No Laughing Matter

The other night Maximum Leader played stand-up comedian at the White House Correspondents' dinner. All good fun, right?

Wrong!

Actually this kind of thing turns my stomach. These black tie affairs in which celebrities mingle with the parasite-in-chief always remind me of the gap between the American royalty in Washington and everyday Americans slaving away in flyover country.

At the dinner Maxie said:

Anyway, it’s great to be here this evening in the vast, magnificent Hilton ballroom — or what Mitt Romney would call a little fixer-upper. (Laughter and applause.) I mean, look at this party. We’ve got men in tuxes, women in gowns, fine wine, first-class entertainment. I was just relieved to learn this was not a GSA conference. (Laughter.) Unbelievable. Not even the mind reader knew what they were thinking. (Laughter.) [emphasis mine]

For the uninformed, the infamous "GSA conference" took place in Las Vegas in 2010. Fox Business describes it as follows:

The government agency, which oversees federal real estate, is now under fire for wasting more than $822,000 in taxpayer money on a lavish conference in 2010 at a luxury resort in Las Vegas for 300 federal workers that included penthouse suites, a mind reader, a clown, a bicycle training exercise, and expensive catering -- spending that was mocked by the GSA’s own workers in videos.

I don't mind the President of the United States making a fool out of himself in front of a bunch of star-struck correspondents. I DO mind Maximum Leader making a fool out of me and all the rest of us American taxpayers.

I took that joke personally, Mr. Maxie!

What the GSA did in Las Vegas was a travesty, a slap in the face to every taxpaying American. The Washington parasites keep sucking the life out of hardworking Americans by demanding more and more tribute. They say they need the extra tax money for urgent and important needs to serve the common good. They say there is no room for responsible spending cuts. And then the employees they are charged to supervise party away the money they are charged to protect and care for...And Maximum Leader thinks the whole thing is funny enough to mock with a bad joke!

My mother used to tell me that some things are no laughing matter. Well, the joke's on you, Mr. Maximum Leader. As I pull the lever in November for your opponent I will think about your line at the correspondents' dinner and I'll enjoy the last laugh!

I hope a huge majority of American voters do the same!

This Is Not A Joke -- Still Time To Enter

The Democratic People's Republic Of Korea Amateur Golf Open, North Korea, that is. This year's tourney will be the "second" annual event.

How did the first annual Open turn out? According to the official Open Website:

The 2011 DPRK Amateur Golf Open took place on the 29th April 2011. Journalists from Associated Press and Japanese/Korean media were on hand to cover the event, which was played by 17 competitors, from 8 different countries. The nationalities included UK, South Africa, Finland, France, Germany, Australia, Luxembourg and DPRK.

The tournament was played in Callaway format and top place with a joint score of 72 were 25 year old Olli Lehtonen (hcp 1.1) and 31 year old Johannes Raitio (hcp 9.4), both from Finland. With the top gross score of 84, Olli was crowned the overall winner.

 I have it on good authority that this year's event will top the 20-competitor mark. Of course, the winner will not be a North Korean native. The Pyongyang Golf course -- the only golf course in the country -- is open only to the nation's ruling elite and invited foreign nationals.

Even though Kim Jong Il is now deceased no North Korean party functionary would dare risk besting the score of the late golf "genius." Admittedly, this would be a near impossible task, since the former "Dear Leader" is reputed to have "opened the course in 1987" with a "world record 38 under par on his first ever round of golf (including 11 hole in ones) [sic]!"

Honesty Is The Best Policy

According to reports, Jay Carney, the President's silver-tongued Press Secretary, said: "I never lie."

What an opportunity for the nation's media! A chance to question a 100%, guaranteed, truth-telling Washington parasite on some very significant issues. Like...

Are the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds assets or liabilities of the US Treasury? In other words, are the Trust Fund bonds real, stored up value, or merely worthless pieces of paper, liens on future parasitic taxes, borrowing and money supply increases?

Did Christy L. Romero, the special inspector general for the TARP bailout program, recently write the following?

After 3½ years, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”) continues to be an active and significant part of the Government’s response to the financial crisis. It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit. The most recent cost estimate for TARP is a loss of $60 billion. Taxpayers are still owed $118.5 billion (including $14 billion written off or otherwise lost).

Mr. Carney, in the interests of the truth, please keep your answers short and to the point.

h/t Michael, theCL Report (The New World Order’s Money Scam)

"not a point of view but virtue itself"

Melanie Phillips is a brilliant, intellectually honest, British journalist and author. I've been following her blog for years. Being British and middle age, Ms. Phillips has a unique perspective. She's experienced the Left's conquest of Britain. She recognizes what is happening and about to happen in the United States. She writes about it rationally and analytically.

Today Ms. Phillips published an article on her website titled "The New Intolerance." The article is worth reading in its entirety. It cogently describes the "war of religion" which is currently raging in both Britain and the United States. The article expertly dissects this war and lays bare its philosophical and psychological roots. What I found especially revealing was her description of the individuals who are waging this war. Of course, I am referring to those on the philosophical Left.

Ms. Phillips writes:

Medieval Christianity — like contemporary Islamism — stamped out dissent by killing or conversion; Western liberals do it by social and professional ostracism and legal discrimination. It is a kind of secular Inquisition. And the grand inquisitors are to be found within the intelligentsia — the universities, the media, the law and the political and professional classes — who not only have systematically undermined the foundations of Western society but are heavily engaged in attempting to suppress any challenge or protest.

It is hard to overstate the influence of these left-wing doctrines on our culture. They form the unchallengeable orthodoxy within academia, from which base-camp they have set forth on their "long march through the institutions" which they have colonised with stunning success. They have managed, furthermore, to shift the centre of political gravity so that anyone who does not share these values is defined as extreme.

For the Left believes that its secular, materialistic, individualistic and utilitarian values represent not a point of view but virtue itself. No decent person can therefore oppose them. Anyone who does so is automatically "right-wing". In fact, such opponents may have no ideological position. But the Left cannot acknowledge such a possibility. In Manichean fashion it divides the world into two opposing and exclusive camps, good and evil; and so it creates as the sole alternative to itself a demonic political camp, to which everyone who challenges it is automatically consigned. Since anything that is not the Left is therefore "the Right", and since "the Right" is by definition evil, to challenge any left-wing shibboleth is to be labelled "right-wing" and put oneself totally beyond the moral pale.

