maybe we should just nationalize the oil industry. They may be sinful, but they’re rich, and we need the money.” Look at Norway and Venezuela as exemplars for the benefits of nationalized oil.

7) Hyperinflation sets in suddenly as the government’s printing presses pump out dollars to pay bills and service debt. But it’s still insufficient to cope with run-away interest rates and ballooning spending for public sector bail-outs. The dollar ceases to be the world’s primary reserve currency.

8)  By 2012 the situation is so bad that a national emergency is declared. The federal government seizes all retirement investments (pension funds, IRA’s, Kehoe’s, etc.) and exchanges them for interest bearing government bonds.

9) The 2012 general election is suspended for the duration of the emergency.

Don’t say “It couldn’t happen here.”

Yet another spam email arrived today from the white house, this time from Carol Browner, the Sun God’s Energy Czarina. And right away, Mozilla tagged it as a SCAM, which of course it is.

This is another of those “campaign promise” style missives that this regime regularly uses to try and take credit for something, or to change public opinion about something else. In this case, after mouthing off nonsense about her heroic efforts in the gulf oil spill drama, Madam Czarina goes on to preach: “The disaster in the Gulf is a wake-up call that we need a new strategy for a clean energy future, including passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation.”

Translation: Let’s let the Federal Government take over electrical generation and transportation and run it like Amtrak. And by the way, let’s take the “Crazed sex poodle’s” advice and wreck the rest of the economy for the benefit of “the planet.”

If it were not so serious it would be funny!

No amount of indignation or ridicule is sufficient to describe the 2,000 page monster of a finance regulatiory bill, now called Dodd-Frank. Like the health care monster, this Demoncrat written and sponsored beast injects the government into every nook and cranney.

But why object?

* It doesn’t address the problem that is supposedly its justification, “too big to fail,” real estate bubble, unwise leverage and derivative practices.

* It was written by the same guys whose prior congressional activities were responsible for causing the crisis in the first place.

* It leaves the two entities most responsible for the “crisis” (Fannie and Freddie) untouched and still toxic.

* It seeks to micro-manage and regulate financial transactions that have heretofore been privately negotiated without serious problems.

* It creates expensive new bureaucracies that will be no more competent or responsible than the ones we’re already suffering under. The SEC for example failed to notice Bernie Madoff’s shenanigans even when repeatedly notified.

* Like all government reactions to perceived “crises” before it, witness Sarbanes-Oxley, this regulatory beast will have many unanticipated negative consequences, which will be very difficult to correct.

* It branches out into regulating consumer finance, which has nothing to do with the main subject but is a pet project of the MLB (meddlesome-liberal-busybodies).

Dodd-Frank gives the government oversight of almost all financial transactions, large and small. Its supporters claim that the regulation of consumer finance is necessary to “protect consumers.” Provisions of the bill set up a spy network to monitor every detail of finance (”to prevent systemic failures”) and threaten individuals with fines and jail if they try to hide their transactions or refuse to provide government thugs with whatever financial details they request. See my previous article: Liberty & Democrats And while they’re at it, they want to regulate the internet. See: FTC Regulation of Internet

Isn’t it amazing what can be hidden in 2,000 pages of legalistic mumbo jumbo? And to do all this without addressing the real cause of the financial panic takes real talent. Fannie and Freddie are free to go their merry way sucking up government bail-out funds by the gazilions. Of course Goldman Sachs gains some assurances that rivals will suffer more than they do, and Obama’s “fat cat bankers” can count on future government fail-outs indefinitely.

So thanks to, Barney, among the most corrupt in the House of Representatives and Chris, among the most corrupt in the Senate, the country’s financial system will be in competent government hands and we’ll all be protected from the predators out there. But aren’t these the same guys whose previous policies and regulations were the root cause of the real-estate bubble and financial crisis in the first place?

Yah, sure!

All of a sudden the Sun God’s chariot is losing its wheels. The gulf is a mess, and the president’s proclamation to “Stop the damn leak” is ridiculed. His decree to “Suspend offshore drilling for six months,” thus throwing thousands out of work has been challenged by a federal judge, who says it’s “capricious.”

The president’s own general in Afghanistan has been called back to Washington for a lecture on etiquette — or perhaps firing. If the latter, Obama faces the likelihood of losing the entire war as the result of his inexperience and thin skin. Now that would be the single most harmful and inexcusable outcome in American military history — letting the president’s personal vanity cause us to lose a war!

Don’t compare this to the Truman, MacArthur situation, either. Truman fired MacArthur for publicly wanting to use nukes and invade China. And I’m sure MacArthur had a lot more pointed things to say about Truman, than McCrystal said about Obama. So the acolytes can’t say this elevates His Assness to the (low) status of a Truman.

The Sun God’s advisors apparently think that the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is a good omen for the introduction of $7 to $10 per gallon gasoline, skyrocketing utility bills, and massive new taxes — to finance subsidies for wind mills and solar panels. All this because of what? Global warming? American guilt for being successful?

The U.S. dollar is on the brink of massive inflation. Governments at all levels (federal, state and local) are committed to more obligations than they can ever hope to pay back ($130 Trillion, anyone?), and an otherwise weak economy, the Sun God seems to think he can recklessly spend us out of the mess with one more dose of stimulus and ass kicking.

As if this all was not enough, he decides to sue Arizona for enforcing a federal immigration law while drug gangs sweep into Southern Arizona’s border regions.

The guy is either certifiably crazy, stupid, or completely immature and out of his depth. I’d vote for the latter diagnosis with a dose of the former for spice.

2011 is going to be the year of comeuppance for the Sun God and his minions, and a year of disaster for the U.S.A. Although Republicans will probably gain control of at least one house of congress, taxes will be drastically raised, causing the economy to dramatically tank. The U.S. Treasury will see its bonds downgraded and will be unable to continue financing the deficit, much less the national debt. The printing presses will be cranked up and hyper-inflation will ensue. The Chinese will be pissed, but we’ve got them over a barrel if they don’t provoke a war. In either case, pissed or at war, it will be obvious how dumb it has been to move our manufacturing to China. If we’re lucky we won’t see a tyrannical government taking the crash and crisis as an excuse to impose a dictatorship. I said lucky, not smart.

What to do about it? As for me, I’m working feverishly to assemble an inflation survival kit by investing everything I can into assets that have intrinsic value, such as precious metals, mineral mining, oil, natural gas, forest products, etc. When the economy really tanks, the stock market will do the same, but in a hyper-inflation scenario ownership of interest in actual physical assets is expected to be a good hedge. Unless, of course, the government suspends all property rights, which it could and might do.

The financial sector, and anything dependent upon China will be demolished. They’ll all lose their proverbial shirts because their notes and bonds will be worthless. But they can start again from scratch, because it’s all paper and confidence that makes it work. No heavy lifting required. Geithner, Bernanke, Paulson and their ilk will con their way back into finance like cockroaches returning after a nuclear blast.

Then, in 10 to 20 years, the American spirit will kick back in and the U.S.A. will revive itself.

And the Sun God will be remembered as the miserable mistake he is.

A P.S. to the previous article describes how government paperwork is causing oil cleanup efforts to be thwarted.

BP Oil Spill: Against Gov. Jindal’s Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard describes how the Coast Guard’s bureaucracy is hindering the cleanup efforts. Hasn’t anyone in the government got the cahones to just cut through the BS and focus on getting the job done?

The BIG BUNGLING U.S. Government IS the PROBLEM. The bigger it gets the more incompetent it becomes! HACK IT DOWN TO SIZE!

keep looking »