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After over 500 articles in this blog, I’m getting weary. But some things are quite clear when explained simply. Play Senator Coburn’s explanation (complements of Daily Caller) of what we’re facing as a country. It’s worth it.

Arizona’s congressional district-7 has for too long been represented by an embarrassment, Rep. Raul Grijalva. This low-life socialist promoted a boycott against his own state to support illegal immigration. He joins the race hustlers, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson calling for the lynching of George Zimmerman and has otherwise proven himself to be unworthy to represent the decent citizens of his district.

This election we have a good choice. Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, a naturalized American citizen born in Mexico is a true patriot and believer in liberty and free markets. She needs our support.

His chart, complements of Merrill Lynch, BLS and via ZeroHedge.com illustrates the manner in which government is fudging the numbers to make Obama’s economic performance look better. The chart compares the “unemployement rate” to the “employment rate.” These usually track one another. Why shouldn’t they? But now, see the chart, a miracle has occurred. The unemployment rate has dropped by 2 percentage points — but the lie is revealed by employment rate, which is static. The implication is that things are getting better due to lower unemployment, but a large number of people have simply given up looking for work or being employed.

We see this jiggery-pokery in all kinds of government statistics, especially the inflation numbers, which exclude fuel and food. These report inflation below 2%. Our experience shows us that inflation exceeds 10%.

Throw the lying bums out. NOW!

Andrew Breitbart brought great energy, a bit of humor, and a lot of courage to the right side of the political spectrum. All who appreciated his work mourn his untimely death at the age of 43 years.

Among Mr. Breitbart’s journalistic targets was the mendacity and bile characteristic of the so-called “mainstream” press. Just a day after his death this ugly leftist taint shines through in the press coverage. While mentioning a few words about his reputation as a merry prankster, these commentators from API and CNN and other outlets then turn to attacks on his work, particularly his exposure of corrupt Obama-connected organization ACORN and Shirley Shirrod, the race-hustling former Department of Agriculture employee. But nowhere have I seen any mention of one of Andrew Breitbart’s most ardent targets, the Federal Government’s Pigford settlement with black farmers, which is so larded with fraud and race that the “mainstreams” won’t touch the issue. On this there’s complete silence, because they know Breitbart had the facts down cold.

Let’s face the facts. A half-black (mulato) president and a lot of black appointees, so freak out the mainstream media fearful about being called racists, that they become liars and apologists for all manner of government-employed criminals and low-lifes. Or maybe they’re that way by nature and the race-hustling, leftists in government simply take unfair advantage of their moral weakness.

We’ll miss Andrew Breitbart, because he wasn’t afraid to sweep the shit out of the stalls, even when others called this crap “government work” and accused him of being a racist because some of the horses are black.

With permission from the author, below is his entire article. Read it and weep. Then get busy reforming government and protecting yourself and your family from the predations of the political class and their greedy beneficiaries, i.e., most of our ignorant fellow citizens.

Weekend Edition
Porter Stansberry: Why your family owes $700,000
Saturday, February 11, 2012

Today… a review of what I think are the most critical facts in our country’s looming currency crisis. Most people still don’t understand the risks we face as a nation because of our feckless leaders and their reckless ignorance of basic economics.

What follows are facts. Nothing in this essay will be conjecture or opinion. I will make no forecast – at least not in this essay. So please, stop the political name-calling… and grow up. The problems we face are ours. All of ours. It doesn’t matter how we got here. It only matters that we begin to deal with these issues – soon. If we don’t begin to solve these core financial problems, they will certainly destroy our country.

Today, our national federal debt far exceeds $15 trillion. This alone is not a serious problem. The interest we pay on these debts is small – thanks to the trust of our creditors, who, for the moment, continue to believe America is a safe bet.

So… what’s the problem? The main problem is the amount of debt we owe continues to increase at a faster and faster pace. This is exceptionally dangerous for two simple reasons. First, there’s simple math. When numbers compound, the result is geometric expansion. And that’s happening right now with our national debt because we continue to borrow money to pay the interest. And we have done so for about 40 years. Think about it this way: How big would your debts be today if you’d been using credit cards to pay your mortgage for the last several decades?

Even worse, our debts are compounding at an accelerating pace because we lack the political ability to limit the federal government’s spending. Please understand… I’m not pointing the finger at any politician or either political party. I’m simply pointing out a fact: This year’s $3.6 trillion federal budget is 20% larger than the entire 2008 budget. And while our government has grown at a record pace, our economy hasn’t. It has hardly grown at all. Thus, this will be the fourth year in a row we set a record for deficit spending. Never before in peacetime has our government borrowed this much money. And now, it’s borrowing record amounts every year.

