The truth is stranger than fiction

In my update to yesterday's post, I addressed the conspiracy theory (actually well-grounded in fact) that the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9-11 was not only the attack by commercial jetliners, but a controlled demolition as well. This has led to a Facebook conversation with a skeptic (whose name I am withholding), which I thought deserved a larger audience.

Skeptic: Who set the charges?

HT: As I indicated in my post, we do not know. If it was a false-flag attack (conspiracy theory alert), it would probably have been done by undercover CIA operatives, possibly agents of al-Qaeda on the CIA payroll, as suggested by my link to Michael Chussodovsky [director of the Canadian think tank Global Research, often quoted in this space]. I do not know -- we may never know.

Skeptic:  really!? Our own CIA was in on destroying two of the most expensive buildings in the world and killing thousands of people and doing incalcuable harm to the American economy. okay, gotcha.

HT: I know it's hard to believe. I get that. The problem is that our federal government has been manipulated for years (I'm not sure how many) by people intent on using it for their own benefit at the expense of the rest of us. These people have no problem with murdering thousands (even hundreds of thousands, if you include Iraqis and Afghans) and cleaning millions of Americans out of their savings (through bank and currency manipulations) to maintain their wealth acquired through an imperialist American foreign policy. I'm not speculating about Jews, Illuminati, and Freemasons -- I'm talking about New York bankers (and by extension, the Federal Reserve Bank, which prints our money), arms merchants, and people like George Soros, a billionaire who profited heavily from our moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico (by buying into a Brazilian oil company that is drilling in the Atlantic and ... the Gulf of Mexico), and is trying to replicate on the dollar his feat of profitably crashing the British pound about a decade ago -- effectively stealing billions in savings from the British people. [To which I should have added a host of very corrupt Congressmen, like inside traders John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi and those who donate heavily to their campaigns.] The endgame is to reduce all but a small elite of the American people to poverty, so they will willingly enslave themselves to the rich that remain in order to survive. It serves their interest to have Americans more interested in football, Lindsay Lohan, and Dancing with the Stars, and in what would be (but for Ron Paul) a meaningless Republican primary, than to understand what is really going on.




A future historian might well entitle their work on the last fifty years, While American Slept: The decline and fall of the United States of America.

Wednesday night, I attended a meeting of an organization of which I have been a member for sixteen years. Before it started (it is a small group), I briefly went over the Defense Appropriation Bill's detainment provisions and their implications (essentially what I wrote Nov. 29), and asked them if this was the kind of government they really wanted to pledge their allegiance to (They know I have not recited the Pledge of Allegiance since I joined them). And again, even with this warning, I remained the only one not to stand up for the pledge. Our people are very confused, and I am beginning to wonder what, if anything, will shake them out of the myth that we still live, and always will live, in a "sweet land of liberty."

My allegiance to the United States government is conditional on its fidelity to the Constitution, which represents the basic principles of our Founding Fathers. My desire for Ohio independence is to replace that government with a smaller one that is faithful to the same principles, as the Ohio Constitution is (in some ways better than the U.S. Constitution). If we see a miracle next year in the election of a President and Congress who are faithful to the Constitution, I will reconsider my position, but I am not confident that such a miracle will happen.

Quotation of the day

Charlie Earl, again... reacting to a story in the Daily Caller (and elsewhere) about President Obama's announcement that he will "continue to act independently of Congress to benefit the American people."

Of course... it's the divine right of kings.

I think the President is serious about wanting to be a dictator.

Lobbyists too powerful because government is too powerful

As a member of the Libertarian Party, I frequently get e-mails from national party Chairman Mark Hinkle and Executive Director Wes Benedict. I read them and usually delete them. However, today's message from Mr. Hinkle gets right to the root of the problem with big government. I am quoting it in full:

"President Obama is currently caught in a bit of a scandal over his pledge not to take campaign money from lobbyists.

"According to the New York Times, 'Despite a pledge not to take money from lobbyists, President Obama has relied on prominent supporters who are active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his re-election bid.'

"It's unfortunate that the president has added one more to his pile of broken promises. But it's not at all surprising.

"Our government has far too much power and money at its disposal. The inevitable consequence is that businesses, organizations, and individuals will work very hard to guide that power and money in their own favor.

"In fact, it often seems like politicians intentionally create incentives for people to try to bribe them.

"Businesses especially will fight for more corporate welfare, and also for regulations that stifle potential competitors. What choice do they have? If they don't fight for those special government favors, then someone else will, which will put them at an increasing disadvantage, and might drive them out of business.

"A recent Economist article pointed out that over the last ten years, companies that lobbied heavily had a much bigger increase in stock value than those that didn't. Executives might conclude that if you're not lobbying, you're ripping off your shareholders!