So there can be no dissent or argument at all. Only one world-view is to be permitted and all other views are to be suppressed or destroyed. And because all that is evil is "right-wing" and all that is "right-wing" is evil, anyone who supports Israel or the Americans in Iraq, is sceptical of anthropogenic global warming, opposes multiculturalism or utilitarianism, supports capitalism or is a believing Christian is not only evil but also "right-wing". [Emphasis mine]

Ms. Phillips has put her finger on an issue that has troubled me for quite some time: Why are leftists and progressives so intransigent in their beliefs even when they are presented with a logical argument or empirical evidence that exposes the absurdity of their position?

We've all seen it. We've all experienced it. Gone are the days in academia or in polite society when logic and evidence hold sway in an argument and those with intellectual integrity recognize their error and accept the truth. Leftists today barely engage anymore in argument. When presented with one, they respond with timeworn and disproved memes. When the memes are challenged, they are likely to immediately respond with an arrogant indifference and, if pressed, with an ad hominem attack. I could never quite understand this nasty habit.

Yesterday, Erick Erickson at Redstate posted an article called "The Second Coming of American Liberal Fascism?" The article describes what happens when leftists gain political power. They no longer have to bother with making ad hominem attacks on their opponents because they have beaten their opponents, not by force of reason, but by the political force of majority rule. So they become righteous and absolutely intolerant of dissent. They ostracize those who persist in dissent and even imprison them. Erickson points out that this is not new. It's happened before in the era of Woodrow Wilson's presidency.

Melanie Phillips explains the nature of this vicious behavior. Leftist ideology is not a political idea but a belief, as religion is a belief. Leftists are exactly the same as medieval Christians and modern day Islamists: There mission is to stamp out evil, i.e., opposing opinion, by any means possible. Forced conversion of the evil dissenters or killing them is impossible in polite society, so leftists resort to the next most effective means, coerced participation, enforced silence or imprisonment.

Politics in America today is no longer a sport in which both sides agree to engage in friendly governance once the election is over. Politics today is a blood sport. The stakes are high. Not only are the livelihoods of politicians threatened by an adverse, electoral outcome, but individuals on the losing political side are at risk of being literally and legally pillaged and plundered or incarcerated for their dissent. Principles upon which this country was founded are at stake in our modern elections, principles like the rule of law, individual liberty and private property. Modern day politics has literally become a life and death proposition.

This is what so many who are immersed in politics today do not understand. They view politics as a panacea. They naively expect their political opponents to graciously concede political defeat and work with them in the future in common cause. They expect all will be well and good provided the right candidate -- the wise and conciliatory leader -- is elected to office. This was possible in times past when political differences were honest and principled, when political argument turned upon alternate means to attain the same end. Today, most on the left do not share the goals of their political opponents. They consider politics a war in which the spoils belong to the victors and in which the defeated have no rights at all.

The truth is that a society that relies on this kind of politics to resolve disputes cannot long survive. The end game will not be pretty.

The only peaceful means I see of preserving our Constitutional republic is to turn over the rock under which these vermin on the left and the right are hiding. That rock is an ideology that is impervious to logic and evidence. As Ms. Phillips suggests, the left-wing especially has taken cover under an "unchallengeable orthodoxy within academia," which shelters it from truth. The solution is to speak that truth relentlessly and fearlessly, and to remind these vermin of the fate that awaits them should they not discard their anti-cooperative religious ideology.

The other day legal expert Professor Alan Dershowitz appeared on the Glenn Beck show. Prof. Dershowitz and Mr. Beck represent opposite sides of the political spectrum. Prof. Dershowitz is a moderate leftist. Despite his political ideology, Prof. Dershowitz courageously stood up against the left's demagoguery of the Trayvon Martin murder case in Florida.

All rational people recognize that it was their ideology that drove leftists, like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rep. Bobby Rush, President Obama and others to rush to judgement in this unfortunate incident. They were quick to accuse Mr. Martin's admitted killer, George Zimmerman, of "racism." They made the accusation comfortably and forcefully before hardly any evidence had come to light. The leftist media mindlessly publicized their accusations. The Florida prosecutors, apparently, knuckled under to public pressure and produced charges against Mr. Zimmerman that the evidence does not support. Prof. Dershowitz condemned the prosecutor's action as "unethical" and possibly "criminal." He calmly explained the legal principles involved and how the prosecution had violated them.

This is the way to crack the dome of orthodox ideology that protects the left. Not only did Prof. Dershowitz expose that orthodoxy for what it is, he courageously disavowed it by his appearance on Beck's program.

It's useless to argue with leftists. Our job is not to persuade them by means of logic and evidence. Such a thing is impossible. Our mission should be to expose them as fervent ideologues and challenge those among them who have any remnant of intellectual honesty and integrity to disavow their cultish belief system.

As I said, if these ideologues persist in their quest for dominating power, the consequences will not be pretty. Their victims will eventually act to defend themselves and the fundamental principles that enable a cooperative society to exist in the first place. 

     

Atrocities Prevention Board Should Investigate Obama

In August of last year, Samantha Power, "Obama's anti-genocide advisor," unveiled the newly created "Atrocities Prevention Board." On Monday of this week Maximum Leader Obama praised the new Board as he "pledged endless support for Israel" in a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. He also announced that the individual who will chair this Board is none other than Samantha Power.


How nice. How convenient. Atrocities the world over will now be managed and controlled by the world's foremost expert on atrocities from a brand, spanking new building in Washington, D.C. that cost US taxpayers at least $15-million. How much Ms. Power will earn as the atrocity-eliminator-in-chief is unknown. But you can bet you'll be paying her salary.