This combination of borrowing record amounts of money (during peacetime) and continuing to borrow the money we need to pay the interest is setting the stage for a massive increase in total federal debt levels. Why is this happening? Don’t our leaders realize they can’t continue on this path?

Well… the problem isn’t so simple to fix. What we face isn’t a $15 trillion problem. It’s actually much, much bigger…

The $15.3 trillion we owe today is really only a minor down payment on promises the federal government made to its most important creditors – the American people. Not yet included in our debt totals are the $15 trillion shortfall in Social Security (thanks to the Democrats), the $20 trillion unfunded prescription drug benefits (thanks to the Republicans), or the $115 trillion unfunded Medicare liability (thanks to the Democrats and Republicans).

Most people ignore these looming liabilities because they obviously will never be paid. In fact, the federal government’s total obligations today – including all future obligations – is more than $1 million per taxpayer. And that’s if you assume all 112 million taxpayers really count. (They don’t. Only about 50 million people in the U.S. pay any substantial amount of federal income taxes.)

But here’s the funny part… While everyone seems ready to ignore these obligations, we’ve already begun to pay them. Our spending on Medicare and Social Security already greatly exceeds the $800 billion in payroll taxes we’re collecting to pay these benefits. (Total spending on Social Security and Medicare last year was more than $1.5 trillion.) And that means our actual debts will continue to compound faster and faster every year, assuming nothing is done to curtail these benefits.

I want to make sure you understand this fact: It doesn’t matter how much (or how little) Congress chooses to cut its discretionary budget. The promises we’ve already made to Americans in the form of Social Security and Medicare guarantee that our debts will continue to compound faster and faster, every year. How do I know?

Once again… let’s return to basic math. Right now, we’re spending (at the federal level) $2.4 trillion per year on transfer payments and interest on our national debt. That doesn’t include any of the other functions of the government – nothing else. Meanwhile, we are only collecting $2.3 trillion a year in income, payroll, and corporate taxes.

Let me make sure you understand this: Even if we cut every other government program – including the entire military budget – the federal revenue collected still wouldn’t be enough to merely cover the costs of our direct transfer payments. Not even close. And every year, these payments will automatically grow.

Here’s another way to look at the same basic numbers, but on a macro scale. Right now, total government spending in the U.S. equals $7 trillion per year. (That’s federal, state, and local.) Total interest paid in the U.S. economy on all debts, public and private, equals $3.7 trillion. The size of our total economy is only $15 trillion. Thus, we are currently spending $10 trillion (out of $15 trillion) on our government and debt. This is unprecedented in all of American history. This financial structure is unsustainable – and extremely unstable, given our debt levels.

There’s the bigger problem. (Yes, it gets worse.) The political solution to our soaring deficits will most likely be higher taxes. Yes, technically that’s a prediction… And I promised no predictions in this piece. But let’s face it. You will never see the federal government make dramatic, meaningful cuts to its promised benefits – not when half the country pays no federal taxes and more than 40 million people are on food stamps. So it’s not really a prediction – it’s a political reality. Will higher taxes save us?

No. You cannot squeeze blood from a stone. The federal debt isn’t the largest obligation we suffer under. Americans hold nearly $1 trillion in credit card debt. We hold nearly $1 trillion in student loans. Total personal debt in America is larger ($15.9 trillion) than all of the federal debt. In total – adding up all of our debts, public and private – Americans owe close to $700,000 per family. It is not possible to finance our federal government’s spending via taxes because the American people are broke. Total debt levels in America are the highest – by far – of any developed nation.

Tax the rich, you say. Well, of course. But marginal rates in many places are already greater than 50%. Tax rates this high don’t work… They actually reduce tax revenues as people move their economic activities elsewhere to avoid taxes… or even simply forgo working.

Don’t forget, the very wealthy can simply leave. James Cameron – director of blockbuster movies Titanic and Avatar – recently did just that, buying a 2,500-acre farm in Canada. John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media, likewise told the Wall Street Journal that he bought a farm on the Canadian border specifically so that he could leave the country whenever he wanted. “We own 18 miles on the border, so we can cross. Anytime we want to, we can get away.”

Think I’m exaggerating the risks of real capital flight from the U.S.? Well… let’s look at the facts. According to the latest IRS report, the number of Americans renouncing their U.S. citizenship has increased ninefold since 2008.

