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You’ve probably seen one or more of the U.S. Government’s 2010 Census promotion ads. You’re supposed to believe that by filling out the census form you’ll be guaranteeing yourself goodies from the government. Now I suppose that to the socialists in congress and the White House this all makes sense. But then we learn that the Sun God’s minions will be spending $340 Million dollars on this advertising foolishness, including a $2.5 Million ad in the Superbowl TV coverage.

In a Michelle Malkin article we also discover that “the Census will triple its total budget from 2000 to $15 billion.” That’s $5.00 per person in the U.S. Don’t you think a private firm could do the job for about $1.0 Billion or so, and walk away with a hefty profit? But then there would be no boodle for ACORN or your local equivalent. So it won’t be done.

The IRS is reportedly buying lots of shotguns. I’m waiting for the Census Bureau to issue a similar request for quotations any day now.

It just goes on and on — the Obama/Pelosi/Reid juggernaut of foolishness and irresponsibility.

The Financial Transaction Tax is one of those sleeper bills that is sitting in congress waiting to be sprung on the country late some Saturday night when everyone is engrossed in a sports program on TV. This tax proposes to raise $150 Billion dollars according to its supporters. It is supposed to make “Wall Street pay back Main street” - a blatant demagogic appeal to class envy and economic ignorance. And yet, the supporters claim it “won’t do any harm.” The idiotic contention that a $150 Billion theft is harmless illustrates just how economically illiterate these people really are. If this thing passes it will severely harm the financial markets which are, after all, one of the few industries in which the U.S.A. remains preeminent.

Use of TARP Funds as an Obama slush fund. The $700 Billion TARP program was never used to purchase toxic assets as was originally promised. Instead it has been raided to buy bank stock, for automobile company bail-outs (if you can call theft a bail-out), to rescue AIG (and in so doing backstop Goldman Sachs) and for home mortgage bail-outs. These uses were not specifically authorized by the reckless and sloppy language of the original bill. So now the president wants to deploy the TARP funds for a $30 Billion program to bribe banks into making small business loans. Given that the SBA is supposed to be in the small business loan business, which has been a complete, useless failure from day one, who would argue that a new government-backed small business loan program will do anything more than provide a slush fund to pay off political allies and cronies? Use the unspent and returned TARP funds to pay down the obscene national debt.

Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell The policy of hiding the participation of homosexuals in the military services by asking everyone to be a blind liar was a bad idea to begin with. The proposal to abandon the policy of excluding homosexuals from the military is an even worse proposal for one simple reason. The military’s business is to exert horrific deadly force. Part of that mission is accomplished by intimidating the enemy. One doesn’t increase intimidation by feminizing the force with a bunch of drag queens. The participation of homosexual men in an organization dedicated to waging warfare, the most exclusively masculine of all human activities, is unnecessary and detrimental. The same can be said for the inclusion of women in such activities.

Health Care Bill The president and his minions continue to believe that if people can simply be convinced of its benefits, then it will pass. The Dems don’t understand that the country does not want the bill, any of it. They have created a bill that says, “We want to cut off one of your arms. You can argue with us about which arm you are willing to sacrifice — that’s bi-partisanship — but you can’t just say “I don’t want any arms cut off.” The silver lining in this thing is that people seem to be waking up enough to realize the damage that could be done, so it may not pass — and the Dems may be thrown out of power in November 2010. But in the meantime the damage they can do is truly mind-numbing.

All of this and a $3.5 Trillion budget with a $1.8 Trillion deficit, too. That’s Not Change I Can Believe In!

The start of every State of the Union speech begins with the grave announcement that the “supreme one” has arrived. “Madam Speaker: The President of the United States of America,” he gravely intones. And then the clapping can begin.

What he should say is: “Madam Speaker: The Chief Bureaucrat of the United States Government.” That, after all, is the president’s actual role. The congress makes the laws, the president manages the bureaucracy. The United States is not led by its president nor by its congress. These are the servants of the people, not their masters. We Americans don’t want nor do we need leaders in federal high office. We are not a club, not a corporation, not a ball team. We are individuals who go about our own business in spite of government, not because of it.

Did I somehow get this wrong? Are we a “people” organized and directed by a “leader”? Do we march about doing the work of the nation? Do we have a “national purpose?” Do we have “national goals?” I say nonsense, BS.

Live Free or Die.

Score for egotism in the Sun God’s State of the Disaster speech: 93 instances of “I”, “Me” or “My”. Bush blamed as usual, economically illiterate as usual. Enthusiastically endorsed by a grinning Pelosi as usual. Too long as usual. Sophomoric blather, as usual.

He’s making it up as he goes, and it doesn’t get any better with practice.

The Sun God lets you know who he really is, what he considers important. It’s all about him. See the video from his recent “jobs” speech in which he mentions himself 132 times!

(Thanks to Americans for Prosperity)

It is reported that he intends tonight in the State of the Union speech to repackage himself as a Jobs God. Let’s see how that works out.

Dems join effort to block global warming rules A little good sense from a few Democrats.

One wonders how long it will take for the political class to realize that the blocks have been completely knocked out from under the global warming scare.

For more than a decade I’ve been registered as a Libertarian voter. Before the last election I participated in the local Libertarian gatherings. I’ve contributed money to the Libertarian party and voted for Libertarian candidates. So you could argue that I’m a Libertarian.