As near as I can tell, the new Atrocities Prevention Board will be funded as part of the "United States Institute of Peace (USIP). According to Wikipedia, "President Ronald Reagan signed the United States Institute of Peace Act that established the Institute in 1984." According to a Wall Street Journal article published Feb. 16, 2011 Congress has invested $720-million in the USIP over the past 25 years. The article says: "According to its own estimate, the institute expected about $54 million from taxpayers in 2011." Yet, peace eludes the world in 2012!


Don't expect better results from the new Atrocities Prevention Board. In a blurb on its website that describes the new Board, the USIP makes the following candid and breathtakingly arrogant pronouncement:

The creation of the Atrocities Prevention Board will not result in the immediate cessation of ongoing atrocities.

You know what? I don't think the Board's creation will result in a delayed cessation of ongoing atrocities. In fact, I don't believe the Board's creation will result in slowing down the creation of new atrocities. Call me cynical, but all I think this new Board will do is provide Samantha Power with a new soapbox and an evermore extravagant lifestyle...plus she and her husband, animal rights activist and walking turd, Cass Sunstein, will have more to crow about on the Washington cocktail circuit.


In Maximum Leader's speech plugging the creation of the Board and Power's appointment as Mini-Leader of it, he said that "national sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people [emphasis mine]." This is true, of course, as far as it goes. However, Maximum Leader seems to think that a sovereign country slaughtering its people grants the United States a license to violate that country's sovereignty when Maximum Leader wants to. He said as much in his speech:

That does not mean that we intervene militarily every time there’s an injustice in the world.  We cannot and should not. 

Good self-control there, Maximum Leader. Only invade if it makes political sense to you. Moreover, you wouldn't want to overextend our military.


Mini-Leader Samantha Power has no problem violating national sovereignty when the urge strikes her. Here she is below advocating an "external intervention" into Israel with a "a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence."

Whoa. She sounds like George Orwell, peace through war, and all that rot.


In his speech, Maximum Leader reminded us of something he has already said and done on the subject:

Last year, in the first-ever presidential directive on this challenge, I made it clear that "preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America."

Do the American people really believe that policing the world's atrocities is a "core national security interest" and a "core moral responsibility" of the United States of America?


Do they really believe supporting the USIP to the tune of $54-million a year is constitutional, not to mention a wise use of their tax dollars? And this cost doesn't even include the cost of the military interventions themselves.


Are you willing to send your children to the heart of the African continent to be blown apart by Islamic nutjobs bent on slaughtering their people?


But perhaps your children won't have to occupy a sovereign nation thousands of miles away. Maybe Power will want to send them to occupy a nation closer to home...like America itself.


Why not?


According to the Christian Science Monitor, Maximum Leader's new Atrocities Prevention Board will "help generate action against human-rights calamities." Those calamities entail using "new technologies – such as cellphone-tracking software and Internet monitoring – to commit human-rights abuses."


Whoa, again! Cellphone tracking and internet monitoring? That's what the federal parasites in Washington are doing to us! According to an April 9, 2012 article at Infowars.com by Bill Quigley:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times recently reported that cellphones of private individuals in the US are being tracked without warrants by state and local law enforcement all across the country.  With more than 300 million cellphones in the US connected to more than 200,000 cell phone towers, cellphone tracking software can pinpoint the location of a phone and document the places the cellphone user visits over the course of a day, week, month or longer. (Source)

In the same article, Quigley states:

The National Security Agency (NSA) collects hundreds of millions of emails, texts and phone calls every day and has the ability to collect and sift through billions more.  WIRED just reported NSA is building an immense new data center which will intercept, analyze and store even more electronic communications from satellites and cables across the nation and the world.  Though NSA is not supposed to focus on US citizens, it does. (Source)

Moreover, tomorrow the US House of Representatives votes on the sweeping CISPA bill that threatens internet freedom by allowing our federal parasites to gather your private information off the internet without obtaining a search warrant. 


And we all know about the infamous internet kill switch, that would allow the Maximum Leader of the United States to shut down the internet in times of national emergency (whatever that means).    


So by all that's right in the world Samantha Power and her Atrocities Prevention Board should advocate a UN invasion of the United States to prevent a continuance of such "human right abuses."


But don't bet on it. Just as it's impossible for a black to be racist, it's impossible for the Maximum Leader of the United States to be a human rights abuser. 


The truth is the Atrocities Prevention Board is merely another conceit of the federal parasites who occupy Washington, DC. It and it's parent organization, the absurd USIP should be defunded immediately.


If Maximum Leader, Samantha Power and company want to salve their do-gooder egos by playing world peacemakers, let them do it on their own dime, not mine.

"Gold Is Where You Find It"

At the end of her column, titled "America's Crisis of Character," the often insipid and ever saccharine Peggy Noonan comments: "Something seems to be going terribly wrong."

Of course, Noonan is referring to our American culture, "or rather the flat, brute, highly sexualized thing we call our culture." After deploring juvenile "flash mobs," a groping TSA agent reducing a woman to tears, the four-day, regional orgy of the General Services Administration, whoring Secret Service agents, US troops in Afghanistan posing with enemy body parts and public school teachers having sex with students, Noonan finishes with a suggestion: "Maybe we have to stop and think about this."

Really, Peggy? The best you can come up with is contemplating our collective navel?

Come on!

I'm an aficionado of old movies made in the 30's, 40's and 50's. If you want to learn why our American culture and character has deteriorated over the past sixty or seventy years and how tragically that deterioration has progressed, watch an old movie and compare it to the trash being made nowadays. Contrast the wholesome and virtuous characters with the vacant, amoral individuals Noonan decries in her column, and the mirror-image characters common in today's films.

I watched a movie a day or so ago called "Gold Is Where You Find It." [SPOILER ALERT!] Made in 1938, starring Olivia de Havilland and Claude Rains, the movie documents the conflict between hydraulic gold miners and farmers during the California gold rush circa 1860. The slurry and waste water from the mines contaminates the farmers' crops and wells. The farmers take their case to court, but a battle erupts anyway. Eventually, the California Supreme Court upholds the farmers' violated property rights.

Even though the plot is free market and pro-property, it is not remarkable. Westerns of that era regularly dealt with conflicts over property rights and upholding the law in the face of resistance by vigilantes. Westerns were popular morality plays, but so were many films of yesteryear.