How then will the government’s spending be financed? Well, I promised no predictions. Not today. But I will remind you that since 2008, the Federal Reserve has expanded the monetary base from roughly $800 billion to nearly $3 trillion. That, again, is a fact. Feel free to draw your own conclusions about what the Federal Reserve is likely to do in the future if the U.S. Treasury is faced with a financial need that can’t be met.

These facts prompted me to focus the latest issue of my Investment Advisory on a step-by-step guide on how to prosper during the coming crisis. I just published the issue yesterday. You can learn more about my letter and how to get immediate access to my research here.

Regards,

Porter Stansberry

P.S. You may do whatever you’d like with today’s essay. Feel free to pass it around to your friends – or anyone else who may be interested in these ideas. Be prepared for lots of nonsense about making the rich pay their “fair share” and pie-in-the-sky projections about how the entitlement system could easily be reformed.

Increasingly a complaint about awkward or goofy health-related services is met with “But that’s the law. We have to do it that way.”

For example, CVS Pharmacy has been revising their web site for prescription refills. It used to work just dandy, and was fairly easy to cope with. Now, however, everything is wrapped in military level security, i.e., enter your user name, your password, your plan number, your group number, a recent prescription number, your name, your birth date, the name of your cat, and if you are not so frustrated that you’ve quit, your shoe size. A complaint about this awkward and unnecessary level of security gets the answer: “The health care privacy laws require it.” Well, should they? Do they actually? Is it just an excuse for programmers going wild?

We see this everywhere. New intrusive health care questionnaires, invitations to have an “expert” examine our living quarters, invitations to consult health-plan nurses. This is health-care by push. I tell them “Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” but they call anyway. Any day now I expect Mrs. Obama to knock on my door and insist on inspecting the contents of my fridge.

I go to my dentist’s lab to have a repair on a broken denture. The lab techs say they can’t do the job without permission from the dentist. Hey guys, this is warranty service. What possible benefit does this have to me, to be told I can’t have someone fix my denture without permission? Maybe my barber will have to get permission to cut my hair next time.

This is insanity and it needs to be stopped and backed up right now. My own frustration is at the boiling point. Friends and family tell me I’m a grump, but I maintain that they’re blissfully ignorant of a trend that could some day deprive us of all of our freedoms.

Speak up. Resist this insanity now, before it’s too late.

It just keeps getting worse. The Sun God president declares that he doesn’t need Senate confirmation for his appointments. He appoints the head of a toxic agency that is detached from congressional oversight and budgets, the so called Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The law and centuries-old practice regarding recess appointments has been ignored presumably because the Sun God believes that “consumers” desperately need more supervision of their finances. Chalk up another win for the emerging totalitarian government.

Eric Holder, the (AG) Enforcer in Chief, has led the way by giving congress the finger over Fast and Furious, the government-sponsored gun running operation that has killed some 300 Mexicans and a couple of American border agents as well. Holder thinks his duty is to protect black people from white bigots, ignoring actual documented election fraud and intimidation of voters by black thugs. Congress couldn’t do anything about that, so the green light is on, right?

Well, what the hell, he thinks. While I’m doing that I might as well do a double duty destruction run. I can destroy the U.S. military, which I detest, by reducing their ground troop strength by half a million men, yield to the Chinese ambition to dominate in Asia, and recover half a trillion dollars to spend on welfare checks for the masses — who will reward me by voting Democrat.

My friend Hugo, down in Venezuela showed how to stay in charge even if his country wasn’t doing all that well and most of his people criticized him. The Chinese are about to take over the leading role in the world, and look at how their leaders stay in charge year after year. Elections are just a historical fad. Modern countries with enlightened leaders need to have stability at the top.

There’s a election coming up, but with things so bad in this country, with so many people not enjoying full government benefits such as food stamps and unemployment payments, we have a real crisis on our hands. I have the answers, thinks the Sun God, I am the salvation of the country. So I can’t just passively let myself be relieved from office by an ignorant, racist, tea party mob. No. I’ll just postpone the election for a few years until I have everything fixed and under my control. After all, I am your glorious benefactor, the Sun God, so who will stand up and prevent me from doing that?

I live near the Mexican boarder. For years now illegal Mexican immigrants have passed through my property. Often times I fed them, gave them water, let them use the telephone and sent them on their way. Other times they disconnected my hoses at night to re-fill their water bottles, discarded trash on the property and camped out back in a dry stream bed (wash) on the property. I speak some Spanish, having attended college in Mexico and Chile, and have a warm spot in my heart for Mexico and Mexicans. But with regard to those crossing my property these days, the hospitality is gone. Last week, for the second time, I was robbed by an illegal Mexican immigrant.