Before my Libertarian affiliation I was, and still am at heart a Goldwater Republican. I believe in small, limited government operating within limited means. I believe that people have responsibilities as well as rights. I am a free market capitalist. I believe that government has no business regulating morality, religion, or personal habits. And above all, I am an unabashed patriot. I am proud of America’s accomplishments, which are the fruits of individual enterprise and freedom. I believe in peace through strength and the global interests and responsibility of the U.S.A. I believe that freedom is a fundamental right for all people and I support our country’s advocacy of freedom worldwide.

My reason for registering as a Libertarian years ago was that the Republican party was behaving just like the Democrats and taking for granted my support and the support of other registered Republicans like me. The only way to get some attention was to leave the party. I had the belief that the Libertarian party stood for “less government and more freedom.” That is a philosophy I could enthusiastically support. I had hoped to find a party that would advance an agenda of freedom and work against the leftward drift of the country under both Republicans and Democrats. Especially now, as the Obama led socialists go charging irresponsibly and mindlessly to the left, effective resistance is needed.

The Tea Party movements of the last year have been the most honest and genuinely effective tools to fight against these destructive socialist policies and programs. But where has the Libertarian party been with respect to these grass roots activities? The party has been absent, silent, and null.

During this period of socialist threats to the very essence of our country’s democracy I want to actively resist this leftist tide. While party politics is about getting “our guys” elected, a very small minority party getting their guys elected does nothing to hold back the onslaught.

The current Libertarian party is an inward looking café club. In addition to housing some civil liberties and small government advocates, it also consists of pacifists, anti-war leftists, Pat Buchanan isolationists, xenophobes and protectionists, and sundry drug legalization and gay rights advocates. Strangely, with such a mix I’ve observed very little active debate within the party — they’re just “Not Democrat” and “Hate Bush.”

The Libertarians simply complain about the similarity between Republicans and Democrats, pleading for support of “their guys” while ignoring the current reality that the only true force holding back the deluge is the Republican party. No matter how lame and even complicit this party has been in the past, it is now resisting the Obamafication of the country. The Libertarians not only do nothing, advocate nothing in specifics, but field a candidate in Massachusetts who did nothing to block the Democrat/Socialist agenda. The only blocking action that made sense in Massachusetts was to ensure the victory of Scott Brown. A vote for the Libertarian candidate in Massachusetts, Joe Kennedy, was a wasted vote.

Kennedy himself said it in an interview quoted below:

Kennedy said he believed he was pulling would-be Coakley supporters because his campaign received over 120 emails on election day alone from “people who were going to vote for Martha Coakley that decided to vote for Joe Kennedy,” compared to one such e-mail from the Brown side.

“We are getting all of the individuals who would never ever vote for a Republican, people who pro-gay rights, people who are antiwar, that don’t want to see Martha Coakley (win),” he said.

The idea “that the third-party candidate splits the republican vote,” Kennedy said, is “the biggest lie in politics, and it has been for years.”

So what was about Kennedy’s campaign that appealed to disaffected far-left elements among the Coakley democrats? What futility. He got less than 1% of the vote. And is Scott Brown a suitable symbol of the Tea Party movement? Who knows? But we do know that his election has made a significant difference nationally. It is vitally important for the Harry Reid Democrats to be blocked. This was a moment calling for action, not ideology.

So what do we do to be effective? It’s clear that the simple horse-race logic of party politics, “just elect more or our guys,” is by itself a waste. It takes a willingness of “our guys” to stand up for principles to make a difference. Likewise, to stand alone on a street corner and preach the gospel makes little or no difference in power politics.

Of course what I or you do as individuals won’t sway the larger political winds. In a democracy we each have only one vote. But we do have choices to make and ways to amplify our voices. We can run for office, donate to political campaigns or become advocates of policies we believe in. I concluded long ago that the influence of policy makers, writers and broadcasters was stronger than that of elected officials. In the long run the direction of political winds is most influenced by what people read, see and hear. The politicians are followers, not leaders.

So I’ll continue to blog, argue and donate to organizations I think will make a difference. I may re-register as an independent or I may rejoin the Republicans with the hope of having some influence while they are weak and disoriented. But I’ll say goodbye and good luck to the Libertarians. I guess they aren’t now and never really were my party.

Government budgets need to be hacked, not trimmed. Pictured below is what the seller, Husqvarna, calls a “traditional multi-purpose axe.”

This is the correct tool to use for reducing government budgets down to a practical size. Whole departments need to be eliminated and their employees fired.

Let’s start with the following. Can someone tell me what “services” the following Federal Government departments provide for you personally? Would their disappearance cause you any real hardship? Note that none of these are constitutionally authorized or even permitted Federal Government activities.

Department of Education ($63.5 Bil.)
Department of Energy ($24.7 Bil.)
Department of Commerce ($8.2 Bil.)
Department of Labor ($54.2 Bil.)
Department of Transportation (71.1 Bil.)
Health & Human Services (70.4 Bil.)
HUD (38.5 Bil.)
EPA (7.1 Bil.)
NASA ($18.1 Bil.)
NSF ($6.0 Bil.)
EPA ($8.0 Bil.)
SBA ($22.8 Bil.>

Completely hacking off these departments and activities would reduce the budget by $393 Billion, a good start, but only 13% of the total budget.

When I advocate hacking off 85% of the federal government’s agencies and make a challenge to identify personal consequences I always get the retort, “But what about the national parks?” OK, let’s talk national parks. The Department of the Interior runs the national parks. The Department of the Interior costs the U.S. tax payers 11.5 Billion per year. The budget spends $2.1 Bil. on national parks, 18% of the total Interior Department budget and 0.07% of the total Federal Budget. So I’ll grant you the 0.07%. We’ll transfer this function to the new National Parks Operations Agency, which will contract out the parks to private business operators. They’ll do the job better and for less money. But let’s eliminate the rest. HACK IT OUT.