What is remarkable about the film is the culture of the frontier characters. They are depicted as polite and cooperative people. They don't curse. Claude Rains is the very definition of a gentleman and father. Even when his children disagree with him, they honor him. The heroic farmers treat each other with respect and tolerance. They are strong, self-reliant, reasonable and honorable men who instinctively recognize right and wrong, good and evil. They show deference and respect, sexual and otherwise, to their women. Even in conflict the dialogue is thoughtful, sympathetic and erudite. All this in what is billed by the studio as a "lusty, brawling saga."



Earlier that day I watched "She Couldn't Say No," a 1954 comedy celebrating small town America, starring Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons. Mitchum plays a doctor who helps the town get through the trouble caused by Simmons whose efforts to repay the town for saving her life bring about unintended consequences. The trailer is below. The clip below the trailer gives the flavor of the film. Some today would call the film naive, but the honesty and genuine human kindness and cooperative sociability exhibited and portrayed by the townspeople is in short supply today. Note Mitchum delivers the baby for the going price of $75, or two pigs taken in barter. No need for ObamaCare in Arkansas in the 50's!





Speaking of Mitchum, one of my favorite movies of all time is "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison." Made in 1957 the film is set in World War II. Mitchum plays an adopted street tough turned US Marine who is marooned behind enemy lines on a tropical island in the South Pacific with a Catholic nun, a missionary, played by Deborah Kerr. The deference and respect Mitchum shows Kerr tells a lot about the character of the men and women of the time. Mitchum is genuinely polite and protective of Kerr, and though he is attracted to her he treats her with the utmost regard and sexual restraint and respect. It's a film that could never be made today without corrupting the integrity of the film and the virtue of the characters.

Talking about movies that could not be made today, how about "Angels In The Outfield?" I know the original, 1951 version that I saw recently was re-made by Disney in 1994, but I bet the remake is a real goofball, irreverent farce (I didn't see it). The original, starring Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh, was a comedy in a loose sense of the word. The movie was touching and reverent. The angels helping Douglas' team win were not farcical but almost believable. The film was filled with Christian life lessons, moral virtues and family values. Mutual kindness and respect win the day.




I could go on and on: The Bells of St Mary’s (1945); The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952); Going My Way (1944); Boys Town (1938); Come to the Stable (1949); The Miracle of the Bells (1948);The Hoodlum Saint (1946); The Sign of the Cross (1932); and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). In the 30's, 40's and 50's films with Christian, Catholic, formal and informal religious themes were commonplace. These films illustrated and explored a cultural, social and moral innocence that no longer exists in this country, an innocence born of deep faith in God and family and a belief in something greater than self. The Americans portrayed in these movies were good people, decent people, modest people, steeped in unapologetic Christian values and morality.

THAT'S what is missing in the American culture and character of today, especially in our big cities and among the young: Christian values and morality! Too many today have embraced a self-centered, amoral, hedonist, "anything goes" lifestyle.

The antidote is not meditation and self-psycho-analysis. The antidote is regaining and practicing our unabashed and lost innocence!

Help Me Change The Lexicon: Government = Parasite

As of this moment I will no longer use the word "government" in this blog. In all future posts I will substitute the word "parasite" instead. I invite all bloggers who value individual liberty to follow suit.

Why? 

The answer is obvious. The relationship between individual citizens and the elitists who rule us from Washington, D.C., our respective state capitols, county seats and city halls is identical to the relationship between host and parasite.

Imagine a group of like-minded individuals who want to live peacefully and cooperatively on their own in some far off corner of, say for example, the Alaskan wilderness. Imagine these individuals purchased the property on which they intend to settle. Imagine further that they wish to secede in every sense from the nation-state known as the United States of America. By "secede" I mean sever all ties: renounce their citizenship; refuse all local, state and federal "services;" and disavow all local, state and federal law enforcement and legal jurisdictional ties. In short, imagine this group of individuals wants to cooperate without parasitic interference by anyone.

Would such a thing be possible?

I think the obvious answer is no.

Parasites at all political levels would probably claim jurisdiction over this group of settlers and refuse to allow them to live freely without intervention. But why?

"Because you're skipping out on your obligations," the elitists might accuse the settlers, "obligations to your fellow citizens like pending tax liabilities, pending legal actions, lawsuits, etc. etc. etc.

So let's imagine our intrepid group of individual cooperators pay off all imaginable and legitimate outstanding debts to their former American countrymen.

It's a sure bet that the elitists in Washington would still intervene, i.e., they would predictably use force to prevent this group of individual cooperators from severing, existing political ties.

But why? A group of individual cooperators living free in the Alaskan wilderness presents no danger to any other American, no burden to anyone. So why would Washington interfere?

Because the parasites in power do not want to lose that power. They must hold sway over their individual hosts in order to feed off them. Without this parasitic sustenance they will suffer or perish.

Individuals cooperate in society to attain ends they share in common. Cooperative action is mutuality of purpose. How does a society of cooperative individuals morph over time into a colony of parasites and hosts?

The short answer is by means of lies and coercion. Cooperative action in society is a long and complicated process which is dependent upon mutual trust, i.e., a mutual agreement among all cooperating individuals to avoid certain anti-cooperative actions in order to attain ends shared in common. This mutual agreement to avoid proscribed anti-cooperative actions like murder and theft implies that cooperative action is voluntary.

For example, trade is a rudimentary form of cooperative action. Two traders agree to voluntarily exchange goods or services they each value differently. Peaceable, voluntary exchange is the means; mutual satisfaction is the common end sought. However, mutual satisfaction is impossible if, once the goods or services are exchanged, the traders may murder each other or employ force or coercion in order to steal back what has been traded.

It follows, then, that cooperation and coercion are incompatible and contradictory actions. Yet, in American society cooperation and coercion exist side by side. How can this be?

Successful cooperative action in society, i.e., institutionalized cooperation, requires some means of institutionalized justice. Men are not angels. Murderers and thieves exist and some may masquerade as cooperators. If these murderous and thieving masqueraders go unchecked, the institutionalized cooperative society will quickly crack up. Why? Because cooperative action in society rests upon a foundation of trust. Once that foundation is broken, cooperative action cracks and crumbles.