The latest robbery involved the complete ransacking of my office/guest house. The thief was obviously a professional crook, not a desperate immigrant farm laborer. He homed in on and took those things that could be exchanged for cash, such as jewelry, a fire-arm, ammunition, loose change, camera, short-wave radio. He also took military medals and incomprehensibly and most painfully some irreplaceable hand-written journals.

The thief also took a $2 bill that had been my late father’s good luck piece. A visit to a store across the highway yielded a surveillance video of the guy spending the two-dollar bill and many dollars of loose change. There’s no doubt about this culprit.

So why write this in my blog? Not sympathy. I get that from my family. Not fame, this blog has very few readers. No, just a testament to the fact that the Mexican border has become a dangerous channel of criminal activity into the U.S.A. Don’t you believe those who say these are just innocent work seeking immigrants. Most used to be, but now most are drug mules and criminals. So for my erstwhile Mexican friends, you have spoiled it for your companieros, you’re no longer welcome, no longer will you receive any hospitality from me. Adios!

We’re hearing a lot of nonsense lately about how China’s economy is the envy of the world. Certain lefties in government and academia have been gushing about China’s construction boom, its railways, its airports, etc. But the real story of China is that it’s a house of cards, or a ticking time bomb. The banking system is as corrupt as the government, and the people seem to have no sense of responsibility or civility at all. The industry pollutes, sells counterfeit products, and tainted medicines. The workforce is slave labor. This is an apocalypse waiting to happen.

If you don’t believe it, you must review the link below, which describes China’s “ghost cities.” These are large cities being built with bank loans, but nobody occupies these cities. See: Chinese Ghost Cities from Business Insider.

The bottom line is that China is an immense lie.

And when China collapses we’re in for an ugly, wild ride since so much of our manufacturing business has been moved to China.

Once upon a time the Eastern-born city manager of a Western city decided that his citizens needed a better breakfast diet. He declared that the city’s goal should be to create more steaks and more eggs. To implement his program he went out into the countryside and implored ranchers to produce more steaks and poultry farmers to produce more eggs. He said he’d do whatever was necessary to help them produce steaks and eggs. But the program didn’t work. And here’s why.

The ranchers told the city manager that they don’t produce steaks. They raise cattle, and among the benefits of cattle raising are steaks. No cattle raised, no steaks produced. And similarly, the poultry farmers explained that they don’t raise eggs, they raise chickens. Unless the city manager could help them raise more chickens his citizens wouldn’t get more eggs.

All the current palaver about “producing” jobs is nonsense. Jobs are produced by a growing economy, by companies making money and expanding. The government can’t do anything at all to “produce” jobs. What it can and should do is whatever it takes to help businesses thrive, make profits and grow. And that’s largely a matter of reducing the size and scope of government, itself. Reduce taxes on business. Reduce the massive blanket of regulations and mandates that smother businesses. Support a sound currency. Get out of the way and let Americans work they way they know how to.

Arguments are being made that the problem is a lack of demand and a lack of employment. Consumers don’t want to spend because they don’t have jobs. Or business won’t hire because there’s too little demand. But both of these are false arguments. What do you think would happen if some businesses found a way to offer gasoline for $1.00 per gallon, or even $2.00? Would there be demand for that? Of course there would. And the business that offered this bargain would have to hire lots of new workers and a lot of supporting businesses would also spring up. So why has the government put most of the continental and offshore oil and gas exploration areas off limits? Why does the government make hundreds of new rules that slow down and gum up the works of creating new businesses?

Jobs are created by business growth. So if you want jobs you have to be a cheerleader for business success. If you’re in government, you should step aside and let the ambitions and skills of America’s entrepreneurs and investors loose. They’ll do the job.

This story is actually a couple of weeks old. In the midst of swirling insanity characterized by President Obama’s “jobs” speech, the FBI’s evidence tampering in the Gun Walker scandal, the gyrating stock market, chaos in the middle east, and other matters — in the midst of all this the Gibson Guitar raid by armed federal agents to enforce foreign laws sticks out.

From what I’ve read the raid originates in an obscure snippet of legislation inserted into an unrelated bill by environmental nut cases. It essentially treats wood as if it were a radioactive substance, requiring tracking and registration of wood that any country considers special. In the Gibson case the wood is from India. Indian law requires the wood to be finished by Indian labor. U.S. Government claims the wood did not meet this requirement, so it sent 20 armed agents into Gibson’s plants and headquarters to confiscate the wood and evidence of wrong-doing. Gibson’s CEO says the company hasn’t been charged with any crime or infraction.