A few more agencies that need the axe treatment are:

Homeland Security (37.6 Bil.)
Veterans (48.4 Bil.)
Corps of Engineers (4.7 Bil.)

Constitutional Departments:
Office of the President (0.4 Bil.)
Judicial (6.3 Bil.)
Legislative (4.7 Bil.)
State (38.3 Bil.)
Treasury (12.5 Bil.)
Other (7.2 Bil.)

Some Homeland Security activities are needed, particularly with the threat of Islamic Terrorism. But not 37.6 Billion worth. So let’s cut that in half. Veterans and Corps of Engineers are necessary obligations, but they too can do with a 50% haircut each for savings of $90.7 Billion.

Constitutionally mandated activities such as the Judiciary, legislative and office of the president, can be trimmed at least 25%, saving $38.1 Billion and no Federal Budget should have such a large “Other” (it must have no purpose to describe it) so HACK IT and save another $7.2 Billion.

That leaves Defense and entitlements.:

National Defense ($600 Bil.)

Social Security ($660 Bil.)
Medicare ($420 Bil.)
Medicaid & SCHIP (210 Bil.)

Net Interest ($240 Bil.)

The Entitlement Mess: Combining Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid/SCHIP adds up to $1.29 Trillion. These are supposed to be paid for by so-called payroll taxes. But in fact, the money collected (budgeted at $850 Billion for 2009 but actually $803 Billion, down 5.5% from budget) is immediately spent, leaving a deficit of ($1.29 Trillion - 803 Billion=) $487 Billion. So what is to be done about this?

My proposal is to have an plebiscite in the form of: “Which of the following do you prefer?”

A. Stay with the present Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP program and double or triple the current FICA taxes, including so-called employer paid portions to 35% of income making these programs viable for an unknown future period. In voting for this option you understand that the U.S. will lose its current standard of living and become a third world economy with almost universal poverty - no exceptions for you.

B. Privatize Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid making each program optional and relying on private charity to provide for those who “fall between the cracks.” In so doing, over time, eliminate $1.29 Trillion from the national budget. By voting this option you understand that, although the country will become immensely richer due to a vastly stimulated economy, you will have additional responsibility and duties, and failing these you may some day have to rely on the charity of others.

C. OPEN FOR SUGGESTIONS — this is a vital issue.

This leaves National Defense, a $600 Billion program ripe for some axe work to trim it down to what is actually needed for the country’s defense and to back up its international interests. A reduction of $200 Billion should do the trick, leaving $400 Billion in the budget.

In keeping with the 33% reduction in National Defense, we’ll reduce the budgets of all other remaining departments by a third as well.

After a while, the Interest portion of the budget withers, so we’ll just leave that one alone. After all, we’re not Argentina.

After the hacking the non-entitlement budget looks something like this:

Office of the President ($0.3 Bil.)
Judicial ($4.7 Bil.)
Legislative ($3.5 Bil.)
National Defense ($400 Bil.)
State (28.5 Bil.)
Treasury (9.4 Bil.)
Homeland Security ($18.8 Bil.)
Veterans ($24.2 Bil.)
Corps of Engineers (2.3 Bil.)

Total Budget: $491.7 Billion. We’ve hacked off $529 Billion. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

But we still face a reform of the $1.29 Trillion entitlement mess. This can only be solved by a plebiscite as suggested, above. If it is not solved then we’re doomed to poverty and serfdom.

To place this into perspective, the last time the Federal Government spent about a like amount ($504 Billion) was in 1979. The country had a population of 225 million. By 1989 the budget stood at $1.1 Trillion, double that. The population had risen to 246 million. The cold war had just been won, so we were still in maximum cold war defense mode. The budget had a $152 Billion deficit. The 2009 expenditures amount to $3.0 Trillion with a $400 Billion deficit. The population of the country is now 300 million. We’ve gone from spending $2,300 per capita in 1979 to $4,479 per capita in 1989 to $10,000 per capita in just 30 years. In spite of the Reagan economic boom and the cold war peace dividend, the Bush-Clinton-Bush governments have put the country into a terrible jam. What Obama intends to do to us is frightful.

Note that without the entitlement mess the Federal Government would have to collect “only” $1,430 per capita to finance the government. Entitlements add $4,300 per capita for a total of $5.730 per capita or ($17,190 for a family of 3). The current burden is $10,000 per capita ($30,000 per year for a family of 3). But this whole article uses 2009 budget figures because 2010 is so wildly uncertain. With the Obama/Pelosi/Reid vision of the future it looks more like a complete wipe-out. Just give all your money to the Feds and they’ll decide how to spend it until the whole country collapses.

And this doesn’t even touch on the fiscal mess the individual states have brewed up for themselves. (Maybe more on this later.)

The moral of this story is: Trim the budget with an axe, and vote on the proper future handling of entitlements. It can’t go on this way much longer without drastic reforms.

From Larry Klayman’s recently published book, “Whores” we get some insight into the ugly political maneuvers that politicians routinely use to provide themselves with loot and political advantages at public expense. We also learn how the political realm includes not only elective office holders, but also the corruption of the judiciary and the bureaucracy at the highest levels of our government.

Until reading this book I could not have believed that the self-dealing corruption, ass kissing, and outright criminality was so prevalent and vile as it is. The corruption of the judiciary was nearly unbelievable. I could not have believed, until recent years, with the advent of the internet as an alternative news outlet, that the press was as blatantly complicit in this corruption as it is.