The advantage of institutionalizing cooperative action in society is that members of that society do not have to vet their trading partners prior to each exchange. Therefore, exchange is vastly expanded and facilitated because all members of the institutionalized, cooperative society are assumed to be trustworthy. This is accomplished by establishing, by mutual agreement, an institutional means of enforcing the societal prohibition against murder and theft. That is, cooperative partners empower certain, trustworthy members of their society to act as an authority that will enforce prohibitions against murder and theft, and that will penalize and punish murderers and thieves.

A society ceases to be a cooperative society when the individuals empowered to enforce prohibitions against murder and theft use their power illegitimately to enforce and coerce other proscriptive and prescriptive individual actions which have not been mutually agreed upon. The empowered individuals and their sycophants become parasites who attain their sustenance by preying on other cooperators -- their "hosts" -- by means of lies and coercion. These parasites lie that their unauthorized, coercive actions are in the best interests of all cooperators. They coerce those cooperators who object to their parasitic actions. This coercion assumes the veil of legitimized murder and theft ostensibly committed in and for the "common good."

As a consequence of parasitic lies and coercion, a society gradually develops wherein a large segment of formerly cooperative individuals sanction the anti-cooperative actions of the parasites. As a consequence of this sanction, the segment of true and legitimate cooperators are coerced into accepting their role as hosts. So long as the parasites do not make the attainment of mutual ends totally impossible, these legitimate cooperators tolerate the parasites. They consider the parasite's feeding on them as the price they pay to attain the cooperative ends they seek.

However, since it is an undeniable truth that cooperative action is and must be voluntary, and since it is also true that cooperation and coercion are incompatible and contradictory actions, the cooperative society which has been infected by parasitic action cannot survive for long. It must and will crack up as soon as the true and legitimate cooperators turned hosts have had enough.

This is the tipping point at which we find ourselves in American society today. The mutually agreed upon, cooperative pact of hundreds of years ago, which sanctified private property and which outlawed murder and theft, has been broken. Our once vast, cooperative society has been divided by sanctimonious, deceitful and increasingly brutal parasites who will stop at nothing to ensure that their supply of hosts is plentiful and uninterrupted.

The black truth is, however, that it is this very parasitic feeding frenzy, accompanied by patriotic music and tints of red, white and blue that will, in the end, inexorably lead not only to the destruction of the parasites but also, at the same time, to the destruction of our once cooperative society.

It is for this reason that I implore all honest men of good will to help save our cooperative society by calling a spade a spade. The elitists in power in Washington are not our guardian angels protecting us from all manner of enemies foreign, domestic and environmental.

These elitist and all-powerful politicians are simply and purely parasites who are slowly but surely eating away our substance. Perhaps labeling them as what they are will somehow allow us to collectively shake them loose from us once and for all.       

Mount Rushmore, Meet President Obama

Wednesday, the greatest President of the United States never to have his face carved on the top of a mountain professed his love for the free market:

"I believe that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history."

Then he reminded us that:

"There’s [sic] some things we don't do well on our own."

Ever wonder what those things is?


Don't stress your brain. He listed them for us yokels. He had in mind some things like doing research, inventing technology, creating industries, building railroads, educating our children, not to mention saving for our retirement and finding a job without starving to death.

Add to those things other things he's already said he doesn't think we do well on our own -- other things like health insurance, health care, energy production, food production, manufacturing light bulbs and automobiles -- and you wonder what the hell he thinks we can do well on our own.

This is like a man who says he believes in arithmetic except for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Of course, he's not stupid. He has to know that there are a plethora of things we do very well, like fight and die in his wars, get felt up at airports by his government thugs and willingly pay taxes through the nose so he and his wife and his fellow government employees can jet off to lavish vacation spots and blow through our hard-earned money on booze, gambling and prostitutes.

Another thing we do well is build monuments to past Presidents.

I can't wait.

"Economic Democracy" = Economic Despotism

From "Planned Chaos," by Ludwig von Mises:

The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. It is true that the various individuals have not the same power to vote. The richer man casts more ballots than the poorer fellow. But to be rich and to earn a higher income is, in the market economy, already the outcome of a previous election. The only means to acquire wealth and to preserve it, in a market economy not adulterated by government-made privileges and restrictions, is to serve the consumers in the best and cheapest way. Capitalists and landowners who fail in this regard suffer losses. If they do not change their procedure, they lose their wealth and become poor. It is consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor. It is the consumers who fix the wages of a movie star and an opera singer at a higher level than those of a welder or an accountant.

Democracy is the God of Progressives and socialists. "Majority rule" is their mantra. This belief implies that the wisdom of the masses is contained in the mind of each voter. Yet, when considering the free market, progressives and socialists deny the wisdom of the masses who cast their votes freely for the producer they favor by purchasing his products or services. Instead of the uncoerced vote of consumers in the marketplace, progressives and socialists trust the judgement of unelected government bureaucrats and elected government regulators to pick economic winners and losers.

By taking money out of the pockets of the masses via taxation, progressives and socialists are in effect taking the right to vote away from individual citizens and giving that right to bureaucrats. The larger the size of government as compared to the size of the free market, the more the democracy of the free market is undermined and replaced by the economic edicts of bureaucratic tyrants.

Ask a progressive or a socialist whether they believe in "economic democracy." They will gush about that idea as a man of religion gushes about his God. They, of course, understand "economic democracy" to mean a political system wherein bureaucratic tyrants decide who produces what and how. That "what" is then equally divided amongst all the individual citizens.

These fools do not understand that their "economic democracy" is, in fact, economic despotism. A true "economic democracy" would be a system wherein each individual citizen freely votes to elect economic winners and losers -- the exact system Mises describes.

Thanks To The Federal Reserve...

...Obama: We didn’t have “the luxury” for Michelle to not work

Let's take the President at his word, i.e., nowadays one salary just won't support a family of four. When I was young, one salary could support a family of six. When my father was young, one salary could support a family of five during the Great Depression. So why is this?