As an aside, the government apparently told Gibson that they could avoid all this hassle if they simply moved their operations overseas!

The most disturbing thing about this episode is the increasing use of massive, military-style armed force by government agencies in raids of this kind. One could expect this kind of government hobnail boot assault in totalitarian countries, but not here in America.

Today’s news reports that a French court has found a (strange) fashion designer, formerly employed by Dior fashion house, guilty of speech that insulted Jews and others. However vile the speech, however vile the speaker, making speech a crime is even more vile. And this type of censorship/criminalization of speech has infected what were previously thought to be democratic, free societies including much of Europe and even Canada. Here in the U.S. it hasn’t come to that yet, with the exception of some “hate crime” laws that criminalize thoughts, which is a related subject.

As vigilance is the price of liberty, we must guard against creeping censorship in its many forms, including self-censorship via political correctness. We are a better and more civilized people who ignore speech we detest rather than bringing down the boot of the state on the neck of the speaker.

Last night’s Republican “debate” like most previous political debates amounted to little more than some candidates dodging spitballs from a couple of “reporters” intent on producing a “gotcha” moment. This is a format that extracts nothing of substance from the participants. It leaves the spectators with a choice based on appearance and body language.

Maybe that’s as deep an impression as most potential voters can absorb. But I think a majority of Americans are smarter than that. They would appreciate having a way to evaluate the candidates’ character and thinking about matters that concern them. This lowest common denominator debate format doesn’t produce anything useful.

Let’s see:

a) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, were created and coddled by Barnie Frank and Chris Dodd. These government backed entities pioneered the idea of sub-prime loans and volunteered to buy packages of those loans from private banks. They didn’t do any due diligence and accepted any-old-package of crap the banks put together. It was,after all, to benefit the poor and huddled masses, the working people, the minorities … after all. Why could that be anything but good.

b) The U.S. taxpayers have so far spent $350 Billion to bail out Fannie and Freddie. Any suggestion that these corrupt piles of crap should be liquidated has been quashed by the Dems in congress.

c) So now the FHFA, the federal agency that was supposed to ensure the soundness and propriety of Fannie and Freddie has turned around and sued the banks. Hey guys, what were you doing when the problem piled up in the first place?

Well, it’s clear that this is an attempt by the Obama administration to place the blame for the housing fiasco entirely on the private sector. And if it destroys the banking system that’s OK with the socialist left. It’s time for the government to take over the banking system according to that financial wizard, Dem representative, Maxine Waters, anyway.

The Obama wrecking ball just keeps on swinging.

In keeping with the President’s penchant for hanging around with tax cheats who also preach higher taxes, such as Warren Buffett, the New York Post says:

This one’s truly, uh … rich: Billionaire Warren Buffett says folks like him should have to pay more taxes — but it turns out his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn’t paid what it’s already owed for years.

That’s right: As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson notes, the company openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002.

“We anticipate that we will resolve all adjustments proposed by the US Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for the 2002 through 2004 tax years … within the next 12 months,” the firm’s annual report says.

It also cites outstanding tax issues for 2005 through 2009.

From a business standpoint I can sympathize. Doing whatever it takes to protect one’s capital from government confiscation makes good sense. To make tax paying some kind of moral obligation is idiotic nonsense.

We now have an able and articulate challenger to replace the marxist madman Raul Grijalva in Congressional District 7 of Tucson, Arizona. Please play this video and get acquainted with our most articulate and sensible candidate, Gabriela Saucido Mercer.

Rep. Grijalva has been an embarrassment and and insult to our city, our state and our country. It’s past time to retire him.

The president and his political advisors apparently decided that their political advantage takes precedence over the dignity of fallen heroes and their families.

Pentagon officials had said that because 19 of 30 of the American families of the dead had objected to media coverage of the remains coming off a plane at Dover Air Force Base, no images could be taken. In addition, the Pentagon rejected media requests to take photos that showed officials at the ceremony but did not depict caskets.

President Barack Obama attended the ceremony, called a “dignified transfer,” for those killed in the worst single loss of the nearly 10-year war. An official White House photo of a saluting Obama was distributed to news media and published widely. It also was posted on the White House website as the “Photo of the Day.” It showed Obama and other officials in silhouette and did not depict caskets.

They couldn’t pass up an opportunity to portray their sun-god as a patriot. But I guess this kind of shameful, disgusting behavior is normal within the ranks of the Obama low-life crowd.