"And of course, these entities that stand to benefit from government favors will work hard (and spend hard) to get friendly politicians elected.

"Some people feel that massive campaign finance regulations will stop this unholy bargaining. It won't. When the dust settles, campaign finance restrictions usually just make life easier for incumbents and harder for challengers. We Libertarians know that only too well.

"I have to remind myself, lobbying isn't essentially a bad thing. It's an expression of our right to 'petition the government for a redress of grievances.' It provides information to politicians. But when politicians get in the habit of handing out favors, you can bet everyone is going to run up to the trough.

"The only way to reduce the power of lobbyists is to reduce the power of government. That choice rests with the voters. If voters keep electing Democrats and Republicans, then the power of government and lobbyists will continue to grow. If voters start electing Libertarians, things will change."

Besides voting Libertarian, the only long-term solution to lobbyists is to decentralize government so much that lobbying becomes impractical, except by local citizens and businesses.

Exposing Progressive Capitalism

... is an interesting new page in Facebook. Its purpose, as well expressed by its logo (left), is to inform the American people how the leftist-sounding rhetoric actually serves a few large corporate interests. Republicans will not like the site, but all of us need to think about whom government is meant to serve.

For myself, I would prefer a Jeffersonian nation of farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans to the society we have now -- it would be much more satisfying physically and spiritually, and require far fewer resources to maintain. This graphic from that page neatly summarizes how corporate cronyism works, at both the federal and state level:

Update on the IHOP raids

I posted a report from the Toledo Blade Sept. 20 of a raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security on several International House of Pancakes restaurants in northwestern Ohio and Indiana, in which many boxes of records were seized.

The franchisees owning the restaurants are Jordanian-Americans. While the FBI has refused to provide any information, there appears to be some suspicion of terrorist activity within subsequent stories published by the Blade. Here is the latest, from Sept. 22.

Down on government? You are not alone

The Gallup Poll has released a series of measures of public confidence in the federal government. Nearly all of them are at or near record lows, including 81% dissatisfied with the way the nation is governed, 15% approval of the way Congress is doing its job, and 49% who now feel that the federal government poses "an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."

Gallup's bottom line: 

Americans' various ratings of political leadership in Washington add up to a profoundly negative review of government -- something that would seem unhealthy for the country to endure for an extended period. Nevertheless, with another budget showdown looking inevitable and a contentious presidential election year getting underway, it appears the ratings reviewed here could get worse before they improve.

So it appears that I am not the only "gloom and doomer" around here...

The truth about the debt settlement

This one is worth quoting in full, from Mike Tuggle at Rebellion:

We're over $14 trillion in debt. (Hey, anyone out there know who got us into that mess?) Anyway, the best and the brightest convened in DC, where they squabbled, haggled, and hectored to find a way out of this crisis. Finally, they hammered out a solution, one that I must confess I would never have thought of:


Add another $7 trillion to our debt.

Wow.

Yes, you read that right. Already drowning in debt, the DC Empire just passed "the largest increase in the debt limit in U.S. history."

As I've said before, trying to survive in the 21st century without a huge central government would be like trying to swim the English Channel without your barbells. (Emphasis added)

Prophecy of the decade

Ron Paul predicting the present from his speeches, 1998-2002. I agree with the conclusion, we should elect Ron Paul in 2012 -- if it won't already be too late...

Terrorists and tyrants

Charlie Earl offers us a clear explanation how people who originally loved liberty come to enslave themselves, from his post in littlestuff-minoosha. (This is a large excerpt, but not the entire post)

Fear is a powerful thing. Many people fail to take risks because they fear failing. Despots know this and utilize fear to control others. Evil flourishes when people allow their fear to subvert their desire for liberty. Fear overwhelms our rational thought and drives us toward making choices that are contrary to our best interests. Choosing to live a life that is marinated in fear as opposed to living in liberty is somewhat like a tiger preferring the cage to the wild. You are alive, but are you truly living? People who are free dare to dance. People who are fearful scurry for hiding places. Psychologists tell us that negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement are useful for manipulating behavior, and fear clearly fits into the negative mold...

Here in the United States we have experienced an interesting phenomenon. Our leaders of our REPUBLIC have used our fear of terrorists to advance the rule of tyranny. Our desire for greater safety has led us to accept the early vestiges of enslavement... True, the federal government is mandated to protect and secure our nation, but it has a greater responsibility to protect and defend our liberty. Our fear of outside threats has seemingly given the government carte blanche to run roughshod over our personal freedom. For our liberty to prevail, we must resist tyranny as forcefully as we denounce terrorism. There is no such thing as freedom from fear. The minds of people are fertile enough to imagine monsters of every type under our beds. Liberty can only survive when we reject fear as a lifestyle….and it does not matter what the source of our fear is.