It's called price inflation and it's caused by monetary inflation. It's been the policy of the US Federal Reserve since 1913. It's the monetary policy this administration defends and advocates.

Regardless of your personal opinion with regard to "stay-at-home-moms," we can thank the Federal Reserve for making this lifestyle option nearly financially unfeasible for today's "working class" families.

Another wonderful innovation in American life brought to you by the "progressive" political movement.

We're Paying Government To Fry Our Brains!

 I saw this story the other day on the Drudge Report. My first reaction was: Is this real or an article in the onion?

Russia working on electromagnetic radiation guns

WHILE many believed it to be an April Fool's Day joke, Vladimir Putin has confirmed Russia has been testing mind-bending psychotronic guns that can effectively turn people into zombies. 
 
The futuristic weapons - which attack their victims' central nervous system - are being developed by scientists and could be used against Russia's enemies and even its own dissidents by the end of the decade.

Mr Putin has described the guns, which use electromagnetic radiation like that found in microwave ovens, as entirely new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals...

...While the technology has been around for some time, MrTsyganok said the guns were recently tested for crowd control purposes.

“When it was used for dispersing a crowd and it was focused on a man, his body temperature went up immediately as if he was thrown into a hot frying pan," Mr Tsyganok said.

 Those damn, devious, Russian animals will stop at nothing, right?

Maybe so, but a quick Google of the net proves that the Russians aren't the only miscreants in the world testing such weapons. You guessed it, the US has been testing such weapons for years. And if history teaches us anything, the US is far ahead of anyone else in the world in developing these weapons...err, "crowd control" devices. "Crowd control." What a laugh!

How about this article: 6 Creepy New Weapons Police and Military Use To Subdue Unarmed People.

Number One on the list is "The Invisible Pain Ray: The ‘Holy Grail of Crowd Control.’"

Guess what, The Invisible Pain Ray gun "works like an open-air microwave oven, projecting a focused beam of electromagnetic radiation to heat the skin of its targets."

It sounds like Putin's toy, doesn't it?

Does anybody believe developing these weapons, whose primary purpose is "crowd control," is a proper function of the government of a free country?

I've been accused of being an alarmist. Really? Don't these weapons set a chill running up and down your spine?

 Coming to a city street near you?

And then there's this little gadget our Japanese friends are developing: the speech-jamming gun. You read that right. This "crowd control" item "can silence people more than 30 meters (100 feet) away."

These ultra-modern "crowd control" weapons are technically scary, but add to these new weapons the recent news that the government is replenishing their stock of conventional weaponry and ammo in a big way.

The Dept. of Homeland Security has ordered 450-million rounds of 40 caliber ammo and 175-million rounds of 223 cartridges.

The US Forest Service has recently "solicited and secured a bid for over 300,000 rounds of ammunition," including 40 caliber, 9mm, .38 caliber and 223 cartridges along with 12 gauge shotgun shells.

To put all this in prospective, a few months ago the FBI ordered 100,000 rounds of 40 caliber ammo.

Remember how we all went nuts in 2010 when the Department of Education ordered 27 12-gauge shotguns? It seems it's about time they ordered a few million rounds of ammo.

All this crap doesn't help me sleep at night. Does any of it make sense to you?

More Cutesy Fluff From Ezra Klein

[EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this post appeared briefly in this space. That post was in bad taste and I apologize for it. I have a dark and irreverent sense of humor along with a hair-trigger political temper. Combined, they can sometimes result in an embarrassing post. Again, I apologize to my many billions of readers. The post below gets the point across without the shame. SB] 

Ezra Klein's piece in Bloomberg, entitled "Don’t Worry About Deficit That Will Heal Itself," is political and economic nonsense. It's illiterate, illogical, irrelevant and deceitful. I cannot even summarize the point of Klein's printed mush because he doesn't have one, unless maybe it's this:

Nevertheless, I’m confident that we will, one way or another, muddle through. Because when it comes to the deficit, Congress really has two choices: Do something to solve it, or do nothing and let that solve it.

Doing nothing will solve the deficit? How is Congress going to stop short of the "fiscal cliff" Ben Bernanke says the country is approaching in 2012 by doing nothing? Isn't muddling through doing something?

Klein says that Congress has muddled through in the past and will muddle through in the future:

In part for that reason, we don’t balance the budget for 70 years at a time. Indeed, we usually don’t even balance it for 10 years at a time. Instead, we muddle through, striking deals that are smaller than wonks like, but sufficient to keep us out of the woods. That’s what we did in the 1990s, which featured deficit-reduction bills in 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997. We’ll probably follow a similar path in the decade to come.

So, apparently in the past muddling through meant doing something, i.e., "striking deals...which featured deficit-reduction bills...," but today muddling through means doing nothing. What is Klein smoking?
 
Maybe Klein thinks doing nothing now will "solve" the deficit because Congress has already done something. Klein writes:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke calls the end of 2012 “a fiscal cliff.” The Bush tax cuts are set to expire. The $1.2 trillion spending sequester, enforcing cuts in the defense and domestic budgets, is set to go off. Various stimulus measures -- including the payroll tax cut -- are scheduled to end. “Taken together,” writes the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “these policies would reduce ten-year deficits by over $6.8 trillion relative to realistic current policy projections -- enough to put the debt on a sharp downward path."

OK. The something Congress did reduces ten year deficits by $6.8 trillion and puts "the debt on a sharp downward path." Terrific, but a lie by omission. Here is the full quote from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

At the end of 2012, we face what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls a “fiscal cliff.” Taken together, these policies would reduce ten-year deficits by over $6.8 trillion relative to realistic current policy projections – enough to put the debt on a sharp downward path but in an extremely disruptive and unwise manner.

Notice the phrase I bolded but Klein erased? [Isn't it customary to use an ellipsis when omitting part of a quote unless the part omitted is obvious or irrelevant? Does that phrase seem obvious or irrelevant to you? Maybe Klein couldn't fit that phrase into his 1000 word piece.]