These Pictures of Chaos and Rioting in England show some consequences of multi-culturalism in a welfare society. (A subject I’ve blogged about here before.) When people become dependents on the government, and that government can no longer provide for them the comforts and benies they think they are owed, then they resort to mindless violence against “they system,” “the man” the “rich and privileged.”

A cohesive and homogeneous society, on the other hand, may provide ways for the dissatisfied to cope and overcome. And it will usually have a means of discouraging the kind of self-destructive behavior we see in London and elsewhere this week.

The dependency and sense of helplessness engendered by the welfare state is no less a sponsor of self-destructive outrage. People not responsible for themselves don’t consider themselves responsible for the property or rights of others.

Take a look at the photos linked above and think about it. Do you have sympathy or contempt for the rioters? Does anything excuse this behavior? Do you think it has meaning in the context of our own society’s race toward multi-culturalism and socialism?

And P.S. take a look at mob violence in Philadelphia this same week.

It’s not about spending cuts or debt limitation. Congress has just given President Obama and his regime the go-ahead to indulge in an additional $2.4 Trillion drinking spending binge. That’s the bottom line and it stinks.

The American people have, once again, been screwed by their elected representatives. A concoction of lies, false promises and unrestrained spending passes for a “compromise” solution to a real problem. The government spends and promises too much year after year. The debt ceiling deal continues this tradition unchanged.

So what went wrong this time? Shouldn’t we be happy there were no obvious tax increases in the “compromise”? I don’t think so. In fact, I think the Tea Party and the Republicans blew it this time by not joining the Dems and asking for massive new taxes. Now, just hear me out.

The argument made by Dems is that there would be “massive pain and suffering” if valuable government programs were cut, so just raise taxes on the “rich”. The Reps demanded spending cuts and said the economy would suffer if taxes were raised. So what happened is what always happens. The Dems promised candy and the Reps promised ipecac. Guess what sways voters? Not discipline. Not logic. Avoidance of pain is a more powerful persuader than disciplined reform. So what’s to be done?

What about the Reps one-upping the Dems and demanding tax increases large enough to match the current yearly deficits? If these tax increases were a flat 10% of all economic activity, hitting rich and poor alike, no exceptions, then it would theoretically raise the $1.5 Trillion needed to pay the year’s deficit. The tax should be called the “Political Irresponsibility Tax” or “Obama’s Social Services Tax” or something. And this is important: The tax should be collected in cash, not withheld. Every citizen should be required to cough up the tax each year. Would that be painful? You bet it would. Would citizens question its value and necessity? Of course, that’s what we need and want.

We need citizens to suffer the actual consequences of the out of control spending. Currently nobody can summon up an image of the useless government programs financed by deficit spending. But a $5,000 to $10,000 check written to the IRS each year might focus their attention to reality. Only then will Washington’s drunken binge be brought under control. And, furthermore, we could call this a bi-partisan solution.

What you’re hearing from our elected congressional “leaders” is all lies and cowardice. Let’s recognize that in two years the Sun God and his minions have increased federal spending by over $4 Trillion dollars. What’s keeping congress from whacking off that $4 Trillion right now? Cowardice. They think we’re dumb and inattentive. They think we won’t notice that a 10-year promise to not spend $1 to $2 Trillion means anything we can count on. It’s total BS meant to deceive you and me.

Stand pat. Don’t raise the debt limit. Prioritize spending of what the IRS collects. End Obama’s $4 Trillion binge right now. Not over 10 years, NOW. Then trim $15 Trillion over 10 years. That might make a difference. Anything less is a fraud.

The budget “crisis” is entirely backward. The pols are arguing about what to cut. The discussion should be about what to keep. They need to assume that the whole government is a pile of manure, and perhaps there’s a pony in there somewhere. Their job should be to find the pony and shovel the rest out into the fields.

I’ve made this appeal before. What part of the federal government’s programs would you want to keep? What programs to you personally benefit from? You’ll have to think long and hard to identify anything personally beneficial and worth keeping.

The very idea of having the congressional “leaders” negotiate with the President on the debt ceiling is obviously unproductive. The republicans should, instead, prepare legislation having major spending cuts, effective immediately, not over 10 years. They should try to get democrat members to buy into it, then pass it. If the democrats won’t participate or the president vetos it, then the responsibility for a failure to raise the debt ceiling will properly belong to the democrats. Keep the dept ceiling where it is and live with it. The whole idea of a ceiling that is blithely raised every time it is hit is something only Washington could think is sanity.