The fear that is used by terrorists and tyrants springs from the same root. Sometimes fear can be a healthy thing for people because it may restrict our compulsion to act stupidly by taking unnecessary risks, but fear is more commonly manifested as paralysis. Liberty is too precious to be sacrificed on the altar of fear and indecision. We can never allow our fear of half-baked loonies to cause us to run to the momentarily safe arms of tyranny. The New Hampshire motto says it best: “Live Free or Die.” Freedom is fleeting, and death is inevitable. Why not live for liberty? It is better to live in freedom and die while pursuing a glorious purpose than it is to die slowly while bound in chains.

Prophecy of the day

From 1948:

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking of the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labor power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Flying Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labor that would build several hundred cargo ships. Ultimately, it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labors another Flying Fortress is built. In principle, the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population...

It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

-- George Orwell, 1984

This is the most rational explanation I have seen for, let's see... Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Libya, and wherever else our handlers are trying to get us into.

In this environment, doublethink is a useful survival skill.

Congress passes major cuts to federal budget

From the Libertarian Party website.

I really couldn't end this day on the downer I posted earlier.

"We are so hosed"

That is what a commenter wrote in response to Lee DeCovnick's post in American Thinker. Mr. DeCovnick was musing on the Japanese official estimate of the cost of rebuilding following the recent earthquake and tsunami, which is in the range of $198-$309 billion. Mr. DeCovnick's reaction:

Uh... hold on a minute. Something seems wrong with these numbers.  Do I understand this correctly; all those coastal cities and towns that were leveled, the tens of thousands of cars and homes that were pulverized, all the stores, shops, factories, warehouses, schools, freeways, roads, ships, aircraft, trains, port facilities and infrastructure reduced to rubble and it will only cost as much as US Federal deficit for a couple of months?

Yup. Read the article, see the evidence, and then get angry. Very, very angry. 


Virtual buckeye to Charlie Earl.

Inglourious basterds

AlterNet, via The Liberty Voice, reports that Hosni Mubarak is far from the only -- or even the worst -- dictator supported by the United States government. Some of the others pocket billions of earnings from their countries' oil deposits, boil opponents to death, and allow their minions to molest young women, but stay on our good side by buying Boeings for their air forces.

The article is well worth reading, but if you are easily sickened, you might want to take a Tums or Zantac first.

And then we wonder why people in other countries hate us, even to the point of wanting to commit terrorism. Or why some of us think Ohio independence might be a good idea...

End the hypocrisy

Charlie Earl's Facebook page is dotted with daily three-word mottoes. I'm going to borrow the technique for one day and say, end the hypocrisy.

Update Feb. 2:  Lew Rockwell weighs in on the Republican hypocrisy of saying we can't be forced to buy health care, but can be forced to pay Social Security and other people's healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid). He has a point, and suggests that we challenge House Speaker John Boehner on the point.

Most of the problems America faces today are the result of governmental hypocrisy, particularly on the federal level:

• President Obama says he wants to help the little guy, but continues to support the Federal Reserve Bank and large transfers of wealth to New York bankers.
• They say they want to increase jobs, while pursuing stimulus packages that kill them.
• The Congress says it wants to reduce the deficit, while taking less than baby steps to do so. The Republicans originally said they wanted to cut federal spending by $100 billion (a paltry figure when the deficit is $1,800 billion (= $1.8 trillion) -- now they are talking about a whole $50 billion. Chump change at the federal level.
• The Eastern liberals want to make our political debate more civil, while they polarize us with phony charges of "racism."

And, worst of all (at the moment):

• We tell the world that we support "democracy," while we prop up ruthless dictators like Hosni Mubarak. 

We will not begin to recover until the feds get the message. Right now, they are like children holding their ears and shouting "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

So we have to get their attention, and the way to do that is at the state level:

• Nullify everything in sight that the feds do that is not in strict conformance with the Constitution.
• Promote the use of silver in everyday transactions, which will destroy the power of the Federal Reserve Bank without any federal action being taken.
• Speak freely, as long as we genuinely believe it is the truth. We don't need anyone's permission -- not the feds', not the Southern Poverty Law Center's, not some academic's -- to say what we think.

We must also get Congress to eliminate all military aid to other countries immediately. End humanitarian aid to countries where we know it is fostering corruption. Get out of the Middle East and Afghanistan, and begin withdrawing from Europe and the rest of the world (with the possible exception of South Korea -- and I'm not completely sure about that).

The purpose of our government is to support the lives, liberties, and opportunities of the American people. Nothing else. We have strayed far from that purpose, but it is our duty as citizens to insist that the federal government rededicate itself to that purpose.

If we cannot do this through many states nullifying many laws, then it will be time for us to declare independence -- but first, we must become more independent in our hearts. And the first step toward that is to demand that our governments

End the hypocrisy!