Here is how the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concludes its report:

At the end of the year, Congress and the President will face what appears to be a daunting choice: either allow the country to go off of a recessionary “fiscal cliff” all at once, or else doom the country to large deficits that will permanently slow economic growth and increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis.

Allowing the country to hit the fiscal cliff at year’s end would be a dangerous mistake, but adding $7.5trillion to our debt by extending the expiring policies and repealing the sequester, without putting the budget on a more sustainable path, would be a travesty.

But the end of the year provides the opportunity for a third option – one which avoids many (though not necessarily all) of the abrupt changes at year’s end and replaces them with a gradual and thoughtful plan to stabilize and then reduce the debt. As Chairman Bernanke has argued, Congress should “figure out ways to achieve the same long-run fiscal improvement [as the fiscal cliff] without having it all happen at one date.” A comprehensive deficit reduction plan can offer a win-win by giving the economy space to recover in the short-term while enacting long-term reforms to strengthen the economy and put the country’s finances in order. Policymakers should avoid the fiscal cliff and take this course instead.

Whoa! Am I crazy, or does this say that doing nothing wouldn't solve anything and, in fact, would be a "dangerous mistake?" Doing nothing would propel the country over Bernanke's "recessionary 'fiscal cliff' all at once."

In fact, the report's conclusion strongly recommends doing something, the "third option," which involves Congress coming up with "a gradual and thoughtful plan to stabilize and then reduce the debt."

Maybe this is what Klein means by Congress doing nothing. I doubt it. Klein writes:

Of course, you can muddle wisely or muddle stupidly. I worry we’ll choose the latter. Evidence is already mounting: The sequester is a stupid way to cut spending. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire all at once is a stupid way to raise taxes. And repeatedly forcing the country to the brink of default is a stupid way to manage our budget. 

There he goes again with that muddling through nonsense! At first Klein is comfortable that Congress will "one way or another" muddle through. Now he warns us that "one way" of muddling through is wise and another way of muddling through is stupid!

Maybe Klein is stupid. Maybe the deficit won't heal itself. Maybe we should worry about it!

And what is that little, overlooked phrase that Klein did have room to publish? I'm talking about the phrase: "a stupid way to raise taxes."

As it turns out, doing nothing really means doing something...to you, something Klein is, apparently, very comfortable with, and something President Obama promised would never happen: raising your taxes. Remember? Obama was only going to raise taxes on the "rich!"

Yeah? Well both Klein and Obama are jerking you around. Here's another tidbit from the Report of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that Klein failed to include in his love letter to himself:

Additionally, on the tax side, the fiscal cliff would lead to abrupt increases in taxes for nearly every person without making strategic choices about how to best improve the tax code.

Here's another:

Congress generally “patches” the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) every year to help it keep pace with inflation. As a result, just over four million tax returns currently pay the AMT. If a new patch is not enacted retroactively for 2012, that number will increase to above 30 million for that year and would exceed 40 million by the end of the decade.

If you don't know what the AMT is, you better find out. It's a very, onerous tax meant to penalize "the rich." The problem is in a few years Bernanke's inflation will make us all "rich" on paper. In reality, we'll be poor saps paying a rich man's tax!

These new taxes, along with all the other somethings Congress did and didn't do in 2011, comprise the "fiscal cliff" we'll tumble over if Congress does nothing between now and then. That tumble will plunge us into another deep recession or worse. But Klein is confident. Forget the cliff, he says. Worry about something that really matters:

The same can’t be said for issues such as infrastructure and loose nukes and climate change and preparing for pandemic flu. On those questions, congressional inaction isn’t enough to make the problem disappear. So those are the issues I worry about.

Wait! If Congress did something to solve these all-important, earth-shaking, progressive-talking-point issues, wouldn't that require Congress to spend a bunch of new [stimulus?] money? Wouldn't this bunch of new "doing something" muck up the "something" that Congress has already done, like the $6.8 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years? Wouldn't that mean Congress would have to muddle through again and...?

You know what? I don't give a damn about what Klein says or thinks or smokes. Rather than writing he'd be better off doing nothing. Logic never muddles through his gibberish.

His is the kind of cute nonsense that the stuffed shirts in Washington salivate over. No wonder the country is speeding toward a "fiscal cliff" with it's foot on the accelerator.

My advice? Fasten your seat belt and start worrying.

Please Mitt, Ditch The Plaid

There is a popular, conservative talk show host in Florida who enjoys telling women to step up and vote like a man.

Why would a libertarian-conservative radio host risk turning off half of his listening audience? Because he's making a point. He knows that a huge majority of men will vote for Romney in November, but he also knows that women overwhelmingly favor Obama. He also knows that this gender "gap" will be enough to throw the November election the President's way.

In a news article published Monday the National Journal proves the point. The article, "Women Kick Obama Into Lead Over Romney - Poll," explains:

Women have helped push President Obama into his most significant lead yet over Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, according to a Gallup/USA Today Poll published on Sunday. It shows the president leading Romney 51 percent to 42 percent among registered voters in swing states.

According to the poll of 933 registered voters, women under 50 have swung over to Obama: More than 60 percent support him now, compared with less than half of this group in February. Meanwhile, their support of Romney has dropped 14 points to 30 percent.

It is ironic that while we men pound our chests debating the Presidential election every which way in every which blog, our wives and daughters are calmly nullifying our bluster by making up their minds to vote for the President.

Why do women lean away from Romney and toward Barack Obama?

I put this very question to a very special woman I know. "I just don't like Mitt Romney," she answered.

"But why don't you like him?" I asked.

She thought for a while, then finally gave me an answer that astounded me: "He's too nice."

She must have noticed my surprise, because she immediately explained herself. "He reminds me of dating," she said. "Romney is always on his best behavior. He's polite. He courteously tells you things you want to hear. He gives you compliments. In short, he wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful. It's after a guy like that gets his hooks into you that he disappoints you, hurts you. Why can't the Republicans nominate a guy, like Chris Christie, who's authentic, who is genuinely passionate about his beliefs, who isn't afraid to tell it like it is no matter who he offends? Where's Romney's conviction? When on a rare occasion he does bow up and get in somebody's face, he can't pull it off because that's not really him. The real him is just too polite...too nice."