After reading the book some thoughts and reminiscences come to mind:

In high school I used to always walk around with a smile on my face, which attracted the attention of bullies. And each year I’d have to have it out with a bully to establish a reputation and preserve the peace for the rest of the term. It never took more than one fist fight, and being a geek not a jock, I always lost. But it didn’t matter. My ‘rep’ as someone not to fool with, my legend so to speak, was established. From then on I could go around with a grin all I wanted — after the shiner healed.

Why the smile? Well, I always thought of people as basically good and honest, even if occasionally wrong when they disagreed with me. The conspiracy theorists and cynics never impressed me, because conspiracy takes too much discipline to maintain secrecy, and cynics denied the fundamental incentives most people have to do the right thing. And further, as essentially a loner, I never believed or understood how people could so completely ignore their better instincts to behave as members of a gang, covering for and protecting their cohorts with artful lies and deceptions.

During my career as a market research consultant and entrepreneur I was privileged to meet and provide services to a fair number of senior executives, most from small to medium size high-tech firms. All that I met were honest people dedicated to building successful companies. I never met a crook, a cheat, or an illegal schemer among them. Maybe I was just naive or lucky, but that’s my experience and observation.

Although I did some work for large companies my observation of these firms revolved around their bureaucratic aspects, but I suppose I was never entwined in their politics enough to become cynical or suspicious. Big company bureaucracy was enough anthropology for me. And whether private or public, I firmly believe that bureaucracy contains the seeds of evil, the potential for its use to create great harm, but to use it for evil requires evil political leadership.

All of which leads to politics. Whether in government or in large organizations, politics involves the trading of favors to create and perpetuate a hierarchy. This commonly also involves the promulgation of a mythology and an ideology. These justify and support the political hierarchy, often at the expense of the greater public. The mythology evolves to reassure the public that the politicians and the institutions they occupy are honest, well intentioned and disciplined. The ideology is spun to corral a particular constituency’s support for the politician and his party.

The most misleading aspect of politics, in my opinion, is the degree to which we citizens rely on the myths and ideology to guide us in selecting and supporting our politicians and, indeed, our political system. In doing so, and by involving ourselves in earnest disagreements over ideology and mythology, we are distracted from the power games that are being played behind our backs by the politicians, senior bureaucrats, the judiciary and the mainstream news sources.

We have essentially allowed a gang to be created within our political system. It is a voluntary association of political players who mutually support, discipline and reward one-another by preying on their constituents, the citizens, you and me. This gang does not recognize any limitation of law or morality with regard to its activities. Its leaders do what they please, The gang members kiss ass to rise in the political hierarchy, all the while proclaiming their good intentions and support for the constituents. Loyalty runs up and rewards and discipline run down the hierarchy. What rankles most about this situation is the difficulty of dislodging the gang from institutions we, ourselves, should own.

Curiously, preservation of a corrupt political system relies on its ability to corrupt the citizens, themselves. A citizenry that recognizes no need for self-discipline, thrift, sacrifice, or duty in its own behavior, favoring only its own apparent comfort and advantage over everything else — such a constituency will not question the gang’s behaviors. The gang bestows favors, it’s constituency consumes them, and the gang’s secure future is assured.

Evidence of this corruption of the citizenry is evident in blindness to the looming disastrous fiscal consequences of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It is apparent in the willingness of citizens to ignore the economy crippling results of high taxes, heavy handed regulation, environmental and energy manias and government nanyism. And the willingness of citizens to let the defense of the country, once a duty of every male citizen, to be born by a professional military force, even if this requires recruitment of females, this is evidence of moral corruption. Oh, well, we rationalize, we’ll muddle through and I’ll get mine before it all comes crashing down.

If, on the other hand, the constituency actually holds true to its political mythology, such as American exceptionalism, duty, honesty, peace through strength, personal freedom and justice for all; and insists on its ideology, such as limited government, budget discipline and transparency, then the gang can be driven out, broken up and banished until next time we get lazy, selfish and complacent.

Given all of this, it is difficult not to become a complete cynic. But I still believe most people are well intentioned and good. So I’ll keep my smile and stand up to the bullies when necessary. And I’ll do whatever I can to fight back against the gang, whether locally or in Washington, D.C.

Times Online has an article titled World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown. This traces the origin of an IPCC statement that the Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035 with “probability of greater than 90%”. It is now revealed that the original prediction was no more than speculation by a scientist several years before the IPCC report. This speculation was picked up as gospel by others and added to the IPCC report without confirmation by the vaunted “peer review” process. In fact it had never even appeared in a scientific paper, only in a news item in the journal New Scientist. Just another reason for IPCC to either disband or go back to basics. I’d vote for disbanding because science doesn’t belong in the political realm, and the U.N. is a political, not a scientific body.

Ralph Peters, retired Army officer describes the “Hood Massacre Report Gutless and Shameful.” This report by the Pentagon bureaucracy avoids any mention of Islamic Terrorism. Peters writes:

The answer is straightforward: Hasan’s superiors feared — correctly — that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.

Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today’s armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.

This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain’t many colonels willing to hammer the Army’s sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.

I downloaded the .PDF file containing the report (a .PDF that didn’t allow text to be copied!). It had the following word count:
* Islam, Islamic (0)
* Jihad (0)
* Muslim (0)
* Radical (12) (only in the context of “self-radicalization” and “individual radicalized”
* Terrorist/Terrorism (7)(in footnotes 3, reference to terrorist database 2, reference to Pentagon programs 1, and a web site 1)

From the report :

Each year, more than one million people in the U.S. are harmed by workplace violence, and an estimated 17,000 take their own lives in their place of employment. The portrait of the “disgruntled” employee who “goes postal” …..