Let’s face it. The NASA Apollo moon landing project was one giant publicity stunt designed to one-up the Russians during the cold war and burnish the image of a young, inexperienced president. While the moon landing was a source of pride to Americans and a thrill to watchers worldwide, it was not a significant contribution to science.

Since then, NASA has spent billions of dollars on the space shuttle and the space station. The shuttle was supposed to be able to land, refit and fly again within a few weeks at a cost of a few tens of million dollars. The reality is that it couldn’t turn around in less than three months and each flight cost half a billion dollars. The thing was a kludge from the start. Just look at the picture and tell me if I’m wrong. Some say the shuttle was only justified as support for the space station and the space station was only justified as support for the shuttle. If you think that’s success you must be a government employee.

In between flights NASA has involved itself in everything from nutrition to automobile technology to rubber bands to global warming alarmism. It’s contribution to technology is miniscule to non-existent. Its cost has been exorbitant.

In light of the need to cut government down to a reasonable size, NASA is an agency we should be happy to sunset. RIP NASA.

The arrogant Obamacrat bureaucrats at the FTC have announced that they will go fishing for something, anything bad at Google. Any successful company must be doing something bad according to this job killing philosophy.

The Obamacrat motto: “We must punish success.”

A most sensible observation I heard recently: “Wars are not ended. They are either won or lost.”

The president’s speech yesterday in which he announced a force reduction in Afghanistan then morphed into campaign mode was vintage Obama. Blah-Blah-Blah. The college professor proclaiming his rules for good living, which centered on you guessed it, kumbaya! Unicorns and good feelings all around, guided by an all-knowing, all-caring government bureaucracy.

Now back to Afghanistan. We are left with the realization that those troops left behind in Afghanistan will be facing an enemy that knows when we will leave. Our troops will have lesser strength, lower morale, reduced support from home (we’re pulling out, aren’t we?). This will be deadly. I personally don’t much like the way this war has been waged and would like to see us pull out abruptly and leave that bastard Karzai and his corrupt bunch of thieves to face the Taliban alone. But if we’re going to stay, it is wrong to dribble out. We should pull troops out of Germany and send them to reinforce the troops in Afghanistan, kick butt in Pakistan and win the war, then pull out.

Treating a war as a re-election campaign problem is immoral at the least. When the lives of our troops are sacrificed for political gain, that is criminal.

On CBS TV this morning, Father’s day, there was a tender essay about the joys and lessons of being a father. A cute black child was pictured with a soft-spoken white man talking about the joys of fatherhood and adoption.

Maybe I missed the introduction. (Some research shows I probably did.) But
then, in the final shot two men were shown with the child. Obviously two white homosexual men had adopted a black child. So what’s wrong with that you might ask? Well, CBS News was advocating a “gay” agenda on father’s day. Neither of these men is a father, at least not of this child. The cute young child will grow up confused and confounded, and without the love and example of a mother. Was there no heterosexual black married couple willing to adopt this cute young child?

The moderator of the program was wearing a rainbow tie, exploiting a child to further the “gay” political agenda. It makes me wonder what these guys smoke when they cook up the script for their show. Whatever it is, they shouldn’t be sharing it with us. I found it inappropriate and disgusting.

If someone pointed to a baseball and told me it was a potato it wouldn’t tempt me to cook it for dinner. I don’t think it would tempt you either, no matter how authoritative the source of the statement. There is a fundamental and obvious difference between a baseball and a potato. But when it comes to laws then it boils down to what the definition of “is” is.

The U.S. Constitution was written by some very wise and well educated men who also expressed their thoughts succinctly and clearly. So it baffles most of us who read and understand the English language how the Constitution’s plain meanings have been mangled and bent to justify all manner of Federal Government powers and expansions. So I was particularly interested to encounter online a copy of the Constitution in the U.S. Senate website, with the original language accompanied by an interpretation. I guess this is what our Senators refer to when they need reference to the Constitution.

Now I’m not a lawyer by any stretch of imagination, and I do concede that much of the damage to our republic has been done by those worthies of the Supreme Court. So I’ll just mention a few things I found in Section 8, where the “limited and enumerated” powers of the Federal Government are specified, along with their interpretation for use by the Senators.

The first of these is the notorious Commerce Clause, which gives congress the power to regulate “interstate commerce.”