"In other words it's the 'girls like bad boys' complex," I suggested warily.

"No," she said sternly. "That would be condescending. Women are attracted to honest passion. Take Romney and his plaid shirts, for instance. Does he think wearing plaid makes him one of us? Does he think we're stupid? Wear a crisp white business shirt, for crying out loud. Don't try to hide the fact you're successful and wealthy. Be proud of it. Women just don't like guys who jerk us around."

"So you're saying Obama doesn't jerk you around?" I asked.

"No. Frankly Romney and Obama are two peas in a pod. Both of them come across as guys who will say anything and do anything to get in your pants."

"Then how do you explain the poll results," I persisted. "Why are women likely to vote two to one for Obama?"

"Look," she said. "Women are not a monolithic voting block. We're all over the map. For instance, I will vote against Obama. If that means I have to cast a vote for Romney, so be it. But there many women -- young single women -- who will vote for Obama because they fear Republicans are going to bogeyman their womb."

"The Republicans are going to what?"

"You know, screw up the progress women have enjoyed. You know it used to be that you men wouldn't let us vote at all. Women have been under the thumbs of men for years. You paid us lower wages. You installed a glass ceiling over our head so we couldn't enter the board room. We put our careers on hold to have your children..."

"But that's all changed!"

"Don't interrupt!" she said. "It's still women who have babies! A woman's womb makes them vulnerable but at the same time the womb is a tremendous source of power."

"Power?"

"Yes, power. Now we can't be forced to have your babies. It's our choice now."

"Ahh," I said. "The old pro-choice argument..."

"I haven't finished!" she glared. "Yes, Obama and the Democrats are pro-choice. And their aim is to make it easy for young, single women who are financially and emotionally vulnerable to choose abortion. Young women like the independence and power they think the government is granting them by giving them a "right" to abortion and contraceptives. But young women are also naive and, frankly, stupid. They don't understand that what the government grants can also be taken away. China, for instance, has taken away a woman's right to have more than one child. Young women here in the US haven't learned that you have to be careful what you wish for. Allowing the government to control your womb eventually backfires. As women grow older and become more financially and emotionally independent, they begin to understand this."

"So what's the solution?" I asked.

"It's just like a man to ask that," she said. "All I know for sure is that Romney should ditch the plaid shirts!"

The lesson I took from this conversation is that the Florida talk show host is wrong. It's stupid to ask a woman to think like a man and vote like a man, even in jest. Women, especially single young women, vote with their hearts and with their own self-interest in mind. To be honest, we all do.

For years men in society have dominated women emotionally and financially. They've used a rigid moral code to force women to stay in their place. Women fought back valiantly. However, for many American women the quest for justice, equality and independence from men has carried them too far. Too many women have now become dependent not on men but on government for emotional and financial stability. They have lost the essential moral values that have served American women well for centuries, values like courage, self-reliance, perseverance and self-respect.

As for men? It's time we stopped flapping our political gums for a second and listened to the women! This next Presidential election isn't going to turn on rising gas prices or a falling stock market. It's going to turn on whether or not the women in our lives like our candidate!

So please, Republican candidates, stop being nice! Stop trying to be everything to everyone.  It's time to stop jerking people around. It's time to be passionately honest!

And Mitt, for God's sake, ditch the plaid!

Is Maximum Leader Obama A Pathological Liar, Or Merely The Most Stupid Man On Earth?

At a press conference yesterday, Maximum Leader commented on the ObamaCare suit now before the Supreme Court. Below is an excerpt from that news conference:



Maximum Leader begins by reminding us yokels that there is not only an economic and a legal element to ObamaCare, but a "human" element as well. No shit Sherlock! Score 10 points in the stupid column.

Maximum Leader goes on to say that he hopes the Supreme Court won't take the "unprecedented" step of overturning a law that was passed by a democratically elected Congress. Are you kidding me? Maximum Leader, have you ever read a history book? My God! Let's make it easy for you. Does FDR ring a bell? 1936? The following is by Anna Sale from an article in It's A Free Country:

It was 1936, and it had been a difficult few years for President Franklin Roosevelt at the Supreme Court. Congress moved quickly to pass Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda, and the nine justices ruled swiftly to throw much of it out.

“No Supreme Court in history had ever struck down so many laws so quickly,” Jeff Shesol wrote in his 2010 book Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court. “Between 1933 and 1936, the Court overturned acts of Congress at ten times the traditional rate.”

The National Recovery Administration’s minimum wages and maximum hours for workers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act’s payments to farmers not to grow crops. The Guffey Coal Act’s price controls on coal. The Supreme Court struck them all down, signaling the clear limits they wanted to impose on the New Deal’s sweep.

Dah! Score 100 points in the stupid column. No! Scratch that. No one could be that stupid. Score 1000 points in the Pathological Liar column.

Maximum Leader then proceeds to describe "judicial activism" as "an unelected group of people...somehow" overturning "a duly constituted and passed law." What? Dear Maximum Leader! We're not all toothless meth heads out here in flyover country! That "group of unelected people" is called the Supreme Court! And what the hell do you mean by "somehow?" Geez, you call yourself "a constitutional law professor!" But you don't understand how the Supreme Court works? It's all in the damn Constitution! Article III, Section 1 and 2:

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court...The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States...blah...blah...blah.

Get it? Oh, forget it! Add a million points to both columns!

Lastly, Maximum Leader says ObamaCare was passed by a "strong majority" of Congress. Even ZIP at Weasel Zippers knows better than that:

Note how he says Obamacare passed with a “strong majority,” which we all know is a crock of shit, they had to resort to reconciliation to ram it through Congress.

Score a trillion points in the pathological liar column!

So what's the final tally?

Do the math.

Chuckie Schumer Dons Hoodie!

NEWS ITEM: Schumer calls for Hill hearings on 'Stand Your Ground'

Shown below is a young Chuckie Schumer decked out in full hoodie regalia standing his ground. Will Chuckie attend his hearings in his hoodie a la Rep. Bobby Rush? I can't say. His office has yet to return my calls.