So the Pentagon regards Hasan’s action as a common instance of “workplace violence” similar to the other 17,000 cases they cite. And then they go on to sympathize with people who “self-radicalize” or even fall victim to “group dynamics” from “small groups.” Hey guys, Al Qaeda is a large group you’ve been fighting for several years! See below:

Recent research has focused on why individuals become terrorists. Although some people self-radicalize as individuals, more commonly small groups of people self-radicalize together. Group dynamics can foster the dehumanization of targets and the drive to commit violence. In addition, the path to terrorism often involves some real or perceived rewards for participation, the desire to address grievances, and a passion for change.

This is politically correct psycho babble of the lamest and most harmful kind coming from the U.S. Department of Defense. What kind of willful blindness enables them to believe and publish such crap?

Shame on Secretary of Defense Gates and shame on the Joint Chiefs of Staff for letting this piece of rotten garbage see the light of day. Oh-oh! Perhaps they actually believe it!?

Email from White House (whitehouse@autoresponder.govdelivery.com):

Due to the high volume of messages received at this address, the White House is unable to process the email you just sent. To contact the White House, please visit:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Thank you.

My rejected email was in response to the self-promoting White House spam message I’d received earlier. From an administration that was supposed to be at the cutting edge of cyber-cool! No, just blowing smoke.

And now Mr. Orzag is complaining that the reason the Obama administration is so incompetent is that their computers are obsolete! And Biden is holding closed door hearings on transparency in government.

GEEZ!! WHAT IDIOTS!

Today we have news that Google is threatening to end its internet operations in China. The reason given is that the company has experienced a high level of cyber-attacks against its headquarters operations, such attacks originating in China. Google says that some of these attacks succeeded in stealing valuable information from the company’s computers. And reading between the lines, Google has been justifiably criticized for going along with the Chinese government’s censorship regime, which is undoubtedly a constant administrative pain in the butt as well.

Let’s face it. The internet is a sewer, and the fact that we can get anything useful from this sewer is something of a miracle. Over 90% of all email traffic is spam. The vast majority of non-email traffic is criminal activity designed to steal software, music, and personal data, or alternatively, to destroy the ability of servers to provide web sites and other services.

Several years ago, after I had invested over a year of effort and thousands of dollars of my personal capital in a software venture, the software’s keys were quickly cracked by numerous Chinese-based software piracy web sites. The web site marketing my software got lots of business, nearly all of it from people using the pirated keys. This traffic was 100% theft, generating no revenue for me. Most of this traffic was Chinese.

Then, just about a year ago, my server was experiencing a large increase in traffic designed to bring down the server, a large number of so-called “denial of service” attacks. It was large scale and ugly. Analysis of the traffic indicated that it originated in China. So now my server blocks all Chinese originated traffic. This has left me with a much quieter, more peaceful environment, though the denial of service attacks continue intermittently from other sources — probably bot-nets.

Parenthetically, many of the latest probes originate in the Amazon “clouds” located in both the U.S. and Europe. I wonder if the Chinese are renting “cloud-time” for their attacks? Oh well.

The lesson here is that the internet sewer is receiving a lot of its pollution from China. The Chinese people care nothing for intellectual property and apparently consider theft to be an honorable occupation. The Chinese government cares a lot about controlling information and from many reports engages in cyber-thuggery, theft and attack as a matter of policy.

Google would be right to pull the plug on China. The internet would be a cleaner sewer without any Chinese participation.

OK, Harry Reid reportedly said something very shocking. He told the truth!

a. Barack Obama is light skinned. (TRUE)
b. Barack Obama doesn’t use the Negro vernacular in his speech unless he wants to. (TRUE)
c. Based on “a” and “b” above, his electoral chances were enhanced — Harry’s opinion. (also TRUE in my opinion.)

Democrats and their PC base are in a frenzy, tripping all over themselves to:

a. Figure out how to say that Harry didn’t say that.
b. Even if Harry did say that, he didn’t mean it.
c. Even if Harry did mean that, he’s apologized to every Negro African-American in his Rolodex.

What Harry should have done is to say: “I meant what I said back then, and I still believe that I spoke the truth.” Period, end of controversy.

Political Correctness is the Enemy of Truth.

Bill Whittle on PJTV interviews government intelligence agents in a video called The Islamic Infiltration: Inside Our Government, Armed With Our Secrets. (Free registration required) In this video, unnamed “former agents” claim that everything the U.S. federal law enforcement agencies do to counter Islamic terrorism is guided and filtered by advisers associated with the Islamic Brotherhood and Hamas. It further claims that political correctness prevents the government from accepting the result of a study the government, itself, commissioned. This study established that the mainstream doctrine of Islam supports the terrorists, not the PC-style moderation and pacifism that some political leaders would want to be true and proclaims to the public at every opportunity.

In today’s news environment with PC entering into the handling of the knicker-bomber, the Ft. Hood jihadist, and everything else about Islamic terrorism, this report is easy to believe.

If true, it screams out for investigation and correction.

From Reason.tv via BigGovernment.com:

Good Enough for Government Work?

I’m a great fan of panics, riots, myths and media scares. These are all manifestations of the human proclivity for group-think and mob psychology, a most interesting and sometimes dangerous phenomenon. Thus I was pleased to see the article entitled The Top Twelve Faux Media Scares of the Past Decade in Andrew Breitbart’s new site, BigJournalism.com.