Quotation of the day

Yesterday, Charlie Earl was trying to decide which to watch and which to record -- the State of the Union Address or the Ohio State Buckeyes basketball game. (I advised Charlie to record the State of the Union so he could rewind if his jaw dropped or to get a quote right).

The following, by John K. Fockler, Jr., appeared as another comment on the schedule conflict:

One of them is an ultimately meaningless entertainment put on by generally inflated egos who believe that they're entitled to do whatever they want to do and to hell with everyone else. The other is a basketball game.

I ended up missing both, but will comment on the State of the Union after I have had time to read the transcript. The (1) Buckeyes beat (12) Purdue 87-64 and have a perfect 20-0 record.

Three questions to ask in any political discussion

Here are three questions every liberty activist and Tea Partier should ask whenever a political discussion comes up on pending federal legislation. They will help educate others and strengthen the movement. These come from Karl Uppiano at American Thinker.

1. Which article of the Constitution gives government the authority to do this?

2. How does this help reduce the deficit and balance the budget?

3. Why does this have to be mandatory and not voluntary?

 

 

Why the Food Safety Act is a bad idea

Charlie Earl at littlestuff-minoosha warns us how bureaucracies run amok in efforts to expand their mission. He uses the "camel's nose in the tent" analogy to suggest that the real purpose of the act is to destroy American agriculture.

He makes a good case. His writing style is such that if I try to quote it, it is sure to be out of context; but once you read it for yourself, you will gain a new appreciation for the reasons this act (and "Net neutrality" and a host of other bad ideas) must be resisted!

The Emperor has no clothes

We don't have to put the President through one of those body scanners -- he's already naked. So says Karen Kwiatkowski in LewRockwell.com in response to what she calls the "Cablegate" scandal occasioned by the release of classified documents on Wikileaks.

In her opinion, no federal agent will die ... unless it is of laughter. I cannot possibly do justice to her article in a summary; but assure you that the post is entertaining, as well as enlightening.

It is a fitting response to my more serious piece on Monday.

The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them; but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming. (Psalm 37:12-13)

Bumper sticker of the day

From the Ron Paul 2012 Facebook site:



Much has been written about the Wikileaks being released today. I understand both sides of the argument; but tend to favor disclosure over non-disclosure, because disclosure is what makes government accountable to the people.

The most sensible solution to the problem is for Congress to take the bull by the horns and define a strict and very limited policy for the classification of documents. In my view, the only reasons to classify a document are:

• To prevent the disclosure of military strategy and tactics to an enemy while a war is in progress;
• To protect an intelligence asset working abroad; and
• To prevent premature disclosure of diplomatic negotiating strategy to the other parties.

There may be a few others that I have not thought of, but the reasons should still be very few and easy to define. In addition, all classified documents should include a mandatory review date. If the review is not held prior to that date, the document is automatically released (Military classified documents would remain so for the duration of the war).

I suspect that the Wikileaks disclosures will prove to be embarrassing to the federal government; which (1) is not sufficient reason to classify a document, and (2) suggests that, given the cloak of secrecy, officials will say and do careless things that would not happen if they knew that their actions were part of the public record. The threat of disclosure is also a potent weapon to ensure that the Constitution is being enforced.

Update on "Outlawing gardens"

My Nov. 18 piece "U.S. Senate bill seeks restriction on personal gardens" has done unbelievable things to my hit count. However, my standards are higher than that. While I do not always research thoroughly (and sometimes not enough), I do try to check the accuracy of what I write -- at least to confirm that there is a bill currently in the Congress that is cited by my source.

However, it appears that my piece might have inspired a reaction greater than what the facts justify. A writer to the Hoptown Hall Forum cited snopes.com, which I generally consider to be a reliable source. Snopes finds that claims that S.510 would outlaw gardening and saving seeds to be "mostly false."

So I read the official summary of S.510. Farms and restaurants are specifically exempted from the inspection provisions of the bill, so Snopes is correct in saying that the bill will not outlaw gardening or saving seeds. It does not appear to mandate the use of chemicals.

However, there is no question that the bill would erect a vast bureaucracy to regulate food, which given the Executive's penchant for creating its own law; would likely have led to absurdities like the ones we have been concerned about.

But Snopes (properly) ignores the most essential point. No matter how broad or limited the powers S.510 would grant to the new Food Administration, it is still an unconstitutional intrusion on the rights of states to regulate what is mostly intrastate commerce.

The bill has not been acted upon since December 2009, and I suggest that the lame-duck session of Congress has bigger fish to fry in its last few days. But pressing for its defeat is still very much in order for any liberty-loving activist.

Go ahead and plan your 2011 garden. You're going to need it.