This clause has been used as a huge loophole to justify federal power to regulate and do almost everything, most recently by Democrats to justify the constitutionality of Obamacare and EPA regulation of carbon dioxide. The winds blowing across state lines are apparently “interstate commerce,” thus making the EPA’s regulation of airborne pollution Constitutional. So wind is “commerce”, flowing rivers are “commerce”, trucking and communication are “commerce”.

Look at the Constitutional statement on the left and then at the interpretation on the right, where it states that “the ‘Commerce Clause’ is one of the most far-reaching grants of power to congress.”
Can that conclusion be reached by the plain meaning of the Constitution in which “interstate commerce” was plainly intended to mean commercial transactions over state lines? A power needed to keep one state from taxing and regulating commercial transactions involving other states? YAH, YAH, I know that the Supreme Court was defenestrated during the F.D.R administration and hasn’t ever regained its courage to do its duty.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all government programs now justified by the Commerce Clause were re-examined, and those that did not involve actual commerce, i.e., commercial transactions, were shut down forthwith?

OK, here’s another little gem. The Postal Clause shown below:

Where in the original language does it say that “Congress may also punish those who use the mails for unlawful purposes.”? Was that a pet notion of the guy who wrote this interpretation for our dear senators?

And where does it say that the Post Office must be a government monopoly?

And now to that clause beloved by politicians and bureaucrats, and tyrants, the “elastic clause”. Read the plain language on the left, then the explanation on the right.

The plain language specifies that the congress can “make laws necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution …“. The bold parts refer to those powers already defined in Section 8 and elsewhere in the Constitution. It doesn’t say that this is an ‘elastic clause’ that enlarges legislative power to let Congress do whatever they damn well please, but that’s the impression one gets from the description by the dear senators’ constitutional interpreter.

Of course, whole books are written on how the original meaning of the Constitution has been contorted and ignored to the detriment of the country. There are undoubtedly many learned experts out there who will tell me I’m uninformed and simple minded. But a potato isn’t a baseball, nor a baseball a potato no matter what the experts claim.

TSA, the Transportation Security Agency, which was supposed to make air travel safe has morphed into a tool of tyranny. Our liberty is at stake. In the coming presidential election campaigns the candidates must make the TSA a serious issue. The whole “Homeland Security” monster needs to be slain. The TSA needs to be eliminated. It is a threat and a tool for the government to dominate us all. President Obama opined that the country needed a domestic force as powerful as the U.S. armed forces. He and his minions are creating such a Soviet style force in the TSA. See this article and the video below. You’ll be shocked, or maybe you won’t be.

PRESERVE YOUR LIBERTY. ELIMINATE THE TSA NOW.

From “The Australian” newspaper we have a
report of multiple protest demonstrations, some of them violent in China. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who is monitoring Chinese affairs. The country is an overheated boiler waiting to blow. The people of China are increasingly aware of their suppression and brutal treatment by the corrupt communist government. The banking system is teetering on the verge of collapse. Inflation is kicking in with a vengeance. The housing bubble is as volatile as that in the U.S.A. Central planning has wasted vast sums of money on infrastructure that nobody has any use for. Huge “ghost cities” have been built that nobody occupies. Urban, coastal Chinese grow rich by exploiting slave labor from the agricultural interior, where hoards of people still go barefoot. And construction companies fail to pay their workers. When these workers object they are suppressed by corrupt local bureaucrats. People are being poisoned by air and water pollution, tainted food and counterfeit medications.

Meanwhile, U.S. and European companies have moved manufacturing to China to take advantage of low paid, essentially slave labor. What will these companies do when the boiler explodes? What will happen when Chinese currency kicks into hyper-inflation? How should the financial world react when China becomes so preoccupied with suppressing the discontent of its population, maybe even revolution or civil war, that it loses interest in buying U.S. government debt? Will the communist government launch an attack on Taiwan as a distraction from its internal problems?

There has been a parade of commentary in the past couple of years to the tune of “China will overtake the U.S. economically, if not also militarily.” Or “China is doing all the modern things, such as high-speed rail, modern airports, high-tech manufacturing, etc.” “The West needs to learn from China.” Nonsense. This is the same kind of hand wringing we heard in the 1970’s about “Japan Inc”. The Japanese supposedly had all the answers, the better formula, the best economics, the best education, they were destined to overtake the U.S. economically and buy up all of our most valuable assets, and on and on. Then, in the 80’s and 90’s the American entrepreneurial economy kicked in, Japan swooned, and the silly notions were proved wrong. And Japan wasn’t even our enemy.

Today communist China is not our friend and is far from a model for our future. It is a dangerous illusion waiting to collapse, perhaps violently, with uncertain consequences for our well-being.

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