Included are:

1) Global Warming
2) SARS
3) Asbestos Insulation
4) Radon Gas
5) Swine Flu
6) Killer Bees
7) West Nile Virus
8)  Mad Cow Disease
9) Killer Spinach
10) Killer Tomatoes
11) Tuberculosis Plane Guy
12) Y2k

Of course, these twelve are not the entire list, which would have to include lead paint, the bird flu and Ebola scares, among others, but he does a great job of selecting the top 12. And let’s not forget that old hole in the ozone layer (1985), Nuclear Winter (1983), the Population Explosion (1990), World Running Out of Oil in 5 years (1979) and the coming Ice Age (1972) from earlier decades.

What every one of these scare scenarios has in common is that the alarm bell was rung loudly by respected elements of society, including government leaders, bureaucrats, business leaders, academics and, of course, journalists. And in each case, instead of a grand debunking, the scares simply petered out, quite silently being replaced by other, apparently more urgent concerns and occasional replacement manias. And in most cases those who rang the alarm bells most loudly will today not admit that they ever believed in or had anything to do with the crisis in question.

And the next one is right around the corner. What Fun!

Thanks to Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com article by Paul A. Rahe. Here is the concluding quote from the article:

President Obama is a man of breathtaking self-regard and self-absorption. As many have noted, he can hardly give a speech without eulogizing himself and intimating that his Presidency marks a watershed in American, if not world history. In the same fashion, he seems to take a certain malicious — one might even say, childish — pleasure in humiliating his rivals and underlings.

We are left to wonder what will happen when it becomes evident, even to the President — as it surely will — that he is an exceedingly ordinary man who blundered into an extraordinary situation and not a Messiah at all.

That says it all. Nothing to add here.

Despite numerous campaign promises to debate health care legislation openly, on CSPAN even, our Sun God President, along with his henchmen Reid and Pelosi are behind the curtain of secrecy plotting the health care take-over they will submit for a vote. Click the link below to review Obama’s insincere lies promises.

Thanks to NakedEmperorNews.com for this video and to Michelle Malkin for bringing it to my attention.

Gosh, it’s cold out there. Record breaking arctic cold blankets the U.S., Europe and Asia.

But don’t despair. Relief is nigh. Just crank up all your SUV’s and Coal Fired Power Plants. Fill the atmosphere with enough CO2 to stop that cold with good old AGW.

UPDATE: Al Gore’s doing his part. You can too!

Here are two posts from a blogger I’ll now add to my must-read list.

Dems Delustional Quest for Historic Grandure plus one of the clearest discussions of Obama/Pelosi/Reid socialized medicine I’ve yet read.

Give it a click. You won’t be disappointed.

Big Brother comes to New Zealand in government requirements for all providers of communications, telephone, internet, web surfing, etc. to install taps that will be accessible to the government.

The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand.

In preparation, technicians have been installing specialist spying devices and software inside all telephone exchanges, internet companies and even fibre-optic data networks between cities and towns, providing police and spy agencies with the capability to monitor almost all communications

It is reported that a warrent is needed for police or others to tap into this system.

What is particularly chilling about this report is the following:

Official papers obtained by the Star-Times show that, despite government claims that it was done for domestic reasons, the new New Zealand spying capabilities are part of a push by United States agencies to have standardised surveillance capabilities available for their use from governments worldwide.

While US civil liberties groups unsuccessfully fought these surveillance capabilities being used on US citizens, the FBI was lobbying other governments to adopt them. FBI Director Robert Mueller III told a senate committee in March last year that the FBI needs “global reach” to fight cyber-crime and terrorism and that co-operation with “law enforcement partners” gives it “the means to leverage the collective resources of many countries”.

Emphasis added.

The English speaking countries seem to be heading down an Orwellian path of surveillance, government monitoring and control. How could the countries of the Magna Carta be the ones doing this? It wouldn’t be too surprising in Russia, North Korea or Vietnam. But New Zealand?

Are these facilities already installed and operational in the U.S.A.? Are you listening in Janet?

The argument is being made by New Zealand officials that non-criminals have nothing to fear from this. Maybe so, for a while, but the potential for misuse by a tyrannical government is breathtaking. Suppose the Irish start using this kind of system to monitor for violations of their new Blasphemy laws.

I’d much rather have all government telephones and electronic communications monitored 24/7 by a committee of citizens. Now that might make some sense.

Ireland has passed a blasphemy law. The majority Green party of Ireland, under Fianna Fail, confirms the saw that greens are stop lights, too yellow to admit they’re reds. Blasphemy? Holy shit! The Dark Ages commeth.

The new law imposes a penalty of up to 25,000 Euros for publishing or uttering anything that any religion may find offensive. Pakistan is reportedly working in the United Nations for this type of law to become universal.

Of course, there is some push-back in Ireland and elsewhere. So maybe it’s just another of those silly green things that can be stomped out by enough ridicule. Or maybe it will take a few stonings or burning of heretics at the stake to turn people’s stomachs. Who knows?

Amidst the dismal background of hypocrisy about Islamic savagery we’re subject to amnesia about another brutal force in the world — the remaining Communist states.

We’ve been lulled into thinking that China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba are really just harmless “socialist” relics. In the case of China and Vietnam our government and industry regard these outwardly benign countries as potential markets and low cost manufacturing sites. Unless we’re paying attention, unless we’re sensitive to the reality of these Communist regimes, we don’t realize what callous, evil, brutal regimes we’re dealing with.

In Vietnam the world’s capitalists have found a docile, low cost workforce ready and willing to sew t-shirts and manufacture sneakers. The population is large, but suppressed by its Communist government. Every so often a little of this government’s truly brutal nature peeks out, such as last week when a pro-democracy army officer was put on trial for subversion. “Mr. Kim, a 60 year old former lieutenant colonel, was accused of joining Bloc 8406, an organization that promotes multi-party democracy, an illegal act under Vietnam’s constitution.” After a short trial Kim was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison. He could have been sentence to death but the judge was lenient due to Kim’s military record.

Kim and his like are among those who were unable to flee the Communists after the fall of Saigon. Hundreds of thousands did flee in every conceivable craft, from inner tubes to fishing boats. They went out to sea, desperate to escape the vicious Communist government that they knew would be merciless and brutal. They were right, although a large, but unknowable number of them died in the attempt to escape slavery.

Meanwhile, we’re turning a blind eye to the savagery of China’s Communist government. Their vicious repression of Tibetans who protest the Chinese occupation of their country, their brutal treatment of Uigurs, their threatening war with Taiwan, their roundups, executions and jailing of dissidents — all of these are glossed over. The currently fashionable trust in China as a commercial partner is blindness. We cannot and should never trust a Communist government. They need not be shooting enemies, but they are certainly not friends or allies.

Face it. Communists are evil, vile people. North Korea is a death camp, Cuba is a prison, as are Vietnam and China.

The Reuters headline says, “PARIS (Reuters) - Youths burned 1,137 cars across France overnight as New Year’s Eve celebrations once again turned violent, the French Interior Ministry said on Friday.” The perpetrators are described as “youths.” Some youths. Those Frenchie kids are really violent monsters, or maybe they just don’t like cars.

From “Times Online”Why 112 Cars are Burning Every Day one gets the part of the story that Reuters tries to hide.

The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”

These are not just “youths.” These are radical Islamists.” why hide the plain truth?

Meanwhile in Denmark there is an attempted murder of the cartoonist who depicted Mohammad in a bomb-turban. Remember this?
These guys just can’t resist an excuse to commit murder and mayhem. The police have refused to release the name of the “foreigner” who they captured in the act.

The Reuters PC approach, “just don’t mention it and it will go away because you don’t want to irritate irritable Muslims” is idiotic. The Muslims will do whatever they want to do. It is only when they realize the harm they’re doing to their own cause and respectability that they might crack down on the bloodthirsty radicals in their midst. For example, if all Muslims were banned from flying on airlines, now that would cause some self examination among the Allah faithful. They don’t have their own airlines, do they? Why let them hide behind a false wall of PC driven “respect?” Muslims will gain real respect only when they force their own to abide by the basic standards of decency, tolerance and humanity that we infidels expect from our own.

We can’t do it for them.

OINK! OINK! isn’t funny any more. This isn’t pork, it’s corruption of the worst and most blatant kind. It should get congress members jailed, not just ridiculed.

Here are examples of some of the $4.2 Billion of earmarks added to the grotesquely bloated $636 Billion defense budget.
From Fox News

In all, Congress added in 1,720 pet projects, including:

∙$5 million for a visitors center in San Francisco
∙$23 million for indigent health care in Hawaii
∙$18 million for the Edward Kennedy Policy Institute in Massachusetts
∙$1.6 million to computerize hospital records in Oakland
∙$47 million for anti-drug training centers around the country
∙$20 million for the World War II Museum in Louisiana
∙$3.9 million grant to develop an energy-efficient solar film for buildings
∙$800,000 for minority prostate cancer research
∙$3.6 million for marijuana eradication in Kentucky
∙$2.4 million for handicap access and a sprinkler system at a community club in New York

Our wimpy Sun God President Obama promised to veto any bill containing such earmarks. He lied! Again.

So why do our elected representatives engage in this criminality? They do it for votes. There are voters and campaign contributors behind every one of the above earmarks. They’re all done for the “good” of someone. Why would anyone argue against these good works?

Can it be stopped? Good question. I propose the following reforms to get control of our Federal Government:

1. The 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is fully enforced by the Supreme Court, throwing out the bogus use of “Interstate Commerce” as an excuse to regulate and corrupt anything and everything. All existing legislation relying on the expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause shall immediately become null and void.
2. Congressional bills are required to cover only a single subject with individual votes on each bill.
3. Every bill requiring expenditure of money must specify its gross total cost and include a tax provision to fund the spending. Detailed budgets shall be the responsibility of executive department heads who will be held personally responsible for every line item of their budget.
4. No bill, including any amendments, may exceed 50 pages of 10 point text printed on 8 1/2×11″ paper with 1″ margins.
5. Any member of the legislative body considering a bill may object to a lack of clarity in the bill’s language. In which case the bill will be sent to the nearest (private) high school for re-drafting before a vote is allowed.
6. Congress shall be allowed to propose no more than 100 bills per legislative year. (That’s 5,000 pages total.) After 100 bills have been voted upon, Congress shall be sent home to face the voters.
7. All bills involving expenditures shall expire after five years, after which they must be re-introduced within the 100 bill limits above.
8. Congress shall pass no law or regulation that does not apply equally to itself as to other citizens.
9. Service as a congressional representative is a privilege, not a career. There shall be no retirement program for members of congress other than Social Security (if it isn’t repealed).
10. Unionization of government employees should be outlawed. All employees serve at the pleasure of the head of their department and may be dismissed an any time for any reason. Department heads are personally responsible for all acts or failures of their department.

Short of revolution and a new constitutional convention it would be difficult to implement these reforms. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying to limit government power and political corruption.

Political Pork is Poison.

Don’t worry folks, the system worked. The undy-bomb didn’t go off. Look at me, Big Sis. “If one of them bad things flys over, well, I’ll just shoot it down — if I can figure out where the trigger is.”

Notice all my safety equipment, glasses, ear protectors. And the gun isn’t loaded. Now that’s safety.

Anyway, it’s Bush’s fault. He let those two guys that planned the attack loose from Gitmo. Unlike us — we’re giving them a fair trial before letting them loose. Anyway, the boss says this guy was an “isolated extremist,” which makes him a common criminal, not a terrorist.

Relax. Everything’s under control.

Bureaucratic blather about “procedures and protocols that have been in place for years” and “what happened to the screening process.” is all that President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano offered when questioned about the attempted bombing of the Northwest Airlines jet last Friday.

This is the same Janet Napolitano who publishes a booklet warning that U.S. Soldiers returning from wars and members of patriot militias, even bloggers are potential jihadists or maybe dangerous presidential assassins based on their rightest/constitutionalist beliefs. This is the same Janet Napolitano whose Transportation Safety Department (oops!) published its entire operational manual on-line. This is the same Janet Napolitano who can’t bear to utter the words Radical Islamic Terrorism.

First of all: FIRE THIS CLOWN Napolitano. Appoint someone who recognizes that terrorists are waging war. They are not isolated, petty criminals. We need to reach out and touch them — with hellfire missiles and special forces strike teams. If Maj. Hasan and young student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab can find Al Quaeda, so can we.

Second: The mission should be to go after people, not things. The Israeli security people concentrate on profiling and screening people. El Al, their airline, hasn’t had a serious hijack or bombing in years. perhaps they’re doing something right. The absurdity of current airline screening was illustrated by Bruce Schneier in an interview he conducted with Kip Hawley, head of TSA in 2007. Schneier pointed out that the banned liquids, which might contain dangerous explosives, are simply tossed into a bin in the middle of the screening area. Is this dangerous or not? Somebody isn’t thinking clearly. Hawley even joked that “Screening ideas are indeed thought up by the Office for Annoying Air Travelers and vetted through the Directorate for Confusion and Complexity, and then we review them to insure that there are sufficient unintended irritating consequences so that the blogosphere is constantly fueled. ” Can Janet top that one?

Third: The people that need to be infiltrated, monitored, screened and prevented from doing their ugly jihadist deeds are all Muslims, every one of them. In order to establish some kind of reasonable security it is necessary to monitor radical Muslim activity worldwide. Strip searching grandmothers at airports is an insane waste of energy and a slap in the face for honest travelers.

Political correctness and prissy foreign policy gets people killed.

In my minds eye I visualize the current before Christmas scenery. No white Christmas and carols there. No jingle bells. I visualize a general walking across a devastated, shredded battlefield, among the dead bodies and broken machines of war, still smoking and burning. The general could be of either army, the victor or the vanquished. It wouldn’t matter to this scene.

So here we are, on Christmas Eve, and Harry Reid has battled for his vision of government control and eternal beneficence through regulatory domination of those evil insurance companies. “The peasants will understand,” he muses, “after a few have felt the sting of the lash. We’ll decorate the white house Christmas tree all in red ornaments next year, maybe with faces of Obama, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hugo Chavez, Che and Castro. That would be joyous.” As he walks through the wreckage, hands clasped behind his back, head bowed, Harry’s cell phone rings.

It’s Nancy, breathless. “Good work Harry,” she purrs sweetly, “I knew you could do it. But now we need to start our reconciliation, don’t we? Do you know of a good place for us to hide while we carve up the booty?”

“I dunno,” replies Harry. “But we better do it quickly before the Chicago boys get into the act. They’re really greedy, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

Over the battlefield more storm clouds are gathering. Lightning strikes in the distance. The smell of death mixes with ozone and the dust becomes pungent as the rain begins. Harry hangs up the cell phone and pulls up the collar of his great coat. “Not only that bitch to contend with,” he says between clenched teeth, “but another vote. And now that everyone knows what it cost in bribes to get this far, every soldier I have left will be demanding boodle-for-fight after reconciliation. One just can’t count on loyalty these days.”

It’s raining harder. The ground has turned muddy, somewhere sloppy, elsewhere sucking at Harry’s boots as he walks. The great coat leaks even with the collar pulled tight around his neck. Harry is feeling miserable and depressed. He contemplates the corpse of a dead enemy soldier and veers sharply to his left. “And then there’s the Supreme Court,” he whines. “Those jackals will be asked to rule on the constitutionality of our victory. We have a few allies in the court, but can we count on them? Hell no. Not yet. But maybe in the future.”

Suddenly the scene changes. Segue into a sunny courtyard. It is filled with wheel chairs and stretchers. The sun beats down though “hallelujah clouds” just like the cover of a bible school prayer book. Except for the missing limbs and grievous burn scars the occupants look normal and happy. The Federal Government has provided them with Socialized Health Care. What a blessing.

Breitbart reports EXCLUSIVE: Transvestites, Mao And Obama Ornaments Decorate White House Christmas Tree

Obama continues to flaunt his left-wing, urban-black, lower-class credentials, even in decorating the White House Christmas tree, where ornaments feature, who else but that Yuletide loving Chinese mass murderer Mao TseDung. And for entertainment another bauble features “legendary transvestite Hedda Lettuce” (maybe somebody knows something about that). And finally — TA_TA! — the sun god as a face on Mount Rushmore.

We’ll undoubtedly be told that the fault isn’t with the Prez or the 1st lady, but with the “designer”, Simon Doonan, hired to do the display. BS! It’s the responsibility of the person hiring the designer to sign off on his work. And it’s not as if Doonan was an unknown quantity. He’s apparently responsible for numerous other disgustingly political holiday displays.

It’s just another example of Obama’s arrogance and narcissism.

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